The Last Light of the Sun Read online

  Ivarr Ragnarson had not been caught fleeing from Brynnfell. Two blood-eagled bodies to the west had been the marks of his passage. The Cyngael had never found the ships.

  Ivarr had made it home. Stood to reason.

  Something else did, too. No thinking man bought mercenaries to raid the Anglcyn coast any more. A waste of money, of time, of lives. Not with what Aeldred had been doing—and was still doing—with his standing army and his burhs, and even a fleet of his own being built along this coastline now.

  Mercenaries might risk it if you paid them enough, but it didn’t make sense. You sailed from Vinmark and raided east and south through Karch now, even down to the trading stations of overstretched Sarantium. Or along the Ferrieres coast, or, possibly, you went past here, west to the Cyngael lands. Not much to be gleaned there these days, for the exposed treasure-houses of the sanctuaries had long since been removed inland and inside walls, and the three Cyngael provinces had never had overmuch in the way of gold in any case. But a man, a particular man, might have his reasons for taking dragon-ships and fighting men back there.

  The same reasons he’d had at the beginning of summer. And one more now. A brother newly dead, to join a blood feud that had begun long ago.

  And if this was so, if it was Ivarr, Thorkell Einarson had good reason to expect nothing but a bad death were he to run away now with his son towards the coast, looking for the ships that would be lying offshore or beached in a cove. Ivarr, repellent and deadly as anyone he’d ever known, would remember the man who had blocked the arrow he’d loosed at Brynn ap Hywll from the wooded slope.

  He really oughtn’t to have been so sure of all this, but he was. Something to do with the night, the mood and strangeness of it. Ghost moon overhead. Nearness to the spirit wood, beyond the margins of which men never went. That girl going out, for no reason that made sense, just following the Cyngael prince. There was something at work tonight. You raided and fought long enough, survived so many different ways of dying, you learned to trust your senses, and this … feeling.

  Bern hadn’t learned enough yet, else he’d not have been so easily taken in an alley. Thorkell grimaced, an expression creasing his features for the first time. Fool of a lad. It was a hard world they lived in. You couldn’t afford to be a fool.

  The boy was making a start, though, had to acknowledge that. Everyone knew how you joined the mercenaries in Jormsvik. The only way you could join them. Thorkell looked down at the brown-haired, brown-bearded figure on the grass. A different man might have acknowledged pride.

  Thorkell didn’t have time to linger, to ask how Bern had done any of this. Nor did he presume that his only son, awakening, would smile in delight and cry his father’s name aloud, and Ingavin’s in thankfulness.

  Bern shouldn’t be long from waking. He would have to hope that was so, that this isolated place wouldn’t draw wolves or thieves in the next while. The boy had filled out across the chest, he saw. You could almost call him a big man. He still remembered carrying him, years ago. Shook his head at that. Weak thoughts, too soft. Men woke each morning, lay down each night, in a blood-soaked world. You needed to remember that. And he needed to walk back to the girl.

  Jaddite now, or not, he murmured an ancient prayer, father’s blessing. Habit, nothing else: “Ingavin’s hammer, between you and all harm.”

  He turned to go. Paused, and—berating himself even as he did—took from his belt-purse something he’d removed when he surrendered to the Cyngael for the second time in twenty-five years. He carried it now, instead of wearing it. The hammer on a chain. You didn’t wear the symbols of the thunder god when you took the faith of Jad.

  It was an entirely ordinary, unremarkable hammer. Thousands like it. Bern wouldn’t know it as anything unique, but he’d realize it was an Erling who had carried him here, and he’d go back to the ships with the warning that implied. He’d have some talking to do, to explain his survival when Stefa never came back, but Thorkell couldn’t help him with that. A boy became a man, had his own stony way to make on land and sea, like everyone else—then you died where you died, and found out what happened then.

  Thorkell had killed an oar-companion tonight. Hadn’t meant to do that. Not truly a friend, Stefa, but they’d shared things, covered each other’s back in battle, slept on cold ground, close, for warmth in wind. You did that, raiding. Then you died where you died. An alley in Esferth for Stefa, pissing in the dark. He wondered if the dead man’s spirit was out here. Probably was. Blue moon shining.

  He bent and looped the chain into his son’s fingers and closed them over the hammer, and then he went away along the stream, not looking back, covering ground towards where he’d seen the princess walking in her own folly.

  There was a snatch of verse in his head as he went. One his wife used to sing, to all three children when they were young.

  He put it out of his mind. Too soft for tonight, for any night.

  He is coming. She knows it. Is waiting within the trees, across the stream. He is mortal and can see her. They have spoken under stars (no moons) on the night she took a soul for the queen. He has watched the Ride go through their pool in the wood. Then dropped his iron blade and very nearly touched her by the trees on the slope above the farm. It has not left her, that moment, from then until now. No quietude, in wood, in mound, crossing water under stars with the music of the Ride all around.

  She trembles, an aspen leaf, her hair violet, then a paler hue. She is far from home, one moon in the sky. A glowing at the wood’s edge, waiting.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Ingavin and Thünir were many things, but they were soul-reapers before all else, and the ravens that followed them, the birds of the battlefield and the banners, were emblems of that.

  So was the blood-eagle: a sacrifice and a message. A vanquished king or war-leader stripped naked under the holy sky, thrown on the ground, his face to the churned earth. If he wasn’t dead he would be restrained by strong warriors, or with ropes tied to pegs hammered into the earth, or both.

  His back would be carved vertically with a long knife or an axe, the bloody opening pulled wide, his ribs cracked back on each side and his lungs drawn out through the opening thus made. They would be draped upon the exposed cage of his ribs: the folded wings of an eagle, blood-crimson, god offering.

  It was said that Siggur Volganson, the Volgan, had been so precise and swift in performing the ritual that some of his victims remained alive for a time with their lungs exposed to the watching gods.

  Ivarr had not yet been able to achieve this. In fairness, he’d had less opportunity than his grandfather had enjoyed during the years and seasons of the great raids. Times changed.

  TIMES CHANGED. Burgred of Denferth, viciously cursing himself for carelessness, nonetheless knew that none of the other leaders at court or of the fyrd would have taken more than seven or eight riders to investigate the rumour of a ship, or ships, seen along the coast. He’d had five men, two of them new—using the ride south to assess them.

  Three of those men were dead now. Assessment rendered meaningless. But no one was raiding the Anglcyn coast these days. How could he have expected what he’d found—or what had found his small party tonight? Aeldred had burhs all along the coast, watchtowers between them, a standing army, and—as of this summer—the beginnings of a proper fleet for the first time.

  The Erlings themselves were different in this generation: settlers in the eastern lands, half of them (or something like that) were Jaddite now, trimming their sails to the winds of faith. Times changed, men changed. Those still roaming the seas in dragon-ships pursuing sanctuary treasures and ransom and slaves went to Ferrieres now, or east, where Burgred had no idea (and didn’t care) what they found.

  The lands of King Aeldred were defended, that was what mattered. And if some Erlings remembered this king as a hunted fugitive in wintry swamplands … well, those same Erlings were humbly sending their household warriors or their sons with tribute to Esferth these days, and f
earing Aeldred’s reprisals if they were late.

  None of which unassailable truths was of any help to Burgred now.

  It was night. Summer stars, ocean breeze, a waning blue moon. They had camped on open ground, less than a day’s ride from Esferth, between the burh of Drengest, where the new shipyard was, and the watchtower west of it. He could have reached either place, but he was training men, testing them. It was a mild, sweet night. Had been.

  The two on guard had shouted their warnings properly. Thinking back, Burgred decided that he and his men had surprised the Erling party as much as they’d been surprised themselves. Unfortunately, there were at least twenty Erlings—almost half a longship’s worth—and they were skilled fighters. Disturbingly so, in fact. Commands had been barked, registered, implemented in a night skirmish. It hadn’t taken him long to realize where these men were from, and to accept what life and ill fortune had doled out tonight.

  He’d ordered his men to drop their weapons, though not before the two guards and one other of his company—Otho, who was a good man—lay dead. No great shame surrendering to a score of Jormsvik mercenaries mad enough to be ashore this near to Esferth. He had no idea why they were here: the mercenaries were far too pragmatic to offer themselves for raids as foolhardy as this one would be. Who would pay them enough to even consider it? And why?

  It made too little sense. And it was not a puzzle worth having more men die while he tried to solve it. Best surrender, much as it burned to do that, let them sell him back to Aeldred for silver and safe passage to wherever they were really going.

  “We yield ourselves!” he cried loudly, and dropped his sword on the moonlit grass. They would understand him. The two languages borrowed from each other, and the older Jormsvik raiders would have been here many times in their youth. “You have been foolish beyond all credit to come here, but sometimes folly is rewarded, for Jad works in ways we do not understand.”

  The largest of the Erlings—eyes behind a helm—grinned and spat. “Jad, you say? I think not. Your name?” he rasped. He already knew what this was about.

  No reason to hide it. Indeed, the whole point was his name, and what it was worth. It would save his life, and the lives of his three surviving men. These were mercenaries. “I am Burgred, Earl of Denferth,” he said. “Captain of King Aeldred’s fyrd and his Household Guard.”

  “Hah!” roared the big man in front of him. Laughter and shouts from the others, raucous and triumphant, unable to believe their good fortune. They knew him. Of course they knew him. And experienced men would also know that Aeldred would pay to have him back. Burgred cursed again, under his breath.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, angrily. “Do you not know how little you can win along this coast now? When did the men of Jormsvik begin selling themselves for small coin and certain battle?”

  He had spent his entire life, it seemed, fighting them and studying them. He was aware of a hesitation.

  “We were told Drengest could be taken,” the man in front of him said, finally.

  Burgred blinked. “Drengest? You are mocking me.”

  There was a silence. They weren’t mocking him. Burgred laughed. “What fool told you that? What fools listened to him? Have you seen Drengest yet? You must have.”

  The Erling planted his sword in the earth, removed his helm. His long yellow hair was plastered to his head. “We’ve seen it,” he said.

  “You understand there are nearly one hundred men of the fyrd in there, over and above the rest of the people inside the walls? You’ve seen the walls? You’ve seen the fleet being built? You were going to attack Drengest? You know how close you are to Esferth here? What do you have, thirty longships? Forty? Fifty? Is Jormsvik emptied for this folly? Are you all summer-mad?”

  “Five ships,” the Erling said at length, shifting his feet. A professional, not a madman, aware of everything Burgred was saying, which made this even harder to understand.

  Five longships meant two hundred men. Fewer, if they had horses. A large raid, an expensive one. But not nearly enough to come here. “You were led to believe you could take that burh, where our fleet’s being built and guarded, with five ships? Someone lied to you,” Burgred of Denferth said flatly.

  Last words spoken in a worthy life.

  He had time to recall, bewildered again, that the Erlings had always seen bows as the weapon of a coward, before the moonlight left his eyes and he went to seek the god with an arrow in his chest.

  GUTHRUM SKALLSON BLINKED in the moonlight, not quite believing what he’d just seen. Then he did believe it, and turned.

  He wasn’t a berserkir, had never been that wild on a battlefield, was happy to wear armour, thank you, but the rage that filled him in that moment was very great and he moved swiftly with it. Crossed to the man with the bow and swung his arm in a full backhanded sweep, smashing it into the archer’s face, sending him sprawling in the blue-tinted grass.

  He followed, still in a fury, swearing. Bent over the crumpled form, seized the fallen bow, cracked it over his knee, then grabbed the belt-quiver and scattered the arrows with one furious, wide, wheeling motion in an arc across the summer field. He was breathing hard, at the edge of murder.

  “You’ll die for doing that,” the man on the ground said, through a smashed mouth, in his eerie voice.

  Guthrum blinked again. He shook his head, as if stunned. It was not to be borne. He lifted the man with one hand; he weighed less than any of them, by a good deal. Holding him in the air by the bunched-up tunic, so his feet swung free, Guthrum pulled the knife from his belt.

  “No!” shouted Atli, behind him. Guthrum ignored that.

  “Say it to me again,” he grunted to the little man dangling in front of him.

  “I will kill you for that blow,” said the man he held at his mercy. The words came out half a whistle, through bleeding lips.

  “Right, then,” said Guthrum.

  He moved the knife, in a short, practised motion. And was brought up hard by a heavy hand seizing his wrist, gripping fiercely, pulling it back.

  “We won’t get final payment if he dies,” Atli grunted. “Hold!”

  Guthrum swore at him. “Do you know how much silver he just cost us?”

  “Of course I know!”

  “You heard the white-faced coward threaten my life? Mine!”

  “You struck him a blow.”

  “Ingavin’s blood! He killed our ransom, you thickheaded fool!”

  Atli nodded. “Right. He’s also paying us. And he’s a Volganson. The last one. You want to go home with that blood on your blade? We’ll settle this on the ships. Best get out of here now, and off this coast. Aeldred’ll be coming soon as they find these bodies.”

  “Of course he will.”

  “Then let’s go. We kill the last two?” Atli awaited orders.

  “Of course we kill them,” gasped the little man Guthrum was still holding in the air. Guthrum threw him away, into the grass. He lay there, crumpled and small, not moving.

  Guthrum swore. What he wanted to do was send the last two Anglcyn back to Esferth to explain, to say the killing was unintended. That they were leaving these shores. There were a great many Erlings hereabouts, or living not far east of here. The last thing Jormsvik needed was their own people enraged because the Anglcyn had cut off trading rights, or raised the tribute tax, or decided to kill a score of them and display the heads on pikes for the death of Aeldred’s earl and friend. It could happen. It had happened.

  But he couldn’t let them go back. There was no explanation that would achieve anything useful. Living men would name the Jormsvik raiders as the men who’d killed an earl of the Anglcyn with a coward’s bow, after he’d surrendered. It wouldn’t do at all.

  He sighed, glared at the figure in the grass again.

  “Kill them,” he said, reluctantly. “Then we move.”

  It is a truth hardly to be challenged that most men prefer not to have others decree the manner and time of their dying. Jor
msvik mercenaries, responsible on an individual and collective basis for so many deaths, were not unaware of this. At the same time, the engrossing and unsettling events in that moonlit meadow, from the time the Anglcyn was shot to the moment Guthrum issued that last order, had compelled attention—and diverted it.

  One of the captive Anglcyn twisted, in the moment Guthrum spoke, grabbed a boot-top knife, stabbed the nearest of the men guarding him, ripped free of the belated clutch of another, and tore off into the night. Not, normally, a problem. There were twenty of them here, they were swift and experienced fighters.

  They did not, however, have horses.

  And a moment later the fleeing Anglcyn did. Six mounts had been tethered nearby. They ought to have been claimed already. They hadn’t been. The arrow, the loss of an earl’s ransom, Guthrum’s assault on the man paying them. There were reasons, obviously, but it was a mistake.

  Running hard, they reached the other horses. Five of them mounted up without an order spoken. No need for orders here. They gave chase. They were not horsemen, however, these Erlings, these dragon-ship raiders, scourges of the white wave, sea foam. They could ride, but not as an Anglcyn did. And he had chosen the best horse—the earl’s, almost certainly. The dead earl’s, their lost ransom. It was all bad. Then it got worse.

  They heard his horn sound, shattering the night.

  The riders reined up hard. The others on foot behind them in the meadow looked at each other, and then at Guthrum, who was leading this party. Every man there knew they were in enormous peril suddenly. Inland. On foot, all but five of them. A full day from the ships, at least, with a fortified burh and a guard tower nearby, and Esferth itself just to the north. It would be day, bright and deadly, long before they got back to the shore.