The Last Light of the Sun Page 30

  The riders had spoken feverishly, interrupting each other, more unsettled than raiders ought to be. They told of a clash between Guthrum and Ivarr Ragnarson over the death of an Anglcyn earl. Brand shrugged, hearing of it. These things happened. He’d have sided with Guthrum—earls were worth a great deal, unless out of favour—but sometimes, he had to admit, you just needed to kill someone, especially if it hadn’t happened in a long time. That came with the way they lived, with the dragon-ships, with the eagles of Ingavin. And he knew for a fact that Guthrum Skallson had done his share of killing prisoners over the years. They’d sort this when everyone got back.

  Forty mercenaries ought to have been more than enough to meet and protect Guthrum and Atli’s small party from any likely Anglcyn response, fight their way back to the ships if they did encounter anyone. Brand ordered three ships offshore, to be safe, left two anchored in the shallows, lightly manned, for the returning parties to board and row.

  He was being prudent, but was not alarmed. Shore parties met people, incidents happened, sometimes deaths. This was a raid, wasn’t it? What did people expect? Jormsvik had been doing this, over the known world, for a long time. Erlings had been coming in longships to these shores for more than a hundred years. Yes, the Anglcyn lands had become harder to raid over the last while, but that had happened at times, too. There were always other places. Three ships had gone last spring out through the straits and down the sea lanes to Al-Rassan, to raid and run before the khalif’s men could be there with their curved swords and bows. That would have been a fight to be part of, Brand had thought, hearing the tale. He wanted to go there, see for himself. There was, word had it, wealth beyond description among those desert-born star-worshippers. He wanted to see their women, behind the veils they wore.

  It was the life he knew, raiding. The northlands offered no refuge for anyone. Vinmark was a hard place, sent forth hard men. And how else could a man of spirit make his fortune, claim a place by winter hearths and in the skalds’ songs, and then the gods’ meadhalls? It wasn’t as if every man could fish, or find land to farm, or make ale or barrels for ale. It wasn’t as if every man wanted to.

  You hoped that if you killed someone on a raid you gained something from it, and if some of your own died, that you’d taken even more, to compensate. Then you sacrificed to Ingavin and Thünir, and rowed back out to sea if you had to, or pushed forward inland, depending on where you were and what you were facing. Brand had lost count of the number of times he’d had decisions like this to make.

  They had five fully manned ships here, allowing room for horses. Five ships was a large group. This incident might even be useful before it ended, Brand thought. Forty Jormsvik fighters could overwhelm any hasty Anglcyn pursuit of Guthrum from a burh; take the leaders hostage—for security first, then gold. Safety and a reward. The oldest tactics of all, just about. Some things never changed, he thought. He kept his own ship as one of the two on shore.

  He was wrong, in fact, about a number of things, but had no real way of knowing it. From the bay where the ships were hidden, they hadn’t seen the signal fires. A great deal had changed in these lands in the twenty-five years since Aeldred, son of Gademar, had come out from Beortferth and reclaimed his father’s throne.

  The party dispatched from the ships, guided by two of the (by now exhausted) riders Guthrum had sent back, did find a group of men. Not their returning companions. By then Guthrum and his men were lying dead beside the pyre that would burn them, across a stream from a village mill.

  Nor did Brand’s relief contingent meet some overextended, too-quick pursuit from Drengest on the coast. Instead, forty Erlings from the ships, most of them on foot, encountered the mounted fyrd of King Aeldred in a field east of the River Thorne, a little past midday.

  FROM THE MOMENT he’d heard the name again—Ivarr Ragnarson—spoken by the Jormsvik leader just before he was killed at the king’s saddle, Ceinion of Llywerth had felt a terrifying surmise taking shape within him.

  He was not a man inclined to flinch from thoughts, or truths, whether of spirit and faith or having to do with the earthly world in which men lived and died. But this growing awareness, as the sun rose and the day wore on, caused him an almost physical pain, a constriction of the heart.

  The last of the Volgans had hired this company. Hired them, it seemed, for a raid near Esferth, at the very end of the season. But that made no sense. Aeldred had these lands far too well defended, especially with the fair about to begin. But what if you hadn’t really meant to stay here? If you’d lied to the mercenaries about your purpose? What if you’d killed a lucrative hostage to stop them from claiming a vast ransom and happily turning home?

  There were compelling reasons why Ivarr Ragnarson might want to lead mercenaries to Cyngael shores, and to a particular farmhouse.

  The Jormsvik leaders would regard it as a waste of time, too far to go this time of year. They’d have to be tricked, persuaded. This was a man, Ceinion remembered, who had blood-eagled a girl and a farmhand during his flight last spring. He was said to be deformed in body and spirit, for the two went together, always.

  Ceinion had led the dawn prayers south of the meadow where they’d killed the Erlings, had kept them brisk for there was need for haste. He’d mounted with the others and rode again beside the king with the god’s sun rising behind them. Aeldred said nothing as they went. Only rasped quick orders to some riders who peeled away from the company and headed east. It was difficult to see this grim-faced, death-dealing figure as the man who’d talked about translated manuscripts and ancient learning in the night just past.

  Ceinion kept his distance from Alun ab Owyn as they went. He didn’t even want to exchange a glance with the prince, fearful that he might give his thoughts away. If Owyn’s son learned what the cleric was thinking he might go wild with helpless panic.

  Which was not, in truth, far from a good description of what Ceinion was feeling himself as the morning passed and the countryside rolled beneath horses’ hooves. The sun was overhead now. If the dragon-ships of Jormsvik were not found, if they had already cast off with Ragnarson aboard and gone west … there would be nothing he or anyone else could do but pray.

  Ceinion of Llywerth, high cleric of the Cyngael, believed in his god of light and in the power of holy prayer for almost everything that could be, except the most potent matter of all: the life and death of those he loved. There was a woman lying in a sanctuary graveyard by the sea, within sound of the surf, beneath a pale grey stone with a simple sun disk carved upon it, and her dying had taken that belief from him. A wound, a rip in the fabric of the world. He had gone a little mad as she died, had done things that still kept him awake some nights. This was not a matter of which he’d written in his long correspondence with Rhodias and the Patriarch.

  He was also thinking, in this bright sunlight, of another woman, loved, and her husband, loved, and their daughter, coming into her glory, all of whom might or might not be at Brynnfell now, and he had no way of knowing, and no way of helping them.

  Unless they got to the ships in time.

  “Can we not go faster?” he asked the king of the Anglcyn.

  “No need. He said he sent for help, remember? They will be coming this way,” Aeldred said, looking briefly at him. “I am sure of it. We’ll stop soon to rest and eat. The river’s ahead. I want the fyrd fresh for a fight.”

  “Some of them will be coming,” said Ceinion. “But we must reach the longships before they get them off from shore.”

  “They’ve done that already. Jormsvik knows how to do these things. We’ll try to block their way home with the fleet in Drengest. I have six ships. I sent riders to them—they’ll be in the water before sundown. Fishing boats out, too, to watch for them. If we find this rescue party, the Erlings will be undermanned at sea. They have horses, which means the wide, slow boats, not the fighting ones. I mean to take them all, Ceinion.”

  “If they go home, my lord,” Ceinion said quietly.

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nbsp; Aeldred threw him a glance.

  “What is it I don’t know?” the king asked.

  The cleric was about to tell him when the horns blew. Then the great grey dog, Alun’s dog, sounded his own warning, and ahead of them Ceinion saw the Erlings, with the river just beyond.

  One of the outriders was galloping back; he reined hard beside them. “Forty or fifty, my lord! Mostly on foot.”

  “We have them, then. Get the mounted ones first,” the king ordered. “No messages back. Athelbert!”

  “Going, my lord!” his son shouted over his shoulder, already moving, calling for archers as he went.

  Ceinion watched the prince ride, readying his bow, easy in the saddle, his archers swift and smooth to respond to commands: precisely trained, his own contingent here. A very different man than his brother. The sons of Aeldred, he thought, might have divided their father’s nature between themselves. That could happen; he had seen it before. He also had a thought, as battle began, about the way Aeldred’s men were fighting today: from the saddle, with arrows as well as spears, which was new, and immensely difficult. And even more difficult to counter, if they had mastered it. It looked very much as though Athelbert and his archers had done that.

  His own people, Ceinion thought, had even more reason to try—to at least try—to come together now, and find some way to join the world beyond their hidden valleys. There might be a certain pride in being the last light of the god’s sun, where it set in the west, but there were dangers as well.

  Such thoughts were for later. Right now he watched a good-sized party of Jormsvik mercenaries form another desperate circle as Athelbert’s archers and the others came up to them. The raiders had already crossed the river; bad for them. They couldn’t have retreated in any case, outnumbered and facing horsemen in hostile country.

  They were brave men. No one on earth could deny or refute that. No swords or axes were thrown down, not even when the command to surrender was given by one of Athelbert’s thegns. Ceinion saw two Erling riders racing back west for the river: not cowards, messengers. Athelbert and five of his archers were pursuing them.

  Arrows flew from moving horses—and missed. The Jormsvik raiders splashed into the river, which was deeper and wider here than by Esferth. They began fording it. Athelbert came up to the bank of the Thorne. Ceinion watched as the prince took steadier aim and fired. Twice.

  He was too far to see what happened in the water, but a moment later Athelbert and his riders turned back. The prince lifted an arm to signal his father. Then he rode calmly to rejoin the fyrd surrounding the Erling force. Men had just died here, Ceinion knew, as they had this morning and in the night. What did you make of that? What words and reflections? It was the fate of men and women to die, often before what should have been their time. Should have been. Too much presumption in the thought. All rested with Jad, but survivors carried memories.

  He moved forward when the king did.

  “Have care, my lord,” cried a red-haired thegn. “They haven’t yielded.”

  “Shoot ten,” said Aeldred.

  “My lord!” Ceinion protested.

  Ten men were shot where they stood, even as he spoke. Athelbert’s archers were really very good. You watched them and you learned something important about the prince, frivolous as he might seem when at play in a meadow.

  “You said you want us to get to the ships,” the king said tersely, watching the deaths, not looking at him. “If they can send forty in a rescue party, they’ll have five, maybe six ships. Might even be seven, depending on how many horses. I’ll need my whole company. And good men will die in that fight, if we get to them in time. Don’t ask me to linger here, or be merciful. Not this day, cleric.”

  Cleric. No more than that. A king celebrated for courtesy, suing eloquently for Ceinion’s presence at his court. But there was a rage in Aeldred now, Ceinion saw, and the king was hard-pressed to contain it. In fact, he couldn’t; it was spilling over. Burgred of Denferth had been a friend from childhood. And beyond that truth, this was a large raid on the eve of the fair in Esferth—threatening to undermine the very idea of the fair. What merchants would come to these shores from abroad, or even overland from north or east, if they had cause to fear attacks from Vinmark?

  “Hear me. I am Aeldred of the Anglcyn,” the king said, moving his bay horse forward. Two of the fyrd shifted to stay between him and the Erlings. Axes could be thrown. “Whichever man leads here, order your men to lay down their arms.”

  Aeldred waited. Athelbert, Ceinion saw, was looking at his father, bow still to hand. No one moved in the Erling circle, or spoke. Swords and short axes remained levelled outwards. About thirty of them now. If they charged, they’d die; so would some of the Anglcyn. The king is too close, he thought.

  Aeldred shifted his horse sideways, and even nearer. “Do it now, Erlings. Unless you wish ten more of you executed. The men you were sent to meet are dead behind us. All of them. If you fight you will be killed here without mercy. There are two hundred of us.”

  “Better die sword in hand than cut down as cowards.” A very big man, yellow-bearded to the chest, stepped forward. “You give sworn oath to ransom if we yield ourselves?”

  Aeldred opened his mouth. He was rigid again. The idea of a demand … He looked at his son.

  “No, my lord!” Ceinion cried. “No! They will yield!”

  Aeldred’s mouth snapped shut. His jaw was clenched, his gloved hands fists on his reins. Ceinion saw him close his eyes. After a long moment, the king loosened the fingers of one hand and made the sign of the sun disk. Ceinion drew a ragged breath. His palms were sweating.

  “Drop all weapons and tell us where the ships are. You will not be killed.”

  The yellow-bearded Erling stared at him. It was remarkable, Ceinion thought, the absence of fear in his eyes. “No. We yield ourselves to you, but cannot betray shipmates.”

  Aeldred shrugged. “Athelbert,” he said, before Ceinion could speak.

  The Erling leader died, falling backwards, three arrows in his chest, through the leather armour. A fourth went into his cheekbone, below the helmet, quivered there, where he lay in the grass.

  “Who is it,” Aeldred said after a moment, “who will now speak for you? You have no more time. Weapons down, guides to the longships.”

  “My lord,” Ceinion said again, desperately. “In the holy name of Jad and by all the blessed—”

  Aeldred wheeled on him. “Heed your own words! Do you want these ships stopped before they go west and not east? Do you?”

  “In Jad’s name, we do!” came a third, urgent voice.

  Ceinion looked over quickly. Alun ab Owyn was moving his horse towards them. “We do, my lord king! Kill them and ride! Surely you know where they might be! High cleric, you heard: Ivarr Ragnarson bought these men. They will be going for Brynnfell, not home! We can’t get back in time!”

  He’d figured it out, after all.

  It seemed he wasn’t too young. And he was right, of course, about the timing. Ships from Drengest, out to sea by sundown, ordered to block sea lanes east, would not catch up to trained Erling seamen by the time new orders reached them. Even if they followed them west—and Aeldred had no reason to give such a command—they’d be more than half a day behind, and they wouldn’t be as skilled on the water.

  “Athelbert, please proceed, if you will be so good,” said the king of the Anglcyn. He might have been asking his elder son to comment, in his turn, on a liturgical passage being considered.

  Ceinion, in great pain, watched ten more Erlings die. They’d refused to surrender, he told himself. Aeldred had given them that chance. The pain did not lessen. Even after the arrows flew, no one came forward from the now-shrunken circle to yield. Instead, the last twenty of them screamed together, terrifyingly, distilling childhood nightmares for Ceinion in that sound, as they cried the names of their gods to the blue sky and the white clouds. They charged straight into the arrows and blades of two hundred mounted men.
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br />   Could childhood fears be expunged in this way, Ceinion wondered, remembering how many chapels and sanctuaries and good, holy men had burned amid those same cries to Ingavin and Thünir.

  He watched the first Erlings fall, and then the last, swords and axes gripped, never betraying their fellows. They died in battle, weapons to hand, and so promised a place among eagles in halls of undying glory.

  It appalled him, and he never forgot the unspeakable courage of it. Hating every one of those men, and what they made him think.

  There was a silence, after, in the field. It all took remarkably little time.

  “Very well. Let us go,” said the king, after a long moment. “We will leave instructions farther south for men to come gather their weapons and burn them here.”

  He twitched his reins, turned his horse. Alun ab Owyn, Ceinion saw, was already ahead of them all, desperately impatient. The grey dog was beside him.

  “My lord!” said the red-haired thegn. “Look there.”

  He was pointing back south and east, to where oaks between them and the sea were broken by a valley. Ceinion turned, with Aeldred.

  “Oh, my,” said Prince Athelbert.

  A group of men, eight or ten of them, some mounted, some on foot, with other horses pulling a cart, were coming towards them, waving and calling, voices carrying faintly in the summer air, and then more clearly as they neared.

  No one moved. The small party approached. It took some time. Their leader was riding in the cart; he appeared to have a wound, was holding his side. He was also the one most vigorously shouting, gesticulating with his free hand, visibly agitated.

  Visibly from the south, as well, Ceinion saw. And speaking a foreign tongue.

  “Jad’s holy light,” said King Aeldred, softly. “They are Asharite. From Al-Rassan. What is he saying? Someone?”

  Ceinion knew fragments of Esperañan, not Asharite. He tried it. Called a greeting.

  Without missing a beat in his tirade, the merchant in the cart switched languages. The king turned to Ceinion, expectantly. Forty dead men lay on the grass around them. Two of Athelbert’s men had dismounted, were efficiently collecting arrows.