* * *
As night came on, the old warrior’s lieutenant climbed the barrow, and found his lord lying as if asleep. Seeking a pulse, he found none; and taking up the flask he scented what it had held, and nodded in resignation. He called the others to the mound’s top, and they came with lighted torches to bear witness to the thane’s passing.
“The new god was kind to him,” one of them said at last, who had been his lord’s messenger during the wars. “A quiet death, without suffering. He deserved it.”
The lieutenant gently placed the red leaf on the thane’s unbreathing breast, and spoke in a voice unsteadied by sorrow, and by anger too. “No. He should have died fighting sword against sword with he that lies below, while he was young. While the old gods yet lived.”
The thane’s standard-bearer bowed his head in assent, and his reply was bitter. “We all should have.”
A long silence followed those words. But then youngest of the three, who had been the chief’s squire since boyhood and whose hair was not yet wholly gray, made a swift silencing gesture. “Wait. Listen.”
The noise came again: a faint rattling, very close.
“A viper,” the lieutenant said, scanning the grass as he drew his dagger.
The standard-bearer shook his head. “No. It’s…under the ground.”
Each man froze, listening to the strange rippling clatter deep in the barrow, and the squire spoke again, barely a whisper. “Bones…”
It sounded like a skeleton slowing coming to life. The thane’s body lay motionless and silent, but the red leaf twitched as two muffled voices issued from deep within the mound, both of them taut and harsh with anger; both the voices of young men in the prime of their strength. Then the clash of edged steel mingled with the curses and taunts and yells, and the noise went on for the space of several breaths before ebbing into the darkness.
Slowly the thane’s men looked around at one another, at first in disbelief, then in wonder, then in joy. All that night they kept vigil with their lord, their eyes and weaponry glinting by moonlight and firelight as they recalled his deeds with glad laughter, and drank to the gods still among them.
* * *
The mound was opened in days to come, so that the old warrior might be laid to rest next to his enemy, as he had wished. The priests noted in their chronicles that within the crypt was found a trove of precious goods, and the remains of a tall well-shaped warrior clad in magnificent armor, his skull still covered with skeins of long yellow hair. But only the bards told of how all the treasures seemed disordered and scattered, and how the skeleton seemed to be rising, clutching its great sword two-handed as if parrying a hard slash, and how it seemed to grin in fierce delight.
The thane’s men restored the treasures to their places, and reverently arrayed the remains so they lay at rest once more. As they covered their lord’s body with a rich grave-cloth, they observed that his lips seemed to shape a smile at the last; and they smiled as well.
When the tomb was sealed once more, the priests of the new god placed a solemn curse upon the barrow and the land about it, and no one dared come near the place thereafter. In time, forest claimed the grass, and thicket grew to cover the grave; but old believers knew that ever afterward on the first full moon of autumn, one might hear the wild din of battle, buried deep beneath the thorn-clad mound.
End
With thanks to Fleet Foxes for their 2008 ‘Tiger Mountain Peasant Song,’ which inspired this story.
The cover design features a reconstruction of the Sutton Hoo burial mask, c. 600-700 CE.
QUEEN OF TIME, contemporary magic realism
THE RYEL SAGA: A TALE OF LOVE AND MAGIC, the expanded ‘director’s cut’ single-volume edition of the critically acclaimed duology WYSARD and LORD BROTHER
WYSARD AND LORD BROTHER: THE RYEL SAGA DUOLOGY, the one-volume edition of the original paperback versions
PENTANGLE: FIVE POINTED FABLES, which gathers together the following short stories (all available separately):
REGENERATED
THE KIND GODS
THE HEART’S DESIRE
EVERAFTER ACRES
LAST LAUGHTER
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