“Then you had best win, hadn’t you? And hope you don’t encounter my father’s ships. Accept now, or fight us here.”
“Accepted,” said Brand Leofson, even faster than Alun had thought he would.
Alun’s heart was beating hard now. It had come. He was thinking of Dai, of course. Ragnarson was dead, but there was an Erling raider below them with a sword. The skein was spun. He drew a steadying breath. His turn to twitch reins, move his horse forward towards the destiny that had been shaped for him at the end of spring.
“I’ll do it,” said Thorkell Einarson.
Alun pulled up his horse, looked quickly back.
“I know you will,” said Brynn, very softly. “I suppose that’s why Jad led you here.”
Alun opened his mouth to protest, found he had no words. Reached for them, urgently. Thorkell was looking at him, an unexpected expression in his eyes.
“Think of your father,” he said. And then, turning away, “Prince Athelbert, have I leave to use the sword you gave me in the wood?”
Athelbert nodded, did not speak. Alun wondered if he looked as young as the Anglcyn did just now. He felt that way, a child again, allowed passage among the men, like the ten-year-old who had joined them with the farmers from the west.
Thorkell swung down from his horse.
“Not a hammer?” Brynn asked, brisk now.
“Not in single combat. This is a good blade.”
“Will you suffer a Cyngael helm?”
“If it doesn’t split because of cheap workmanship.”
Brynn ap Hywll didn’t return the smile. “It’s my own.” He took it off, handed it across.
“I am honoured,” said the other man. He put it on.
“Armour?”
Thorkell looked down the slope. “We’re both in leather. Leave it be.” He turned to the woman, still kneeling on the grass. “I thank you for my life, my lady. I have not lived a life deserving of gifts.”
“After this, you will have,” said Brynn, gruffly. His wife looked at the red-bearded Erling, made no reply. Brynn added, “You see his eye? How to use that? Kill him for me.”
Thorkell looked at him. Shook his head ruefully. “The world does strange things to a man if he lives long enough.”
“I suppose,” said Brynn. “Because you are fighting for us? For me?”
Thorkell nodded. “I loved him. Nothing was ever the same, after he died.”
Alun looked at Athelbert, who was looking back at him. Neither said a word. The birds were singing, all around them.
“Who fights for you?” shouted the big Erling down the slope. He had dismounted and come up alone, halfway to where they were. He’d put on his helmet.
“I do,” said Thorkell. He started down. A murmur rose from below, when they saw it was an Erling.
Alun saw that Enid was wiping at tears with the back of one hand. Rhiannon had come up beside her mother. He still didn’t have his own heart’s beating under anything like control. Think of your father.
How had he known to say that?
BERN WATCHED HIS FATHER coming down. He had been staring in disbelief from the moment they saw the Cyngael. Thorkell was easy to see, he always had been, half a head taller than most men, with the red banner of his beard.
So the son had known, without hearing a word spoken but watching the telltale gestures of the men above them, that it had been Thorkell who had spoken of single combat when battle had been upon them. So many of the stories told and sung—all the way back to Siferth and Ingeld in the snow—were of single combat. Glory and death: what brighter way to find either of them?
He’d heard others beside him, calculating swiftly, trying to decide if there were Cyngael hidden behind the slopes either side, and if so, how many. Bern had no sense of such things, could only register what he’d heard: they could win this fight, it was judged, but would take losses, especially if there were arrows among those in reserve.
And they wouldn’t leave these lands. They had understood that from the moment the Anglcyn prince—impossibly here among them—said what he did.
Bern had had those premonitions of disaster, on the longship coming here and all the way through the black hills east. It seemed he might have more claim to foresight than he’d ever thought. Not the best time to discover that.
Then the Anglcyn prince came forward a second time and offered the challenge. It would be easy to hate that voice, that man, Bern thought. Terse muttering beside him, experienced men: if they gave up their weapons they might as well be naked, one said, heading back through a hostile land, then trying to get home, rowing into the wind, desperately vulnerable to anyone they met, with Aeldred’s ships waiting for them. Without weapons, they couldn’t winter over, either.
It was a challenge that offered the illusion of survival if they lost; not more than that. But they were dead if they did battle here, win or lose.
“Brand, you can slice the fat man apart,” he heard Garr Hoddson rasp. “Do it, we get home. And you’ll have killed Brynn ap Hywll. Why we came!”
Brynn ap Hywll. Bern looked up at the Volgan’s slayer. Erling’s Bane. He was an old man. Brand could do it, he thought, remembering the speed of Leofson’s blade, looking at the hard, scarred tautness of him. He would save them, as a leader should. There was a window opening, Bern thought.
Brand shouted, “Accepted!” and drew his sword.
Then he cried, “Who fights for you?” And the window closed.
Bern heard his father say, “I do,” and saw him start down towards where Brand was waiting.
The setting sun made a firebrand of Thorkell’s beard and hair. They were so far, Bern thought, looking up at him, from the barn and field on Rabady. But the light—the light now was the same as on evenings he remembered.
NEITHER MAN WAS YOUNG. Both had done this before. Combat could start a battle or avert it, and there was fame for the winning, even if this was a skirmish, a raid, not a war.
They approached each other, both eyeing the ground, in no obvious haste to begin. Brand Leofson smiled thinly. “We’re on a slope. Want to move to flatter ground?”
The other man—Brand had a vague sense he ought to know him—shrugged. “Same for both. Might as well be here.”
The two swords were the same length, though Brand’s was heavier than the other’s Anglcyn blade. They were both big men, of a height, pretty much. Brand judged he had several years’ advantage. Still, he was disconcerted to be facing another Erling. It was unexpected. Just about everything on this Ingavin-cursed raid had been.
“What did they do? Promise to free you if you won?”
The other was still looking around at the grass, gauging it. He shrugged a second time, indifferently. “I imagine they might do that, but it didn’t come up. I suggested this, actually.”
“Hungry for death?”
The other man met his gaze for the first time.
He was still higher up, looking down. Brand didn’t like it, resolved to do something about that as soon as they started.
“It comes for us. No need to be hungry, is there?”
One of those, it seemed. Not the sort of man Brand liked. Good. Made this even easier. He took a few more moments to do what the other was doing; noted a fallen branch to his left, a depression in the ground behind it.
He looked at the other man again. “You suggested it? Did me a service, then. This has been the worst voyage.”
“I know. I was with Aeldred when they butchered you. It’s because of Ragnarson. Ill luck in the man. You really killed him?”
“On my ship.”
“Should have turned home, then. Didn’t someone tell you to? A good leader cuts losses before they grow.”
Brand blinked, then swore. “Who in Thünir’s name are you to tell me what a leader does? I’m a Jormsvik captain. Who are you?”
“Thorkell Einarson.”
Only that, and Brand knew. Of course he knew. Strangeness piled on strangeness. Red Thorkell. This one was in
the songs; had rowed with Siggur, his companion, one of those on the Ferrieres raid when they’d found the sword. The sword Brand had come to regain.
Well, that wasn’t about to happen.
A weaker man, he told himself, would have been disturbed by this revelation. Brand wasn’t. He refused to make too much of it. All that history just meant the other man was older than he’d guessed. Good, again.
“Will they honour the terms?” he asked, not commenting on the name or showing any reaction. It was on his mind, though: how could it not be?
“The Cyngael? They’re angry. Have been since the raid here. You kill anyone on the way?”
“No one. Oh. Well, one. Woodcutter.”
The red-beard shrugged again. “One isn’t so much.”
Brand spat, cleared his throat. “We didn’t know how to get here. I told you, a terrible raid. Worst since a time in Karch.” That was deliberately told. Let this one know Brand Leofson had been about, too. Something occurred to him. “You were the Volgan’s oarmate. What are you doing fighting for the pig who killed him?”
“A good question. Not the place to answer it.”
Brand snorted. “You think we’ll find a better place?”
“No.”
Einarson had courteously moved down and to one side, so they stood level on the slope, facing each other. He lifted his blade, pointing to the sky in salute. The conversation, evidently, was over. An arrogant bastard. A pleasure to kill him.
“I’m going to slice you apart,” Brand said—Hoddson’s words a moment ago, he liked the ring of them. He returned the salute.
Einarson seemed unruffled. Brand needed more from him. He was trying to work himself into anger, the fury that had him fighting his best.
“You aren’t good enough,” Thorkell Einarson said.
That would help. “Oh? Want to see, old man?”
“I suppose I’m about to. You’ve charged your companions with what you want done with your body? Have you a request of me?”
Courtesy again, Erling ritual. He was doing everything properly, and Brand was beginning to hate him. It was useful. He shook his head. “I am ready for what comes. Ingavin watch now and watch over me. Who guards your soul, Einarson? The Jaddite god?”
“Another good question.” The red-haired man hesitated for the first time, then smiled, a curious expression. “No. Habits die hard, after all.” With that same odd look on his face he said, exactly as Brand had done, “I am ready for what comes. Ingavin watch now and watch over me.”
And whatever all that meant, Brand didn’t know, nor did he care. Someone had to start. You could kill a man at the start. They were only wearing leather. He feinted a thrust and cut low on his backhand. If you took someone in the leg he was finished. A favourite attack, done with power. Blocked. It began.
WHAT HE KNEW of fighting he knew from his father. A handful of lessons as he’d grown through boyhood, offered irregularly, without notice or warning. At least twice when Thorkell had been suffering the after-effects of stumbling at dawn out of a tavern. He’d grab swords, helms, gloves, order his son to follow him outside. Something in the way of a father’s duty, was the sense of it. There were things Bern needed to know. Thorkell told them, or showed them, briskly, not lingering to amplify, then had Bern take the weapons and armour back in while he carried on himself with whatever else needed tending to on a given day. A son’s footwork as important—not necessarily more so—as a milk goat’s bad foot.
You noted your opponent’s weapon, looked to see if he had more than one, studied the ground, the sun, kept your own blade clean, had at least one knife on you always, because there were times when weapons could clash and shatter. If you were very strong you could use a hammer or an axe, but they were better in battle, not individual combat, and Bern was unlikely to grow big enough for them. He’d do better to be aware of that, work at being quick. You kept your feet moving, always, his father had said.
Nothing ever in the tone, Bern remembered, beyond simple observation. And observation, simple or otherwise, was the underlying note to all the terse words spoken. Bern had killed a Jormsvik captain with these injunctions in his head: judging the other man to be hot-tempered, overconfident, too full of himself for caution, riding a less-sure horse than Gyllir. Bern was a rider, Gyllir his advantage. You watched the other, his father had said, learned what you could, either before or while you fought.
Bern watched. The late-day light was uncannily clear after the mist of the mornings through which they’d come to this ending. The two men circling each other, engaging, breaking to circle again, were etched by brilliant light. Nothing shrouded now. You could see every movement, every gesture and flex.
His father was years removed from fighting days, had the bad shoulder (his mother used to rub liniment into it at night) and a hip that nothing really helped in wet weather. Brand was harder, still a raider, quicker than such a big man ought to be, but had the bad, covered eye.
He also, Bern realized, after the two men had exchanged half a dozen clashes and withdrawals, did something when he tried a certain attack. Bern was watching; saw it. His father had taught him how. His father was fighting for his life. Bern felt unsteady, light-headed. Couldn’t do anything about that.
“JAD’S BLOOD! He’s too old to keep parrying. He needs to win quickly!”
Brynn was at Alun’s side, swearing and exclaiming in a steady, ferocious undertone, his own body twisting with the two men fighting below. Alun didn’t see either man faltering yet, or any obvious opportunities to end it quickly. Thorkell was mostly retreating, trying to keep from being forced below the other man on the slope. The Jormsvik leader was very fast, and Alun was putting real effort into resisting a deeply private, shaming awareness of relief: he wasn’t at all sure he could have matched this man. In fact—
“Hah! Again! See it? See? Because of the eye!”
“What?” Alun glanced quickly at Brynn.
“Turns his head left before he cuts on the backhand. To follow his line. He gives it away! Holy god of the sun, Thorkell has to see that!”
Alun hadn’t noticed it. He narrowed his gaze to concentrate, watch for what Brynn had said, but in that same moment he began to feel something strange: a pulsing, a presence, inexplicable, even painful, inside his head. He tried to thrust it away, attend to the fight, the details of it. Green kept impinging, though, the colour green; and it wasn’t the grass or the leaves.
RHIANNON, WATCHING TWO MEN FIGHT, was dealing with something so new to her she couldn’t identify it at first. It took her some moments to understand that what she was contending with was rage. A fury white as waves in storm, black as a piled-up thundercloud, no shading to it, no nuance at all. Anger, consuming her. Her hands were clenched. She could kill. It was in her: she wanted to kill someone right now.
“We should not have come,” her mother said, softly. “We make them weaker.”
Not what she wanted to hear. “He’d have taken the fight himself if you hadn’t been here.”
“They’d have stopped him,” Enid said.
“They’d have tried. You’re the only one who could. You know it.”
Her mother looked at her, seemed about to say something, but did not. They watched the men below. It was eerily clear and bright just now.
The men below. What, Rhiannon mer Brynn thought savagely, was a woman? What was her life? Even here in the Cyngael lands, celebrated—or notorious—for their womenfolk, what, really, could they ever hope to be or do at a time like this? A time that mattered.
Easy enough, she thought bitterly, as swords clashed. They could watch, and wring their delicate hands, her mother and herself, but only if they first disobeyed clear and specific instructions to stay away and hide. Hide, hide! Or they could be targets for an attack, be violated, killed, or taken and sold as slaves, then mourned and exalted in song. Song, Rhiannon thought savagely. She could kill a singer, too.
Women were children till they first bled, then married to mak
e children, and—if Jad was kind—their children would be boys who could farm and defend their land or go off to fight one day. There was a ten-year-old boy here with a small scythe. A ten-year-old.
She stood by her mother, aware that Enid was still trembling (uncharacteristically) because she’d been so sure Brynn would fight and die here. There might be some pattern or purpose at work, that her mother had saved a red-bearded Erling’s life in the farmyard that night, claiming him, and now that man had taken Brynn’s fight upon himself.
There might be a pattern. Rhiannon didn’t care. Not right now. She wanted them all dead, these Erlings, here simply because they could come, in their longships with their swords and axes, because they exulted in killing and blood and death in battle so their gods would grant them yellow-haired maidens for eternity.
Rhiannon wished she had the powers of the Cyngael goddesses of old, the ones they were forbidden even to name since they’d embraced Jad here in the west. She wished she could invoke stone and oak, kill the raiders herself, leave bodies hacked in pieces on this grass. Let those yellow-haired maidens put them back together. If they wanted to.
She’d blood-eagle them. See if the so-fierce raiders of the sea came back here after that. Her mood of the long summer was entirely gone, swept like fog before wind: that wistful, aching, sleepless sense that things had gone awry. They had, they had. But there was a lesson to be learned: love and longing were not what life in the northlands was about. She knew it now. She was seeing it. The world was too hard. You needed to become harder yourself.
She stood beside her mother, her face expressionless, showing no least hint of what was raging within her. You could look at Rhiannon, limned in that brilliant light, and see her as a dark-haired maiden of sorrows. She would kill you, if she could, for thinking that.
ANOTHER YOUNG WOMAN, in Esferth far to the east, would have entirely understood these thoughts, sharing many, though with a different fire in her, and one she’d lived with all her life, no sudden discovery.
The bitterness of a woman’s lot, the helplessness with which you watched brothers and other men ride out to glory with iron at their sides, was nothing new for her. Judit, daughter of Aeldred, wanted battle and lordship and hardship as much as any Erling raider cresting waves in a dragon-ship, coming ashore in surf.