Authors: F J Atkinson
Withred smiled and shook his head pityingly at Egbert. ‘Don’t you dare judge me by your standards, you toad. I’ll not argue the matter further; I prepare to leave with you now.’ With this, he walked to his mount. He was aware that Egbert had violated the woman during the night and would continue to do so until she was worn haggard, at which point he would slay her. He had done his best to protect her from Egbert’s lusting, but last night’s weariness, coupled with the comfort of the bed, had caused him to sleep deeply, and Egbert had taken advantage and raped the woman. Increasingly sickened by the wanton savagery he was witnessing on the raids, he had decided to protect her and the old man from needless torment. Feeling guilt at his failure of the previous night, he was now prepared to kill Egbert, even though this would mean his expulsion from Osric’s group and a hefty payment of wergild to compensate Egbert’s family.
Egbert,
for his part, knew that Withred’s inclusion would have a restricting effect on his excesses. He loved the smell of blood and gore; he also loved treasure—especially treasure he could keep hidden for himself—and this would be easier without Withred’s surveillance.
Exasperated, he shouted at Withred:
‘Keep your long legs on the ground you fucking bird; I’ll leave the woman for now!’ He threw Martha to the floor. ‘Weeks looking at your ugly face would soften my dick anyway. I’ll take the old one though; he at least will prepare us with decent food at the end of the day.’
‘Maybe your stupid head has hit the tavern floor once too often,’ said Withred. ‘We need the old man to see to the huge stock of food that we’ll collect while you’re away. I’ve spoken to him over it, and he tells me he knows how to preserve meat. Beside, only eight of us remain here, not including the two captives, so all of us will need to hunt every day. We cannot spare a hunter to prepare the meat; every man must be used to
hunt
!’
Egbert exploded with rage.
‘So you keep the whore, you keep the cook, and I ride off into the unknown without any comforts!’ He pointed at Withred. ‘I’ll pick the best men though; I can assure you of that!’
Withred knew he had won the day and allowed Egbert a last face-saving concession.
‘As you wish. Pick your men and get on your way before the morning is wasted.’
Murdoc and Dominic stayed and observed the group until mid morning. They watched as Egbert chose his men and loaded the ponies with provisions before leaving the camp.
‘This complicates matters,’ said Dominic, ‘I
had
hoped they would all have moved out. Now we must camp away from here.’
‘Why not stay at the tree house until the others have gone?’ asked Murdoc.
Dominic mulled it over. ‘We’ve no option for now, but we only have the time it takes for their scouting party to find a new village to lay waste to. When they get back here, we need to be ready for them; we can’t let them return to their main base. The least we can do is delay the invasion.’
Murdoc tone was matter of fact.
‘In that case it would serve no purpose to just sit and wait for the main group to get back; we may as well start soon with the business of slaying the others.’
Dominic sat on his haunches and continued to watch the camp.
‘Yes, but we must do it my way. I’ve hunted in these woods for ten years now, though never against creatures such as these, but stealth and caution works, whatever the quarry.’
Murdoc peered anxiously into the forest behind him.
‘First we must make sure the children are safe. The longer we’re away, the more chance something could happen to them. Time to go back and check, I think.’
They ran crouched until they were a good distance away from the camp, Dominic leading the way, running light footed back towards the tree house.
The bear walked the forest alone after losing its cub to a frenzied wolf attack. Ravenous, it picke
d up the scent of deer and followed it to a leafy bower filled with dappled sunlight. Here, the smell was strong, and the bear stood, snuffling loudly, its great snout stuck in the air as it judged the location of its prey.
The roe watched unmoving, aware that any movement would alert the bear to the fawn that lay curled against its stomach. Mother and fawn blended perfectly in the mottled light of the hollow; the doe hardly daring to blink its black, shiny eyes lest it catch the attention of the predator.
The breeze shifted causing the bear to lose the deer’s scent. Back on all fours, it lowered its head and began to scan the hollow, but the deer’s gift from nature—its mottled coat—served to defeat the poor eyesight of the bear.
It was about to leave the clearing when
a movement caught its eye. The fawn, hungry for milk, stood up to harry its mother for a feed. The bear noticed the movement immediately and bounded across the clearing, but was just too slow to grab the doe, which quickly fled into the trees.
The fawn had not of its mother’s guile or speed, and before it could
move its spindly legs, the bear pounced and quickly killed it with its great bulk.
Five days later the bear again craved for meat; the diet of roots and grubs since it had feasted on the fawn having failed to satiate its huge appetite. It entered a section of forest that was predominately beech trees and stopped cautiously as it heard a familiar but rarely heard noise. During its long life, its foraging had occasionally taken it to the edge of the forest, where it had glimpsed men in their habitations. Not knowing what to expect from these seldom-glimpsed forms, the bear had always retreated and avoided contact with them. It had never regarded them as food, preferring instead to hunt familiar prey such as deer or salmon.
Today was different, and its hunger overrode its caution, so it decided to investigate the source of the noise. It padded cautiously through the beech wood and stopped fifty yards from a wide girthed tree, under which sat two small figures. Mad with hunger, it decided to feed and bounded up towards them.
The second morning after Dominic and Murdoc had left them, Tomas and Ceola had spent the day around the base of the beech tree. Tomas had told Ceola all about his village and his friends, all of whom were dead, but had made her giggle when t
elling her of his past mischief making and escapades.
Ceola, in her turn, had told Toma
s all about life in her village. How she had loved to accompany her father into the fields on warm, sunny days. Throughout their chatter, they mentioned neither the invaders nor the loss of the people dear to them, having now driven all the ghastly images from their conscious awareness.
Ceola saw the bear watching them from a distance. She had been listening with amusement to Tomas as he recounted an amusing tale from his youth, when she held up her hand to silence him and said,
‘Look over there Tom, we’re being watched.’
Tomas immediately sprang to his feet.
‘Quick!’ he urged, ‘climb the tree.’ He lifted Ceola onto the rustic ladder and looked over to the bear, which had started to move towards them.
He had barely climbed out of reach himself when the bear arrived with a rush
of unbridled power at the foot of the tree. Leaving the ladder in place and pushing Ceola ahead of him, he made sure they both completed the climb up to the lofty platform.
Ceola screamed as the bear leapt high and clutched the
wide girth of the tree with its claws. It hugged the trunk with its limbs and began to shuffle up, its hide rippling as the powerful, underlying muscles flexed and contracted. She screamed again as its huge head appeared over the rim of the platform.
Then,
Tomas remembered the bow and arrows left for them by Dominic. He grabbed the bow, shakily notched an arrow, and pulled back as far as his strength would allow. He let go and the arrow hit the bear in the shoulder. As it tried to swipe the arrow away with its other limb, the bear lost its grip and fell from the tree.
Ceola and Tomas looked down at the stunned, but still very dangerous
brown bear. Tomas’ action had saved them for now, but the arrow was a mere pinprick to the animal. Again, it looked up at the terrified children.
Tomas still gripped the bow and notched another arrow as the bear rocked on its haunches
as it again prepared to leap. Ceola scrambled to the edge of the platform as a shouting came from a distance in the forest. ‘It’s father and Dominic,’ she screamed. ‘They’ve come to fight the bear!’
Murdoc and Dominic had entered the clearing just as the bear had fallen from the tree. Fearing the worst
, Murdoc ran towards it with his spear at his shoulder. ‘Hey! Hey!’ he shouted, as he slowed to a trot twenty paces from the bear. The animal now studied Murdoc, but flinched as an arrow ghosted past Murdoc and again entered its shoulder near to its existing wound.
Dominic now joined Murdoc
, who was readying himself for a suicidal rush at the bear. He placed a restraining hand on his arm. He had already tried the noisy approach and realised it was the wrong way to go about scaring a bear. ‘Hold your ground and crouch low so as not to be a threat.’ he said. ‘And don’t look it in the eyes.’ He looked to the ground and silently slipped an arrow from his quiver and notched it into his bow. The bear stood still, continuing to observe them warily.
Deft and quick, Dominic again loosed an arrow, hitting the bear in its shaggy chest. This time it jumped back, then turned and quickly loped into the forest, not wishing to feel the pain of further arrows.
Dominic ran to the spot where
it had left the clearing. Satisfied they would not be troubled for a while, he walked back to Dominic who was beckoning for Tomas and Ceola to join them on the ground.
The children climbed down to them and Murdoc picked up Ceola and hugged her in relief.
‘Thank God I heard you scream. It made sure we got here on time.’
Dominic ruffled Tomas’ hair.
‘Good lad,’ he said, ‘I see that you stuck an arrow into our shaggy friend. It’s not my first meeting with it, and I fear it won’t be my last.’
Tomas swelled with pride at Dominic’s endorsement, as Ceola said,
‘Yes Dom, he was very brave; he would have killed the bear if you hadn’t got here in time.’
Tomas blushed at the attention.
‘I don’t think so Ceola. It was all I could do to hit it, I was shaking so badly.’
Murdoc, suddenly hugged Tomas,
‘But hit it you did,’ he said, ‘and so saved yourself and Ceola.’ He turned to Dominic with his arm round the boy’s shoulder. ‘What chance have the savages now, eh Dom? They must dodge the arrows of shaking Tomas!’
The trill of Ceola’s laughter filled the
woods with its innocent beauty and lifted the hearts of the others, bringing forth memories of simpler, happier times.
Egbert and his men made good progress along the ancient track. The abundant herds of deer grazed on any new shoots that tried to re-colonise the open ground, and had kept the passageway largely clear of obstructive vegetation. Stone sets broke occasionally through the surface of accumulated mulch, and upon this firm road, the pack ponies hauled their loads of provisions.
It was late afternoon on the fourth day of their trek when finally they saw signs that the forest was thinning. The area through which they rode was overgrown hazel coppice. Festooned
with strips of ragged, coloured cloth, the misshapen trees stood like eerie, ceremonial, sentinels amongst the low vegetation.
Wlensing rode beside Egbert. He was a well-built man with a close-cropped ginger beard. He wore a simple leather jerkin that had four lines of studs down the front, cut off at the shoulders. His bare arms displayed his only ostentation: a golden arm ring given to him by Osric for his courage in battle. His woollen breeches tucked into knee-length, fur trimmed boots, and a close fitting iron helmet completed his austere appearance.
Usually a man of few words, he growled tersely to Egbert. ‘It appears the land here has been shaped by human hands; see how they tie offerings onto the trees. It’s said they worship the Christ God, but maybe they still fear the spirits of their dead.’
‘They would do well to fear the spirit of this ax,’ said Egbert patting the weapon. ‘We near our quest grim one. My ax will feed soon, I think.’
Cissa rode to join them. He pointed at the track ahead.
‘See how the pathway is trampled and worn. It would be wise to go with caution from here on, for an army of angry Britons may await us. We number too few to repel an attack from a large force.’
It was normal for
Cissa to council heedfulness. His prudence had often served to counterbalance Egbert’s recklessness, and this was the reason Osric had included him in the war band.
Egbert
listened impassively to Cissa’s advice, and then sniggered to Wlensing. ‘It seems our friend is getting scared again, as is usual before a raid. Have you seen how he picks amongst the spoils when it’s all done with? He even waits ‘til the women have lost their fight.’
Wlensing
frowned as he surveyed the woods around him. ‘There’ll be no pickings for him here. I just hope we can get this spying done quickly and then return to the comforts of the coast.’
They were optimistic that the coppiced woodland would lead them from the forest, but soon the trees thickened around them again, and it was mid-morning before the trees again thinned out and the village came into sight.
Abandoned, the huts stood derelict; the walls having lost their mud rendering in places, allowing the lattice frameworks to stand out like ribs on decaying corpses. A line of boulders that lay in the form of a cross some distance from the huts confirmed that they had nothing to fear from anything alive in the village.
The men,
like the forest, were silent—their ponies shuffling and grunting, sending out billows of foggy breath into the cool, pre-noon air.
Wlensing looked around him, frowning.
‘I don’t like this place Egbert. It’s got a bad feel to it.’
Egbert,
too, was unsettled as he looked at the foreboding scene, but realised he could not let the men see any weakness in him. ‘Gloomy it is for sure,’ he conceded, ‘but gloom doesn’t wield a spear, and it won’t put me in my grave. Come on, follow me, and let’s delve deeper.’ He dismounted and led his pony into the clearing, the others following cautiously.
It was soon apparent that the village had not met its ill fortune at the hands of enemies. The huts showed no signs of burning or deliberate damage, and owed their sorry state to the process of natural decay rather than the result of human destruction.
Cissa knelt and thoughtfully examined the stone cross. ‘It would be a considerate foe indeed,’ he reasoned, ‘who so thoughtfully buried his enemies. I think we stand at the scene of a pestilence or a hunger here.’
‘Then let’s replenish our water from that well and hope no rotting carcass befouls it,’ said Wlensing, looking around uneasily. ‘Then we can get back in search of the living—this place freezes my very bones.’
Egbert pointed beyond the village boundary towards what appeared to be overgrown fields.
‘I guess that’s our direction. That would be the way they took their produce to trade.’ He heaved his bulk onto his pony. ‘That’s if any other wretches are left alive in this putrid land.’
Their track, indented by r
uts baked hard by the sun, told of the passage of long-vanished ox drawn carts to and from the village. After a while, Wlensling dismounted and knelt by one of the furrows. ‘It seems this track was used for many years if the depths of these ruts are anything to go by,’ he mused. ‘Maybe they lead to a bigger settlement, or even a market.’
The group continued through the early afternoon
, following the tracks, but saw no living man or woman. It was late afternoon before they, at last, heard the sound of human voices.
Two boys were at play in a tree near a small pond. The old Alder had begun to lean, and one of its branches grew at right angles to its trunk and bridged the water. It was on this branch that the boys were lying on their bellies, looking down into the green water as they idled away their day. They looked up when noticing the reflection of a mounted man. The man spoke to them in a tongue they could not understand.
Further attempts at communication received only blank stares from the boys, until Cissa, who had learned a few words of the British tongue from Withred
, rode to Egbert’s side and asked in British, ‘Village?’
The larger of the boys nodded when hearing the word. Cissa adopted a shrugging questioning posture, and again asked,
‘Village?’
The boys shimmied off the tree and walked
cautiously towards the riders. Egbert dismounted and pointed to one of the tracks that led away from them. ‘Village?’ he asked, copying Cissa.
The larger boy nodded his head and pointed to another track that led from the pond and contoured around a small grassy hill before disappearing from sight.
Egbert patted the boy on the head, and smiled at him before mounting his pony.
Nodding knowingly at Cissa, he took the track indicated. Egbert crested the grassy hill first and turned to the following riders with a triumphant smile on his face. The other riders joined him, as the reason for their leaders joy unfolded before them. The scene below was one of an undulating patchwork of long, rectangular fields, situated in a huge clearing of the forest. Golden cereal crops rippled in the breeze, like water on a swelling sea, presenting a far from wild landscape.
Laughing in triumph, Egbert turned to Wlensing
‘Now we
can
return, you gruff bastard; look at that, it must put a smile even on your face.’
Wlensing
did allow himself a rare smile. ‘Yes, it’s a fine sight, that’s for sure. Time to get back, I think. Osric will be delighted when he hears of this.’
He made to turn his pony, but Egbert grabbed his arm and looked at him squarely. ‘Where are you going Wlensing? We’re forgetting our manners.’ He nodded, back towards the contoured track they had just ascended. ‘We’ve not thanked the lads for their information—they deserve a reward.’ He withdrew his ax and wheeled his pony around. At a trot, he headed for the boys
After putting the bear to flight, Dominic had gone to the woods to find food and returned with a deer. This, he roasted on a makeshift spit, and after eating their fill, the fugitives sat in the warmth of the fire, comforted by its ochre glow in the
dimming evening.
Murdoc looked worried as he spoke quietly to Dominic. ‘We’re too near to them. They’ll surely hunt game and wander close.’
‘Yes, we’re in danger even here,’ agreed Dominic, ‘and we need to keep on our toes, though I still think this is still the safest place to stay for now, as long as the young uns stay up the tree.’ He peered into the gloom, scrutinizing the distant shrubbery for signs of disturbance. ‘The bear still worries me though; maybe one of us needs to stay here to protect the children.’ He pondered the options a while. ‘It’s better if you stay with them, and I’ll go and keep my eye on the camp.’ He took an arrow from the hide quiver that lay at his feet, looking along its shaft and squinting as he examined its trueness. ‘Don’t forget they can’t be allowed to return with any news of other souls to slaughter. We must delay the invasion, even if others of their kind do come later. These, at least, must pay for what they’ve done. I’ll go in the morning and see what mischief I can cause.’
‘Maybe you can also get the woman and old man out,’ said Murdoc. ‘It grieves me to see them subjected to such torment.’
Dominic
replaced the arrow in the quiver. ‘My thoughts too,’ he said, ‘but as long as they are of use to them we need not be too hasty.’
The next day Dominic watched as the Saxons left the encampment in small groups, leaving just one man to guard the area. His concern grew when two of them passed close by and headed in the direction of the tree platform. They had discussed this probability and Murdoc had pledged to remain aloft with the children until dusk to avoid detection.
Dominic considered following
them, but happy that Murdoc would stick to their plan, he decided instead to sit and watch developments in the camp. He considered killing the man guarding the camp, but was uncertain when the others would return, and didn’t wish to lose his advantage over them should a chaotic melee ensue. He decided to watch for that day to establish the pattern of camp routine.
The woman walked to the edge of the clearing,
but returned to the cooking fire when the guard who sat outside the low building called her back. She had come close enough to reveal her features in detail to Dominic, and he guessed her age to be no more than twenty years. Her blonde hair was matted and dirty, defeating the efforts of the bronze clips to hold it in place, so that it hung long and untidily around her face. Despite the woman’s unkempt appearance, he could see that underneath the grime she was beautiful, and that her troubled and careworn face must be a remarkable sight when radiant and smiling. Her slender figure continued, even now, to move with grace and dignity.
Nothing much happened for the rest of the day, apart from the old man and young woman continuing to prepare and salt meat, which they took to the underground chamber. The guard spoke occasionally to the pair, and Dominic noticed that his tone was mild and relaxed.
In the late afternoon, the other men began to return from the forest, most of them empty handed. Dominic was careful to keep still and not give his position away. Just one of the men had made a kill and the group ate boar that evening, cooked over the open fire.
It was after this meal, just before dusk, that a heated discussion broke out between two of the men. One of them was the man who had guarded the captives that day. After a while, he walked into the hut leaving the other men around the campfire.
As darkness fell, the men settled down to sleep, leaving the man and woman
alone some distance away from the main group. There were no guards posted and Dominic decided the time was now right to free the two captives.
H
e crept stealthily to the edge of the clearing, stopping dead when a silhouette moved across the front of the fire. Not breathing, he watched as the figure approached the sleeping woman and pulled her to her feet.
Awake
now; she struggled as the man dragged her across the open ground towards Dominic. He knew immediately that the man intended to rape her, and a dark rage began to surge through him, as hideous images of the sexually mutilated women of the devastated village seared into his mind.
Dragged by her hair, the woman stumbled as she passed by
his crouching shadow, close enough for him to feel the draught of her passage. He silently followed with his hunting knife ready, as the man threw the woman to the ground.
Martha had experienced overwhelming joy when Egbert had departed the camp. Simon also was thankful, and took great solace from the knowledge that Martha would not be forced to lie with Egbert again—at least for the time being. That night the other men left them alone, and Martha, for once, had been able to sleep deeply.
The next day all but one of the men had left and gone in different directions in search of prey.
Simon was relieved that only the tall imposing man the others called Withred had stayed behind to watch them.