Hild: A Novel (29 page)

“Bull calf, King?”

“Bull calf. Born yesterday. Is it dead or isn’t it? Find out.”

Housefolk, alerted to the king’s early waking, hurried to bring hot water, breads, breakfast beer. One man slid the cloak from the king’s shoulders and folded it while another unlaced his shirt. His chest hair glinted here and there with grey. A puckered and twisted spear scar ran along his left ribs.

His scowl was hidden briefly as his bodyman dropped a new tunic over his head.

No one offered Hild anything.

When his warrior jacket was fastened Edwin looked considerably more alert. His bodyman was combing his beard when Forthere stuck his head through the doorway again.

“It died, King. The freemartin born with it, too.”

Edwin pushed his man away and looked at Hild. “The freemartin?”

“It signifies nothing.”

He gave her a sly look.

“The bull calf is the one that matters, lord King. The calf the colour of the Lindsey Bull.”

“Unless you’re wrong.”

“Have I ever been wrong?”

“So Cadwallon allies with Cuelgils to raise Lindsey.” He stared at the fire, calculating. “Yet no armies have marched from Gwynedd.”

“Not yet.”

“It is winter.”

His meaning was clear: If he took the war band to Lindsey in this weather and found nothing, he would have no spoil to share among his gesiths. He would have to gift them from his personal hoard. He would take his losses out of her hide.

“The armies of Gwynedd will come to Lindsey in spring. If Cuelgils still rules.”

The long silence was broken only by the crackle of flames taking hold of the new wood on the fire. Edwin was looking at her.

“How old are you now?”

“Eleven, King.”

“You want me to go haring off to Lindsey on the dreams of a maid of eleven years…” It was not a question, and in any case Hild had no answer. She simply stood. “So when I swoop upon Lindsey and slaughter them all, how will I know if you were right or not?”

Hild had no idea. “You will know.” And now her life hung on her mother’s information.

*   *   *

A maid of eleven years. A child.

Facing a formal summons to the king’s hall, a woman girdled and veiled would have bolstered her breasts and painted around her eyes, cinched her girdle tight to accentuate her hips and the symbols of her rank hanging about them: the keys and crystal and weft beater.

Very well.

Hild unpinned her sleeves to show arms tan and tight as a stripling’s, wore a light cloak in royal blue flung back from her shoulders gesith-style, and tucked her hair behind her ears, to remind them of a fighting man with greased-back hair.

When she was escorted by Lintlaf and Coelfrith into the hall she stopped four paces from Edwin’s great chair, rather than the usual three, to stand in the shaft of winter light so that her hair blazed more chestnut even than the king’s. She stood tall—she overtopped all but Forthere now—with her hand on her seax, and let rich royal certainty invade her every word: Cuelgils was a traitor. Remember Bebbanburg. Remember treachery.

“We will take Lindsey,” Edwin said, and not one voice dissented.

*   *   *

This time there were no wagons, no women, no bags packed with finery for show. There were two hundred gesiths wearing their metal wealth, with their mounts and remounts, a hundred war hounds, a hundred servants on their own mounts, a smith-armourer, and fifty packhorses. This time they ate in the saddle and slept rolled in blankets, and the outriders had orders to kill anyone—Angle or wealh, man, woman, or child—who saw them. It drizzled steadily; they rode robed in tiny jewels of rain. They crossed into Lindsey on the second day.

Everything was mud. Horses foundered. Hild, being light, was easier on her mount than most, but even so, when they reached the shallow valley of the River Trent, she felt Cygnet trembling under her, just as her own thighs trembled and her wrists ached.

The river gleamed dully, like pewter. Patches of linden woods formed misty thickets along the banks. Clearly the outriders had missed someone: the Lindseymen had had warning enough to throw down trees on the west bank of the river, branches facing the road, and to form their shield wall on the east bank.

The Northumbrians laughed. The shield wall was only twenty shields wide and three deep and the clutter thrown in their path was light; the Lindseymen had had time to cut only small trees.

Edwin ordered a halt—long enough to wipe faces and eat a handful of twice-baked road bread—while fifty gesiths and the wealh dismounted to clear the road and collar the dogs in their war harnesses. The outriders rejoined them from the woods.

The horses and wealh did the work while the fifty gesiths formed an arrow shield facing the woods. No arrows flew. Lilla and the king exchanged looks.

The horses stamped and steamed, and the unoccupied gesiths laughed and talked in great booming voices, though some were pale. All made the motions of eating, though few actually chewed and swallowed. Many threw their bread to the dogs. The dogs fought over it. In the hissing rain the noise was sudden and violent.

Hild gnawed her bread. Her mouth was drier than summer straw. But she chewed stolidly and managed to swallow one mouthful. She raised her arm to toss the rest to the dogs, then thought better of it. Some were bleeding already, seeping red under the rain, standing in pink puddles.

Hild drank from the flask of small beer at her saddlebow and forced herself to chew and swallow again. She felt strange, as though it were someone else who lifted the bread, who chewed and swallowed, who carefully unfastened the flap of her saddlebag and put away the bread. Someone else who loosened her seax in its sheath, someone else who studied the fallen leaf rubbish and thought it beautiful.

A man put his hand on Cygnet’s neck. Lintlaf, on foot. “The king wants you to stay on this side with the wealh and the horses,” he said. Hild nodded. Most of the gesiths were dismounting. “Don’t try to fight. It’s not like a knife fight. You don’t know … Forthere and his men will guard you.” She nodded again. “Forthere is angry.”

Forthere was. As Lintlaf and the rest of the war band checked their weapons and the dogs sat in a dreadful, eager silence, Forthere wrenched his horse’s head this way and that, and shouted at the wealh to stop their Thunor-cursed hand-waving and get behind those trees with all the horses, all, mind, or he would lop off the left leg of any lackadaisical lily-livered limpknob.

Hild kneed Cygnet into his path. “Are you angry with your horse, Forthere?” She nodded at the great rope of drool that hung from its bit.

“You…” His face worked. But she was the seer who had saved Bebbanburg; she was the king’s niece. She was the reason they were here.

She nodded. “Me.” She understood his anger. Forthere, giant Forthere, was used to being in the van, running under the banner or stalwart behind a shield, not being left behind to guard the baggage. “Nonetheless, have a care for your horse.”

He loosened the rein a little. “Stay behind the wealh, behind the horses, behind me. You lose so much as an eyelash and the king will have my ears.” He lifted his huge ham hand, stuck two fingers in his mouth, and whistled. A gesith looked up. Forthere waved him over. “This is Eamer.” It was the whip-muscled redhead Hild had noticed at Brough, now on a thin black gelding. “You will stick to him like honey on bread,” Forthere told her, and then, to Eamer, “Everywhere she goes, you go. Even to piss. You, her, til the Lindseymen are dead.”

The king’s drummer began the beat. Both men went rigid for a moment, like hounds pointing, as the gesiths formed up in two bands. Forthere shook himself, gathered his reins.

Hild’s scalp tightened. A battle, shield wall to shield wall. Linden wood to linden wood. She imagined meeting a man the size of Forthere, huge with battle rage, stinking with it; dogs dripping and snarling at her legs, her arms. Sharp swords cleaving down, splintering shields, crushing skulls, slicing off faces. Men sworn to follow their lord or die. Victory or death, no middle ground. They sang so they didn’t piss themselves.

Forthere cantered off, already shouting.

“Lady,” Eamer said, and backed up his mount to allow Cygnet past in the direction of the horse picket among the linden trees.

The two bands of gesiths were now shin-deep in the river, the dogs already swimming. She was glad she had no choice but to hide among the trees, hide from the blood and the rage, the striving to kill. She kneed Cygnet forward.

The drumbeat stopped. Hild twisted in her saddle. The gesiths were halfway across and up to their chests, and the drummer held his drum high above his head. The gesiths sang, to give themselves heart, and one group swung upstream from the Lindseymen, one downstream.

*   *   *

The picket lines were strung between trees. Hild slid from her horse, and the instant her foot touched the ground all sound of the river and the gesiths’ singing disappeared. Gone, as though sliced through with a knife. She blinked. Pulled herself back in the saddle: the singing rising to a roar, like logs rolling off a wagon.

“Lady.”

She got down again. The sound vanished. “The sound…”

“A sound shadow,” Eamer said. “Cupped by a god’s hand. Or so they say. But I like to hear what’s happening.” He unstrapped his spear and slung his linden shield before dismounting.

She loosened Cygnet’s girth and handed the reins to a wealh, and listened again: nothing but the murmur of the wealh, Forthere’s shouted command to the ten gesiths at the edge of the copse, and the dripping in the trees. She sat on the mossy top of a limestone rock shaped like a giant mushroom cap. A sword fern grew at its base. She tipped her head back and studied the bare branches of the linden tree above. If she stood to her full height she might just touch it.

Sword fern, shield tree, and a maid whose name meant battle. Yet she was shivering.

A horse stamped. Hild and the wealh jumped. Forthere’s gesiths laughed.

The rain seemed to be easing. A few birds called from the trees. Hild pushed her hood back, trying to hear them better. She didn’t recognise their call.

“How long will it take?”

Eamer leaned his spear against the rock, took off his helmet, and scratched his head. “When fools are in charge, wise men make no predictions.”

“Fools?”

He put his helmet back on, took up his spear again. “Does war interest you, lady?”

Hild had never been asked a question by a gesith before. She looked at him afresh, at his Gewisse brooch. “It does today.”

“Then the Lindseymen should have laid trees on the far side of the bank, where we would have to climb them already tired from the crossing, heavy with water and slippery with mud. Or they could have hidden bowmen on this side to pick off those who cleared the path. They are fools.”

Hild pondered that. “Why are they so few?”

“Likely most are at Lindum, to guard the gold. If—” He broke off, slid his shield from his back onto his arm. “Down. Get down. Behind the rock.”

An arrow chunked into his shield. She stared at it. Another hissed into the fern by her feet, and then she was scrambling to her feet, leaping, up, up, up into the tree. She balanced on a slippery smooth bough, arms wrapped around the trunk, heart banging like a drum.

She peered down at the clearing. Everything moved like flies stuck in honey.

Eamer brushed the arrow from his shield with his spear shaft. The broken arrow spun away, lazy as dandelion seed, and landed in the moss on the boulder, directly beneath Hild. Fletched with goose feathers.

Sword fern, shield tree, goose feathers.
Part of your wyrd.

A horse screamed and others whinnied, and whinnied again farther away. Men shouted. The sound was wavery and unreal. Hild stared at the goose feathers glistening tawny and white on the bright green of the mossy boulder.

More arrows hissed from the woods. Men fell.

Lindseymen poured into the clearing. Forthere shouted, “Shields!” and the Northumbrians—the ones not lying on the green ground with arrows standing from their chests—locked shields, and the Lindseymen, running and leaping over the fallen, parted around them like water. Forthere shouted, “Break!” and then they were all running, gesiths chasing Lindseymen. To her end of the clearing.

“Death!” Eamer bellowed, and with a clang of iron that shook the tree, he slammed his shield at one Lindseyman’s head and his spear at another’s.

A Lindseyman in a round leather helmet took Eamer’s spear under his jaw and the blade burst through his cheek. Eamer shook the man like a dead rat on a stick. Then, cursing, he flung spear and man down and drew his sword. Lindseymen, pursued by gesiths, poured around the boulder. Hild, shrieking like a gutted horse, half fell, half leapt from the tree, seax flashing.

Someone slammed into her, then another picked her up and threw her back down behind the rock.

*   *   *

Wealh were catching the horses the Lindseymen had loosed and killing the ones they had hamstrung. Forthere was asking her anxiously, loudly, if she was all right. Hild wiped the blood off her face with a wet dock leaf and nodded. It wasn’t her blood. It was the blood of those who had fought over her like mad beasts while she lay stunned.

A while later, she didn’t know how long, it was Eamer nodding while Forthere shouted. From this distance she saw Forthere had a dent in his helm, over his ear. Eamer wasn’t listening; he had his foot on the dead Lindseyman’s face and was trying to pull his spear free. Forthere kept shouting nonetheless. “… with her, like a burr. Like a burr. Woden’s beard, it was her they were after. The maid.” Eamer’s spear pulled loose with a grating suck. “The king wants her over on the east bank. Get her there safe if you value your ears.”

*   *   *

Threescore men lay twisted and burst open on the grass. A handful, Edwin’s men, were laid tidily at the side of the field, covered with their cloaks and shields, swords at their sides. A dozen or so of the Lindseymen stirred and moaned and called for water. No one paid attention. The sound scraped at her bones. She focused between Cygnet’s ears as her mare and Eamer’s gelding picked their way delicately across the trampled, slimy expanse to the leather tent where the king’s banner poles were driven deep in the dirt.