Dawn Wind (32 page)

Scarcely aware of moving forward again, he walked on towards the camp-fires.

The royal fire burned before Aethelbert’s great ridge-tent in the midst of the camp, and there the High King sat in his chair, his white boarhounds at his feet and his kings and councillors and the black-robed holy men about him; while Ingwy his harper knelt beside the flames, chanting to his harp the high and far-off deeds of Scyld the Father of his People when the world was young.

At the lower fires where the young warriors gathered, they were making their own more uproarious amusement. They also had a harp, belonging to one of their number, and were passing it from hand to hand as they passed the mead jars, beating out the rhythm of their thoughts as they asked each other the long elaborate riddles beloved of the Saxon folk.

A tow-headed young man with a strong merry voice had the harp when Owain came up, and was ranting out his riddle to a circle of laughing listeners.

White of throat am I, fallow grey my head;

Fallow are my flanks, and my feet are swift;

Battle weapons bear I! Bristles on my back

Like a boar’s stand up. With my pointed toes

Through the green grass step I—

‘A badger!’ somebody shouted. ‘It’s a badger!’

‘A badger’s head isn’t fallow, it’s striped,’ someone else objected, ‘striped black and white like the holy men at the King’s fire yonder.’

‘I say it’s a badger for all that—isn’t it, Osric?’

‘You’re too sharp, you are,’ said Osric, grinning. ‘I wonder you don’t cut yourself!’

And Bryni, who had been sitting beside him, staring idly across the fire at a couple of dark-haired Britons of Gerontius’s bodyguard, sprang up, putting out his hand for the harp in his turn. ‘I’ve made a cunning one—listen!’ His eyes were very bright, and his voice was thick and a good deal louder than usual.

Swifter than swallows, darting through blue air,

Winged I am, mightily, but no bird am I.

Battle-sark I wear, many-scaled, shining,

But no fish spawned me, in green depths under foam.

Flame is my breathing—

Vadir Cedricson yawned and did not trouble to hide it. ‘If you sing in honour of our western strangers, remember to make your dragon red.’

Bryni broke off between one word and the next, and glowered towards him. ‘You said, Vadir Cedricson?’

The other smiled. ‘I said if you sing in honour of the western strangers, remember to make your dragon red.’

‘Are you sure that I was not going to?’

Vadir raised pale brows. ‘My grandsire never did, so far as I remember. He used to ask that riddle after supper, at least twenty times a year.’

‘That’s a lie, for I made it up myself, since supper!’

‘Maybe if you had made it up before supper, you would have remembered where it came from.’

‘I’m drunk, am I?’ Bryni said furiously, and flung the harp aside so that it fell with a jangle of jarred strings. ‘So then—I’ll be drunk as a hero by moonrise, if I choose, but
you
shan’t tell me of it!’

‘No?’ said Vadir, in a voice as smooth as silk.

‘No!’
shouted Bryni.

The thing had flared up before Owain was well aware of it. Now he cut in. ‘Don’t be a fool, Bryni, you
are
drunk, and so is he. Let it go.’ But the boy did not seem even to hear him; the blood was burning scarlet along his cheekbones, and his eyes were stormy. ‘No one tells Bryni Beornwulfson when he’s drunk, not even his nearest kin; and thanks be to all the Gods in high Valhalla, you are no kinsman of mine, Vadir.’

Vadir got slowly to his feet; he could move quickly enough when he chose, despite his lame foot, but at the moment he did not choose. Slowness could be more maddening. He was as drunk as Bryni, but he showed it less, and he could always goad the boy to madness.

Yet now, maybe for the first time in his life, he said a thing which Owain, watching him, was fairly sure that he had not meant to say. ‘Not yet,’ said Vadir Cedricson.

While the words still hung on the air in the hush that had fallen about the fire, his pale eyes flickered, as though he would have called them back if he could. But the pride which had made him hide from his world the fact that he could want any girl badly enough to wait a year for her, forbade him to deny the thing now that it was said.

In the silence, Bryni took a long menacing step towards him. ‘And what is it that you mean by that?’

Smoothly, deliberately, Vadir told him.

‘That’s another lie!’ Bryni said, when he had finished.

‘No, just something that maybe the women did not trust you to know.’

‘It will be a long time before Lilla comes to your hearth, Vadir.’

‘Ah, I hope not. Your mother thought her too young last year, but by the time for the autumn slaughtering-
-
’

Until then it had been no more than a wordy quarrel. Now, quite suddenly it became deadly. Bryni turned from hot to cold. He said, through shut teeth, ‘Slaughter month is a good choice, Vadir. But men can die as well as cattle. Do you think I’d let you have Lilla, you crooked little man?’

The hush about the fire became a tingling stillness, and in the stillness Owain saw a devil looking out of Vadir’s eyes. He made no sound, but he moved with the swiftness of a striking adder, and something flashed in the firelight, in his hand that had been empty the instant before. Bryni’s knife was out in the same instant, and they sprang together. Blade rang on blade and the sparks flew up. Then Owain had leapt in from behind and caught the boy’s knife-wrist and dragged it down, while other men fell on Vadir, and between them they dragged the two apart.

‘Drop it!’ he panted. ‘Drop it, Bryni! Remember where you are!’

For to draw weapon at such a gathering was one of the things for which there was no forgiveness.

It was all over. Bryni stood panting, with the blood dripping from a shallow gash in his upper arm. Vadir stood still and unresisting in the grip of a man on either side of him; he breathed through nostrils that flared and trembled like those of a stallion, and his eyes glittered between half-shut lids; but he had control of himself again. He said quite quietly, the words falling small and deadly chill, ‘I will have your heart’s blood for that.’

‘But not here, and not now,’ put in a huge man of Aethelbert’s following, whose very size seemed to give his word some weight among the rest. ‘The High King’s feast-fire is no place for the settling of blood debts.’

Owain flashed him a quick look of gratitude. But voices were rising from the men about the fire, the hush was passing from them and the mead in their veins leaping up again. They were in a mood for anything that offered excitement, and they came crowding in on the two who stood hackles up in their midst. Then one of the Britons struck in, stumbling a little over the Saxon tongue. ‘In my tribe, when a quarrel rises at a time or a place such as this, where it is forbidden to draw blade, we have a way of settling the matter, all the same.’

Instantly a dozen voices together were demanding more. ‘And what way is that? Tell us, then—’ while both Vadir and Bryni, breaking their narrowed gaze from each other’s faces, turned towards him.

‘The two whose quarrel it is, draw lots,’ said the Briton, ‘and he who draws the shorter corn-stalk is accounted clear, but he who draws the longer corn-stalk must put his own life to some chosen hazard before the next sunrise, or be called coward henceforth by the men who were his brothers.’ He looked about him at the faces in the leaping firelight. ‘It is an old custom, and it is a good one. When the thing is ended, it is ended. There is no place left for a blood feud.’

Owain felt suddenly a little sick, but the others were crowding round, eager as young hounds on a scent, and Bryni, his eyes suddenly at their most blazing green, cried out, ‘Well, what is there to wait for? We’ve no corn-stalks to hand, but grass-stems will serve just as well.’

‘Here, then.’ Osric, who had asked the badger riddle, stooped without more ado and plucked up half a dozen stems from the trampled grass beside the fire. He handed the grass-stems over to the dark Briton, who arranged them with care in his closed fist, the heads sticking out between his thumb and forefinger, and held them forward into the firelight.

‘Now, draw.’

Bryni drew first, scarce looking what he did, and held up a grass-stem that ended about three finger-breadths below the feathery brown head. Then Vadir took a limping pace forward and chose his stem with deliberate care; and held it up also. Owain saw with sharp relief that it was almost twice as long as Bryni’s. ‘It’s Vadir!’ the shout went up. ‘Vadir has it!’ Bryni gave a cry of disgust, and tossed his grass-stem to the breeze which carried it to the fire’s heart; and Vadir stood looking about him with an odd smile on his thin lips, holding his grass-stem as though it were a flower.

At that moment, above the quick rise and fall of voices, they heard again the angry neigh of the God’s Horse.

Vadir flung up his head and laughed, wildly and recklessly. ‘So. To me falls the hazard, and most welcomely; but I’ll choose my own. Brothers, I’ll ride you Frey’s Horse, that has never known mortal man on his back before.’

For the second time that evening, and more deeply than before, a hush fell on the warriors about the fire. Even Bryni was silent. And looking at Vadir standing there, a little sideways as he always stood, his eyes bright and the lees of the wild laughter making thin lines about his mouth, Owain, who hated him, paid tribute within himself to the man’s insane courage. For this was a terrible thing that he was taking to himself; it was not alone to pit his magnificent horsemanship against a virtually wild stallion, but to pit himself against his Gods, if he believed in any Gods at all. If he had not been drunk, surely not even Vadir would have claimed that particular hazard.

‘So be it,’ said Aethelbert’s man, while the dark Briton opened his hand and let the grass-stems drift into the flames. ‘And your blood be not on the hands of any here, but on your own head.’

And the hush was lost in a roar of voices. Men were pulling brands from the fire to serve as torches; with Vadir borne in their midst and the firebrands whirled aloft they began to stream off towards the hind part of the camp.

Frey’s Horse was tethered by a strong flaxen halter to an ancient thorn tree such as grew here and thereon the higher ground of the marsh. He was standing alert, his head turned towards their coming as though he waited for them. He stamped and snorted at the torches, tossing his head so that his mane flew up like the crest of a breaking wave; but he was not afraid. He had never, save once, been afraid of anything in all his proud life, and Owain, remembering the tottering grey foal that he had brought into the world, was pierced by his beauty as by a sword.

His ears were pricked forward in curiosity, his eyes bright in the torch-flare that was staining his whiteness with gold as the young warriors crowded closer; and again, pawing the ground with one round hoof, he flung up his head and neighed defiance at them.

Vadir said, ‘Get back, you fools, unless you want your brains dashed out. Somebody get me a lick of salt.’

One of the men ran back towards the cooking-fires, and returned with a palmful of greyish salt. Vadir held out his hand for it, and then without a glance at the men around him, he limped forward alone.

‘A whip,’ somebody said quietly, out of the dark between the torches—it was odd how quiet they had all become. ‘You’ll need a whip.’

‘The pommel of my dagger will serve as well, if I have a hand to spare,’ Vadir said, still without looking round. He halted at arm’s length from the stallion who watched him as though with scornful interest, and held out the salt on his palm. Frey’s Horse advanced his head, snuffed at the man’s hand, and dropped his muzzle into the salt. Men had brought him licks of salt before, and he knew the sound of their voices in his ears, and even perhaps remembered dimly a time when he had not been so terrible, and men had dared to draw their hands down his nose as this man was doing now.

‘Don’t do it, Vadir,’ somebody cried out sharply. ‘You haven’t a chance!’

But if Vadir heard him, he paid no heed.

He was moving slowly, quietly, round to the horse’s side, and there was a strangeness on him, a kind of exultation, the look of a man face to face with something that he has been waiting for all his life. ‘Two of you come here and hold him,’ he ordered coolly, ‘and be ready to cut the halter when I say.’

After a moment’s hesitation first a Saxon and then a Briton ran out to him and caught the white stallion by mane and halter rope, and even as he began to snort and rear, Vadir made a perfect steed-leap. He seemed to barely touch the quivering white shoulders with his hands, and next instant he was astride his mount. ‘Now!’ It was like a shout of triumph.

A blade flashed in the torchlight, once, twice, and the halter leapt apart. The two men sprang back and ran for their lives as Frey’s Horse reared free.

This had never happened to him before, this Thing, this Terror on his back. Fear was on him as it had never been before even in the winter of his breaking, but more than fear was fury. Screaming with rage he reared up and up until it seemed to the men watching that the stars in the green summer sky were no more than the sparks struck from his lashing hooves; then he plunged earthward, whirling and bucking, mane and tail flying in a white spume as he sought to fling off and break and pound into nothingness the thing that clung to his back as though it were a part of himself.

Vadir clung as though indeed he were part of Frey’s Horse; with clenched knees, and hands twisted into the roots of the flying mane. The watching men would have been roaring him on to victory, but a kind of awe held them, and the wild excitement swept through them silently like a soundless wind. Frey’s Horse was rearing and plunging, the ground shivered under his hooves and his screams of fury seemed to tear the night in two. And all the while the whirling moon-storm of battling horse and man remained in one place. More than once the God’s Horse would have broken out of the torchlit circle and gone thundering into the night, but the ruthless hands on his mane and head-gear wrenched his head further and further round and up, until he could only swing in a circle, far back on his haunches.