The Last Light of the Sun (56 page)

“Two ships!” The Erling’s voice was incredulous. “We
never
leave hostages, you shit-smeared fool! We never leave our ships!”

“Then the ships will be taken when you die in these lands. You will never leave, any of you. Decide. I am not of a mind to talk.” His voice was cold now.

One of the Erlings came forward on foot, stood by the stirrup of the one-eyed man. They whispered together. Alun looked at Thorkell again. Saw that the other man was gazing over at Brynn.

“How do we know you aren’t lying about Llywerth and Cadyr? How would they know about us?” It was the second Erling, standing by the one named Leofson.

A horseman twitched his reins and moved forward to sit his mount beside Brynn. “You know because I tell you it is true. We rode through the spirit wood, three of us, to bring warning of your coming here.”

“Through the spirit—!
That
will be a lie! Who are … ?”

The Erling fell silent. He’d sorted the answer to his own question. It was the accent, Alun realized. The flawless, courtly Anglcyn tones.

“My name is Athelbert, son of Aeldred,” said the young man beside Brynn, who had ridden with them through the godwood to serve a cause that wasn’t his own. “Our
fyrd
killed sixty of you. I will be unspeakably happy to add to that number here. My father has sent a ship from Drengest, right behind yours, with a warning for Cadyr. They will have had it days ago, while you were coming here. Ap Hywll speaks truth. If we do not send to stop them, the Cyngael will take your ships or drive them offshore, and you will have nowhere to go. You are dead men, where you stand. Jormsvik will never be the same. They will mock your names forever. You cannot possibly imagine the pleasure it gives me to say these words.”

A murmuring among the Erling host below them. Alun heard anger but no fear. He hadn’t expected to. He saw some of them begin to draw blades and axes. With a hard, fierce sense of need, he unsheathed his sword. It had come, it had finally come.

“Wait,” said Thorkell quietly beside him.

“They’re drawing weapons!” Alun rasped.

“I see it. Wait. They will win this fight.”

“They will not!”

“Trust me. They will. Ap Hywll knows it too. Numbers are close, but they have horsemen and fighters. Brynn has his thirty men but the rest are farmers with scythes and sticks.
Think!
”

His voice carried towards the front. Later, Alun decided he had meant it to do so. Brynn turned his head slightly.

“They know they cannot leave these shores alive,” he said, softly.

“I think they do,” Thorkell Einarson said, still quietly, speaking Cyngael. “It won’t matter. They cannot give you hostages or ships and go back to Jormsvik. They will die first.”

“So we fight. Kill enough of them so that tomorrow or the next—”

“And what will your wives and mothers say, and the fathers of these two princes?” Thorkell never raised his voice.

Brynn turned around. Alun saw his eyes in the late-afternoon light. “They will say that the Erlings, accursed of Jad and the world, slew yet more good men before their time. They will say what they have always said.”

“There is a way out.”

Brynn stared at him. “I am listening,” he said. Alun felt the breeze blowing, making their banners snap.

“We challenge him,” Thorkell said. “He wins, they are allowed to leave. He loses, they yield the two ships and hostages.”

“You just said—”

“They cannot
surrender
ships. They can lose a fight. Honour requires they deal fairly then. They will. This is Jormsvik.”

“That difference matters enough?”

Thorkell nodded. “Always has.”

“Good,” said Brynn, after a moment, smiling. “Good. I fight him. If he will do it.”

Looking back, Alun remembered that four people said
No
at the same moment, and he was one of them.

But the voice that continued, when the others stopped in surprise, was a woman’s. “No!” she said again.

Alun turned, they all did. On the side slope, quite close in fact, on horseback, were the lady wife and the daughter of Brynn ap Hywll. He saw Rhiannon, saw her looking at him, and his heart thumped, a barrage
of memories and images falling like arrows from the bright sky.

It was the mother who had spoken. Brynn was gazing at her. She shifted her mount to come forward among them.

“I told you to stay at home,” he said, mildly enough.

“I know you did, my lord. Chastise me after. But hear me first. The challenge is proper. I heard what he said. But it is not yours this time.”

“It has to be mine. Enid, they came to kill me.”

“And must not be allowed the pleasure. My dear, you are the summit and glory of all men living.”

“I like the sound of that,” said Brynn ap Hywll.

“I imagine you do,” said the lady Enid. “You are vain. It is a sin. You are also, I grieve to tell you, old and short-winded, and fat.”

“I am not fat! I am—”

“You are, and your left knee is aching as we speak, and your back is stiff each day by this hour.”

“He’s old too! That one-eyed captain carries his years—”

“He’s a raider, my lord.” It was Thorkell. “I know the name. He is still a fighting man, my lord. What she says is truth.”

“Are you here to shame me, wife? Are you saying I cannot defeat—?”

“My love. Three princes and their sons stood aside for you twenty-five years ago.”

“I see no reason why—”

“Do not leave me,” said Enid. “Not this way.”

Alun heard birdsong. The doings of men here, the wrack and storm of them, hardly mattering at all. It was a summer’s day. The birds would be here when this was over, one way or another. Brynn was gazing at his wife. She dismounted, without assistance, and knelt on the grass before her husband. Brynn cleared his throat.

It was Athelbert who broke the stillness. He twitched his reins and moved towards the Erlings, down the slope a little way. “Hear me. We are told that you cannot surrender the ships. You must understand you are going to die, if so. A challenge is now offered you. Choose a man, we do the same. If you are victorious, you will be permitted to sail from here.”

“And if we lose?”

They were going to accept. Alun knew it, before they’d even heard the terms. It was in the quickened voice of the one-eyed captain. These were mercenaries, bought to fight, not
berserkirs
lusting after death. He was feeling something strange, a circling of time.

Three princes and their sons.
His father had been one of those sons, twenty-five years ago. Alun’s age, very nearly. Brynn had been, too. What was unfolding here felt as if it were part of a skein spun back to that strand in Llywerth.

Athelbert was speaking again. “You forfeit two ships, your weapons, including those on the ships, and ten hostages as surety, to be released in the spring. Not a surrender. A challenge lost.”

“How do we get home without weapons? If we meet anyone at all—”

“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.