THE CROWS OF HUNGER
We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement.
—THE BIBLE, ISAIAH 28:15
The sun had crept slowly towards the western horizon and the red-flecked sea as Stormbringer stirred, rose to his feet, and moved to the summit of the vine-strewn sandy dune. Below him, the enemy camp was a careless jumble of tents and cooking fires.
“Is the beacon ready, Arthur?”
“Yes, Stormbringer, ready to light as soon as you give the signal.”
“There’s no reason for delay then. Halgar will be in position, and the Geats will be engrossed in eating their supper, so let’s light the beacon and introduce these fools to Hell.”
Arthur had prepared a small mound of kindling, wood shavings, and dried leaves in a small hollow in the ground, and this tinder was quickly ignited with his flint. He had also prepared a torch, wound round with cloth soaked in the pitch which Stormbringer carried on his boats to repair sprung planks and timbers. Once the flame roared into life, Arthur thrust the torch into the beacon and waited until the dry wood caught alight.
“Lord!” Arthur acknowledged the command softly as the blaze leapt up with a sudden flare of scarlet and gold flames that were almost too beautiful to announce the start of a battle.
“Attack!” Stormbringer ordered, his call to arms clearly heard over the squabbling of feeding seabirds and the soughing of the freshening wind. As Stormbringer charged down the dunes with Arthur and the Dene warriors in pursuit, the young Briton could hear distant roars of challenge across the river from the besieged Dene encampment near the banks of the tributary. Desperate not to trip over the trailing creepers that rendered this area between the sea and the tree line an obstacle course of considerable danger, Arthur shouted to Stormbringer that Frodhi’s warriors had commenced their attack.
At full pelt, a line of Dene warriors forty feet long struck the Geat force like a tidal wave. It was inevitable that the Geats would hear Stormbringer’s call to arms, but they had been engrossed by one of the few high points of any soldier’s day, the evening meal. So it took the besiegers a moment or two to realize that they were under attack from an unexpected quarter.
Shouts, curses, and bellowed commands filled the air and added to the confusion among the Geat warriors. When Arthur reached the first cooking fire, he kicked over a triangle of iron supporting a heavy cooking pot filled with bubbling mutton stew. The hot slop of food hit the glowing coals with a deadly hiss, but Arthur now knew that he wouldn’t trip over the cauldron during the fighting.
A huge, disheveled Geat with a plaited blond beard and long, uncombed locks vaulted over the mess around the fire pit with the determination of a man who was crazed or confused. In one hand, he wielded a wicked axe on the end of a long handle which he swung with such force that Arthur felt the breeze of the blade as it sliced past his chest. Too experienced to look downwards, the Briton responded with an underhand slice of his sword. He knew the Geat would evade the blow, but the warrior must be prevented from swinging that unusually long axe again.
Arthur stepped inside the arc of the axe, even as he swung his sword. Now less than four feet from his enemy, most Dene warriors would be too far away for knife work and too close to wield their swords effectively, but Arthur already had the hilt of the Dragon Knife in his left hand. He drew the blade out of its scabbard and the pommel embraced his hand like a lover. He scarcely took the time to think as the wondrously crafted knife sliced open the Geat’s throat with the practiced neatness of a fisherman filleting a fish. Quickly, as the arterial blood sprayed over the space where Arthur had just been standing, the Briton sped towards the next warrior.
And the next!
And the next!
The Geats had been caught completely off guard. Two men had even been in the malodorous latrines when the attack began and had lost valuable time dragging up their unlaced trews. As the shadows deepened, it was only the presence of firelight that gave any sense to the chaotic struggles of men as they fought and died.
Now, Arthur could appreciate why the success of the Dene attack depended on men who had fought the sea together and knew each other’s faces and the timbre of their voices. One huge man appeared before him, eyes wild with battle lust and his braids swinging like snakes around his head. Arthur almost castrated the warrior before he recognized Rolf Sea-Shaper, the helmsman from Loki’s Eye. At the last moment, the young Briton managed to control the deadly momentum of the knife thrust.
“Rolf! You fucking idiot! I’m the Briton—you know me!”
Rolf shook his head and the redness left his eyes.
“Arthur, the Last Dragon! Shite! I could have gutted you!”
“Look down, Rolf Sea-Shaper.” Rolf saw the Dragon Knife almost touching his genitals. He winced appreciatively.
“Congratulations, young Arthur! You’d have trimmed me in ways my wife wouldn’t have liked. Stay careful, friend!” Then the warrior turned and pursued a running Geat who seemed crazed and disoriented, for he was heading pell-mell towards the Vagus and the besieged enemy. Without identification to mark the chains of office, the Geat and Dene warriors were interchangeable, so only familiarity saved Stormbringer’s men from killing one another rather than their enemies. Sensibly, the Sae Dene commander had ordered that warriors from his ten ships should provide the nucleus of troops for the first wave of attack, so the second wave would be used only if, for some inexplicable reason, Stormbringer’s crews failed to achieve their objectives.
Later, Arthur would realize that the battle had been quick and vicious, although time seemed to stretch out as the Dene hunted down those Geats who were trying to retreat. They had realized their position was hopeless within ten minutes of the commencement of hostilities, but were far too proud to beg for mercy. Once trapped, most of them died bravely and attempted to take their attackers into the shades with them.
Arthur was faced with one ugly choice as the camp was being mopped up and the corpses piled onto a section of the riverbank once they had been stripped of all their valuables. Stormbringer had determined that the families of the dead would receive the first cut of the spoils, while the remainder would be kept and equally distributed among the entire force at the end of the campaign. Once the Sae Dene had explained his intentions, the warriors in the various crews worked together with cheerful enthusiasm.
In the corner of one large tent, Arthur stripped away a bundle of clothing that had been thrown into the corner near a sleeping pallet. Then he felt a sting in his hand and a hellcat came after his eyes, her long claws bared and her teeth searching for the soft skin of his throat. Without a further thought, Arthur struck out with his clenched fist on the side of the head. The figure yelped, then slid unconscious to the floor.
“Mercy, my lord! Mercy! My daughter was trying to protect me,” a shrill female voice called from the back of the tent. “The girl’s only thirteen, and she’s still a virgin. Please, lord, don’t kill her! She’s already seen her father slaughtered in front of her! Please . . .”
“Hell’s fucking bells!” Arthur swore in the Celtic tongue, and then began to ask questions of the woman, a striking strawberry blonde of some thirty years. In her arms, she nursed an infant who couldn’t be any older than one or two days.
What do I do now? The girl’s a child and she falls into the category of a slave. I should kill the mother immediately, but her baby will die if we can’t feed and care for the infant.
Arthur thought quickly. “Get on your feet and all three of you might survive.” Arthur shoved the reluctant woman forward as she tried to rouse her daughter. A narrow snake of blood slid from the girl’s nose. Then, half dragging the semiconscious girl-child and with the nursing mother bringing up the rear, Arthur picked his way through the dead to where Stormbringer was overseeing the clearing of the Geat camp.
“Hoi, Stormbringer!” Arthur shouted in warning in case any of the Sae Dene’s companions killed his captives before he had time to explain his plan to the captain. “I’ve a favor to ask and a problem to solve.”
Stormbringer looked up and felt that odd shiver of premonition that raises the hair on the arms and sends shudders through the soul.
Arthur was walking out of a thick drift of charcoal-grey smoke and, behind him, a wall of fire and showers of wind-borne sparks created a halo of light around the tall Briton’s figure. The nimbus of fire caught Arthur’s curls and seemed to crown him with a diadem of yellow, orange, and scarlet flame shot through with gold. The woman, who was nursing the infant at her breast to silence it, was a black blur against the brilliant backdrop, as was the figure that sagged over Arthur’s shoulder.
Then the Briton dumped the small figure unceremoniously on the ground.
The child, for she was little more, sprang to her feet and spun to face her captor with the speed of a striking serpent. She had been dissembling, feigning unconsciousness to attack Arthur as soon as he put her down. As Stormbringer watched this largely silent tableau, the girl’s headscarf tore away and her white-blond hair came loose, seemingly yards of it, for the child’s locks had never been cut. Stormbringer couldn’t recall the last time he had seen such thick, lustrous hair on an adult, least of all on the head of a child.
She launched herself at Arthur with the intention of scooping out his eyes with her nails, but Arthur gripped a handful of that wonderful hair, turned her so that she faced Stormbringer, and then used his boot on her boyish backside to shove her down onto the muddy, blood-soaked earth. The child’s right hand landed in a puddle of clotting gore, and she wailed thinly before bursting into tears.
“What have you brought me, Arthur? We agreed that there were to be no prisoners except for children!”
“Aye, Stormbringer! That was our agreement!” The light played across Arthur’s face and, momentarily, the features appeared to be molded out of gilded bronze, except for his eyes, which caught the light like two prismed crystals—colorless, yet striking.
He’s a god! the superstitious pagan in the Sae Dene whispered from inside his brain. No! He isn’t a god, he’s just Arthur! But God seems to be giving me a glance into some future glory. So what under heaven does He intend for this troubled young man?
“I’ve decided to claim these three souls as part of my spoils from our campaign. I know! I’m a landless and untried man, and I should be more sensible, but this girl is younger than my sister—for all that she’s a hellcat. Her mother says she’s been rendered half crazy because her father was killed in front of her, so it appears that she is maddened with grief.”
Stormbringer welcomed the opportunity to break the moment and gaze down at the child.
He saw immediately that the girl’s eyes were an unusual shade of grey, with navy rims around irises which were almost colorless within. Those flat eyes, fringed with long, pale eyelashes, were threatening and angry. The child’s milk-white skin and pale flesh was so delicate and transparent that Stormbringer could have sworn he could see the veins just under the skin.
She’s a frightening child! An intense child! But is she dangerous?
“I can’t, and won’t, kill a child who’s younger than my sister, Master Stormbringer. But my scruples don’t extend to her mother.”
At this threat, the young girl wailed like a wild beast and she struggled to rise. Arthur’s boot pushed her back onto her knees, although he felt a momentary stab of pity.
“Unfortunately, the mother has recently given birth, and her infant son will die if I kill her. Such an action is at odds with the upbringing that governs my manhood so, for good or ill, I ask that these captives be given to me as slaves. I’m prepared to vouch for their silence until our campaign against their kinfolk comes to an end.”
Stormbringer bit on his thumbnail and his magnificent brows furrowed in concentration. “Step forward, woman, so I can see your face!”
The woman complied so that the Sae Dene commander could see her expression and come to a conclusion concerning her fate. She could have been no older than thirty, and the girl had inherited her mother’s fine white skin and delicate features.
“Bare your head, woman, and tell me your name,” Stormbringer demanded.
The woman complied, and the assembled warriors could see that she possessed a beauty that was unearthly, almost fabulous, lit as it was by the fires from the burning tents and the detritus of a savage conflict. So would Helen of Troy have seemed when she watched her husband take his revenge on her adopted city for his humiliation at the hands of Prince Paris, her lover. Her thick, sword-straight hair had been plaited into long braids, which she had wound into a coronet around her head. No diadem could have been more beautiful. The tendrils of curling hair that had escaped from the plaits softened the harshness of the constraining locks and made the mother appear more vulnerable, especially to impressionable male eyes. Whether she had intelligence, Arthur couldn’t tell.
“My name is Ingrid, and my husband was the commander of this encampment. My daughter is Sigrid. Any harm that comes to my children is my fault, so I should bear the punishment. I was pregnant and refused to stay behind in safety in the lands that lie beyond Lake Wener. In my loneliness, I wept and refused to eat. Eventually, my husband weakened and permitted me to join him here, since his duty to his master, Olaus Healfdene, was considered to be a relatively simple and safe task of guarding harmless prisoners.”
“Why didn’t your husband send you to safety once your son was born? There was no reason for you to remain any longer. You should have been packed off home immediately.”
The woman bit her lip, as if only a flow of blood could ease her feelings of shame. “I should have gone, but my son was only born a few days ago and I never recover quickly from childbed. I was supposed to leave in the next few days . . . oh, Inge! Would you still be alive if I had acted reasonably? Would you have traveled with me to Västergötland and survived this massacre? Is your death my fault?”
She opened her mouth and would have wailed aloud. Instead, she began to tear her robe in distress and scour her perfect cheeks with her nails until Stormbringer ordered her to be restrained. Arthur released Sigrid, who ran to her mother and held her protectively. The girl stroked her mother’s forehead to comfort her, while she glared at Arthur with a fierce rage. The child was more adult than the parent.
“Yes, Arthur. Like you, I lack the callousness to damn an infant to die of starvation. Take all three of these Geats as slaves if you wish, but you are responsible for their behavior.”
“Aye, Stormbringer! I accept that all blame and shame will be mine!”
Stormbringer, Arthur, and his captains made their way across the river to the Dene encampment. They were forced to take the longest route, which involved wading through waist-deep water and then swimming across one of the deep channels at the widest point of the river where it entered the sea. Arthur knew from the captain’s expression that Stormbringer was worried, because Leif and his warriors had made no attempt to take part in the twin battles along the banks of the rivers. Such behavior, or lack of it, was a warning that the prolonged siege of over two months might have been successful in killing off most of the Dene survivors through starvation and illness.
As they swam they held torches high above the water so they could see their way in the black waters and on the insect-ridden swamps.
In the predominantly stygian darkness, Arthur could see several lights flickering in the swamps ahead of them. “Look, Stormbringer, the signs aren’t entirely gloomy. Some fires have been lit, so some of your kinsmen are still alive.”
When he reached shallower water, Stormbringer quickly found his feet, for his torch was one of the few still sending out a bright light. His spare hand immediately started to slap at invisible insects, which were biting any inch of his skin that wasn’t below the waterline.
“They need as much fire as they can get to kill off these fucking insects,” Stormbringer shouted, with his voice rising angrily on the last word. Arthur realized he’d never heard the Sae Dene curse before.
The river was fast running in the main channel, but the stones on the uneven bottom had grown beards of weed, moss, and slime near the river’s edge. The smell of rotting weed was stronger here, even though the Vagus had a powerful flow. Arthur almost dropped his own torch when a stone slid out from under his leather soles and brought him down to his knees with a sharp and painful jolt. Waterweed and reeds were choking the margins of the river.
“Fuck! It should be too damned cold for this shite to grow on the rocks.”
Several of the warriors had already slipped and fallen while trying to keep their footing. They snickered in understanding.
“Shut up, Arthur! Did you hear that?”
Stormbringer’s body was stretched and taut like a hunting hound that has taken the scent of prey and was now readying itself for a deadly attack. His every sense was straining now towards the shore only a hundred feet or so away.
“There! I thought I heard someone weeping, and I’ll swear I heard a cry for help.” Stormbringer picked up the pace, trying to maintain his balance in the river’s current.
“I heard it too,” Halgar added, so every man struggled to remove himself from the treacherous waters.
The current slowed significantly once they reached the reeds, but the hard, dry vegetation resisted them at every step. Cursing, the warriors heaved themselves onto solid ground.
Solid ground?
Mud! Clinging, reeking mud further slowed their rush towards any survivors of the siege. Stormbringer called out to his men to be still and maintain their silence.
“Rescue is here—and we have food and clean beer aplenty. Just call out so we can find you.”
The answer, when it came, was almost under Stormbringer’s feet.
A man clad in full battle gear, but dreadfully gaunt and frail, had forced his emaciated body to crawl towards the riverbank.
“You’re skin and bone, man! Who are you, and where’s the main body of Leif’s defenders?” Stormbringer’s voice was rough with emotion. In response to a gesture from the Sae Dene, Arthur raised his torch over the starving man who flinched away from the cruelty of the light.
“We’re all ill, master. All who are alive, that is! I’ve not kept count, but Leif assigned his young cousin to that task after the first month. Leif swore that the Crow King would come, but you’ve been overlong in arriving. I am Hrolfr, and my grandsire insisted that we were kin to Hnaef Healfdene, king of the Dene, near to a hundred years ago. Anyway, my name is much like that of the king, so perhaps there is a family link there in the distant past.”
The young man was babbling and he knew it. Prolonged hunger had taken away any appetite, but he was so weak that his brain had slowed alarmingly. Fruitlessly, he tried to stand.
“I’m sorry, master.” The young man’s eyes filled with tears of shame at his weakness. “I don’t have the strength to take you to Leif, who is our commander. But if someone were to lend me a shoulder to lean on, I’ll be able to show you the way.”
Stormbringer swallowed a lump in his throat and pushed the man down gently so he could lie in the long grass of the verge in relative comfort, despite the insects that were attacking his flesh in tormenting clouds.
“Smear your bodies with mud,” the young man suggested helpfully as he caught the direction of Stormbringer’s thoughts. “It helps a little bit.”
The Denes hurried to smear their skins liberally with stinking, slimy sludge from the riverbank.
“Halgar! Swim back to the encampment. Once there, bring Arthur’s women to Leif’s encampment. They can make themselves useful by nursing those living who are the victims of their kinsmen. We’ll need makeshift litters to transport the injured and dying back to the ships as soon as we bring them to the riverbank. Horses would help if you can get them! The Geat warriors are supposed to love their steeds, so I imagine you’ll find a picket line somewhere. It’ll be near clean water beyond their camp.”
Halgar started to move, but Stormbringer stopped him with one hand.
“Put the warriors to work who aren’t clearing out the corpses of the Geat scum. We need hot food—nothing too solid or difficult to chew. And we need beer! Send some men back to the longboats to fetch whatever is needed. If Hrolfr is anything to go by, his companions will be in dire straits. Hurry, Halgar! He must be one of the strongest of our patients, because he managed to crawl this far.”
Halgar ran and dived in. In a matter of minutes, he became a black dot in the water, and then he was gone.
“Horik! You’ll remain here with Hrolfr,” Stormbringer instructed one of his warriors. “Ensure he remains as comfortable as possible until such time as we take him back to the longboats.”
“Aye! I’ll care for him, Stormbringer. I’m afraid of what we’re going to find in there, my lord. The smell is disgusting whenever the wind freshens.”
Horik had no need to say more. As the captain of one of Stormbringer’s ships and a distant kinsman, he understood the Sae Dene better than most. He also knew the sweet reek of old death, and he had seen Stormbringer’s efforts to control his rage. The Sae Dene had berserker fury in his heart, so wanton waste of life could unchain the beast that lived within him. Stormbringer could foretell what waited for them when they entered the encampment.
“Be careful, Valdar! Danger and peril lie in the darkness within these swamps.”
Confused by the interplay of information between the two kinsmen, Arthur started to move towards the flickering light and whatever horrors awaited them there. As Stormbringer joined him, Arthur could sense the heavy foreboding in his captain.
“Why do you want the females brought here? To nurse the sick? Or do you want to teach them a lesson? It’s possible that Hrolfr is the only one who remains alive. He’s young and he would have been strong before the siege.”
“You’re very calm, Arthur, but I suppose these men aren’t your people,” Stormbringer hissed. “Yes! I want these women to see what their man did.”
Arthur tripped over a tussock of coarse grass that managed to survive above the salty marsh that surrounded it. His right foot sank to the ankle in foul-smelling, clinging mud, so he cursed creatively.
“I’m not afraid of what’s tangible, Stormbringer. I was under ten when I saw my best friend’s corpse, and nothing’s changed since then. I couldn’t survive if I allowed myself to be squeamish. I’ve seen burned churches and nuns who were hacked to pieces after they were raped to death. It was all so unnecessary! I firmly believe that torturing these women, especially the girl, would be pointless.”
Stormbringer nodded, raised his torch, and then plowed on into the swamps.
“I know, Arthur, but I’m not always a good man.”
Suddenly, a wind shift caused both men, and the warriors who were moving carefully behind them, to hear the slow, soft sound of moaning. They realized the thin, reedy sound had come from human lungs.
Arthur tripped again.
“Oh, shite!” Silence, appalled and chill, followed the curse.
“Stormbringer! You need to see this.”
The shock in Arthur’s voice filled Stormbringer’s throat with bile. The Briton was rarely upset by violence.
Arthur raised his torch and scrubbed his left hand on his shirt in an attempt to remove the stain of something he had touched with his fingers. The man whose moans had warned them of his presence breathed his last just as the light exposed his body. The breath rattled one last time in his throat and chest—and then he was gone.
Some ten yards away, three bodies lay on the margins of the swamp. They had been dead for some days. One corpse had the green tinge of old death, and insects rose from its open mouth and nose in clouds when Arthur pushed his torch close to the ghastly, contorted face. Maggots crawled on the purple, engorged tongue, so Arthur had to force himself to control his disgust.
But the evidence of death, ugly as it was, hadn’t caused Arthur’s cry of distress. The first corpse had been stripped below the waist and the fatty flesh of the buttocks cut away with a butcher’s efficiency. The meat from the thighs had also been harvested: someone had flensed portions of edible meat from the body of this dead warrior.
“This body has been cannibalized,” Arthur said with finality and disgust. “And these two men, I believe, must have been the butchers.”
Stormbringer allowed his torch to play over the corpses of the perpetrators of the crime and the rotting meat near the bodies. Unlike their victim, these two corpses bore marks of violent death. Their bodies had been hacked about with sharp knives, and each corpse had been almost beheaded by blows that had cut their throats. The hands of these corpses were black with old blood, while their stained knives were lying in the mud where they had been dropped. Nearby, separated from the bodies by a small space, several lumps of blackened flesh crawled with maggots.
For the first time in his life, Stormbringer completely lost control of his stomach.
When only bile was left to be scoured out of his gut, Stormbringer ordered his warriors to stay back.
“Else you’ll have this hellish view of our own ugliness burned into your brain, like me. Go on into the encampment! Whatever we find there can’t possibly be as bad as this.”
“I’ll burn the bodies later, Stormbringer,” Arthur promised. “At least, there must have been someone with scruples here who has executed those sods. Forgive them, Stormbringer, for weak men can become crazed if they’re dying of starvation and consider the means of salvation is close at hand.”
An angry, frustrated, and shocked Stormbringer finally reached Leif’s camp, which was on the only significant piece of dry land on this island. This camp was drenched with the same misery and despair that Arthur imagined would rule in the realms of Satan.
Every portion of dry land was in use.
Coarse, primitive pallets had been constructed out of reeds and water grass, and simple coverings made of cloaks covered this makeshift bedding. Some tents were also in use, but spear shafts had been used to suspend them over several rows of beds. Their fires burned in crude fire pits where pots of vile-smelling herbs and grasses burned, ostensibly to ward off the hordes of insects. Other large iron pots, filled with water, were boiling on the untended fires.
On the pallets, men lay in various stages of illness. Some still had enough strength to grip the hands of their saviors in gratitude and mutter their thanks through tears of joy. Others lay in a waxen silence, lost in the sleep that comes before death, so Arthur wondered if any of these men could be saved. Some raved in their delirium, their bodies burning from within in a fever that was melting the flesh from their bones. A few of the shaky, but less seriously ill, warriors were trying to nurse over a hundred of their comrades and, try as he might, Arthur saw no one who could be considered well and able-bodied.
“The Geat could have walked into this camp at any time they liked.” Arthur’s voice was thick with contempt. “Instead, they chose to let these poor bastards starve in their own shit. I’ve glad now that we killed them all without mercy. No commander who could issue orders that caused such an affront to nature should be permitted to lead men.”
Stormbringer was beyond the release of words. One trembling young man, trying to spoon some boiled water into a dying man’s mouth, pointed towards the center of the pallets where Leif, the Sword of Skandia, could be found.
Leif had been a tall, robust man in the prime of life before starvation and dysentery had melted the flesh off his bones. Now he sat, supported by his saddle, and attempted to eat a watery stew made from horsemeat and grass, but his stomach kept rejecting the better parts of the food.
Stormbringer introduced himself to Leif while, around them, the camp gradually came to some semblance of life. The women had arrived and, white-faced, began to clean and wash down the patients with the assistance of the Dene captains. One of the characteristics that Arthur admired about the Dene was their ability to take on the caring and often demeaning tasks of females, if there was no one else to give succor to the dying.
“How did you come to this pass, Leif? I apologize for our tardiness in answering your call, but I had difficulty in assembling our fleet, so many of your casualties can be sheeted home to me. But I don’t understand what has caused . . . all this.”
“Where is the king?” Leif interrupted. His green eyes were hot with fever. “I must give him my thanks for his assistance in our time of need.”
“He’s not here right now, but I’m standing in his stead,” Stormbringer replied tactfully as he pushed the jarl back onto his disheveled bedding. The warrior lord continued to try to rise with ineffectual hands until Arthur stopped Stormbringer’s distortion of the truth by interrupting his commander.
“This noble jarl who has saved you and your warriors is Valdar Bjornsen, the Stormbringer, who has been declared an outlaw by Hrolf Kraki, partly because he spoke out that it was necessary to come to your assistance. If it had been left to Hrolf Kraki, then you would never have been relieved. Stormbringer called on all Dene jarls of honor and pride to assemble in a fleet that would come to your aid.”
Leif’s face was a study in rapidly altering emotions. At first, his confusion was clearly written on his face, but then rage engorged his green eyes with blood. This emotion was followed by regret and, finally, despair. The sick man’s fists clenched and Arthur stared at the large bones of the wrists, which were virtually bare of muscle. Suddenly, the charcoal and purple shadows around his deep-sunk eyes seemed deeper, as if Leif had accepted that his death was inevitable.
“I should have surrendered to the Geat and brokered a truce whereby my people could survive. I was foolish to put my trust in the honor of others, so these good men became ill, hungered, and perished because I held to old treaties and allies.” Leif’s arm gestured to all the pallets and patients who lay around him. “This is my fault.”
“What shite!” Arthur muttered under his breath, but Leif’s sharp ears had heard his insult.
“What did you say?” he demanded.
“You’re being a fool! We’re here, aren’t we? I’m a Briton, so I’ve got no axe to grind, but I can see clearly that, while your king might have been disloyal to you and your tribe, the Dene warriors haven’t failed you. Look at them! Those men cleaning up the piss and shit of your men are jarls, not slaves. Forget the self-pity and show some gratitude.”
“Arthur!” Stormbringer was outraged at Arthur’s bluntness, but Arthur ignored him.
“Leif must be forced to understand the chances you’ve taken to save him and his command. And the plans that you’ve made to turn back the tide of the Geat invasion. I know he’s ill, almost to death, but I won’t have any criticisms laid at your door.”
“Your lad is a fire-eater, Stormbringer. This Briton, whatever that is, is right,” Leif said softly with a slow grin. “I was wallowing in self-pity and I failed to value your efforts to save my people. My apologies, Stormbringer! I have heard of you in the past. I’m glad to have finally met you, and my heart is lighter to be part of your plans.”
“Right now, you’re a hindrance rather than a help,” Arthur added crudely. “I’m sorry, Stormbringer, but this warrior is entitled to the truth. He’s a man, and he’ll react just like you. See!”
Leif clenched his fists and dashed tears of weakness and frustration out of his eyes. “Yes, Stormbringer, your Briton is right! What do you need? Tell me, and I’ll do what I can to help.”
Stormbringer patted Leif encouragingly on the back and began to brief him on the plans he’d devised to transport the sick to a site upriver where the air was clean and local villagers could be paid to help with the nursing and the recuperation of the invalid warriors. The Sae Dene captain was loath to divert too many of his fighting men to the task of caring for a hundred survivors suffering from dysentery and breathing problems.
Even though he was sick, Leif was a clever man and knew the landscape intimately. And so, within an hour, a temporary plan had been put in place for the evacuation, while Arthur’s females and other volunteers went from row to row to keep the survivors supplied with fresh water and tiny servings of well-mashed fish and vegetables, in an effort to rebuild some of their strength and prepare them for transport upriver by longboat.
Sigrid looked at Arthur with eyes darkened by resentment and dislike, while her mother clicked her tongue at her daughter and apologized for the girl’s resistance.
“She’s not used to manual work, Lord Arthur, so please take her inexperience into account.” The woman’s beautiful face had no power to tempt him because he needed only to look at the starved faces, hollowed eyes, and protruding bones of the sick Dene to be reminded that her husband had been the architect of this suffering.
“She’s a spoiled brat, Mistress Ingrid. I grew up in a privileged household, but I would have been beaten for such unattractive fits of sulking.”
Sigrid dropped the cup of water she was giving to a delirious young man all over the patient and then thrust her face into Arthur’s, although she was too short to reach higher than his chin. Arthur noticed, irrelevantly, that she was tall for a girl who hadn’t yet reached womanhood.
“It’s obvious that you weren’t the object of your parents’ love then, else they’d have tried to protect you from sick and smelly men who could make my mother and my brother very ill. My father would never have risked my life.”
“Your father caused all this! It was a cowardly way to fight and win a battle, don’t you think? And he took no risks with his own skin!”
Arthur was far from finished, although Sigrid’s eyes filled with tears.
“My foster father thought too much of his children to allow such ignorant, crude, and bad-mannered behavior to take place in his household. Had we so disappointed him by acting like peasants, he would have been very ashamed of us. As for my mother? We would never shame her by any of our actions—never!”
The child flushed hotly. As the color rose up her striking face, Arthur decided that she would become a beautiful woman one day, if she survived to adulthood.
“I knew it! Your real father left you, so you must be a bastard! Hhhhm! That explains how you could set me to work like a field slave.”
“My father was the High King of all the Britons, you silly little bitch. One day, you might learn not to criticize any man’s family or acquaintances at times when you don’t know what you’re talking about. As of today, I own you—body and soul! I also own your mother and your brother. Your mother will explain to you what that means, because the time for any pride on your part is over. You can consider yourself fortunate that I’m not Dene, or you would already be dead.”
Sigrid’s face was ashen now, but Arthur showed her no mercy.
“I’ll be forced to protect you from the wives and mothers of these men who may, or may not, return to their homes. Do you now have the common sense to understand what I’m saying?”
The girl nodded and pressed her face into her mother’s breast.
• • •
THE WIND HOWLED and the rain lashed the Forest of Dean in an unseasonal storm of particular savagery. The newly sawn pine timbers in the house were still bleeding sap, like the slow leak of pink-stained tears. But the forest smells survived in the timber, and Bedwyr woke to the perfume of pine needles, the scent of Elayne’s hair, and the aroma of dog that emanated from his old hound. For one short moment, his memory failed him, and then one last recollection of sharp pain surfaced in his head and he heard himself groan.
“Beloved? Bedwyr? Oh, bless the Lord, Bedwyr has woken!”
Somehow, Bedwyr managed to pry his gummed eyelids apart and saw the face of his beloved Elayne floating above him. He tried to speak, but the words were guttural nonsense.
“Don’t try to talk, my darling. The children are here, so all you need to do is hold their hands and feel how much we love you.”
Bedwyr looked at the circle of faces round his familiar old bed. He tried to raise his right hand to stroke its honey-colored carving, but his muscles refused to obey. He pushed his feelings of panic away, for a warrior must know when his time has come.
“God has finally taken pity on me,” Bedwyr murmured, but what came out was a series of grunts and distorted sounds. “Arthur and Maeve are still not at home, but yet I must go. What will become of you all?”
With the wisdom of a loving wife, Elayne interpreted her old man’s attempts to communicate, took him in her arms, and set about putting his mind at rest.
“Lasair, your eldest son, has become a man now, and he’ll rule in your place, my precious darling. You brought us to our new home and settled us into our new surroundings, but it’s time for you to rest. And Barr is here as well! He’s taken over the defense of our new forest home, and he’s been busy training the young men to use their bows effectively along the margins of the trees. All is well within your family.”
Bedwyr wanted to weep for the loss of his children, but after a life full of losses, he had learned the value of keeping up a facade of strength. He smiled and nodded, to show the boys that he was proud of what miracles they had wrought in moving the entire tribe from Arden to Dean, although his thoughts remained fixed on the two children who had always been closest to his heart.
Elayne’s eyes were glistening with unshed tears. “We will be safe and well without you, Bedwyr, so if God calls for you to come to him, everything here has been done and you are permitted to rest.”
Her hand pressed his, while his daughter wiped his mouth of its spittle. How undignified old age is, Bedwyr thought, and how shameful! And now I find myself dribbling like a child. Like me, Myrddion must have hated growing really old, so I won’t regret being called to meet my Maker.
Bedwyr’s mind ranged back to a stony hilltop. Mountains marched across the horizon in rows like the helmed and armored legions from Rome. Although he had never seen the Romans in action, his father had told him stories of a time long, long ago, before a Saxon knife had terminated his father’s ability to speak.
The room in the half-built fortress behind sturdy walls in the Forest of Dean melted away, and Bedwyr’s memories returned to a distant time and place. He felt the weight of Caliburn in his hands—so heavy and so laden with the invisible chains of duty, self-sacrifice, and patriotism—and a beautiful woman who was telling him to throw it into the tarn that lay behind her. The face of Nimue, the Maid of Wind and Water, who became the Lady of the Lake after Myrddion Merlinus died, swam into his fading vision.
And what would become of Elayne? Bedwyr had loved her for so long that he had forgotten what existence had been like when he was on his own. He recalled that he had lived a solitary life fueled by the need to revenge himself against all Saxons, but he no longer recalled the sense of it all. Their shared communion of souls had been more important to Bedwyr than sex, friendship, or united desires for their country, and they had been one person from the moment of their first meeting.
Except for one short period of time! It was a brief and painful hour of betrayal, as fleeting as a breath. Even then, Bedwyr had lacked the heart to chastise his lady for loving the High King of the Britons, a man whom everyone adored. She had given the king her mind and her companionship in Cadbury at a time when the man Bedwyr had served and loved best in the world had been assailed by traitors, murderers, and the horror of personal doubts. Artor had valued the same things in his auburn-haired wife that Bedwyr had loved, so when disaster threatened to kill them during a snowstorm that froze their bodies, they had betrayed him. So long ago! Bedwyr had been angry for a time when he was faced by the proof of that small time of disloyalty that was made flesh in the warm, rosy body of Arthur, their son. But Bedwyr could never reject his lord for more than a week or two, so the Arden Knife had been present at the final battle when Artor had taken his mortal wound. Ever faithful, Bedwyr had closed Artor’s eyelids over his grey eyes for the last time, and he had folded the huge, scarred hands onto the breast of his king. Bedwyr had removed the pearl thumb ring to comply with his master’s instructions, but Artor went to the grave with an amulet containing a part of a scroll around his neck. Even then, with Artor dead and beyond caring, Bedwyr had refused to read that scrap of superfine vellum because his master had insisted on keeping it close to his heart.
So much had been lost, but more had been saved from those terrible days of failure and defeat. Somehow, Bedwyr had gathered together the courage to patch up the ragged edges of the king’s life and maintain the old, civilized ways in the face of a world gone berserk and brutal. “A rearguard action against fate,” Bedwyr had always called their way of life, but circumstances swept Arden away in any case, along with his children, and he couldn’t grow in this alien forest where he had been transplanted.
Somehow, the old man had expected death to be more painful than this gradual slowing of mind and breath. He felt the love of his family enfold him, but the fierce ties to them that once would have forced him to remain alive had weakened. And he was glad!
There was so much for his sons to do to secure this new forest, but his shadow was too large for his sons to stand alone without asking for his advice. Yes, it was better that he go now, before he failed in his wits, allowing his boys to grow strong in the sunlight without his form blocking it out. But, by God’s good graces, he sorely missed Arthur, now that he had come to the end of all things.
From a great distance, he heard his wife call out to him as she wiped the tears of a great loss from his eyes. But she was such a long way from him when he opened his eyes to see her once more. Elayne seemed dim, as did the whole breathing, changeable world below his hands. Bedwyr could see the light now, and his soul longed to follow the beam of unbearable whiteness to its source.
“Go, my darling! We are safe and well, and we will endure the world without you.”
Elayne’s whisper seemed to come from far away, but the message was so strong and true that Bedwyr rose and looked down on her as she folded her body over the chest of an ancient, twisted man who was lying on his deathbed. Still, the white light called him, and he saw figures in the rays of light. A hound ran out of the whiteness, and Bedwyr knew the beast at once. Together, they had served in the fortress of Caer Fyrddin a lifetime ago. And there was Myrddion Merlinus, by God, grown young and lithe again. His parents embraced him and he felt complete.
Finally, Artor embraced him in the old way, and Bedwyr found no shame in weeping into those still-young, still-vibrant arms.
In the Forest of Dean, an old legend died and was mourned overlong after the corpse went to the fires. He had known the gods when they walked upon the earth and he had served a righteous cause with other legends. The pyre burned for two days, while Elayne ordered tree after tree sacrificed to the spirit of the Arden Knife until, at the last, she handed that venerable weapon to her eldest son.
The time for miracles was now truly over.