The Last Light of the Sun

TEN

Brogan the miller, awake as usual before dawn, was thinking, as he pissed into the stream before beginning the day, about some of the things he disliked.

It was a long list. He was a sour, solitary man. Had been drawn to the mill because it gave him a house at the edge of the village, a place removed from (and a stature above) the others. He'd murdered someone to get this mill, but that was an old story and he didn't think or even dream about it often any more. Brogan didn't really like people. They talked too much, most of them.

His servant was, usefully, a mute. He'd been very happy (briefly) when he'd learned that Ord, a farmer with fields east of the village, was looking for work for his youngest son who didn't talk. Brogan had made arrangements to bring the boy to the mill. He was old enough, a broad-shouldered lad. A straw pallet, food, a day a week to help his father. Milk and cheese for Brogan in exchange for that last.

And a decent worker who didn't prattle on when feeding the animals or standing waist-deep in the stream mending the wheel. Brogan, who had come to the mill as a worker himself thirty years ago—and taken certain measures a little later to ensure he'd stay—couldn't understand why people would mar an easy silence with wasted words.

There were still stars in the west. First hint of greyness east. Dawn wind ruffling the reeds in the river. Brogan scratched himself and went to unbolt the mill. A warm day coming. Still summertime, though late in the season, with what that meant.

Brogan didn't like the new end-of-summer fair, third year now. The road west of their hamlet towards the river (of which the millstream was a tributary) became too busy. Steady traffic from coast to Esferth and then back, afterwards.

People on roads signified trouble for Brogan the miller. Nothing good about them at all. Strangers stole things, came looking for women or drink, or just mischief to make or find. Brogan had coins buried in three places around the mill. Would have spent some of them by now, but he'd never wanted anything enough to spend good money on it. A woman, now and again, but you could buy one of those for grain, and many of the farmers paid him with flour and wheels of bread. More than he needed. He left his money buried, but worried about it. Long ago, he'd lain awake wondering if someone would find the old miller in his grave, dig him up, see the crushed skull. Now it was the coins that woke him sometimes in the dark. All over the world men knew that millers made money.

He had three dogs. Didn't like them, their barking, but they offered protection. And Modig, the mute, was a good-sized lad, handy with a cudgel. Brogan himself wasn't a big man, but he'd survived a fight or two in his day.

He'd considered taking a wife, some time ago. Children to do the work as he grew older. The idea had come, lingered a while, and passed: women changed things, and Brogan the miller didn't like change. That was the principal reason he didn't like the king. Even after all these years, Aeldred was always changing things. You had to make bows and arrows for yourself now, or buy them, and you were supposed to practise every week, and be tested by someone from the fyrd each spring. Didn't they have other things to do, the fyrd? Farmers with bows: that was a stupid, dangerous thought. They'd kill each other before the Erlings had a chance.

It was dark in the mill, but after so many years he knew his way blind. He opened the shutters over the stream, to let in some light and air. Went down the steps, heard the mice skitter from his footfall. He lifted the lock to the sluice, gripped with both hands, put his back to it, and pulled back the chute gate. The water started pouring in. Soon the familiar sounds of the turning wheel and millstones grinding above began. He went back up, took the first sack, opened it, dumped it into the hopper above the turning stones. Through the open window the eastern sky showed brighter. The first women and children would be coming for their flour after sunrise, most of them straight from the dawn prayers in the small chapel.

Brogan was still thinking about changes as he checked the millstones, which were turning easily. A new cleric in the village now. This one could read and write, was supposed to be teaching people. There were new rules for military service, new taxes for the building of the burhs. Yes, the burhs were supposed to protect them, but Brogan doubted a walled fort at Drengest south and east on the coast, or the other one inland two days east, would do much good for their hamlet or his mill if trouble came. And reading? Reading? What in the name of Jad's toes and fingers did that have to do with anything? Might be well enough for a soft man at court where they ate with ale-soddened musicians piping and warbling to spoil good meat. But here? In a farming village? Modig would do so much better mending the fence or the water-wheel once he could spell his name! Brogan turned his head to spit expertly out the window into the stream.

The new cleric had called shortly after arriving. Fair enough: the mill was owned by the chapel and the miller together. That was why Brogan was miller, really. When the old one had come to his unexpected end (a sudden fever in midsummer, taken in the one night, buried sadly by his servant at dawn), it had made sense for the cleric to strike a bargain with the dour young man after the funeral rites. The miller's assistant, Brogan by name, had seemed to know what he was doing, and the village couldn't afford to have the mill idle while they considered who should have the position. It was a stroke of good fortune for the young fellow, obviously, but Jad could sometimes bestow generously where you might not have expected it.

Thirty years later, this newest cleric (fifth one Brogan had worked with) had looked around the mill in a cursory sort of way, clearly uninterested in what he saw, and then, growing enthusiastic, had asked Brogan about installing one of the newer-styled vertical wheels. He'd read a letter from a fellow cleric in Ferrieres about them, he said. More power, a better use of the river.

Changes, again. Ferrieres. Brogan, wasting more words than he'd wanted to, had explained about the flow of their small stream, the limited needs of the hamlet, and the cost of having a vertical wheel built and attached.

It was that last, he was sure, that had induced the cleric to nod sagely, stroke a weak, beardless chin, and agree that the simpler ways were often best, fulfilling the god's purposes entirely well.

They left the horizontal wheel alone. Brogan took the chapel's share of the mill's earnings (in coin or kind) to them every second week. He was prompt about that sort of thing; it kept people from coming round and talking.

He did hold back a slightly higher portion for himself. If you set that up from the outset, they were unlikely to have questions. He'd been through this before. The cleric had asked about written records on that first visit, Brogan had explained he didn't know how to write. He'd declined an offer of reading lessons. Leave it to the young ones, he'd said.

People were always wanting to change things. Brogan couldn't understand it. Change was going to come, why hurry it along? The king had even sent around new instructions for farmers at the end of this past winter, with the archers from the fyrd, on how to properly handle their fields. Alternating crops. What to grow. As if anyone at court knew anything about farming. Brogan had never been near the king's court (only twice up to Esferth town, which was twice more than enough) but he knew what he thought of it. You didn't need to eat dung to know you wouldn't like the taste.

He leaned out the window and looked upstream to his right. Modig had fed the chickens, was at work in the herb and vegetable garden. A virtue to having a farmer's son here: the garden was looking better than it had in years. Brogan wasn't fussy about what he ate, but he liked turnips and parsnips with his bread and broth and fish, and a decent seasoning as much as the next man, and Modig had a way with the garden. Of course, thought the miller sourly, if he'd had counsel from the courtiers on what seedlings and how much dung to use, it would doubtless be far better.

He spat again into the stream below, saw the pale harbinger of sunrise in the east, and muttered his customary two-sentence version of the rites. His own idea of Jad was not of a god who needed a lot of words. You acknowledged him, gave thanks, and got on with what you had to do. And it didn't need to be done in a chapel. You could pray in a mill over water, gazing out at the fields.

Gazing out at the fields, Brogan the miller saw—in the last near-darkness of a summer night—twenty men or more downstream from him, kneeling beside the water or knee-deep in it, drinking and filling flasks.

He drew his head back quickly, because he saw that they carried weapons. Weapons meant—since they were being quiet and were nowhere near the north-south road—that these were outlaws, or even Erlings, and not simply passing by on their way to trade peacefully at the Esferth fair. Brogan swallowed, his palms suddenly sweaty, scalp prickling. He thought of his coins buried in the yard and just outside it. He thought of death. Armed men across the stream. A large number of men.

Not, in the event, large enough.

From the north, Brogan suddenly heard a dog. His heart lurched. It was a deep, fierce, triumphant howl; not one of his own dogs, though they immediately started their own wild barking in the fenced yard. He looked out, carefully. The men in the stream had begun scrambling from the water, splashing, stumbling, unsheathing swords. They formed, at a shouted string of commands, a tight, disciplined order and began running south.

They were Erlings, then. The language gave it away, and no outlaws would be nearly so precise in their formation and movements. Brogan leaned out, looking past where Modig had now stopped working in the garden and was standing rigid, also watching. That howling came again, a sound he would remember. Wouldn't ever want to be hunted by that. Brogan heard hoofbeats and shouting over the barking of his own dogs, and into his field of vision, streaming down from the north, came a galloping company, swords drawn, spears out, hurtling through the stream.

In the pre-dawn light he saw a banner, and Brogan the miller understood that this was the king's fyrd, and that they had seen the Erlings and were going to catch up to them just across the water from his mill. His heart was pounding as if he, too, were running or riding. He had been expecting, moments ago, to be killed here, fingers broken one by one—or worse things—until he told where his money was. The nightmare that came in his sleep.

Leaning out, he saw the Erlings turn to face the horsemen bearing swiftly down upon them. He didn't like King Aeldred, all his changes, the new taxes levied to support fyrd and forts, but at this particular moment, watching those horsemen surround the Erlings, such feelings were… suspended.

Brogan left the mill, went out the door, walked down to the stream. Modig, holding a spade, opened the garden gate and came over, stood beside him. The dogs were still barking. Brogan snapped a command over his shoulder and they stopped.

There was a grey mist on the millstream, rising. Through it, as the pale sun came up, they watched what happened in the meadow on the other side. The millwheel turned.

+

It occurred to Alun at some point during the night ride south that he was surrounded now by Anglcyn warriors, who had traditionally been his enemies, racing to intercept Erlings, who were enemies as well. One of Athelbert's archers had given him a sword and belt, at the prince's command. You could name it a friend's gesture. You had to, really.

For the Cyngael, he thought, friends were hard to come by in the world. And that, if you stopped to think about it, really did make the feuds between Arberth and Cadyr and Llywerth harder to justify. That wasn't something people did think about, though, west of the Rheden Wall. Their endless internal warring was… the way things were. The three provinces raided and goaded each other, fought for primacy, always had. His father, Alun knew, would have preferred stealing a herd of cattle from an arrogant Arberthi and hearing his bard sing about it after, to any foray across the Wall into Rheden, or even mauling Erling raiders.

Though that last might not be true any more, not since Dai was killed. He couldn't be sure, but he thought his father had changed through the spring and summer. Alun was aware of changes within himself, shaped around loss and what he'd seen in that pool by Brynnfell. He didn't know where the changes had taken him, but he knew they were there.

He wasn't sure exactly where he was right now, galloping south-east between copses of trees, but he did know—or believe—that the man who'd led the raid that killed his brother was somewhere ahead of them. Ivarr Ragnarson had eluded pursuit near Brynnfell, fled to his ships and away—and had now killed a good man here. He needed to die. It was… important he be killed.

If you stopped to think about it. There was no time to stop tonight—two short rests allowed by the king, no more than a pause to drink at streams, fill flasks, then riding again—but he had plenty of time to think under the summer stars as the blue moon westered through clouds and went down behind the woods. There were riders all around him, but their faces—and his—were shielded from scrutiny. The shelter of darkness, the… need for it. And with that, the memory came back to him, inescapable, who had said exactly that, and when: Needful as night.

Rhiannon mer Brynn, clad in green at her father's table, the night his brother had died and had his soul stolen away. He realized he hadn't let himself think about her, those words, his own song, since then, as if flinching from too fiercely bright a fire. Do you hate me so much, my lord?

Alun looked over towards the woods. More darkness, blurred in distance, the river somewhere between. He thought of the faerie, her hair changing colour, the light she'd made, and he began to wonder, riding, exactly what the world was, how it was crafted, how he'd make his own peace with Jad… and the high cleric on the horse ahead of him, beside King Aeldred.

He didn't know if he felt older now, or younger because less sure of things, but he did understand that everything had altered and could not be remade as it had been before. The speed of things for you, the faerie had said. He didn't even have a name for her. Did they have names? He hadn't thought to ask before stumbling out of the wood. He had been afraid, as he'd left the trees, wondering if he would come out into different moonlight and find his world gone.

Instead, he'd found an Anglcyn princess, inexplicably, waiting there for him.

I am only this far. As if she'd known of his fear, what he was feeling. No distance at all, just across a quiet stream. The world still his, not altered, yet changed in every way. Her being there another thing to think about, try to understand. He shook his head. There were only so many images, memories, you could deal with at once, Alun decided, before you had to look away.

And then, as the night ended, all changed again.

Thinking back, afterwards, he realized he oughtn't to have been so surprised that they found the Erlings. For one thing, the fyrd knew this land as well as he and his brother had known the valleys and fells of Cadyr, every tuck and fold of their province recorded on a mental map, down to the shepherds' huts and the farms where daughters might be willing to rise from their beds, wrapped in a shawl, and come out into the dark, soft and warm, to a known whisper at a night window.

They had been riding along the route that made sense for intercepting a party on foot. The Erlings would be running towards where their ships would have anchored, between the burh at Drengest and the steep coastline farther west where they couldn't come ashore. You could figure these things out if you knew where you were and the land around you. Copses and rivers, slopes and hamlets. Aeldred and his fyrd would know them all: the places where the Erlings who'd killed Burgred of Denforth would be unable to pass, and the ones they'd try to avoid. They might miss the Erlings in darkness or mist, but they'd find their path.

And they had Cafall with them.

The dog was the part of this night that neither Alun nor Ceinion, and certainly none of the Anglcyns, had thought about. But it was Cafall—hunting dog, Brynn's gift—who howled, a wild sound that could terrify and appall, as they approached a stream in the grey before sunrise. Alun's heart began pounding. Someone near the front raised an arm and pointed, shouting. It was Athelbert, he saw.

They had been intending to pray here, dismount long enough to perform the dawn rites on the riverbank. Instead, they thundered across, west of a village mill, splashing through water, weapons out, and they came up to the Erlings, who were on foot, and surrounded them in a green meadow as the sun came up.

+

There were too many people living here now, too many towns, too many burhs with fighting men inside them. Guthrum Skallson, running with fewer than twenty men (five had taken the horses to the ships with a warning, to bring forty of them back), had seen a hill fire burning, and then another to the north, a little later, and had realized that they were in even more danger than he'd thought. They'd run all through the night.

He couldn't say he was surprised when they were found. They'd have taken a different route if the woods and treed slopes had allowed. But they didn't know these lands, and the best he could do was go back west along the same path they'd taken and hope they met their reinforcements before they were intercepted.

It hadn't happened. He hadn't expected those hilltop flares in the dark, the speed of the Anglcyn response. He'd thought they had a decent chance, that he'd been in worse trouble over the years. Then a dog howled as dawn broke, and the fyrd was there.

He had the men circle in the meadow as the Anglcyn riders thundered across the stream. No point running, these were mounted men. He saw the banners in the pale light and under-stood that King Aeldred hadn't just sent his warriors, he had come himself. They were taken.

It had happened before. There were resources in Jormsvik, Ingavin knew. They could be bought back, for a price and promises. Likely some of them would be hostages for a time. Likely Guthrum would be one of those. He cursed, under his breath.

He had eighteen men; there appeared to be close to two hundred surrounding them, mounted. He wasn't a berserkir, he was a mercenary, hired. This wasn't war. He let fall his sword, held up open hands. Stepped forward, that the Anglcyn king might know who led this party.

"How many men did Burgred take south with him?"

A man with a grey beard spoke, in Anglcyn, but not to Guthrum. He understood the words, though; the languages were near enough.

"Six, including himself," said a younger man on a brown horse beside the speaker.

"Shoot six," said the bearded man, who would be Aeldred of the Anglcyn. "Not that one." He pointed to Guthrum.

The younger one spoke. Six arrows flew. Six of Guthrum's men—who had lain down their weapons when he had—fell into the grass.

Guthrum did not fear death. No mercenary could fight as many battles as he had over so many years and live with fear. He didn't want to die, however. He liked ale and women, battle and comrades, peril and hardship and ease after. The trappings of a warrior in this middle-world.

He said, "None of them killed your earl. None of them would have."

"Indeed," said the king on the horse in front of him. "So Burgred lives, is coming home even now?"

Guthrum met that gaze. No Erling ought to cower before these people. "We do not use arrows in Jormsvik."

"Ah. So no arrow killed him. Our tidings are false? Good. None will have killed your fellows, if so."

Thought he was clever, this king. Guthrum had heard that of him. Problem was, he was clever. In too many ways. Raiding had become impossible here. This journey had been a mistake from the moment they took Ivarr's money and set sail.

Ivarr. Guthrum looked around.

Someone—a younger man, smaller, sitting an Erling horse—had come forward beside the king. He looked down at Guthrum. "Ragnarson was with you?"

Spoke Anglcyn, but you could tell a Cyngael the moment he opened his mouth. How could he know about Ivarr, though? Guthrum considered for a moment, thinking fast, keeping silent.

"Shoot another, Athelbert," said the king.

They shot another. Atli, this time.

Guthrum had come to Jormsvik's walls with Atli Bjarkson fifteen years ago. Walking to the fortress together from homes in the north, meeting on the road, winning their fights on the same morning, joining the same company. A never-forgotten day. The day that split your life into before and after. Guthrum looked down into the grass now in a morning's first light, far from Vinmark, and he spoke the farewell aloud, invoking Ingavin's welcome for a friend in the warriors' halls. Then he turned back to the mounted men surrounding them.

"You were asked a question," said King Aeldred. His voice was calm, flat, but there was no way to mistake the rage in him. This might not be a hostage and ransom circumstance, after all. And Guthrum had men here for whom he was responsible.

"We have surrendered our arms," he said.

"And will you tell me Burgred did not when you found them? When you put an arrow in him?"

"How do you know about that?"

"Athelbert. One more, please."

"Wait!" Guthrum lifted an urgent hand. The prince named Athelbert, more slowly, did the same. No arrow was loosed. Guthrum swallowed, looking up at the Anglcyn, a black rage in his own heart. He could crush any of these in battle, any two of them; he and Atli could have handled half a dozen.

"However you know this," he said, "you are right. Ivarr Ragnarson paid for this raid, and killed the earl. Against my orders and wishes. Do you think we are fools?" He heard the passion in his own voice, moved to master it.

"I think you are, yes, but would not have thought so in that way. Mercenaries killing a nobleman taken. Where is he, then? This Ragnarson?" There was contempt in the voice. Guthrum could hear it.

He would have said he despised Ivarr Ragnarson at least as much as those surrounding them did. He felt no loyalty to him at all. Had been on the edge of killing the man himself. And had that last Anglcyn bowshot taken any man there but Atli, he would likely have pointed back to the stream where Ivarr had obviously remained hidden when they fled. One life surrendered, to save those in his charge. A fair and proper deed.

The flow of time and events is a large river; men and women are usually no more than pebbles in that, carried along. But sometimes, at some moments, they are more. Sometimes the course of the stream is changed, not just for a few people but for many.

They shouldn't have killed Atli, Guthrum Skallson thought, standing in a meadow surrounded by his enemies. Our weapons were in the grass. We had yielded ourselves.

"We took five horses," he said. "I sent riders back to the ships."

Aeldred stared down at him for a long time. The arrogance of it was as wormwood, gall, bitterest taste he knew: as if a woman were looking at him this way. Scarcely to be borne.

"Yes," the king said, finally, "you will have done that. And asked for reinforcements to meet you. A ship's worth? Very well. They will be dealt with next. You have all made a terrible mistake. Jad knows, I have no need or desire of ransom for any of you at all. My need, just now, is otherwise. Athelbert."

"My lord!" began another, older man. Another Cyngael. "They have laid down—"

"No words, Ceinion!" said the king of the Anglcyn.

He had spared the life of the man who'd blood-eagled his father. Everyone in the northlands knew the tale. He wasn't doing so now. Aeldred turned away, indifferently, as arrows were notched.

Guthrum nearly got to him.

You didn't let yourself die helplessly in a morning field like a target set up for womanish Anglcyn who dared not fight you properly. Not if you were an Erling and a warrior. He was actually at the king's reins, reaching up, when the sword took him in the throat. It was the young Cyngael who had moved fastest, Guthrum saw with his last sight.

He was dying on his feet, though, in battle, as was proper. The gods loved their warriors, their blood, the dragon-ships, red blades, ravens and eagles called you home to halls where mead flowed freely and forever.

The sun was up, but he couldn't see it, suddenly. There was a long white wave. He named Ingavin and Thünir, and went to them.

+

Expressionless, though with his heart beating fast, Brogan the miller stood by the stream and watched his king and warriors kill the Erlings in the meadow.

Fifteen or twenty of them. No hostages, none spared. There was no ferocity or passion in the dispatch of the raiders. They were just… dealt with. For more than a hundred years the Anglcyn had lived in terror of these raiders from the sea in their dragon-ships. Now the Erlings were being killed like so many ragged outlaws.

He decided, just then, that he liked King Aeldred after all. And watching the arrows fly, he came also to a reconsideration of his views on the subject of archery. Beside him, Modig stood gripping his spade, his mouth hanging open.

The fyrd turned to ride south. As they did, one rider peeled off from the others and came over towards the mill and stream where the two men were. Brogan felt a flicker of apprehension, made himself be calm. These were his defenders, his king.

"You live here?" the mounted man snapped, reining his mount on the other side of the river. "You are the miller?"

Brogan touched a hand to his forehead and nodded. "Yes, my lord."

"Find villagers, farmers, whatever you can. Have these bodies burned before sundown. You yourself are in charge of collecting weapons and armour. Keep them in the mill. There are eighteen Erlings. All were armed in the usual ways. We have a good idea of what should be here when we come back. If anyone steals, there will be executions. We won't stop to ask questions. Understood?"

Brogan nodded again, and swallowed hard.

"Make certain the others here do."

The rider wheeled and set off, galloping now, to catch up with the fyrd. Brogan watched him go, a graceful figure in morning light. In the meadow, not far away, lay a number of dead men. Eighteen, the rider had said. His burden now. He cursed himself for coming out to watch. Spat into the stream. It was going to be very hard to stop poor men from stealing knives or rings. Surely the fyrd wouldn't begrudge—or be able to track—a stray torc or necklace, would they?

It occurred to him that he and Modig might be able to gather most of the arms and store them before anyone else

No, that wouldn't work. The women would be here soon, for their flour. They would see what had happened. It was impossible to miss: Brogan saw birds already gathering where the bodies lay. He grimaced. This was going to be difficult. He suffered a reversion of his thoughts about king and fyrd. The lords were trouble, whenever they came, whenever they noticed you. He ought to have stayed inside. He was turning to Modig, to tell him to make a start, at least, but found his right arm gripped fiercely by his servant.

Modig pointed. Brogan saw a man emerge from the stream to their left—a pale, small figure for an Erling, he would say, later—and begin to run south. He was well behind the fyrd, which was almost out of sight. Certainly they were too far away for any call or cry to summon them back to take this last Erling, who'd kept himself hidden, apart from the rest. They'd have to let him go, Brogan thought. Not that he'd get far, alone.

Modig made a sound deep in his chest. He plunged into the stream, splashing through it, then began running, spade in hand. "Stop!" cried Brogan. "Don't be a fool!"

The Erling was moving fast, but so was young Modig, chasing him. Far away, the dust of the king's men could be seen. Brogan watched the two running men till they were out of sight.

Later that morning he assembled the villagers to gather the weapons and armour—and the rings and arm torcs and belts and boots and brooches and necklaces—of the Erlings. The children ran about, chasing away the birds. Brogan made it very clear, talking more than anyone could remember, that the fyrd was coming back, and that death had been promised to anyone known to have taken anything.

The presence of eighteen dead raiders, the shock of them, meant that no one did try to palm or pocket a thing, so far as Brogan could tell. They carried the gear in relays across the water to the mill, piled it in his smaller storeroom. Brogan locked the door, hung the key on his belt.

He picked out only two rings for himself, and a golden torc in the shape of a dragon devouring its own tail. Added three other pieces of jewellery after, when most of the others had gone to bring wood and the two who had stayed behind with him, as guards, were drowsing under the willow by the stream. It was a warm day. Across the water boys were throwing stones at birds and wild dogs near the eighteen dead men.

It was two of the boys who found the body of Modig, the son of Ord, shortly after midday, a little distance to the south. His ears and nose had been hacked off, and his tongue. That last, Brogan the miller thought, was a sad and vicious thing. He was angry. He'd found a perfect servant, finally, and the young fool had gone and gotten himself killed.

Life was an ambush, Brogan thought bitterly, a series of them. Over and over till you died.

Later in the day the villagers began streaming back with armloads and carts of wood, and the cleric. Their women came, too, and all but the youngest children. This was a great event, something unimaginable, never to be forgotten. The king had been here himself, had saved them from Erling raiders, slain them all, right beside the millstream. Their millstream. A tale for the colder nights to come and the long years. Babies not yet born would hear this story, be led to the place where it had happened.

The new cleric spoke under the open sky, invoking Jad's power and mercy, then they lit the pyre, using wood that had been gathered for winter hearths, and they burned the Erlings in the field where they'd died.

After, they dug a grave and buried Modig by the stream and prayed that he might go home to the god, in light.

+

In a mist before dawn, some distance west, Bern Thorkellson dismounted to relieve himself in a gully. His first halt since leaving his father outside Esferth.

He had spent what remained of the night riding very fast, trying to take his mind from that impossible encounter. What was it the gods were doing with their mortal children? You took a horse across black, frozen waters and lived, fought your way into Jormsvik, went on a raid in Anglcyn lands… and were rescued by your father. Twice.

Your accursed father, whose murders were the reason for all of this. For everything that had happened. And he simply showed up where you were—on the other side of the sea—and knocked you out in an alley and somehow carried you outside the walls and then came back to warn you, and order you on your way. It was all… hugely difficult. Bern could not have said that much about the world seemed clear to him that night.

He had just finished retying his trousers when a man and woman sat up from a hollow in the ground and stared at him, a handful of paces away.

This, at least, was clear enough.

They stood. It was still quite dark, mist around them, rising off the fields. Their clothing and hair were disordered; it was evident what they'd been doing. The same thing young men and women did in meadows all over the world on a summer night. Bern had done it on the isle, in better days.

He drew his sword. "Lie down again," he said quietly. His own language, but they'd understand him. "And no one is hurt."

"You're an Erling!" the young man said, too loudly. "What are you doing here with a blade?"

"My own business. Attend to yours. Lie down again with her."

"Rot that," said the man, who was broad-shouldered, long-limbed. "My father's the reeve here. Strangers declare themselves when they come by."

"Are you a fool?" Bern asked, calmly enough, he'd have thought.

It was because he was with his girl, Bern later decided, that the Anglcyn did what he did. He reached down, grabbed a thick staff he'd have carried out with him for protection from animals, and stepped forward, swinging it at Bern's head.

The woman cried out. Bern dropped to a knee, heard the whistle of the staff. He rose and levelled a short backhand slash with his sword to the man's right arm, at the elbow. He felt it hit hard, but not bite.

He'd used the flat of his blade.

Couldn't have said why. A memory of summer fields with a girl? Stupidity such as this man's didn't deserve to be indulged or rewarded. The Anglcyn ought to have lost an arm, his life. Didn't the fool know how the world worked? You met a mounted man with a sword, you did what he instructed you, and prayed, urgently, that you'd live to tell about it.

The staff had fallen to the grass. The Anglcyn's good hand clutched at his elbow. Bern couldn't see his eyes in the darkness. "Don't kill us!" the girl said, her first words.

Bern looked at her. "I hadn't intended to," he said. She had fair hair, was tall. It was hard to make out more. "I told you to lie down. Do it now. Though if you let this idiot between your legs again you're as much a fool as he is."

The girl's mouth opened. She stared at him, for longer than he'd have expected. Then she reached out and pulled the man down beside her into the hollow again, where they'd been warm together moments ago, young and in summertime.

"Honour your god in the morning," Bern said, looking down at them. He wasn't sure why he'd said that, either.

He went back to Gyllir and rode away.

In the hollow behind him, Druce, the son of Finan who was indeed king's reeve of the lands thereabouts, began swearing viciously, though under his breath, in case.

Cwene, the baker's daughter, put a hand to his mouth. "Hush. Does it hurt?" she whispered.

"Of course it hurts," he snarled. "He broke my arm."

She was clever, understood that his pride was wounded as well, after being so easily subdued in front of her.

"He had a sword," she said. "There was naught you could do. I thought you were very brave."

She thought he'd been a reckless imbecile. She was aware that they ought to have died here. Druce's arm should have been severed, not bruised or broken, by that sword. The Erling could have done anything he wanted to her, after, anything at all, then left them dead in the tall grass with no one ever to know exactly what had happened. She said nothing more, lay there beside Druce, looking up at the last stars as blackness became grey, feeling the breeze that blew.

Eventually they made their way back towards the village, separated in the usual way, went to their homes. Cwene slipped into the house the way she'd come out, through the door that connected to the animal shed. Familiar smells, sounds, everything changed, forever. She should have died in the field. Each breath she took now, for the rest of her days…

She got into bed beside her sister, who stirred but did not wake. Cwene didn't sleep. It was too near to morning. She lay there thinking, revisiting what had happened. Her heart was pounding, though she was in bed at home now. She began to weep, silently.

Three months later, in autumn, the baker beat her until she named the reeve's son as the father of the child she was carrying. At that point her father became mightily pleased (it was a very good match) and carried his anger across the village to the reeve's door.

The baker was a large man himself, and not inconsequential. She and Druce were wed before winter. They had two more children before he was killed by someone who didn't want to pay his taxes, or lose his farm. Cwene married twice more; outlived them both. Five children survived childhood, including the daughter conceived in the meadow that summer night.

Cwene had dreams, all her life, of the moment in darkness when an Erling had come upon them, a creature out of nightmare, and had gone away, leaving them their lives as a gift to use or throw away.

We like to believe we can know the moments we'll remember of our own days and nights, but it isn't really so. The future is an uncertain shape (in the dark) and men and women know that. What is less surely understood is that this is true of the past as well. What lingers, or comes back unsummoned, is not always what we would expect, or desire to keep with us.

It was late in a long life, and three husbands had been laid in the earth, before Cwene realized—and acknowledged to herself—that what she had wanted to do, more than anything before or since, was ride away from her home and everyone she knew in the world with that Erling on his grey horse that night long ago.

The clever girl had become a wise woman through the turning years; she forgave herself for that longing before she died.

Riding south, Bern was increasingly aware of hunger—he hadn't eaten since late the day before—but he was also conscious of a cold, steady fear in his gut, and he didn't let Gyllir slow as the sun rose, climbing the summer sky. He felt appallingly exposed here in these flat lands running to the sea, knowing the fyrd was abroad and looking for Erlings with vengeance in mind.

The Anglcyn worshipped a god of the sun: would that make a difference? Would it help them, under so much summer light? He had never thought such a thing before, and he didn't much like thinking about it now, but he'd never been among Jaddites, either. Rabady Isle seemed very far away; their farm at the village edge, even the straw in the barn behind Arni Kjellson's house. He kept glancing around as he rode, an unceasing sweep of the wide lands to his left.

The signal flares had been farther east, and Aeldred's course had lain on the far side of the river—to begin with. There was nothing to say the king hadn't split his riders in the night, sending some of them this way. Bern, feeling more alone than he had since the night he'd left the isle with Halldr's horse, had a painful sense that the king's men would be very good at knowing where the Jormsvik ships might be.

Gyllir was tired, but there was no help for that. He leaned forward, slapped the horse's neck, spoke to it as a friend. They had to keep moving. For one thing, his might be the only alert the others could get. They had to have five ships offshore before two hundred men came sweeping down upon them. The gods knew, the men of Jormsvik could fight. It might be a close battle if the fyrd came. They could easily win it, but if enough of them died, or if the ships were damaged, there was no meaning to such a victory. Glorious or not, they'd die in these Anglcyn lands when Esferth and the accursed burhs Aeldred had built sent out the next waves of men. He wasn't quite ready, Bern realized, to go to Ingavin's halls.

He looked east again, no longer into the too-bright sun. Past midday now, the mist had long since burnt away. No hilltop signal fires in this bright daylight. A beautiful afternoon. Birdsong from the forest west, a hawk overhead, circling.

He had no idea what was happening elsewhere. Could only hasten to the sea. His father had done this too, Bern thought suddenly. Had done more, in fact; that journey alone across the Wall and the breadth of the Anglcyn lands, when he'd escaped from the Cyngael after the Volgan died. And now Thorkell was back here. Had even been among the Cyngael again, taken by them a second time. Bern wanted to think of something derisive but couldn't.

I got you out of a walled city. Think on it.

The quiet, assured voice. And a blow to the head when he'd spoken too fast, as if Bern were still a boy on Rabady. But his father had known about Ivarr, had guessed what Ragnarson would say. How did he always know? He cursed Thorkell, as he had so many times since his father's exile, but without fever or fire now. He was too tired, had too many things to think about. He was hungry and afraid. He looked left again, and behind him. Nothing there, a shimmer of heat coming off the ripening fields. Gyllir would have to drink soon. He needed water himself. Not quite yet, he decided. It was too exposed where they were right now.

He didn't recognize the landscape nearly well enough, couldn't tell how far he had yet to ride, though they'd come this way going north to Esferth, he and Ecca, on the other side of the river. There had been a number of people on that road, heading for a royal fair the Erlings hadn't known about. Third year of the fair, someone told them. They hadn't been hiding on the way north, had pretended to be traders. They'd carried sacks on the horses, purporting to hold the goods they'd trade. Ecca's anger had begun on the road, with what they'd heard. If this was the third year of a summer fair, then any tale they'd been told about Esferth being empty was hollow as an emptied ale cask. Ivarr Ragnarson, he'd said to Bern, was either a fool or a serpent, and he suspected the latter.

Bern hadn't paid enough attention on that ride and was suffering for it now; all the endless shallow dips and folds, up and down, up and down, looked exactly the same. The farmland across the river seemed an unimaginable expanse of fertile soil to someone raised on Rabady Isle's stony ground.

He turned in the saddle to look back again. A constant fear of pursuers behind him. The farms began just across the river; anyone in the near fields could see him, a single horseman passing between river and wood. Not alarming in itself, unless they were close enough to see what he was.

The trees on his right were dark, no tracks or paths into them. Sunlight would fail here. There were woods like this in Vinmark. Untamed, unbroken, stretching forever; gods and beasts within them. This forest would be pretty much impenetrable, he guessed, wild and dangerous, an unbroken density of oak and ash, alder and thorn, marching west to the Cyngael lands. Ecca had said that on the way. A better wall than the Wall was the saying. And the woods went right down to cliffs above the strait. They'd seen those cliffs from the ships.

The Anglcyn would know all this far better than he did. They'd know the Erling ships had to be east of those sheer bluffs, in one shallow bay or another.

They were. There weren't so many choices and they hadn't been overly subtle about choosing one. Too many mistakes on this end-of-summer raid. Ivarr Ragnarson's raid. They'd anchored, taken hasty counsel, sent Bern and Ecca north to look at Esferth. Ecca had done this many times, knew what he was about, and Bern had a young, reassuring countenance. Brand Leofson had also agreed to let Guthrum and Atli lead a small sweep east, to see what they could find or take while they waited for the report from Esferth, and Ivarr had gone with them.

Bern was the report from Esferth now.

Ivarr Ragnarson would kill him, Thorkell had said, if he learned who Bern's father was. Suddenly, and much too late, Bern understood. Think the rest of it out while you ride, he'd been told. And, He wants to go back west. Back west. Ivarr had just been there, then. In the Cyngael lands.

And Thorkell had been with him. That was how his father knew what had happened. And about poisoned arrows. Something had happened there… Thorkell had been taken again. Or else…

There was never enough time to think things through. The world didn't seem to work that way. Maybe for women weaving and spinning, maybe for Jaddite clerics in their isolated retreats, waking in the night to pray for the sun. But not for a bound servant on Rabady Isle, or a Jormsvik mercenary, either. Riding towards another gentle, grassy rise, almost identical to the one before and the one before that, Bern heard the sounds of battle ahead of him, across the river.

The riders Guthrum Skallson had sent made it back to the ships early in the morning. The help Guthrum requested was dispatched without hesitation by Brand, who was commanding the raid. You didn't leave men behind. It was one of the things that marked Jormsvik.

The riders had spoken feverishly, interrupting each other, more unsettled than raiders ought to be. They told of a clash between Guthrum and Ivarr Ragnarson over the death of an Anglcyn earl. Brand shrugged, hearing of it. These things happened. He'd have sided with Guthrum-earls were worth a great deal, unless out of favour—but sometimes, he had to admit, you just needed to kill someone, especially if it hadn't happened in a long time. That came with the way they lived, with the dragon-ships, with the eagles of Ingavin. And he knew for a fact that Guthrum Skallson had done his share of killing prisoners over the years. They'd sort this when everyone got back.

Forty mercenaries ought to have been more than enough to meet and protect Guthrum and Atli's small party from any likely Anglcyn response, fight their way back to the ships if they did encounter anyone. Brand ordered three ships offshore, to be safe, left two anchored in the shallows, lightly manned, for the returning parties to board and row.

He was being prudent, but was not alarmed. Shore parties met people, incidents happened, sometimes deaths. This was a raid, wasn't it? What did people expect? Jormsvik had been doing this, over the known world, for a long time. Erlings had been coming in longships to these shores for more than a hundred years. Yes, the Anglcyn lands had become harder to raid over the last while, but that had happened at times, too. There were always other places. Three ships had gone last spring out through the straits and down the sea lanes to Al-Rassan, to raid and run before the khalif's men could be there with their curved swords and bows. That would have been a fight to be part of, Brand had thought, hearing the tale. He wanted to go there, see for himself. There was, word had it, wealth beyond description among those desert-born star-worshippers. He wanted to see their women, behind the veils they wore.

It was the life he knew, raiding. The northlands offered no refuge for anyone. Vinmark was a hard place, sent forth hard men. And how else could a man of spirit make his fortune, claim a place by winter hearths and in the skalds' songs, and then the gods' meadhalls? It wasn't as if every man could fish, or find land to farm, or make ale or barrels for ale. It wasn't as if every man wanted to.

You hoped that if you killed someone on a raid you gained something from it, and if some of your own died, that you'd taken even more, to compensate. Then you sacrificed to Ingavin and Thünir, and rowed back out to sea if you had to, or pushed forward inland, depending on where you were and what you were facing. Brand had lost count of the number of times he'd had decisions like this to make.

They had five fully manned ships here, allowing room for horses. Five ships was a large group. This incident might even be useful before it ended, Brand thought. Forty Jormsvik fighters could overwhelm any hasty Anglcyn pursuit of Guthrum from a burh; take the leaders hostage—for security first, then gold. Safety and a reward. The oldest tactics of all, just about. Some things never changed, he thought. He kept his own ship as one of the two on shore.

He was wrong, in fact, about a number of things, but had no real way of knowing it. From the bay where the ships were hidden, they hadn't seen the signal fires. A great deal had changed in these lands in the twenty-five years since Aeldred, son of Gademar, had come out from Beortferth and reclaimed his father's throne.

The party dispatched from the ships, guided by two of the (by now exhausted) riders Guthrum had sent back, did find a group of men. Not their returning companions. By then Guthrum and his men were lying dead beside the pyre that would burn them, across a stream from a village mill.

Nor did Brand's relief contingent meet some overextended, too-quick pursuit from Drengest on the coast. Instead, forty Erlings from the ships, most of them on foot, encountered the mounted fyrd of King Aeldred in a field east of the River Thorne, a little past midday.

From the moment he'd heard the name again—Ivarr Ragnarson—spoken by the Jormsvik leader just before he was killed at the king's saddle, Ceinion of Llywerth had felt a terrifying surmise taking shape within him.

He was not a man inclined to flinch from thoughts, or truths, whether of spirit and faith or having to do with the earthly world in which men lived and died. But this growing awareness, as the sun rose and the day wore on, caused him an almost physical pain, a constriction of the heart.

The last of the Volgans had hired this company. Hired them, it seemed, for a raid near Esferth, at the very end of the season. But that made no sense. Aeldred had these lands far too well defended, especially with the fair about to begin. But what if you hadn't really meant to stay here? If you'd lied to the mercenaries about your purpose? What if you'd killed a lucrative hostage to stop them from claiming a vast ransom and happily turning home?

There were compelling reasons why Ivarr Ragnarson might want to lead mercenaries to Cyngael shores, and to a particular farmhouse.

The Jormsvik leaders would regard it as a waste of time, too far to go this time of year. They'd have to be tricked, persuaded. This was a man, Ceinion remembered, who had blood-eagled a girl and a farmhand during his flight last spring. He was said to be deformed in body and spirit, for the two went together, always.

Ceinion had led the dawn prayers south of the meadow where they'd killed the Erlings, had kept them brisk for there was need for haste. He'd mounted with the others and rode again beside the king with the god's sun rising behind them. Aeldred said nothing as they went. Only rasped quick orders to some riders who peeled away from the company and headed east. It was difficult to see this grim-faced, death-dealing figure as the man who'd talked about translated manuscripts and ancient learning in the night just past.

Ceinion kept his distance from Alun ab Owyn as they went. He didn't even want to exchange a glance with the prince, fearful that he might give his thoughts away. If Owyn's son learned what the cleric was thinking he might go wild with helpless panic.

Which was not, in truth, far from a good description of what Ceinion was feeling himself as the morning passed and the countryside rolled beneath horses' hooves. The sun was overhead now. If the dragon-ships of Jormsvik were not found, if they had already cast off with Ragnarson aboard and gone west… there would be nothing he or anyone else could do but pray.

Ceinion of Llywerth, high cleric of the Cyngael, believed in his god of light and in the power of holy prayer for almost everything that could be, except the most potent matter of all: the life and death of those he loved. There was a woman lying in a sanctuary graveyard by the sea, within sound of the surf, beneath a pale grey stone with a simple sun disk carved upon it, and her dying had taken that belief from him. A wound, a rip in the fabric of the world. He had gone a little mad as she died, had done things that still kept him awake some nights. This was not a matter of which he'd written in his long correspondence with Rhodias and the Patriarch.

He was also thinking, in this bright sunlight, of another woman, loved, and her husband, loved, and their daughter, coming into her glory, all of whom might or might not be at Brynnfell now, and he had no way of knowing, and no way of helping them.

Unless they got to the ships in time:

"Can we not go faster?" he asked the king of the Anglcyn.

"No need. He said he sent for help, remember? They will be coming this way," Aeldred said, looking briefly at him. "I am sure of it. We'll stop soon to rest and eat. The river's ahead. I want the fyrd fresh for a fight."

"Some of them will be coming," said Ceinion. "But we must reach the longships before they get them off from shore."

"They've done that already. Jormsvik knows how to do these things. We'll try to block their way home with the fleet in Drengest. I have six ships. I sent riders to them—they'll be in the water before sundown. Fishing boats out, too, to watch for them. If we find this rescue party, the Erlings will be undermanned at sea. They have horses, which means the wide, slow boats, not the fighting ones. I mean to take them all, Ceinion."

"If they go home, my lord," Ceinion said quietly.

Aeldred threw him a glance.

"What is it I don't know?" the king asked.

The cleric was about to tell him when the horns blew. Then the great grey dog, Alun's dog, sounded his own warning, and ahead of them Ceinion saw the Erlings, with the river just beyond.

One of the outriders was galloping back; he reined hard beside them. "Forty or fifty, my lord! Mostly on foot."

"We have them, then. Get the mounted ones first," the king ordered. "No messages back. Athelbert!"

"Going, my lord!" his son shouted over his shoulder, already moving, calling for archers as he went.

Ceinion watched the prince ride, readying his bow, easy in the saddle, his archers swift and smooth to respond to commands: precisely trained, his own contingent here. A very different man than his brother. The sons of Aeldred, he thought, might have divided their father's nature between themselves. That could happen; he had seen it before. He also had a thought, as battle began, about the way Aeldred's men were fighting today: from the saddle, with arrows as well as spears, which was new, and immensely difficult. And even more difficult to counter, if they had mastered it. It looked very much as though Athelbert and his archers had done that.

His own people, Ceinion thought, had even more reason to try—to at least try—to come together now, and find some way to join the world beyond their hidden valleys. There might be a certain pride in being the last light of the god's sun, where it set in the west, but there were dangers as well.

Such thoughts were for later. Right now he watched a good-sized party of Jormsvik mercenaries form another desperate circle as Athelbert's archers and the others came up to them. The raiders had already crossed the river; bad for them. They couldn't have retreated in any case, outnumbered and facing horsemen in hostile country.

They were brave men. No one on earth could deny or refute that. No swords or axes were thrown down, not even when the command to surrender was given by one of Athelbert's thegns. Ceinion saw two Erling riders racing back west for the river: not cowards, messengers. Athelbert and five of his archers were pursuing them.

Arrows flew from moving horses—and missed. The Jormsvik raiders splashed into the river, which was deeper and wider here than by Esferth. They began fording it. Athelbert came up to the bank of the Thorne. Ceinion watched as the prince took steadier aim and fired. Twice.

He was too far to see what happened in the water, but a moment later Athelbert and his riders turned back. The prince lifted an arm to signal his father. Then he rode calmly to rejoin the fyrd surrounding the Erling force. Men had just died here, Ceinion knew, as they had this morning and in the night. What did you make of that? What words and reflections? It was the fate of men and women to die, often before what should have been their time. Should have been. Too much presumption in the thought. All rested with Jad, but survivors carried memories.

He moved forward when the king did.

"Have care, my lord," cried a red-haired thegn. "They haven't yielded."

"Shoot ten," said Aeldred.

"My lord!" Ceinion protested.

Ten men were shot where they stood, even as he spoke. Athelbert's archers were really very good. You watched them and you learned something important about the prince, frivolous as he might seem when at play in a meadow.

"You said you want us to get to the ships," the king said tersely, watching the deaths, not looking at him. "If they can send forty in a rescue party, they'll have five, maybe six ships. Might even be seven, depending on how many horses. I'll need my whole company. And good men will die in that fight, if we get to them in time. Don't ask me to linger here, or be merciful. Not this day, cleric."

Cleric. No more than that. A king celebrated for courtesy, suing eloquently for Ceinion's presence at his court. But there was a rage in Aeldred now, Ceinion saw, and the king was hard-pressed to contain it. In fact, he couldn't; it was spilling over. Burgred of Denferth had been a friend from childhood. And beyond that truth, this was a large raid on the eve of the fair in Esferth—threatening to undermine the very idea of the fair. What merchants would come to these shores from abroad, or even overland from north or east, if they had cause to fear attacks from Vinmark?

"Hear me. I am Aeldred of the Anglcyn," the king said, moving his bay horse forward. Two of the fyrd shifted to stay between him and the Erlings. Axes could be thrown. "Whichever man leads here, order your men to lay down their arms."

Aeldred waited. Athelbert, Ceinion saw, was looking at his father, bow still to hand. No one moved in the Erling circle, or spoke. Swords and short axes remained levelled outwards. About thirty of them now. If they charged, they'd die; so would some of the Anglcyn. The king is too close, he thought.

Aeldred shifted his horse sideways, and even nearer. "Do it now, Erlings. Unless you wish ten more of you executed. The men you were sent to meet are dead behind us. All of them. If you fight you will be killed here without mercy. There are two hundred of us."

"Better die sword in hand than cut down as cowards." A very big man, yellow-bearded to the chest, stepped forward. "You give sworn oath to ransom if we yield ourselves?"

Aeldred opened his mouth. He was rigid again. The idea of a demand… He looked at his son.

"No, my lord!" Ceinion cried. "No! They will yield!"

Aeldred's mouth snapped shut. His jaw was clenched, his gloved hands fists on his reins. Ceinion saw him close his eyes. After a long moment, the king loosened the fingers of one hand and made the sign of the sun disk. Ceinion drew a ragged breath. His palms were sweating.

"Drop all weapons and tell us where the ships are. You will not be killed."

The yellow-bearded Erling stared at him. It was remarkable, Ceinion thought, the absence of fear in his eyes. "No. We yield ourselves to you, but cannot betray shipmates."

Aeldred shrugged. "Athelbert," he said, before Ceinion could speak.

The Erling leader died, falling backwards, three arrows in his chest, through the leather armour. A fourth went into his cheekbone, below the helmet, quivered there, where he lay in the grass.

"Who is it," Aeldred said after a moment, "who will now speak for you? You have no more time. Weapons down, guides to the longships."

"My lord," Ceinion said again, desperately. "In the holy name of Jad and by all the blessed—"

Aeldred wheeled on him. "Heed your own words! Do you want these ships stopped before they go west and not east? Do you?"

"In Jad's name, we do!" came a third, urgent voice.

Ceinion looked over quickly. Alun ab Owyn was moving his horse towards them. "We do, my lord king! Kill them and ride! Surely you know where they might be! High cleric, you heard: Ivarr Ragnarson bought these men. They will be going for Brynnfell, not home! We can't get back in time!"

He'd figured it out, after all.

It seemed he wasn't too young. And he was right, of course, about the timing. Ships from Drengest, out to sea by sundown, ordered to block sea lanes east, would not catch up to trained Erling seamen by the time new orders reached them. Even if they followed them west—and Aeldred had no reason to give such a command—they'd be more than half a day behind, and they wouldn't be as skilled on the water.

"Athelbert, please proceed, if you will be so good," said the king of the Anglcyn. He might have been asking his elder son to comment, in his turn, on a liturgical passage being considered.

Ceinion, in great pain, watched ten more Erlings die. They'd refused to surrender, he told himself. Aeldred had given them that chance. The pain did not lessen. Even after the arrows flew, no one came forward from the now-shrunken circle to yield. Instead, the last twenty of them screamed together, terrifyingly, distilling childhood nightmares for Ceinion in that sound, as they cried the names of their gods to the blue sky and the white clouds. They charged straight into the arrows and blades of two hundred mounted men.

Could childhood fears be expunged in this way, Ceinion wondered, remembering how many chapels and sanctuaries and good, holy men had burned amid those same cries to Ingavin and Thünir.

He watched the first Erlings fall, and then the last, swords and axes gripped, never betraying their fellows. They died in battle, weapons to hand, and so promised a place among eagles in halls of undying glory.

It appalled him, and he never forgot the unspeakable courage of it. Hating every one of those men, and what they made him think.

There was a silence, after, in the field. It all took remarkably little time.

"Very well. Let us go," said the king, after a long moment. "We will leave instructions farther south for men to come gather their weapons and burn them here."

He twitched his reins, turned his horse. Alun ab Owyn, Ceinion saw, was already ahead of them all, desperately impatient. The grey dog was beside him.

"My lord!" said the red-haired thegn. "Look there."

He was pointing back south and east, to where oaks between them and the sea were broken by a valley. Ceinion turned, with Aeldred.

"Oh, my," said Prince Athelbert.

A group of men, eight or ten of them, some mounted, some on foot, with other horses pulling a cart, were coming towards them, waving and calling, voices carrying faintly in the summer air, and then more clearly as they neared.

No one moved. The small party approached. It took some time. Their leader was riding in the cart; he appeared to have a wound, was holding his side. He was also the one most vigorously shouting, gesticulating with his free hand, visibly agitated.

Visibly from the south, as well, Ceinion saw. And speaking a foreign tongue.

"Jad's holy light," said King Aeldred, softly. "They are Asharite. From Al-Rassan. What is he saying? Someone?"

Ceinion knew fragments of Esperañan, not Asharite. He tried it. Called a greeting.

Without missing a beat in his tirade, the merchant in the cart switched languages. The king turned to Ceinion, expectantly. Forty dead men lay on the grass around them. Two of Athelbert's men had dismounted, were efficiently collecting arrows.

"He is outraged, my lord, and unhappy. They declare themselves to have been assaulted, injured, and robbed on their way to Esferth Fair. By one man, if I understand properly. An Erling. He took a horse. A good horse, I gather. Meant for you, in Esferth. They are… they are displeased with the protection being offered to visitors."

Aeldred looked from the cleric to the man in the cart. His eyes had widened.

"Ibn Bakir?" he said, looking at the merchant. "My stud horse? My manuscripts?"

Ceinion translated as best he could. Then, somewhat belatedly, told the visitors who the man on the bay horse was.

The Asharite merchant straightened, too quickly. The cart was a precarious place to stand. He bowed, almost fell. One of his fellows steadied him. The merchant had a wound in his right side; blood welled through what appeared to be green silk. He had a dark bruise on the side of his head. He nodded energetically, however. Turned, reached down, still being steadied, and pulled some parchment scrolls from a trunk behind him. He waved them in the air, the way he'd waved his hand before, calling for aid. Someone laughed, then controlled himself.

"Ask him," said Alun ab Owyn, his voice strained, "if the Erling was unusual in his appearance." They hadn't heard him come back.

The king glanced over at Alun. Ceinion asked the question. He didn't know the word for «unusual» but managed "strange." The merchant's effusive manner grew calmer. With the overexcited manner fading, he seemed more impressive, notwithstanding the fluttering green garment. This was a man who had, after all, travelled a long way. He answered gravely, standing on his cart.

Ceinion heard him; felt a wind in his soul.

"He says the Erling was white as a dead spirit, his face, his hair. Not natural. He surprised them rushing out from the trees, took only the horse."

"Ragnarson," said Alun, unnecessarily. He was looking at Aeldred. "My lord king, we must ride. We can beat him there—they lied to you this morning, back in the meadow. He wasn't with their messengers to the ships. He's just ahead of us!"

"I believe," said the king of the Anglcyn, "that this is so. I agree with you. We should ride."

Five men were detailed to escort the merchants to Esferth and lodge them with honour. The rest of the fyrd turned west and south. They paused only to fill their flasks and let the horses drink. It was Alun ab Owyn who led them splashing into the River Thorne and across, and it was Alun who set the pace after, alongside the woods, until some of those who actually knew where they were going caught up with him.

The king, his bay horse galloping beside Ceinion's, asked only one question on the long ride that followed.

"Ragnarson is the man who led the raid last spring? Brynnfell? When the Cadyri prince was killed?"

Ceinion nodded. There was nothing more to say and a great need for speed.

They never caught up with him, never saw more than the sign of tracks ahead, alone at first, then merging with those of another horse—following it, not side by side. The tracks ran back southeast a little as the river curved between ridges of hills. Both sets, cutting at precisely the place where the Anglcyn outsiders had thought they might. They followed, galloping, between stream and forest, and they came at length to a sheltered strand of stones, and the sea.

Westering sun on the water by then. White clouds on the breeze. Tang of salt. Clear evidence of ships having been beached here, and a large company of men, very recently. Nothing more than those signs; empty the wide sea, in all directions. No way to know, none at all, which way the ships had gone. But Ceinion knew. He knew.

The king ordered the fyrd to dismount to let tired horses graze along the beach, up a little way where there was grass. He gave time for riders to rest as well, eat and drink. After which, he called his thegns to council. Invited Ceinion to come, and Alun ab Owyn, a generous gesture.

At which time it was discovered that Alun and his dog and his Erling servant were nowhere to be found.

No man had seen them leave the strand. Half a dozen outriders were dispatched. It wasn't long before they returned. One of them shook his head. Ceinion, standing beside the king, took a step towards them and stopped, without speaking. Owyn of Cadyr, he was thinking, had only the one son living now. He might lose them both.

One of the riders dismounted. "They have gone, my lord." That much was obvious.

"Where?" said Aeldred.

The rider cleared his throat. "Into the forest, I fear."

A stir, then silence among those gathered. Ceinion saw men making the sign of the sun disk. He had just done the same, a habit as old as he was. What, he thought, am I going to say to the father? A wind was blowing now, from the east. The sun was going down.

"Their horses' tracks go in there," the outrider added. "Into the woods."

Of course they do, Ceinion thought. It was madness, entirely so, what Alun wanted to do. Coming here they'd followed the coastal path all the way, skirting the wood. Of course they had. That was how you went: from the south you travelled along the coast; if you were starting north you went through the watchtower gates of the Wall. But not the forest. No one went through the woods.

But the coastal path would only take you back to Cadyr in the south, and Arberth—and Brynnfell—would be four days beyond that, up the river valleys. Retracing the coast road would be a wasted, meaningless journey. It wouldn't do. Not if you had decided that the Erlings were heading for Brynn ap Hywll's farm again. If you had decided that, and you knew Ivarr Ragnarson was aboard, then you could do something shaped by madness…

Ceinion felt old again. That seemed to be happening to him more and more. The man's voice had sounded genuinely regretful just now, reporting the tidings. The young Cyngael prince had saved King Aeldred's life this morning, they had all seen it. They would be sorry to see a young life end in this way.

Someone swore, savagely, breaking the mood. Athelbert. He strode angrily away up the strand. Stones there, some grass, grazing horses, light glittering on the water. It would be dark in the woods, and they stretched all the way to the Cyngael lands, and no one went through them. Ceinion closed his eyes. It was growing cooler, late in the day, edge of the sea, the sun going down.

He would die in there, Owyn's younger son.

I am too old, Ceinion thought again. He was remembering—so vividly—the father as a young man, equally reckless, even more impulsive. And now that man was an aging prince, and his son was about to find his own end trying to go through the untracked woods carrying a warning all the long way home. A desperate, glorious folly. The way of the Cyngael.