B007IIXYQY EBOK (17 page)

Then Baldemar continued serenely as if Wido had not spoken. “Wido, before the Holy Ones and the immortal gods, I say that you had foreknowledge of that raid. And that you detained me here by design with a false dispute over spoil—so as to lay my family open to attack.”

A sound like a single great groan passed through the throng. It was the heart-stricken sound of people who did not want to see what they beheld, of one who comes upon a whitened skeleton in a moonlit glade and knows it is the missing kinsman.

For Baldemar left Wido no choice but to challenge him to single battle. If Wido did not, the words would stick to him forever like a poisonous mud, and his spirit would slowly sicken and die.

Wido’s eyes burned hot as a kiln. “Not only is your fate blighted—not only have you become useless as pot scrapings—you’ve gone staring mad, Baldemar.” His voice rose to a modulated shriek. “I beg the gods for a chance to cut that lying throat.”

A strident voice from among Wido’s Companions cried out: “Trial by single battle!” The cry was quickly taken up by all who loved Wido. Many of the men most recently aligned with him had never seen Baldemar in battle and readily assumed trial by combat would favor Wido, the younger man.

The clamor continued until Geisar, First Priest of Wodan, and Sigreda, who was to succeed him, hurried into their midst and raised their staffs for silence. Geisar, when standing beside Sigreda, was often likened to the dying oak overlooking the young tree in first flower. The old priest’s face was the petrified record of some long-spent fit of fury. His body was so warped and wasted by age his neck was thrust forward almost horizontally; wispy white hair fell like a mane. He had milky blue eyes that frightened children; the left eye slewed to the side, as if he strove always to catch a tribal offender unawares. Sigreda was raven-haired and young, with a delicately rounded face polished and smooth as an apple, a mouth that was shapely and cruel, and half-shut eyes that were curtains dropped on mystery. Geisar had great authority because he had lived so long, and Sigreda, because she had once been apprenticed to Ramis—the people chose to forget that after a year Ramis drove her off as unfit. Witgern trusted her no better than Geisar.

Gradually they were obeyed and the crowd grew silent. “What say you to this?” Geisar said in his belligerent whine, looking first at Baldemar.

“If I must fight to prove the truth of my words, I must. I will meet him here, in this place, tomorrow at dawn.”

Witgern cast down his eyes in misery. Baldemar was in fine battle form, but surely he could not hope to equal Wido in stamina. It was difficult to imagine the world without Baldemar in it.

“That is satisfactory,” Wido replied. “I agree to rid the world of you here, tomorrow at dawn. And when you are dead, you may rest easily in your otherworldly abode, knowing your daughter has been taken into my hall. What a pity. Had you given her to me already, we would be kin…and your life would be saved.” Wido grinned and turned to look at his sons. “Odberht, Ullrik, can you decide between you who shall have the maid without coming to blows over it?”

Sigreda gave Wido a sharp look. “Just say whether or not you agree, Wido.” Witgern thought—she is acting a part. She does not want anyone to know how much she, too, wants Wido victorious. But why? What has Wido given them?

“Baldemar!” cried out a man of his own Companions. “Even given your words are true, Wido did not act alone. Why do you not lead us out at once to punish the Hermundures?” This brought a chorus of voices raised in assent.

Baldemar responded by nodding to one of the Companions who stood guard round his tent. The man disappeared within, then emerged bearing six native spears bound together with cord. Baldemar took them and held them aloft. “These spears I had brought from six villages where the raiders struck. Any one of you, come forward and look. On not
one
of them is a village mark or a name-sign. One imprudent raider might have forgotten to mark his weapon so he could proclaim his kill—but six, at different villages? This is but one of several things they did that Hermundures surely would not.”

Everywhere Witgern saw looks of puzzled alarm. Then he looked quickly at Wido and was certain he saw a start of unease in those small bright eyes. What did he know of this? More than any of them, Witgern was quite certain.

“When I learn
who
attacked us, I will lead us out. If you would know it at once, ask him,” Baldemar declared, pointing at Wido. “Perhaps he will consent to share his great knowledge of the enemy with his own people.”

Odberht could no longer keep silence. “Serpent tongue! You prepared those spears yourself. You’ll not long outlive this slander.”

Odberht’s small bay stallion nervously tossed its head and Baldemar saw for the first time the man mounted behind him among Wido’s foremost Companions; he seemed remote from the passions expressed all about. His arms were bare of rings; he had neatly combed straw-colored hair, a russet beard, and tantalizingly familiar faded blue eyes. Baldemar frowned, struggling with a memory.

“You there,” Baldemar said. “Come forward. I would have a look at you.”

“Stay there,” Wido ordered the Companion. “Trickster. Get off from us!”

But Baldemar ignored Wido and approached the young man until he stood in his shadow. “Your face is known to me, I would swear by my mother’s ashes,” Baldemar said softly.

“You are mistaken,” the young Companion replied, his voice wavering like some top-heavy object ready to fall. He grabbed it by force of will and held it steady. “I am Branhard, a man of the Bructeres, and I left my own land but two full moons ago. I never have set eyes upon you before this day.” He spoke too forcefully for a man innocently responding to a question, and all stared at him.

“Truly? The Bructeres, you say? Then you are of my wife’s people. You must have recent news of Athelinda’s mother. Tell me, has Gandrida recovered from her illness?”

Wido shot Branhard a look that meant—do not answer him. But the young Companion was too unnerved to notice.

“Yes,” he answered. “Yes, she has, and she fares well.”

“Gandrida died last year.”

The Companion flushed. Sharp shouts erupted among Baldemar’s men. “Who are you? Name your country!”
they cried, crowding closer, a pack of hounds barely restrained from seizing their victim’s throat. Had Sigreda and Geisar not ordered them back, they might have murdered the young man right then. Wido’s defenders moved close, spears upraised, and formed a protective ring about him, while those too far off to have heard these words continued their dogged chant—“Trial by single battle!”

Baldemar had chosen his question well. Gandrida had been a celebrated and powerful woman of rank, and her death was known well beyond the borders of her people’s lands. The Companion’s ignorance showed him to be not a man of the tribes at all, but a southerner who must have dwelled all his life in the lands controlled by the Romans.

Odberht whispered something to his father, wildfire in his eyes. Wido shook his head angrily to whatever Odberht had proposed.

“Lay your traps now, Baldemar, while I tolerate it,” Wido shouted over the din. “But beware you’re not caught in one of your own snares, you too-clever man.” Wido smiled an oily smile and turned his head to nod at his three hundred well-armed Companions, a gesture that meant,
I’ve thrice the battle companions you have and I will use them now if you try to corner me again in all the people’s sight
.

“Speak no more,” Geisar broke in. “One of you spews untruths and is not fit to walk among us. Tomorrow at dawn, let the spirits of the land determine who shall live on and who shall be cast out. Depart now, one and all.”

The crowd began to withdraw. Wido and Branhard turned their horses, and Baldemar strode off toward the lone oak at the crown of the hill to make a sacrifice of a white calf for the welfare of his family. Sigreda, who meant to assist, was a dark spirit moving gracefully at his side. But Witgern noticed with a start of unease that Odberht did not move; he sat rigidly on his horse, his gaze fastened on Baldemar’s back.

“Baldemar,” Sigreda was saying, watching him with those torpid eyes that concealed swift calculation, “I dreamed I saw your corpse on the ground with a stake driven in, while Wido rode by on a horse caparisoned in silver and gold. It is because you have not sacrificed what we asked. You must give us the appeasement gift now, lest you never get a chance to give it.”

“That is because I have decided mere cattle and sheep and silver are not enough. I plan to give in addition the most valuable thing a man can give, and I mean to deliver the whole of the gift at once.”

“That is your life, Baldemar. The god has not asked for it. We seek not to destroy but to purify. And you cannot give your life twice. What if you die tomorrow?”

“Do the gods preserve the innocent?”

“Of course.”

“Then you’ve little to worry about.”

From behind them came a barked war cry and the hammering of hooves. Sigreda spun round and saw a flare of sunlight on an upraised blade. She screamed and flung herself to safety.

The frayed leadline by which Wido restrained his oldest son had finally snapped. Odberht, sword raised, bore down upon Baldemar.

Wido wheeled his horse about. “Odberht! Damnable idiot!
Halt, I command you!”

To strike an enemy from behind was an act so dishonorable that the culprit was often condemned to be drowned beneath hurdles in a lake. Wido’s status probably would save Odberht from such a fate, but still it would open a wound on the living body of his kin that would never fully heal. Wido had no objections to murder by this means if it were carried out in secret, but he was horrified his son had the bad judgment to do it openly, before the army and the priest of the high god.

A half dozen voices cried out a warning to Baldemar. Witgern bolted forward, meaning to push Baldemar to safety, even though Odberht was hopelessly ahead of him.

For a harrowing moment that seemed to last a day, Baldemar made no move to defend himself, striding on confidently, seeming resigned to death.

Odberht galloped alongside Baldemar. The heavy blade slashed down.

Baldemar spun round so swiftly he might have been a ghost on the wind. No one saw him draw his sword, though he must have as he turned, for in the next instant he brought it upward with such force that Odberht felt as if his own blade struck a wall of stone.

There followed a penetrating clang that might have shattered the skull of an ox, and a great shower of sparks. The impact nearly unseated Odberht. The throng of three thousand stood mute, transfixed; none dared interfere.

Odberht was thrown back onto the rump of his mount but quickly righted himself by grasping the horse’s mane. Then he resumed the attack with frenzied energy, emboldened by the seeresses’ words,
You will not die by the sword—
the shield he carried always. He executed a rapid series of savage down-cuts aimed at Baldemar’s head. But Baldemar blocked each stroke with careless ease, as a father might contain the tantrum of a child who thrashes out blindly. Soon, to the amazement of the crowd, Baldemar forced both Odberht and his horse back, step by step. Hearty cheers broke out among Baldemar’s Companions; it was a sight that would feed many winters’ tales.

Then with one neat stroke Baldemar cut the right rein. Odberht’s horse wheeled to the left, following the pressure of the remaining rein, and simultaneously Baldemar lunged forward, surprising Odberht on his shield side. He grasped the young man’s left leg and pulled him from the horse.

Coarse laughter mingled with moans of despair. Wido covered his eyes and wailed unheard, “Now I have no sons!
One the gods made a simpleton, the other, a treacherous and false-hearted fool.”

Odberht fell hard on his side, raising a dust cloud. But rage brought him up at once and he charged like a dazed boar, swaying slightly, sword held low as if to disembowel his foe. Baldemar sprang forward to meet him, and blade crashed against blade; then came the furious, erratic rhythm of iron on iron as the tempo of the death dance whipped into ecstatic speed. Odberht’s feints and parries were crude and blunt with the clumsiness of youth, and for a short time he held his own. But most eyes were on Baldemar.

Was there ever another like him,
Witgern wondered. Love of fighting was evident in his every leap and strike; each move blended artfulness and calm with the animal smoothness of the galloping horse, the darting stag. It was like watching a musician of great skill who gets wondrous effects from the barest touch of the hands upon the strings, set against one who compensates for his awkwardness by striking louder notes.

A dark stain appeared on Odberht’s tunic. He was quickly driven to the edge of the crowd, forced to his knees, and then to the ground.

“Baldemar! Greatest of chiefs!” his Companions began to chant. Many of Wido’s followers thought in that moment—age has not slowed Baldemar. Wido is a dead man.

Baldemar pressed the point of his longsword to Odberht’s neck.

“Kill him…kill him,” came a dry, whistling voice behind him, a voice like wind hissing round rocks. At first Baldemar heard only his own heaving breath and thought the words some trick of his mind. Then he realized that Athaleiea, the ancient seeress who followed the army, had scuttled close to him. Her sun-browned face was turned to the sky, her eyes were closed, and she was prophesying. Had she added the words “…or die in your turn,” or had he imagined them? In coming days those words would prowl the recesses of his mind like revenants, dread presences threading in and out of consciousness, felt but never quite seen.