The Circle of Stone (Darkest Age) (16 page)

As the party started towards the hill, Edmund saw Elspeth walking at the back, half hidden between Cathbar and Cluaran. He smiled a little: his father would disapprove if he saw, but it warmed his heart to know that his friend would not be left behind.

They unbuckled their sword-belts and laid the weapons on the ground, while the Danes did the same a few feet away. Then, on an order from the earl, they began the ascent.

The path they used was narrow and deeply worn, and in places Heored’s men had to ascend in single file. Edmund sent his sight to the top of the hill, looking for an ambush. But he found no human eyes there at all; borrowing the sight of a circling bird, he saw only the empty shrine, and the worn grass around it.

When they reached the hilltop Olav Haaksen and his men were waiting in front of the temple. It was a simple construction, little more than a platform the height of a man’s shoulders,
holding three high walls with a pitched roof above. The fourth wall was part-open, with two great doors pulled back. A flight of wooden stairs led up to the raised entrance. Inside the structure, oil lamps had been fixed to each of the supporting pillars, casting a garish yellow light that made the space behind them hard to see, but Edmund could make out an altar, and on it a large central statue flanked by two smaller figures.

‘That’ll be Freya, their goddess, and her children,’ Cathbar said in his ear.

Elspeth and Cluaran came up beside them as Heored halted his followers by the steps. Haaksen stepped forward, gesturing to Heored to do the same, and the two men climbed the steps together to stand within the temple.

Heored spoke first, holding up his hands to show that they were empty. ‘I’ve come unarmed to your temple, as you asked me. Now you are bound to hear my demands.’

‘Speak on, Heored of Sussex.’ The earl’s voice was calm and faintly amused.

‘First,’ Heored said, ‘do you deny that you and your men sailed to Northumbria and ransacked the port there?

‘I do not,’ Haaksen said. ‘Though I might do; for I did not sail myself, and you have no proof. But we are in my temple. It was indeed some of my men who despoiled your cousin’s port: lesser lords, and younger sons without land or wealth of their own. I knew of their undertaking, and encouraged them, having no lands or wealth to give them.’

There was a muffled exclamation from the men around
Edmund. Was their quest over, and so simply? The earl had admitted responsibility; bound himself, surely, to make amends. But Haaksen had not finished.

‘So here is my word,’ he said, and raised his hand in pledge. ‘In the presence of my god, I bind myself and all who follow me never again to sail to your lands for spoil; nor to your cousin’s lands, as long as my life lasts.’ He let his hand fall. ‘So much for your demands. Now you must hear what I require of you.’

‘Our demands are not yet done.’ Heored’s voice was steely. ‘Your men murdered some of my cousin’s people; reduced others to poverty. What reparation will you make to them?’

Haaksen’s eyes glittered. ‘You will see my reparation,’ he cried. He lifted his hand again and brought it down in a chopping motion.

Instantly, half a dozen of his men leapt up the stairs of the temple, while the rest threw themselves in front of the platform, blocking it off. Heored, roaring with fury, grasped Haaksen by the throat – but the earl’s followers had already surrounded him. One of them reached behind the images on the altar, and Edmund saw a flash of steel. Next moment, the men were passing bright swords from hand to hand.

‘Treachery!’ Cathbar bellowed.

The Sussex men surged towards the temple, throwing themselves on the Danes who stood in their way.

For an instant, Edmund was frozen with horror. He saw Elspeth beside him, opening and closing her right hand, mouthing ‘Ioneth!’, her face crumpling when no sword
appeared. Cluaran had snatched a stone from the ground and was using it as a weapon against a man a head taller than himself. Cathbar had knocked one man down and was trying to clamber on to the platform, kicking at two of Haaksen’s men as they pulled him back by the legs.

Above him, Edmund heard his father cry out – and he could move again.

He dodged between the fighters, ducked under the outstretched arms of one of Haaksen’s men and through the legs of another. He was on the steps – then inside the temple. And in his belt he still had his little hunting knife.

For a moment he could see only the ring of men advancing on their prey, swords gleaming dully in the yellow light. Then he caught sight of his father.

Heored was bleeding from several wounds, but was still on his feet. He had his back to the rear wall of the temple, beside the great central idol, and had picked up one of the flanking statues, a thick wooden pole half the height of a man, with a face carved at the top. He held the statue in both hands, swinging it like a club.

Edmund darted forward, drawing his knife. The swordsmen around his father were moving warily, but they were still closing in. With a yell, Edmund stabbed at the man nearest him, catching him in the sword arm. The man grunted and swerved. Heored looked towards him, and saw his son.

‘Edmund – no!’ he cried, and for the first time in his life Edmund saw fear in his father’s eyes. ‘Go back!’

But Edmund could not obey. One of the assailants had seized on Heored’s distraction to lunge at his throat. Edmund struck without thinking and buried his knife in the man’s back. The attacker dropped without a sound, the knife still in him, and Heored grabbed at his sword as it fell.

Then Edmund felt himself seized around the waist, his arms pinioned, and dragged away from his father. He howled and struggled, twisting around in the iron grip.

Olav Haaksen’s face grinned into his. ‘You can’t save him, foolish boy!’ he cried, and threw Edmund from the platform.

He fell hard against one of the men below, who staggered. Edmund hit the ground on hands and knees. For a moment all he could do was crouch there, winded, while lights flashed before his eyes. Then his sight cleared and he looked up, as a heavy grinding noise sounded above his head.

The great doors of the temple had been closed. Edmund screamed, but he could not pull himself up through the press of bodies. He could still hear shouts and the clanging of metal behind the heavy wooden doors. Haaksen stood before them with a bloodied sword in his hand, slashing at any man who tried to come close, until the sounds died away.

‘It’s over!’ the earl shouted exultantly.

The men around Edmund had stopped fighting. Haaksen called up two of his followers to open the temple doors again. Inside, nothing moved. One of the lamps had fallen and gone out. The dim light from the other showed only a confused heap of bodies.

‘Sussex men!’ he cried. ‘There’s no need for any more to die. Go home now, and my word to you will stand.’

‘Your word!’ shouted Teobald, his voice breaking. ‘You broke parley – you murdered our king!’

‘His life was forfeit, for leading his men to this land,’ Haaksen said. ‘And our god required it. He fought well,’ he added, looking with a little regret at his dead men on the platform. ‘But that makes the sacrifice more worthy.’ He beckoned to some of his men on the ground. ‘Take up their bodies,’ he told them, ‘but leave the king for his own people.’

Cathbar looked at him with contempt. ‘You’ve defiled your own goddess’s temple!’ he said coldly.

‘This?’ Haaksen laughed. ‘Freya and her kind are dead! We worship a new god. This will be his temple from now on, consecrated with blood and fire. Look!’ He leapt on to the platform again and took up the remaining torch, bringing it to light the giant statue. For the first time Edmund saw that the face of the goddess had been defaced with sword-strokes. Over it was scrawled a new face: narrow eyes, a savage grin, and hair and beard of flame.

‘The burning man,’ Haaksen said, and there was reverence in his voice. ‘He heals when he will, and kills when he will, and his eyes are upon us now and for ever. He comes with the thunderbolt, and his veins run with fire.’

‘And his name,’ Cluaran said softly, ‘is Loki.’

To Edmund, standing in the ruins of his world, it seemed as if he had known it all along.
Loki . . . who destroyed Elspeth’s
father, and Cluaran’s, and now mine. Who unleashes dragons and burns villages. What else could he be but a god?

‘Your father is dead, little king,’ said Haaksen. ‘Go home, and I’ll kill no more of your people. The Burning One will need many warriors when he comes to spread his rule over your own land. But it will not be my men who bring him to your shores. You’ll embrace him yourself before long.’ He smiled. ‘As all do in this land. Even the ones who spread his word in blood and fire – burning the homes of those who will not praise his name.’

The bodies were being carried out of the temple, leaving only one behind. Olav Haaksen turned on his heel, closely flanked by his men, and strode away down the hill.

Edmund ran to where his father lay sprawled on the altar beneath the grinning, mocking face.

Heored opened his eyes as Edmund raised him and looked at his son with the ghost of a smile. ‘You came to me in a good hour,’ he whispered. ‘You saved me from the death of a trapped animal, let me die with a sword in my hand.’

‘Don’t leave me, Father! Please...’

‘No more of that!’ Heored interrupted, with some of his old impatience. ‘You’re a man now . . . A king. Listen to me, Edmund – take the men home, do you hear me? Go and comfort your mother.’ He broke into a racking cough, gasping for breath, while Edmund clung to him as if his father were a leaf being whipped away in the wind.

‘I’ll do everything you say,’ he promised, trying to keep his voice steady. Heored nodded. When he spoke again his voice
had faded to a breath, so thin that Edmund had to bend his ear to his father’s mouth

‘Whatever skills . . . the gods have given you . . . you’re still my son, Edmund. Be a king.’

‘I will, Father! I’ll be worthy of you, I swear it.’ Edmund’s voice caught in his throat. ‘And I’ll avenge you on the one who did all of this. I’ll destroy the Burning Man.’

He did not know if his father heard him. Heored’s eyes stared at him unseeing, and his head lolled back. Edmund lowered his father to the ground and looked up. Men were standing around him, waiting for him to speak. Cathbar looked down at him gravely. Behind him, Cluaran was silent and Elspeth’s eyes were full of tears.

Edmund felt tears run down his own face, but he did not stop to wipe them away. He bent to close his father’s eyes, then rose to his feet.

‘King Heored is dead,’ he said, amazed to hear how steady his own voice sounded.

Teobald nodded and knelt down by Heored’s body. When he stood up, he held the king’s signet ring, the great ruby that Edmund had never seen off his father’s hand. The captain took Edmund’s right hand and slid the ring on to his middle finger. Then he knelt again.

‘Hail,’ he said, and around him the other men joined in, their voices rising in chorus.

‘Hail, Edmund: King of Sussex!’

There was no getting near to Edmund that afternoon. He was given no time to mourn, Elspeth thought with sympathy: the captains surrounded him, pledging their service, and asking his instructions for the disposal of the camp, and the place of his father’s burial. There was work to do, too. Some of Heored’s men had been wounded by Haaksen’s followers. Two had died, and several others needed all the help that the camp healer and Eolande could give them. The Fay woman kept Elspeth busy improvising splints and tearing bandages, and then, after the wounded and dead had been carried back down the hill, set both her and Wulf to fetching water.

Elspeth was glad to be occupied. Whenever her hands were idle, Haaksen’s words came back to her:
The Burning Man . . . his eyes are upon us now and for ever
. She remembered the grinning face she had seen scrawled across defaced shrines throughout her journey. The demon’s image had followed her across the country, but she had not recognised it until now. Perhaps Loki truly was everywhere.

She shivered, looking over her shoulder – but there was only the activity of the camp: men lighting fires, cleaning their weapons, and further away from the hill’s foot, building a pyre.

They held the funeral just before sunset. Teobald and the other two captains laid Heored’s body on the bier with his two slain men on each side. Their three swords were laid beside them. It was Edmund who set the lighted torch to the wood; then all the men stood back while the flames rose and the thick smoke coiled upwards, turned a lurid red by the dying sun.

Edmund looked very small and slight among the men, and his face was wax-pale in the light of the flames, but he held himself as straight as a spear.

‘I pledge my father’s memory,’ he declared, and there were answering cries of ‘Heored!’

‘Before he died,’ Edmund went on, ‘my father charged me not to spend the life of a single one of his men on needless revenge. Tomorrow you will start back for Sussex.’

There was a loud murmur among the men; Elspeth suspected that but for the sorrow of the occasion, it would have been a cheer. She looked at her friend, who suddenly seemed remote from her: a leader of men. Would he go home, too? And if he did, how would she manage without him?

It was a black night, without even a moon. Elspeth walked through the sleeping camp. The burial mound had been
completed: it stood stark and bare, abandoned except for Edmund, who sat alone, keeping watch over his father for one last night.

He looked up as she approached, his face twisted with misery. In that moment she forgot that he was a king and ran to him, throwing her arms around him.

‘Oh, Edmund, I’m so sorry...’

Edmund leant against her, his shoulders shaking with sobs. They held on to each other fiercely for a few moments; then Edmund pulled back and brushed the tears from his face, struggling for calm.

‘I’ll be better tomorrow,’ he said. His voice was slow and rough, as if the words hurt him. ‘I know what it is I have to do, and my father’s . . . the captains will help me.’