The Edge on the Sword (19 page)

Veering onto the road with a sob of frustration, Flæd kicked Apple into a hard gallop away from the fighting. Looking back over her shoulder toward the camp, she could see the distant shapes of men struggling with each other, and somehow she could not feel relief at leaving them behind. Then her stomach gave a lurch—someone was running away from the camp toward her. No, the figure was not heading directly along her path, she saw with another turn of her head. He appeared to have picked up a trail leading through the bracken. It looked like his course would take him into the trees north of the fighting.

Possibilities flashed through Flæd’s head. This was almost certainly not a member of the West Saxon party. A deserter from among the raiders? He was more likely to be a messenger, she thought, sent to bring back more attackers. Red could not be aware of anyone leaving the battle—he was still back in the thick of the fight….

A stab of anger pierced Flæd’s fear. Someone had been sent to bring fresh warriors down upon her outnumbered band. More violence against their peaceful party—against her companions! And she had been sent away, commanded only to save herself. She would not do it. With a plunging turn she brought Apple around and urged her horse after the running man. Maybe on horseback with her dagger, she thought as she grasped its hilt with shaking fingers, she could stop him.

Flæd and Apple came to the place where the man’s little track left the main road, and Flæd pushed her horse to keep their speed along the narrow way. Soon trees were whipping against her arms and Apple’s sides, and the runner had come into view again. Flæd and her mount lunged forward. She was gaining on the running man, and at last he noticed her. But now Flæd had come very close. Dagger in hand, she leaned over to swipe at him just as Red had taught her to do with the practice sword. The man whirled around, ducking beneath Flæd’s stroke. His fingers dug into her leg, pulling her and her mount off balance. She lost her seat and tumbled sideways, striking the ground hard with one shoulder before Apple’s heavy body crashed down after her. A flailing hoof clipped her chin, and with an awful jerk she found stillness, blackness.

Flæd opened her eyes and saw the moon shining down on her through fronds of bracken. Near her ear a horse blew softly through its nose, and she heard the sound of big teeth cropping grass. She tried to roll over and gasped at the pain she felt in her neck and jaw. With a moan she sat up. Oat and Apple were grazing at the edge of the path a stone’s throw away from her. Shakily she stood and took several steps before she stumbled over something on the ground.

A body lay in front of her. Flæd scrambled backward in fright, but the figure did not move, and slowly she crept forward again to take another look. In the moonlight she recognized the face of the runner she had tried to stop, and she could see that his neck was broken. Around him the ground cover was flattened, the earth churned by hooves. Flæd guessed that the man had been caught beneath her falling horse.

Could she have brought herself to kill him with her knife if she had been given the chance? She had aimed a blow at him from horseback, she remembered as she backed away and struggled to her feet, stomach churning. To kill a man—that was what her training had taught her. But she had never actually tried it before.

The horses snorted nervously as she limped up, but Flæd caught their halters and spoke in a low voice to calm them. When they quieted, she stripped off her belt and sawed it into two leather thongs, which she looped through each horse’s halter. Cautiously she led the pair a few lengths further into the bracken, until they reached a little thicket where she snubbed their heads up close to the trunk of a tree. She left them there and crept back to the edge of the road.

Another rider was coming. Still gripping her dagger, Flæd crouched down, watching the figure on the road draw closer. She shifted the knife in her hand, finding a better grip. The rider’s face was still in shadow, but
now on the horse’s bridle and saddle she could see the strange shapes of unfamiliar decorations. This was not a mount she knew. Silently Flæd edged to one side as the rider reined up at the site of her fall. The person dismounted with a creaking of leather and ring mail, peering out at the broken undergrowth.

Then Flæd was behind him, pricking her knife into the back of his neck. She shook with the horror of what she thought she would have to do. The man was suddenly very still. “Lady?” she heard him whisper as he stood there rigidly. “Is that the lady Æthelflæd?”

“Who are you?” she whispered with swollen lips, bracing her arm for the thrust.

“It’s Dunstan, Lady, Dunstan from your father’s burgh. The envoy from Mercia—Red—he sent me to find you.”

“Red sent you?” Flæd asked, stepping around the man and looking at his face for the first time. She recognized the young retainer—it
was
Dunstan, just as he had claimed. “Where is my warder? What happened at the camp?” she demanded, pain throbbing through her face with every word.

“Lady he is badly injured,” Dunstan said. “We have taken this raiding party, but there may be others. He sent me on this captured horse….” Flæed was already crashing through the brush toward her horses. “Lady!” he cried as she plunged out of the thicket on Apple’s back, Oat close beside them, “Lady Æthelflæd, wait!”

Flæd hardly recognized the camp as she galloped through its outskirts past the bodies of horses who now lay silent and unmoving. The bundles of possessions where men had bedded down for the night were strewn everywhere. Torn cloth, shattered boxes, and broken earthenware pots and cups littered the ground. Flæd headed toward the wagons and the center of camp where a fire still burned. One of the wagons had been tipped on its side. Sacks of grain had been ripped apart, their contents spilling out onto the ground. Two of the boxes of silver lay smashed in a wagon bed, surrounded by a sea of coins. Flæd slid down from Apple’s back and ran toward the campfire, where she could see men moving around several prone forms.

“Where’s Red? Where is he?” she said frantically as she burst into the firelit circle.

“Lady Æthelflæd!” said one man, running to catch at her hand. “You are unharmed? Your face …”

“Where is Red?” Flæd said in a whisper that felt like a shriek. Dread filled her as she saw the man hesitate.

“He is here,” the man said at last, “on the other side of the fire.” Encircling her shoulders with his arm, he led her around the flames. There on the ground lay Red, his face gaunt in the flickering shadows. Blood soaked his short hair, and the leather cap which had been removed and placed beside him showed a great tear on one side. Flæd knelt down and reached for her warder’s hand. She felt a strange stiffness in his fingers. She touched his cheek. Even close to the warmth of the fire, it was growing cold.

“Lady,” said a soft voice. The man who had brought her to Red crouched down, and Flæd recognized him as one of the wagon drivers. “I know some healing,” he told her, “but the wound was too bad.” Quietly he began to tell her what had happened. “The envoy saw the raiders first, and made the rest of us circle behind while they were maiming the horses. He hid in camp. When they found the wagons they tore them apart, looking for something, and all of a sudden he rose up and ran at them alone. He killed three before they cut him down.” The man bowed his head in grief. “We were running to join him, just as he had planned. We surprised them from behind and killed five more before the rest put down their weapons. We bound up the prisoners, Lady.”

Flæd could not speak. Her hand still rested on Red’s unmoving chest.
He killed three before they cut him down
…
the wound was too bad.
She felt a terrible wrench as she remembered how often she had wished that his constant watching would end, and that he would leave her. No, her mind keened, no, no. My protector, she squeezed her eyes shut. My friend. With a great effort she looked back at the man who had shown her the body.

“Are any others dead from our party?”

The driver shook his head. “No, but the raiders destroyed all of our horses,” he added. “None of us was meant to escape alive.”

Gently, Flæd placed her warder’s big hand back on the ground beside him. On the firelit ground nearby lay a trampled blanket. She shook the dust and leaves from it and spread it over Red’s body, folding the cloth back neatly at his shoulders. “He is cold,” she faltered, not looking at her companion.

Flæd stood and limped back toward the wagons. Some of her father’s retainers sat exhausted in little clusters. Others tended wounds, and one or two had returned to the wagons to begin salvaging what goods they could, scooping the spilled coins into empty grain sacks. She stopped beside the seat at the front of the wagon where she had sat the day before. Far back in the little space her mother had shown her, the box with Ethelred’s gifts lay undisturbed.

“Lady!” a young man’s voice cried, and Dunstan came hurrying up. “The envoy charged me with your care, and I …” Flæd turned away from him, fighting back the anguish that crossed her face. She could not let the thought of Red silent on the ground overwhelm her now, she tried to remind herself. She knew that their little party must regroup—how should this be done? Someone among these men would know what to do. Someone would tell her how they should go forward from this evil place.

“Please gather our men,” she said shakily. In a few moments the little travelling party had collected before her. Two retainers had blood on their clothes from wounds, and one driver showed a messy gash under one eye.

“Are you well enough to continue?” Flæd asked him. The man nodded. Flæd searched the faces of the other men, looking for the one prepared to lead them. Some did not look back at her, peering nervously out into the night instead. Two younger thanes met her eye eagerly, but she shied away from their gaze.
I’m not the one
, she rejected the thought.
One of these experienced fighters is the man you want.
All of them were waiting to see what she would say. In a small voice she addressed the retainers. “How many prisoners have we taken?”

“Five, my lady,” one of them answered, “and eight raiders are dead.”

“There is one other, back along the road. I…I think it would be right to bury them,” Flæd said.

“My lady,” said another man, stepping forward, “I know some of the prisoners’ speech, and they have spoken to me. They plead for their lives, and offer wergild in exchange for the life of the man they killed.” Wergild was legal payment for a freeman’s death—a fixed sum of money in exchange for a life. The retainer’s face hardened with anger. “They say that although he was clearly of common birth, he fought well. They offer two times the value of a churl.” A murderous silence gripped the little circle of men, and Flæd felt a flash of rage and sorrow like a hot sword in her chest. For several seconds she said nothing. Then, in an icy tone, she began to issue orders.

“Have the prisoners bury their own dead. Give them water, and make a place for them in one of the wagons. They will come with us to Lunden.”

“To Lunden, Lady?” It was the same retainer again—the one who had spoken to the prisoners. “Surely we must go back to the king’s burgh after this disaster! Some of us have travelled in this country, but none of our party can guide us like the Mercian envoy. He knew the fastest way to Lunden, and he would have known where we could best defend ourselves from more raiders. Now who will save us if they come again?”

Flæd looked at the man’s frightened, querulous expression. This was not the leader she had hoped for. Would no other thane come forward?

“Red told me we are half a day’s hard ride east of Lunden,” she said warily. “We have come more than half the distance of our journey. Do we not face as much danger in going back as we do in going forward?”

“We should go back,” the dissenting retainer insisted, raising his voice. “We should return home.”

Flæd tried to think. If their party reached the burgh, Alfred would surely muster a small army to escort her back to Lunden. But there was still every chance that they would be pursued on their retreat, and no West Saxons from the king’s burgh would be watching for their arrival, ready to come to their aid. Lunden was somewhere not far ahead of them—Red had thought that she could find it on her own, if she needed to. He had been trying to train me to protect myself, to do his job in case I ever found myself without him, Flæd remembered.

“I believe Red would have wanted us to travel on to Lunden,” she said out loud. “Does anyone agree?” Silence settled over the men again, broken only by the crackling of the fire.

“We do,” said one of the young thanes at last, speaking for himself and his companion. “We will come with you.”

“And I,” said Dunstan, stepping forward to stand beside her. “I made a promise to the envoy.” That’s right, Flæd thought with a little sinking feeling, Red sent someone to help me. He wasn’t really sure I could take care of myself.

“Foolishness,” the angry thane resisted. “We are too small already. Our company should stay together.”

“We should,” agreed a stocky, broad-shouldered man with a bandaged leg. He limped to join the retainers clustered around Flæd, and one by one, the seven remaining men followed. Flæd looked at the scowling man who stood alone opposite her.

“Please,” she said, “we need your sword, your skill with the prisoners’ language. Our company is small,” she echoed his plea, “we should stay together.” Slowly the man uncurled his fists. Stone-faced, he nodded.

Still no one else spoke, and Flæd wondered futilely who would tell her what she ought to do next. Finally she looked to the two drivers. “Find as many of the raiders’ horses as you can,” she told them. “We will need mounts and teams by daybreak.” Flæd stepped back and spoke to all of the men again. “Ethelred must be told of this attack. Perhaps you can decide among you who should ride ahead to Lunden. The rest of us must be ready to ride at dawn.”

Flæd ignored the murmur of voices behind her as she walked away. Her hand went to her throbbing face, which she had just begun to feel again. She made her way to the place where she had been sleeping before
the attack. Her possessions lay in a clutter among those of her warder, the neat bundles ripped apart and scattered. Beneath her foot she felt something hard and square. Stooping down, she discovered her handbook. Inside the begrimed leather of its binding, she found that the illuminated
æsc
and the maxim in Father John’s hand had taken no damage. In the moonlight which now bathed the camp, Flæd stared at the writing.
A woman must shine, cherished among her people…she must know what is wise….