The Edge on the Sword (23 page)

“This is foolish, Lady, as I have said,” he murmured as he reached her side and gazed at the distant campfires.

“We need to know what they are planning. And we need to weaken them in whatever way we can. I have the most woodcraft of any member of our party. Only I have a chance to go among them undiscovered,” Flæd repeated firmly.

“I will watch from the edge of their camp,” he insisted.

“And who will direct our men here?” she asked, trying one more time to make him stay behind.

“You will, Lady, when I bring you back safely.”

Flæd could not blunt his determination, and so together they slipped into the trench, circling unseen to the entrance. The body of the fallen raider still lay where their rocks had struck him down. Flæd had been steeling herself for the task she would have to carry out when she reached the dead man. Now, gratefully, she felt Dunstan pulling her back. She waited while he knelt briefly beside the body and drew his sword. Afterward, carrying a new burden, the two of them followed the ditch back around the hill again. Almost invisibly they crept out and away from the fortress. There they waited motionless in the trees until they spotted the first sentry, and then two others.

It was not difficult, once they had seen these watchers, to pass them. It was easier still to find their way along a well-travelled path running between their hill fort and the camp-fires they had sighted. It was nearly impossible for Flæd, despite her brave words, to take the bundle and step away from Dunstan, beginning her solitary hunt through the camp. But she did.

“M
MMFF
!” Æ
THELFLÆD
SWALLOWED
A
YELP
AS
A
ROCK
DUG
into her ribs. A pair of raiders was striding toward her as she cowered just off the path, and she held her breath, hoping they had not heard her little noise. Fool, she thought to herself, dreading discovery. But the two companions moved on.

Flæd’s side ached as she eased herself up and scuttled toward the next campfire. She knew she had been extremely fortunate so far. Here in the heart of the raider’s encampment, only one man had seen a small movement when she froze a second too late. He had made a sign which she recognized as a ward against evil (as if he thought me a demon, she remembered), then turned his back and hurried away. If he could have seen the thing I carry beneath this shapeless clothing, she thought, cringing at the bump of the package against her back, he might have shouted to the camp that a being of hell had come among them.

The fire she was approaching now had at least ten men around it—the largest single gathering of raiders she had seen in this camp of around four dozen. She positioned herself in the surrounding shadows, and began to listen.

Several speakers were engaged in an argument. They raised their voices, interrupting each other, and one man even began to shout until a movement at the edge of the group silenced them all. A person wearing a dark cloak stood up facing the raider who had shouted, beckoning him to come closer. Flæd gasped, then clamped a hand over her own mouth in fear of being heard, and in consternation at what she had seen.

The figure in the cloak was the man who had led her abduction in the spring. She stared at him as he leaned to address the raider he had summoned. Yes, there was the gaunt face she remembered. There were the dangerous eyes she had stared at when he spoke his few words of English.

Obeying his leader’s gesture, the quarreling raider held out a sheet of parchment he had been clutching in his hand. The cloaked man jabbed at
the page with one finger, saying something in a scornful voice that made the others around the fire laugh nervously. Flæd saw the raider open his mouth, preparing to respond as the cloaked man looked away indifferently.

Suddenly there was a flicker of metal, and the raider jerked his head to one side with a cry. He tottered before his leader, blood running from a gash beside his ear.

Like a beast sheathing its claws, the man in the cloak wiped his blade and returned the dagger to his belt. He did not speak again. With a groan the injured man blundered away.

Flæd stayed hidden as the bleeding raider passed her. When he had gone, she began to back away from the fire. She wanted to find Dunstan and tell him what she had seen, but she had come here to do more than gather information.
I have come like a creature of the fens, a shadow in the night, to bring confusion and fear upon my enemies. I have come to show them a sign of death.
On the path the raiders used, just beyond the firelight, Flæd placed the burden she and Dunstan had brought with them, and drew off the stained cloth they had used to wrap it. The head of the raider killed at the fortress gate rolled a little, half-opened eyes glinting, the raven crest of its helmet catching the distant light of the fire. The other Danes would know their comrade’s face and his gear—the battle animal he had chosen for the helm’s crest, its singular decoration.
We came among you
, this act would tell the raiders.
We will deal with you as we served your companion.
Flæd hardly felt like a person as she turned her face from the gory trophy meant to menace the raiders who had caused Red’s death.
I am hate
, she thought. 7
am vengeance. I am a monster woman, leaving a head at the edge of her pool.

Flæd looked behind her. She could see no one approaching from any direction on the trail, but something pale shone on the ground. Silently she went to it. Reaching out her hand, she grasped at the white shape and found herself holding a piece of parchment spattered with drops of fresh blood. The injured raider had dropped the page his leader had thrust back at him.

In the shadows of the path Flæd could only make out a few shapes drawn on the crushed vellum. She folded it and tucked it into the pouch she had tied around her waist beneath her rags. After a moment’s thought, she unsheathed the dagger hidden there and kept it in her hand as she moved swiftly back toward the place where she and Dunstan had entered the camp.

“Lady.” She whipped around at the word spoken softly in her own language, but it was only Dunstan, who was emerging from a new hiding place close by.

“We agreed you would wait there,” she hissed, pointing with her knife back to the spot where she had left him.

“We agreed you would not approach so many men at once,” Dunstan countered, The two of them glared at each other, until Dunstan broke the silence. “You left our gift?” Flæd nodded, unwilling now to speak of it. “Then we will wait to hear how it is received.” Together they stole through the trees to the outskirts of the camp.

“That man in the cloak, the one who is their leader,” she said when they had reached a prudent distance, “I think …”

“I know him,” both of them said at once, then stopped to stare at each other again.

“He led the men who took me in the spring,” she told her thane.

“I last saw him one year ago, at the Danish surrender,” Dunstan said. He glanced around, assuring himself that no one had followed. The two of them sat down in the darkness where a little moonlight came through the branches.

“He is one of Guthrum’s men?” Flæd asked.

Dunstan nodded. “Once he was a
jarl
, a Danish nobleman with much the same rank as our aldorman Ethelred, and a person with great authority in the wars,” the thane replied. “His name is Siward.” Dunstan paused, his young face wrinkled with worry. “I will tell you what I know of him,” he said at last.

“King Alfred had decreed that the Danes must be baptized as Christians when they pledged peace. Siward was forced to come with Guthrum’s other generals, but at the place of surrender, he resisted. Two other Danes held him when the priest brought the holy water. He fought, screaming out in his own language and in the words he knew of ours. He cursed the English and Alfred, calling on his own gods for vengeance.”

“He refused to submit?” Flæd asked.

“He did,” Dunstan said, “and Guthrum was ashamed that one of his commanders would not obey him. He ordered that Siward be taken away and held, but that night the dissenter disappeared. The Danish guards, it was thought, felt sympathy for him.”

“My father said in the council room that not all of Guthrum’s people would be governed by the treaty,” Flæd reflected.

“Siward would not,” Dunstan agreed. “He hates your father, and it seems he has found others who share his feeling.”

“Or perhaps he has bullied them into joining him,” Flæd said, shaking her head. “I saw him punish one of his men for little more than raising his voice beside the fire. See what that raider dropped after Siward stuck him with a dagger.” She pulled out the piece of parchment she had found and opened it where a beam of moonlight fell across her lap. Flæd could not read the characters she saw, but as she followed the wriggling line near the parchment’s edge, she realized what she held in her hand.

“This is a map,” she murmured. “Look! Here is the Welsh coast, the Humber River here, and beyond it the Danelaw.” Her eye paused at what must be the border between Mercia and Wales. “Dunstan”—she pointed to several scattered markings—“these are the places where attackers struck the border outposts.”

She tried to think. Why would Siward’s raiders, lurking in the heart of Mercia, know anything about such distant assaults? Anxiously, Flæd surveyed the map another time. When she looked up, she thought she had found an answer.

“If these are all Siward’s forces,” she said slowly, “then he has sent only a few troops west, perhaps to confuse us. The main host waits here”—she touched the map in a place dark with the marks she thought must indicate raiding parties—“in the Danelaw, around Eoforwic, just as Osric guessed,” she added in a faint voice.

“Weren’t the attacks at the border made by Welshmen?” Dunstan asked skeptically.

“By riders who dressed like Welshmen, but who were larger men, like Danes, we were told,” Flæd replied. “And the men who attacked me carried weapons made to look like the work of Welsh craftsmen, although the knife we took bore a Danish craftmark.” Flæd gulped back sadness—her warder had shown them that mark. She tried to concentrate. “If Siward can remain hidden here in the country of his enemies, he is not a careless man. The Welsh weapons, the disturbance at the border—I think these things were meant to make my father and Ethelred look to the west.”

“And if you disappear now,” Dunstan joined in, beginning to understand, “your father and the aldorman will look west. They will take their troops and go west, while Siward brings his horde down from the north!”

The two of them fell silent, stricken by their discovery. It was Dunstan who finally spoke.

“Lady Æthelflæd, you must reach Lunden,” he said emphatically, “nothing must prevent you. You and I may be able to reach the river tonight, alone—”

“Dunstan,” she stopped him. It was the second time he had tried to convince her to leave the others, to protect her by asking her to desert the men. She could see the special need now for Ethelred and Alfred to know she was safe. But to disappear, leaving her people waiting for her with their preparations half-finished? “There must be something else we can—”

A cry from the camp silenced them, then more shouting. They could see raiders running along the pathway Flæd had followed, gathering near Siward’s fire.

“They have found it,” Dunstan muttered unnecessarily. The awful token Flæd had left seemed to be spreading fear through the camp, as they had hoped. “May Siward’s men vex him now like a flock of sheep with one dead in their middle.” He turned back to Flæd. “And we should go. Will you do what I have suggested?”

When Flæd and Dunstan left their hiding place in the wood, Flæd had a heavy feeling in her chest. She mulled over the compromise she had reached with Dunstan. What other choice did I have, she wondered as they stealthily approached the fort’s secret entrance.

“We worried when you were gone so long, Lady,” said the thane who waited for them inside. “We have made the preparations you ordered.”

“Show me,” Flæd told him. “And afterward, gather the rest of the men. We will discuss our plans, and then”—she pulled off her leather cap and rubbed her eyes—“some sleep.”

The sound would always terrify her—that thud of boots in the night.
Flæd was dreaming of the room she shared with her sisters in her father’s burgh. Dove and Ælf laughed, running around the wooden floor with small pounding feet No, they were screaming, running away from something.
She jerked awake as the heavy footsteps came closer, and was already pulling her shirt of ring mail over her clothes when he burst into the dirt-floored room where she had gone to sleep.

“Lady!” The young retainer hissed in a strangled whisper. “A new attack! They will breach the wall!” Æthelflæd considered this news as she jammed on her boots and reached for her heavy leather cap. She issued two curt commands which sent the man scurrying back down the corridor, and then strode out after him looking for her horse.

We are not ready yet…not yet.
A low noise of men and horses filled the air as she emerged into the yard at the center of the fortress’s defenses. She swung up onto Apple, already saddled for her, and quickly glanced around the torchlit space. The enemy forces had chosen the least secure part of the wall for their assault. Could her trick with the helmet have brought on this early attack, she wondered with horror. They had meant to
unnerve and confuse their enemies, not spur them into action!
The gate—by morning we might have made it stronger.

“How many outside?” she demanded.

“As many as forty, Lady,” came the answer from Dunstan. That must be nearly every one of Siward’s men, judging from what she had seen in their camp. Steadying her anxious horse, she cast a rapid glance over the riders gathered around her—all eight of them looked haggard for lack of sleep, two were wounded, one badly enough that he sat bent with pain in his saddle.
Why won’t he wait inside with the wagon and the other driver? He will be the first to die.
Without another word, she motioned toward the secret passageway opposite the place where the attackers had massed, and sent her own mount into the lead with a little leap.