Before I knew that my mind was made up, I heard my own voice saying, “We will go now and look into the Black One’s mouth and feel him over, for I have not even touched him as yet. And if the horse be all that he seems, then it is a fair bargain, Bedwyr.”
And I remember that we spat in our hands and struck palms like men sealing a bargain in the marketplace.
On a wild night of late September, with the first of the autumn gales beating about the thatch, we supped again in Cador’s mead hall, I with the great gaunt joyful head of Cabal on my knee; behind us the long road and the choking summer dust cloud rolling up through Gaul, behind us the urgent struggle to get the last of the horses across before the weather broke. And the torchlight and the heather beer seemed the more golden for the triumphant knowledge of fine big-boned Septimania stallions and the brood mares picketed within the ring fence of the Dun.
Bedwyr, with dark smudges beneath his eyes — for the last crossing, with the Black One on board, had been no easy one, and he had not slept, even in his accustomed place at the great brute’s side, for two nights before it — had come from his fairly won place among the Companions and sat on the harper’s stool beside the hearth and sang for us, or maybe for himself, the triumph song of Arwas the Winged after he slew the Red Boar.
THEY broke at noon, and all the rest of that day and most of the next we had driven them, among the willow-fringed islands and the reedbeds and the wildfowl meres; we had fired their winter camp (they should be well used to the stench of homesteads going up in flames). We had cut off the stragglers and burned their narrow dark war boats in the mouth of the Glein. Now, at evening on the second day, we came up from the river marshes toward the monastery on its island of higher ground, where we had left the baggage beasts.
We were a full band, three hundred cavalry, four hundred counting grooms, drivers, armorers, et cetera — or we had been, two days ago. We were somewhat less this evening, but in a few weeks we should be up to strength again; we always were. There were no captives with us. I have never taken captives, save once or twice when I had need of a hostage.
Cabal trotted as usual at my horse’s off forefoot. Bedwyr rode on my sword side, and on the other, Cei who had blown in like a blustering west wind to join us when first we made our headquarters at Lindum, just two years ago. A big, red-gold man with hot-tempered blue eyes, and a liking for cheap glass jewelry that would have become either a Saxon or a whore. Those two had proved themselves in the past summers when, sometimes alone, sometimes with the half-trained warriors of Guidarius, the local ruler, we had attacked the settlements of Octa Hengestson, and driven back his inland thrusts again and again. And the time was to come when I counted Bedwyr the first and Cei the second of my lieutenants.
Bedwyr had unslung his harp from its accustomed place behind his shoulder, and was plucking the strings in triumphant ripples of notes that broke in waves of brightness, managing his horse with his knees the while. He often played and sang us home from battle. “After the sword, the harp,” as the saying runs — and always it seemed to help our weariness and our wounds. When the tune was recognizable, Cei lifted up his voice in a deep grumbling buzz that was his nearest approach to singing, and here and there behind us a man took up a snatch of the familiar tune; but for the most part we were too spent to join in.
The sun was sinking as we pulled up out of the rustling reedbeds, and the vast arch of the sky was alight with a sunset that seemed to catch its mood from Bedwyr’s harping and break in waves and ripples of flame. Never, even among my own mountains, have I known such sunsets as those of the eastern marshes, winged and shining skies busy as market crowds or streaming like the banners of an army. The standing water among the reedbeds caught fire from the sky, and overhead the wavering lines of wild duck were flighting.
On the lower levels only just clear of the marsh, the monastery’s horses were grazing. It was horse country, though most of the beasts, sturdy though they were, were too small for our needs; too small, that is, if we had had any choice in the matter. But it would be seven or eight years yet before we could hope to draw much from the Deva training runs. We had lost upward of a score of horses in the past two days, and they would be harder to replace than the men.
The countryman in charge of the herd (the horse herding and breaking was the only work of the community not done by the Brothers themselves) took one look at us from the hummock of land that was his lookout post, and tossing up his spear ran back toward the monastery building. We heard him shouting, “They are coming! They are back! Holy Brothers, it is the Count of Britain!” And a few moments later the bell of the little church began to throb out its round bronze notes in greeting and rejoicing. “Truly, we are to have a hero’s welcome!” said Bedwyr; and he let his hand fall from the harp strings, so that the weary smother of hoof-beats behind us grew suddenly louder.
The fire was fading from the sky as we reached the gateway in the thorn hedge; the huddle of reed-thatched sleeping cabins and farm buildings about the church and wattle dining hall were dark against the fading brightness of the west, and the few wind-stunted apple trees of the monks’ orchard were pale and insubstantial clouds of blossom; and suddenly I thought of that other community over toward the sunset in the Island of Apples. The Brothers and the poor folk who had taken refuge with them had come crowding down to their gateway, save for whichever Brother it was who was still ringing the bell. Their hands reached out to us, their anxious faces were full of questioning; they called down blessings on us as we clattered through. They had brought a lantern with them, and by its light I saw the haggard face of a woman with a babe asleep at her shoulder, and that Brother Vericus the ancient Prior was crying.
In the clear space between the ring hedge and the huddled buildings, I dropped from the saddle and pulled off my war cap. The others were dismounting all about me, clattering to a weary standstill, more than one of them swaying with the weakness of a wound. The sharp yellow gleam of the lantern was in my eyes, and people pressing about me, catching at my hands, or my knees, and I was aware of the tall spare figure of the Abbot moving toward me; aware that I was expected to kneel down for his blessing as I had done when we rode out. I wanted to get the wounded under cover, but I knelt down. Cabal lay beside me with a grunt.
“How went the day, my son?” He had a beautiful voice, like the bronze notes of the bell still floating out above us.
“We burned their winter camp,” I said. “There is one Saxon settlement the fewer to foul the grass, and this place may rest secure from the Barbarians, at least until the next thrust.”
His hands were light as skeleton leaves on my head. “May the Grace of God be upon you. And may your shield, under His, be over all Britain, as it has been over us this day; and may you find His peace when the fighting is over.”
But it was not the Grace of God that I wanted at that moment, it was salves and bandage linen and food for my men. I got to my feet again, slowly, for I was so tired that I could scarcely bear my own weight up from the ground. “Holy Father, I thank you for your blessing. I have wounded men with me — where may I send them for tending?”
“Wounded men, alas, we had expected,” he said. “All is ready for you in the hall; Brother Lucius, our Infirmarer, will go with you.”
The drivers whom we had left behind with the baggage train were already busy with the horses, and some of the village men among them. I saw Arian lead off with my bronze and bullhide buckler clanking softly at the saddletree, then turned to the business of getting the wounded together. Gault, one of my best youngsters, had a long spear wound in the thigh, and slid half fainting into the arms of his friend Levin, who had ridden close beside him all the way; but the rest of us were able to walk, and we went up to the hall together. I had a gash in my sword arm — most of our scathes, as usual with horse soldiers, were in the sword arm, or in the thigh below the guard of the thick leather kilt — and it was still oozing red.