Blood Eye(105)

'What are you doing here, Cynethryth?' Weohstan demanded, holding her at arm's length. 'Are you mad? It's not safe.'





Cynethryth turned to look at me properly for the first time since we had found her, or rather since she had found us. I thought of the black-haired Welsh girl I had raped and my chest hammered with guilt. Cynethryth's face was tight, her eyes full of indecision, and I could tell she was struggling to find the words. 'My father means to betray you, Raven. All of you.' She looked at Penda. 'He has taken the gospel book of Saint Jerome and means to cross the sea a few days from now.'





'And the remaining hoard he owes me?' Sigurd boomed, water from the Wye dripping from his golden beard. Cynethryth ignored him, searching her brother's face. 'Well, girl?' Sigurd said. 'Has the ealdorman left me what he owes?'





'Are your ears full of duckweed, heathen?' Cynethryth snapped. 'He means to cheat you. He has the book and he will sell it. Without it there is no money. Certainly not what he promised to pay you, anyway.' Sigurd cursed and Cynethryth turned back to Weohstan. 'The book has blinded him, brother. It has stolen his judgement. He believes it will make him richer than any king in England.'





'These men saved my life,' Weohstan said, but his face betrayed that he was all too aware why Ealdred would not want to leave vengeance-thirsty Norsemen in the heart of Wessex.





'We kept our word, Cynethryth,' I said. 'Many men died for it.' The Norsemen began cursing and shouting as Olaf roughly translated Cynethryth's words, whilst the Wessexmen glanced around nervously, their hands finding their sword grips as though they expected to be cut down where they stood for their lord's betrayal.





'I rode through the night to warn you,' Cynethryth said to me. Her face was pale and drawn and her eyes were full of the pain of a daughter betraying her father. 'You don't have much time.'





'The ealdorman won't get far,' I said, my blood simmering as the truth sank in.





'I'll have his head,' Sigurd growled in Norse and his men declared their own murderous intentions regarding Ealdred.





'Listen to me, Raven,' Cynethryth pleaded, shaking her head, and I saw fresh tears moisten her eyes. 'He has sent men to kill you. I came as soon as I learned of it. Why do you think he gave Sigurd half the silver? Because he knows he will have it back soon enough. They're coming, Raven. You have to get away. They're coming now!'





'But we have Weohstan,' I said. Sigurd was frowning at the girl as though wondering what else she would say to ruin his day. 'And what about these men?' I asked, pointing at Penda and the last remaining Wessexmen.





She shrugged wearily. 'I don't think my father ever believed you would succeed, Raven.' She paused for a moment, then took her brother's hands in her own. 'Or even that Weohstan was alive. Consider the men he sent with you.' She glanced at Penda, though for shame of her father could not hold his eye. 'Only a few were his household men.' Penda spat at this, though he must have recognized the truth when he heard it. Ealdred had not wanted to waste his best warriors on a fool's mission. Apprentices, sons, and women becoming millers, smiths and fletchers, I thought to myself. 'Others are on their way to make sure Sigurd never returns to Wessex,' Cynethryth went on. 'The priests assured our father that this was God's will. They said the land must be cleansed of the filth of the heathens.'





Sigurd grimaced. 'The dogs still piss up trees and life goes on, Raven,' he said. Then he shook his great ash spear. 'And we go to earn our reputation.'





'Kill the Englishmen, Sigurd!' Asgot shrieked in Norse, jabbing his spear towards one of them. The Wessexmen stepped away from the Norsemen and Penda glared at Sigurd, the challenge clear in his fierce eyes.





'These men have been honourable, Asgot,' I said, fixing him with my blood-eye. 'Would you kill everything that breathed that was not a Norseman?'





'You know I would, Raven,' the old godi snarled, revealing black teeth.





'We go to Wessex,' Sigurd said, looking first to Olaf, then to Serpent's steersman Knut. Both men nodded. 'We go to Wessex and we get to our ships before the English dog burns them.'





'He won't burn the ships, lord,' I said in English, gripping the sword's hilt at my waist and glancing at Weohstan. 'He'll take them. What better vessels does he have to cross the sea?'





'Raven's right,' Weohstan said, looking at Cynethryth as he spoke. 'My father has a couple of broad trading ships, but nothing to be proud of. Nothing that would turn the head of a high lord or king.'





So, full of flaming fury, we used our axes to cut through King Offa's wall, for Cynethryth had forded the Wye downriver where there was no wall and she would not now leave her mare behind. Then we turned south into the Hwicce forest and whatever trap the treacherous ealdorman of Wessex had set for us.