I felt sick. There was no honour in what we had done and I feared what the gods would do to us. But then I remembered something Glum had said about us being too far from our own gods, and this chilled my blood even more, for if the Christian god ruled this land, where did that leave me? I shook my head, pushing the thought away. Penda punched my shoulder. 'Wake up, lad,' he said, 'we couldn't let him go, could we? Besides, the whoreson had nothing left to fear from us, so we couldn't rely on his prattle.' He pointed down to the man's groin and even in the gloom I saw that the man's trousers were dark and slick. 'Oswyn the clumsy ox didn't keep the bastard still enough,' Penda said grimly. 'I cut the vein. Poor turd would have bled to death.' Penda gestured for Oswyn and Coenred to throw the corpse into the river. 'He would have bled to death and he would have lied to us,' he said.
I guessed Penda was right in so much as the men did not need the Welshman feeding the fear that already gnawed like rats at their guts, because we were in enough danger as it was and fear can make a man weak.
The smooth stones we put in the man's clothes took him down to the riverbed, and we were soon heading north again, much more quickly now without him. Oswyn led us away from the river, afraid that we might be seen by the light reflecting off the water, but we followed it from a distance, the going easier still now that we ran on solid ground. It seemed we had not been moving for long when a pink glow began to spread across the eastern sky. We wrapped our cloaks around us and slept for a couple of hours amongst soft green bracken. We woke at dawn and the birds were chattering so loudly that it seemed they were trying to warn everyone within earshot that we were there, and I feared the Welsh would hear them and come to kill us before we even set eyes on Caer Dyffryn.
That same morning, Eafa the fletcher killed a raven. The bird was sitting on the twisted limb of a blackened willow, watching us, when Eafa put an arrow through it with his yew bow.
'See how my arrows never miss?' he boasted to the others who slapped his back, impressed by his skill.
'You are a fool, Eafa,' I said, standing before him with my long spear. 'A fat, putrid, ignorant fool.'
The fletcher baulked at this, then smiled and looked to his friends. 'Ah, yes,' he said, 'I remember. You Norsemen believe the raven is a magical creature, don't you?' Some of the others laughed scornfully even as they made the sign of the cross. 'You believe they can see the future. If so, why did he not fly away as I drew my bow?' Penda looked on, saying nothing, and I did not know whether he hoped I would put my spear in Eafa or that Eafa would put his in me.
'You don't know anything, Eafa,' I said. 'You're a piece of pig shit. The raven has nothing to fear in this world because he is not of this world.' I touched the raven's wing that Cynethryth had plaited into my hair, and the fletcher's mouth twisted in disgust, but there was a flicker of doubt in his eyes. 'Fetch your arrow, pig shit,' I said. 'We'll see how skilful you are when the Welsh are coming to kill you.'
The Wessexmen were quiet then, because they knew they would soon have to fight. And they knew we were too few.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WE DID NOT NEED ANY WELSHMAN TO TELL US WHEN WE HAD COME to Caer Dyffryn. Virgin meadows of yellow rattle gave way to close-cropped pasture where the only flowers remaining were tall clumps of white sneezewort making a stand by the river's edge, besieged by finches and tits.
'They know we're here,' Penda said, shielding his eyes against the rising sun and scanning the higher ground to the north and east.
'How can you tell, Penda?' a short, pockmarked man named Saba asked. Saba worked in one of Ealdorman Ealdred's water mills. Now he found himself in the land of his enemies and he was nervous. He carried a short axe and had sheathed himself in toughened leather, but he owned no helmet, instead wearing a hard leather skullcap which made him look even shorter.
'Look around you, Saba,' Penda said with a nod, scratching the scar on his cheek. 'This morning, whilst you were dreaming of grinding wheat, this meadow was cloaked in flea-bitten Welsh sheep. They've moved 'em.' The Wessexmen, still with mud-blackened faces, looked around their feet. Sure enough, shiny droppings littered the short grass.
'God have mercy on us! That's it then!' a man called Eni exclaimed, his eyes wide and his beard trembling. 'It's over. We've got to go back. If the black-shields know we're here, we don't stand a nun's chance in a whores' hall.'
'Eni is right, Penda,' Saba said, trying to seem unafraid. 'We should go back. If they know we're here . . .' He left the words hanging, allowing the men to imagine their own fates. Some of them grunted in agreement or spoke up for heading back to Wessex, whilst others looked to Penda, waiting for him to speak.