Blood Eye(95)

'Bollocks!' Oswyn roared. 'Have you seen the women round here?' He spat down the hill. 'They'd make any man jump from the straw to face a shieldwall.' The men laughed and Penda ordered Oswyn to tie Ealdorman Ealdred's banner to a long spear and plant it in the earth. There was no wind to speak of, but enough of a breeze to stir the dark green banner so that its leaping stag embroidered in golden thread could be glimpsed every now and again.





'Let them know where we are, lads! Wouldn't want them to miss us,' Penda called, his voice thick with pride. The men cheered and banged their swords and spears against the backs of their shields so that the Welsh might have believed there were sixty men on that hilltop, not thirty-one. 'Forward,' he yelled, and as one man the Wessex shieldwall advanced to where I stood at the top of the slope, and the noise grew when they saw their enemy at the foot of the hill. The clamour filled my head, making the hairs on my neck stand up and the skin of my arms prickle. My spit tasted bitter.





Then a thin horn sounded in the valley and Penda raised a hand to silence the Englishmen. The Welsh numbered perhaps one hundred and fifty warriors. Beyond their battle line I saw women and children and white-haired old men come from the fortress to watch the fight. They had even brought their dogs. The horn sounded again.





'They want to talk before the blood-letting,' Oswyn said.





'Ah, they just want to tell us how they're going to stamp on our guts and throw our eyeballs to the crows,' Penda said. 'But I don't need their bedtime stories. I sleep well enough.' He stepped forward with his spear raised.





'Wait, Penda. We might learn something of Weohstan,' I said. He curled his top lip and nodded.





So Oswyn, Penda and I walked slowly down the slope until we were halfway between our two war bands, and our enemy's leaders came up the slope to meet us. There were two of them, both powerfully built men with long black beards and unkempt hair. One wore Norse mail and I recognized it as the brynja that had belonged to Glum's kinsman Thorleik. This man stepped forward and spat at my feet. Then the other warrior spoke with the same lilting voice as the man we had killed by the river days before.





'He says he looks forward to boiling your brains and feeding them to his children,' Oswyn said, allowing a smile to touch his thick lips.





'What did I tell you, Raven?' Penda said, gesturing to the Welshman. 'Bedtime bloody stories and it's still shy of midday.'





'Ask him if Weohstan of Wessex still lives,' I said to Oswyn who frowned, trying to find the words, though when he did the Welshman in leather armour smiled to reveal black teeth. Then he spat his reply as a serpent spits venom.





'He lives,' Oswyn said, wide-eyed. 'They had planned to ransom him, but now they have no need to.'





'Why not?' I asked, my heart pounding at the news that Weohstan lived. 'Why won't they ransom him?' I pointed my spear at the Welsh down the hill. 'This need not come to blood. There is still time.' Oswyn nodded and asked the question, but when the reply came the Wessexman tensed, the colour draining from his face.





'Well, you big bastard? Spit it out, man,' Penda said, frustrated at having to wait for every translation. He would rather the talking stopped and the killing began.





Oswyn cleared his throat. 'He says they no longer need to ransom Weohstan, because we have walked like a lame deer into a slaughter pit. Others are coming, kinsmen from across the hills, young men eager to prove themselves. He says that his people will soon be stripping our corpses as the eagle strips the hare's bones of flesh. Our arms, our swords and shields are the only riches they need.' Oswyn looked back to the Welshman. 'He says that their old folk, their grey-beards and their children and their women have not emptied their bowels yet today because they wait to shit on our eyes when we lie dead.'





'Enough jawing,' Penda said, stepping forward so that his face was a finger's length from the man with the black teeth. 'Piss off back to your women before I put those stinking teeth through the back of your head.' The Welshman spoke no English, yet he understood well enough, for he grimaced, turned his back on Penda and with his companion set off down the slope.





'He stank like a pig's innards,' Penda said, turning his back on the Welshmen and testing the balance of the spear he was holding. 'This thing's not worth a spit,' he mumbled. 'Damn thing couldn't kill a dead dog.' Suddenly, he twisted back and sprang forward, hurling the spear high into the blue sky. It dived like a hawk and pierced the black-toothed Welshman between his shoulders, dropping him to his knees. The other warrior jumped aside in shock, then screamed a curse at us before dragging his twitching friend down the hill, leaving the spear lodged where it was. Wessexmen cheered the first blood-letting of the day.