Either they didn’t understand me, or they chose to ignore me. The pedlar looked worse than I had ever seen him. They had taken everything from him save for his braies, which were soaked through and marked with brown stains that were either mud or his own shit. Countless bruises and weals decorated his back and chest. He could barely stand without aid, but hunched forward like a man many years older, in danger it seemed of collapsing at any moment.
They led us to what I supposed had once been the stable-yard behind the hall, except that the buildings had long since fallen into disrepair and everything was overgrown with nettles and thistles. Half a dozen horsemen awaited us, with spears that carried pennons in the pale yellow and blue of the house of Cynfyn. There the guards made Byrhtwald get down on his knees, while one of the horsemen, a bald-headed man of solid build, dismounted. Handing his spear to a retainer, he drew a long sword with polished blade and gleaming edge.
And suddenly I understood why we were here.
‘No,’ I said, struggling against my captors, but their hands were firm upon my shoulders, holding me back. Hunger and thirst had weakened me and I was helpless to act. ‘You can’t do this!’
‘He is of no more use to us,’ said the one with the sword. ‘Now his life is forfeit.’
Byrhtwald looked up at me. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and I saw the great sadness that lay behind them. Like the bravest of warriors he was doing his best to hold his nerve and show courage in the face of death, but he trembled nonetheless.
‘Remember me, lord,’ he said.
The tears were in my eyes as they were in his. I had witnessed the blow that killed Turold and seen the twins Snocca and Cnebba cut down before my eyes. All three I had known well, far better than the pedlar, and yet for some reason the knowledge of what was about to happen troubled me much more than had any of their deaths.
They forced him to bow his head, exposing the back of his neck. The bald man stepped forward, laying the flat of the steel upon it before raising the weapon high. Eyes closed and taking deep breaths, Byrhtwald first muttered a prayer in his own tongue that I could not make out, before reciting the familiar words of the Paternoster.
‘Et ne nos inducas in tentationem,’ he said, drawing the words out as he realised that with each one he spoke his end grew nearer, ‘sed libera nos a malo.’ Behind his back his fists clenched and he let out one final sigh. ‘Amen.’
No sooner had he finished speaking than the blade came down.
It took three blows to remove Byrhtwald’s head from his shoulders. Either the man who did it was unused to wielding a sword or else he was unskilled in such killings. The first stroke missed and sliced into the Englishman’s shoulder instead, causing him to pitch forward, screaming in agony. As he writhed on the ground, his hands clutching the place where he had been wounded, the blade struck again. This time it did find his neck, in an instant slicing through his throat and his spine. That was the stroke that killed him, though it needed one more to sever the head entirely.
Thus it was done, and Byrhtwald my friend was gone.
‘He was nothing to you,’ I yelled at the Welshmen, spitting in the direction of the one who had killed him. ‘He was nothing to you. He didn’t have to die!’
But dead he was. With bloody fingers, the swordsman held Byrhtwald’s head up by the hair, displaying it proudly for all to see, before with a roar and a chorus of laughter and cheers from his comrades he hurled it over the walls of the yard.
And as he wiped the sword on a patch of grass, I recognised the smoke-like pattern of the steel and the two blood-red stones embedded in the hilt, and saw that it was my own blade that had spilt his blood, that had taken his life.
From the position of the sun I reckoned our route took us once more west and south, and that reckoning was proven right when later that day we crossed the dyke. Back into Wales, as if I hadn’t already seen enough of this godforsaken country.
Bleddyn and his raiding-band did not ride with us. Where they were headed I was not sure, though I could make a guess: Scrobbesburh. Instead I was escorted by the same six horsemen who had been at Byrhtwald’s killing.
‘Are you taking me to Eadric?’ I asked them some time later, when that place was long behind us.
‘Eadric?’ snorted the bald-headed one, whose name I had learnt was Dyfnwal. From the way he had assumed charge I guessed he must be their leader. ‘If he wants you, he’ll have to come and fetch you. And when he does he’d better bring with him a cart full of silver. He’s a fool if he thinks he’s getting you for nothing.’
This raised a snigger amongst the others.
‘Where are we going, then?’