Where the rumour came from, if it was true at all, or if the whole thing was just an enemy ruse, I have no idea. It hardly matters now. The end was near. It would have happened sooner or later.
It didn’t matter then, either. No one wanted to wait to find out whether or not it was true, least of all Eadgar. I saw him and his huscarls, mailed and helmeted, with banners flying, mounting their horses and marshalling their men to ride out. I watched his servants emerge from his great tent carrying armfuls of clothes, cooking pots, weapons and helmets, with cloaks over their shoulders and ale flasks hanging from their belts and leather scrips slung across their chests. Four of them dragged out an immense chest that they must have found in the ruins of the enemy castle at Eoferwic, since I didn’t know where else it could have come from, and stuffed silver chains and pouches of coins into their lord’s packs and saddlebags.
Within the hour the ?theling was gone, despite the protests of Gospatric and everyone else who’d placed their faith in him, who’d pledged their swords and their spears and their shields in his support and were willing to fight to the last. He fled back into the north with his retainers, his clerks and his servants, his shield bearers and his stable hands. Into exile.
And that was that. After he left all was chaos. You heard how it was from those who returned. Men gathered their things and made ready to flee. We were so few by then; what had once been an army ten thousand strong was reduced to mere fragments. Those thegns who’d remained, who had stayed loyal to the cause through everything, rode back to the halls and the strongholds that they called home. I don’t blame them. There was nothing more they could have done. Not by then.
And so our proud host broke apart, its various parts each going their separate ways, like a spear shaft shearing into so many splinters.
For us, though, that was just the start.
*
‘Why?’ Tova asks. ‘What did you do then?’
*
Most, as I said, fled back to their halls and their homes. But we, Cynehelm and his men, had no home to go back to. There were others like us too: men who had stood in the shield walls at Fuleford and Stanford Brycg, who had given everything for this land, and who weren’t ready to suffer under the rule of foreigners. We all knew that submitting to the king would be futile. There would be no mercy. Not after we’d twice risen against him. And so we bound ourselves by oaths, pledged our blades to each other’s service, and swore to continue the fight by whatever means we could. By whatever means we had to.
In all there were perhaps two dozen of us, never more than that. We were men of all ages, some barely out of boyhood while others were in their fortieth winter, and we hailed from all quarters of Britain. Honest men, noble men, fierce men, scoundrels. The one thing we had in common was that, for whatever reason, we could not or did not want to go home.
And Cynehelm was the one who led us. He didn’t think himself much of a warrior, not really, although by anyone else’s estimation he was more than competent. But then that was true of everyone who chose to ply their trade, as he did, upon the dangerous waters of the German Sea, where the sea wolves roam in search of vessels that ride heavy across the waves, laden with goods for distant markets.
He wasn’t the easiest of men to like. He could be cold and sour-tempered at times. Cynehelm Caldheort, he was sometimes called, although never to his face and only by those who didn’t know him. Cynehelm the Unfeeling. Those who were as close to him as I was, though, knew that he was a fair and generous lord, who always tried to do right by those who depended on him.
He wasn’t much to look at either. He took little pride in his appearance. He didn’t care for glittering arm rings or jewelled weapon hilts, fine-spun cloaks and ornamented sword belts, as some men did. He’d risen to his rank in life not through birthright but through his own hard toil, and he never felt the need for the trappings of wealth that others so adored. He preferred to let his deeds speak for him. Maybe that’s why men sometimes underestimated him. He was patient, or tried to be, anyway. Only fools ever mocked him, and they never did so twice. To his followers, he was someone who knew how to command respect and how to win confidence.
He was a good lord, in spite of everything.
*
‘Was?’ asks Merewyn.
‘He isn’t any more.’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘He’s dead. But I’m coming to that.’
*
When you’re out on the open sea and a storm blows up around you, you don’t try to fight the waves. Not if you want to live. No, you ride them, even if that means they end up taking you far from where you were intending to go. As the wind changes, you have to change with it. And that’s what we did.