I said, I can’t just stand by and let these wrongs go unpunished. Not after everything I’ve seen. After everything we’ve fought for.
They began backing away, with the dog following. ‘Then take your fight somewhere else. Somewhere far away. We’ve seen enough troubles here already. I beg you, don’t bring any more upon us.’
Help us, I said.
It was a desperate plea, I knew it was, and there was something inevitable in the way Ymme shook her head.
‘No. Don’t ask us to help. Just go, please.’
At least promise you won’t tell anyone you saw us, I said.
‘Only if you swear that you and your friends will leave.’
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Wihtred shoot me a questioning glance, but he knew better than to say anything.
And I swore. I gave my oath to her. An oath that, even then, I wasn’t sure if I could keep.
‘Then you have our promise too,’ Ymme replied. She turned to go, beckoning to her sister, who was staring us up and down, partly in wonder at being in our presence, I think, but also partly in dismay because of what I’d just sworn. I remember exactly what her face looked like then, the way her cheeks shone pink with the cold of the day, her fair hair all a-tangle, and I remember as our gazes met seeing in her eyes something else. Something that I hadn’t seen in a long time, and haven’t seen since.
Hope.
And right then, seeing the young one’s face, I saw how much she was depending on us. How much she wanted to believe that we would do what we had intended. We were the only ones who could help her and her folk. There was no one else. And, in the end, that was what swayed me.
It’s strange, I suppose, what makes us choose certain courses over others. But as I watched those girls and their hound disappear into the woods, I was more sure than ever that what we were doing was right.
Malger had to die.
*
‘So you didn’t mean what you said?’ Mereywn asks. ‘When you swore you’d leave.’
‘I thought I did,’ says Beorn. ‘I was wrong.’
The fire has begun to dwindle; small flames dance and flicker amid the embers, and their light plays across Beorn’s face, making strange shadows of the pits of his eyes and causing his yellow teeth to gleam.
Oslac yawns noisily, deliberately. ‘When will you get to the point?’
‘Am I boring you?’ he asks. ‘I thought you were the one who wanted to hear it in the first place.’
‘I know, and I’m thinking now that I made a mistake.’
‘The sooner you shut up, the quicker it’ll be over.’
Oslac scowls again but says nothing.
*
Late that night, after Gamal and Sebbe had come back from their scouting, we held a council of war. It had been a few hours since we’d returned from our meeting in the woods and Cynehelm’s mood had been steadily darkening. Doubts were creeping into his mind, and the longer we spent discussing what we should do the angrier he grew. He wasn’t usually one to let his frustrations show, but he was angry then, and everyone knew it as they sat waiting for him to speak.
This threatened to ruin everything, he said. If the girl spoke—
She won’t, I told him.
And why not?
Because she gave her oath that she wouldn’t, and I believe her.
Her oath is worth nothing to me. Not when our lives are at stake. How could you be so careless as to let them find you in the first place?
It was fate.
It wasn’t fate, he snapped, and he told me not to be foolish. For all we know, he said, word has already reached Malger, and his men are searching for us as we speak.
No, I answered. They’re hardly going to venture into the woods after dark, when they could easily be ambushed.
We have to leave, he said. Before first light, before they come looking for us.
There were footsteps then, a rustling in the bracken, and we all looked up at once, drawing our weapons as we turned to face whoever it was, expecting the worst.
But it was only long-faced Pybba, one of those keeping watch that night. With him, though, was another figure, shorter and clad in thick wool. It was the girl from earlier. Not Ymme. The other one, the younger of the two. Pybba said he’d found her, or rather she’d managed to find him, which we all thought strange until it emerged she’d heard him pissing against a tree. She’d said she was looking for the outlaws, and since he didn’t know what else to do with her, he decided it was best to bring her straight to us.
She looked terrified, and no wonder, seeing all of us turned towards her with bared steel in hand. I suppose she must have had some idea of what to expect after meeting Wihtred and myself, but even so we must have looked to her a rough lot, dirt-stained, bruised and travel-worn, dark under the eyes from so many sleepless nights. At last her gaze settled upon me. Seeing a face that she recognised seemed to calm her a little.
Leofstan asked me if this was the girl we had met that afternoon, and I said yes, one of them, anyway.