But not one of them looked like Malger.
It was hard to tell, because of the fog and because they all wore helmets like the one Cynehelm had, with a piece to protect the nose, and so it was hard to make out their features. I knew, though, that Malger was short and broad of shoulder, with a round face, nothing like the riders approaching, and the closer they came the surer I was.
He wasn’t among them.
And I knew. Somehow, suddenly I knew. I could feel it right here, in my gut. Even as, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the others sliding their blades from their scabbards, I could feel a wrenching, a twisting, a churning.
That was when I heard my name. It came from somewhere beyond the rampart behind us, and it sounded like the girl’s voice. Eawen’s, I mean, but it couldn’t be, I thought, not all the way out here. I must be imagining things, I told myself.
A cry went up and I turned, and suddenly there they were, Malger and his men, half-running, half-sliding down the grassy bank with swords in hand, while others stood on top of the rampart with bows, loosing arrow after arrow into our small band. Wihtred fell and Thurgils too, and there was blood everywhere, over their tunics and their faces, blood on the frosted ground, and everyone was shouting all at once, and no one knew what to do. We were caught like eels in a trap, and there was no way out.
At once Cynehelm threw himself into the fray, yelling at us to kill them, to kill the foreigners. They had reached the bottom of the ditch, where battle was joined. One of our younger men went down to a blow across the shoulder and neck and did not get up; I saw Malger plunging his sword into Pybba’s gut and ripping it free. He was whooping with joy, and I wanted to strike that grin from his face, to bury my axe in his skull, but there were too many men between us.
Then, above the shouts and the cries of pain, I heard the shrieks. A girl’s shrieks. On top of the ramparts on the other side of the ditch was Eawen, and I knew then that I hadn’t imagined her voice. She was trying to break free from the grasp of one of Malger’s men.
*
‘I don’t understand,’ Tova says. ‘What was she doing there?’
‘I didn’t understand either. Not at the time, with all that was going on. It was only later, when I was far away from there, that I was able to make sense of it all, that I was able to work out what must have happened.’
‘And what was that?’ asks Merewyn.
‘My guess is that while Eawen was with us the night before, someone noticed she was missing. Her sister, maybe. When eventually she came back, they made her say where she’d been. As soon as they discovered she’d been with outlaws, they must have gone to Malger.’
‘But why?’
‘For much the same reasons as her sister gave, I suppose. They were scared they would be accused of conspiring against him. They were scared of the consequences.’
‘So it was Ymme who betrayed you, then?’
‘Maybe it was. Maybe she was right to.’
‘That doesn’t explain why the Normans took the younger one with them that morning,’ says Guthred. ‘All she’d done was bring you food. She had no hand in what you were doing.’
‘No, but she’d spent long enough with us to see not just how many we numbered, but also how well armed we all were. Also where we had made our camp and where we were planning our ambush. I suppose they took her so that she could show them the way. Maybe they were also thinking she might make a useful hostage as well, if it came to it.’
*
At the time, though, as I said, I didn’t know how or why Eawen was there, but it hardly mattered. There she was, shrieking, limbs flailing as she struggled against her captor. His arms were around her middle, and there I was, with the ditch and more than a dozen of the foreigners between me and her, and there was nothing I could do.
Run, Cynehelm was shouting, but there was nowhere we could go. The foreigners had us hemmed in on both sides: from the ramparts and from the track, where the horsemen were riding down any who scrambled out from the ditch. They were killing us, tearing us apart.