Bile churns in her stomach. Even though she’s trying not to get too close, death’s odour fills her nose. Like the slaughter yard back home in the weeks before winter, when the pigs and cattle they can’t afford to feed through the cold months have to be killed so that their meat can be salted. And yet not like that at all.
That’s not all that she can smell, either. There’s something else. It clings to her throat and to the back of her mouth, sharp and bitter and dry.
Smoke.
With the mist all around she can’t see where it’s coming from, but there’s no mistaking it. And if there’s smoke, there must be something burning. She’d like to believe it’s a hearth fire, but she knows that’s only wishful thinking. She glances at the others; they’ve smelt it too.
Beorn climbs back into the saddle. ‘Stay close to me,’ he warns, hefting his bow and nocking a feathered shaft to the string.
‘We shouldn’t be here,’ Merewyn says. ‘We should go back the way we came.’
‘Quiet,’ he says while he looks about, watching the mist for signs of movement. ‘They should be long gone by now, but in case they aren’t, let’s not take any chances.’
They ride on, the scent of smoke growing ever stronger. Through the swirling, all-enshrouding gloom rise the sharp lines of a hall. Or what used to be a hall. Only one corner still stands. Of the rest, nothing but two rows of stunted, blackened timbers, collapsed roof beams and ash. Beyond, the remains of several other houses and outbuildings, laithes and pens. From one, a smell like that of roasted pork, but which Tova knows isn’t. Feeble wisps rise where the wreckage still smoulders.
And there are the rest of them: too many to count, even if Tova wanted to, which she doesn’t, but at the same time she can’t tear her eyes away. Men and women alike, some with spears and hayforks and hoes in hand or close to, their features blackened by fire, disfigured by the sword, missing eyes and noses and hands and feet, with wounds to their faces and their backs and their chests. Pink tendrils spill out from gashes in their bellies; carrion birds flock about them, picking at the shining kets. Eyes black as jet stare back accusingly, suspicious of the newcomers who have arrived uninvited to their feast. Strings of flesh trail from their beaks.
That’s the last thing she needed to see. Her stomach lurches again, and this time she knows she can’t keep it down. She lets the reins slip from her grasp as she bends over, and then it comes, sharp-burning, rushing up her throat, spewing from her mouth in a long stream that dribbles down her chin. Again it comes, and again, and again. Each heave worse than the first. She wipes a sleeve across her mouth and spits once, twice, three times, trying to get rid of the taste, but it won’t go.
A hand on her back. She looks up to see Merewyn.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tova says, although she’s not sure why. She never imagined this, even after what Beorn told them. She didn’t believe him, but then how could she? It sounded like something from one of those poems that Skalpi sometimes asked ?lfswith to sing. Those songs of ruin, the ones that tell of long-gone times, of fallen wonders, of tarnished glories, of warriors bereft of kin and companionship, whom fate has abandoned. Tales of loss, of guilt without redemption. Tales of darkness. She doesn’t remember much of the words but she remembers how they made her feel, those few times when she was invited to sit by the hearth with the rest of household and listen. Alone and afraid. Shorn of hope.
That’s exactly how she feels now.
It’s true, she thinks. What Beorn said. Everything he told them. It’s all true.
No pigs snorting and squealing as they run wild in the fields and the hedges and the woods. No horses or heifers or sheep grazing in the fields. No chickens left scratching in the dirt. They’re alone, the three of them. And the Normans are out there somewhere, in their dozens, their scores, their hundreds, their thousands. Their raiding-armies scouring this land, crushing every living thing.
‘Better to have it out than in,’ Beorn says. ‘Are you all right?’
The way he speaks, it’s like he knows it’s something he ought to ask, rather than having any genuine concern for her well-being, but Tova nods anyway. A numbness spreads through her as she stares at the smouldering wreckage. Her world, everything she knew, is crumbling around her, and she feels herself crumbling with it.
He asks, ‘Do you believe me now?’
*
They pick their way carefully through the scorched ruins, their eyes and ears open for some sign of life, but there’s none.
‘We should bury them,’ Tova says. ‘We can’t just leave them as fodder for the beasts. We should lay them to rest properly.’
‘We don’t have time,’ Beorn says. ‘Do you have any idea how long it’d take to dig graves for them all? We’d be here for days.’
She shakes her head. ‘They deserve better than this.’