Daughter of the Wolf (54 page)

‘Athulf brought it, with your messages. All summer, you've been sending me word.'

‘Not me.'

‘You're teasing me. Stop, please, Elfrun. This isn't funny.'

‘Thancrad' – she could hear the high note of rising panic and choked it back – ‘I never sent you any word. If Athulf said I did he was lying. That tag was stolen from me.

‘I don't believe you.' His mouth had gone square, corners tugging downwards, and for a dreadful moment she thought he was going to cry. ‘Those words, kind words...'

She half stamped her foot in frustration. ‘Call him in. Ask him, see if he'll lie to my face.'

She watched his own face tighten. He closed his fist around the silver tag. ‘Well, no harm done. You're here now.'

‘I never accepted the veil. I never said yes.' She could hear her voice shaking and she couldn't have said herself whether it was with fright or fury. She knew it happened, that a girl was taken and married by force, whether she and her family liked it or not. But she had never thought it might happen to her. Whose account of this dreadful night would be believed, when the world learned of it? She could see the avid faces, the gleaming eyes, the wagging tongues, at spring and harvest meetings. How they would relish this.

‘Don't be afraid.' He tried another smile. ‘I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose—'

‘I'm not
afraid
, you oaf.' She glared at him, her fists clenched in front of her. ‘I'm angry. Are you so stupid you can't tell the difference? Athulf stole that tag. He lied to me, and he is lying to you. What sort of loyalty is that? And you're
surprised
that I want nothing to do—'

‘What is wrong with you?' For the first time there was an edge of anger in his voice too. ‘Do you think this was my idea? Flatter yourself that you're my first choice?'

She stared at the floor, shocked at his sudden turn from coaxing to hostility.

‘You should be counting your blessings,' he said bitterly. ‘There are other girls in the world, you know.'

‘Then why me?'

‘You call me stupid, and then you ask that question?' His hurt was evident but she felt no urge to console him.

They glared at each other for a long moment before Elfrun realized. ‘Donmouth.'

He nodded.

She turned away from him, hugging her arms around her body. This wasn't about her at all. It hadn't even been desire for her body that had fuelled his assault just now. It was the land she embodied, the reed-beds and the water meadows, the fields of barley and oats, and the sheep on the hills. And not only what, but where. Donmouth, the gateway to Northumbria. Hold Donmouth, and you have the kingdom in the palm of your hand.

Hot tears burned her eyes but she had no intention of giving in to them.

‘Elfrun?'

She ignored him. She was thinking too hard.

‘You should have this back,' he said. ‘If it wasn't a token from you, I don't want it.' He took her hand and she felt him pushing the little silver tag into her palm, curling her fingers about it. But as soon he released her she let it drop into the rushes.

‘Are you going to keep me here?'

‘This wasn't my idea,' he said. ‘Don't blame me.' He was looking beyond her. ‘I didn't want it like this.'

‘Do you really think I care whose idea it was?'

Thancrad stared at her, then pushed past her and headed for the door. He shouted a name and battered the wood with his fists, and there were muffled answering voices from outside. Elfrun heard the bar being taken down with a clatter and a thump. She had thought it was still this same endless night. But the long early-morning sun came in horizontal through the doorway, outlining Thancrad in gold, and beyond him the yard was full of people.

And among all the strange faces, sharp and clear, was Auli.

Finn's eyes snapped open.

He had waited for a long time, and finally, somewhere in the midnight, still waiting, he had tumbled against all desire and good sense into sleep.

Widia had been as good as his word, finding Finn a strip of cloth to tie around his neck and support his left arm, and the pain from his damaged shoulder had faded into a dull throbbing ache and a lingering nausea that he knew would pass. Eventually.

Waiting for Widia to return, his thoughts had been more taken up with the lingering sense of bruising on his mouth, the memory of Elfrun's clumsy, reckless kisses that had come out of nowhere in the half-dark of the heddern, her passion that had touched him and terrified him in almost equal measure. Why had he ever thought, even for a moment, that it was a good idea to ask her to come away with him?

What could he ever offer her? Not just the absolute poverty of his pouch, but the poverty of his way of life, the poverty of his heart. Whenever Finn thought of what a priest might call his soul he had an image of one of those leggy beetles that run so fast, so lightly, on still water that their tiny feet only dent the surface, skittering this way and that. To stop would be to sink. So fast, so light, evading blows and attention equally. Passing across men's awareness for a moment, and then gone, like the swallows, and forgotten.

But Elfrun had looked at him. Him, not the trinkets and tat he peddled. She had turned that thoughtful, dark-brown gaze on him, eyes like pools of peaty water, and he felt that she had seen right down through the shallows and into the places deep down, where the monsters lurked. She had looked, and she had not flinched. He had a sudden tactile memory of her fingers, light as moths, on the old scars on his back.

How on earth, after all that, had he slept? And it seemed he had slept for hours.

Fully awake now, he was squatting with his back against a tree trunk, watching Donmouth coming back to life as the sky paled. It was a morning of mist and echoes, the call and response of the cocks on the dunghills, wild geese honking as they descended to the estuary. A child trotted past swinging an empty basket. He could hear the rise and fall of voices from the women's house. Those girls would have no interest in him now that he had lost his pack. Gethyn sat at his side, and the dog-boy, his twin for silence and patience, just beyond.

There was still no sign of Widia.

Finn closed his eyes. What kind of welcome would he be given at Illingham? He knew he had an obligation to go there, and to go now, and this had nothing to do with whoever had taken Elfrun. He had lied to her, saying that he would head for York. If Auli were anywhere up and down the Humber coast she would be there, and so would the rest of the crew. And he would be coming back to them with their most valuable assets squandered. Never mind the variously cheap and costly treasures from his pack – it was coming back having lost Myr and Varri that would anger Tuuri.

Holmi less so. Boys who danced on ropes were easily picked up in any market. But a good bear was hard to find, as was a man to lead him.

Varri had been an excellent bear.

Nothing to do with who had taken Elfrun – and everything. He might not know the ins and outs of the rivalries between Illingham and Donmouth, but he knew who Tuuri's paymasters were, and he could guess at which target they were aiming their first shots.

Finn stared into the darkness behind his eyelids. He should have told Elfrun everything, warned her properly, not let her touchy pride – and his – stand in the way. What business did he have hanging on to the rags and shreds of his pride, anyway? He thought of Elfrun's upright stance, her strongly marked eyebrows and the dusting of freckles across her nose. The earnest little frown that tugged constantly between her brows, and how from the first time he had exchanged words with her, almost a year ago, he had felt the urge to touch a fingertip to those furrows and make them vanish.

He should have told her of the threats that hung around Donmouth, as present to his eyes as the skeins of mist and hearth-smoke that even now were looping and curling around the low, reed-thatched roofs. But he had not told her. Stupidly, he had thought her burdened enough. And he had let her walk away from him, straight out of the stable and into immeasurable danger.

Widia thought she was safe at Illingham?

Then Widia was a fool.

The sun was rising, reddening the blood in his closed eyelids. Elfrun had been gone all night, and him just sitting here.

‘It was you. You brought that mirror.'

His eyes snapped open. The mist was tinged with gold.

The speaker was a skinny creature who looked as though childhood were reluctant to relinquish her. She wore a dress that she had clearly outgrown, all bony wrists and bare calves. It was a moment before he recognized her. Her mention of the mirror was the clue. The child from the drear November beach with her skirt full of cockle shells. Her eyes were huge, her face shining.

‘Yes,' he said mildly.

She nodded, as though satisfied with his brief answer, and hunkered down beside him. ‘I was looking for the lady.' There was a pause. ‘I even went into the hall. Her red cloak's hanging up there, so she must be around somewhere. She always has it close by her, now. Always, always. But no one has seen her.' She looked him up and down. ‘You're hurt.' An observation, that was all.

He nodded. Then, ‘Go and get her cloak.'

Her light-blue eyes widened.

‘Go on,' he said.

She looked at him hard for a moment, then slowly rose to her feet. ‘God help me if that sour-faced misery guts Luda catches me.'

She was a long time.

When she came back she was bright-eyed and tight-lipped. ‘I've given it a brush,' she said. ‘I've never seen it in such a state. And I told Luda the lady was asking for it.'

Finn reached out to touch the soft red folds, but Wynn pulled away. ‘The lady trusts me with her things,' she said pointedly, and he nodded, accepting her suspicion as his rightful portion. ‘Are we taking it to her?'

Finn made up his mind. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘Now.' He had to break this inaction or go mad. He pushed upwards, using the trunk of the ash for support.

‘Where is she?'

‘At Illingham.'

Wynn nodded thoughtfully. ‘She'll want her cloak.' She fell into step beside him, with Gethyn and the dog-boy at their heels.

The tide was coming in and the river was high. They stripped off to wade across, the water chest-deep on the dog-boy, their clothes and Elfrun's cloak bundled on their heads. Gethyn was unhappy but took to the water in the end when he saw what they were all doing.

Hardly were they dressed again – Finn taking the longest, clumsy with his bruised and swollen shoulder – when his ears pricked. ‘I can hear horses,' he said. ‘The far side of the river. Into the bushes.'

Just one horse, with a young man in the saddle, heading for the ford. He would pass very close to them as he emerged, but it was too late now to move. Finn watched, hardly breathing. He recognized Athulf at once, but, just as he had the previous morning, he kept his suspicions to himself. The men who had attacked him and Holmi and Myr had had their hoods pulled down. One stubby chestnut with a stiff blond mane looked much like another. But he had been fairly sure, watching Athulf ride out of the Donmouth yard yesterday, looking at the set of his shoulders, the defensive jut of his chin, the way he held the reins; and watching him now as he encouraged his horse down to the river's edge Finn was ever more convinced that those initial misgivings had been right.

Elfrun's young cousin, the lad with the hunched shoulders and the permanent sulk, was one of the killers.

One of the men who had come thundering out of that little valley cut by the stream and made straight for Varri, circling and jabbing with spears, howling and whooping now, and then when Myr had pushed in front of his beloved animal, shouting for help, for mercy, his empty hands spread wide, they had attacked him too. Finn and Holmi had been out on a little swampy island, and Auli further out still, keeping watch for the boat, but Holmi had loved Myr and Varri and he had gone floundering back, for all Finn could do to stop him. And then that spear like the wrath of an angry god out of nowhere, with such force, sending him flying backwards...

He still couldn't quite believe that he had not been transfixed by the spear, that his blood had not all seeped out into the brackish, muddy water of the estuary, that his body was not even now rolling, cold and limp, with the tide.

And so he should have been. But Auli had come back.

It was something he never would have expected from her, to hold him just out of the water, and half float, half drag him somehow on to the land, to stagger with her shoulder under his armpit into the shelter of the brambles.

And Elfrun had found him there.

Elfrun, who had given the cloak off her back and the warmth of her own wonderful, fragile, sturdy body to stop his life ebbing away into the damp ground.

Was it remotely conceivable that the arrogant young man who was now urging his mount up the bank only a few feet from them carried out deeds like this with her blessing? And her other men – what about them? Who were the other two members of that murderous band? Finn had looked hard at Widia and the other men in the Donmouth search party yesterday morning, but no one except Athulf had brought him that sickening lurch of recognition.

Finn watched Athulf and his little mare vanish among the trees, her wet hide gilded and dappled by the long transverse rays of autumn sun. Long experience had taught him that no deed was so bad that someone wouldn't do it; and that, no matter how dark his imaginings, the truth was usually darker still. But he nonetheless could not, would not, believe that Athulf had been acting with Elfrun's benediction, or even her blind eye.

‘One way or another, I am going to get you, young cock of the walk,' he said below his breath. ‘Let's see how you crow then.'

The hall was thronged with strangers, even though most of the crews were still down with their boats. Only the masters and a couple of men from each boat were here, but with Tuuri's own men that still meant a dozen fighters who answered to someone else, and in Tilmon's considered opinion that was quite enough. Over their heads he could see Tuuri and his crew of eastern Balts, talking in quick voices, their foreign babble which Tilmon found infuriating. Bad enough when men spoke in Danish or Frankish, which were enough like proper human speech that he could get the gist. This incessant sibilant nonsense, however, which sounded like nothing so much as the twittering of birds in the rushes: this felt like a personal insult.