Dawn Wind (33 page)

Afterwards, Owain wondered why Vadir did not let him go, trusting to his own horsemanship to be able to hang on until the horse had run himself to a standstill and exhaustion gave him the mastery. Maybe it was because he was determined that he and not his mount should choose the moment. If so, he delayed too long. Suddenly, so suddenly that for the first time it seemed that Vadir was not prepared for him, the stallion whirled about and plunged towards the thorn tree.

The low-hanging branches seemed to swoop to meet him. Owain heard the brute’s terrible scream of triumph, and a sharp human cry cut off hideously short; and Frey’s Horse plunged on riderless, then, trampling and shrieking, swung back to come at something that lay still on the ground.

Conscious of a vague surprise at himself, Owain found that he was running, flinging himself forward to come between Vadir and the trampling hooves. He heard a roar of voices all about him, men were closing in with flaring torches, and in their midst, he had sprung for the short end of the severed halter, and hung on. If he lost his hold and went down under the murderous hooves, he would be not only trampled on but savaged into wet red rags. He knew that, and he knew that swung and shaken like this, he could not hang on long. His one hope was that, even now, through the killer rage in the great savage heart, he might be able to reach Frey’s Horse and make him remember, and with the last breath almost gone from him, putting out the whole strength both of his body and the love that he had felt for the long-legged colt, he cried his foal-name over and over again. ‘Teitri! Teitri!’

He saw the wild white head upreared above him, fiendish against the darkness, and then Bryni was beside him with, of all mad weapons, a bundled-up cloak in his arms, and as the great head came down with flaming eyes and bared teeth towards Owain’s straining shoulder, he thrust the bundle into the horse’s open jaws.

The folds clogging his teeth and half choking him seemed to give him a moment’s pause, and break, as it were, the bright circle of his rage.

Screaming again, he went up in a rearing half turn, swinging dizzily on his hind legs; he shook his head, savaging at the thick folds and flinging them aside. But the fire of his panic fury seemed sinking, and all at once it was as though the familiar voice crying his foal-name pierced through to him. Slowly the great lashing forefeet came down, and Frey’s Horse gave one last convulsive plunge, and stood still.

He was trembling from crest to tail, his milky hide black with sweat, the whites of his eyes wild in the fierce light of the fire-brands, and his breath snorting through nostrils that seemed as though they brimmed with blood. But the ears that had been laid viciously back were swivelling forward to catch the tones of a dim-remembered voice.

‘Teitri! Back then! Sa sa, get back, my bold heart!’ Owain was sobbing for breath, talking to the trembling stallion pantingly, in the British tongue, as he had talked to him when he was a foal. ‘Softly, softly now, get back—back I say!’ And all the while, with his hand on the arched nose, he was urging him away from the man who lay so still under the low-hanging thorn branches.

Suddenly, like a child that is very tired, the God’s Horse ducked his head and muzzled against Owain’s heaving breast.

After that the thing was quickly over. Someone had brought one of the God’s Horse’s mares to lead him away, and Owain watched him go, then turned back to join the knot of men round Vadir Cedricson. He was quite dead; from the look of him his neck had been broken by the branches, and he must have been dead before he hit the ground. Bryni was there also, no longer drunk as a hero, but stone cold sober, as he knelt beside Vadir’s body. ‘I always said I’d kill him, didn’t I, and I suppose in a way I have,’ he said, looking up at Owain with a face nearly as white as the dead man’s.

‘It was Frey that killed him,’ another man said, and there was a mutter of agreement.

But Owain did not hear him. ‘You and I, as surely as Teitri; but himself most of all.’

He was aware suddenly of a voice that asked questions in a tone like a fox’s bark, and other voices that answered the questions. But it all seemed far off and meaningless, outside some barrier, and for the moment, even Bryni shut out, he was alone with the broken body of his enemy. He saw with a piercing vividness the white dead face, he heard the sea wind in the thorn branches and smelled the saltness in it, and the sweetness of bruised marsh grasses.

He had hated Vadir Cedricson, and now the man was dead, and because he was dead, Owain himself was free. But in those first moments he remembered the bond of the shared task that had been between them on the night that the silver foal was born.

A hand came down on his shoulder, and someone was bending over him. ‘Come—up with you. It is the High King.’ He stumbled to his feet and turned about. There within arm’s length stood Aethelbert of Kent, a knot of his hearth-companions behind him, and at his side, tall and austere, the stranger monk, Augustine.

Aethelbert spoke no word, and nothing moved about him but his beard stirring in the wind. And looking into the veiled eyes Owain felt the anger in him, for though it might be in his mind to abandon the faith of his forefathers for a faith that could be more use to him, he had not quite abandoned it yet, or he would not have felt the need to bring Frey’s Horse with him to this meeting. But at the same time he saw that the King would not deal with the affront to the God, as doubtless he would have liked to do, because of his wish to stand well with the Emissaries of Rome, whose God was one day to drive out Woden and Thor and Frey of the White Horse.

Clearly he had asked all that he needed to ask, and had already said all that he could allow himself to say on that matter, for when he spoke at last, it was only to demand, with a glance towards the body under the elder tree, ‘Was he a friend of yours?’

‘No,’ Owain said.

‘The more fool were you, then, to risk an ugly death for him. But it seems that you have some power over the horse-kind. I never yet saw any man handle the God’s Horse in his rage, and win him to quietness, let alone live to tell of it after.’

‘I knew him in his colt days, and he remembered me again. There is no more to it than that.’

Aethelbert nodded, and turning to the man who stood beside him looking on, began to say something; then with an exclamation of impatience, looked about for someone to translate for him. But at the moment, Bishop Lindhard was nowhere to be seen. Owain said quickly, ‘I have yet something of the Latin tongue. Tell me what you would say to the Holy Man.’

‘I would have spoken only some foolishness concerning the wisdom of making friendship with the mighty. If you can indeed speak his tongue, tell him the meaning of what he has seen, for he is a curious man who asks many questions.’

Owain turned to the man at the High King’s side, and found the cold masterful gaze already on his face. He began in careful Latin, ‘Holy Father-
-
’

But before he could get farther the other leapt in. ‘Ah, you speak the Tongue! I thought from the first moment that you were no Saxon.’

‘I am British, of the Roman stock. My Latin has rusted for we used it seldom in daily speech, even when I was a boy; but our priests still use it for the services.’

‘Of the Faith too, then, as well as the Tongue.’

Owain met the imperious gaze a little challengingly. ‘The faith of our fathers has not so utterly perished from Britain as maybe Rome believes,’ and felt, when he had said it, like a small boy who has loosed a bird-bolt at a man in armour.

Augustine merely bent his head in answer, and said, ‘Now tell me the meaning of all this that I have just seen.’

‘So the High King bade me do,’ Owain said. He gathered his thoughts together, and in as few words as might be, he told Augustine what he asked, while Aethelbert looked on, fingering his beard.

When he spoke of Vadir drawing the longer grass, the monk broke in again, with a gesture of one hand towards the crumpled body. ‘And this was the hazard chosen for him?’

‘No, it was the hazard he chose for himself. He knew the stallion as I did from the day he was foaled. There was a link between them always—I believe—’ He fumbled for the words he wanted; his head felt thick. ‘I think he was fated.’

Augustine was silent for a moment, and his eyes had the look of a man gazing into a far distance. ‘Fated, yes,’ he said at last. ‘The High King was telling me a while since, how in the elder Saxon-kind, whenever the people sought new pastures, they would send a white horse ahead to lead them. And now the White Horse leads them again, out of old things, into the new.’ His gaze flashed back to Owain’s face. ‘Say to Aethelbert of Kent for me that I have seen Frey’s Horse who was as far beyond all other men’s handling as though he were the North Wind, bend his neck in acceptance under a Christian hand; and I take it joyfully as a sign from my God.’

But when they had taken Vadir up, his head hanging, and carried him away, and the young warriors went back to the fires, they threw mead into the blaze for Frey, before they returned to their drinking again.

For as Einon Hen had said, the time for the Queen’s multitude was not yet.

W
HERE
the old paved road plunged into the woods, Owain checked and looked back over open country. The Intake was shining with the pale gold of stubble under a high tumbled sky. He had stayed to help them get the harvest in; but now harvest was over and it was time to go.

Bryni would have come with him the first few miles, but he had not wanted that. No long-drawn farewells at all that he could help. He had not even gone for the last time to look at Dog’s grave or the girl with the bird and the flowering branch. He had simply picked up his cloak and the old well worn sword and his small bundle of belongings and taken his leave of the household—all save Lilla, who at the last moment was not there—as briefly as though he would be back by nightfall.

This was his true leave-taking, this pause between the Intake and the Wild, and the last look back towards the familiar steading beside its wind-shaped apple trees; and when he turned his face northward again and went on into the woods towards the ferry, a part of his life would be finished and laid away behind him, and he would be walking forward into the future.

A little rustle among the bushes of the woodshore made him turn quickly, and Lilla stepped out on to the old paved road, with burrs clinging in her yellow hair. Owain’s heart sank a little. ‘Why, Lilla! What brings you out here, then?’

‘You,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I hoped that you would not be gone beyond my catching up with you. I came to bid you the Sun and Moon as your path.’ And then in a little rush: ‘No I didn’t; I came to say—don’t go, Owain.’

Owain’s heart sank further. ‘I must go, Lilla.’

‘Why? We are your people—the nearest people you have. I can scarcely remember the time when you were not here, and nor can Helga and Bryni; the hearth will be desolate without you.’

‘You’ll be going to a hearth of your own, soon. I don’t belong here, anyway.’

She was silent a moment, then she came nearer and put her hand urgently on his that held the bundle. ‘Then let me come too. I don’t mind where. I’ll belong wherever you do, if you’ll let me come too.’

Owain was silent also, looking into her small round pleading face. Then he shook his head. ‘I’ve a girl of my own, you see.’

She dropped her hand as though it had been stung. ‘Where did you find her? At the Kentish Court?’

‘She was my girl before ever I wore your father’s thrall-ring round my neck.’

‘That’s a long time,’ Lilla said, her eyes huge and grave on his face. ‘Do you think that she will have waited for you?’

He looked down at her very kindly. ‘I don’t know. But I am going to see.’

‘And if she has
not
waited—’

Again he shook his head. ‘No, I shan’t come back, even if she hasn’t waited. It is as I said: I don’t belong here. And you—you want a good steady lad of your own age, like Horn.’ How pompous and grey-bearded that sounded. Well, if it made Lilla laugh at him, as he knew Regina would have laughed at him, that would be something.

But Lilla did not laugh. She only said in a small flat voice, ‘I suppose you are right. I suppose I never really thought that you would let me come with you.’

‘I know I’m right, but thank you for wanting to come, all the same.’ He gave a little hitch to his bundle. ‘You must go home now and I must be on my way.’

‘Yes—it is no good starting on a wayfaring with the day half spent. The Sun and the Moon on your path, then, Owain.’

‘And on yours, Lilla. Life be kind to you.’ He knew that she wanted him to kiss her, so that she might have it to remember, afterwards. But the less she had to remember the better for her and Horn. So he only took her by the shoulder and turned her round. ‘Go now, and don’t look back, and I won’t look back either.’

He stood for a long moment to watch her walk away, feeling completely wretched, because he knew that she was crying. Then he hitched up his bundle again, and turned northward into the trees.