I shouted that I wanted them alive. “Alive! Keep them alive!”
Two of Tekil’s men died despite my shout. One had been stabbed and torn by at least a dozen blades and he twisted and jerked in the stream that ran red with his blood. Clapa had abandoned his sword and wrestled Tekil onto the shingle bank where he held him down by brute strength. “Well done, Clapa,” I said, thumping him on the shoulder, and he grinned at me as I took away Tekil’s knife and sword. Rypere finished off the man thrashing in the water. One of my boys had received a sword thrust in his thigh, but the rest were uninjured and now they stood grinning in the stream, wanting praise like puppies that had run down their first fox. “You did well,” I told them, and so they had, for we now held Tekil and three of his men prisoner. Sihtric, the youngster, was one of the captives and he was still holding the slave shackles and, in my anger, I snatched them from him and whipped them across his skull. “I want the other two men,” I told Rypere.
“What other men, lord?”
“He sent two men to fetch their horses,” I said, “find them.” I gave Sihtric another hard blow, wanting to hear him cry out, but he kept silent even though blood was trickling from his temple.
Guthred was still sitting on the shingle, a look of astonishment on his handsome face. “I’ve lost my boots,” he said. It seemed to worry him far more than his narrow escape.
“You left them upstream,” I told him.
“My boots?”
“They’re upstream,” I said and kicked Tekil, hurting my foot more than I hurt his mail-clad ribs, but I was angry. I had been a fool, and felt humiliated. I strapped on my swords, then knelt and took Tekil’s four arm rings. He looked up at me and must have known his fate, but his face showed nothing.
The prisoners were taken back to the town and meanwhile we discovered that the two men who had been sent to fetch Tekil’s horses must have heard the commotion for they had ridden away eastward. It took us far too much time to saddle our own horses and set off in pursuit and I was cursing because I did not want the two men to take news of me back to Kjartan. If the fugitives had been sensible they would have crossed the river and ridden hard along the wall, but they must have reckoned it was risky to ride through Cair Ligualid and safer to go south and east. They also should have abandoned the riderless horses, but they were greedy and took them all and that meant their tracks were easy to follow even though the ground was dry. The two men were in unfamiliar country, and they veered too far to the south and so gave us a chance to block the eastward tracks. By evening we had more than sixty men hunting them and in the dusk we found them gone to ground in a stand of hornbeam.
The older man came out fighting. He knew he had small time left to live and he was determined to go to Odin’s corpse-hall rather than to the horrors of Niflheim and he charged from the trees on his tired horse, shouting a challenge, and I touched my heels to Witnere’s flanks, but Guthred headed me off. “Mine,” Guthred said and he drew his sword and his horse leaped away, mainly because Witnere, offended at being blocked, had bitten the smaller stallion in the rump.
Guthred was behaving like a king. He never enjoyed fighting, and he was far less experienced in battle than I, but he knew he had to make this killing himself or else men would say he sheltered behind my sword. He managed it well enough. His horse stumbled just before he met Kjartan’s man, but that was an advantage for the stumble veered him away from the enemy whose wild blow swept harmlessly past Guthred’s waist while Guthred’s own desperate hack struck the man’s wrist, breaking it, and after that it was a simple matter to ride the enemy down and chop him to death. Guthred did not enjoy it, but knew he had to do it, and in time the killing became part of his legend. Songs were sung how Guthred of Northumbria slew six evildoers in combat, but it had been only one man and Guthred was lucky that his horse had tripped. But that is good in a king. Kings need to be lucky. Later, when we got back to Cair Ligualid, I gave him my father’s old helmet as a reward for his bravery and he was pleased.
I ordered Rypere to kill the second man which he did with an encouraging relish. It was not hard for Rypere because the second man was a coward and only wanted to surrender. He threw away his sword and knelt, shivering, calling out that he yielded, but I had other plans for him. “Kill him!” I told Rypere who gave a wolfish grin and chopped down hard.
We took the twelve horses, stripped the two men of their armor and weapons and left their corpses for the beasts, but first I told Clapa to use his sword to cut off their heads. Clapa stared at me with ox-eyes. “Their heads, lord?” he asked.
“Chop them off, Clapa,” I said, “and these are for you.” I gave him two of Tekil’s arm rings.
He gazed at the silver rings as though he had never seen such wonders before. “For me, lord?”
“You saved our lives, Clapa.”
“It was Rypere who brought us,” he admitted. “He said we shouldn’t leave the king’s side and you’d gone away so we had to follow.”
So I gave Rypere the other two rings, and then Clapa chopped at the dead men and learned how hard it is to cut through a neck, but once the deed was done we carried the bloody heads back to Cair Ligualid and when we reached the ruined town I had the first two corpses pulled from the stream and decapitated.
Abbot Eadred wanted to hang the four remaining prisoners, but I persuaded him to give me Tekil, at least for a night, and I had him brought to me in the ruins of an old building which I think must have been made by the Romans. The tall walls were made of dressed stone and were broken by three high windows. There was no roof. The floor was made of tiny black and white tiles that had once made a pattern, but the pattern had long been broken. I made a fire on the biggest remaining patch of tile and the flames threw a lurid flicker on the old walls. A wan light came through the windows when clouds slid away from the moon. Rypere and Clapa brought Tekil to me, and they wanted to stay and watch whatever I did to him, but I sent them away.
Tekil had lost his armor and was now dressed in a grubby jerkin. His face was bruised and his wrists and ankles were joined by the slave manacles he had intended for me. He sat at the far end of the old room and I sat across the fire from him and he just stared at me. He had a good face, a strong face, and I thought that I might have liked Tekil if we had been comrades instead of enemies. He seemed amused by my inspection of him. “You were the dead swordsman,” he said after a while.
“Was I?”
“I know the dead swordsman wore a helmet with a silver wolf on the crown, and I saw the same helmet on you,” he shrugged, “or perhaps he lends you his helmet?”
“Perhaps he does,” I said.
He half smiled. “The dead swordsman scared Kjartan and his son halfway to death, but that’s what you intended, isn’t it?”
“That’s what the swordsman intended,” I said.
“Now,” he said, “you’ve cut off the heads of four of my men and you’re going to give those heads back to Kjartan, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Because you want to frighten him even more?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But there have to be eight heads,” he said. “Isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” I said again.
He grimaced at that, then leaned against the wall and gazed up at the clouds drifting beside the crescent moon. Dogs howled in the ruins and Tekil turned his head to listen to the noise. “Kjartan like dogs,” he said. “He keeps a pack of them. Vicious things. They have to fight each other and he only keeps the strongest. He kennels them in a hall at Dunholm and he uses them for two things.” He stopped then and looked at me quizzically. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? For me to tell you all about Dunholm? Its strengths, its weaknesses, how many men are there and how you can break the place?”
“All that,” I said, “and more.”
“Because this is your bloodfeud, isn’t it? Kjartan’s life in revenge for Earl Ragnar’s death?”
“Earl Ragnar raised me,” I said, “and I loved him like a father.”
“What about his son?”
“Alfred kept him as a hostage.”
“So you’ll do a son’s duty?” he asked, then shrugged as if my answer would be obvious. “You’ll find it hard,” he said, “and harder still if you have to fight Kjartan’s dogs. He keeps them in their own hall. They live like lords, and under the hall’s floor is Kjartan’s treasure. So much gold and silver. A hoard that he never looks at. But it’s all there, buried in the earth beneath the dogs.”
