“Then it must be no small force indeed that comes at us,” added a paunchy, gray-bearded man whose face was caked in sweat. He huffed with exertion as he swung his pick-axe down, scattering lumps of newly-freed earth. “If you are sayin’ the Western March is emptied, that is…”
“It had better hope to be very strong, if it is to get by us,” Wulfstan riposted firmly, hearing the great anxiety beneath the man’s words. His own chest heaved as he brought the iron headed pick-axe overhead, and slammed it forcefully into the ground, throwing up several substantial chunks of dirt.
The men spoke with the relaxed familiarity that came from long years of association and interaction together. None of them had ever been so far away from their home villages, but their shared past and current experiences strengthened their bonds even further.
The Saxan ranks had continued to swell considerably over the past couple of days, as large numbers of the new arrivals were put immediately to work on defenses surrounding the principle Saxan encampment.
Wulfstan was glad for the hard labor, as it gave them all something to do to pass the time and hold their deep unease at bay. Most of the men had never seen more than a handful of people gathered together, hundreds at the most. The presence of so many thousands was a bewildering sight to most levy men, looking as if the entire world was coming together in one location.
For his own part, Wulfstan was slowly working to grow used to the presence of so many people in one place. It was certainly staggering to consider the vast sights around him.
Whatever others were feeling, he knew that his own state of mind had definitely been cast awry, as his recurring dream had been coming back to him on a nightly basis. The visions of destruction and flight towards the heavens continued to permeate his mind, feeling so real that he often woke up in cold sweats, with a racing heart.
Leaning on the rough wooden shaft of the pick, he looked up at the sky. With echoes of his dreams resounding in his mind, Wulfstan almost expected to see a peculiar, and conspicuous, layer of something like a cloudmass far, far above, of the purest white radiance.
“They’ll get by you for sure, dreaming while awake,” jibed the first man with a chuckle, snapping Wulfstan out of his reverie.
“It is a nice day for such,” the second man remarked.
Wulfstan smiled, heaving the pick back up to his shoulder. “Okay, I’m guilty, you all caught me. I’m getting back to work now, if you do not mind.”
He swung the pick again with renewed force, feeling the strength unleash through the muscles of his arms, shoulders and back. Ultimately and in truth, there was little else to do, other than await the certain approach of the enemy.
“You’d face an army by yourself, says I,” the first man uttered, chuckling and shaking his head as he glanced at the stout-hearted warrior.
“And what is that?” queried the second, older man, a curious lilt to his tone of voice. He rested the head of his own pick-ax on the ground, and peered out towards the plain in front of them, squinting.
“You’d better not take another break, Cenwald. Your bones are not that old. Even if you always try to make us think so. Nobody believes it during the plowing time at the village back home. We all know you are one of the best hunters and all… and I…” the first speaker started to say.
His jovial smile faded as fast as his words, as his own eyes rose upward and gazed out. His attention was drawn suddenly in the direction of the west, towards where Cenwald was staring.
Wulfstan followed their gazes, seeing the trepidation spreading on their faces. Out on the very edge of their vision, the men beheld the distant, swift movement of several horsemen who were circling about on the open plain to the northwest. The horsemen had just crested the low, long slope of a distant rise. It took no expert amongst them to immediately recognize that the horsemen were of a foreign nature.
The horses moved with speed and grace, flowing in harmony across the grassy plain. They looked to be smaller of build than any horses that the village men had seen before.
Overall, there were only a few of the galloping horsemen, but all of the men in the developing trench knew what their presence meant. It signified boldly that the time that they had all been inwardly dreading had arrived at last. The horsemen could be none other than the outlying scouts of the invaders, in the vanguard of the enemy force.
“From Andamoor, I’d say. The turban-wearers far from the north, across the seas. Their horses look fragile enough. We will see what kind of warriors they are soon enough,” rumbled a grizzled thane, standing on the lip of the deepening trench.
The thane rested his strong, weathered hands on his hips, as he looked out with a hard gaze towards the plain.
Wulfstan looked from the thane and back out toowards the plain with increased wonder. He had heard a few gleeman tell tales of the lands far to the northwest, but had never actually seen anyone from Andamoor before with his own eyes.
He continued to marvel at the swift, slender horses that gracefully navigated the plain. He did not see anything fragile about the elegant, controlled way that the riders and horses seemed to glide in harmony across the open ground.
Instead, the sight of their dexterity was at once a thing to instill caution in him. It was the first, unmistakable sign that the enemy would be coming at them with new types of fighters and cavalry, of kinds unknown to their own lands and ways.
Something in Wulfstan’s mind told him that the strange horsemen would be far from the only different element within the invading army now marching upon their lands. Yet there would be no way of knowing what was truly coming until everything was already upon them. Even then, the things that were unknown to the Saxans would be just as confusing and hard to fathom.
The enemy army would be like a dense, impenetrable storm surging relentlessly towards them, vast and mysterious in the power that it would hurl against the Saxans. In some ways, it was like the cataclysmic forces of Wulfstan’s dreams. Their promises of destruction always preceded the deep, distinctive voice that Wulfstan heard in his dreams, and the subsequent flight into the skies toward a faraway, cloud-like shape.
That thought, coupled with the cognizance of the implications displayed out on the plains before his eyes, caused a slight agitation to take hold within him. He fought an impulse to look back up to the skies, to again look for a cloud-like shape of opalescent brilliance.
The horsemen showed little worry about being seen, almost as if they wanted to herald the arrival of their army. They were not worried about silence, either. The air carried their faint, distant cries across the ground. Wulfstan held little doubt that they could have easily remained hidden if they had wanted to.
“They will camp beyond the edge of our sight,” added the thane, before returning his attentions to the men in the trench. “But the battle is not long off now. Something you must keep in mind. There is no time for delay. Finish this trench.”
Despite the strong tone to the thane’s words, there was a perceptible undercurrent of grave concern in his voice. The men needed no prodding or cajoling to achieve a greater sense of urgency.
Wulfstan barely heard the thane’s words, absently nodding, as he brought his pick up and down again. In between blows to the earth, his gaze returned to the horsemen.
To the right of his field of vision, a small group of Saxan cavalry galloped in the direction of the scouts. He could see the sunlight glinting off their iron helms and the spear-blades of their long lances, pennons flapping in the wind from a couple of them.
Even from his distance, Wulfstan could assess the differences in the two types of mounts. The strong Saxan steeds were indeed hardy, but they were noticeably slower than the breed utilized by the enemy scouts. The gap still closed as the enemy horsemen circled, yelling out some unintelligible cries at the approaching Saxan warriors.