We asked around in case any of the villagers had heard anything of Bleddyn or Eadric’s movements, or indeed of King Guillaume’s army, which could not be far away either, but met without luck, and I regretted having killed all of the foemen without taking the chance to question them first. Still, we now at least had a little more hope of being able to defend ourselves. To add to the weapons we already possessed, we now had four new round shields, and the same number of spears and knives and leather jerkins of varying sizes reinforced with steel studs, and one sturdy helmet with a chain curtain to protect the neck that I claimed for myself. With us too we took the four ponies. All were headstrong and determined but hardy beasts that I reckoned might well have seen battle before. And so, mounted and armed, we began to look like something resembling a war-band.
Having warmed to us, the old priest bade us stay and share a repast, but I declined. The days were growing shorter, I explained, and we needed to make the most of the light while we had it if we were to catch up with the king and his host. He understood, although he still insisted we take something in return for our good work. Thus we left that place, our packs filled with rounds of cheese and bundles of salted mutton and fish, while their thankful cries rose to the heavens behind us.
But food was not foremost in my mind. No, what I hungered for was the sword-joy, the thrill of battle. This morning had only given me the briefest taste, and I was still far from sated.
We ventured north in search of the ancient trackway known to the English as W?clinga Str?t, where Mildburg had seen the royal army. Of the people we met along the way few knew anything of the king’s progress from Lundene. Occasionally we would find someone who claimed to have glimpsed such a host within the last week, or knew someone else who had, though whether it was Welsh or English or Norman they could not say. Like Mildburg they hadn’t dared to approach too closely, but at least she had managed to tell me roughly how many they numbered and the colour of their banners, none of which they knew. I was beginning to think she was the bravest person in all of Mercia, for she had managed to bring us more useful news than anyone.
We reached W?clinga Str?t late that afternoon and immediately saw the churned-up turf where many hundreds of hooves and feet had passed.
‘How recently were they here?’ I asked?dda.
‘It’s hard to say,’ he replied with a shrug as he crouched down and examined some of the tracks. ‘As much as a week ago, possibly more.’ He rubbed his fingers in a trampled mound of horse shit and then wrinkled his nose as he sniffed at them. ‘By the smell of it I’d say this is already several days old.’ He glanced about at some of the gouges that the horses’ shoes had cut in the mud. ‘Whoever came this way, they came upon large animals; you can tell from the depth of the hoof-marks here that these were no mere ponies.’ He gestured at the animals we had captured earlier that day. ‘Not like those.’
‘You think this was King Guillaume’s host?’
‘Without a doubt, lord.’
That night we camped within the ruins of what I guessed must once have been a Roman house, an arrow’s flight from the road. The roof-tiles had long since fallen in, but there were new beams and a layer of thatch over the largest chamber, suggesting someone had been here not long ago, and from the droppings on the floor I guessed it had been used as a barn. We sheltered in there, making a fire close by the entrance where the smoke could escape, warming ourselves beside it and watching flickering light play across the walls with their crumbling plaster and the faded images of people and wild beasts that long ago had been daubed thereon.?dda, Galfrid, Odgar and myself took it in turns to keep watch through the night, and in the morning we followed the old road for another few miles before, without warning, the tracks veered away to the right.
‘In that direction lies St?fford,’ said the monk Wigheard, who alone among all of us had any knowledge of these parts.
St?fford. According to some of the tales that was where Bleddyn had made for following his victory at Scrobbesburh. We were growing closer. Although if these tracks were a week old as?dda said, that suggested the battle had already been fought and won without us. Or lost, said a small voice in the back of my mind, and I tried to silence that thought, but over the hours that followed it kept returning.
To that end I kept scouting, riding from copse to copse and ridge to rain-battered ridge, crossing thickly wooded valleys in search of any sign of friend or foe, covering so many miles that by evening my stallion was growing irritable. He was called Fyrheard, which meant ‘hardened by fire’. The name, it was said, had been given to him when he was a foal, after a stray spark from a groom’s lantern had happened to set the fresh straw in the stables alight. Fortunately the same groom had also neglected to bolt the doors and the young horse had managed to escape the blaze before it consumed the building entirely, though they said he was much changed by his ordeal, and afterwards grew ever more aggressive and wilder in spirit: qualities which made for a good warhorse. I had purchased him in case Nihtfeax should ever become injured or sick, and through the winter had begun to train him to the lance and the melee. He had much to learn and was still lacking in the stamina that a destrier needed, but he showed promise.
Now, however, as the sun burnt low in the western sky, Fyrheard was flagging. I coaxed him on, up to the brow of the next hill, promising myself that after this we would turn back. These were not the long evenings of summer, when the light lingered for many hours after sunset; the nights in late September had a way of setting in faster than one expected. I did not trust myself to be able to find the way back to the others in full darkness.
Each step was a struggle; Fyrheard was not in the mood for climbing, but I was determined not to let him have his way and so I urged him on, following a winding deer-track up the hill until we came to the top and I could gaze out over the river plains below-
Where the corpses of men and horses lay in their dozens and their scores and their hundreds, with the shreds of banners and pennons lying blood-stained in the dirt beside them. The dying sun cast a powerful reddish glow upon everything that put me in mind of the wastes of hell as Father Erchembald sometimes described them, and the putrid stench wafting on the breeze only helped to strengthen that impression.
I descended the slope towards the plains. Small fires, long since burnt out, and the remains of tents were scattered across the valley. There had been a camp here, though whether it had belonged to the king’s men or the enemy was not easy to discern. The corpses themselves offered little clue, so disfigured were they by wounds and the depredations of the carrion beasts. But as I grew closer to what must have been the heart of the camp I spied wooden plates and drinking cups lying abandoned beside the fires, some with scraps of food still left upon them, as well as a couple of tattered cloaks stitched together from various furs such as were favoured by the Welsh. The stricken banners and pennons were not ones that I recognised, and that I took for a good sign.
That was when I noticed the women — about a dozen of them — moving close to the edge of a copse that ran along the riverbank. Their dark robes marked them out as nuns, and at first I wondered what they were doing, until I saw the wagon piled high with bodies. A great ditch had been dug in one corner of the field, into which they tossed the dead without much ceremony. Elsewhere a pair of oxen had been yoked together, but they were dragging not a plough but the rigid body of a horse. Its side had been carved open by a spear, and out of the wound trailed what was left of its innards; flies swarmed around it.
‘Hey,’ I called, waving to catch the nuns’ attention as I rode towards them. ‘Hey!’
Even though I rode alone they were wary of me at first, and understandably so. The scabbard belted to my waist would hardly have escaped their notice, and neither would the helmet upon my head, but I dismounted and spread my arms wide to show that I meant them no harm.