If he was telling me my dearest sister was still alive, that was, of course, something to rejoice over, although if she was as sick as we had been told, life could turn to death in the blink of an eye.
He could not be speaking of Rollo. He didn’t know Rollo was in danger; nobody did except Gurdyman and me, and I was all but sure now that the danger, whatever it was, had overcome him.
I thought about it for a couple of heartbeats. Go on? Give up? Then I took Hrype’s hand, jumped out of the boat and on to the Chatteris quay.
TEN
Rollo was attacked when he was in sight of the great sea that lies off the east coast of Britain. He had made his way steadily and swiftly, usually keeping the Wall in sight over to his left. As well as providing a clear aid to going in the right direction — due east towards the coast — he had discovered that what tracks and roads there were in that lonely and largely deserted country were better maintained near to the Wall.
They laid an ambush for him. The sun was setting in the west behind him, for he had been encouraged by the sea’s proximity into travelling on later than usual. Darkness was rapidly descending. He was approaching a place where the road ran down into a shallow valley, on each side of which were stands of ancient trees. Up there in the north country, spring was late in coming and the trees were only just showing the first signs of leaf. Rollo would not have thought that the stark trunks and all but bare branches could have provided places of concealment for even one man, let alone four.
It was his horse who first sensed danger. Named as she was for an entity with supernatural powers, perhaps elements of a particularly keen awareness had rubbed off on the mare. As she bore Rollo down into the valley, she must have heard, seen or even smelt something which, wise horse that she was, she knew ought not to be there.
She had been going along at a smart trot, affected by her master’s mood and as keen as he to reach the coast and turn south. Suddenly, she stopped, so abruptly that Rollo was almost unseated.
‘Strega?’ he said softly. ‘What’s the matter?’
The horse, of course, could not answer. She gave a soft whicker, and a shudder ran under the skin of her shoulder. A variety of possibilities ran like fire through Rollo’s mind: was she exhausted? Had she picked up a stone in her foot? Was she throwing up lame?
He was about to dismount and check her over when at last, and far too late, he finally took in the topography of the place where Strega had so abruptly stopped. His heart pounding, he looked on down the road and saw the stands of skeletal trees on either side. Somebody made a small movement just as he was staring at the trees on his right.
He pressed his heels into the mare’s sides and said to her urgently, ‘On, Strega, on!’ Still she hesitated. He leaned forward on to her neck and said, as close to her ear as he could, ‘Yes, I know, I’ve seen them. Now go!’
She needed no further urging. Just as abruptly as she had stopped, she started to move again, her sturdy strength taking her from standing to a full gallop in moments. Her speed took the ambushers by surprise, and it was only when they had been flying down the track for some moments that Rollo heard the whoops and yells of the men who had lain in wait as they left their hiding places and raced after him.
He knew quite soon that two were no threat, for they were mounted on old, broken ponies whose laboured breathing was audible across the rapidly increasing distance between them and Rollo. Soon his swift glances over both shoulders told him that it was now between him and the two remaining men.
He knew what he would have done in their position. The track went on through the valley in a wide curve to the right, and the shortest distance to the far end was to cut across the curve. While the land inside the curve did not look secure enough for Rollo to risk it — what would happen if he floundered in a patch of boggy ground or if Strega failed to clear the fast-flowing stream that rushed through the valley? — he would, had he been one of the pursuing pair, have taken that chance and hastened to cut his quarry off as he hurried along the road.
He heard a shouted conversation between the two men, although they spoke in a language he did not understand. He was pretty sure what they were saying, however, and very shortly afterwards, he saw with dismay that his assumption was right. One man remained right behind him; his horse was perhaps not quite as swift as Strega, but it was close. The second man cracked his fist down hard on his horse’s rump, yelled something in a high, wild voice and, with a fierce tug on the reins that had his horse jerking its head in pain, plunged down off the track and across the green grass of the valley.
Rollo’s years of experience had taught him not to waste time worrying about things that might not happen. The second man was now some distance away, and Rollo would deal with him when the time came. For now, the man behind him was alone.
Rollo pulled Strega up, drew his sword and spun round. The man had less secure a control of his mount, and it seemed, in addition, that Rollo’s unexpected move had taken him unawares. Leaning back in the saddle in what appeared to be a hopeless attempt to slow his horse’s pace, he kept on riding, straight at Rollo, a long, wickedly pointed knife in one hand and a shorter stabbing knife between his teeth. His dark eyes blazed with blood lust; he was going in for the kill.
As the man drew level, Rollo nudged Strega with his knee to make her step aside. There was little need even to swing his sword — he could simply have held it out — but he swung it anyway.
The man’s head was sliced from his shoulders, and it bounced away across the springy turf. The body remained upright in the saddle for some ten or twelve paces, and then the horse — perhaps aware of a sudden lack of control, perhaps simply alarmed at the smell of blood — abruptly swerved, gave a couple of bucks and threw the headless body to the ground. Then it gave a shrill whinny and, turning, galloped away, back along the track towards the last of the sunlight.
Rollo gathered Strega’s reins, spoke some quiet words to her and then urged her on down the track. He could hear shouts and blood-curdling yells from the two men behind him — much closer now — and Strega needed no spurred heels to tell her she had to hurry. Rollo made himself concentrate on the ambusher who was attempting to head him off, realizing with a feeling of sick dread that the man was well over halfway across the valley and going fast.
It was going to be a race.
Rollo had the advantage of firm ground, but his pursuer had a lot less further to go. Rollo went through the options that would be open to him when the two of them came face to face. None was very attractive. None gave him better than fifty-fifty odds.
As he and Strega flew down the track, he was already calculating. He must get to the interception point first, for then, even if he did not have time to evade his pursuer, at least it would be he who selected the staging of the fight between them. He watched the other man, and it seemed to Rollo that his opponent’s lead was slowly being eroded.
Had he hit wet ground? Was that bright green grass not as firm beneath his horse’s hooves as he had hoped?
The man and his horse were approaching the stream that hurried through the valley. The track remained on higher ground and avoided it, but anyone cutting across the valley would have to ford it, wade through it or jump over it at some point. Rollo watched as the man looked frantically to his right and his left, trying to decide where best to cross.
From the vantage point of the higher ground, Rollo could have advised him. The obvious place was a stretch of water that looked shallow, for it was broken up by what appeared to be stones and boulders on the stream bed. To someone on the same level, it probably looked like a man-made ford.