Nicola Griffith - Hild

A pile of goods for burning lay to one side of the dead fire. A much smaller pile lay on the green-and-blue blanket to the other. It was a good blanket. Rhin would be able to use it.

The stripling had curly brown hair, hazel eyes, and teeth still new enough to be straight. He went limp when he saw her, but he weighed so little the brothers didn’t sag.

She nodded at the brothers and drew her seax. “Turn him to the light.”

He struggled, but the brothers tightened their grip. She slit the tattered remnants of his tunic. Flea bites ran down his hairless chest. She shifted the seax to her left hand, laid her right palm against his breastbone. His heart beat wildly. She fixed her gaze on his eyes.

“What’s your name?”

“Lady—”

“Your name.”

“Tims, lady. Lady, I beg you—”

“Look at me.” He did. His heart steadied, then slowed. “Tims, are you from Craven?”

His heart jumped. “Lady—”

“Sshh, sshh. No matter.” His heart slowed again. “Tims, answer me now. Are you willing to do honest work?”

“Yes! Lady, I swear!” But his heart kicked like a hare, and his pupils shrank to dots.

She stepped back, sheathed her seax, and nodded to Coelwyn, who shoved a spear up through Tims’s sunken belly and under his ribs. Tims screamed and writhed and Coelwyn shouted for the brothers to hold him still, still, you arseholes, and levered the spear to and fro, swearing until he found the big vein and Tims poured out, red on the bleached grass.

She toed through the pile on the blanket: a skin of mead, two good axes, a flawed beryl, a painted leather belt, and a bag of rust powder. She hooked up the mead skin, unstoppered it, sniffed. Mad honey. She poured it away.

Cynan and Gwrast hacked the heads and hands from bodies. Eadric carried them to the fire, where Oeric lifted the brand from the coals and burnt the wolf’s-head onto every forehead and hand. He hated doing it, especially the women, but Hild had said, “I’m the king’s fist and you’re mine,” and like the others he didn’t dare argue with this new Hild, hard as iron. He was hers to command.

They hammered stakes across the Gap and impaled the bodies, the heads, the hands, in a long row facing Craven, all branded with the wolf’s-head. That night, by firelight, her men limewashed their unused shields and painted a staked man and a wariangle in a glistening mix of blood, rust, and oil. Men of the butcher-bird.

Bandits would not trouble Elmet now for a while. She sent the bowmen back to her Menewood with the blanket and the axe heads. They were good blades, and the mene had no smith.

As she and her men rode north and east, the sky clouded and the ground turned soft. The sun hadn’t shone here yet, but it would; she could smell the change of weather following them. It wasn’t the only thing that followed them; but the Elmetsætne, instead of coming out to talk to her, stayed in the trees.

She told herself it was all to the good. The rumours were doing her work for her. But not far from the road a tremulous voice shrieked Butcher-bird! and a hazel tree shook as someone small scrambled out of reach.

She wanted to leap off her horse, climb the tree, back the child against the trunk, and shout, It’s how I keep us safe!

But there was no us . Belonging was not a seer’s wyrd. She held Ilfetu to a walk and didn’t blink.

They returned to Sancton at midmorning under a tattered sky. Even as she reined in, she saw the looks that passed between the housefolk. She could have made her gesiths paint out their shields but it wouldn’t have made a difference. Gesiths would tell their tales. Fate goes ever as it must.

She unhooked her saddlebags and tossed them to Morud. “Tell Gwladus to bring food to my room.” The whispers left the byre before her, running through the vill like bracken fire: butcher-bird…

She strode to the hall. In the doorway, the low morning sun caught the carved boar on her thumb and struck fire from her carnelians. Gesiths paused in their games and stared, silent, at the enormous shadow with its stave, glittering around the edges like a wight. One was Oswine, playing knuckles with Lintlaf. But no king, no priests, no Cian. Had he been and gone again? She left without a word.

She found Edwin and Coelfrith, heads together by the gate in the east hedge where housefolk were gathering elm boughs. She hadn’t seen anyone but wealh set elm aside since she was a child. The inner bark, when added to soups and stews of nettles, would thicken them enough to keep you alive, for a while.

Six gesiths, armed and armoured, stood to one side. Edwin gave no sign that he knew they were there, but they had an air of hurry about them, and their shields were on their arms, not their backs. When they dipped their heads to her ring they did not lower their eyes, and two did not bother to conceal the fact that they looked beyond her to see if she had brought her hounds: brothers who now wore shields painted with an emblem that was not the king’s boar.

She stopped outside stave-reach of the king and bent her head. “Uncle.”

He waited. She knelt.

He nodded. “Niece.”

Coelfrith sighed and the tension left his knees. Hild felt herself split in two: the butcher-bird thinking, I could take him, and the seer, I serve the king. She leaned her staff in the crook of her arm and wrapped her fingers around the ring. Hesitated.

Now the king gave her an amused look: Told you I’d want it back . “Did you bring me anything worthwhile, Niece?”

She let go of the ring and pointed up. “The sun, Uncle.”

“So we won’t need these?” He waved at the housefolk with armsful of elm branches.

“Will Eadbald not trade his Kentish wheat?”

“Of course he’ll trade. But why spend if I don’t have to?”

She turned the ring on her thumb. “The sun’s here to stay. You could plant a barley crop.”

Coelfrith said to the king, “Why risk the seed? We should save it for next year.”

“Don’t look at me. She’s the seer. Besides, she’s still wearing the boar. Even from her knees she speaks for the king. So what should the king say, Niece?”

Hild understood why the king hated decisions. There were always so many of them. “Wheat and barley both from Eadbald?” she asked Coelfrith.

He nodded. “It’s landed at Brough. It’ll come by barge to York.”

No risk of starvation, then, just silver. “Plant,” she said.

“How much?”

“All of it. But plant today. Plant now.”

“That’s what I like,” Edwin said. “Bold choice.” He held out his hand for the ring. Coelfrith moved to go.

“Wait,” she said. “Coelfrith, your brother. Coelwyn lost an eye. But he’s hearty. He’s strong. He fought well.”

After a moment, Coelfrith said, “An eye. Well, he has another,” because that was what gesiths were supposed to say. Just an eye, just an ear, just a finger. The gods gave us more than one. What will be, is.

He nodded to her, to the king, and walked back to the vill.

Edwin turned his hand over, palm down, pointing finger out. “Ring.”

Hild pulled it off her thumb and slid it onto his finger.

He flexed his hand, rolled his shoulders.

“So. Staking them out. A strong statement for a few bandits.”

“They came from Craven.”

His eyes glittered. “You’re sure?”

“You should ask Oswine.”

“Ah, you’ve seen him, then. Oh, do get up. Very well, we’ll ask Oswine. But don’t upset him. Remember he’s our honoured guest.”

He had rolled the work from his, to theirs, to hers, slick as goose grease. She would remember that trick. She wanted to stretch but didn’t want to seem too tall or too strong next to the king. “And our other honoured guest?”