Nicola Griffith - Hild

“Bull calf, King?”

“Bull calf. Born yesterday. Is it dead or isn’t it? Find out.”

Housefolk, alerted to the king’s early waking, hurried to bring hot water, breads, breakfast beer. One man slid the cloak from the king’s shoulders and folded it while another unlaced his shirt. His chest hair glinted here and there with grey. A puckered and twisted spear scar ran along his left ribs.

His scowl was hidden briefly as his bodyman dropped a new tunic over his head.

No one offered Hild anything.

When his warrior jacket was fastened Edwin looked considerably more alert. His bodyman was combing his beard when Forthere stuck his head through the doorway again.

“It died, King. The freemartin born with it, too.”

Edwin pushed his man away and looked at Hild. “The freemartin?”

“It signifies nothing.”

He gave her a sly look.

“The bull calf is the one that matters, lord King. The calf the colour of the Lindsey Bull.”

“Unless you’re wrong.”

“Have I ever been wrong?”

“So Cadwallon allies with Cuelgils to raise Lindsey.” He stared at the fire, calculating. “Yet no armies have marched from Gwynedd.”

“Not yet.”

“It is winter.”

His meaning was clear: If he took the war band to Lindsey in this weather and found nothing, he would have no spoil to share among his gesiths. He would have to gift them from his personal hoard. He would take his losses out of her hide.

“The armies of Gwynedd will come to Lindsey in spring. If Cuelgils still rules.”

The long silence was broken only by the crackle of flames taking hold of the new wood on the fire. Edwin was looking at her.

“How old are you now?”

“Eleven, King.”

“You want me to go haring off to Lindsey on the dreams of a maid of eleven years…” It was not a question, and in any case Hild had no answer. She simply stood. “So when I swoop upon Lindsey and slaughter them all, how will I know if you were right or not?”

Hild had no idea. “You will know.” And now her life hung on her mother’s information.

A maid of eleven years. A child.

Facing a formal summons to the king’s hall, a woman girdled and veiled would have bolstered her breasts and painted around her eyes, cinched her girdle tight to accentuate her hips and the symbols of her rank hanging about them: the keys and crystal and weft beater.

Very well.

Hild unpinned her sleeves to show arms tan and tight as a stripling’s, wore a light cloak in royal blue flung back from her shoulders gesith-style, and tucked her hair behind her ears, to remind them of a fighting man with greased-back hair.

When she was escorted by Lintlaf and Coelfrith into the hall she stopped four paces from Edwin’s great chair, rather than the usual three, to stand in the shaft of winter light so that her hair blazed more chestnut even than the king’s. She stood tall—she overtopped all but Forthere now—with her hand on her seax, and let rich royal certainty invade her every word: Cuelgils was a traitor. Remember Bebbanburg. Remember treachery.

“We will take Lindsey,” Edwin said, and not one voice dissented.

This time there were no wagons, no women, no bags packed with finery for show. There were two hundred gesiths wearing their metal wealth, with their mounts and remounts, a hundred war hounds, a hundred servants on their own mounts, a smith-armourer, and fifty packhorses. This time they ate in the saddle and slept rolled in blankets, and the outriders had orders to kill anyone—Angle or wealh, man, woman, or child—who saw them. It drizzled steadily; they rode robed in tiny jewels of rain. They crossed into Lindsey on the second day.

Everything was mud. Horses foundered. Hild, being light, was easier on her mount than most, but even so, when they reached the shallow valley of the River Trent, she felt Cygnet trembling under her, just as her own thighs trembled and her wrists ached.

The river gleamed dully, like pewter. Patches of linden woods formed misty thickets along the banks. Clearly the outriders had missed someone: the Lindseymen had had warning enough to throw down trees on the west bank of the river, branches facing the road, and to form their shield wall on the east bank.

The Northumbrians laughed. The shield wall was only twenty shields wide and three deep and the clutter thrown in their path was light; the Lindseymen had had time to cut only small trees.

Edwin ordered a halt—long enough to wipe faces and eat a handful of twice-baked road bread—while fifty gesiths and the wealh dismounted to clear the road and collar the dogs in their war harnesses. The outriders rejoined them from the woods.

The horses and wealh did the work while the fifty gesiths formed an arrow shield facing the woods. No arrows flew. Lilla and the king exchanged looks.

The horses stamped and steamed, and the unoccupied gesiths laughed and talked in great booming voices, though some were pale. All made the motions of eating, though few actually chewed and swallowed. Many threw their bread to the dogs. The dogs fought over it. In the hissing rain the noise was sudden and violent.

Hild gnawed her bread. Her mouth was drier than summer straw. But she chewed stolidly and managed to swallow one mouthful. She raised her arm to toss the rest to the dogs, then thought better of it. Some were bleeding already, seeping red under the rain, standing in pink puddles.

Hild drank from the flask of small beer at her saddlebow and forced herself to chew and swallow again. She felt strange, as though it were someone else who lifted the bread, who chewed and swallowed, who carefully unfastened the flap of her saddlebag and put away the bread. Someone else who loosened her seax in its sheath, someone else who studied the fallen leaf rubbish and thought it beautiful.

A man put his hand on Cygnet’s neck. Lintlaf, on foot. “The king wants you to stay on this side with the wealh and the horses,” he said. Hild nodded. Most of the gesiths were dismounting. “Don’t try to fight. It’s not like a knife fight. You don’t know… Forthere and his men will guard you.” She nodded again. “Forthere is angry.”

Forthere was. As Lintlaf and the rest of the war band checked their weapons and the dogs sat in a dreadful, eager silence, Forthere wrenched his horse’s head this way and that, and shouted at the wealh to stop their Thunor-cursed hand-waving and get behind those trees with all the horses, all, mind, or he would lop off the left leg of any lackadaisical lily-livered limpknob.

Hild kneed Cygnet into his path. “Are you angry with your horse, Forthere?” She nodded at the great rope of drool that hung from its bit.

“You…” His face worked. But she was the seer who had saved Bebbanburg; she was the king’s niece. She was the reason they were here.

She nodded. “Me.” She understood his anger. Forthere, giant Forthere, was used to being in the van, running under the banner or stalwart behind a shield, not being left behind to guard the baggage. “Nonetheless, have a care for your horse.”

He loosened the rein a little. “Stay behind the wealh, behind the horses, behind me. You lose so much as an eyelash and the king will have my ears.” He lifted his huge ham hand, stuck two fingers in his mouth, and whistled. A gesith looked up. Forthere waved him over. “This is Eamer.” It was the whip-muscled redhead Hild had noticed at Brough, now on a thin black gelding. “You will stick to him like honey on bread,” Forthere told her, and then, to Eamer, “Everywhere she goes, you go. Even to piss. You, her, til the Lindseymen are dead.”

The king’s drummer began the beat. Both men went rigid for a moment, like hounds pointing, as the gesiths formed up in two bands. Forthere shook himself, gathered his reins.