Nicola Griffith - Hild

Hild’s scalp tightened. A battle, shield wall to shield wall. Linden wood to linden wood. She imagined meeting a man the size of Forthere, huge with battle rage, stinking with it; dogs dripping and snarling at her legs, her arms. Sharp swords cleaving down, splintering shields, crushing skulls, slicing off faces. Men sworn to follow their lord or die. Victory or death, no middle ground. They sang so they didn’t piss themselves.

Forthere cantered off, already shouting.

“Lady,” Eamer said, and backed up his mount to allow Cygnet past in the direction of the horse picket among the linden trees.

The two bands of gesiths were now shin-deep in the river, the dogs already swimming. She was glad she had no choice but to hide among the trees, hide from the blood and the rage, the striving to kill. She kneed Cygnet forward.

The drumbeat stopped. Hild twisted in her saddle. The gesiths were halfway across and up to their chests, and the drummer held his drum high above his head. The gesiths sang, to give themselves heart, and one group swung upstream from the Lindseymen, one downstream.

The picket lines were strung between trees. Hild slid from her horse, and the instant her foot touched the ground all sound of the river and the gesiths’ singing disappeared. Gone, as though sliced through with a knife. She blinked. Pulled herself back in the saddle: the singing rising to a roar, like logs rolling off a wagon.

“Lady.”

She got down again. The sound vanished. “The sound…”

“A sound shadow,” Eamer said. “Cupped by a god’s hand. Or so they say. But I like to hear what’s happening.” He unstrapped his spear and slung his linden shield before dismounting.

She loosened Cygnet’s girth and handed the reins to a wealh, and listened again: nothing but the murmur of the wealh, Forthere’s shouted command to the ten gesiths at the edge of the copse, and the dripping in the trees. She sat on the mossy top of a limestone rock shaped like a giant mushroom cap. A sword fern grew at its base. She tipped her head back and studied the bare branches of the linden tree above. If she stood to her full height she might just touch it.

Sword fern, shield tree, and a maid whose name meant battle. Yet she was shivering.

A horse stamped. Hild and the wealh jumped. Forthere’s gesiths laughed.

The rain seemed to be easing. A few birds called from the trees. Hild pushed her hood back, trying to hear them better. She didn’t recognise their call.

“How long will it take?”

Eamer leaned his spear against the rock, took off his helmet, and scratched his head. “When fools are in charge, wise men make no predictions.”

“Fools?”

He put his helmet back on, took up his spear again. “Does war interest you, lady?”

Hild had never been asked a question by a gesith before. She looked at him afresh, at his Gewisse brooch. “It does today.”

“Then the Lindseymen should have laid trees on the far side of the bank, where we would have to climb them already tired from the crossing, heavy with water and slippery with mud. Or they could have hidden bowmen on this side to pick off those who cleared the path. They are fools.”

Hild pondered that. “Why are they so few?”

“Likely most are at Lindum, to guard the gold. If—” He broke off, slid his shield from his back onto his arm. “Down. Get down. Behind the rock.”

An arrow chunked into his shield. She stared at it. Another hissed into the fern by her feet, and then she was scrambling to her feet, leaping, up, up, up into the tree. She balanced on a slippery smooth bough, arms wrapped around the trunk, heart banging like a drum.

She peered down at the clearing. Everything moved like flies stuck in honey.

Eamer brushed the arrow from his shield with his spear shaft. The broken arrow spun away, lazy as dandelion seed, and landed in the moss on the boulder, directly beneath Hild. Fletched with goose feathers.

Sword fern, shield tree, goose feathers. Part of your wyrd.

A horse screamed and others whinnied, and whinnied again farther away. Men shouted. The sound was wavery and unreal. Hild stared at the goose feathers glistening tawny and white on the bright green of the mossy boulder.

More arrows hissed from the woods. Men fell.

Lindseymen poured into the clearing. Forthere shouted, “Shields!” and the Northumbrians—the ones not lying on the green ground with arrows standing from their chests—locked shields, and the Lindseymen, running and leaping over the fallen, parted around them like water. Forthere shouted, “Break!” and then they were all running, gesiths chasing Lindseymen. To her end of the clearing.

“Death!” Eamer bellowed, and with a clang of iron that shook the tree, he slammed his shield at one Lindseyman’s head and his spear at another’s.

A Lindseyman in a round leather helmet took Eamer’s spear under his jaw and the blade burst through his cheek. Eamer shook the man like a dead rat on a stick. Then, cursing, he flung spear and man down and drew his sword. Lindseymen, pursued by gesiths, poured around the boulder. Hild, shrieking like a gutted horse, half fell, half leapt from the tree, seax flashing.

Someone slammed into her, then another picked her up and threw her back down behind the rock.

Wealh were catching the horses the Lindseymen had loosed and killing the ones they had hamstrung. Forthere was asking her anxiously, loudly, if she was all right. Hild wiped the blood off her face with a wet dock leaf and nodded. It wasn’t her blood. It was the blood of those who had fought over her like mad beasts while she lay stunned.

A while later, she didn’t know how long, it was Eamer nodding while Forthere shouted. From this distance she saw Forthere had a dent in his helm, over his ear. Eamer wasn’t listening; he had his foot on the dead Lindseyman’s face and was trying to pull his spear free. Forthere kept shouting nonetheless. “… with her, like a burr. Like a burr. Woden’s beard, it was her they were after. The maid.” Eamer’s spear pulled loose with a grating suck. “The king wants her over on the east bank. Get her there safe if you value your ears.”

Threescore men lay twisted and burst open on the grass. A handful, Edwin’s men, were laid tidily at the side of the field, covered with their cloaks and shields, swords at their sides. A dozen or so of the Lindseymen stirred and moaned and called for water. No one paid attention. The sound scraped at her bones. She focused between Cygnet’s ears as her mare and Eamer’s gelding picked their way delicately across the trampled, slimy expanse to the leather tent where the king’s banner poles were driven deep in the dirt.

The gesiths had found the Lindseymen’s beer. One of them, with a finger newly gone and blood all over his leg and teeth, was laughing and pissing in a dead man’s mouth.

The thought of going alone into the king’s tent full of men who had just killed other men made her feel dizzy. She told herself that Eamer, too, had just killed, but still her voice wobbled when she said to him, “Stay out here.”

Just inside the tent, the king, unhelmed, stood with his naked sword in one hand, point resting on the floor, and a goblet in his other. Lilla, still helmed, red with gore, stood under the tent peak, where two short-haired men were bound to the centre pole. One of Lilla’s men stood against the tent wall, deliberately seeing nothing, saying nothing. The tent reeked.

Edwin was smiling. Blood clotted the mail around his elbow. “It’s a clear road to Lindum now, if we’re swift, and we lost only eleven men.”

“Eleven men on this side, King,” Lilla said.

Edwin ignored him and said to Hild, “You were right.” He pointed with his chin at the bound men. “Welshmen.”