Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"Eight. Eight women, twenty-one men."

"And you were left alive?"

"Not left alive. I was not with them. I arrived late, too late to help them. Could I have a drink?" My throat was raw.

"Later." He was frowning now, a deep, vertical cleft marring his open brow. "Tell me of this. Who are you, and how came you to arrive there at all, let alone too late to help them? And who was responsible for their deaths? Did you watch from safety until the slaughter had been done and then come forth to plunder the remains, or were you one of the killers?" He paused, watching me closely. "I warn you, think carefully before you speak another word."

I looked back at him, eye to eye, and held myself erect. "I rode in pursuit of the man who killed them, thinking him someone else. I saw them from the top of a distant cliff, clustered upon the sands around their boat, which had been stranded high and dry by the receding tide. Even as I watched, I saw their pursuers close with them, and they seemed well matched, man for man. I rode around and down to overtake them, but my horse was hampered by the sand, so that by the time I arrived the fighting was almost over."

The frown was still etched upon his brow. "And they were all killed, every one, on both sides?" I heard his disbelief.

"No, when I came, six of the attacking force remained alive. They were killing the wounded. It had been a hard-fought fight."

"And?"

"I killed them."

"All six of them, you alone?" His disbelief was total.

"Aye, with a bow, from well beyond their reach." I had decided, as I spoke the words, to make no mention of the man I had spared.

Now he looked back at my discarded armour. "I see no bow."

"No," I snapped, knowing I was being reckless, "nor do you see my horse. I left both on the beach."

He pursed his lips and said nothing, and the child in his arm kicked and snuffled.

I felt myself swaying with fatigue, and my bound arms burned with agony. The pain in my head, which had been dulled, took on a new sharpness and located itself, it seemed, right in the middle of my forehead.

The seated chieftain continued to bite thoughtfully at the inside of his lower lip, saying nothing for a spell, then returned to the subject of the women, asking me how they had been killed. I told him haltingly, fumbling for words, reliving the scene in which the attacking force, led, I had thought, by Uther Pendragon, had snatched up the eight women and used them as living shields against the arrows of the defenders. I avoided, however, naming names, either my own or Uther's. My own confusion, watching the affair, had been profound, since I had known neither that the man I thought was Uther wore only Uther's armour, nor that the bowmen facing him were Uther's men. I ended my recital to find myself facing another question.

"You were pursuing one man, thinking him someone else, isn't that what you said? Explain that."

"He was my cousin," I told him, reeling so the men supporting me had to renew their grip. "I thought he had killed my wife, and I had hunted him for many days. He warred against Lot of Cornwall."

That captured his interest, but not, it appeared, in Lot of Cornwall. "You thought he killed your wife? You thought? You did not know it?"

"No, I did not know, but I believed he had, and I sought vengeance. I saw him from afar, as I have said, recognizing his armour, but when I caught him, it was someone else, an Outlander who had already killed my cousin and stripped his corpse for his own use."

"So your cousin is dead?"

"Aye."

"When did this take place, this slaughter?"

I squinted up at the sun. "Today, although I don't know how long ago. Shortly before or after noon, I think. We were blown out from land and there was nothing I could do but wait until we were blown in again. I lay down with the child and fell asleep."

The man facing me shook his head in wondering disbelief and his lieutenants burst into guffaws of raucous laughter at my innocence of the ways of the sea.

"You may be fortunate we saw you before you fell beneath the horizon," the leader said. "Where did this happen, do you know?" He read the answer in my eyes and spoke to one of his own men. "Sean, how far would he have drifted with this tide, and from where, in, what, four hours?"

The man addressed leaned over the side of the rail and then looked up at the mast top, to where a banner fluttered. Then he leaned outboard, hawked and spat, watching his spittle fly off with the wind. His voice, when he spoke, was peculiarly high, almost a falsetto, a grotesque sound to issue from so big a man.

"Six leagues? Eight? Perhaps ten. The tide is to the east, so the place lies west, and northward."

"How long to get there? Do we have the time?"

Again the squint up to the masthead. "We have a wind, not much, but it should do. With all men on the oars, we could be off the coast close to the place by nightfall, if we go now."

"So be it." The chieftain looked back at me. "You have until nightfall, if we reach the coast, otherwise till morning. The truth or falsehood of your words will be plain when we find the spot." He paused, his head cocked to one side, looking at me obliquely.

"The resolution lies with you, so I hope you will recognise the place we seek. Failure to do so will prove you have lied, and you will die." he spoke to one of the others. "Cut him loose and find him somewhere to lie down until we sight the coast, and give him some water and a bite to eat." Then to me again, "Rest yourself well, Yellow Head. You will have need of all your faculties."

They cut my bonds and led me to the corresponding platform at the decked-in front part of the boat, where they gave me to eat and drink and threw me a skin to sleep on. I drank the water thirstily but fell into sleep before I could eat the bread.

My body stiffened while I slept, so that by the time someone shook me awake my aches had settled deeply into my bones and I had a hard time rising to my feet, beset with cramps and pains and a head that threatened to burst apart with the clamour of my surging blood. That possibility concerned me, for I had twice in recent years been saved from death by the ministrations of a trusted friend whose skills in medicine had prompted him to drill a hole in my head to relieve the pressure of blood on my brain, what he called hematoma. Once upright, I leaned for a spell against the fore part of the ship, close by the great, thrusting dragon's head, allowing the gusting wind to clear my head and ignoring the jostling of the fellow sent to fetch me. I braced myself against the surging deck, stretched myself to my full height, closed my eyes and drew deep, steady breaths, holding each one for a count of three before expelling it completely and filling my lungs again.

The exercise worked, and calmed me to the point that I could tell the present pounding in my skull bore no resemblance to those other, far more ominous headaches I had known. The root of this one lay in the hard, flat metal of the weapon that had hammered me to the deck, bruising my neck and shoulder, both of which ached in concert with my head.

As my various pains died down and I approached mastery of myself once more, I realized that I had awoken to noises that were alien to my ear and offered nothing to appease my aching head: the steady, rhythmic pounding of a deep drum that was not, as I had thought at first, the surging of my own blood in my head; the creaking, grunting, strangely shuffling rhythm of the oarsmen; the groaning of straining ropes and the thin, shrieking whistle of the wind; and among all these, the constant, wailing shriek of a hungry child.

I rubbed the sleep crust from my eyes and followed my escort back along the length of the galley to the stern platform, and the first thing I noticed as I set out was the angle of the great cross-spar on the mast. A strong wind had sprung up, and the spar now slanted right to left from fore to stern to catch its full power. The bellied fabric of a mighty sail swelled out above me, blocking out the sky, angled away from me so that I looked into the cup of it, its heaviness anchored to a second great spar high above that must have overlain the lower one when the sail was lowered. Now I could see that both spars were tethered to the mast by large iron rings bolted firmly to the spars themselves, and held in tension by a bewildering array of tight-stretched ropes that permitted the angle of the spars to be changed to catch the wind. I glanced to my left then and saw the shoreline of Lot's kingdom, and below me the swaying bodies of the oarsmen moved to the steady tempo of the drum, thrusting the vessel forward so that it seemed to skim over the surface.