Three dead men were still draped in the trees, arrows protruding from their chests, but most of the slain lay beneath them, piled and pinioned by other dead, including some of the king’s guard. She found his staff first. It protruded from the ground like a spear, the sharpened end buried deep, and she ran to it, pulling it free before she saw him, moving toward her from the edge of the wood, covered in mud and navigating the dead with searching steps.
Then she and Alba were spotted and swarmed, the soldiers of the king rushing to inquire after their welfare, and Hod was lost to her view.
“The Northman tried to warn us. But we didn’t listen,” the driver confessed to the captain of the guard. “I thought he just wanted a break to stretch his legs and take a pisser, and the mud was too deep to slow.”
“Were they Northmen?” someone asked, suspicious. “Maybe he was in on it.”
“The Northmen sailed from Berne two days ago,” Ghisla shot back. “And we left before them. How would they get ahead of us, with no horses, and hide in the trees? I also recall the blind man pleading with you to halt.”
The guard had enough conscience to look ashamed, and Ghisla bit down on her cheek so she wouldn’t say more. The king was pushing through his men, giving orders and demanding answers, and the speculation began.
“They’re clanless,” someone else suggested. “They wore no colors.”
“They’re Bernians,” Hod said, working his way through the gathering crowd. The king turned and his men shuffled, parting for him. Ghisla stepped into the space they made, using the staff she held to clear the way. When she reached him, she took his hand and placed it on the stick.
He grimaced slightly, almost like her touch pained him, and she immediately stepped away, afraid she would bring him unwelcome attention with her care. His face was battered and one of his empty eyes was swollen shut, but he did not move like he was greatly injured, and the blood he wore did not appear to be his own.
“How do you know they were Bernians?” the captain challenged.
Hod pointed his staff toward a captured, wounded man propped against a tree. He was gray and grim, and he wouldn’t live long. “He told me they were Bernian.”
“And you believed him?” the captain retorted.
“He sounds Bernian, smells Bernian, and I’m guessing he looks Bernian too,” Hod responded, his voice dry. “There are a few of the clanless mixed in, I’d suppose, but the Bernians knew we would be coming this way and thought they could kill a few soldiers, take the wagons, and ransom or sell two valuable women.”
“Aidan of Adyar said Bernians have been attacking settlements on his border,” Alba interjected. “He claimed they’ve been doing the same in Dolphys too. They won’t fight the Northmen but are all too happy to harass their neighboring clans.” The men around her shifted in discomfort, but ceased their arguing.
“String them all up,” Banruud said. “Wounded and dead.”
There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide from the macabre display, and she and Alba made their way among the wounded of the guard, trying to avert their eyes from one horror as they tended to another. As instructed, the king’s men dragged the Bernians, both dead and alive, to the trees they’d hidden in and strung them up, one by one, a lesson to the next band of rovers and raiders who might seek to do the same.
Two wounded Bernians, seeing their unavoidable fate, jumped up and rushed the king, who stood with his back to the gruesome work of his men, Hod at his side.
Ghisla wasn’t sure if it was instinct or duty, but Hod swung his stick at their feet, taking the first man’s legs out from under him. The second man was wilier, and he dodged Hod’s staff as he lunged for the king. Hod pivoted and brought the stick down hard across the man’s shoulders and the backs of his arms. His head bounced off the ground, and he wasn’t conscious when his clansman rose up again and launched his blade at Banruud. Hod paddled the knife from the air and, with both hands, skewered the man through the back with the sharpened tip of his staff, ending the scuffle.
Hod pulled his staff free with a grimace, and the king’s guard cried out, staggered by the exhibition . . . and then they clapped.
Alba shielded her eyes and Ghisla turned away, sickened by the unending death, but she heard the king commend Hod, wonder and wariness underlining his praise.
“That is three times today, blind man, that you have saved my life. It seems the North King has done me a great service. I would not have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes.”
“Indeed, Majesty. Indeed,” the captain of the guard cried, his own amazement evident.
But Hod said nothing at all.
With the carriage destroyed and some of the horses scattered or deceased, the wounded rode and Hod and many others walked, including Ghisla and the princess, who shunned the suggestion that they ride with the king or one of his men. They’d seen too much killing and staunched too much blood, and they walked huddled together, averse to everyone else. Hod had felt Ghisla’s revulsion and her surprise when he killed the two Bernians. He was aggrieved by it . . . and unsettled.
Shock was settling in for everyone, and they didn’t get far before the king called a halt and they set up camp, circling the few wagons and erecting tents in a clearing near a creek. Hod was sent to guard the women as they washed, his blindness a convenience for the other men.
He would wash later, when the camp was sleeping, but he longed to be clean now. The driver’s whip had left a long slice from his right ear to his nose, and the brambles of the hedge had marked his brow. His left eye was swollen shut, not that he needed it. He vaguely remembered his staff connecting with his cheekbone as he was tossed from the carriage roof. He was fortunate he hadn’t impaled himself.
He listened to the women and the trees around them, standing watch in the only way he could, logging the creatures and sorting the sounds. Fires had been started, the scent of smoke and stew wafting up into the air. Both warmth and food would do the women good. They had submerged themselves completely, dresses and all, scrubbing at the bloodstains on their skirts and sleeves before soaping everything else. They said very little as they washed, their splashing, their chattering teeth, and the squelch of their clothes their only communication.
They emerged from the river, the water sluicing from their limbs, and wrung out their skirts before wrapping themselves in blankets and trudging back to the tents. He followed them silently, a shadow with a staff, and when they ducked into the enclosure prepared for them, he made a shelter for himself, grateful for the provisions he’d been allotted. He’d retrieved his possessions from the carriage, and the women’s trunks had been transferred into a wagon. They had dry clothes, and furs to sleep on.
But Hod didn’t rest. He washed and ate and crawled into his tent. His face throbbed and his muscles ached, and he could hear Ghisla’s troubled heart as she drifted off and woke again, restlessly dreaming, hardly sleeping. When she said his name, knowing full well he would hear, he rose and went to her.
The sentry outside their tent had fallen asleep an hour after he arrived, and Hod shook him awake. It would be hours before the next watch came.
“I’m awake. I’ll take this shift,” he reassured the man, who stumbled off toward his tent, mumbling a grateful good night.