“Ransom, you say?” the Erling grunted. He was yellow-bearded, wearing armour. Eyes beneath a metal helmet, the long nosepiece. “No. Not so. You drop weapons now or this one’s breast is cut off. You want to see? I don’t know who she is, but clothing is fine. Shall I cut?”
Brynn’s captain stepped forward.
“I said drop weapons!”
A silence, taut, straining. Alun’s mouth was dry, as if full of ashes. Dai was outside. Dai was outside. Had been there alone.
“Let him do it,” said Rhiannon, the daughter of Brynn ap Hywll. “Let him do it, then kill him for me.”
“No! Hear me,” Alun said quickly. “There are better than fifty fighting men here. You will not have so many for a raid. Your leader made a mistake. You are losing out there. Listen! There is nowhere for you to go. Choose your fate here.”
“Chose it when we took ship,” the man rasped. “Ingavin claims his warriors.”
“And his warriors kill women?”
“Cyngael whores, they do.”
One of the men behind Alun made a strangled sound. Rhiannon stood, the one arm twisted behind her back, the axe fretting at her throat. Fear in her eyes, Alun saw; none in her words.
“Then die for this Cyngael whore. Kill him, Siawn! Do it!”
The axe, gripped close to the blade, moved. A tear in the high-necked green gown, blood at her collarbone.
“Dearest Jad,” said the woman on her knees.
A heartbeat without movement, without breath. And then the other Erling, the second man in through the window, dropped his shield with a clatter.
“Leave her, Svein. I’ve been taken by them before.”
“Be a woman for the Cyngael, if you want!” the man named Svein snarled. “Ingavin waits for me! Drop weapons, or I cut her apart!”
Alun, looking at pale, wild eyes, hearing battle madness in the voice, laid down his sword, slowly.
There was blood on the girl. He saw her staring back at him. He was thinking of Dai, outside, that shouted warning before the hooves and fire. No weapon at all. His heart was crying and there was a need to kill and he was trying to find a space within himself to pray.
“Do the same,” he said to Gryffeth, without turning his head.
“Do not!” Rhiannon said, whispering it, but very clear.
Gryffeth looked at her and then at Alun, and then he dropped his blade.
“He will kill her,” said Alun to the men behind him, not looking back. His eyes were on the girl’s. “Let his fellows be defeated outside, and then we will settle with these two. They have nowhere on Jad’s earth to go from here.”
“Then he will kill her,” said the man named Siawn, and he stepped forward, still with his sword. Death in his voice, and an old rage.
The axe moved again, another rip in the green, a second ribbon of blood against white skin. One of the women whimpered. Not the one being held, though she was biting her lip now.
They stayed like that, a moment as long as the one before Jad made the world. Then a hammer was thrown.
The yellow-bearded Erling was wearing his iron helmet or his head would have been pulped like a fruit by that blow. Even so, the sound of the impact was sickening at close range in a crowded room. The man crumpled like a child’s doll stuffed with straw; dead before his body, disjointed and splayed, hit the floor. The axe fell, harmlessly.
It seemed to Alun that no one in the room breathed for several moments. Extreme violence could do that, he thought. This wasn’t a battlefield. They were too close together. Such things should happen … outdoors, not in women’s chambers.
The woman in whose chambers they were standing remained where she’d been held, motionless. The flying hammer had passed near enough to brush her hair. Both arms were at her sides now, and no one was holding an axe to her. Alun could see two streams of blood on her gown, the cuts at throat and collarbone. He watched her draw one slow breath. Her hands were shaking. No other sign. Death had touched her, and turned away. One might tremble a little.
He turned away, to the Erling who had thrown that hammer. Reddish beard streaked with grey; long hair spilling from the helmet bowl. Not a young man. His throw, the slightest bit awry, would have killed Brynn’s daughter, crushing her skull. The man looked around at all of them, then held out empty hands.
“All men are fools,” he said in Anglcyn. They could make it out. “The gods gave us little wisdom, some less than others. That man, Svein, angered me, I confess. We all go to our gods, one way or another. Little profit in hurrying there. He’d have killed the girl, and both of us. Foolish. I will not bring a great deal in ransom, but I do yield me, to you both and to the lady.” He looked from Alun to Siawn behind him, and then to Rhiannon mer Brynn.
“Shall I kill him, my lady?” said Siawn grimly. You could hear the wish in him.
“Yes,” said the brown-haired woman, still on her knees. The third woman, Alun saw, had just been sick, on the far side of the room.
“No,” said Rhiannon. Her face was bone-white. She still hadn’t moved. “He’s yielded. Saved my life.”
“And what do you think he would have done if there’d been more of them here?” the man named Siawn asked harshly. “Or fewer of us in the house tonight, by Jad’s mercy? Do you think you’d still be clothed, and standing?” Alun had had the same thought.
They were speaking Cyngael. The Erling looked from one of them to the other, then he chuckled, and answered in their own language, heavily accented. He had been raiding here before; he’d said as much.
“She would have been claimed by Mikkel, who is the only reason we are so far from the ships. Or by his brother, which would have been worse. They’d have stripped her and taken her, in front of all of us, I imagine.” He looked at Alun. “Then they’d have found a bad way to kill her.”
“Why? Why that? She’s … just a woman.” Alun needed to leave, but also needed to understand. And another part of him was afraid to go. The world, his life, might change forever when he went outside. As long as he was here, in this room …
“This is the house of Brynn ap Hywll,” said the Erling. “Our guide told us that.”
“And so?” Alun asked. They’d had a guide. He registered that. Knew the Arberthi would, as well.
Rhiannon was breathing carefully, he saw. Not looking at anyone. Had never once screamed, he thought, only that one warning to him, when the horse smashed the window.
The Erling took off his iron helmet. His red hair was plastered to his skull, hung limply to his shoulders. He had a battered, broken-nosed face. “Mikkel Ragnarson leads this raid, with his brother. One purpose only, though I did try to change his mind for those of us who came for our own sakes, not his. He is the son of Ragnar Siggurson, and grandson of Siggur, the one we named the Volgan. This is vengeance.”
“Oh, Jad!” cried the man named Siawn. “Oh, Jad and all the Blessed Victims! Brynn was outside when they came! Let’s go!”
Alun had already picked up his sword, had turned, twisted through the others, was flying as fast as he could down the corridor for the double doors. Siawn’s desperate cry came from behind him.
Brynn ap Hywll hadn’t been the only one outside.
He hadn’t killed anyone yet, the thought came. A need was rising, with his terror.
TERROR WENT AWAY like smoke on a wind as soon as he was out through the doors and saw what there was to see. Its passing left behind a kind of hollowness: a space