Storm of War by Peter Gibbons

Author:Peter Gibbons [Gibbons, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books

18

Beornoth’s warriors stood ready in two blade-bristling ranks, spears poised and resting on shield rims so that the throng before them faced a wall of painted shields and war iron. They formed up before where a group of villagers broiled, shouting and brandishing wood axes and hoes. Two of the villagers held torches, the light from them catching on the spears and helmets of Beornoth’s warriors. Beornoth strode from the tavern clutching Osric’s sword which had hung on the edge of an ale table. It had been Osric’s father’s sword, a fine blade in a red fleece-lined scabbard, the hilt wrapped in silver wire. Beyond the villagers, mounted warriors milled in the tangle of Crowsford’s lanes, shouting and growling, iron in their fists. The riders emboldened the villagers, who would not have stood so bravely alone in the face of a well-armed war band.

Osric’s surviving warriors came through the tavern door behind Beornoth and came to a stop before him in a line, cowed and shuffling their feet. Their Lord was dead, their ring-giver, and they had done little to prevent that. Wulfhere and Brand came out behind them, with Wulfhere ushering a straggler on with the long haft of his axe.

‘They don’t look like much. These lads are broken men,’ said Wulfhere, shaking his head in pity at the warriors. ‘It’s no simple thing to see your Lord killed, making you a masterless man. I know and remember it well. It’s like an icy blade plunging into your heart.’ Beornoth had captured Wulfhere when he was a masterless man, roving the land as a thief and a brigand. It was the fate a warrior feared most, to have his status and reason for being stripped away by the death of the Lord he had sworn to protect. Such a man had to find a new Lord quickly, or he was deemed a man outside of the law and could legally be hunted and killed.

‘Who in all hell are they?’ asked Wulfhere. He squinted into the darkness, but it was hard to make out the riders beyond the glare of the villager’s torches. ‘If they are Osric’s men, they could ride us down and kill us here. These pitiful bastards wouldn’t be slow in joining them.’ He jutted his chin at Osric’s sullen warriors.

‘Let’s find out. I want no more Saxon blood spilt if we can help it.’ Beornoth marched towards his men, holding the Ealdorman’s scabbarded sword high above his head, his hand gripping its centre to show that he did not mean to use the weapon. Wulfhere was right, and if the horsemen were fresh warriors sent for by Osric to help protect him from Beornoth, then it would be a grim fight in the streets of Crowsford, and the men on horseback would have the advantage, striking from the backs of their mounts, and the power of their warhorses would scatter Beornoth’s men like chaff. His men had left their own horses at the edge of the

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