The Price of Blood by Doris Sutcliffe Adams

Author:Doris Sutcliffe Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-08-20T04:00:00+00:00

9

Once under cover of the trees they stopped running and silently gathered together in a panting throng, looking down at the village. The hall flamed crimson and yellow, white smoke rolled away on the wind and blew up the valley in ragged wisps, and the glare reddened the grey fields and streaked the river with lurid light. Men swarmed to loot it before it burned. Others were running about the enclosure, and a cluster stood about the gate, but no pursuit had yet started.

Niall leaned against a tree and passed a hand over his sweating face. His front hair broke away crisply, brittle from singeing, as he touched it. Around him men gasped for breath, tied up wounds, stared dry-eyed and bitter at their homes. A child sniffled quietly, stifling sobs, and a man called down Heaven’s curses on the heathen in a flat, lifeless voice.

“Where is their ship?” Edric demanded harshly, from higher up the hill. There was a sudden surge of movement; from where he stood the sea could be seen, blank and empty as it had been when Niall stood by the shore.

“They came down the valley,” said Niall, “Through the woods, not by sea.”

“Through the woods? But how in God’s Name could they find the way?”

They muttered and grunted, but there was no answering that.

“If they have no ship there is a chance to rescue our folk!” Cynric said quickly.

“We will need help,” Leofric decided. He had his arm round his young wife, so that they made a double black shadow under the trees. “Our neighbours—Sigebert and Ulnoth—or if we can find Odda in time-—come!”

“No sense in standing here and cursing Danes,” Edric grunted, and they stumbled away along the hillside, feeling their way as best they could over the rough ground between the trees and thickets. The moon gave them light, and the leafless trees blocked little of it, but the slope was steep, the earth slippery and sodden with rain, and now the fight was over they were bone-weary and sick with sorrow and shame and bitter anger.

Cynric had been wounded in the thigh, though not gravely, and limped along leaning on Edric’s shoulder, with Judith at his other side. Niall fell in beside Leofric, and the company straggled out behind them, grim and wretched. Still there was neither sight nor sound of pursuit; no doubt the Danes had occupation enough to last them until daylight. Niall thought of the women in their hands, of the husbands and fathers around him who could be thinking of naught else as they turned their backs on their loves, and his last remorse for what he had done left him.

They reached the path that angled back and forth up the hill to the moor, and could move more easily. Leofric roused himself to call his folk together and issue orders.

“Aldred, Eowils, help the boys drive the sheep into the moor. Wilfrid, Osbert, go with all speed to my Lady’s father Ulnoth and beg his aid. The rest of us will get the women and children to Sigebert’s steading and win their aid.

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