And So It Begins...
Powys 867 A.D.
© Trustees of the British Museum.
The road was dust upon dust, its air hot enough to flay a man's flesh from his bones and save his soul for breakfast. Puffs of earth billowed over the horses’ knees, ghostlike, making the troop look like travelers to the Netherworld. An ill omen, some would say.
"Or possibly," Gareth said,"we resemble Mose's flight in the wilderness, without the hope of water to cool a traveler's feet and less hope of a welcoming bed at the other end.
"And I mean a good bed with someone clever in it. Not lying back to back on stone-hard ground with a war brother, gripping your sword all night."
"Which sword would that be, Gareth?" Evan grinned as the sally produced an outpouring of hoots and ribald jests from the troopers within earshot. Gareth shot a black look at the long file of horsemen riding in double ranks. Evan swiped a sleeve across his own sweating face and squinted against the noon glare.
He had lashed his helmet to his saddle, preferring the remote chance of taking an arrow to the river of sweat that streamed down his face when he wore the iron mask.
"I shall let that remark pass, Cousin, just this once," Gareth said. "It's too pigging hot to play word games. Though at least we know the crops will not mold. If Owen was with us, that's what he'd say."
Evan shifted to view Gareth, disheveled, dust-streaked and sitting his mount negligently, one knee cocked over the saddle horn. The odor of man-sweat, leather and hot horse wafted into the air.
"Crops not molding? That understates the issue. If Owen were here, he would recite how many dying months of May were unseasonably warm, going back year by year to the reign of Macsen Wlelig. Then he'd move on to how many harvests were ruined by rain or floods."
"Or hail," Gareth said, rolling his eyes. "Spare me. The good thing about Owen not coming on this journey was not listening to his cant and not jostling with him for the women."
Evan laughed as he shook his head. Owen and Gareth's longstanding public feud for the first attentions of every beddable woman suffered no lack of eager partners, the women equally attracted by the black-eyed warrior as by his blond, erudite cousin. Evan, the marriageable prize, managed his amorous encounters with more discretion.
The wedding celebration in Dyfed between Meurig, a Powys lord, and Brand of Dyfed's niece, had neatly reaffirmed the alliance between the kingdoms. It had also provided an amusing interlude from the usual routine of planting, building, and re-arming for war.
Brand, white-haired with age, and a friend of Evan's deceased father, had greeted the Powys delegation with welcoming whoops of laughter and promises of loyalty. The prescribed days of wedding celebration had been punctuated with long nights of drinking, full days of hunting and interesting opportunities when the moon arose. Evan spent his evenings with the graybeards, discussing every battle they'd seen or heard about.
Brand's niece had proved to be a homely thing, with thin lips and narrow hips that boded ill for childbearing. But her face had been luminous under its bridal wreath and almost pretty as she knelt with her new husband to receive the blessing of Holy Church. She looked less comely the next morning, when the bride joined her husband to present the twenty-four pieces of gold in virgin-price. Pale and drawn, she'd been, with shadowed eyes full of knowledge. Still, that was how most maidens appeared after being sacrificed on the altar of an arranged marriage.
Evan drank his share of wine, skirted pointed questions about his unencumbered marital state, and turned for home when the ritual nine-night of feasting rumbled to a riotous end.
Powys' political map was, for the moment, stable. To the south, Dyfed and its allies remained loyal. Eastward, Mercia was occupied with the Saxon English to the exclusion of any trouble-making. Gwynedd, Evan's vexatious neighbor to the west, had fallen into a running battle with the Norse. Longboats of fierce Norsemen struck repeatedly at Ireland, pursued by warbands from Gwynedd.
"A waste of Cavynn Gwynedd's good men, for the sake of an oath made between grandsires," Gareth had scoffed when they heard the news. "Why leave your own shores to defend someone else's?"
"We can pray it will be the waste of Cavynn Gwynedd," Evan replied, unsmiling and eyes glacial. He could always hope.
Today, though, the prospect of his ageing enmity with Gwynedd was as ephemeral as the dart of cerulean bluebirds overhead, swooping and diving in a squabble over nesting sites. Today, Evan rode bareheaded, as he caught snatches of conversation from the horsemen following. They were well within Powys' borders and another easy day to the safety of Powys Keep. They had no reason to hurry.
A man far back in the troop began to sing, an ancient lay extolling the virtues of men from Powys and the innumerable blessings that followed the birth of the freeborn.
"An equal share of the spoil!" Gareth repeated, as the warband raised their voices to take up the chorus. "If every man in the hundred gets an equal share of the spoil, what's the point in it for me, I'd like to know--what's that stench?"
Evan raised his hand to signal a halt. The line of horses behind him shivered into stillness, sunlight glancing like lightning strikes from the tips of burnished war lances and sword hilts.
"Fire," he said, as a freshet of wind lifted strands of hair from his neck. His eyes narrowed. The indeterminate features of childhood had resolved into a hard-hewn face schooled to watchfulness. Now, he exhibited no emotion as a new gust of wind blew scent to them, acrid char, mixed with something sickmaking and overlaid with the rancor of decay.
"Fires of very Hell," Gareth said, quickly setting himself to rights as he snatched up his helmet, tethered by a leather thong to his saddle. Evan searched the horizon, innocent-seeming in the shimmering heat, nascent growths of wheat glimmering pale jade under the sun.
"Smoke." Evan nodded his chin at a far-off smudge of black curling heavenwards. "Not much still rising; it must be a day old or more." His horse crow-hopped, tossing its head as the reek of smoldering thatch gusted past.
Gareth squinted west, jamming his helmet on his head. "Whose holding is this?"
“Avlach's. His manor is further south and west, in the drop of that vale." Evan indicated the place, a tiny tuck in the landscape, where the foothills skirting the mountain Cader Idris dropped away.
"How likely do you think one of his crofts just happened to burn?" Gareth secured his helmet while his horse danced under him. Familiar with war, the horses knew the signs. "Heat can set a stale pile of hay ablaze, if it was near--"
"No,” Evan said. The horses fidgeted, stamping and flattening their ears as another whiff of air spoke its news; the dust churned higher. "A simple burn of hay would not still be smoking."
He scanned the surrounding hills, one hand raised to block the glare. "I’m wondering what happened to Avlach? If there's mischief afoot he should be searching it out. Unless he met trouble, too."
"Only one way to find out." Gareth checked the knife in his boot and tapped the hilt of his sword three times for luck. "How shall we play this?"
"You're the war chief, you decide," Evan said, as he stared into the distance.
"Well and good, twenty men and I head straight for the burn." Gareth cleared his throat and spat hard as he gestured. "You split with the rest--half the men south and half north--come the whole way around and see what's out there. Troopers going south will stop at the manor and see if there's been harm."
Evan reached for his helmet. "As ever, you read my mind. I'll make a long circle through the woods ahead, though if it was raiders, I think they left." He shrugged. "It feels empty."
"We shall see." Gareth rose in his stirrups and turned to bark orders. Within moments, a detachment of horse troopers pounded west, racing flat out as they thundered after him, stalks of new wheat mangling under the hooves of their passage. White primroses were cut into pieces; some spun into the air.
Evan spared his departing kinsman a glance, then turned to the remaining men. "You heard him!" He gestured with a hand. "You lot go with Thom, ride to the manor and make certain all is well. We meet by sunset at the smoke. If you find trouble,” Evan's eye caught Thom ap Berengyr’s. "Deal with it." Thom nodded and flagged troopers as two lines of horsemen wheeled into position, spears glinting.
Evan's face set into hard lines as he crouched over his horse and urged the beast north. Someone had attacked his people -- his! -- while he exchanged mead toasts and good wishes for an ally's marriage. The rhythmic thunder of horses at the gallop pulsed in time with the blood in his veins, a logic-defying headiness of pursuit, anger and iron resolve. As Powys' king, his first duty was to protect those who could not defend themselves.
If he caught the whoresons who burned Avlach's land they would beg for death before the end.
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I'm so very proud of you and happy to see The Comrades.
You already know I love this beginning.
Where are Owen and Gareth when you need them? *wink*