The gale roared past and faded, although the treetops still shook and danced. It was no beast after all, merely an unnatural blast of wind. The rain eased a little.
“Ah!” Erkanwulf managed something like a grin; his face was a smudge against the darkness. “It hurts!”
“Damn. Damn.” It seemed everyone he traveled with ended up in worse trouble after knowing him!
“I should have known better,” continued Erkanwulf through gritted teeth. “I had a cousin who was killed by a falling branch in a windstorm. Ah! Eh! Leave it be a moment!”
Ivar got to his feet and wiped moisture from his brow, trying to clear his sight. His hair was soaked. His leggings sagged and slid as the strips of cloth loosened, and his boots made a stropping sucking sound with each step as he came around the tree and peered into the darkness.
The lights were strung out not twenty paces from him. He shrieked because he was so surprised, and pressed the ring Baldwin had gifted him to his lips, praying.
“Who are you?” called a voice out of the night. It spoke Wendish.
“I’m just a messenger. No one who means any harm. My companion is hurt. I think his horse is dead. I can’t shift it off him. I pray you. Help us. Or leave us alone.”
The lights circled in like wary dogs and resolved into lanterns cunningly protected from the rain by caps of bronze and walls of a bubbly glass that made the flame within dance in weird distortions. Hooded figures carried the lanterns. There were four of them, whether men or shades he could not tell because they wore cloaks drawn tightly around their bodies. Most strangely, they were all barefoot.
“Have you any weapons?” their leader asked. “Throw them down, if you please. We don’t mean to hurt you. We’re not bandits, not like those we’re hunting.”
“I can’t fight one against four!”
“If you won’t throw down your weapons, we’ll leave you here in peace, but we won’t help your companion.” There was a pause as the one who spoke raised his lantern higher to get a look at Erkanwulf and the two horses, one down, one holding still with head up and eyes rolling white. Erkanwulf had either fainted or was playing at it. “Good mounts. Pity about that one, but if it’s dead or broke a leg, it’ll make a good stew.”
“Who are you?” Ivar didn’t dare surrender his precious weapons to bandits.
“We’re King Henry’s men. We got a charter some years back to keep this road through the Bretwald free and clear. He made us free of service to any lord or lady. We’ve kept our word to him. That’s why we were hunting bandits. There was a problem a month back. Honest folk got attacked. It’s not a good time to travel.”
“Aye, Martin,” interjected one of his companions. “And no better to be standing out here in this rain and storm, you lackwit! What if that wind comes howling back and kills the rest of us like it killed that horse? This rain and storm are bad enough, but that gale was something out of the Abyss! I’m not waiting out here any longer! If there’s just two of them, they’re scarcely that mob of bandits what set on those merchant wagons, can they be?”
It was a woman who spoke, and a woman who set down her lantern with a grunt of disgust and walked over to the fallen horse’s head and knelt beside it, pulling back one eye. “It’s dead. Here, you!” She gestured impatiently to Ivar. “Come help me get your friend loose.”
She was strong. Together, they shifted the shoulders of the horse enough for Erkanwulf to scoot free. When her hood fell back, Ivar saw she was young, with old scars on her face suffered in a battle or a burning.
“Ahow!” yelped Erkanwulf, but although bruised and in a great deal of pain he stood on his right leg and gingerly moved all the joints in his left one by one—hip, knee, ankle—even though his ankle hurt so badly he couldn’t stand on it. The curve of the ground had kept the horse’s full weight off him, and the dense cover of leaf litter and debris had offered enough cushion that he evidently hadn’t broken anything.
The horse, however, was quite dead.
“If we leave it out here,” said the one called Martin, “the wolves will eat it before we can get back to butcher it. There’s a fair bit of riches in that horse!”
“It’s my horse!” said Erkanwulf. “Given me by Princess Theophanu’s steward!”
Martin had the confident bearing of a young man accustomed to working all day at things he was good at. “A princess’ steward, eh? Is she one of King Henry’s children? I can’t recall them all. We’ll put you up until your leg is better, and make a decent trade to you for what we take of it. We could use horsehair. No one in the village owns a horse. The froth meat’ll go bad if it isn’t used at once. And the wolves’ll take it all if we don’t get moving. We’ll have to cut it up and hang it after.”