Page 33 of Warrior Queen
I stood in my stirrups. “Run!”
They ran.
We scattered down the side roads and between the buildings, shouting to the people still inside the houses to get out and run. Chaos. Men shouting. Women screaming. Children wailing. The inhabitants rushed into the streets, faces white with fear, clutching babies to their chests and dragging small children by the hand. Dogs ran everywhere, barking excitedly as though this were some kind of game. And from the lean-to hut beside the church, a tall, thin man in long brown robes emerged, the pate of his partly shaven head gleaming in the sunshine.
A deceitful blue sky burned overhead, as though challenging that this was a day of danger.
“To the forest,” Merlin shouted, as people ran past him in all directions. “Go east. Run. Leave everything and run.”
A few people were trying to load handcarts. Some, rendered ham-fisted by terror, harnessed nervous bullocks to heftier vehicles.
“You don’t have time,” I shouted at a pot-bellied, middle-aged man trying to pile all his worldly possessions onto an ox cart. “They’re less than an hour away.”
The man glared up at me as if I were mad. “I won’t leave everything I’ve worked for to those heathens.”
Merlin swung his horse around. “Better to leave them than to leave yourself. They don’t take prisoners. Not unless they’re young and pretty, which you’re not.”
Indecision flitted across the man’s ruddy face. Then, as his portly wife waddled out with an armful of bedclothes, he grabbed her with no more ado and heaved her into the driving seat. Springing up beside her with amazing agility for his age, he cracked his whip at the pair of rust-red oxen, and the cart rumbled toward the eastern gates.
I trotted Alezan along the main street toward the wattle and daub church where it stood along one side of the small market square. Small hummocks surrounding it marked where Christian burials had been made, all but a few grassed over, one or two even decorated with wilting flowers. The priest stood in the doorway of his church, his bony jaw set, and his face determined.
“You need to get out,” I called to him. “They kill all holy men.”
He glared up at me, thanks to my helmet probably unaware that I was a woman. “I will not leave my church to their desecration. Leave me be.”
Fool. I knew from Merlin’s history lessons what foreign raiders did to priests. And women. “Suit yourself,” I snapped at him, and wheeled Alezan away. Other more appreciative people remained to be rescued.
Beyond the church, houses stretched up toward the tumbled north gateway, our men hurrying between them, leaning from their horses to bang the pommels of their daggers on the closed doors. Why were people so slow to react? Didn’t they realize this was a matter of life or death? Did they think we were joking?
I trotted to the north gateway to find it in a worse state of repair than the south one. In the distance, a group of small boys were playing in the grass with an inflated pig’s bladder, just as I’d seen Llacheu and his friends do at Din Cadan. Football, fifteen hundred years before the Premier Division. Setting my heels to Alezan’s sides, I urged her into a canter, then pulled her to a skidding halt beside the boys.
They stared up at me in shock, eight sets of eyes fixed on my face, mouths hanging open at the sight of a fully armed warrior.
“Run,” I gasped at them, fear robbing me of my breath. “The Irish are coming. Don’t go back to the town, go east.” I pointed towards the wooded hills, not close enough for comfort. “Run as fast as you can, and hide. They take boys as slaves.”
For just a moment they all continued to stare at me, then the biggest of them tugged his shaggy forelock in respect. “Come on,” he shouted, and they turned and ran, their football left forgotten in the grass.
I watched them for a moment as they legged it over the grazing lands with more speed than their elders, then swung Alezan back around. Already, people were pouring out of the eastern gateway, heading up the cart track toward the dark line of the forest. A few rode horses, mostly beasts of burden, lumbering at the head of the flight– some with wives or children perched behind the rider.
One or two carts brought up the rear, their drivers belaboring the straining draft animals. And behind them, people on foot ran in dribs and drabs after their fellows. Our men were helping as best they could. Was that Rhiwallon with a girl perched behind his saddle, her arms about his waist?
Touching my legs to Alezan’s sides, I urged her back into a canter. In moments I was through the gateway and turning to the right down a side street, shouting to the few people who remained to hurry, that we had no time before the Irish arrived. They ran out into the main street, leaving me alone for a moment.
“Hey,” someone shouted. “Over here. I need help.”
I swung Alezan into a narrow alley leading off the street.
Something hit me hard in the chest, shooting me backwards off Alezan, arms flailing. As I hit the ground the air shot out of my lungs, my head thumped the cobbles, and everything went dark.
*
Hearing came backfirst. Birds singing somewhere far off. A hen clucking to herself, and her feet scratching in the dirt near my head for a tasty morsel. Where was I?
If I moved my throbbing head, it was sure to fall off. Was that light shining through my eyelids? Bright, hot light. Was I in bed?
With infinite care, I opened my right eye just a slit, and closed it again, dazzled by something huge and fiery right above me. It took a moment or two to work out it was the sun.
More feeling returned, and with it the sensation of lying on something hard and knobbly. My fingers stretched out, and the tips touched cobblestones. What was I doing asleep on a road? If I hadn’t been worried about the security of my head, and the pain, I’d have shaken it.
