Page 34 of Warrior Queen
A flake of memory returned. I’d fallen off my horse. No, someone had knocked me off her. Fear surfaced– had I broken anything? My neck, maybe? I wiggled my toes and found they worked, shifted one leg at a time, then lifted first one arm then the other, just a little, and stretched my fingers. All of that worked, so hopefully I hadn’t done serious damage. Except my head.
I tried to move it and found the back hurt the worst. Gingerly placed fingers found a large swelling where it must have struck the cobbles. My helmet. The straps hadn’t been done up. It must have come loose when I fell.
The rest of my memory flooded back. Breguoin. I was in Breguoin, and the Irish were coming. Heedless of the pain lancing through my head as though I’d been stabbed with a red-hot poker, I rolled onto my side and managed to push my body into a sitting position. The world rocked a few times then came into focus. I was lying in a silent, empty street on dirty cobbles. House doors hung ajar, a few chickens scratched about, and a small brindled dog ran past with a joint of cooked meat clasped in its jaws. Apart from him, not a soul was to be seen.
And no Alezan.
Of course. Some ungrateful bastard had knocked me off to steal her for himself and left me to the fate we’d come to rescue him from.
The Irish.
They were coming. I had to get up.
Leaning on the rough wattle and daub wall of the nearby building, I struggled to my feet, and stood there swaying, waiting for the world to stop rotating. Probably I had a concussion, but now wasn’t the time to worry about it.
I heaved in a few steadying breaths as nausea threatened, and stood more upright, fighting the urge to let my legs collapse under me. Apart from the carefree birdsong coming from some of the bushes in the abandoned gardens, silence reigned.
I had to get out. Where were my men? Had they all forgotten me? And where was Alezan? Anger surfaced. A vision of the chaos of shouting mounted warriors and screaming running people flashed into my head. Of course. Probably not their fault they hadn’t noticed my absence.
On unsteady legs I tottered from house wall to house wall, heading for the end of the street. Surely someone must still be here? Someone who could help me. At the corner of the last house, I leaned against the wall, breathing deeply again as sickness welled up in my stomach. I touched a hand to the still growing lump on the back of my head and winced, hoping I hadn’t cracked my skull. No way would I get my helmet back on there again, even if I could find it.
Gathering my courage, I took a peek around the corner. The road gave an unobstructed view past the church on the left to the south gateway. My heart almost stopped beating. Hordes of savage and probably drunken warriors were pouring in through the entrance and over the ruined walls in a rising tide, barging into the houses on either side, their shouts lifting to the skies.
The Irish were here.
Chapter Twelve
Transfixed with terror,I stared down the Roman road that bisected the town of Breguoin as nearly four hundred Irish raiders began their rampage. At least they weren’t in a hurry. But that was a small blessing. It must have been three hundred yards from the north to south gateways, but it might as well have been only thirty, for all the difference that was going to make. Some of the keener ones would reach this end before long, and I had nowhere to hide.
Deep, guttural shouts came from inside the houses, and sticks of furniture catapulted through broken doors to be smashed to splinters in the road by huge double-handed axes. Someone ran out brandishing a burning torch and hurled it onto the nearest thatched roof. It rolled off the steep pitch and hit the road in a shower of sparks. Undaunted, the man picked it up and held it to the thatch’s edge until the dry reeds caught. Flames leapt and black smoke billowed upwards.
They were laughing, and most likely swearing, only I didn’t understand their shouted words. Gaelic, maybe, but excluded from whatever magic had given me the ability to understand British speech. Huge, bearded men, some already reeling drunk, burst out of houses clutching food and flagons of beer and cider, or waving pots and pans, tools and clothes. The raucous din grew louder by the minute.
Movement by the church caught my eye. The priest. The idiot had come to stand in his little churchyard, defiant, a wooden cross clutched, talisman-like, in his hands. I wanted to run and make him hide, scream at him to get away while he could. But I didn’t. Instead, I watched in horrified silence as half a dozen of the ruddy-faced warriors swaggered up to him, flagons in one hand, axes in the other, jeering.
Some of them wore rusted mail shirts, others, leather jerkins that revealed bare, muscled arms. Long hair hung in dreadlocks, and thick ginger beards half-hid their faces. Even from a hundred yards away, I could sense their vicious delight at having discovered an inhabitant too foolhardy to have fled. Throwing aside their flagons of drink, they shifted their axes from hand to hand, almost in time with one another– like grotesque, land-bound synchronized swimmers.
One of them shouted, lips curling back in a snarl, and all his fellows guffawed with ribald laughter. The priest drew himself up taller, arms outstretched as though to protect his little territory, holding out his crucifix in front of him.
Too far away to hear the Irishman’s words, or the priest’s reply, I was close enough to see the blow that cleaved the tonsured skull in two, scattering blood and brains into the little churchyard to decorate the graves. For a moment the dead man remained upright, before toppling to the ground like a felled tree.
Turning away, I threw up the cheese and onions I’d eaten at our mid-day break, spitting bitter bile onto the paving stones.
I wiped my mouth on my sleeve, panting, tasting the sourness of my vomit. I had to get away before they did that to me– after they found I was a woman and raped me.
A glance over my shoulder showed me the silent side-street. Where was there to hide that they wouldn’t find? Perhaps a barn. No, I could end up burned to death. Although might that be preferable to being raped, probably multiple times? Like Albina and Cloelia.
I peered back at the main street. If I made for the north gateway, they’d see me, even preoccupied as they were. I’d have a hundred-yard head start, but that was nothing. They were men, with longer legs and better stamina than I had. And there’d only been grassland, with a few stunted trees, in that direction. Nowhere to hide. If I tried to run east, to the forest, following the townspeople and my men, I’d lead the Irish raiders straight to them.
I pushed myself off the comforting support of the house wall, and stumbled back down the side-street toward the western rampart, thanking God that the town walls were so tumbledown. Ahead of me, the brindled dog sat chewing on his unexpected bounty beside a rickety garden fence. On impulse, I bent and grabbed the meat before he had chance to growl at me. “Come on boy, we have to get out of here.” I couldn’t leave him for the raiders to slaughter as they’d killed the priest. IwasEnglish, after all.
The dog ran after me, eager to retrieve his meal, growling a little at my cheeky theft.
I reached the end of the street. Three feet of partly robbed-out wall stood between me and the outside. I hurled the meat over, the dog leapt after it, and I scrambled in his wake.
I hadn’t counted on the other side of the wall being at the top of a steep grassy bank. Neither had the dog. We rolled head over heels together to the bottom. He recovered first, snatched the meat, and bolted, abandoning me to my fate. Ungrateful hound.
Winded by a second fall in less than an hour, I lay still, flattened against the bank, struggling to regain my breath. Nowhere to hide. The sheep had done a good job of grazing this bank and ditch– not a blade of long grass as cover. If any of the Irish raiders came and looked over the wall, they’d see me.
