Born of the Sun (2 page)

Perhaps, in a few days, Kerwyn would be well enough to move. Surely she would be safe enough at Bryn Atha until then.

A brisk wind was driving high white clouds across the May sky on the day the Battle of Sarc Water was fought. The Britons under their prince, Ahern, fought valiantly but ineffectively. The efficient Saxon war machine crushed them with little trouble. The British survivors fled into the hills, leaving their dead on the field. The Saxons did not even bother to make camp to care for their own wounded; they pressed on toward Bryn Atha, home of the princes of the Atrebates.

The sky stayed light for a long time this season of the year, and the sun was still shining when the Saxons marched through the gate and into the courtyard of Bryn Atha. Niniane watched them from the window of Kerwyn’s bedroom, her mouth dry with terror. She had not really believed this could ever happen. Saxons. At Bryn Atha. Her breathing was coming quick and shallow as she watched the men pouring into the courtyard. Most were helmetless and carried spears and swords and great embossed shields. They had a large number of packhorses with them, but the war band was on foot, save for two men who were obviously the leaders.

“Niniane …“It was the merest thread of sound and she went to kneel beside the dying harper. “Hold my hand,” he whispered.

“Of course.” She picked up the hand lying on the blanket and held it between her own small ones. It was burning hot.

“I’m cold,” he said.

“Shall I get you another blanket?” Her voice was low and husky; Kerwyn had always loved to hear the sound of it. But her mind was not on what she was saying; her ears were attuned instead to what was happening in the courtyard. She heard the sound of the front door crashing open. They were in the house.

Kerwyn began to cough and she put her arm under his frail shoulders to help him sit up. She could feel how burning hot he was even through the linen of his shirt. He struggled to speak, managed one word—“cold” —then slumped down against her. She felt for his heart; it was still. She laid the old harper back onto the bedplace and slowly rose to her feet.

She could hear the clank of mail in the gallery, the guttural sounds of the language they were speaking. They were looking into all the rooms. She could hear the crashing of the doors as they were kicked open. Her hand went to the dagger at her belt and she remembered her brother’s words.

The door of Kerwyn’s bedroom burst open. Niniane felt an invigorating flash of anger. There was no need to put a foot through it! A big blond-haired man erupted into the room and stopped dead when he saw her. Niniane stood as straight as she could, raised her chin, and stared into his startled eyes.

There was a moment of silence and then he said something to her. She shook her head. “I don’t understand you,” she answered in British. The Saxon looked from her to the figure of the harper, frowned, and barked a command. Another warrior appeared at the door and the man who was in the room with her said something to him. Niniane could distinguish the word “Cynric.” They were sending for their king.

It was the longest five minutes of Niniane’s life as she stood there, under the speculative eyes of the big Saxon, waiting to learn her fate. She took some cold courage from the dagger she held hidden in the folds of her gown. The Saxon appeared to be staring at the brooches on her shoulders.

After what seemed to her an eternity, her captor, who had been leaning his shoulders against the wall, suddenly came to attention. Two men walked into the room, and she recognized them as the ones who had been on horseback in the courtyard. One of them was old, with thick shaggy gray hair and a heavy, still-powerful-looking body. He dismissed her captor with a word.

This must be Cynric, Niniane thought. Cynric, son of Cerdic, King of the West Saxons. The king turned to look at her, and for the first time she saw his eyes. They were neither blue nor green, but an extraordinary mixture of both. She had never seen eyes that color before. He was looking her up and down and her hand tightened on her dagger. Cynric turned to the man beside him and said something.

“Who are you?” the other man asked her in accented but perfectly understandable British.

She tried not to show them how frightened she was. “I am Niniane,” she answered, almost haughtily. “This is my house.”

The British-speaking Saxon raised his eyebrows. He was younger than Cynric, dark-skinned and narrow of face. His clear blue eyes were set under extraordinary high-arched brows. “Your house? Who is your father?”

She wondered, belatedly, if it had been wise to tell the truth. She tried to swallow but her mouth was perfectly dry. “Ahern, Prince of the Atrebates,” she replied.

The brown-haired man turned to the other and began to speak in Saxon. Cynric answered and then the other man looked at her and asked, “Who is that?” He was referring to Kerwyn.

“My father’s harper,” she answered steadily. “He became ill and I could not move him. So I stayed …”

The brown-haired one walked to the bed and put his hand on the harper’s chest. He looked up at her. “He is dead.”

She had backed away when he approached the bed. “Yes. I know. He … he died just a few minutes ago.”

“Poor timing for you, Princess of the Atrebates,” the man remarked ironically.

Her hand on the dagger tightened. Her palm was sweating so, she was afraid it was going to slip out of her grasp.

Cynric spoke impatiently and the other answered him. The king’s blue-green eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he listened. Cynric spoke again and the British-speaker turned to Niniane, “This is Cynric, King of the West Saxons. I am Cutha, his kinsman. The king tells you not to fear. You can put down your knife. We will not harm you.”

Niniane bit her trembling lip. How had he known about the knife? The Saxon king came over to the bed and looked down at Kerwyn’s body. Then he looked at Niniane and spoke. Cutha translated: “I too have a reverence for harpers.”

Niniane had buried most of the valuable jewelry they still had at Bryn Atha, so there was little in the villa for the Saxons to loot. She was afraid that perhaps they would take their disappointment out on the villa—or on her. But they seemed to accept their slim booty philosophically. The Saxons, it seemed, had given up expecting much in the way of gold from the Britons.

They stayed at the villa for two days only, and during that time Niniane was allowed to keep to her room. They brought her food and otherwise left her alone. No one made the slightest move toward raping her. Cutha had even been kind enough to inform her that her father and her brother had escaped from Sarc Water alive.

It could have been much worse, she thought as she stood at her window and watched the Saxon thanes busy in the courtyard. They had taken a number of household items that apparently struck their fancy: the Samianware pottery, the oil lamps, some of the hangings that still covered the walls. The thing that had pleased Cynric most, however, had been her polished metal hand mirror. Evidently the Saxons did not have mirrors.

Yes, it could have been much worse. They had come, and they had taken things that would be missed, but the villa was still intact, her father and brother were still alive, and it seemed she was safe. So Niniane thought as she watched Cynric’s men putting the villa’s belongings into the saddlebags of their packhorses that gray spring afternoon.

An hour later, she was thinking that things could not have been worse. The Saxons were indeed leaving Bryn Atha, but to her horror she found that they were taking her with them. “Am I to be made a slave?” she asked Cutha incredulously when he told her of her fate.

He had given her a reassuring smile. “Certainly not, Princess. You are far too valuable to be a slave. You will come with us as a member of the king’s own household. You may pack a saddlebag of things to bring with you. We leave tomorrow at first light for Winchester.”

It seemed that Bryn Atha had not been lacking in loot after all. Coinmail would say she should have used the knife.

Cynric, King of the West Saxons, sat his horse in the courtyard of Bryn Atha and watched as his war band made ready to leave. Cutha came out of the house with the little British princess they had found and took her to one of the horses they had captured from her father.

The Britons, Cynric thought with contempt. The young boys in Winchester would fight with more skill than these farmers. Still, it would be wise to go carefully. He would need the goodwill of the Britons if he wanted to expand his territory. There were not enough Saxon ceorls to do all that must be done if Wessex were to become a power in the land. This girl they had found at Bryn Atha might prove helpful in making peace with the Atrebates. She was wellborn, a princess of her line. A useful acquisition.

Cutha mounted and rode over to his place beside the king. The girl followed a little behind, her horse led by one of his thanes. She sat the horse well, Cynric noted. She was small and delicate-looking, but he judged her to be at least fourteen. He could see that she had breasts.

“Ready, my king,” Cutha said, and Cynric squeezed his horse forward. The war band fell in behind him, marching four abreast. The packhorses came last, each led by a man on foot.

They did not retrace their steps toward Calleva. Cynric had seen the city; now he wanted to see the rest of the country in the area. So they went west, to the old Roman road that led to Venta from Corinium. Their pace was leisurely. The king wanted to spy out what kind of land lay in this new part of his kingdom. He had eorls back in Winchester to whom he owed much, and there was little in the way of gold to be had from the British. But there was land.

The farms they saw were all deserted. Word had got round that he was coming, Cynric thought scornfully. It would not be difficult to settle Saxons in this country. He would scarcely need to fight.

They filled the packhorses to capacity with the items that took their fancy in the farmsteads, and then, as they were still ten miles from home and it was time to eat, Cynric decreed that they stop for the night. They found a clearing by the road to make camp, fires were made and food cooked. Cynric sat on the rug that had been spread for him, watching his men and fighting his own weariness. No longer could he ride for eight hours at a time. He was getting old.

The girl sat on a rug as well and watched his men out of grave and level eyes. She had ridden behind him all day, her face still and guarded, giving away nothing of what she felt. There had been no whining about how tired she was, how frightened, no questions as to what he was going to do with her. He looked at her now approvingly and said to Cutha, “I am going to lie down. She had better come too. She cannot be used to so much riding.”

His kinsman nodded and spoke to the girl, whose eyes flew in alarm to the king. Cynric grimaced a little at what he saw there. She need not fear
that
from him, and certainly not now, when he was so weary he could scarcely stand. “She had better sleep between the two of us,” he said to Cutha. “She looks the sort who might try to run away.”

Cutha nodded and, standing, reached a hand down to help Cynric up. The king shook him off impatiently and forced himself to get to his feet unaided. He put a hand on the girl’s shoulder, ostensibly to guide her but in reality to steady himself, and began to walk in the direction of his bedplace. The girl’s bones felt small and fragile under his hand, but she bore his weight with surprising strength. She was tough, this little British princess, he thought. She might make a good alliance for one of his sons.

Niniane was so weary that she fell asleep as soon as she realized that she was indeed going to be allowed to sleep alone. When she awoke several hours later it was to find the camp quiet. All the men were wrapped in their cloaks and sleeping on the ground around the dying fire.

She lay very still. The night was still also and, except for the fire, pitch dark. Clouds had moved in during the course of the evening to cover the moon and the stars. Cynric and Cutha were sleeping deeply. Would it be possible for her to escape?

Slowly and cautiously she sat up. There had to be a guard posted, she thought. But no one stirred. It was possible she might be able to creep out of camp unobserved.

She sat there, alone, the camp sleeping around her, and contemplated the possibility. Once she got out of camp, where would she go?

She could try one of the farms they had passed. Perhaps the people had come back by now and would hide her. But how to get to the farm? The Saxons would look for her on the road. They had horses; they would be able to overtake her before she could reach a safe haven.

She would have to hide in the forest.

Out of the darkness came the call of a wolf. Niniane shuddered. To leave the safety of the fire and go by herself into the fierce darkness of the forest, where there were wolves … She could not do it. It was shameful to admit, but she felt safer here, lying between the big bodies of these Saxons, than she would by herself out alone in the forest.

The wolf called again and Niniane lay back down. She was a wretched coward. Coinmail would say it was her duty to take her chances in the forest. Well, she was not Coinmail and she would rather take her chances with the Saxons. They were surely planning to ransom her back to her father. That must be what Cutha had meant when he said she was valuable. It would be wiser not to do anything foolish just yet, wiser to wait and see what was going to happen. There was the gold jewelry she had hidden at Bryn Atha for a ransom. By summer she would probably be home once again.

The Saxons rose early the following morning and were on the road shortly after dawn. “How far is it to Venta?” Niniane asked the thane who was leading her horse and who she had discovered spoke a rough but serviceable British.

“We don’t go to Venta,” came the surprising answer. “We are for Winchester.”

“Winchester? What is Winchester?”

The thane, whose name was Eclaf, turned to stare at her in astonishment. “Winchester is the home of the West Saxon king,” he answered. “It is one of the greatest royal enclaves in all of England. You have not heard of it?”