The Red And Savage Tongue (Historical Fiction Action Adventure Book, set in Dark Age post Roman Britain) (14 page)

     Murdoc, who had been
hiding nearby, hurled his spear towards the vanishing ponies, but to no avail. He continued to run into the gloom of the forest in pursuit of the pair but stopped in response to Dominic’s shout. ‘No further, it’s futile—you mustn’t follow! Don’t forget there are more of them unaccounted for. We can’t leave the camp unprotected.’

    
‘Gods!’ yelled Murdoc, ‘we had them, and let them go. I swear that Egbert is protected by the devil himself!’

     Having expected more men to arrive, Dominic had set his trap in the hope that it would act as a
diversion and confusion—as well as acting as a killing pit. The intention then was to kill as many men as possible from distance, before melting back into the forest along with the others.

     An awful screaming
now came from the pit, and Dominic and Murdoc ran over to Martha and Simon who stood by it. Martha covered her mouth and buried her head into Simon’s shoulders as the bear went about its dreadful task on Hereward.

     As soon as he had hit the damp
stone floor of the pit, Hereward had sensed he was not alone. As he had fallen from above, the huge shape nuzzling in the corner had flinched. Instinctively, Hereward backed to the opposite corner of the pit and fumbled for his ax, but to no avail. The weapon had dislodged from his person and bounced into the shadows.

     The bear brought its full weight down
upon him and started to maul. In desperation, Hereward broke free and endeavored to claw his way up to the rim of the pit, screaming in his futility to scale a vertical height that had already defeated the bear’s efforts at escape.

     He screeched again as the bear raked its huge fore claws over his head, leaving his scalp hanging ragged and loose down his back
like a baggy cap. His end didn’t come quickly. The maddened bear repeatedly tore at him with its great strength, and his screams emerged terrible and falsetto as his disemboweled gut spilled onto the slimy floor.

     At the rim of the pit, Dominic and Murdoc winced as they watched the grisly scene, whilst Withred led the others into the hut and out of earshot.

     Dominic grimaced as the bear began to feed on Hereward. He glanced at Murdoc. ‘A death befitting a killer of children I think.’

    
Murdoc stared down into the pit, his eyes glazed and distant. ‘I looked on like a coward while that man and others raped my mother and my wife.’ He watched indifferently as the bear started to tear chunks from Hereward. “Murdering bastard,” he muttered, as he coldly watched the bear feed, while even Dominic had to turn away.

No one really knew how old the village was. That it was in existence before the Romans came to the island was common knowledge. Tales abounded in the village of past heroes who had fought alongside Boudicca. The warrior queen had led the Iceni tribe to the north, and had been able to unite the normally warring factions, thus amassing a huge fighting force, which had inflicted heavy defeats on the Romans in uprising at Verlamion, Londinium and Camulodunum.

     The retribution by the Romans had been swift, and seventy thousand Britons had died in the terrible counter strike. The action of the joint forces of the Iceni and Trinovantes had not been without merit,
however, and the Romans had realised that the Britons were obedient but not servile, and from that day on treated them with caution and some respect.

     The village had existed in peace since then, and four centuries had passed with little change. The seasons came and went and the population fluctuated according to the success of the harvest or the outbreak of disease.

     It was after a succession of good harvests and the resulting growth in population, that a new group of farmsteads began to appear. Still within the confines of the wooded lands, the farmsteads settled where outcrops of arable land occurred within the usual unyielding clay of the forest. The cleared land to the east and west of the forest was not available, so the forest was the only option for expansion. 

     A group of men had cleared an area large enough to accommodate houses and storage huts. This completed, they cleared a further area of the virgin woodland ready for livestock and crops, felling trees and burning the underlying vegetation. Within eighteen months, the village was ready for habitation
, and a group of younger men, along with their wives and children, moved in and planted the first crops.

     At first, things had gone well. The harvest had been a success, and the livestock had produced abundant offspring. It soon became apparent that new fields would be desirable to provide excess produce for trade. Deeper still into the forest, more trees met the ax
as still more land was cleared. Then disaster struck.

     Returning from
Verlamion with provisions, some of the men had died after bringing a pestilence back with them from the town. Soon the entire village had caught the disease, and within a year, all were dead.

Fifty years had passed since the disaster, and thirty years since Brinley, then a boy, had dared to travel to the village. Along with a group of men, he had made the journey to bury the few scattered bones that remained of the victims of the tragedy.

     He could still remember the eerie atmosphere and ghostliness of the place as the leaves whispered around his feet on that grey November morn
ing. When they had first walked into the forbidding ghost village, they had no way of knowing which bleached bones belonged together, and in the end they had collected them and buried them in one grave, marking the spot by laying a cross of boulders. Some of the men, who had abandoned Christianity and returned to paganism, would occasionally journey to the old hazel coppice near the village and tie strips of colored cloths to the trees in an appeasement gesture to the old Gods.   

     Back in his own village, many years passed with good harvests and no more outbreaks of the pestilence, and Brinley had become the unofficial headman. The population had remained stable, as an unusual occurrence of male births had ensued, so after spending their childhood in the village, many of the surplus men had left to marry and live with women from other settlements. Brinley had found a wife amongst the few girls, and she had born him two daughters. Life was good, but dark rumour had begun to circulate about raiders from the east.

James had worked hard in the fields all day, tending the crops with the other men, and was surprised to see his
sons were absent when he returned. He could see that his wife, Sarah, was troubled. ‘The boys?’ she asked. ‘Are they with you?’

    
‘No, they are not with me,’ said James, as he put his digging tool in its place in the corner. ‘I gave them the day off remember.’

    
‘They are still in the woods then,’ said Sarah, ‘and I told them to be back before sunset. I heard wolves last night and soon it will be dark.’

     James tensed,
something was wrong
. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have given them time off,’ he said, trying to sound unconcerned, ‘but don’t worry, they’ll be lost in their games as usual. I’ll get them. Ask Brinley to follow me in case they prove hard to find.’

     He climbed the steep hill that overlooked the village, and made for
the tree by the pond—a popular meeting point for the local children. Weary and hungry after a day in the fields, he was eager to find the boys, then return with them to feed upon on the tasty stew Sarah had bubbling in her pot.

     He rounded the hill, which gave
him his first sight of the pond. Immediately, he knew something was wrong. A shape lay in the water, partly submerged. He broke into a run, splashing wildly through the water. When he reached the broken body, he could see that it was his beloved boy, and that he had died of mortal injuries inflicted by cruel ax blows to his head and neck.

     Kneeling, he scooped Eidon’s body into his grasp
. He looked up, stunned and disbelieving, his mouth gaping, as Brinley and the other men arrived on the scene.’

     ‘Oh Jesus,’ said Brinley.
‘Oh sweet Jesus Saviour.’

     James merely shook his head,
unable to absorb the gravitas of the moment. A heart-rending, keening cry from beyond the pond had the men running through the water towards the smaller of the two boys, who was huddled in shock, but otherwise unharmed.

     Brinley picked him up and brushed strands of muddy wayward hair from his eyes
, just as the stunned James joined them with Eidon’s body limp and dead in his arms.

     The surviving boy, Cedric, sniveled in Brinley’s embrace, globules
of mucus mixing with his tears as he gagged for breath and gazed wide-eyed and fearful into the forest.

Days later, James and Sarah sat with a small assembly in Brinley’s home to discuss the repercussions of the tragedy.

    
‘Has Cedric spoken then?’ asked Brinley.

    
‘Yes, at last … this morning he told us things, just as I was beginning to think he would never speak again,’ said James, his face a pale stony mask. ‘It happened as we put his victuals before him. He decided to speak to us. It seems we did have visitors that day. He mentioned horses. There were riders in strange dress, and they looked at the land from the hill, then turned and rode back into the forest. But not before one of them—’ He stopped, his jaw muscles clenching and his breathing rapid as he fought to control his emotions. ‘But not before one of them killed our boy.’

     Anna, Brinley’s wife, went to
James as he sat huddled with Sarah. She placed her arms around both of them, as they once again succumbed to their grief. ‘Your sorrow is shared by us all,’ she also wept, ‘… Eidon was a son to the whole village.’

     The men around the table sat in respectful silence whilst Anna led James and Sarah out of the hut and back to their own dwelling.

      Brinley looked gravely at the other two men in the room—his short, grey hair and trim beard setting him apart from his untidy, hirsute companions. ‘What James just told us explains the hoof prints we found near the scene of Eidon’s death,’ he said. ‘It seems our fears were justified. As you know, there’s been much talk in the village about raiders from over the grey sea. Saxon folk have often visited our isle for one reason or another but since the Romans left, some of them have been running amok amongst our own folk, taking land and killing innocents on the shoreward side of the forest.’ He paused and looked anxiously towards the door of the hut. ‘And now, it seems, they’ve found new hunting grounds.’

     Griswalda, an old weatherworn Briton, looked up from the age-polished knot he had been studying in Brinley’s table.
‘By that, I take it you mean that they have found
us
,’ he said. ‘If that’s true what happens now?’

     Darga, the youth, slapped the table, his colour elevated.
‘If they come here we must be prepared to fight them. Eidon’s death must be avenged.’

     Brinley shook his head and sighed.
‘How are we to do that boy? We are skilled in the ways of the plough, not the spear or war ax.’    

    
‘So we are to lie helpless and go to our deaths like swine to the butcher’s knife?’ said Darga. “Is that your council? Our people once took on and beat the Romans for God’s sake. Surely we can cope with cowardly savages that kill children and then run away!’

     Griswalda held up a restraining hand to the young man
, his tone patient. ‘There is no doubting your intention Darga, but Brinley speaks the bare facts. We don’t know how to fight these people, because the Romans allowed us to live in peace whilst protecting us. We’ve forgotten how to fight.’

    
‘Damn the Romans!’ shouted Darga. ‘It’s because of
them
the raiders are on these shores. I spoke to a man from Verlamion last year; he used to live in Camulodunum on the eastward shore. He told me that the raiders took up residence there many years ago at the invitation of the Romans, to fight for them, he said. At first, they kept to their own quarters, but after the Romans left, they began to strut around the town, looking upon it as their own. Before long, they had driven out or killed the local townsfolk, and now use the place as a refuge and winter base for their plunderers.’

     Brinley was about to speak when Anna re-entered the room.
‘There’s much shouting in here,’ she said, ‘I suggest we save our energy for the murderers when they arrive.’

     Darga looked
at Anna and smiled, and then looked to the other men. ‘See … it takes a woman to show us the way. The spirit of Boudicca is alive and in this room it seems.’

     Brinley now spoke.
‘I merely stated that we don’t have the knowledge or facilities to defeat the raiders, but like you, I don’t intend to cower in front of them like a dog. Ways must be found to defend ourselves.’

    
‘How long do you think, before they return?’ asked Griswalda. ‘We are now into the darkening part of the year and winter’s not that far away.’

     Brinley shrugged.
‘That I can’t answer, but we must start to think about preparation at once.’