Chapter 8
Eight
DARCY
The sound of the horns rolled out of the woods, low and ugly enough that every man on the rise stopped what he was doing, except for him.
“Godwin, with me. Osric, keep the men here, and no one follows unless I call for them.”
He was already moving before he’d finished speaking, sword in one hand and his dark cloak snapping behind him as he strode down the slope toward the village, which meant I had to gather up my skirts and hurry if I wanted to keep up with him.
“Stay here.”
“No. You’ve known me long enough to understand how well telling me that works.”
“It has been four days.”
“Exactly. We shouldn’t still be having this conversation.”
His mouth flattened in the expression I was beginning to recognize as Wulfric for I am surrounded by fools, which was likely useful for a Saxon lord and, now that I thought about it, would have suited several watch managers I’d known over the years.
We reached the southern edge of Ashford just as two scouts emerged from the trees, bows in hand and wet leaves clinging to their woolen cloaks.
Neither looked particularly alarmed, which helped, though not enough to slow my pulse until the older man, Eadric, bent forward with his hands on his knees and began speaking.
“Riders, my lord. Across the stream.”
“How many?”
“Eight. Mayhap ten.”
“Did they cross?”
“Nay. Watched the road, then turned south again.”
Wulfric asked what they wore, which horses they rode, whether they carried banners, and how long they had remained near the stream.
I understood perhaps half of why the answers mattered, but that was fine because, unlike every man I’d ever met who believed watching three documentaries made him an expert, I knew what I didn’t know.
War was Wulfric’s world while I dealt with what happened when carefully laid plans caught fire.
By the time Eadric accepted a cup from Anya and took his first long drink, Wulfric was already walking back toward the rise.
“You’re going up there again?” I asked.
“Aye.”
“To do what?”
“Prepare.”
“For ten men?”
“For those who may follow them.”
Ten armed riders might be ten armed riders, or they might be the first sign of something much larger moving through the woods, and judging by the way his shoulders had gone still beneath his cloak, he had no intention of assuming the kinder possibility.
He looked as tired as I felt. “You haven’t eaten.”
“Neither have you.”
Before I could answer, Hild appeared from beside a cottage and thrust two oat cakes into my hand, though calling it a cake was a triumph of medieval optimism. It was round, dry, and solid enough that I could probably have used it to defend Ashford if the Normans arrived before supper.
“For each of you,” Hild said with a nod in Wulfric’s direction.
There are moments when women understand one another perfectly across every possible divide of century, rank, and questionable baked goods. I caught up with him halfway up the hill and held out the other oat cake.
“Eat.”
“No time.”
“That wasn’t the answer I was looking for.”
“I am occupied.”
“It goes in your mouth. You can keep walking.”
“You are remarkably troublesome for a woman under my protection.”
“And you’re remarkably stubborn for a man who needs calories.”
“What are calories?”
“Something you’re currently lacking.”
I pushed the oat cake into his hand, and he stared at it for a moment before turning that same look on me.
“Eat,” I repeated.
“You command much for a foreign widow.”
“Terrible habit.”
He took a bite, which I counted as a victory even though the thing looked capable of removing a tooth.
With a dubious look at the oat cake, I took a bite. It was even harder than it looked.
By the time we reached the rise, the men had gone back to work. Wulfric moved amongst them, shifting archers, sending two men toward the northern path, checking some part of the defenses that meant nothing to me and everything to him.
The light was fading over Ashford, turning the wet fields bronze beneath a bruised gray sky while smoke rose from the thatched roofs below. The air smelled of damp earth, burning oak, onions, and the pork stew Gilda had been cooking since midday.
Men talked while they worked, sometimes laughing too loudly, not because anything was particularly funny but because people did that when they were tired and afraid and needed the world to feel ordinary for another few minutes.
Wulfric finished speaking to Godwin and came toward me as I looked past him toward the rise.
“Where will you be?”
“When?”
“If they come.”
His expression gave me the answer before he spoke.
“Here.”
“At the front?”
“A lord does not hide behind his men.”
Something tightened beneath my ribs.
“I didn’t ask whether you’d hide.”
“Then why ask?”
Because I wanted to know where he would be if everything went wrong, and because apparently four days was all it took for my brain to begin noting the location of one certain Saxon as though that information belonged on an incident board.
“What happens if you have to fall back?”
“We will not.”
I laughed once, without humor, and his brows drew together.
“What?”
I waved a hand. “The impossible declaration. We will not fail. We will not retreat. We will stand until the seas boil and the mountains crumble.”
“I said none of those things.”
“You implied them.”
“My men need certainty.”
“Fine. Give them certainty. Just don’t start believing you can order the world to behave.”
The humor left his face.
“You think I know nothing of the world’s cruelty?” He stood, feet shoulder width apart, scowling at me.
“I think you know exactly how cruel it is, and you still act as though refusing to bend will somehow protect you from it.”
His eyes went cold. “That is enough.”
It should have been, except the fear had already woken, climbing up my throat before I could push it back where it belonged.
“What happens when it isn’t?”
“When what is not?”
“Enough.”
He stared at me.
“When do you stop?” I asked. “When half your men are hurt? When the village is burning? When there’s nothing left here except people dying because nobody wanted to be the first person to admit the fight was over?”
His jaw tightened.
“This is my home.”
“I know.”
“Nay.” His voice sharpened. “You do not.”
“You’re right,” I said at last.
Regret moved across his face, but I was angry now, and anger had always been easier to carry than grief.
“I don’t have a home here. I don’t have anything here, so perhaps you’re right and I have no idea what losing one feels like.”
“Darcy…”
“You know how my friend died.”
The sounds around us seemed to recede, although somewhere behind me an axe still struck wood, steady and ordinary.
“He went back inside,” I said. “There was a report that someone might still be trapped. The building was unstable, and he knew it, but he went anyway because that was who he was.”
“Because someone needed him.”
“Yes. Everyone thinks bad choices look bad when you make them, but sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they look brave, and sometimes everybody calls you a hero afterward.”
My throat tightened. “He was brave. He was one of the bravest men I knew.”
“Would you have had him leave someone to die?”
“I would have had him come home.”
There it was, the ugly truth I’d never said at the funeral, never admitted to Ellis, never whispered to Brian’s mother while she held my hands and told me her son had died doing what he loved.
Wulfric looked away first.
“My father died with a sword in his hand,” he said after a long moment. “As did his father before him. I was taught that a man stands for what is his.”
“That doesn’t mean he has to die for it.”
“To leave is to lose it.”
“Not always.”
His gaze went down to Ashford, and I followed it to the hall standing above the smaller roofs, smoke curling through the opening in its thatch.
“Aelfwyn loved that hall,” he said.
The anger drained out of me.
“She chose the carvings over the door herself, though the craftsman told her vines were foolish there. She called him a sour old goat and watched until he carved every leaf.”
A faint smile touched his mouth.
“She planted herbs beside the eastern wall, though most of them died because she forgot to water them. She is everywhere here.”
“You think if you leave,” I said carefully, “you’ll lose her too.”
His eyes met mine and I knew I’d gone too far again.
“I’m sorry.”
“Nay, you are right.”
The wind lifted my hair across my face, and I raised a hand to push it away, but Wulfric reached me first.
His fingers brushed my cheek. His hand was warm despite the cold, his fingertips rough from reins and sword and work I could barely imagine. He tucked the loose curl behind my ear, and the touch shouldn’t have meant anything.
His gaze dropped to my mouth as my breath caught. He was close enough that I could see the flecks of different blues in his eyes. Without thinking, I put one hand against his chest, feeling his heart beat beneath my palm.
“Darcy,” he said, and somehow my name sounded different, but then something changed in his face as he stepped back.
Aelfwyn.
A scream came from the southern road as wee both turned to see a child stumbling from between the trees, barefoot and crying, blood dried down one side of his face.
Behind him came a woman carrying a baby, then an old man leaning heavily on a stick. Families emerged from the woods with carts and livestock, some coughing, some weeping, most carrying whatever they’d managed to save. Beyond them, smoke climbed black against the darkening sky.
Wulfric was already moving. He reached the boy just as the child’s knees gave way and caught him by the shoulders.
“What happened?”
The boy clung to his cloak.
“They burned it.”
More people appeared on the road. Ten. Twenty. Too many to count.
Wulfric looked south. “How many are coming?”
The boy’s mother reached us, tears cutting clean tracks through the soot on her face.
“All of us,” she said as behind her, the road filled with the displaced.