The King's Hounds (The King's Hounds series Book 1) Read online

  This time I repeated my question in their language, instead of in English.

  They stared at each other. Then they grabbed me, turned me back around so that I was facing the gate again, and shoved me on my way.

  Idiots. Surely they could hear from my perfect Danish accent that I was not an Englishman. It’s not like I’d painstakingly learned the language of the victors just to please them. My mother was Danish—so Danish was literally my mother tongue, and my father was Saxon, so I spoke both languages fluently.

  I reached the gate just as an oxcart was rolling in. One glance over my shoulder told me that the warriors had already turned their attention elsewhere, so I ducked behind the cart and walked behind it, bending over as it rumbled past the Hall and came to a stop between two outbuildings.

  No one had noticed me, not even the driver, and I didn’t waste any time. I popped into the building next to the peat-covered outdoor oven—and luck was on my side. Several rows of bread were cooling on the long wooden racks mounted on the walls inside.

  Without hesitating, I grabbed two wheat loaves—I could get rye or barley anytime. This was my chance to sink my teeth into sweet nobleman’s food. I quickly tucked them inside my tattered coat, wincing as the still-hot loaves touched my belly. Just as I turned to slip back out the door, three women walked in.

  The two in front were carrying a handbarrow between them filled with bread. The woman in back had blonde braids and soft, voluptuous lips. Her clothes betrayed her high social status—as did the fearlessness with which she looked me in the eye.

  “What are you doing in here?” she said in Danish, clear and forthright, her head held high.

  “They told me Asmund was in here,” I said. I spoke without hesitation.

  “Asmund?”

  I nodded. There was bound to be at least one Asmund in any Danish manor.

  “You mean Asmund the Shepherd?” said one of the servant girls, who also looked quite attractive under her gray shift dress.

  “Who else? I don’t know any other Asmund.” You should always sound like you know what you’re talking about.

  “And just what would a shepherd be doing in the bake house?” This nobleman’s lass wasn’t dim.

  I shrugged. “How should I know? They said he was here in the hut. I didn’t even know it was the bakery until I walked in.”

  “Well, he’s not here.”

  I grinned at her. “I can see that.”

  Cradling the loaves with my hand inside my coat so I wouldn’t drop them, I headed for the door. I had just reached the threshold when her voice stopped me. “Well, don’t you want to know where he is then?”

  “That’s all right. I’m sure I’ll find him.”

  But it wasn’t going to be that easy.

  “Wait!” she called.

  I looked across the courtyard. The three warriors hadn’t noticed me yet, but they were bound to spot me once I got closer to the outer gate. So I waited while the three girls whispered together.

  “He’s grazing the animals in Cuckoo’s Meadow today,” she said, walking over to me. She smelled clean.

  “Well, then I’ll go find him there.” The warriors glanced up at the sun, which was approaching its midday zenith.

  “So you know where Cuckoo’s Meadow is?” There was a hint of teasing in her voice.

  I waved my hand vaguely toward the woods outside the palisade. The warriors were watching three of their colleagues, who were walking over to them from the other side of the courtyard.

  And sure enough, once they were all together, my pals all headed straight for the Hall and their waiting dinners.

  I nodded to the girl and strolled across the courtyard as if I owned the place, waving boldly at the new gate guards. I made it to the gate unimpeded. Although men entering a manor were stopped, anyone on his way out wasn’t considered a threat.

  The planting fields around the manor were a good arrowshot wide so no one would be able to approach me unseen.

  As I set out toward the edge of the woods, following the dusty ruts worn deep into the dirt by years of carts and horsemen, I half expected her haughty voice to stop me again, but the girl had obviously believed me. No one stopped me from entering the woods.

  I followed the wheel ruts for a while. Eventually I stopped and, hidden behind a tree, glanced back. I walked another few arrowshots before veering off between the trees, onto a narrow footpath, through a carpet of bluebells that led to a floral-scented clearing with a stream running through it.

  Sitting against a beech trunk, I devoured the sweet wheat bread, noting my stomach’s gratitude after several days without any food. Then I walked over to the stream and drank. I would have preferred ale, but after my run-in with those girls, it would have been tempting fate to search for the brewery as well.

  My stomach was full, the day was warm, and my legs tired from several days of walking.

  I woke up to someone kicking me in the side. Not hard, the way a warrior would have done, but not gently either.

  I lay still without opening my eyes, but I didn’t shut them tighter, either. I made sure my breathing didn’t change. I know how important it is to control your body, so that you still look like you’re asleep.

  Another kick. I made a sleepy face, rolled over onto my stomach so that my right arm was just in front of the kicking foot, and continued to breathe deeply and evenly.

  When the next kick struck me, I gave a good hard whack; the pain shot up my forearm as I hit the kicker’s shinbone. I jumped to my feet with my knife out before the troublemaker had even hit the ground.

  I dropped on top of the fallen kicker, straddling the offender’s torso with a knee on either side and my knife under his jaw.

  Fortunately, I recognized the person before I stuck the knife in.

  Her eyes were dark with rage and her voice shrill, but there was nothing to suggest any fear in the girl’s face. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  I grinned at her. The second time I had done so since I’d met her. “Right now? Nothing. A minute ago I was defending myself against an unknown assailant.”

  “Assailant?” she scoffed. “Get off me.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not uncomfortable.” My eyes slid down her body, then glanced back toward the path we’d both followed to get here.

  “You lied,” she accused me.

  I nodded. “Not for the first time.”

  “You could have just asked for the bread.”

  “And a nobleman whose warriors had already kicked me out would have given it to me?”

  She didn’t say anything. “I would have … if you’d asked.”

  She might have been telling the truth. Or maybe—since I was still straddling her with a knife to her throat—she just thought a little white lie was in order.

  “Who are you?” She didn’t appear to be in any hurry for me to move.

  I saw no reason not to tell her. “Halfdan.”

  “Halfdan. So your father …?”

  “Was Asulf of Oakthorpe. My mother, his second wife, was a Dane.”

  “Was?” She didn’t look angry anymore, and was still not the least bit afraid.

  “My mother died when I was very young. My father fell at Assandun.”

  “Oh.” She still didn’t show any signs of wanting me to get up. “A lot of good men died that day.”

  “Others survived. Your father, no doubt. As well as one person who should have fallen, but luckily he eventually got what he had coming to him.” My voice oozed with bitterness.

  “You mean …?” She looked puzzled for a moment and then nodded as though she’d solved a riddle. “Eadric Streona.” As a Danish speaker, she had trouble with the Saxon name.

  “Yes. They call him Eadric the Grasper in your language.” I spat on the ground. She didn’t need to know any more than that. “And you are?” I asked.

  “Tova, Ømund’s daughter.”

  “Ømund?”

  “Who fought with Cnut at Assandun.
”

  A nobleman, in other words. A common warrior would not have fought with the Danish king, but for him.

  “And now he owns that manor back there?” I guessed. Nothing like sitting astride the daughter of a Danish warrior who had surely taken many English lives.

  “My father is King Cnut’s thane and owns a great deal of land,” she said, her voice laced with pride.

  “For now,” I said.

  But she saw through me. “For now? So, you think the Anglo-Saxons are going to put together some kind of effective army?”

  “No.” I shook my head. She was right. The Danes ruled this land now. Well, the Danes and any Saxons who had made their peace with King Cnut. Eadric, that traitor, had paid with his head when Cnut discovered he had lied and switched sides. Other good men who had survived the Battle of Assandun were Cnut’s men now, now that Edmund Ironside was dead. King Cnut and King Edmund had divided the country between them while they were both alive. Cnut would get everything north of the Thames, and Edmund all the land to the south. But whichever of them lived longer would inherit all of England.

  So when Ironside died, Cnut got everything.

  I looked at the girl. “Why did you follow me?”

  “To see if you were lying.”

  “Hmm.” I ran my finger over her cheek. “Why don’t I believe you?”

  Her eyes darkened, but I stopped her from answering by moving my finger over her lips and leaning forward. With my mouth right up to her ear, I whispered: “Where are the warriors?”

  “There … there aren’t any warriors.” She couldn’t ignore my weight on her body.

  “A nobleman’s daughter doesn’t go out into the woods by herself to check if someone is lying.”

  “I … I …”

  I let my hand fall over her breast, felt her nipple through her clothes. It was not immune to my caress. “You wanted to see what kind of man I was.”

  She shook her head and tried to break free.

  When I brought my mouth to hers, she kept her lips clamped shut. At first. But I know how to caress a woman, and her mouth eventually opened to mine.

  It wasn’t rape. Although that might have been what she told her father afterward to try to avoid getting into trouble.

  She was certainly no virgin. I was sure of that from the moment she first spoke to me. Her outspokenness wasn’t just a consequence of her noble birth. No virgin would ever have spoken so cheekily to a strange man.

  She was a young woman who knew how to enjoy lovemaking, and who finished me off with her mouth after letting me caress her to her own gasping delight.

  She was too wise and experienced to let me enter her, but there was no way the man who came whistling down the footpath could have known that when he spotted us lying together, relaxed and naked, looking exactly like a pair of postcoital lovers.

  The fleeting pause between his grin at spotting our intertwined bodies and his shudder when he recognized the girl is what saved me. I leapt up and forward, slammed my fist into his temple, and watched him fall like an ox under a butcher’s ax.

  “Who is he?”

  Tova stared at him blankly. “One of my father’s tenant farmers.” Then she turned back to me and said, “That’s some fist you’ve got.”

  “And I run fast, too,” I said, grabbing my clothes. I gave her one last kiss and darted across the clearing. I didn’t stop to put my clothes on until I was safely surrounded by tree trunks. The spring afternoon was still young, and I planned to be far away by nightfall.

  Whatever story Tova made up for her father, it did not dispel his anger about a stranger bedding his daughter.

  While resting under a tree that night, I was awakened by the sound of approaching warriors. That had been two days ago, and I’d been on the run ever since.

  I considered climbing down from the tree and running in the opposite direction of the warriors, but I decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

  Instead I waited, my stomach complaining more and more vociferously. After evening had fallen, I was rewarded with the sight of the warriors, now retracing their steps dejectedly. With their spears over their shoulders and their swords sheathed, they were chatting casually among themselves and paying little attention to their surroundings. They didn’t look up this time either, and soon disappeared back down the footpath.

  I decided it would be foolish for me to go out on a limb now, so I stuck it out on my branch until morning, dozing in fits through the spring night filled with cuckoo calls, waking with a start each time I fell into a deep sleep, and eagerly awaiting the dawn as I muttered curses about my rumbling stomach.

  As the sun began to warm the air, I weighed my options. I had to get down, but figured it would probably be wise to keep away from all the manors and villages until I was quite a bit farther from Ømund’s estate. Tova had mentioned that he owned a great deal of land, and as Cnut’s thane, he was quite a powerful man.

  I might encounter another wayfarer like myself, one who would be willing to share his food. Or, more likely, as I accepted with a shrug, I would find a wayfarer who could be forced to share what he had.

  And right then, just such a wayfarer came into view.

  Chapter 2

  The wayfarer was alone, which was the most important thing. He was a little stooped and leaned on his staff. His clothes were worn but clean, from his leather shoes to the felt hat he wore pulled down over his eyes, probably to keep out the sun.

  Plodding along behind him was the oldest mule I’ve ever seen. Its mane was thinning and gray, as were the sparse, straggly strands of hair visible on its flanks between big bald patches. A packsaddle hung crookedly on its sharp spine, as though the man hadn’t checked it since cinching it on earlier that morning.

  Neither a halter or bridle hung from the animal’s drooping head, but it followed right at the man’s heels anyway. The man stopped at the foot of my tree, pressed his hands to his lower back, and straightened up. As he rubbed his back muscles, he looked ahead down the path, spat, and began rummaging among the many packs on the saddle. He pulled out a half-filled swine bladder, held it to his lips, drank, then spat again.

  “Yes, yes, Atheling, old friend. We’re getting there.”

  He spoke in a West Saxon dialect. His voice was gentle.

  I pressed my body against my branch, craning to see back up the path, trying to figure out who he was talking to. There was no one in sight, and as I scanned back and forth, he put the water bladder away and gave his mule a gentle slap on the neck. “Well, Atheling. Let’s go.”

  As they disappeared into the woods, I smiled at myself for not realizing he had been talking to his mule. After they were gone, I lay there for a while on my back, thinking.

  I hadn’t seen any weapons on the man, nor did he look like a warrior—though I knew he must have a knife hidden on him somewhere.

  Not that that worried me. If I could just get close enough, surely my own knife would motivate him to share whatever he had with me.

  But then there was his staff …

  It came all the way up to his stooped shoulders and was as thick as my wrist. In the right hands it could definitely be a lethal weapon.

  Whether his were the right hands, I didn’t know, but I had no intention of letting the man’s staff answer that question. Given its reach, if he was any good with it at all, my knife would be worthless.

  Once I was sure he was far enough away not to hear me, I climbed down from my tree and tracked him silently through the woods, scanning my surroundings as I walked.

  Birds chirped all around. Cuckoo calls mingled with the chaffinch’s trills, the wren’s warbling song, and the great tit’s uniform dee-dee, dee-dee. The sun was stronger now, and sweat trickled down my neck despite the shade of the trees. I was thirsty after all that time up in the tree and kept an eye out for a stream.

  Before long, I spotted a meandering brook in a meadow to my left. The water looked cold and refreshing. I squatted down and drank, scooping water up in my
cupped hand so that I could keep my eyes on my surroundings at all times. But aside from a roe deer that suddenly appeared through the trees to stop and graze, there were no signs of life.

  I saw a copse a ways downstream and headed toward it. I studied the slender oak saplings and supple ash trunks I passed on the way, and selected a straight oak—which could not have been very old as the trunk was no thicker than my forearm. Still, it took quite a while to cut it down with my knife and just as long to trim the branches and strip the bark. However, by the time I was done, I held a strong, supple staff in my hands.

  I set out for the man again, hoping that he would provide me with sustenance for the day. I was careful not to make too much noise, and ready to hide at the faintest sound.

  The man and his mule had a good head start, but they were obviously not in any rush, so it wasn’t long before I heard him chattering away in English up ahead.

  When I got close enough to see the mule’s ass, I began eavesdropping on its owner’s conversation, and determined that he was talking just to hear the sound of his own voice. Apparently he did not have anything very interesting to discuss with his old fart of a mule.

  The sun had passed its zenith when the voice suddenly took on a firm tone, causing me to stop in my tracks.

  “Now, Atheling, my noble friend,” I could hear his words clearly and rolled my eyes at the pun in the pack animal’s name—very funny, a prince’s title for a lowly mule. “Here’s a patch of grass for you, with shade for me. It even seems to be ant-free. Let’s dine here, my noble friend.”

  I waited until I thought he’d had time to sit down. Then I snuck closer. I stopped, hidden behind a thicket, and peeked out, shading my eyes with my hand.

  He was straight ahead of me, right where the path curved around a small knoll. He lay in the grass in the shade of the trees, gnawing on hunks of meat that he’d sliced off a leg of lamb with his knife. The knife, a short seax, lay to his right. My eyes immediately sought his walking stick, which was leaning against the packsaddle on the ground, well beyond his reach.