It was my turn to pause before answering.
“We were relying on Cuthbert. He’s a great preacher, I think you know, and he would have answered Wilfrid in normal times, and answered him very well, but he’s ill. We asked too much of him, and he cracked,” I said.
“There’s something else about the Romans that turned King Oswy’s head,” Godwin said. “They are like a well-drilled army. They are more than happy to bless the armies of the kingdoms they already have, but you – begging your pardon, Magister – you Irish are more likely to give him a three hour sermon than a three-second blessing.”
“We’re not very enthusiastic about wars and conquests, no,” I agreed, “but we were on his side when it mattered most to him, when the Mercian army had him hemmed in against the Cheviot hills. He talks about that victory as a miracle and thanked Lindisfarne for it handsomely.” We walked the horses on, while Godwin thought some more.
“Will you go over to Rome?”
“Me? No, no. I can’t go over. The price for their order and discipline is that they want to control everything - body through the King’s word, and souls through their threats of damnation. I don’t like it. These Romans like power too much.”
“Ah, yes. You may have the right of it there. But can you see the appeal to a king?” Ethelred dropped back to rejoin us before he could continue. We were in a large clearing but the trees and undergrowth were closing in, less than two hundred yards before us.
“I think there’s someone ahead,” he said in a low and casual voice. “Bushes either side of the track. Right up to the edge. I saw movement.”
“Magister?” Godwin enquired. I felt ahead with my mind and detected four, two either side, furtive and conspiratorial. I nodded.
“Two on each side. It’s an ambush, all right. Let’s make ready.” So saying, I loosened my sword in its sheath and prepared to draw it. Godwin stopped me.
“Can you not - you know - stop them?”
“I need eye contact - or physical contact for best results. I could only do it one at a time. And they are determined on a course of action. It would take time to break it down. I doubt if they’ll give us that time.”
“Very well, but leave it to us. This is our speciality.”
“I can fight as well, you know.”
“I’m sure, and with your bare hands too, I hear,” Godwin smiled, “but we know what we’re doing. You would only get in the way. Stay back and pick off any that try to come round our flank. You ready?” he asked Ethelred, as he buckled his shield onto his crippled arm.
“Aye, and willing too,” came the reply.
“Well then, let’s get to it!” he finished with a roar and the two of them charged into the narrowing track.
The failing light made it a little difficult to see exactly what happened, but it was clear that the ambushers were not expecting a charge. The expected easy pickings had turned into a desperate fight almost before they realised what had happened.
Godwin and Ethelred took a bush each and flushed the outlaws into the open. They had the initial advantage, as they were on horseback and the robbers were on foot and surprised. One head flew on a gout of blood into the trees at the first pass. The two soldiers dismounted and engaged their enemies on foot. A second robber retreated under an onslaught of blows from Godwin. A third was engaging Ethelred. The fourth had got his senses back and was trying to edge around and come at one or the other soldier from behind. I slipped quietly off my horse and pulled my sword from its scabbard. I didn’t want to kill but I would not see my companions wounded.
Even with a withered arm, Godwin could use his shield. He powered it from his shoulder and upper arm, using it like a battering ram as he fought, barging and slicing alternately and forcing his opponent back. In doing so he opened up a gap between his own back and Ethelred’s, and the last robber was heading for it, sword upraised.
His swing was met by my long blade, immovable as rock. The robber turned a surprised face to me and what he saw in my eyes scared him out of his wits. He dropped his weapon and fell gibbering to the floor.
Godwin had beaten his opponent to the ground.
“Let’s save ourselves the trouble of a trial. You’d only be sentenced to hang anyway, and we haven’t got time to waste.” With that, he ran the man through. Ethelred found himself an opening and finished off his opponent through the heart. The last of them was crying and weeping on the ground, trying to crawl away from me. Godwin looked at him with something approaching pity.
“What did you do to him, Magister?”
“Asked him what he feared most and showed it to him - with a few embellishments.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know. It came from his own mind, and I didn’t have time to examine it closely.” Godwin looked at me with something approaching disgust. This was not a soldier’s way.
“A clean death is better than lingering madness,” he said and cut the man’s head off before I could stop him.
“He would’ve recovered. I would have released him,” I said.
“I’d have hanged him anyway,” Godwin said and cleaned his bloody sword on the grass.
I wanted to give them a burial service but Godwin insisted that they’d wasted enough time for one day and, after a short argument, ordered me back into the saddle. I refused and, after a few more fruitless threats and orders, we agreed to light a small pyre. We collected sufficient brushwood in less than twenty minutes, and set it to burning immediately the bodies were dumped on top of it. I said a few words and then we were on our way. The horses would normally have been well rested after the time they had spent hanging around but the smell of death made even these battle-hardened beasts nervous. They wouldn’t be able to go much further that day; just through the village Ieuan had raced through two-and-a-half hours earlier and out the other side a mile or so. It was full dark when we finally called a halt, the time since the fight having passed with hardly a word between us.
The fire was made up and the meal was eaten before anyone said anything of any meaning. It was I who broke the silence as I was finding Godwin’s mood uncomfortable.
“Godwin, what ails you?” He didn’t look up.
“You. You disturb me. What you did to that robber. He was terrified, and you barely laid a finger on him.”
“I was you who killed him. I didn’t.”
“Isn’t a quick, fighter’s death preferable to madness?”
“As I said, I would have relieved him of his fear. And don’t think he wasn’t frightened of you: he was terrified.”
“But I didn’t drive him out his mind.”
“Nor did I. It was a temporary thing.”
“So you say.”
“So I do say.”
Silence fell again but it was broken, this time by Ethelred.