Excerpt: Æðeling / Hlaford

I found Siflæd in the Great Hall, which had been turned into an impromptu surgery, where men worked to save the lives or the limbs of the wounded from both sides. Amidst the dead and dying, and the few that might still live, Siflæd stood leaning on the edge of the high table, the only one that didn't have a bloodied victim lying on it, grimly watching the frantic bustle of activity. She'd left her helm and shield somewhere, but still wore her armor, the once-shiny mail stained with blood, and her well-used sword rode at her hip. Her dark hair had been braided and coiled to add padding inside her helm, but locks of it had come loose and drifted in wisps around her face. The red line of a cut crossed one pale cheek, and she had what looked to be the beginnings of a nasty bruise just at the top of her right vambrace. She was beautiful.

As I approached her, she looked up at me and gave me a tired, crooked half-smile. "We did it," she said.

"We did."

"It's good that you arrived when you did. We had the supplies here to outlast a siege, but not the fighting-men to hold out long against attack. We beat off two attempts to take the castle by storm. We would not have beaten a third. And if the walls of Cyningham were not so stout as they are, we would not have beaten off the second one."

"What happened here after the army left?" I asked.

Siflæd grimaced, then flinched as someone behind me screamed in agony. "Dunnere æt Colnecæstre arrived here a few days after you left, probably about the time you sailed from Alba Ea Gelæte, at the head of his army. He assured us that my brother had summoned him to defend Cyningham against any attack while he was away. Well, I know my brother, and I know if he had any expectation that he could add that many men to his army by delaying only a few days, he would have waited for them, and forget any need to keep Cyningham covered while he was away.

"So I didn't trust him, but we had been caught with the gates wide open and the town unprotected, so it would have been difficult to deny him outright. Even if we had been able to close the gates against him, the town would have been at his mercy, and without the townsmen, we would not have been able to man the walls for even the small defense we were able to present.

"So I invited him in, and his husceorls, but pretended that we needed a day or two to make preparations before his army could be billeted inside the walls, so they had to make camp out on the green. And we treated them to a fine feast..."

"Poisoned?"

"No. Not unless making sure they had plenty of the good mead counts." Siflæd gave me a cross look, though I thought there was no real anger behind it. "Do I look like a craven poisoner? Besides, while I had my suspicions, I didn't know for certain, and it would've been politically inconvenient if I had poisoned one of my brother's powerful allies.

"So we invited them in, and fed them, and billeted them here in the Great Hall, and I made sure that Dunnere and those of his husceorls who seemed to be carefully avoiding having too much mead knew that when I went off to my chamber, I was unaccompanied by anyone but my handmaiden. You remember Æðelswiþa?"

"I do. The blonde you fought the sell-sword for."

Siflæd paused, brushed the loose hair back out of her face, which accomplished nothing enduring, then said, "That's not exactly how I would have described that, but yes, I suppose. Anyway, we went off to my chamber, openly and obviously alone and carrying no weapons, and prepared for the night. As expected, sometime after midnight, Dunnere thumped on my chamber door. Æðelswiþa jumped up from her place at the foot of my bed and went to inquire as to what business he had of her lady in the middle of the night, and he pretended that there was something urgent happening that he needed to tell me about, perhaps an attack; he wasn't specific. So she opened the door, and he and three of his husceorls rushed in and seized her, and when they rushed forward to also seize the form in my bed, which was just a roll of my blankets, I stepped out from behind the door and killed them all."

"Four on one?" I inquired, impressed.

Siflæd smiled, a cold and joyless expression that I didn't think was really an improvement on the sad half-smile. "They had no idea that I ordinarily kept my kit in my chambers. I'm not sure they even knew that I had or knew how to use it, for that matter. I was waiting for them, fully armed and armored, with hauberk and shield and sword, and attacked them from behind by surprise, and they were in tunics with just swords and torches, and were expecting me to be in my bed, unarmed and half-asleep. It wasn't a fight; it was murder. Two of them were dead before they even knew what was happening, and the other two died almost as quickly."

"It was tremendously brave," a voice behind me said, and Æðelswiþa stepped up to stand at my elbow. She was holding an empty bucket in her hands, and her dress, which looked old and worn even for a girl of her formerly low standing, and especially so if Siflæd had raised her to handmaiden to the highest-ranked lady in the kingdom, was stained here and there with blood. Fortunately, none of it seemed to be hers.

"Killing that niðing that tried to force himself on you was braver," Siflæd said. "I was armored when I fought Dunnere and his men, and they weren't. That's a huge advantage."

"You didn't know they weren't going to be armored when you made the plan," Æðelswiþa objected.

"Perhaps not. I still had the advantage of surprise, though, and I knew that they'd take me alive if they could. My birth made me a valuable hostage. Bravery was opening that door in naught but your shift, without even rank to protect you, just to be convincing enough to lure them in where I could strike from behind. And then when the fighting began, grabbing my spear and attacking that husceorl, still in naught but your shift."

"I had you to protect me," Æðelswiþa said, with utter faith. She looked up at me and added, "I completely missed the husceorl, too. I'd never tried to use a spear before. It's harder than it looks, just for a simple stab, I mean, not the fancy stuff like you and Lady Siflæd can do with one. I was trying to distract him for Lady Siflæd, though. She killed him then, so I think it helped."

"It did help," Siflæd said. "But still, you shouldn't have risked it. I would've had him in a moment anyway. In any case," she went on, picking up the threads of her tale again, "we came down here then, and 'Swiþa slit the throats of the rest of his husceorls as they slept off their drink on the benches, while I stood watch in case any of them woke before she was done."

"It was just like slaughtering hogs back home," Æðelswiþa said. "Except the hogs never did anything wrong."