Winter's Blossom: The Seasons of Arthur

Chapter 15

It was on leaving the wood we found the first evidence of the war on the land. There were not many buildings in the Disputed Lands, but those that there were all blackened hulks. Some still smoked weakly from the fierce fires. Birds circled low overhead.

On the ground crowd hopped around in circles, cawing at the dogs that gathered. The dogs were worrying at the carved up corpses of a man and his family, littering the blackened bloodstains of the burnt ground. A fox edged cautiously closer, hoping to join in the feast but turned to flee, yelping as a snarling hound snapped viciously at it and chased it a short distance.

Other dogs looked up at us as we approached the buildings. One large, black dog lifted its heads from the bowels of a corpse to snarl at us. It's muzzles was red with blood, it's lips drawn back to threaten us with bloodstained teeth so that it looked like it could be a hound of hell itself.

'Get out of here.' Aglovale shouted at the dogs, breaking the silence and making me jump almost out of my skin. He threw a stone at them and the big dog yelped and dropped back, snarling again. But with the leader of the pack retreating before us the other dogs backed off warily.

The man they had been tearing at was a disgusting sight. His stomach seemed gone, ripped apart by the birds and dogs. Chunks had been ripped off the flesh parts of him, from his throat, his upper arms and legs. Empty eye sockets stared into sky, and the flesh around the face had been picked at by the birds.

The tunic had ridden up, exposing the groin and the gaping hole there. But the hole not surrounded by the ripped and torn meat of hungry animals. This was a cut from a blade. 'Bastards.' Aglovale growled vehemently, and not at the dogs.

I felt numb as we looked through the ruins, checking for survivors. Often children may escape into the nearby woods and then come back to the devastation left by a marauding enemy. Inside the house was a woman and a girl, both in the room lying near each other inside. The woman was naked on the floor. The dogs had got to her but not the girl yet. The girl was almost naked, with the hems of her dress pulled up above her waist and the tops and side of her dress torn so much that only a few strands of ripped wool around her waist, exposing her shoulders and her small budding breasts. The inside of her thighs were bloody but there was no wound there, or anywhere but for the savage red line across her throat. By her height and size of her breasts I guessed that she was thirteen at most. I felt tears threaten behind my eyes.

Other men poked around with their sword points at places on the ground, or found water to pour onto it. Water was a sure way of finding buried riches as the water would seep under the loose ground. There were no survivors though, nor hidden hoards and Dirandon called us back from where we searched. 'Aren't we going to bury them?' I asked Dirandon when he called to go. But the veteran warrior just shook his head sadly, 'If we stopped to bury them, we would be burying ourselves soon after.' And with that we were marching again, while around me the growl of angry men grew into a rumble, so that I almost pitied the Angles we came up against.

Dirandon fretted about the what would be waiting for us. He had to deal with the risk that the village we marched to would be prepared, that they would have had the time to gather men from nearby settlements to resist us. He also had to worry that Engist might detach part or all of his army to eradicate the risk to his rear when he found out about us. It meant that Dirandon behaved as if he was caught somewhere between marching towards our deaths and fleeing from it, and that we might stumble on a stronger force of trained warriors this time.

However, much to everyone's relief, we were not to encounter another enemy until we reached our destination.

The Angles had known about us, and they were ready. At least they were as ready as they could be. The wooden walls were manned, though we could see only a spattering of mailed men with shield and axe behind them. Most of the defenders were young boys or old men with scythe and spear. Ironically, despite Dirandon's fear of marching to meet a prepared and reinforced settlement, we had actually been helped for they had, on hearing of the enemy threat, evacuated as many as would go, not knowing how few we were in number and that without surprise, every man, woman and child in the village could have thrown us back. We were not to know that yet though,