Chapter 3 - The Long Road Out Of Eden

"Oh, aye," the cowherd assures Calix with a nod, "but it's a full day to walk. Stop for a bev and I'll see where our map's to." He adds, beckoning to follow him towards the barn.

Calix waits until the man's back is turned to look over his shoulder toward the others, and takes it as a good sign that none are in immediate view. With a shrug to himself, he heads after the cowherd. "Have ale on you out here?"

Goewyn looks in the direction Egon is pointing, notices the crack and nods. She draws her seax and then disappears  as she silently moves around to the other side of the barn. Her years in the wilds of Wealas taught her how to move with the quietness of the owl. Her foot falls never touch even an errant leaf as she moves like a shadow across the moon. Her eyes take in three men, gambling and drinking with weapons and armor. She narrows her eyes as their suspicions are confirmed, even though she cannot hear what they are saying, and just as quietly makes her way back to her companions. She leans in closely to them as she whispers. "At least three men, drinking and playing a game. They are armed and armored. Simple weapons, no mail, but they are out of place in the barn."

As the cowherd and Calix disappear toward the barn, Egon waves the remaining trio toward the southern barn door. As they move, he says, "Let us see how Calix fares."

As the cowherd leads Calix around the open doors on the west side of the barn, a number of other men come into view. Three are sat playing dice around a hay bale that they're using as a makeshift table and two others loiter in the corners. There are also several horses stabled in the stalls.

Muireann darts forward, keeping low in the grass, pressing herself behind the stile, keeping the cowherd in view.

Calix nods in acknowledgement toward the three new men as they come into view, looking around to the animals. Smaller than he was used to back home, but he'd long since learned he couldn't be picky on these shores.  "Good horses. You must be the envy of many here."

"Perks of working for his lordship," the cowherd remarks with a sweeping gesture towards the barn's occupants, who each offer Calix crooked smiles. "I'm Tunbrand, by the way. The ginger cunt in the corner with no coin is Swithaelf," he continues, causing the trio sat around the hay bale to erupt with raucous laughter. "That's Gundgeard, Oshelm and Gargrim, and the shady bugger brooding in the back is Instan. Fella' here's lost his way, lads. Still got that map?" Gundgeard and Gargrim wave to Calix while Oshelm gets up to go root around in a saddle bag. "Sit down, have a drink," Tunbrand says, scooping up a wooden cup from the hay bale. "Oi, you lot! I'm sick of staring at cow shite. Who's up next?" Swithaelf grunts affirmatively in response and slopes off outside to watch the herd.

"Been too long since I've rolled dice. Think I've forgotten how," Calix responds after nodding in acknowledgement of the introductions, finding a seat on one of the bales of hay. It's somewhat disorienting to see the setup, so familiar in the context of soldiers who had laughed and mocked in a different tongue.  "What's the game, and who here was the one to rob Swithaelf blind?"

Gundgeard and Gargrim chuckle to one another conspiratorially in wordless answer to Calix's question. "Sixes," Gundgeard explains. "What's your name, mate?" "More importantly,"  Gargrim adds,  "what do you have to bet?" However, the moment is interrupted by the Swithaelf's raised voice from outside. "Who's that skulking around over there?!" The man demands, the muscles of his powerfully built arms and shoulders rippling as he sets an arrow to a warbow and pulls the string taught. With somebody now looking directly at her, the stile doesn't provide nearly enough cover to hide Muireann from view. Inside the barn, Instan steps in behind Calix, while Oshelm turns from his horse, axe in hand. "Friend of yours?" Gargrim asks, his voice laced with ice.

Muireann freezes, her fingers a hairsbreadth from the bow slung over her shoulders. Slowly, she moves her hands away from the bow, staring the big man down. There are several optiins that immediately spring to mind. She doubts any of them speak Irish. So, in Irish, she says, "Hi. Steal any cows lately?" The words are accompanied by a tight smile. 

God help me. Calix looks over his shoulder reflexively, though there's little reason to. Any hope he had that it might be Hrothgar who he could easily sell up the river disappears at the sight of blonde hair, and he looks instead to Gargrim, trying to cover for what just seconds ago had seemed a smooth plan.  "If I was with her, do you think I would be the one in here right now, playing distraction?"

Murieann's voice in lilting Irish sends a chill down his spine. This could turn sour, fast . He searches up and down the gap in the barn door, looking for a locking bar. He doesn't find one, to his relief. But as a last second instinct, he checks the bottom of the door and finds two drop bolts. Grimacing, he begins to slowly make his way along the wall of the barn toward the door he knows is open.

"Take off the sweord," Gundgeard tells Calix sharply, his hand on the hilt of his seax. Meanwhile, Tunbrand also fits an arrow to his bow and steps up beside Swithaelf. "Come out into the paddock, girl," he shouts and both men hold their bows ready to shoot.

Right. Okay. Sure. She pokes her head up above the fence. "Why would I do that?" She says, stumbling over the still-strange language she'd learned not too long ago.  

Calix draws Eleison slowly as he stands, his other hand held in a placating gesture as he watches Gundgeard's hand on his seax hilt. "Peace. I barely know her, that's the truth. We don't want trouble."

Emma H. said: Right. Okay. Sure. She pokes her head up above the fence. "Why would I do that?" She says, stumbling over the still-strange language she'd learned not too long ago.   "'Cos if y'don't, we're gonna fill y'full o' 'oles." Swithaelf grunts back and Muireann can see that both are ready to loose their arrows if she makes a move that they don't like. sansasnark said: Calix draws Eleison slowly as he stands, his other hand held in a placating gesture as he watches Gundgeard's hand on his seax hilt. "Peace. I barely know her, that's the truth. We don't want trouble." "I wouldn't do that if I were you," Instan growls in a low voice from behind Calix as he starts to draw Eleison from its sheath with a rasping cling. "Unbuckle the belt."

Muireann inwardly curses herself. Gods, I'm clumsy. Slowly, she steps out from behind the stile, ducking beneath the fence, her hands held up at shoulder height. 

This was going badly very quickly. Goewyn looks over her shoulder to Hrothgar and waves him over while pointing towards Egon and the men who'd spotted Muireann as she quickly begins making her way around to a better flanking position. As she makes her way around the backside of the barn, inspiration presents itself in a massive pile of dry hay piled up against the backside of the barn. She knew a great way to get them to come back outside... she pulls out a bit of flint and draws her seax. 

"I can't do that," Calix responds carefully, not moving his hilt further from the scabbard. What are their feet made of in Ireland, iron? "I'll not be parted from this sweord again. Let us go, and we'll see the end of one another."

"I don't think so," Oshelm tells Calix, brandishing his axe as Gundgeard and Gargrim each move to grab an arm.

Muireann moves, darting back behind the fence she'd just come over. Two arrows fly at her, one sticking into the post next to her head as she slides between them, another grazing her arm. She lets out a string of Irish curses, stringing an arrow into her bow. She pops up, and her eyes glow a strange green. The man called Tunbrand looks dazed for half a second as his eyes glow with the same green. She looses the arrow at him, but it goes wide, sticking in the wood wall of the barn. She ducks back down, stringing another arrow, still cursing under her breath. 

The three twangs  of arrow strings snapping against forearms set Egon running. As Muireann takes a grazing blow, he's already cleared the fence and is bearing down on one of the archers. He lashes out at one of his legs and the man kicks his leg away to avoid the blade. The blade meets flesh -- just barely -- and the archer's balance fails, sending him toppling to the ground.  Egon looks down at the archer. "Hello there," he says with a soft grin.

" Just because we don't  want  trouble, doesn't mean we won't cause it.  Have it your way, then." Eleison's weight settles into his palm. " Have it your way, then. " Hand axes and seaxes glint in the morning light, and Calix shifts his weight into a familiar stance from his family's training yard. It's a nasty situation, there's no getting around it; but one glance to the nervous horses behind the men makes him think there may be getting through it. He'd spent his life around horses – so familiar that the fantasy of riding again had been a common one as he rotted in a cage across from Egon. They hadn't been able to help him then, but perhaps they could be his deliverance now. Turning toward Gargrim, he lashes out with a swift stab, the prayer Fabian had taught him a silent mantra that never quite makes it past his lips.  The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; against them he will thunder in heaven. Eleison's blade finds purchase, sliding past Gargrim's steel with a thunderous shudder so loud he might have flinched had he not been expecting it. Almost at once half the horses rear and whinny, the animalistic noises tacking on to the edge of the boom. A breath later and it's a stampede through the barn, powerful beasts racing past and through the group in their sudden desperation to get to the door. Half the men around him are forced to their backs by trampling hooves and he spins past the others, clashing Eleison against swinging blades as he sprints the gap toward a chestnut, murmuring words in Frankish to calm it just in time to vault on to its back.  If there was one thing he was certain of, it was that the Lord provides. 

As chaos quickly spreads, Goewyn rushes forward and easily leaps over the top of the fence, kicking up a spray of loose leaves and soft soil as she rushes towards the front of the barn and her companions as quickly as her fleet feet will carry her! 

Deftly side-stepping towards the doors, Instan hurls two knives at Calix in quick succession. One streaks past its target, while the other thumps hard against the Frank's armoured shoulder and clatters to the ground. Tunbrand staggers to his feet in the wake of the horses' stampede, quickly fitting a new arrow to his bow and loosing it at Egon. Although the arrows does not pierce the Kentish warrior's leathern jacket, the impact at this range almost knocks him over. Inside the barn, Oshelm scrambles to find his feet, only to have Eleison meet him at every turn. Gundgeard grabs a nearby bow and looses an arrow at Calix that is deflected by the leather of his warrior jacket. However, Gargrim does find some small opening, slashing at Calix's calves. Meanwhile, Swithaelf surges to his feet faster than Egon expected, but finds his heaxy axe ringing in his hands as it catches on his opponent's langseax. Outside, Hrothgar hurries to join Egon, ducking back and forth as he tries to find his way past the panicked horses to the melee.

Muireann takes a deep steadying breath, her back to the fence, singing a soft Irish lullaby as she strings another arrow. She turns, bracing herself against the fence, drawing the string back to a hairsbreadth from her eye. Everything around her stills, the only sound the breath she takes in. Anyone else wouldn't have been able to make the shot. Anyone who wasn't her. Years of practice had taught her to find peace in the stillness, find the mark in the quiet. And it was in those spaces that she could hit any shot. She knew her craft, and she knew it well. Her soft, lilting melody ends, and she releases her arrow. All at once, the world returns to a normal pace, and three things happen at once. First, Tunbrand dies, his eyes and hers flashing green as the magic of the Druids and her arrow snuff out his life. Second, she places her sights on the man next to him. Third, another arrow is already taking the place of the first. 

Egon slashes at Swithaelf, but the man hooks his blade aside with the head of his axe. A follow-up punch, a slash, a block. The two men engage and dodge and sidestep each other's blows.

Calix twists on horseback, cleanly stabbing Oshelm as he attempts to come up from behind. With his knees and a guiding hand against the horse's great neck he urges it upward, feeling the bludgeoning weight resonate in his jaw as the beast's hooves pound down into Gargrim's chest.

Goewyn takes her father's bow out and puts an arrow to the string as she creeps around the corner, keeping herself small and unobtrusive while she surveys the fight. She finds her target, a warrior dueling with Egon, as she draws the string back just like her father had taught her and waits for one breath... two breathes.... now! The man had raised his axe up in preparation for a strike, exposing the soft spot in his armpit, she releases with a sharp snap and the arrowhead punches through his rib bones and sinks halfway to the fletching into his torso. There's a moment when she thinks it had not hit anything vital before his knees buckle and he tumbles to the side as if he could simply run away from the source of his pain and collapses to the ground... dead or dying, Goewyn did not care. He was out of the fight. She lets out the breath she was holding and slips back behind the wall out of sight. 

By now, the stack of hay on the eastern side of the barn is well and truly in flame and licking at the bottom of the roof's thatch. Seeing Oshelm, Tunbrand and Swithaelf fall before him in quick succession, Instan bolts for one of the passing horses, only to find Egon's blade barring his way. The gaunt-looking man snarls and meets the langsax with a pair of fast stabs of his knives, but nothing comes closer than a scratch. "Gar!" Gundgeard shouts in distress, when he sees Calix trampling his brother. Grabbing a spear, the wild eyed Saxon jabs at the horse, giving Gargrim the moment that he needs to roll out from under the beast. There's a flash of metal as the burlier brother's seax slices open the steed's belly and blood spatters across the floor of the barn. A shrill whinny of distress pierces the air and then the horse collapses, landing Calix on his back with a resounding thud . Moments too late, Hrothgar rounds the corner with a ferocious battle cry, charging Gundgeard with his broadaxe. The blade passes inches from the man's chest only for the haft to knock the wind from his stomach on the follow through.

Muireann ducks under the fence, striding out across the field towards the now smoking barn. She draws back her bow, and an arrow zips narrowly past Egon and Hrothgar to stick in Gundgeard's throat. The man falls with a gurgle. 

Egon looks back at Goewyn as the woman's arrow pierces the man he had been dueling. He nods in thanks, then turns his sword back on the man that had tried to run. He was quick, certainly, and the two blades he fought with flashed fiercely. But Egon's langseax was quicker, slashing at the man's ribcage when he over-extended himself. Egon's blade rises up and across the man's throat, spilling hot crimson as it went. The kurzsax hit the ground, then his knees, and finally the rest of him as he expires at Egon's feet.

Calix hits the ground hard, the shudder of pain through his spine streamlining into something purer and hotter as the horse's pained whinnies come a breath later. He rolls to his feet with in furious indignation, stabbing indiscriminately at Gargrim and feeling little better even when Eleison strikes home. For a breath he stares down at the man as his eyes go glassy, breathing hard and trying to place the surge of emotion – but it leads, as all things do, back to that day at the beach, when horses had been dying all around him, and he forcibly shuts it down as quickly as it had started. Dropping to a knee beside the creature, he presses a palm to the worst of the bleeding gashes, his eyes closing as he wills God to take mercy on the beast, who had done no wrong except bear a Frank upon it in a land of Saxons. After what feels like an eternity the horse's pained breathing slows to something that might pass for normal, hair instead of rent flesh brushes his palm, and he opens his eyes to find a horse frantic not from pain but from thatch falling eaten and charred around them. "I will hope for the both of us your legs are working," he remarks, standing and gently guiding the horse to its feet, standing by its neck to avoid anxious hooves as he walks it slowly toward the edge of the barn and out into the pasture.  "Come on, then; that's it.  You will have quite the tale to tell around the water barrel, my friend ."

One of the horses bucks and whinnies nearby, its eyes rolling as the flames begin to overtake the barn's roof.  "Easy there,"  Egon says, approaching with his hands outstretched.  "Easy. Let's get you out of here."  The bucking begins to subside and Egon pats the horse's neck.  "Come on, let's go."  He leads the horse free of the barn. The animal whinnies, its hooves lightly stamping the ground in agitation. He continues to pat the horse's neck as he watches the smoke climb into the sky.  "We should round up the cattle and get moving quickly. We've lit a signal flare for the entire countryside." 

No sooner had her arrow struck down Gundgread, it was all over. She absently slings her bow over her shoulder, her fingers trailing along the flank of the horse rushing by her out of the burning barn. She murmurs softly to it, coming up alongside, her fingers trailing through the long mane. "Hush, it's alright. There's no fire out here. Let's go walk." The language she spoke wasn't Irish. It wasn't Mercian. It wasn't even Welsh. It was something far more ancient. "How did you get to this place?"  

An enormous brown eye fixes Muireann's, staring at her with both puzzlement and comprehension. "The man brought me here."

She tilts her head at the horse. "The man who was killed here?" She wasn't sure exactly how much complexity the creature would be able to understand. Best to keep it simple. Keep it to one man. Instead of many.

"Yes," the horse confirms, nuzzling its mouth against Muireann's hand.

"Did the cows come with you?" Muireann absently scratches the horse behind the ear.

"Yes," the horse replies again, leaning into the scratch.

Muireann smiles, pressing her forehead to the horse's nose. "How long were you traveling with the cows?"

"One sun?" The horse explains with difficulty. "It is hard to remember."

She laughs softly. "One sun. That's quite short." She'd had a feeling that a horse's sense of time wouldn't be very specific. "Were the cows happy about it?"

"Cows do not like being moved," the horse tells Muireann, as though surprised that she does not understand this universal fact.

"Of course they don't. Silly me." She pauses. "Was the man in a hurry to move the cows?"

The horse brays affirmatively. "All of them moved the cows as fast as they could."

Egon cocks his head to one side, gazing intently at the woman that seems to be speaking with the horse. "I find myself in strange company," he says to Calix, gesturing to Muireann. "Is holding conversation with animals an Irish trait?"

Muireann nods. "As I thought. Were you pursued?"

The horse seems unsure and glances about nervously. The idea clearly unnerves the poor animal.