Chapter 3 - The Long Road Out Of Eden

Egon looks around, his eyes tracing the Roman walls and architecture juxtaposed with the newer buildings. "The ealdorman will live in one of the Roman buildings. Probably the biggest. Let's look for that one."

Walking deeper into Corinium, more and more of the surrounding buildings are Roman in style, built of stone with a terracotta roof. At the heart of the town is a large stately home of the same kind with a walled inner courtyard. It's clearly the largest building around.

Through an open window, a heated conversation can be heard from inside. "-cannot risk open war with Castra. This is an insult, to be sure, but the matter must be handled delicately."

Egon moves forward into the yard of the house, listening intently to the conversation, but losing the thread as the speakers move away from the window. "A herd of cows is not worth the lives of loyal warriors and Wildhelm-" Cocking an eyebrow in curiosity, he moves up to the door and gives it three sharp raps. "Good morning!" he calls as friendlily as possible.

There's a moment of quiet inside and then the sound of motion before the door opens a crack to reveal a balding man with a crooked nose and thick eyebrows. "Good day. I don't believe that we've met. I am Aelfbrand, ealdorman of Corinium. What can I do for you, stranger?"

"Greetings, Aelfbrand," Egon says. "I am Egon, and these are my travelling companions. Our travel has come under some duress, and we are looking to work our way into some mounts -- either that, or coin for some mounts." He takes a look back at his travel companions, and then looks back to the ealdorman. "Would you happen to know of any mercenary work we could take on? We are all capable fighters."

Aelfbrand glances back over his shoulder at a severe, raven-haired woman inside his hall. She nods and the ealdorman opens the door wider, muttering something to himself about closing windows. "You have remarkable timing, Egon," Aelfbrand remarks. "Would you and your companions care to come inside?" He gestures to a long table where the pair have been breakfasting. "This is my beloved wife, Swithwyn." The ealdorman adds, gesturing to the dark-haired woman. "Do I detect an eastern accent? What brings you so far west?"

Egon gestures the company inside. At the introduction, he gives a deep bow in Swithwyn's direction. "My lady," he says. He rises and turns to Aelfbrand. He puts on his best unconcerned smile. "Somedays I ask myself the same question," he says with a chuckle. "Our travels take us all over. But you commented on our timing. There is something that we can do for you, then."

Aelfbrand sighs and gestures to his guests to take a seat at the table. He hesitates when Calix's cross comes into view, but having already invited the guests in doesn't bring it up. Swithwyn throws her husband a look across the table, before returning to her bread. "My people have cattle that spend the summer grazing up on the Cotswolds. When the weather turns, they will be brought down for the winter, or rather they would have been. A herd has been lost and appears to have been taken north-west towards Gleawecastre, or Caerloyw, as the Wealh call it. It is an insult by the ealdorman Wildhelm, but I refuse to be drawn into such a pointless conflict. If you could recover these beasts for Corinium, then I could perhaps see my way to finding you some horses." Aelfbrand takes a bite from his bread and watches Egon as he chews and waits for the Kentman's reaction.

Egon frowns, and leans forward across the table. "Your cattle were stolen by another village? Have you had conflicts with this...Wildhelm, you said? Have you had trouble with him before?"

Aelfbrand nods in confirmation. "King Ceolwulf is yet young and Wildhelm sees himself as an equal or superior. If Corinium would swear fealty to Wildhelm, then he could usurp control of Hwicce and have himself named its king. I am a loyal ealdorman of Wessex and have denied him this. We are not at war, but he seeks to provoke me until he can find an excuse to take our lands by force. If you can return the cattle, then it would buy me some time to convince the king to denounce Wildhelm."

Nodding, Egon grimaces at the memories of the game of politics -- his least favorite part of his former life. "With as little bloodshed as possible, I would imagine. Give Wildhelm as little claim that you wronged him as possible."

"Oh, you have nothing to do with us,"  Swithwyn interjects, giving each member of strange group a long stare. "We've never heard of you and played no part in your actions... but if you return the herd to us, then you shall have your horses," she agrees.

"Who is Wildhelm's successor?" Calix asks abruptly in West Saxon.

"As an ealdorman?" Swithwyn replies, again eyeing Calix's cross with disapproval. "It is uncertain. Cyning Ceolwulf might choose Windhelm's brother, Gundwig, his nephew, Pendculf, or his son, Ceolhelm. Of course, as Cyning of Hwicce, Windhelm would see Ceolhelm as Aetheling." She pauses for moment, before adding. "Why do you wear that ridiculous thing?" Swithwyn turns to look back at Egon. "Has the east fallen so far that you have forgotten the ways of our forefathers?"

"Our group is not monolithic," Egon says, giving Swithwyn a reassuring smile. "What god my companions follow will not affect how we do the job you've requested of us."

Swithwyn sits back with a "hmph" and continues eating. "Do we have an understanding?" Aelfbrand asks.

"Yes. We'll find them," Calix responds shortly, looking to Swithwyn. "With God's grace we'll bring your herd home."  

Swithwyn scoffs. "Have we fallen so far as to seek the aid of their gormless God?" She asks her husband with a scowl. "What worth has a warrior who will never see Valhalla? What of Tyr's own chosen?" "You would send men chosen by Tyr to quietly fetch some cows?" Aelfbrand counters with an amused smile. "There is little glory in this task for a great warrior, but there are horses for our guests here, if they return successful."

Egon winces at Calix's declaration, but his expression turns to mild bemusement as the husband and wife banter about the chosen and not-chosen of the gods. What did it matter? If Calix truly believed that he was bound for his Christian heaven, then would he not fight all the more harder to do good by these people and be worthy of it? The same way that Egon himself would fight to be worthy of Valhalla. Was it not all the same, in the end? He kept his private musings to himself. They would likely be more heretical to Swithwyn's ears than Calix's own statement had been.  "We should set out at once. There is still plenty of daylight to be had. Might we find some food for our journey somewhere?"

Aelfbrand tosses Egon an unbroken loaf of bread from the breakfast table. "EOFORWIG," he yells over his shoulder and a boy comes scurrying into the hall. "Fetch these travellers a wheel of cheese and put it in a sack with some dried apples and sausage from the stores. Then see them on their way." "The next time I see you, the job is done," the ealdorman tells Egon and his companions with a sharp nod. 

Muireann's eyes have been darting between the ealdorman, his wife, Egon, and Calix during the course of their conversation. She grips her bow a little more tightly when the question of Calix's religion is brought up. As much as she disliked Christians, she was also very interested in not needing to walk everywhere. And if that meant putting up with a cross, for a little while at least, so be it. She stands abruptly as the boy runs into the hall. "Seems everything is managed then," she comments, in her still very broken Mercian. "I'll be ready to leave, outside." Without barely a look to the others, she steps out into the courtyard, leaning against chilled stones.

"Tired already?" Hrothgar quips at Muireann in West Saxon as he steps out of the hall, cheese wheel in hand. The food has been wrapped in leaves for travelling and he crouches to set about packing it in his bag.

Muireann shoots Hrothgar a look, then pulls out a knife and starts carving symbols into the haft of her bow. "I don't like stuffy people in stuffy houses. The politics here...it's....stifling," she finally finds the Mercian word she was looking for, though she's sure she butchered it horribly. I hate this language.  

Hrothgar shrugs. "We'll leave them behind us soon enough and be off into the hills. That's what you prefer?"

"I'd prefer to not be here at all." She punctuates the last word with a particularly violent dig into the wood of the bow. She blows on the fresh row of symbols, getting all the small wood chips from the score marks. She looks over at Hrothgar. "Why? Is that what you'd prefer?"

Egon nods politely and says, "Thank you, Ealdorman." He nods politely to Swithwyn as well, and then makes for the door.

Calix gives Swithwyn a long look before following Egon out the door, just in time to hear Muireann's assertion. "At last, something we can agree on." He gestures toward the gates they'd entered through. "All the more reason for horses."

Hrothgar grunts back at Muireann as he finishes packing the cheese. "I would prefer to be half way to Kent and making plans to feed Chad's balls to that cursed Christian priest," he tells her with a foul grin full of yellow teeth, "but if it gets me a horse, I will settle for rounding up cattle. To Gleawecastre, was it?" The hulking Saxon hefts his bag onto his back and straightens, taking a deep breath of the cool morning air.

"Let's be off,"  Egon says. " Gleawecastre and its stolen cattle await."

Departing Corinium through its northern gate, the rolling hills of the Cotswolds rise up ahead, blanketing the horizon in a panorama of rich and verdant greens. It takes all morning to hike across the hills towards Cowley, where Aelfbrand told Egon that the herd was originally pastured. Nevertheless, it's a pleasant walk and as noon approaches the sun has burned off most of the clouds, leaving blue skies in their wake. Upon arrival, Cowley itself seems to be little more than a collection of huts, but the plush meadow where the beasts have spent their summer is plain for all to see.

As they move closer to the pasture, Muireann darts out ahead, her eyes gliding deftly over the scene, looking for any indication as to how the cows might've escaped. She kneels down in the dirt, tracing her finger through it, looking up at the sky, then back down. Standing, she moves back to the others. "They've moved off. North-west by the looks. Seems to be four on horseback took them." She looks at them all, waiting for a long moment, then realizes she's been speaking in her native Irish. Gods above.  Grumbling, she shifts her tongue back to the awkwardness of Mercian, relaying what she'd found. Again.

Goewyn was beyond glad to out of the halls of the Ealdorman and outside with the others. In this moment she was of no use to anyone, she would have been no good at this... whatever this was. "So, we are killing some folks for cows, in exchange for horses?"  She asks Egon, pointedly ignoring Calix as the three of them leave the halls. "Thank you, for taking care of that, Egon. I would not have known how to speak to someone like that. My place is in the woods, not the stone castles of lords and their honeyed words." Goewyn joins Muireann in checking the tracks and nods her assessment to match that of Muireann's. "What do we know of these lands we are going into? Egon, do you know of this lord?"

"I'm afraid that I do not," he says, musing over the tracks that Goewyn and Muireann found. He looks pointedly at Goewyn, trying to decide if the woman had simply asked due to circumstance, or if she had somehow gleaned more knowledge of his past than he had actually let on. "Did you think that I would have?"

She shrugs. "You just seemed to know how to talk with these people, I thought perhaps you might have knowledge of the lords and their lands. That is all."

"Ah," Egon says. "Let us just say that I used to travel in similar circles. But not this far north."

Goewyn and Muireann follow the tracks of the herd west through the trees and over the hillside for several more hours. Eventually, they happen upon a clearing near the edge of the woods, with a thatched barn and a paddock full of cows. The rushing water of a small stream can be heard from the northern side of the paddock and the smell of manure is heavy on the air.

"Well, it certainly smells like cattle," Egon muses quietly. "Let's move in slowly and take a look."

The two ladies take point, stalking between the trees with practiced grace as they edge closer to the barn. As their view of the paddock's fence grows clearer, Muireann spots a man watching over the herd on the western edge of the field, near the tree line.

Muireann holds out a hand, halting the others. She points across the paddock to the man at the tree line. "One by the trees. Who knows how many more in the barn," she whispers to the others, slowly nocking an arrow in her bow. 

The man's gaze starting to drift in their direction, Calix grabs Egon and pulls him downward behind Muireann and Goewyn with a good-natured smirk and a low,  "Moving in slowly does still call for movement. The cows are going to think you one of their own."

Egon grimaces as Calix pulls him along. "This is not exactly my specialty ," he says.

"Find me in Brittany. I will show you."  Calix looks back to the others, signaling for them to go around before abruptly stealing forward into the next bush. It's from behind this that he ultimately emerges onto the bend of the road, squinting up at the sun.  "Good morn,"  he calls to the cowherd in West Saxon, slowly approaching by walking down the road in the direction opposite the group.  "I am in need of some aid. The simplest sort, if you have a head for directions. It would seem I, ah, do not."

"Let's go," Egon hisses, jerking his head toward the barn.

Muireann returns the arrow to her quiver, slinging her bow over her shoulder in one smooth movement, beginning to slowly move opposite of where Calix had gone. Hopefully they'd be able to pull this off without too much fuss.

"Alright me babber?" The cowherd greets Calix cheerfully with a strong local accent. "Where you going to?"

Babber  takes Calix a moment to correlate in stronger tongues, but the helpful tone is difficult to miss and he seizes onto it immediately, approaching the man at the fence. "Corinium. At least I thought I was. Are you familiar?"

"Aye, over yonder," the man laughs, gesturing back east the way that Calix has come from. "Other side of the Cotswolds, mind. You're proper lost and no mistake." Meanwhile, Egon and Muireann dart across the track to take cover behind the nearby stacks of hay while Calix distracts the cowherd. As they move up to the wall of the barn, they can hear the muted rumble of voices coming from inside.

The voices make a low murmur no more distinct than the sounds of the cows in the pasture. Egon grunts softly in frustration. He waves to get the attention of Goewyn, then points at the southern door to the barn. He mimes peering through a crack with his hands, then points at the door again.

"How far of a walk, if we assume I learn not to wander?" He tries a sheepish grin. "Have you seen it yourself before?"