The fit lasted only moments before he realized the gruesome hopelessness of what he was doing. When he stopped, he heard shouting outside in a language that was similar to the one he spoke but not quite the same. That brought him back abruptly to the danger he was in. He might be about to die.
I don’t care, I’ll die, he thought; but that mood lasted only seconds. If he met another Viking, his own head might be split just like that of the man at his feet. Stricken with grief as he was, he could still feel terror at the thought of being hacked to death.
But what was he to do? He was afraid of being found inside the dairy, with the corpse of his victim crying out for revenge; but if he went outside he would surely be captured and killed. He looked about him wildly: where could he hide? His eye fell on the overturned manger, a crude wooden construction. Upside down, its trough looked big enough to conceal him.
He lay on the stone floor and pulled it over him. As an afterthought he lifted the edge, grabbed the ax, and pulled it under with him.
Some light came through the cracks between the planks of the manger. He lay still and listened. The wood muffled sound somewhat, but he could hear a lot of shouting and screaming outside. He waited in fear: at any moment a Viking could come in and be curious enough to look under the manger. If that happened, Edgar decided, he would try to kill the man instantly with the ax; but he would be at a serious disadvantage, lying on the ground with his enemy standing over him.
He heard a dog whine, and understood that Brindle must be standing beside the inverted manger. “Go away,” he hissed. The sound of his voice only encouraged the dog, and she whined louder.
Edgar cursed, then lifted the edge of the trough, reached out, and pulled the dog in with him. Brindle lay down and went silent.
Edgar waited, listening to the horrible sounds of slaughter and destruction.
Brindle began to lick the Viking’s brains off the blade of the ax.
* * *
He did not know how long he remained there. He began to feel warm and guessed the sun must be high. Eventually the noise from outside lessened, but he could not be sure the Vikings had gone, and every time he considered looking out he decided not to risk his life yet. Then he would turn his mind to thoughts of Sunni, and he would weep all over again.
Brindle dozed beside him, but every now and again the dog would whimper and tremble in her sleep. Edgar wondered whether dogs had bad dreams.
Edgar sometimes had nightmares: he was on a sinking ship, or an oak tree was falling and he could not get out of the way, or he was fleeing from a forest fire. When he woke up from such dreams he experienced a feeling of relief so powerful that he wanted to weep. Now he kept thinking that the Viking attack might be a nightmare from which he would wake at any moment to find Sunni still alive. But he did not wake.
At last he heard voices speaking plain Anglo-Saxon. Still he hesitated. The speakers sounded troubled but not panicked; grief-stricken rather than in fear of their lives. That must surely mean the Vikings had gone, he reasoned.
How many of his friends had they taken with them to sell as slaves? How many corpses of his neighbors had they left behind? Did he still have a family?
Brindle made a hopeful noise in her throat and tried to stand up. She could not rise in the confined space, but clearly she felt it was now safe to move.
Edgar lifted the manger. Brindle immediately stepped out. Edgar rolled from under it, holding the Viking ax, and lowered the trough back to the floor. He got to his feet, limbs aching from prolonged confinement. He hooked the ax to his belt.
Then he looked out of the dairy door.
The town had gone.
For a moment he was just bewildered. How could Combe have disappeared? But he knew how, of course. Almost every house had burned to nothing. A few were still smoldering. Here and there masonry structures remained standing, and he took awhile to identify them. The monastery had two stone buildings, the church and a two-story edifice with a refectory on the ground floor and a dormitory upstairs. There were two other stone churches. It took him longer to identify the home of Wyn the jeweler, who needed stonework to protect him from thieves.
Cyneric’s cows had survived, clustering fearfully in the middle of their fenced pasture: cows were valuable, but, Edgar reasoned, too bulky and cantankerous to take on board ship—like all thieves, the Vikings would prefer cash or small, high-priced items such as jewelry.
Townspeople stood in the ruins, dazed, hardly speaking, uttering monosyllables of grief and horror and bewilderment.
The same vessels were anchored in the bay, but the Viking ships had gone.
At last he allowed himself to look at the bodies in the dairy. The Viking was barely recognizable as a human being. Edgar felt strange, thinking that he had done that. It was hardly believable.
Sunni looked surprisingly peaceful. There was no visible sign of the head injury that had killed her. Her eyes were half open, and Edgar closed them again. He knelt down and again felt for a heartbeat, knowing it was foolish. Her body was already cool.
What should he do? Perhaps he could help her soul get to heaven. The monastery was still standing. He should take her to the monks’ church.
He took her in his arms. Lifting her was more difficult than he expected. She was slender, and he was strong, but her inert body unbalanced him and, as he struggled to stand, he had to crush her to his chest harder than he would have wished. Holding her in such a rough embrace, knowing she felt no pain, harshly accentuated her lifelessness and made him cry again.
He walked through the house, past the body of Cyneric, and out the door.
Brindle followed him.
It seemed to be midafternoon, though it was hard to tell: there were ashes in the air, along with the smoke from embers, and a disgusting odor of burned human flesh. The survivors looked around them perplexedly, as if they could not take in what had happened. More were making their way back from the woods, some driving livestock.
Edgar walked toward the monastery. Sunni’s weight began to hurt his arms, but perversely he welcomed the pain. However, her eyes would not remain closed, and somehow this distressed him. He wanted her to look as if she were asleep.
No one paid him much attention: they all had their own individual tragedies. He reached the church and made his way inside.
He was not the only person to have this idea. There were bodies lying all along the nave, with people kneeling or standing beside them. Prior Ulfric approached Edgar, looking distraught, and said peremptorily: “Dead or alive?”
“It’s Sungifu, she’s dead,” Edgar replied.
“Dead people at the east end,” said Ulfric, too frantically busy to be gentle. “Wounded in the nave.”
“Will you pray for her soul, please?”
“She’ll be treated like all the rest.”
“I gave the alarm,” Edgar protested. “I may have saved your life. Please pray for her.”