He sighed, blowing out air slowly so that his breath billowed about him for a moment in the early morning cool.
“Stay close, boy,” he whispered. “Show me what you’ve found.”
Odin looked up at him, its one eye dark and thoughtful, bearded mouth red and straggled. And then the dog spun around and padded silently back into the undergrowth. Dunston hurried behind, less concerned now with remaining silent as with finding the source of that blood.
It was closer than he had imagined. A few heartbeats later, Odin led him into a clearing surrounded by densely leafed linden trees. In the centre of the glade lay a corpse. He did not need to approach the body to know the man was dead.
The clearing was awash with blood. The man had been slain atop a fallen oak, the wood long dead and crumbling. The tree trunk was slimed with gore. The delicate white flowers of the dog rose that grew along the edge of the rotting tree were splattered with crimson. The moss that clung to the wood glistened darkly. Blood had spattered and smeared much of the clearing’s green carpet of snakeweed and ivy. The corpse had been stripped to the waist. Where his skin was not daubed with his lifeblood, it was pallid; the blue-tinge of death. Dunston could not see the dead man’s face. He had been left face down on the log. His greying hair dangled down, lank and blood-streaked, brushing the earth beneath his hanging head.
Dunston had seen death before. But the savagery of this man’s slaughter made his breath catch in his throat. This was more than a murder, or a robbery of an unlucky traveller. There was evil here.
Dunston shuddered.
Odin padded forward into the glade.
“Stay,” Dunston ordered, his voice harsh; a knife cut in the stillness of the forest.
The dog whimpered, but halted and sat on its haunches. Absently, Dunston reached out and placed a hand on the hound’s head. The dog’s warmth was comforting.
Dunston stroked the soft, warm fur behind Odin’s ears, but all the while, his gaze remained fixed on the scene of slaughter before him.
The slain man’s back had been split open. His ribs had been pried apart and his offal pulled from his flesh and splayed upon his back. Dunston did not need to get any closer to know that the bloody mess either side of the great wound in the centre of his back was made up of the man’s lungs. They had been draped like crude, blood-drenched wings on the man’s shoulder blades.
Dunston had heard of such things, but he had thought them the tales of scops to frighten children. Though why they felt the need to make the Norsemen any more terrifying than they were, he had never understood. In his experience, the men who came from the sea aboard the beast-prowed sea-dragons, oars beating as the wings of some giant bird, were fearsome enough. There was no need to invent stories of human sacrifice and ritual killings in the name of their one-eyed god.
Could it be that the tales were true? Had raiders landed nearby in their sleek ships, on the Frama perhaps? Surely the river was not large enough here to carry fighting ships? Were Norsemen even now creeping through the forest in search of prey?
And yet he had only seen the tracks of four men. And it was not the way of those heathen Norse to sneak around murdering men in the dark of the woodland. The people of the coast lived in constant fear of the coming of the dragon ships, he knew, but here? And why so few of them?
Whatever the truth of it, the remains of the poor man told him one thing. Danger was close.
Dunston dragged his gaze from the gory spectacle and cast around the clearing. Clothing was strewn about. A tawny-coloured cape. A ripped kirtle, tattered and flecked with dark stains. A single leather shoe. Dunston flicked his gaze back to the dead man and noted his left foot was bare.
An unusual shadow caught his attention. There was something large just beyond the clearing. He took a couple of steps towards it. His hand rested on his seax handle and once again he was moving with the silent stealth of a woodland hunter. Two more steps and he was able to discern what the object was. A handcart. A simple, two-wheeled affair that could be pulled by one person. Walking to the cart, he tugged back the greased leather that covered its contents. He was surprised to find several sacks, a wooden box and a couple of small iron-hooped kegs, nestling safely and seemingly untouched beneath the cover. Teasing open one of the sacks he found long white goose feathers inside. A second, smaller bag held leather pouches. Each of the pouches was tightly tied, but they were not sealed well enough to disguise the heady aroma of pepper, cinnamon and mace. Dunston’s head swam with the powerful scents of the spices. These were not the things that would bring Norse warriors battle-fame and have their names sung of in the halls of their northern lands, but the stuff was valuable enough. Pulling the leather back over the cart, he looked about him.
A light wind rustled the leaves high above. The summer sun was warming the land. Somewhere far off a wood pigeon called. The forest was returning to normal, breathing once again after the sudden violence that had happened within its depths.
Dunston sighed. When he had awoken that morning, he had meant to check his snares, and then return to his hut and the forge. The knife he was making for Oswold, the leatherworker from Briuuetone, was taking shape and it would easily have been finished by midsummer’s eve. But now that would have to wait. He could not leave the man here. The easiest thing would be to bury him and just keep what was on the cart. He could sell the items over time, and some of the things might be of use to him.
Shaking his head, he returned to the clearing. He knew he would do no such thing. He was no thief, and besides, there were killers on the loose. Perhaps even Norsemen. No, he would take the cart and the man down to Briuuetone. Let Rothulf decide what must be done. Perhaps the reeve would know who the corpse was. Maybe the dead man had kin.
Dunston took in a deep breath and spat, readying himself for the task of wrestling the man’s gore-slick remains onto the small cart. He once more searched the ground, as much to put off the task as anything else.
The same four men. They had all been here. He could clearly see where they had confronted the man with the cart and then dragged him to the fallen oak. The spray of the man’s blood showed Dunston where they had first tortured him and then, with a great gouting fountain of dark arterial blood, they had taken his life. Dunston reached out to touch a bramble, pulling a small red woollen thread from a thorn. His hand shook. He could almost hear the screams of the dying man, the laughter and shouts of the men who had butchered him. Dunston was no stranger to death and he was accustomed to slaughtering, gutting and skinning animals small and large. But this torn tragedy, a mass of ripped flesh and offal, this was no way for a man to die.
Twisting the piece of wool between his forefinger and thumb, Dunston steeled himself for what he needed to do. But just as he pushed himself up, he noticed the slightest of prints in the soft earth in the shade of the dog rose. This was something else. No, someone else. Judging from the size and depth of the track, this belonged to a child or perhaps a woman. Had the four men taken her?
Dunston’s heart pounded. Was there even now a defenceless child at the mercy of the brutes who had committed this act of savagery? He searched frantically about the glade for more sign, but the area was trampled. Flies and insects droned and hummed now about the corpse, gorging themselves on its blood and cooling flesh.
He could find no more tracks. Perhaps he should follow the clear trail of the killers in order to see whether they had carried the child off with them. He did not like the prospect. There were four of them and he wanted nothing to do with men capable of such atrocities. And yet, without a backward glance, he hitched up his belt and walked into the forest after them. He would have to come back for the poor man’s body later.