Amber Treasure, The by Richard Denning Page B

was she so
emotional about what I had said. Unless ... I felt a tension leap into my chest
... unless ...
    I turned now and looked towards
the Villa and at once I spotted Sunniva, my sister, moving down the street
peering into the huts and searching among the villagers. Her face was pale and
her eyes red, so she could not have had much sleep and it looked like she must
have been crying. I moved towards her and she turned her head, saw me, gasped
and then ran over and hugged me.
    “Cerdic! There you are. Thanks be
to Woden,” she said, with a faint smile. “We had feared the worst when one of
the other lads told us that he had last seen the three of you running towards
the village last night. We thought you had run into some of these bastards in
the woods. I could not stand to lose you as well ...”
    Suddenly, her face darkened and
she moved towards the Villa.
    “Come, Cerdic. Leave your friends
here!” she ordered.
    I nodded at Eduard and Cuthbert
then hurried after her, her words ‘as well’ echoing in my head.
    “What is it Sunniva, is someone
hurt? Is it Mother?”
    She stopped running but did not
turn to look back at me.
    “No, Cerdic, Mother is well,
although she wishes that the gods had chosen her instead of…” Sunniva’s speech
stumbled to a halt and then she sobbed and when she looked at me, I could see
that her face was screwed up as she fought back the tears.
    “Instead of who - is it Father?”
I asked, aware that my voice was trembling. The tension in my chest was worse:
an almost unbearable tightness, as if my heart would burst.
    “Father is injured, but not too
badly and he will live.” Sunniva answered, wiping her hand across her face.
    “Who then, Sunniva?”
    She now looked utterly shattered:
her spirit burned away by sorrow. She sighed.
    “Cerdic, it’s Cuthwine: Cuthwine
is dead!”
    I opened my mouth, but aghast at
what she had just said, no words came out. It couldn’t be true, could it:
Cuthwine, my brother − dead? Of all my family, he had been more the
warrior than the farmer, unlike my father. He had always seemed so strong and
so able. Yet he had died last night, fighting to defend our home.
    “How ...when …?”
    “During the raid, a group of
Welsh stormed the Villa. I hid beneath my bed as they burst in, but Mother took
Mildrith and the slaves out through the kitchens to hide in the fields to the
east. The raiders stole what they could, including Mother’s beautiful amber jewellery.
Cuthwine, Father and some of the villagers who were around when the attack
came, tried to delay the raiders to give the others a chance to escape. Our
people fought the raiders in the courtyard,” she explained, then for a few moments
her face distorted once more as fresh tears forced their way out. Eventually,
she spoke again.
    “I crept out to the balcony and peeked
down at them and from what I could see, they had almost seen them off and three
of them certainly won’t be going back to Elmet, if that's where they were from.
Then, Cuthwine and Father seemed to have got carried away and pursued the
others out of the door. I went to your room and looked out the front of the
house and I could still see what was happening though ... though I wish I had not
...”
    She cried a bit more and it took
almost a minute for her to be able to talk again. I was too stunned from what I
was hearing to say anything, so I let her take as long as she needed.
    “Well, then what happened is the
raiders rallied around their chieftain, a great brute with only one eye and a
scar where the other should be. He charged forward and ... he ... oh, Cerdic
... he cut Cuthwine down with a great axe − just hacked into him. I think
he was dead before he hit the ground. Father went into a fury then and attacked
the chieftain with a wood axe and a seax. I think the anger of seeing Cuthwine
killed gave him strength and he managed to shatter the chieftain’s axe shaft.”
    My heart was pounding inside me
and I could still