The Red And Savage Tongue (Historical Fiction Action Adventure Book, set in Dark Age post Roman Britain) by F J Atkinson Page B

the forest, but soon the trees thickened around them again, and it was mid-morning before the trees again thinned out and the village came into sight.
         Abandoned, the huts stood derelict; the walls having lost their mud rendering in places, allowing the lattice frameworks to stand out like ribs on decaying corpses. A line of boulders that lay in the form of a cross some distance from the huts confirmed that they had nothing to fear from anything alive in the village.
         The men, like the forest, were silent—their ponies shuffling and grunting, sending out billows of foggy breath into the cool, pre-noon air.
         Wlensing looked around him, frowning. ‘I don’t like this place Egbert. It’s got a bad feel to it.’
         Egbert, too, was unsettled as he looked at the foreboding scene, but realised he could not let the men see any weakness in him. ‘Gloomy it is for sure,’ he conceded, ‘but gloom doesn’t wield a spear, and it won’t put me in my grave. Come on, follow me, and let’s delve deeper.’ He dismounted and led his pony into the clearing, the others following cautiously.
         It was soon apparent that the village had not met its ill fortune at the hands of enemies. The huts showed no signs of burning or deliberate damage, and owed their sorry state to the process of natural decay rather than the result of human destruction.
         Cissa knelt and thoughtfully examined the stone cross. ‘It would be a considerate foe indeed,’ he reasoned, ‘who so thoughtfully buried his enemies. I think we stand at the scene of a pestilence or a hunger here.’
         ‘Then let’s replenish our water from that well and hope no rotting carcass befouls it,’ said Wlensing, looking around uneasily. ‘Then we can get back in search of the living—this place freezes my very bones.’
         Egbert pointed beyond the village boundary towards what appeared to be overgrown fields. ‘I guess that’s our direction. That would be the way they took their produce to trade.’ He heaved his bulk onto his pony. ‘That’s if any other wretches are left alive in this putrid land.’
         Their track, indented by r uts baked hard by the sun, told of the passage of long-vanished ox drawn carts to and from the village. After a while, Wlensling dismounted and knelt by one of the furrows. ‘It seems this track was used for many years if the depths of these ruts are anything to go by,’ he mused. ‘Maybe they lead to a bigger settlement, or even a market.’
         The group continued through the early afternoon , following the tracks, but saw no living man or woman. It was late afternoon before they, at last, heard the sound of human voices.
        Two boys were at play in a tree near a small pond. The old Alder had begun to lean, and one of its branches grew at right angles to its trunk and bridged the water. It was on this branch that the boys were lying on their bellies, looking down into the green water as they idled away their day. They looked up when noticing the reflection of a mounted man. The man spoke to them in a tongue they could not understand.
         Further attempts at communication received only blank stares from the boys, until Cissa, who had learned a few words of the British tongue from Withred , rode to Egbert’s side and asked in British, ‘Village?’
         The larger of the boys nodded when hearing the word. Cissa adopted a shrugging questioning posture, and again asked, ‘Village?’
         The boys shimmied off the tree and walked cautiously towards the riders. Egbert dismounted and pointed to one of the tracks that led away from them. ‘Village?’ he asked, copying Cissa.
         The larger boy nodded his head and pointed to another track that led from the pond and contoured around a small grassy hill before disappearing from sight. Egbert patted the boy on the head, and smiled at him before mounting his pony.
         Nodding knowingly