The thunder rolled round us while we talked of him, passing but slowly, and the rain fell in sheets, washing away the more terrible stains of war.  Through it came back, unarmed and humbly, some of the Mercians, begging truce wherein to take away their comrades, and Kynan spoke to them.  As we had reason to think, the whole affair was the doing of Gymbert, so far as his men knew.  Behind him was the hand of Quendritha, of course, but of that they had heard no more than that to take us would please her.

When the storm ended, with naught but a far-off mutter of thunder among the hills beyond the Wye to mind us of it, I went out to find Jefan.  At that time there were folk from the Welsh woodlands coming up to help in any way that was needed, for a fire on the highest point of the ramparts was sending a tall smoke curling and wavering into the air, and the meaning of that was well known to them.  One might see by the way in which they were tending the wounded and digging two long trenches without the ramparts, where the slain should rest presently, that such fights were no new thing to them on the marches of Mercia.

Jefan the prince lay in a hut, and he smiled ruefully as I came in.  His ankle was broken, and the old priest had set it, skilfully enough, but it would be many a long day before he could use it again.  He held out his hand to me before I could speak.

“Are you hurt?” he said anxiously.

I was not, save for a scratch or two of no account.  More was Kynan, and that was a wonder, or his luck, as he would have it.  But Jefan said, trying to laugh: 

“I would that I might see just one bout of sword play betwixt you two.  I had held my brother as the best swordsman in all the West, but I saw a better in the gate.  There I must lie helpless, with a Mercian across me moreover, and it was somewhat of a comfort that there was that to watch.  I had seen naught of it but for the fall.”

So I had not been learning all that the best men in the Frankish armies could teach me of weapon craft for nothing, and hereafter I learned that such praise from Jefan was worth having.

But as for my thanking them for this protection of us, they would have it that the whole trouble was of their own making, since they had stayed so near the border after a raid.  Even now we must hence, for the sheriff would gather a levy to follow them no doubt.  It needed no command from Offa for that; but he would be here anon, in leisurely wise perhaps, but certainly.

“Wherefore we must go,” said Kynan.  “Then, as usual, he will find no one to fight with, and naught but a few broken marrow bones to remind him that last night we feasted on Mercian cattle up here.”

Now I would that Erling might have been laid to rest in Fernlea, near to Ethelbert, but that could not be.  We set him in a place near the gate which he had kept so well, raising a little mound over him, and Jefan said that it should be a custom with every warrior of the Cymro who entered the camp in the days to come that he should salute him, and that the tale of his deed should be told at the camp fire here from age to age, so long as harp was strung and men should sing of deeds worth minding.  Maybe that was the resting and that the honour the viking would have chosen for himself.