by James Wilde
Kraki levered one of the bodies with the toe of his shoe and shrugged. “A good man, if he is at your shoulder. Less so if you stand axe to axe.”
Tostig kneaded his brow in thought. “Find him. Do not let him leave Eoferwic.”
The Viking nodded. “The slave might know his whereabouts. The Mercian has been trapped by her thighs, and she is one who can steal a man’s wits in the process.” Still drunk from the festivities, he lurched out into the night.
The earl hesitated a moment, eyeing the marks of torture on the hanging body and wondering how much Hereward had learned from the dying man. He had promised his brother that he would hold the north in the name of the Godwins, and every day he felt he was failing a little more. And now his chance to prove to Harold that he was worthy of respect was on the cusp of being destroyed by a Mercian who was more beast than man. He could hear his brother’s condemnation ringing in his head, as he had heard it ever since he’d been a child. Tostig the Worthless. Tostig who would amount to nothing.
Frustration turning to anger, the earl followed Kraki out into the bitter night. He found the Viking in the woman’s house. Acha sprawled on the floor, teeth bared like a cornered wildcat, her cheek pink from the blow that had been struck.
Tostig stood over her. “Where is your man?”
Feigning deference, Acha stood and bowed her head, but her eyes flashed with defiance. The Viking grasped for her, but the earl held him back with one hand. He stroked his chin for a moment as he studied her and then said, “I understand you, woman. You are cunning and clever. I know you had standing among the Cymri and here you are as nothing. You secretly despise all around you and would seek to overturn the established order, if you could.”
Acha returned his gaze boldly, but said nothing.
“You saw in this man … strength? Protection? Hope that he could help you achieve your aims? But you must now know that he cannot protect you, or serve any purpose that you hold dear. With him, your only future is an outlaw life, hunted and despised, and eventual death. A woman like you …” the earl shook his head, choosing his words, “… would find no value in anything a man like that could offer.”
The space following Tostig’s words was filled with the crackle of the fire and the howl of the wind outside. Acha let her gaze drift down to the floor and said, in a bitter voice, “He has gone to the church to free the monk who is held prisoner there.”
Tostig nodded. Turning to Kraki, he ordered, “Bring the huscarls together. Find Hereward. Slaughter him as he slaughtered our guests. Leave no trace.”
The earl followed the Viking out, leaving Acha still seething, filled with murderous intent. Returning to the hall, he found Judith waiting for him, her troubled expression at odds with her festive emerald dress.
“You will not harm him?” she asked.
“He is our enemy and he has committed terrible crimes.”
“Hereward is a lost soul. Better to pray for him.”
“It is too late for that.” He would have turned away, but Judith caught his face between her hands and pulled his gaze back to her eyes.
“You are a good man, husband. You will destroy yourself following your brother’s path.”
“I am worth as much as Harold.”
“You are. More.”
He kissed her hand, enjoying the fleeting moment of tenderness. His face fell when he heard Kraki’s barked orders outside the door. “I must go,” he said, averting his eyes to hide his shame.
The Viking had lined up his men in the space beyond the hall’s doors. Each huscarl held a torch that guttered and snapped in the gale, the light casting monstrous shadows across their fierce faces. In their other hands, the warriors gripped their axes or spears, hungry for blood.
Kraki glanced at Tostig, who nodded his assent. With a battle cry in the old tongue, the Viking turned and loped into the blizzard. The earl watched the flickering torches move away into the dark and hoped the dawn would come soon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“WHAT IS THAT?” SHIELDING HIS EYES AGAINST THE BITING flakes, Alric pointed across the thatched roofs of the town. In the distance, dancing flames gleamed off the deepening snow.
“Torches,” Hereward replied. “They come for us. I had hoped we would have more time before my work was discovered. Still, this is our lot and we must deal with it.”
“You have horses ready? We could ride away from Eoferwic before they find us.” Shivering in his tunic, the monk wrapped his arms around himself. Despite the cold, he felt infused with a glow of mounting hope. All he had prayed for was coming to pass.
“And freeze to death before sun-up,” the warrior replied. “Besides, we must wait for another.”
Alric’s brow knitted. “Another?” He studied Hereward for a moment, and when the warrior didn’t meet his gaze, he nodded. “A woman.”
Hereward silenced the monk with a glare. “I told you. No more talk.” He watched the ebb and flow of the torches moving in their direction. “They’re heading for the church,” he muttered in a puzzled tone. “How do they know I am here?”
Grabbing Alric by the tunic, he propelled the monk into the narrow space between two houses. They waded through the knee-high snow, stumbled across the stinking spoil heap and over a low fence into a workshop yard. Skirting the well, they fought their way through a deep drift along the side of the workshop and emerged on to the next street.
Glancing down the white way, the warrior glimpsed the glow of two torches and cursed under his misting breath. “Kraki, the bastard.”
“What is it?” the monk gasped.
“The Viking who leads the huscarls knows his work too well. He sends his men along every street leading to the church, to stop us slipping by.”
“We could hide until they pass.”
“They will find our tracks soon enough in the torchlight, and they will lead them straight to us.” Hereward looked round until he saw a cowshed. “In there,” he urged. “Hide among the beasts until I come for you.”
Alric began to protest, but the warrior barked the order once more, with such a fierce gaze that the shivering monk ran to the shed and hid in the dung-scented dark. The cows stamped and shifted at the strange presence, their snorts so loud that the young man was fearful the noise would draw unwanted attention. Creeping to the door, he peered out into the black-and-white night and watched Hereward ease into a deep drift and pull the snow over him like a blanket. Alric wondered how the warrior could appear immune to the bitter cold; sometimes it seemed that nothing touched the man at all.
The two huscarls lurched up the street, heads down into the buffeting wind, torches guttering ahead of them. Their hoods remained low so that their faces were hidden, but their cloaks billowed behind them like bat-wings.
As the two men passed Hereward’s hiding place, the warrior burst from the snow like a churchyard revenant. The howl of the gale drowned the cries of shock. Gripped by the speed and fury of the attack, the monk crossed himself. The warrior’s sword flashed. Blood spurted across the drift from the first man’s throat. When he stumbled to his knees trying to stem the flow, Hereward leaped past him at the second man, who was struggling to whip his axe out from his flapping cloak. The warrior lopped off his head with one bone-juddering strike.
Alric was horrified by the brutality—and entranced. He saw a poetry to the killing, the gleam of the dark blood against the white flakes, the glimmer of the blade in the torchlight, the speed and elegance of the warrior’s exquisitely balanced turns and thrusts. Hereward was moving away before his second victim had fallen, a fleeting shadow across the snow.
The monk knew he couldn’t hide any longer. He told himself he was concerned for his companion’s safety, but a part of him wanted to see more. Here were revelations of God’s work that were usually denied him, and he wanted to make sense of them. Stumbling across the street, he skirted the still-twitching bodies and entered a narrow path between two houses in Hereward’s footsteps. When he left the stre
et, he heard a cry behind him. A man had stepped out of his house to investigate the disturbance and was now turning back with an anxious expression.
Although Alric moved as quickly as he could through the blizzard, he found that he had lost sight of the Mercian. He grew uneasy, aware that he had abandoned a safe haven for a labyrinth where an attack could come from any direction. His heart pounding, he crept to the edge of the next street and peered around the corner of a small house. Another huscarl was stalking up the incline toward the church.
A figure jumped from the edge of a low roof. Alric had not even noticed the dark shape hunched there in the swirling snow. Silently, Hereward fell, driving his sword down like a spike. The monk glimpsed the warrior’s face contorted in a bestial snarl, and then he ghosted away once again, leaving a body leaking steaming life.
Alric hurried in pursuit of his companion. The lethal dance bewitched him. Death occurred in the corner of his eye, a flash of a blade here, a lunge from the shadows there. Hereward was everywhere and nowhere, appearing from the blizzard and gone in a swirl of flakes. Bodies littered the streets. Yet the only sound was that of the wind roaring across Eoferwic from the floodplain beyond the clustered houses.
Dazed by the brutality of one eviscerating kill, the monk staggered out into a street only to realize his mistake a moment later. A huscarl was emerging from the side of a pigsty nearby. Before Alric could retreat, the man bellowed a warning and raced to investigate. Waving his torch in the monk’s face, he barked a query. Alric was tongue-tied. The bearded man glanced down at the monk’s habit and his eyes gleamed with suspicion. He raised his spear toward the younger man’s chest.
Movement flashed on the edge of Alric’s vision. Hereward bounded from his hiding place, sword raised for a killing stroke. But the huscarl glimpsed the movement too, and he whirled, swinging his spear. The weapon clattered against the side of the warrior’s head, pitching him into the snow. In an instant, the spear-tip pressed against Hereward’s neck. The monk glimpsed a bead of blood rising up.
“I … I am sorry,” Alric called, realizing how pathetic he sounded.
The huscarl grinned at Hereward. “No devil. No ghost. Just a man.” Tossing his torch to one side, he gripped the spear-haft with both hands and prepared to ram it down. With a cry, Alric darted forward, but the huscarl lashed out with the back of his hand, catching the monk full in the face. The younger man tumbled backward, seeing stars. When his vision cleared, the huscarl was hunched over the spear once more, ready to make the killing blow.
Then four men swept out of the blizzard and wrestled the Viking to the ground. Before he could cry out, the attackers rained blows down upon him. Two of the men were armed with cudgels. By the time Hereward scrambled to his feet to help, the huscarl had already been beaten senseless.
As Alric staggered upright, another man slipped from the lee of a house. He glanced around, and the monk saw that it was Wulfhere. The rebel beckoned with his good hand. Within moments, the four men, Hereward, and the monk slipped into a deserted textile workshop. In the dark, they crouched beside the loom amid the bitter smell of dyes.
“Thank you for your aid,” the warrior whispered, looking around at Wulfhere and his men. In Hereward’s face, Alric saw an expression of bafflement, as if the warrior couldn’t understand why anyone would have risked his own life to save him.
“You have opposed Tostig’s cruel rule,” the one-eyed man replied, “and the people of Eoferwic have taken strength from that. We could not stand by and see you killed.”
“We hope you will join us in an uprising against the earl,” one of the other men said.
Hereward shook his head. “This is not my fight.” When he saw the disappointment around him, he added, “And this is not the time for an uprising. You will be crushed.”
“The taxes bleed the life from us. Tostig steals our freedom and tries to bend us to his will. He is a man of the south. He does not understand how we do things in Northumbria.” Wulfhere waved his good hand with passion. “We fight, or we are broken anyway.”
“I understand. But this is war, no less for lacking axes and spears. Fight it as you would any battle, choosing the time and the territory. And ensuring that your forces are strong and well ordered.” As Hereward spoke, a hint of a cold smile lit his face. Alric could see that his companion was relishing giving the strategic advice that could damage his enemies.
“What do you suggest?” Wulfhere asked.
“You must get the thegns on your side. If they support the earl, he will never be moved from his hall. They are the true source of his power across Northumbria. Speak to them. Tell them your concerns. If it takes a year … two … win them over. Then your victory will be assured. Tostig cannot oppose all of Northumbria with only his huscarls at his back.”
My thoughts exactly, the monk said to himself, pleased. And that will weaken Harold Godwinson. The warrior was clever; he didn’t need a sword to wound.
Wulfhere and his men agreed that Hereward’s suggestion was a good one. “What now for you?” the one-eyed man asked. “There are places where you can lie low, but—”
“Tostig will not rest until I am found,” the warrior interrupted. “He will burn your houses and make trouble for your neighbors until you are forced to give us up. I would not wish that upon you. We must leave Eoferwic this night. Where we go …” he glanced at Alric, “… we have yet to decide.”
He thanked Wulfhere again and slipped out into the night. When the monk followed him to the door, Wulfhere handed him a cloak. “Keep warm,” the one-armed man said. “It is a bitter night, and you will freeze out there. Go well, Alric, and with all our thanks.” Touched, the monk clapped the man on the shoulder and hurried after the warrior.
By the time he caught up with Hereward, Alric realized the wind had dropped a little, and the snow was falling more slowly, in larger flakes. He felt a tranquility that brought back sharp memories of childhood Christmases, but the recollection was fleeting. Barked orders filled the air. Feet pounded through the snow. In the direction of the church, a red glow lit the sky, accompanied by a distant crackle and spit. Twists of golden sparks rose up to meet the snowflakes. Other ruddy glows appeared on every side, and Alric’s nose wrinkled at the sting of smoke.
“Are they burning Eoferwic to the ground to find us?” he asked, filled with mounting trepidation.
“They have lit the bonfires the Northmen were preparing for their fire festival three days hence,” Hereward said, his mood darkening. “With this snow all around, reflecting everything, they will light up the night, leaving fewer shadows for us to hide in.”
“They must hate you greatly to go to such lengths.”
“They fear me.”
The monk heard no boasting in his companion’s words, only a calm acceptance of the facts. Hereward crept along the narrow path between the houses until they heard raised voices and puzzling peals of laughter. Peering over the warrior’s shoulder, Alric saw a knot of men farther along the street toward the church. Tostig was there, with Kraki and two other huscarls. The earl’s expression was severe as he conversed with an equally grave Ealdred. The archbishop was wrapped in a thick woolen robe, as gray as his face now appeared to be. But the laughter came from Harald Redteeth, who prowled around the group of men, occasionally throwing his head back and roaring his humor to the heavens. He looked, Alric thought, quite mad.
A man ran up to pass on some urgent information and disappeared just as quickly, and then another. The monk saw that they were not huscarls. Tostig had bought more aid with his gold.
Hereward was watching the patterns the men made as they darted among the houses. “They scour the streets in an ordered way,” he said. “They will have covered the gates and the walls. There is little chance of escape.”
“What can we do?”
“Burn Eoferwic down. In the confusion, we may be able to find a way out.”
“We cannot kill good men and women,” Alric said, horrified. “Our lives ar
e not that important.”
Hereward bunched his fists in frustration and for a moment looked as if he might knock Alric to the ground. “Very well,” he replied, calming. “You have probably ensured our own deaths, but so be it.” Glancing back at the group of men, he murmured, almost to himself, “There are now too many to fight, and they are too well organized.”
“I have a plan,” Alric said.
A few minutes later, the two men were creeping down a street where several families kept their pigs in a single large sty. Alric went in and herded the animals out while Hereward waited to slap their flanks as they passed. The squealing pigs bolted into the street in a frenzy, and within moments their owners ran out of the surrounding houses, bellowing their anger. Nearly twenty men, women, and children chased after the pigs to round them up, calling incessantly, while more people emerged from their houses to see what was going on.
But that was only the start, Alric thought.
While Tostig’s men hurried toward the outcry, Hereward and Alric slipped among the houses toward the church. As they hoped, the enclosure was deserted.
“And so we risk everything,” Hereward muttered. “I must have lost my wits to take battle advice from a monk.”
Alric ran into the church, his footsteps echoing along the nave until he reached the door to the tower. “Help me,” he called back to the warrior. Together, they leaped onto the bell-rope and pulled with all their strength. High overhead, the bell tolled.
Within moments, the sound of running feet drew near. Hereward slipped behind the door, drawing his sword. A young deacon burst into the tower.
“Quickly. You must help,” the monk cried. “Eoferwic is under attack by raiders from the sea, just as in the times your father’s father spoke of. Raise the alarm. Let all know of the peril we face.”