Conquest 03 - Knights of the Hawk

by James Aitcheson

  ‘He won’t get far,’ Pons replied. ‘Where can he possibly go?’

  He had a point. Even if the Dane did escape into the woods, sooner or later he would have to show himself if he didn’t want to starve. When he did, we would be ready, waiting to cut him and his retainers down. He had fought and he had lost, and he would die by one means or another, sooner or later.

  At the same time, though, I knew I wouldn’t be able to rest until that murderer, that defiler, that vile heathen lay lifeless with my sword buried in his gut. For three years already I’d thirsted for justice. No longer was I to be denied.

  I glanced at Magnus, and he at me, and saw that he was of the same mind.

  ‘Vengeance,’ he said.

  I nodded in agreement. Wheeling about, I coaxed my horse into first a canter and then a gallop, drawing all the speed I could from his legs as we took off across that field of death in pursuit of Haakon and his band. All around rose the familiar battle-stench of blood and shit and mud and piss and horse dung and vomit, all intermingled.

  ‘Haakon,’ Magnus yelled, trying to catch his attention as we left the scattered, crimson-soaked corpses behind us and charged across thick tufts of grass. The Dane’s standard-bearer had at last thrown down the cumbersome banner and we rode over it, trampling the once-proud dragon and axe into the mud.

  ‘Come and face us, you whoreson,’ I called out. ‘You can’t run from us!’

  The ground was soft and once or twice my mount almost stumbled, but nevertheless we were quickly gaining on them. They were five in number: his erstwhile standard-bearer, a fair-haired boy who could not have seen any more than twelve summers; his three hearth-troops; and, lagging a little behind them, the Dane himself, half running and half limping in a way that suggested he must have been wounded in the battle. They still had a few hundred paces to go until they reached the safety of the trees, and they must have been beginning to doubt whether they could manage it before we fell upon them.

  To my flank there came a piercing shriek and a yell. Magnus’s horse must have tripped, for I glanced over my shoulder and saw it had gone down, and he with it. Hooves flailed and turf flew, and in the midst of it all the Englishman was struggling to extricate himself from the saddle.

  ‘Magnus!’ I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me. He had other things to worry about.

  As did I. Brief thoughts of going back to help the Englishman were swiftly forgotten. Something much more important was at stake. It fell to me now to kill the Dane, to claim revenge on behalf of us both. That was the promise I’d made myself. Here was my chance to make good on it.

  ‘Haakon!’ I roared.

  With every heartbeat I was growing closer, while the clash of arms and the shouts of men were growing more distant. He couldn’t ignore me any longer. At the sound of his name this time he stopped and turned to face me. Even though the nasal-guard of my helmet obscured my face, he must have recognised me.

  He must have seen, too, that there was no longer any use in running. Fixing his gaze upon me, he drew his bloodied sword and stood his ground as I charged towards him. He realised that his time had come, but he was proud. I’d heard long ago that amongst the heathens to die without a weapon in one’s hand was the worst dishonour, for it meant they would not be permitted to dine with their gods in whatever afterlife it was they believed in. Whether that was true or not, and whether that thought was in his mind, I don’t know. More probably, like any man whose life had been spent travelling the sword-path, he considered it nobler to go to his grave fighting, a warrior to the end, rather than suffer the coward’s death and be cut down from behind.

  A howl left his lips as he ran, staggering, at me, his sword raised high, his golden arm-rings shining. His braid had come loose and his greying hair flew behind him. He realised, I think, that I was responsible for burning his hall, for destroying everything he had spent so many years fighting to gain. He knew now what I had felt that night at Dunholm, when so much had been taken from me, when my own world had crumbled about me.

  Our blades clashed with a shriek of steel, and then I was past him, turning sharply before coming at him again. I parried the blow he aimed at my horse’s neck, and the one after that, and the one after that, trusting in the steel not to shear, all the while waiting for my opportunity to come, as I knew it must. Waiting for him to give me the opening I needed. Blood trickled from a gash at his hip, and each movement he made seemed unsteadier than the last. He was slow to turn, and slower still between each sword-stroke.

  ‘Die,’ he yelled in that coarse voice of his, and he was weeping now. Weeping because he knew that his end was near. Weeping because he knew that I was toying with him. ‘Die, you bastard, you Norman filth! Die!’

  He swung at my thigh, but it was the swing of a desperate man. Again I met his blade with mine, and this time I was able to force his down, out of position, before backhanding my sword-point across the side of his head. He was only just within my reach and so I managed only a glancing blow, but it was enough to rob him of his balance and send him to the ground with limbs flailing and teeth flying. His sword slipped from his fingers, falling away uselessly into the grass. I slid from the saddle and stood over him. He gazed back up at me, rasping heavily, his eyes moist. A bright gash decorated his cheek, and a crimson stream ran from the corner of his mouth.

  Some way off, Danish voices shouted out in despair. So desperate had they been to reach the sanctuary of the woods that his remaining huscarls hadn’t noticed that their lord was no longer with them. Not until it was too late. They turned, and began rushing back to try to save him, but they were too far away to do anything.

  I pointed the tip of my blade at the pale skin at Haakon’s neck. ‘Aren’t you going to plead for mercy?’

  He stared up at me, not in fear but in something more like resignation. ‘Would you grant it if I asked for it?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘But I want to hear you beg.’

  He smiled that humourless smile I’d seen before. Of course he would not beg. Nor, had I been in his place, would I.

  ‘She moaned like a whore,’ he said instead.

  ‘What?’ I’d thought he might ask me to make his end quick, or say any number of other things, but I hadn’t been expecting that.

  ‘Night after night, she moaned when she was in my bed, when I was inside her. She was my favourite. Did you know that?’

  ‘Enough,’ I said. Tears welled in my eyes, and my throat stuck. ‘No more.’

  ‘I loved her,’ he murmured, a hint of sadness in his tone. He closed his eyes as if recalling some long-cherished memory. ‘Yes,’ he said with a heavy sigh, ‘I loved her.’

  I couldn’t bear to listen any longer. Summoning all my strength, all my hatred, I plunged my sword into his throat, thrusting it hard so that it tore through flesh, sliced through bone, and I was roaring as I did so, roaring for all the world to hear, allowing the anguish that for so long had been buried within my heart to finally let itself be heard, until there was no more breath in my chest, and I had nothing left to give.

  Gritting my teeth, I ripped the blade free. My heart was pounding, my whole body trembling and dripping with sweat. Falling to my knees, I wiped the moisture from my eyes and gazed down at Haakon’s bestilled, bloodied corpse. In that instant, all the grief and pain and doubt and despair that for three years had plagued and tortured me were at once dispelled.

  It was done.

  Twenty-nine

  WITH HAAKON DEAD, the rest of his retainers fled. Jarnborg was ablaze, sending up great plumes of smoke into the sky. A bitter wind gusted from the west, carrying those plumes across the water along with the cries of the injured and the dying. Sword-blades and spear-hafts clattered against iron shield-rims as our men raised the battle-thunder in triumph.

  ‘Sige!’ I heard some of Magnus’s men roar. ‘God us sige forgeaf!’

  God has given us victory. Indeed it seemed little short of a miracle. After so long dreaming and hoping and prayin
g, Haakon had fallen. The field of battle belonged to us.

  I was still kneeling beside the Dane’s limp body, hardly daring to believe that it was true, that he was dead and that our struggle was at an end, when Magnus called my name. He hobbled towards me, wincing with every step, his horse having bolted. Luckily he’d managed to free himself from the stirrups before it did, and apart from the injury to his foot I was glad to see he was unharmed.

  ‘I only wish I could have killed him myself,’ he said as he stood beside me. Together we stared down at the Dane: at his face, strangely serene in death; at his unmoving chest.

  I nodded but said nothing. Had it been the other way around and his been the hand that slew Haakon, no doubt I would have felt equally cheated. But I also knew that only one of us could have delivered the killing blow, and I was glad it had been me.

  He must have guessed my thoughts. ‘You did the right thing, Tancred,’ he said, and clapped a hand on my shoulder as if to assure me that he did not bear any resentment. ‘If it had been your horse that had fallen, I wouldn’t have turned back to help you. So I don’t blame you. You did what had to be done, for both of us.’

  His tone was not grudging, but sincere. He smiled, and it was a smile of relief as much as anything else. Relief at having survived this day. Relief that justice, at long last, had been done.

  We ventured back towards the rest of our host. Some of the enemy still lived, but not many. Magnus’s huscarls remembered only too well how Haakon had betrayed their lord, and held anyone who had thrown in their lot with him in the lowest contempt, while the men that Wace and Eudo and Aubert had brought with them had been told of the Dane’s part in the massacre of near two thousand Normans at Dunholm, and were not inclined to show forgiveness. And so the slaughter still went on as our men set about pursuing the enemy, cutting them down from behind and decorating the backs of their skulls with bright gashes. A handful had fled on to the sands, perhaps hoping to reach their ships drawn up further along the shore and make an escape by water. When they realised how few they were in number, though, they abandoned their weapons and whatever armour they possessed, deciding instead to try to swim across the bay to safety. They waded out from the shore, crashing through the waves, but they didn’t get far before our men were upon them, staining the foaming sea-froth pink with Danish blood.

  ‘No mercy!’ I heard a familiar voice shout from across the field, and saw Eudo on a horse that he must have seized from one of Haakon’s hearth-troops. In one hand he held a bloodied spear, while his banner was in the other. Gradually those around him took up the cry, until a dozen Normans were chanting as if with a single voice: ‘No mercy!’

  Wace was with him, albeit on foot, and Tor and the Gascon and Serlo too, all charging behind the tusked boar, filling the air with their battle-joy, delighting in the glory of the kill.

  With those roars and chants ringing out, Magnus and I trudged across a meadow trampled flat by the passage of hundreds of feet. Men cheered as they recognised us, and yet I hardly heard them, for my mind was elsewhere. I glanced about, searching for Godric, Ælfhelm and Oswynn. Until I knew she was safe, I would not celebrate. But amidst everyone running back and forth, amidst all the panicked horses, I couldn’t spot them, and the longer I kept searching, the more my concern grew. I could feel it stirring in my breast, clutching at my heart, and I tried to bury it, not wanting to let even the possibility enter my thoughts. She was safe, I told myself. She had to be.

  To left and right, English and French were throwing their arms around one another, slapping each other on the back, punching their comrades on the shoulders, lifting fists to the sky, sharing in the delight of a hard-earned victory, celebrating together as allies and brothers in arms. I had seen some strange sights in my years, but never any as strange as this.

  ‘Lord!’

  Over the laughter and the singing and the whoops of joy, I made out Eithne’s voice. She stood amidst a crowd of men, perhaps a hundred paces away, close to a jagged outcrop of dark rock, waving both her arms, trying to attract my attention, and at once I felt my worries easing, my heart lifting.

  But only for an instant.

  ‘Lord!’ she cried again, as she beckoned me over, and this time there was no mistaking her tone, which was insistent rather than jubilant. With her, crowded close, were Godric and Ælfhelm, who was nursing a wound to his shoulder, his fellow huscarls Dweorg and Sceota, and Pons too. Of Oswynn, however, there was no sign.

  And I knew.

  My skin turned to ice. My heart all but stopped, and the breath caught in my chest. No longer were all those men shouting and rejoicing; or perhaps they were, but I did not hear them. Around me the whole world seemed to slow.

  ‘Lord!’ Eithne was shouting still, her voice desperate, as I pelted towards her as fast as my legs could carry me, nearly tripping over the corpses in my way but somehow managing to stay upright.

  ‘Where is she?’ I roared as I grew nearer. ‘What happened?’

  She stared, terrified, at me, but though her mouth opened, no words came out. Instead, after a moment’s hesitation, she and the others simply stepped to one side, making way and allowing me to see for myself.

  Oswynn, my Oswynn, lay on the ground, her head of pitch-black hair resting upon a bundle of folded cloaks, her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling. Her breath misted in front of her face, but there was so little of it, and it came only in stutters.

  ‘No,’ I said, barely able to manage even a whisper, so numb, so devoid of strength, so helpless did I feel. ‘No.’

  Eanflæd, the English girl, knelt beside her, pressing a bloodied cloth against Oswynn’s lower torso, whilst at the same time stroking her brow. Her eyes were red and her cheeks wet with tears. No sooner had she noticed me approaching than she rose to her feet and made way.

  ‘She wanted to kill them all,’ I was dimly aware of Ælfhelm saying. ‘We tried to stop her, Tancred, but there was a fury in her, a fury such as I’ve never seen in a woman. We tried, but before we could even—’

  He kept speaking, but whatever he said, I didn’t hear. My mind was running with a thousand thoughts and I was deaf to his explanations, blind to everything except for my woman as I fell to my knees by her side and took her cold hand in mine, squeezing it as I tried to coax her back to me. Her eyelids fluttered, and a drawn-out moan escaped her lips. Beneath the rag Eanflæd had been using to staunch the flow, Oswynn’s shift was torn where a spear or a seax had dealt its blow, and the linen around it was crimson-dark and sodden. I pressed the cloth firmly against the gash, refusing to admit to myself what my eyes and my heart were telling me, which was that it was no use, that the blood was burbling forth too freely to be stemmed. She was gut-stricken, wounded deep, beyond the ability of the best physician or leech-doctor in Christendom to help, and experience had taught me that no one who suffered such an injury ever lived long. With every trace of mist that escaped her lips, it seemed that a little more life went out of her. Breath by breath, she was slipping away. From the world. From me.

  This couldn’t be happening. Not after everything we had done; after the many leagues we had travelled across field and marsh, river and storm-tossed sea; after the countless foes I’d laid low in order to find her and bring her back. Did all of that count for nothing?

  ‘Oswynn,’ I said desperately. This had to be some dream, some nihtegesa, I thought, except that I couldn’t find a way to wake from it.

  At the sound of her name she stirred. Her eyes opened, just by a little, but enough to see me kneeling over her.

  ‘Tancred,’ she said, and she was weeping, her voice weak, little more than a whisper. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—’

  ‘No,’ I said, and suddenly I was weeping as well. To hear her say such a thing was more than I could bear. She had no reason to apologise. If anyone was to blame, it was I, not her. ‘I should never have left you. I shouldn’t. It’s my fault.’

  I wasn’t only thinking of that moment earlier this morning wh
en I’d entrusted her protection to Godric and Ælfhelm. I was also thinking back to that night at Dunholm. If only I’d been there to defend her, none of this would have happened.

  ‘You came, though,’ she whispered, managing something like a smile, although there was such pain in it.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, but I wasn’t sure if she heard me. Her face was pale, her skin cold to the touch, her chest barely moving, her breathing light, and growing lighter. She closed her eyes and I gripped her hand more tightly, trying to hold on to her. To prevent from happening what I could not prevent; to stave off fate. To keep her with me a little longer.

  ‘Oswynn,’ I pleaded, as if that would help, as if it would change anything. ‘Don’t go.’

  The smile had faded from her expression; her fingers grew limp in my grasp. Her eyelids trembled, and her mouth opened by the tiniest sliver. She was trying to say something, but whatever it was I couldn’t tell, for at the same time from somewhere close at hand a sudden cheer rose up, drowning out the sound of her voice. Doing my best to stifle my sobs, I leant closer, until my ear brushed against her lips.

  ‘—for me,’ she managed to say, and I thought I must have missed something, or else misheard, so quiet was she. But then she spoke again, and this time I did hear her. ‘You came for me.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, unable to hold the tears back any longer. She gave a long, slow sigh, and through watery eyes I gazed down at her, waiting for her to say more, to say anything at all.

  Her mouth was still. Her eyes were closed.

  ‘Oswynn!’ I said, but no matter how loudly and how many times I repeated her name, she could not hear me. Grief overtook me then, and I let it pour out, spilling down my cheeks as I hugged her close and sobbed into her hair and into her cheeks and her neck. Over and over I begged her to wake, to come back to me. But she would not wake, nor would she come back. Her soul had fled her body, fled this world for whatever place it is that souls are supposed to go.