by James Wilde
Flames flared in the eastern dark. His reassuring voice drained away as he watched the flickering light. A brand had been lit. Their enemy no longer saw a need to hide under night’s cloak.
‘There.’ Alric pointed to the west. Through the swaying branches, another torch burned. As he turned in a slow arc, more lights crackled into life all around them, five, ten; he gave up counting. How many of those bastards were out there, Hereward wondered? Fifty? A hundred? The Normans had sealed their trap, biding their time until they were sure their prey was at the centre of their circle. The monk looked over, but he kept his wits enough not to give voice to his thought: that there was no way out.
‘Keep low and run,’ the Mercian ordered. ‘This is our land. We still have a lead on them.’
The captive laughed silently as he looked around the unsettled faces. Hunstan, the eldest there, spun round, bristling as he jabbed his spear. ‘He will betray us. We must kill him.’
‘Let him go,’ Hereward said.
The warriors turned to look at him, baffled. Aghast, Alric stuttered, ‘Godfrid gave up his life for us to learn what this Norman knows. And if he goes free, he will draw the enemy to us within moments.’
All around the bobbing flames were drawing closer across the sea of night. He could hear the clang of iron now, and the bark of harsh voices. The Normans’ blood was up. They were ready for a slaughter. ‘Set him free,’ Hereward ordered.
The captive glanced around, unsure what was happening. Hereward grabbed his sweat-soaked tunic and hurled him back along the track with a sharp kick up his arse for good measure. The Norman fell, flashing one murderous look back at his former captors, before he scrambled to his feet and raced away into the dark.
Alric snatched his friend’s arm. ‘An act of kindness for your enemy? This from a warrior who has hacked off hands and burned faces for a wrong word.’
‘Has it not been your mission in life to teach me to be the lamb and not the wolf? All your labours must have worked,’ Hereward said, ignoring the monk’s suspicious gaze.
The invaders beat iron swords on mail as their death-march drew nearer. Their guttural war-song rumbled across the desolate fens. Dread was only another of their weapons and they used it to good effect.
‘Run,’ Hereward exhorted before his men had time to take full measure of the threat they faced, ‘as if the Devil were at your backs.’ Taking the lead, he pounded along the track until he saw the bent oak that marked the spot where the narrower path branched away to the left. It was more treacherous still: barely wide enough for one, it snaked through deep bogs where a wrong step would plunge a man to his death. To take that way would slow their pace, no doubt, but the Normans could come at them from only two directions.
‘I admit, more than once I have worried that madness has claimed you,’ Alric gasped between heavy breaths. ‘But this time I truly think you have lost your wits.’
‘It is my curse to listen to your wittering through day and night until I die. I know that,’ Hereward grumbled as he searched the dark ahead. ‘But I would spend a day on my knees in your church if it would buy me silence for the rest of this night.’
‘You have likely killed me anyway so you have no more need to complain. Why did I not stay in Ely?’
‘A good question,’ the Mercian said, his jaw taut.
Through the clustering willows and ash trees, he could see the wavering flames dance closer. The circle was drawing in tighter still. In his head swam the stony face of Ivo Taillebois, called by his own men the Butcher. Though he had glimpsed the Norman sheriff only a few times while spying through a wall of branches, he could never forget the creator of so much of the misery that had been inflicted on the fens. How that bastard must be laughing now. He had been ready for the English foray, that was clear. Perhaps he had even been praying for it. Losing one man would signify nothing to him if it meant he could follow the secret trail back into the well-guarded heart of the English fortress.
Ahead, torches bobbed where the track reached solid ground once more. Hereward hissed and the men came to a halt behind him.
‘We are trapped,’ Alric whispered.
‘Monk,’ Hereward cautioned, waving a finger. He nodded to a shaped stone standing upright at the edge of the track. ‘The waters are low this time of year. Beneath the surface a ridge of higher ground runs south. If we are careful we should be able to walk along it and keep our heads high enough to breathe.’
‘And how will you know when you are following the line of the ridge?’ The monk’s voice wavered.
‘When I am not, I will be dead.’ Hereward heard his friend swallow and he allowed himself another grin. Silence at last. ‘You have two choices,’ he whispered. ‘Put your faith in God, or for now put your faith in me. I have not let you die yet, have I?’
Before Alric could respond, he slipped into the cold slime next to the shaped stone. The clutching fingers of the reeking bog dragged his feet down. Bubbles gurgled and burst around his groin, his waist, rising higher and higher still. When the pungent mud reached his chest, he felt his foot settle on solid ground. He waded forward a few paces, every iota of his wits focused on the sensations from his feet. Tapping one shoe in front of him, he felt the bumps and hollows for the narrow path of the ridge. As he moved on, he turned his head to see Alric immediately behind him and the rest of the war-band following in his wake, easing into the bog one by one. He made out the silhouette of Fromund with a barely conscious Swithun, and watched briefly as Fromund held the wounded man’s arms and lowered him into the marsh, where clutching hands guided him in and supported him. As Hereward worked his cautious way onwards he felt pride at how Swithun’s brothers were prepared to risk their own lives to bring the fallen warrior home.
Once before, when he was a boy, he had taken this path, though his chin had barely reached above the surface. But then he had been filled with the stupidity and bravado of youth. He remembered the sludge gushing down his throat. Choking, fighting for air, the dark closing over his head. His panic as he realized death had him in its grip. He shook himself back to the present.
Hands scrabbled for his back, almost throwing him off-balance. Hereward wrenched his head around. ‘If you pitch me to my death, by all that’s holy, I will drag you down with me.’
‘Forgive me,’ the monk replied in a tremulous voice. The Mercian could see he was shaking and would likely soon make a fatal error. He grasped the man’s shoulder and whispered warmly, ‘Have faith. All will be well.’
Alric forced a worried smile, his teeth pale in the gloom.
In silence, they waded into the dark.
Enveloped in the stink of rotting vegetation, they heaved against the sucking mire. With each step the silt licked up until it reached their shoulders, and they began to shiver from the cold despite the heat of the night. Hereward glanced back at the trail of warriors snaking into the marsh. The end of the column was lost to the dark, but the faces of those nearest were taut with stark concentration. Everyone there knew a wrong step could be the end of them. ‘Slow and steady will see us through this,’ he hissed in encouragement. Yet time and again he heard a muted splash as someone snatched at the man in front for support when his feet slipped off the narrow ridge. Alric’s muttered prayers droned out, the words laced with mounting desperation.
As they rounded a spur of land dense with trees, a torch glimmered among the branches barely ten spear-lengths away. Hereward hissed for his men to halt. Norman voices rang out through the dark, drawing nearer. He squinted, watching the light gleam off helms. Five men, he guessed, exploring the finger of dry land reaching into the marsh. Hereward watched the light from the lofted brands dance across the gleaming surface of the mud towards the huddled English. Once it revealed them, they would be easy targets for the Norman archers.
Closer the light glimmered until Hereward could almost touch it with his hand. It wavered there, taunting them. The voices chimed louder, insistent tones mixed among the barked orders. Had they bee
n seen? He wished he understood more of that strange tongue than the few words he had gathered. His chest tightened.
After a few moments the orange light began to ebb and the voices receded as the Normans retreated back into the willows. Alric let out the long sigh he had kept trapped in his throat. ‘God watches over us,’ he whispered.
When he was sure the king’s men had gone, Hereward uttered the order to continue. It rustled back along the line into the dark. He watched the torches wavering through the trees all around, like fireflies. The Normans had the scent of their prey. They would not give up until they had fresh heads to perch atop their gates.
As he advanced, he heard low voices behind him and he glanced back. Alric listened to the next warrior in line and then leaned in. ‘Swithun’s wounds were too great,’ he murmured. ‘The cold has sapped the last of the life from him.’
Hereward bowed his head for a moment, then said, ‘Let him go.’
‘We should take him home for a Christian burial—’
‘I will not risk another man’s life. Two is enough for this night.’
Alric hesitated, then nodded. He passed the order back. As the warriors released Swithun’s body to the mud, the monk intoned a brief, sombre prayer in the Roman tongue, adding in English that the warrior had finally escaped the suffering and would be welcomed in to the peace and plenty of heaven. That small comfort was welcomed by the other men, Hereward saw. The monk had done well.
They heaved on around another spur of land, and then finally the mud began to recede. Hereward glimpsed the familiar silhouette of the three broken ash trees where he knew the second stone marker stood. With a low hail to his men, he waded ashore.
The English collapsed on the dry bank, heaving in gulps of warm night air. Hereward allowed them a moment, but his gaze never left the constantly moving torches.
‘We can follow a track home from here, yes?’ Alric whispered as he wiped the mud from his face with a dock leaf.
The Mercian shook his head. ‘No home for us yet. Now we fight.’
Alric gaped in horror. ‘We barely escape from the enemy with our lives and now you would take the fight to them with a handful of weary men. You are mad. You will kill us all.’
CHAPTER THREE
THE MOON CREPT from behind the clouds, painting the willows silver. Through the dark shadows pooling around the trees the English ran, spears held low. The sound of their feet was barely a whisper on the turf. All around, the torches of their enemies ranged. Alric could see no clear path through their ranks.
The monk struggled to keep up with Hereward’s loping gait. ‘Are you hell-bent on damning all of us?’ he hissed between gasps.
‘I told you: trust me.’
Alric scrabbled with his hands to fight his way through a curtain of hanging branches that his friend avoided with ease. He looked back at the other men, who trusted every word their leader uttered, and prayed they would be well. Have faith, he thought bitterly. If only Hereward knew how much faith he had shown on their long march together.
A waft of burnt wood made his nose wrinkle. He peered into the dark, searching for any sign of a settlement, and soon glimpsed the outline of buildings.
‘Where is this place?’ Alric gasped as they emerged into a circle of six thatched houses around a green in a clearing.
‘Norham,’ Hereward replied without glancing back. He kicked open the nearest door and peered inside. The hearth was dead, the ghost of woodsmoke lingering in the air. Alric glimpsed no sign of life within. Had the whole village fled the Normans?
‘Burn it down,’ Hereward yelled to his men. ‘All of it. Do it quickly and let us be away.’
‘Stop,’ the monk whispered in protest. ‘These are our people. You cannot destroy their homes.’ He threw himself in front of the Mercian, ducking from side to side to keep himself in between the warrior and the dwelling.
With a grunt of frustration, Hereward grabbed his friend’s tunic and dragged him around the back of the house where the air reeked of rot. Choking, the monk pressed the back of his hand across his mouth and nose. Rough hands propelled him towards a pile of cordwood. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he saw it wasn’t firewood at all. The bodies of the villagers had been piled up in a jumbled heap, men, women and children. The blood had long since dried brown, but the gaping wounds spoke of sharp swords.
‘They will no longer miss their homes,’ Hereward hissed.
‘How long have they been dead?’ Alric gasped.
‘Five days now,’ Hereward growled. ‘Word reached me before we set off north.’
‘What did they do to offend the Normans so?’
‘They helped our fight against the thieving king.’ The warrior spat. ‘Sometimes they offered shelter to those who travelled from afar to join us, or a bite of bread to the hungry.’ His voice lowered, but it remained iron-hard with anger.
Alric gaped at the heap of bodies. However many times he witnessed the brutality of their new masters, he never failed to be sickened.
Without another word, Hereward returned to the front of the crudely thatched building and snatched a newly lit brand from one of the other men. He hurled it on to the dirty reed thatch and within a moment the flames licked up. The crackle became a roar, orange sparks whisking up into the night sky on the swirling black smoke. ‘Let this be their pyre,’ he bellowed into the dark, ‘and a beacon too.’
Alric stumbled over the rows of herbs growing beside the house and scrambled to his friend’s side. ‘What good is burning the village?’ he protested. ‘It will only draw the Normans to us.’
Hereward shielded his eyes against the glare from the conflagration and watched as his men set fire to the other houses. ‘Let those stinking curs come,’ he murmured. For a long moment, he seemed caught by the spectacle and then, as if waking from a dream, he thrust a fist towards the heavens. ‘Follow me,’ he yelled above the roar of the flames. ‘We have two more villages to burn. Let us lead those bastards on a dance before death comes.’
Alric felt queasy with worry. He gripped his friend’s arm and whispered, ‘Do not drag these good men down with you. If you see only doom here, let you and me face it alone.’
When Hereward turned to him, the monk recoiled. With the fires burning behind him and flames dancing in his eyes, Hereward looked like the devil himself.
A dark grin spread across the warrior’s face. ‘The Normans would sit in judgement of the English,’ he said. ‘Let them come and I will judge them.’
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NIGHT WAS filled with fire and fury. In the black gulf of the fenlands, the burning village glowed, torches flickering all around like sparks caught in the smoke-eddies. The warm breeze smelled of endings, sharp and tarry. Silhouetted against the orange luminescence, two men stood on the higher ground, watching the grey wave of Norman fighters wash towards their prey. At their feet, the hunched villager sobbed. Blood caked his face and soaked his tunic from the long beating he had received.
‘See, it was all for naught.’ William de Warenne had to shout to be heard over the roar and crackle of the fires, the drone of the war-chant. With cold contempt, the Norman noble looked down his nose at his captive. ‘The English warriors have decided to stand and die anyway. If you had told what you knew of them, you might have saved your worthless life.’ He was a fighting man, his brown hair cropped and shaved at the back like the mail-clad warriors he had battled alongside when the king had taken England. In a show of virility, he had thrown his purple cloak over his right shoulder to reveal the sword hanging at his hip.
Glowering from beneath a low brow, the other man kicked the captive in the side. He nodded in appreciation when he heard the howl as another rib broke. Ivo Taillebois, now the sheriff, had gained his byname from King William himself: the Butcher. Dressed all in black like the men he commanded, he showed none of the flamboyance of his companion, nor the aristocratic profile. Swarthy-skinned, his heavy features spoke of generations of toil on the land. Ye
t through a strong right arm, animal cunning and a brutal nature, he had clawed his way to undreamed heights. ‘You betray the king, you pay the price,’ he grunted to the broken villager. ‘How hard is it for you English to learn this lesson?’ He turned and called into the dark.
A warrior ran up, his own tunic stained with blood. ‘I should have you whipped for letting the English take you captive,’ the Butcher said to the man Hereward had set free earlier that night. ‘But you guided us to the path these rebels took and we now have them in our grasp. So it seems I should reward you.’ He placed one foot upon the whimpering villager and shoved him down the mound. ‘Gut him and dump him in the bog. And you might find a skin of wine on your bed when we are back in Lincylene.’
The warrior grinned. He hooked a hand in the back of the captive’s tunic and dragged the screaming man away into the dark.
‘Bring Hereward to me alive,’ William de Warenne said once the screams had died away. ‘I would break him in front of the English, until he sobs like a child and pleads for his life. Then we shall see how many raise arms against us.’
‘You will get your wish. It was only ever a matter of time before he fell.’
The two turned to watch their men close on the English rabble.
All of this Harald Redteeth saw as he cloaked himself in the dark of a copse near by. The fires shimmered off his helmet and glowed from the black pools of the eye-holes. His wild hair and beard were stained red. And under his mail, he reeked of sweat, the smell of an honest man.
The Viking took the king’s coin as an axe-for-hire, but that didn’t mean he had any respect for his Norman masters. They knew no honour, only the value of things that they could take by force and covet like magpies, and honour, as his father had told him time and again, was everything. Though he had sold his axe to any who would pay since he had left the cold northern lands of his home as a boy, that had always been his code. Blood for blood above all.