Knights of the Hawk c-3

by James Aitcheson

  And I recognised that face, for it was the same one that had haunted my dreams for a year and more, ever since that night at Beferlic.

  Haakon Thorolfsson.

  How many nights had I lain awake, thinking of the ways in which I would wreak vengeance upon the one who had murdered our lord? And now at last here he was, brazenly riding towards us. He grinned broadly, although there was no humour in his eyes. He checked his mount about fifteen paces away: close enough to be able to converse without needing to shout, but far enough that if any of us charged him he would easily be able to turn and gallop safely away. He wasn’t stupid.

  ‘I was wondering when you’d come,’ he said. There was a rasp to his voice that perhaps was a mark of the cold, wind-blasted lands from which he came. ‘Although I confess I’m disappointed. I thought that, between you, you might have been able to muster more of an army.’

  I think we all knew there was no point in answering that, for none among us spoke. Haakon was well aware how large was the army we had brought with us, and we weren’t in the mood for playing such games.

  ‘Magnus Haroldson, my friend,’ he said, spreading his open palms as if in greeting. ‘It’s good to see you again after so long. Come to break your army against Jarnborg’s walls once more, have you?’

  ‘What do you want, Haakon?’ Magnus asked. ‘Or have you left the comfort of your hearth merely to insult us?’

  ‘Insult you?’ the Dane asked, and managed somehow to laugh and look affronted at the same time. ‘Why should I want to insult you? We are old allies, are we not?’

  Magnus spat in his direction. ‘You stole everything from me. My brothers are dead because of you.’

  ‘If you thrust your hand into a wasps’ nest, then it is your own fault if you are stung. You and your brothers were foolish enough to leave your spoils unguarded, and so I took them. There is no more to it than that. I had nothing to do with their deaths. If anyone should bear the blame for that, it is these Frenchmen you call your friends. They were the ones who deprived your family of everything it had, and who drove you from England. Is that not true?’

  I glanced at Magnus, but couldn’t read his expression. I understood, of course, what the Dane was trying to do, and only hoped that the Englishman understood it too, and that his hatred for Haakon outweighed his hatred for our kind.

  ‘Very well,’ the elder man said when it was clear that Magnus had nothing more to say. ‘You ask me what I want, and this is my answer.’ He turned his gaze towards myself, Wace and Eudo. ‘I want to know which one of you is the Breton, Tancred of Earnford.’

  That surprised me, for I hadn’t expected him to have come by that information.

  ‘I am,’ I said curtly as I felt my sword-arm itch and imagined how, if I could only get close enough to him, I would slice my blade-edge across his steed’s neck, unhorsing him. Then, while he lay on the ground, I would drive the point down into his mailed chest, using all my strength to bury it deep. One strike was all it would take to puncture his heart. One strike, and we could end this now. But he was too watchful to allow that to happen. I only had to take a couple of paces towards him and he would turn and gallop away with ease.

  He smiled with the warmth of an old friend who had not seen me in years. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you are the one I have heard so much about. The one who gave Eadgar Ætheling his scar. A worthy warrior.’

  I wasn’t about to confirm or to deny it for him, and so instead I said, ‘How do you know my name?’

  At that Haakon gave a laugh. ‘You cannot send your spies, your knowledge-gatherers, all across Britain, and yet expect me not to hear that you’ve been seeking me out. I’ve suspected for months that you’d be coming. It was only a question of when. To tell the truth, I didn’t think it would take you this long.’

  ‘They told you I was paying them?’ Not only had those whoresons failed to bring me the information I wanted, but they had in turn sold what they knew about me to my enemies.

  The Dane breathed a sigh. ‘It tires me to relate how it all happened, so let us not waste our breath discussing it. Suffice it to say that you are not the only one who has his spies. I’ve heard the tales of your deeds. I know who you are, Tancred, and what brings you here.’

  I wondered how much he did know. Certainly I wasn’t about to let slip anything which might turn out being to his advantage. Did he think I had come because of the life he had taken, or because he had stolen my woman from me?

  ‘You killed our lord,’ I said, deciding that, of the two reasons, that was the one he was more likely to know about. ‘You killed Robert de Commines.’

  He stared at me for long moments, that wolfish look having returned. ‘Yes,’ he said at last.

  ‘You admit it, then?’ Eudo asked.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Haakon countered. ‘Yes, I killed him. I watched the mead-hall burn and I heard the screams of those inside. I remember how he stumbled out with the smoke billowing around him. I remember how easy it was for me to ram my sword home. I remember how he died with barely a whimper.’

  ‘You don’t deserve to live,’ Eudo said. The wind had dropped and in the stillness I heard the hiss of steel against his scabbard’s wool lining as he drew his sword.

  ‘Eudo,’ I said warningly. The Dane had clearly come to parley with us for a purpose, and I wanted to know what that was, not to scare him off.

  Wace laid a hand upon our friend’s shoulder. ‘Put your sword away.’

  Eudo hesitated, but eventually he must have realised that it was a useless gesture, for he slid the blade back whence it had come.

  ‘Even if you did kill me, it wouldn’t bring your lord back to you,’ Haakon said. He turned to Magnus. ‘Nor your brothers.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t enjoy watching you squirm while your lifeblood dripped away,’ Harold’s son retorted.

  The Dane smiled. ‘The young pup has a loud bark, I see. It’s a shame that he lacks the bite to match it.’

  ‘Enough of this,’ I said, growing impatient. ‘Have you come with anything worthwhile to say?’

  ‘There is one thing.’

  ‘Then spit it out.’

  A smirk was upon his face. ‘Vengeance isn’t the only reason that brought you here, is it?’

  So he knew. Knew why I had come here, what it was that had brought me on this journey in the first place.

  ‘Where is she?’ I demanded.

  Haakon didn’t answer, not in any words. Instead he merely raised a hand in what I took for a signal to his six companions waiting by the bridge. Still mounted, they advanced now. Suspecting a trick, I laid my hand upon my sword-hilt, and out of the corners of my eyes I saw the others doing the same. If the Dane was at all concerned, however, he didn’t let it show.

  I fixed my gaze on the six figures as they approached, realising as they did so that only five of them were men. For in the middle of them rode a woman, and not just any woman either. Long before she was close enough for me to make out her features, I knew who she was.

  As if it could have been anyone else.

  Oswynn.

  Twenty-five

  ‘Oswynn,’ I said, under my breath at first, and then more loudly, so that she could hear: ‘Oswynn!’

  Her hands were tied in front of her and her mount was being led by one of the riders flanking her. She wore a cloak that might have been otter fur over a fine-spun woollen dress, but all that expensive garb did not disguise the bruises on her face, which was thinner and paler than I recalled. Her head was bowed as if in submission, and when she did look up her eyes were hollow. All the fire she’d once possessed seemed to have been extinguished. The summer when we met had been her sixteenth, and three more summers had come and gone since then, but she looked much older than her years might have suggested. And yet she was still as beautiful as ever. Her hair, black as the night when the moon is new and cloud veils the stars, which I had liked her to wear unbound, was braided like that of a married woman.

  ‘I
presume she’s the one you came for,’ I heard Haakon say, but I was not paying him attention, not really, for I couldn’t tear my eyes from her.

  I willed her to say something, even just my name, but she did not utter any sound at all, nor so much as smile, which I ascribed to fear of what they might do to her if she did, rather than because she didn’t recognise me. She did, I was sure of it, just as I was sure that even in those hollow eyes I spied a glimmer of something like relief or hope. I tried not to imagine what the Dane had done with her in the years we had been apart, but it was impossible. The way she held herself told me all that I needed, or wanted, to know.

  ‘Striking, isn’t she?’ Haakon went. ‘Prettier than any Danish girl, for sure, and I’ve known my share of them. I can well understand why you would want to come all this way to steal her from me.’

  ‘You’re the one who stole her,’ I said. ‘She’s my woman, not yours.’

  ‘Is that so? Where were you that night to lay claim to her?’ He gave a flick of a hand, beckoning her forward. Reluctantly, she came sidling up alongside him. ‘She belongs to me,’ he said, reaching over and untying the bonds around her wrists. A gasp of surprise or protest escaped her lips as he seized her forearm and held up her left hand. ‘Here is the proof.’

  A marriage-band glinted in the cold light of that winter’s day. Oswynn, in tears now, tried to snatch her hand away, but Haakon’s grip was firm and all her struggling was in vain.

  My blood boiled and I set my teeth in anger, but somehow I held myself back. I didn’t believe for a heartbeat that she had become his wife out of choice, nor do I think he expected me to. All he wanted was to taunt me, but I refused to rise to the bait. Losing my temper would achieve nothing, and indeed could end up costing me everything. Haakon’s men were close; if I came within five paces of their lord, they would strike me down without hesitation.

  ‘I don’t want to see blood spilt upon my lands any more than you wish to lose good hearth-troops,’ the Dane said as he released Oswynn’s wrist at last. ‘Better men than you have tried to take Jarnborg from me, and all have died by my sword-edge. For that reason, and because I am a generous man, I will give you one piece of advice. Do yourselves and your followers a favour, and leave these shores.’

  ‘What happens if we don’t?’ asked Magnus.

  ‘You aren’t the only one who has friends,’ Haakon replied mildly. ‘I sent word to mine three days ago. They will be here within the week, if not sooner, at which point we will not hesitate in crushing you and making drinking cups of your skulls. So you have a simple choice. If you value your lives then you’ll leave. Otherwise I can promise you only death.’

  ‘You lie,’ Wace said. ‘You have no friends coming to lend their swords in your support.’

  ‘Believe what you will,’ Haakon said, ‘so long as you’re prepared to wager your life on it. I have given you my advice, for whatever it might be worth. I leave it to you to decide whether or not you heed it.’

  With that once more he smiled that humourless smile, then turned and spurred his steed into a canter, followed by his retainers, and by Oswynn, who cast a desperate glance over her shoulder, holding my gaze for as long as she was able as they led her away, back across the bridge, across the valley, up towards the gates of the iron fortress.

  ‘I’ll come for you,’ I called after her, using the English tongue. ‘I swear it, Oswynn, I’ll come for you!’

  I didn’t know whether, above the wind and the thudding of hooves upon turf, she managed to hear me, but I hoped she did.

  ‘He’s bluffing,’ Wace said later, when we had returned to the beach where the crews of both ships had set up camp, and spoken to the others. ‘He must be.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ Eudo asked as he tore off another hunk of bread and crammed it into his mouth. The sun was high and we hadn’t eaten since daybreak, but I couldn’t so much as think about food. Seeing Oswynn, only to have her taken away yet again, had left me feeling empty and despondent.

  ‘If Haakon knew he had help on the way, why would he care to warn us?’ Wace asked. ‘Why not let those allies of his come, and try to catch us by surprise?’

  ‘Because he has nothing to gain by attacking us,’ I said. ‘If he can make us leave without having to risk battle, so much the better as far as he’s concerned. He’s made it clear that whatever our quarrels with him, he has no interest in us. Unless we come assaulting Jarnborg’s walls, there’s no pressing reason why he or his friends need cross swords with us at all.’

  Like his countryman Snorri, Haakon was proving to be a cautious one, far from the reckless adventurer that I had expected. Undoubtedly I could have learnt much from his example, were I not so intent on killing him. As it was, I was wondering only how we might take advantage of that caution to bring about his downfall.

  ‘I think he’d prefer to destroy us if he can, rather than risk the possibility that we might return in the spring with an even larger fleet,’ said Magnus. ‘For that reason I’m inclined to agree with Wace.’

  That was the first he had said in a long while. No doubt he was still thinking about those crags and that palisade, and whether there was any way of scaling them, without any siege engines or ladders, that wouldn’t cost the lives of half our retinue. As too was I.

  ‘What I don’t understand’, Eudo said, ‘is why he should feel the need to bluff at all, assuming he has the strength in numbers that we think he has.’

  I mulled over that for a few moments, and then it came to me, and I gave a laugh. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘That’s it exactly.’

  For Eudo had as good as answered his own question. Haakon must be worried to some extent about his ability to defend his stronghold, or else surely he would not resort to such ruses. Did that mean his defences were perhaps not quite as sound as we had supposed?

  To begin with Eudo gave me a strange look, but then he too must have realised, since he began to smile, and Wace and Magnus and Ælfhelm as well.

  Four longships we had seen drawn up on the sand in the bay beneath Jarnborg at the north of this island. We’d assumed that meant he had four full ships’ crews at his disposal, but what if that weren’t the case? What if he didn’t have the ten score spears I’d hazarded, but only half that number?

  Naturally all this was guesswork, and didn’t mean that Jarnborg was ours for the taking, not at all. A mere thirty spears could probably hold its gates, so strong was its position upon the promontory. But it all helped add to my conviction that, providing we could only find a way inside, we could do this. We might have struggled to hold our own against two hundred, but against a hundred, anything was possible.

  Confidence. As so often, it came down to that. Haakon was trying to play on our doubts, to make us lose heart, but it hadn’t worked, and in so doing he had betrayed his own unease.

  ‘What do we do next, then?’ Magnus asked.

  I considered. ‘If he’s bluffing, then nothing has changed as far as we’re concerned, so there’s no reason why we should go anywhere.’

  ‘And if he’s telling the truth?’

  ‘Then we know we have only a few days in which to make our assault, if we’re to do it at all, before his allies arrive.’

  ‘A few days?’ Ælfhelm asked. ‘How can we possibly defeat him in that time?’

  He was right to have his misgivings, and yet a new sense of purpose had stirred within me, and I was not to be discouraged. ‘We’ll find a way,’ I answered.

  We had made it this far, after all: further than I would have dared imagine was possible even a couple of short months ago, during the struggle for the Isle. Back then I’d all but given up hope of finding Oswynn again in this life, and this morning I had seen her with my own eyes.

  ‘One thing’s for certain,’ said Aubert, who must have overheard our conversation. ‘We won’t be going anywhere this afternoon.’

  ‘Why not?’ Eudo asked.

  ‘The winds have been gusting hard all morning and I’ve watche
d the waves growing choppier by the hour. There’s a gale on its way. Trust someone who’s spent more years out on the sea than you’ve even lived.’

  ‘In that case,’ I said, ‘we’d better make use of the time we have, and see if we can find Jarnborg’s weakness.’

  Provided, that was, that it had one.

  As unlikely as an attack by Haakon seemed, we nevertheless took care to post sentries along the ridge that overlooked our landing place, as well as further inland, so that those back at the ships would have plenty of warning if indeed he came. Then, while Magnus took a handful of men with him to try to get closer to Jarnborg, I set off with Serlo and Pons and Godric to learn what we could from the folk who lived close at hand: those who did not flee at the first sight of us, and whose speech Eithne could understand. I’d brought her with us, thinking she might be familiar with whatever tongue was spoken in these parts, which she was, but only barely.

  ‘I can only understand half of what they’re saying,’ she explained to me after we’d managed to accost a grey-bearded cowherd, whose name we learnt was Tadc, and his trembling, bone-thin wife, Aife. ‘Some of the words they use are unknown to me, and they have a strange accent.’

  ‘What do they know about the fort?’ I asked.

  Eithne put the question to them, and I sensed her frustration both in her voice and in the set of her lips. Although I couldn’t understand her tongue, I nevertheless recognised the name of Haakon’s stronghold, at the mention of which Tadc and Aife suddenly froze, their eyes wide, before both began to babble at the same time, talking over one another, gesturing wildly with spindly fingers towards the north and all the while shaking their heads.

  ‘They dare not so much as set foot upon its slopes, or come within an arrow’s flight of the bay where he keeps his ships,’ Eithne said. ‘They are frightened of Haakon and his fellow warriors, with their pagan amulets and their foreign speech. He asks them for payment and they give him what he demands, but otherwise he ignores them, and they are happy enough at that. They have no reason to venture anywhere near his stronghold.’