Hereward 02 - The Devil's Army (21 page)

‘I will do as you ask,’ Hereward soothed, knowing that he could do no such thing. More than anything he wanted to bring comfort to this good man, but it was beyond him. ‘Do not lose faith,’ he whispered. ‘In my heart, I am sure there is an honest answer to this mystery, and you and your daughter will be reunited.’

The miller pumped Hereward’s hand, seeming pathetically grateful for these miserable few words of comfort. ‘You are a good man,’ Dunnere said, wiping the snot from his nose with the back of his hand. ‘It warms my heart to know I do not stand alone in my suffering.’

Hereward watched him stumble away through the drifts, feeling his spirits fall lower still.
A good man
, he thought bitterly, and spat into the snow.

Before he could move onwards, Hengist hurried up and lurched into his path. Hereward felt troubled by the odd gleam that now seemed to have settled in the other man’s eyes. ‘Brunloc tells me ten more men left while we were gone,’ Hengist said, pulling his cloak tighter.

‘This winter is hard. We knew some would not stay the course.’

‘Aye, but this is more than we expected. And the numbers grow greater by the week. A trickle now, soon a flood if things stay as we are.’ He stamped the snow off his shoes. ‘Soon we might have no army to speak of.’

‘Most will not risk travel in this harsh weather. The true test will come in the spring. Till then we will find some way to put fire in their hearts.’ He nodded and walked on, hoping Hengist would take some encouragement from his words. But the other man had spoken the truth. They were losing warriors faster than they could bear. If the flow was not stemmed by the spring, the uprising would die, and the hopes of the English with it.

He put aside his grim mood and strode forward. As he neared his door, it flew open. Turfrida stood framed in the golden glow from the fire. He paused, feeling uneasy at the urgency of her appearance, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the light, he saw she did not smile and her gaze was questioning. Fear filled him, fear that had haunted him every day since Turfrida’s life had been threatened during the uprising, a dread that she might be the one to pay the price for his own bloody war.

‘What is wrong?’ he whispered.

He felt relief as her face softened. She smiled, though still a little uncertainly. ‘Husband, I have news,’ she announced, holding her arms out to him. ‘I am with child.’

C
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T
WENTY
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IGHT

FROST GLITTERED IN
the dead man’s eyebrows. The falling snow settled in the hollows of his eye sockets and drifted across the bodies of the five other Norman soldiers lying around the edge of the frozen marsh. Harald Redteeth knelt beside the fallen warrior, listening to the voices of the
alfar
in the howling wind. They called to the souls of these brave dead to join them in the world beneath the seas and the lakes and the hills. The Viking muttered a silent prayer, urging those shades on to Valhalla instead. These Normans were true warriors, even if they followed the orders of fools.

Not so long gone he had himself almost joined the ranks of the
Einherjar
in that vast hall of fallen warriors. But Woden had seen fit to turn him back at the very doors. And he knew why. He still had work to do, blood-work, and like his friend Ivar the Dead who breathed cold breath upon his neck day and night, he would never be allowed to rest until it was done. He stood, feeling the aches that still lingered from his now-healed wounds. Pink scars now covered more of his torso than the skin with which he was born, but each one served as a reminder of who he was.

‘Speak clearly. What happened here?’

The gruff voice of Ivo Taillebois snatched him from his reverie. He turned and crunched across the snow to the small group of men surrounding the ceorl who had witnessed the attack. He wore thick furs reeking of grease. His wide eyes had the faraway look of a man still gripped by the horror that he had seen. Flanked by three Norman warriors, Taillebois looked like a raven in his black cloak and breeches, his fist snarled in the front of the ceorl’s furs.

‘Tell me,’ he demanded again. His other gauntleted hand moved to his sword hilt.

‘He has had the wits scared out of him.’ William de Warenne leaned over the neck of his horse, shivering inside his lilac cloak.

Harald ignored them, drawn as always to the silent member of the group, the old man Asketil Tokesune, Hereward’s father. He supported himself on his long staff, his filthy cloak so ragged it surely could not keep out the winter’s blades. His skin was as pale as snow, his pebble eyes as black as the waters beneath the ice. The others treated him like a simple child, but Harald saw the truth.

The Butcher shook the ceorl so roughly his teeth rattled. As the sword half-slid from its scabbard, the man came to his senses. ‘Ghosts, they are,’ he gasped. ‘Not men.’

Taillebois hawked phlegm and spat on the snow.

‘They have the faces of death,’ the ceorl continued, ‘white skulls, fresh from the grave. They came with the snow.’ He placed his hand upon his heart. ‘I … hunted fowl. I swear before God, may He strike me dead: this land was empty until your battle-wolves came by. When the wind changed, he was there … Hereward … stepped forth from hell with his sword Brainbiter. His men, his dead men, struck with spear and axe. Your soldiers fell without even a cry. What hope did they have? Barely had a prayer escaped my lips when the dead men were gone, into the snow and away.’ He fluttered a hand towards the heavens. ‘God help me that I had seen such things.’

William pulled his cloak tighter, his teeth chattering. ‘This is not good enough,’ he said to the Norman commander. ‘We kill
one of theirs, they slay five of ours. Be like a sly fox, the king said. Aye, so sly we barely move. Where are our fangs?’

‘We have our eyes and ears among them,’ Taillebois growled. ‘Soon we will hear news we can use to bring them to their knees.’

The nobleman snorted. ‘Soon?’ he sneered. ‘How soon? If Hereward’s head is not on a stick by the summer, the king will fall upon us as he has done upon the north.’

‘You already know all you need.’ Asketil’s voice was almost lost beneath the wind’s whine.

‘Save your breath, old man,’ the Butcher said, thrusting the ceorl away from him. ‘When we need to hear your words, we will—’

‘Wait,’ William interjected. ‘What say you?’

Harald watched Asketil’s face darken, the lips pulling back from his yellow, chipped teeth. Hatred lay there, of a kind he had never seen between father and son. He felt his distaste for the old man rise.

‘You do not know my son as I know him,’ Asketil replied, looking up at the Norman noble. ‘The ceorl speaks true. He is no man. He is a beast who puts on the face of a man. Show his true face and none would follow him. Find the beast inside him and he will return to the wild and leave this uprising behind.’

Taillebois gave a dismissive laugh. ‘Men like that would die before they walked away.’

‘Hereward is not a man of honour. He cares only for himself. His mother’s blood stains his hands. And, aye, he would see me dead too.’ Harald watched Asketil’s knuckles whiten as he grasped his staff tighter. ‘He has been tamed by the two who are closest to him. Your eyes and ears in his camp have already learned this. You know.’

The Butcher’s brow furrowed in thought. He pushed his way through his warriors to stand before the old man. ‘The monk?’

‘And his wife. The witch. Between them, they have shackled the devil inside him. But those chains are weak. Without their guiding words, he will return to the Hereward of old.’

William clapped his hands, grinning. ‘Take the monk—’

‘No,’ Asketil said, shaking his staff. ‘The woman.’

The nobleman’s grin faded.

‘She is his true weakness,’ the old man continued. ‘For all his fierceness, he is still the child running to his mother, wishing to protect her. All women are his weakness.’

‘Take his wife?’ William mused, unsure.

Asketil stamped his staff upon the hard ground. ‘Take his woman. Cut out her heart.’

The nobleman winced, reeling back on his mount.

Harald stepped forward. ‘There is no honour in making a woman suffer,’ he snapped.

Asketil turned on him, sneering. ‘You are as weak as Hereward.’

Harald smiled in reply. He saw Grim, his axe, slicing through the old man’s neck, the head falling to the snow, the blood gushing out.

‘You heard from your eyes and ears what happened when his wife was taken by Saba and those others. Hereward threw aside all reason for her.’ The old man looked from William to Taillebois. ‘There is too much at stake here for soft hearts and soft heads. If a woman’s death makes you cringe, then think of her not as wife but as witch. She can be tried and tested and found wanting under God’s eyes.’

The Butcher nodded thoughtfully. ‘A witch. Aye.’

‘Are we not men who fight and die as men?’ Harald kept his voice calm, but in his head he heard his father telling him the rules of life by the winter fire: honour, and blood, and the road to Valhalla. These Christian men would have called his own mother witch, and half the women in his village. ‘A victory like this has no value.’

As fast as a snake, Taillebois drew his sword and thrust the tip against Harald’s neck. Harald held his eyes steady, unflinching. ‘You take orders from us. You do not speak out,’ the Butcher snarled. He glanced at William. ‘It would be easier to lure the
woman out of the camp than the monk. Once we have her, Hereward will do our bidding.’

After a moment, William nodded. ‘The king was right. The cunning fox keeps his belly full. Once he sees his wife in agony, Hereward will say whatever we want to free her. He will end the uprising himself.’

Grinning, Taillebois sheathed his sword. ‘Then it is agreed. We take the witch.’

Now forgotten, Harald watched the Butcher climb back on to his horse, but it was the old man who drew his gaze. The frailty in Asketil’s face had drained away. His eyes now blazed with an uncanny fire and he bared his teeth like a wolf ready to tear out the throat of a lamb.

C
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T
WENTY
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THE BODY LAY
at the side of the road. The skin was black, the belly bloated, and ravens had taken the eyes. As he rode towards the corpse, Balthar scarcely gave it a second glance, so many had he seen on the journey. They lined the roads like markers to hell. The stink of human rot hung everywhere in the north, and even the nosegay stuffed with herbs and spices could not bring him respite. He coughed and gagged, his eyes darting towards his shadow riding in silence at his side. Faramond was a dour Norman knight who barely acknowledged his charge. But Balthar was glad of his companionship. No man should venture abroad alone in such a tormented place.

As they neared the body, undulating shadows rushed away into the growing dark. The knight grunted. ‘Some say there are more rats in Northumbria than men these days.’

‘Oh, to be in the south once again,’ the Fox sighed, thinking of Godrun. How distant her beauty and her tenderness seemed amid those grim surroundings. ‘Have you heard word when we return home?’ he ventured hopefully.

‘When the king’s work is done.’

Balthar sighed. And when would that be? Eoferwic was already William’s. In the days leading up to Christmas, they had
ridden through a blasted land into a burnt city – a mere shadow of its former glory – with hungry, desperate folk proclaiming their saviour, the king. Their voices had been raised more out of fear than hope, he knew. They had seen the thick black clouds of carrion birds following the Norman army. But Eoferwic was only one stopping point on the long road of William’s bloody obsession. He would not be satisfied until no man was left standing between here and the Tees in the far north.

His breath clouded in the chill, and he shivered. As he looked up at the rising moon in the clear sky, he felt the sting of snowflakes in the wind. It had been a hard winter and it would get harder still, he was sure of it. He closed his eyes and dreamed of the warm fires in the hall the king now occupied in the ruined town. When he opened them a moment later, he glimpsed movement across the river plain outside Eoferwic.

‘What is that?’ he asked, squinting into the growing gloom and pointing. ‘One of the king’s war-bands?’ He flinched at the cold-blooded brutality of William, who had divided his army into smaller groups and each day sent them out to slaughter men, salt fields and burn any homes or barns in parts they had not yet devastated.

Faramond followed his gaze, and shook his head. Though he did not reply, Balthar saw the knight’s hand slip to the hilt of his sword.

They rode on, faster now. As they neared Eoferwic and the reek of wet charred wood that hung over the town, he heard cries carried on the wind. The winter chill seemed to bite even deeper into his bones when he saw that what he had taken to be a war-band was a large crowd of women and children, stumbling across the reed-beds and scrubby grassland towards the gates.

‘Do not speak to them,’ Faramond warned, his gaze as bitter as that wind. ‘Do not meet their eyes. And if they dare reach out to you, strike them with your cudgel.’

‘They are poor, hungry souls,’ Balthar protested.

‘They are already dead.’

As they drew towards the gates, the starving beggars noticed them and as one they turned and surged across the road, their cries like those of gulls at sunset. Little more than rags were their dresses, torn and filthy, and many had wrapped themselves in blankets and sack-cloth against the biting cold. They looked like spectres, he thought, with ashen skin and hollow cheeks and eyes fallen deep into shadow, and they reached out with thin, clutching hands as if they wished to draw him back to the grave with them. The children were worse. He could not even look at them.

Faramond shouted for them to clear the path, but only when he drew his sword and beat it against his shield did they cower away. Yet Balthar felt only pity for them. This wandering mob roamed the countryside in search of any morsel that might allow them to live to see another day. But there was nothing, anywhere. And when he looked into their devastated eyes, he saw they knew it.