Hereward 02 - The Devil's Army (24 page)

The boys crawled to the shadows at the back of the hut, too weak to stand. How terrible was their plight. He felt pity for these folk. In Wincestre, he had been sheltered from so much hardship, but now, after all the horrors he had witnessed, he would never be that same man.

The boys forgotten, he tapped the iron cook-pot. It swung gently on its chain and a protruding bone rattled. So hungry did he feel, he wondered if there were perhaps a morsel of meat still attached that he could suck off. The silver penny would more than pay for what little he would find. He peered into the pot, but the bone had been picked clean. The juices had all been drunk and the vessel was dry. He shrugged, disappointed. A few more bones rattled around in the bottom. He dipped his hand in and felt around, pulling each one out in turn to
examine it, but all were dry. Finally, his fingers closed around a curved bone and he drew it up.

Ice-water sluiced through him as he realized what he was seeing. A skull. A human skull, so small it could nestle in the palm of his hand.

In his shock, he flung the tiny thing across the hut and it rattled on the cold mud floor. Sickened, he scrabbled away from the hearth and clutched the back of his hand to his mouth. What vision of hell was this?

Before he could contemplate the true horror of his discovery, he felt a blast of cold air. The door hung open. The woman was there, and not alone. Hollow-eyed, gaunt faces loomed in the dark behind her. They seemed to hang on the threshold for a moment as if contemplating what they were about to do, and then they surged inside.

Balthar cried out, trying to scramble to his feet, but they swarmed as swiftly as rats. Though he wrenched himself from side to side, hands gripped his arms and legs and pinned him down. ‘Please, God, have mercy,’ he shrieked.

A man loomed over him, staring eyes gleaming with madness. His lips pulled back from his yellowing teeth in an eager grin and he feverishly ripped open Balthar’s cloak. The other men and women pressed in, and he gagged at the sour reek rolling off them. In their trembling hands he glimpsed a smith’s hammer and a chisel, a billhook. Most held knives. All his thoughts rushed away in terror at the fate awaiting him. Like a madman himself, he fought, screaming until his throat was raw, but their hunger gave them greater strength.

A fist crunched against his face to still his struggles so they could more easily go about their business. Dazed, he muttered through split lips, ‘Let me live. Please, God, let me live.’

The man swung his knife up.

A crash thundered through the hut. The heads of his captors jerked round. Balthar found his eyes gripped by that suspended blade as all his other senses fell away. He thought he half-heard the roar of some wild beast, and the shrieks of frightened birds.
The knife whisked away as a storm of frantic movement broke around him. He gaped, bewildered. In the thin glow from the embers, the looming shapes of his captors whirled about. Shouts and snarls echoed, then a cry of agony, cut short.

A hand shook him roughly from his stupor. ‘Run,’ a voice commanded. He stared into a familiar face and realized it was Faramond the knight. The Norman warrior flew away, his sword hacking in an arc. Blood sprayed. Balthar clawed himself up to his feet in a panic. Amid the din, his senses spun. Putting his head down, he lashed out blindly and hurled himself between the flailing bodies.

Once through the press he turned, his back set against the wall, to see Faramond thrust his blade through the heart of a man. Two more bodies lay on the floor, leaking gore. But the starving villagers flew at the knight like a pack of wolves, clawing at his face as they leapt on top of him. He crashed down under the ferocity of the attack and his attackers fell on him like rats.

Balthar scuttled crabwise to the doorway and lurched out into the bitter night. On the threshold, he glanced back, despite himself. Under the churning pile of bodies, Faramond’s pinned head was turned towards him. His eyes widened in silent pleading. The billhook and the knives ripped down and Balthar turned and ran. There was nothing he could do, he told himself. Sickening screams echoed out into the snow-covered hills, but the Fox refused to hear them. Only when silence fell once more did he suck in a juddering breath. Yet he could not allow himself to think of what was happening in that lonely hut at that moment.

Blinking away tears of fear, he ran to where Faramond’s horse waited, snorting in the cold. He clambered on to its back and urged it along the deep tracks in the snow. When the village had disappeared into the dark behind him, he began to shake, and then cry. The knight must have come to look for him when it was discovered he was missing, and Balthar had abandoned him to a terrible fate. As he followed the trail back
towards the Norman forces, he shook his head to dispel the shock of how close he had come to death. But he doubted his guilt would ever fade. Never more could he pretend he was the man he had believed himself to be. The dawn would not come soon enough.

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3 March 1070

FLAMES FLICKERED BEYOND
the night-dark trees where the four men were crawling on their bellies like snakes. There, on the edge of the wetlands, the spring breeze brought the tangy scent of the nearby ocean. Every now and then, the sound of waves crashing against the salt marsh broke through the rustle of leaves and the dim crackle of the fire.

‘Wait here,’ Hengist whispered, his eyes unnervingly wide and fixed. As he crawled off through the sprouting bracken and long grass in the direction of the bonfire, Redwald, Sighard and Madulf exchanged doubting looks.

‘Can we trust him? He is lighter in the head with each passing day,’ Madulf grumbled. ‘While enemies creep up on us, he could be away whispering to the rabbits.’

‘Leave him be,’ Sighard replied, throwing a friendly punch at his brother’s arm. ‘Watching the Normans slaughter kin could send any man away with the ravens.’

Madulf only scowled.

‘There is no better scout than Hengist,’ Redwald murmured, his attention fixed on the bonfire. He could hear shouts, and
singing. If it was a camp, as the scout had claimed, it was a large one. ‘If Hereward trusts him, then so do we.’

‘Trust,’ Madulf grumbled. ‘I cannot even trust my own brother.’

‘How say you?’ Sighard replied, indignant.

‘I saw you creeping out from Edoma’s hut before dawn,’ his brother replied, sullen.

‘’Twas not me.’

‘Lies.’

‘Hush,’ Redwald insisted, irritated by their constant chatter so close to danger. ‘Edoma is a woman of honour. She would not waste her time with either of you squeaking piglets.’

Silence fell as they waited for mad Hengist to return with news that it was safe to advance. After a moment, Madulf whispered, ‘We have heard tell that Hereward believes the Normans have eyes and ears within the camp. And that you are charged with deciding who is true and who is the hidden enemy.’

‘I said, still your tongue.’

‘Is it true?’ Madulf insisted. Redwald heard a jarring note in the young man’s voice.

A cry rang out from deep in the woods ahead.

‘Hengist,’ Sighard exclaimed.

Before Redwald could urge caution, the two brothers had snatched up their spears and shields and were racing through the undergrowth. Redwald cursed under his breath. He hesitated for one moment, wondering if he should abandon them to their fate. Then he grabbed his own spear and shield and jumped to his feet. He kept low, his shield high, his weapon levelled. The sounds of revelry from the camp had been snuffed out. Only the breeze moaned through the branches. Ahead the flames licked up. He could smell woodsmoke and the rich aroma of roast boar.

Redwald searched the trees on all sides. It was as black as pitch. Ahead lay a clearing lit by some silvery light. He paused and listened. No hint of a footstep reached his ears. Once again he cursed Madulf and Sighard. Those foolish children.
He would not give up his life for them or for mad Hengist. Determination filled him and he began to edge back the way he had come.

Something moved away in the gloom and he halted once more. He felt his heart beat faster. Was it one of the two brothers? Or Hengist returning? He could smell the fresh paint on his shield as he peered over the lip. His body felt as heavy as stone.

A silhouette whisked past the clearing. A branch cracked away to his right. The whispers of subtle movement rose up all around and gathered pace until a rumble of footsteps was rushing towards him. A torch flared in the dark, and another.

Redwald whirled and crashed through the bracken. Barely had he taken ten paces when a figure loomed up on the edge of his vision. A blow crashed against the side of his helm and he saw stars. A moment later he found himself lying on his back looking up through the bracken fronds. His head throbbed with the thrum of blood. A dark shape hovered over him. He felt for his spear, but it was lost in the ferns.

A torch swept near. The orange glow lit the fierce face of a Dane, his body heavy with mail and furs. He snarled something in a language Redwald did not understand as he drew back a glinting axe.

Redwald threw an arm across his face and cried out.

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THE RAVEN BANNER
fluttered in the chill morning breeze. Under the standard’s protection, the camp stretched from the edge of the dense woods across the misty salt marshes to the white-topped waves of the grey sea. Tents billowed and flapped and guy-ropes cracked. Next to every entrance, shields brightly painted in red, blue and amber rested against spears and axes. Bleary-eyed warriors squatted around the embers of the night’s fires, picking over greasy waterfowl bones and the sticky remnants of roast boar.

Hereward shielded his eyes against the glare of the rising sun and studied the army and beyond it the ships moored along the coast. So many, more than he had ever anticipated. He saw from the scars and the stumps and the missing eyes and the notched weapons that these were the fiercest warriors the far north had to offer. A den of wolves, ready to fall on any fresh meat that came their way. He inhaled a deep draught of the salty air, still sharp with the last cold of winter, and strode down the incline. As his cloak flapped behind him, he could only think that the sound reminded him of the wings of ravens waiting to pick over his bones. Kraki walked at his right shoulder, Guthrinc at his
left, a fearsome sight even for these battle-hardened Danes, he hoped.

As they licked their lips and wiped their fingers on their matted furs, the warriors glanced towards him with narrowing eyes. Hereward searched among the tents until he saw Hengist, beckoning. The way had been prepared. Now they had only to hope that they were not opening the gates to hell.

Guthrinc hummed to himself as he looked around. ‘How many riches you bring to my life, Hereward,’ he murmured, his tone wry. ‘And now the chance for a spear in my back.’

Kraki glowered at any man who dared meet his eye. ‘They care as much for us as a dog cares for his fleas. We are no threat, and they know it.’ Yet Hereward saw his hand never strayed from his axe.

‘Keep your heads high,’ the Mercian whispered. ‘Remember: they sent Hengist back to tell us they would talk.’

‘Aye, but what about the other three?’ Kraki growled. ‘Their heads might be food for the ravens.’

‘Ah, such good cheer flows from your lips,’ Guthrinc said, smiling at the Danes he passed.

‘I know fighting men, unlike you, mud-crawler,’ the Viking replied.

Hereward heard the clank of chainmail as warrior after warrior stood up to watch him go by, but he did not look back. As they neared the centre of the camp, he saw Redwald, Madulf and Sighard, still among the living, dipping hard bread into bowls of grey slop. Redwald had a bruise on his forehead and a gash on his right cheek, but the other two looked hale and hearty. Hereward ignored them, his gaze fixed on the largest tent, which had been dyed blood-red, but Guthrinc called to them, ‘What torments you suffer. Warm food! A full belly! I am glad I risked my neck to save you.’

Hengist waited by the entrance to the red tent. ‘Here, now,’ he called to whoever waited inside, ‘Hereward of the English, ring-giver, battle-wolf, spiller of Norman blood.’

Hereward came to a halt by the glowing coals of the tent’s fire.
A thin trail of smoke wafted up to the pale blue sky, fragrant with the scent of the smouldering greeting-herbs that had been tossed on to the embers. A good omen. After a moment, the flaps of the tent were thrown aside and two helmed Danes stepped out – huscarls, Hereward guessed – followed by a third man. Though he seemed around his fiftieth summer, he stood as tall and broad-shouldered as Hereward, his eyes burning with vitality. His black hair was long and wild, as was his beard. Under his thick, purple cloak, the gold rings of a king gleamed on his arms.

Hereward hid his surprise, and bowed his head in a show of deference. Here was Sweyn Estrithson himself, king of the Danes, not one of the monarch’s many sons that he had expected to meet. This opportunity was greater than he had ever dreamed; and riskier too.

The king nodded, accepting the show of respect. ‘You know me?’ he asked.

‘I know of a king who is as fierce a warrior as he is wise a ruler,’ Hereward replied. ‘And one who now has bloodied the nose of William the Bastard and may yet cut his legs from beneath him.’

‘And my huscarls have told me the tale of the Bearkiller, the bane of Normandy’s duke.’

‘Then we have ploughed the same field.’

Sweyn broke into a gap-toothed grin and swept his right arm to usher Hereward into his tent. The Mercian nodded to Kraki, Guthrinc and Hengist to wait outside. It was warm in the ruddy glow under the hemp cloth. In one corner, hot coals glowed in a copper bowl. More fragrant leaves smouldered on the embers, hiding the reek from the cess-pit beyond. Furs had been heaped in one corner as a sleeping place. The king sprawled on them and waved a hand for Hereward to sit on a plank supported by two logs. Sweyn clapped his hands and a pretty brown-haired girl slipped in – English by the looks of it, Hereward thought. She carried a pitcher, and from it she poured two wooden cups of beer. When she offered one
to Hereward, she blushed, clearly knowing who he was. He smiled in return.