Hereward 02 - The Devil's Army (26 page)

King Sweyn had stayed with the remainder of his army, clustered with his commanders in his blood-red tent as they planned the coming battle against the Bastard. Hereward felt a cold satisfaction that vengeance was coming fast. There could be no turning back from this day.

He glanced across the heads of his men. Their faces were crusted grey with ashes, each one a promise of the grave for any Norman who stood in their way. Some looked determined, others keen. No fear. That was good. Guthrinc winked at him. He winked back.

Redwald squatted by his feet, watching the moonlit trees ahead. ‘It is sad Alric cannot share in our great victory this night.’

‘He is not a fighting man.’

‘No, better he stays behind and ministers to the women and children. He is not one of us.’ He paused for reflection, adding, ‘A good man, but not one of us.’

A hunting owl screeched as it swept across the Wellstream. When the haunting cry died away, Hereward felt a tremor in the boat as it approached the point where two other streams flooded into the channel. Still swollen by the spring rains, the waters churned violently. But his men knew the moods of the Wellstream. They were ready for this.

He cupped his hands around his mouth and mimicked the screech of the owl. The call leapt from boat to boat. Hereward rested his hand on Redwald’s shoulder and the younger man looked up at him with untroubled eyes and a trusting smile. For one moment, Hereward felt a pang of regret for the few good times during his childhood, and then the boat slammed into the swirling current. He dropped to his haunches, gripping the edge.

At the agreed warning, the warriors heaved on the oars. The boat rolled as if it had crashed over rocks hidden just beneath the surface. Hereward braced himself. One side flipped up at an acute angle, then smashed back down. The other side rolled up just as steeply. ‘Hold steady,’ he urged through gritted teeth. He could hear his men cursing as they fought with the oars. The timber frame groaned, flexing against the current. Aft it was wrenched to one side and the boat went into a spin. Oars stabbed the water. Hectic splashing drowned out the sound of laboured breathing. The warriors thrust the boat into the spin, and the vessel whirled one rotation. Then the oarsmen rowed in unison. The boat seemed to heave, and judder, and then, as if breaking free from invisible hands, it shot forward along the channel.

Hereward released the breath he was holding. The violent spring currents had torn boats apart in times past, however well-made they had been. His relief ebbed when he heard a cry and a splash. Turning, he saw that a Dane had been thrown
over the side of the next boat in its convulsions. His fingertips clutched at the edge of the vessel as the claws of the currents tore at him. The desperate faces of his brothers glowed white in the moonlight. They lunged to grab his wrist, but the boat shook so violently they could barely keep their own feet.

And then he was gone, his mail shirt and heavy furs dragging him down beneath the black waters. The other men cried out his name and jabbed the oars beneath the surface in the hope that he would grab hold. But he would have been swept away by the current, Hereward knew. If his body were ever found, it would not be until the summer and then far from this place. The waters of the fens were cruel. The Wellstream claimed three bodies a year, folk said, and many left offerings of bread and spears once the snows had melted, to placate that hungry river.

Even though he had never learned the Dane’s name, he bowed his head in memory of the lost man. It would not be an omen.

The rest of the fleet made it through the turbulence without further loss of life. Silence fell upon the warriors once more. They bowed their heads with grim determination as they rowed harder up-river. The Wellstream drove like a spear into the heart of their enemy. Never would they have been able to approach so quickly and unseen by the Norman patrols if they had been forced to follow the old tracks. As the reed-beds thinned, the desolation of the fens gave way to thick woods and steeper banks. The horizon, always so far away in Ely, seemed to close in around them. Hereward sensed his men grow tense as they neared their destination.

When they rounded a bend in the river, the Mercian himself stiffened. On higher ground, a church tower was silhouetted against the starry sky. The thatched roofs of houses tumbled down the slope from the enclosure surrounding the minster.

‘Burgh,’ Hereward murmured to himself. His thoughts flew back to the last time he had visited the abbey, when his uncle, the abbot Brand, knighted him under duress. Brand was now dead, and a new abbot guided the monks, no doubt just as much in thrall to Norman power.

With hand signals and hushed tones, the orders were given. The oarsmen guided the boats to the river’s edge and moored them with stakes driven into the mud. Once they had disembarked on to the muddy path – the place where local fishermen would drop their willow baskets to catch eels – Hereward raised his blade towards the sweep of glittering stars. His men grabbed their spears and axes from the bottom of the boats, and their shields from where they had been hanging along the sides. All faces turned towards him as the warriors gathered four abreast on the Wellstream’s edge.

‘Some say these are the End-Times,’ Hereward began, his voice low but his words carrying powerfully across the rapt men, ‘and that the king is the Devil who has brought us to these dark days. The north is a wasteland. On the wind, we hear the cries of the sick and the starving. The blood of an unjust war against the innocent has turned the rivers red. Aye, Death is abroad upon his white horse.’

He lowered his sword and swept it towards Burgh. ‘This night we show William the Bastard whose days are truly ending … his own. Follow me now, wolf-brothers, and let our weapons drink deep of the mead of battle. Glory waits for us, and gold. And on the morrow, a new dawn breaks.’

He saw eyes burning with fire and lupine grins, and spears thrust towards the heavens in a silent cheer. As he turned towards Burgh, his blood pounding in his chest, he felt struck by a revelation that warmed him. The affairs of men turned in a gyre, like the falcon that flew from his wrist when he was a boy. Once he had been little more than a ravening wolf, driven by rage and hungry for blood, shunned by all civilized folk. Now he was a leader of men who had been taught the value of friendship and honour and justice. Once, not too many weeks gone, his army had stared disaster in the face, and now they had victory within their grasp. He thought of his father, and the miseries of his childhood, and how he had once believed that had charted the course of his life. But no path was set. God or fortune or will could lead any man out of the dark.

Hereward grinned to himself. All would now be made right with the world. He whirled towards the church tower, glowing silver in the moonlight. ‘We are the English,’ he cried, knowing there was no longer any need for secrecy, ‘and the day of reckoning is here.’

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THE ROAR OF
the attacking English rang through the still night. Hereward thought how it must have chilled the very souls of any Normans who heard it, a dread that would be doubled the moment they looked down on the skull-faced horde thundering towards the palisade.

‘Redwald, Guthrinc,’ he called as they scrambled up the ramparts. ‘On my order, let fly your battle-serpents.’

The two warriors plucked arrows from the leather pouches on their backs as they ran. Hereward knew he had chosen them well for no man there was better with the hunting bow. When they were in range, they dropped to one knee and nocked the shafts to their lines. The night, too, had been well chosen. He waited until he saw the heads of two Norman guards appear above the stockade, caught in moonlight so bright it might as well have been day.

‘Now,’ he snapped.

The arrows whipped out. The guards, focusing their attention on the melee against the fence, never saw them coming. One plunged into a helm’s eye-hole and the man screamed, pitching backwards from the fence as he clutched impotently at the wavering shaft. The other arrow found a Norman throat.
Hereward heard the choking gurgle for only a moment before that man too fell.

Cries of alarm rang out from the other side of the palisade. The sound of running feet echoed from the hall where the English scouts had told Hereward the small Norman force slept. The Mercian grinned. All was unfolding as planned. Ivo Taillebois, William de Warenne and the bulk of their men were far away to the south. He laughed as he thought of the hated enemy waiting in the woods all night for a raid that would never happen. His men had sown the whispers of that attack for days in the surrounding villages, knowing it would reach the ears of Norman spies.

More guards appeared on the fence. They had clearly seen their fallen brothers for they kept their heads low.

‘To the Bolhythe Gate,’ Hereward yelled. His warriors surged along the eastern wall towards the southern entrance to Burgh. Beyond the gate, the street led straight as an arrow to the abbey.

From the southern ramparts, Hereward looked out over a moonlit wasteland of tree stumps, vast swathes of land blackened by burning, heaps of waste where shrieking flocks of birds would feed each day, and large stagnant pools. Deep ruts had been carved into the road leading to Burgh by the merchants’ carts. He turned to face the gate, as high as three men and no doubt barred by a heavy oak beam on the other side.

‘Break it down,’ he commanded.

Four Danes heaved up the trimmed and bark-stripped trunk of an oak that had been left outside the fence by the wood-cutters at the end of the day’s labour. As they charged towards the gate, the rest of the army thundered alongside them, throwing the weight of their bodies against the barrier. The wave broke with a crash. The gate groaned and splintered, but held. With a roar, the Danes pulled their ram back for another strike.

Hereward whipped his arm to the right and left to direct Guthrinc and Redwald to positions on either side of the throng. They knelt once more, nocking arrows to creaking bowstrings, and aimed at the top of the stockade. When a guard raced
along the walkway, Redwald let fly. The shaft clanged on the Norman’s helm and ricocheted away. Cursing in his guttural tongue, the man dropped down low. The two English archers fired again and again whenever any Norman dared raise his head. Hereward nodded his approval. The English within Burgh would be roused and the gates shattered before the enemy could hurl rocks or fire down upon his men.

The tree-trunk rammed against the gate time and again. The barrier bowed. Shards of wood flew out. From the high walkway the guards’ yells grew more urgent as they realized their defences were about to fail.

‘The moment you are through the gate, cut down any Normans you find,’ Hereward bellowed to his men. Barely had the words left his mouth, when he heard a tumult growing deep within the settlement. His brow knitted. No more warriors rested within Burgh that day, his scouts had been certain of that. The rising wave of anxious voices swept closer until it crashed against the other side of the gate. English voices.

Hengist turned to him, puzzled. ‘The lambs of Burgh aid the wolves who steal their food and their coin?’

Hereward watched his skull-faced warriors hammer the gate. He thought of the stories of the Wild Men of the Woods he had heard told by superstitious folk across the fens as rumours of his army had spread, and he guessed the truth. ‘They fear us more than they fear William’s men. We have done our work too well,’ he replied, his face darkening.

‘The gate will never fall with so many men pressed against it,’ Hengist said, listening to the swell of voices from the other side. ‘We are undone by our own.’ He ran one hand through his stringy blond hair and looked to his leader, waiting for the order to withdraw.

Hereward shook his head. ‘This night is a battle-cry that will ring out across the land. If we run like whipped curs at the first hardship, we tell everyone that we are too weak for the struggle ahead. We may as well lay down our spears and bare our throats to the Norman king. Would we be known
for ever more as the men who betrayed the last hope of the English?’

‘What say you, then?’

Hereward gritted his teeth. Only one road lay ahead, and he must take it, though it damned him for ever. ‘If the folk of Burgh attack us because they are afraid, they will only run when they are more afraid.’ He felt his heart sink, knowing that this weapon would cut both ways. He shook his head, pushing such troubling thoughts from his mind. ‘Burn the gates and the walls,’ he shouted to his warriors. ‘And then set Burgh itself afire.’

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AND BURGH DID
burn. Grey clouds of choking smoke swirled up from the blazing gates. Whitewashed only days before, the seasoned timber of the walls was already blackening and cracking. Shadows flitted across ash-encrusted faces as the English army shook their spears at the sable sky. In the ruddy light, Hengist danced, untroubled by the fierce heat. Warriors shouted to be heard above the deafening roar as they handed out sizzling brands for the moment the barrier would fall. And beyond the palisade, a chorus of screams tore out.

Hereward lost himself in that conflagration. As the rest of the world fell away, his head filled with that flickering wall of orange and yellow. On his tongue, he tasted only the bitterness of the smoke and his nose wrinkled at the scorching air. Deep inside, he began to feel the first stirrings of the devil he always carried with him. The fire called to it and it answered. The screams of the Burgh folk facing their greatest fear was nothing. The rush of excitement rising from his belly was all. Monster, he was, at heart. He could not deny that.

‘Hereward. Give the order.’

He stirred himself, realizing that Redwald had been talking to him. He shook his head to dismiss the lure of the flames and
yelled, ‘When the gates fall, burn the houses. But do not set fire to the abbey.’