Hereward 02 - The Devil's Army (43 page)

Near running, they edged the mere and then moved out into the heart of the wetlands as the forest fell behind. Taillebois ordered a man to go ahead with his spear to test the ground lest they plunge into one of the hidden bogs. So dark was it, they could barely see further than the man in front. Every now and then, a man would stumble and fall, his brothers dragging him back to his feet. The pace could not be slowed, they all knew that.

When the lead warrior hissed a warning, they ground to a halt. An owl shrieked in the distance as it hunted. ‘Go slow,’ the Butcher warned. ‘A bog lies ahead, but our scout has found a causeway.’ Harald heard the Norman commander hesitate and knew what he was thinking. On a causeway, they could be trapped, with only two directions to choose.

As Taillebois deliberated, the Viking heard a whistling. Before he could call out a warning, a strangled cry rang out. A man fell near to him, a shaft protruding from his chest. Harald dropped low. But the unnerved Norman warriors milled about, shouting in the dark as they tried to shove each other towards the causeway. Another man cried and fell. And another. Redteeth scrambled on his hands and knees towards the front of the column.

‘How can they see us?’ one soldier cried, his voice breaking. He pitched back an instant later, trailing blood from the arrow rammed in his chest.

‘Are you mad?’ Harald shouted. ‘Get down. Make yourself as small as mice—’ The rest of his warning was lost beneath the sound of thundering feet as the men raced for the causeway. Cursing at their foolishness, Harald loped behind them.

Suddenly, orange flared out of the dark. The burning shaft thumped into the back of a Norman soldier. Screaming, he ran four more paces as the flames leapt up his body, and then he pitched on to the wet ground. The fire roared up, a beacon to light the night for the English dogs.

The glow lit fear-filled faces as the Normans panicked and scrambled on to the causeway, haring as fast as they could along the narrow, treacherous path. Harald had no choice but to follow them.

Once they had escaped the revealing glare, Redteeth heard the man in front of him praying for dawn. A moment later he cried out as he slipped off the causeway and plunged into the marsh. Another warrior tried to grab for his arms and followed him into the sucking mud. In an instant, both men were gone, dragged down by the weight of their mail shirts. As the sounds of their thrashing faded away, the Viking shook his head wearily. These fools would do the enemy’s job for them.

The fleeing warriors slowed. The causeway was made of flint and almost impossible to make out in the engulfing dark. Mile upon mile lay ahead of them before they would reach the safety of the castle at Lincylene and the Viking could almost feel the despair rising around him.

On and on they trudged. The path carved a straight line through the stinking marsh. Occasionally Harald glimpsed indistinct shapes in the dark, small islands covered in willows and sedge. Each one could hide an English archer. Not for a moment could their guard be lowered. The reeds swayed in the breeze and murmured and mocked. The trees moaned, the bog gurgled. Bubbles burst, reeking of rot. They could not even trust their own senses in that place. After a while, the strain began to tell. The Viking heard more whispered prayers, edged with desperation, and voices raised in anger as men blamed their brothers for near-slips and stumbles. It seemed as if they had been walking for an eternity.

As they approached rising ground, a bark of shock brought the column of anxious men to a halt. Harald struggled past
the rest to the front, taking care not to lose his footing. ‘What now?’ he growled. A warrior pointed a trembling finger at a pale shape hovering in the dark ahead. He squinted and saw it was a head, resting at the point where the causeway met dry land. The mouth gaped and the eyes had rolled up so only the whites were showing.

‘Lambelin,’ de Taillebois muttered.

‘Go back,’ one of the warriors urged. ‘They must be waiting for us.’

As the men began to turn, Harald called for them to hold fast. He squatted, resting the palm of his right hand upon the flint. His skin tingled with the vibrations running through the causeway. ‘They want us to go back,’ he growled. ‘The English are coming up behind us. Fast.’

Panic gripped the remaining soldiers once more. They spilled out on to the rising ground, forcing Harald and the Butcher ahead of them. Taillebois called for caution, but it was no good. The Normans stumbled into the trees and the undergrowth along the marsh edge. The Butcher yelled out once more that their indiscipline would be the death of them and this time a few calmed. But not for long.

As Harald turned, he glimpsed movement all around. Spectral shapes formed out of the gloom. From swaying reed-beds and pools of black water they rose, from the sucking mud where surely no man could ever live, from the trees and the bushes and seemingly out of the very earth itself. At first they appeared as insubstantial as mist. But then with a cry that could chill the blood, they rushed from the night, taking on form and fury as they came.

Terror took hold of the Normans. Harald watched them run. Axe-blades flashed, splitting skulls, severing limbs. Spears burst through chests. A man went down and hands grabbed his ankles and dragged him off into the murk, though he dug his nails into the mud to hold himself fast. The Viking watched the white, contorted face disappear, a scream tearing from his throat.

The Butcher caught his arm. Five warriors were gathered around him, their spears and swords pointed towards the gloom. ‘We have lost Morcar,’ he hissed. ‘Our only hope now is to run.’

Redteeth saw through Taillebois’s words. The Butcher intended to sacrifice his own men. Their slaughter would be the distraction that hid his own escape. Disgusted that the Norman made no attempt to save those he commanded, the Viking said nothing. The Butcher would pay the price for his dishonour, sooner or later. Within moments, they were running through the willows. The screams of the dying echoed on every side. One by one those cries faded away until Harald could hear nothing but ragged breath and the hammering of their feet. Only seven of them remained, he marvelled, just seven out of the entire Norman force that had ridden south from Lincylene. Hereward had proved himself a great warrior indeed. It would be an honour to take his life when the opportunity presented itself.

But as they squelched through soft ground beside a wall of waving reeds, a spear shot from the gloom and took one of the warriors. Away in the trees, he glimpsed the ghosts keeping pace with them. The Butcher had seen them too, for he glanced once at Harald before suddenly turning on his heels and darting in the opposite direction. Harald heard him crash into the reed-bed and then he was gone.

When another warrior went down on the tip of a spear, the Viking skidded to a halt and shook his axe in the air. He was only running to his death, he now knew. Better to stand his ground and die in battle like a man. ‘Hereward,’ he roared. ‘Come. Fight me. Let one of us die with honour.’

Three cries came in quick succession, the last of the Norman soldiers dying. For a moment, only silence hung among the trees. He raised his axe and looked around. Movement flickered on the edge of his vision and a blow crashed against the back of his head. His helm flew from his head and he fell, dazed.

When his senses returned, he fumbled for his axe but it was
gone. Those skull-faced night-creatures stood all around in silence, looking down on him with fierce eyes. Before he could speak, they parted and a figure walked through their midst. Hereward loomed over him, his face an emotionless mask. He felt a sword point at his throat, under his chin, forcing him to raise his head as the iron bit into his flesh. He looked deep into the Mercian’s pale eyes, and for the first time in his life felt unsettled by what he saw there.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTY
-F
OUR

TORCHLIGHT DANCED ACROSS
the ash-encrusted faces of the English as they watched their leader prepare to take the head of his enemy. Hereward pressed the tip of his sword into the Viking’s scarred flesh. A bubble of blood rose up, but still Harald Redteeth did not flinch. For this man, death was not a grim stranger to be feared, he could see that. Both of them had known too much of endings.

Silence lay heavily over all. Not a man moved. Hereward felt an unfamiliar calm descend. For most of that day, the blood-lust had raged through him. He had hacked and sliced with no thought but of stealing the last breath. Now he weighed a life in his hands. The Viking’s eyes were all-black, as if he had been consumed by the night from within, and in the torchlight his dyed beard and hair glowed like the embers of a home-fire.

‘You killed my friend Vadir. You lopped off his head and tossed it away as if it were nothing.’ He paused, scrutinizing the Viking’s unflinching gaze. ‘And you saved the life of my wife. You are a bastard, and the world would be better off rid of you. And you are a man of honour.’

Harald Redteeth grinned. ‘Aye, here is a riddle to hold any feast in its thrall.’

The trees rustled in the chill breeze, and if Turfrida had been there she would have said it was the voices of the
vættir
as they observed this momentous event. For one moment, he felt his wife’s presence in those willows too, and he shivered.

‘This blood-feud of ours will be ended,’ he murmured. ‘But not this day.’ He drew his blade back and sheathed it.

Harald Redteeth heaved himself to his feet and levelled his gaze at his enemy. ‘One day we shall find our ending.’ With a nod, he turned and plucked his axe from where it had fallen. Without a backward glance, he pushed his way through the English and was gone.

Guthrinc stepped up to Hereward’s shoulder and sighed. ‘This night will come back and bite you in the arse.’

Hereward shrugged. ‘Amid all this bloodshed, honour is like a beacon in the dark. These things matter.’

He looked around the faces of his loyal men. At his command, they had offered up their lives, and they had fought with a courage that far exceeded their raw skill. He felt proud of each and every one of them; he could have asked no more.

‘We have won a great victory this day, one that will ring out across this land,’ he called. ‘You, here, are the last hope of the English. And you have earned the glory that they will shower upon you. A greater battle lies ahead, one that will finally bring William the Bastard crashing into the mud. But you have shown here that it is a battle we can win.’ He grinned. ‘Now, to Ely. And let us feast as if there be no tomorrow.’

A cheer rang out across the chill wetlands, and that night Hereward thought he had heard no greater sound.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTY
-F
IVE

WAR WAS COMING
, and his horse would be red.

In the light of the feast-fire, the faces of the Ely folk might glow with hope, but Alric could see in their shifting eyes that they knew it would be so. War, and his three brothers too, as each seal was opened. And then, as sure as night followed day, would follow the Final Judgement. For Ely, for England, for all men.

As Kraki roared a mead-oath from the top of the Speaking Mound, he put on a grin and raised his own cup. It had been a great victory, no one could deny that. The king’s army in the east had been turned to dust, his sheriff, the Butcher, humiliated. And yet in that moment of glory lay the threat of all their tomorrows. The king would come as he had come to the north. And all the dead they had buried these last days, all the young men who had never before raised a spear in battle, would be as nothing to what lay ahead.

They all knew it would be so. He could see.

And yet he marvelled as he wandered among the crowds enjoying the battle-feast. The men sang and cursed and laughed and swilled ale down their throats as fast as their cups could be filled. Women whirled around the bonfire to the lilting tune
of bone whistle and harp, their faces flushed with abandon. Children jumped dogs over the high poles, and wrestled so close to the blazing logs their scolding mothers had to drag them back from the heat. This was not a night for tomorrow; it was a night for days gone by. It was a night to say this is what our fathers built with their hands, and their fathers before them; this is what we have, and if we have it not in days to come, still we will know the fire it brought to our hearts and the warmth to our lives.

He sipped his ale and felt deep currents move him.

The throng was the largest yet, reaching down through the dwellings almost to the walls themselves. Ely folk, and earth-walkers from the Camp of Refuge, and now Morcar’s men, their eyes bright as they basked in the warm reception they had received. Alric eyed the girls’ favours trailing from their wrists and the ale-cups thrust into their hands by carousing men.

Through the crowd, Hereward walked, the way parting before him. He smiled and nodded to all who called his name, but Alric could see his thoughts were elsewhere, at a lonely grave beside the abbey at Crowland. The monk wondered if the day would ever come when those eyes lost their haunted look.

He watched Hereward lean in close and whisper in Acha’s ear. The conversation seemed intense and after a moment the woman’s face darkened. With the history that lay between the two of them, Alric felt himself grow suspicious, but only for a moment. With a nod, Acha hurried over to Godrun. The blonde-haired girl sat on her own, staring into the flames. Her face was blank, but the monk sensed her troubles heavy upon her. Since her return, she had barely spoken to anyone, even her own father.

Alric grunted his thanks to a serving woman as she handed him a chunk of sticky boar-meat, and then he wandered up to his friend. ‘Is something amiss?’ he asked, looking to where Acha now sat close to the younger girl. The two women chatted and smiled.

‘Acha has agreed to watch over Godrun,’ Hereward replied. ‘She has a good heart, though she tries to hide it.’

‘And succeeds most of the time,’ the monk muttered.