Hereward 04 - Wolves of New Rome (15 page)

‘Then let us not forget all we learned in our long fight against William the Bastard,’ Hereward replied. ‘Shield wall!’

His men surged into place with Hereward at the centre. Shields slotted into place, spears bristling out. Over the wooden rim, the Mercian watched their enemies as the wall advanced. The Banu Hilal had seen nothing like this. Their flowing robes were black, as were the headdresses and the scarfs tied across their mouths to keep out the whipping sand. In their framed eyes, wide and white, the Mercian saw incredulousness at first, then mockery for this strange breed who advanced behind a wall of wood and hide.

One warrior let out a gleeful battle-cry. Leaping towards the English, he swung his
akouba
above his head. Guthrinc braced himself as the blade thundered into his shield. The sword bit deep. As the scowling desert warrior struggled to wrench it free, a spear burst through a gap in the wall and rammed through his gut. His eyes widened in disbelief. By the time the spear tore free, he was dead.

Across his range of vision, Hereward saw the Banu Hilal pause as they tried to comprehend this strange attack.

‘Forward!’ he yelled. ‘Let us take this fight into the heart of these dogs!’

Keeping their heads low, the English drove their shield wall into the thick of the battle. Spears lanced out, slashing tendons, punching through ribcages. Without mail-shirts or armour of any kind, these desert warriors were vulnerable in any fight.

But as he looked around Hereward could see that his spear-brothers were at just as great a disadvantage. The enclosing shields had formed an oven and the English sweltered in the suffocating heat. Stinging sweat blinded them. Dust choked their noses and mouths. He sensed some of his men beginning to falter.

‘Fight on,’ he urged. ‘There will be enough water to slake any thirst once we have won.’

But near the edge of the shield wall, Bedric stumbled and fell. In an instant, an iron lance rammed through his chest. The Mercian winced as if the killing blow had taken his own life. Bedric had once been a scop, entertaining earls and kings with his recitations. A gentle man who had picked up the spear to help defend Ely. He would be mourned.

‘Close the wall!’ Hereward roared as their enemies bore down upon the gap. The shields locked together just in time. Blade after blade crashed against them.

On the English pressed, carving a path through the startled Banu Hilal. Bodies fell on all sides. With a heavy heart, the Mercian watched two more of his men die: Ceolbald, a dour warrior from the cold north; and Hardwin, who trapped fowl better than any man there.

Squinting through the wind-whipped sand, Hereward glimpsed one foe who seemed braver than most. He was tall, perhaps two heads on Hereward himself. A broad scar cut across the bridge of his nose. He had torn away the scarf that covered his mouth, and when his eyes locked on the Mercian’s he gave a gap-toothed grin that showed he was unafraid of this strange breed of warriors.

With a whooping battle-cry, he charged. His
akouba
flew around his head in a shimmer of dazzling sunlight. When he brought it down, Hereward was all but crushed to his knees by the jarring impact. His shield cracked, splinters of wood flying out, but it held. Sighard jabbed his spear through the wall but the tribesman danced out of reach, jabbering in a tone that could only have been mockery.

When the warrior attacked again, Hereward set his shoulder hard against his shield. The sword boomed against wood and hide like a wave crashing on the beach. More shards spewed up. The shield would not last much longer under such blows, Hereward knew. Quickly, he uttered a command to the men around him.

The desert warrior flexed his muscles ready for his third strike. The Mercian held his gaze, silently taunting. The tribesman’s eyes narrowed, his laughter draining away. With another high-pitched whoop, he whirled the sword around his head and threw himself forward.

At the last, Hereward yelled. The men behind him eased back, and he pulled away from the wall. As his enemy’s sword whisked down, the point skimmed down the surface of the shield and bit into the desert floor.

Hereward lunged. Hooking his axe into the man’s side, he yanked it forward, tearing the flesh. Howling, the tribesman staggered. Seizing his moment, the Mercian hacked at his neck. So strong were the towering warrior’s sinews that it took two more strikes to cut deep and even then Hereward could not free the head from the body.

His eyes rolling back, the tribesman crashed down into the sand.

‘Cunning,’ Sighard said from behind his shield.

‘A strong arm is not enough,’ Hereward replied. ‘Sharp wits win battles.’

The death of their formidable brother seemed to drive the Banu Hilal into an even wilder frenzy. With blood-curdling shrieks, wave after wave crashed down upon the English. A storm of swords thundered upon the shields, the bodies pressing tighter on all sides.

Hereward’s ears were dulled by the clash of swords, the shriek of the strange, high-pitched battle-cries, the screams of the dying, the constant drumming of hooves as the battling cavalry circled the field of war. Underfoot, the sand churned into thick mud with the blood and piss of the wounded. So many bodies littered the desert around them that they could not move without tripping over the remains. And so they stood their ground as the waves crashed against them, unable to advance, unable to retreat.

Blinking the filthy sweat from his eyes, Hereward glanced at the hardened faces of his men on either side. Heads bowed in the shade of their shields, they thrust their spears between the gaps in the wall. If he were to die this day, he felt proud to be alongside his brothers.

After what seemed an age, he looked up and saw a broad space among the chaos of the fighting. He could barely believe how few of the Banu Hilal remained. The Imazighen knew victory was within their grasp. Somehow they found new energy, striking harder, faster.

Hereward glimpsed Salih ibn Ziyad, confident and controlled in the heat of the fighting. He swung a sword with his right arm, and with his left he slashed his silver dagger across the throats of his staggering victims. And beyond the wise man, a hellish apparition loomed. For a long moment, Hereward could not comprehend what he was seeing. But then he realized it was Maximos Nepos, slicked from head to toe in the blood of his victims, laughing like a madman as he swung his double-edged sword. So strong was his arm, it looked as though he was scything corn in the fields of England. Ceaselessly, untiring, he reaped his crop of bodies.

A cry spiralled up into the cloudless sky, undulating for a moment before dying away. Waving their swords in front of them, the Banu Hilal backed away from the men they faced, and then spun on their heels and raced away. On the edge of the battlefield, the circling riders, too, brought up their steeds and sent them galloping back towards the eastern horizon.

A cacophony of whoops and shrieks rang out from the Imazighen. The men waved their swords in the air, and held high their shields.

Exhausted, the English warriors slumped to the ground. To a man, they looked up at Hereward, scarcely able to believe they had survived that day.

‘Life is good, brothers,’ the Mercian roared. ‘Drink deep.’ He glanced around the corpse-littered land and nodded with pride. ‘We turned the tide of this battle. We … the English. The Imazighen will be in our debt now. Good fortune comes our way and we will seize it with both hands.’

THE DISTANT SHRIEKS
of the dying ebbed away. The clash of steel ended, and the rumble of hooves faded into the distance. On his mule, Alric turned and shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun. The oasis was a dark smudge on the horizon at the end of the long, straight trail the caravan had carved across the rolling dunes. Was the battle over? And who had won?

He muttered a prayer and promised himself he would think of it no more. Hereward had faced greater odds before and he had survived. It was in God’s hands now, and if the Lord thought fondly of his good works here upon the earth, he would be reunited with his friend soon enough.

Turning back, the monk looked along the column of laden beasts, and the white-bearded old men on their horses, as upright as young warriors. The women and children walked alongside, seemingly oblivious of the merciless heat. The undulating line snaked on, moving at a steady pace beneath the azure sky. The only sound was the smacking of the men’s lips as they chewed their mash of foul brown leaves, pausing every now and then to spit a clot upon the earth.

The desert out here was not so flat. Fewer rocks and more of the sweeping waves of sand that sucked at a man’s feet. Alric grimaced. Oh to be back in Ely, with the rain drumming on the church roof and the north wind swirling leaves across the reeking marshlands. He felt a brief ache for simpler times. This hellish place would be the death of him.

Ahead of him rode the queen. Her back was straight, her chin raised. She had never looked back, even when the screams and the sounds of the fighting were at their loudest.

Alric dug his heels into the mule’s flank, urging it alongside Meghigda’s pony. She did not look down at him. Her gaze was fixed upon the distant horizon.

‘What Hereward said was true,’ he ventured. ‘He will fight alongside your people unto the end.’ When she still did not acknowledge his presence, he added, ‘He is a good man.’

‘So you say,’ she replied in a dismissive voice.

‘So I swear, as God is my witness.’

This time she eyed him, looking him up and down as if measuring his very worth. ‘I have trusted men from beyond the sea before. They are all
good men
. But then they shed their skins, as all snakes do, and the truth is revealed.’

Alric felt surprised by her command of English and wondered how much else she kept from her guests, but he passed no judgement. ‘Not all men from beyond the sea are the same.’

She sniffed, looked away.

‘The betrayal you feel … You speak of Maximos Nepos.’

Meghigda glared at him. ‘Enough. I will not hear his name spoken in front of me.’

The monk wondered what the Roman could have done to create the depth of hurt he saw in the queen’s eyes. ‘Hereward speaks highly of you,’ he said, changing the subject.

She narrowed her eyes. ‘He does?’

‘You are a good leader of men, he says. Strong. Just. You are not like our own King William, who would see all England burned to the ground to achieve his heart’s desire. Your people have placed their faith in you, and you have accepted it.’ He paused. ‘You would die for them?’

‘Of course.’

The monk nodded, pleased. ‘That is rare. But good.’

With a slender hand, Meghigda unfastened the scarf from her mouth and let it fall away. For an instant, Alric thought how sad she looked. ‘I was but a girl when I took up the sword of the Imazighen. It has been my life, and I was prepared for it from the moment I came into this world. In our tent, the one my father and my father’s father and my father’s father’s father had carried across the hot lands, I would sit upon my mother’s knee and hear the stories of my people. Stories of pain and blood and suffering. Since the time when we first walked the sands, we have looked to the east and the invaders who want to bring us to our knees and make us slaves. We have never been beaten. Never!’ Her eyes sparked with passion.

‘And now you must fight yet another war.’

She snorted. ‘This is no hardship. Battle … that is the soul of the Imazighen. When I had seen eight years pass, raiders came to our camp. They killed my father. And my young sister. And they cut off my mother’s head and set it on the floor of our tent, and made me stare into her eyes all night. Oh, how they laughed!’

Alric winced.

‘And when six more years had passed,’ she continued in a quiet voice, ‘I led my men across the sands until I found them. And with my own knife I cut them open and left them under the sun for the birds to eat. Left them alive, so they could think on the crimes they had committed before they stood before God.’ She looked at him, her face drained of all emotion. ‘I am al-Kahina.’

The monk felt chilled by what he saw there.

From up ahead, shouts and cries echoed through the still air. The disturbance rippled along the column.

Meghigda frowned. ‘What now? We must reach the rest of my men before dusk to warn them of the Banu Hilal.’ Before she could investigate, warriors swarmed over the rolling dunes on both sides. Alric gasped. He had seen no sign that anyone had waited there. His shock burned even brighter when he saw that these were not the desert people. Their skin was pale.

Before the Imazighen could react, arrows showered down. Crossbow bolts thumped into faces and chests of men, women and children too. Horses and mules and the hump-backed beasts cried and fell and thrashed as the shafts lashed into them. Screams filled the hot air.

Old men plunged backwards down the brown drifts, trailing glittering arcs of blood. The survivors ran aimlessly, but the attackers seemed to be everywhere. A spear rammed through the back of a fleeing woman. An axe slashed the chest of an old man as he thrust a short-bladed knife. Everywhere the Imazighen fell. The caravan broke up, the surviving beasts thundering away into the wastes.

Aghast at the slaughter, Alric called upon God to help these poor souls, to no avail. He watched as Meghigda drove her pony into the fray. Snarling and spitting like a wildcat, she drew her sword. But she was one and her foes were many, and all the fighting men had been left behind. The monk’s heart fell as warriors surged around her, forcing her mount to a halt. Once, twice, she hacked down into skulls and shoulders, but then hands caught her wrist and she was dragged from her pony. A cheer rang out from the warriors as she disappeared from view.

Alric felt rough hands yank on his arm and hurl him to the ground. Dust filled his mouth and stung his eyes. As he flailed, feet thundered into his ribs, his stomach, his head. For a moment, the world spun into darkness.