Hereward 04 - Wolves of New Rome (2 page)

‘You should not be here, Juliana—’

‘You are so stern.’ Grasping his hand, she dragged him into the room. Once they were out of sight, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him upon the right cheek. ‘Wulfrun the warrior!’ she teased, reaching out to his iron helm. With a frown, he jerked his head back, but he could never resist her. Bowing, he let her take the gilded helm. His hazel hair tumbled free. For a moment, she caught her fingers in it. Her face grew serious, her thoughts flying away he did not know where. But then a smile lit her face once more and she murmured, ‘You are two men, Wulfrun, did you know that? Two men, and I know not which is the true one.’

He laughed at her playfulness.

‘There!’ She pressed the tip of one finger against his lips. ‘When you wear the helm of the Guard you never smile and never, never laugh. Your face is like stone, your voice so grim. Yet when you strip it away you are warm and caring, and gentle.’

‘You do not like the captain of the Guard?’

Juliana hesitated. ‘He scares me.’

Wulfrun flinched. But he understood what lay behind her words. The rite deep beneath the palace had changed him; remade him. The choking smell of the cloying smoke from the torches, the stink of fear-sweat on the naked men, the reek of the urine that they all would drink to usher them across the threshold to their new life. The blood of the lion, and the bull. To stand under the banner of the Varangian Guard meant being a man no longer. All weaknesses, all flaws, aye, and all kindnesses too, had to be put aside. Now he felt as if he were carved from stone. There were days when he could feel the heart of the person he had been begin to crumble, become dust, drift away. He peered deep into Juliana’s face. She was the last bond that connected him to that fading man. Without her, he truly would be lost.

Beyond the doorway, the aristocrats began to trail out of the hall. Amid the hubbub, a familiar creaking echoed. Wulfrun glanced at Juliana and saw a shadow cross her face. The Nepotes had suffered much during the last two years, but in Constantinople the price for failure was always harsh.

Juliana eased past him to spy on the throng. Sure enough, there was her father, Kalamdios Nepos. Four slaves carried his chair at shoulder-height on wooden poles. Wulfrun felt a pang of pity. Kalamdios too had lost the man he used to be, but his loss was not by choice. His face was fixed in a permanent scowl, and though his eyes swivelled in his head, seeing everything, he was cut off from the world like a ship adrift in stormy seas. His mouth could not form words, only the mewling of an infant. Drool dripped from the edge of his lip. He could not lift his arm to wipe it away, nor feed himself, nor walk. Wulfrun had seen his fingers flex, and his wrists had some movement, but that was all that remained of the once-powerful Kalamdios. On the side of his head, a large patch of hair was missing where the blade had cut through the skull and into his brain.

Beside him walked his wife, Juliana’s mother. Simonis Nepa was still slender, still beautiful, though silver streaked her auburn hair. Wulfrun thought she had the saddest face he had ever seen. When he first arrived in Constantinople in the stream of English refugees fleeing the devastation wrought by William the Bastard upon their homeland, he remembered Simonis laughing as she welcomed the wealthiest merchants in the city into her house.

He glanced down at Juliana, frowning as she watched her kin pass by. Did she believe her bloodline was cursed, as many said?

Juliana must have sensed him looking at her, for she glanced up and smiled. ‘All is well,’ she murmured.

A small figure pushed through the blood-spattered aristocrats like a rat swimming upstream. The head turned this way and that, searching, until Wulfrun glimpsed the thin face.

‘I must go,’ he whispered. ‘Ricbert looks for me.’

‘More news from your spies in the city? Or your scouts across the empire?’

‘Both, I would wager.’

Her eyes flashed with affection and she breathed, ‘Keep well.’ She kissed him on the cheek once more and then slipped out into the flow of bodies.

Wulfrun hailed. His aide grinned and elbowed his way through the crowd, caring little how many of the high-born snapped with irritation. In the anteroom, Ricbert pulled off his helm and ran his fingers through his lank brown hair. ‘You gave the great folk of Constantinople a fright,’ he said, showing his crooked teeth.

‘Aye. They will not be so quick to plot for a while. Until they start to wince under Nikephoritzes’ taxes again.’

The smaller man snorted. ‘A little blood makes them afrit? They have too many comforts here. They would not last a day in England.’

‘They pay us well for our hardness, Ricbert.’

‘Long may they refuse to get their hands dirty.’

‘You have news?’

Ricbert shrugged. ‘Seljuks to the east, Normans to the west. So many enemies to the north, I would not know where to begin. But all is as it was. No movement towards Constantinople as yet.’

Wulfrun shook his head, feeling the weight of his responsibilities. ‘These soft people can lose themselves in the endless rounds of who-is-doing-what, but soon enough they will be forced to face up to the reckoning that is coming their way. Till then …’ He paused, sensing a hesitancy in his aide. ‘There is more?’

‘The scout has returned with news of England.’

For a moment, Wulfrun let the words settle on him. Then he removed his helm from under his arm and slipped it on his head. The world closed in around him.

‘The rebellion is over. In the fenlands, the English have been defeated. William the Bastard is victorious.’

‘And Hereward?’
Dead.
He heard the word in his head before the other man spoke.

But Ricbert shook his head. ‘England is rife with tales of what happened to the rebel leader after Ely fell. The Normans claim he ran like a whipped cur and threw himself upon the king’s mercy, betraying his own men in the same breath.’

Wulfrun set his jaw. He knew Hereward too well. ‘More Norman lies.’

With a sly smile, Ricbert threw his arms wide. ‘Perhaps he flew away ’pon the wings of an angel. In the inns, they call him Bear-killer … Giant-killer … wielder of a magic sword which can cleave whole mountains in two, so the scout tells me.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘I would pay good coin for a sword like that.’ His smile faded when he saw Wulfrun’s cold face. ‘A ship set sail from Yernemuth with the last of the English rebels upon it, and, so it seems, Hereward among their number. It is said they come here, to Constantinople, to seek their fortune.’

Wulfrun felt a heat deep in his bones. He had thought himself stone, but it seemed there was a part of the old Wulfrun that still lived on, even under the colours of the Varangian Guard. ‘Then let him come,’ he said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. ‘If he dare walk through this city, his days will soon be ended. My axe will see to that.’

THE WARRIORS WATCHED
the ship drift towards them across the green swell. With faces like winter, they took in the billowing amber sail and the cracking lines, the freshly painted shields lining the side and the tiller swinging at the mercy of the currents. For this was a ship of ghosts, they could see that now. The vessel looked as if those who sailed it had only just set its course, but no man walked upon that deck. And all that rolled out was the groaning of the hull as it flexed against the waves, a sound that seemed to come from beyond the grave.

‘Pull alongside,’ Hereward commanded. In the sultry heat, he was stripped to the waist. The tattooed blue-black circles and spirals of the fighting man flexed across his tanned arms. Placing one foot upon the side of his own ship, Hereward studied the deserted vessel. Though he could sense his men urging him to leave well alone, instincts honed on the field of battle demanded that he know more.

Overhead, the sail swelled as his men took to the oars. Their vessel was a warship, just large enough to accommodate the thirty men upon its benches. But some would say they were ghosts too, dead men all, stripped of their lives, their home, their loved ones, their hope. Outlaws, exiles, condemned to wander the earth for ever.

‘This is bad business,’ the Viking growled under his breath. Kraki was his name. Wild of hair and beard, his face was cleaved by a jagged scar. He scowled, trying to hide his unease. On land, he was a seasoned warrior, a former leader of Earl Tostig’s deadly huscarls, and axe-for-hire, trailing death behind him as he trekked from his cold northern home. But here on the whale road he seemed as superstitious as any drunken ceorl in the dark midwinter. Ghosts and portents and curses. He needed dry land under his feet to find himself again, Hereward knew. But he was not alone there.

Only one of those aboard was not a member of the war-band. Red Erik was long seasoned by the salt winds and, unlike the others, capable of navigating to distant shores. In the five days they had been upon the waves, the warriors had started to learn to be seamen under his command. Until the exile, many of them had never left the well-trodden paths of their villages in the fenlands of eastern England. Then they had been forced to venture into open water with waves as high as towering cliffs. But England was gone for good, of that there could be no doubt. The comfort of the winter hearth, the care of kin, the joyful feasting after the harvest, all gone, never to be seen again. King William had seen to that.

Hereward gritted his teeth. These good warriors had fought the Bastard long and hard after he had stolen the English crown that day at Senlac Ridge. And for a brief time, it had seemed the hated Norman invaders might be driven back into the sea. But betrayal came lightly to some, and while they had been looking out over the walls of their fortress at Ely they had not been paying heed to their backs, and the blades of their own.

He swallowed his bitterness. On the Isle of Eels, their forces had been strong. They had weapons aplenty and the walls stood firm. The secret paths through the treacherous bogs and dense woods and flooding watercourses were unknown to the enemy. Once they had destroyed King William’s camp at Belsar’s Hill, it had seemed the invaders were on the brink of collapse. But the monks of Ely, who had offered sanctuary to the rebel band, began to fear for their gold and power. And so they showed the Bastard the secret ways and led his army to the gates. In the face of such vast numbers of Normans and mercenaries, it was then only a matter of time until the hopes of the English crumbled.

In the end, his leadership had amounted to naught. He winced. To save England from the brutal retribution of the king, to save his birthland of Mercia, to save all the desperate men and women who had rallied to his standard, he had been forced to take the Bastard’s deal: leave the shores of his home for ever, and do so in secrecy so that the people for whom he had fought so hard would think he had abandoned them. What choice did he have? If he had stayed the king would have killed and maimed and starved the English until he had wiped out all trace of them. He had accepted that final twist of the knife; it was the only honourable course. And his most loyal warriors had followed him even then. He owed them everything. Now their fate lay on his shoulders alone. He could not, would not, fail them again. But there was hope. Though England was forbidden to him, he had heard there was a need for fighting men in the east. Perhaps there they could find a new home.

The ghost ship drifted closer still until his men could throw their hooks into the wood and drag it alongside. Before Hereward could peer into the vessel, cries rang out all around. Men crossed themselves or clutched the lead hammers that hung round their necks.

Leaning over the side, the Mercian saw what had dismayed them. Blood sluiced along the deck from prow to stern, a lake of it, gleaming darkly in the midday sun.

‘Still wet,’ Kraki mumbled, moistening his lips. Thirty pairs of eyes flickered towards the horizon, searching for whatever had brought about this curse.

‘You have waded through a sea of Norman guts on the battlefield,’ Hereward called to his crew. He pushed scorn into his voice, trying to cut through their superstition. ‘Are you afrit of a little blood?’

Kraki heaved himself off his bench and leaned in. ‘Now it is not ghosts that trouble me.’

Hereward stared into the distance. They had sailed without incident past Normandy and Brittany, Guyenne and Navarre. But then they had put in to the rocky shore of Leon and Castile to replenish their food and water and there the fearful fishermen had issued their warning. A vast fleet of sea wolves was laying waste to the coastline, searching for one of their number who had robbed them of some great prize.

A cry rang out from the prow.

Hereward whirled. A figure was standing on the side of the ship, arms outstretched, ready to throw himself into the waves. The Mercian glimpsed the red hair, the pale skin, and realized it was Sighard, the youngest of the war-band. Men scrambled over the benches. They knew as well as Hereward that a black despair had eaten its way into the lad’s heart since his brother had been slain by the Normans.

For an instant, Sighard teetered on the brink. But just as he lifted one foot to take a last step on to the green fields of the whale road, a huge figure rose up and strapped his mighty arms around the lad’s chest. Guthrinc was an English oak who towered over every man there, with a heart just as big. He wrenched back, and the two men sprawled across the deck.

Hereward thrust his way through the circle of warriors that had gathered around them. Guthrinc kept his arms wrapped around the lad, just in case.

‘Let me die. I am no use to anyone,’ Sighard mumbled, one arm thrown across his freckled face.

‘You are a brother to us all,’ the Mercian said, crouching down. ‘You have proved yourself in battle a hundred times. There is not a man here who would not give up his life for you. Do you hear?’

‘Let me die,’ Sighard repeated.

As Hereward stood up, Alric caught his arm. The monk’s brown hair was lank from salt spray, his sodden tunic clinging to his slim frame. They had been friends for long years now, and knew each other better than any men there. Alric pulled the Mercian to one side and whispered, ‘You cannot leave Sighard to his own devices. I have seen this affliction before. There will be smiles, and kind words, but the blackness will gnaw away at him, and sooner or later he will take his own life. He needs hope.’