Hereward 05 - The Immortals (19 page)

‘Now
you
will be the death of us,’ Maximos said, as he ran at the side of the Mercian warrior.

‘At least there will be some reward for risking our necks.’

‘Aye, for you.’

Herrig the Rat waited at the top of the steps, beckoning. The sound of running feet and alarmed voices echoed through the palace.

Hereward bounded down the steps into the hall. Glancing back at Sighard and Three Fingers struggling with the weight of the chest, he could see they would soon be snapped up in the jaws of their enemies. Yet he would be damned if all this had been for naught. He would not go back to Constantinople and see his men treated like dogs again.

Whirling, his gaze fell upon the shadows swirling across the stone wall. He grinned. Snatching up a pitch-soaked torch, he held the spitting brand to tapestry after tapestry. Flames roared up. Choking smoke billowed.

Maximos wrenched open the door and with a furious swing of his arm urged the others out just as three Norman warriors stumbled into the hall. Their axes hovered, their fear-filled eyes darting towards the inferno. Hereward set his jaw. They had dropped their guard, just as he had hoped.

With a lunge, he rammed his blade into the chest of the nearest man. At the death-cry, the attention of the two others snapped back to the fugitives. Hereward danced forward. Brainbiter swept up, deflecting a swinging axe. Sparks flared in the thick smoke.

In the corner of his eye, he glimpsed another figure beside him. It was Maximos. The Roman was strong, but light on his feet too. Stabbing with his short sword, he drove the third Norman back. With a fluid move to one side, he hacked across his foe’s forearm. The warrior’s axe tumbled from his grasp and he went down on one knee, howling in agony. Maximos placed one foot on the man’s chest and thrust him back into the flames. Screams tore through the hall as his tunic caught fire.

Hacking high, then low, Hereward pushed his own opponent back towards the blaze. Once the heat swelled at his back, the Norman lowered his axe and leapt to escape his fate. The Mercian seized his opening and slashed his blade across the warrior’s face. Before the man had fallen to the blood-slick flagstones, Hereward had spun on his heel and was darting through the open door with Maximos at his side.

Cries rang out behind them. More Normans were flooding into the hall. He heard alarm, fear that the fire would engulf the palace, and anger too, that what they had no doubt considered a fine redoubt had been attacked with seeming impunity while their backs were turned.

When Hereward flashed a look over his shoulder, his eyes locked with another, familiar, pair. Bathed in a ruddy glow from the hellish inferno, Drogo Vavasour was rigid, gripped by the sight of the last man he had expected to find there, and the most hated. In an instant, he was swallowed up by a crowd of men shipping hides filled with water to extinguish the blaze. Hereward ran on.

‘You have bought us some time, but not enough,’ Maximos said as they raced across the courtyard. ‘If I had John Doukas here, I would have tossed him into the flames too. He might as well have killed us himself.’

‘We are not dead yet,’ the Mercian grunted. But in a city filled with enemies, surrounded by rugged countryside that would slow their escape, he knew they would need God and fortune on their side if they were to live to see the dawn.

Herrig loomed out of the shadows of an alley on the other side of the courtyard, a ghostly figure beckoning. When Hereward and Maximos plunged into the narrow space, they found Sighard and Three Fingers leaning breathlessly against the wall. Zeno waited beside them. ‘Stay close at my heels,’ the Rat breathed, dropping low like his namesake. Darting down the alley, he scrambled through a narrow gap between two halls. Close behind him, the warriors squeezed through the space and followed the scurrying figure along winding tracks as black as pitch. Sighard’s and Three Fingers’ breath rasped as they heaved the laden chest between them.

When they reached the wide street running along the walls, they waited in the shadows for their moment. Now that the burning ship had sunk beneath the waves, the crowd had started to thin. It would not be so easy to lose themselves in confusion, Hereward could see.

Zeno pushed his way past Hereward to peer into the dark beyond the walls. ‘Do we go to the river? Steal a ship?’

‘Our enemies will be upon us before we cast off into the current,’ Alexios said. ‘No, our only hope is to take horses and ride to the plains. Any who watch will mistake us for stragglers joining Roussel’s army. Once we have joined with the Athanatoi we will find safety in numbers.’

Maximos grinned, but his eyes remained cold. ‘We should heed the Little General.’ Even now he made no attempt to hide his mockery.

Alexios bristled.

Stepping between the rivals, Hereward growled so that the others could not hear, ‘Put aside your differences or I will leave you behind.’ He turned his gaze on Alexios, adding, ‘Whatever vow I made to your mother.’ Without waiting for a response, he jabbed a finger at Sighard and Hiroc and jerked it towards the gate. Both men nodded. Steeling themselves, they kept their faces low as they edged out of the alley. Hereward nodded, satisfied. Carrying the coffer between them, they looked like two merchants taking their wares down to their ship. No threat at all.

As the English warriors reached the gate Zeno walked out of the alley, then Alexios and Maximos. Hereward looked round for Herrig. When he glanced back, he glimpsed the Rat already on the other side of the wall, out of sight of the guards.

When he could afford to wait no longer, Hereward lowered his head and dropped in close behind a local man walking towards the gate, almost as if they were together. He could see the guards pacing around, their hands tight on their sword hilts. Steeling himself, he let his own fingers close on Brainbiter. If they had to fight their way past the whole city, they would.

Under dancing torchlight far along the street, bodies were churning, heads turning. Roussel’s palace guards were racing to close the gate.

Sighard and Three Fingers were already in the shadow of the stone arch over the gate. Near them, the guards cocked their heads, straining to make out the meaning of the distant cries.

Hereward picked up his step, ready to break into a run. But as he half drew his sword, he glimpsed the gate guards pushing through the small crowd towards the uproar.

The confusion had acted in their favour.

The two English warriors slipped through the unguarded gate, followed by Zeno, Maximos and Alexios. When Hereward caught up with them, they were darting through the dark away from the track, towards the pen where Roussel’s army kept their horses. Behind him, he heard the sound of the gate grinding shut.

Maximos flashed him a grin.

‘We are not out of hot water yet,’ the Mercian cautioned.

When they reached the pen, he could not help but breathe a sigh of relief. The remaining horses stamped and whinnied as the strange men approached, but their unease would not be heard above the din coming from beyond the walls.

‘We failed.’ Alexios sagged against the fence. ‘How will we hold our heads high now, when we return home?’

Hereward eyed the coffer and grinned to himself. The English had not failed. He cared little whether they took the Caesar back with them or not. This was all he had wanted out of this foray – enough gold to buy their way into the Varangian Guard.

But then the grinding of the gate echoed again, and the furious voices began to tumble out of the city.

‘They will be on our tail soon enough,’ Maximos said, looking towards the glow of torchlight. ‘Let us hope we can outride them on strange mounts.’

‘Then let us make it hard for them,’ Hereward said. He glanced down at the chest, knowing its weight would slow his men down. ‘I will take our spoils and ride south, making the trail clear so it will draw them away. The rest of you, ride for our brothers as fast as the wind.’

‘Alone?’ Sighard protested. ‘Who will watch for attack in the night? How will you hunt for food when there are Norman dogs running you down?’

‘You will not ride alone.’ To Hereward’s surprise, Maximos stepped forward.

‘Aye,’ Alexios insisted, ‘and I will be at your side too.’

‘And I,’ Zeno said. Turning to the three English warriors, he said, ‘This is for the best. We know this land. We can find the tracks that will take us away from the Normans. You, ride hard for your brothers, and tell Tiberius to wait for us at the Sakarya forge.’

Sighard hesitated, but Three Fingers gave him a rough shove, knowing there was no time to argue. With Herrig, they mounted their steeds and urged them out of the pen. Soon they were galloping towards the track that led to the plain.

When Hereward had climbed on to his chosen horse, Maximos heaved up the coffer and set it in front of him. ‘We will find a way to strap it to the beast once we are away from here,’ he said. ‘Let us hope you get a chance to spend it.’

Walking away from the pen, Zeno struck his flint and wafted the sparks towards the dry brush at his feet. Soon flames were leaping. ‘Fresh meat for the wolves,’ he said. ‘They will follow us now.’

‘Come, then,’ Hereward said, digging his heels into his horse’s flanks. ‘We have woken the Devil. Let us make certain he does not drag us down to hell.’

A SLIVER OF
amber light danced. All around it, a dark as deep and lonely as a moonless night pressed down. Here, in this dank pit reeking of urine and shit, the rats scurried without cease, their claws clicking on the cold stone.

Kraki had been in worse places. From somewhere in the palace above him muffled sounds floated – running feet, cries – and he could smell smoke. A fire had been discovered, he guessed. Perhaps he would simply roast to death, instead of the slow ending he imagined.

Watching the torchlight flicker under the door, he pressed his back against the slick wall. Few would find it comforting, but he did. His memory swept across the plains and the fields and the great, wide whale road to the cold land of his birth. He remembered the reassuring feel of sturdy rock at his back as he sheltered in a cleft in the mountains against the knife-wind. His father was there, telling him tales of bloody battles, and Odin’s will. He felt surprising regret for those lost days, and he realized how much he missed the old wolf, with his face carved raw by the gales, and his wild grey beard, and the pink scar of honour that ran from temple to chin.

But then his father’s face faded and Acha’s rose from the mist, raven-black hair and skin like snow, her eyes stern, accusing. Yes, ’twas true, he thought bitterly – she had made a farmer of him. He yearned for days long gone, for the comfort of the home-fire, for his woman. The fire in his belly was dying, he thought with a pang of fear. There was no place for his axe here. If he survived this pit of misery he should fly back west, across the plains and the fields and the whale road, to England, to Acha. He had no value here any longer.

When he heard the shuffling steps approaching his cell, he gritted his teeth. He knew who was visiting him long before the door swung open and flooded the tiny chamber with torchlight. Blinking in the glare, his eyes gradually revealed the silhouette of Ragener looming over him.

The ruined man eased the door half shut with his foot and squatted in front of his captive. His split lips turned his grin into grimace.

‘You are brave when I am trussed up like a deer for the slaughter,’ Kraki growled. ‘Cut my bonds and we will talk like men.’ He strained at the rope round his wrists at his back, though he had tried to break it a hundred times.

‘I am no jolt-head, Viking,’ the sea wolf said with a throaty laugh. ‘A man with one hand is no match for a great warrior like you. But over time I will even the score a little.’

Kraki sensed the other man’s hunger, like a dog waiting for the scraps on his master’s plate. ‘That knife of yours will even the score for you, that is what you are saying. As it did with the monk.’ In his mind’s eye, he saw Alric’s blood-drained face floating on the edge of death as the black rot ate its way from his ravaged hand.

‘Aye,’ Ragener replied, his voice edged with pride. ‘I took his fingers, one by one. God gave him the strength to take his suffering, I grant.’

‘He is stronger than you.’

The Hawk flinched at the bald statement. ‘It was a small price to pay,’ he snapped. ‘Your leader, the bastard Hereward, took my hand.’ He raised his stump and shook it in Kraki’s face.

‘And he took the monk’s hand, but that was an act of mercy, to save his friend’s life from the black rot.’ The Viking’s voice was low, steady, betraying no fear. ‘Hereward will never forgive you, you know that? He will pursue you to the ends of the earth to make you pay for what you did to his friend. He will take your other hand, your feet, your eyes, and then, when you can bear no more, he will take your head.’

Ragener’s one good eye glowed like fire. His mouth gaped like a codfish, and for a moment the Viking thought his enemy was going to wail like a child. Knives did not make men. The forge of the heart did that.

As if the sea wolf could read his thoughts, Ragener pulled out his short-bladed knife and waved it under his captive’s nose. ‘Let us wait no longer. I will start with your tongue. Then I will not have to listen to any more of your whining.’

The ruined man lunged, pressing the tip of the blade against the Viking’s throat as he forced him back against the stone with his stump. He was stronger than he looked, with the strength of someone filled with a rage against the world. Kraki felt the hot needle-burn of the knife against his skin. He would be dead in an instant if he resisted.

‘Let us see how much you love life.’ Ragener’s whisper was laced with wicked glee. ‘Put your tongue out. Let me slice it off and you will live to see another day. Resist and I will carve away your lips to get at it, then I will chop your throat like a piece of venison.’

Kraki held the sea wolf’s gaze. He knew this man was capable of anything. There was no honour in him.