Knights of the Hawk (44 page)

I glimpsed a flurry of movement on her deck as men were roused and lanterns lit. Voices carried across the water, hailing us, and a shiver ran through me, for those shouts came in French. The men pulled on shoes and, leaping down on to the shingle, came running down to the shore, waving their arms at the same time. No doubt they’d worked out by then what was happening, and that we were getting away, but they were too late. We were already past them, and gathering speed,
Nihtegesa
’s prow carving through the star-glistening waters towards where the narrow creek emptied into the river mouth, and I was laughing, whooping with the thrill of the chase, of having eluded them.

‘You’ll have to try harder if you want to catch us!’ I yelled at them, into the breeze gusting from astern, and Serlo and Pons were quick to join in, hurling insults at the Frenchmen, who could only watch, powerless to do anything, as we pulled away. They shouted something in reply, but whatever it was they said, I couldn’t make out. I saw some of their comrades labouring to float
Wyvern
, but she was easily half as large again as
Nihtegesa
, and they were clearly struggling.

That was the last I saw of them. A moment later the creek opened out into the bay, we rounded a headland and they were lost from sight. Breakers foamed as they met the shore, whilst
Nihtegesa
rode the swell, the salt spray crashing into her bows and her gunwales, luminous in the moonlight. With one hand Magnus beat a small drum that hung by a leather strap around his neck, keeping the oarsmen in time, while Uhtferth kept a steady head on the steering-oar, his thin face drawn in concentration.

Ahead the open sea beckoned, stretching as far as the eye could make out. Somewhere out there, among the islands known as the Suthreyjar, was Haakon, the man whom I had been seeking for a year and more.

I hoped for his sake that he slumbered soundly while he still had the chance. For all too soon we would be descending upon his halls, wreaking our own night terror, inflicting upon him the same despair as he had inflicted upon me. He had taken something that did not belong to him, something precious to me. Now I would take it back, and make sure that he paid for the suffering he’d inflicted.

He had no way of knowing it, but we were coming for him.

Twenty-two

WHETHER I TRULY
believed that was the last we would see of our pursuers, and that we had shaken them off our trail for good, I can no longer remember. If I did, however, then I was not only foolish but also gravely mistaken.

In those hours after our flight from Dyflin, though, I found no place in my thoughts for worry or doubt. The seas were calm that night, which meant that for once my gut was not churning, and so instead of sickness swelling in my stomach, there was hunger. My heart was filled with delight, my head giddy not just with the salt air but with the prospect of adventure and the feeling of freedom: a feeling I hadn’t experienced in a long time. Tancred a Dinant, the Breton, the lord of Earnford, was once more going to war, but this time it was different, for this was a war of my own choosing.

Under the cover of night, we ran north for a couple of hours or more, taking advantage of the stiff breeze that blew athwart our course, until the clouds began to veil the stars, when Magnus at last took us in towards shore, where a wide beach stretched between two high cliffs. We pushed
Nihtegesa
high up the sand, then took down her mast and made a tent over her deck with an oilskin sheet to keep out the thin rain which by then was beginning to fall, and bedded down under it for shelter, with our cloaks rolled up as pillows. By morning the skies had cleared, and with the sun glistening off the wave-tips and a favourable wind filling our sail, we set off again, following the whale-road north.

The sun was past its highest when first we glimpsed the ship on the horizon. It lay some way off our stern, and a little out to sea, on our steerboard side. The keenest eyes among us could not make out whether she was trader or longship, however, and we soon lost sight of her. Still, it served to put me on edge all that afternoon and the evening too, which was probably why I was in such a foul mood as we sat around the campfire, where Ælfhelm and his comrades were cooking some kind of stew made from fish and beans that was apparently a favourite dish in Defnascir, the place many of them hailed from.

‘What was it that Haakon stole from you?’ Magnus asked me later that evening, when the last light of day was all but gone. I was sitting upon a boulder high up on the beach, above the tideline, running a whetstone up the edge of my sword, the one I’d brought from Earnford. It was not as well balanced as I would have liked, and I was still getting used to its weight, but the least I could do was keep it sharp and free of rust.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What business is it of yours?’

‘It’s my business because it’s my ship.’

I didn’t answer straightaway, but simply took an oilcloth from my pack and worked at polishing the flat of the blade until the coiling, smoke-like pattern ingrained in the steel glimmered in the moon’s wan light.

‘Well?’ Magnus asked.

‘He took my woman.’

At first he must have thought I was joking, for he gave me a strange look. ‘Your woman?’ he asked with a snort. ‘Is that all?’

‘If you had ever seen her,’ I said, ‘you wouldn’t be laughing.’

‘It’s not my place to judge, I suppose,’ said Magnus. ‘All I can say is that she must be a precious jewel indeed if you’re travelling to the ends of Britain just to find her.’

‘She is,’ I answered, closing my eyes, recalling her face, just as I had many times during the dark, lonely nights since she’d been taken from me. I remembered the wild gleam in her eyes that spoke of her mischievous, restless spirit, the feel of her skin upon my fingertips, her round, firm breasts that I had caressed so many times in those short months that we had been together.

How I missed her.

It was often said that only for the sake of reputation will a man risk everything, but now I realised that wasn’t true. For here I was. What fame I’d earned myself was all but squandered, and my name tarnished, perhaps for ever. But if it wasn’t riches or land or duty or honour that had set me on this path, then what? Love? That was one name for it, I supposed, although this didn’t feel to me like the love that the poets often sang of: overpowering, obsessive and jealous. No, this was different. Even though we had not been together long, somehow with Oswynn I had sensed a kinship of souls, a closeness that I had never been able to forge with any other. Not even with Leofrun, for all that she had been dear to me. That closeness was what I yearned for above everything. All my striving for fame and glory had not made me happy. Now I went in search of the one thing that would.

The boulder on which I perched was wide enough for two, and Magnus sat down beside me. ‘I got into a fight over a girl once myself,’ he said as he gazed out across the cove at the breakers lapping gently upon the sand. ‘I didn’t know she was married until her husband stumbled upon us while we were tumbling together. I was fortunate to get away without a scratch upon me. He wasn’t.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘It always seems to end badly when there are women involved. And yet we never learn, for we’re always fighting over them, aren’t we?’

I thought back to that summer’s day, long years ago. The day when I had claimed my first kill. That fight had been over a woman, too.

I was nearly twice the age now that I’d been then, but clearly the last twelve years had taught me nothing, nothing at all. For I was back where my journey along the sword-path had begun, as reckless and as dim-witted now as ever, and with barely anything to show for all my struggles.

‘How did Haakon take her from you?’ Magnus asked.

I sighed, and told him about the ambush that night at Dunholm, and how my friends and I had barely managed to escape with our lives, and how that had been the last I’d seen of her for a year and a half, until she had appeared at Beferlic. ‘How she came to end up in his company, I don’t know. Possibly one of Eadgar’s men captured her during the ambush, and later sold her on as a slave.’

‘I can think of a simpler explanation than that,’ Magnus said. ‘Haakon was at Dunholm.’

I shot him a glare. ‘What?’

‘He was there. He was pledged to Eadgar at that time, as were many other sword-Danes from Orkaneya and the Suthreyjar. He was one of those leading the attack. Or at least so he’s now claiming.’

‘Whoever told you that obviously wasn’t there. It was Eadgar and the Northumbrians who led the attack that night. I saw his purple-and-yellow banner.’

‘I’m not denying that Eadgar was there, but he wasn’t the one who broke down the gates of the stronghold and torched the mead-hall. That was Haakon’s doing.’

I stared at him, confused. ‘No,’ I said, surprised that Magnus could have heard it so wrong. ‘It was Eadgar who stormed the gates. He burnt the mead-hall.’

With Robert de Commines, my lord, inside. Had I not, weeks later, stood face to face with the ætheling whilst he bragged of how he had murdered him? Had all that been but a dream?

‘So Eadgar would have everyone believe. He wanted to be the one to kill Earl Robert, but Haakon desired the glory for himself. What I’ve been told is that while the aetheling was occupied elsewhere in the town, he took it upon himself to storm the stronghold.’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘If that’s true, then why haven’t I learnt of this before now?’

‘Because Eadgar paid Haakon and all his followers to keep their mouths shut, and paid them very generously at that.’

My mind was reeling. None of this was making sense. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘At the time he was seeking the support of a number of the great Northumbrian lords, many of whom still doubted Eadgar’s stomach for a fight, and didn’t believe in his conviction or his ability to mount a full campaign. The ætheling needed them to believe he was the one, and he alone, who burnt Dunholm, who killed Earl Robert and destroyed his army, if he was to bring their spears under his banner.’

‘But why should the truth only come out now?’

The Englishman shrugged. ‘Now that Eadgar’s rebellion has been crushed and he’s fled to the protection of the King of Alba, most of those supporters have deserted him. I suppose Haakon thought there was no need to hide it any longer. Probably he was tired of keeping it a secret and wanted, finally, to boast of his triumph. I only heard this from someone who learnt it from a passing trader, so how much of it’s true, I can’t say. Still, it would explain how your woman came to be with him.’

It was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes. At a single stroke most of what I thought I knew about what had happened that night was swept away, revealed for the lie it was.

How many times had I played over those events in my mind, trying to think of some way that it could have been different, something I could have done to turn the battle and save my lord? How many times had I dreamt of exacting my revenge upon Eadgar for what he’d done, for all of my sword-brothers he had slain, for all the Norman blood he had spilt?

All this while I had been swearing vengeance upon the wrong man. It wasn’t Eadgar I needed to kill, after all. It was Haakon Thorolfsson.

Until now, though I would never have admitted it to Magnus, I’d been wondering whether it would even be necessary to mount an attack on the Dane’s fortress if I could negotiate with him a price for Oswynn’s release. Now, however, I realised that nothing less than his blood would satisfy me.

And I, not Harold’s son, would take his life. My hand would deal the telling blow. I would do it slowly, and make him suffer as he had made my lord suffer. I’d do to him all the things that, long ago, I’d sworn to do to Eadgar. I would put out his eyes and sever his balls, cut out his tongue so that he could not scream, and only then would I kill him, slicing open his belly and burying my sword-point deep in his chest, in his heart, and when I was done I would leave his broken corpse for the carrion birds to feast upon.

Even then it wouldn’t be justice. Not after what he had done. Nothing could be.

But it would be enough.

The following day we saw the ship again, only this time she was a little closer than before. Close enough, at least, that we could make out the black and yellow stripes of her sail.

Wyvern
.

She must have seen us, for she stayed on our tail for more than an hour that afternoon, gradually overhauling us, until a sudden squall blew in, lashing us with rain and hail and churning the waves into a foaming tumult that harried
Nihtegesa
’s hull and splintered into trails of froth that cascaded up and over the gunwale and soaked us to our skin. The timbers creaked and shudders ran along the whole length of the ship. We shipped the oars so that they did not shear, and had to bail water out of the bilges just to stay afloat, but one good thing came of it, for amidst the low clouds and the heaving waves we managed to lose
Wyvern
. When finally the rain ceased and the clouds passed over and we saw the evening sun disappearing over the thickly wooded lands that lay to larboard, there was no sign of her.

‘Your friends are certainly determined,’ Magnus said that night when we lay at anchor. He’d brought us into a narrow cove, which was difficult for anyone who wasn’t familiar with the land and its rivers to spot from out at sea, but which offered good shelter from the wind. ‘It’s lucky for you I know these coasts, or else there’s a good chance they’d have caught us already.’

I couldn’t argue with him on that, although admittedly there’d been a moment earlier that day, before the squall, when I had doubted him. In an effort to maintain some distance between us and our pursuers, he had ordered Uhtferth to steer us hard by a headland, too close for my liking to the looming crags and sharp rock stacks that jutted proud of the waves. The wind had gusted in
Nihtegesa
’s sail and more than once I’d murmured a prayer to God, thinking it was about take her and dash us against those cliffs in a tangle of broken timbers, but fortunately Uhtferth and his crew had a good feeling for the currents and the swell, and we’d raced swiftly past without coming to harm.