Hereward 03 - End of Days (12 page)

Grinning, Redteeth heaved himself up. He had a fight on his hands. That was good.

Back and forth the two men fought along the muddy, leaf-clogged river bank. Harald felt his thoughts drift away on the mushrooms’ raven-wings. He saw only his enemy. His arms and legs moved as if they belonged to someone else; and they did, to Thor himself, who had given his lightning and his thunder the moment Harald had swallowed the bitter flesh. He gritted his teeth and snapped and snarled. His knuckles crashed into the other man’s face. Deda spun back to his knees, then raised one eyebrow as he wiped a trickle of blood from his nose with the back of his hand.

Harald saw no fear there. Indeed, the knight seemed to see their battle as an amusement.

For long moments they tore at each other. Now Harald could see why his opponent had removed his hauberk. His own mail shirt made him lumber like a bear. But as the knight stumbled back over a stone, he saw his opening. Racing forward, he crashed into Deda and wrapped his arms around him.

Redteeth grinned as he peered into his enemy’s face, their
noses barely a finger’s width apart. He crushed tighter, squeezing the breath from the other man’s lungs. Soon ribs would shatter, and then spine. And yet Deda’s face remained calm, and an ironic smile still played on the edge of his lips. That only drove the Viking to even greater exertions.

But the knight was a head taller than him. He pressed his toes on the mud and thrust forward with all his weight. A moment later, the two men were flying down the slippery bank and into the icy Grenta. So powerful was Deda’s kick that Harald realized they had spun beyond the shallows and into the deeper water. The bitter cold shocked through the numbness of his thoughts. His arms flew from the knight. Down he went, pulled to the bottom by the weight of his mail shirt. As the water closed over his head, he thought how clever the bastard Norman had been.

Just when he felt the darkness begin to close in, hands fumbled for his chest and hauled him up. He burst into the pale light, throwing back his head as he sucked in a deep draught of air. Deda had his fingers hooked in the mail shirt. He pulled the Viking through the shallows and dragged him up into the thick brown mud along the water’s edge. Harald lay on his belly for a moment, catching his breath. When he rolled over, he looked at the other man through narrow eyes. The dripping Norman still sported a wry smile.

‘I saved your life,’ Deda said. ‘I would think that would be worth something. Coin or not.’

‘Aye,’ Redteeth grunted. ‘It has some worth.’ Water sluiced out of the back of his hauberk as he pulled himself to his feet.

The knight offered his hand. ‘They said you were a wild beast. I think there is more to you than that. And we shall find out the truth of the matter on the road.’

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

THE LONE CANDLE
flame guttered in the dark belly of the church. Shadows danced across the drawn face of the man kneeling in prayer before the altar. In the vast gulf of night, that single point of light was his sole worldly comfort. As cold sweat trickled down his back, Alric’s supplication echoed more loudly. He squeezed his hands together until they ached. God would watch over him. God would keep him safe.

How long had he been alone in that deserted church? Two hours? Three? His knees ached and the cold of the stone reached deep into his bones. But he could not leave. Death was coming for him.

When the flame flickered upright once more, the monk felt his gaze drawn towards it. For a long moment, the candlelight held him fast. Then, with the prayer dying in his mouth, he moistened his dry lips and listened.

Only silence filled that empty space.

Barely a moment later, he sensed someone behind him. Crying out in shock, he threw himself aside. A glinting blade flashed through the space where his neck had been.

Alric sprawled across the cold flagstones, straining to see through the gloom. A shadow loomed over him, a cloaked and
hooded man wielding a short-bladed knife. ‘The king’s man,’ the monk hissed. The candlelight lit a long face with deep-set eyes, one he did not recognize. Not an Ely man, but one of the thousands of human flotsam who had drifted into the Camp of Refuge to seek shelter under Hereward’s banner. A nobody, a nothing, the perfect disguise.

‘The monk who knew how to uncover me,’ the attacker spat. ‘In the tavern, in every workshop, that was all I heard. No more.’ Alric’s heels and elbows skidded on the smooth stone as he tried to push himself away. Hereward’s lie had had the desired effect, drawing the Norman bastards’ rat out of its hole, though little comfort it was to him at that moment.

The knife swept up; the hooded man lunged.

With a flick of his foot, Alric kicked the candle as he rolled aside. The church was plunged into an all-consuming darkness. Scrambling away on his hands and knees, the monk heard the attacker’s curse echo along the nave. A moment later he sensed frantic movement as the hooded man lashed out wildly with his blade. Time and again the monk felt the knife whistle by. Terror gripped him. Now he had seen the face of the king’s spy he would not be allowed to escape with his life.

As he scrabbled through the dark, he heard a door crash open. A light flared, then another, torches dancing along the nave, the slap of running feet. His heart leapt.

Shadows flickered across the walls as Hereward and his men surged around the church. The hooded man raced to escape the trap he now realized had been set for him, but there was no way out. The plan had been too well made.

Alric pushed his way up the wall and drew in a deep breath. He was shaking. Yet he felt a surge of elation that he still lived. For a moment, he had doubted that he would ever see the day again.

The English warriors surrounded the attacker. Ranging back and forth, the trapped man brandished his knife at anyone who took a step towards him. Alric weighed the hardness he had seen in the spy’s face. Here was a man who was not afraid to
die. He would not give up his secrets, the monk was sure, and he would try to take some English blood before he was brought down.

Alric’s attention flitted towards Hereward. The Mercian’s face was unreadable as he strode across the nave. Eyes fixed upon the prisoner, he pushed his way through the ranks of warriors. At the front, he took Madulf’s spear and without breaking a step drove the weapon through the hooded man.

The monk flinched. Cold, brutal and effective. Here was the leader the English needed in these dark times, a man who could match the king blow for blow. And yet he could not celebrate, for he knew the price his friend would pay.

As the Norman spy twitched on the end of the weapon, his blood pooling around him, Hereward pushed past his men and strode up to Alric with the nonchalance of a sailor who had just speared a codfish.

‘You risked your life for the people here. They will never forget that,’ he said, resting one hand on the monk’s shoulder.

‘I did only what had to be done.’

Hereward allowed himself a brief smile which said more than words, and returned to his warriors.

‘Where there is one, there could be many,’ Kraki said, eyeing the wounded man. ‘William the Bastard will not rest. He will send more of these rats, until he succeeds in stirring the folk to rise up against us.’

Hereward nodded. ‘That he will.’

‘Are we then doomed to see more innocents slaughtered?’ Sighard asked. ‘To keep fighting this same battle over again until we are worn down?’

The Mercian stepped over his fallen enemy and glanced down at him. ‘He has some life in him yet.’ He looked around the gathered warriors who were hanging on his words. ‘Take a wooden stake and drive it up through his arse and out of his neck. Then set him by the gates for all to see.’

‘Alive?’ Sighard said, uneasy.

‘He will live for a day, perhaps two.’ Hereward’s voice was
devoid of emotion. He watched the spy’s eyes widen in horror at the ordeal to come. ‘His screams will do our work for us. All Ely will know what happens to any who dare attack us here, in our home. And they will warn any new arrival, and any Norman snake who slithers up will think twice before it acts.’

The hooded man held out an arm and began to plead for mercy. Turning on his heel as if he had not heard, Hereward walked towards the door. ‘Our backs are safe,’ he called. ‘Now let us turn our spears towards the bastard king.’

Alric watched his friend depart, and then he bowed his head and whispered a prayer.

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

ACROSS THE MARSHY
floodplain of the Ouse, a finger of solid land was growing. Around it, men toiled with shovels and hammers. They shattered flint and dragged sacks of sand. Others cut alder branches and carried armfuls of reeds as they extended the raised bank across the wet land. The rhythmic crack of hard labour rang out in the quiet of the autumn morn.

‘See, was I not right?’ mad Hengist hissed. ‘The Normans are building a causeway.’ He danced in a circle, no longer troubled by his injured ankle.

‘You did well. We have no better scout.’ Hereward lay on his stomach on the high ground and eased aside the brown bracken so he had a clear view of the work.

‘Is this the king’s great plan? That causeway is barely wide enough to take two men abreast,’ Kraki snorted as he crawled beside his leader. Guthrinc, Sighard and Madulf squatted at their backs and more of their men leaned on their spears and waited for orders further down the slope.

‘It may not be as bad as we feared,’ Guthrinc commented, ‘but that causeway will still bring his army closer to Ely than they have ever been before.’

‘No horsemen will be able to use that narrow way, and the riders are their greatest strength,’ Kraki growled.

Sighard laughed. ‘We will pick them off, two by two, as they wander off the end. And that will leave us in a better place to launch our own attack against the king himself.’

Hereward allowed the chatter to fade into the background. He squinted, studying the activity so that he did not miss a single thing of importance. The men were Norman foot-soldiers, though they had set aside their armour and weapons as they sweated in the warm sun. The bundles of alder and rushes and reed were laid out in a line on the boggy ground so that the layers of sand and flint being shovelled on to them would not sink. At the water’s edge, more wood was being lowered into the water to pile up a raised area across the river bed. Ramparts of peat were being constructed along the course of the causeway.

Kraki nodded towards the fortifications. ‘Peat. If that is the best the king has, then his crown is already falling from his brow.’

Madulf had been moving along the high ground, studying the causeway from different angles. ‘The defences are far from complete. With Morcar and his men beside us, we could carve through them in no time.’

‘Aye,’ Guthrinc agreed. ‘Send a message to the king. Let him know we are coming for him.’ He glanced at his leader. ‘What say you? We send word back now to Earl Morcar? We could attack before nightfall.’

Hereward eyed the defences, the heaps of armour and weapons, and the few guards half dozing from boredom. ‘No,’ he said. He could sense the disappointment of his men. ‘They outnumber us, but only by a few.’ He took a handful of the black earth and began to smear it around his eyes and along the lines of his cheekbones. Slowly, the skull beneath his skin emerged under his tracing fingers, a fearsome sight. His men watched, eyes bright, and then one by one they began to do the same.

‘Our enemy’s defences are not done,’ Hereward continued. ‘They are weary and unprepared for battle. We have surprise upon our side. Let us seize our moment. We attack now.’

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

‘
YOU HAVE TAKEN
my balls, knight. You and that king of yours.’ Harald Redteeth stalked along the causeway swinging his axe as if he wanted to lop the head off every guard he passed. ‘This is work for children, not warriors.’

Deda hid his grin behind his hand. He liked the Northman. ‘You are a wonder to all, Viking,’ he called. ‘Most yearn for peace, or gold, or women and mead. For you, only guts and blood and brains will do.’

‘And they will not come soon enough,’ the other man grumbled. ‘Any thick-skull can guard a pile of shit in the middle of the fens.’

‘But this pile of shit is the king’s great plan,’ the knight remarked, feigning seriousness.

Redteeth grunted. ‘Aye, and there, in one, is the king’s dream for England.’

Humming to himself, he wandered off, pausing only to glower at each guard he passed. Thin sport, but he took what he could find. Deda smiled. But when he looked around the causeway, he understood the Viking’s concerns. Once they had been summoned to receive their orders in Grentabrige, he had expected a greater calling and worthy battles against the
English, ones in which a knight could distinguish himself. But the king had insisted they both be dispatched to this god-forsaken place. He presumed William had some deeper plan in mind, but he could not see it.

He watched the sweating men shovelling piles of flint as clouds of midges danced in the sunlight around them. The steady chink of spade on stone was lulling some of the guards into a doze. Nearby a soldier’s eyelids drooped and his head began to nod.

As Deda began to turn away, he glimpsed rapid movement in the corner of his eye. The guard staggered and choked. For a moment, the knight stared with incredulity until he saw that the head of an arrow had rammed out of the man’s throat. The soldier plunged forward, dead, a trail of glistening crimson following him down.

Deda jerked from his frozen moment. A throat-rending battle-cry rang out across the causeway.

Out of the shadowy wood on the high ground, apparitions burst forth, hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked, as if the grave had recently given them up. Bristling with spears, their shields held high, they whooped and howled as they swept through the long grass towards the rooted, slack-jawed Normans.

‘Arm yourselves,’ Deda bellowed to the unmoving guards. ‘Defend the causeway.’

In twos and threes, the king’s men stumbled towards the pile of hauberks, helms and axes, but many stood as if in a dream.