Hereward 03 - End of Days (4 page)

Harald nodded, accepting the call to battle. Raising his rough, unpainted shield, he shook his axe. The two warriors began to circle. A track appeared through the glistening bracken.

Kraki narrowed his eyes. The rest of the world faded away. He studied Harald Redteeth’s face, the scars from spear, sword and axe, the swath of pink where the skin had been burned away: a map of battles. Here was a worthy foe.

A roar shattered the moment as Redteeth swung his axe high. The two warriors clashed like rutting stags. Thrusting his shield in front of him, Kraki smashed his enemy’s blade aside. The seasoned wood groaned. He hacked down with his own weapon, but the blade only bit deep into his enemy’s shield. He wrenched it free and took a step back.

They circled each other again.

When next the calm broke, Kraki lunged to hook his foe. Darting in close, he swung his axe behind Redteeth’s back. With a lightness of foot that belied his bulk, he leapt back, dragging his weapon with him to rip open his opponent’s side. But the Viking rolled to one side as the blade came back, and there was only a trail of sparks where it raked across his mail. Redteeth threw back his head and laughed.

Kraki glowered – he saw no humour. Fighting was serious business.

Delirious with battle-fury, Redteeth’s unblinking eyes were as black as coals. It was the toadstool-madness, Kraki knew, giving him a strength above all men, and a relentless ferocity. He seemed not to tire. Round and round they went, blades flashing high and low, until Kraki thought there would be no end to it.

Behind the Northman, Hengist raised his head above the swaying fronds. Kraki had no time to be shocked. The mad English warrior yanked up a broken branch that had been hidden beneath the bracken and jammed it between Redteeth’s legs. The mercenary went down hard. Kraki wrenched up his axe. But when he locked eyes with the Viking, he realized he could not kill him. The fight had not been won fairly; it would be an ignoble death. With a flick of his wrist, he hammered the haft down into the fallen man’s face.

Nearby, hunting horns blared and men called to each other
in the guttural Norman tongue. ‘We are not free yet,’ Kraki growled.

Once he was sure Redteeth was unconscious, he grabbed a handful of Hengist’s tunic and hauled him effortlessly on to his shoulders. He remembered Guthrinc’s words to Hereward when their leader had spared the Viking’s life:
This night will come back and bite you in the arse
. Kraki feared this day would do the same. But he would not – could not – have done anything else. Without honour, a man had nothing.

On weary legs, he pushed his way through the bracken. Sounds of running feet echoed on all sides. Sweat trickled down his back. Their enemies were too close, and drawing closer by the moment.

Hengist seemed to be craning his neck, and after a moment he whispered, ‘I know this place. Over there.’ He waved his arm to the right.

Kraki hesitated, then lurched in the direction the other man had indicated. The fog rolled around them. Underfoot, the ground became softer, then sodden. Within a few steps, he reached the edge of black water.

He cursed. Trapped. And there was no going back. The call and response of the bastard Normans had started to coalesce behind him. Before he could berate Hengist for his stupidity, the other warrior waved his arm once again, this time directing Kraki along the muddy shore to his right.

Pushing through the curtain of willow branches, he found a pile of newly cut wood. An axe protruded from an oak that had been cut down and dragged to the water’s edge. An adze and a mallet lay in a froth of curled, creamy chippings. Kraki inhaled the sweet smell of the wood. Further on, the embers of a fire glowed red. Beside it, in a wisp of grey smoke, hides dried, ready to be cured and then drawn over a willow frame to make the small round-boats the locals used for fishing in the inland sea. Kraki cocked his head. All was still. The boatmaker was no doubt in hiding, quaking at the sound of the Norman horns. The Northman edged past two half-made round-boats until he
found one of the larger, flat-bottomed vessels constructed from a hollowed-out tree trunk. It had been dragged half out of the water on to the mud.

He grinned. ‘Sometimes you are not as mad as you seem.’

‘I have saved your life and I have saved your life,’ Hengist murmured.

A yell shattered the tranquillity. Redteeth had been discovered. Kraki dumped the other man into the boat and hurried to the prow. The thick mud sucked at his feet. Heaving the vessel from its mooring, he splashed out into the shallows and clambered aboard with little grace. The fog closed around them.

Lying in the bottom, Kraki stared up at the white world. The stifled sounds of the Normans searching the boatmaker’s yard floated across the gently lapping water. Relief flooded him. The bastards would never find them now.

As his rapid breathing subsided, he raised his head and glanced at Hengist.
Sometimes you are not as mad as you seem
. His own words tugged at his thoughts. ‘Show me your knife,’ he murmured.

The other man didn’t meet his searching gaze. ‘I have lost it,’ he replied in a barely audible voice.

Kraki studied his spear-brother, reflecting on what Elstan had said about the murder that had cast a pall over all Ely. Oswyn the potter had been a friend to many, a gentle man. No one could imagine what kind of devil had killed him. After a moment, Kraki laid his head back, pushing the troubling notion to one side.

He drifted with the boat.

Unshackled, his thoughts took wing, back to his woman, Acha. He felt a pang of affection that surprised him. When he had first met her in Eoferwic, he had loathed her sharp tongue and contemptuous manner. Then he had wanted to tame her. But at some point on the long journey south to Ely, true feelings had stirred inside him. He hated that; it made him feel weak, like the rosy-cheeked young men who had their noses
tweaked by the village girls. And he despised himself for fearing that death might drag them apart whenever he went into battle. That made him vulnerable, as if he fought without a shield.

He shook the thought from his head, for in truth it frightened him, and he had never been afrit before. Sometimes he even dreamed of fleeing Ely with her, and this cursed, never-ending fight, to see out their days together in some quiet settlement where axes and spears were never raised.

He closed his eyes. She had made a farmer of him. Cut off his head now and be done with it.

‘I hear something.’ Hengist was lying on his stomach and peering over the rim of the boat.

‘No eel-catcher would be out in this fog,’ Kraki grunted. ‘Put your head down. Soon we will be far enough from shore for the king’s men not to hear the splashing of our oar. And then we will be back in Ely in no time.’

He watched Hengist furrow his brow. ‘Listen,’ the Englishman exclaimed, cupping a hand to his ear.

Kraki heard nothing. He shook his head.

‘No,’ the other man protested. ‘There is something out there.’

The Northman raised his head above the rim of the boat. This time he did hear something, far away in the bank of the fog. A low moan, so fleeting he could barely be sure he had heard anything. Hengist turned to him, eyes widening. Kraki could see the other man feared this was no earthly encounter. When the muffled rumbling came again, he felt his neck prickle. It did sound like the call of some great beast.

‘What do we do?’ Hengist whispered, his voice strained.

The Northman pulled himself up, resting his hands on the rim of the rocking boat. The sound was coming from somewhere ahead of them, but the distorting effects of the fog made it impossible to tell the exact direction. They could not go back towards the shore, that was certain.

Hengist edged backwards, raising one trembling arm to
point. A dark shape loomed away in the white bank. It towered above them, perhaps as high as the pitch of the church roof at Ely. If this were a monster, it could swallow them whole in an instant.

The boat drifted on, both men gripped by the looming shadow.

The beast’s call rolled out across the water again. When the bulk finally emerged from the fog, he grew cold. This was worse than any supernatural terror.

Kraki raised his head to look up the length of a huge siege engine, a trebuchet, standing tall on a scaffold with four mighty oak legs, each one too wide for him to encircle with his arms. The long beam ending in the catapult sling hung low. He imagined the machine in action, firing projectiles that could rip through a fortress’s thick stone walls as if they were made of wattle. He shivered again. The siege engine floated on several of the flat-bottomed boats bound together with rope. He marvelled at the cunning of the Normans; there was no other way to get such a vast machine across the fenlands. Several men were hard at work rowing. Another lounged among the trebuchet’s legs. He raised a horn to his lips and blew, producing the deep, low blast that they had taken to be the voice of the lake monster.

As the siege engine disappeared into the mist once more, their boat bobbed across its wake.

‘They did not see us,’ Hengist gasped with relief. ‘God has blessed us.’

Another horn blasted from a different direction. Kraki turned and looked back. Now he could hear men shouting and the creak of ropes, and more horns calling that all was well. Another vast black shape began to drift out of the fog, following the first siege engine. And another, and another, until he could see the towering shadows everywhere. With mounting trepidation, he watched the slow procession until the fog swallowed them up once more.

Doom was coming to Ely. The king’s patience had grown
thin and he had sent his full might into the fenlands. And there could not have been a worse time. Their leader was missing. Their forces were in low spirits awaiting news of Hereward’s fate. And like wild dogs they fought among themselves over the right course of action. Kraki gripped his axe between his legs and bowed his head, wondering what terrors the coming days would bring.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

GOLDEN LEAVES GLOWED
in the shafts of sunlight punching through the fading fog. The morning was growing warmer as the two men made their way through the woods on the backs of dun ponies. The scent of autumn hung in the air, the sharp tang of berries and the sweet aroma of fallen fruit turning to rot, the cloying reek of damp vegetation.

‘You are well?’ Alric asked. His voice sounded jarring amid the birdsong and the steady crunch of leaves under the horses’ hooves. They had not spoken for long miles. He was a monk, his face thin, his frame slight, and he always looked to be three days from a good meal.

His companion, Thurstan, abbot of Ely, was older, taller and greyer, but just as lean. He jerked his head as if startled. ‘Church business weighs upon me,’ he muttered.

Alric was not convinced, but he did not press the matter. He wiped the sheen of sweat off his forehead and looked around with unease. He saw enemies in every thicket and ditch. Perhaps the abbot felt the same.

‘We will soon be in Angerhale,’ Alric said, ‘and home in Ely before midnight. Our brothers will fare well without you till then.’

Thurstan inhaled a deep draught of the chill air. They had been riding through the night and their muscles ached. ‘No news of Hereward?’ he asked.

Alric shook his head. ‘I am sure he is well.’

‘But if he has abandoned us …’

‘We have leaders of great wisdom among the rebel band,’ the younger man interjected. ‘Kraki. Guthrinc …’

‘But they are not Hereward.’

Alric paused. ‘No. They are not. But there is not a man there who would not lay down his life to protect the monks of Ely. The English will never forget the faith you have placed in them. We stand strong, together.’

Thurstan nodded, but he lost himself in his dark thoughts too quickly.

They guided their ponies along the track through the woods and emerged into rolling green lands lit by the morning sun. Trails of pearly mist still drifted to the hollows. Nearby was Bottisham, and on the horizon in the west was the grey fug of the home-fires of Grentabrige. They would not want to venture too near to that stronghold of the king. Once out of the trees, the riding was easier. They trundled along a road of rutted mud, weaving past a mill where hens scratched among the white dust beside a pile of sacks.

Thurstan’s mood seemed to lift as they took the track past neat fields towards their destination, a hamlet of only four shacks around a dirty pond and a few outlying farms.

‘May I ask, Father, now we are here, what is the nature of your ministrations in Angerhale?’ Alric clambered down from his mount and tied the pony to the post.

‘Aye, you may ask now.’ Thurstan slipped from his pony and unfurled his long frame, stretching the cricks from his muscles. ‘I am not here to minister, but to do God’s business.’

‘Here?’ Alric looked around at the meagre shacks. He noticed a man skulking in the lee of a barn, his eyes on them.

Thurstan glanced around once to make sure they were not
being watched and then hurried over. ‘Jaruman. You are well?’ he enquired.

Jaruman barely came up to Alric’s chest. His face was flayed pink by the wind and his hair was the colour of a fleece. He bowed his head in awe when Thurstan towered over him and muttered some words that Alric could not hear.

‘You do God’s work well, Jaruman,’ the abbot said with a tight smile. ‘You will be well rewarded in the next life. And in this one.’ He pressed a coin into the ceorl’s palm. When Jaruman’s eyes lit up, Alric thought he might fall to his knees in gratitude. ‘Make sure we are not disturbed,’ Thurstan added, and without waiting for an answer he marched into the barn. Alric ran over the whorls of hard mud to catch up.

As they stepped into the dusty air of the interior, he looked around, his brow knitting again. He saw hay for a horse, a plough caked with old mud, and one of the tiny straw men that the superstitious farmers used to placate the god of the fields, and he could smell the apples in the barrels. Nothing that might have encouraged the abbot to take such a dangerous journey.