Time of the Wolf (6 page)

Redteeth nodded to Ivar once more.

“His name is Hereward!” Alric shouted. “There! You do not need to hurt him more!”

“Hereward,” Redteeth repeated. “That means nothing to me. Now … where are you from?”

Unable to watch the punishment inflicted upon his companion, the young monk turned his head away, but he flinched with the sound of every blow.

After a while, Hereward floated free of the shackles of the world. The voices around him receded and he was in the fens, a boy, catching fish on a sun-drenched afternoon. He was stealing a gold cup from the abbot's room to sell to buy mead with his friends. He was looking down on the torn body of Tidhild, her hand so pale against the blood.

Icy water crashed against his face, shocking him alert.

“Look at him,” Alric said. “He is not human to suffer in silence so.”

“We have only just begun,” Redteeth replied. The Viking paced the house, flashing glances into the corners as if things waited there that no one else could see.

When two of the men had stoked the hot embers in the hearth, Ivar placed a pair of iron tongs, a poker, and his long knife in the flames. While they absorbed the heat, Redteeth addressed Alric, who was slumped in one corner, his head in his hands. “Christian man. You have converted many of my people to the Creed. They no longer talk of Odin hanging on Yggdrasil, but of Jesus on the Cross. You build churches in the old stone circles and in the sacred groves, and by the wells and the springs. That is how you lure them. I have heard your kind say that your God is better than mine. Is that so?”

Alric nodded.

“Your ways are better?”

“Yes.”

Redteeth nodded slowly. “So a Christian man should not break a vow sworn in his God's name?”

Alric bowed his head.

“Will your God forgive such a transgression? Will he wash away the stain of blood caused by such a crime? So many innocent deaths?” Redteeth stepped forward and kicked the monk hard in the stomach. “If you had not run like a coward, I would not have had to slaughter the people who sheltered you. Think on this in your final moments.”

“Leave him,” Hereward croaked.

“You would prefer your own pain to his?” Redteeth said. “Why, you must be a Christian too.” The warriors all laughed loudly.

At the Viking commander's order, Ivar removed the poker from the fire and held it close to Hereward's ribs. The Mercian gritted his teeth as his flesh bloomed under the searing heat. When Redteeth leaned in to whisper, Hereward could smell his enemy's meaty breath and the vinegar reek of his sweat. “Why would you dare to risk offending me? What lies in your head?”

Hereward looked Redteeth in the eye and grinned. “You will never know.”

Responding to a nod from his leader, Ivar pressed the hot poker to Hereward's side. Pain lanced through him, and the stink of his own sizzling flesh rose up to his nose. His roar tore his throat, but it was the sound of triumph, not defeat.

“Look at his eyes!” Alric shouted. “You waste your time! I tell you, he is not a man—he is the Devil!”

“He is a man,” Redteeth replied with a shrug. “And we will find his humanity, given time. Perhaps when we cut his skin from him, as he did to my own man Askold.” He pointed to the blade in the embers.

Wrapping his woolen cloak around his fingers, Ivar plucked the glowing knife from the fire, its heat so intense that the mercenary flinched even through the covering.

“Begin with his right arm,” the Viking commander ordered. “Start with the skin. Then remove the flesh and muscle down to the bone.” He added to Hereward, “We will carve you like the wild boar at our Yule feast.”

As the Northmen jeered and laughed, Hereward hid his thoughts behind a blank expression. He had noticed that Ivar had leaned in close when he brandished the poker, closer than he would ever have risked if the Mercian's arms had not been pinned. As the second in command approached with the red-tipped knife, Hereward waited for the opening to materialize and then lunged forward. Clamping his teeth on Ivar's cheek, the English warrior bit down to the bone and ripped away the chunk of flesh with a twist of his head.

Howling, Ivar lurched back, dropping the knife onto the old woman's bed. Amid the crackle of straw, gray smoke curled up. When the Mercian felt his two captors loosen their grip in the confusion, he wrenched his arms free, jabbing his right elbow into one throat and driving his forehead into the face of the second man.

He felt the thing inside him rise up, the other Hereward, born of rage and bloodlust, unconstrained by human values, and he welcomed it. The pain of his wounds vanished. As strength flooded into his weary limbs, he reacted with a speed that made the mercenaries seem lead-footed in comparison. Snatching up the poker, he lashed it across Redteeth's face. From the corner of his eye, he saw the monk wriggle out from among their captors and wrench open the door. Good, Hereward thought. He planted one leather sole in the Viking commander's gut and propelled him out into the snowy morning.

The mercenary band began to gather their wits, too late. As flames licked up from the hearthside bed, Hereward snatched up his sword, hacking one man in the face, then whirling to lop off the right hand of another. With a flick of his shoe, he kicked the burning straw across the room to the other straw at the back. The fire rushed up the timber frame to the thatched roof.

As a sheet of flame spread over their heads, panic erupted in the dense smoke. Hereward darted outside before the Vikings could react. Grabbing Redteeth's axe from where the mercenary sprawled in a daze, he slammed the door and embedded the weapon in the splintering jamb to seal it shut. The roaring of the fire drowned out the terrified shouts from within, which turned to screams as the burning roof began to fall in.

Through the throbbing of the blood in his head, Hereward heard Alric cry out in warning. The Viking commander was struggling to his feet. Whirling, Hereward kicked Redteeth in the face with such brutal force that the mercenary pitched backward, unconscious. His fury spent, Hereward's euphoria faded. The world suddenly looked too brittle, cold, and bright. Lurching from the pain seeping back into his battered body, he attempted to lift Redteeth. “Help me,” he croaked.

“You are badly injured,” Alric said as he shouldered the Viking's bulk. “You will not reach Eoferwic alone.”

“I have survived worse.”

“Sooner or later, your luck will run out.”

The screams of the trapped warriors died amid the roar of the fire as the walls caught light and the flames soared up high into the sky. Hereward thought of Gedley and felt proud.

When Redteeth came round, confusion flickered across his face, then uneasy awareness, then simmering rage. Hereward watched the play of emotions with cold satisfaction. The noose was tight round the Viking's neck and his hands were bound as he wavered precariously on the chopping block. Alric turned away as the mercenary fought to keep his balance, no doubt remembering his own ordeal.

“This is not an ending,” Redteeth growled.

“It is the end of your story,” Hereward replied. “Except for the part where the ravens feast on your remains.”

“You should have left well alone,” Alric added.

“Good Christian man,” Redteeth spat.

The monk was a strange man, Hereward thought, but he might have his uses. Turning his back on the glowering Viking, he said, “You are a free man now. What will you do? Return to your monastery?”

Alric hung his head. “I am not free. If Harald Redteeth does not return with my head, another will come in his place, and another after that, until this matter is done.” His eyes flickered in the direction of Gedley. “I will never be free.”

“I have business in Eoferwic … grim business,” Hereward said, searching the other's face for even the barest hint that betrayal lay ahead, “and I cannot risk becoming food for the wolves.”

The monk's eyes narrowed. “What manner of business?”

Hereward hesitated. How could he tell the younger man that it involved murder, conspiracy, and the security of the very throne of England itself when he had no idea who could be trusted or how far the plot reached?” There are lives at stake,” he said. “More, perhaps, than died in Gedley.”

“You butcher without thought for God's work. Why would you be concerned with saving lives?”

“We all wrestle with our devils, monk. Can any man truly say he is wholly saint or wholly sinner?”

Alric's eyes brightened as if he had alighted on some great notion. Waving a finger, he said, “And you would have me accompany you?”

“If I can be sure you will not pass judgment on me on the road, as it seems in your nature to do.” He could feel his legs growing weaker by the moment. They would need to find new shelter and a chance to recover. “These wounds drag me down. You are right: I will never reach Eoferwic on my own.”

The monk pondered.

“I will pay you well,” the warrior added, jangling the pouch at his hip.

“Very well,” Alric said, setting his jaw. “You need me now, and I, God help me, need you for protection, at least until we reach Eoferwic.”

Hereward clapped a weak hand on his companion's shoulder. “You are a whining little shit, monk, with a miserable disposition that makes for poor company. But if we can survive the hardships of this wild land, I will shoulder the burden.”

While Alric cast one tormented backward glance at the Viking balancing on the block, Hereward felt the weight of the secret he carried with him. With a heavy heart, he peered among the clustering oaks and ash trees, but saw no sign of the pursuit that had dogged him for so long. Perhaps there was some hope after all, he thought.

As Hereward lurched away with Alric supporting him, Redteeth roared his defiance: “This is not an ending!”

If Hereward had searched the depths of the Viking's eyes at that moment, he would have seen that Redteeth was right. It was not an ending. The red-bearded Northman would not give in to death.

He
was
Death.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“H
ARALD
R
EDTEETH IS DEAD
. W
HY DO YOU WASTE SO MUCH
time watching for pursuers?” Alric struggled to keep the crack out of his voice, but he felt irritable from exhaustion and hunger and the bitter wind burrowing deep into his bones.

Hereward crouched on the granite outcropping, one hand shielding his eyes from the midday sun. Now that his wounds had healed, the sinewy warrior showed no sign of feeling the cold as he searched the bleak white landscape tumbling away from the foot of the hillside below them. There were times when the young monk thought his companion more beast than man, at home in the wild countryside, perceiving scents that Alric could never smell on the knife-sharp wind, identifying spoor, detecting the merest hint of movement a day's march away or more, hearing notes of warning in the cawing of the rooks, and, for all he knew, the voice of God in the soughing in the branches.

“Men are moving through the forest below.” The warrior rose onto the balls of his feet, and for a moment the monk lost him in the glare from the thick snow lying across the hillside. “Five, I think. Tracking us or collecting wood?”

The monk narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Do you fear that they are hunting me … or you?”

Hereward laughed. “Would you wait and ask them yourself?” Bounding down from the rock, he scanned the way ahead over the windswept hilltops. “If we are caught out here in the open, we will soon be enjoying the sleep of the sword.”

Alric had watched the warrior's mood improve by the day as they neared Eoferwic. At times a robust humor had emerged, almost as if the Mercian sensed an opportunity to slough off whatever burden weighed him down, the monk mused. He saw learning in that face, most surely, and even some warmth. He had to accept that his wild-eyed companion was more of a puzzle than he had first believed. “It would be a blessed relief. I get little other sleep these days,” he muttered.

“You are free to leave at any time.”

“Then who would pray for your black soul? I am all that prevents the Devil from rising up to offer you a throne beside him.”

“The Devil on one hand, and a monk whining and whimpering all day and all night on the other. A hard choice.” The warrior jumped down to the monk's side, landing gracefully.

Alric shrugged and walked ahead. “The meek are blessed.”

“Dead. The meek are dead, because they leave their spears under their beds.”

“And blessed.” Alric ducked when he heard rapid movement at his back. A large stone flew over his head and crashed into a snowdrift. He whirled, jabbing a finger. “That could have staved in my skull.”

“I must practice my aim,” the warrior said, his tone wry. “But let us move on. There will be sharper stones in the valley.”

Grumbling, Alric stalked ahead. He cast one look down into the black woods and saw nothing, so he picked up his step, stumbling through the knee-deep snow. The two men slipped and skidded down the steep slope, sometimes turning head over heels so that their eyelashes and hair became crusted with ice. As his chest began to burn from his exertions, Alric asked, “You have kin?”