Hereward 02 - The Devil's Army (34 page)

Through the low-hanging branches he pushed, towards the sound of the arguing voices. Barely had he taken four steps into the shadows under the canopy, when he sensed movement
behind him. Thinking Nasi had come after him, he half-turned. A bolt of pain seared through his head and he felt himself falling.

Darkness came.

How long passed, he did not know. Once again, he felt sure he was back in the monastery in Jarrow, his place of safety, being scolded by Brother Oswyn for being a poor scholar. As he came round, he felt the world moving beneath him. Rough wood prickled his cheek. His head throbbed as if he had spent all night drinking mead. Hands folded into his tunic and pulled him into a sitting position. When his vision cleared, he found himself looking into the face of Nasi. Salty wind stung his face and a booming filled the air. He knew then where he was.

‘You chose to join me on the wave-skimmer after all, monk,’ the Dane said with a grin.

With mounting horror, Alric looked round. No land could he see, no safe home, only the heaving blue waves and an uncertain future.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
-E
IGHT

THE SKY BLACKENED
in the north. Bolts of lightning danced along the horizon. As the wind tore across the water, the swell began to heave. Alric looked to the growing storm, fear and nausea battling inside him. Upright in the prow, Nasi barked orders to his men, keeping one eye on the vast array of ships dipping and cresting on the waves. The Danes were seasoned sailors and treated the whale road with respect. Yet they gazed with unease towards the tempest as they hunched over their oars. That troubled him even more. Aft, the steersman wrestled with the steering oar against the turbulent waves. The weather-vane tipped with the iron heads of ravens spun wildly.

‘God will watch over us,’ Aethelwold murmured, more to ease his own terror than to comfort Alric.

‘I have endured one shipwreck. I should not wish to face another, even with the Lord at my shoulder,’ Alric muttered. Memories of black water closing over his head flooded his mind and a shudder ran through him.

The prior dropped to his knees and mouthed a prayer in front of the relic chest. The four other monks on the vessel clustered around him as the deck rolled under their feet. As they picked up the prayer, Alric looked around and saw a curious thing.
The Danes near by eyed the box with the same uneasy stare they kept for the storm. At first, he could not understand why that would be so. When he saw one of the warriors cross himself and raise his eyes to the heavens, he had it. Men who braved the sea were more superstitious than those who lived out their days on dry land. These hardened fighting men feared they would be punished for stealing the relic from the churchmen who guarded it.

Lightning briefly turned the world white. Then thunder cracked overhead and the day became as night.

Alric crouched down beside the praying monks, finding some shelter from the blasting wind below the rims of the shields on the rack running around the boat. Screwing up his eyes, he wished he were back in Ely, anywhere but where he was.

Adding to his misery, his head still throbbed from the blow that had struck him. The attack as yet made little sense, though he had turned it over in his mind a hundred times. A hooded man had paid good coin for a Dane to take his dazed form aboard a ship, so Nasi had told him. Only one answer seemed possible: that he had played too large a part in the leadership of the army since Hereward’s departure, and the Normans had sent their eyes and ears in the camp to get rid of him. He felt proud at that; and scared too.

Another flash and thunder-crack, then within moments rain as hard as stones lashed on a buffeting gale. Alric buried his head on the sodden deck. Under his trembling hands, he felt the ship rise high as if it had been plucked up by God. When it crashed down, the monks cried out as one, all of them rolling along the planks. Alric clamped his eyes shut tight. This was how it had started last time. A vision of towering cliffs of black water flashed across his mind, and then he felt once again his lungs filling, his vision darkening, and his panic as Death clutched for him. He feared drowning more than any other death. Along the Northumbrian coast he had seen men pulled from the sea, bodies black and bloated, eyes eaten by the fish.

Seawater sluiced across his face. Choking, he jerked his head
up and saw a growing pool in the bottom of the vessel. Cold terror flooded through him. The tar-covered moss and animal hair that jammed the grooves between the planks was failing in the rough waves.

‘Here. Make yourself useful,’ Nasi bellowed. He tossed a wooden hand bailer. Alric snatched it up and threw himself into the pool, scooping the brine over the side. When he glanced up, he saw Nasi still standing upright next to the dragon-headed prow, his hair plastered to his head. His face remained as calm as if they sailed across the mere at Ely. Alric felt comforted by that sight. The pounding of his heart eased a little and he even found it in him to peer over the side. At times the waves seemed higher than the mast. The rest of the ships were lost in the deep gloom of the storm, if they had not already been dragged down to the bottom.

But then the strakes flexed, groaning against the rivets like a wounded bear, and dread gripped him once more. A wave as high as a church tower plucked the vessel up and flung it down into a trough. Alric cried out, afraid the ship would shatter into pieces. How could this be happening to him again? Was this how God punished him for his sins?

The wave-skimmer whirled, rose up, crashed down again. Alric spun through the pool of water, jerking up and gasping for air. He could see only iron waves and iron sky. And somewhere the prior was screaming, ‘God save all our souls!’

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
-N
INE

DARK WATER ENGULFED
Hereward. From the depths, he struck out, upwards towards a halo of thin, grey light hovering overhead. He blinked once, twice, and as his vision cleared a cold face fell into view. The face of Death, it seemed, and it was. Harald Redteeth peered down at him, his pupils as wide and black as that deep ocean from which the Mercian had just escaped.

‘Alive. Good,’ the Viking muttered, his breath reeking of meat. He drew back, settling on his haunches.

The Mercian’s left eye was caked with blood, his face mottled with bruises from the beating he had taken when the guards fell upon him. His wrists and ankles had been bound together with hempen rope. He shook his head to clear the haze and looked around. He was in an undercroft, but not the same one where Turfrida was being held. The dank air smelled of loam. At the far end, near the earthen steps leading up to the door of the store, a candle flickered, but he could not tell if it was night or day outside. A heavy beat echoed high overhead, rain drumming on the roof boards. The hot period had broken.

‘Come near,’ he urged with a grim smile. ‘I have torn out the throat of a wolf with my bare teeth. I can do the same for you.’

Harald Redteeth shrugged. In the palm of his right hand, he balanced the axe that hung at his side by a leather thong. The blade was notched and scarred, the haft worn by years of use. ‘This is my axe, Grim. It was given to me by my father, and to him by his father,’ he said, examining the weapon approvingly. ‘That is what we do. Pass down the things of value so there is a chain linking us with the past that shaped us. You English, you do the same with your knives, so I am told.’ He looked to Hereward who showed no response. The Viking nodded reflectively. ‘With these blades, we carve our lives, and our place in the land, and in the years. And when I hold this axe, I feel my father’s hand upon mine, and his father’s upon his. That is how it should be.’

He laid down his weapon and picked another axe off the mud floor. Hereward had not noticed it until now. Harald Redteeth turned the axe over, examining it from every angle. It was clean, shiny, the edge sharp. He wrinkled his nose. ‘This is a Norman axe. They have a way with weapons, those bastards. Sharper.’ He ran one filthy-nailed finger along the cutting edge. ‘Stronger. They are built to kill.’ He tossed the weapon aside and it clattered on the hard ground. ‘They mean nothing. They are not passed on. They do not tie a man to his blood or days long gone.’ He narrowed his eyes and pointed one finger at Hereward. ‘
You
know what I mean.’

Hereward watched the Viking stand and prowl around the shadows of the undercroft, his hauberk rattling with each step. He came to a halt in the half-light, his red-dyed beard glowing like fire. Hereward sneered. ‘The Butcher has sent you—’

‘The Butcher has not sent me,’ Harald interrupted, cracking his knuckles. ‘I am not here to do you harm. Where would be the honour in that, a man tied up like a dog?’

The Mercian strained at his bonds until his wrists burned. ‘You would do well to kill me now,’ he said. ‘For when I am free I will end your life for what you did to my friend Vadir, in Flanders.’

‘No more than what you did when you killed my battle-brother Ivar, in a burning house, denying him entry to the Halls of the Slain.’ The Viking glowered. ‘We have a blood-feud, you and I, and it can only be ended one way, between men, on the field of battle, whether it be by your death or my own.’

‘Yours, then.’

Nodding, Harald Redteeth drew closer and folded his arms. ‘We shall see.’

‘My wife, Turfrida. She yet lives?’ Hereward held his head up, trying to show no sign of weakness, but a tic gave away his fears. How close he had been to spiriting her away from danger until his father had betrayed him. His stomach heaved at the memory. His mind shied from all thought of Asketil, a man filled with such loathing he would set aside all blood-ties to try to destroy his own flesh.

The Viking nodded, scowling with disgust. ‘Stealing a woman, and a woman with child at that … making her suffer to break your spirit … there is no honour in this course.’

‘And yet you raise your axe for these very snakes.’

Redteeth bristled. ‘I take their coin. And it serves me that they are your enemy.’ Calming himself, he prowled away once more and when he turned, he said in a low voice, ‘And so you must dishonour yourself by denying the English and the battle you fight. Force your own folk to bare their throats to the conqueror’s fangs. And if you do not, your woman will die in agony.’ He spat. ‘No man should endure that choice.’

Hereward kept his shoulders back, but he felt a deep cold run into his bones. Never could he sacrifice his wife and his unborn child. Nor could he renounce the English, and every man and woman who had believed in him. He saw no way out of this misery, and only suffering and death on all sides.

If Redteeth recognized those fears in his face, he said nothing, and Hereward felt grateful for that small mercy. The Viking shook his head wearily and strode back towards the door. At the foot of the steps, he half-turned and said, ‘The Butcher will be here soon, with that noble cur who follows him around.
They will demand of you your decision, and one way or another your life will be over.’ He shrugged, humming a strange tune to himself. After a moment, he added, ‘A horse is tethered by the house where your woman is kept. The castle gates are open, and will stay that way until the carts have brought food for this night’s feast.’ He bowed his head in thought for a moment, and then added, ‘A man who was not bound could put both to good use.’

Hereward snarled at the final taunt as Harald Redteeth climbed the steps and went out. But in the flickering candlelight, something glinted in the corner of his vision. He looked round and saw the Norman axe, still lying on the mud next to him.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY

RAIN LASHED THE
castle grounds. Lowering black clouds turned the day into night as the figure crept out of the store near the keep. Torrents of water gushed across the sun-baked mud and grass of the bailey. Shin-deep grey pools formed in the hollows. Thunder cracked overhead, and in the stables the frightened horses whinnied and stamped their hooves. Hereward gripped the Norman axe, creeping low against the wall. So heavy was the downpour he could barely see the gates. It was the perfect cover for what he had to do.

His sodden tunic was already clinging to his skin as he reached the store where Turfrida was imprisoned. Blinking the rain from his eyes, he eased open the door and slipped inside. When the thunder rolled away, he heard the piercing scream hidden beneath it. His wife was not alone. Devastated, his head spun at the agonies he heard in that throat-rending cry. No more would she suffer. Hereward gritted his teeth and crept down the steps.

A steady beat of rain dripped through the roof. More water sluiced down the earth walls of the undercroft and pooled across the floor. An orange glow suffused the far end of the space, from a fire dancing in a circle of stones. Iron rods lay
in the coals, the tips glowing yellow. His nose wrinkled at the cloud of sulphurous smoke drifting through the store. Another scream tore from his wife’s throat, and he almost cried out in response.
No more
, he thought to himself.
No more
.

As the smoke shifted, he glimpsed Turfrida huddled on the floor in the glimmering light by the far wall. She had rolled into a ball, her hands pressed against her face. Her round belly strained against the filthy linen of her dress. Two figures loomed over her, their backs to him. One was a guard leaning on a spear. Tall and strong, he was, like an oak, a worthy opponent in any battle. In the heat of the undercroft, his helm had been set aside and he wore only a sweat-stained tunic and breeches. Hereward saw the other man was Emeric the witchfinder. He clutched an iron poker, the tip glowing red, and he slowly waved it over Turfrida’s shaking form.

‘Witch,’ he murmured. ‘How many times we have met here. I would have long since shown you God’s mercy were you not the bait for an English rat. And so we must still pull the devils from you one by one, this day, and the next, and the ones beyond that, until the vermin has met his fate.’