Hereward (45 page)

Redwald drew closer, dropping to his haunches to see better. His enemies pleaded with him in their tongue, but then the mud washed into their mouths, and only chokes and gurgles emerged, and then a silence broken only by the bubbles bursting on the slimy surface.

Redwald stood up, brushing the dried mud from his hands. His darkest days lay behind him now, he was sure. His heart swelled. He would never again be deflected from reaching his goal. By any means necessary, power and security would be his.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY
-S
IX

BLOOD STREAMED FROM the ragged neck of the severed head. His eyes burning with fierce fire, Hereward held his trophy high for Harald Redteeth to see. Hatred burned in the Viking’s chest, not just for the English warrior, but for the Normans, whose many failings had denied his axe the life for which it hungered. The red-bearded mercenary fought his urge to confront the rebel leader and raced back up the slope, knowing that he was in danger of being outnumbered. He loathed fleeing from a battle, but he was wise enough to know there would be another opportunity for his axe to drink deep.

Avoiding the paths that snaked between the trees, Harald crashed through the undergrowth, hacking at any branch that fell in his way. Everywhere he looked he saw death. Knights stumbled into bogs. Bodies bristled with arrows. Weakening moans rose from gaping pits. The
alfar
had been right. There were raven harvests aplenty, but all of them Normans. The rebels had made fools of them all. The Viking glimpsed them moving through the fog like spectres. Some climbed from ditches or rose up from covered hiding places. Others called warnings from the branches above. And floating on the floodlands, two men had wielded bows from strange shell-shaped boats, the like of which Redteeth had never seen before. All of them bore hideous masks of mud and ash and charcoal.

A battle cry resounded at his back, taken up on all sides. As the mercenary hauled himself through the willows, he heard the bellicose shouts begin to draw near. The English were not about to let their enemies escape, if they could help it. Spitting epithets, the Viking crashed through tangled branches and twining bramble.

But when he reached the lip of the downward slope, he glimpsed a shape looming on the left of his vision. A spear ripped through the flesh of his forearm. Numb to all pain, he reacted faster than his foe could have expected. Before the English rebel had a chance to dart back, the Viking whirled, crunching his axe into the man’s neck and wrenching it free in a gush of blood. For a moment, the shower of red jewels gripped him in a mushroom-fed fascination.

More battle cries tore him from his reverie and he threw himself over the rim and careered down the slope. Through the folds of grey, he glimpsed other figures hurtling through the trees alongside him. The heavy thud of feet on the soft loam told him they were Normans. Crashing out of the trees, he sped on to the grassy shoulder where the fog had started to clear. The musky smell of the horses hung on the breeze, and he could hear their snorts and whinnies ahead. The beasts smelled blood and death.

When he mounted his steed, the mercenary allowed himself the luxury of glancing back. Barely twenty Normans from the fifty-strong force were racing away from the island. Behind them, shadowy figures shifted through the mist along the treeline.

I will be back
, he vowed,
and I will take your ears to hang on my mail
. He began to sing a jaunty song that ended with a peal of high-pitched laughter. The surviving Normans eyed him as if they thought the privations of the battle had driven him mad. That only made him laugh harder.

Once they had put some distance between them and the rebels, Aldous Wyvill slowed his men to a trot. Dried blood caked the corner of his eye and a blue bruise was spreading over his cheeks. ‘We will be back to avenge our fallen,’ he snarled. ‘Be brave. Hold fast.’

‘They were taking the heads,’ one of the knights gasped in horror.

‘I said, be brave!’ the Norman commander yelled at the man. ‘We shall not be beaten by peasants armed with clubs and rocks, and warriors who trick us with traps.’

The men fell silent for the rest of the ride, but Harald could smell the sour stink of fear in their sweat.

In the enclosure, Aldous ordered the gate to be shut and barred. As the dispirited knights dismounted and led their horses away, Frederic of Warenne eased out of the hall in a flap of silk and linen. He pressed his hands together in anticipation of delight, but the thin-lipped smile fell away when he saw how few men had returned, their sagging shoulders and the wounds on show.

‘What is this?’ he cried in dismay.

‘The English were waiting for us. It was a trap.’ The Norman commander tucked his helmet under his arm.

Aghast, Frederic clutched his hand to his mouth as a dreadful future flashed before his eyes. ‘The rebellion continues? Will it spread? Will the English retake their lands?’

‘Your lands are safe,’ Aldous snapped. ‘For now. But we need reinforcements soon. Our scouts report that the ranks of the rebels are swelling by the day.’

Harald Redteeth watched the simmering tension between the two men. Neither knew how to combat this turn of events, he could see. No cavalry charge could move the rebels from their natural fortress of water, bog and mist. Stifling a giggle, he put on a grave face and announced, ‘Terror is the only answer.’

The Norman commander whirled, but Frederic held up a limp hand to halt Aldous. ‘Speak,’ the landowner urged.

‘We must make the English too scared to come here. They must know that they will face axe and fire. Starvation. They must believe that these fenlands are little more than a slaughterhouse for their kind.’

Frederic clapped his hands. ‘Yes, he is right. Let us send for reinforcements. Many reinforcements.’

Aldous looked unsure, recognizing that such a course might reflect badly on his own ability to manage the fens. But it was clear that the landowner had made up his mind. ‘My men are needed here,’ the commander sniffed, turning to Harald. ‘Ride to the garrison at Lincolne. I will give you a message for the commander there, who will send to London for what we need.’

The red-bearded mercenary nodded. Glancing round the enclosure at the ragged remains of the Norman force, he felt it was a good time to be away from Barholme yet still be able to claim his coin. The invaders had failed to respect Hereward and had paid the price. The English warrior had changed greatly since their first meeting, Redteeth now realized. He was more dangerous, cleverer, wiser, and had learned many new strategies. To treat Hereward as just another rebel was to court disaster.

As he strode towards the store to fetch supplies for his journey, Frederic’s reedy voice floated back to him: ‘At least we are safe here.’

Harald Redteeth laughed long and hard.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY
-S
EVEN

AN OWL SHRIEKED away in the moonless night. The wind lured whispers from the reed-beds. And out of the lonely wetlands the silent ghosts walked, dark-eyed, sallow-skinned, with murder in their hearts.

We will drench this land in blood to honour our ancestors
.

The whispered exhortation rustled among the band of men as they slipped past the ebony lakes and through the wild woods; an oath that could never be broken. With his shield on his arm and his axe in his hand, Hereward led the rebels towards the old straight track. After the rout at the camp, the men had learned to follow him without question. His mail shirt jangled with the rhythm of every step, but he wore no helm. Instead he showed his ash-painted face to the enemy; in the dark the crusted, grey mask became a glowing skull, a portent of what was to come for all who saw it.

His head throbbed with the beat of his blood. The thing he carried with him at all times, shackled deep in his heart, was rising free. He welcomed it. There was no other way. Back at the camp, in the grey hour just before dark, Alric had pleaded with him to hold his true nature in check or risk losing his soul for ever. And part of him knew the monk was right; to give in to the bestial bloodlust and the slaughter, where was the honour in that? But the peace of which he had always dreamed now seemed as ephemeral as the fenland mist. Alric had been a good friend to him, perhaps the best he had ever had. But Hereward Asketilson was already dead. Hereward the scourge of the invader, the feeder of ravens, demanded blood. And his devil would ensure it flowed in torrents.

Through the leafless trees, the torches glimmered round the Normans’ hall, Hereward’s old home. The warrior raised his hand to bring his war band to a halt. For a long moment, they waited in silence until a shadow separated from the trees and edged towards them.

‘Did I do well?’ it whispered.

‘You did well, Hengist.’

The thin-faced man from the village ran a shaking hand through his lank blond hair. His pale eyes glistened. ‘The Normans killed all the other men,’ he croaked. ‘Once I had told them the location of your camp, as you instructed, I thought they would leave. But they put my neighbours to the sword, while they knelt, while their women sobbed and prayed.’ The words died in his throat.

Hereward rested a supportive hand on the trembling man’s shoulder. ‘The invaders can never be trusted. They have no honour. But through your courage, and your neighbours’ sacrifice, we lured them into the fens and broke them. And soon, perhaps this night, we will be rid of them.’

Hengist nodded, wiping the back of his hand across his sticky nose. ‘I will join you,’ he vowed, ‘and I will pay them back in kind.’

‘And this night?’

‘Two men upon the fence.’

‘Only two?’

‘The others feast in the hall, and lick their wounds.’

Hereward shook his head in disbelief. ‘Then they have brought this end upon themselves.’ He nodded to Redwald, who flashed a grin, and Guthrinc, who cracked the knuckles of his large hands. The two men pulled their hunting bows from their shoulders, and an arrow each from the pouch upon their backs, and then moved quietly into the willows surrounding the enclosure.

The rebels ghosted among the trees. Beyond the palisade, the Norman guards stood on their platform, their helmets agleam in the torchlight. Redwald and Guthrinc knelt on the treeline, shafts notched. Hereward knew it would take a good eye to hit their prey in the gloom, but those two men were the best archers he had. They would not fail, as he had failed Vadir.

The bow-lines creaked, held for a moment, and then snapped free. Twin arrows whistled through the dark. The shafts flew so fast Hereward didn’t see them strike, but he heard them puncture flesh, and a gasp of shock and a gurgle. Both knights fell from their platform.

For a long moment, the warrior listened for any sign that the Normans in the hall had heard the falling bodies. When no sound came, he waved the rebels on. Clambering over the newly dug ramparts, the men gathered at the foot of the fence. Dropping to his hands and knees, Hengist felt around the base of the timber palisade until he came to an area that had been padded with loose chips of wood under a thin covering of soil. Hereward felt his heart swell at the risks the English farmers had taken to meet his strict instructions during their labours. At his nod, four men fell to the ground and scrabbled out the padding until there was space enough for a slight man to crawl under the fence.

‘Let me,’ Redwald whispered.

‘Take care,’ Hereward said. ‘The guards may still be alive. The knights could leave the hall at any time—’

‘Brother,’ Redwald interrupted with a grin, ‘trust me.’

‘I trust you,’ the warrior replied. He felt a burst of pride at the other man’s bravery.

Redwald wriggled through the narrow gap, and a few moments later the rebels heard the groan of the bar lifting from the gate. Once the way swung open, the men flooded inside the enclosure. Hengist padded around to the rear of the hall, Hereward and Alric darting behind. From within came the sound of drunken singing and laughter. Fools, Hereward thought. The Normans had too quickly drowned their misery at the day’s dismal outcome. But then they did not understand the English, and the fire that burned in their hearts, or the weight of their hatred.

Edging past the pit where the waste and rotting food was tossed, along the side of the chicken hut, Hengist ducked down at the hall’s rear wall and moved a pile of wood. A hole had been dug behind it, just big enough for a man to squeeze into the space beneath the hall’s timber floor where the straw had been stuffed to keep out the winter cold. Hereward nodded approvingly. Once again he felt impressed by the risks that had been taken by the men the Normans had put to work. He found a grim humour in the thought that the invaders had turned good men into their slaves and thereby brought about their own demise.

The warrior sent Alric to fetch one of the torches. When the monk returned with the sputtering brand, Hereward handed it to Hengist and whispered, ‘You know what to do.’

‘Aye. With joy in my heart,’ the other man replied, his face cold.

As they made their way back to the front of the hall, Alric caught Hereward’s arm. ‘You are not alone. I will pray for your soul.’ The monk’s face looked like stone, but his eyes swam with passion.