Hereward 03 - End of Days, page 10
‘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.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘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.
‘A fight, then. This is more like it.’ Redteeth was grinning like a wolf, his axe shaking in his fist.
‘No. You know the paths here better than any man. Take a message to the king. This may be the beginning of the English uprising. If we all die here, there will be no one to warn our army.’ Deda could see the Viking wrestling with his bloodlust. ‘Go,’ he urged. ‘Bring back fresh men.’
Redteeth hawked up phlegm and spat, but gave a grudging nod. Spinning on his heel, he raced into the ash trees and was gone.
Deda drew his sword and darted along the causeway. Those men who had managed to drag on their mail shirts and their helms threw themselves towards the ramparts. But there was no shape to the defence. One warrior found himself facing three English spears. Though he had the higher ground and a long Norman shield, it was not enough. He was cut down in a moment.
His own shield was resting against a pile of sandbags, but Deda knew he had no time to reclaim it. He leapt on to the ramparts where four English rebels were closing on a wounded soldier. As the man knelt, clutching at his side where his tunic darkened, the knight stepped in front of him and braced himself. He thrust his blade into the chest of an English fighter, then hacked through the haft of a spear.
Sensing they faced a seasoned warrior, his opponents fumbled together a wall with their three shields. It was a feeble thing. Their commander would have been furious. When they tried to advance up the crumbling peat ramparts, Deda hammered his foot into the centre shield. As the rebel stumbled backwards, he leapt into the space that had been vacated, stabbed left and cut right. The two English fighters screamed as their sides opened up.
He bounded back to the top of the ramparts. When he looked around, he saw the day was already lost. The smaller English force had already torn the heart out of his men. Bodies littered the causeway. Some of the rebels had thrown aside their spears and were shovelling aside the sand and flint with whoops of glee. In moments, they were destroying what had taken hours to build.
Hereward’s men prowled towards him, white eyes staring from black sockets. They conjured a vision of death as easily as they dealt it. Deda whirled around. Barely a quarter of the men who had laboured that morning still lived, all of them trapped on that spur stretching out across the bog to the water’s edge. Huddled like pigs in the butcher’s pen.
Racing towards them, Deda called, ‘Stand your ground. Form a shield wall. You can yet hold them off.’
But he might as well have remained silent for all the good it did. He felt his heart sink as he watched good men driven mad by fear of death. Some leapt from the causeway as if they had suddenly gained the ability to walk upon the surface of the bog. They were sucked down or managed to stagger a few paces before the mud held them fast, easy targets for the English bowmen. Others jostled for a footing on the causeway and pitched their own fellows over the side.
‘Stand your ground,’ Deda yelled once more.
He pushed his way into the soldiers, grabbing shoulders to try to heave them into line. But he could see their terror was too great. They threw him off so that he almost stumbled into the bog himself. Some of them raced towards the English, yelling the Norman battle-cry, Dex aie. A futile gesture. Each one ran straight into a row of spears.
Soon he found himself at the end of the causeway, with his back to the swollen river. The currents were strong enough to drag him to his death. Only a madman would risk them. He grinned with grim irony. Surely God was now punishing him for the way he had tricked Harald Redteeth in Grentabrige?
Tossing aside his sword and his helm, he dived into the torrent. The river was a wild beast. It dragged him down to the bed, pummelled him against the side, then spat him up for one gulp of air before thrusting him to the depths once more. His thoughts fled, dashed from his head. He felt only the fire in his chest. He saw only grey and black.
And then, just when he felt sure his time was done, something cracked against him. He flung out a hand and his fingers closed round wood. Forcing his head up, he saw he was holding on to the haft of a spear. In an instant, he was yanked out of the flow. Hands hauled him on to the river bank.
With a rush of joy that he still lived, Deda sucked a draught of air into his burning lungs. Above him, black branches hovered against a patch of silver sky. And then a head heaved into view, skull-faced as though it were taunting him with how close he had been to leaving the world behind.
‘My name is Hereward,’ the English rebel said. ‘And your life is now mine.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE GHOSTS WERE abroad in the forest that night. Rowena had seen them, standing among the willows, their eyes pools of shadow in faces of stone. Her father had told her by the hearth one midwinter night how the dead sometimes stayed close to the living, lamenting the life they had lost. ‘Never look them in the face,’ he had said. ‘Never let them lay their hands upon you, for they will not let go.’
She pulled her cloak tighter around her and hurried along the moonlit track. Her feet whispered over the fallen leaves. Behind her, Acha kept pace. Her pale face was emotionless, but her wide eyes darted around. Could she see the ghosts too, Rowena wondered, or was it the Norman hunting bands which frightened her so? Three times they had been forced to hide in ditches until the bastards had passed by. They had lain in the mud, covered in leaves and branches, and shivered in terror for their very lives, knowing full well their fate if they were caught.
An owl shrieked and they both jumped. Their laughter was nervous, but brief, for they knew any sound would carry far in the stillness of the fenland night.
Not long after, Rowena smelled the smoke of a home-fire on the breeze. Easing aside a curtain of willow branches, she peered into a small clearing. All was as Sighard had told her. The hut looked as if it could barely withstand a hard winter.
‘The wise woman’s home,’ Rowena whispered. Her neck prickled at the eyes of the dead upon her. She should not be here.
She felt Acha grow tense beside her, too. Putting on a brave face, Rowena turned to the other woman and said, ‘You have my thanks for walking with me on the night-road. You did not have to do this. We are not kin. I am hardly known to you. But now we are here, you can return to Ely where you will be safe.’
‘And walk the night-road alone?’ Acha’s dark eyes gave nothing away.
‘Then stay here.’
‘We stand or fall together.’
Rowena looked back at the hut. It seemed deserted. ‘The words of Hereward?’
‘He is …’ Acha paused, searching for words that seemed hard to find, ‘a good leader. A good man.’ She seemed about to say more, but caught her tongue.
Rowena sniffed. ‘So I have heard. But he has been no use to me. I will not sit by the hearth and stay silent like some Norman wife. If Hereward will not help, I will do it myself.’
Pushing her way into the clearing, she raised her head in a show of confidence. ‘Brigid,’ she called. ‘We are two lost souls who would seek your guidance back to the path.’
After a moment, the door creaked open. Brigid was framed in the orange glow of the hearth-fire at her back. She had become almost a part of the wild in which she hid, Rowena could see. Sinewy, filthy, the wise woman half hunched as if ready to pounce. She looked her visitors up and down for a moment and then crooked a finger to beckon them in.
Rowena felt Acha all but pressing against her back as they stooped to enter the hovel. Inside, her nostrils flared at odd smells, unfamiliar spices, strange mixtures. A bed of dirty straw lay on the hard earth in one corner. Animal bones, charms, feathers, bundles of dried herbs and plants were scattered everywhere.
‘We have brought you bread, and salt,’ she said, offering the cloth-wrapped bundle.
Brigid took the gift and motioned to the two women to sit by the hearth. The wise woman squatted on the other side and they watched each other through the swirling strand of grey smoke. ‘I have many questions,’ Rowena began. ‘This world has been turned on its head. Little makes sense any more.’
The wise woman nodded. ‘This is a time of hidden things. What is seen is not all there is.’ She picked up a long, thin bone and began to beat a steady rhythm on the edge of a chipped bowl filled with dried leaves. Closing her eyes, she added, ‘All is changing, like the seasons. What once waited in the shadows will step out into the light. And then you should beware.’
‘You speak of the king … coming to the east?’ Acha ventured, her voice almost lost beneath the crackle of the fire.
‘All here will see the skull that hides behind the face. Death is drawing closer.’
Rowena shivered. Had the wise woman seen into her own mind and read the thoughts that had passed there only moments earlier?
‘All here … in this house?’ Acha asked in a tremulous voice. ‘Or all in the east?’
Brigid did not answer.
Rowena leaned forward. She could not forget the thing that had driven her to visit that dangerous place in the middle of the night, the only thing that truly mattered to her. ‘The Normans took my husband. They dragged him from his bed, aye, and all the men in our village. If they were to be killed, the king’s bastards would have done it there and then. I must know where they were taken, and why.’ And I will bring them back, she thought, if no man is brave enough to aid me.
Brigid took a cup of brackish water and poured it into the bowl. She stirred vigorously with the bone until the leaves disintegrated, and then she peered into the contours of the sludge in the bottom.
‘Do the men live?’ Acha whispered.
‘They live. For now.’
Rowena tensed. Her thoughts flowed back across three summers to the hall by the lake, and her handfasting. She remembered Elwin folding his fingers around her own, and looking into his smiling face and thinking her heart would burst from happiness. No other man had moved her like that. He was as strong as an ox, but he could play the harp and sing like an angel. It was the laughter she missed the most. He made a hard life sweet. Ah, how they laughed. ‘For now, you say. How many hours or days do I have to find him?’
Brigid studied the paste.
Outside, a stone clinked against wood. All three women jerked their heads up. In the still night, the sound had come like thunder.
‘The Normans are here,’ Acha said under her breath. Her hand slipped inside her dress and she pulled out a short knife.
Rowena felt shocked to see she carried such a blade, as all the men did. The notion was lost in an instant when she saw Brigid rise. She reached out to the wise woman. ‘Wait,’ she said with urgency. ‘Tell me where my husband is.’
But Brigid swept to the door, the other two women forgotten. Rowena felt desperation surge through her and she scrambled after the wise woman, demanding an answer.
The crack of a branch reverberated from the edge of the clearing. Now Rowena allowed herself to fall silent. There would be no saving Elwin if she died there.
Brigid turned, her eyes glowing in the reflected firelight. ‘Flee,’ she urged in a hoarse voice. ‘Into the trees. Do not stop. Do not look back.’
She wrenched open the door and stepped out. Rowena felt Acha’s fingers grip her upper arm, and then the other woman propelled her into the night. Her feet whisked across the ground. In the whirl, she sensed Acha, transformed, no longer the silent watcher with the face like stone. A wild thing, snapping and snarling and lashing out with her knife, she tore across the clearing. Nothing could stand in her way. Pulled along at her side, Rowena glimpsed figures … men … little more than smudges against the greater dark. They fell away, afraid to confront this ravening wolf ripping through their midst. And then the branches tore at her face and hair and the shadows closed around her and they were scrambling over roots and snarled brambles.
‘Wait,’ she gasped, tearing her arm free. ‘We must help Brigid.’
Acha whirled, her face contorted, still wild with passion. ‘Go back and you die,’ she spat.
‘I … I cannot leave. As God is my witness, if there is aught I can do, I must.’
The other woman must have seen something in Rowena’s face, or heard something in her voice, for the beast faded from her features, and her brow knit. ‘You are mad,’ she whispered.
‘Come. They will think us long gone.’ She tugged at Acha’s sleeve and eventually the other woman relented.
They crept back through the willows to the edge of the clearing. The glow from the open doorway lit a tableau of silhouettes. Brigid had been forced to her knees, a spear resting against the back of her neck. Nine men surrounded her. But as Rowena’s eyes grew used to the gloom, she felt shocked. She saw no helms, no long shields or hauberks. The attackers’ hair had not been shaved at the back in the Norman way. She saw English men, and five of the interlopers wore the tunics of monks. She felt Acha tense beside her, and knew the other woman had seen the same puzzling thing. One of the men swiped the back of his hand hard across the wise woman’s face.
