Hereward 02 - The Devil's Army (2 page)

‘You must have faith, monk,’ Hereward replied, enjoying his joke.

‘If the Normans attack now, we are dead men, all of us.’

‘There are risks in everything we do. And there will be more, until we have enough men to take this war to the king. Our numbers are growing, but still they are far from what we need,’ Hereward said in as reassuring a tone as he could muster. How
to bring the English together and build an army, that was his greatest worry. Time was growing short. Soon William the Bastard would turn his full attention to the east. Neither Alric nor any of his men understood that the rebellion hung by a thread until he had found a solution to that problem. And this night, he hoped, would help. He rested a hand on his friend’s shoulder, adding, ‘We gamble or we lose. That is the simple truth.’

‘Aye, but whose lives are at stake when you make your wager?’

Hereward didn’t need to answer.

Once Alric had returned to the column of men, Hereward nodded, and the warrior at the front jabbed the captive once again, forcing him to set off. Leather soles rattled loose flints as the group followed the causeway through the treacherous bogs.

The night came down.

Among the willows there was little moonlight to guide their way. They could risk no naked flames for fear they would shine like beacons across the sea of dark. As the pace slowed, Hereward’s thoughts raced back across the summers. The peaceful days of his youth, fishing and drinking with friends around his father’s hall at Barholme, sometimes seemed to belong to another man. He missed those times – though he did not miss his father’s fist or shoe. He winced, trying to turn his mind’s eye away from the old man’s face, but instead he glimpsed a flash of his mother lying on the floor of the hall, bloody and beaten to death. That memory brought a surge of hot anger.

Then he pictured that bastard William sitting on the stolen throne. He knew nothing of the new king’s looks, but oddly it was his father’s face he saw swimming there beneath the crown. His anger burned hotter still.

When they rested again, he leaned against the still-warm bark of an ash tree, listening. He heard the screech of an owl far beyond the water, and glimpsed the flutter of a bat overhead. The men clutched their spears, knuckles white in the gloom, heads bowed so no one could see the fear in their faces. Yet
the captive watched them all with a lingering wolf’s eye as he squatted at the foot of a willow. He was seemingly untroubled by his wounds. His breathing was steady, his shoulders at ease.

Hereward rested his hand on the shoulder of the nearest man, Godfrid, still only sixteen summers old and as raw as all the others who had taken that journey north. The young warrior nodded in reply to his leader’s silent communication. Dropping low, he crept along the track ahead to scout the way.

After a few moments, Alric stiffened. ‘I heard something,’ he hissed.

Hereward looked around, but it was impossible to see more than four spear-lengths. He could smell the monk’s fresh fear-sweat. ‘The water never stops moving. The mud sucks and belches. You are still not used to the moods of the land around these parts,’ he replied.

‘No, I heard a hard sound,’ Alric insisted. ‘Like iron on wood.’

Hereward cocked his head and listened. As the night-breeze dropped, the faint crack of a fallen branch echoed from away to the east. He whirled, whistling through clenched teeth. His men crouched so they were harder to see. The captive only grinned. One of the English stood up and planted a heavy foot into the man’s ribs. The Norman glowered, but said nothing. He knew that his life would be lost in an instant if he dared draw attention to their location.

‘Kill him now,’ one of the men urged. ‘He will only slow us down.’

‘Our enemies may have only crossed our trail and not yet know where we are,’ Alric whispered, his voice hopeful.

‘They know,’ Hereward growled. He darted to the captive. Drawing his sword, he raised the iron blade until the tip pressed at the man’s neck. ‘Slow your step for even a moment and I will leave your head here for your kind to find.’

The Norman held the warrior’s gaze for a moment until his eyes flickered away and down. Keeping his blade against the man’s back, Hereward thrust the prisoner forward until they were running. From the back of the column, he could hear
Fromund’s ragged breathing as he lumbered with the wounded Swithun. The dying man’s prophecy had come back to haunt them.

Hereward swept out his left arm. As his men slowed, he squinted into the dark ahead. With senses long accustomed to the whispering fenland nights, he felt his skin prickle at something unfamiliar. He prowled forward alone. Barely had he gone a few steps when he glimpsed a grey shape among the trees.

A Norman scout
, he thought, though the moment the notion passed through his mind he knew it was wrong. He crept forward a few more paces and the pale figure came into focus. It was Godfrid, the look-out, spreadeagled across a hawthorn bush. Blood dripped in a steady patter. His head lay at an unnatural angle, attached to the torso by little more than a strip of sinew and flesh.

The Normans were on every side.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

THE ENGLISH WARRIORS
reeled away from the slaughtered man. Breath caught in narrow throats as eyes searched the enveloping dark for whoever had slain their brother. Then shields snapped up and spears levelled, and, as one, they squatted and listened. A breeze stirred the leaves and the blood dripped into the sticky puddle under the fallen man’s feet, but no other sound reached their ears.

Hereward crouched beside them. He saw their white knuckles and their drawn expressions and knew he must quickly move to calm them. Fear bred errors and with these inexperienced men that would soon lead to a messy death. ‘Godfrid gave his life for us,’ he whispered. ‘We must not let his sacrifice come to naught. Haste now. We will take the narrow track by Dedman’s Pool—’

Flames flared in the eastern dark. His reassuring voice drained away as he watched the flickering light. A brand had been lit. Their enemy no longer saw a need to hide under night’s cloak.

‘There.’ Alric pointed to the west. Through the swaying branches, another torch burned. As he turned in a slow arc, more lights crackled into life all around them, five, ten; he gave up counting. How many of those bastards were out there, Hereward wondered? Fifty? A hundred? The Normans had
sealed their trap, biding their time until they were sure their prey was at the centre of their circle. The monk looked over, but he kept his wits enough not to give voice to his thought: that there was no way out.

‘Keep low and run,’ the Mercian ordered. ‘This is our land. We still have a lead on them.’

The captive laughed silently as he looked around the unsettled faces. Hunstan, the eldest there, spun round, bristling as he jabbed his spear. ‘He will betray us. We must kill him.’

‘Let him go,’ Hereward said.

The warriors turned to look at him, baffled. Aghast, Alric stuttered, ‘Godfrid gave up his life for us to learn what this Norman knows. And if he goes free, he will draw the enemy to us within moments.’

All around the bobbing flames were drawing closer across the sea of night. He could hear the clang of iron now, and the bark of harsh voices. The Normans’ blood was up. They were ready for a slaughter. ‘Set him free,’ Hereward ordered.

The captive glanced around, unsure what was happening. Hereward grabbed his sweat-soaked tunic and hurled him back along the track with a sharp kick up his arse for good measure. The Norman fell, flashing one murderous look back at his former captors, before he scrambled to his feet and raced away into the dark.

Alric snatched his friend’s arm. ‘An act of kindness for your enemy? This from a warrior who has hacked off hands and burned faces for a wrong word.’

‘Has it not been your mission in life to teach me to be the lamb and not the wolf? All your labours must have worked,’ Hereward said, ignoring the monk’s suspicious gaze.

The invaders beat iron swords on mail as their death-march drew nearer. Their guttural war-song rumbled across the desolate fens. Dread was only another of their weapons and they used it to good effect.

‘Run,’ Hereward exhorted before his men had time to take full measure of the threat they faced, ‘as if the Devil were at
your backs.’ Taking the lead, he pounded along the track until he saw the bent oak that marked the spot where the narrower path branched away to the left. It was more treacherous still: barely wide enough for one, it snaked through deep bogs where a wrong step would plunge a man to his death. To take that way would slow their pace, no doubt, but the Normans could come at them from only two directions.

‘I admit, more than once I have worried that madness has claimed you,’ Alric gasped between heavy breaths. ‘But this time I truly think you have lost your wits.’

‘It is my curse to listen to your wittering through day and night until I die. I know that,’ Hereward grumbled as he searched the dark ahead. ‘But I would spend a day on my knees in your church if it would buy me silence for the rest of this night.’

‘You have likely killed me anyway so you have no more need to complain. Why did I not stay in Ely?’

‘A good question,’ the Mercian said, his jaw taut.

Through the clustering willows and ash trees, he could see the wavering flames dance closer. The circle was drawing in tighter still. In his head swam the stony face of Ivo Taillebois, called by his own men the Butcher. Though he had glimpsed the Norman sheriff only a few times while spying through a wall of branches, he could never forget the creator of so much of the misery that had been inflicted on the fens. How that bastard must be laughing now. He had been ready for the English foray, that was clear. Perhaps he had even been praying for it. Losing one man would signify nothing to him if it meant he could follow the secret trail back into the well-guarded heart of the English fortress.

Ahead, torches bobbed where the track reached solid ground once more. Hereward hissed and the men came to a halt behind him.

‘We are trapped,’ Alric whispered.

‘Monk,’ Hereward cautioned, waving a finger. He nodded to a shaped stone standing upright at the edge of the track. ‘The waters are low this time of year. Beneath the surface a
ridge of higher ground runs south. If we are careful we should be able to walk along it and keep our heads high enough to breathe.’

‘And how will you know when you are following the line of the ridge?’ The monk’s voice wavered.

‘When I am not, I will be dead.’ Hereward heard his friend swallow and he allowed himself another grin. Silence at last. ‘You have two choices,’ he whispered. ‘Put your faith in God, or for now put your faith in me. I have not let you die yet, have I?’

Before Alric could respond, he slipped into the cold slime next to the shaped stone. The clutching fingers of the reeking bog dragged his feet down. Bubbles gurgled and burst around his groin, his waist, rising higher and higher still. When the pungent mud reached his chest, he felt his foot settle on solid ground. He waded forward a few paces, every iota of his wits focused on the sensations from his feet. Tapping one shoe in front of him, he felt the bumps and hollows for the narrow path of the ridge. As he moved on, he turned his head to see Alric immediately behind him and the rest of the war-band following in his wake, easing into the bog one by one. He made out the silhouette of Fromund with a barely conscious Swithun, and watched briefly as Fromund held the wounded man’s arms and lowered him into the marsh, where clutching hands guided him in and supported him. As Hereward worked his cautious way onwards he felt pride at how Swithun’s brothers were prepared to risk their own lives to bring the fallen warrior home.

Once before, when he was a boy, he had taken this path, though his chin had barely reached above the surface. But then he had been filled with the stupidity and bravado of youth. He remembered the sludge gushing down his throat. Choking, fighting for air, the dark closing over his head. His panic as he realized death had him in its grip. He shook himself back to the present.

Hands scrabbled for his back, almost throwing him off-balance.
Hereward wrenched his head around. ‘If you pitch me to my death, by all that’s holy, I will drag you down with me.’

‘Forgive me,’ the monk replied in a tremulous voice. The Mercian could see he was shaking and would likely soon make a fatal error. He grasped the man’s shoulder and whispered warmly, ‘Have faith. All will be well.’

Alric forced a worried smile, his teeth pale in the gloom.

In silence, they waded into the dark.

Enveloped in the stink of rotting vegetation, they heaved against the sucking mire. With each step the silt licked up until it reached their shoulders, and they began to shiver from the cold despite the heat of the night. Hereward glanced back at the trail of warriors snaking into the marsh. The end of the column was lost to the dark, but the faces of those nearest were taut with stark concentration. Everyone there knew a wrong step could be the end of them. ‘Slow and steady will see us through this,’ he hissed in encouragement. Yet time and again he heard a muted splash as someone snatched at the man in front for support when his feet slipped off the narrow ridge. Alric’s muttered prayers droned out, the words laced with mounting desperation.

As they rounded a spur of land dense with trees, a torch glimmered among the branches barely ten spear-lengths away. Hereward hissed for his men to halt. Norman voices rang out through the dark, drawing nearer. He squinted, watching the light gleam off helms. Five men, he guessed, exploring the finger of dry land reaching into the marsh. Hereward watched the light from the lofted brands dance across the gleaming surface of the mud towards the huddled English. Once it revealed them, they would be easy targets for the Norman archers.

Closer the light glimmered until Hereward could almost touch it with his hand. It wavered there, taunting them. The voices chimed louder, insistent tones mixed among the barked orders. Had they been seen? He wished he understood more of that strange tongue than the few words he had gathered. His chest tightened.