Knights of the Hawk (49 page)

‘It’s like this every morning in these parts,’ Magnus told me as we huddled in our cloaks, waiting for it to clear.

‘Every morning?’ I asked.

‘All through the winter, from when the leaves begin to fall to when the first green shoots burst through the soil. And the winters last a long time this far north.’

It must have been another hour before the fog had cleared enough for us to raise the stone rings that served as anchors and, on the ebbing tide, leave the shelter of that harbour.

And so we set out for the isle without a name, Haakon’s isle, keeping close formation as we watched that land carefully for any signs of the enemy. I glimpsed farmsteads, barns, woods, sheep-pens and pastures, cairns and burial mounds, but no scouts or sentries, until we passed a headland where stood the crumbled ruins of an old stone roundhouse. There, on the cliff-top, waited a rider mounted on a white horse. He watched us as we drew closer, no doubt counting the number of oars on both ships and trying to guess from that how many we numbered, until suddenly he kicked on and galloped away, no doubt to Jarnborg, to tell his lord the news.

If Haakon didn’t already know we were coming for him, he would shortly.

Not long after that we came upon the cove Magnus had mentioned. As expected, there was no one to prevent us landing there, and so we ran both ships aground on the sand next to one another, close to where a narrow rivulet emptied into the sea. The day was silent, save for the plaintive cries of a pair of buzzards as they circled over a small clump of trees that stood a little way to the south, and the cawing of rooks gathered in its branches.

‘I don’t like this, lord,’ Serlo, ever the morose one, muttered. We jumped down from the ship, our boots sinking into the wet sand, and trudged up towards dry land. ‘He’s plotting something. He has to be.’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Or else our arrival has frightened him.’

I didn’t believe that, not for a moment, but didn’t want to admit that the silence unnerved me too. Did Haakon have a war-party hiding in that copse, waiting for the right moment to attack us? It seemed unlikely, unless they were keeping very still indeed so as not to disturb those rooks. It didn’t look big enough to hide more than fifty men, and we had more than twice that number. Not all of those were warriors, of course, but every oarsman and deck-hand knew how to handle a spear or a sword. It was no great army, not by any means, but it wasn’t a force to be dismissed readily either. I only hoped it was enough.

After holding another council, we agreed that a small group should go on ahead to scout out the island and see if we could get close enough to Jarnborg to be able to ascertain its strength. Leaving Serlo, Pons and Godric with Aubert and most of the rest of our party to help defend the ships in the event that the enemy did come, Wace, Eudo and I donned hauberks and helmets, knives and swords and shields. Together with Magnus and ten of his huscarls, Ælfhelm among them, we set out across the grassy tussocks and the outcrops of grey, lichen-covered stone that jutted from the earth, making our way towards higher ground where we might gain a better view of our surroundings.

In all that time we saw no more sign of our enemy, and none of the local folk dared approach when they saw us, instead running in from the fields to the safety of their homes. Probably they thought we were raiders, come to steal their flocks and their women. We left them alone, following Magnus as he led us half marching, half scrambling over that stony, broken land, until we descended towards a broad, flat plain that was crossed by countless tiny streams and hemmed in on both sides by high crags, and which ran for about a mile towards the sea. A few scattered barns and round wattle-and-thatch hovels lay close to the shore, where spindly-legged wading birds dug their bills into the mud in search of worms, and where a number of small fishing boats together with four longships were beached.

‘Those are Haakon’s ships, for certain,’ Magnus said, his expression darker than ever I had seen it. ‘I’d recognise them anywhere.’

By my reckoning, four longships meant at least two hundred men, and possibly as many as two hundred and fifty. I guessed the true number was smaller rather than larger, since each one would be an additional burden on his storehouses, representing a mouth that had to be fed and kept well watered, but I couldn’t be sure.

‘We’ve been seen,’ Wace said, and pointed up towards the crags on the northern side of that valley, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, where the same rider on the same white horse had stopped and seemed to be gazing down towards us. At least, I assumed it was the same man.

He must have known we were looking at him, but strangely he did not bolt at once as I might have expected. Instead he stayed where he was for a while longer, before once more galloping away, soon disappearing over the crest of the hill.

‘We ought to turn back, lord,’ Ælfhelm said to Magnus. ‘We’re too exposed here. If Haakon has a trap laid for us—’

‘He hasn’t,’ I interrupted him.

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘What would be the point of sending us such a warning if he meant to ambush us?’ I countered.

‘A warning?’

I sighed. ‘That horseman wasn’t trying to stay hidden. If he were, he’d have kept to the trees, and wouldn’t be riding anything as visible as a white steed. No, he wanted us to see him.’

‘Where’s the sense in that?’ Ælfhelm asked.

For all his years, the huscarl still had much to learn, but I was too tired to explain it myself. ‘Wace?’ I asked. ‘Eudo?’

It was Wace who spoke up first. ‘Haakon wants only to remind us that he’s still watching us and that he knows what we’re up to, and so make us a little more cautious.’

And his warning was working, too, on Ælfhelm at least, for although he said nothing more on the matter, I could see from the look in his eyes that he remained less than convinced.

So much in war comes down not to individual prowess of arms, or weight of numbers, or deftness of strategy, but to confidence. Confidence in one’s scouts and their information. Confidence in one’s ability to survive and succeed against the odds. Confidence in one’s friends and allies to stand firm in the shield-wall and protect one’s flanks in the charge. Even small raiding-bands can accomplish momentous deeds if they have sufficient nerve, while I’d heard tales of great hosts that in times past have been cowed into fleeing without so much as giving battle, merely because their commander lacked the stomach for the impending clash of arms, or because the enemy by their clever ruses had convinced him that victory was impossible.

In the end, it is very often not the side that is largest or most experienced that gains possession of the field of slaughter, but the one that is most confident. For that reason we did not turn back, but chose to carry on, keeping to the open where the enemy could clearly see us and where, if they did show themselves, we would be easily able to spot them coming. In doing so, we were letting Haakon know in turn that we had no fear of him.

We trudged on down that valley, across lush grassland made soft and heavy by the previous day’s rain. We watched the crags on both sides lest any more riders should appear, but they didn’t, and before long we glimpsed the forbidding slopes of the promontory rising to the north, just as Magnus had described it, ringed by steep scarps and crowned with a high stockade. A gatehouse looked out over the neck of land that lay to its south, and the golden, freshly laid thatch of the halls inside was just visible above the sharpened points of the walls’ timber posts.

Jarnborg.

This, then, was the iron fortress about which we had heard so much. I’d harboured half a hope that Magnus had been exaggerating, and that it would turn out to be little more than a simple ringwork of banks and ditches surmounted with stakes, like the refuges in which the folk who lived on the Marches sometimes sought shelter from the marauders who came across the dyke. But that half-hope was stifled the instant I set eyes on Jarnborg, and my heart sank, for it was every bit as impressive as its name suggested, as formidable a fastness as I had ever seen and easily a rival to any castle that we Normans, who were known and admired across the length and breadth of Christendom as master builders, had ever erected. Indeed it might as well have been wrought from iron, for it seemed like a place that could withstand the passing of ages and perhaps even the world’s end itself.

‘There it is,’ Magnus said. ‘Haakon’s winter stronghold.’

Desperately I scanned its walls, searching for some weakness we might exploit, but could find none, not from this approach at least. A cart-track wound its way up the incline towards the gates, between the boulders that everywhere jutted up from the ground, but it was narrow, the land on either side falling away sharply towards the shore, where the waves pounded and the seabirds flocked to feast upon whatever the tide had washed up.

And it was while we were all gazing, unspeaking, upon that fortress, that the gates opened, and from them issued forth seven horsemen. Too few to pose much threat to us, and so we waited to see what they would do, watching them carefully as they descended the track that led down towards the valley, until there could be no doubt that they were making towards us. They made no particular haste; even once they were on the level ground they rode merely at a gentle trot, as if enjoying a morning’s ride around their estates.

They hadn’t come to fight, I realised, but to talk.

‘Keep your eyes open and your wits about you,’ I told the others nonetheless.

‘You think this might be a ruse?’ Eudo asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said as the wind flapped at our cloaks and buffeted our cheeks. ‘But keep your hand close by your sword-hilt just in case.’

Six of the riders halted around two hundred paces away, close to where a wooden bridge crossed one of the many streams, leaving the seventh to ride on alone, giving flight to the banner in his hand. The black dragon, exactly as I remembered it, with eyes of fire and an axe gripped in its claws. The man who carried it was powerfully built and broad of shoulder; his greying hair was tied in a braid in the Danish style at the back of his head. A thick beard adorned his chin, his arms were decorated with rings made from rods of gold twisted around one another, and he wore a sealskin cloak over a mail shirt that looked in places to be missing a few links, but which nevertheless had been polished to a shine. His face was lined with the creases of age, but there was a wolfish keenness to the way his eyes darted about that somehow made him seem younger than his years.

And I recognised that face, for it was the same one that had haunted my dreams for a year and more, ever since that night at Beferlic.

Haakon Thorolfsson.

How many nights had I lain awake, thinking of the ways in which I would wreak vengeance upon the one who had murdered our lord? And now at last here he was, brazenly riding towards us. He grinned broadly, although there was no humour in his eyes. He checked his mount about fifteen paces away: close enough to be able to converse without needing to shout, but far enough that if any of us charged him he would easily be able to turn and gallop safely away. He wasn’t stupid.

‘I was wondering when you’d come,’ he said. There was a rasp to his voice that perhaps was a mark of the cold, wind-blasted lands from which he came. ‘Although I confess I’m disappointed. I thought that, between you, you might have been able to muster more of an army.’

I think we all knew there was no point in answering that, for none among us spoke. Haakon was well aware how large was the army we had brought with us, and we weren’t in the mood for playing such games.

‘Magnus Haroldson, my friend,’ he said, spreading his open palms as if in greeting. ‘It’s good to see you again after so long. Come to break your army against Jarnborg’s walls once more, have you?’

‘What do you want, Haakon?’ Magnus asked. ‘Or have you left the comfort of your hearth merely to insult us?’

‘Insult you?’ the Dane asked, and managed somehow to laugh and look affronted at the same time. ‘Why should I want to insult you? We are old allies, are we not?’

Magnus spat in his direction. ‘You stole everything from me. My brothers are dead because of you.’

‘If you thrust your hand into a wasps’ nest, then it is your own fault if you are stung. You and your brothers were foolish enough to leave your spoils unguarded, and so I took them. There is no more to it than that. I had nothing to do with their deaths. If anyone should bear the blame for that, it is these Frenchmen you call your friends. They were the ones who deprived your family of everything it had, and who drove you from England. Is that not true?’

I glanced at Magnus, but couldn’t read his expression. I understood, of course, what the Dane was trying to do, and only hoped that the Englishman understood it too, and that his hatred for Haakon outweighed his hatred for our kind.

‘Very well,’ the elder man said when it was clear that Magnus had nothing more to say. ‘You ask me what I want, and this is my answer.’ He turned his gaze towards myself, Wace and Eudo. ‘I want to know which one of you is the Breton, Tancred of Earnford.’

That surprised me, for I hadn’t expected him to have come by that information.

‘I am,’ I said curtly as I felt my sword-arm itch and imagined how, if I could only get close enough to him, I would slice my blade-edge across his steed’s neck, unhorsing him. Then, while he lay on the ground, I would drive the point down into his mailed chest, using all my strength to bury it deep. One strike was all it would take to puncture his heart. One strike, and we could end this now. But he was too watchful to allow that to happen. I only had to take a couple of paces towards him and he would turn and gallop away with ease.

He smiled with the warmth of an old friend who had not seen me in years. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you are the one I have heard so much about. The one who gave Eadgar Ætheling his scar. A worthy warrior.’

I wasn’t about to confirm or to deny it for him, and so instead I said, ‘How do you know my name?’

At that Haakon gave a laugh. ‘You cannot send your spies, your knowledge-gatherers, all across Britain, and yet expect me not to hear that you’ve been seeking me out. I’ve suspected for months that you’d be coming. It was only a question of when. To tell the truth, I didn’t think it would take you this long.’