The Way Between the Worlds (12 page)

The lord, as Rollo had already guessed, was referred to by everyone as Hawksclaw. Nobody knew much about him, other than that he lived in the wild lands to the north-east, in what some said was a ruined castle. They whispered, wide-eyed, that he had no wife but kept seven women captive, one for each night of the week, and by them had a gang of bastard sons as cruel and ruthless as he was.

Listening to the tales, believing perhaps a third of what he was told, Rollo recognized what he must do. He knew that many of the English did not like their new Norman masters, and he could well appreciate why not. But here in the north-west, if the alternative to William’s rule was a ruthless, lawless brigand who made up the rules as he went along, then surely the choice was obvious. Rollo’s own attitude, had anyone asked him, was that at least William’s firm hand kept the country peaceful. William did not care what men believed, what they thought, which god they worshipped; as long as you worked hard, kept the peace and paid your taxes, in all likelihood the king would leave you alone. Moreover, he would fight off the country’s enemies, as a king should.

Such were Rollo’s thoughts as, step by careful step, he made his plans to kill the man known as Hawksclaw and so leave Carlisle and the north-west safe and ready for the king’s arrival.

It should have been foolproof. So thorough had Rollo’s preparations been that he believed he knew his enemy’s routine down to every instant of the day. Hawksclaw was not a hard man to read: he was a bully and a braggart, and he kept his men obedient to him through brutal cruelty. Rollo had formed the opinion, after having watched the man’s stronghold for a week or more, that the removal of their charismatic but vicious leader would be the end of the threat posed by this particular private army. Hawksclaw’s men, he believed, would creep away once he was dead. It did not seem likely that any of his sons would assume their father’s mantle. They numbered not the ‘gang’ that the people of Carlisle had claimed but in fact only three, one of whom was a boy and one crippled. The remaining son looked as if he had suffered too much from his father’s casual brutality and appeared to be a weak, indecisive man.

Rollo slipped into the stronghold for the final time late one night. It did indeed look like a ruined castle, but the days of its strength and power were long gone. The outer walls were breached in several places, and the wooden gates had been repaired many times, latterly in what appeared to have been a half-hearted fashion. Rollo’s previous forays had enabled him to memorize the interior layout, which consisted of a central yard – foul with mud, ordure, puddles of yellowish water and dozens of animals, from scrawny hens to skinny, disease-ridden wolfhounds – surrounded on three sides by rows of two-storey buildings made mostly of wood. These structures were, in general, crudely made, filthy dirty inside and slowly falling apart. On the lower level there were stables, a small forge and several storerooms, most of them half-empty. Above were a series of dilapidated alcoves that stood open on the side facing the yard, the only privacy for those within provided by flimsy wooden shutters or badly-cured animal skins. One corner of the stronghold was built of stone, and it was here that the lord had his private chambers. They were on the upper floor, reached by a wooden staircase that led up from the yard. There was a wide hall, in the centre of which a fire burned in a circular hearth, and, off to one side, a bed chamber. The whole place stank like a midden built over a latrine.

There were usually a handful of dispirited men hanging around and sometimes more; Rollo had once counted fifty. It appeared that not all of Hawksclaw’s fighting force were permanently billeted with him, which made sense because, for one thing, the lord would not have to feed them all if they did not live with him, and, for another, if they were spread out, there was less danger that every one of them would be wiped out in a single attack. Sometimes Rollo had seen a group of woman, huddled together, one of them looking fearfully over her shoulder and another sporting a swollen, weeping black eye.

It was clear from the demeanour of Hawksclaw and his men that they felt sufficiently secure in their lonely stronghold not to fear attack. The place was minimally guarded, and it was easy for a man of Rollo’s experience to slip in and out unseen by the pair of young men – little more than boys – who habitually leaned against the gates and bragged to each other of their prowess in the saddle, in the field of combat and, most frequently, in the bed of whichever of the women they claimed to have most recently forced themselves on.

On that last night visit, the two young guards had been replaced by an old veteran with a huge beard and a long scar through one eye. He had made himself comfortable, slumped down in a corner out of the wind, and appeared to be fast asleep. Passing him silently, Rollo slipped through one of the wider breaches in the walls and, for a few moments, stood in the deep shadows looking out across the yard. There was not a soul, human or animal, to be seen. He made his soft-footed way up to the chamber where Hawksclaw slept. There was a gaping hole in the stone wall, inadequately covered by a torn piece of leather, and sufficient moonlight came through for Rollo to see quite clearly. He approached the pile of animal skins that served the lord for a bed and stood for a moment looking down at the sleeping man under his thick blanket. Even in the relaxation of sleep, the face was cruel and hard. His mind cool and detached, Rollo killed Hawksclaw as he slept.

He was on his way out of the room when he heard a faint sound. Spinning round, he saw a girl spring up from the floor on the far side of Hawksclaw’s bed, where she must have been hidden from view, curled up and asleep. She was naked, her body sinewy and slim, her small breasts firm and high. Long black hair flowed down her back, and her dark eyes were blazing. She sprang at Rollo, and he felt a searing, burning pain in his chest, about a hand’s breadth above his heart.

He grabbed the handle of the knife and pulled it from her hand, biting his lips against the cry of agony as the steel was wrested out of his flesh. Instantly, her hands were at him, her fingers scrabbling for his eyes, and he grabbed her wrists, forcing her hands away. She tried to kick him in the groin, but he sensed the attack coming and, grasping her around the waist, flung her to one side so that her flying feet found only empty air. He knew she would kill him if she could.

Among his victims, no woman yet featured. He did not wish to kill one now, even a wild demon like her. Bunching his right hand into a fist, he hit her on the side of her head, and she went limp. He carried her across to the bed and laid her beside her dead lord. The night was cold, so he was careful to cover her well with the heavy woollen blanket.

For a moment he stood staring down at her. He had not hit her hard, and already she was stirring. He turned and left.

The wound in his chest became inflamed, and he believed he would die.

While he was still able to travel, he’d put many miles between himself and Hawksclaw’s stronghold. He did not believe the dead man’s followers posed any serious threat to the king’s plans to take the area, but they were more than capable of taking lengthy and agonizing revenge on the man who had killed their leader. If Rollo were to be caught, death, when it at last came, would be nothing but a relief.

He had made his way to the most desolate of his refuges, a mystifying ruined building like nothing he had ever seen before. It was rectangular in shape, not very large, and at one end were three squat pillars. The site was overgrown, and chunks of stone lay all over it. There were the remains of a hearth, and, beside it, a pit dug into the earth. The building must once have been underground, for even now, although open to the wide sky, it lay beneath the surface of the surrounding land. It was reasonably safe to have a fire there – by day at least – and by using dry fuel it was possible to keep the smoke to a barely visible minimum. Rollo had adopted the pit as a sleeping place, lining it with dry leaves and dead grass and building up the earth in front of it so that, once within, he was sheltered from the wind and the rain. He took to setting many of the stones that littered the site into the fire during the day, and then placing them in his pit when he extinguished the fire at nightfall. Some nights, when the temperature did not fall too dramatically, he was quite warm.

In the depths of his sickness he cried out to her. But she did not come.

He realized, as slowly he began to recover, that it was his own careful preparations that had saved him. His refuge was too far away from Hawksclaw’s stronghold for any of the dead man’s men to have hunted him down, even if they had tried. And his foresight in making ready a safe, sheltered place to lie up in had kept him from freezing to death when, helpless and wracked with fever, he had lain in his pit and longed for Lassair.

In time, he had begun to understand that he would live.

Now, he knew he could not go on hiding. His wound was healing – though in the absence of any professional attention it had closed in a ragged, bumpy line that itched and prickled. It should have been stitched, he knew; he had other scars on his body that, although the result of far graver wounds, had mended cleanly thanks to careful stitching. But he had baulked at sewing up his own flesh. His only remedy had been a small bottle of lavender oil; Lassair had told him it helped fight infectious humours. He wondered now if it had saved his life, reflecting that if so, it was the second time she had held him back from death.

Now that his strength was returning, he knew he must hasten to send word secretly to the king, to inform him that the potential threat in the north-west no longer existed. Hawksclaw was dead and, without his leadership, Rollo did not believe that wretched, ragged band of old men in their lonely, tumbledown compound stood much of a chance of stopping a man like William.

And then, after he had located one of his network of reliable men and dispatched his message, there was the matter of the other command that William had issued to him  . . .

Rollo had deliberately not thought about it until now. It was so different in kind from any challenge he had faced before that he was wary of it, to the point of being fearful. He was used to flesh and blood men – or women, he thought ruefully, remembering the girl in Hawksclaw’s bed – who came running at him with sharp steel in their hands trying to kill him. His world was a fighter’s world, and he was content that his talent for the silent, secret work of the killer spy had been recognized by his king, and that William was putting him to good use. But this other business was nothing like either a clean, open battle or a clandestine assignment.

In his heart, Rollo knew that he did not want to do this job. It was so far outside his experience that he was not sure even how to begin, never mind bring it to a successful conclusion. And the whisper of the unknown force that seemed to be involved frightened him; he would not have said that he was superstitious, but for this terrible thing to have been achieved, the power involved must be awesome indeed  . . .

His thoughts were getting him nowhere. He did not have a choice, for the king had given him a mission and he had accepted it. He would have to do his best, and if that wasn’t good enough he would probably die.

With a heavy heart, still feeling weak and far from well, he got up very early one morning, packed up his belongings and carefully went over every inch of the place that had been his strange refuge. When finally he turned his back on it and walked away, it would have been all but impossible to see that any man had been there.

He trudged off along the line of the ancient wall that snaked away eastwards across this narrow neck of England. He had left Strega in the care of a man in a small and isolated village some miles away, and until he reached the place, he had no choice but to walk. His pack had rarely seemed heavier, and it was only willpower that kept him going. The weather was milder – spring was well advanced now – and for a fit man the march would have been a pleasure. Rollo, as he very soon realized, was very far from fit.

As, eventually, the lonely hamlet came into view, Rollo hoped fervently that the stable boy had taken good care of Strega, for she and Rollo had a long ride ahead of them.

He would travel on towards the east until he reached the sea. There were still some twenty-five miles to go, across the wild north country which his pursuers would know so much better than he did. Twenty-five miles to cover, during which he would be alone and vulnerable to attack. He would have to employ all his skill, using not only sight and hearing to detect a possible threat, but also that strange extra sense that seemed to be there when he most needed it. If Strega was well fed and well rested, as indeed she ought to be, then she would be eager to run and, with any luck, they would reach the sea by nightfall. He would find some busy, bustling port in which to lose himself, and he would have the luxury of a good hot meal, perhaps even a wash, and a comfortable bed to sleep in. Then – and his soul began to sing at the thought – at long last he would turn south and leave the desolate, dangerous north behind him.

His next destination and his next mission lay just ahead of him, in the near future. The fact that what the king had ordered him to do was as dangerous, in its way, as a whole troop of murderous brigands with revenge in their hearts, he did not allow himself to think about.

One thing at a time. And he still had to get to the coast  . . .

EIGHT

M
y huge joy at the realization that it was Rollo who had been calling out to me made me walk on air for two whole days. Then, as I woke on the third morning from a deep and dreamless sleep without the merest suspicion of words spoken inside my head, I was hit with a sudden sense of dread, so profound that for a moment I felt physically sick.

He had been in terrible danger. He had been hiding in some frightful pit once used in the initiation rites of an ancient religion. He had been wounded, sick, desperate. I had seen him, and I had heard him call out to me, many times. Now the dream visions had gone and the words had ceased.