Time of the Wolf (19 page)

“I will no longer be run like a dog.” His voice burned with passion.

Acha gripped his arms. “You are one man. Would you kill them all? Would you ride into London and fight your way into Edward's presence, when surely Harold will have all the King's swords raised in his defense?”

“If not I, then who?” He found his thoughts turning to Wulfhere and the other men and women of Eoferwic, suffering under the yoke of Tostig's taxes. The Godwins cared little for anyone but themselves, that was clear enough. The injustice of Harold's cold-hearted drive for power struck the warrior as acutely as his seething desire for vengeance. “My plans must change,” he continued, trying to keep his voice steady. “The Godwins and their allies—even Archbishop Ealdred who is so close to them—they are all my enemies now.” He paused, his mind flashing on a vision of Tostig impaled on Brainbiter. Could he get away with such an act?

“The Godwins are the most powerful family in the land. There will be no escape for you anywhere in England,” Acha ventured.

Hereward looked at her closely, trying to read the thoughts that chased each other like shadows across her face. He laid his hand upon his heart.

“We have known each other only a short time, but I feel we are of a kind,” he said. “In here there is something that connects us. I have some business to attend to, but after I am done, before dawn, meet me at the wharf. I will protect you. And we will be together.”

“You will protect me?” she echoed, unable to meet his eyes.

“I know what you want.” He transferred his hand to her heart. “I know your secret fears and hopes, because they are my own.”

“And what is your business now?”

“I go to free the monk you told me of.”

“The murderer?”

He nodded. “He deserves better justice than he will ever find in Eoferwic.”

A cry of alarm echoed through the storm. Hereward guessed the bloody evidence of his questioning had been uncovered. “I must go before I am found here.” He stepped toward the door, then turned back. “Meet me at the wharf before dawn,” he repeated, searching her face for a response.

Another cry, caught by a second throat, and a third. Hereward knew he couldn't afford to wait any longer. With one backward glance at Acha, he slipped out into the blizzard. Dark figures darted through the swirling snow, their calls disappearing into the howling wind. Hereward ran along the side of Acha's house to the enclosure fence, kicked his way through the gate, and lurched across the knee-deep drifts. The flakes were falling so fast, he knew his tracks would soon be covered.

He put Acha out of his mind. Pulling his cloak around him, he forced his way through the bitter gale toward the church. Deep inside him, the drums beat out the word
betrayal
in a steady rhythm. His plans were shifting fast to match the new way he saw the world, a place of shadows where honor mattered little. He was beginning to think that the men who spoke of honor were the ones least likely to have it.

On the higher ground, the waves of white washed up high against the sturdy gray vessel of the church. The bell protested with faint musical notes against the wind's turbulent battering. Beneath the tower, the low houses of the clerics stood silent, their thatch now lost beneath folds of snow.

Hereward strode to the hut where Alric had been held, but he found the small straw-covered room empty. Rats scurried away when he entered. He grew angry, and that surprised him a little. The monk meant nothing to him. But the order imposed by undeserving powers needed to be confronted, to be disrupted, and the monk, like all men, deserved a second chance. Prowling around the church enclosure, Hereward considered dragging the archbishop from his hall and prodding him with a sword until Alric's new location was revealed. Perhaps more than prodding him.

But as the warrior made his way to Ealdred's looming hall, he heard faint, discordant voices. Following the sound, he came to a sturdier house with a timber roof. He identified Alric's tones, and, he thought, the archbishop's. The two men appeared to be involved in an argument. Pressing his ear against the door, Hereward listened.

“Tell me what the Mercian knows.” It was the archbishop, his voice strained.

“If I knew anything, I would not tell you.” Alric's voice cracked.

“What others have heard his lies?”

“I do not believe he lies. He has always spoken with an honest tongue. Which is more than I can say for other men I have encountered in Eoferwic.”

“He is a murderer … a beast.”

“He is a man. Like all men.”

Ealdred snorted. “The Mercian has shown himself to be corrupted by evil—”

“Like all men,” Alric interrupted in a loud voice, “he has good and evil within him, and like all men he can be saved and brought to God.
Woe unto them that call Evil Good, and Good Evil—”

“Do not quote scripture to me! You face punishment for your own crimes against God. First the court will hear your shame, and then you will endure your trial by ordeal. Your flesh will be seared. Your nose will be filled with the stink of your own burning flesh, and your cries will rend your throat. Let us see then if you continue to protect this worthless sinner.”

“I care nothing for myself.” Alric's voice broke with emotion. “You think to tempt me. You hint that I will face no trial, no ordeal, if I give up this man who needs me. I welcome the opportunity to proclaim my sins and beg forgiveness.”

“What vanity to think that you alone can save a soul,” the archbishop sneered. “Another sin against God.”

Hereward felt unaccountably moved by the monk's words. He had been as unyielding as the oak for as long as he could remember, but that night seemed to be one of transformation. Anger crystallizing from his stew of confusion, he tore open the door and stepped into the warm room.

The archbishop whirled, fear rising in his taut features as it had done in the faces of the four men who had died earlier that night. Lit by the golden light of the blazing fire in the hearth, Alric closed his eyes and gave a beatific smile. He was kneeling before Ealdred, his hands and feet bound. New bruises mottled his face. Two men stood guard over him, not churchmen. Hereward guessed they had been sent by the earl to extract the answers Tostig required.

“Stay back,” the archbishop hissed, “or God will smite you down.”

“Your friend and ally, the earl, is already discovering that God's will may not coincide with his. Now it is your time to learn this lesson.” He raised his axe.

“You dare attack a man of God? Truly, you are capable of any monstrous deed,” Ealdred gasped, backing to the far side of the house. He urged the guards forward with insistent hand movements.

With little enthusiasm, the two men grabbed the spears leaning against the mud-colored wall and edged forward. Hereward faced his opponents, his eyes glinting.

“Spare them,” Alric said.

“They can spare themselves by throwing down their weapons.”

“Do not listen to him. Attack. The earl will reward you,” Ealdred cried.

The monk pleaded again.

“Quiet,” Hereward shouted back at the young cleric. “Always you are like a fly buzzing in my ear.”

The guards attacked as one. The warrior spun between the spear thrusts and brought the axe down on one haft, shattering it. Continuing to spin, he swung his weapon toward the disarmed guard's head. At the last moment, he turned the blade so the flat struck the man's temple, knocking him cold.

“There,” Hereward snapped. “I listened. Now, be silent.”

The other guard struggled to turn his spear to the warrior's new position. Hereward kicked the man's legs out from under him and made to drive his axe into the man's chest as he sprawled.

“No,” Alric insisted. “Let him live.”

Cursing loudly, Hereward wavered, and then kicked the guard in the head. “I am already regretting my decision to come here this night.” He glared at the monk, then turned to the archbishop, still cowering against the far wall. Shaking his axe toward the cleric, he said, “You play games with lives to see the advancement of the Godwins. I would be a fool to think you would ever reconsider your alliances, but know that judgment comes, sooner or later.” He grabbed the back of the monk's habit and dragged him toward the door. Slitting Alric's bonds, he hissed, “My patience balances on a knife-edge, monk. It would be wise for you to keep your jaws clamped firmly shut from now on.”

Alric nodded, his smile unwavering.

Briefly emboldened, Ealdred called, “Your days are numbered, Mercian. You will rue this night.”

Hereward flashed the archbishop a murderous look and then hauled the young monk out into the snow-blasted night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

S
ICKENED
, T
OSTIG SURVEYED THE BLOOD SEEPING INTO THE
floor of the reeking house. His gaze roamed toward the bodies discarded and dismembered as if they'd been cordwood, and then skittered away. Though he was battle-hardened, the earl had never witnessed a scene of such dispassionate slaughter. He glanced at the corpse still hanging by its feet from the beam and muttered, “What kind of man is capable of such things?”

Kraki levered one of the bodies with the toe of his shoe and shrugged. “A good man, if he is at your shoulder. Less so if you stand axe to axe.”

Tostig kneaded his brow in thought. “Find him. Do not let him leave Eoferwic.”

The Viking nodded. “The slave might know his whereabouts. The Mercian has been trapped by her thighs, and she is one who can steal a man's wits in the process.” Still drunk from the festivities, he lurched out into the night.

The earl hesitated a moment, eyeing the marks of torture on the hanging body and wondering how much Hereward had learned from the dying man. He had promised his brother that he would hold the north in the name of the Godwins, and every day he felt he was failing a little more. And now his chance to prove to Harold that he was worthy of respect was on the cusp of being destroyed by a Mercian who was more beast than man. He could hear his brother's condemnation ringing in his head, as he had heard it ever since he'd been a child. Tostig the Worthless. Tostig who would amount to nothing.

Frustration turning to anger, the earl followed Kraki out into the bitter night. He found the Viking in the woman's house. Acha sprawled on the floor, teeth bared like a cornered wildcat, her cheek pink from the blow that had been struck.

Tostig stood over her. “Where is your man?”

Feigning deference, Acha stood and bowed her head, but her eyes flashed with defiance. The Viking grasped for her, but the earl held him back with one hand. He stroked his chin for a moment as he studied her and then said, “I understand you, woman. You are cunning and clever. I know you had standing among the Cymri and here you are as nothing. You secretly despise all around you and would seek to overturn the established order, if you could.”

Acha returned his gaze boldly, but said nothing.

“You saw in this man … strength? Protection? Hope that he could help you achieve your aims? But you must now know that he cannot protect you, or serve any purpose that you hold dear. With him, your only future is an outlaw life, hunted and despised, and eventual death. A woman like you …” the earl shook his head, choosing his words, “… would find no value in anything a man like that could offer.”

The space following Tostig's words was filled with the crackle of the fire and the howl of the wind outside. Acha let her gaze drift down to the floor and said, in a bitter voice, “He has gone to the church to free the monk who is held prisoner there.”

Tostig nodded. Turning to Kraki, he ordered, “Bring the huscarls together. Find Hereward. Slaughter him as he slaughtered our guests. Leave no trace.”

The earl followed the Viking out, leaving Acha still seething, filled with murderous intent. Returning to the hall, he found Judith waiting for him, her troubled expression at odds with her festive emerald dress.

“You will not harm him?” she asked.

“He is our enemy and he has committed terrible crimes.”

“Hereward is a lost soul. Better to pray for him.”

“It is too late for that.” He would have turned away, but Judith caught his face between her hands and pulled his gaze back to her eyes.

“You are a good man, husband. You will destroy yourself following your brother's path.”

“I am worth as much as Harold.”

“You are. More.”

He kissed her hand, enjoying the fleeting moment of tenderness. His face fell when he heard Kraki's barked orders outside the door. “I must go,” he said, averting his eyes to hide his shame.

The Viking had lined up his men in the space beyond the hall's doors. Each huscarl held a torch that guttered and snapped in the gale, the light casting monstrous shadows across their fierce faces. In their other hands, the warriors gripped their axes or spears, hungry for blood.

Kraki glanced at Tostig, who nodded his assent. With a battle cry in the old tongue, the Viking turned and loped into the blizzard. The earl watched the flickering torches move away into the dark and hoped the dawn would come soon.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“W
HAT IS THAT
?” S
HIELDING HIS EYES AGAINST THE BITING
flakes, Alric pointed across the thatched roofs of the town. In the distance, dancing flames gleamed off the deepening snow.

“Torches,” Hereward replied. “They come for us. I had hoped we would have more time before my work was discovered. Still, this is our lot and we must deal with it.”

“You have horses ready? We could ride away from Eoferwic before they find us.” Shivering in his tunic, the monk wrapped his arms around himself. Despite the cold, he felt infused with a glow of mounting hope. All he had prayed for was coming to pass.

“And freeze to death before sun-up,” the warrior replied. “Besides, we must wait for another.”