Time of the Wolf (43 page)

Urging his horse alongside the Norman commander, the red-bearded mercenary said, “Hereward is more than a man. He is ridden like a mare by some night-walker, and he has all the powers of the dark world on his side. You must take special care with him.”

Aldous eyed Harald with contempt, then glanced back to see if the superstitious comment had affected his knights. The Viking was used to the look, and cared little. Fools lay everywhere.

“No risks will be taken,” the commander replied, turning his attention away from Redteeth to study the approach to the island. “We will strike quickly and hard before the rebels have a chance to mount a defense.” Looking across the boggy ground, he turned up his nose. “If we could use our cavalry, this would be over in the blink of an eye. As it is, we are still better armed than they.” He smiled at the chink of the heavy mail hauberks and the swords rattling against thighs.

Harald settled back into the rhythm of his mount and continued to listen to the whispers from the trees.

On the edge of the bog, the knights dismounted and left their horses with two of the young hands who had accompanied them from the hall. A narrow, low ridge of grassland ran toward the foot of the island. The Viking scrutinized the dense bank of black trees covering most of the island and the marshland and floodlands surrounding it. The rebels had chosen their camp well, he thought. But if the English were not prepared for the attack, their new home would be the perfect trap, with little opportunity to flee across the causeway that stretched across the water on the western side.

Aldous raised one hand to draw his men in line on top of the grass ridge. Harald settled into position midway along the column. The knights kept low, moving slowly so they would not be heard. The Viking sniffed the air. Woodsmoke. Two campfires, perhaps three.

At the foot of the island, the gray mist swirled among the willows and ashes. Harald smacked his lips, tasting the blood that was to come. As the knights steadily climbed the slope, muffled voices floated back through the fog. The rebels sounded busy. Preparing to flee, Harald wondered? Finding a position to make a stand?

When the calls and chatter were clearly close at hand, Aldous raised his hand again to bring his men to a halt. Whisking his arm left and right, he ordered them to move out in a line. The scouts had told him the island summit was flat and sloped gently down to the bog on the far side. A tune meandering through his head, Harald resisted the urge to whistle as he gripped his axe. He fixed his eyes on the Norman commander. The whispers of the
alfar
faded away. Silence fell.

Holding his hand high, the Norman commander waited, listening to the ebb and flow of voices. All eyes were upon him. He whisked the arm down. “Dex aie!” he called in his own tongue.
God aid us.

Echoing the cry, the knights rushed up the final few steps of the slope and over the rim. Through the mist, Harald saw the English scatter like rabbits. There were fewer than he had anticipated.

Careering down the incline, the footfalls of the heavily armored Normans sounded like thunder. Harald outpaced them all. His eyes darted this way and that, searching for Hereward. A rebel in a brown tunic bounded through the ferns to his left. Two men disappeared into the mist to his right. The ghosts of others flitted ahead.

Plunging down the slope, Harald realized the fog was growing thicker still. He saw that all but one of the knights on either side had disappeared from view as they followed the muffled yells echoing from across the island.

His breath rasping in the chill air, the Viking skidded to a halt on the edge of a bog. He had reached the far side of the small island. The knight clanked to a stop beside him, then began to range along the edge of the marsh, looking around.

His senses tingling, Harald dropped to his knees to examine the muddy ground. It had not been churned up by fleeing feet.

“No one came this way,” he grunted.

The Norman ignored him, prowling past hanging willows.

The red-bearded mercenary stood up and tried to pierce the dense fog. Deep in the cave of his head, the voices of his ancestors rang out in warning. “Wait,” he cautioned. “Something is wrong here.” The knight stopped, lifting a sweep of branches with his sword.

Silence fell across the island. No fearful shouts or cries of fleeing rebels. Harald raised his axe, turning slowly.

From somewhere nearby, a throat-tearing scream shattered the quiet. Then another. And another.

Death cries, the Viking warrior knew.

The Normans had been too confident, he saw now. He felt sure the rebels had been aware of the impending attack and prepared for it, and he was not about to risk his life finding out the truth. “Return to the horses,” he called to the knight, as he began to move back up the slope. “We have lost the advantage here.”

He glanced back to see if the man was following and noticed large bubbles bursting on the surface of a pool in the bog. The knight turned just as a figure rose up from the depths, black slurry streaming off him. White eyes appeared in the mud-dark face, and then white teeth in a triumphant grin.

Rooted, the knight could only stare as Hereward's blade flashed toward his neck.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

T
HE BARKED ORDERS OF THE
N
ORMAN COMMANDER ECHOED
through the fog. Redwald grinned. Though he could not understand the words, he could hear the uncertainty in the man's voice. Another scream tore out nearby. Hereward's plan was working perfectly.

Leaning against the damp trunk of an ash tree, he listened to the sound of feet running in confusion. When heavy footsteps drew near, he cupped his hands to his mouth and called out as though he were lost.
The Normans lumber like oxen in their armor,
he thought as the leaden footsteps moved in his direction. He waited until the figures coalesced in the fog and then turned on his heel and ran down the slope.

Branches tore at his face, but his breathing remained regular. He had not felt this alive since the days with Harold Godwinson. From the thunder at his back, he estimated he had drawn seven or eight of the knights; a good number.

Leaping over a rotting log that had been dragged across the path, he flashed a quick smile at Guthrinc who waited behind a tree beside it. The large man's face was smeared with white mud, the hair matted, charcoal ground into the skin around his eyes. He had the face of death, like many of the rebels. Redwald remembered Hereward's words:
terror strikes as sharp as any axe.
He hesitated a little farther on and glanced back. As the first knight slowed near the log, the burly rebel swung his axe into his chest. The
chunk
of iron carving bone echoed down the slope. Guthrinc wrenched out the blade and had faded into the fog before the knight had slumped to his knees in a gout of blood.

Turning, Redwald continued down the slope, just slowly enough to catch the attention of the Normans who had hesitated beside their dying fellow. He allowed himself a gleeful laugh. He felt a queasy joy at seeing such vengeance for the terror the Normans had inflicted on him during William the Bastard's victorious battle for the English crown. The enemy had made him feel weak that day, and that was the harshest blow of all. He would rather lose a hand than feel that way again.

Further down the slope, he jumped across a spread of branches, yellowing turf, and dry leaves. Once more he turned and glanced back at the wall of iron speeding toward him. The knight at the head crashed through the thin covering into the hidden pit. His bubbling scream rang out as the stakes embedded in the bottom rammed through his body. Unable to slow, a second knight tumbled in after him.

Redwald clenched his fist in triumph. He had doubted Hereward's assertion that the numerous pits they had dug would claim lives, but the warrior had insisted he had witnessed the tactic's lethal success on his travels on the other side of the whale road. His brother had grown during the years they had been apart, Redwald decided. Perhaps Hereward truly could lay claim to the throne.

Sprinting to the edge of the marshland, Redwald continued along the rim until he came to a green area reaching into the fog. He glanced around for the secret marker and then ran out from the treeline. The four remaining knights roared as they saw him.

Feigning panic, the rebel raced ahead. A sly smile crossed his face as he heard the pounding of the Normans' leather shoes turn to splashing. A moment later, their frantic cries sounded and Redwald came to a halt. He turned and placed his hands on his hips, relishing the sight of his enemies' final breaths. The four knights thrashed thigh-deep in the sucking bog, the weight of their armor dragging them down. Redwald stood on the thin finger of solid ground reaching out into the marsh that only a fenlander would recognize. The more the Normans fought to get free, the more they sank. In desperation, they tossed aside their swords and axes and hurled their helmets away. Redwald enjoyed that, for it meant he could see the terror in their eyes more clearly. Two of them struggled to remove their hauberks, but it was a futile task. Down they went, with gathering speed, the stinking black mud pulling at their stomachs, their chests, their necks. Their cries became childlike, their eyes filling with tears.

Redwald drew closer, dropping to his haunches to see better. His enemies pleaded with him in their tongue, but then the mud washed into their mouths, and only chokes and gurgles emerged, and then a silence broken only by the bubbles bursting on the slimy surface.

Redwald stood up, brushing the dried mud from his hands. His darkest days lay behind him now, he was sure. His heart swelled. He would never again be deflected from reaching his goal. By any means necessary, power and security would be his.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

B
LOOD STREAMED FROM THE RAGGED NECK OF THE SEVERED
head. His eyes burning with fierce fire, Hereward held his trophy high for Harald Redteeth to see. Hatred burned in the Viking's chest, not just for the English warrior, but for the Normans, whose many failings had denied his axe the life for which it hungered. The red-bearded mercenary fought his urge to confront the rebel leader and raced back up the slope, knowing that he was in danger of being outnumbered. He loathed fleeing from a battle, but he was wise enough to know there would be another opportunity for his axe to drink deep.

Avoiding the paths that snaked between the trees, Harald crashed through the undergrowth, hacking at any branch that fell in his way. Everywhere he looked he saw death. Knights stumbled into bogs. Bodies bristled with arrows. Weakening moans rose from gaping pits. The
alfar
had been right. There were raven harvests aplenty, but all of them Normans. The rebels had made fools of them all. The Viking glimpsed them moving through the fog like specters. Some climbed from ditches or rose up from covered hiding places. Others called warnings from the branches above. And floating on the floodlands, two men had wielded bows from strange shell-shaped boats, the like of which Redteeth had never seen before. All of them bore hideous masks of mud and ash and charcoal.

A battle cry resounded at his back, taken up on all sides. As the mercenary hauled himself through the willows, he heard the bellicose shouts begin to draw near. The English were not about to let their enemies escape, if they could help it. Spitting epithets, the Viking crashed through tangled branches and twining bramble.

But when he reached the lip of the downward slope, he glimpsed a shape looming on the left of his vision. A spear ripped through the flesh of his forearm. Numb to all pain, he reacted faster than his foe could have expected. Before the English rebel had a chance to dart back, the Viking whirled, crunching his axe into the man's neck and wrenching it free again in a gush of blood. For a moment, the shower of red jewels gripped him in a mushroom-fed fascination.

More battle cries tore him from his reverie and he threw himself over the rim and careered down the slope. Through the folds of gray, he glimpsed other figures hurtling through the trees alongside him. The heavy thud of feet on the soft loam told him they were Normans. Crashing out of the trees, he sped on to the grassy shoulder where the fog had started to clear. The musky smell of the horses hung on the breeze, and he could hear their snorts and whinnies ahead. The beasts smelled blood and death.

When he mounted his steed, the mercenary allowed himself the luxury of glancing back. Barely twenty Normans from the fifty-strong force were racing away from the island. Behind them, shadowy figures shifted through the mist along the treeline.

I will be back,
he vowed,
and I will take your ears to hang on my mail.
He began to sing a jaunty song that ended with a peal of high-pitched laughter. The surviving Normans eyed him as if they thought the privations of the battle had driven him mad. That only made him laugh harder.

Once they had put some distance between them and the rebels, Aldous Wyvill slowed his men to a trot. Dried blood caked the corner of his eye and a blue bruise was spreading over his cheeks. “We will be back to avenge our fallen,” he snarled. “Be brave. Hold fast.”

“They were taking the heads,” one of the knights gasped in horror.

“I said, be brave!” the Norman commander yelled at the man. “We shall not be beaten by peasants armed with clubs and rocks, and warriors who trick us with traps.”

The men fell silent for the rest of the ride, but Harald could smell the sour stink of fear in their sweat.

In the enclosure, Aldous ordered the gate to be shut and barred. As the dispirited knights dismounted and led their horses away, Frederic of Warenne eased out of the hall in a flap of silk and linen. He pressed his hands together in anticipation of delight, but the thin-lipped smile fell away when he saw how few men had returned, their sagging shoulders and the wounds on show.

“What is this?” he cried in dismay.

“The English were waiting for us. It was a trap.” The Norman commander tucked his helmet under his arm.