Hawk Quest (10 page)
Vallon pushed him away in disgust and addressed Wayland. ‘It’s blacker than Hades out there. Are you sure you can lead us to the Roman tower?’
Wayland nodded and held up a coil of rope knotted at intervals. He’d muzzled his dog and fitted it with a spiked collar.
The bell began to chime a solemn end to the day’s frivolities. ‘That’s the signal,’ Vallon said. ‘There’s no time to lose. The mist is on our side for now, but it will slow our escape and it will soon disappear when the sun rises. We move as fast as we can.’
Wayland picked up two draped cages and slung them over his shoulders. He unmuzzled his dog, reached for his bow and stepped through the door, the rope trailing behind him. The fugitives took hold of it, each grasping a knot, and went out into the soggy night.
A few diehards were still whooping it up at the hall, but the rest of the world had gone to sleep. The runaways shuffled forward like felons or penitents. They hadn’t gone far when Hero shunted into the man in front and the man behind barked his heel. Hero heard muted voices from above. They must be under the gatehouse.
‘Is it open?’ he heard Vallon whisper.
Hero didn’t hear the reply, but soon the rope tightened in his hands and he found himself moving again. He didn’t know he was at the gate until he was through and someone slid the bar to behind them.
‘Stay together,’ Vallon whispered. ‘If anyone gets separated, no one’s going back for them.’
Wayland led the way up a wooded hillside with the runaways blundering behind him. Condensation pattered through the branches and splashed on their heads with maddening unpredictability. After a long, fractious climb they cleared the mist and saw the milecastle ahead of
them. By the time they reached it, a seam of cold yellow light was cracking open on the eastern horizon. Wayland looked back over a sea of cloud broken by dark reefs and islands. Away to the west, snow-covered hills glimmered under the fading stars. Not a breath of wind.
Richard sobbed on the grass as if his heart would burst. Raul went into the tower to collect the supplies.
‘Look,’ Hero wheezed, pointing at a tiny silhouette on a summit miles to the south. ‘There’s the gibbet we passed on our journey here.’
Vallon straightened up, panting. ‘At the pace you travel, we’ll all be food for crows before noon. Which way now?’
Wayland pointed west, along the wall. Its course was visible for miles, rising and falling through the mist like the backbone of a sea monster.
‘Let’s go,’ Vallon said, leading off. The other runaways jerked into motion. Vallon glanced back. ‘What are you waiting for?’
Wayland gestured at the cages.
‘He wants to release the hawks,’ Raul said.
‘I don’t give a rat’s arse what he wants.’
‘Captain, Wayland does things his own way.’
‘Not any more. And that goes for you, too.’
‘Understood, sir, but we need Wayland more than he needs us. Best leave him be.’ Raul emitted a rasping belch, shouldered the basket and lurched off like a demonic pedlar. After a moment’s angry indecision, Vallon followed him.
Wayland was in no hurry. He waited until the sun rose and the cloud ocean flushed pink before opening the cage containing the goshawk. It gave him a glare, bobbed its head and rowed away into the mist. By evening it would be as wild as the day he’d caught it. He released the peregrines. He hadn’t flown them since Sir Walter’s departure more than a year ago. They spent their days blocked out in the weathering yard, fanning their wings and tracking their wild kin circling down the wind. The falcon flew heavily and landed on the tower, but the tiercel winnowed into the sky as if he’d been waiting for this moment and knew exactly what course to follow. Up and up he went, a dark flickering star that Wayland watched as if it carried his hopes and dreams. He didn’t blink until the sky closed over it.
The fugitives had reached the next milecastle. Vallon turned and gestured, then dropped his arm and led the ragtag caravan away.
When they had walked out of his life, Wayland passed through the castle gate. In the long shadows the mounds and hollows in the courtyard resembled graves. His gaze wandered over the empty parapets. He smacked his palms together and the clap bounced back from the walls like an echo through time. He scratched the dog’s head.
It’s just you and me now.
He frowned and went back through the gate. The faint tolling of a bell told him that the escape had been discovered. He sat down, imagining the scene at the castle – the soldiers with thumping headaches and addled eyes cursing as they tried to disentangle armour and harness with hands that seemed to have sprouted five thumbs. Their horses would be sore from yesterday’s hunt, but the Normans would use dogs to track the runaways. They wouldn’t get far. Already the mist was lifting.
Wayland shouldered his pack and set off downhill on a course that would bring him to the South Tyne miles upstream. He had no qualms about abandoning the fugitives. Vallon and Hero meant nothing to him, and Richard was a Norman and therefore a sworn enemy. He bore Raul no ill will, nor was he bound to him by friendship. He had no friends. He didn’t need friends. He was like the goshawk, a shadow in the forest, gone in the first glimpse.
In any case, there was nothing he could do to save them. He’d only agreed to Vallon’s request because it suited his own purposes. Their flight would distract the Normans while he made good his own escape. By nightfall, when they were lying hacked in pieces, he’d be safe in a forest hideaway.
As if some force was acting against his limbs, he found his steps slowing until he came to a stop. The dog watched him, ears pricked. Wayland looked back at the wall, then down into the valley. He leaned and spat. The dog, anticipating his next move, sprang away downhill. Wayland whistled and turned back towards the wall. I’m not doing it for the strangers, he told himself. I’m doing it for the look on Drogo’s face when he realises who’s outwitted him.
By the time he caught up with the fugitives it was broad daylight and only a few ribbons of mist clung to the slopes. The country on all sides was dreary common, open and almost treeless.
‘We have to get off the wall,’ Vallon gasped.
Wayland lay down and put his ear to the antique paving.
‘How far are they behind us?’
Wayland pointed at a milecastle and held up two fingers.
He scourged them on, amazed at how slowly other people moved. They were nearly at the next castle when he stopped and put a finger to his lips. Soon they all heard it – the distant belling of hounds. Hero and Richard stumbled on, throwing terrified glances behind them. They came over a rise and a flock of sheep stampeded across a part-walled enclosure below. The sheep stopped in a bunch, all looking back, the ewes stamping their feet. Two mean-looking dogs streaked over the turf. A boy and a girl emerged from behind a cairn and stared up at the fugitives.
‘That’s all we need,’ Hero groaned.
The children ran at the sheep, waving sticks and crying out. The dogs turned and chivvied the flock through a gap and down into a gulley.
Wayland stripped Raul and Hero of their cloaks. Richard cringed away. ‘Give it to him,’ Vallon said, pulling off his cape.
Wayland pushed him to the edge of the wall and pointed at the gulley.
‘He wants us to follow the sheep. Quick, before the soldiers come in sight.’
Wayland grabbed Raul and mimed the route they must take.
South to the river then west to the first ford. On the other side follow the river until you reach a stream flowing in from the south. Go up the valley until the stream divides. Wait for me there.
Raul slapped Wayland’s shoulder to show that he understood, took hold of Richard and plunged off the wall. Wayland didn’t wait to see how they got on. He tied some of the runaways’ clothes to his girdle, the rest to the dog’s collar, then took from his pack a bag containing a concoction of musk and castor. He smeared the foul-smelling grease on his feet. The hue and cry drew closer.
The next section of wall ran as straight as a rule. Wayland dropped into the great ditch on the south side and broke into an easy lope, matching the dog stride for stride. A milecastle slid by. The next one stuck up like a rotten molar. Wayland scaled the broken turret and lay facing the way he had come. His breathing eased. On a stone beside him a bored or homesick legionnaire had scratched a prayer or
obscenity or declaration of love. A lark sang its heart out so high in the blue that Wayland couldn’t spot it – singing at heaven’s gate, his mother would have said.
When Wayland looked down, he saw riders stitched into the landscape on each side of the wall. One, two, three. They disappeared into a dip and others took their place. When all were clear, Wayland had counted thirteen, plus four hounds.
The hounds checked at the spot where the fugitives had left the wall. One of them ran down into the sheep pasture. The others didn’t follow. Their baying intensified. A rider rode after the wayward hound and whipped it back into line. The pack drew on.
Wayland slithered down from the tower. Ahead the way divided, a broad track descending through gentler terrain to the south, the wall switchbacking along a scarp with a steep drop on the north face. A moor dotted by loughs sloped up to a forest of ancient pines. He’d been in the forest years ago with his father and they had stood at this same spot.
‘See the trees in front,’ his father had said. ‘Those are the champions, frozen in their advance by a thunderbolt thrown by Odin.’
‘Our mother says Odin and all the other gods don’t exist,’ he’d said. ‘She says there’s only one God and his son is Jesus Christ, the light of the world.’
His father had scuffed Wayland’s hair. ‘Jesus has yet to shine his light into all parts. But don’t tell your mother I said so or she’ll deny me all comforts for a month.’
Wayland checked the knots securing the cast-offs. He followed the wall, his breathing growing harsher with the ascent. When he reached the first crag, he scrambled down where a horse couldn’t follow and hared off north, trying to keep below the contours. The land grew wilder, rough pasture and cottongrass giving way to heather and springy mosses. Drab little birds started up at his feet.
He reached the treeline and looked back. The frieze of riders was climbing the scarp, and from the way they rode their mounts he knew they hadn’t spotted his breakout. He jogged into the forest.
This was where the real effort had to be made, distance gained until the hunters had been lured so far from their quarry that they would need another day to recover from the deception. Wayland broke into a run and his mind closed down. All he was conscious of was his feet
flying over the ground, the trees sliding back, the sun flickering between their high black crowns. He emerged from the forest on to an empty moor and ran on. Cresting a ridge, he saw in the distance two men astride shaggy ponies who stood in their stirrups to better make him out. When he went over the next horizon they were still watching, wondering perhaps if the running man and his giant dog were flesh and blood or apparitions from a mythical past.
On he went, running, trotting or walking as the going dictated, until he came to the rim of a wide basin thinly wooded with birches. At the bottom a burn swollen by meltwater tumbled down steps before dividing around a boulder and plunging into a clough. He untied the cast-offs and stowed them in his backpack. While he waited for his breathing to slow, he studied the waterfall, calculating the distance from the bank to the boulder and from there to the far side. Thirty feet at least. The current dashed at the rock, sometimes washing over it. He couldn’t cross in two separate moves. All or nothing.
He swallowed two deep breaths and hurtled down the slope. By the time he came to the burn he couldn’t have stopped if he’d wanted to. He took off too short, sprang off the rock, and hung for an age before crashing on to the other bank with a force that jarred him to his eyeballs. The dog thumped into the heather beside him. Wayland gave a breathless laugh and ruffled its mane. He drank from the peaty stream and planned his next move. Not far above them lay a whinstone slab half buried in rank heather. They sank down against it and shared meat and bread.
The day was warm and still, the clouds anchored to the ground by their shadows. Budding leaves hazed the birches in luminous green. A moor owl quartered the opposite slope. The bugling of the hounds woke Wayland from a doze. He watched them work down the scent line and recognised them by their markings – Marte and Marteau, Ostine and Lose. Marteau ran lame, skipping along on three legs, the fourth loosely tucked up.
Riders notched the skyline. They remained on the ridge for some time, searching for movement. By now they must be wondering how such pedestrian quarry could outpace them for so long. They started their descent and from the way the horses sidestepped, Wayland knew they were pretty used up. He smeared peat on his face and drew
sacking over his hair. He selected his heaviest arrow and stuck it in the ground by his bow.
The hounds rushed up to the waterfall and jostled on the brink. They tested the current and found it too strong. Their voices died. They cast upstream and down, each time returning to the fall.
The riders pulled up. Their horses were blowing hard. Some soldiers dismounted. The rest slumped over their horses’ necks. Their sweat-streaked faces were still besooted and the smudges around their bloodshot eyes gave them the look of plague victims. Some wore no armour. Drax had pulled on his mail over his nightshirt. Drogo’s mount was lathered and its head splashed with pink froth. Man or beast, he used both the same.
The huntsman scratched his head. ‘The hounds say they crossed here.’
Drogo slid off his horse. ‘Don’t be an imbecile. The current would have swept them over the fall.’
‘One of them crossed.’
Drogo jerked. ‘Wayland?’
The huntsman nodded. ‘I saw him course a deer once and he leaped a chasm I wouldn’t have set a horse at.’
‘Then where are the rest of them?’ Drogo surveyed all around. ‘It’s a ruse. They must have backtracked. They can’t be far.’