Hereward 03 - End of Days (27 page)

Hereward ignored them, whirling back and forth until he glimpsed a familiar face struggling through the stifling smoke. Clutching a hand across his mouth and nose, Redwald was fleeing towards the marshland. All thoughts of Acha flooded from the Mercian’s head. Only the lust for vengeance remained.

With a snarl, Hereward snatched out his sword. His
brother’s eyes widened in shock and he lurched back. The blade cleaved only smoke.

Redwald ran like a rabbit trying to escape a fox, but he could see no way out. The fire reached out its arms to encircle them both. Hereward felt pain blaze through his chest, but he was in the grip of his devil now. He cared not that the inferno was sapping his life as long as his brother was made to pay.

He hacked again. Redwald ducked beneath his sword and rolled across the ground. Strands of smoke rose from his hair where the sparks singed, but it was terror of Hereward that the Mercian saw in his brother’s eyes.

When the warrior advanced, Redwald scrambled into a stumbling dash, but fell once more. He wrenched his head round to gape at the demon behind him.

As Hereward took a step towards his prey, a hand grasped his arm. He whirled and saw Harald Redteeth, the red glow of the conflagration reflected in his black eyes. Hereward’s sword flashed up, but the Viking clashed his axe against it and shook his head. He yelled something that was lost to the roaring and pointed through the blazing huts. Hereward felt baffled by the actions of his hated enemy. The Northman tried to drag the Mercian a few paces before shouting again. This time Hereward thought he understood the word ‘woman’.

Concern for Acha rushed back into his mind and he felt a pang of guilt that he had given in to his own desire for vengeance with such ease. As the Viking ran off, he followed, pausing only once to look for his brother. But Redwald was nowhere to be seen.

He caught up with Redteeth at a workshop at the centre of a firestorm. Flames consumed the huts all around and one of the blazing shacks had collapsed against the door. Shrouded by smoke, the Northman was slamming a foot repeatedly against the wall. Sparks glowed in his beard. His lungs afire, Hereward hurled himself at the hut. Flames already danced across the roof, the wood blackening and sagging.

Time and again, the two men crashed against the steaming
wood. Each time, Hereward reeled. In the heat delirium, he dreamed his father stood at his shoulder, watching his failure. But then the wood splintered, and cracked, and with a final heave it shattered inwards. The two men sprawled atop the broken boards.

As he pushed himself up, Hereward glimpsed Acha lying face down on the far side of the workshop. She was not moving.

Smoke rushed in. Above his head, the roof split and shards of burning wood began to rain down. A moment before the roof collapsed, the Mercian hurled himself across the workshop. He choked on a searing blast of air as a wall of flames roared up, trapping him. No longer able to see Redteeth, or the way out, he dropped to his knees and grasped Acha’s hand. Her skin was scorching. He scooped her up into his arms. Surrounded by fire on three sides, he turned and faced the remaining wall. Smoking and charred, it bowed out.

He could hear his father now, cursing him, cursing his mother. His legs felt drained of strength and his chest ached from the effort of breathing. He knew his life was draining away. Wrapping his body around Acha, he threw himself at the wall. It folded before him as if it were made of parchment. Spikes of wood tore at his face and arms.

The last of his breath slammed from his lungs as he rolled across the ground only a hand’s width from the next burning hut. Somehow he found the strength to haul himself to his feet.

Redteeth was watching him from the other side of the bank of flames. The Viking nodded, seemingly pleased with what he saw, and then he turned and loped away into the smoke.

Lost in a daze where his father and his brother circled him, Hereward staggered away from the inferno. After a while he realized he was on the edge of the marshland. He slipped into cooling water, and splashed handfuls upon Acha’s face and arms. For long moments he lay there, recovering. Asketil and Redwald faded away. Only the roaring of the fire remained inside his head.

When Acha’s eyelids fluttered open, he helped her to her feet. ‘God watches over you,’ he said.

Coughing the smoke from her lungs, she eyed him. ‘No. The Devil.’ She forced a smile.

He had seen the effects of fire and smoke upon men before, and thought that God had indeed watched over them both that day. With heavy steps, they trudged back towards Belsar’s Hill.

As they climbed the slope, Hereward looked around and saw the scale of their victory. He could scarcely believe that all the long hours he had spent planning that day’s attack had paid off so well. The causeway was destroyed. Norman bodies littered the track so thickly that it was impossible to walk without stepping on a corpse. The English army milled around as if at the midwinter fire feast.

A figure detached itself from the other men and hurried towards them. When the strands of smoke separated, he saw it was Kraki. The Northman all but swept Acha into his arms. The Mercian grinned at his dour friend’s joyous relief and turned away, leaving them to their reunion. Wearily, he made his way to Guthrinc at the summit of the hill.

The tall man swept out an arm and said, ‘Look on your works.’

Hereward looked back. The whole of the fens was alight. The peat was burning, deep down into the ground, and would burn for months, if not years, to come.

‘Surely no man, not even a king, would challenge a warrior who could do such a thing,’ Guthrinc added with a wry smile. ‘Be assured, Hereward of the English, the memory of this day will live for ever. The Normans have fled. You have won.’

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY

ENGLAND HAD BECOME
hell. Where once there would only have been a sea of shadow, the entire western wetlands glowed orange and gold. Flames surged up to the vault of heaven. Where once there would only have been silence, the night shuddered with the roaring of the inferno, and the spitting and cracking as the ancient woodland was consumed. The meres shone like the sun. A pall of smoke choked out the stars. And the wind whisked sheets of glimmering sparks through the night.

Hereward stood on the Speaking Mound at Ely, entranced by the destruction he had wrought. He felt the call of the fire deep in his gut where his devil hid. Let all the world burn, it whispered, for it will be a kinder place in the ashes.

He jerked from his dream as a woman plucked at his hand. Ely rushed in, a whirl of song and laughter and thunderous life. More flames danced, this time before his eyes. The bonfire whooshed up higher as red-faced boys hurled more wood upon it. As he peered down the slope, it seemed for a moment as if all the English had gathered there. Ely folk and the multitude who had swarmed to the Camp of Refuge covered every patch of mud and grass on the isle, among the houses and down to
the very walls themselves. They swilled back ale and mead and wine looted from the Norman camp, and gnawed on slabs of hot beef and pork from the row of carcasses turning slowly on spits over the beds of hot coals. They sang and danced and cried and kissed.

Music throbbed into the night. Ten men drummed on hides pulled taut over casks. Others plucked at lyres as they sang songs from days long gone, of victory, fire and blood. A white-haired man leapt around the fire. His wolf-like howls punctuated the words of the singers as he drew a bow across a three-stringed instrument that Hereward had never heard played before, a rebec. As the player sawed, the music reeled with flourishes that made the heart swell.

Hereward grinned. The folk had earned their jubilation. They had stood by him through all the hardship, the long seasons of want and the oppressive terror that the Normans would sweep in and slaughter them all. They had placed their trust in him, and he had not let them down. He would thank God for that, with an offering at the shrine of St Etheldreda later that night.

The woman, bright-eyed and pink-cheeked, plucked at his hand once more, urging him to join the dance. He smiled and shook his head.

‘Join them. Let them carry you on their shoulders. It will be good for them, and you too.’ Kraki clambered up the mound to stand beside him. His eyes gleamed in the firelight. A cup of mead sloshed in his hand, but he was not yet drunk.

‘There is still work to be done.’

‘Your trouble, you Mercian bastard, is that you know only how to fight, not to feast.’ He downed his drink, then raised the cup into the air with a roar. ‘Drink. Let your worries wash away. Let your heart rise up. These times come few and far between in this grim life, and we should hold them to us as much as we can.’

Hereward smiled, knowing the other man was right. But Kraki was correct, too, that celebration did not come easily to
him. He was always looking beyond the next ridge to where the ravens gathered. ‘One battle has been won, and a great one,’ he replied. ‘The king has been sent away with his tail between his legs, and we stand on the brink of all that we have fought for – the bastard Normans driven back across the whale road and the crown once again upon a deserving head. We cannot rest until we have walked that last mile.’

Kraki sighed. ‘You are a miserable bastard. You would have us all brooding over our cups, and silence in the feasting halls, I suppose.’

Hereward laughed. ‘There will be time enough for feasting. When the Normans are gone, we can lay down our arms for good and enjoy the peace that will come.’

Kraki’s smile faded, and he eyed Hereward from under his heavy brows. ‘You think there will be peace for men like us? We were born with axes in our hands.’ He nodded towards the surging crowd. ‘Peace is for those folk. So they can raise their children and fill their bellies and tell tales of these dark times by the hearthside on winter nights. But for us?’ He shook his head.

Hereward watched the feast. ‘There is some wisdom in that thick head of yours. You hide it well.’

Kraki grunted. ‘I drink to forget these things, and on the morrow I will have a sore head to end them all.’ He shrugged, not caring. ‘You have plans to finish off the Normans?’

‘In the morn we send messengers to Malcolm in Scotland, and to the Danes. If William the Bastard is attacked on two or more fronts, as Harold Godwinson was, he will be torn asunder if he tries to resist.’

Kraki frowned. ‘You do not fear we are inviting two devils to sup by our hearth?’

‘If devils they be, they sit at the feet of William the Bastard. Once Malcolm and Sweyn Estrithson have seen how we have crushed the Normans, they will tread carefully.’ He took a cup of ale from a girl of barely fourteen summers. She blushed and bowed her head as if he were some king, and not a warrior with
blood under his nails. ‘And as those messengers set sail, we will send others out across England, to Mercia, and Northumbria, Wessex and beyond, and we will bring the English to their feet. On this axis England turns, and turn it will.’

‘The English will for ever praise the day you came home, and brought your sword with you,’ Kraki said, clapping the other man on the back. In search of more mead, he took a few steps down the mound and then turned back. His scarred features had softened, an unfamiliar sight. ‘Hereward …’ he began in a hesitant voice. ‘You have my thanks … for Acha …’

The Mercian nodded, holding his gaze for a moment, and then the Viking trudged on his way. Hereward watched him push his way through the throng to where Acha danced. A nod, a smile, a moment of tenderness without words. The Mercian felt warmed to see his battle-brother finding such unexpected comfort amid the bloody life they had shared.

Hereward drained his cup and then turned towards the minster lowering on the top of the hill. Candlelight glowed in the windows. He winced, his burns still sore despite the unguents the leech had slathered all over him.

As he began to climb the slope, he spied Morcar sitting among some of his most trusted men. The horse-faced earl’s features were dark. No jubilation there, the Mercian thought. Abbot Thurstan stood beside him, his head bowed in reflection.

‘You have the thanks of the English. This great victory would not have been earned without you,’ Hereward called. Morcar always had to be treated like a maid on the night of her handfasting.

The earl looked up. ‘Would that my brother were here to see it.’

‘Think of days to come. Soon you will be back in Wincestre, at court, with the cheers of all ringing in your ears.’

Morcar’s eyes gleamed, no doubt with thoughts that one day the crown would be his. ‘Whatever God wills,’ he said. ‘And yet I see storm clouds ahead. If the king had been killed here, all would have been well. But the Bastard yet lives, and worse,
he has been humbled. His vengeance will be terrible indeed.’

‘Let us not sour this night with such talk,’ Thurstan murmured. ‘I will pray for us all.’

‘Fair advice, Father,’ Hereward said. ‘We will deal with the king in good time.’

Leaving the earl to his brooding, the Mercian climbed the hill towards the minster enclosure. In his pouch he had plunder, a ring of silver taken from the finger of one of his Norman victims. He hoped it would be an acceptable offering at Etheldreda’s shrine.

The church smelled of fresh incense. Lit by a halo of candle-light, a figure was hunched on its knees in front of the altar. Alric looked round and smiled.

‘Has the feast ended so soon?’ he asked in a sardonic tone.

‘The mead will not be gone before I return.’ Hereward grinned. ‘You will be pleased, monk. I come to offer tribute at the shrine of Etheldreda.’

As Alric walked along the nave, Hereward thought he looked more at peace than he had ever seen him.

‘It has been a long, hard road to this night.’ The monk shook his head with disbelief. ‘After our first meeting in Gedley, who would have guessed we would be standing here, together.’

‘I remember it well. Blood and wolves and fire and a monk who whined like a child with a thorn in his thumb.’

‘We have both learned much along the way.’ Alric smiled to himself, remembering.