Hereward 03 - End of Days (33 page)

A moment later the torrent sucked him beneath the surface. Drowned.
Madness
, Redwald thought. Would the king sacrifice all of them to see the English destroyed? He glanced around at the drawn faces of the soldiers and guessed that they were thinking the same. Not Harald Redteeth, though. The mad Viking was sitting on a fallen tree as if he had not a care in the world. He put his head back and opened his mouth to catch the raindrops.

‘You,’ the king yelled, pointing at another man. The soldier blanched, but knew better than to show even a hint of doubt.
He clambered on to the swaying bridge and leapt into the water. Within a moment, he too was gone. Two more soldiers were claimed by the raging torrent before the monarch roared his frustration.

‘I will not be denied,’ he bellowed, thrusting aside the men along the bank. Snatching up the rope at the bridge, he stepped into the shallows.

Redwald gaped. What possessed the monarch that he would risk his own life? He had felt he had the measure of this man, but now it was as if he did not know him at all. But then a thought struck him with such force, he almost reeled back. In his mind’s eye, he was sitting beside a tabula board in a warm hall, and Harold Godwinson, the man who would … should … have been wearing the English crown, had decided to impart his wisdom.
How far will you travel along the road to damnation to achieve your heart’s desire?
he had said.

Redwald realized those words had been the great rule of his life. Perhaps he had lived by them even before Harold had given them voice. But now he could see that William held by them too. Perhaps all great men did. He smiled to himself. They were one and the same, the king and he. He should not have let himself become so downhearted. Great things still waited for him in days yet to come.

Weighed down by his vast hauberk and his helm and still carrying his sword, William waded out into the flow. One boat had drifted away and another floated in to take its place, the flickering lantern-glow lighting the lines of determination on the king’s face. The water rose to his chest, and then his neck.

Some of the soldiers fell to their knees in the mud and clasped their hands together in prayer for their lord. Others stared in horror or marvelled at his courage. William seemed to care naught for the fate that awaited him. Pushing his chin up, he looped the rope around the boat. As the oarsmen battled to make it tight, he waved a hand to beckon to the next vessel.

William the Bastard waded on. The rushing water gushed around his chin, and then washed over his face. With only his
helm visible, he flung the rope over the next boat. Another had already sculled into place.

And then the helm itself disappeared beneath the torrent. Silence fell across the soldiers gathered along the bank. They stared at the river, wishing their lord to live. After a moment, a cry rang out, and then another. ‘The king is dead. God save the king.’

Redwald narrowed his eyes and watched.

When the helm broke the surface of the water, a cheer roared along the water’s edge, drowning out the storm itself. Once the king had dragged himself a few more paces, he thrust his head up and sucked in a huge lungful of air. Still holding the rope, he turned and looked back at his men.

Redwald felt entranced.
Look upon me
, that fierce gaze said.
I am a god. Nothing can kill me. Nothing can stop me from gaining my heart’s desire
. A grin spread across the king’s face as the cheers continued to ring out. Redwald felt his knees go weak. Here was his destiny. Here!

As if possessed, the soldiers threw themselves at the bridge. They fastened the timbers to the boats, clawing their way along the edge as other vessels floated into place. In no time, the structure was complete. The army flowed across the bridge and on to the isle of Ely.

Caught up in the flow of determined warriors, Redwald had to fight to break free when he passed before the gaze of the monarch. He stepped forward and bowed his head, his eyes closed. ‘Your servant,’ he said in a trembling voice. He stayed there for a long moment, and when he looked up the king had gone. But he knew William had heard his voice. All would be well.

Grinning, he pushed his way back into the stream of fighting men.

When night fell, the rain still pounded. In the leafless woods clustering on the lower slopes where the Norman army sheltered, few could sleep from the constant drumming on their makeshift sailcloth shelters. The men huddled around smoking fires built in rudely constructed ovens of carved peat blocks,
the water puddling at their feet. The orange glows dotted the hillside like summer fireflies.

Redwald could not sleep either. After his revelation at the river, he felt as if a furnace roared in his head. He had been too patient, too slow and stumbling, he could see that now. If he wanted to achieve his heart’s desire, he needed to grab life by the throat, as William had done, as Harold Godwinson had done. He wandered among the knots of hooded men, their sodden cloaks pulled tight around them, their faces pools of shadow, long shields resting against their backs to give some respite from the bitter wind. The army seemed to go on for ever.

From further down the slope, he could hear the thud of mallets as soldiers worked through the night to fix the siege machines in place. Twenty good men had been lost to the swollen waters as those great wall-breakers had been floated to Ely across the treacherous fens, he had heard. Soon the pounding would begin. There could be no hope for the English now. With their cold-hearted, clear-eyed desire to keep their grip on land and power, Morcar, and the monks, had put the spear to that. The walls would fall and Ely would burn and every man, woman and child within that place would be put to the sword. It would be a Norman world then.

A figure made its way up the slope from the track. As it neared, he saw it was the knight Deda. He looked troubled, his face deeply graven. As the knight passed, he paused and held Redwald’s gaze as if he were about to speak. But it seemed he could not find the words, for he only nodded and moved on. He made his way to where the mad Viking Harald Redteeth sat, chewing on the contents of the leather pouch that hung at his hip. Redwald could not understand the unlikely friendship that seemed to have grown between the two men, but they instantly fell into a deep and intense conversation.

He walked on a while and then stopped and looked up the slope. In the distance, he could just make out a flickering light,
perhaps one of the torches over Ely’s gates. He shivered. The last light in the deep, dark night of the English and soon it would be extinguished. Aye, it would be a Norman world, but there would be a place in it for him.

When the walls fell, he would be one of the first into Ely, whatever the risk to himself. Only a grand gesture would earn the king’s favour. And in all the fighting and the heroism of that moment, only one thing would shine out like a beacon: if he could deliver William’s heart’s desire, the thing that had driven him to risk everything, even his life. The head of the leader of the English rebels, his own brother, Hereward.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
-N
INE

FIRE WAS FALLING
from the grey sky. The heads of the terror-stricken English snapped up to watch, and for a moment the hellish judgement seemed to hang above them. A terrible hush fell across Ely. And then the blazing ball plunged down. Shards of burning wood thundered against the walls. A scorching spear of timber rammed through the chest of an archer guarding the ramparts. In an instant he was alight from head to toe, his throat-rending screams tearing out across the hillside.

As flames licked up one section of the wall, Hereward scrambled from the walkway and raced across the mud, yelling, ‘Bring water.’ Snatching up pails filled from the wells that morning, boys stumbled after their leader. Well rehearsed, they formed a chain. But even when the blaze was quenched, there was no chance to rest. The air whistled. Hereward bellowed for the lads to take cover, but too late.

A storm of flintstones boomed from the heavens. Most of the missiles crashed against the walls, but some whipped over the top. One lad was too slow in fleeing to the shelter of the buildings. A flint cracked against the back of his head, felling him. Hereward sprinted from the cover of the palisade and
scooped him up in his arms as another barrage hammered against the defences.

He laid the lad down behind a hut. The other boys gathered round, staring, wide-eyed. They all wanted to be warriors, but they had not yet made friends with death, the Mercian thought. He held the fallen boy’s hand, touched his head, his lips. He eased open the eyelids, but there was no light there. One of the boys began to sob silently. A high-pitched cry rang out as a woman thrust her way through the crowd, the dead lad’s mother, Hereward guessed. She fell to her knees and pressed her head against her young one’s chest, weeping.

There was nothing he could say.

Feeling the weight of the lad’s passing, and of all the lives that were fated to end in Ely, he stood up and turned away. His burden, and his alone.

Kraki stormed along the walkway, roaring orders at the archers and javelin-throwers they had placed along the ramparts beyond the palisade. Hereward felt pleased he had good men at his side whom he could count on. They would make it a fight. The Normans would rue the day they came to Ely.

Another crash boomed out over the settlement. The wall bowed, and Kraki had to grip the timber to keep his feet. The thunder seemed as though it would never stop.

The king’s siege machines had started their relentless barrage of burning wood and hails of flint at dawn. After so many hours of punishment, Hereward wondered how much more the Ely folk could take. Each new crash against the palisade brought a cacophony of shrieks. Men who had never fought before hunched their shoulders and ran wildly and cried prayers. Even seasoned warriors winced and looked down. In Flanders, he had seen men driven mad by the constant pounding. Everyone inside the walls felt the shadow of doom upon them.

Under the eye of mad Hengist, a team of men ran to the damaged palisade with split timbers. They set to work with shovels and saws and mallets. Hereward clambered up the ladder and crouched beside Kraki.

‘The bastards,’ the Northman muttered. ‘Enough of rocks and wood. Let me face them over my axe.’

‘They will come soon enough,’ the Mercian replied. ‘Once they think they have softened us up.’

‘At least the damned rain has let up.’

Hereward pointed to a flurry of movement further down the slope. ‘Be careful what you wish for.’

Two groups of soldiers ran out from behind their defences, speeding to the right and left. Each man carried one of the deadly Norman longbows.

The Mercian leaned over the walls and yelled, ‘Bowlines.’ In the shelter behind the high ramparts, archers nocked their shafts and leapt up to the top of the earthworks. The javelin-throwers ran to their positions. Hereward raised his right arm.

As the Normans pounded up the slope to get close enough to loose their arrows over the walls, Hereward squinted, judging the distance. ‘Now,’ he bellowed.

The English arrows whisked down. One rammed into a chest, another into an eye. Norman bowmen flew backwards, crashing on to the ground, dead.

The Mercian kept his arm raised until the king’s bowmen came to a halt and nocked their own shafts. He whipped it down. The javelin-throwers launched their weapons. The Normans scattered as the missiles arced towards them. One was too slow. A javelin rammed through his chest, out of his back and into the ground. Impaled, he twitched as if he had the palsy while the life drained from him.

The English archers let fly again. This time six Normans fell. But the king’s men were too battle-hardened to run scared. Once they found their position, they raised their bows and loosed their shafts. Ely’s defenders dived behind the ramparts, pressing their backs against the walls of earth. Hereward and Kraki dropped to their knees as the arrows thumped into the walls just below where they stood.

When they peered back over the palisade, the Norman bowmen were retreating down the slope, dragging their fallen
brothers with them. The creak of straining ropes echoed as the arms of the siege machines were drawn back once more.

‘William the Bastard is trying to drain all our arrows and javelins,’ Kraki grunted.

‘As we try to drain theirs.’ Hereward grinned, but they both knew time was on the king’s side. His army could sit for days if necessary, pounding the walls until they were turned to splinters, waiting for the barns to empty and bellies to rumble with hunger. But the monarch surely could not expect the folk of Ely to wander out and plead for mercy. They all knew there would be none.

When he heard his name called, he turned and saw Alric waving at him frantically from the edge of the huts. He climbed down from the walkway and ran over.

‘You must see this,’ the monk said in a grave tone. ‘I want no bad news,’ Hereward warned him.

He followed Alric across Ely to the Camp of Refuge. Since the English army had gathered on the slopes of Ely, only the sick and the wounded, and the women and children, still waited among that sprawling jumble of huts and reek of waste. For hours, the camp had been still with worry and prayer, but now Hereward could hear a passion-filled voice ringing out, a familiar voice, and the words he snatched from the wind troubled him.

In the centre of the Camp of Refuge, a large crowd had gathered around Abbot Thurstan. Hands raised to the heavens, he stood on a barrel surrounded by a wall of monks, their heads bowed in prayer.

‘God will deliver you from death,’ the abbot proclaimed. ‘Though it seems all hope is lost, you will be saved. He will save you. Not Hereward, not any mortal men, but God Himself. You must place your faith in Him alone.’

The Mercian gritted his teeth. While he fought to keep spirits high, the cleric spoke only of coming disaster. What good would that do? But Alric waved a cautionary finger. There was more.

‘Bring your men back to your hearths and tell them to lay down their arms,’ Thurstan went on. ‘Do not let them give their lives in vain. They will not be harmed if they bow to the king. What gain is there in the slaughter of your husbands? Save them, save yourselves.’