Hereward ran to the tethered horses, untied the leather straps and slapped their flanks to send them cantering off into the woods. He hoped they would be able to avoid the bogs on their own.
‘What are you doing?’ the monk protested. ‘They cost us good coin. And how will we travel-’
His eyes blazing, the warrior grabbed his friend with both hands in the neck of his robe. ‘Do what I say. This is my world now, not yours, and if you listen to me you may live through it.’ The excited barks echoed just beyond the low ridge of exposed roots. ‘Run!’
Turning, he ducked low beneath the trailing willow branches and sprinted without checking whether the monk was behind him. Soon the pounding of leather soles and ragged breathing sounded at his back. Before they had settled on the campsite, Hereward had scouted the lie of the land. He knew the location of the overgrown watercourses, the old tracks, the marshes. The barking of the dogs grew closer. The warrior imagined the curs snapping at their heels and the smirking knights encouraging their fellows to the hunt. He set his teeth, holding back the blood-rush.
‘We will not outrun them,’ Alric gasped, the fear in his voice palpable.
Bursting from the trees, Hereward skidded to a halt where the ground fell away before a sheet of bright green rippling under the grey mist. He snaked out an arm to grab his friend before he careered into the deadly marsh. Panic flared in Alric’s face.
Momentarily, Hereward held his companion with his eyes, reassuring him while the hounds’ baying raced nearer. When the monk gave a hesitant, trusting nod, the warrior grabbed the man’s robes and jumped with him into the swamp. Hereward felt arms of liquid mud encircle him and drag him inexorably down. Alric flailed in panic as his head dipped beneath the slimy surface. Snaking one hand up, the warrior caught hold of an exposed tree root beneath the overhanging lip of bank where the woodland floor had fallen away into the marsh. With his other hand he snatched his friend’s robes. The monk gulped and spluttered, his face smeared with filth. Hereward pressed one finger to his mouth. With an effort, Alric silenced himself, and the two men eased under the lip of hanging grass and crumbling brown soil just in time.
The curs’ barking resounded over the two mens’ heads as the dogs ran along the edge of the bog, snuffling in the undergrowth. A moment later, the thump of hooves reverberated through the soil. His eyes wide, the monk held the back of a hand against his mouth to stifle a moan of dread.
The sound of leather shoes hitting the turf; one of the knights had dismounted. Then another. Footsteps approached the edge and came to a halt directly over Hereward’s head. A curt command from further back. The hounds’ snuffling and yelping receded. Silence fell.
A bubble rose on the slimy surface of the swamp, then burst with a pop that sounded jarringly loud in the misty stillness. Alric grew fixed and still. Hereward felt the blood rumble in his head.
A hint of a shadow fell across the rippling green marsh-water. The knight was peering over the edge, looking where the bubble burst, listening.
Alric screwed his eyes shut tight.
Do not whimper. Do not cry out, Hereward thought.
A grunt from the knight, still hovering on the edge. A comment with a querying note. Laughter among the knight’s two companions. Had the dogs identified the fugitives’ location? Was the knight toying with them?
Hereward felt his muscles grow tense.
The rapid beat of more riders arriving. Voices raised, conversation flashing back and forth.
The warrior tried to estimate how many knights now stood a whisper away. For long moments the conversation ranged across the group, and then the knight barked something in his gruff tongue and returned to his horse. Someone else shouted an order and the dogs padded away. The thunder of hoofbeats disappearing into the quiet wood echoed across the marsh. The knights would be following the tracks of the horses he freed, Hereward hoped. It would buy time.
Alric sagged. Shaking with the release, he whispered, ‘Is this how it is to be now? Fear everywhere? English hunted like animals?’
Hereward felt a wave of respect for his friend. By no means a fighting man, the monk had endured much at the warrior’s side yet still continued to be a true companion. Silently, the warrior vowed to keep Alric safe, even at the cost of his own life. ‘Let us wait before we pass judgement,’ he replied, trying to raise the monk’s spirits but fearing the worst. ‘Now, hold tight. I will have you out before you drink too much of this stew.’ When Alric fumbled for the root, Hereward reached out to grab a handful of turf and hauled himself slowly out of the sucking mud.
Once they were on the bank, the shivering monk gasped, ‘If the roots had not been there to support us, we would have been sucked down to our deaths.’
‘I knew the roots were there.’
‘You knew?’
‘Yes.’
‘You searched the area for an escape from all possible encounters,’ Alric persisted, incredulous.
‘That is how I survive, monk.’
CHAPTER FORTY — FIVE
On weary feet, the two men pressed westwards for the rest of the morning. The mist lifted, treating Alric to the beauty of a world turned silver as the pale light glinted off sheets of water that reached almost to the horizon. Islands of green grass with dense orange, gold and brown copses splashed colour across the fens. A suffocating stillness lay hard on the land.
Hereward picked a path across a narrow causeway snaking only a hand’s width above a treacherous bog. Amid the stink of decaying vegetative matter, the warrior felt the exuberance of their escape dissipate and a familiar brooding descend upon him. ‘Monk,’ he called to the man trailing along the uneven path behind, ‘I would know God’s plan for us.’
For a moment, Alric held his tongue. ‘God’s plan is that we do God’s work.’
Hereward heard the dissatisfying uncertainty in his friend’s tone. ‘I was a man when you first met me, but I was not a man,’ he said. ‘I saw the world as a child would. You, and Vadir, have taught me things that my father never did. But the more I have learned, the less I feel I know. Is this right, monk? Why do I feel this emptiness… this disquiet? You told me I was more than a devil in human form, as I have been called time and again since I was a child. More than a feeder of ravens, leaving only sobbing widows and fatherless children in his wake. If what you say is true, then what is my purpose in life?’
‘The questions you ask… there are no easy answers,’ Alric began, choosing his words carefully. ‘I wish God had given me the skill to divine the purpose you need, but I am just a man, Hereward, with all the failings of men. I can reflect. I can offer guidance. But in the end, every man must look into his own heart to find the answers he seeks.’
‘In my own heart?’ the warrior murmured.
‘Yes.’
Hereward’s head dropped as he turned his thoughts in on himself. For a long while, he lost himself to the dark reaches inside him, and when he next looked round the causeway was far behind. Familiar landmarks rose up on every side: the field where he learned to hunt with his father’s falcon, the copse where he first lay with a woman, the fair Cengifu, the farm of his childhood friend Ailwin, who died when the sickness took him and his two brothers and sisters. Memories of happiness, pain and grief locked into the dark soil, the stark trees, the shimmering pools. For a moment, he stood and drank in his past.
‘Enjoy the view,’ Alric sniffed, ‘but I am cold and wet and filthy and I would know what you plan to do with us here.’
‘Once I know, I will tell you.’ Hereward sifted the strange feelings rising within him.
The old straight track knifed from the ancient stone marker post to the church tower dark against the pale sky. Growing silent, the two men followed it along the side of a watercourse edged with brown reeds rustling in the breeze. The day drew on. When they passed a row of skeletal willows, cheery voices rose up from the near bank.