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 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 grey, 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.
Aghast, Frederic clutched his hand to his mouth as a dreadful future flashed before his eyes. ‘The rebellion continues? Will it spread? Will the English retake their lands?’
‘Your lands are safe,’ Aldous snapped. ‘For now. But we need reinforcements soon. Our scouts report that the ranks of the rebels are swelling by the day.’
Harald Redteeth watched the simmering tension between the two men. Neither knew how to combat this turn of events, he could see. No cavalry charge could move the rebels from their natural fortress of water, bog and mist. Stifling a giggle, he put on a grave face and announced, ‘Terror is the only answer.’
The Norman commander whirled, but Frederic held up a limp hand to halt Aldous. ‘Speak,’ the landowner urged.
‘We must make the English too scared to come here. They must know that they will face axe and fire. Starvation. They must believe that these fenlands are little more than a slaughterhouse for their kind.’
Frederic clapped his hands. ‘Yes, he is right. Let us send for reinforcements. Many reinforcements.’
Aldous looked unsure, recognizing that such a course might reflect badly on his own ability to manage the fens. But it was clear that the landowner had made up his mind. ‘My men are needed here,’ the commander sniffed, turning to Harald. ‘Ride to the garrison at Lincolne. I will give you a message for the commander there, who will send to London for what we need.’
The red-bearded mercenary nodded. Glancing round the enclosure at the ragged remains of the Norman force, he felt it was a good time to be away from Barholme yet still be able to claim his coin. The invaders had failed to respect Hereward and had paid the price. The English warrior had changed greatly since their first meeting, Redteeth now realized. He was more dangerous, cleverer, wiser, and had learned many new strategies. To treat Hereward as just another rebel was to court disaster.
As he strode towards the store to fetch supplies for his journey, Frederic’s reedy voice floated back to him: ‘At least we are safe here.’
Harald Redteeth laughed long and hard.
CHAPTER FIFTY — SEVEN
An owl shrieked away in the moonless night. The wind lured whispers from the reed-beds. And out of the lonely wetlands the silent ghosts walked, dark-eyed, sallow-skinned, with murder in their hearts.
We will drench this land in blood to honour our ancestors.
The whispered exhortation rustled among the band of men as they slipped past the ebony lakes and through the wild woods; an oath that could never be broken. With his shield on his arm and his axe in his hand, Hereward led the rebels towards the old straight track. After the rout at the camp, the men had learned to follow him without question. His mail shirt jangled with the rhythm of every step, but he wore no helm. Instead he showed his ash-painted face to the enemy; in the dark the crusted, grey mask became a glowing skull, a portent of what was to come for all who saw it.
His head throbbed with the beat of his blood. The thing he carried with him at all times, shackled deep in his heart, was rising free. He welcomed it. There was no other way. Back at the camp, in the grey hour just before dark, Alric had pleaded with him to hold his true nature in check or risk losing his soul for ever. And part of him knew the monk was right; to give in to the bestial bloodlust and the slaughter, where was the honour in that? But the peace of which he had always dreamed now seemed as ephemeral as the fenland mist. Alric had been a good friend to him, perhaps the best he had ever had. But Hereward Asketilson was already dead. Hereward the scourge of the invader, the feeder of ravens, demanded blood. And his devil would ensure it flowed in torrents.
Through the leafless trees, the torches glimmered round the Normans’ hall, Hereward’s old home. The warrior raised his hand to bring his war band to a halt. For a long moment, they waited in silence until a shadow separated from the trees and edged towards them.
‘Did I do well?’ it whispered.
‘You did well, Hengist.’
The thin-faced man from the village ran a shaking hand through his lank blond hair. His pale eyes glistened. ‘The Normans killed all the other men,’ he croaked. ‘Once I had told them the location of your camp, as you instructed, I thought they would leave. But they put my neighbours to the sword, while they knelt, while their women sobbed and prayed.’ The words died in his throat.
Hereward rested a supportive hand on the trembling man’s shoulder. ‘The invaders can never be trusted. They have no honour. But through your courage, and your neighbours’ sacrifice, we lured them into the fens and broke them. And soon, perhaps this night, we will be rid of them.’