Conquest 03 - Knights of the Hawk

by James Aitcheson

  ‘Go after that one!’ Magnus yelled to Dweorg and Godric. ‘Leave the other two for us,’ he added, by which I guessed he meant himself and me.

  Leaving the corpse of that first Dane behind me, we crashed on down the slope after our quarries, between the birches and the elms, hacking a path through the brown bracken, strumbling across the uneven ground. We were gaining on them, and they knew it, too. Each risked a glance over his shoulder, and I glimpsed the whites of their eyes. It was a risk too many for the shorter, dark-haired one. He gave a cry as his knee twisted and he tumbled forward into the undergrowth. He struggled to get up, shouting for help, but either his friend didn’t hear him or else didn’t care enough, and he was still prone on the ground when Magnus’s seax found the back of his skull, silencing him.

  The taller one ran on towards the nearest of the four horses. I wasn’t far behind him. No sooner had he vaulted up on to its back and, red-faced and sweating, pulled his knife from its sheath, ready to cut through the rope tethering the animal, than I was upon him, seizing his leg and with my other hand grabbing his sword-belt, dragging him from the saddle. He landed awkwardly, falling on his shoulder as he struck the ground, and I would have finished him then had not his mount, panicked by the commotion and the sight of naked steel, suddenly reared up, pummelling the air with its forelegs. I threw myself backwards, just in time, as an iron-shod hoof passed inches in front of my face, before landing on my arse on the hard earth.

  Straightaway I scrambled to my feet, expecting to find the Dane striking out across the open ground that lay beyond the woods in the direction of the fortress. But the fall from the saddle must have injured him worse than I’d realised, for he was still on the ground, lying on his back, his chest rapidly rising and falling as softly he whispered words I could not understand. I stood over him, staring into his fearful eyes. Fearful, because he knew that his end was at hand. Blood, thick and dark, burbled from his nose and mouth, streaming down his cheek and his chin. He clasped his hands together, imploring me to grant him mercy, to grant him his life.

  In vain. He must have seen the look in my eyes and realised this, for suddenly he tried to scramble backwards in crab-like fashion. He didn’t get more than a couple of paces before I laid my foot upon his chest, pinning him to the ground, and he had enough time to let out a yell before the point of my sword came down on his neck, piercing flesh and bone. At once his flailing limbs were stilled, his chest ceased moving, his eyes glazed over and his lifeless head lolled to one side.

  Silence. Breathing hard, my lungs burning with the cold air, my sword’s fuller dripping with crimson, I gazed out into the mist in case these Danes had any friends nearby, but no one came to challenge us. Hurriedly I sheathed my blade, although not before wiping it upon the grass to clean the worst of the blood from it, then set about dragging the man’s corpse back into the woods where it would be less easily spotted.

  ‘Help me,’ I said to Magnus, who was with me now. The Dane was heavier than I’d imagined. The Englishman took hold of the feet while I lifted the shoulders. Together we carried him back up the slope a short way into the copse, where no one was likely to happen upon him. We threw him down amidst the bracken so that he was hidden from sight, and there we left him, although not before stripping him of his cloak, his silver brooch, his boots and his necklace of ivory beads. We did the same to the one Magnus had felled as well as the other two, not as spoils but as preparations for the next part of our plan. Having found Godric and Dweorg again, we ventured back towards the hill’s summit, where Pons, Serlo, Ælfhelm and Sceota were already waiting for us with the four trembling slave-girls, who sat around the trunk of the broad-bellied oak, keeping close together, regarding us with wide eyes.

  ‘Did you catch them all?’ Serlo asked when we reached them. ‘Are they—?’

  ‘All dead,’ I replied as I let the collected garb of the Dane I’d slain fall in a heap on the ground. I cast my gaze over the girls, who looked down, doing their best to avoid my attention. They looked pale, and freezing in their thin, mud-stained dresses. Terrified, too, and I supposed they had every right to be.

  ‘Have you told them who we are and why we’re here?’ I asked Serlo.

  ‘Not yet. We were waiting for you and Magnus.’

  I glanced around. ‘Where’s Eithne?’

  She rose from the rock on which she was sitting. For the first time since that day we had met at Alrehetha, the Irish girl was about to prove her worth. This was the reason I’d brought her with me, rather than let her go with Eudo and Wace.

  ‘I need you to speak to them,’ I told her. ‘They’ll understand you.’

  It was a reasonable assumption that they understood Danish, too, if they served in Haakon’s household, so I could have asked Magnus instead, but I thought the girls would be more reassured if Eithne were the one addressing them, not just because she was a countrywoman of theirs but because she was of a similar age.

  ‘What exactly do you want me to say?’ she asked.

  ‘First give them our names and tell them why we’re here,’ I said. ‘Tell them there’s going to be a battle, that we mean to destroy Jarnborg and Haakon too, but that for all of those things to happen we need their help. The rest I leave to you to explain however you can.’

  More than anything we needed a way to gain entry through the gates, but beyond that we also needed a guide, or guides, who knew the fortress and could show us where to go once we were inside. Although they didn’t yet know it, the four of them provided our answers to both problems.

  I waited, watching them closely, while Eithne related everything to them. At the mention of Jarnborg they all jumped up in alarm. Tears spilt down the cheeks of the youngest. She was probably no more than eleven or twelve summers old, with a thin, pointed face, hair as bright as gold and eyes the colour of sapphires. One of the others got down on her knees before Eithne, clutching at the sleeves of her cloak, while the two elder ones, who with their round, freckled faces and dark, tangled hair were so alike that they were probably at least cousins if not sisters, beseeched her with words I couldn’t understand.

  ‘Quiet,’ I said, marching forward, hoping that even though they might not understand what I was saying, the force of my voice would be sufficient to still them. I wasn’t disappointed. At my approach they quickly fell silent.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked Eithne, although I could readily guess.

  ‘They don’t want to return to Jarnborg, lord.’

  I didn’t blame them, but we didn’t exactly have a lot of choice. Since they were our prisoners, neither did they.

  ‘If they want their freedom, they’ll help us,’ I said, and hoped that would prove incentive enough for them. ‘And not just their own freedom, either, but that of every slave in Haakon’s household. Tell them that.’

  It was a lofty promise to make, and even as the words left my lips I wasn’t sure it was one I could keep. Still, I needed to win them over somehow, and things would go much more easily if we had their willing support and didn’t need to coerce them.

  Again I waited while Eithne, her hands raised in a calming gesture, passed on my promise, and for the answer to come back. For a few moments the slave-girls exchanged nervous glances, whispering to one another and shaking their heads. They had no reason to trust us, no reason at all. Why should they believe anything we told them?

  Eventually one of the two elder ones with the freckled faces came forward, her chin held high as she addressed us, though of course we had no idea what she was saying.

  I glanced at Eithne, seeking her translation. ‘They’ll do this,’ she told me after a moment. ‘Any foe of Haakon’s is a friend of theirs, Derbforgaill says, and if they can be a part of his destruction, they will.’

  ‘Derbforgaill?’ I asked, to which Eithne nodded. I still struggled to get my tongue around these Irish names. ‘Give her our thanks, and tell her that we’re indebted to her. To all of them.’

  Eithne did so, and thus it wa
s settled. After that we wasted no time. The mist was already thinner than it had been, or so it seemed anyway. Perhaps it was only my imagination, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Nihtegesa and Wyvern would be sailing soon, and we needed to be inside the stronghold’s gates before Haakon’s sentries sighted them entering the bay. Before the alarm was raised and Jarnborg rose in arms.

  The others had drawn lots beforehand, since that seemed like the fairest way of deciding who would accompany Magnus and myself, and who would stay behind. Four Danes there had been guarding the slave-girls on their way to the spring, which meant that only four of us could go to Jarnborg; the rest would stay behind and join up with the others when they arrived in the ships. Godric and Ælfhelm had drawn the shortest twigs from the bunch that I’d held in my fist, and so they would join us. I’d rather have had Pons and Serlo alongside me in a fight, but I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. For there would be only four of us against a horde of the best warriors that Haakon, one of the most feared pirates of the northern seas, could muster.

  I must be stupid to have considered this, I thought. But it was too late to turn back. And we had already travelled so far. Not so long ago I had been with the king’s army in the marsh-country, embroiled in a struggle for power and in the name of the kingdom. Hardly two months later here I was, hundreds of leagues from any place I could call home, in this frozen, wind-battered island on the northernmost fringes of Britain, beyond the dominion of any king or prince: the sole Frenchman in a company of Englishmen, waging a desperate fight against a Danish warlord who until a few short weeks ago had been little more than a face to me.

  What strange tapestries our lives weave. I only prayed that Jarnborg did not turn out to be the place where my own tapestry reached its end.

  Trying not to dwell on such things, I shrugged on the grey cloak of the man I’d killed and fastened the brooch at my left shoulder in the Danish manner. A few drops of blood had stained the fur on the collar, spilt when I had plunged my blade into his throat, but they were small and hardly noticeable except from close at hand. Nothing could be done about it now. It was a little too large for my frame, but hopefully no one would notice. I belted it tightly so as to conceal my hauberk. None of those we’d killed had been wearing mail, but I wasn’t about to venture into the enemy camp without it. Lastly I removed the garnet-studded golden cross that Father Erchembald had given me and handed it to Serlo for safekeeping. In its place I fastened the leather string with the ivory beads around my neck, noticing as I did so that some of them were inscribed with strange, spindly runes. Perhaps they spelt out a good-luck charm. If so, it hadn’t worked for its owner.

  I turned to Magnus, who had similarly attired himself in the garb of the man he’d slain, the one difference being that the necklace he wore was threaded with small pieces of amber and jet rather than ivory.

  ‘How do I look?’ I asked.

  He grinned. ‘Like a Dane.’

  I hoped he was right. As disguises went, these were hardly the most elaborate we might have devised, but with any luck we wouldn’t need to fool Haakon and his men for long. I was relying on them believing that we had quit the island, and for that reason being less watchful than perhaps they ought to have been. The last thing they would expect, surely, would be for their enemies to saunter in by the main gates.

  And that would be their mistake.

  Twenty-seven

  AND SO WE set out: Magnus, Godric, Ælfhelm, Eithne and myself. We needed someone who could speak both English and Irish to act as interpreter, and so she took the place of the one called Derbforgaill, since they were not dissimilar in height and in build. She had undone her braid, rubbed dirt into her hair and smudged some across her cheeks too so as to make herself look more like the slave-girl, and then they had exchanged clothes: Eithne’s fine-spun woollen garments for the other girl’s coarse linen shift and tattered, mud-stained cloak.

  If putting on a slave’s garb brought back unwelcome memories of her own thralldom, I saw no sign of it. Certainly she seemed nervous, but then so were we all.

  ‘God be with you, lord,’ Pons said when the time came for us to part ways. Often the light-hearted one, his mood was solemn now.

  ‘And all the saints too,’ Serlo added. ‘May they keep you safe from harm.’

  We could well do with their favour this day. Indeed I reckoned we would need every ounce of aid that the heavenly kingdom could offer us, and more besides.

  The same thought was running through my mind when, not long after that, we began the climb up the crumbling track that led towards the iron fortress. The eastern skies were markedly brighter than they had been earlier, and across the fjord the mist was just starting to clear, although it still hung thickly around the crag on the promontory, veiling the tops of its palisades and the gatehouse, which had the strange effect of making them seem taller. A grim sense of foreboding gripped me then, as I gazed up at those dark walls and realised that, one way or another, this was where my fate would be decided.

  We’d retrieved the horses that Haakon’s men had arrived upon, but while the path was wide and even enough for us to ride up it, I was all too aware of the sharp precipice to our right, where the ground fell sharply away towards the rocks and the pounding waves below, and so we dismounted and went on foot. Magnus and Ælfhelm led the way, with the girls behind them, bearing their now-filled pails of water on the short poles across their shoulders. Godric and I brought up the rear.

  With every step we took towards Jarnborg’s gates, my heart thudded harder in my chest, and my throat grew drier as my doubts began to multiply. All it needed was for one person to challenge us, and they would surely see through these feeble disguises of ours at once. And mine was feeblest of all. While the Englishmen’s longer hair would allow them to pass, at a glance, for Danes, my own, cut short as it was in the French style, clearly marked me out as a Norman. Fortunately one of the corpses had been wearing a helmet with a chain curtain to protect the neck. It was a little too large for my head, but it was better than nothing.

  The palisade loomed ever larger before us. Yesterday, from half a mile away, it had seemed formidable enough. Now that we were almost upon Haakon’s winter fastness, however, it became clear just how powerful a position it commanded, perched as it was atop the rocky promontory. Gradually I began to make out the rough shadows of two sentries standing atop the gatehouse, behind the parapet, with spears in hand, the points presented to the sky. They saw us as surely as we saw them. Recognising us for the party that had been sent to the spring, straightaway they called down to whoever was manning the gates. With a long creak of timbers, those great doors swung open. This was the moment of reckoning. All our careful planning would be for naught if we failed here.

  Loose pebbles crunched beneath my feet as I led my horse up the track towards the open gates, and I breathed deeply to try to still the pounding in my chest, convinced that someone would hear it.

  The sentries on the gatehouse called out something that might have been either a greeting or a challenge; I guessed it was the former, because Magnus, at the head of the column, raised a hand in acknowledgement. He and Ælfhelm passed beneath the gatehouse’s arch, followed by Eithne and the girls, and then Godric and myself. Two fair-haired boys, both no older than thirteen or fourteen, their cloaks huddled about them to guard against the cold, stood just inside the gates. From the red rims around their eyes, the sorry-looking expressions on their faces and their unsteadiness on their feet, I reckoned they were suffering from having overindulged the previous night. Perhaps that was why they had been placed on gate duty this cold morning, as a punishment for their drinking, and perhaps if they had been more awake then they might have spotted that we were not the same men who had ridden out from the fortress earlier. But, as I’d often found, folk will often see only what they expect to see. The thought that we might attempt such a ruse wouldn’t even have entered their heads, and so they had no reason to pay us close attention.

 
Nevertheless I dared not meet their eyes, but instead fixed my gaze on the way ahead, concentrating merely on putting one foot in front of the other, and on coaxing my stubborn horse on. Behind us, I heard the great oak gates creak as they were closed once more.

  We were inside Jarnborg. Against the odds, against even my expectations, we had done it. I could scarcely believe it. Under the very noses of Haakon’s men, we had slipped inside his precious stronghold, his so-called iron fortress, against the walls of which Magnus’s assault had been broken and scores of his loyal followers had been killed. The place that not so long ago we had considered all but unassailable.

  All was deathly still, and strangely so, considering that it had to be more than an hour since first light. Usually by this time I would have expected to hear shouting and laughing as men trained at arms in the yard, and the steady ring of hammer upon anvil as a farrier worked at his forge. But there was none of that. Save for those at the gate, no one seemed yet to have risen. Instead there was only an eerie hush, broken occasionally by a dog’s bark or a cock’s crow, as if the whole of Jarnborg were still asleep, its defenders all snoring soundly in their beds.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ I murmured to Eithne once we were far enough away from the gate and the sentries posted there that we could talk without fear of being overheard.

  Even as I spoke, through the lingering mist, I spied an array of tents, more than I could easily count but numbering in the scores, arranged in rings around burnt-out campfires. A few men had emerged from them, but not many, and they looked barely able to stand. They sat upon the muddy ground outside their tents, groaning and holding their heads in their hands. One lay curled on the ground, his dog licking his face, eagerly trying to wake him from his stupor, while a pair of hogs that must have escaped their pen wandered the wreckage in search of morsels. Everywhere the ground was littered with wineskins and ale-flasks, with chicken bones from which strings of flesh still hung, with half-eaten hunks of bread, wooden bowls in which the remains of some kind of bean stew had frozen, browned apple cores, broken clay cups, knives and skewers, iron ladles, spoons carved from antler and bone, and empty casks half the height of a man, some of which had been overturned.