Knights of the Hawk c-3

by James Aitcheson

  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 was 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.

  ‘There was a feast last night,’ Eithne said at last, after passing on my question to the other girls. ‘A celebration.’

  ‘A celebration?’ Godric put in, frowning. ‘Of what?’

  A smile crossed my face then, and I had to stifle a laugh as, even before Eithne had the chance to explain, I realised what had happened. Our ploy had worked better than I could ever have dared imagine.

  Hardly had our two ships been sighted leaving his shores, she said, than Haakon had ordered two dozen barrels of ale brought up from his cellars, and another dozen of wine, and haunches of meat and rounds of cheese and all manner of other foodstuffs from his storehouses. There had been dancing and there had been singing, as the Dane and his followers savoured their victory and fell about with laughter at how he had driven us off with mere words, at how he had frightened us into fleeing. And so it had gone on most of the way through the night, until, insensible with drink, they had eventually given themselves up to sleep.

  The deceiver had himself been deceived. He had been too ready to believe in appearances, and so he had let down his guard. He had underestimated us, underestimated our cunning. Now we would make him pay for that blunder.

  A thrill awakened within me: a thrill of a kind I hadn’t known in what felt like an age. All the doubts, all the fears, all the misgivings that I’d harboured suddenly fell away. With every heartbeat, as I stared out across the yard and the debris left over from the feasting, my confidence grew.

  For that was when I truly began to believe that we could do this. Victory was ours for the taking. All we had to do was to seize the opportunity we’d been given.

  ‘What now?’ Ælfhelm growled under his breath. He kept glancing about, as if expecting hordes of foemen to descend upon us at any moment.

  ‘Now we find my woman,’ I said, knowing that we had no time to lose. The past few days at sea had taught me that once this early fog did start to lift, it lifted quickly. Already it was decidedly thinner now than it had been when we’d ambushed Haakon’s men. Whereas before we could barely see further than a stone’s throw, now I was able to see on the far side of the enclosure the faint outlines of barns and storehouses, halls and workshops, stables and chicken-pens. Above the palisade to the east, meanwhile, the sun’s disc was struggling to make itself shown, its feeble light just about visible through the gloom.

  Earlier, with Eithne’s help, I’d described Oswynn to the slaves, and asked if they knew her. It was as I’d feared when Haakon showed me the marriage-band on her finger. He wasn’t keeping her as a mere house-servant, or a dairymaid or corn-grinder or washerwoman. As if I’d believed for a heartbeat that he would. Rather, she was one of the chosen few he often liked to take to his bed. They were quartered separately from the other thralls, in a building close by his own hall, from which they could be readily summoned at a moment’s notice whenever Haakon’s lusts consumed him. My blood boiled at the thought.

  ‘They’re well treated,’ Eithne had added. ‘They’re fed well, better than his other slaves, at least, and he makes sure they always have the finest clothes-’

  I’d stopped her before she’d been able to go on. Eithne hadn’t been with us when we’d met Haakon the previous day. She hadn’t seen the bruises decorating Oswynn’s cheek, or how thin she looked.

  Those thoughts were foremost in my mind now, as I bade Eithne ask the slave-girls where I could find this building where Oswynn was being held. No sooner had she finished speaking than they began pointing in the direction of a long stone-and-thatch hall in the far corner of the enclosure, and the squat, low-gabled house that stood beside it.

  So near. Little more than a hundred paces stood between myself and Oswynn. My throat was dry and I swallowed to moisten it. Soon I would be able to hold her, as I hadn’t held her in three long years.

  ‘Go with the girls,’ I told Eithne. ‘Get word to the other slaves. Tell them there’s going to be a battle, but that they have nothing to fear from us. They’ll be safe provided that they stay out of sight of Haakon’s men. So long as they’re ready to leave this place when his hall goes up in flames, I can guarantee them freedom. Can you remember all that?’

  ‘I think so,’ she replied, somewhat stiffly. ‘I’m not stupid, you know.’

  ‘Then don’t waste time quarrelling with me. Go now.’

  Her eyes betrayed her anxiety, but she did as she was told without further argument. I watched the four of them go, still carrying those pails lest anyone looking on suspected there was something awry.

  ‘Come on,’ I said to the others. ‘We can’t tarry here.’

  A cock crowed, heralding the morning, but that was the only sound to break the stillness. Leaving the horses tethered to a post, we trudged across the muddy yard towards that low building. Icy water seeped into my boots, making my toes numb, as we skirted our way around the tents an
d the men camped there, walking with purpose but at the same time trying not to make it seem as though we were in a hurry.

  Two of Haakon’s huscarls were posted outside the entrance to the stone hall, decked out in mail hauberks that fell past their knees. Their long-handled axes and bright-painted round shields rested up against the wall and they were pacing about, rubbing gloved hands together and blowing into them to try to warm them, muttering to one another and occasionally snorting in laughter. They must be the only people in the whole of Jarnborg, I reckoned, who were not still nursing the effects of the previous night’s feasting. They both cast a glance in our direction as we approached. I tensed, but then after a few heart-seizing moments they turned away to resume their conversation, and paid us no more attention. And why should they? We were, by all appearances, merely four of their countrymen, stretching their limbs on a cold winter’s morning. If they’d seen us at close hand they might have thought differently, but most likely they saw our helmets and guessed we had simply decided to rise early for some sword practice in the yard. Perhaps if they had dwelt on that assumption a little longer, they might have questioned why it was that we four were so keen when everyone else in camp still lay huddled in their blankets. Perhaps then their suspicions might have been aroused. Obviously they were too concerned with other things, however, since no challenge came.

  We rounded the main hall, past the stables and the mounds of dung that had been shovelled into heaps outside, towards that low-gabled house. There was no sentry guarding the entrance here, but the door was stout, built of oak or some other heavy timber, and fitted with a sturdy iron lock and ring-handle. I glanced back over my shoulder to see if those two huscarls had followed us, but could not see them, although I heard their laughter from around the corner. Satisfied that no one was watching, I descended the steps towards the door, which was slightly below the level of the ground. I gripped the cold handle, gently twisting it until I heard the latch lift, then pushed, slowly but firmly, more in hope than in expectation, for I didn’t expect to find it unlocked.