Knights of the Hawk c-3

by James Aitcheson

  The door flexed once more. The hinges made a terrible shearing sound, and the bar that we’d set in place trembled. Another blow followed, and suddenly the planks were cracking along the grain, buckling under the force of the impact. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, letting the sweetness of the air roll across my tongue, quelling the fears that dwelt at the back of my mind and burying them deep, doing my best to still my fast-beating heart and allow the battle-calm to overtake me, steeling myself for what was to come. Readying myself to meet my God.

  Then the sound of steel upon oak ceased, and I opened my eyes, expecting to see the first of the foemen staggering beneath the lintel. The first who would die.

  But though the shouting continued, the door still stood. At first I couldn’t understand what was happening, why the enemy seemed to have given up. I glanced at the others and saw the same bewilderment in their expressions. Only then did I hear the horns sounding out across the camp: a series of rapid, insistent blasts followed by a single sustained note. Again the pattern was repeated, and again, and a fourth and a fifth time as well. And though their words were a mystery to me, I realised from their tones that the Danes standing beyond the door were suddenly crying out for a different reason: no longer out of haste to break down the door and discover what was going on in this hall, but in confusion and alarm.

  Feet thudded upon turf, steadily growing further away from us. From the din that was erupting outside I reckoned the whole camp had to be rising. It didn’t take me long to guess the reason why.

  They had come. Nihtegesa and Wyvern had come, and not a moment too soon.

  Twenty-eight

  As impatient as we were, nevertheless we dared not emerge until we could be sure it was safe. Across the yard the war-horns continued to blast out their warning notes, hooves thudded upon turf, men shouted to one another, dogs barked in excitement. But no more axe blows came, and no longer could I hear footsteps outside the hall.

  Trying to make as little noise as possible, I climbed across the crude barricade we had thrown up. With Godric’s help I lifted the bar from across the door and tentatively opened it, by only the smallest fraction at first, but enough to be able to see out. I half expected to find at least one of the Danes left guarding the entrance to the hall, but there was no one.

  Elsewhere across Jarnborg, all was disorder. Men, some only half-dressed, were scrambling from their tents into the morning light, struggling to their feet, running back and forth, swigging from leather flasks to lend them courage, hurriedly tugging on leather jerkins and mail shirts, belting scabbards upon their waists and snatching up spears and shields and whatever other weapons they could find to hand. Meanwhile their lords were yelling for order, trying to gather their hearth-troops around their banners even as they poured out through the gatehouse: an unruly horde sallying forth with blades drawn and raised to the sky.

  And then, striding out from the great stone hall, came Jarl Haakon himself, he of the black-dragon banner. He wore a helmet with a nasal-guard, so his face was partly hidden. Nevertheless I recognised him not just by the greying braid at his nape and the keenness of the eyes that stared out from beneath his helmet’s gilded rim, but also by the rings of twisted gold he wore upon his arms, by his silver-gleaming hauberk, and by the dozen or so huscarls guarding him. His cheeks were red as he barked instructions to those around him, doing his best to ignore the hounds who were racing around him and his men, their tails up, occasionally leaping up to paw at their chests and lick at their faces. They sensed that something was afoot, and they wanted to be a part of it.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Magnus, who was behind me, but I waved him silent.

  Haakon’s stable-boys brought him and his retainers their horses. Without hesitation they mounted up and rode out, bellowing at all the others making for the gates to get out of their way. The black dragon was flying to battle, flying to vanquish his foes and drive them from his shores once and for all.

  Or so he thought. Hooves thundered as he galloped through the midst of his followers, closely followed by his huscarls, and still I kept my gaze upon them until they had disappeared through the gatehouse arch, with the rest of his army charging on foot in their wake.

  ‘Come on,’ I said to the others as the last of the enemy filed out from the fortress. Even in the short while that we had been holed up inside this hall, the mist had lifted considerably. The skies had grown lighter, and there was even a small patch of blue through which the sun was breaking. If we were looking for a portent, there could be few better than that.

  Throwing the door open, I ran up the wooden steps into the yard, which was strangely quiet now. Only a few stragglers remained: those for whom the previous night’s celebrations had proven too much. Bleary-eyed and pale of face, they staggered about in search of weapons. Some were doubled over, spewing forth long trails of vomit on to the muddy ground. They didn’t notice us; or else, if they did, they didn’t think anything of us. They had more pressing concerns.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Eanflæd called as she came rushing after us, clutching her skirts to avoid tripping on the steps. ‘What about us? Are you just going to leave us here?’

  ‘You’ll do best to stay here, where you’re safe,’ I replied. ‘We’re going to find Oswynn.’

  ‘And then to burn this place to the ground,’ Magnus added grimly.

  I tossed the keys to her and she caught them neatly in two hands. ‘Lock yourselves in if you have to, if you feel safer that way, although that door won’t hold much longer,’ I told her. ‘We’ll come back for you, I promise.’

  ‘Wait,’ she said, just as we were about to set off. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Tancred,’ I replied. ‘And this is Magnus. Haakon wronged us both, and we’re here to take our revenge upon him. But we have to go now, or else everything we’ve done so far will have been in vain.’

  She seemed content with that explanation, and she would have to be, for that was all the information I was prepared to give her then. I signalled to the others and we set off across the yard, past the stables, towards Haakon’s hall. Taking care not to make a sound, keeping low so as to be less easily spotted, we moved along the side of that long stone building towards the gable end where the two huscarls had been posted earlier. I led the way, creeping towards the corner of the hall, where some dozen or so empty barrels were stacked. I crouched behind them, peering through the slightest gap, and saw that of the two guards, only one remained, looking more than a little agitated as he glanced around, his long-handled axe in hand. He was probably a few years younger than me, around the same age as Magnus, round-faced and looking uncomfortable in his hauberk.

  ‘How do we get past him?’ Ælfhelm murmured, startling me, for I hadn’t noticed him beside me.

  It was a good question. The entrance to Haakon’s hall lay in full view of most of the rest of the fortress, and I couldn’t see how we could kill him without attracting unwanted attention.

  ‘I have an idea,’ Magnus said. ‘Wait here.’

  Before I could say anything to dissuade him, he was rising to his feet and darting back the way we had come.

  ‘Magnus,’ I hissed in warning, but he was already too far away to hear me. Rather than heading back towards the building where the bed-slaves were quartered, though, he disappeared instead around the far end of the hall. Silently I cursed him for not telling us what he had in mind, for leaving us here.

  That was when I heard what sounded like his voice, calling out in what must have been the Danish tongue from the far side of the hall. Ducking as low as possible so as not to be seen, I watched the entrance to see what the young door-guard would do. Whatever it was Magnus had said, suddenly the Dane was turning towards the source of the noise. Again the Englishman called out, and this time it was enough to draw the guard from his position. He ventured round the corner and out of sight.

  This was our chance.

  ‘Now,’ I said as we scrambled from our hiding place, maki
ng for the doors to the hall. I thrust them open, and burst inside, with the two Englishmen behind me, into a long, dark feasting-hall. The wreckage of the previous night’s celebrations lay everywhere: broken pitchers, abandoned ale-cups and drinking horns, rushes stained with the contents of several men’s stomachs, and, suspended on an iron spit over the still-smoking hearth, the almost bare carcass of what had once been a pig, but was now hardly more than bone, with scraps of charred meat hanging from it. A putrid stench of piss and vomit filled the room, causing the bile to rise in my throat, but somehow I managed to hold it down.

  Nothing moved, save for the mice scrabbling among the rushes in search of crumbs of food, and a scrawny cat that was licking its lips as it padded the length of the long trestle table that stood on the dais. A pair of torches in sconces mounted on the walls offered the only light. Apart from us the hall was empty. Behind us I heard the door open and I tensed, my hand leaping to my sword-hilt, but it was only Magnus.

  ‘Is he-?’ I began.

  ‘Dead,’ he confirmed.

  I nodded. ‘Build up that hearth-fire, and do it quickly,’ I called to the three of them as I took one of the torches from the wall and marched towards the dais end of the hall, where I saw a flight of stairs leading up. ‘Anything that you think might burn, throw it on. We don’t have long.’

  Haakon’s bedchamber would most likely be on the up-floor. Hurriedly I picked my way through the remains of the feast, over ale-soaked bedrolls and puddles that might have been water but which could well have been piss, then ran up the stairs, shouting: ‘Oswynn!’

  No answer came. Reaching the top, I found myself in what must have been Haakon’s bedchamber. The faint light of my torch flickered across the roof-beams and the sloping thatch above. Richly embroidered tapestries in bright hues hung upon the walls to keep out the draughts. A squared tæfl board lay on the floor, the ivory and jet playing-pieces scattered everywhere.

  And then, at the far end of the chamber, I saw the bed, and curled up beneath the blankets and the furs, sobbing, a figure I knew only too well, for I would have recognised that black hair anywhere.

  ‘Oswynn,’ I said. ‘Oswynn!’

  There was a stand for the torch at one side of the hall, and I set it down there before rushing over to her.

  ‘No,’ she said as I approached, shaking her head wildly and retreating further beneath the coverlets, and I wondered if she’d mistaken me for Haakon. ‘No, please.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said as I knelt down at the bedside. ‘It’s me.’

  She raised her head from the pillow then and looked at me through red-rimmed eyes, a fearful look upon her face. For long moments all she did was stare at me in shock, as if I were an apparition, but then her expression began to soften as recognition took hold.

  ‘Tancred,’ she said, sitting up suddenly and blinking as if she couldn’t believe what she saw. ‘You came.’

  ‘I came,’ I replied, smiling gently.

  In truth I could hardly believe it myself as she threw her arms around me and I held her close for the first time in nearly three years, wondering how it could have been so long, feeling her form beneath her rough linen shift, thinner than I remembered, and breathing in the sweet scent of her skin. She began to cry, and that was enough to set me weeping as well. Tears cascaded down my cheeks, and they were tears of relief, tears of love, tears of joy. After all this while, all this searching, hoping, dreaming, we were once more together. I thought of all those bleak hours in recent months when I’d despaired of ever being able to find her again, when the grief and the pain had been almost too much to bear, and I remembered the darkness that had often descended upon me. A darkness that now was banished. For here she was.

  ‘I didn’t think you would …’ she began, but couldn’t go on as a fit of sobbing overtook her. ‘He told me you’d left,’ she said once it had subsided. ‘He said-’

  ‘He was wrong,’ I said. ‘Whatever he told you, it was a lie.’

  I gazed into her soft, glistening eyes, wondering what she must have seen in the past three years, what she must have endured, though at the same time I did not even want to imagine.

  ‘Come on,’ I told her. ‘We have to go.’

  She wiped a hand across her moist cheeks as she raised herself, somewhat stiffly, I noticed, from the mattress. Haakon had hurt her and for that, I promised myself, I would make him suffer, just as soon as I caught up with him.

  ‘Go where?’ she asked.

  ‘Anywhere but here. My friends have ships. They’ll take us to safety, if we can only get out of this place.’

  To tell the truth I wasn’t quite sure how we were going to reach them, given that the whole of Haakon’s army lay between us and the bay. As always, getting inside was the easy part. But I knew that somehow we would do it. We had to, for the only alternative was death.

  Taking Oswynn’s hand in mine, I led her towards the stairs, lifting a sealskin cloak from where it lay atop a chest and wrapping it around her shoulders, then taking the torch from its stand. Down in the feasting-hall the hearth-fire was crackling and smoking. Godric, Magnus and Ælfhelm had tossed armfuls of the drier rushes on to the smouldering embers, and now bright flames were sparking into life, already causing some of the larger kindling and timbers they had thrown on it to blacken and catch light.

  ‘Grab that torch,’ I said to Godric, pointing towards the second of the two wall-sconces, and to Magnus and Ælfhelm: ‘Take some of those timbers from the fire.’

  They didn’t need telling a second time. This was the moment we had been waiting for. The moment when we would send our message to Haakon, when we would destroy his famed stronghold, and all he held dear.

  We carried those firebrands out into the open and then tossed them high up the thatch on both sides of the hall so that it would catch all the quicker. Then, while Godric went to fetch Eanflæd and the other women from the building where we’d left them, Ælfhelm, Magnus, Oswynn and I set about spreading flame to some of the other storehouses, sheds and outbuildings that abutted the palisade.

  I knew it wouldn’t be so long before we were spotted. And so it proved. Of the two hundred or so warriors who must have comprised Haakon’s army, only perhaps a score still remained in Jarnborg, and they were clearly the worst afflicted, since many were barely able to stand and even now were continuing to spew the contents of their stomachs all over the yard. No sooner had they seen us, however, and realised what we were doing to their lord’s halls than they raised a cry and began coming at us: a swarm of wild spear-Danes and sword-Danes and axe-Danes in various states of undress, some in only their trews, most without even a shield to protect themselves.

  We, however, were armed and ready for a fight, eager to free our sword-arms, our blood already up.

  ‘Stay back!’ I yelled to Oswynn as the enemy charged. ‘Stay behind us!’

  Some tripped over their own feet as they ran, while others could only manage an ungainly stagger, which meant that instead of all attacking together, they came in ragged fashion, in ones and twos. The first of them rushed towards me, yelling wordlessly, aiming a swing at my shoulder. Steel shrieked as I met his weapon with my own, and then I was turning the flat of my blade against the edge of his, forcing it down and out of position, before jerking my elbow up and into his chin. Stunned, he staggered backwards, and instantly he was forgotten as I spun out of the path of the next man’s axe and whirled about his flank. This one was not quick either in wits or on his feet, and before he’d even realised where I had gone, I’d sliced across the back of his thigh, sending him sprawling.

  ‘No mercy,’ I shouted. ‘No mercy!’

  The battle-calm was descending, the sword-joy filling me, and I gave myself over to instinct as I stepped deftly from one opponent to the next, cutting, parrying, thrusting, scything through their midst, as easily as if it were a dance. All about me the blade-song rang out. I was dimly aware, at the far end of the enclosure, of Eithne and a band of the slave-girls,
a dozen of them and more. With knives in hand they rushed from one of the buildings. Even as we tore into the enemy from the front, they assailed them from behind, hurling themselves into the fray, setting upon those Danes who had tripped and fallen, plunging steel into their throats, and I was laughing as I saw we were winning, cutting them down on all sides, wreaking a ruin amongst Haakon’s troops, filling the morning with our fury.

  The fire was taking hold now, sweeping across the thatch of the feasting-hall and the other buildings. Bright tongues of flame licked at the sky, while thick clouds of black smoke billowed up, wafting across the enclosure, stinging my eyes and making me cough, but I did not care as I released the anger that for so long had been building and let my sword do its work, until suddenly the enemy, the ten or so that remained, were falling to their knees, or else fleeing across the yard.

  Behind me I heard Oswynn scream, and my heart all but stopped as I turned, thinking that she had found herself some trouble. They were not screams of alarm or pain, though, but of hatred. In her wide eyes was a fury I’d never before witnessed. Rushing forward, she snatched up the sword of one of the fallen Danes, and then, as he tried to rise, stamped her foot down on to his chest, pinning him to the ground. He gave a yell, but it was short-lived, as Oswynn gripped the hilt in both hands and drove the point down, hard, into his face, all the while shrieking in triumph as tears streamed down her cheeks. Her teeth gritted, she tugged it free, then plunged it into his chest where his heart would be, and again and again and again, until finally I managed to drag her away.

  ‘He’s dead,’ I said, though still she struggled. ‘Oswynn, he’s dead!’

  Eventually I was able to prise the weapon from her grasp. I tossed it aside and she fell into my arms, pressing her face against my shoulder, weeping uncontrollably. By then the fight was all but over, and those few who hadn’t surrendered were being chased down by the slave-girls. In all the years I’d trodden the sword-path I’d never seen anything like it.