Knights of the Hawk c-3

by James Aitcheson

  ‘He was one of Haakon’s friends,’ Oswynn said. ‘Sprott, his name was. Many times he-’

  But whatever it was she had been about to say, she couldn’t go on, for fresh tears spilt forth.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, caressing her head. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’

  What she had seen and what she had been made to do, I didn’t want to imagine. It was a wonder that anything of her old spirit remained. At least she had not forgotten how to wield a blade. A long time ago I’d gifted her with a knife and spent long afternoons teaching her how to use it, so that she would be able to protect herself if ever she needed. A keen learner, she had picked up the rudiments far quicker than many boys, and I was pleased to see that those skills were as sharp now as they had been then.

  ‘Lord,’ I heard Godric call, and looked up to see him returning with Eanflæd and the other two women close behind him.

  Haakon’s hall was by then nothing but a writhing, twisting tower of flame, a beacon blazing out across the fjord. Around it the many stable buildings and workshops that we had also fired were aflame, and even some that we hadn’t, as the breeze spread glowing ash from one to the next. Smoke swirled all about, growing thicker with every heartbeat. Jarnborg, Haakon’s home, his pride, his so-called iron fortress, was burning.

  This was no time to revel in our achievement, however. We had to leave while we still could, before any of his men rushed back to rescue their prized possessions from the blaze.

  ‘This way,’ I called, waving to Oswynn but also to Godric, Ælfhelm and a grimacing Magnus, who was hobbling, the leather of his shoe covered with blood where he had been wounded. He was clearly struggling, and I knew he would never make it out of Jarnborg alive on his own. But I wasn’t about to leave him. Together we had planned and plotted this victory, and together we had risked all. Together we had fought, and together we would see it through.

  ‘Go with them,’ I said to Oswynn, meaning Godric and Ælfhelm. I picked up a spear that a dead Dane had no more use for and thrust it into her hands. She could hardly go without a weapon, and that would be better suited to her than a heavy sword. ‘You’ll be safe so long as you stay close to them and don’t leave their sight.’

  ‘No,’ she said, her eyes beseeching. ‘I want to stay with you.’

  ‘Don’t argue with me,’ I said. ‘Not now.’

  I wiped away the tear rolling down her cheek and kissed her then, kissed her hard, savouring the feel of her lips pressed against mine, and with that I tore myself away from her embrace.

  ‘Go,’ I said. As she turned, a shiver ran through me, for I remembered only too well what had happened the last time I’d left her to the protection of others. But it would be different this time.

  I rushed to Magnus, placing one arm under his shoulder and lending him my own for support, allowing him to take the weight off his injured foot. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ælfhelm hurrying towards us, and I knew that it was the oath binding him to his lord that had made him turn back. At the same time Godric too was hesitating, as if uncertain what to do.

  I waved them on. ‘Lead the women away from here,’ I shouted. ‘Get them to safety. Go!’

  Fortunately the huscarl soon saw sense. After a moment’s hesitation, he turned, raising his sword and pointing it towards the gatehouse. I was relying on him, as doubtless the most experienced warrior among us, if not necessarily the best swordsman, to keep his head.

  The guards at the entrance, seeing how we had possession of the place of slaughter, had already fled, leaving the gates open. All we had to do was reach them. One step at a time, I helped Magnus across the yard, through the mud and the puddles, around the bodies of the slain. The usurper’s son wasn’t heavy, but he wasn’t light either, and I soon felt the strain on my back and shoulders.

  ‘Thank you, Tancred,’ he said through clenched teeth when we were rounding the pig-pens and halfway to the gatehouse.

  ‘Don’t thank me until this is over,’ I replied curtly. ‘We haven’t survived this yet.’

  Close by the gate, Eithne was marshalling the slaves, yelling at them to follow Godric and Ælfhelm and Oswynn. As well as women and girls, there were a few men and boys, I saw now, all recognisable by their short-shaven hair and all armed, some with spears and axes taken from Danes they had killed, but most with fish knives and meat cleavers, hayforks and iron pokers, implements that in the right hands were as good as any weapon.

  ‘Lord!’ Eithne shouted when she saw me. Quick-thinking as ever, she ran to the horses that we’d tethered not far from the gate. The sight of the flames, the smell of the smoke and the clash of steel had spooked them, but she clearly had a way with the animals, for by the time we’d reached her she’d managed to soothe one so that it would let Magnus mount it. Together we helped him into the saddle. He winced as he placed his injured foot in the stirrup.

  Teeth gritted against the pain, he clasped my hand in thanks. ‘I’ll live,’ he said. ‘So long as I can hold a sword, I’ll fight.’

  Eithne and I turned our attention to the other horses, doing what we could to calm them before mounting up and slicing through the ropes tying them to the post. Then the three of us kicked on, cantering through the smoke, beneath the gate-arch and on down the track, riding hard to catch up with the rest of our party.

  The wind buffeted my cheeks and stunted trees flashed past on either side. The mist was clearing; from here I could see through the trees, all the way down the slope towards the bay. Between the bare branches I glimpsed Nihtegesa and Wyvern drawn up on the shore, with hundreds of footprints streaking away from them across the sand, leading towards drier land.

  Where battle had been joined. Already on both sides the ordered lines of the shield-wall had broken and men were running among one another, hacking and thrusting and laying their enemies low, filling the morning with howls of agony and cries of rage, with the clatter of steel upon limewood and the screams of horses. Across the bloodstained field lay crumpled bodies in their dozens, with their weapons and their pennons lying beside them. And then, in the middle of the fray, I caught sight of Haakon’s banner, the black dragon with the burning eyes and the axe in its claws. It was all but surrounded, with both Eudo’s tusked boar and Wace’s rising sun harrying it, although from such a distance I couldn’t pick out either the Dane or my friends amidst so many mail-clad warriors.

  ‘For Robert!’ I yelled. Those on foot ahead of me heard our hoofbeats and my cries and made way. I kept looking for Oswynn and Ælfhelm and Godric, but I didn’t see them, and I could only suppose they were somewhere further ahead. ‘For Robert de Commines!’

  ‘On!’ Magnus cried, exhorting our band. Cheers erupted from the slaves as he and I rode past them to lead the charge. ‘On, on, on! For Eadmund and for Godwine!’ yelled Magnus, and I guessed those must be the names of the two brothers he had lost.

  We had reached the flatter, open ground at the foot of the promontory on which Jarnborg stood. Ahead, three foemen were stumbling away from the fray: one clutching his arm; another whose face was entirely covered with blood and was missing several of his teeth; a third who had lost an eye. Too late they saw us coming. Too late they raised their weapons. My steed did not falter as I brought my weapon to bear, slicing across the shoulder of the first at the same time as Magnus battered his blade across the second’s helmet. The last, the one with the missing eye, threw himself to one side, just in time, and we left him for those behind to finish as we rode on across the open meadow, towards the heart of the fray, towards the dragon banner, which was beginning to waver as our forces pressed at it on all flanks, from the front and from behind.

  Worse was to come for Haakon, too. Some of his followers had decided their lives were worth more than their oaths to their lord, for suddenly they were breaking and running. They hadn’t been expecting a battle this morning; they had no stomach for the struggle, nor in truth were they in any fit state to wield a blade, and their nerve was failing them. Their side st
ill held the advantage in numbers but, as I’d found, numbers alone will not win a battle. Confidence is everything, and theirs had been shattered. Where bloodlust and battle-fury had reigned, now there was only fear. And just as one man’s resolve can provide inspiration for his sword-brothers, and make their hearts swell with belief both in themselves and their cause, fear can do the opposite. So it was then. Man by man, the enemy host crumbled. As each spear-Dane saw his companion deserting his side, abandoning the struggle, so he too realised his efforts were in vain. He saw the hordes of Englishmen and Normans bearing down on him with sharpened steel in their hands and death in their eyes, and he fled, spreading his panic in turn to the next man and the next and the next, until, like sparrows fleeing the hawk’s shadow, suddenly the enemy were scattering, running anywhere they could, so long as it was away from their foes.

  Into that tumult, roaring, swearing death upon them, invoking God and all the saints to aid us in the slaughter of our enemies, Magnus and I charged, with the rest of our small army behind us. On horse and on foot, men and women alike, we hurled ourselves against the enemy tide, adding our numbers to those of our allies, striking out to left and right, losing ourselves to anger, to the wills of our blades, revelling in the joy of the kill. Over the heads of the enemy I glimpsed the dragon banner on the move, heading further inland, across the boggy valley to the higher ground and the safety of the woods that lay at the heart of the island. Somehow Haakon had managed to break out from the midst of the Englishmen and Frenchmen surrounding him. I made out his gleaming mail, bright beneath the morning sun, as he struck out with only his standard-bearer and a bare handful of his loyal huscarls for protection. They were on foot, having clearly lost their horses during the fighting, and were now running like the rest of their countrymen. Like cravens.

  We had done it. Hard though it was to believe, we had done it. In every direction I turned, the rout was under way. Haakon had been not just crushed but humiliated.

  ‘Lord!’

  I glanced about, saw Pons waving to me, his sword in one hand, his helmet in the other. Blood was smeared across the front of his hauberk, his hair was flattened against his head, and there was a broad grin on his grimy face. Some fifty paces further away, Wace and Eudo and their knights had managed to surround a group of Haakon’s huscarls, and I took them for such because of the long-handled axes that they each bore. These they now threw down on the ground as a sign of their surrender.

  ‘Where’s Serlo?’ I asked Pons. ‘Dweorg? Sceota?’

  ‘I don’t know, lord. I lost sight of them during the fighting.’

  I glanced about, but could not spot them anywhere. I could only hope Serlo was all right.

  ‘We need to get after Haakon,’ I said. ‘We need to finish this.’

  ‘He won’t get far,’ Pons replied. ‘Where can he possibly go?’

  He had a point. Even if the Dane did escape into the woods, sooner or later he would have to show himself if he didn’t want to starve. When he did, we would be ready, waiting to cut him and his retainers down. He had fought and he had lost, and he would die by one means or another, sooner or later.

  At the same time, though, I knew I wouldn’t be able to rest until that murderer, that defiler, that vile heathen lay lifeless with my sword buried in his gut. For three years already I’d thirsted for justice. No longer was I to be denied.

  I glanced at Magnus, and he at me, and saw that he was of the same mind.

  ‘Vengeance,’ he said.

  I nodded in agreement. Wheeling about, I coaxed my horse into first a canter and then a gallop, drawing all the speed I could from his legs as we took off across that field of death in pursuit of Haakon and his band. All around rose the familiar battle-stench of blood and shit and mud and piss and horse dung and vomit, all intermingled.

  ‘Haakon,’ Magnus yelled, trying to catch his attention as we left the scattered, crimson-soaked corpses behind us and charged across thick tufts of grass. The Dane’s standard-bearer had at last thrown down the cumbersome banner and we rode over it, trampling the once-proud dragon and axe into the mud.

  ‘Come and face us, you whoreson,’ I called out. ‘You can’t run from us!’

  The ground was soft and once or twice my mount almost stumbled, but nevertheless we were quickly gaining on them. They were five in number: his erstwhile standard-bearer, a fair-haired boy who could not have seen any more than twelve summers; his three hearth-troops; and, lagging a little behind them, the Dane himself, half running and half limping in a way that suggested he must have been wounded in the battle. They still had a few hundred paces to go until they reached the safety of the trees, and they must have been beginning to doubt whether they could manage it before we fell upon them.

  To my flank there came a piercing shriek and a yell. Magnus’s horse must have tripped, for I glanced over my shoulder and saw it had gone down, and he with it. Hooves flailed and turf flew, and in the midst of it all the Englishman was struggling to extricate himself from the saddle.

  ‘Magnus!’ I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me. He had other things to worry about.

  As did I. Brief thoughts of going back to help the Englishman were swiftly forgotten. Something much more important was at stake. It fell to me now to kill the Dane, to claim revenge on behalf of us both. That was the promise I’d made myself. Here was my chance to make good on it.

  ‘Haakon!’ I roared.

  With every heartbeat I was growing closer, while the clash of arms and the shouts of men were growing more distant. He couldn’t ignore me any longer. At the sound of his name this time he stopped and turned to face me. Even though the nasal-guard of my helmet obscured my face, he must have recognised me.

  He must have seen, too, that there was no longer any use in running. Fixing his gaze upon me, he drew his bloodied sword and stood his ground as I charged towards him. He realised that his time had come, but he was proud. I’d heard long ago that amongst the heathens to die without a weapon in one’s hand was the worst dishonour, for it meant they would not be permitted to dine with their gods in whatever afterlife it was they believed in. Whether that was true or not, and whether that thought was in his mind, I don’t know. More probably, like any man whose life had been spent travelling the sword-path, he considered it nobler to go to his grave fighting, a warrior to the end, rather than suffer the coward’s death and be cut down from behind.

  A howl left his lips as he ran, staggering, at me, his sword raised high, his golden arm-rings shining. His braid had come loose and his greying hair flew behind him. He realised, I think, that I was responsible for burning his hall, for destroying everything he had spent so many years fighting to gain. He knew now what I had felt that night at Dunholm, when so much had been taken from me, when my own world had crumbled about me.

  Our blades clashed with a shriek of steel, and then I was past him, turning sharply before coming at him again. I parried the blow he aimed at my horse’s neck, and the one after that, and the one after that, trusting in the steel not to shear, all the while waiting for my opportunity to come, as I knew it must. Waiting for him to give me the opening I needed. Blood trickled from a gash at his hip, and each movement he made seemed unsteadier than the last. He was slow to turn, and slower still between each sword-stroke.

  ‘Die,’ he yelled in that coarse voice of his, and he was weeping now. Weeping because he knew that his end was near. Weeping because he knew that I was toying with him. ‘Die, you bastard, you Norman filth! Die!’

  He swung at my thigh, but it was the swing of a desperate man. Again I met his blade with mine, and this time I was able to force his down, out of position, before backhanding my sword-point across the side of his head. He was only just within my reach and so I managed only a glancing blow, but it was enough to rob him of his balance and send him to the ground with limbs flailing and teeth flying. His sword slipped from his fingers, falling away uselessly into the grass. I slid from the saddle and stood over him. He gazed back up at
me, rasping heavily, his eyes moist. A bright gash decorated his cheek, and a crimson stream ran from the corner of his mouth.

  Some way off, Danish voices shouted out in despair. So desperate had they been to reach the sanctuary of the woods that his remaining huscarls hadn’t noticed that their lord was no longer with them. Not until it was too late. They turned, and began rushing back to try to save him, but they were too far away to do anything.

  I pointed the tip of my blade at the pale skin at Haakon’s neck. ‘Aren’t you going to plead for mercy?’

  He stared up at me, not in fear but in something more like resignation. ‘Would you grant it if I asked for it?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘But I want to hear you beg.’

  He smiled that humourless smile I’d seen before. Of course he would not beg. Nor, had I been in his place, would I.

  ‘She moaned like a whore,’ he said instead.

  ‘What?’ I’d thought he might ask me to make his end quick, or say any number of other things, but I hadn’t been expecting that.

  ‘Night after night, she moaned when she was in my bed, when I was inside her. She was my favourite. Did you know that?’

  ‘Enough,’ I said. Tears welled in my eyes, and my throat stuck. ‘No more.’

  ‘I loved her,’ he murmured, a hint of sadness in his tone. He closed his eyes as if recalling some long-cherished memory. ‘Yes,’ he said with a heavy sigh, ‘I loved her.’

  I couldn’t bear to listen any longer. Summoning all my strength, all my hatred, I plunged my sword into his throat, thrusting it hard so that it tore through flesh, sliced through bone, and I was roaring as I did so, roaring for all the world to hear, allowing the anguish that for so long had been buried within my heart to finally let itself be heard, until there was no more breath in my chest, and I had nothing left to give.

  Gritting my teeth, I ripped the blade free. My heart was pounding, my whole body trembling and dripping with sweat. Falling to my knees, I wiped the moisture from my eyes and gazed down at Haakon’s bestilled, bloodied corpse. In that instant, all the grief and pain and doubt and despair that for three years had plagued and tortured me were at once dispelled.