Knights of the Hawk (26 page)

He roared an instruction that I couldn’t quite make out, but I didn’t need to. At once the shield-wall was breaking and the Englishmen were surging forward with steel in hand and death in their eyes.

‘Get back!’ I yelled at Hamo. The path was too narrow to fight effectively on horseback, but if he and his men could withdraw to join us on the higher ground by the thicket, then we might just have the space in which to give our sword-arms room.

Either Hamo didn’t hear me, though, or else he chose not to listen. Barking an order to the rest of the archers, he drew and loosed another two shafts from his arrow-bag. The first fell wide, disappearing somewhere amongst the sedge, but his second found the throat of one of the onrushing enemy. The man’s legs buckled and he toppled backwards to cries from the comrades into whose path he had fallen. Two of them stumbled as they tried to negotiate his fallen body and, as they did so, their shields dropped out of position, just for the briefest of instants, but it was an instant too long. One dropped his seax as an arrow pierced his upper arm, while another was struck upon the breast; the head must have found a gap between the links of his mail, for the shaft was buried almost up to the fletching. Suddenly the track was slick with blood and obstructed by the corpses of three men, over which the rest now had to climb.

‘
Sceldas!
’ Hereward roared at them, and at the same time lifted his own bow.

The same bow with which he had felled Pons’s destrier. The same one with which he humiliated me before my own knights.

He drew the string back past his chin and held it there for a few moments before finally releasing it. The arrow sailed over the heads of his countrymen, flashing silver as it flew, spearing towards Hamo and his company. There was a yell and then one of them was tumbling from the saddle to the ground: the gaunt one with the large ears who was forever grumbling about how empty his stomach was.

‘Ansfred!’ one of his friends shouted, but Ansfred was already dead. He lay on his back with his eyes and mouth open, a surprised look fixed on his face, and a white-feathered shaft flecked with scarlet protruding from his chest.

‘Get back!’ I yelled for the second time. Whether it was because they heard me, or because they had seen one of their number fall and had no wish to suffer the same fate, I didn’t know, but finally Hamo’s men seemed to awaken from their bloodlust. As the Englishmen charged towards them, they all began to turn, riding back to join us on the higher ground where the willows stood.

All, that was, except for Hamo himself. Seemingly oblivious to the death of his man, he stood his ground, loosing arrow after arrow as fast as he could draw them from the bag at his side. Most fell wide or else stuck fast in the leather and limewood of the English shields, but a couple found their targets, and I saw that several among the enemy were beginning to waver as they stepped across the bodies of their slain comrades, their feet slipping on the blood-soaked mud, even as those behind pressed forward. Hereward called for them to advance, but while some were paying attention, confusion and indecision had gripped the rest.

Long years of experience had taught me that such moments were fleeting. If we were to take advantage of their confusion, we had to do so quickly. An idea formed in my mind.

‘Stay here,’ I said to Wace and all the other knights as I pushed Fyrheard into a gallop, racing down from the cover of the trees towards the English ranks.

‘What are you doing?’ Wace called. ‘Tancred!’

‘Trust me,’ I shouted back, and then to the withdrawing archers: ‘Form a line in front of the trees. Wait for my signal!’

Hamo must finally have used all his arrows, for only now did he follow the rest of his company. His cheeks were even redder than usual and his face showed a smirk of satisfaction as he rode past.

I checked Fyrheard about fifty paces from the enemy lines, raising my hands in the air, away from my body, to show that I had not come to fight but to speak.

‘Sheathe your swords,’ I said in the English tongue. I was aware that I was taking a chance, but I reckoned that they would be intrigued enough to want to hear what I had to say. ‘I’ve come to speak with your lord.’

I’d lost sight of him among the ranks of his men, but I knew he had to be there somewhere.

‘Where are you, Hereward?’ I shouted. ‘Come and show your face!’

My heart was beating fast. This all depended on my sounding confident, but I was not confident at all. One arrow was all it would take, if Hereward decided to use this opportunity to finish what he had begun one week ago.

His men broke ranks and I saw him. He handed his bow to one of his retainers and strode forward, stepping over the corpses as easily and indifferently as if they were fallen branches.

He stopped about ten paces from me, removed his helmet and that was when I saw him properly for the first time. The man who by his sword-edge had probably accounted for more Normans than any other single Englishman had managed in the last five years. The man who had defied us all these months. But if his pride was at all wounded by being betrayed by his allies, by having to flee the place that for so long he had helped defend, it was not apparent in his demeanour. He was probably around the same age as myself, if the number of cuts and scars decorating his face was anything to judge by. Certainly he looked no younger. There was a hardness in his eyes, and a firmness in his stance that gave the impression of someone who didn’t know the meaning of defeat. He dressed not in mail but in an archer’s leather corselet, reinforced with iron studs that would deflect a glancing blow but little more.

‘Have you come to parley or just to gawp?’ he asked.

‘I’ve come to talk,’ I answered.

‘Then talk.’

His voice was strangely measured and even, not at all what I had been expecting after everything I’d heard about him.

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘You know you can’t run. We can easily outpace you and pick you off, one by one, until you decide to surrender.’

Hereward shrugged. ‘We might not be able to run but we can still fight. You’ll run out of arrows eventually and I doubt your men have the same stomach for a fight as mine. We have numbers on our side.’

I forced a laugh, and hoped it sounded convincing. ‘You think we’re the only men that King Guillaume has sent?’

‘You tell me.’

‘There’s a whole raiding-party four hundred strong following behind us,’ I said, hoping that he would fall for the lie. ‘King Guillaume is scouring the marshes with fire and sword to try to find you. He has put a price on your head of one hundred silver marks, and he doesn’t care whether you’re brought to him alive or dead.’

It sounded believable enough that even I was convinced. With any luck he would swallow the morsel whole, and we wouldn’t have to risk another battle.

‘What, then?’ Hereward countered. ‘You would have me give myself up to you?’

‘That’s right. If you do that, and freely offer your submission, then the king might just be willing to show you clemency. There is no other choice, if you want to live.’

He snorted. ‘There is always a choice.’ He turned his back and made to return to the shield-wall.

‘You can’t escape your fate,’ I called after him. ‘Your rebellion is finished. The Isle belongs to us. Your allies have forsaken you, as has your cherished saint, Æthelthryth. She heard your prayers and she laughed at them. She spits on your dreams. Do you hear me?’

He rounded on me. ‘What would you know of St Æthelthryth?’

‘Only what Godric tells me,’ I replied. ‘To think that the feared Hereward, the scourge of the fenlands, was reduced to begging for a woman’s help to win his wars!’

‘Godric?’ he asked, frowning. ‘You mean Morcar’s nephew?’

‘Didn’t you know?’

I called the boy’s name and he came forward, tentatively at first, but I jerked my head and he quickened his pace.

‘Were it not for him, we might never have taken Elyg,’ I said. ‘This is the one who brought about your downfall, who brought an end to your rebellion.’

‘You were the one who betrayed us?’ Hereward asked Godric. His eyes were colder than steel on a winter’s morning. ‘I always knew that your uncle had the tongue of a serpent. I ought to have guessed you would be no different.’ He sneered as he gestured at the scabbard that hung from the boy’s belt. Godric had come from Alrehetha without a weapon, and so I’d given him the sword with the emerald in the pommel that had belonged to Thurcytel. ‘That’s a big blade for a child to carry. You’d best take care that you don’t cut yourself.’

The boy’s cheeks reddened, but he said nothing.

‘You always were a worthless turd in my eyes,’ Hereward went on. ‘How can you call yourself a thegn when you don’t even know how to wield the weapons with which to defend your lands?’

‘Enough of your squawking,’ I said to Hereward.

He ignored me. ‘Even now you cower behind the protection of these Frenchmen. Why do you let him speak for you? Have you lost your voice, or just your wits?’ He spat. ‘Your mother was a whore, and the daughter of a whore besides, but even so she would have drowned you at birth had she known the disgrace you’d bring upon your kin and your countrymen. Because of you, our one last chance to regain our birthright is lost. This once-proud kingdom has fallen, we find ourselves ruled by foreign tyrants, and it is your fault. Do you hear me? You did this, Godric of Corbei!’

‘No!’ the boy cried, and before I could do anything he spurred his palfrey forward, at the same time drawing his sword.

‘Godric!’ I shouted, but it was too late. The boy had allowed the elder Englishman to goad him to anger, and now he would suffer.

Some of Hereward’s men started forward, but he raised his shield-hand to forestall them, while with the other he let his helmet fall and drew his seax. A smile spread across his face as he took his stance, lowering his blade-point towards the ground, leaving the upper half of his body open as an invitation to attack. Godric accepted without hesitation, roaring with rage as he swung at Hereward’s head, but his foe had been anticipating such a move. He ducked beneath Godric’s blade, at the same time whipping his own up and flashing the edge across the palfrey’s hindquarters, tearing through flesh and sinew. The animal buckled and the boy fell, and he was still clinging desperately with one hand to the reins when he hit the ground.

‘Stop this,’ I shouted above the horse’s screams. Hereward stood over the boy with his seax pointed at the skin beneath his chin. Godric’s sword lay just a little beyond grasp, but the fall must have knocked the wind out of him, or else hurt him worse than I had thought, since he seemed unable to reach it – for all the good that it would have done him at that moment.

‘Stop?’ Hereward asked, although he did not take his eyes from the boy. ‘Why should I stop? Not only has he betrayed us, he’s tried to kill me too.’

‘He couldn’t kill you if you were weaponless and missing both your legs,’ I said. ‘You’ve had your fun, so now let him go. He’s worth nothing to you.’

‘Please,’ Godric said weakly, and let out a cough. ‘Spare me, p-please, I beg of you.’

Hereward kicked him in the ribs. It didn’t seem to me an especially hard kick, but it was enough to make the boy cry out in agony and bend double as he rolled over, clutched at his side and cursed all at the same time.

‘I hardly touched you, weakling,’ Hereward growled. Disdainfully he spat at Godric before at last he turned to face me. ‘Are you so scared to fight me that you have to send whelps like him to do your work? Don’t insult—’

He didn’t get the chance to finish. In one movement Godric’s hand had found the hilt of his weapon and brought the blade around, aiming at the back of his opponent’s legs, and I saw that all that howling and swearing and writhing had been but a ruse.

Hereward gave a yell as the point slashed across his ankle. A glancing blow, it seemed, but the lank-haired Englishman fell to his knees. Straightaway his retainers started forward. Godric scrambled to his feet, took one glance at them and another at Hereward, perhaps thinking to finish him, but instead he froze. For, despite his injured leg, Hereward was struggling to his feet, his teeth clenched and his eyes wild.

‘Bastard,’ Hereward said, and swung at the boy, but it was a wild stroke that missed by a hand’s breadth, and suddenly he was off balance, staggering, hobbling, sliding on the mud. ‘Bastard!’

And I saw a chance to end this.

Summoning all the breath in my chest, I gave a wordless roar, and in that roar was all the anger and frustration of the last few weeks. I charged forward, trusting that the others would be behind me. Hereward heard me coming, and despite his injured ankle managed to turn just in time to fend off my strike. Steel shrieked against steel as our blades met, but then I was riding on, leaving him for those behind me to finish. I crashed into the first of Hereward’s men before he could so much as level his spear. Iron clattered upon limewood as he fell beneath Fyrheard’s hooves. Like a river the battle-joy was flowing, carrying me with it as I struck out on both sides with shield-boss and sword-point. Men must have been shouting, screaming, yelping in pain, howling in anguish as their friends fell before their eyes, but all I remember hearing is the sound of my own breathing and the beating of my heart in my breast and the blood pounding behind my eyes. I rammed the steel home into the throat of the next man and then battered the flat of the blade across the nasal-guard of the one after him, slicing his cheek open, biting into his skull, sending teeth and fragments of bloodied bone flying.

‘No mercy!’ I shouted.

I heard a rush of air and glanced up to see a volley of goose-feathered shafts arcing high into the blue sky, but thankfully they were headed in the direction of the enemy and not for me. Hamo’s archers had not entirely exhausted their arrow-bags, then. It was quick thinking on their part, too, for it happened that at the same moment as Hereward’s retainers raised their shields, to protect themselves from the approaching storm, we were upon them, cutting beneath the iron-reinforced rims into their unprotected thighs, driving into their midst, forcing them back. The ploy was one that we had used at Haestinges five long years ago; it had worked then and it was working now, and the enemy did not know what to do. Behind me I heard Serlo and Pons and the others bellowing as they cut down some of the wounded we left in our wake. The enemy were falling before our fury, and in that instant I felt as if nothing in the world could harm me.