Knights of the Hawk (48 page)

‘I almost forgot,’ I heard Eudo call, as he disappeared back into the hold space. ‘There’s one more thing.’

He emerged a moment later holding a shield, which like my banner bore the symbol of the hawk, although rather more crudely depicted, since whereas I’d entrusted the task of making the banner to the women of Earnford, I’d insisted on painting all my shields myself, and had spent long hours working under the sun and by the light of the hearth-fire daubing white and black on to the hide that faced the limewood boards until they appeared how I wanted them, or close enough to the image I held in my head as to satisfy me. Some laughed when they saw my efforts, reckoning that my hawks looked more like magpies or moorhens, but I didn’t care.

For a shield is not only a knight’s protection, it is also his pride, and any warrior who values his life knows to pay as much attention to his shield as to his mail and his blades. That said, even the sturdiest of them rarely lasts long in the hands of one who lives his life by the sword, and this one had seen happier days. The boss was scuffed and dented, and there were grimy marks upon the paintwork, which might have been mud or blood or a combination of both. How much longer this one would last until the iron rim cracked and the limewood began to splinter, I couldn’t say with any certainty, but none of that mattered right now. Eudo held it out to me and I took it gratefully, passing the long guige strap over my head and then working my forearm through the brases, adjusting the buckles with my other hand until it felt secure.

And all the while I could not stop smiling. I might have been landless and lordless, lacking so much as a horse to ride and a hall to call my home, with hardly a penny left in my coin-purse and so few friends that I could have probably counted them on my two hands alone, yet in that moment I felt rich beyond imagination. For those friends that I did have were worth more to me than all those other things put together. On my behalf they had taken risks that other men would baulk at. After everything that I’d done, they were still prepared to fight by my side.

And that thought alone was enough to give me confidence that we could do this. That somehow, I did not know how, but somehow, we would prevail.

Twenty-four

THE LAST THING
we wanted to do was to rush in, in the hope of gaining the advantage of surprise, only to find ourselves caught in a snare. Thus we proceeded cautiously, with lookouts posted at all times at bow and at stern.

More than a week after leaving Dyflin, we found ourselves entering a narrow strait between two islands: one of gently sloping hills that Magnus called Ile; and another that he called Dure, which was steeper, with slate-grey peaks that rose like the burial mounds of giants, dwarfing us and our tiny craft. There was, Magnus had told us, a shorter route we could have chosen, to the east of the steeper island, which he had used once before and where there was less chance of being spotted, but those were treacherous waters. A vicious whirlpool churned off the northernmost point of Dure, around which waves had been known to rise to the height of ten men, enough to overwhelm even the sturdiest vessel and cause it to founder and sink.

‘Some believe that on the sea floor dwells a sea serpent whose jaws are large enough to swallow even a forty-bencher whole,’ he said solemnly, and I wasn’t sure whether he meant that was what he believed. ‘Others say it’s the washtub of an ancient hag-spirit, who comes down at night to clean her filthy, lice-ridden robes in its waters, although no one has ever seen her.’

Whether either of those stories was true or not, since Magnus was our guide and he knew these waters better than anyone else among us, I thought it wise to take his advice. Even for those who knew the currents well, he said, that was a dangerous channel, for the winds and the tides could conspire to dash unlucky travellers upon the rock-bound shore, on the sharp skerries that rose out of the water, and the dark shoals that lay just beneath the surface.

Instead, then, we took the safer, longer route, although as we neared the strait that joined the two passages, we glimpsed one of those whirlpools from afar, and saw those immense waves of which Magnus had spoken, rearing up like wild sea stallions that charged at one another before erupting in clashes of white-glistening spume, as if the sea were at war with itself. Even from several leagues away the roar of that maelstrom was loud enough to make many men cross themselves against the evil of that place.

No evil befell us, however, nor did we spy any other ships approaching, and so that same afternoon under grim skies Aubert steered
Wyvern
to the north-east, following
Nihtegesa
. With a gusting breeze at our backs, we sailed into a wide sea-lake, bounded on both shores by dark-towering mountains the likes of which I had never before seen, whose peaks were lost amidst the clouds. And in the middle of that sound, stretching along the length of the fjord, rose a long, low finger of land, its crags and grassy slopes dotted with wind-stunted, bare-branched trees. From the other ship, one of the Englishmen waved to attract our attention, pointing towards that island as his crew reefed her sail and the oarsmen slackened their pace.

‘That’s it,’ Magnus called to us, once Aubert had brought us level with
Nihtegesa
, and even above the gusting wind I could hear his excitement. ‘That’s Haakon’s isle.’

‘What now?’ I shouted back.

‘We find shelter!’ He spread his arms wide and gestured upwards to the darkening heavens. The upper slopes of the mountains had suddenly become lost amidst the swelling cloud, and with every moment the wind was increasing in strength, turning white the tips of the waves that ran up the fjord, a sure sign of worse weather on the way. Perhaps that was the reason why we hadn’t spied any other vessel out, not even a coracle or fishing boat, although it still concerned me that the waters were so quiet. I wasn’t alone in that opinion, either, as Magnus told me after we had steered our ships into a bay on the fjord’s northern shore that offered a good natural harbour. There, with the light fading, we dropped anchor to ride out the coming squall, and conferred on our best course of action.

‘He knows we’re coming,’ Magnus said. ‘He must do. So why hasn’t he shown himself yet?’

‘Perhaps he’s weaker than we’ve been led to believe,’ I suggested.

‘Or else that’s what he wants us to think,’ Wace put in, ‘so that he can draw us in closer.’

‘Into his snare,’ Eudo added, his expression sour.

‘What would be the purpose of that?’ I asked. ‘He has no need to risk an open battle with us. More likely he’s simply decided to stay behind his walls at Jarnborg, and wait to see what we do.’

They all were silent for a few moments while they contemplated that. We sat in a circle on oak sea chests aboard
Wyvern
as she rocked gently from one side to another on the incoming tide. The wind was up, howling through the bare branches of the trees on the shore.

‘How do we find this fortress of his, then?’ Wace asked.

‘Finding it is easy,’ Magnus said. ‘If you sail a few miles further up the fjord you can see it clearly from the water. It stands atop a rocky promontory that juts out to the north, at the far end of the island from here, overlooking a wide bay where he keeps his ships.’

Eudo raised an eyebrow. ‘You know it well, do you?’

‘I came here once before, two years ago,’ Magnus said flatly. ‘Just as Haakon murdered your lord, so he was responsible for the deaths of my two brothers. I wanted revenge, and tried to storm Jarnborg, but only succeeded in leading several of my retainers to their deaths. Now their blood is on my hands.’

Suddenly I understood what he’d meant before, when he’d told me that hosts numbering in the hundreds had not managed to take Haakon’s fortress. The thought that he himself had been there, had thrown himself and his army against its walls, hadn’t so much as entered my head. But if he had already tried and failed, what made him think things would be any different this time? Even with Eudo and Wace and the crew of
Wyvern
to swell our numbers, we only had around one hundred and thirty men at our disposal, and he could not have expected their support when he had first agreed to this venture, back in Dyflin. Was it desperation that had driven Magnus on this course, as it had driven me?

‘In that case you’ll be able to tell us the best way of approaching Jarnborg,’ Eudo said.

‘There’s a sandy cove about halfway along the island, on the north-western side, if I remember rightly,’ Magnus replied. ‘It can’t be much more than an hour’s march from Jarnborg. We can land there, providing that he doesn’t send forces to drive us off.’

‘He won’t,’ I said. ‘Not if his nearest refuge is an hour’s march away. He’ll wait for us to come to him.’

‘Assuming that we land without meeting any trouble,’ Eudo said, ‘what then?’

‘Somehow we have to draw Haakon out.’

‘Either that, or find a way into his stronghold that doesn’t involve a direct assault on its walls,’ Wace suggested.

I turned to Magnus. ‘Is there such a way?’

‘Not that I can recall. The promontory’s summit is ringed all around with a high palisade, beyond which steep bluffs lead down nearly all the way to the water’s edge. There’s only one gate leading in, and only one way, too, of reaching that gate, across a narrow neck of land to the south of the crag. It’s exposed, and the enemy would see you coming from half a mile away or more.’

‘What about an approach by water?’ Wace asked. ‘Is that possible?’

‘There are landing places at the foot of the bluffs, yes, but you can only reach them in a rowing boat or coracle or some other small craft. You couldn’t get a whole army up that way.’

‘Perhaps not, but Haakon is less likely to be expecting an attack from that direction,’ I said. ‘Could a handful of men make the climb, using the cover of darkness?’

‘By night?’ Magnus asked scornfully. ‘You’d be as like to slip and break your neck. Besides, even if you did manage to make the ascent, how then would you get inside the fort? The gate is the only way in or out, so far as I know.’

That was a problem, certainly, and one to which it was hard to see a solution. It looked as if our only hope, then, was to try and draw Haakon out. But how?

One thing was for certain. We needed to see this place for ourselves, and try to ascertain just how many men he had, so that we knew exactly how strong a foe we faced. Only then could we start thinking properly about a strategy that would either get us inside Jarnborg, or else entice them out, so that we could give battle on our own terms.

‘If there’s a way, we’ll find it,’ I said, and wished that I felt more sure of that. We were close, so close, yet victory still seemed a distant dream. To think that Oswynn, my Oswynn, was only a few leagues from where we now lay at anchor. How many times this past year had I dreamt of holding her, embracing her? Now she was almost within reach, and yet at that moment she seemed further away than ever.

Tiredness clawed at my eyes that night but I could not sleep. Instead I lay awake, shivering beneath a swathe of winter blankets, my breath misting in the light of the waning moon as I thought of her and tried to imagine her lying beside me, the two of us sharing in the warmth of each other’s bodies. For some reason, though, her face would not come to my mind, and that troubled me.

Somewhere towards the prow a man began to snore. I tried to bury my head in the blankets to shut out the noise, but even then I couldn’t settle. It wasn’t just that the deck was hard and the cloth coarse and uncomfortable. My mind was filled with a thousand knotted thoughts that I could not tease apart. What if we failed? What if, in spite of all our efforts, this expedition came to naught? What if Jarnborg remained unbroken, Haakon still lived, and we were forced to leave this place, bruised and bloodied, humbled and empty-handed? What was to prevent Pons and Serlo forswearing their oaths and leaving my service? I could hardly expect them to remain bound to me for ever if I had nothing to offer them, any more than Robert could expect me to obediently follow him everywhere he led. But if my sworn swords deserted me, and my friends sailed back to England, what would become of me? Where would I go? If revenge and victory were denied me, and if I could not have Oswynn, what was there left for me?

Only then, as I lay there, eyes closed in the darkness, waiting for sleep that would not come, did I truly understand what it was I’d committed myself to. This was more than a simple feud over women and honour between rival warlords on the fringes of Christendom. What tattered scraps remained of my pride, my dignity, my reputation depended for their survival or the success of this endeavour. It was I who had started us all on this road. My shoulders would bear the responsibility if we failed, and mine alone.

But how would I be able to go on, knowing that I’d given my all and still it had been for nothing? Although I wouldn’t admit it to any of the others, in that moment I saw that, for me, there were only two ways this could possibly end. Nothing less than success would be enough for me.

It was victory, or it was death.

Eventually sleep did take me, although it was a fitful sleep in which fragments of half-formed dreams bled one into another. I saw the faces of old sword-brothers long dead, whose names no longer came to mind. I walked through places long forgotten, places I hadn’t visited since my youth: the woodlands near to the castle at Commines where the other boys and I had played and practised ambushes and, later, taken girls for secret trysts; the abbey in Brittany where I had grown up under the care of the monks. And I saw Robert, the first by that name to whom I had been sworn, but he was an old man, wrinkled and hoary-haired, which even in the midst of the dream I thought strange, since he had only been around forty years or so when he met his end. He would hardly meet my gaze, would utter not a word, and I didn’t understand why.

I woke still bone-tired and with a chill in every corner of my body, to a morning veiled by a white sea-mist that made it hard to see more than fifty paces.