The French Executioner (55 page)

‘They will take you till the forest ends. It is about a day’s march. There, some of their family will carry you for another
day on to the border.’

While she was talking, Hanna was pouring a liquid distilled from nettles onto Jean’s fresh bandages. He felt the cool slickness
of it reach his skin and dissolve beyond that into his body. Again, the pain, which had grown greatly even in the little journey
in Haakon’s arms down the forested hill to this rendezvous, began to dissipate.

‘Do you know where in France that border is, Hanna?’

‘Just above Lorraine. You will cross from the Duchy of Luxembourg. Do you know it?’

‘I know it. If we are lucky with roads and horses, we can be in the Loire five days later.’

Hanna looked up, concern clear on her face. ‘You might not make it so far, Jean. You know this. I have done what I
can, but your wounds …’ She sighed. ‘You need to rest for at least a month.’

‘And you know I cannot. For all our sakes, I cannot rest until this is done.’

At a nod, Haakon laid him gently in the sling between the litter poles. Hanna turned to Beck standing anxiously nearby.

‘This bottle for the bandages.’ She handed it over. ‘And this one to drink before sleep and whenever the pain is great.’ She
smiled. ‘Do not confuse the two.’

Beck took a deep sniff of the contents of each. ‘I will not. Thank you.’

‘I have done little enough.’

Beck put her arms around the older woman.

‘You have saved his life. It is a debt I cannot hope to repay.’

A wrinkled hand reached up and tousled Beck’s curly raven hair.

‘Help him do what must be done and you will have repaid me tenfold.’

When Jean was settled, Haakon took his place at the head of the little column. The three horses had been as well cared for
as their masters and seemed set fair for the journey, nostrils flaring into the afternoon air. It was a brisk autumn day,
but the cruel cold rain had stopped and the sun’s rays created avenues of light through the treed lanes ahead.

Hanna came one more time to Jean’s side, made some final fussing adjustments to bandage and splint. A broken hand lifted for
a moment to rest clumsily on the moving one.

‘Enough. You have done all you can, and I thank you.’

She got stiffly to her feet. ‘It may not be enough.’

‘It will have to be.’

‘Go with God, Jean Rombaud.’

Haakon, on a look from Jean, ordered Fenrir forward. The litter men followed, Jean swinging between them, their reliefs trailing
behind. Beck brought up the rear.

Hanna watched until long after the party had disappeared into the fading sun. Then, with a sigh, she began to retrace
the trail to her hill. Alongside the Scots pine she scattered various substances gleaned from plant and beast. It would not
confuse the hunting dogs for ever, but for a time. She knew that every second’s delay to the pursuit was vital. That knowledge
she did not need to look for in the flames.

‘Are you certain it is them?’

‘Certain, my Lord. Their dog has a distinctive howl and it went off to hunt a short time ago.’

‘So they have lost their ears and nose? Good.’

It was one of the longer conversations Giancarlo Cibo had had for a week. He saved his strength for the trail and there was
little to be said upon it. The fools had tried to make him remain behind, while they went after the hand; they would fetch
it to him where he rested. Yet only he knew it wasn’t the hardships of the chase that brought the blood cascading to his lips,
it was the absence of what he now knew he needed. He had to have her hand in his, resting on his chest, to halt the crimson
flow. They might capture it and bring it in triumph back to Wittenberg, but he knew they would be bringing it back to a corpse.

Even this much closer he felt better. Less than half a league ahead, they said, and he could confirm that, he felt the pull
of it. So near now; and when it was his again he would never let it go and he would make no more mistakes. Instant death for
those who had robbed him of it, as swift and unmistakable as a knife thrust in the heart. His taste for exotic pleasure had
led him to delay. No more.

He looked around at his men, slumped against trees, on the ground, snatching meagre mouthfuls of hard bread and dried meat
from their satchels. Two thirds of them had fallen away
during this chase deep into France, they or their mounts, leaving just these strongest fifteen. So he, the oldest and the
sickest, had done well to keep up. To lead. But of course, if they did not have his weakness, they also did not have his motivation.

Franchetto had again seemed as if dead, his huge body curled around in the position he had slept in since Marsheim. Now, without
opening his eyes, he said to the tall German before them, ‘Then let us attack now. Let us end this and get back to the civilisation
of Siena.’

There was still a pretence that the men were under Franchetto’s command. Heinrich could never keep the contempt out of his
voice when he paid lip service to this pretence.

‘They are awaiting your orders, my Lord.’

Franchetto heard the tone, rose to glare into the destroyed face. Yet before he could speak, the soft voice, the silkiness
frayed now, spoke first. ‘No orders. Creep down there, cudgel them in their blankets, take the hand. When you are sure you
have it, slit their throats.’

‘My Lord.’

Heinrich kicked and cursed his men to standing. It was early evening and they’d been hoping for a few hours’ sleep, but hearing
that their quarry had been sighted and was within reach, even the most tired of them roused themselves and checked their weapons.
The chase had gone on long enough. It was time for the kill.

It was Fenrir’s quick success in hunting that saved them, his sudden return, rabbit in mouth, disturbing the soldier who had
taken up a position astride the dog’s path. The wind came from behind the approaching hound so before he could smell the man
he was upon him, seeing his sword glimmering in the light of the rising full moon.

Rabbit dropped, dog leaping, a man’s cry of pain. They were all instantly awake under the willow by the little pool
where exhaustion from the last three days’ riding without sleep had dropped them. Jean it was who’d suggested they spend the
few hours till moonrise there, knowing there was only this little shelter between them and the crossroads, if they were to
avoid the village, craving this little rest to give him strength for the final stage of the journey.

Dulled senses had not warned him that their pursuers were so close.

Haakon rolled from a sleeping position to his feet in an instant, his axe clutched in his hands. Beck was on her knees, a
stone already fitted to sling, leather and rope whirling as Cibo’s guard burst screaming from his shelter in the tree line,
Fenrir’s jaws clamped onto his arm.

‘Take them now!’ came Heinrich’s cry as another man emerged and fell, a stone lodged in his forehead, and the rest of his
men burst from cover. He himself ran for the one position he knew had not been filled yet – the road out of the valley.

It was eighty paces from the tree line to their clearing and Haakon, under cover of the stones, used the scant time to pick
up Jean and hurl him over a horse. Jean’s scream of agony was drowned in the war yells of the approaching guards. Haakon was
astride his own horse in a moment.

‘Beck, to me!’ he cried, thrusting his axe into the sling of his cloak, spurring his animal without waiting to see the result
of his cry. He had seen something else. A large man running to block the exit from the little valley.

With one hand on his own horse and one on the rein of the horse that bore Jean, Haakon had no weapon other than speed. Heinrich
was swept aside by the rush of horses and man. Hurling himself at the horse that followed, the German grasped at the reins
for an instant, but Beck hit him hard on his broken wrist and the sudden sharp pain caused him to let go.

‘After them!’ he raged, spitting mud at their receding backs.

The horses galloped towards a bridge that lay downhill,
spanning a stretch of river ribboned in silver moonlight, swollen now by the autumn’s near incessant dowsings. Glancing back
the three hundred paces to the little outcrop, Haakon could see the first of the guards emerge from the defile. They did not
ride down yet, gathered their strength. He reined up on the bridge.

‘How far to this village, Jean?’

‘It is over the next hill, the crossroads a league beyond. We are so close.’

‘They will catch us in minutes,’ the Norseman said.

Beck, looking back, nodded. ‘We will have to make our stand here then.’ She made to get down from her horse.

Haakon spoke as he dismounted. ‘We will not.
I
will.’ Their eyes met, halting her protest. ‘There is no time to argue about this. The river is wide but this bridge is narrow.
I can hold them here for a while. Long enough, perhaps.’

Jean, who had somehow managed to wriggle around so that he was astride the pack horse, looked down and said, ‘No, Haakon.
Your loyalty does not extend to dying here alone.’

‘Who said anything about dying? And if I do, what better way than against impossible odds with my axe in my hand and my war
hound at my side? What a story it will make, like one of the old tales. The Valkyrie will have to bear me to Valhalla at the
end of it, that’s for certain.’

Jean could not help but smile, though something seemed to catch in his throat.

‘You truly are a pagan, Norseman.’

Haakon returned the smile. ‘This from a man who seeks to bury a hand at a crossroads.’

Fenrir snarled. They could hear the shouts from the hill, the first men riding down, hunters’ delighted cries for a quarry
still in sight. The gleam of the impending fight shone in the dog’s strange square eyes as well as in his master’s.

‘Ride, now, or you make what I do here in vain.’

Haakon swiftly slipped on the metal undershirt and
breastplate he had bought at Munster. The helmet rose to cover his flowing gold locks, a strip of metal over the nose.

‘We will try to honour your gift.’ Beck turned to grab the reins of Jean’s horse. ‘As Januc would say, Allah protect you.’

‘Januc.’ Haakon’s eyes darkened for a moment, then cleared with a smile. ‘You know, you can’t blame him. I’m glad at least
one of us remained true to the mercenary code. All this self-sacrifice is hard on the purse.’

‘Hoch, hoch!’ Jean called out as Beck, angrily brushing a tear off her cheek, led him away.

Haakon stood at the bridge’s centre, his axe inverted before him, its head resting on the ground, his huge hands lightly on
the butt. As the hoof beats disappeared behind him, the ones before him slowed down.

‘Surrender, dog!’ yelled Heinrich. ‘Surrender and we’ll make your death a swift one.’

Haakon tipped his head to one side. ‘Hmm. Lots of words there I don’t understand. Perhaps you’d like to come over here and
explain them to me.’

A horrendous spluttering of blood accompanied the next words.

‘Take him!’ screamed Giancarlo Cibo. ‘Rip him apart!’

They could only come two at a time along the narrow bridge – one for Haakon and one for Fenrir. As they grappled with the
first of them, others waited their turn behind.

Haakon’s giant axe flashed, a scything crescent in the waxing moonlight, impossible to stop. They were strong warriors, the
elite of the Archbishop’s guards, but they died as they came and each body underfoot made it harder for the next pair to advance.
Four lay there before someone thought to bring boar spears from the horses, and their thrusts began to force Haakon back across
the bridge. The points could not pierce his armour but one finally caught Fenrir in the chest and Haakon could do nothing
as his friend was lifted from beside him, snapping and snarling still, to fall under a
thunderstorm of blows. Then the thrusting forward began again, and though Haakon cut and sliced the heads off many of the
spears, there were always others to replace them. He was pushed back the length of the bridge and knew that once he reached
the end it would all be over.

One spear thrust, slipping beneath his breastplate, snagged in his chain armour; it pulled him forward, off balance, and a
sword cut down and bit into his left arm just above the wrist. Another snickered in and cut him in the exposed leg. Roaring,
Haakon dropped to one knee. Hurling his axe forward, he saw it lodge in the forehead of a man too keen to take advantage of
his fall, but the sword he drew barely parried the three that came at him. Someone had managed to slip round him at the bridge’s
end and he only half-parried the blade dancing in at his side, turning the force from a death to a wounding blow, taking it
in the other arm.

Forcing strength into his cut leg, Haakon stood and with a cry of ‘A Haakonsson!’ he hurled himself into the heart of his
tormentors. There he was immediately pinned by two spears, then two more, his mighty body lifted on them and swept up and
over the parapets of the bridge.

Haakon spiralled down and hit the water flat. Instantly caught in its maelstrom he was tumbled downstream to clatter into
the rocks. Out of sight of the bridge, an eddy caught and held him in its whirling embrace. Round and round he spun, as the
water around him turned red.

Strange,
he thought,
but where are the Valkyrie? In the tales, this is when they come.

Then he felt their hands upon him, dragging him awkwardly from the water, and he knew he was bound for Valhalla, the only
heaven he could desire. The hands felt a touch rougher than he’d expected – they belonged to blonde maidens after all – but,
he thought, you probably had to be that tough to be a Valkyrie. As this world faded away, he looked forward to the other side,
to an eternity of feasting and fighting until the last battle. But most of all he looked
forward to seeing his father there. For at last he had a tale worthy of his hearing!

‘Shh! Is that them?’