Time of the Wolf (15 page)

Black eyes glittered. Blood and flesh spattered off bared teeth. The beast's bellow made Hereward's ears ring, and then the world around him fell into silence. He stood his ground until the bear's gaping mouth filled his entire vision.

Then, with all the strength he could muster, he drove the axe down. The impact jarred every bone in his body, and the bear's skull split in two as if he were slicing meat off a roasting pig. A wave of blood crashed against his face, and a moment later the dead but still moving bulk slammed him off his feet. When he came around an instant later, he was fighting for breath, the full weight of the stinking carcass crushing the life from him.

After a moment, many men dragged the bear off him and he emerged to jubilation. Eager hands hauled him to his feet and slapped his back and shoulders. Grinning faces flashed past with words of praise that he barely heard. Turning slowly, Hereward felt stunned by the adulation of the crowd. In his life of hatred, suspicion, and contempt, he had never experienced anything like it.

“They will tell tales about this in Eoferwic in the time of their children's children's children.” Kraki reclaimed his dripping axe from the bear's skull. He looked the warrior's blood-drenched form up and down. “Better get yourself washed. There will be women here eager to lie with the hero of the day, but not if he looks like a slaughterman.”

“Your name,” a man shouted. “Who are you?”

“This is Hereward, the greatest warrior in all Northumbria, perhaps in all England,” the Viking announced. “He has traveled to Eoferwic from the south to offer his sword in service to Earl Tostig. The earl has gracefully accepted.” Kraki gave a sly grin, satisfied that he had turned the act of heroism to the advantage of his master.

Unsettled by the attention he was receiving, Hereward retrieved his sword and broke away from the crowd, striding back to the hall with the huscarl. As his surging blood subsided, he felt suspicion rise. “The bear could not have broken its bonds. It was set free. What madness would consume someone to release that monster?”

Kraki replied: “The beast was half crazed from its imprisonment. No one would have ventured near it.”

“The hall was abuzz with preparations for tomorrow's festivities, and no one noticed a bear loose?”

Kraki shrugged. “Unless it had only just broken free.”

“The moment I entered the enclosure? During the fire, someone set light to the house I was searching.” Hereward came to a halt and confronted the Viking. “Was it you?”

“Not I,” Kraki said, a flicker of indignation crossing his face at the suggestion. “No honorable man would murder in such a way. I care little for you, but if I wanted to end your days I would do it face to face, with my blade against yours.” He snorted and walked on. “Your trouble, you see enemies everywhere. But never friends.”

“I have no friends,” Hereward called after the huscarl, “and I need none.”

Inside the hall, he found Acha waiting for him. She offered no thanks for saving her life, but they held each other's gaze for a long moment. Taking his arm, she led him away from the streams of servants decorating the hall for the feast. In the quiet of his home, she helped him to his bed and fetched a wooden bowl of fresh meltwater and a cloth to bathe the wounds on his arm where the bear's claws had torn his flesh. Hereward felt uncomfortable at her tenderness and pushed her away, taking the cloth himself. As he cleaned off the blood, he watched her face. Many would have considered her features cold, perhaps emotionless. But he knew better. The truth lay beneath, where the woman she'd dreamed of being still struggled to survive.

When he was done, her dark eyes met his once again. He saw the promise clearly. Holding his gaze, she leaned across him and brushed her lips against his. He felt the softness of her breasts and the warmth of her thighs pressing against him. Blood throbbed in his body, but it was not the consuming crimson passion of the battlefield; he had control over it, and he accepted it willingly. Unclasping her brooch, she let her dress fall away and allowed him to explore her body with his hands. Pushing her onto her back, he eased into her, and they moved together, sweat slicking soft skin in the chill of the room.

When they had finished their lovemaking, they lay entwined in each other's limbs while their breathing subsided, listening to the throb of the hall and the soothing melody of the church bells marking the onset of the holiday.

Reflective, Acha twisted his blond hair around her finger. “You have no woman of your own?” she asked.

Though her question was innocent, Hereward felt a tremor run through him.

“What is wrong?” she asked, concerned.

“I had a woman, once. Not long ago. She died.” He let his arm fall across his face, trying to drive the vision from his head.

“The sickness?”

“Murder.”

Tidhild, staring at him with glassy eyes, the pool of blood around her growing sticky.
The guilt consumed him.

After a moment, she rested her head on his shoulder and whispered, “Tell me.”

At first, Hereward thought he couldn't give voice to the stew of emotions that had bubbled inside him since he had fled London. But as she traced her fingers across his chest, he realized he wanted to unburden himself, and Acha was perhaps the only person he could tell.

He cast his mind back to the warm night when he had witnessed the murder in the shadow of the new abbey. He recounted the details free of emotion, but when he reached the point where he parted company with Redwald, his voice trembled and he had to pause to steady himself.

“Redwald told me to hide at Aedilred's house while he went to raise the alarm. I stayed there for a while, drinking ale, but a terrible melancholy came over me and I felt driven to visit Tidhild,” he continued, feeling the cold in the room for the first time. “We had been together since the winter snows had melted, and … we had grown close.” He paused, recalling those days when it felt as though his life was finally turning toward peace. “I had lain with women before, but Tidhild knew my heart.”

“Would you have married her?” Acha ventured.

“That question means nothing now.”

“I am sorry. I did not wish to stir up bitter memories.”

“I have hardened myself to it. I left Aedilred's and crept through the night like a thief. Tidhild's father was away and I knew she would be alone, but I felt something was wrong before I reached the door to her house. Some say we see the darkness ahead of us in our minds. That we all carry around with us the portents of the terrible things that will be.” He brought his arm around her back, finding comfort in the softness of her skin. “I found Tidhild dead, her blood still warm. She had been stabbed with a knife many times.”

Acha leaned up on her elbow and searched his face. “Did you slay her?”

“No!” Hereward exclaimed, his body snapping upright.

“I have seen the way you lose yourself to the bloodlust. You had been drinking ale—”

“I would never harm a woman.” The warrior lay back and closed his eyes. “It was not the first time I had seen such a sight.”

Though he didn't want to revisit that time, another part of him demanded that he set free the memories. “My mother. Murdered too.” He hesitated, a cold weight growing in his chest. “By my father. He did not mean to do it, but his rage consumed him. He beat her with his fists until she was gone. When I looked at Tidhild, I saw my mother … I saw me, there, both times.…”

“You were not responsible.”

“I was. It was clear the murderer went to Tidhild searching for me. Someone who wanted me silenced before I could reveal what I had learned that night. Tidhild was killed, perhaps as a warning to me, perhaps because she was there and no reason beyond that. But her death lies upon me. I can never leave it behind.”

The sound of raven wings filled his head, and he thought he saw shadows flying across the wall of the room.

“I ran to my father. He is one of the King's thegns and had Edward's ear on Mercian matters for many years.”

“A thegn? After he murdered your mother?” Acha's furrowed brow revealed her incredulity.

“I was a child. Despite the horrors I witnessed, I kept my mother's murder a secret, out of duty to my kin. But there was little love between my father and me after that time. He despised me, because I reminded him of the crime he had committed. Because I reminded him of his weakness. And though I tried to earn his respect.…” His words died in his throat. Shaking his head, he steadied himself. “I went to my father and told him about Tidhild. I was afraid his life was at risk as well. But he was sure I had slain her, and was lying to save myself. He thought me like him.” Hereward hammered a fist on the bed. Acha folded her smaller hand over it. “My father betrayed me. He ran to the King and raised the alarm. He accused me of murder.”

He fell silent for a moment and then said in a cold voice, “And all who knew me at court thought me capable of Tidhild's murder, for they knew my rage and my savagery. They knew my love of blood. No one would believe my account of the stranger's slaying. They would think it more lies to cover my tracks. And if I was arrested, it would only be a matter of time before my life was taken by whoever had ordered the killing of Edward Aetheling, the King's chosen heir. I had no choice but to run. And as I collected my sword, my axe, and my shield, my brother, my loyal brother Redwald, told me that my own father had asked that I be declared outlaw.” He felt the cold in his heart spread throughout his body.

“Does Tostig know that you are outlaw?”

Hereward shook his head. “Not yet. I hoped the earl would persuade the King of the plot before the truth came out. There is still hope. Word has been sent to London. If the throne can be made safe, then this hardship will have been worthwhile.”

“You are a puzzling man.” Acha leaned back and surveyed her lover. “You fight without any sign of honor, yet you act only honorably in your sacrifices to protect the throne. You kill men as if they were nothing, yet risk your own life to save a woman. You show yourself to the world like the rocks along the coast, yet this night you have revealed only tenderness.”

Keen to lock the past behind him, Hereward rolled her on to her back and kissed her deeply. But shadows still moved across his mind. He thought of his mother, and Tidhild, and his father's blind fury, and he feared what the future held.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“N
O ONE WILL HEAR YOUR CRIES
,
MONK
. I
F DEATH IS WHAT
you want, it can be arranged quickly and silently.” With a black-toothed grin, Harald Redteeth shook his axe a finger's width from Alric's defiant face. The younger man slumped on the cold stone steps of the church tower where he had fallen.

“Archbishop Ealdred would never condone my murder within the minster,” he spat.

The Viking surveyed his prisoner's pale face and saw the fear behind the bravado. “You think that old churchman cares one whit about you? His thoughts are on greater matters—power and glory, and who will soon be sitting on England's throne and whether that new king will have need of an even newer archbishop. Now walk, or die.”

Alric resisted for only a moment, and then dragged himself to his feet and continued up the tower steps. The monk still had some fire in him, Redteeth thought, but it would do him little good. He would have to endure the agony of one of the church's ordeals— water or iron—but the outcome was not in doubt. Death was the only sentence for his crime. Harald plucked at his freshly dyed red beard in brooding rumination. The Mercian was the one he really wanted. It was Hereward who had left the Viking to a shameful death with a noose round his neck. And it would have come about if the men pursuing the English warrior had not followed the tracks through the woods from Gedley and chanced upon his hanging form. Unconsciously, his hand went to the pink welt where the rope had bitten into his neck. If it had been left to him, Hereward would already be dead, butchered and fed to the pigs. But his revenge would come soon enough, and all the more keen for being savored.

As he hummed a lilting tune, the mercenary felt the last feathery fingers of the toadstools pluck at his thoughts. He glanced back at his second in command climbing the steps a few paces behind him. Ivar's skin was as gray as the stone of the tower walls, his blue beard bedraggled.

“Why do you haunt me still?” Harald asked.

“Valhalla is denied me, for I died trapped and screaming in fire, not in glorious battle,” the shade responded in a tone like cracking ice. “I must walk the shores of the vast black sea forever. No rest for me, Harald Redteeth, not until blood has been spilled.”

“And no rest for me until you have been set free,” the mercenary replied, understanding his responsibility. “Not until blood has been spilled.”

Ahead, the monk flashed a puzzled glance back.

The two men emerged on to the flat roof of the tower in the bright light of a Christmas sunrise. Eoferwic tumbled away from the minster into the white river plain, a black smudge misted with smoke from the homefires.

Alric shielded his eyes against the sun as he looked out over the landscape, his chest heaving in sadness at what he knew he would soon be losing forever. “Why have you brought me here?” he whispered.

“A kindness,” Harald Redteeth replied bluntly.

“A cruelty,” the monk snapped back. “Dangling food before a starving man.”

The Viking shrugged. “A cruelty. A kindness. Your choice.”

Alric held his head up defiantly. “I will not betray Hereward.”

“He died long ago,” the mercenary replied, echoing the words he had first spoken beside the fires of Gedley. “His spirit does not yet know that his life is over. He is a ghost who feasts and drinks and walks.” He glanced at Ivar, cold and gray against the tower's wall. “The Mercian thinks himself safe behind the palisade of Tostig's enclosure. He is not.”