Knights of the Hawk

Twelve

We rode hard, following winding, flint-studded paths so narrow and treacherous that in many parts we were forced to go in single file. Reeds flashed past on both sides as we skirted stagnant pools and leapt fast-trickling rivulets, trusting in our steeds not to falter over the soft ground. In every direction a wide expanse of bog stretched to the horizon, broken occasionally by dense copses of birch and elm, above which jackdaws circled, cawing loudly as if warning those ahead of our approach. I only hoped the enemy weren’t lying in wait for us there, since we would make easy targets if they were. I watched the trees carefully as we passed, expecting at any moment to see a flurry of silver-shining arrowheads flying forth from out of those yellow-green leaves, soaring over the reeds, glinting with the promise of death.

But no arrows came. Fyrheard was flagging, his head bowing, but I coaxed him on. In some places the path had fallen away into one of the countless channels that crossed the land, and we had to dismount in order to lead the horses through the muddy waters. Every so often we would spy footprints, and by the number of them and the way the mud had been churned we could tell that a significant number of men had travelled this way. Whether those prints had been set down recently, though, none of us could say for sure. I wished then that we had Ædda with us. My stableman and the ablest tracker in all of the Welsh Marches, he was also my closest friend among the English, but he was back at Earnford. In his absence we had no choice but to follow Godric, and trust that he knew what he was doing. Every so often the path would seem to fork and he would come to a halt, his young brow furrowed while he looked for tracks upon the ground and gazed about the surrounding swamp for landmarks that showed we were on the right course.

‘Are you sure you know where you’re going?’ Wace asked when, for the fourth time that hour, Godric paused. The morning was wearing on and the sun was growing high in a cloudless sky, beating down upon our backs. There was no shade to be found anywhere; beneath my mail my arms and chest were running with sweat, and my tunic and shirt were clinging to my skin. Flies buzzed in front of my face and I tried to swat them away, but they kept returning.

Three ways presented themselves. One continued straight ahead, leading due north, while the others branched out to the east and the north-west.

‘Not all of them necessarily lead anywhere,’ Godric explained. ‘Not anywhere we want to go, at least. Some look safe, but if you aren’t careful you can find yourself cut off when the tide rises. Many men have lost their lives that way.’

‘But you know which one to take, don’t you?’ I asked.

He studied the ground closely, and squinted as he gazed out towards what looked like a ruined cottage, a spear’s throw away to our right. ‘I’ve only travelled these paths a couple of times, lord.’

‘Only a couple of times?’ Wace asked, and turned to me. ‘Why are we letting ourselves be led by this pup?’

‘I can find the way, lords,’ protested Godric. ‘I need some time to think, that’s all.’

‘Time is something we don’t have,’ I muttered peevishly. The lad didn’t seem to have heard me, and that was probably as well, because I didn’t want to hurry him into making a decision that we might come to regret.

After long moments Godric pointed down the branch heading north. ‘This way,’ he said firmly.

‘You’re certain of this?’ I asked.

‘Certain, lord.’

Wace cast a doubtful glance my way, but I could only shrug, and so we ventured on. Once in a while the path seemed to turn back on itself, or else peter out amongst the undergrowth, but we never lost it entirely, and I supposed that meant we were on the right trail. That suspicion was confirmed when, not long after, we came across what looked to be the same tracks as before, except that this time, trodden into the mud, were smears of horse dung, and freshly laid horse dung at that. We stopped and Serlo crouched down to inspect it.

‘Still moist,’ he said, rubbing some between his fingers and then sniffing them. ‘Still warm, too.’

‘If they’re mounted rather than on foot, then we’ve no chance of catching them,’ growled Tor.

‘They aren’t,’ Serlo said. He rose and vaulted back into the saddle. ‘If they had, we’d have spotted more of their dung before now.’

‘Sumpter ponies, then?’ Pons suggested, and looked to the rest of us for confirmation.

I nodded and at the same time felt fresh hope rising within me. Hereward and his band would be slowed by their pack animals, and that meant we must surely be catching them.

‘Keep going,’ I said. ‘They can’t be much further ahead.’

No sooner had I spoken than there came a distant shout from behind us. I turned sharply to see a band of horsemen, perhaps a dozen strong, approaching from the same direction as we had come, and I tensed at once, my hand tightening around the haft of my spear.

‘They’ve found us,’ Godric said. The colour had drained from his face. ‘It’s them!’

So I thought at first too, but how could they have known we were following them, and how did they end up behind us on the path? My answers came in the form of a greeting, shouted out in the French tongue, and I realised that they were friends, not foes.

Godric looked ready to flee, but I drew alongside him and seized hold of his mount’s reins. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘They’re some of ours.’

Who they were, though, I couldn’t tell at such a distance. The sun was behind them and so it was difficult to make out their features, and I had to raise a hand to my eyes to shield them from the glare.

‘Lord Tancred!’ one of them called brightly. ‘You didn’t think you were going to claim the whole reward for yourselves, did you?’

‘What?’ I shouted back.

‘The reward,’ he said. ‘For Hereward’s capture.’

The voice was familiar but only when he grew nearer, and I was able to see his ruddy jowls and small, hard eyes, did I finally realise who it was. In that moment my temper soured.

‘What are you doing here, Hamo?’ I asked.

‘The same as you. So I thought, anyway, except you all seem to be more interested in the dirt than in doing anything useful.’

I ignored that, glancing at the eleven companions he’d brought with him, most of whom I remembered from our escort duties. But I saw no one who looked like a guide.

‘How did you know the paths through the marsh?’ I asked.

‘We didn’t,’ Hamo said with a smirk that spoke of self-satisfaction but which at the same time seemed to mock me. ‘But then we hardly needed to. We could see your helmets and your spearpoints a mile off. All we had to do was follow them, and trust that you were going in the right direction. And so here we are.’ He flashed me a gap-toothed smile. ‘Together once again.’

‘Together once again,’ I muttered under my breath. Eighteen men were better than seven, for certain, although Hamo was hardly a steadfast ally, or the kind of man that I could rely on to hold his nerve in the thick of a fight. His only loyalty was to his purse, and if things began to turn against us, his first thought would be to protect his own hide.

‘Are we riding on, then?’ Hamo asked. ‘Or are we just going to wait here while Hereward and his band get ever farther away?’

‘We ride on,’ I replied. ‘But first understand this: you’ll listen to us, and do everything that either I or Wace here tell you to, without question or hesitation.’

‘I am my own man, sworn to no one,’ he said with a sneer, drawing close enough that I could see the hairs sticking out of his nostrils. ‘I can make my own choices.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘You’ll listen and do as you’re told, or else we could all end up dead. Do you hear me?’

He returned my stare but said nothing. I only hoped he heeded my words, for I wasn’t prepared to waste any more time or breath arguing with him.

‘Lead on,’ I told Godric, whose colour had returned, although he continued to regard Hamo and his friends with an apprehensive look. He didn’t seem to hear me at first, but then I repeated myself and he turned to face me. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘The longer we tarry, the less chance we have of catching them.’

He nodded and kicked on down the path, and we followed, past tangles of crooked trees and splintered branches brought down by the recent winds, past thick reed-beds and shallow streams in which wicker eel-traps lay. How many miles we’d come from Elyg, I had no idea, although it was probably not quite as many as it felt. My arse was aching; we’d left camp at first light and midday was fast approaching, and most of that time we’d spent in the saddle.

We must have ridden for another half an hour before Godric gave a stifled cry. Perhaps half a mile ahead, a flock of marsh birds took wing, some hundred and more of them rising into the sky, turning as one in a great circle, before descending and disappearing from sight behind a stand of drooping willows. Straightaway I checked Fyrheard, and held up a hand to the others as a signal to stop.

‘Something must have scared them,’ Wace murmured.

My heart was pounding as I squinted into the distance, trying to make out what that something might be, and whether at last we had found our quarry. If it was Hereward, however, he and his band were well hidden amidst the undergrowth. Yet who else had any reason to be out here?

It had to be them.

‘Stay close,’ I said. ‘From now on, not a sound.’ I glared at Hamo’s men, who as usual were laughing between themselves at some private joke, probably at my expense. ‘We move quickly and we move quietly.’

I didn’t wait for any acknowledgement but spurred Fyrheard on. The path led us to the willow thicket, which stood upon one of the many small islets that dotted the fen. Its slopes were slick with mud, but we struggled up them, ducking beneath low branches, pushing our horses as fast as we dared as the track dipped and rose, until we burst forth from the trees into the blinding brightness, and could see the way stretching out in front of us.

And there I saw them. There were, I reckoned, around three dozen of them, although it was difficult to make an exact count, since they were not all together, but rather strung out along the path, the closest of them a mere hundred paces ahead of us. And those were just the ones who looked to me like warriors, for there were also women and even a few children, scurrying along behind their mothers, not to mention those leading the packhorses, who had taken up the rear.

Hamo gave a whoop. Before I could do or say anything, he was galloping past me down the slope, almost knocking me from the saddle. Behind him thundered the rest of his men, their bows in hand.

‘Kill them,’ he yelled. ‘Kill them!’

‘Hamo!’ I shouted, but it was too late. I’d wanted if possible to surprise the enemy, but there was no chance of that now. I swore aloud.

He nocked an arrow to his bowstring, narrowed his eyes as he pulled back, took aim and then let fly, closely followed by his companions. The air whistled and the midday sun glinted off the steel heads. The first struck one of the sumpter ponies on the rump, tearing through its flesh, and it went down with a shriek, thrashing its hooves and spilling the contents of its packs. The second buried itself in a man’s back and the force of the impact sent him tumbling forward, and then came the rest, raining death upon the Englishmen and their families. Children were screaming and crying; somewhere amongst them a dog was barking, and men were shouting to one another as they realised the danger. While some grabbed the hands of their womenfolk and picked up the smallest of the children to carry them to safety, others were shoving their way to the rear, unslinging their round shields from where they rested across their backs and forming a line to obstruct our path and cover their retreat. The way was wide enough for three men at most to stand abreast and they formed the shield-wall across it.

But they could do nothing to stop the hail of steel. The air whistled as Hamo and his men let another volley fly, and another and another, and they did not seem to care whether they loosed all together or not, for they were merely intent on killing as many as possible and staining the marshes with English blood. One of the women stumbled as she ran, and fell upon the ground. A boy who might have been her son turned to try and help her up, only for an arrow to take him in the chest. The remaining ponies were whinnying, rearing up, kicking out at anyone who came too close, the whites of their eyes showing. The wounded lay on the ground, cursing, yelling out to God and the saints.

And then, striding forward through the throng of fleeing women and children, came Hereward himself. It was only the second time our paths had crossed, and on this occasion he wore a helmet that served to mask his face, but I recognised him at once. His dark hair straggled about his shoulders, and there was the same purpose, the same confidence in his bearing that I remembered. He came with a seax upon his belt and his own bow slung across his back, and with a score of mailed warriors behind him. Abbot Thurstan must have been mistaken, for he didn’t look injured at all.

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.

Confidence is a strange thing. It can arrive unexpectedly as if from nowhere, for no apparent reason, and inspire men to do things that in their right mind they would never dream of undertaking; and it can desert a man just as quickly, even on the point of victory. And so it was then, for even though they still just about outnumbered us, the enemy broke. A couple threw down their weapons, obviously hoping that we would spare them if they gave themselves up, but those hopes were in vain, and they had barely a chance to open their mouths in protest before we cut them down.

Breathing hard, I found myself with space around me. The rest of the Englishmen were fleeing northwards along the track, following their womenfolk, abandoning the fight.

I checked Fyrheard by the path’s edge. ‘Go,’ I yelled to the others, my voice hoarse and hurting. ‘After them!’

‘With me,’ said Wace. ‘Conroi with me!’

He and Pons and Serlo and Tor and the Gascon flashed past, and they were followed by Hamo and half a dozen of his men, who had cast aside their bows and drawn swords and axes and knives. Cries of delight went up as they sensed plunder at hand.

But I had more important things in mind. I glanced about, searching for Hereward. For his corpse was not among those strewn along the path.

And then I saw him, striking out from the path across the mud, crashing through the sedge and the reeds towards a stand of alders an arrow’s flight away, hobbling as he went owing to his injured ankle. Godric was pursuing him, swearing as he struggled over the soft ground, while by the willow trees on the island one of the remaining archers — a squat, square-faced lad — had an arrow upon his bow. Already he had drawn the string back and his eyes were narrowed as he took his aim.

‘Leave him,’ I called, and thankfully the lad heard me and lowered his bow. ‘He’s mine!’

If ever there was one kill I wanted, it was this one. I would not let Hereward escape my sword, as Eadgar Ætheling and Wild Eadric and Bleddyn ap Cynfyn had done. I wanted to be known as the man who had slain the scourge of the fens, who had gone toe to toe with him in single combat and had bested him. His death would be just reward for all the hardships we had suffered, on this campaign and in the past five years.

Freeing my shield-arm from the leather brases and leaving Fyrheard behind, I headed off in pursuit of the Englishman, charging across the quagmire as best I could manage. The ground sucked at my boots; before long my trews were soaked and clinging to my legs as high as my knee, weighing my tired legs down further, but I clenched my teeth and kept going, hacking at the reeds with my sword as I desperately tried to clear a way through.

I saw Godric ahead of me and called to him. Mud caked his clothes, his tunic was torn, his arms were cut and his cheek was grazed where he had fallen, and all he had with which to defend himself was his sword.

‘Go back,’ I told him. ‘This isn’t your fight.’

‘Lord-’

‘You’ve done enough,’ I said, more forcefully this time. ‘Now, go.’

His face fell, but I didn’t have time to argue with him as I crashed on, further into the bog.

‘Hereward,’ I yelled. ‘Come and fight me!’

Soon I was wading through water that was knee-deep, and I was wet up to my chest from the splashing, but still I pressed on in the direction he’d been heading, until I found myself gazing out across a sun-sparkling mere, some fifty paces wide and more.

I’d lost him.

‘Hereward!’

No reply came. I swore violently, and again, and again. All that could be heard was the swish of the breeze amongst the reeds, and the gentle, rhythmic whistle of a heron’s wings as it flew overhead, and the distant cries of alarm as my sword-brothers chased the enemy down.

He was gone.

The bloodlust faded and I was standing alone, panting, feeling the cold waters swirl around my toes and sweat trickle down from my brow. Marsh-grime covered my hauberk and chausses and there were strands of weed tangled around my sword-hand and around my blade. There would be no glory. Not this time.

I was returning my sword to its scabbard when behind me there was a sudden splash, and I half turned, thinking that Godric had decided to follow me after all-

Not a moment too soon. Hereward, his damp hair flailing, heaved his seax around, aiming for my head. Instinctively I ducked, but in doing so I found myself struggling for balance. My foot had become trapped in the mud and I couldn’t move it quickly enough. With a crash of spray I toppled backwards, plunging into the marsh, my mail dragging me down, and there was water in my mouth and in my nose and in my throat, and I was choking and swallowing and gasping for breath all at the same time, trying somehow to raise my head above the surface, but there was a weight on my chest, holding me under, and my limbs were flailing and my lungs burning, and I could see nothing except white stars dancing in my eyes.

Then there was a hand on my collar, pulling me free of the marsh’s grasp. I inhaled deeply, thankful to find air at last even if only for a moment, and I saw my enemy standing over me, his yellow teeth bared, and in his stone-grey eyes was hatred such as I had never seen.

‘You Frenchmen stole my lands,’ he said, and he was sobbing as he spoke. Tears streamed down his face. ‘You killed my men. Now I’ll kill you!’

I tried to struggle, but couldn’t find the strength. I had just enough presence of mind to take another breath before Hereward let go of my collar and stamped down upon my chest. I could make out his shadowy form standing over me, and the bright spot of the sun behind him, but all my kicking and waving was to no avail, and that was when the fear took me.

Fear, because I knew that this was it. My time had come, and all I could think was how stupid I had been, and how for that stupidity I would now pay with my life.

My mind began to cloud. With every last beat of my heart I could feel my strength failing, the darkness encircling me, closing in-

When suddenly the weight on my chest was no more. Summoning every last ounce of will that was left to me, I raised myself up, struggling against the weight of my hauberk, gasping desperately for air that at first would not come, but which, when it did, was as sweet as heaven. I blinked as I inhaled, scarcely believing that I was still alive.

Sunlight pained my eyes, making it difficult to see, but as the brightness faded I saw Hereward. He staggered a couple of paces backwards, staring stupidly down at me as if in surprise, his jaw hanging open as if he were about to say something. Whatever that might have been, though, he never had a chance to utter. His legs gave way; he toppled forwards, and I caught a glimpse of the gash decorating the back of his skull as his limp corpse fell with a crash into the water.

And I found myself looking upon the face of the man to whom I owed my life.

Godric.