Alric had watched the warrior’s mood improve by the day as they neared Eoferwic. At times a robust humour had emerged, almost as if the Mercian sensed an opportunity to slough off whatever burden weighed him down, the monk mused. He saw learning in that face, most surely, and even some warmth. He had to accept that his wild- eyed companion was more of a puzzle than he had first believed. ‘It would be a blessed relief. I get little other sleep these days,’ he muttered.
‘You are free to leave at any time.’
‘Then who would pray for your black soul? I am all that prevents the Devil from rising up to offer you a throne beside him.’
‘The Devil on one hand and a monk wittering and whinging and whining all day and all night on the other. A hard choice.’ The warrior leapt to the monk’s side, landing gracefully.
Alric shrugged and walked ahead. ‘The meek are blessed.’
‘Dead. The meek are dead, because they leave their spears under their beds.’
‘And blessed.’ Alric ducked when he heard rapid movement at his back. A large stone flew over his head and crashed into a drift. He whirled, jabbing a finger. ‘That could have staved in my skull.’
‘I must practise my aim,’ the warrior said, his tone wry. ‘But let us move on. There will be sharper stones in the valley.’
Grumbling, Alric stalked ahead. He cast one look down into the black woods and saw nothing, so he picked up his step, stumbling through the knee-deep snow. The two men slipped and skidded down the steep slope, sometimes turning head over heels so that their eyelashes and hair became crusted with ice. As his chest began to burn from his exertions, Alric asked, ‘You have kin?’
‘Two brothers.’ Hereward paused. ‘One I call brother, but he is not blood.’
‘How so?’
‘When I was a boy, my father took him in. Redwald.’ The warrior’s eyes took on a faraway look. A hint of tenderness, Alric wondered? ‘His father was killed, by outlaws, I think. And his mother died too. The sickness.’ He shrugged. ‘He was alone, and my father welcomed him to our hall and treated him like a son.’
‘And does he share your love for blood?’
Hereward laughed quietly. ‘Redwald is the better man.’ Tapping his head, he added, ‘He has sharp wits and cunning ways. He is wise beyond his years, and his plots and plans would make Harold Godwinson proud. Even as we speak, he will be putting all his skills to good use on my behalf.’
‘And what plans and plots does he weave?’ Alric spoke lightly, to draw out more of the warrior’s hidden side.
‘Ones that lead to revenge.’ The monk saw the hard look that flashed across the other man’s face. ‘Though we are not joined by blood, there is no more loyal brother than Redwald. He will take his time, and work hard, over days and weeks… years, if need be… and when the hour is right he will destroy the one who wronged me. This is his vow.’
Alric was troubled by Hereward’s harsh tone, but also surprised by the first confidences he had heard in the ten days they had been travelling together. ‘You and your brother have a strong bond.’
The warrior looked to the far horizon as he remembered. ‘When I was old enough to skin a deer, my father gave me his knife, as fathers do to eldest sons, and as his own father did to him. It had a short blade, old even then, but kept sharp on the whetstone, and a handle of whalebone carved into the shape of an angel. Soon after, it disappeared. I knew that Redwald had stolen it. I could see it in the cast of his features and his quick glances. He felt guilt. And he knew that I knew. But I said naught.’
‘Why?’ The monk’s brow furrowed.
‘Because he had nothing of his own. Not for him a knife handed down from his father, or land, or gold. And more… who we are’ — the warrior pressed his right hand on his heart — ‘comes from the ones who forged us. When he lost his mother and father, Redwald lost the knowledge of who he was.’
Alric was touched. ‘So you allowed him to keep the gift your own father gave to you, because it was the only thing he had in all the world.’
‘And in that moment we were bound together as true brothers.’
Alric’s thoughts turned to the many friends who had died in Gedley, men and women who had trusted him, whom he had betrayed through his own weakness. And above all the one death that haunted him more than all others. Tears burned his eyes. Redemption would come hard, he thought, if at all. Could he ever clear the stain on his soul?
Reluctantly, the monk lurched up the next hillside. He watched the broad shoulders of the man ahead of him, the erect back that defied the savage cold, and he imagined Hereward’s past. A fighting man who betrayed his thegn. A woodcutter’s son who killed in an argument over food, or a woman. From what depths did the inhuman brutality surface? What had driven the Mercian into this cold, inhospitable place in the cruel heart of winter? What business did he have in Eoferwic and how could it prevent many deaths? His crime must have been terrible indeed. He had little faith in God, less in his fellow man. Alric was his final chance.
At the summit, the monk was blinded by the snow-glare. When his eyes cleared, he saw the sun flashing off two meandering rivers and, in the distance, trails of black smoke against the clear blue sky. He could discern the regular pattern of many houses against the white, and the tower of a great stone church.
‘Eoferwic,’ Hereward said.
Alric’s stomach complained at the fading memory of their last meal, two days gone. ‘And will we stay until the feasting at Christmastime?’
The warrior chuckled. ‘If your fellow churchmen can endure your whining voice, you can stay until Judgement Day.’ The monk flashed a questioning glance. ‘In Eoferwic, we go our separate ways.’
Alric felt wrong-footed, just at the point where he had started to entertain hope. ‘These last ten nights, you would have frozen to death in the woods if not for me,’ he floundered.
‘True. A small gift of food and a place next to the fire on a cold night are more readily given to a churchman.’ The warrior looked baffled by the other man’s hesitancy. ‘What ails you now? Since we left Gedley you have been cursing every moment you have spent with me. Now you wish to be friends?’
‘I wish…’ Alric shook his head, the words dying. What did he wish?
‘Besides, we are even. Two nights ago, when we took shelter at the farm, our host crept in, to harm you, I think. I imagine he still prays to the old gods and feared you would discover it and bring the wrath of your fellow Christians around his ears. I sent him away with the flat of my blade.’
‘I do not want you to save my life,’ Alric said sharply. ‘I am here to save you.’ And there it was, he realized. But Hereward merely laughed, a rich, full sound rolling over the snowy waste.
For the rest of the day, they walked on down the hillside and across the wind-blasted plain. Alric struggled through the deep drifts, his face and fingers numb, but his nimble mind turning with a precise gyre.
The warrior followed the trail of a raven across the sky, the one point of black in the entire vista. ‘The night I was born, there was a great storm,’ he said, speaking almost to himself, ‘and the lightning cleaved in two the great old oak tree beside the hall. My mother said it was a prophecy, of what I was never sure. But from that night on, I was told, all the ravens would gather there, filling the dead branches, like black leaves.’ He watched the bird disappear, and then bowed his head in thought as he trudged on.
As the sun slid down towards the western hills, the sky ignited in pink and gold. The mournful honking of geese echoed across the plain and wintering swans rose in one white cloud, the beating of their wings like thunder. The snow seethed with sinuous shadows. Though the ground was frozen hard, treacherous pools lurked among the long yellow grass rising out of the white covering, their glassy surfaces ready to shatter at the first footfall, pulling the unwary traveller beneath the ice. Hereward appeared to have an almost mystical sense of their location, and picked a path through the increasingly dangerous terrain with ease.
‘I am a son of the fens,’ he explained. ‘To foreign eyes my home appears green and pleasant, but it conceals hidden bogs and water courses that can steal a life in the blink of an eye. As children we are taught to respect the land, and watch and listen for the secret signs. Those who learn the lessons live. Those who do not are lost to the black waters.’
Soon the monk could smell woodsmoke on the wind, and behind it the fruity stink of human waste. Eoferwic lowered at the confluence of the two grey rivers, a dark smudge under the winter sky. Beyond the defensive ditches, Alric could see the line of the tall palisade that had been stained by so much blood during the waves of attacks that had made the city such a dangerous place over the years.
