hearth, the old woman snored under her filthy woollen blanket, but Alric was gone, probably to empty his bladder, the warrior guessed.
Redwald will avenge us, he thought, as the last of the troubling dream drifted away.
Rising, he stretched. Though his wounds still ached, the witch’s balm had stripped the edge off the pain, and his limbs felt stronger after the night’s sound sleep. Would he be well enough to reach Eoferwic? The woods were rife with wolves and outlaws stalked the old straight tracks, if they were even passable after the heavy snows. He fought back his doubts, knowing that the king’s life, and his own, depended on his flight reaching its end.
Thoughts of the court reminded him of Tidhild, dead at his feet, her black eyes looking up at him, and in a surge of grief and guilt he swept out into the cold morning. The glare of the sun off the dense white snow blinded him. When his vision began to clear, a shape among the trees a stone’s throw from the house coalesced into the form of the young monk. Yet the man was naked, Hereward saw with shock, with a noose round his neck, a gag across his mouth, and his hands tied behind his back. Precariously, Alric balanced on the tips of his toes on a wobbling chopping block. His eyes were wide with fear. Another rope ran from the block across the frozen ground and into the trees.
Redteeth, Hereward thought. A trap to lure him out into the open. He silently cursed himself: Brainbiter still lay on the straw where he had been sleeping. And then he cursed the monk for failing to keep his wits about him. ‘Kill him! I care not!’ he shouted.
With a snap, the rope across the snow was yanked taut and the block flew out from beneath Alric’s feet. He kicked and flailed as his full weight dragged the noose tight round his neck.
Defiance forgotten, Hereward raced from the house and flung his arms round the monk’s waist, raising him up so the noose loosened. Supporting him with one arm, he tore the rope from Alric’s neck, and together they collapsed into a drift. Hereward yanked away the monk’s gag and bonds. ‘You are a fool,’ he snapped.
‘They took me unawares-’ Alric’s words died as the shadows fell across them.
Standing up, Hereward looked deep into the wind-lashed face of Harald Redteeth, the Viking’s pupils so dilated his eyes appeared all black. Hereward saw a hint of madness there. Wrapped in furs over their mail, bristling with axes and spears, the band of six warriors clustered around their leader.
‘Stranger,’ Redteeth said with a whimsical wave of his hand, ‘you have caused me no little trouble.’
‘I have given you a taste of hell. There is more to come.’
Redteeth laughed without humour. ‘Your time is over.’ He held Hereward’s gaze for a long moment, sifting what he saw there, and then he nodded to his men.
While two Vikings grabbed an arm each and dragged Hereward back to the house, a third tossed Alric his clothes and bundled the monk along behind. The rest of the mercenaries drove the old woman outside at spear- point. Her shrieked protests and curses rang out until Redteeth snatched a spear from the nearest warrior and drove the blade through her stomach. Alric cried out in horror. It was clear to Hereward that the young monk blamed himself for this death as he did for all the ones in Gedley.
‘Kill us and be done with it,’ he said, in a voice cracking with passion.
Redteeth turned on him. ‘Your time will come, monk. I wish to savour your demise before we cut off your head and take it back to the man you have wronged.’ To Hereward, he continued, ‘I would know your secrets, stranger. You are clearly a warrior of no little skill, yet you put your own life at risk for those you do not know. What gain is there for you in interfering in my business?’
Held tight between the two mercenaries, Hereward showed a cold face. ‘Lean closer. I will whisper it to you.’
Seeing the contempt in those eyes, Redteeth nodded to Ivar. Without warning, the second in command crashed a giant fist into Hereward’s face, splitting his lip. Once the ringing in his head had cleared, the Mercian tasted iron on his tongue, and spat a mouthful of blood into the embers.
‘Let us begin with questions you can answer easily. What is your name?’ Redteeth asked.
Hereward did not respond, and Redteeth nodded to Ivar once more. The second punch sent a jolt of pain through Hereward’s head and neck.
‘What is your name?’ Redteeth repeated calmly.
Hereward said nothing. Savage blows rained down on him, but he took it as he had taken every beating in his life, and there had been many. His left eye swelled shut, his lips turned to a pulp, blood streamed from his nose and his left ear throbbed so much he could hear nothing on that side. Redteeth asked again.
‘Why do you not tell him your name?’ Alric cried incredulously. ‘You told it to me in an instant. It is not a secret! You are only buying yourself more pain!’
‘My name…’ Hereward mumbled through his torn lips. ‘My name… is mine. It is what I have.’
Redteeth nodded to Ivar once more.
‘His name is Hereward!’ Alric shouted. ‘There! You do not need to hurt him more!’
‘Hereward,’ Redteeth repeated. ‘That means nothing to me. Now… where are you from?’
Unable to watch the punishment inflicted upon his companion, the young monk turned his head away, but he flinched with the sound of every blow. Hereward felt puzzled by his reaction. Why would anyone care?
After a while, he floated free of the shackles of the world. The voices around him receded and he was in the fens, a boy, catching fish on a sun-drenched afternoon. He was stealing a gold cup from the abbot’s room to sell to buy mead with his friends. He was looking down on the torn body of Tidhild, her hand so pale against the blood.
Icy water crashed against his face, shocking him alert.
‘Look at him,’ Alric said. ‘He is not human to suffer in silence so.’
‘We have only just begun,’ Redteeth replied. The Viking paced the house, flashing glances into the corners as if things waited there that no one else could see.
When two of the men had stoked the hot embers in the hearth, Ivar placed a pair of iron tongs, a poker and his long knife in the flames. While they absorbed the heat, Redteeth addressed Alric, who was slumped in one corner, his head in his hands. ‘Christian man. You have converted many of my people to the Creed. They no longer talk of Odin hanging on Yggdrasil, but of Jesus on the Cross. You build churches in the old stone circles and in the sacred groves, and by the wells and the springs. That is how you lure them. I have heard your kind say your God is better than mine. Is that so?’
Alric nodded.
‘Your ways are better?’
‘Yes.’
Redteeth nodded slowly. ‘So a Christian man should not break a vow sworn in his God’s name?’
Alric bowed his head.
‘Will your God forgive such a transgression? Will he wash away the stain of blood caused by such a crime? So many innocent deaths?’ Redteeth stepped forward and kicked the monk hard in the stomach. ‘If you had not run like a coward I would not have had to slaughter the people who sheltered you. Think on this in your final moments.’
‘Leave him,’ Hereward croaked.
‘You would prefer your own pain to his?’ Redteeth said. ‘Why, you must be a Christian too.’ The warriors all laughed loudly.
At the Viking commander’s order, Ivar removed the poker from the fire and held it close to Hereward’s ribs. The Mercian gritted his teeth as his flesh bloomed under the searing heat. When Redteeth leaned in to whisper, Hereward could smell his enemy’s meaty breath and the vinegar reek of his sweat. ‘Why would you dare to risk offending me? What lies in your head?’
Hereward looked Redteeth in the eye and grinned. ‘You will never know.’
Responding to a nod from his leader, Ivar pressed the hot poker to Hereward’s side. Pain lanced through him, and the stink of his own sizzling flesh rose up to his nose. His roar tore his throat, but it was the sound of triumph, not defeat.
‘Look at his eyes!’ Alric shouted. ‘You waste your time! I tell you, he is not a man — he is the Devil!’
‘He is a man,’ Redteeth replied with a shrug. ‘And we will find his humanity, given time. Perhaps when we cut his skin from him, as he did to my own man Askold.’ He pointed to the blade in the embers.
Wrapping his woollen cloak around his fingers, Ivar plucked the glowing knife from the fire, its heat so intense the mercenary flinched even through the covering.
