‘Begin with his right arm,’ the Viking commander ordered. ‘Start with the skin. Then remove the flesh and muscle down to the bone.’ He added to Hereward, ‘We will carve you like the wild boar at our Yule feast.’
As the Northmen jeered and laughed, Hereward hid his thoughts behind a blank expression. He had noticed that Ivar had leaned in close when he brandished the poker, closer than he would ever have risked if the Mercian’s arms were not pinned. As the second in command approached with the red-tipped knife, Hereward waited for the opening to materialize and then lunged forward. Clamping his teeth on Ivar’s cheek, the English warrior bit down to the bone and ripped away the chunk of flesh with a twist of his head.
Howling, Ivar lurched back, dropping the knife on to the old woman’s bed. Amid the crackle of straw, grey smoke curled up. When the Mercian felt his two captors loosen their grip in the confusion, he wrenched his arms free, jabbing his right elbow into one throat and driving his forehead into the face of the second man.
He felt the thing inside him rise up, the other Hereward, born of rage and bloodlust, unconstrained by human values, and he welcomed it. The pain of his wounds vanished. As strength flooded into his weary limbs, he reacted with a speed that made the mercenaries seem lead-footed in comparison. Snatching up the poker, he lashed it across Redteeth’s face. From the corner of his eye, he saw the monk wriggle out from among their captors and wrench open the door. Good, Hereward thought. He planted one leather sole in the Viking commander’s gut and propelled him out into the snowy morning.
The mercenary band began to gather their wits; too late. As flames licked up from the hearthside bed, Hereward snatched up his sword, hacking one man in the face, then whirling to lop off the right hand of another. With a flick of his shoe, he kicked the burning straw across the room to the other straw at the back. The fire rushed up the timber frame to the thatched roof.
As a sheet of flame spread over their heads, panic erupted in the dense smoke. Hereward darted outside before the Vikings could react. Grabbing Redteeth’s axe from where the mercenary sprawled in a daze, he slammed the door and embedded the weapon in the splintering jamb to seal it shut. The roaring of the fire drowned out the terrified shouts from within, which turned to screams as the burning roof began to fall in.
Through the throbbing of the blood in his head, Hereward heard Alric cry out. The Viking commander was struggling to his feet. Whirling, Hereward kicked Redteeth in the face with such brutal force that the mercenary pitched backwards, unconscious. His fury spent, Hereward’s euphoria faded. The world suddenly looked too brittle, cold and bright. Lurching from the pain seeping back into his battered body, he attempted to lift Redteeth. ‘Help me,’ he croaked.
‘You are badly injured,’ Alric said as he shouldered the Viking’s bulk. ‘You will not reach Eoferwic alone.’
‘I have survived worse.’
‘Sooner or later your luck will run out.’
The screams of the trapped warriors died amid the roar of the fire as the walls caught light and the flames soared up high into the sky. Hereward thought of Gedley and felt proud.
When Redteeth came round, confusion flickered across his face, then uneasy awareness, then simmering rage. Hereward watched the play of emotions with cold satisfaction. The noose was tight round the Viking’s neck and his hands were bound as he wavered precariously on the chopping block. Alric turned away as the mercenary fought to keep his balance, no doubt remembering his own ordeal.
‘This is not an ending,’ Redteeth growled.
‘It is the end of your story,’ Hereward replied. ‘Except for the part where the ravens feast on your remains.’
‘You should have left well alone,’ Alric added.
‘Good Christian man,’ Redteeth spat.
The monk was a strange man, Hereward thought, but he might have his uses. Turning his back on the glowering Viking, he said, ‘You are a free man now. What will you do? Return to your monastery?’
Alric hung his head. ‘I am not free. If Harald Redteeth does not return with my head, another will come in his place, and another after that, until this matter is done.’ His eyes flickered in the direction of Gedley. ‘I will never be free.’
‘I have business in Eoferwic… grim business,’ Hereward said, searching the other’s face for even the barest hint that betrayal lay ahead, ‘and I cannot risk becoming food for the wolves.’
The monk’s eyes narrowed. ‘What manner of business?’
Hereward hesitated. How could he tell the younger man that it involved murder, conspiracy and the security of the very throne of England itself when he had no idea who could be trusted or how far the plot reached? ‘There are lives at stake,’ he said. ‘More, perhaps, than died in Gedley.’
‘You butcher without thought for God’s work. Why would you be concerned with saving lives?’
‘We all wrestle with our devils, monk. Can any man truly say he is wholly saint or wholly sinner?’
Alric’s eyes brightened as if he had alighted on some great notion. Waving a finger, he said, ‘And you would have me accompany you?’
‘If I can be sure you will not pass judgement on me on the road, as it seems in your nature to do.’ He could feel his legs growing weaker by the moment. They would need to find new shelter, and a chance to recover. ‘These wounds drag me down. You are right: I will never reach Eoferwic on my own.’
The monk pondered.
‘I will pay you well,’ the warrior added, jangling the pouch at his hip.
‘Very well,’ Alric said, setting his jaw. ‘You need me now, and I, God help me, need you for protection, at least until we reach Eoferwic.’
Hereward clapped a weak hand on his companion’s shoulder. ‘You are a whining little shit, monk, with a miserable disposition that makes for poor company. But if we can survive the hardships of this wild land, I will shoulder the burden.’
While Alric cast one tormented backward glance at the Viking balancing on the block, Hereward felt the weight of the secret he carried with him. With a heavy heart, he peered among the clustering oaks and ash trees, but saw no sign of the pursuit that had dogged him for so long. Perhaps there was some hope after all, he thought.
As Hereward lurched away with Alric supporting him, Redteeth roared his defiance: ‘This is not an ending!’
If Hereward had searched the depths of the Viking’s eyes at that moment, he would have seen that Redteeth was right. It was not an ending. The red-bearded Northman would not give in to death.
He was Death.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘Harald Redteeth is dead. Why do you waste so much time watching for pursuers?’ Alric struggled to keep the crack out of his voice, but he felt irritable from exhaustion and hunger and the bitter wind burrowing deep into his bones.
Hereward crouched on the granite outcropping, one hand shielding his eyes from the midday sun. Now his wounds had healed, the sinewy warrior showed no sign of feeling the cold as he searched the bleak, white landscape tumbling away from the foot of the hillside below them. There were times when the young monk thought his companion more beast than man, at home in the wild countryside, perceiving scents that Alric could never smell on the knife-sharp wind, identifying spoor, detecting the merest hint of movement a day’s march away or more, hearing notes of warning in the cawing of the rooks, and, for all he knew, the voice of God in the soughing in the branches.
‘Men move through the forest below.’ The warrior rose on to the balls of his feet and for a moment the monk lost him in the glare from the thick snow lying across the hillside. ‘Five, I think. Tracking us or collecting wood?’
The monk narrowed his eyes in suspicion. ‘Do you fear that they are hunting me… or you?’
Hereward laughed. ‘Would you wait and ask them yourself?’ Bounding down from the rock, he scanned the way ahead over the windswept hilltops. ‘If we are caught out here in the open, we will soon be enjoying the sleep of the sword.’
