until the day of judgement, still that first time he took a life will be the one he remembers most clearly.
I should know, for I have walked that path. My name is Tancred, and this is my tale.
One
The smoke on the horizon was the first sign that the enemy were nearby. It billowed in great plumes above the fields, spreading like an ink-stain upon the fresh parchment of the sky. Save for the occasional bleating of sheep in the pastures and the warbling of skylarks hovering high above, there was no sound. A thin drizzle fell, the wind had died to almost nothing and everything else was still, which made the sight of those plumes in the distance all the more unnerving.
Straightaway I reined in my destrier, Fyrheard, and raised my hand to those following as a signal to halt. My men, riding to either side of me, responded at once, as did the mounted archers at the rear of our column, but the oxen-drivers were too busy talking between themselves to notice, and only my shout of warning stopped them and their animals from colliding with us. I cast a glare in their direction and berated them in the English tongue, but they didn’t seem to notice. Suddenly their minds were on the distant smoke, at which they were pointing and shouting in alarm.
‘A hall-burning, do you think, lord?’ Serlo asked. One of my two household knights, he was a bear of a man with a fearsome sword-arm and a temper to match: not the kind of man that I would have liked to face in a fight, and I was glad to count him as a friend.
‘If it is, it wouldn’t be the first,’ I replied. Nor, I suspected, was it likely to be the last. In the last fortnight the rebels had made half a dozen such raids, always in different places but always following the same pattern: striking as if from nowhere to lay the torch to a village or manor, before just as quickly withdrawing to their boats and melting away into the marshes. By the time word of what had taken place had reached us and the king had sent out men to meet them in battle, they were already long gone. Still, it was rare that they should strike so far from their island stronghold. The castle at Cantebrigia was barely two hours behind us; the rebels were either growing bolder or else more foolhardy, and I couldn’t make up my mind which.
‘What now?’ Pons asked, his voice low. The second of my knights, he possessed a sharp wit and an equally sharp tongue, which he often struggled to restrain, but there was nothing light-hearted about his manner now.
‘We could try to find another way around,’ Serlo suggested.
‘Not if we want to reach the king’s camp by dusk,’ I said. Aside from the main tracks, I wasn’t at all familiar with this land: a flat and featureless expanse of pasture and barley fields, crossed by streams and rivers narrow and wide. What I did know was that there were few well-made ways along which fully laden carts could travel, with bridges and fords that they could cross. We could easily waste several hours if we decided to leave the road and strike out across the country.
Pons frowned. ‘Do we go on, then?’
‘They could be lying in wait for us,’ Serlo pointed out.
I considered. On the one hand I had no wish to lead us all into a trap, but on the other it seemed unlikely the enemy would announce their presence so clearly if an ambush was what they had in mind. Besides, it had been several weeks since the rebels had made any serious attempts to waylay our supply trains — not since the king had begun sending out parties of knights and other warriors to accompany them and ward off any would-be attackers.
And that was how I came to be here. I, Tancred the Breton, Tancred of Earnford. The man who had helped win the gates in the battle at Eoferwic, who had led the charge against the pretender, Eadgar Ætheling, faced him upon the bridge and almost killed him. The same man who by night had entered the enemy’s camp in Beferlic, rescued his lord from imprisonment at the hands of the Danes, and captured the feared Wild Eadric, the scourge of the Marches. I had stared death in the face more often than I cared to remember and each time lived to tell the tale. I had done what others thought impossible. By rights I should have been rewarded with vast lands and halls of stone, chests brimming with silver, gilded swords and helmets with which to arm myself, stables of fleet-footed Andalusian horses that I could offer as gifts to my followers. I should have been leading forays against the enemy, hunting down their foraging parties, training at arms with my companions, or else helping to hone the shield- and spear-skills of those less proficient in the ways of war.
But I was not, and with every day my anger grew. For instead of being allowed to make use of my experience, instead I found myself reduced to this escort duty, riding back and forth across this featureless country day after day, all to protect a dozen scrawny oxen, their stinking, dung-covered owners and these rickety carts, which were constantly becoming stuck or else collapsing under the weight of the goods they carried. It would have been bearable had the rebels ever dared approach us, since at least then I’d have had the chance to test my sword-arm. Probably sensibly, however, they preferred to go where the pickings were easy and where they could wreak the greatest devastation, rather than risk their lives for the sake of whatever supplies we guarded, which usually comprised no more than some loaves of bread, barrels of ale and rounds of cheese, timber planks, nails and bundles of firewood — all things that our army needed to keep it warm and fed, but which, if the reports we received were reliable, the rebels already had in plenty upon their island fastness at Elyg.
‘What are you thinking, lord?’ Serlo asked.
‘I’m thinking that those smoke-plumes are rising thickly,’ I said, meaning that those fires hadn’t been burning for long, which in turn meant that those who had caused them couldn’t be far off. And I was thinking, too, that this was the closest I had come to crossing swords with any of the rebels on this campaign. The battle-hunger rose inside me; my sword-hand tingled with the familiar itch. I longed to hear the clash of steel ringing out, to feel my blade-edge biting into flesh, to let the battle-joy fill me. And as those thoughts ran through my mind, an idea began to form.
‘The three of us will ride on ahead,’ I said. ‘If the enemy are lurking, I want to find them.’
Serlo and Pons nodded. While they were unafraid to speak their minds and while I often relied upon their counsel, they both respected me enough to follow whatever course of action I chose. The same could not be said of the company of archers that had been placed under my command, who guarded the rear of our column. Lordless men, they made their living by selling their services to anyone who would pay, owing allegiance to their purses and their purses alone. Even now I could make out the mutterings of their captain, a ruddy-faced man by the name of Hamo, who possessed a large gut and a sullen manner, and whom I had little liking for.
I turned to face him. At first he didn’t notice me, being too busy exchanging snide remarks with his friends about how I was frightened of a little smoke, and how he’d heard it said that Bretons were all cowards, and that was why I’d been tasked with this escort duty, because I was too weak-willed for anything else. Clearly he knew nothing of who I was, or the deeds I had accomplished. He was lucky that I was too poor to afford the blood-price for his killing, or I would have long since struck him down for his insolence.
As it was, I had to wait a few moments before one of his comrades saw that I was watching and nudged him sharply in the side. He looked up; straightaway his tongue retreated inside his head, while his cheeks turned an even deeper shade of red.
‘Lord,’ he said, bowing extravagantly, which prompted a smirk from a few of the others. ‘What are your instructions?’
I eyed him for a few heartbeats, silently daring him to break into a smile, but luckily for his sake he wasn’t that stupid. Although he was not averse to muttering behind my back, he knew better than to defy me openly. I reckoned he was probably ten years older than me, which was a good age for someone whose life was lived on the field of battle. The summer just gone was my twenty-eighth, and although no one could yet call me old, I had ceased thinking of myself as a young man.
‘Wait for us here,’ I told him, trying to hold my temper and my tongue. ‘I want to find out what’s happened.’
Hamo frowned. ‘We were ordered not to leave the carts undefended.’
‘I’m not leaving them undefended. You’re staying with them.’
Strictly speaking my duties didn’t extend to hunting down enemy bands, a fact of which we were both well aware. But if Hamo thought I was going to let this opportunity pass, he was mistaken.
