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?
