Knights of the Hawk

The shipmaster looked apprehensive, and I didn’t blame him. This wasn’t his battle. He had done Eudo and Wace a favour out of friendship, but the prospect of risking his lord’s prized longship on a voyage far beyond familiar shores was another thing entirely.

‘I’ll have to ask my men,’ he said. ‘They’re honour-bound to follow my orders, but I also have a responsibility towards them. Bear in mind as well that many of them didn’t even want to come this far.’

‘I understand,’ I said, and waited while he went and spoke with the members of his crew, some of whom I recognised from the last time I’d set foot on Wyvern’s deck, and several more that I didn’t. I saw lots of shaking heads and heard snorts that I took for disapproval, until one, older and more weather-worn than the others, whose name, if I remembered correctly, was Oylard, stepped forward. He began remonstrating with them, calling them cowards, saying they were unfit to call themselves Normans, and that their fathers and their grandfathers would be ashamed to see them shrink from such a challenge.

He pushed his way through the throng towards us. ‘Is it true?’ he called across from Wyvern. ‘Is it true that this Haakon was responsible for what happened at Dunholm?’

‘That’s what I’ve been told,’ I replied, raising my voice for the benefit of the others, who were watching, listening. ‘He was in the vanguard. He was the one who stormed the fastness and set fire to the mead-hall.’

Close to two thousand Normans had met their deaths that night when Eadgar and his allies had attacked. Men, women and children alike been cut down without mercy; the streets had run with their blood. No army of ours had ever suffered such a reverse on English soil. It was a humiliation that most of us would rather have forgotten, and yet how could we forget it? Even now, three entire campaigning seasons later, Northumbria remained unconquered; the king’s efforts to scour that land last winter had not made him its master nor brought the instigators of the rebellion to justice. And so the stain of that defeat lingered, while those who had inflicted it continued to live.

‘My cousin was at Dunholm,’ Oylard said as he turned to address his fellow boatmen. ‘A farrier’s apprentice, he was, no more than a boy. I later found out that he never came back. Dead at only thirteen summers old.’

They couldn’t fail to have heard about what happened that night three years ago. Many had probably heard it firsthand, from those like Eudo and Wace and myself who had been there and who had survived, although such had been the slaughter the enemy had wrought that we were few in number. No doubt Oylard was not the only one to have lost a friend or relative to the enemy’s sword at Dunholm, or at the very least knew someone who had.

One of the others, bald and thick-necked, spoke up. ‘I don’t know about you, Oylard, or any of the rest of you, but I for one won’t be risking my neck unless there’s the chance of reward at the end of it.’

‘There’ll be spoils enough to go around,’ I said. ‘From what I hear-’

‘From what you hear? What kind of an assurance is that?’

‘You have my word,’ Magnus interjected before I could answer. ‘He stole from me, as he has stolen from many others over the years. His treasure-chests brim with silver and gold, so rich has he grown profiting from the triumphs of others. I can promise that there’ll be no shortage of plunder should we succeed.’

‘And you’re willing to share in that wealth, are you?’ asked Bald-head.

The Englishman hesitated, and I understood why. Naturally he didn’t want to have to share, not if he could help it. If Wyvern were to join us then whatever booty did come our way would have to be divided more than a hundred ways. And yet another ship’s crew worth of allies would undoubtedly prove useful. There was much more to this expedition than pursuit of riches, and so if that was the price we had to pay for their help, then so be it.

That was how it seemed to me, anyway. But the decision was not mine alone to make. Magnus was chewing his lip, his face drawn as if contemplating.

‘Well?’ asked Bald-head.

‘If you’ll join us,’ Magnus said after a moment’s pause, ‘then, yes, we’ll share that wealth with you.’

He glanced at me to make sure that I was in agreement, and I nodded. The bald one went to confer with Aubert, Oylard and his fellow boatmen. Again there was grumbling, and again voices were raised, but at the end of it the shipmaster came forward.

‘Have you decided?’ I asked.

Aubert smiled. ‘We’ve come this far, haven’t we? It seems to me we might as well venture a little further. If Robert has anything to say about it later, well — ’ he shrugged and gestured towards Wace and Eudo ‘- I can always claim that they forced me to come north against my will, can’t I?’

‘If you do, those will be the last words ever to come out of your mouth,’ Eudo warned.

His expression suggested he was only half joking, but Aubert laughed all the same.

‘So,’ the shipmaster said. ‘Where do we find this Haakon?’

After that day’s calm, the wind picked up again on the next. A fierce storm blew in that made it impossible to sail, but we came upon a village close by the shore whose folk proved friendly enough, once they realised that we weren’t interested in robbing them. There we put what coin and goods we had to good use, exchanging them for a barrel of salted pork to replace one we’d lost overboard whilst riding out the squall several days before, as well as two more of ale in place of some that the seawater had spoiled. Our purchases made, we waited for the gale to subside, for the rain to cease lashing down, and for the skies to lighten once more.

I thought of old Snorri, and hoped Hrithdyr was safe in port rather than having to weather out this storm on the open seas that lay between here and Ysland. Assuming that they had made it without harm through the Suthreyjar, that was, although if there was anyone who would know which passages were safe to take and which islands to avoid, it was probably him.

‘He wouldn’t have lived as long as he has, doing what he does, if he didn’t know how to take care of himself,’ Magnus assured me. ‘He’ll be all right. If he’s sensible he’ll have sought out a travelling companion or two for the voyage. At this time of year the sea wolves are beginning to slumber, but nonetheless you’ll often find traders will band together for protection.’

‘As we have,’ I said.

‘True, but no one’s likely to attack us, are they?’

‘Why not?’

‘You’ll find easy spoils aboard a trader, but on a longship all you’ll find are warriors. You never see wolves preying upon their own kind, do you? Why should they waste their time fighting each other when there are more than enough pickings to allow them all to grow fat?’

That made sense, although even so I found myself more than a little nervous when the next morning, after the sea-mist had lifted, our two ships left the shores of Yrland behind us, for I knew we were venturing further north than I or any Norman had ever been before, into waters unknown even to Aubert.

I only prayed this latest undertaking did not prove to be a mistake on my part. The Danes were renowned across Christendom for being hard men to kill, and if the stories about him held any grain of truth, we were pitting ourselves against one of the fiercest and most ruthless of them all.

Winter was almost upon us. Even hours after the sun had lifted above the hills off our steerboard side, my breath misted before my face, while the wind bit through my cloak, working its chill through my flesh and deep into my very bones. This was the time of year when most sensible folk were slaughtering what animals they couldn’t afford to keep fed through the winter, mending holes in their warm clothes and caps, and huddling down close by their hearths.

But we were not most folk.

The further north we sailed, the steeper and darker grew the islands that rose like jagged mountains out of the sea, the more thickly wooded they became, and the fewer signs we saw of anyone living there. No wisps of smoke rose towards the slate-grey skies; no sheep grazed upon the hillsides; no fishermen’s hovels stood above the shoreline. These were sparse, barren lands, where the inhabitants of the one village we did come across were subject to no king that they knew of, whether English or Scots or Irish or Danish. Indeed, if any lord at all held sway in these parts, they had not heard of him. They tended their chickens and their few goats, and sometimes sold their goods to passing merchants and other travellers, though not often, and for the most part those were the only souls they saw outside of their own valley. But when Eithne and Magnus, who both happened to speak their language or something very like it, mentioned to them the name of Haakon Thorolfsson, and asked if he had been heard of recently, they all made the sign of the cross and began babbling at once.