Twenty-six
We waited until well after night had fallen before making our way across that still and silent land to lay our snare. The skies were clear and the stars cast a chill light upon us. Everywhere the branches, the fields and the meadows glowed white with frost. There was no wind to cut through our cloaks, for which I was glad, but nevertheless I could feel winter’s icy tendrils wrapping themselves around me, drawing the heat from my limbs.
Eventually we found the spring Tadc and Aife had told us about, although not without some difficulty, even following the directions they’d given, since it lay close to the summit of a low rise, at the heart of a dense thicket which the small light there was barely penetrated. In darkness as deep as pitch we scrambled through leaves and mulch, while branches and thorns scratched our arms and our faces. We climbed up the sharp crags, sometimes feeling our way on hands and knees, our leather soles slipping on the lichen-covered boulders, all the while listening for the trickle of water. After what seemed like hours of searching, we eventually found it burbling forth from a crevice in the rock. Surrounding it, forming a crown upon the brow of that gentle hill, stood a wide ring several dozen paces across of rough-hewn stones, most of them half as high as a man and a few even taller, which I supposed had been left by the ancient folk who were the first people ever to live in Britain, before even the Romans had come and wrought their great works.
There, taking shelter amidst the hazel and the holly, the oak and the ash, huddled in our cloaks and with our breath misting before our faces, we lay in wait for our prey, taking it in turns to keep watch. There were nine of us in all: Magnus and myself; Serlo and Pons; Godric and Eithne; Ælfhelm, and two of the huscarls under his command, neither of whom seemed to have proper names. The first was known as Sceota, which was the English word for a trout, on account of the fact that he had a reputation as a strong swimmer, while the other was called Dweorg, which meant a dwarf, even though he was a giant of a man and easily the tallest of all of us, taller even than Serlo.
I lay awake for a long while that night, and not just because of the cold and the damp that was soaking through my cloak into my tunic, but also because my mind was racing with thoughts of Oswynn, of the fastness upon the crag and how we would take the torch to its halls so that the flames would leap high enough to be seen the length of the fjord. I smiled as I closed my eyes and thought, too, of Haakon himself, and how I would take pleasure in gutting him like a fish and watching his lifeblood slip away. Blood that should have been spilt a long time ago. That was the last thing to cross my mind before finally sleep claimed me.
A sound sleep it was, too, strange though that might seem, since the ground was wet and I never usually rested well when wearing mail. It was filled with dreams of Earnford as I remembered it from the early summer, shortly before we had ridden to join the king’s army in East Anglia, when the wheat was still green and the days were growing long, and for some reason Oswynn was there too, her hair flying long and loose behind her as we rode from the woods down to the river. Her laughter filled my ears as with a spray of sun-glistening water we crashed through the ford, except that when I arrived upon the other side and looked back, there was no sign of her. All was still, the sun had disappeared behind dark, fast-moving cloud that obscured the sky, the crops were withering in the fields, and I was calling her name over and over and over as I whirled about, searching for her. I was still calling when I felt a hand upon my shoulders, shaking them roughly, jolting me from sleep.
Instinctively my hand leapt to my knife-hilt at my waist and drew it free, thrusting the point in the direction of the blurry shape that was my assailant.
‘It’s me, lord,’ said the one standing over me, drawing away from my blade, and as my eyes adjusted to the dimness of the morning I realised it was Serlo. ‘It’s me,’ he repeated.
A grey half-light filtered through the mist that hung all about, obscuring the trunks of the trees and making it difficult to see much more than a hundred paces.
My head was spinning, my throat parched, my sight still a little blurry, and under my tunic my skin was soaked with sweat. ‘What-?’ I began as I withdrew my blade and, blinking to clear my eyes, slid it back into its sheath.
He put a finger to his lips. ‘They’re coming.’
‘Already?’
That was when I heard, somewhere down the slope a short way to the north, the familiar jangle of horse harnesses, a peal of laughter and the sound of voices in a tongue I couldn’t understand but which had to be Danish.
At a guess I reckoned it was barely after dawn, which meant that they were early, although the enveloping mist obscured everything beyond about forty or fifty paces, even the sun, so probably it was not quite as early as it seemed.
Without wasting another moment I hauled myself to my feet, at the same time shrugging off my cloak, which was sopping and covered all over with leaves, and letting it lie where it fell. Pons, who had joined Serlo for the final watch of the night, was busy waking Godric and the other Englishmen. I checked to make sure that my sword slid cleanly from its scabbard. How long had it been since last I’d drawn it in anger, since last her edge had tasted enemy blood?
Eithne, lying wrapped in blankets by the trunk of a wide-bellied oak, was beginning to stir, and I laid a hand on her shoulder.
‘They’re coming,’ I said. ‘Hide.’
She woke with a start, wide-eyed in panic, at first not seeming to understand what I was saying, but then quickly she rolled up the blankets and scrambled for cover. The voices were growing closer with every passing moment, and I knew we didn’t have much time before they were upon us. I crouched down behind one of the frost-covered standing stones. Magnus had taken cover behind a holly bush to my right, and I held up a hand to catch his attention.
‘On my signal,’ I whispered, as loudly as I dared, which was not very loud at all. ‘Make sure the others know.’
Magnus nodded. This was his fight as much as it was mine, but there was no disputing whose sword-arm was the more experienced, and in any case he understood that this was no time to argue. Each of us knew what he had to do. The others took position behind the stones, amidst the undergrowth, in the crevices between the outcrops of rocks and wherever else they could hide themselves. I glanced to my left and my right to see who was beside me, and found Dweorg and Godric.
‘Stay close to me,’ I told the latter. ‘Remember everything I told you and you’ll do well.’
He looked every bit as nervous as when I’d first met him. This would be his first taste of battle since that day in the marshes when he’d slain Hereward. His first fight as a true warrior, as a full-fledged killer. Only too well did I understand the burden of expectation that placed upon a man, and yet I had every faith that his nerve would hold and that he would not fail me. He knew what was at stake, and knew what he owed me, too.
The voices came again, closer than before, and I risked a glance around the edge of that standing stone in the direction from which they were coming.
In the dim light I saw their shadows emerging from out of the fog. They came in a line, each following carefully in the footsteps of the one before them, trudging up the stony ground to the summit of that little hill. Four slave-girls, each with two wooden pails that they carried on poles across their shoulders, were in the middle of that column, with two of Haakon’s men leading and two more behind, preventing them from running away. One of the girls yelped as she stumbled and fell, her pails clattering upon the ground, and then a second time as one of the Danes hissed some manner of curse and hauled her up. She rubbed her elbow where she had fallen on it, and gingerly, stifling a sob, proceeded to pick up the fallen containers from where they lay. She was small and slight of stature, about Eithne’s age, I reckoned, although it was difficult to say for certain.
Keeping still, hardly daring to breathe, I watched as the two leading Danes, swathed in thick cloaks of grey fur clasped at the shoulder with silver disc-brooches, with helmets upon their heads and wearing necklaces made from beads of amber, jet and ivory, approached the spring, murmuring to one another in low voices. One of them gave a curt snort of laughter, although at what I could only imagine. In the belief, perhaps, that our ships and their crews had been fooled into leaving their shores. Their manner and the fact that they wore no mail told me they had come without any expectation of trouble.
My hand, dry and cracked from the cold, tensed, my numb fingers curling around the corded grip of my sword-hilt. Slowly, so that it made not even a whisper, I slid the steel from the scabbard’s lining of oiled fleece, all
