Sword of Vengeance, page 11
10
Beornoth, Hrodgar, Brand and Tata stayed the night at Rettendon. The village was deep in the heart of winter, and the Lady Ælfflæd apologised profusely about the simple fayre her household could offer for the evening meal. Her people took Byrhtnoth’s body from its sailcloth wrapping and laid it out on a table to wash, bind and prepare for burial. Nothhelm said solemn prayers at the evening meal in gratitude for the return of the ealdorman’s body and that he could now be buried in a godly fashion. He blessed Beornoth and Hrodgar for the fateful tasks which they must complete if Byrhtnoth’s family was to succeed to the ealdorman’s titles, and if Sigeric and Godric were to be stopped.
They imitated a feasting hall by pushing tables together in the longhouse, and Beornoth strategically placed Brand next to him to prevent the Norseman from losing his temper because of the disrespectful sideways looks from the dinner guests. Brand was a proud Northman and did not hide the hammer pendant around his neck or the large raven tattoo upon his neck. He did, however, make a small concession by not eating, farting or laughing as Nothhelm prayed at length whilst the food was laid out before them.
Ælfflæd’s people laid on as fine a feast as they could with what remained of their winter supplies. There was porridge, flatbread, vegetables cooked in garlic and other herbs, and a cured leg of lamb which had to be shared amongst all the guests in the hall so that each person received only a few slices of meat. There was good ale, honey and a soft cheese which spread easily across the warm bread. At Beornoth’s request, they provided a pitcher of fresh water, for he would not drink ale unless absolutely necessary.
Once the feasting was over, and they had exchanged thanks and prayers, Beornoth bedded down for the night by the central hearth. Ælfflæd’s people pushed the eating benches to the sides of the room so that Beornoth and his companions could lie beside the fire with their cloaks for blankets. Sleep came fitfully, and Beornoth lay upon his side, staring into the hearth’s glowing embers. He pondered on where to start and where to go. He had too few men to take on Godric and his band of hired blades. To ride to Godric’s lands would be to walk into his hands. Hrodgar had spoken at dinner about his preference to use stealth to enter Godric’s hall and slit his throat in the darkness, but he baulked at any talk of killing Archbishop Sigeric; to kill a man of God was to attack God himself, and he would hear no talk of it.
Beornoth pondered on those problems. Hrodgar’s plan to kill Godric in his bed made sense given their lack of warriors, but Beornoth wanted to look the traitor in his eyes as he ripped his life from him. A knife in the darkness was not an honourable way to deal with an enemy, even if it was the most practical. Godric’s burh at Hareswood was not a full burh, in that it did not meet plans laid out by King Alfred. It had a ditch, and a palisade built of stout timbers, a gatehouse and hall, but was smaller than the traditional burh, which Alfred had built throughout Wessex and beyond to keep out Viking incursions after the Great Heathen Army had come within a hair’s breadth of conquering Britain and ending Saxon rule. Hareswood would be well defended, and Beornoth blinked sleeplessly at the orange embers. He wondered how they could sneak in, kill Godric and get out again without his warriors noticing. The notion of an assassination rankled with his warrior’s conscience and kept Beornoth awake, until his worries overwhelmed him like an enemy shield wall, and he drifted off to dream of Eawynn and her garden.
‘The horses are ready,’ said Hrodgar, gently nudging Beornoth’s shoulder to wake him. He sat up, groaning at the ache in his belly wound and the stiffness in his ageing joints. Beornoth blinked, and his left eye opened fully for the first time since the fight at Olaf’s camp. They left Ælfflæd’s home on a windy morning under a low, brooding sky. Leafless trees swayed, their branches reaching towards heaven like the thin, praying hands of those in need of a miracle. Wuffa and three of Ælfflæd’s guards waited for them beyond the hedge fence.
‘We will escort you to Celmersford, lord,’ Wuffa said, and would not be turned away. Celmersford was a slow day’s ride away. ‘If north is where you plan to ride.’
‘We go north,’ said Beornoth. ‘And your escort is welcome. We might need your blades if Godric’s brigands attack again.’
‘Hareswood is north-east of here,’ said Hrodgar. He spoke tersely, and Beornoth shook his head.
‘We need men. So, we go north. We must punish East Anglia for their failure to march to Maldon. For that, we need warriors. Then we go for Godric.’
‘Where will we find this magical force of fighting men who will appear from nowhere and march with us to East Anglia?’
‘In the north. Thered of Northumbria will give us men, as would Alfgar of Cheshire. We have two powerful ealdormen who will support us. We could go to the king, but he supports only with words, and not with swords.’
Hrodgar opened his mouth to protest at the accusation against Æthelred but thought better of it when he saw the stubborn look of Beornoth’s cliff of a face. They rode through the small gate, and Beornoth turned Virtus to wave at Ælfflæd and Nothhelm.
‘What’s to stop Godric riding to Rettendon and killing the widow and the bishop?’ asked Brand in Norse as they cantered along the frost-hardened road.
‘Godric might be a shit-stinking coward, and a greedy land-grabbing bastard,’ said Beornoth. ‘But even he must draw the line at attacking the widow of an ealdorman who so recently and heroically died in battle, and no man would kill the bishop of Essex if he wants to keep the blessing of the Church. If Godric has his eye on becoming ealdorman, he can’t do it with a widow’s and bishop’s blood on his hands.’
‘But he can do it with a shire washed in blood, as long as he doesn’t touch the widow or Bishop Nothhelm?’
Beornoth shrugged, and they rode to Celmersford through a country absent of travellers, the cold roads empty as people stayed indoors to see out the dark season. But riders shadowed the small column, visible on the edges of a windswept bluff to the east of the road. Brand saw them first, emerging from the woodland’s edge to cross open ground and climbing to watch them from the high ground.
Wuffa led them to a tavern on the road into Celmersford, a small place called the Fighting Duck, where they found food and lodging. Beornoth asked Hrodgar and Wuffa to find food and talk to the tavern owner about the goings-on in Essex and then slipped out with Brand into the evening chill. They had Tata saddle their horses, which he did without a grumble, even though he had just finished brushing and feeding the animals after the day’s ride.
‘You want to kill the watchers, lord?’ asked Brand as their horses trotted away from the tavern, and its warm fire and food.
‘They must be Godric’s men, so let’s send a message before we leave the lands of the East Saxons.’
Brand grinned and patted the haft of his axe. They rode north and east, keeping a close eye on the low-lying hills and woodland around the road and tavern. It was not a place of deep valleys or ranging cliffs, but of gently rolling hillsides, farmlands and forest. Darkness came early and quickly, but the moon was a sliver from its full glory and lit up the shire in silver so that the frost glistened on grass, branch and hedge like a sea of shattered ice. The two riders circled around the route they had taken towards Celmersford, easing their horses through the darkness, letting the mounts choose their own pace. Men who knew horses better than Beornoth swore the animals could see just as well in the dark as they could in sunlight, and that the real danger of night riding was to the rider.
They rode past a steading of low roundhouses, and Beornoth’s head turned as an owl hooted its ghostly cry in a tangle of shadowed trees. Brand laughed for joy as both men noticed a glow in the depths of the forest, as though it were the entrance to the gates of hell. The Viking laughed because they had surely found their prey, for who else would hide out in woodland on a winter’s night but hunters who wanted to remain hidden from their prey?
Beornoth tied Virtus’ reins to an ash branch on the forest’s edge. He stroked the beast’s ears and fed him a carrot he had taken from Rettendon.
‘If I do not return, I wish you good luck,’ he whispered, and Virtus brought his powerful head up so that Beornoth could touch his forehead to the horse’s. Beornoth put up the hood of his dark cloak and drew his sword. He crept into the undergrowth, moving slowly and carefully the closer he came to the brightness at the heart of the wood. Brand crept alongside him, axe in one hand and a long knife in the other. Voices laughed and talked in the darkness, growing louder with each step forward. The four men spoke with northern accents, with the slightest tinge of Danish in their Saxon tongue. Men of the Danelaw then, fugitives of some minor war or dispute between thegns or lords in the distant north, masterless men who had found pay in the service of Godric and his ambition.
Brand pointed his axe to the left, and Beornoth nodded. The Viking peeled away and circled around the band of men so that he and Beornoth could attack from opposite sides. The four men Beornoth had seen on the bluff above Celmersford drank ale and told stories by the fire. As Beornoth crept closer, he listened to a man with a Pictish accent boast about how he had killed six men and was a man of great reputation in his homeland. He told a story of how a churl had begged for his life as the Pict tupped his wife and stole his silver. The other three laughed and Beornoth emerged from the darkness.
Beornoth waited there, sword drawn and hood up, staring at the four warriors. They thought they were clever men, spying on Beornoth and sending word to Ansgar the Giant or to Godric himself. One of Beornoth’s great joys of war was to surprise men who had planned his death, men who had wrought a cunning scheme to come at him with blades and dark intent, and then to kill them instead. To live when a man who sought Beornoth’s life died himself.
‘Holy God,’ said one of the four men, and he shot up from the log on which he sat. He pointed at Beornoth, his face lit up by the firelight and his mouth curled downwards in fear. The others turned and Beornoth stepped forward.
‘Who are you? We are not men to suffer robbery. Be off with you, before I skin you alive,’ said the Pict. He reached for his spear, which rested beside him.
‘I am Beornoth, king’s thegn,’ he said, and strode towards the Pict.
‘Holy God,’ the rearmost man repeated and took short steps away from the fire. He shrieked and spun around as his back collided with Brand’s chest. Brand laughed, and the man stumbled back towards the fire.
The Pict licked his thick lips and ran a hand down his drooping moustaches. He held his spear in his right hand, and he glanced from its point to Beornoth’s sword.
‘Now is your chance,’ said Beornoth. ‘You are four, and we are but two. Cut us down and bring our heads to your lord, and he will reward you handsomely.’
‘We haven’t come to kill you,’ said the Pict. He tried to be belligerent, but fear cracked his voice and he swallowed hard. ‘Just to watch, that’s all. We meant you no harm.’
‘No harm? Who asked you to follow us?’
‘Lord Godric of Hareswood, lord,’ said a wiry man on the Pict’s left, and the bigger man shot him a baleful frown.
‘And once Godric knew of our destination, he would kill us. Would he not?’
The wiry man looked at his friends and shook his head. Beornoth wasn’t sure if he did that because he disagreed with what Beornoth said, or because he couldn’t believe the cruel twist of fate about to befall him. Because fate had caught up with these men in an East Saxon forest; Beornoth had come for them, and any man who crossed him did so in full knowledge of his reputation.
Beornoth sprang forwards and struck with his sword, both sudden and brutal. Rather than raise his spear to counter Beornoth’s sword, the Pict turned his back with a fearful whimper. Beornoth snarled in disgust and opened up the Pict’s thigh with the point of his blade. He kept the sword moving and slashed its edge across the throat of the wiry man as he fumbled for an axe in the undergrowth.
Brand chopped his axe into the rearmost man’s chest, ripped it free and hacked again as the enemy fell screaming into the fire. Embers flew into the dark, and Beornoth stepped over the Pict. He had fallen into the rotten, frozen leaf mulch, crawling like a worm, and he left a trail of gleaming blood behind him. He turned over and wept like an infant at Beornoth’s snarling fury. The Pict covered his face and howled with fear, and Beornoth caught a waft of shit where the boasting coward had soiled his trews in terror. Beornoth stabbed the tip of his sword into the man’s guts, twisted it savagely, and pulled the blade free. As the Pict lowered his hands to cover the wound, Beornoth ripped out his throat with the bloody sword point.
‘Leave that one,’ Beornoth said as Brand advanced on the final spy, wanting to kill the man. Brand turned to him with a hurt look on his face, like a child who has been told he cannot accompany his father on market day. Beornoth stalked across the blood-spattered campfire to where the fourth man sat, stuck to his log seat by crippling fear. Beornoth pointed his sword at him, leaving the blade a hand’s breadth from his pox-scarred face. The man stared at the bloody sword blade, mouth open and eyes glassy with shock.
‘I am Beornoth, and you can live to run back to your Lord Godric and tell him I killed his men. Tell him I saw him run from the battle at Maldon and take the fyrd with him. He left his oathsworn blood brothers to die. He is an oathbreaker, a traitor and a coward. Tell him that death stalks him, that I have been sent back from the jaws of hell to punish him for his crimes. Now, go.’
The man scrambled off his log and ran into the darkness. He fell over a dead branch, rolled in a clutch of ferns, and fled into the forest on all fours like a whipped dog.
‘Now Godric will live in fear,’ said Beornoth in Norse, and Brand nodded, a feral grin splitting his golden beard. ‘We will gather a band of fighters, men who will fight to avenge my fallen brothers. We shall return to East Anglia and Essex, and traitors’ blood will run through the fields like a river.’
11
After a hot meal and a night spent huddled in a small tavern outside Celmersford, the riders started on the hard road north. Wuffa’s men returned to Rettendon to protect the Lady Ælfflæd and her household, but Wuffa himself would not return. He asked Beornoth to let him join their war band. Wuffa had loved Ealdorman Byrhtnoth, and begged Beornoth for a chance to be avenged upon those who had betrayed the great lord. Beornoth reluctantly agreed. Wuffa did not seem like much of a fighting man with his narrow, wiry frame and bandy legs, but there was something about him. There was an air about the man, something that stopped him from holding Beornoth’s eye for longer than a few seconds. At first, Beornoth thought the man callow, but through talking to him on the road from Rettendon to Celmersford, Beornoth realised it was shame that cast Wuffa’s eyes down. The shame of not being there at Maldon when Byrhtnoth and his hearth troop fought to the death whilst Wuffa guarded the Lady Ælfflæd. Beornoth could not imagine having to live with that knowledge, that the men Wuffa had been born and raised alongside, men he had fought and lived with his entire life, had sacrificed their lives to protect the people, and he had not been there. Wuffa lived, and the warriors he knew and loved were dead.
Five riders made the hard journey north, and it took twenty-two long days. There were days where the road was unpassable, gripped as the country was by winter’s fury. Rain lashed the roads and bounced on tavern thatches. Beornoth spent ungodly amounts of silver to keep the men and horses fed and lodged at way stations along the well-trodden trading roads leading to Tamworth, and then north-east towards York. They coughed and sneezed with colds, and huddled around fires where the tavern keepers served ever-thinner stews as winter supplies ran out. Luckily, there were few on the road, and so the riders could secure rooms at most stops, though the straw in the pallet beds was often grimy and stinking from the backs of many travellers since that hay had been cut stiff and golden from late summer fields.
York sat at the confluence of two rivers, the Ouse and Fosse, and had been an important city before even the time of the Rome folk. Some men believed the Romans had used giants to lift and place the enormous stones that formed the walls and older buildings around the city, and there were certainly no men alive in England who could cut and dress stone as closely as the Romans. The Rome folk had called the place Eboracum, and then Beornoth’s ancestors, Saxon warriors who had braved the Whale Road to wrestle the land from the Britons, had muddled that name in their own tongue so that it became Eoforwich. When Ivar the Boneless and his Great Heathen Army descended on York to kill its King Aelle in revenge for their murdered father, Ragnar Lothbrok, their tongue struggled with the Saxon name, and it became Yovrvik. Over time, men simplified that to York. In the time of Beornoth’s father, the kingdom of York had been a mighty state outside the rule of King Alfred and his descendants. It had ruled at the heart of the Danelaw until the death of Eric Bloodaxe just before Beornoth was born.
They rode through the huge south-facing gate on a day where the sun shone without heat, and the clip-clop of Virtus’ hooves on the cobbled streets brought back grim memories. Before they had fought together, Thered and Beornoth had been enemies, and Thered’s father, the old Ealdorman Oslac, had tried to have Beornoth taken and killed in the city’s great hall. It had only been thanks to Byrhtnoth’s quick thinking, and the support of Leofsunu, Aelfwine, Wulfhere and the rest of the hearth troop, that he had escaped with his life.
Tata gawped at the looming, magnificent walls of the city’s great minster, where the Vikings had once stacked their looted treasure. It was a bustling place of merchants, traders, warriors and folk about their daily business. Men pushed carts loaded with earth-brown pottery, and Beornoth cursed at the driver of a wain stacked with the curved amphorae of expensive wine from across the sea when he let his wheels run over and pin an old woman’s ragged cloak.
‘I’ll never get this stink out of my nose,’ grumbled Brand. He wrinkled his nose and gazed up longingly at the sky. For a man used to the open sea, and the hill and fjords of Norway, a city was a foul place. After a day or so, a man became accustomed to the ever-present smell of piss, shit, smoke and cooking food, but upon entering the city it assaulted a man’s senses and Beornoth pulled his cloak up around his nose to block out the worst of it.
