Sword of Vengeance, page 9
‘How did you come by the lad?’ Beornoth asked, jerking his thumb towards Tata.
‘He came to me just before I departed from Winchester. The king’s steward said that the lad arrived bedraggled, an orphan looking for work, food and shelter. They had no place for him there, and I would need a pair of hands on the road. For preparing food, making fires and such. Only having one hand makes some tasks difficult. I saw your man there talking to the Norseman at Maldon. Are you sure you can trust him?’ said Hrodgar, and pointed towards where Brand fed a handful of grains to his horse and stroked the beast’s long nose.
‘I can trust him. Perhaps more than any man alive. He is one of them. His own kinsmen were in that camp. Men from his homeland with whom he sailed to these shores.’
‘I don’t like the look of him. He is not a man of God. It would be better if you let him return to his own kind. He can sail away with them and never return. Breaking bread with the likes of him sullies us. He is not a man of honour.’
Beornoth let that comment hang above the fire. He finished his meal and lay flat on the hay. Brand was a man of honour; he had risked his own life to save Beornoth’s when it would have been easier to let him die. Brand had protected Beornoth against his own people, and had he let Beornoth die, nobody would ever have questioned his honour or his drengskapr. Brand had saved Beornoth because of the blood debt, and because he would know that he had let a man to whom he owed his life die. Beornoth would die to protect the Northman, and he would not allow an assassin to decide whether Brand could ride with them. If it came to a choice between the two men, it was no choice at all.
They slept close to the fire, surrounding its edges with rocks to keep the barn safe from its flames. Beornoth huddled beneath his woollen cloak against winter’s chill. He listened to the horses’ snorts and the crackle and spit of the blaze. Darkness fell, and as Brand fell into a deep slumber, he snored. Brand usually snored, but that night it was like the rumble inside a hungry giant’s belly. After a time, Hrodgar sat up straight, like a man who had been stung by a bee.
‘For the love of God, will someone shut that grunting pig up?’ he said.
The boy Tata had his cloak pulled tightly around his head to block out the noise, and Beornoth stifled a laugh at the sheer noise of the Viking’s snoring. Hrodgar shuffled around the fire and kicked Brand’s boot. Brand grumbled and mumbled, and then continued to snore. Hrodgar reached over and grabbed the crusty remains of the farmer’s loaf and tossed it at Brand. It hit the Viking in the face, and he sat up, a half-asleep look of annoyed surprise on his face.
‘What was that?’ he said in Norse, voice thick from sleep.
‘Stop snoring!’ shouted Hrodgar.
‘What did wolf-joint say?’
‘He said your snoring is too loud,’ said Beornoth.
‘Ha!’ Brand laughed. ‘Tell the one-handed bastard that I was dreaming of his mother and sister. If he wakes me again, I’ll thrash him to within an arse hair of his miserable Saxon life.’
‘He says he is sorry,’ said Beornoth to Hrodgar in the Saxon tongue.
‘He did not say that,’ Hrodgar barked, his face a cliff of tired frustration. ‘Just tell him to be quiet.’
Moments later Brand’s snoring began again, just as loud as before. Hrodgar twisted and turned, trying to find a position where he could block out Brand’s rumbling croak. Beornoth found himself in the half-sleep, where he wasn’t sure if he was awake or asleep. Strange thoughts and vivid memories mixed with dreams, and his breath steamed above him as the night grew colder. Brand’s breath caught in his chest and he rolled over, and the snoring stopped, leaving the barn with only the sounds of the horses, and the gentle sigh of sleeping men. The barn door creaked, and Beornoth’s head turned like a night owl. A boot scraped on hay stalks and a timber plank groaned. There were men in the barn, and more sneaking through the door. He could smell garlic and onions, and the acrid stench of sweat.
Beornoth shifted under his cloak and reached for his sword belt. His hand curled around the seax’s antler hilt. His sword hilt was outside his reach, and he rolled his leg to kick Brand’s boot. The Norseman lay next to him, but he did not wake up, so deep was his slumber. Hrodgar was too far away for Beornoth to alert him to the imminent danger. Steel rasped in a wooden throat, and there was no time for any chance to surprise whoever came upon them in the dark of night with weapons and malice.
Beornoth surged from his cloak, stomach wound stabbing at him and his seax in his fist.
‘Enemy blades!’ he bellowed at the top of his voice. ‘Enemy blades!’
Beornoth jumped backwards and kicked the flaming fire logs with his boot, hoping that the firelight would show him how many enemies had entered the barn. Sparks flew and orange light illuminated dark figures at the barn’s walls. Hrodgar scrambled to his feet, a knife in one hand, but Brand still would not stir.
‘Who is out there?’ Hrodgar shouted.
‘Thay your latht prayers, turdth,’ said a low, guttural voice with a heavy lisp. ‘We hab come to thend your thoulth to hell. Kill them!’
The shapes moved, and light from the flaming logs shone on a long blade. A voice roared, and a shadow raced at Beornoth with a spear outstretched, the blade wickedly sharp. Beornoth sidestepped it and sliced his seax across the attacker’s ribs and the man cried out and danced back into the darkness. Hrodgar struggled with a cloaked attacker, fighting for his life in the half-light of the fire’s remnants. Beornoth’s sword belt lay on the ground by where he had bedded down, and he reached out with his boot and tried to slide his sword belt towards him. Before he could hook the leather under his heel, two men came for him, both armed with short-hafted axes.
‘How many of the bastards are there?’ said Hrodgar, wrestling with his assailant.
‘Too many,’ said Beornoth. The two axemen came on cautiously, weapons brandished in front of them, whilst the spearman cursed and spat to their right, with a hand clamped to his injury. There were five men, and possibly more. The axemen came on together, teeth shining in the dark, and they muttered to one another, looking for confidence in words of encouragement. They were no simple robber band; they had come heavily armed and knew who they faced.
An axe came overhand and Beornoth diverted the haft with his left elbow so that it fouled the attack of the second axeman. It knocked him sideways, and he tumbled over Brand’s sleeping form. The Norseman roared into wakefulness, swearing in Norse, and immediately tangled with the fallen attacker on the barn’s dusty floor.
‘Who are you?’ Beornoth said to the first axeman, who recovered his feet and came at Beornoth again. He ignored the question and slid his hand up the haft of his axe so that it became a wicked lump of metal in his fist and tried to slice at Beornoth’s arm. Beornoth whipped his arm away and punched the man in the jaw. He reeled away and Beornoth kicked him back a further two steps, which bought enough time for Beornoth to bend and pull the king’s sword free of its scabbard. He shifted the seax to his left hand and held the sword in his right. Tata leapt from his cloak and ran towards the horses, whimpering as he went. The axeman came back at Beornoth, but he paused as he noticed the long sword in Beornoth’s grip. A sword was the weapon of the warrior class, men whose profession was war. Thegns, ealdorman, men who protected the people from the viciousness of the world. To own a sword, a man must either be wealthy enough to have one made, or have one granted to him by a great lord in return for his skill and courage. So, when the axeman saw the sword, he realised he faced a warrior of reputation.
Beornoth lunged at him, feinting with his sword, and the man was so transfixed by its shining blade that he bought the feint and raised his axe to block the blow. Beornoth punched the tip of his seax twice into the man’s stomach, once into his thigh, and then hammered the pommel of his sword into the man’s face. Hrodgar’s attacker fell to the ground, gurgling from an unseen injury, and the Defnascir man came to stand at Beornoth’s shoulder.
‘I’ll go around the edges and force them out,’ Brand said, where he knelt over a twitching corpse. The Viking set off in a crouch, axe in one hand, his shape merging with the shadows. Ahead of Beornoth, a glow emerged from beside the barn door. One log he had kicked from the fire had carried its licking flame onto a bale of hay which had crackled into light. As the fire danced into life, three more shapes appeared. They came with axes and knives, thinking they would slaughter the riders in their sleep, but hesitating now that their prey had turned into sword-wielding warriors.
‘Who sent you?’ called Hrodgar, but the men said nothing. They spread out into a line, and the injured spearman joined them. The horses whinnied and scraped their forelegs, unsettled by the growing flames at the door. Beornoth’s heart thumped. He did not know how many men had come to kill him. They kept on coming, and there could have been a dozen more outside the barn waiting to pour in and hack him to pieces. These men were Saxons, not Vikings, and that was a surprise.
A figure rose up behind the attackers, axe in one hand and knife in another. Brand charged them, calling to Odin as he ran, and he descended upon the attackers with Viking fury. They turned, surprised to be attacked from their rear, and as they did, Beornoth set about them. He sliced one man’s knee with his sword and shoulder-charged another. Brand chopped his axe into the spearman’s skull with a wet slap and it burst like an egg. Hrodgar fought with the leftmost man, punching and jabbing with his knife. The final attacker came at Beornoth, and he was huge. He was taller than Beornoth, and larger by far. The axe was like a wand in his meaty fist, and he lumbered forward, his bulk framed by the roaring flames that had crept up the barn door and now crawled along its roof timbers. The roof creaked and groaned as the fire consumed it; thatch sparked to light and smoke drifted from the rafters like a deadly fog.
‘Time to die, thitworm,’ said the big man, the words coming in a garbled lisp. Beornoth stabbed his sword, but the giant batted it away contemptuously with his forearm as though it were no more threatening than a wooden spoon. The axe came around at frightening speed, and Beornoth met it with his seax, but such was the strength in the giant that he drove Beornoth backwards, his seax arm pushed towards his face by the axe. A thunderous crash sent sparks and smoke billowing as a section of the barn came down. A heavy boot kicked Beornoth in the chest and he fell sprawling into the remnants of the campfire. Above him, a clump of burning thatch drifted down like a feather and he rolled so that it wouldn’t land on his face and burn the flesh from his skull.
The fight raged in the barn, and droplets of fire dripped from the roof, where the fire crept along the thatch. It was hot in the barn; the night’s cold replaced with the searing, eye-melting fierceness of fire. The winter air became sucked into the fire’s rapid hunger.
Beornoth tried to rise, but a boot larger than his head stood on his sword arm and pinned him to the ground.
‘Lord Godric thendth hith greetingth, bathdard,’ the giant said. Beornoth struggled but could not rise. The enormous man smiled, and he had a mouth completely empty of teeth, a maw of red gums and a lolling togue like a monstrous baby. The axe came overhand, and would have killed Beornoth in one strike, but Hrodgar chopped his blade into the giant’s back. He bellowed with rage, turned, grabbed Hrodgar by his jerkin and tossed him into the fire as though he were a cut log. Beornoth had to get out of the fight and out of the barn; soon the whole thing would come down about them in a burning mass of old timber and mouldy thatch, and if he had a choice Beornoth would rather die on the end of a blade than feel the unthinkable pain of fire eating the flesh from his bones.
Beornoth cut at the giant with his sword, and it sliced into the meat of his calf. The big man shouted in a mix of pain and rage. He saw Brand slashing into his men, more of them lying dead or writhing in pain on the barn floor. The big man turned back to Beornoth and howled in impotent fury, then turned and ran. He limped because of the cut Beornoth had dealt to his leg, and it was like watching a bear shambling into a forest. He crashed into the barn’s wall like a sledgehammer, and its timbers shattered before his bulk. He fell through the hole, stood and lurched into the night.
Beornoth pursued the man, but he noticed Tata struggling with the horses, who were now wide-eyed and panicked from the fire. The flames had reached halfway across the barn, and the heat kissed Beornoth’s skin, forcing him backwards. He fought against the instinct to run and dashed to the horses, flanked by Brand and Hrodgar. They shouted to each other, but the words were lost in the roar of the burning barn. Beornoth dragged Virtus towards the barn’s centre, stroking his flank and talking to him in soothing tones.
‘We can’t get out!’ shouted Hrodgar above the din. He held one arm above his face to protect his eyes from the unbearable heat.
Beornoth picked up his sword belt and fastened it on. He carried his byrnie and saddle across Virtus’ back and sheathed his sword. Smoke billowed out of the giant-sized hole in the wall and Beornoth dashed to it, grabbing a fallen axe as he went. He hacked at the edges of the jagged timbers, the axe blade chopping chunks of wood free and making the hole larger. Beornoth paused, coughing and retching from the smoke, which poured from the thatch in great, stinking clouds. He turned and beckoned to the others, and they led the horses from the barn. Beornoth ran to Virtus, lifted Tata onto the horse’s back and led them both outside.
They collapsed onto the cold grass beyond the barn, each of Beornoth, Hrodgar, Brand and Tata coughing and retching, steam rising from their mouths in the chilly night air. The barn cracked and moaned, and the entire front section collapsed in on itself with a crash of wood and fire. The farmer knelt in the dirt by his roundhouse, hands clasped to his head in despair at his destroyed barn. His winter stores, food for him, his wife and his animals, destroyed. He would starve without it, and Beornoth walked to him and dropped a fistful of silver coins onto the grass before him.
‘Who, or what, in all Satan’s realms was that?’ asked Hrodgar, his voice coming like a croak from the smoke.
‘He was Godric’s man. The traitor knew we were here and sent men to kill us,’ said Beornoth.
‘Godric, Byrhtnoth’s thegn?’
‘Yes. Essex is not safe for us. We need to get the ealdorman’s body back to his widow and set about sending these treacherous dogs back to the dirt.’
Beornoth had a new enemy. Men hunted him just as he hunted them. He had Byrhtnoth’s body, but the traitors he sought were one step ahead. How had they known he was in Essex and been able to find him on a small farm deep in the Essex countryside? Beornoth thought about those problems as the farmer brought water to wash the smoke from their faces. Word could have come from Olaf’s camp at Maldon, or from any of the taverns on the journey south. But Godric had clearly heard that Beornoth rode south, and Beornoth hoped that in his nightmares, Godric saw Beornoth charging at him, sword in hand. A giant hunted him, but Beornoth was not afraid. Essex had been his home once, but it had become a nest of serpents who had betrayed their lord and now tried to steal his lands and wealth. But Beornoth was coming for them.
9
Snow dusted the frozen pastures of Essex as the riders pushed south. Beornoth rode the cart, bumped and jostled by the frozen ground, and Byrhtnoth’s headless corpse rolled in the back, its rotting stink escaping its yellowed sailcloth shroud to taint the air around the cart with the sickly-sweet stench of decay. The land approaching Rettendon was flat and bare, a patchwork of grazing pastures and tilled fields marked by ditch and hedge which in spring and summer would explode with vibrant greens and browns, but now in the depths of winter, was a hard white wasteland. Beornoth held the reins in hands wrapped in cloth to keep out the frost and cuffed at a running nose, which felt like it could snap off if the air grew much colder.
Rettendon itself was a simple village. It was not a fortified burh but merely a collection of turf-topped longhouses, a stable and a small gatehouse. It was ringed by gorse hedging, which served as a sort of natural, low palisade. Beornoth counted a flock of three score sheep and four cattle shivering in a miserable field on the settlement’s west side, and then a sty of six pigs close to the dwellings. Smoke billowed from the largest of the longhouses; it was a hall of sorts, too small to be a feasting hall, but large enough to hold a dozen people.
Beornoth rode in the cart, and Tata huddled in the back, swathed in his cloak. The lad had said little since they had left Mameceaster weeks earlier, and nothing at all since the ambush at the barn. Beornoth glanced back at him, and the lad looked up with large, wet eyes. Beornoth guessed he was fourteen years old; he was thin and sullen but tended to all the warriors’ chores with silent dedication. He kept their weapons oiled and sharp. Tata fed and brushed the horses each morning and night and filled their water skins whenever they passed a fast-flowing stream. He bought food and ale from villagers, made cook fires and baked flatbread. He was, Beornoth thought, the perfect servant. Hrodgar spoke little of Tata or where he had come from, and when Beornoth had asked him, the king’s man had brushed off the question, saying only that Tata had wandered into the king’s lands as a beggar, starving and in need of help. Brand and Hrodgar rode beside the cart, but on opposite sides. The longer the journey went on, the more they seemed to rub each other up the wrong way. Saxon and Viking, Christian and pagan, as different as cat and dog.
