The rain did not let up until late afternoon, when the sun – had they been able to see such a thing through the grey – would have been sliding toward the horizon. The going had still been slow. Once Hubert had led the enemy far enough from Rigia to be well out of sight, his three sons had hurried around, preparing. The weariest of the horses were swapped with those that could be spared from the stables, a full day’s rations were packed, and everyone was given a fresh cloak, though the value of such a thing on top of sodden clothing was questionable.
Even though Hubert had conceived such a helpful diversion, there were plenty of enemies to watch for in this land, and so their journey was a tedious one, following back roads known only to the boys, being locals, through hamlets that never saw a nobleman’s colours except on tax day. Twice, even before noon, they spotted in the driving rain small groups of men that their three guides said were Bessin’s soldiers, and each time they were led in a circuitous route around them.
‘Why do we not kill them and save time?’ Bjorn had grumbled on the first occasion.
The duke had rolled his eyes. ‘This is Bessin heartland. A death here will draw too much attention. Kill one, and within the hour there might be a hundred on our trail. Better slow and careful.’
Halfdan couldn’t agree more. The majority of the group were his men, and he was less inclined to risk losing a Wolf to a fight that could be avoided for the good of an outsider, even one as important as William.
They had paused in a small woodland to eat their lunch, the trees so compact that they kept the very worst of the rain away for the short pause. Then, once more, they’d set off on their journey. During the afternoon, they had to bypass three more such gatherings of Bessin’s men, and Halfdan became increasingly suspicious that every house they passed kept eyes on them, and only waited until they were out of sight before running off, reporting their presence to someone of importance.
Yet as the light started to fade, and they were some way from their destination, still they had avoided all encounters, and no one had challenged them.
‘We will not make Falaise tonight,’ William announced wearily, as he looked up at the last few spots of rain falling from a sky that remained threatening.
‘Even if we ride at night?’ Leif asked.
‘Riding at night is dangerous at the best of times, especially with enemies looking for you. No, we should find somewhere to hole up until dawn and then make the last press for home in the morning. We still have over ten miles to go. The important thing now is finding somewhere suitable.’
‘There,’ Gunnhild said in a commanding tone, turning and pointing off to their right.
The others peered into the gloomy grey. The landscape was almost perfectly flat, a uniform patchwork of stubbly, recently harvested wheat fields, with small farms here and there. They could see nothing that stood out.
‘Where?’ William asked, frowning.
‘Can you not feel it? Does your devotion to the nailed White Christ so blind you to the real world?’
William looked faintly irritated, but no more blessed with understanding.
Halfdan looked off into the distance. He could feel something. Just faintly. He was pragmatic enough to admit that it might be simple suggestiveness, given his knowledge of the völva’s power, but he was also willing to believe, regardless.
‘Tell us.’
‘I can feel the Seiðr from even this far, perhaps half a mile away. It is an old place, and the nailed god has yet to claim it. There, I have strength. There, we will be safe.’
William looked doubtful, still, but Halfdan reached out and grasped his arm. ‘If she is that sure, then she is right. Believe me.’
With that, he gestured for the others to follow, and they moved off across the open fields, shunning the road and following the direct path laid by Gunnhild’s pointing finger. After a quarter of a mile, he no longer harboured any doubt. Even he could feel it, and it was no simple suggestion of the völva’s. Judging by the looks on the other faces, the Christians could feel it, too, though with less delight than Gunnhild, who wore a look as though she were coming home, and whose pace continued to pick up as they neared her destination.
They passed the first ruins, little more than low walls with a few broken columns – some sort of house, perhaps, once upon a time, laid out in ordered squares around a garden. There was a small, round building, and then larger walls, which were also broken. Halfdan, interested, diverted slightly to ride through the middle of the ruins. The place was made of rooms with tanks sunk into the ground, some rectangular, some half-moon-shaped, of various sizes, all either filled with stagnant, algae-filled water or growing weeds and grass.
He’d seen enough of the columns of the style that abounded in the area to know the place had been of the Romans, abandoned when they fell centuries ago, and never yet built over. The nailed god priests seemed eager to place their churches over old places of power, but some, perhaps, were just too powerful for them to be comfortable with.
He rejoined the others, and they moved on.
It had been a town; not a great city like lofty Acerenza or golden Miklagarðr, or white-walled Kutaisi, but a town of some means, and larger than the villages that seemed to have supplanted such places in the region. They moved past buildings, some little more than low rubble and shattered stumps, others more intact, some even with portions of roof remaining. With each great echo of bygone glory, Halfdan found himself trying to guess what the places had been.
Then, as they came to the centre, he needed no one to tell him about the buildings they approached. The town centre was some form of open square, surrounded on all sides by ruined shells. Several of the buildings were temples. The Seiðr was almost visible, writing across the bricks and marble like the liquid fire of the Greeks. He glanced at Gunnhild. She was in her element. This was her place more than anything else, for she felt the power of old gods, not dampened by the ever-growing wool blanket of Christian thinking.
‘What was the name of the ship that carried us safely from Miklagarðr?’ Gunnhild said as she reined in at the centre of the square.
William frowned, no idea what she was talking about.
‘Tyche’s Arrow,’ Halfdan replied, the feeling of awe growing as he looked about him.
‘And Tyche was…?’
‘A goddess of fortune,’ Leif answered, ‘of luck.’
Gunnhild stepped her horse forward to one of the square ruins overlooking the square.
‘Tyche continues to guide us,’ she said, dismounting.
She left the horse where it was and strode into the place. It was one of the few surviving buildings with a roof, and she disappeared into the dark. William threw a worried look at Halfdan.
‘She knows what she’s doing,’ the jarl replied, slipping from his own saddle.
He followed her in, and William was close behind, others dismounting, someone taking charge of the animals.
‘Here is where we stay,’ Gunnhild said from the darkness.
Someone behind Halfdan struck sparks a dozen times, and then a glow began that slowly lit the room. The jarl had seen places like this in Miklagarðr; they were ancient temples. In that great city they had been converted to churches or other buildings, but retained their form, and there could be no doubt what this place had been. And at the far end, next to the suddenly very imposing figure of Gunnhild, was a statue of a woman, almost twice life-size. She was beautiful, of perfect marble, unstained by weather in this place and even retaining stains of her original paint. In one hand she held some sort of container of fruit and flowers, and by her foot stood a wheel.
‘Tyche,’ Gunnhild said.
Halfdan nodded.
‘I will walk with Freyja,’ she announced.
Cassandra and Anna arrived, crossing themselves as they passed the threshold, but doing so with confidence regardless. Others entered, though when some saw what was happening, they hurried back out. William did not. He approached Halfdan.
‘What is Freyja?’
‘You Normans have lost too much Northern ice from your soul,’ Halfdan grinned. ‘Freyja is the goddess. The gatherer of the slain, the boar mistress, the hunter and the heart of the world. If among the Aesir and the Vanir there is even one to match Odin, it is she.’
‘You talk like an epic of old,’ the duke laughed.
‘And you talk too much. Settle.’
Halfdan dropped to one of the stone benches that ran along the sides of the temple, William doing so beside him, and watched. He had seen Gunnhild do this many times, and he knew what to expect, and yet every time he felt somehow that it was new, and private, and special. Also, it seemed that Anna and Cassandra had become part of her weaving, for they sat with her, one to each side, as she began. Their voices joined hers in a haunting harmony as the ancient melody that he could never remember the next day rose and fell, rose and fell, then rose, and rose and rose. He had not seen her use the powder that she kept safely hidden from Bjorn, but he could only assume she had. When she was stretched high, on the balls of her feet, arms swirling, staff whirling, finally she dropped the handful of beads and bones, and more than she had held hit the stone flags of the temple floor. She sat for a time, cross-legged, as the melody faded, and then opened her eyes and looked down.
‘This place is powerful,’ she said. ‘And so is the duke, for all his youth.’
Halfdan and William both frowned, leaning forward.
‘I sought only to know more of what awaited the Wolves, and for what it is that we stay here, but I also see the duke’s thread, gold and powerful. Kings and emperors have rarely had a brighter weaving than this Duke of Nordmandi.’
A strange smile crept across William’s face. Gunnhild seemed to sense it. She looked up.
‘Do not feel so content, William of Nordmandi. Do not be complacent. Your future may be great and long, but it will not be easy, and every ounce of success must be earned with sweat and blood.’ She looked at Halfdan. ‘He and the man who stole your ship both have a destiny far from here. They have yet to meet, I think. But now, here, there is great danger for all of us. Men come with swords, but they will regret it. They are sheep, while we are wolves and lions, and if we hold true, we will take the night. Then, tomorrow, we will find refuge at the duke’s home. Someone waits for us there, their thread binding to ours. Someone whose very presence is a sign to point us onwards. Someone through whom the Wolves will grow strong once more, as we were when we left Kiev, and even more so. Theirs is a white thread, pure and bright. I do not understand what that means, but it will become clear in time. The dragon still comes. That, too, is yet unclear.’
Halfdan nodded. Whatever it all meant, it sounded more positive than he’d expected.
‘What of Ulfr and the gold?’ he asked.
She turned an arched brow at him. ‘I told you before not to worry about Ulfr. He has his own business. For now, we prepare. This night we will be tested, and if we are successful, we will win through to Falaise.’
For the next hour, as the light began to fade, they worked. From Gunnhild’s words, it seemed the enemy was coming for them here, and the better prepared they were, the more chance they stood. Some of the Christians were a little sceptical, but the general danger of the region was enough to goad them into doing their part anyway.
They scattered across the town, exploring the ruins, and at the centre, as they met time and again, they drew a map in the dirt. The horses were all quartered together in buildings off the square, blockaded in with scrub and branches. Then men worked with axes, cutting timbers, pulling long nettles and stripping them of their leaves, or peeling ivy from the trunks of trees, both to knot together as makeshift cords. By the time the darkness truly closed in, they had a fire burning in one of the roofless temples and were cooking the food Hubert’s household had packed them off with. Pickets watched at the edge of town on the four main roads that led in, and they were changed hourly so that everyone could rest a little.
As they sat or lay in repose around the temples, William, propped up on one elbow, sighed. ‘It seems a decade or more since I slept.’
‘Then go to sleep,’ Ketil grunted, wrapped in his cloak close by.
‘It has been almost two days,’ William added, ‘and there looks little chance of making it up tonight.’
‘Not next to you, anyway,’ the Icelander complained.
Halfdan smiled. ‘When we first came across the dark sea from Hedeby to the Rus lands, seeking the man who killed my father, I was so plagued with the need for revenge and yet so thrilled with the feel of the whale road, that I hardly slept the whole voyage.’
‘I know,’ said Ketil. ‘In those days you yapped as much as he does.’
Bjorn rolled over in his cloak. ‘I fell asleep on a waterfall, once.’
Ketil grunted, and Halfdan, despite knowing Bjorn’s tales, found himself intrigued. It sounded more plausible than most of his fabrications, and the phrasing was odd.
‘On a waterfall?’
‘Yes. Back home, when I was young, before I was the Bear-torn and I knew which end of a woman to do what with, I had been climbing a mountain with two friends. We had heard that a dragon had stored its treasure there. Looking back, I think the elders were telling tales of Fafnir and we misheard and misunderstood. Obviously we never found dragon or treasure, so we decided to climb back down, but it was getting late, and climbing mountains is tiring. We found a pool, where a short waterfall fell from above to fill it, and from it, a huge waterfall fell to the green lands below. We drank the cold water, and we used rocks to part-dam the in-flow, so that there was space nearby to sleep. We slept.’
‘That’s not on a waterfall,’ Halfdan said.
‘While we slept,’ Bjorn went on, ‘the rocks we had piled started to move and come free, and the flow opened up again. Bjarni and Floki were fine, for they were a little higher than me, but the water picked me up and carried me, and I was so tired, I didn’t wake. It carried me right to the edge of the great fall down the mountain, and there I was, lodged against a rock and kept stable.’
Halfdan found himself rapt. Bjorn’s tales were never believable.
‘And?’
‘And just as the light came up, I woke, before the others, and opened my eyes, and I was looking down a thousand-foot drop.’
‘And?’
‘And I fell,’ Bjorn grinned. ‘It’s how I got this dent in my shin.’
Halfdan rolled his eyes. It had been too good to be true. ‘Go to sleep, unless you want a matching one on the other leg.’
But despite his urging and the tiredness of a two-day escape, few drifted off easily. The knowledge that they were only ten miles or so from safety, but that it seemed inescapable that they would be attacked during the night, preyed on every mind.
Halfdan was still awake when it happened.
One of the Apulians, who’d been on watch at the northern edge, came running into the centre, and every shoulder was shaken, men woken with quiet words of warning.
‘Where?’ Halfdan murmured, rising and reaching for his chain shirt.
‘Half a mile out, across the fields. Maybe fifty of them, and coming slow, careful.’
Halfdan frowned. That meant the approaching enemy knew their prey was here, otherwise they would be moving speedily, trying to get somewhere for warmth and comfort. And if they knew the Wolves were here, then that meant that Halfdan had not been mistaken in his fear that every set of eyes in every window they’d passed had watched for them, and then hurried to report in.
Somehow, Gunnhild seemed to be up and prepared without anyone ever seeming to have approached her. The last time he’d looked, she’d been rolled in a cloak, chest rising and falling rhythmically, yet she was up and moving, hand waving, emphasising her words as she laid out strategies and directed people.
‘From the north,’ he shouted across to her. She nodded to him, though he wasn’t sure whether that was ‘thanks for the information’ or just a slightly irritable confirmation that she knew that already.
‘Positions,’ he told them. ‘Hold the north and concentrate there. Two-man pickets on all other approaches.’
As he belted his sword on over the chain shirt and rolled his shoulders, stretching out muscles tight from the lengthy repose even without sleep, he ran the numbers through his head once more. Fifty of them, the picket had said. Duke William and the Wolves numbered nineteen in all, with Hubert’s sons. That was still more than two to one, which was the golden number that no sensible general went above if he held out any hope for success. But Gunnhild was confident. And she had said they would come, here, tonight.
He hurried through the town as men dashed around, finding the places that had been assigned using the map in the square’s dirt that evening. They’d been well prepared, with four different plans, depending upon the direction from which the enemy approached. The north, in Halfdan’s opinion, was their strongest, which was good.
‘If that Neel de Cockpinch goatfucker is with them,’ Bjorn said as he joined his jarl, ‘he’s mine.’
‘There are plenty to go round, Bjorn. Just find them and kill them. You’re on goading and killing, with the other three of us. We leave all the clever stuff to the others.’
It was really quite masterful. These Normans seemed almost as desperate to fight as good warriors of the old North, and so they shouldn’t have been too hard to push into combat. The four men Halfdan had assigned as bait were exactly the four men to drive the enemy into a blind attack: Bjorn and Ketil, both of whom excelled at being provocative; Halfdan, for he was known to be a leader; and William, for one look at the duke would undoubtedly have them champing at the bit.
As the enemy approached the northern edge of town, where two men sat amid ruined buildings flanking the road, watching, Halfdan smiled. There lay the first line of defence, and, as long as it all held and worked, it should be excellent.
He could just see the enemy, approaching in the darkness, moving at a walk, their horses careful, slow, the riders scouring the ruins, sword in one hand, shield in the other. They were being far too careful. They needed a push.
‘Ready?’ he called to the men ahead.
Both of those he could see held up a hand, acknowledging that they were. He turned to the others. Bjorn and Ketil were looking hungry, excited, and – of course – unpleasant and brutal. William was stoic, his face unreadable. No fear in evidence, though, which was both a surprise and a relief to Halfdan.
‘Let’s get to it.’
The four of them stepped into the centre of the street, facing the approaching riders, and Bjorn and Ketil, flanking the two nobles, each retrieved a burning torch from the doorways at the street sides. The blazing torches were lifted, allowing their golden light to illuminate the four men. William wore his mail hauberk, of course, but over it he had his red tabard with the two gold lions on show, making him rather hard to miss, even in the dark.
‘Come on, fuckers,’ Bjorn called loudly through a grin. ‘The Bear-torn is waiting!’
The shout, along with their clear presence and identity, did exactly what they’d hoped. The riders, little more than thirty yards from the edge of town already, started to call to one another and point ahead. An order was shouted, and in moments the enemy were kicking horses and slapping reins, pushing their horses into a speedy attack.
The riders, goaded into foolishness, raced into the edge of the town past those buildings, and as the first half a dozen passed, the trap was sprung. The men in the ruined buildings pulled on the ropes they’d spent a solid hour weaving from ivy and nettles, all bound together almost to the thickness of a wrist. The rope rose to between four and five feet from the ground, and the rest of the horses ploughed into it. For a moment, Halfdan thought the cord would not hold, for he’d been sceptical about the strength of the plants from the start, despite Gunnhild’s insistence. The weight of even one horse was a lot of strain, even for a thick rope, after all.
Yet it held. The men who’d yanked it taut had immediately pulled it round beams to either side of the street and wound it there to hold it. The first horse struck the rope and skittered to a sudden halt, the next ploughing into his flank, the whole advance snarling up in the gap between the two buildings. Halfdan had only enough time to see that much before he had to move to deal with his own problem, but he knew exactly what would happen. The rope would break soon enough, but it had held long enough to stop the charge and unhorsed several men.
While the two rope-men fled their position, out of danger, others would appear above, having climbed onto the ruined walls to gain height. Each man carried a sling around his shoulder made from a cloak, containing half a dozen heavy cobbles taken from the ruins of the buildings. These would be liberally thrown among the snarled-up collection of men and horses. Where they struck humans, they would break bones and put men out of the fight. Where they struck horses, they would do less direct damage, but they would panic the animals into rearing and turning, where they would inevitably cause further casualties.
It would be carnage.
Still, they would fare better than the six poor bastards who’d made it through and were cut off. Those riders issued triumphant cries as they sped up, bearing down on their prey.
Halfdan and the others bolted, racing down the side street next to them as planned. Barely had they turned out of sight, though, when they stopped and scattered, two to each side of the street. The Normans turned the corner in their wake at a charge, hungry for victory. They stood no chance.
Two of the horses ploughed into the sharpened stakes that had been set at an angle into holes in the ground every couple of feet across the road. A third only just stopped short, rearing and throwing its rider. The other three did well to pull up short of the trap, but it did not save them. Instead, as they whirled in panic at the realisation of the trouble they were in, Thurstan and his men struck, emerging from doors at a run, swords and axes already out. They were not aiming for the men, though. The Wolves were outnumbered, so this was about bringing down the odds as fast as possible. They broke the legs and slit the bellies of the enemy horses and then leapt back out of the way as the thrashing, leaping and rolling began. Meanwhile, Halfdan and the others stepped forward to the three who’d been caught by the trap. One man was entirely hearty and recovering his shock, his horse impaled on a spike and shuddering wildly as the rider tried to extricate himself from saddle and stirrups in the chaos. His shield had gone during the disaster, fallen somewhere, and, though he still held his sword, he could not bring it to bear usefully in his current predicament. Halfdan watched as the young duke walked over to the man, head tilted slightly as though trying to understand something, and then calmly reached up with that small knife of his and expertly slashed the man’s inner thigh under the hem of his chain shirt, stepping back quickly as the rider desperately tried to bring his sword around. Blood sheeted from the wound immediately, a constant torrent down the leg.
Once again, Halfdan found himself re-evaluating the duke. He was clever and brave, but he was also efficient and utterly ruthless.
The man died swiftly in the saddle, the strength sapping from him as he struggled, leg soaked through with his own blood.
Halfdan went to deal with the others, but found Bjorn and Ketil arguing over who got to kill the last survivor. The wounded rebel was staring wide-eyed and making pleading sounds even as the two big Northerners came to an agreement and struck him at the same time, one to each shoulder, almost beheading him.
The four of them melted away into the buildings just in time. The blockage at the rope had been cleared and a fresh wave of riders entered the streets, looking right to the sharpened stakes and the carnage there, and then moving on. Halfdan found his chosen position quickly: a nice little viewpoint where a flight of ancient stairs led only to open air but granted an excellent view of the ruins.
Even as he climbed, he heard the rumble of the next trap. It had taken only two men to push the unstable wall, which had been close to collapse. As the riders passed by, the wall fell on them, twelve feet of bricks and stone. Fresh ruination. Other screams across the town announced other traps being sprung. From his viewpoint, the jarl could spot odd little encounters, and when he turned to look north, he could see that there were no more than a dozen riders outside the town, including a nobleman who might well be Neel de Cotentin. The lord waited for some time as the crashes and rumbles and cries of panic issued across the ruins, and finally threw an arm out, at which his man produced some sort of horn and blew a short, desperate cadence.
At the sound, all across the ruins the rebel knights disengaged from their struggles and tried to depart with varying degrees of success. Many managed to put their heels to their mounts and race away. Others were less lucky, either unable to break free or already dismounted and finding themselves cut off and trapped.
It made Halfdan smile to see fourteen riders emerge sporadically from the ruins and converge on their master. Cotentin had lost half his force in the space of half an hour, and clearly had no intention of losing any more. Out in the darkness, the Norman lord retreated with his survivors, disappearing into the night.
Despite Gunnhild’s insistence that there would be no further attack that night, as he returned to street level, Halfdan called out instructions to every figure he passed, ordering that the dead be stripped of anything of use or value and then moved out of the way, clearing the streets, any traps that could be reset having that done, in preparation, and all men back to their positions. He then returned to the square at the centre, where Gunnhild was in deep conversation with her women.
They started to settle once more, watchmen in place making sure Cotentin’s men did not return unexpectedly. A headcount was taken, and it transpired that they had lost two Wolves: one a Hauteville man they’d picked up in Melfi, the other one of Maniakes’s Varangians. A third man was nursing a wound, but both he and Gunnhild were confident that it would heal in good time. Two men was a high price for the Wolves to pay, but to fell two dozen enemies, it was an acceptable one, and no one complained over the death toll.
The rest of the night passed in peace, and the morning dawned damp but bright. The Wolves and their Ducal guest prepared themselves and emerged from the ruined town with a sense of hope. Falaise, and with it William’s army and safety, lay little more than ten miles away, and there seemed no doubt that they would reach the place before noon. Gunnhild was sure their immediate troubles were behind them, Cotentin had scuttled back north with his tail between his legs, and William was content that they were in safe lands from here on.
The revolt had begun, but at least the duke and the Wolves would be safe… for now.