It took almost half an hour to get everyone moved. Halfdan had more cause than ever to be grateful for the snowfall that kept them obscured from the enemy positions, for rebel arrows would not have found it hard to pick a target.
While Halfdan and Ulfr had reworked the stones in the wall, and the solid shipwright, ever a practical man, had found small pebbles and lodged them between the larger stones in temporary place of mortar, Geoffroi and his friend had been hauled to the top of the wall by Bjorn and Ketil, where they helped the big albino and the tall Icelander anchor the rope. Then, the Wolves began to come down the rope and join the two men as they admired their handiwork. The wall would still be weaker here than elsewhere, but not nearly as weak as it had been, and it would be very hard to target by artillery, looking much the same as the rest of the rampart.
Gradually, the others had come to rest on the snowy slope. Leif, then Gunnhild, followed by her ever-present companions, Anna and Cassandra, then Thurstan, Rurik, Abbe and Robert, and then, close to the end, Ketil, Bjorn remaining at the top until the end. Second to last came Archbishop Ælfric, sliding down the height of the wall with some difficulty in his long robes, clutching his staff of office and coming to rest on the snow, looking exhausted.
Halfdan looked at him, frowning. ‘You’ll have to lose the cloak.’
Ælfric frowned, plucking at his chasuble with two fingers. ‘It is freezing out here.’
‘And your cloak is bright red. Hard to hide in snow. Take it off.’
Grumbling, the Saxon cleric shrugged off the crimson garment and, with it, unravelled a long strip of brightly coloured and gold-threaded silk. The former he let fall to the ground, though the latter he folded tight and tucked it into the belt that held his white ankle-length tunic tight. He pointed down at the red heap.
‘If you only knew how much such robes cost.’
‘Are they worth more than your life?’ Halfdan said pointedly.
He looked up to see Bjorn sliding down the stone face, Geoffroi and his friend struggling to hold the rope atop the wall given the big man’s massive weight. To save them what he could, Bjorn let go and dropped the last eight feet, almost falling as he hit the slippery slope, arms flailing comically as he kept his footing with difficulty. Ælfric turned sharply as the rope began to disappear upwards.
‘My retinue!’
‘I told you before that there wasn’t room.’
The archbishop’s eyes narrowed. ‘I would make you swear upon the Holy Book to preserve my life and freedom, if such an oath were worth a wet fart to you people.’
That made Halfdan chuckle, especially given the wry smile that hovered on the edge of the man’s face as he finished.
‘You will be safer with us than here, believe me.’
‘I do,’ Ælfric replied earnestly, looking up at the wall and the now-disappeared rope.
Atop the rampart, Geoffroi and his companion leaned over the parapet and waved at them. ‘Farewell and good luck. We will give you a quarter of an hour. God be with you.’
‘I sincerely hope so,’ the archbishop called back up, eyeing the pagans around him. Halfdan and the others called up their fond farewells. A quarter of an hour. The two Normans would stand vigil in the place of the Wolves for that time, and then hurry off to report their arrival to William and bring the damaged wall to the duke’s attention. A quarter of an hour should allow sufficient time for the Wolves to be gone from the area before reinforcements came to the wall and discovered their absence. While there was no official agreement keeping the Wolves among the ducal forces, it seemed likely that William would be at best reluctant to let them leave.
With a last wave up at them, Halfdan turned. He saw genuine regret in Ulfr’s eyes as the shipwright said his farewell and turned with the rest of them, and wondered what had happened back at Pirou. Whatever it was had forged a certain brotherhood between his friend and the two Normans, clearly. But either Ulfr had not thought to invite them to join the crew, or the Normans had turned down the offer, opting to remain and support their duke.
It was Gunnhild who led the first leg, taking the Wolves and their Saxon priest down to the first large rocky overhang, which would protect them from the worst of the snow and also make them very hard to spot from both above and below. The moment they were in the lee of the rocks, and in shelter, Halfdan grasped Ulfr by the shoulders with a wide grin.
‘By Thor’s mighty bollocks, it’s good to see you, my friend. But how came you? We are thirty miles from the sea.’
Ulfr nodded. ‘There we were lucky. My skill with steering oar and prow, combined with Geoffroi’s knowledge of the coast and the region, made it possible. We have a new ship, my jarl. The Sea Dragon is almost as swift and almost as powerful as the Sea Wolf.’
Halfdan registered the name of their new ship, given in passing, with a smile, and turned to Gunnhild to see the satisfaction settle over her as the dragon in her vision became clear. He turned back as Ulfr continued.
‘She sits in the last navigable stretch of a river at a place called Clécy, about ten miles from here. I left most of the crew with her, for safety.’
‘Crew?’
‘Long story. I’ll tell you when we have time. For now, I have three men in a wood on the far side of the rebel force, and they have two carts and a number of horses. Enough for us to get back to the ship, and once we’re off at speed downriver for the coast no one but Sleipnir could catch us.’ He eyed the gathering at the base of the rock. ‘Good job I brought carts. You seem to have picked up a priest.’
Halfdan laughed. ‘Also a long story. But he’s coming with us.’
‘Going to be a crowded ship, but we’ll manage. We need to keep moving, make use of the blizzard. We waited half a day out there for the weather to turn bad and give us the chance to get this close.’
The jarl nodded. ‘Lead on.’
With that, Ulfr turned and began to move swiftly down the slope, slipping here and there, but keeping his footing with the sureness of a man born and bred in the rocky lands of the North. Halfdan followed, and the others came in his wake. In a turn of events that surprised the jarl, he saw the archbishop, shivering in only his tunic in the snow, slipping and almost falling as they descended the difficult slope, using his crook for stability. Suddenly it was Bjorn, of all people, who was next to Ælfric, grabbing him when he slipped and preventing him from falling. Halfdan made a mental note to check in to that later, for it seemed oddly out of character for the big man.
With care, and helping one another where necessary, the Wolves made their way down the slope, from craggy cliff to craggy cliff, slowly and silently descending to the flat ground below. The snow was still thick, coming down in a blanket, and had left a carpet half a foot deep on the grass. Ulfr had them stop at the bottom of the slope in the cover of the last jagged outcropping of rock that jutted, black, from the snow-covered long grass. There, they peered off into the snowstorm.
‘That way,’ Ulfr said finally, pointing off in a direction that looked, to Halfdan, just like all the others – a curtain of falling snow, with the indistinct shape of gathered men in the distance little more than a dark ribbon in the white.
‘Are you sure?’
Ulfr gave his jarl a withering look. ‘Who has navigated the whale road for more years than you have lived?’
Halfdan laughed. ‘All right. That way it is. Lead on.’
Ulfr did just that, stepping out from the rock and pulling his cloak tight around him. As they moved closer to the enemy force, Halfdan started to see differences. The enemy were not one unbroken line of men surrounding the castle, as they had been earlier. With the onslaught of the weather, many units had been stood down and were taking shelter in tents or by fires, and the cordon around Falaise was maintained by small unlucky units left on guard, gathered in knots here and there, the gaps between them filled with picket positions of one or two men. It was one such picket for which they were making, the Wolves’ position adequate to keep just enough falling snow between them and the units on either side to mask their movement.
At one point, Ulfr held up his hand to them, and they all stopped dead, silent in the falling white. The snow had lessened for just a moment, a freak wind sending it flurrying in various directions high up, and for just a few heartbeats, before the wind changed once more and the deluge returned, they were worryingly visible. Such was clear from the fact that Halfdan could then see a unit of archers not far off, and if he could see them, there was every chance they could see him.
Still, unmoving and silent, they must have blended in with the rocks and bushes that formed a mottled landscape with the snow, and by the time they were moving again, no alarm had gone up.
After what seemed an eternity, they were approaching the picket, and Halfdan’s hand went to the hilt of his sword, wondering what Ulfr’s plan might be to overwhelm the two men, before realising that no such move would be necessary after all.
The two pickets watched the castle ahead, but as they came close Halfdan could see the mute evidence of Ulfr’s earlier passage, alongside the two Normans. One man was only upright because the spear he appeared to be holding was driven through his forearm, and he was propped against it, the butt wedged into the ground. The other appeared to be sitting on a tree stump, but the dark stain all down his front and in a puddle around his feet spoke eloquently of the cut throat he had suffered as the three men sneaked up behind him.
Another flurry of snow in fresh breezes caused the falling blanket of white to falter, and the whole group of escapees paused alongside the pickets, creating a shadowed tableau that from a distance could be mistaken for a small rebel unit in their rightful position. They remained there for what seemed hours. Halfdan saw Gunnhild looking up into the sky and followed suit. When he looked back down, her eyes were on him.
‘The snowfall is ending. Very soon we will lose our cover, the enemy will come out of their tents, the siege engines will start again, and we will be caught in the middle of the enemy camp.’
Halfdan nodded, turning to Ulfr. ‘How far?’
‘Not far now.’
The shipwright looked up, as they had. The snowfall was increasing once more, though the clouds were higher and lighter, and inevitably it would soon be nowhere near as heavy as it had been. This would, they all realised, be the last cover they would get.
‘Go,’ Halfdan said, ‘and move fast now. Follow Ulfr.’
The shipwright began to move at speed, hurrying through the ankle-deep snow, huddling in his cloak but with a hand on his axe. They followed, clustered together, and through the quickly diminishing downfall, Halfdan began to see more clearly the units to either side. For now they were unnoticed, for the enemy were intent on – if anything at all – the fortress ahead, not paying attention to unauthorised movement among their own forces. Occasionally, men glanced their way, but still no alarm went up. Dark shapes of warriors in the snow, moving among their own lines, could easily be mistaken for their own units assembling. It was all just a matter of time, though.
‘Fuck,’ Ulfr said in little more than a hiss, coming to a sudden halt.
Such a reaction from the usually stoic shipwright drew Halfdan’s concern, and as he stumbled to a halt behind him, the jarl peered off ahead. He could see the shapes of men on horses, and other infantry, too, gathered near the edge of a wood. A man was giving orders, and Halfdan was about to ask the shipwright what was happening, when he realised the answer himself, for he recognised one of the figures.
Serlo de Hauteville, lord of Pirou, and brother of both Beatrix and Iron Arm. A man whom Duke William had welcomed into his own council, but who had watched the balance of power with the eye of a survivor and had in the end abandoned his duty and thrown in his lot with the rebels. Halfdan cursed. Ulfr had said their friends were in the woodland. Ahead was clearly that woodland, but Hauteville was there, too, and the Wolves were trapped among the enemy.
‘What now?’ Ulfr hissed. ‘We need to get into those woods.’
Halfdan nodded, frowning, looking about him. They had all been at Pirou, and there was little chance the lord of that place would not recognise one of the Wolves who had escorted his sister north from Apulia. He counted up, quickly. There were nine riders and eight footmen with Hauteville. Eighteen altogether. With Ulfr, the Wolves leaving Falaise numbered twelve. Not encouraging odds, but with the element of surprise, they could be a lot more even. That element became clear as his gaze settled on the one man among them whom Hauteville would not know. His smile broke free as he gestured to the Archbishop of Jorvik.
‘Ælfric?’
‘Halfdan?’
‘I need you to take the lead. Bluster and blather as we come close to those men. Buy us time before they are alert.’
The man looked doubtful for a moment, but resolve fell across him quickly. In leaving the castle, he had thrown in his lot with the Wolves, for good or for ill, and their survival meant his. He thought for a moment, and then nodded and struggled out ahead of them. He plodded off through the white with his staff in hand, making straight for the gathered group of riders.
Halfdan followed with Ulfr, and hissed back at the others, ‘Weapons out. The moment they notice something wrong, or I shout, kill them all.’
And that was it. The Wolves of Odin, bristling with weapons, followed the shivering, half-dressed archbishop out across the snow in the last drifting flakes.
Just as the jarl had hoped, there was no sudden cry of alarm from the gathered Normans. The man leading the group took the majority of their attention, and he was a nailed god priest – a figure above suspicion, seemingly. Some of the riders, including Serlo de Hauteville himself, glanced at the Wolves following on, but they were armed and armoured men in the middle of an army of armed and armoured men, and with cloaks and amid the last snowfall their identity was not immediately clear.
‘Father?’ Hauteville called, confusing Halfdan for a moment, before he remembered that this was a term of respect for a Christian priest, and not just a familial relation.
‘Thank the good Lord,’ Ælfric shouted, relief filling his tone.
Hauteville stared at the man, frowning. Halfdan tensed as they neared. The Wolves each had a weapon in hand. As yet, none of the enemy had moved to draw a sword. The Loki serpents on his arm were tingling.
‘I never thought I would escape Falaise alive,’ the archbishop gasped. ‘I took advantage of the blizzard. The duke’s men never even…’
He needed to go no further. By that time, Ælfric was almost at arm’s length from the lord of Pirou, the Wolves too close to the enemy to maintain a fiction any longer, and the riders had sensed something was wrong. Even as the archbishop’s words tumbled out, one of the Pirou horsemen shouted a warning and drew his sword.
He never got any further. Leif’s throwing axe hit him in the face, and he was robbed of senses and consciousness – if not his life – in an instant, lolling in the saddle, sword falling away. Ketil was the second to strike, his massive stride coming into play as he covered the remaining distance to another rider in three great steps, leaping with the last, his axe coming round in a wide swing and smashing into the man’s side, breaking several ribs even through the chain hauberk he wore. The man cried out and doubled over, out of the fight.
The other Normans were drawing their own weapons, crying out with alarm and preparing to hold off the Wolves, but they were too late to do anything more than defend themselves. Bjorn swamped two of the infantry, dispatching one with a single axe blow that left a crumpled and dented head inside a crumpled and dented helmet, even as he grasped the other by the throat in one great, pale, meaty hand and lifted him from the ground.
The rest were piling in, Ulfr and Rurik with powerful axes, Thurstan, Abbe and Robert with swords. Gunnhild had her staff out and had already smacked a rider with it, the man reeling in his saddle and trying to push away the weapon long enough to draw his own sword, his head spinning from the blow. Even Cassandra and Anna were together keeping one of the footmen busy, the man struggling with the morality of fighting women, while they repeatedly battered him.
Halfdan turned to the one man in the gathering who mattered more than anyone, and found to his surprise that he wasn’t there. Serlo de Hauteville’s horse was stepping away, its rider struggling up from the snow, furious as he drew his sword. Halfdan caught the look of astonishment on Archbishop Ælfric’s face as he lifted his crozier, the ornate top of which was broken from the blow he had landed on the lord of Pirou, unhorsing him.
‘Finish them,’ Halfdan called to his Wolves. ‘Riders first. Stop them going for help.’
Even as his hirð did just that, Halfdan found himself facing Hauteville, the man’s eyes slits in a face of pure anger as he shook the snow from his shoulders and braced himself, feet apart, sword in hand.
‘So now you show your true colours,’ the Norman spat. ‘Mercenaries and thieves.’
Halfdan snorted. ‘I hardly think a man who heaped praise on his jarl at the dinner table and barely waited for him to walk out of the door before betraying him and signing up with his enemies is in any position to sneer.’
Though Hauteville said nothing in reply, the look that crossed his face, momentarily interrupting the anger, made it clear that Halfdan’s words had hit home. Serlo knew his own treachery, and the guilt was already gnawing at him.
‘You will not escape,’ he said, taking a step forward.
Halfdan looked about him. The Wolves had mounted a true surprise attack on these men and had overwhelmed most before they had even managed to draw a sword. Not a single rider had got away, and the last few men were fighting for their lives against the overwhelming force of Halfdan’s hirð.
‘I think we will,’ he said, and then took the one step that put him within reach of the lord of Pirou.
Each man took in his opponent in that heartbeat. Both combatants wore chain shirts, Halfdan’s a simple sleeved garment that came down to his hips, belted around the waist, Serlo’s one of those great Norman affairs that reached to the wrist, with a square flap on the chest that could be pulled up in the form of a veil, the hem reaching below the knees, with a slit up the front, dividing it and making riding easier. Similarly, while Halfdan wielded his Alani blade, short and straight with an eagle carved into the hilt, Hauteville held a long, heavy sword, tapering gently from a solid cross-guard, of the sort favoured by most warriors, Normans and Swedes alike. It was clear in an instant who was the heaviest armed and armoured, but that also meant that their fighting styles had been determined from the start.
Serlo came first, swinging that sword wide with impressive strength, gripping the hilt with both hands as the blade sliced through the air, coming round at diaphragm height. Halfdan had anticipated the blow, for he knew how limited the options were for a man with such a sword. As the blade swept round, instead of trying to parry it, which would likely fail, or leap out of the way, which would put him on the back foot, he stepped into the blow, inside the arc of the blade, slamming into Hauteville.
The sweeping blow met no target as the two men fell to the snowy ground, Halfdan atop his opponent. As he’d hoped, the fall knocked the breath from Hauteville, and the man’s arms slammed out against the ground in a pose not unlike the White Christ Halfdan had seen on his cross in churches.
The jarl pulled back his sword hand, gripping that short, razor-sharp blade, ready to slam it down into the V-shape of the man’s neck, above where his collarbones met, the only sizeable exposed patch of flesh. But before Halfdan could deliver the killing blow, Hauteville suddenly bucked, displaying more strength than Halfdan had expected, sending the jarl flying backwards, staggering to his feet. Halfdan was not to be stopped, though. Even as the Norman rose, long sword in hand, ready to come for another swing, Halfdan charged. Hauteville saw him coming and, anticipating a repeat strike, being driven to the ground once more, he ducked to the side.
Good – just as Halfdan had hoped. As the man stepped aside, the jarl threw himself down to the snowy ground, his sharp, short blade lancing out as he passed.
He took precious moments sliding to a stop in the snow, turning and clambering to his feet, but during that time he could hear his victory calling in the form of a shrill cry of agony from the lord of Pirou. As Halfdan settled into a steady stance once more, facing Hauteville, the Norman stopped bellowing, and began to pant as he forced down the pain and panic. He even managed to take a step on his good leg and drag forward the one that had had the hamstrings scythed through by the jarl’s blade. He was having trouble staying upright, the left leg trembling and wobbling, threatening to give way at any moment, but still Hauteville glared at him, eyes coal-black, sword unwavering in his strong hand.
Halfdan had watched men suffer the wound that would end them more than once in his long life of war, and had seen wounds less than this drive a man to panic and flight. Not so, Serlo de Hauteville. If Halfdan had ever needed a reminder that the blood and bone of the men of this land was that same blood and bone that had defeated the monster Grendel, that had sailed the whale road in raiding ships and delighted in battle in a manner that would make Odin proud, he saw it in the struggling lord. The Normans were no longer Halfdan’s people, but somewhere, deep down, there was the power of the North still in them.
‘You’re finished,’ he said.
‘Not while you breathe,’ Hauteville replied, and, miraculously, managed another step without collapsing in a heap. Halfdan took a step himself. Hauteville was tottering, barely staying on his feet. He was close to overbalancing altogether, and Halfdan felt the weaving before him become clear. He smiled. He lowered his own blade and took one more step.
When Hauteville swung it was a mighty blow, meant to be the final one, the one that would end Halfdan and allow the Norman a satisfying revenge for his own disfigurement. But Halfdan was ready – that weaving of the Norns had shown him the way. As the huge blade swung, this time Halfdan dropped to a crouch, and the sword sliced through the air above his head, powerful enough that if it had struck him, it would have broken a dozen bones in his side. Instead, it met only air, and the momentum of the swing caused the inevitable. With only one stable leg holding him up, the swing sent Hauteville staggering three paces before falling to the ground.
This time, Halfdan did not give him time to recover. As Hauteville gasped with both effort and pain, struggling even to lift the heavy sword out of the deep snow, the jarl was on him, springing like a starved wolf on its stricken prey, reversing his grip on his weapon. His knee slammed into Hauteville’s chest, knocking the breath from him once more, that big sword slamming back down into the snow. The tip of Halfdan’s short blade found that V in the Norman’s throat again, and this time he struck before his opponent could throw him or pull away. He drove the blade into the unprotected flesh and, unwilling to even allow a chance for Hauteville to survive, he added his other hand to the hilt, pushing down hard. The blade slid deep into Serlo de Hauteville’s throat, keeping going until Halfdan felt it graze the spine and then meet the resistance of the frozen earth beneath the man.
He stopped there, his work done, and watched as the Norman’s eyes widened, blinked, and then very, very slowly glazed and fell still. Even then, unwilling to leave anything to chance, he rose, leaning back, and watched Hauteville’s chest for a long moment, making sure it neither rose nor fell, but lay still. Finally confident that his opponent was dead, Halfdan pulled his sword free with both hands and a great deal of difficulty. Then, trembling with both the effort and the cold, he rose, stepping back, away from the body lying spread-eagled in the snow.
Hauteville lay immobile, dead, that long sword in his hand. Halfdan looked down at him for a long moment, trying to decide how he felt about the man. He had been a strong warrior in life and had proved that right to the very end. He had the rock and ice of the North still in his bones. But he had betrayed his own jarl. He had broken an oath, and that was bad. Of course, Halfdan mentally brushed aside his own oath-breaking when they had fled the Byzantine forces. That, of course, was entirely different…
No. Neither Odin nor Freyja would likely even look at Serlo de Hauteville for their great mead halls, as a traitor and a follower of the nailed god. But just in case, Halfdan decided to be sure. He bent once more and plucked the warrior’s sword from his hand, casting it away, far from his reach.
Task complete, he rose once more and looked at the others.
Abbe was clutching his arm and cursing, though the bloodstains on the limb were small and not too alarming, and it did not appear that anything had been broken. Anna was nursing her face, which was black and purple around one eye and cheek where she had taken a blow from a chain-wrapped fist. But that seemed to be the grand total of the damage they’d taken, while Hauteville’s small guard were dead, to a man.
He became aware that both Ulfr and Ælfric were waving frantically at him and pointing off to one side. As he recovered and turned that way, peering into the last few falling flakes, he realised that they had been spotted. The alarm had been raised. People were shouting and pointing their way.
He turned to the Wolves. They had to go, now.
‘Ulfr, lead the way to your friends.’ Then, to the others, ‘Gather these horses. We need to move fast. Take the horses and leave the carts.’
This was it. They had to run before the rebel army began to hunt them down.