James Aitcheson - Knights of the Hawk

And then, at the far end of the chamber, I saw the bed, and curled up beneath the blankets and the furs, sobbing, a figure I knew only too well, for I would have recognised that black hair anywhere.

‘Oswynn,’ I said. ‘Oswynn!’

There was a stand for the torch at one side of the hall, and I set it down there before rushing over to her.

‘No,’ she said as I approached, shaking her head wildly and retreating further beneath the coverlets, and I wondered if she’d mistaken me for Haakon. ‘No, please.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said as I knelt down at the bedside. ‘It’s me.’

She raised her head from the pillow then and looked at me through red-rimmed eyes, a fearful look upon her face. For long moments all she did was stare at me in shock, as if I were an apparition, but then her expression began to soften as recognition took hold.

‘Tancred,’ she said, sitting up suddenly and blinking as if she couldn’t believe what she saw. ‘You came.’

‘I came,’ I replied, smiling gently.

In truth I could hardly believe it myself as she threw her arms around me and I held her close for the first time in nearly three years, wondering how it could have been so long, feeling her form beneath her rough linen shift, thinner than I remembered, and breathing in the sweet scent of her skin. She began to cry, and that was enough to set me weeping as well. Tears cascaded down my cheeks, and they were tears of relief, tears of love, tears of joy. After all this while, all this searching, hoping, dreaming, we were once more together. I thought of all those bleak hours in recent months when I’d despaired of ever being able to find her again, when the grief and the pain had been almost too much to bear, and I remembered the darkness that had often descended upon me. A darkness that now was banished. For here she was.

‘I didn’t think you would …’ she began, but couldn’t go on as a fit of sobbing overtook her. ‘He told me you’d left,’ she said once it had subsided. ‘He said-’

‘He was wrong,’ I said. ‘Whatever he told you, it was a lie.’

I gazed into her soft, glistening eyes, wondering what she must have seen in the past three years, what she must have endured, though at the same time I did not even want to imagine.

‘Come on,’ I told her. ‘We have to go.’

She wiped a hand across her moist cheeks as she raised herself, somewhat stiffly, I noticed, from the mattress. Haakon had hurt her and for that, I promised myself, I would make him suffer, just as soon as I caught up with him.

‘Go where?’ she asked.

‘Anywhere but here. My friends have ships. They’ll take us to safety, if we can only get out of this place.’

To tell the truth I wasn’t quite sure how we were going to reach them, given that the whole of Haakon’s army lay between us and the bay. As always, getting inside was the easy part. But I knew that somehow we would do it. We had to, for the only alternative was death.

Taking Oswynn’s hand in mine, I led her towards the stairs, lifting a sealskin cloak from where it lay atop a chest and wrapping it around her shoulders, then taking the torch from its stand. Down in the feasting-hall the hearth-fire was crackling and smoking. Godric, Magnus and Ælfhelm had tossed armfuls of the drier rushes on to the smouldering embers, and now bright flames were sparking into life, already causing some of the larger kindling and timbers they had thrown on it to blacken and catch light.

‘Grab that torch,’ I said to Godric, pointing towards the second of the two wall-sconces, and to Magnus and Ælfhelm: ‘Take some of those timbers from the fire.’

They didn’t need telling a second time. This was the moment we had been waiting for. The moment when we would send our message to Haakon, when we would destroy his famed stronghold, and all he held dear.

We carried those firebrands out into the open and then tossed them high up the thatch on both sides of the hall so that it would catch all the quicker. Then, while Godric went to fetch Eanflæd and the other women from the building where we’d left them, Ælfhelm, Magnus, Oswynn and I set about spreading flame to some of the other storehouses, sheds and outbuildings that abutted the palisade.

I knew it wouldn’t be so long before we were spotted. And so it proved. Of the two hundred or so warriors who must have comprised Haakon’s army, only perhaps a score still remained in Jarnborg, and they were clearly the worst afflicted, since many were barely able to stand and even now were continuing to spew the contents of their stomachs all over the yard. No sooner had they seen us, however, and realised what we were doing to their lord’s halls than they raised a cry and began coming at us: a swarm of wild spear-Danes and sword-Danes and axe-Danes in various states of undress, some in only their trews, most without even a shield to protect themselves.

We, however, were armed and ready for a fight, eager to free our sword-arms, our blood already up.

‘Stay back!’ I yelled to Oswynn as the enemy charged. ‘Stay behind us!’

Some tripped over their own feet as they ran, while others could only manage an ungainly stagger, which meant that instead of all attacking together, they came in ragged fashion, in ones and twos. The first of them rushed towards me, yelling wordlessly, aiming a swing at my shoulder. Steel shrieked as I met his weapon with my own, and then I was turning the flat of my blade against the edge of his, forcing it down and out of position, before jerking my elbow up and into his chin. Stunned, he staggered backwards, and instantly he was forgotten as I spun out of the path of the next man’s axe and whirled about his flank. This one was not quick either in wits or on his feet, and before he’d even realised where I had gone, I’d sliced across the back of his thigh, sending him sprawling.

‘No mercy,’ I shouted. ‘No mercy!’

The battle-calm was descending, the sword-joy filling me, and I gave myself over to instinct as I stepped deftly from one opponent to the next, cutting, parrying, thrusting, scything through their midst, as easily as if it were a dance. All about me the blade-song rang out. I was dimly aware, at the far end of the enclosure, of Eithne and a band of the slave-girls, a dozen of them and more. With knives in hand they rushed from one of the buildings. Even as we tore into the enemy from the front, they assailed them from behind, hurling themselves into the fray, setting upon those Danes who had tripped and fallen, plunging steel into their throats, and I was laughing as I saw we were winning, cutting them down on all sides, wreaking a ruin amongst Haakon’s troops, filling the morning with our fury.

The fire was taking hold now, sweeping across the thatch of the feasting-hall and the other buildings. Bright tongues of flame licked at the sky, while thick clouds of black smoke billowed up, wafting across the enclosure, stinging my eyes and making me cough, but I did not care as I released the anger that for so long had been building and let my sword do its work, until suddenly the enemy, the ten or so that remained, were falling to their knees, or else fleeing across the yard.

Behind me I heard Oswynn scream, and my heart all but stopped as I turned, thinking that she had found herself some trouble. They were not screams of alarm or pain, though, but of hatred. In her wide eyes was a fury I’d never before witnessed. Rushing forward, she snatched up the sword of one of the fallen Danes, and then, as he tried to rise, stamped her foot down on to his chest, pinning him to the ground. He gave a yell, but it was short-lived, as Oswynn gripped the hilt in both hands and drove the point down, hard, into his face, all the while shrieking in triumph as tears streamed down her cheeks. Her teeth gritted, she tugged it free, then plunged it into his chest where his heart would be, and again and again and again, until finally I managed to drag her away.