James Aitcheson - Knights of the Hawk

I stared at that arrow-point and fear gripped me: a fear so powerful that I had never known its kind before. My stomach lurched; my breath caught in my chest. My blood was no longer pounding, filling my limbs with vigour, and I wondered if my heart had stopped. Like water being thrown on a fire, the battle-joy was extinguished. For the first time I could remember since that day when I was a youth, my nerve failed me in the heat of battle. I did not see victory before me now, but something else entirely.

I saw my death.

Why it happened and how it happened so quickly, I cannot say. All I know is that suddenly I was jerking sharply to one side, wheeling around, abandoning the charge, abandoning the fight, all the while expecting to feel a sudden strike between my shoulder-blades, or for Fyrheard to collapse beneath me and for me to be pitched from the saddle.

I never knew where that feathered shaft landed, or whether Hereward even loosed it at all. But I heard the jeers and laughter of the Englishmen in their boats. They taunted me in their own tongue, calling me a craven and many worse things besides, and an angry heat burnt inside me at the knowledge that they were right. I had fled from a fight, not because I was outnumbered or because sensible action had won out over blind rage, but because of fear.

Fear at the challenge. Fear for my life.

Floods of sweat rolled off my brow, stinging my eyes. By the time I had blinked the moisture away, wiped a sleeve across my face and turned to face the enemy again, it was too late to do anything. Hereward was wading back once more through the silt-brown marsh-waters to the cheers of his companions. Several of them helped to haul his mailed form aboard one of the boats, where he proceeded to stand up and grin at us, lifting his arms aloft and spreading them wide.

‘Hereward!’ his men cried as one. ‘Hereward!’

A few of them broke into song, raised their fists in the air or bared their pale arses at us, waggling them from side to side. Most, however, had picked up oars and were anxiously rowing as fast as possible. Hamo’s men continued to rain steel upon them, riding down right to the edge of the marsh so that they could get closer. One arrow struck a green-painted shield, but that was the closest any of their attempts came, the rest all dropping with splashes into the murky depths. Still they kept sending volley after volley up into the evening sky, although more in hope than in expectation, I sensed. All too soon the boats were beyond the range of even the most skilled archer in Christendom, and not long after that they had disappeared entirely into the marsh-mist.

Our chance was gone. We had let Hereward escape, and a single paltry kill was all we had to show for our efforts.

One kill, and one fallen horse. Whilst I had been watching the enemy vanish across the water, Pons, with Serlo’s help, had managed to free his trapped leg from beneath his mount, which lay quiet and almost still now as its bright lifeblood slipped away on to the grass. Apart from bruises and some scratches to his face, Pons himself was unharmed, but Hereward’s arrow had driven deep into the animal’s belly, puncturing its lung, I didn’t wonder, and so taking it beyond the ability of any of us to do anything. As Pons’s lord it would fall to me to find him a replacement, but the cost was not what was foremost in my mind then. A knight’s destrier was one of his closest and most trusted friends, and every bit as valiant a warrior. The beasts lived and fought and travelled with us, and while good horseflesh was valuable and prized above even swords and mail, their companionship and loyalty could not be measured in terms of weight of silver or gold. Pons had owned him for as long as he’d been sworn to me, which was to say a little over two years, and there was a tear in his eye as he crouched by the animal’s side. He stayed with it, rubbing its muzzle until it moved no longer and we knew it had passed.

‘I don’t blame you, lord,’ Pons said some time later while we were returning to Hamo and the carts. ‘We did what we had to.’

But the truth was that I should have known better. I had been foolish. Thinking only of the rewards and not of the dangers, I had rushed into battle, and though some might say that I had paid for that folly, the truth was it could have been far worse. We were lucky that the price hadn’t been higher, that more Norman blood hadn’t been spilt and more lives wasted.

At that thought a shiver ran through me, for I knew full well that some of that blood could easily have been my own.

We arrived at Brandune later that evening, just as darkness was falling and the stars were beginning to emerge. As expected, the clerks were waiting for us when we reached the king’s hall. No sooner had I announced our names and our business to the sentries on duty at the gate and we had led the oxen and carts into the courtyard than they began pressing me with their questions. Where had these goods come from, and how had they been paid for? How many barrels of such a thing had we brought; what weight of this and what length of that? Answers to all these questions and others besides were recorded by a squinting monk whom I recognised, Atselin by name. I had crossed paths with him before and understood him to be chief amongst the clerks. He worked by light of a lantern at a writing-desk set up in one corner of the yard, close to the grain-sheds and the storehouses.

‘You’re late,’ Atselin said when I approached. He didn’t deign to look at me but continued to scrawl even as he spoke, his head down so that his tonsured pate reflected the orange lantern-glow. From the set of his wiry eyebrows I could tell there was a scowl upon his face.

‘We saw another hall-burning,’ I replied. ‘I took it upon myself to go and see what had happened.’

He gave a snort of derision. ‘The rebels are always raiding. Every day we hear of yet more manors that have been razed to the ground. You wasted your time and ours for that?’

‘This one was Hereward’s doing.’

My words had the desired effect. His hand stopped mid-scribble; the furrows upon his brow deepened. He looked up sharply.

‘Hereward?’ he echoed.

Finally I had his attention, although I resisted the urge to smile at that small victory. ‘We saw him. He’d come by boat, at the head of a war-band numbering around fifteen men.’

‘How do you know it was him?’

‘It was him,’ I said firmly, meeting Atselin’s hard eyes. I had nothing to prove to this man.

He seemed to consider my answer for a few moments. Though much had been spoken of him of late, no Frenchman had so much as laid eyes upon Hereward in several weeks. Until now.

‘I suppose, then,’ said Atselin, raising an eyebrow, ‘that you were able to put an end to their pillaging?’

I sensed a barb hidden in his words, but I was determined not to let him provoke me. ‘We arrived too late for that. But we pursued them to the edge of the fens where they had their boats, and there we fought them.’

‘And killed a great many, I hope.’

To that I made no reply. Atselin gazed expectantly at me for a few moments longer, but when it became clear that I had no answer to offer him he turned his attention back to his quill and the sheet of parchment before him, at the same time dismissing me with an absent flick of his hand. But I was not about to be summoned and sent away so readily, like some trained dog performing tricks upon command.

‘You don’t believe me,’ I said.

He dipped the end of the goose feather into a pot of ink, and then resumed scratching his spindly letters upon the vellum, as if he hadn’t heard.

I brought my fist down upon the top of the monk’s desk. It shuddered under the impact. ‘It was Hereward. We saw him.’