He swung at my thigh, but it was the swing of a desperate man. Again I met his blade with mine, and this time I was able to force his down, out of position, before backhanding my sword-point across the side of his head. He was only just within my reach and so I managed only a glancing blow, but it was enough to rob him of his balance and send him to the ground with limbs flailing and teeth flying. His sword slipped from his fingers, falling away uselessly into the grass. I slid from the saddle and stood over him. He gazed back up at me, rasping heavily, his eyes moist. A bright gash decorated his cheek, and a crimson stream ran from the corner of his mouth.
Some way off, Danish voices shouted out in despair. So desperate had they been to reach the sanctuary of the woods that his remaining huscarls hadn’t noticed that their lord was no longer with them. Not until it was too late. They turned, and began rushing back to try to save him, but they were too far away to do anything.
I pointed the tip of my blade at the pale skin at Haakon’s neck. ‘Aren’t you going to plead for mercy?’
He stared up at me, not in fear but in something more like resignation. ‘Would you grant it if I asked for it?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘But I want to hear you beg.’
He smiled that humourless smile I’d seen before. Of course he would not beg. Nor, had I been in his place, would I.
‘She moaned like a whore,’ he said instead.
‘What?’ I’d thought he might ask me to make his end quick, or say any number of other things, but I hadn’t been expecting that.
‘Night after night, she moaned when she was in my bed, when I was inside her. She was my favourite. Did you know that?’
‘Enough,’ I said. Tears welled in my eyes, and my throat stuck. ‘No more.’
‘I loved her,’ he murmured, a hint of sadness in his tone. He closed his eyes as if recalling some long-cherished memory. ‘Yes,’ he said with a heavy sigh, ‘I loved her.’
I couldn’t bear to listen any longer. Summoning all my strength, all my hatred, I plunged my sword into his throat, thrusting it hard so that it tore through flesh, sliced through bone, and I was roaring as I did so, roaring for all the world to hear, allowing the anguish that for so long had been buried within my heart to finally let itself be heard, until there was no more breath in my chest, and I had nothing left to give.
Gritting my teeth, I ripped the blade free. My heart was pounding, my whole body trembling and dripping with sweat. Falling to my knees, I wiped the moisture from my eyes and gazed down at Haakon’s bestilled, bloodied corpse. In that instant, all the grief and pain and doubt and despair that for three years had plagued and tortured me were at once dispelled.
It was done.
Twenty-nine
WITH HAAKON DEAD, the rest of his retainers fled. Jarnborg was ablaze, sending up great plumes of smoke into the sky. A bitter wind gusted from the west, carrying those plumes across the water along with the cries of the injured and the dying. Sword-blades and spear-hafts clattered against iron shield-rims as our men raised the battle-thunder in triumph.
‘Sige!’ I heard some of Magnus’s men roar. ‘God us sige forgeaf!’
God has given us victory. Indeed it seemed little short of a miracle. After so long dreaming and hoping and praying, Haakon had fallen. The field of battle belonged to us.
I was still kneeling beside the Dane’s limp body, hardly daring to believe that it was true, that he was dead and that our struggle was at an end, when Magnus called my name. He hobbled towards me, wincing with every step, his horse having bolted. Luckily he’d managed to free himself from the stirrups before it did, and apart from the injury to his foot I was glad to see he was unharmed.
‘I only wish I could have killed him myself,’ he said as he stood beside me. Together we stared down at the Dane: at his face, strangely serene in death; at his unmoving chest.
I nodded but said nothing. Had it been the other way around and his been the hand that slew Haakon, no doubt I would have felt equally cheated. But I also knew that only one of us could have delivered the killing blow, and I was glad it had been me.
He must have guessed my thoughts. ‘You did the right thing, Tancred,’ he said, and clapped a hand on my shoulder as if to assure me that he did not bear any resentment. ‘If it had been your horse that had fallen, I wouldn’t have turned back to help you. So I don’t blame you. You did what had to be done, for both of us.’