For everyone else the war was over. For us it was only beginning.
Even as the rest of the army was fleeing into the north, we ventured south, into the midland shires and what used to be known as the territory of the Five Boroughs, which the Normans had already brought under their heel. We abandoned our horses, going on foot so as to be less easily noticed, keeping off the main roads and tracks. We took to travelling by night, stealing our way through the shadows. By day we slept in ditches and in copses, though always with one eye open and with weapons close to hand.
Over the next month we lived off the land, surviving by our wits and our swords, laying ambushes for the enemy on woodland paths, slaying any French-speakers we came across, attacking supply trains that were poorly guarded, killing those we could and then emptying the contents of their carts into the nearest river. Barrels of salted pork and pickled herring, casks of ale or wine or butter – all of it. We took just enough to slake our hunger and thirst, and then in it went, the bodies as well.
But that wasn’t enough. Not for Cynehelm. His home, our home, had been destroyed by the foreigners. He wanted vengeance. From waylaying convoys and scouting parties, we soon turned to more ambitious undertakings. We set the torch to mills and barns, stables and churches and even halls, barring the doors from the outside so that no one could escape, then watching from afar as the thatch smouldered and sparked into light and the flames swept across the roof until the whole thing was seething with flame. Then would come the screaming, as those inside realised what was happening, screaming that only grew louder when they tried the doors only to discover they were trapped. After that, the coughing and the choking, quickly drowned out by the roar as the beams and the wall timbers caught, and the building became one bright-blazing, twisting column: a beacon and a warning.
*
‘But that’s horrible,’ says Tova.
‘That’s war. If you think it’s anything like the tales that the poets and skalds sing, you’re wrong.’ He glares at Oslac. ‘They know nothing. It isn’t about heroes and kings. It’s not about mighty shield walls clashing, the clatter of steel upon lime wood, the sword song ringing out or the glory of the kill. The man who claims it is hasn’t seen battle. He has never been in a real fight, nor probably ever hefted a blade longer than a carving knife. Certainly he has never plunged it into a man’s belly, driving deeper, twisting until the blood gushes thick and fast all over his arm, then stood bellowing in triumph, watching for the moment when the light goes out from his enemy’s eyes and he voids himself all over the ground at his feet. They don’t sing long into the winter nights about the joy of wading ankle-deep in pools of vomit and shit and piss and mud, do they?’
‘No,’ Tova says quietly.
‘Well, that’s what war is like, girl. It’s about ambushes and raids. Looting. Seizing goods, cattle and sheep. Taking your enemy by surprise; striking when he least expects it. Letting him know that, as long as you live, you won’t let him sleep quietly in his bed. And it wasn’t just the foreigners. Many thegns, in the midland shires especially, had given their oaths to King Wilelm and marched under his banner. Marched with the foreigners. It makes me angry to think about it even now. Englishmen who’d turned against their people, who had even killed their own kinsfolk. Who had begun drinking wine and were learning to speak the French tongue, who had set aside their wives so that they could take Norman brides, all to win favour.’
Tova swallows. ‘What happened to them?’
‘We did to them what we did to all our enemies. We knew who they were. We knew where they lived. And we showed them no mercy because we knew they would show us none.’
‘You killed them?’