Free Hereward 02 - The Devil's Army by James Wilde

shadows behind one of the homes. Instinctively, he dropped his hand to his sword hilt. But then Acha eased into the glaring light, her eyes darting around.
    ‘You should not be here,’ he said.
    ‘Your words were not so harsh when we lay together in Eoferwic,’ she replied, her implacable eyes as black as her hair.
    ‘Those days lie far behind us and I am not the same man now.’ Unbidden, his thoughts swept back to their hungry love-making while the snow blanketed the Northumbrian city, and he felt a pang of guilt. He pushed the vision from his mind, but he noted she had not lost any of her beauty in the intervening years.
    ‘Your heart is the same. I know it.’ She stepped closer to him, so that her breasts almost brushed his arm.
    ‘You have a man. Kraki. He will protect you—’
    She waved a hand as if swatting a fly, her nose wrinkling. ‘He stinks, he snores in an ale-sleep every night, and his moods are as dark as the winter sea—’
    ‘And he will not take you back to your home, or show you the life you would have had if you had stayed in the Cymri court.’
    She would not meet his gaze. ‘You and I are of a kind. You know that. We should share our days and nights.’
    ‘I say again, I have a wife.’
    ‘And I say again, take another. One that befits a leader of men.’ Her eyes gleamed with defiance and her lips curled back from her teeth. ‘With me beside you, crushing the king will only be the first of the great tales they will tell about you in days to come. Who knows what heights you could reach?’
    ‘I know what it is you want, and I know you will go to any lengths to get it. Once—’ He caught the words in his throat and shook his head. ‘No matter. This is done. I will be gone from Ely for a while. When I return, let us not speak of this again.’
    He pushed past her, though he could feel her cold eyes upon his back as he moved along the track. Yet barely had he gone four spear-lengths when he glimpsed a hulking figure besidethe well. It was Kraki, his expression unreadable. Hereward wondered if the Viking had overheard any of the conversation, but when he glanced back, the other man was gone. The rivalry and suspicion that had once lain between them was still close to the surface, and it would be an ill thing for it to rise again.

C HAPTER T EN
    THE HOODED MAN pushed his way through the crowded street. A beggar, he seemed, shoulders hunched from the burdens of his life. His gait was weak and shambling, his cloak, tunic and breeches filthy with the mud of the road and reeking of sweat and loam. He leaned on a tall willow staff to help him over the sun-baked ruts.
    Wincestre throbbed with life. Since the new king had set to building a new world in which to live, many had come from nearby towns to seek a living, the beggar saw as he looked around. In the smithies, the hammers never stilled. The rattling of looms sounded from a hundred doors. Men shouldered bales and dragged sacks, and carpenters sang as they stripped oak logs for new house beams. In the marketplace, merchants competed for attention with ever louder cries while their boys fought with each other in the dust. The earth-walker’s head rang with the din of hens squawking in their crates and droves of grunting pigs herded towards Butchers’ Row where the blood ran in the street and clouds of black flies droned. Never had he seen so much food, or such wealth.
    The beggar wandered the winding streets. Past the remnants of the old stone buildings left by the Roman conquerors hestaggered, and up to the gates of the new conqueror’s palace. He watched and he listened, missing nothing. What a strange place this was, he thought. Bought with the blood of Englishmen and built on the bones of generations. And now Wincestre filled with folk picking over the remains for their own selfish needs.
    In the shade of an apple tree opposite the palace gates, he sat and waited. Every time the gate opened, he lowered his head and watched from under