Hereward 04 - Wolves of New Rome Read Online Free PDF

easily?’
    ‘You will end my days whatever I say,’ the ruined man snapped. He caught himself. His good eye darted and he moistened his lips. ‘I can offer you more than gold. Something with value beyond your dreams.’
    Kraki laughed with contempt. ‘Aye. You sail the whale road for joy alone.’
    Ragener ignored the Viking, his eyes narrowing. ‘Something that will set king against king, and see rivers of blood spilled to win it.’
    Hereward looked around with a wry expression. ‘And where is this great treasure? Not here. Only the blood of your men fills this boat.’
    ‘You do not have the right eyes.’
    The Mercian nodded. ‘Speak, then.’
    ‘Hereward!’
    Spinning at the sound of his name, Hereward looked back along the ship. Alric had leapt aboard and was squatting next to a bench, pointing towards a mound of sailcloth aft. ‘I saw it move. Someone hides there,’ the monk called.
    ‘Watch him,’ the Mercian said with a nod to Ragener. ‘I think he is more snake than hawk.’ Drawing Brainbiter, he clambered over the benches to where Alric waited, a knot of men at his back. As the vessel heaved up on the swell, he watched the sailcloth. Nothing moved.
    ‘I saw it!’ Alric repeated in answer to the unspoken question.
    As the beat of the Mercian’s feet thudded along the deck, the mound shifted, barely perceptibly but enough for Hereward’s keen eyes. A cowardly pirate hoping to escape the judgement of the rebel crew, he guessed. Catching the edge of the filthy cloth, he yanked it up. The figure beneath lunged so fast the Mercian barely saw it. A bloodstained blade lashed out. Wrong-footed, Hereward could only watch as the short sword whisked to open up his guts.
    But Alric was quicker. The monk threw himself into his friend, propelling Hereward just beyond the reach of the cutting edge. Yet the figure rising from the mound of sailcloth was as fast as a viper. It struck again, this time catching Alric a glancing blow. Stunned, he flew over the edge of the ship and into the surging waters. Within an instant, he had been sucked beneath the surface.
    For a moment, Hereward could not move. For the murderous attacker who might well have claimed his friend’s life was a naked woman. Slaked in blood, seemingly as feral as a wildcat, she hunched over, spitting and snarling, and ready to slay any man who came near her.

C HAPTER T HREE
     
    WAVES BOOMED OVER Alric’s head. The turbulent current’s claws wrenched him into the maw of icy darkness. Brine surged into his nose, his mouth, and for a moment the shock of the cold slapped his senses away. As he flailed in the grip of the crushing swell, he felt the candle of his life gutter.
    The last of his breath seeped away. Lights flashed in the dark deep in his head. Memories rushed up as if they had been freed from a sealed vault: times he missed, faces he half knew, days he hoped he would never recall again. His father, struggling to find the words to say goodbye as the old man delivered him to the door of the monastery at Jarrow. Fierce, cruel Father Leomas thrashing him with a willow cane for failing to recite the catechism. Dark, cold nights in his cell, listening to the scratching of the rats.
    The blackness clawed at the edge of his vision and he thought his chest might burst.
    More memories flooded his skull, some almost too painful to bear. His hands around the throat of Hereward’s treacherous brother Redwald, throttling the life from him so that his friend could be free of that hated man’s curse. And his desperate fear that, however selfless his actions, Hereward would only despise him if he discovered the truth of his crime.
    Water surged into his mouth.
I am dying
, he thought. His arms drifted to the side. His panicked movements ebbed. Soon all would be gone. Perhaps it would be for the best.
    But then his mind burned with one image: a sword, raised high, glinting in the sun. Hereward, a good man who carried a devil inside him. A soul to be