Oath bound, p.1
Oath Bound, page 1
Also by Richard Cullen
Herald of the Storm
The Shattered Crown
Lord of Ashes
A Demon in Silver
Hangman’s Gate
Spear of Malice
OATH BOUND
Richard Cullen
An Aries book
www.headofzeus.com
First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Aries, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Richard Cullen, 2021
The moral right of Richard Cullen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (PB) 9781801102049
ISBN (E) 9781801102032
Cover design © Nick Venables
Aries
c/o Head of Zeus
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
www.headofzeus.com
Contents
Welcome Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Place Names
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Two
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Part Three
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Part Four
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Glossary
About the Author
Credits
An Invitation from the Publisher
The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration; as the playwright says, it “brings to light that which was unseen and shrouds from us that which was manifest”.
— Anna Komnene, The Alexiad
Place Names
Amblesberie – Amesbury
Ánslo – Oslo
Berchastede – Berkhamsted
Boseham – Bosham
Bretagne – Brittany
Brien – Brean
Canterburgh – Canterbury
Coleselle – Coleshill
Coppethorne – Copthorne
Cudessane – Shefford
Dunheved – Launceston
Exonia – Exeter
Hedeby
Hereford
Hooe
Leofminstre – Leominster
Lundenburg – London
Mathrafal
Merleberge – Marlborough
Rhuddlan
Scipene – Shippon
Sudweca – Southwark
Tatecastre – Tadcaster
Walingeford – Wallingford
Walsingaha – Walsingham
Worle
Recordine – Wrockwardine
Yorke – York
Prologue
SENLAC HILL, 14TH OF OCTOBER 1066
Carrion crows led a path to the dead. They had filled the distant sky, a cloud of them wheeling and cawing before the feast. Bedel and Wyg passed men stumbling across open fields and through the trees in their ones and twos. Neither lad could tell if the bloodied wastrels were their own countrymen fleeing for their lives or the invaders, and they weren’t of a mind to stop and ask.
Bedel glanced back through the darkened spinney, seeing Wyg struggling to keep up, blundering his way from the shadows. The sky had been turning to grey when they’d set off from Hooe, but even after running most of the five miles they hadn’t managed to reach the hill before sundown.
‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ Wyg said for the tenth time as he ambled up to his older brother. ‘Mam’s gonna kill us.’
Bedel ignored him, but Wyg was right: their mam was gonna kill them, but this was too good an opportunity to miss. Everyone in Hooe knew what was happening. The Franks had come across the sea, looting and burning until the king could take no more. He’d raised the fyrd and gone to face them, and by now it would all be over, one way or the other. Bedel might have missed the scrap but he was damned if he was gonna leave all that loot lying around for the crows.
‘We should go back; it’s too dark,’ Wyg moaned.
‘Go back then,’ Bedel snapped. He’d just about had enough of Wyg’s whingeing. He should have left him back at the village, but then his little brother was always dogging his tracks like a waif. Besides, Bedel was the eldest and he’d never in his life done what his little brother asked.
Wyg glared around at the dark surroundings. ‘I can’t go on my own, can I. What if I get –?’
Bedel shushed him, raising a hand to his brother’s mouth. ‘Listen,’ he whispered.
Carried across the field beyond came a sound. Voices raised on the wind. Singing.
The longer they listened, the more Bedel could make out. Those weren’t English voices. The invaders had won. King Harold was beaten.
For a moment he thought turning back might not be such a bad idea. Caught looting the dead by Harold’s men and they’d be in the shit for sure. Caught by an invading army…
Bedel dismissed the thought. He hadn’t come all this way to leave empty-handed.
Silently he led his brother through the trees to the edge of the spinney. It was a bright enough moon to see by and the view made something twist in his guts. Dark shadows peppered the field. Corpses lay like abandoned sacks of dirt all the way across the flat expanse and up the hill. And atop that rise stood a camp, tents all along the dark horizon, flags flying, fires burning.
‘Is that the king’s men?’ Wyg whispered.
‘Course it ain’t the bloody king’s men, idiot. Listen to them. Does that sound like any king’s men you’ve ever heard?’
Wyg’s silence told Bedel his brother understood perfectly well they were not king’s men.
Just as Bedel was wondering whether this was a good idea after all, a spot of rain landed on his face. In moments that spot had turned to a spatter and then to a torrent as the sky opened up and it started to piss down.
A smile crossed Bedel’s face. Those Franks would be less likely on the lookout for looters in this, and the sound of it beating down would hide any noise the pair of them might make.
‘Right,’ he said to Wyg. ‘Best be quick about this.’
He darted from beneath the trees, Wyg at his shoulder. Under cover of dark they reached the first mass of corpses sprawled out on the field. To Bedel’s eye they reminded him of how his father had often looked those years ago, just before he’d drunk himself to death. That useless bastard had spent a lot of his time lying around like a dead man. Bedel could only hope the dead he ransacked tonight would grant him more of a legacy than his sot of a father ever had.
Their skin was stony pale in the moonlight. Not that the dead bothered him; he’d seen enough of them in his few short years to know there was nothing to fear from a corpse.
Bedel searched the first body, but there was nothing to find; no coin, no jewellery, no nothing. He moved on to the next. This one had nothing on him either, apart from a leather belt at his waist. Bedel saw the buckle was iron, might have been worth something. After a quick fumble, he managed to get it undone, but it was wedged tight underneath the bulk of the corpse.
‘Help me, will you,’ Bedel said to Wyg.
He struggled again, yanking at the belt but it wouldn’t come free. Turning, he saw Wyg watching him.
‘Don’t stand gawping,’ he said. ‘Come and help me.’
Wyg just stood there in the rain, useless and shivering.
‘If you’re not going to help, you might as well piss off.’
‘I don’t like it,’ said Wyg too loudly.
‘You don’t like what?’ Bedel asked, feeling his annoyance growing.
‘This is wrong,’ Wyg said. ‘We should be helping bury this lot, not robbing them.’
Bedel stood up fixing his brother with a stern glance. ‘You knew what we were coming for. If you weren’t going to help you should have stayed at home.’
‘Well maybe I should,’ Wyg snapped.
Before Bedel could say anything else, his little brother ran off into the dark.
Bedel cursed. He knew he should have made Wyg stay home, but it was too late now. Well, bollocks to him. Without giving his brother another thought, he turned back to the body – grabbing the belt again and giving another yank. It came loose and he eventually managed to slide it out from under the corpse. Holding up the buckle in the moonlight he realised it wasn’t made of iron at all, but tin. Pretty much worthless.
Despondently, he moved on to another one of the corpses, finding nothing of value. Then another, and another. Most of the dead had already been stripped of any worth, and Bedel got the sinking feeling his brother was right. He shouldn’t be here at all. And now Wyg had run off into the night and there was no telling where he was. This had been a stupid thing to do.
He squinted through the dark, trying to see where his brother had gone.
‘Wyg,’ he uttered into the night as quiet as he could so as not to bring attention from the singing Franks. There was no reply.
Bedel moved through the field of dead, picking his way across the corpses. ‘Wyg?’ he whispered again. Still no answer.
There was a rising sense of panic in his stomach. If he returned without his little brother there would be hell to pay. His mother would beat him to within an inch of his life. Just as he began to despair, he heard laughing in the distance. Straining his ears, he made out a little voice he recognised coming from the camp at the summit of the hill.
No, it couldn’t be.
Bedel began to make his way towards the sound of his brother’s voice. Fires were lit all along the hilltop and he could see the silhouettes of foreign soldiers moving around in the dark. They were drinking and laughing, as the bodies of their enemies rotted in the night only a few feet away. In the midst of it all, he heard his brother babbling on about something or other as the Franks laughed along.
Stupid bloody Wyg. Never could keep his mouth shut, never could stay out of trouble.
Bedel had reached the edge of the camp. He heard his brother’s voice louder than any other. He was telling one of his stupid stories, but the Franks seemed to find it amusing for some reason. Then, from the edge of the dark, Bedel saw him.
Wyg was standing on a chair, and beside him a man sat eating at a table in the middle of the field. Warriors surrounded him, still in their mail coats, and Bedel could tell this was the man in charge. Everyone was showing him respect as he sat eating his fill from a big wooden table. And next to him stood Wyg nattering away.
‘…and then we came all the way from our village,’ Wyg said. ‘We wanted to see, that’s all. Me and my brother.’
The leader just sat eating, tearing at a chicken carcass and ignoring the boy. It reminded Bedel that all he’d eaten since breakfast was mouldy bread.
Half of him wanted to run off and leave Wyg with his new friends. But something inside him knew there was danger here. He had to take his brother home. He had to find the courage to step into this nest of snakes.
Bedel walked towards the table and the man who was eating from it. He stepped into the torchlight, passing the laughing warriors. He could see that every last one of them had been in a fight. Some were wounded and still bleeding, but none seemed to care.
As Bedel reached the table, the man looked up, fixing him with a stern gaze. His hair was cropped at the sides, his chin clean-shaven, a dark moustache hanging down past his sullen mouth.
‘Wyg, we have to go home,’ Bedel said, eyes still fixed on the man, unable to look away.
His brother stopped his talking, and an uncomfortable silence fell over the group. The warrior wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he spoke in another language, talking to Wyg as though he should have understood.
‘Eh?’ Wyg answered.
Bedel wanted to scream at his brother that they were in danger. That there was every chance they’d soon be as dead as the corpses lying on the field, but the words were stuck in his throat.
‘He asks that you sit beside him, little one,’ said a man at the edge of the gathering. Bedel saw he was dressed as a priest, but for the mail he wore under his robe. A silver crucifix hung about his neck, beneath a handsome smiling face.
With a nod, Wyg obeyed, sitting down on the chair beside the table. The warrior spoke again in the Frankish tongue, as though Wyg would suddenly understand him. Once again, the priest spoke for his leader.
‘He says he has come to this land to conquer. He wants to know if you think he will be welcomed by your people?’
Wyg furrowed his brow. ‘What do you mean?’ the boy replied.
Bedel clenched his fists, fighting the urge to run, but how could he? If he left his brother here his life wouldn’t be worth a spit.
‘He has come to take your lands,’ the priest said. ‘So tell us, will your father bow down before his new king? Or will he fight against him?’
‘Our dad’s been dead years now,’ Wyg replied.
The priest conveyed his words in Frankish, and the warrior shrugged before speaking again.
‘Tell us, boy,’ asked the priest. ‘Will you give your fealty?’
Again Wyg furrowed his brow. ‘I don’t know what fealty is.’
‘It is loyalty,’ the priest replied. ‘Undying devotion to your king.’ He gestured to the warrior at the table. ‘This man intends to rule over these lands. Will you bow down before him? Will you pledge your loyalty to your new master?’
Wyg looked at Bedel. He was unsure of what he was supposed to say.
Bedel took a step forward. ‘We will both bow down before you, my lord,’ he said, unsure which of the men he should address.
The priest seemed unmoved by Bedel’s willingness to please, but still he gave the answer to the warrior at his table, who laid down the chicken carcass and said more words.
The priest regarded Bedel with a smile. ‘Then let us hope that your countrymen are as eager to accept their fate as you are.’
That seemed to be it, as the king at his table went back to filling his belly.
‘Can we go now?’ Bedel asked, keen for this to be over with.
‘Of course,’ the priest said. ‘Go. Live your lives. But do not forget the face of your new king. He will not forget yours.’
‘Let’s go, Wyg,’ Bedel said.
Surprisingly, Wyg seemed only too happy to do as he was told this time, and he moved from behind the table. Bedel grabbed his brother’s hand, and as they made their way from the camp, back towards the field of bodies, he could hear the Frankish warriors laughing once more.
He all but ran across the battlefield, pulling his brother along behind him. The rain was pouring now, and a distant storm was closing. Bedel felt it in the air just before the distant horizon suddenly lit up. A few seconds later there was an ominous rumble of thunder. He didn’t stop running, pulling Wyg through the dark, dodging the bodies strewn in their path. Before they had crossed half the battlefield, Bedel’s foot caught on something on the ground and he tripped, sprawling in the dirt.
‘Come on we have to go,’ Wyg said, hopping from one foot to the other, his hair and clothes drenched.
Bedel pushed himself up to his knees, looking down at the corpse he had tripped over. It was among a pile of dead men, their faces shining white and pitiful in the moonlight. He looked closer at the hulking body in front of him. Around its thick neck was an iron band, and as he reached out and touched the metal Bedel realised it was a torc. He had seen its like only once before, a piece of jewellery worn by a passing tinker. The man had told him how old and valuable such things were, and Bedel got a sudden warm feeling in his gut. Perhaps he might salvage something from this after all.
He took hold of the torc in both hands. There was another flash of lightning, and Bedel briefly saw that two wolf heads had been carved into each end of it. He yanked at the neckband, trying to free it, but it was held fast about the dead warrior’s neck. As he yanked again, the thunder rumbled.
A hand grasped his arm in an iron grip.
Bedel heard Wyg yelp behind him, before his brother ran terrified into the night. Bedel could only watch in horror as the corpse pulled itself from the pile of bodies, still grasping tight to his arm. Arrows protruded from his mail; his hair and beard were matted to his face by blood and rain. He dragged himself to his feet, until he stood tall amidst the carnage of the battle, a terrifying giant back from the dead.
