Raven Read online

  About the Book

  We lusted for an even greater prize…the one prize that can never be lost or stolen or burnt. And we would find it in Miklagard…

  Raven and the Wolfpack have suffered. Good men have died, and hard-won treasure has been lost. But for the Norseman, there is something more precious than gold or silver, and that is fame. For fame is the saga-story a warrior leaves behind when he has breathed his last.

  And so the Fellowship sail in search of Constantinople, the city they call Miklagard, for there, it is rumoured, riches and glory are to be found. But the journey takes them and their longships through unknown and dangerous waters – from the wind-whipped marshes of the Camargue to the crumbling walls and gore-stained arenas of a decaying Rome. And while the streets of Miklagard might be paved with gold, they also run with blood.

  Armed with sword, axe, spear and courage, Raven and his Viking brothers will pay a high price for the fame they seek…

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  List of Characters

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Giles Kristian

  Copyright

  ODIN’S

  WOLVES

  Giles Kristian

  Óðin’s Wolves is for my sister, Jackie, who has always been a golden thread in the weave of my life.

  LIST OF CHARACTERS

  NORSEMEN

  Osric (Raven)

  Sigurd the Lucky

  Olaf (Uncle), shipmaster of Serpent

  Knut, steersman of Serpent

  Bragi the Egg, shipmaster of Fjord-Elk

  Kjar, steersman of Fjord-Elk

  Asgot, a godi

  Svein the Red

  Black Floki

  Bjarni

  Bram the Bear

  Bothvar

  Arnvid

  Aslak

  Gunnar

  Halfdan

  Halldor

  Hastein

  Hedin

  Gap-toothed Ingolf

  Kalf

  Kveldulf

  Bag-eyed Orm

  Osk

  Osten

  Ulf

  Yrsa Pig-nose

  WESSEXMEN

  Penda

  Baldred

  Gytha

  Ulfbert

  Wiglaf

  Cynethryth

  Father Egfrith

  DANES

  Rolf

  Agnar

  Arngrim

  Beiner

  Boe

  Bork

  Byrnjolf

  Egill Ketilsson (Burlufótr)

  Geitir

  Gorm

  Kolfinn

  Ogn

  Ottar

  Skap

  Tufi

  Yngvar

  BLAUMEN

  Amina

  Völund

  GREEKS

  Nikephoros, Emperor of the Romans/Basileus Romaiôn

  Staurakios, his son and co-emperor

  General Bardanes Tourkos

  Arsaber

  Karbeas

  Theophilos

  GODS

  Óðin, the All-Father. God of warriors and war, wisdom and poetry

  Frigg, wife of Óðin

  Thór, slayer of giants and god of thunder. Son of Óðin

  Baldr, the beautiful. Son of Óðin

  Týr, Lord of Battle

  Loki, the Mischiefmonger. Father of lies

  Rán, Mother of the Waves

  Njörd, Lord of the Sea and god of wind and flame

  Frey, god of fertility, marriage and growing things

  Freyja, goddess of love and sex

  Hel, both the goddess of the underworld and the place of the dead, specifically those who perish of sickness or old age

  Völund, god of the forge and of experience

  Eir, a healing goddess and handmaiden of Frigg

  Heimdall, Warden of the gods

  MYTHOLOGY

  Aesir, the Norse gods

  Asgard, home of the gods

  Valhöll, Óðin’s hall of the slain

  Yggdrasil, the World-Tree. A holy place for the gods

  Bifröst, the Rainbow-Bridge connecting the worlds of the gods and men

  Ragnarök, Doom of the gods

  Valkyries, Choosers of the slain

  Norns, the three weavers who determine the fates of men

  Fenrir, the mighty Wolf

  Jörmungand, the Midgard-Serpent

  Hugin (Thought), one of the two ravens belonging to Óðin

  Munin (Memory), one of the two ravens belonging to Óðin

  Mjöllnir, the magic hammer of Thór

  Fimbulvetr, ‘Terrible winter’, heralding the beginning of Ragnarök

  Fáfnir, ‘Embracer’, a dragon that guards a great treasure hoard

  Gleipnir, the magic fetter forged of a mountain’s roots and birds’ spittle, which restrained the wolf Fenrir

  Garm, the greatest of dogs

  Sköll, the wolf that pursues the sun

  Gerd, a giantess

  Svartálfar, dark elves that live underground in Svartálfheim

  Gymir, a giant

  Sæhrímnir, a boar that is cooked and consumed every night in Valhöll

  Úlfhédnar, frenzied warriors who fight in animal skins

  Máni, the personified moon and brother of Sól

  Jötunheim, the realm of the giants

  It is a dark thing now

  To see empty benches at the oars

  The southern sky stained red

  With the hot blood of men.

  The Valkyries came hunting

  For heroes of the sword

  Still they sing their battle song

  Now just as then …

  Raven’s Saga

  PROLOGUE

  YOU HAVE COME AGAIN. SOME NEW FACES TOO BY MY RECKONING. Tramped through that thick pelt of snow out there to hear more of an old man’s memories. That’s because none of you has ever done anything worth remembering. You live like the goats and horses that even now tremble with fear by your hearths while this ball-cracking blizzard frenzies out there in the dark. Fimbulvetr has begun, mark me. This is the first of three terrible winters that presage the end of days and the gods’ doom. Yet you have soaked your shoes and left your warm furs. You are tugging the ice lumps from your beards and rubbing your hands like greedy Greek merchants and here you are in this draughty old hall. You have come for the blood, do not deny it. You are here for the battles and the death, because you think there is glory in such tales. That is my fault I suppose, because even though I despise skalds and their lies, yet I still twist too much golden thread into my stories and not enough
of the cold truth. A man rotting to death, stinking and leaking rancid pus – that is the truth. Watching a blood-slathered oar-mate fumbling at his own gut rope, trying to push it back into his belly – that is the truth. Maybe I should talk more of those things so that you might taste it for what it truly is. Less honey in the gruel.

  Yet I still say this: if a jarl comes in the spring looking for men to pull his oars, you striplings and new-beards get yourselves down to the jetty. Puff up your chests and put a little brawn on those unscarred arms. Lads like you are not meant to carry slops to pigs and work the plough all day. That’s a waste of good shoulders – rowing shoulders. You pack your sea chests! Kiss your mothers tenderly and tell your fathers you’ll bring them back enough silver to mean they no longer have to break their backs in shit with the thralls. Take the whale’s road and see something of the world. Stand at the prow and feel the salt spray on your faces. I am telling you, it is the best feeling you will ever have.

  Learn to fight, too. A man who fears other men because he does not know how to stand up for himself is a nithing. And the gods love courage. Not that they will spare you a horrible death if that is your wyrd. But I have lived long enough to learn something of men’s fate. Wyrd is like a great heavy pile of logs stacked against a man’s house. At the bottom of the pile you have the layers that were stacked and left to season years ago. These you cannot get to easily without trapping your fingers or bringing the whole lot down. Neither can you shift the whole pile at once from one place to another. If you have lived with no regard for the saga-tale you will leave behind, you will find your wyrd grown too big and heavy to move. You will likely die a straw-death or fall from a cliff or see your flesh eaten by some foulness. But if you are a man who wants to leave a great blaze behind you when you cross the Rainbow-Bridge, you can, by great deeds or some act of courage, shift the newer layers and thus defy those bitches the Norns who love to spin men a poor end. Still, some men’s destinies are entwined with others and this sort of wyrd can be much too heavy, so that all you can do is fight hard, tooth and nail, whenever a bad death is stalking you.

  I have moved my own log pile more times than I can recall. I have been unpicking the threads of my wyrd all my life and see no reason to stop now. Which is why the well-worn hinges of my sea chest have been squeaking like a caught mouse recently, as well you all know. I have sent several of your sons and striplings out into the world, as well as five of my own thralls, who happen to be near to useless anyway and better kept out of my way for their own good. For I did not live so long and survive so many fights so that I could die in my sleep. I have too many friends and oar-mates waiting for me in the All-Father’s hall for that. Though I sometimes fear they will not recognize me after so long and with this white hair and frail body. For years I have kept burning the hope that some of my enemies still live. Gods, I made enough of them! Surely there are some still out there to whom I owe a blood price. I have so often whispered that into the dark. And your sons will earn good silver searching for them, even more if they spit my challenge into those whoresons’ ears.

  Now there are rumours in the village – shivering here and there like moths – that one, or even more, are coming. Hard men who know that my death will swell their reputation like a corpse’s bloated belly. And I thank old One Eye for that, for it is He who pumps the bellows, fanning the fame-lust in men’s chests.

  ‘They are coming for Raven,’ men whisper into their mead horns, their eyes as shifting as the grey sea road.

  Well, let them come.

  CHAPTER ONE

  WE WERE SEVENTY-ONE WARRIORS, AND AS ODD A CREW AS HAVE ever ploughed the whale’s road. Norse, Dane and English – men who would normally face each other from behind the shieldwall – sat beside each other on sea chests, shared deck space beneath the stars, and pulled the spruce oars together, so that they beat like eagles’ wings, our bows slicing the sea. We even had a monk and a woman thrown in for good measure, though a monk aboard a longship is about as useful as a hole in a shield. Even so, Father Egfrith was a good man, for all his fool’s hope of sluicing the old gods from our black souls. As for the woman, she was Cynethryth, beautiful Cynethryth, and that was enough.

  For seven weeks Jörmungand, Serpent’s dragon prow, had forged into the unknown, following the Frankish coast. Then, after a long passage south, we had sailed the Dark Sea west, along the margin of a barren, rock-bound land from which jagged, treeless, boulder-strewn mountains surged into the sky. This desolate shoreline was cut with rocky beaches, most of which were trapped by steep cliffs that plunged into the white-tossed breakers, and we had rarely made landfall for fear of tearing open our hulls.

  Now we were ploughing south again. On our steerboard side the black water stretched away to the west as far as the eye could see, and who knows what lay that way? But we were staying as close to land as we dared, for we had escaped the wrath of an empire and were lucky to still have the skins on our backs and the blood in our veins. Three other dragons followed in our wake: Sigurd’s second ship Fjord-Elk, and the two remaining Dane ships, sleek fast snekkjes named Wave-Steed and Sea-Arrow. We had escaped the Franks and so we had escaped death, but in doing so we had lost our silver hoard, which had glittered and shone so brightly that perhaps the gods in Asgard had grown envious and so decided to piss on our glory. I have learnt that that is the gods’ way. They are capricious and cruel, inspiriting you to deeds worthy of a skald song and then knocking you on to your arse for all to see. Perhaps they have no love for us at all, but merely watch the weave and weft of our small lives – cutting or braiding a thread once in a while – to help pass the great eternity of their own. The gods may not love us but they do love chaos. And where there is chaos there are warriors and swords, spears and shields. There is blood and pain and death.

  And now we were sailing south to Miklagard, the Great City, because although we had lost our Fáfnir’s hoard, we were warriors still and they said that in Miklagard the buildings were made of gold. Besides which, we lusted for an even greater prize. I could see that hunger in men’s eyes, reflected in the lustre of their well-polished war gear: helms, shield bosses and axe heads. That prize is fame. It is the meat of the skald’s song, which men and women feast on around the hearth whilst the wind batters the hall door. It is the one prize that can never be lost or stolen or burnt.

  And we would find fame in Miklagard.

  ‘It’s no way to go,’ Penda said with a slight shake of his head. The sail was up and bellying, taking advantage of a decent following wind, and most of us had thrown furs around our shoulders because that wind had fingers of ice in it and we were not rowing. ‘It must hurt like the devil’s own fire,’ the Wessexman muttered through a grimace.

  ‘There’s no hope then?’ I asked, knowing the answer but asking anyway.

  ‘There might have been,’ Penda said, ‘if they’d opened it up again and washed the muck away in time. Now …?’ He shook his head again. ‘Poor bastard’s got a few days perhaps. Hard days, too.’

  Halldor was standing at Serpent’s prow, looking out rather than in, which I suspected was because he felt ashamed. A Frankish spear had sliced off half of his face and although our godi Asgot had stitched it together, the wound rot had come and now the Norseman’s face was puffed up like a skin full of bad milk, so that you couldn’t even see his right eye. Reeking yellow pus oozed through the stitches, which seemed about to rip apart at any moment, and I could not imagine the pain of it. The previous day I had noticed a green tinge to the angry stretched skin. We all knew Halldor was a dead man.

  ‘I wouldn’t wait much longer if it was me,’ Penda said, drawing his knife from its sheath and testing the edge against his thumbnail. ‘There’s always a length of rope and a rock,’ he suggested matter-of-factly, pointing his knife at Serpent’s ballast.

  ‘And shiver in Hel until Ragnarök?’ I shook my head. ‘No Norseman would choose drowning,’ I said, shivering myself at the thought. For a drowned man there is no Valhö
ll, just ice and the stiff black corpses of those who have died of old age or sickness. And there is a giant dog called Garm who will gnaw on your frozen bones to get to the marrow. ‘Black Floki will do it,’ I said. ‘When the time comes.’ A whining gust whipped cold spray across the deck and hit the sail’s leeward side, making it snap angrily.

  ‘Sooner rather than later, then,’ Penda gnarred, sheathing his blade with a satisfied nod. At sea you have to be careful not to over-sharpen your blades for want of something to do.

  ‘I think he’s gathering memories to take with him,’ I said, taking a lungful of the cold sea air which was ever sweetened by the pitch-soaked twisted horsehair stuffed between strakes. ‘Wherever he is going, he’ll want to remember what it felt like to ride the whale’s road,’ I said, watching Halldor put a mead skin to the grimace that was his mouth to dull the pain.Serpent’s

  ‘Have you finished your deep thinking yet, lad?’ Bram Bear growled, galumphing over to Serpent’s side where he pulled down his breeks and began pissing over the sheer strake. ‘I want to know how you’re going to pay me what you owe, you son of a goat. And I’m not the only one.’

  I sighed, knowing this was one matter that would keep coming back to me, like waves returning to the shore. For I had cast our silver adrift to tempt the Franks and they had chosen to scoop up that treasure rather than pursue us, which was just as well because they had outnumbered us five to one and we were as exhausted as a Norseman in a nunnery.

  ‘It’s you who owes me, Bear,’ I said, ‘for saving that hairy hide of yours. It would be nailed to some Frank’s door if not for me.’

  ‘Pah!’ He batted my words away like gnats. ‘It would take more than a few farting Franks to finish me, boy.’ Then he nodded towards Halldor and tugged his beard thoughtfully, his piss scattering downwind. ‘If he’d have kept his shield up … or his head down, he wouldn’t be packing his sea chest for the dark journey.’ He shuddered, pulled up his breeks and turned, pointing a thick finger at me. ‘No, you owe me, Raven, and I don’t like being silver-light.’ I saw that Penda was grinning, meaning that he was beginning to piece together scraps of Norse, which would save me translating everything for him.