Raven Read online

  ‘Maybe we should visit this mosque, Uncle,’ Sigurd suggested, fingering the ridge of scarred flesh on his right cheek where Mauger had desperately clawed at a wound. But Mauger was long dead now.

  ‘Do you need to wash your ears out, lad?’ Uncle asked. ‘You just heard what happened to Völund.’

  ‘How many ships did you have?’ Sigurd asked the blauman.

  ‘One,’ Völund replied, at which Sigurd turned to Olaf, a haughty smirk lifting his beard.

  ‘And the blaumen lords travel with their silver?’ Olaf asked Völund.

  ‘And gold, Norseman,’ Völund replied, his white teeth flashing, ‘much gold.’

  So now our prows were pointed towards Yebisah, which Völund told us was the island’s name, though Sigurd had said we would avoid a fight if we could. Men were still grimacing from cuts and bruises taken against the blaumen and none of us really wanted another fight so soon, however much we liked the idea of some amir’s gold.

  We moored in a deserted cove on the island’s north-west side. There were hundreds of such bays but this one could not be seen from the sea and we likely would have sailed by it had Völund not recognized a cairn high up on a bluff. It was from this very same anchorage that Beak Nose had swooped out to capture the small ship Völund had sailed in.

  ‘That brave turd would have made a good Norseman, I think,’ Olaf said admiringly, ‘for it seems he used to catch ships the way a spider catches flies.’

  ‘His web could not hold us, Uncle,’ I said with a grin.

  ‘That was like a spider trying to catch an eagle,’ Svein the Red put in, which was well said, specially from Red who was not known for his clever words.

  Those of us who would make up the raiding party prepared to disembark. There were ten of us and that would be more than enough, Sigurd said, to steal anything worth stealing and get back to the ships before anything went amiss. If there were too many blaumen for us ten to deal with then we would not fight anyway, so ten it was. And we were armed like war gods: Sigurd, Svein, Bram, Floki, Aslak, Bjarni, Penda, Wiglaf, Völund and me, all in shining brynjas and polished helmets. Völund looked awe-inspiring in Kveldulf’s old war gear, though some of the Norsemen had griped about a blauman wearing their dead sword-brother’s brynja and helmet. Worse still, they grumbled, was that the blauman spent half the day on his hands and knees for his god, which was no way to treat good war gear. Even Yngvar had moaned that it should be him accompanying Sigurd on to the island and not his old oar-mate. But Sigurd had explained that of the two of them Völund was the more useful, blauman or not, because he knew the island and spoke the Allah-worshippers’ tongue. No one could argue with that, though some clamoured that Völund had better put the arms back in Kveldulf’s sea chest the moment we returned. Kveldulf had a son back home, they said, and the war gear should be his.

  Using Sea-Arrow as a tender we were able to get close enough to some rocks to clamber ashore without so much as getting our feet wet, which is always a good way to begin a raid. We looked around, blinking against the glare of the midday sun off the white rocks, then followed the blauman, scrambling up the rocks, the sweat already soaking our beards and running down our backs. Gods it was hot! We carried swords and shields, spears and axes, and some had brought bows, for even though we would not be able to carry so much if we did get lucky, it was decided that it was a better thing to be able to kill anyone who wanted to kill us. We also had food, bad-weather skins and furs, so that we could spend a night or two on the island without having to return to the ships.

  Apart from some scraggy goats who eyed us indifferently, Yebisah looked deserted. We climbed over rocks that showed no sign that men had ever stepped foot on the place, yet Völund assured us that the blaumen had built a temple to their god here and that we would see it for ourselves soon enough. I was glad there were only ten of us, as our boots raised a cloud of white dust and if we had been more that cloud would have been big enough to announce us as surely as a war horn.

  The sun was in the west when we climbed, dry-mouthed, up the last escarpment, picking our way through thorny bushes to get to the edge. Völund gestured for us to make ourselves low and so we did, as he bent his legs and peered over the crumbling ridge. He had taken us round so that we came to the mosque from the south-east and would be able to use this high ground to our advantage, like ernes watching for hares from a craggy peak.

  ‘Gerd’s Tit was bigger,’ Svein grumbled, his face flushed beneath his sweat-soaked red beard.

  ‘We haven’t come for the mosque,’ Sigurd reminded him, slapping the big Norseman’s back, so that dust puffed up from his cloak.

  I used my spear to push aside a bunch of gorse and got my first look at the Allah temple below. An arrow’s flight away, it was surrounded by a low wall and had the same rounded roof as the other one we had seen, but this one had no balustrade crowning it from which men could look out. Instead it had a stone tower on its east side, which Völund told us was called a ma’dhanah, and the whole thing was as white as Goliath’s sail, so that I had to half close my eyes against the brightness. The only part of the whole structure that was not white was the doors, which were of dark wood. In the courtyard a succession of stone troughs, each set lower than the one before, channelled running water so that at several places you would be able to fill a bucket from the flow.

  ‘There’s no one down there,’ I said.

  ‘Someone will come,’ Völund said. But the only person we saw the remainder of that day was a man in white robes who twice climbed the steps of the ma’dhanah and sang that eerie song we had heard from the blaumen before. And at that sound Völund would kneel and touch his forehead to the ground and perform other strange acts whose meaning was lost on us. In the morning we were up before the sun and we crawled to the ledge to watch as the white stone blushed pink with the new day’s light. It had been a hard thing not to go down and fill our skins with that fresh running water which glistened in the sun, for ours was stale and warm, but Sigurd would not risk us being caught down there.

  ‘What would you do if you were that blauman down there and you saw us coming?’ he asked Bram when the Bear had complained that his water might as well have been horse piss for how bad it tasted.

  Bram shrugged. ‘Fight?’ he suggested half-heartedly.

  Sigurd frowned. ‘Anyone?’

  Black Floki glanced at me, urging me to put Bram out of his misery.

  ‘I would get inside that tower and lock the door if there is one,’ I said, ‘then I’d light a fire at the top so that my people would know that raiders were here.’

  Sigurd looked back to Bram.

  ‘Fucking coward,’ Bram muttered at me, scowling at the grins around him.

  So we stayed up there on the ridge and listened to the blauman’s strange song and watched Völund perform his strange ritual whenever the undulating sound floated up to us, for it was the job of the blauman in the tower to tell the other Allah-worshippers that it was time to pray.

  ‘His god must be a hard bastard to make his followers kiss the damned ground for him five times a day,’ Penda said in bewilderment. I repeated this in Norse to Völund.

  ‘The key of Paradise is prayer,’ he said simply.

  ‘Then your key will be worn to a worthless stub by the time you need to use it,’ Bjarni warned him, chewing a mouthful of wind-dried mackerel.

  That night it rained and we took it in turn to keep watch, sheltering beneath grease-smeared reindeer skins and wondering how long Sigurd was prepared to lie in wait for something tempting to come along. As men will when the weather is bad and their bellies are grumbling for food, the others talked of their kinfolk back home. They imagined their loved ones sitting around crackling fires, laughing and gossiping and talking about the jobs that needed doing on the farmstead and complaining that their menfolk were off across the whale’s road instead of being home. Winter was coming and decisions would have to be made, such as which animals would live through the coming winter and
which would be killed. Norsemen and Wessexmen talked of these things and I listened, for I had no kinfolk that I knew of. The closest I had to kin were an English girl who could no longer bear to look at me, and the men with whom I shared that miserable night amongst the rocks of Yebisah.

  It was Black Floki who spotted our hare in the grass. Bored with the others’ talk of home, he had loped out into the sodden night to watch for sails from the cliff tops, the only man whom Sigurd allowed to leave our camp. He had returned at sunrise, pale, soaking and grinning, his crow-black hair swept back from his rawboned face and his beard dripping. Sigurd was just wiping dry his helmet against the inside of his tunic and the others were pissing or rubbing the sleep from their eyes.

  ‘Some blaumen are coming,’ Black Floki said, nodding to the east and the rising sun. ‘They spent the night moored a stone’s throw along the coast.’

  ‘So close?’ Bram asked.

  ‘One of Svein’s throws,’ Floki clarified, a rare smile in his beard. ‘But it was some Thór-luck that they did not stumble on to us.’

  ‘Lucky for them,’ Bram rumbled.

  Bjarni rapped his knuckles against his head. ‘Any man with both oars in the water would have been keeping dry last night, not wandering around like a corpse without a grave.’

  ‘How many?’ Sigurd asked.

  ‘I counted twenty but there could have been more,’ Floki said. ‘They lit no fires. It was dark. But they must be coming here. Óðin knows there’s nothing else on this island worth dropping anchor for.’

  ‘Good odds,’ Svein said cheerily.

  ‘The blaumen are brave fighters,’ Bjarni reminded us.

  ‘I have an idea,’ I said, speaking even as I untangled the scheme in my mind.

  ‘Does it involve throwing all our silver into the sea?’ Bram asked and Bjarni cuffed him round the head.

  ‘I’m listening, Hugin,’ Sigurd said. Hugin is one of Óðin’s birds and its name means ‘thought’.

  ‘Aye, spit it out, Raven deep-thinker,’ Black Floki added with a smirk.

  ‘We don’t want a fight if we can avoid it,’ I said. Most, not all, nodded at that. ‘Völund is a blauman. That wailing whoreson down there is a blauman.’

  ‘Frigg’s tits, lad! That is some deep thinking,’ Bram mocked, but Sigurd scowled, showing that the time for joking was over.

  ‘Völund goes down there, unarmed of course,’ I said, ‘and he tells that long-beard that he has come to pray. Then he threatens Long Beard that he will cut off his ears if he doesn’t give him his robes.’

  ‘Why not just kill him?’ Svein suggested with a shrug.

  ‘Because the blood would stand out against those white robes, you thick-headed lump of snot,’ Black Floki said, shaking his head. Svein sulked at that.

  ‘Will all the blaumen enter the mosque?’ I asked Völund.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘but usually the amir will go in and pray alone first. Afterwards, he will let his men give their praises to Allah.’

  I nodded. ‘So when the amir enters the mosque, Völund will take hold of him and make his warriors drop their blades.’

  ‘And if they don’t?’ Bjarni asked.

  ‘If they don’t, this Allah will be using their lord as a footstool much sooner than he thought.’ I looked at Völund. ‘As soon as they put down their swords, which they will if they want to save the man who feeds them, we will come.’ Völund’s thick lips curved in a smile because he knew it was a good plan.

  ‘At least this scheme doesn’t end with us being silver-light,’ Bram admitted as I explained it to Penda and Wiglaf, though they had already caught the whiff of it.

  ‘It will work,’ Sigurd said, holding my eye a moment.

  ‘We have to be quick,’ Black Floki warned. ‘They will be here soon.’

  We looked at Völund, who was already out of Kveldulf’s brynja.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE AMIR WAS THE FATTEST MAN I HAVE EVER SEEN. WE WATCHED from the ridge, sipping the fresh rainwater we had collected during the night, as the blaumen came towards the mosque from the east. Völund was looking up at us from the courtyard below and Sigurd held up his sword to let the man know that the amir was approaching. Völund had had no difficulty in persuading Long Beard to give up his white robes and it seemed to me that the former slave was enjoying himself as he tucked a long knife into his tunic and waited.

  ‘Maybe he cannot walk,’ Bjarni suggested, for the fat amir came to the mosque lying amongst swaths of bright blue and yellow cloth on what could have been a door, carried by six thickset slaves. Ten white-robed warriors walked in front, spears in their hands, swords at their waists and golden shields slung across their backs. But our eyes did not linger on the fat man or his warriors, for behind them walked thirty women in fine, loose tunics that reached down to the knee in every colour of Bifröst. Beneath these they wore loose-fitting breeks and their feet were bare. Their faces and heads were covered by more fine cloth that shimmered in the breeze and from where we were it seemed that the dark skin of their bare hands and feet was covered with tattoos. Behind the blauvifs walked another ten warriors with the strange-shaped bows slung across their shoulders.

  ‘Never mind his legs not working,’ Bram said, ‘I’ll wager the fat whoreson’s ears have fallen off, travelling with so many women!’

  Aslak made a low purr in the back of his throat. ‘I don’t know about you sheep-swivers but I’m now wondering what we’re doing all the way up here when all those beauties are down there.’

  ‘How do you know they are beauties?’ Bjarni asked. ‘You can’t see their faces.’

  ‘When your balls are as heavy as mine, they’re all beauties.’

  ‘We move now,’ Sigurd said, carefully backing away from the edge, so we did the same, collecting our war gear and putting on our helmets, wincing whenever iron chinked on iron. Sigurd’s still had the gold band round it, which, added to the rest of his rich gear, made me think of Týr, Lord of Battle.

  ‘Lord,’ I said quietly as the others checked straps and buckles and tightened their belts to take some of the weight of their brynjas, ‘if it comes to a fight they will know that you lead us.’ I nodded at the golden ring which glinted dully against the grey iron. ‘Their bowmen will go for you.’

  Sigurd pursed his lips and scratched his chin as though deep in thought. He knew this, of course. Then he nodded, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. ‘Then while I’m swatting their arrows you can kill them, Raven,’ he suggested as though it was the most simple thing in the world. Svein slapped my back, his beard all teeth, then we were on the move, iron and steel jingling as we followed Black Floki down a dark defile that in places narrowed to the width of Svein’s shoulders but was a quicker way down than the track we had taken up. Water trickled amongst the clacking pebbles at our feet and our breathing sounded like the sea in that cold crevice, but we soon came to the end of the shadow, where we blinked at the white daylight. Black Floki raised a hand for us to stay put whilst he edged along a wall of white rock and, keeping his cheek to the stone, peered round its corner. He gestured for Sigurd to move up, which the jarl did, only taking a look himself when Floki gave him the nod.

  Sigurd turned to the rest of us. ‘Svinfylkja,’ he said, and we nodded, knowing that at the mosque Völund was about to make his move on the amir. Then men were shouting and Sigurd said, ‘Heya!’ and he stepped out into the open, his shield raised before him and his spear in his right hand ready to be thrown. Behind him on either shoulder were Bram Bear and Svein the Red and behind them were Black Floki, Aslak and Bjarni, their shields protecting our flanks. I came next with Penda on my right and Wiglaf on my left so that our formation was a solid wedge of wood, iron and steel that is called svinfylkja because it is the shape of a boar’s snout. When there are more of you, a svinfylkja is a good thing for breaking through a shieldwall, but for us that day it was the best protection against the blaumen’s arrows.

  Through the fleeting gaps between
the others’ heads I saw some of the blaumen turn towards us, their faces full of shock and their weapons and shields raised. Beyond them, Völund had a thewy arm round the fat amir’s neck and a wicked-looking curved knife pressed against the dark flesh. The amir’s eyes bulged like boiled eggs and his mouth was wide enough to catch the gull that laid them. But I could not blame him for being terrified, for his god’s priest had a knife to his throat and was grinning like a fiend.

  ‘Keep it tight, lads,’ Bram growled, ‘and keep those shields good and high. Better to get an arrow in your foot than in your eye.’

  Völund was yelling something to the amir’s men, ordering them to throw down their weapons, I guessed. But they seemed unsure what to do, because we were stamping straight towards them and this must have made them think twice. When you outnumber your enemy two to one and your enemy still come at you with not so much as a whiff of fear about them, it gnaws at your guts. But Sigurd knew that we risked them making a fight of it if we came any closer and he yelled at us to stop, which we did, coughing in the dust cloud we had kicked up. The slaves who carried the amir stood by the water troughs, gaping, their sweat-soaked, corpse-black skin streaked with grey dust. Nearby, the women were sitting on blankets, their heads turned towards us but their expressions hidden beneath their colourful shrouds.

  Now the amir called to his men in a voice that was piss-thin with fear, and they nodded dutifully, then carefully laid their swords, spears, bows and shields on the ground, stepping back from them, hands raised passively.

  ‘Shieldwall,’ Sigurd said, for we did not need the boar’s snout any more. Yet it was no bad thing to look like a wall of gut-ripping death and so we put our shields edge to edge rather than overlapping them and moved forward as one. The blaumen stepped backwards, never taking their eyes off us, and when we had passed their discarded blades we stopped. Bram was snarling at them and Svein was eyeballing them, enough violence in that look to half kill a man.