Raven: Blood Eye Read online

  I sheathed my sword and glanced at the English shieldwall. It was longer than our own. Much longer and four men deep in places. I gave Ealdred a curt nod. 'I'm listening.'

  'Well, Raven? Has the Englishman come to fight or not?' Sigurd's eyes glinted in the dark. His men stood shoulder to shoulder, their painted round shields raised and their axes and swords hungry for flesh.

  'His name is Ealdred,' I said. 'He is an ealdorman and the king's cousin.'

  Sigurd pursed his lips. 'Which king?' he asked.

  'Egbert king of Wessex,' I said.

  'A real king!' Sigurd chuckled. 'Should I kiss his hand now or after I cut it off?' This was loud and in English.

  'Tell him we want to fight the king, not his dog!' Olaf shouted.

  'Ealdred says that your fame grows like a storm, my jarl, and that you have stirred fear in men's hearts and forced prayers to the trembling lips of God's children.'

  Sigurd smiled at this. 'Does the man want to fight me or fuck me?' he called.

  'He wants to drink with you, lord,' I said. 'Ealdred wants you to go to his hall and share his mead and discuss terms of trade.'

  Sigurd leant back and laughed from deep in his belly. 'The king's cousin wants to drink with me, hey? Freyja's tits, these English are a strange people! Drink?' He turned to his men and then back to me, fixing me with an icy stare. 'Tell Ealdred to go and play with his king's cock and leave me alone. He comes here and threatens my ships with fire, then expects me to go to his hall and drink his mead? I am no whore!' he yelled. 'Ha! I'd sooner sail into the sun!'

  'Lord, he has many warriors,' I said quietly. 'And they'll burn the ships. How can we stop them? This Ealdred will send his men to die against you. I can see it in his face.' Sigurd glanced at his men once more, lingering awhile on Bram who gripped his axe tightly, his bloodied face swollen and snarling. With one word from Sigurd they would all fight to the death. But would that be enough to earn them their fame? How would they be remembered if none lived to speak of their courage by the hearths in the halls of the north? For their enemies would weave a different story once they lay dead and their souls feasted in Óðin's Corpse Hall.

  Sigurd frowned. 'What does he want from me, Raven? My amber? My whetstones?' He shook his head suspiciously.

  I shrugged. 'He would not tell me, though he gave me his word that if you agree to go to his hall, he will have his men throw their firebrands into the sea.'

  'He gave his word to you, not to me.' Sigurd shook his head and pulled at his beard. 'These are strange days, Raven, when you ask me to believe the word of a Christ-follower. And stranger still that I listen.'

  'What choice do we have?' I asked. 'Ealdred has maybe two hundred spears.'

  Sigurd scoffed. 'Only some will be warriors. Most would rather be sharpening their ploughshares or sitting by their hearths.' But even so, two hundred was too many and Sigurd knew we could not fight and hope to win. 'Very well,' he said with a nod towards the English, 'tell this Ealdred I will drink his mead. But I swear this by Óðin – if I smell English treachery, I will cut off his head.'

  When I approached Ealdred with Sigurd beside me, the ealdorman did as he had promised and the flames in the fishing boats were extinguished. Darkness enveloped the longships once more and I touched my bone-handled knife, relieved that they were safe again.

  'I am Sigurd son of Harald. The Lucky, some call me.' Sigurd stood tall before the English lord and his grizzled bodyguards.

  'It is a fitting name,' Ealdred acknowledged with a wry smile, 'and your men must be grateful that their lord is not the kind of man to throw their lives away. Not when there is nothing to be gained from it.' He raised a hand into the air and I turned to see the fishing skiffs full of men and fire being rowed away from Sigurd's longships.

  Sigurd glanced at the warriors around Ealdred and seemed unimpressed. 'We will come to your hall, Ealdred, but if I see a slave of the White Christ, I will fill his belly with steel.'

  'A priest tried to poison Jarl Sigurd,' I said to Ealdred.

  The ealdorman seemed surprised, then frowned and tugged on his long moustache. 'A whisper of the Holy Spirit on the breeze can tempt a man to desperate acts, Jarl Sigurd,' he said, making the sign of the cross, 'but I can assure you I keep my priests on a very short leash.' He smiled. 'So, shall we go?'

  Sigurd laughed loudly, causing Ealdred and his men to look to each other in bewilderment. 'I will come when I am ready, Englishman,' he said and with that turned his back on Ealdred and walked to his men. And I followed him.

  The Norsemen took up what Olaf told me was called the swine array, a wedge-shaped arrow formation with their backs to the sea. And battle ready they waited, shields and spears raised in the sickly light which bounced off the water below the eastern sky. I was not given a place in the swine array but was made to stand behind with Ealhstan, for I was not a warrior, and each man in the wall must trust the man beside him to keep his shield raised, overlapping his neighbour's, and his sword arm strong.

  'I don't know what Sigurd is waiting for,' I said to Ealhstan. He turned to look out across the breaking surf, which threw up a chill that made me shiver. The skiffs that had threatened Sigurd's seasoned timbers had been rowed out of sight, whilst Ealdred's men on the beach had retreated so that they were once again dark, shifting shapes against the pale rock of the rise before us. 'Why doesn't he go to the ealdorman's hall?' I watched the jarl talk with Olaf, the two warriors' iron helmets dull above white skin and unseen eyes. 'This will be stinging Ealdred's pride.'

  Ealhstan pointed to the slate-grey sea's horizon, rounded his gaunt cheeks and blew into my face, and I suddenly understood. The wind came from the south and it was possible that the tide followed it. Sigurd knew that even if he could fight the English off long enough to board Serpent and Fjord-Elk, it would be tough rowing to get clear of the fire boats, which were surely still nearby. We would also endure a rain of fire arrows from the shore before we could pull the tarred, seasoned hulls out of range. The risk was too great even for Sigurd, and though it may have looked like stubborn Norse pride the truth was the jarl was buying us time. So we waited, and the sun broke free in the east, filling the world with pure light and revealing the Norsemen's tired faces. And still they did not break formation. So neither did Ealdred's men, until later in the day the wind dropped enough for Sigurd to give a firm nod and turn to his men, his eyes fiercely shining from his drawn face. At least one of his ships had a chance of getting away if Ealdred turned his spears on us.

  'Stay with the ships, Glum,' Sigurd said, gesturing for Serpent's crew to ready themselves, which they did gladly, relieved to sling their shields across their backs and move their cramping limbs. Glum rearranged his men into a smaller but still deadly swine array and Sigurd nodded that I should go with him to Ealdred's hall. He told Bram to stay behind with Glum too, because he was battered and limping. But Bram refused with a rumble of profanities and hefted his shield and spear anyway.

  'Stay here, Ealhstan. I have to go with Sigurd,' I said, gripping his stick-thin forearm. The carpenter nodded and clasped my arm, his watery eyes exploring my face with equal concern and frustration. 'Keep your hair on your head, old man. I'll be back to make sure they've not made a heathen of you,' I said, trying to smile, but I knew the truth was that Ealhstan was worried for me, not for himself, and I left to follow Bjorn and Bjarni before Ealhstan's fears could become my own.

  We climbed the rise strewn with birch and bracken and spiky green gorse buzzing with bees, passed through stunted oaks, elm and ash, and reached the clearing of stumps where Olaf, Glum, Floki and the others had waited when I went to buy the meat. Then, followed at a distance by the English, we descended the slope along the muddy track, and I wished I had a spear like the other Norsemen who planted the butts into the slippery filth to help keep their feet.

  'We'll be rich men this time tomorrow,' Bjorn said to his brother Bjarni as we descended into the valley, shaped like a shallow dish, where Ealdred's folk lived, some
within the protection of a low wooden palisade. The Wolfpack eyed the place hungrily, grinning at the thought of what it might offer: food, silver and women, all fine things to a Norseman. The stream had vanished into the earth at several places where the ground rose, but always it reappeared, flowing from the heart of the village, just as Sigurd had predicted it would, where it turned an old mill wheel whose rhythmic clunking disturbed the peaceful afternoon. A fine drizzle fell as folk moved about, herding animals, carrying water and firewood, weaving wool and making linen cloth. Hammers rang in forges, potters worked clay, and craftsmen of all kinds handled stone, glass beads, bronze, silver and bone.

  'Rich or dead, brother,' Bjarni replied, adjusting the round shield on his back. Timber houses pockmarked the landscape, the smoke from their hearths casting a pall over the village in the gathering twilight. The sweet woody air reminded me of Abbotsend.

  'Looks like a good place to raise cubs,' Olaf said, nodding at the piles of timber and half-constructed houses at the edges of the settlement. 'Plenty to keep a man busy round here. And good land,' he added appreciatively.

  'We're building another church. Of dressed stone,' Ealdred said, swaying in the saddle and pointing to a knee-high ruin beyond his mead hall. 'Our Father's house should not be made of straw and pig shit, eh?' The stones in place looked like the ones from the old watchtower on the hill overlooking Abbotsend, but the ones piled beside it were crude, unfinished blocks. 'My mason tells me it will take two years to build and that means three or four, but those ancient foundations are strong. The old people knew how to build. Makes you wonder what happened to them, doesn't it? A people like that.' Sigurd glanced at Olaf who shrugged disinterestedly. 'Used to be a heathen temple, the monks tell me,' Ealdred said, rubbing his horse between the ears. He held up a finger. 'The Lord shall have dominion.' The Norsemen scowled, and Ealdred scratched his head irritably. 'Not that you people would be interested in such matters, living outside the good Lord's shadow as you do.'

  'Our gods go wherever we go, Englishman,' Sigurd replied in good English. 'Here,' he touched the amulet of Óðin at his neck, 'and here,' he said, thumping his chest.

  'I wouldn't be you come judgement day, that's all I'm saying,' Ealdred muttered as he dismounted smoothly and handed the reins to a slave. 'Wait here. I will announce your arrival.' He disappeared into the hall, an imposing cob-walled structure with a high-pitched roof of new thatch. Sigurd turned to his men and put two fingers to his eyes, a warning to stay vigilant. A group of boys with wooden swords stood a short way off, watching us excitedly, whilst the men and women went about their tasks, but more slowly now, moving carefully and deliberately. And there was fear in their eyes. You are right to be afraid, I thought. I have seen these men slaughter such as you. I have seen them burn houses like yours. I have seen them make the Blood Eagle.

  I patted Ealdred's horse's flank and the beast skittered and whinnied, tossing its head and almost breaking free of the retainer's grip. 'Horses can smell the sea on a man, Raven,' Olaf said, looking at the animal with its rolling eyes and the poor groom who was cursing and fighting with the beast. 'They fear it as we fear Hel herself and her flea-bitten beast.' Half black and half flesh-coloured, grim Hel guards the underworld and those damned souls killed by sickness or old age. 'Keep your swords tucked up in their beds, lads,' Olaf warned, 'and lower your axe, Eyjolf, bloody thing's like a cunny-hungry cock!' The men's laughter broke the tension for a moment, then Sigurd pulled them taut again.

  'Look like the wicked, blood-loving whoresons you are, lads,' he said, rinsing his hands in the rain barrel by the hall's entrance. 'If the Englishman betrays us, we fight our way to the sea.' The men nodded and the gang of boys began to fight each other, showing off their prowess to these strangers, these blue-eyed men from the north who carried great war axes, spears and round painted shields.

  I was tempted to run then, to tell Ealdred about the raid on Abbotsend and escape. But I knew if I did the Norsemen would kill Ealhstan, and even if they did not, I could not leave him. And if I ran, where would I go? Ealdred's people were strangers to me. They would likely fear my blood-eye as Ealhstan's people had.

  As ritual demanded, the Norsemen left their weapons outside the hall where, Ealdred assured Sigurd, his grooms and servants would take excellent care of them. 'I have heard the Norsemen's reputation for the love of their weapons,' the ealdorman said respectfully. 'You have my word they will be safe, but they must stay outside.'

  Sigurd agreed, but insisted on leaving five men, including Svein the Red, outside the hall to guard their arms. Small knots of Englishmen were gathering, watching us and arranging cloaks, tunics and brooches, and I wondered if they would join us.

  'You see our reputation is well deserved,' Sigurd said with a wry grin to one of Ealdred's retainers. 'We love our swords more than our women. You can trust a good sword, even a beautiful one,' he grinned, 'but a woman? Never.'

  The man seemed unsure for a moment before giving a shallow bow. 'You are my lord's guest,' he said, 'it shall be as you say. I will have mead brought to those who remain out here.'

  'Come inside, Sigurd.' Ealdred stood at his hall's threshold. 'The sea air makes a man thirsty, don't you think? I have just the remedy.' Bjarni farted loudly, then shoved me forward and I entered Ealdred's hall.

  The interior was ill lit with foul-smelling, flickering candles. A draught blew the hearth smoke in all directions and some of us coughed, having just come from clean air. Smoke-blackened tapestries swung slightly in the gusts, keeping out the worst of the wind gathering strength outside. Two huge hangings showing Christ's crucifixion curtained off the far end of the hall.

  'See their skinny god?' Bjarni said, pointing at the tapestries. 'He looks like a sparrow strung up to smoke.' He shook his head. 'These Christians are strange.'

  'Here is my prayer to the White Christ,' Osten said, then gave a loud belch. 'I hope their food is better than their choice of god,' he added, nudging Thormod who smacked his lips hungrily. Njal kicked Sigtrygg excitedly as a pretty slave girl fed more wood into the hearth above which a cauldron simmered, giving off steam which smelled of carrots and onions. The girl pretended not to notice us, but as she turned to the table to begin cutting strips of meat for the pot, I saw an impish smile touch her lips.

  'Did you see that, Sigtrygg?' Njal said, puffing up his chest. 'She likes the look of old Njal.'

  'I saw nothing,' Sigtrygg said with a shrug, 'but don't worry, my friend, I'll let you cling to your dreams seeing as they're all you have.' But Njal was too busy eyeing the girl to take offence.

  'Sit down,' Ealdred said, gesturing to the long oak table and mead benches running almost the length of the hall. The Englishmen I had seen outside were entering now, their scabbards empty but their eyes full of mistrust. 'Tell me of your travels,' he went on cheerfully. 'We had a merchant from far-off Frankia here some months ago, but he spoke no English and I wouldn't have trusted a garlic-reeking word from his mouth anyhow. How long have you been at sea, Sigurd the Lucky?' A hint of mischief touched his face beneath the drooping moustache.

  'I will tell you my story soon enough,' Sigurd replied, 'but not with a dry tongue. First we drink. Just one cup,' he said, holding up not one finger but three. 'To the coming trade!'

  'Of course, of course! Ethelwold, bring our guests something to begin with!' Ealdred called. In no time our alderwood cups were full of sweet mead, every drop as good as promised, and soon the ealdorman's hall was filled with noise as Norse and English shared their love of strong drink. Ealdred himself sat at the head of the table between the grizzled warrior who had questioned me the previous day and another man whose face was so scarred that his mouth was frozen in a grimace.

  I found myself swaying as I sat, but Gunnlaug assured me it was normal after being at sea. The Norseman leant against me, his great bulk almost knocking me off the bench whenever he moved. 'I never thought English mead would taste so good,' he said, raising his cup to Ealdred. His fair beard was dripping w
ith the stuff, and he wiped it on the back of his arm before giving a great belch.

  'Our monks make it,' Ealdred called from the end of the table. 'Fair Honey Drop, they call it, though there's nothing fair about the price. They've got barrels of the stuff hidden away at the old monastery. Clever bastards make more money than I do!' He grinned, tilted his cup at Sigurd and drank deeply.