Raven: Blood Eye Page 6

  'Come here, boy,' Sigurd called. He stood on the mast support, one arm round the thick pole as the wind that rounded the sail blew his yellow hair across his face. I did not move. If old Ealhstan was not afraid, I would not be afraid either. 'The fishes must eat too,' Sigurd said, his voice edged with threat. 'But they would find you a sorry meal, I think. Come here, Red Eye.'

  I got to my feet and stumbled into a Norseman who cursed and shoved me away as though he'd been burned. My legs had not yet learned the rhythm of the sea. I tried to bend them with the ship's roll. 'Do you know who this is?' Sigurd asked, tugging the small carving of a one-eyed man which hung at his throat.

  'It is Óðin, the chief of your gods, lord,' I replied, remembering how Sigurd's godi had drawn Griffin's lungs out of his back. 'The Blood Eagle was done for him. A heathen sacrifice.'

  'How do you know of Óðin All-Father?' he asked, his eyes narrowed. 'Your people worship the White Christ. The Christians shout that our gods are dead. Yet we kill the English and take their silver. We go where we please and your Christ does nothing to stop us. How can our gods be dead?' He clenched a fist. 'We are the spearhead of our people. We are the first. Do you think we could cross the angry northern sea if our gods were dead and could not watch over us?'

  I shrugged. 'Wulfweard our priest says those who worship false gods are the Devil's turds.' But Wulfweard was dead, killed by the man standing before me. 'That is what he used to say,' I said.

  'That fat man with the cross who tried to poison me? That red-faced pig's bladder?' I nodded. 'Did you like him?' Sigurd asked, as though he'd tasted something foul.

  'No, lord,' I replied. 'He was a toad's arsehole.'

  Sigurd nodded. 'It was a good thing to kill the priest. He talked too much.' He smiled. 'I have not known many Christians, but all of them were in love with their own voices. The toad's arsehole said you are from Satan. Satan is your devious god? Like our Loki? Loki weaves more schemes than a hall full of women.'

  'Satan is not a god. There is only one God,' I said.

  Sigurd laughed loudly. 'Fish puke!' he exclaimed. 'There are many gods, boy!' He waved at the sky. 'How could one god keep watch over so many men? There would be chaos! One god?' The other Norsemen laughed too, shaking their heads so that their plaits bounced as they played their games or worked on their carvings.

  'Are you from this Satan? Have you seen him?' Sigurd asked. A wave broke over the bow, drenching a Norseman to the amusement of the others. The man cursed. 'Asgot my godi says I should kill you. I doubt he knows why, but that one's knife is seldom far from his hand.' I glanced at the old grey-beard, the speaker for the gods, who sat cross-legged away from the others. The bones tied in his plaits rattled as he cast a handful of stones on to a wooden board. 'But we are not foxes, hey? We don't kill for the simple pleasure in it.'

  'I am not from Satan, lord,' I said. 'I have never butchered a man. I have never opened his back and hacked at the bones whilst he lived. Even the fox is not so cruel.'

  Sigurd smiled, twisting his yellow beard between finger and thumb.

  'I don't think you are from Satan,' he said eventually. 'You are from Óðin All-Father. Even Asgot says this is possible. Your eye is made from blood.' He pointed to the empty eye socket on the small carving at his neck. 'See here. Óðin traded an eye for a drink from Mirmir's Well of Wisdom. Do you understand me, boy? Even the gods do not know everything. Some, like the Far-Wanderer, crave wisdom.' I nodded, my stomach churning now that I stood, and I hoped the bile would not rise as vomit again. 'But Óðin is the Lord of War, too,' Sigurd went on, 'he is Lord of the Slain.' I touched my blood-eye as I looked up at this warrior who seemed to believe I was something other than what I was. 'What is your name, English boy?' he asked.

  'Osric, lord,' I said, noticing crimson spots on his brown, weather-beaten face. Griffin's blood.

  'There is war in you, Osric,' the Norseman said, absently scratching his beard and bending a knee in time with the ship's roll. 'For this reason I have let you live.' Sigurd's free hand fell to rest on his sword's hilt. 'There is war in you,' he repeated. 'And death too.' Then he turned and jumped up to the raised stern to signal to the other ship, ordering his men to look out for a safe place to moor overnight, for the danger of striking rocks was greater now in the failing light. The men on the cliff tops might know we headed west, but it would take them longer to cover the difficult ground than for us to sail round peninsulas, so Sigurd could risk mooring. Besides, those levy men would have to be fools to pick a fight with these Norsemen. And they were not fools. They were mostly farmers, craftsmen and traders. They were husbands and fathers. I had seen the Norsemen's slaughter. The memory of it flashed in my mind like fish scales beneath the waves.

  'Hey, Uncle, it seems Njörd is watching over us again!' Sigurd called, his teeth glinting like fangs in the weak yellow light cast by the cow's horn lantern he had lit so that his other ship would not lose us in the dark.

  'That is why I would sail to Asgard itself with you, Sigurd the Lucky!' Olaf shouted from the sternpost, a great smile swelling his cheeks. He leant to pick up a coiled rope, one end of which he passed through a smooth rock before making a thick knot. 'I've sailed with many men, some fine, some fools, but you, Sigurd, you have the gods' favour.' They were happy because the wind that had filled the sail earlier had now died away, giving Olaf no problems in sinking the weight to test the depth of a small, rock-strewn cove. More important, there was little danger of being blown towards the rocks. Sigurd himself had spotted the bay and though it did not penetrate far inland, it would protect both vessels from the open sea.

  'The Englishmen can bring their spears and their bows and we can be gone before they sink an arrow within a hundred strokes,' Sigurd announced happily to his men. He called to the captain of the other ship that we would be staying for the night, then slapped a bear of a man on the back, sharing some joke about the English with him.

  'You hear that, lad?' Olaf asked me as he lowered the ship's iron anchor into the calm water, steadily feeding the rope through his hands. 'We can snatch this up and put out to sea in the time it takes to piss,' he said with a smile. Olaf was the oldest man aboard, except for the godi and Ealhstan, and he clearly loved being at sea. 'So you can tell the old man not to waste his time praying to that White Christ of yours.' He made the sign of the cross mockingly. 'You're on Sigurd's ship now, lad, and Sigurd is as lucky as a cock in a henhouse.'

  'He's a cruel bastard to take an old man from his home,' I muttered in the Norseman's language, but Ealhstan gnashed his teeth and pointed to my mouth, suddenly snatching at something invisible, and I realized the gesture's meaning. He would rather rip out my tongue, making me mute like him, than listen to me using the heathens' words. To Ealhstan it was another betrayal and it burned my heart to see the disappointment in his eyes.

  'Is he always so cheerful?' Olaf asked, nodding at the old man with a grin that revealed several dark teeth. 'Thór knows I have never met a happy Christian, apart from a man I met in Ireland once,' he said, his bushy eyebrows arched, 'and I doubt he was still laughing when he sobered up. Not with that headache. Drank like a fish, that one.'

  Next day, Sigurd the Lucky put me to the oar. A Norseman had been killed at Abbotsend and I took his place. There might have been enough of a breeze to push us along, but I think Sigurd wanted to keep his men strong and hungry, the way a hunter starves his dog to make it more eager for the prey. Whatever the reason, it was relentless work pulling the blade through the water in time with the others and soon my arms and shoulders burned and my heart felt as though it would burst. Sweat coursed down my face and I could only brush at it with a shoulder. My eyes stung and my tunic was soaked. After a long time, the screaming pain dulled to an ache and the sweat dried up, and I found a strange peace in the monotonous rhythm. I lost myself in the motion of the stroke. Eventually I faltered and then they made old Ealhstan grip the stave too, and blisters swelled and burst on his skilled hands.

  'A man do
es not need a tongue to row, hey, Englishman?' one of the Norsemen said in broken English, leaning back with the stroke. Ealhstan did not even grunt a riposte, his lungs having no breath to waste as we pulled on the oar, struggling to match the Norsemen's backbreaking rhythm.

  Over the next few days we hugged the coast, gaining shelter at night and making slow progress by day. Serpent and Fjord- Elk followed the shore like predators on the prowl and though it seemed to me that their crews kept one eye on the look-out for an easy target, I also felt that they were simply happy to be on the move. The Norsemen still feared making landfall in case the English had gathered a great number of spearmen, and Sigurd was content to wait until there was no longer sign of those who tracked us from the cliff tops and the shore. There was little wind, but Sigurd was in no rush and he harnessed what breeze there was, letting it push us westward. Eventually, we stopped seeing spearmen against the skyline and riders on the shingle, and yet I would still devour the coastline with my eyes for any sign of an English levy, and I would imagine these proud heathens dying beneath English blades. Sometimes, I thought I saw men peering out to sea, but they turned out to be rocks or trees and once even a sheep. In those days I learned that your eyes will fashion form from hope, the way old Ealhstan made something beautiful from rough wood.

  One grey morning, a steady drizzle fell unfelt on to my sweat-drenched clothes as I peered up at the grassy bluff, lost in the rhythm of the stroke. My palms had hardened like seasoned beech and the blisters had become knot-like calluses. I started when Ealhstan grabbed my ankle. He was exhausted and leaning against the chest on which I sat rowing with all my strength so that he might rest. He pointed landward, put two fingers to his eyes and shook his head.

  'You think I'm a fool, don't you, old man? Looking for something that's not there,' I said. He nodded, then resumed picking his teeth after a small breakfast of hard bread and dried codfish. At least the Norsemen were feeding us. Without food we could not row. 'The women must have told Reeve Edgar we were taken,' I said weakly, 'when they saw we were not among the dead.'

  He cupped a pair of imaginary breasts and made a wailing sound in his throat.

  'You're right,' I said. 'They'll be mourning their dead men, not worrying about the two of us.'

  He frowned then and pointed at my oar, gesticulating for me to keep up with the heathens. I leant back, pulling hard on the stave, suddenly aware that I had come close to snaring the oars. You didn't have to watch the others to know if you were losing time, for you would hear the solitary blade hit the water behind the rest. 'If you stopped distracting me, old man . . .' I huffed, gulping air as I leant forward to pull again.

  He shrugged his slight shoulders and pointed to my bloodeye. Then he walked two fingers through the air and pretended to spit. Folk will happily walk in the mire to avoid me, was what he meant. Then he scratched his bristly chin and pulled a sour face as if to say, And as for me . . . He clenched his swollen fists, popping several knuckles, then made the sign for cups and platters. 'So what if folk know your hands are not what they once were?' I said. 'You're an old man. They won't expect you to work their wood for ever.' But this brought a bitter smile to Ealhstan's lips, for I had struck the nail clean. He was an old man and I was an outsider. Why would anyone come for us, even if they knew where to find us? He pointed to my blood-eye and nodded towards the heathen in front of us, and I knew what his words would have been if his mouth still held a tongue: Keep fixing these bastards with that unnatural eye of yours, lad. Put some fear in their heathen bellies.

  'Sigurd believes I'm from Óðin All-Father, their chief god,' I said, matching the Norsemen's stroke again. 'He says that Óðin put me in his way for a purpose hidden like a knife in a sheath.'

  Ealhstan grunted, rapped his knuckles against his head and sprinkled something invisible across the deck, his way of saying I had wood dust for brains. Then he pointed at Jarl Sigurd, made the same gesture and touched the ship's top strake and banged his fists together. 'You think Sigurd is a fool and I am a fool to listen to him,' I said, 'and you think we might as well jump overboard, for a fool is likely to run his ship aground before long.' I shook my head, and the old man grimaced, turning to look out across the sea once more.

  But Sigurd did not wreck Serpent, and neither did his shipmaster Glum wreck Fjord-Elk, the other ship. When there was good wind, their great square sails pushed us westward, and when there was none, the Norsemen rowed as though they had been born at the oar. At night they fished and played games, sang, drank ale and arm-wrestled. A huge red-haired man called Svein sat for the most part looking miserable because no one would challenge him. But what I noticed most about the Norsemen was how much they laughed. They laughed at the smallest things, such as when Olaf complained about toothache or when his white-haired son Eric muttered a girl's name in his sleep. I noticed too that they were younger than I had first thought. Their faces were weather-beaten and their beards unkempt, but in their blue eyes I saw men in their prime, and this new familiarity made it harder to recall the savagery that I knew bristled within them, beneath the wind-burned, salty skin. Now of course I know that it is the young who are capable of the most terrible cruelty. A young man will kill without a second thought, then rejoice in the slaughter. But time will often smother the flames of his heart and the older man is more likely to sheathe his blade, seeing in his opponent his own son or his daughter's husband. These Norse were young men and laughter or no they were dangerous. They were killers.

  'If we're lucky it will pass to the east before it breaks,' Eric said. The youngest Norseman's face was turned up to the blackening sky so that his white hair fell straight, and from where I sat at my oar port he looked afraid.

  'Not this time, son,' Olaf said flatly. 'I doubt even Sigurd can make Njörd smile today.' Olaf turned to me. 'Njörd governs the flights of the winds,' he called, sweeping an arm westward. 'He controls sea and flame . . .' he grinned sourly, 'and he is in a foul mood today.' Every man aboard was staring up at the evil-looking black cloud sitting so low in the sky that I could have shot an arrow into its belly to release the deluge. Round its edge was a halo of brilliant silver light, but we were far from its edge. An angry wind began to slap the woollen sail and rattle the shields that the Norsemen had mounted on Serpent's sides that morning to warn off another dragon ship headed east on the horizon.

  'We're in the storm's maw, Ealhstan,' I said, touching Serpent's top strake and wondering how she would fare in the chaos of a violent storm. The old man was gripping one of the sheet blocks, his knuckles bone white. 'And we'll soon be in its belly,' I said. I had never been at sea in a storm and I was terrified.

  'Next time, we'll sacrifice a younger bull before we leave the fjord, Asgot,' Sigurd shouted to his godi. He stood at the ship's prow, one hand gripping the neck of the dragon staring dully out to sea with its red eyes. He grimaced. 'That sack of shit Haeston sold me was a threadbare old beast.'

  'Only a fool would insult a god like Njörd with a poor beast,' Asgot replied accusingly. 'Anger one of the kinder, less powerful lords of Asgard if you must. Baldr perhaps. Freyja even, if you don't mind your cock shrivelling and dropping off,' he said, clutching his groin and shaking his head so that the bones in his hair rattled. 'But never Njörd, Sigurd. Never the Lord of the Sea.'

  Sigurd bent his legs as Serpent rose and dipped. 'I swear old Njörd's appetite grows, godi,' he said, watching the heavens. 'Furl the sail, Uncle! Let's wet the oars and take her out there.' He nodded southward. Since the previous night, the coastline had promised only jagged rocks and sheer cliffs, and if the wind turned to come up from the south both ships would be tossed against them and broken. And so we gripped the oars and bent our backs, heading out to sea against a swell that kept dropping away so suddenly that my oar bit only the white hair that was spreading across the waves.

  Night was falling and Sigurd had to make a decision that would seal our fates. We had to get away from the rocky coast, but row too far and we could lose our way, f
or the cloud would veil the stars and we would sail blind.

  The reefing ropes whipped left and right as though the wind came from all sides at once. My oar's blade struck the white crest of a wave as I glanced over my shoulder at the distant cliffs, before Serpent's bow rocked into the sky. She gave a great creaking sigh that seemed to say, Don't look back, Osric, there's just us now. No land, no safety, just wood and nails and flesh.

  'Any further and we'll lose sight of land!' Olaf shouted above the swirling wind that whistled through the oar ports. 'There's no way of knowing which way the storm is heading, Sigurd! We'll have to ride Rán's daughters!' Rán's daughters were the waves, and as Serpent's prow struck, they leapt across her top strakes to slap our faces and sting our eyes.