Raven: Blood Eye Page 7

  Sigurd frowned, salt water dripping from his hair and beard. The wrong decision could see his men drowned. But if they were afraid, they showed little sign of it. Some invoked their chosen gods. Black Floki challenged Njörd Lord of the Sea to do his worst, but the men around him cursed and told him to shut his big mouth. We rowed hard, as though muscle and sinew could challenge the might of wind and wave. But water was pouring in at the oar ports and the oars themselves were in danger of snapping under the swell's pressure. Rain and seawater drenched us, my face stung from the salt and I found it impossible to row in time with the others.

  A great crack of thunder filled the world. 'Enough, lads! Get the oars in!' Sigurd called. 'Eric, tell Glum we're going to ride this one out,' he shouted, pointing to the oil lamp in its hollow horn sheath. Eric nodded, wiping rain from his brow as he took up the lamp and stumbled over to Serpent's seaward side, grabbing hold of the sheet to steady himself. We stowed the oars, plugged our ports with leather bungs and prepared for Njörd's fury. Suddenly I was jealous of Eric, who had been given a task that would steer his thoughts from fear. 'Take in the shields!' Sigurd shouted, and I stood just as Serpent's dragonhead prow lurched skywards. I stumbled into a chest and was flung back, striking my head on an oak rib.

  Beside me Ealhstan made a long guttural sound as another peal of thunder split the night. He clung to Serpent's top strake, already looking like a drowned man. Something hit me in the chest as I lay in a sloshing pool of seawater. It was a length of tar-stinking rope.

  'Tie the old man down or his bones will be washed overboard!' Svein the Red shouted as he staggered, unrolling the spare sail to help cover the small open hold at the base of the mast. 'And have a word with Óðin All-Father!' the red-bearded giant added with no hint of a smile. 'I don't swim well.'

  The wind whipped the white hair from the waves and the ship creaked and moaned at the sea. I stumbled to Ealhstan, whose legs were trembling with the effort of fighting the ship's roll, and put my arm round him. 'Come, old man, you're not getting off this surf dragon without me,' I muttered in his ear, and he nodded and together we blundered to the mast. I sat him on the keelson, blinking through the stinging spray, and threw the rope around him and the mast. When I had made the knot, the old man put a hand to my cheek. 'We'll get through this,' I shouted and gripped his thin wrist. Bile had risen hot in my chest and my head swam with sickness.

  Sigurd had unfurled the great square sail and he and Olaf and three others fought with bowline and forestay and backstay, moving in harmony with the ship so that it seemed they might remain standing even if Serpent capsized. They were trying to harness the wind rather than oppose it, but they were losing. I wiped my eyes against the driving rain, struggling to see Fjord- Elk. She was sometimes thirty feet above us, then thirty below, her crew like wooden figures carved into the ship's deck. She looked like a god's toy.

  'No, Uncle!' Sigurd roared into the wind. 'We can't win this one! Get her sail down before we're tipped out like bad mead.'

  'Aye, she'll tear to shreds!' Olaf agreed as he fought with the sail. And so, with the sail down and no oars in the water, we were helpless.

  'Sigurd's given Serpent to the fate maidens!' a man named Aslak called over his shoulder, clinging to a sheet block. 'The Norns will craft our future now.' Each man gripped his chest of belongings and the ship's top strake, waiting to see what future, if any, the Norns of fate had woven for him. Each man except Sigurd. He stumbled across Serpent 's deck, dipping his hand into a sodden leather bag and giving each man a coin, which they tucked deep inside their clothing with a nod of thanks. He passed by Ealhstan and came to me and I looked up at him as the wind howled and the thunder roared in my ears.

  'I give them gold in case tonight we sleep in Rán's kingdom at the bottom of the sea!' he shouted with a grimace that could have been a smile. 'She will only receive those with gold and it seems she is casting her nets today. Rán is a greedy bitch, hey, Asgot!' he called to the old godi, who shouted something back and threw his hands heavenward, causing Sigurd to grin mischievously. Sigurd suddenly gripped the top strake as Serpent rode up a great wave, its dragonhead nodding to the gods before plunging down towards cruel Rán's kingdom and her hall lit by dead men's gold. 'Here, boy.' He removed the amulet of one-eyed Óðin from round his neck and passed the leather thong over my head. 'Now remind the All-Father who you are!' he shouted. 'Tell him to spare us so that we might do great things in his name!' His blue eyes and the white foaming crests of Rán's nine daughters were the only colours in a dark, threatening world. 'If Óðin listens, I will free you!' he shouted. 'If not, I'll give you to Njörd!'

  I was drenched and trembling and I did not move. I touched the carving round my neck and wondered if Christ or His angels could see me wearing the heathen figure. Christ sees all, Wulfweard had said.

  'I can't do it, lord!' I exclaimed, swallowing the vomit in my throat and grabbing Serpent's top strake with both hands. I spat the foul taste into the sea. 'Óðin will not listen to me!' I barked. On steady legs, Sigurd drew his long knife and held it up for all his men to see. I stared at the blade, knowing it was about to cut my throat, but still my limbs would not obey me. His blue eyes bored into me and then he turned, took Ealhstan's head in one great hand and held the knife beneath the old man's chin. 'Leave him!' I yelled and grabbed Sigurd's wrist and instead of knocking me back down he stared at me. 'You won't harm him!' I said, clutching the wrist as though to let go was to die.

  Sigurd blinked slowly and gave a slight nod and I took this to mean he would not kill Ealhstan and so I let go of his arm and stepped back, somehow keeping my footing as a great wave washed over me, burning my eyes with its cargo of salt and making me retch. When he had lowered the knife I turned and picked my way to Serpent's dragonhead prow, where I stood with one arm round the beast. Then I called to the sky.

  'Óðin All-Father! Lord of the North! Save us from this storm! Remember me, Óðin! Remember me!' I don't know where the words came from, but I hurled them into the teeth of the storm, into the wall of whipping wind that swallowed them down. It ate my words as though I was nothing, and yet my defiance drew hot blood through my veins and stilled my trembling. 'Save us, Óðin! Save us and we will honour you!' Serpent reached the summit of a giant wall of water and then fell so steeply that she almost flipped over. I still clutched the wooden carving of the All-Father, holding it aloft, and as the ship righted herself I was flung forward over the prow, but I grabbed the top strake, and hung chest deep in the freezing water until something grabbed my shoulder and hauled me up, flinging me into the ship as though I were a codfish.

  'Ha! Rán's daughters spat you back out, boy!' Svein the Red roared, beaming from ear to ear. 'Englishmen must taste foul! Those bitches will usually take anyone they can get their claws into!' I crouched in the hollow of the ship's bow, terrified and appalled, because I believed the Lord Christ had tried to drown me for invoking a heathen god. I shivered. Then I vomited, spewing up warm seawater on to Serpent's seasoned timber hull.

  On hands and knees I crawled to the mast, to Ealhstan, afraid that if I stood Christ or Njörd or any other god might see me and fling me back into the cold sea. And there I sat as the old carpenter scoured me with eyes as cold as opals. Water dripped from his top lip and he spat it away in disgust.

  'I had to do it,' I said. 'What choice did I have?' But Ealhstan shook his head and closed his eyes and though it could have been to rid them of stinging salt water, I believed it was so he did not have to see me; me who had prayed to a heathen god and suspended my soul above Hell's fire.

  Then Olaf pulled a dry fur from the hold and gave it to me. 'Here, boy, you did well,' he said, frowning as though wondering what I was. Behind him I saw Sigurd. He had two hands on Serpent's top strake, his face turned up to the night sky. And he was smiling.

  The storm broke. The low black cloud which had been the belly of the beast split apart to reveal a forest of stars. The seas fell and the stinging rain died, and for a t
ime I feared the elements were simply regrouping to return and finish us off. After all the noise it was eerily quiet aboard Serpent. The men's low voices and the rhythmic creak of seasoned oak replaced the fury of wind, rain and sea. I tied back my hair with a length of tarred twine and sat at my place on Serpent's port side, gripping her top strake with white hands and looking out across the grey sea.

  'Don't worry, little brother. He's had his fun with us,' Sigtrygg said, slapping my back as he bent to scoop up water with a thin-lipped pail. Pools sat in the hollows of the sail that covered the hold, and our feet sloshed through water so that half Sigurd's men were busy bailing. 'Old Njörd will leave us alone now.' Sigtrygg was a fierce-looking warrior whose face was ruined by lumpy scars, though it was clear he had never been handsome.

  'How do you know?' I asked him, daring to take one hand from the hull. I found the smell of wood and tar somehow comforting, now that Serpent had fought for us and won. She had ridden the storm and I felt grateful to her.

  'You're never safe at sea, Englishman,' Njal called from the steerboard side. His grin parted his fair beard through which he was tugging a comb. 'But that is what makes it so much fun!' The grin became a scowl as the comb stuck in his saltmatted hair and refused to budge.

  Sigtrygg flung another pailful over the side, the water reflecting the starlight before splashing into the sea. He bent again. 'Somewhere some other mean bastard who thought it would be fine to sacrifice a half-dead bull is having a bad night,' he said, straightening. 'So long as it's not us, I couldn't give a fart.'

  'We'll give Njörd your breeding bull next time, Sigtrygg,' Sigurd said, holding out his hand to me and nodding towards the Óðin amulet at my neck. I gave it to him and he put it over his head before helping Olaf inspect the sail for damage. The wind had stretched it, but it would retake its shape overnight. 'Better still, he can have you,' the jarl added, thumping Sigtrygg's soaking back. 'Get the oars out, lads!' he called. 'We've had our fun tonight.' And where they might have moaned at having to row again, the Norsemen seemed relieved to be taking a grip on Serpent once more; oars and steerboard rather than wind and waves controlling where she would go.

  It never gets completely dark at sea, because any small light from stars or moon, even if they are veiled, reflects from the water. But it would have been too dangerous to sail and so Sigurd decided to row back towards land and anchor in the shallows. At the first sign of exposed rocks, we could back oars far more quickly than adjust the sail. By the time the heat from our bodies had warmed the water in our soaking clothes, we had found a bay sheltered from the west wind by a great peninsula, and Olaf had dropped the anchor to the sandy bottom. The crews of both longships settled down to sleep or played games by candlelight. Ealhstan and I sat together whilst white-haired Eric held Sigurd's lamp before his face and began to sing a song that Olaf told me was ancient when his grandfather was a boy.

  'I can sing my own true story,

  Tell of my travels, how I have suffered

  Times of hardship in days of toil;

  Bitter cares have I harboured,

  And often learned how troubled a home

  Is a ship in a storm, when I took my turn

  At the gruelling night-watch

  At the dragon's head as it beat past cliffs . . .'

  The men were smiling and nodding in appreciation. They all knew the sea and knew that she would sometimes swallow even great men. But the sea was their domain too, and they loved her.

  'Got a voice like honey, hasn't he?' a man named Oleg said without taking his eyes from Eric. 'Hard to believe, if you've ever heard his old man sing,' he added, nodding towards Olaf who glowed with pride.

  'He sings well for a heathen,' I dared, but Oleg simply nodded. It was a fragile, beautiful sound and I thought Rán's daughters, those foam-headed waves, would take Eric if they could, to sing in their mother's hall for all eternity.

  'Often were my feet

  Fettered by frost in frozen bonds,

  Tortured by cold, while searing anguish

  Clutched at my heart, and longing rent

  My sea-weary mind . . .'

  Now Sigurd himself held up a hand and Eric smiled, inviting his jarl to take up the song, which he did in a voice neither sweet nor lovely, but gruff and full and true.

  'Yet now once more

  'My heart's blood stirs me to try again

  The towering seas, the salt-waves' play;

  My heart's desires always urge me

  To go on the journey, to visit the lands

  Of foreign men far over the sea . . .'

  And then, with the sound of singing washing over me, I slept.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WE BENT OUR BACKS TO THE OAR. I WAS GETTING USED TO THE rowing now and preferred to do it alone, but I knew it took Ealhstan's mind off the seasickness, so I let him sit beside me against the top strake, his arms moving with the oar though taking little of the strain. There was only the whisper of a breeze this morning, meaning that every pair of arms was needed to pull Serpent through the still seas. But there was some strange comfort in the smooth stave that had blistered my hands, in the rhythm of the stroke and the plunge of the blades into the grey sea. Before, I had felt like a prisoner, but now I understood Serpent's beauty, saw the magic in the way she flexed through the waves and carried us away from harm.

  'I don't understand, Ealhstan,' I said, breathing heavily, 'how it is that I speak their tongue.' He stared straight ahead as though he had not heard me. 'The knife you found on me. How did I get it?'

  He shook his lank white hair and panted, but I knew he was only feigning exhaustion. And so I kept the questions to myself. My mind reached back into the darkness, searching for an answer, but finding nothing. My earliest real memory was of waking up in Ealhstan's house. I remembered feeling hollow. Empty. Exhausted. Satan's dark angel. That was what Father Wulfweard had called me. After that, everyone avoided me the way they avoid cow dung in the fields. Everyone except Ealhstan. And though at first I could not speak his language, I fetched his wood and caught his fish and worked hard so that he would not think I was a useless, lazy foxtail, which was what Griffin called the other boys in the village. But Abbotsend was gone now, and maybe my answer with it.

  Back came the oar again and again. There were twenty-six blades, all of differing lengths depending on the curve of the ship, and they sliced into the water in perfect unison. Ealhstan was grunting with each stroke now. I told him to rest but he would not.

  'Stop your barking, Englishman,' Black Floki bawled across from the steerboard side. Dark-haired, dark-eyed and mean-looking, it was easy to see where he got his name. 'Fucking mute! You sound like an old woman being ploughed by a horse.'

  'Ah, leave the old fart alone, Floki,' said Oleg, who sat behind him. 'You're bitter as an old maid.' Oleg was a short, tough-looking Norseman whom I had rarely heard speak before. 'Hey, Osric, the girls back home whisper that Floki was born to a spiteful old she-wolf on the foulest night of the year.'

  'And that night she had a great thorn in her arse which made her even meaner than normal,' a warrior named Eyjolf put in. The other men laughed. 'Floki is just jealous because no one talks to him. Isn't that true, Floki?'

  Black Floki's brow furrowed, making him look even meaner. 'I have to share a boat with Englishmen and you wonder why I'm bitter,' he spat. 'And I'm hungry,' he murmured under his breath. Norsemen cannot get enough meat. They crave it constantly and see it as their jarl's duty to provide it. But we had long ago eaten the fresh joints taken from Abbotsend, and Sigurd was keeping the salted pork and mutton in reserve. For, as I had learned, many days can pass before it is safe to make landfall. There was a plentiful supply of cheese and the Norsemen never struggled to catch fish, but that was it, cheese and fish every day. Even Ealhstan was growing tired of mackerel and I had never thought to see that day. Griffin would not have believed it had he still lived.

  Bjarni jerked a thumb at Ealhstan. 'I would swim back to his smouldering
pigsty for a leg of lamb,' he said, closing his eyes as though he could taste it. 'Or a side of beef. No, boar, that's what I'm craving.' He stretched out a leg, kicking his brother's backside on the bench in front. Bjorn swore. 'And walrus,' Bjarni said, 'the way Mother cooks it with pepper and chives and garlic. Even an old horse would go down well, now that I think about it.' Kalf picked up an empty mussel shell from the deck and threw it at Bjarni. It bounced off his head, but he did not seem to notice. 'Horse can be good so long as you don't overcook it.'