Raven Read online

Like a wolf snatching a moth from the air, I thought.

  Sigurd seemed to consider it a moment longer, then he nodded and slapped the smooth mast before jumping down. ‘Bragi! Rolf! Today we are sea eagles and there is our mackerel! Let us see which of us has the wings to match our talons!’ And with that men whooped and hollered, because their jarl had made a contest of it and we would now see which of us was the fastest. Squalls raged aboard all four ships as crews worked the lines to best catch the wind on their sails whilst others grabbed their helmets and spears and bows. A few put on their brynjas but I was one of those who did not bother, because no one expected the trader to make a fight of it against four dragons.

  ‘The poor bastards must be wishing they had not put to sea this morning,’ Penda said, shaking his head.

  ‘Leave them be, Sigurd!’ Father Egfrith implored, wringing his hands.

  ‘Out of my way, monk,’ Sigurd growled, putting on his own helmet with its new gold band.

  ‘But my lord, those poor souls have done you no harm,’ Egfrith protested.

  ‘But I will do you enough harm if you keep buzzing in my ear,’ Sigurd said, as Black Floki grabbed Egfrith’s shoulder and shoved him, so that he tripped over a sea chest and struck his arm on the hull.

  ‘I’m beginning to think we will never make a Norseman of him,’ Sigurd said, shaking his head sadly. ‘Come on, Uncle!’ he yelled, pointing to Fjord-Elk on our port side. ‘Those whoresons are beating us!’ I saw Cynethryth at the prow, one arm wrapped round Jörmungand’s throat, her hair, once golden as summer wheat but now darker with filth, flying behind in the wind. I wondered what was going through her mind, for I felt as though I no longer knew her, as though the girl I had known was gone and in her place stood a bitter woman who was in thrall to dark and twisted thoughts.

  ‘They’re going to get there first!’ Bjarni yelled. He was making lewd gestures at the men of Fjord-Elk and they were gesturing back with equal energy as the Elk sliced through the sea almost a length ahead of us now. Off our steerboard side Sea-Arrow was coming on well and a spear’s throw off her port stern Wave-Steed glided lightly over the rushing furrows. ‘We’ll never hear the end of it!’ Bjarni groaned.

  ‘Throw Svein overboard!’ Bag-eyed Orm suggested, pointing his spear at Svein. ‘We’ll fly like a fart in the wind then.’

  ‘I can’t help having a giant’s cock,’ Svein the Red said, shrugging his great shoulders.

  The trader had her oars in the water now, desperately trying to reach the northern shore. She had no chance of doing that before we caught her, for we were flying. Our sails strained against the yard, the sheets, timbers and blocks creaked, and my blood seemed to bubble with the sheer joy of it. I slapped Penda’s back, feeling the grin stretch my wind- and salt-dried skin.

  ‘You can’t do this in Wessex!’ I said, and he shook his head as though that was a great shame, then hefted his spear to get a feel for its balance. Because we were nearly level with the jagged headland that carved into the sea on our port side and about which the sea churned and thrashed in white spumy gouts. There was no catching Fjord-Elk now, which was the price we had paid for having most of the heavier cargo in our hold, but at least we would beat both the Dane ships, whose sails were only half the size of Serpent’s.

  ‘Frigg’s arse!’ Olaf clamoured from the bow, turning back to Sigurd. ‘It’s a trap!’

  I jumped up on to my sea chest, clutching a shroud for balance, and saw two ships nosing from behind the headland, their oar banks beating like wings.

  ‘They’re fighters!’ Olaf called.

  Having seen the ships, Bragi was already leaking some of the wind out of his sail, waiting for us to catch up so that he could seek Sigurd’s orders.

  ‘You see what happens when you live by the sword!’ Egfrith yelled, his eyes wide with fear.

  ‘You still want to accept the invitation, Bragi?’ Sigurd roared, but the words were lost in the wind.

  ‘Do we fight them?’ Olaf asked, tugging his beard, his face screwed up. As things stood we would meet the enemy ships in the time it takes a hungry man to eat his breakfast.

  ‘We are four and they are just two, Uncle,’ the jarl called back, sending Orm to fetch his brynja. ‘Now we will see how sea-bold they are.’ Olaf grimaced, not happy with his jarl’s decision, but began barking orders and preparing for a fight.

  When Bragi saw that we were not slowing he caught the wind again and Fjord-Elk lurched into life. Then, as we scrambled into our brynjas, Bram blew the signal horn, the long note sounding like a bull’s bellow, which told all the crews that they were to attack.

  ‘Blaumen!’ Olaf yelled from the bow and Sigurd nodded, throwing his arms up through the sleeves of his brynja and slipping it over his head.

  ‘These blaumen are proving to be worthy enemies,’ he said, bouncing his broad shoulders to let all the rings fall into place. ‘Their gods must be warriors, hey! We should catch one and take him back home to show our kinfolk.’ He turned to me. ‘Will we beat them, Raven?’ he asked, pulling his belt tight around his waist, then fastening it.

  ‘These blaumen are brave fighters, lord,’ I admitted, ‘and their gods might be warriors like ours. But we’ll beat them.’ I had chosen a short axe because a sword can be cumbersome in a deck fight, and now I slipped my left arm through the strap and made a fist round the leather-bound grip. Any men with bows were at the bows now, choosing the first arrows they would send. Some of them touched the points against amulets of Óðin or Thór, or Thór’s hammer Mjöllnir, for luck. Many of us lined the port side for that was where we would board them from if Knut could get us alongside.

  ‘It’s a useful thing having four ships, Uncle,’ Sigurd said appreciatively. Olaf was beside him now, grimly staring out from beneath his helmet’s rim.

  ‘Only if the Danes know what they’re about,’ Olaf said through gritted teeth.

  Sea-Arrow would attack the first of the blaumen ships with us, getting in behind so that the blaumen would have to defend both bulwarks. Wave-Steed and Fjord-Elk would prey on the second ship in the same way. It was a good plan and we were feeling confident.

  That was until we got a better look at the enemy.

  ‘Christ and his angels, they’re huge!’ Baldred said, scratching his dense black beard. And the Wessexman was right. The blaumen’s ships were big. Their hulls were long and slender, longer than with freeboards perhaps two spear-lengths from the waterline. We had fought a Frankish ship with high sides but these two were longer and each had a fortress at its bow upon which up to a dozen blaumen bristled with bows and spears.Serpent,

  ‘These nuts are going to be hard to crack,’ Bram Bear said, brows raised in wonder at the strange vessels.

  ‘How many oars?’ a man asked.

  ‘Too many to count the bloody things,’ Olaf replied. ‘Must be over a hundred.’

  ‘One hundred and fifty,’ another man said. Those oars plunged and rose, plunged and rose, with incredible speed, bringing the ships on against the wind.

  ‘They’re bold bastards!’ Gytha said.

  ‘They’ll use those to board us,’ Osk said, indicating the enemy prows, which pointed forward like bird’s beaks and were wide enough for five men to stand shoulder to shoulder on.

  ‘They’d break their damned necks,’ Olaf said and I thought he was right, for whilst those beaks would be useful for boarding other high-sided ships, they would not be much use against us. Still, they could stand on them and shoot arrows into us, which was not a good thought.

  ‘Furs!’ Sigurd yelled. ‘Get your furs and put them over your shoulders! A good fur will stop an arrow.’ Then he whistled across to Bragi and made a series of gestures that Fjord-Elk’s captain must have understood, because he nodded and began barking orders at his crew. Then, as we fetched our furs and did as Sigurd had told us, using long-pinned brooches or piercing the furs and threading leather or twine through them that we could tie across our chests, the jarl strode aft and told his plan to Knut
.

  ‘We’re still going to attack them then?’ Baldred said uneasily, dragging his teeth across his bottom lip.

  Penda gripped the man’s fur-clad shoulder and smiled. ‘What else were you going to do today, Baldred?’ He nodded in my direction. ‘But I would keep my distance from Raven. I’ve seen him practising with that axe.’ I swore at him.

  Sigurd yelled to the Danes and threw his hand forward repeatedly, the gesture telling them to turn their prows south-east and keep going without engaging the enemy. Rolf, standing on Sea-Arrow’s sheer strake, waved back that he understood, then jumped down. We were close enough now to see the dark faces of the men on the enormous fighting platforms at the bows, though we could not see the rest of the crews who were hidden in the bellies of those great wooden beasts.

  ‘Shields!’ a man roared and we raised our shields and braced as the air shivered with the hiss of a large flock of arrows. A heartbeat later those shafts clattered amongst us, tonking off shield bosses, thudding into wood and sploshing into the sea.

  ‘Anyone hit?’ Sigurd yelled as men shuffled aside to let him through. No one was. I glanced up and saw several arrows hanging in Serpent’s sail and some holes where they had plunged through the thick wool. I looked back and saw Cynethryth crouching behind a sea chest, holding a shield over her head. She was wearing a toughened leather skullcap and a leather scaled brynja taken in the last raid. I hardly recognized her. Behind her Knut was at the tiller protected by Bjarni who had a shield in each hand.

  ‘You don’t need to see what’s going on, lads,’ Olaf called, perhaps for my benefit. ‘Uncle Olaf will tell you what you need to know. Just keep your ugly arse faces behind those shields until me or your jarl tells you otherwise. We’re going to show these draugar sons of whores that you don’t lay a trap for wolves unless you have the balls to jump into the pit to finish them off!’

  Another storm of arrows ripped into us and this time there were a few yells of pain where the points had found their way past shields and between fur and mail into soft flesh. Again I looked back at Cynethryth and silently thanked the All-Father that she was not hurt. I could hear the blaumen shouting now. I saw Bram Bear and Bothvar and Yrsa Pig-nose readying grappling hooks and I heard the twang as some of our men loosed arrows. I wished I had a small pebble to suck because my mouth was so dry, and I gave myself over to fear because I knew that that fear would grow into the battle joy that helps a man butcher other men. The trembling was in the muscles above my knees. Soon it would spread upwards, turning my bowels to water, and eventually it would reach my hands and even my jaw, putting a bitter taste in my mouth.

  ‘They’re trying to keep their bows towards us.’ Olaf was looking over his shield. ‘They must think we’re going to roll over and let them scratch our bellies.’

  ‘Bragi is going to hit the first ship!’ Sigurd yelled, which was a surprise to me. But, risking a look myself, I saw that the second blaumen ship had turned south-west to cut off the two Dane snekkjes, leaving its sister ship to deal with us. They’re bold enough, I thought. ‘You’re going to need a bigger axe, Raven,’ Sigurd said, grinning at me. But it was too late to grab a two-hander from the hold and before I could say as much there was a great roar from the men of Fjord-Elk as her steersman Kjar, with the help of the men working the sail, turned her steerboard-on to the enemy ship and the others hurled spears and loosed arrows at the blaumen in the bow fortress. The oars on the blaumen ship’s steerboard side thrashed the sea as her captain sought to turn her bow northwards and keep that long beak between us and Fjord-Elk. There was enough wind across our sail to take us straight past her stern and into the open channel beyond and if that happened I doubted the blaumen could catch us even with two hundred oars. Bragi then dropped Fjord-Elk’s sail, and without oars in the water she was helpless. This was a daring move, for the blaumen captain was trying to manoeuvre his ship’s beak over Fjord-Elk so that her men could use their height advantage. For a moment it seemed Sigurd was going to let the westerly carry us by, but then he roared at Knut and Jörmungand bucked and snarled at our enemy. The sail snapped as the wind hit its leeward side, but that would not be enough to slow us now. The blaumen did not have time to pull in their oars and Serpent’s prow smashed into their port-side oar bank, filling the world with the splintering crack as ten or more staves snapped like kindling. Rowers were screaming, their chests crushed by their oar grips, and then there were men above us, their dark faces twisted with hatred and fury.

  ‘Carve them up, lads!’ Sigurd yelled, his shield raised above his left shoulder as he hacked into an enemy oar amidships with his great sword. Svein the Red had already destroyed two oars and he was roaring as he swung the two-handed battle axe into another oar, cutting it clean in half. There were two arrows sticking in the brown bear fur across the giant’s shoulders but he paid them no heed. I hacked into an oar with my short axe but the blade stuck and the ships moved, so that I had to leave it half buried in that stave and draw my sword instead.

  ‘Bragi’s men must have boarded them,’ Penda said, catching a spear on his shield and deflecting it into the sea. One of Hedin’s arrows took a man on the ship’s bow fortress in the throat and he staggered against the bulwark and fell out of sight. We could not see Fjord-Elk on the blaumen ship’s steerboard side but the enemy ship was ringing with the sound of battle and somehow Bragi’s crew must have climbed aboard. I glanced eastward and saw that the other blaumen ship was ploughing away as fast as her oar banks could beat and the Danes were coming to join us, rowing because the wind was against them.

  Bothvar and Yrsa had sunk their grappling hooks into the enemy ship’s sheer strake and were heaving to keep the hulls together.

  ‘Here! Take this!’ A man with a filth-matted beard looked down at us, then dropped one end of a knotted rope which Sigurd himself caught. Then the man was gone.

  Sigurd sheathed his sword and turned to us with a savage grin.

  ‘Are you whoresons coming?’ he said, then began to climb. A spear streaked down and I turned just in time, so that it glanced off the fur on my shoulder and thudded into a Norseman’s shield. All around me arrows jutted from the furs Sigurd had told us to wear and I knew men were still alive because of that low cunning. I slung my shield over my back and climbed the rope, throwing myself over the enemy’s sheer strake without stopping to make sense of the chaos. And it was chaos. The blaumen were fighting each other, but I saw that some of them must be slaves for they wore rags and looked as though they had just crawled out of a burial howe but for their shoulders and arms which were thickly muscled from rowing. Many of them were still chained to each other but they fought their masters with a desperate fury that reminded me of the Danes – who were now pulling alongside the stern. I unslung my shield and pushed into the fray.

  ‘Kill them!’ Olaf bellowed, thrusting his shield’s boss into a blauman’s face, then plunging his sword’s point into the man’s foot.

  A warrior screamed something at me and slashed his sword but I caught the curved blade on my own sword and lunged forward, smashing the hilt into his face. His eyes filled with shock and his mouth hung crooked, his jaw smashed, and he tried to step back but could not because of the press of men around us. I swung my sword at his forward leg and he dropped his shield but my move was a feint and I reversed the blade, sweeping it up into his throat, ripping out his windpipe in a spray of bloody gore. These blaumen had lured us into a trap to kill us and take what was ours and now they were dying because they had underestimated us. Many were shedding their buff leather jerkins and arms and leaping overboard; these men would drown because we were far from the shore, but they preferred that death to the one we offered them.

  I saw the man who had thrown us the rope. He was on his knees, throttling a blauman whose eyes bulged like those of a fish dragged up from the depths, and I realized he was not one of the Danes but must be a slave of the blaumen. The veins in his bare arms looked like hemp cords and his skin looked to have suffered burn
s and healed over again. Other oarsmen cowered pathetically, two to a bench, half gripping their staves, half shielding their heads.

  ‘The ship is ours!’ a Wessexman yelled. To my right the first of the Danes were boarding, eager to earn their own kills. Kveldulf, one of Fjord-Elk’s crew, spun round, hot blood spraying me from a gash across his face, then a blauman’s spear burst through his chest and he fell to his knees. Blood flew and men screamed and the battle joy filled us. Swords rang and shields clashed and the clamour of it all drenched the world.

  ‘Shieldwall!’ Sigurd yelled.

  ‘Shieldwall!’ Olaf roared, pushing through the press to stand with his jarl. It was a good idea because in that sort of chaos you are as likely to be killed by one of your own side as by the enemy, especially on a rocking ship. Building a shieldwall would make sense of the tumult and once formed we could sweep the deck in a line of wicked sharp steel, and finish it.

  ‘They won’t be trying to snare us again, hey!’ Svein the Red said, shoving between two Norsemen to take his place in the growing bulwark of shields that already spanned the width of the deck. At the ship’s stern the Danes were making their own shieldwall and they looked impressive now, if strange, in their new mail and wielding the blaumen’s curious weapons. Between those two walls of death our enemies tried to regroup, pulling themselves into some sort of order but not knowing which way to turn. Many of the slaves cowered at their row benches still, chained and helpless or else too frightened to fight. Others lay wounded or dead in pools of blood. The few who had fought free and survived, including the man who had thrown us the rope, had gathered by the mast, where they stooped uncertainly, not knowing where their best chances lay. Men hurled insults at each other, clutched bloody wounds, gasped for breath, bellowed with pain, or died quietly.

  ‘Hold!’ Sigurd yelled, and so we made sure our shields overlapped and we planted our feet as the ship gently rocked, unlocking our knees with each pitch and roll. Then we waited, our chests heaving and our mouths drier than a dead dog’s ashes.