Raven: Blood Eye (16 page)

'You men must be hungry,' Ealdred said to white-haired Eric and Thorkel beside him. The two Norsemen grinned like devils when Olaf translated and Eric replied in Norse that he was hungrier than Thór after a day's giant-killing. Ealdred did not understand the Norse, but smiled anyway and leant back, giving a command to the retainer who waited at his left shoulder. Then he turned back to us. 'Bring my salt-dried guests what they've been waiting for!' he called, slamming both hands on the table.

Ealdred's cook began to ladle the steaming stew into bowls which his slaves brought to the table and set before us, but after Wulfweard's planned treachery at Abbotsend the Norsemen were suspicious of the food and would not take their spoons near it until they saw Ealdred himself slurp some of the stuff, oblivious of their fears. Seeing this they dug in, sucking air through puckered lips to cool the stew before swallowing, and in no time at all spoons were scraping on bowls' bottoms and we were given second helpings. The stew was flavoured with cloves and rich in meat – pork, hare and a tougher flesh which might have been goat – and after the previous night's feast by the breaking surf my stomach was soon hot and full and my head was looking forward to finding a straw pillow.

I was so tired I might not have noticed the booted foot beneath the wind-stirred tapestry of the crucifixion that vanished a heartbeat later when the hanging settled again.

A stab of fear stopped my heart and I glanced at Sigurd who was laughing with Olaf, then I watched Ealdred take a small bite of a honey and almond cake as he talked quietly to the big warrior beside him, who I realized had barely wet his tongue with the mead by his right hand.

'Hey, Gunnlaug, is the White Christ snarling or smiling?' I asked, forcing a smile and nodding at the tapestry at the hall's far end.

'If that weakling can smile with his hands and feet nailed to a tree, then he's . . .' he unhinged his jaw and gave a low belch, 'more of a god than I realized,' he finished, downing more Fair Honey Drop and wiping his beard on the back of his hand.

'I'll take a closer look,' I said, pushing myself up from the mead bench and moving towards the linen hangings, stumbling as though drunk so as not to arouse Ealdred's suspicion. I stood looking into the Christ's dyed thread face, for a moment wondering if the dead eyes of that white god were truly judging me for my sins. Then I stretched out a hand and pulled the tapestry aside. A fist hammered into my face and warriors burst forward, screaming death to heathens, and suddenly the room was all swords and spears and bared teeth.

'Óðin!' Sigurd roared and the Norsemen jumped from the long benches and hurled their cups and bowls at the English.

'No!' Ealdred cried as the Englishmen snatched up swords hidden amongst the floor rushes and cut down Sigtrygg and Njal. Some ran to block the main entrance, but Black Floki tripped one of them and was on him like a wolf, savaging the man with his bare hands.

'I'll rip out your heart!' Sigurd growled at Ealdred who stood behind the huge warrior with the silver rings on his arms. The big man scythed his sword through the air to keep the Norsemen back. Then the door flew off its hinges, battering Ealdred and his man to the floor as Svein the Red sprawled on to the rushes beside the Englishmen. Norsemen scrambled for their swords and axes as the English went at them in a fury, hacking and stabbing. In the crush I grabbed a sword.

'Here, Sigurd!' I called, and he took the blade and turned with a roar towards Ealdred's men, for I had seen that a Norseman has no fear of death if he holds a sword. A man's elbow struck my head and hot blood slapped my face, blinding me. I fell into a pile of guts that stank, and I slid in the gore, trying to stand as knees and boots battered me. Somehow, I wriggled clear to a dark corner of the hall where a dying man's shit had sprayed the rushes, adding to the stench of smoke and wood and blood and sweet mead. Bjarni and Bjorn were amongst the English, hacking and stabbing with their eating knives, desperate to make room for sword work. Black Floki ducked under a wild sword swing and thrust a blade into a man's neck, and Olaf made such a blow with an axe that an Englishman was cut in half at the waist. With slick hands I clawed at the blood in my eyes, trembling against the wall. A moment before, we had been sitting at Ealdred's table, but now the benches were slippery with blood and the room was filled with madness. Men screamed and the dark hall stank of open bowels and death. Then, like a cauldron boiling over, the fighting climaxed and ragged panting order won out. Norse and English parted into bloody knots, the dead littering the rushes between.

'Throw down your weapons, heathens!' Ealdred snarled. 'There need be no more killing.' He had survived the clash and now stood at the centre of his line which swelled as more warriors entered the smoky hall through a door hidden by the Christ embroideries.

'There are more of the troll-fucking goat turds outside, Sigurd,' Olaf said, breathing heavily at the main entrance where there was no longer a door thanks to Svein the Red. He turned to Sigurd, his expression unimpressed. 'But my wife puts more fear in my belly than these English.'

'What were you doing out there Svein? Weaving a wimple for your mother?' Sigurd asked, glancing at the thick oak door amongst the floor rushes. His yellow beard was matted with blood, though not his own. 'No one comes in that way, you hear me?' Svein nodded grimly. 'Olaf, Oleg, you stand with Svein. If I see an Englishman at my back, you'll be swimming home to your wives.' The three Norsemen rolled their shoulders and stood at the hall's threshold, their weapons inviting the English to come and die.

Inside, Ealdred's men were forming a solid shieldwall the width of the hall and three deep, and not all were men of trades. Some were clearly warriors, well armed with fine swords and helmets and some even with mail, though most wore leather armour. They were killers and Sigurd knew it. He must have known too that the trap we had sprung had been carefully laid.

'Tonight we drink in Valhöll!' he called and his men repeated the word, 'Valhöll! Valhöll!' They thumped their swords against their shields in a death rhythm and I slid up against a smooth timber post until I stood on unsteady legs. Sigurd turned to me then and I felt ashamed to be hiding in a dark corner like a mill mouse.

'The boy is no part of this, Ealdred,' Sigurd said above the din. 'We killed his kin and took him.' I stepped out of the shadows and wiped my gore-slick hands on my breeches. I was shaking.

'He wears your false god round his neck.' Ealdred's mouth was twisted with disgust.

Sigurd's hand went to his own neck and found the Óðin amulet was gone, lost in the fight. But I had snatched it up and now it hung at my throat. His eyes flashed, touched by a wolfish grin.

'Boy, tell Óðin we honour him this day,' he said.

'I will tell him, Sigurd,' I said, taking a step towards him. Then the Norseman turned to face his enemy. And the clash of arms filled Ealdred's dark hall like the coming of judgement.

OLEG STAGGERED BACK FROM THE DOORWAY CLUTCHING AT AN
arrow in his face. Eyjolf lay in the blood that pumped from the sliced artery in his thigh, white as snow on the red rushes. Yet the English could not break Sigurd's shieldwall. They had lost plenty of their own to these Norsemen, these death dealers whose sword skill was a wonder to behold. I stood by Olaf now, ready with a sword and shield to take my place should he or Svein be cut down.

'We can't lose with the All-Father watching over us,' Olaf said, spitting at a tapestry by the open doorway. 'We've made enough noise for him to find us. Glad to have you with us, lad,' he added. I clutched the sword grip with white knuckles and gripped the shield's leather-bound handle so tightly that I could feel the veins in my forearm straining. For I had chosen to die with these men, these warriors who had burned my village and taken my freedom. There had been no thought, just the vain hope to survive and hurt this treacherous ealdorman, and now the Norsemen buoyed each other with dark jokes. They filled Ealdred's hall with the warrior's pride, and it was all I could do to catch my breath in that stinking place of death.

'Come, Ealdred!' Sigurd snarled, breathing heavily. 'We've iron for all of you!' He spat a wad of blood. I stole a look at the English shieldwall and saw in men's eyes the seeds of doubt. Uncertainty made their movements cautious. Their own dead lay before them, whilst unbloodied fighters at their rear shouted at them to advance. I sensed that the balance had shifted. Seeing no way out, those I stood with accepted death now, embraced it even. But the English had thought it would be easy slaughter and now caught the whiff of their own deaths in the thick air and were afraid. The shieldwalls clashed again.

This is the blood the old godi warned of
,
I thought, glancing at Asgot who stood in the second line, thrusting his spear into English faces. His own face was contorted with rage and bloodlust and he seemed like an old grey wolf, long past his prime but with teeth and claws still sharp. An arrow thudded into my shield. 'Find a helmet, Raven,' Svein said, smashing his sword on to the raised shield of a man trying to force a way into the hall. 'Here!' Svein tore the shield from the man's grasp, grabbed his neck and threw him into the wet rushes at my feet. 'But kill the pig first.' The dazed Englishman drew his knife and slashed it across my shin as I brought my sword down to cave in his face with a crack. The body shuddered and was still. For a moment I was still, too, unable to take my eyes off the man's broken face and the white bone shining wetly between the gash. A moment before, he had been a living, breathing man with fears and hopes. Now because of me he was nothing. 'Hey, wake up, lad!' Svein shouted. I bent to the corpse and cursed it for trying to kill me. Then I took its bloodied helmet with its sweat-soaked sheepskin lining and limped to the door, my leg stinging like hell, though it was not bleeding much yet. 'It fits you,' Svein said approvingly, shoving against the enemy. 'You have Sigurd's luck, lad!
'
But anyone would have thought Sigurd's luck had deserted him as the shieldwalls clashed and clanged and desperate men grunted and heaved.

'The door, Raven, bring it here!' Olaf shouted. 'Quickly!' Guessing his intentions I hefted the heavy door from the rushes and slid it lengthways across the gap he and Svein defended, as an arrow clattered off the doorframe. Then I took two benches and set them against the makeshift barrier to lend it some weight. At least it would protect the Norsemen's lower halves from the arrows that came at us from a night now alive with moving flames. Torches streaked about like flying demons and harsh voices filled the shadowy landscape.

'Looks like every whelp in this cursed land has come to watch us die,' Olaf said, as he and Svein peered over the rims of their arrow-filled shields. Dead men littered the earth before them and it seemed that, for now at least, the English had broken off their attack at the hall's entrance. Inside, men still strained, slashed and cut.

'Sigurd will get us out of this,' Svein said in his deep voice, and I realized I was wrong to think the Norsemen accepted death. Clearly Svein did not.

'Right now I'd settle for a barrel of Ealdred's Honey Drop,' Olaf grumbled, screwing up his eyes to allow the sweat to run over them. 'My tongue's bigger than my cock! How's it looking, lad?' he asked, peering into the night beyond.

Sigurd stood like a rock at the centre of his shieldwall. I had seen Ealdred's bodyguard drag his lord, like a carcass, clear of the mêlée to the hall's dark rear. 'Sigurd's holding them,' I said, knuckling my eyes. 'They keep trying to get down the sides, but we're holding them.' Then, like the last great wave before the tide turns, the English shieldwall closed again, its warriors desperate to tear a way through. They knew that one hole in the Norsemen's line would make the whole thing cave in, but the Norsemen knew it too and none of them would let himself prove the weakest stone; not whilst blood still filled his veins, or whilst he stood in the sight of his friends. The English failed again and began to shuffle backwards, the men at the rear allowing this to happen for the first time. Sigurd did not miss his chance. Stepping over broken bodies he took his line forward, keeping pressure on English shields until Ealdred's were forced back to the Christ tapestries and out of the door behind. Out they poured like bad ale stuttering from a skin, and when the last two Englishmen were at the door, Sigurd raised his shield.

'Stand, lads! Hold it here!'

'Let's follow them, Sigurd,' Bram said. 'We've got them on the tide.'

Sigurd shook his head, sweat and blood flying from it. 'Out there they'd surround us, Bram. Their archers would tear us apart.'

'I'm not getting an arse full of arrows now,' Knut said with a grimace, 'not after all this.' Bram clenched his lumpy, swollen jaw and nodded, accepting the decision. Outside, the night teemed with vengeful, shouting men. Olaf was right and it sounded as though every Englishman from near and far had come to destroy us. There were women out there too.