Raven: Blood Eye (37 page)

'Reminds them to hate us,' Penda murmured, nodding at the debris, then he looked back to the round house. 'The door might be barred. It'll be no easy thing getting in. We'll make a noise like bloody thunder.'

'No, we make just enough noise, Penda, enough to wake them up but no more than that,' I said, staring at the place. No candlelight leaked out, nor could I see any smoke rising through the thatch. 'We'll wake them and when they come outside to check . . .' I shrugged.

Penda scratched his scar. 'Better than breaking down the door,' he admitted, and in a few heartbeats I found myself to the side of the round house, cradling a slimy piglet with Penda's hands clamped around its snout.

'It won't keep still!' I hissed, struggling to hold on to the muddy creature as it wriggled for its little life and kicked with sharp trotters. 'Do it now,' I said, 'before I drop it.' Penda jabbed his long, bone-handled knife into the piglet's arse and let go of its snout so that it gave an ear-piercing squeal. 'Freyja's tits!' I hissed. 'Kill the damn thing before it wakes the dead!'

'Hold it still then, whelp!' Penda growled. He was trying to slit the pig's throat, but the animal squirmed and squealed and squawked, and so instead of slicing across, he rammed the point of the blade into its neck by its forelegs and the squealing stopped.

I heard voices inside the house, then the scratch of flint and steel. I threw the flailing animal aside just as the door opened and Penda burst into the place, dropping a woman with a punch before she could scream, and I leapt inside, spun and slammed my knife's hilt into a man's face, sending him sprawling.

It was over in a breath. Penda kicked the man in the head for good measure and with him slung over my shoulder we made our way back to the waiting Wessexmen whose dark shapes now stood out in the landscape like timbers from King Offa's wall. I whispered my thanks to Loki the Trickster, the Sly One, who had seen fit to reward our mischief.

Then we fled north along the riverbank, through long grass and reeds, seeing by the starlight reflected off the fast-running water and hoping its murmur would smother our passing. I gave the limp Welshman to Coenred whose legs were thick as tree trunks and the Wessexman threw him over his shoulder like a sack of flour. I caught up with Penda who set the pace.

'We'll be lucky to get any sense out of him,' I said as we ran bent low across ground left marshy from the Wye's swollen months.

'He'll be fine, lad,' Penda replied. 'That's the thing about the Welsh. Hard buggers. Takes a lot to kill 'em.'

'Shouldn't we try to get him talking?' I asked, my shield thumping my back, which was beginning to ache from running bent. I hoped Cynethryth's stitches would not tear open. 'Weohstan could be back in that village for all we know.'

'Lad's not there, Raven, I know that much,' Penda said, his loping run so smooth and natural that he looked like a predator. 'If he's still got breath in him, they'll have him in a bigger shit pit than that place. The boy's not a piece of meat like you and me. He's got a real price.' Just then a coot burst up from the reeds, making a sound like a hammer striking an anvil. 'And we're gonna bleed for it,' I heard Penda mutter.

We ran on in silence, each man aware of the danger we were in, for if Weohstan was being held in a Welsh fortress, how were thirty men going to free him? We mud-smeared few who loped like shadows along the riverbank were both hunters and hunted, perhaps closer to the afterlife than to our own homes. Certainly I was, and the thrill of it filled me, making my heart thump and my limbs tingle, and though Penda expected us to die with Welsh spears in our bellies, I believed the Norns had woven another fate for me.

The Wessexmen waited in the darkness on their haunches, catching their breath and looking out in all directions. Oswyn tilted his helmet, splashing water across the prisoner's face as he lay in the mud. When that had no effect, Oswyn kicked him in the balls, which seemed to work for the Welshman groaned and his eyes rolled as he came round. Oswyn kicked him again, hard, and the man cried out.

'Where's the Wessexman who was taken across the wall?' I asked, holding up a hand to stay Oswyn's raised foot. 'Your people took a prisoner when the moon was lying down. Where is he now?' The man winced, holding his swollen face, then shouted and struggled and we had to hold him down and cover his mouth. Oswyn repeated my questions in the man's own language, but the Welshman spat and threw back his head, revealing the naked whiteness of his throat.

'He wants you to kill him,' Oswyn said, spitting in the man's face.

'He thinks we killed his wife, Penda,' I said with a grimace. 'He'll tell us nothing.'

'Shows what you know, whelp,' he growled at me. 'This piece of goat shit will tell us the last time he took a dump by the time I'm finished.' He removed his helmet and ran a hand through his short hair, raising it into spikes. 'He just needs a little persuasion.' Crouching, he drew his long knife and held the blade against the man's groin. The Welshman grimaced in defiance, his teeth white in the darkness. 'Keep him still,' Penda barked, cutting through the man's woollen breeches. The Welshman began struggling now. 'Hold him still if you want to keep your bloody fingers!' Penda hissed at Oswyn. Despite his bulk, Oswyn was struggling to keep the Welshman's legs on the ground. Then the man's prick was exposed and Penda grabbed it, putting the knife beneath it. The prisoner began babbling in his own tongue as a thin trickle of blood ran down Penda's blade. Penda raised an eyebrow at Oswyn who was grinning like a child, for it appeared that the Welshman wanted to help us after all.

'He says he heard of a raid into Mercia, but no men from his village were involved,' Oswyn translated. 'His village is war poor,' he said, sharing a look with fat Eafa, 'and its menfolk have no stomach for fighting the English.' The man prattled on wide awake and cooperative, though I doubted it would help him now. 'He does not know where they took the lad,' Oswyn said, looking at Penda. Penda shrugged his shoulders and bent back to his task, holding the blade against the man's shrinking penis. The Welshman yelped and Penda shook his head slowly, withdrawing the knife. The man looked pleadingly at Oswyn who dipped his head, encouraging him to speak for his own sake. 'He says if they took anyone important, any lucky bastards too valuable for the slave market, they would take them to Caer Dyffryn,' Oswyn said. 'It's a small fortress in a valley north of here.' Some of the Wessexmen murmured and cursed at the name.

'I know it,' Penda said. 'A lot of us do.'

'He swears he doesn't know more,' Oswyn said.

Penda scratched at the scar beneath his chin. Then he wrapped the Welshman's hair around his fist, yanked his head back and sawed through the gristle of his throat. The man's breath escaped with a soft gush.

'Óðin's teeth, Penda! He could have told us more!' I said, watching the Welshman die, his eyes bulging in panic. 'We could have asked how many men are at Caer Dyffryn. How long it will take to get there . . . anything!'

Penda wiped his knife on the man's tunic and stood. 'If we'd asked more, he would have begun lying to us, lad. Would have come up with a sack full of horseshit to dishearten us.' He gestured to the Wessexmen, who stood peering into the dark as though they expected arrows and spears to rain down on them at any moment. 'The lads don't need lies, Raven. It's bad enough as it is.' I stared at the Welshman, at the black blood bubbling through the tear in his throat. His body convulsed and his legs twitched pathetically. Then he was still.

I felt sick. There was no honour in what we had done and I feared what the gods would do to us. But then I remembered something Glum had said about us being too far from our own gods, and this chilled my blood even more, for if the Christian god ruled this land, where did that leave me? I shook my head, pushing the thought away. Penda punched my shoulder. 'Wake up, lad,' he said, 'we couldn't let him go, could we? Besides, the whoreson had nothing left to fear from us, so we couldn't rely on his prattle.' He pointed down to the man's groin and even in the gloom I saw that the man's trousers were dark and slick. 'Oswyn the clumsy ox didn't keep the bastard still enough,' Penda said grimly. 'I cut the vein. Poor turd would have bled to death.' Penda gestured for Oswyn and Coenred to throw the corpse into the river. 'He would have bled to death and he would have lied to us,' he said.

I guessed Penda was right in so much as the men did not need the Welshman feeding the fear that already gnawed like rats at their guts, because we were in enough danger as it was and fear can make a man weak.

The smooth stones we put in the man's clothes took him down to the riverbed, and we were soon heading north again, much more quickly now without him. Oswyn led us away from the river, afraid that we might be seen by the light reflecting off the water, but we followed it from a distance, the going easier still now that we ran on solid ground. It seemed we had not been moving for long when a pink glow began to spread across the eastern sky. We wrapped our cloaks around us and slept for a couple of hours amongst soft green bracken. We woke at dawn and the birds were chattering so loudly that it seemed they were trying to warn everyone within earshot that we were there, and I feared the Welsh would hear them and come to kill us before we even set eyes on Caer Dyffryn.

That same morning, Eafa the fletcher killed a raven. The bird was sitting on the twisted limb of a blackened willow, watching us, when Eafa put an arrow through it with his yew bow.

'See how my arrows never miss?' he boasted to the others who slapped his back, impressed by his skill.

'You are a fool, Eafa,' I said, standing before him with my long spear. 'A fat, putrid, ignorant fool.'

The fletcher baulked at this, then smiled and looked to his friends. 'Ah, yes,' he said, 'I remember. You Norsemen believe the raven is a magical creature, don't you?' Some of the others laughed scornfully even as they made the sign of the cross. 'You believe they can see the future. If so, why did he not fly away as I drew my bow?' Penda looked on, saying nothing, and I did not know whether he hoped I would put my spear in Eafa or that Eafa would put his in me.

'You don't know anything, Eafa,' I said. 'You're a piece of pig shit. The raven has nothing to fear in this world because he is not of this world.' I touched the raven's wing that Cynethryth had plaited into my hair, and the fletcher's mouth twisted in disgust, but there was a flicker of doubt in his eyes. 'Fetch your arrow, pig shit,' I said. 'We'll see how skilful you are when the Welsh are coming to kill you.'

The Wessexmen were quiet then, because they knew they would soon have to fight. And they knew we were too few.

WE DID NOT NEED ANY WELSHMAN TO TELL US WHEN WE HAD COME
to Caer Dyffryn. Virgin meadows of yellow rattle gave way to close-cropped pasture where the only flowers remaining were tall clumps of white sneezewort making a stand by the river's edge, besieged by finches and tits.

'They know we're here,' Penda said, shielding his eyes against the rising sun and scanning the higher ground to the north and east.

'How can you tell, Penda?' a short, pockmarked man named Saba asked. Saba worked in one of Ealdorman Ealdred's water mills. Now he found himself in the land of his enemies and he was nervous. He carried a short axe and had sheathed himself in toughened leather, but he owned no helmet, instead wearing a hard leather skullcap which made him look even shorter.

'Look around you, Saba,' Penda said with a nod, scratching the scar on his cheek. 'This morning, whilst you were dreaming of grinding wheat, this meadow was cloaked in flea-bitten Welsh sheep. They've moved 'em.' The Wessexmen, still with mud-blackened faces, looked around their feet. Sure enough, shiny droppings littered the short grass.

'God have mercy on us! That's it then!' a man called Eni exclaimed, his eyes wide and his beard trembling. 'It's over. We've got to go back. If the black-shields know we're here, we don't stand a nun's chance in a whores' hall.'

'Eni is right, Penda,' Saba said, trying to seem unafraid. 'We should go back. If they know we're here . . .' He left the words hanging, allowing the men to imagine their own fates. Some of them grunted in agreement or spoke up for heading back to Wessex, whilst others looked to Penda, waiting for him to speak.

'And what will you tell Lord Ealdred, Eni?' Penda asked eventually, when those advocating a return to Wessex had said their piece. 'Well, lad, let's hear it.' He was tightening the helmet strap beneath his scarred chin as he spoke. 'Er, sorry, lord,' he mimicked Eni, 'but we couldn't get your son and heir back from the bastard Welsh because . . . well . . . they saw us. So we said they could keep the lad and hared away from the horrible fucking heathens, like dry-cunnied virgins from a Norseman.' He turned to me. 'No offence, heathen,' he added.