Raven: Sons of Thunder (40 page)

‘Sigurd!’ Knut yelled. ‘You need to see this.’ Many of us lifted our oars and turned to look. The forts were open on their river sides, which had seemed strange until now. Now, with utter horror, I realized what those buildings were for and I saw the source of that terrible noise that sounded like an iron dragon grinding its teeth. Emerging from the water on both banks was a huge chain, rusty and dripping and forged of links as big as your fist. Inside the forts men turned great windlasses, drawing in the chain so that it would soon stretch taut across the river. When it did we would be trapped.

‘Row hard, men!’ Sigurd shouted, hurrying back to his row bench and gripping his oar. ‘Harder than you have ever rowed!’

‘But Sigurd, there’s no time!’ Olaf exclaimed. ‘That chain will be up. It’ll crush us to kindling.’

‘Hold your tongue and row, Uncle,’ Sigurd yelled, pulling with his enormous strength. ‘And be ready when I give the word!’ And though I agreed with Uncle and didn’t think I was the only one, I worked my oar as though Óðin himself was choosing men to fill the benches on his own dragon ship, because Sigurd was my jarl and I believed the gods loved him. The blood pounded in my head. My world closed in around me, but through the mind-fog I heard Sigurd bawling orders from his bench and I readied myself. I heard arrows too, whopping into the water beyond
Serpent
’s prow, and I knew it would be any moment now.

‘Move!’ Sigurd bellowed. I pulled in my oar, letting it clatter to the deck, then grunting with effort I picked up my row bench, my sea chest full of silver and arms, and together with the others I half ran, half stumbled in my brynja to
Serpent
’s stern, into the press of men, as arrows thwacked off the hull and bounced off our mail.
Serpent
’s bow lifted, Jörmungand leaping into the twilight sky. The terrible thumping scrape of the chain against
Serpent
’s belly filled the world. Those nearest the mast step were flung towards us, spilling their heavy chests. Then, as soon as the momentum was spent, Sigurd roared again and we lumbered forward, tripping on discarded oars and thumping into each other, hurrying to the bow as
Serpent
’s stern now surged up and she slid down off the chain.

‘Thór’s teeth, we did it,’ Olaf said, wide-eyed. No sooner were we over than we looked back to watch
Fjord-Elk
follow our lead and we winced to see her prow leap and hear the scrape of the chain across her hull. But she made it too and we cheered Bragi the Egg and his crew. Now it was the Danes’ turn.

‘They’re small and light enough,’ Penda said hopefully as we returned to our places, puffing like bellows.

‘But they don’t have the weight on board to lift the bows
over,’ I said, putting my oar back through its port and waiting for Olaf to order the first stroke.

‘Those skinny-arsed lads have done it!’ Bram Bear cheered.

‘Not bad for Danes,’ round-faced Hastein offered with a grin. And then the second Dane ship was over and we all cheered again and yelled insults at the Franks watching from the riverbanks. But then we were silenced by a splintering crack that ripped across the water like the voice of doom. The third Dane ship had looked to be over but lacked the momentum to slide all the way down and had come to rest with the chain beneath its hull, just rearward of the mast. That crack was the ship’s back breaking and the cries from the men on board told us that they were all done for.

‘Poor bastards,’ Wiglaf said, shaking his head. The Dane ship was in two pieces now and both were spilling screaming men into the fast-flowing river.

‘Why don’t they go back for them?’ Yrsa Pig-nose asked. ‘Why don’t the others go back?’

‘That’s why,’ Osk replied, pointing to the chain leading into one of the forts. It was slack again now, meaning that the Franks were sinking the chain so that their own ships could pass. Meanwhile, another Frank ship was launching from the bank, meaning we now had a whole fleet after us.

‘Hey!’ Olaf called and we plunged the oars into the river and began to row again. Sigurd pulled on his oar, his back bulging and his sweat-soaked golden hair stuck to his brynja. That chain should have stopped us. Then the Franks would have killed us. But Sigurd had come up with an outrageous plan and it had worked, and I shook my head at the sheer brazen impudence of it. I have since heard men talk of our escape that day and attribute it to themselves or others. Some of these are lies woven by men who talk a good saga tale – men who have heard of Sigurd’s Fellowship and steal their stories the way rats steal scraps from a king’s table. But maybe some other men
have
tried the same thing, and maybe many of them even now lie with the crabs.

The smaller Frankish boats stopped only to spear the drowning Danes and that was terrible to see, for those brave men deserved better deaths than that after what they had been through. But all we could do was row, which by now was backbreakingly hard. We were exhausted and Sigurd must have been tempted to fight the Franks whilst we still had enough strength to lift our swords. But he also knew that our enemies would surround us, hurling their missiles from all sides, and it would be a desperately hard fight. So we rowed, the sun having rolled into the west and now sinking fast. Even as the light drained from the world and the first stars glinted through tears in the high clouds, we rowed. And we prayed we would make it to the sea.

THAT NIGHT WAS DARK ENOUGH TO BRING WITH IT THE RISK OF
running aground on a sandbank or rock, but light enough for Knut to be able to keep
Serpent
near the middle of the river where the danger was less. At any other time I would have happily exchanged places with him, working the tiller instead of breaking my back at the oar, but not that night. He could keep it and good luck to him, I thought, watching his face, which was as tight as a cat’s arsehole, his brow heavy with the great burden of steering us down that gloom-filled course towards the sea.

We were in a daze, rowing as though the rhythm was as deep a part of us as our heartbeat or our breathing. We did not talk, having no strength for words, but simply pulled the oars, muscle and bone imitating the movement our eyes saw in the body in front. You would not have thought it possible to go on like that, but it was possible. What’s more, the Franks were still coming too. With our oars’ up stroke we could hear theirs chopping the river somewhere in the darkness behind us.

Dawn brought mist. It rose from the water and curled out along the marsh and mudflats above which lapwings streaked
and dragonflies hung, blurs of colour against the reedy grass. We were half dead at our benches.
Serpent
was a ship of draugr men, the corpse-pale undead hauling our oars as relentlessly as the coming of Ragnarök. But whereas the gods’ doom still lay in the fog of the future, ours would be upon us before the sun was fully risen.

‘What’s to be done, Sigurd?’ Olaf rumbled, the big Norseman a spent force at his oar, his neck barely able to keep his head on straight. ‘The whoresons’ll soon be on us like fleas on a dog.’ He was right. The two biggest Frank ships had been gaining all night and now they were almost close enough for a strong man to sink a spear into
Serpent
’s mast. As for the Danes, there was no sign of them and I thought they must have given up or been overcome in the night. Perhaps they had simply died of bone-tiredness at their benches, their death ships even now nosed into the reeds and waiting silently for the ravens.

‘We’ll fight the whoresons,’ Bram Bear called, his words dry as old wheat husks. But how could we fight? We could barely lift our eyes let alone our war gear. Even with my leather gambeson beneath my brynja, the mail had rubbed my shoulders raw, and as for my legs, I was not even sure they would carry me if I stood.

Being lighter,
Fjord-Elk
was up ahead and though I was sure she would come back to help us fight the Franks, it would only be a matter of time before the other imperial vessels turned up to join the fray. Our situation was desperate and Sigurd’s silence sent those roots of doom creeping even deeper into our souls.

‘We fight,’ the jarl said eventually, stirring a smattering of agreement.

‘I’d rather die in a fight than at the fucking oars,’ Black Floki said, and no one disagreed.

‘Wait, Sigurd,’ I shouted, ‘there is another way.’ There was a dragging silence but for the dip and creak of the oars, so that
I began to wonder if I had spoken aloud or merely thought to. Then Sigurd told me to join him at the prow, so I stowed my oar, relieved to find that my legs still worked, though they were full of knots and cramps. Men raised their heads as I passed and the hard pride in their eyes was cut with hope that weighed on me heavy as a wet wool blanket. I glanced back and saw the prow and the first beating oars of the lead Frank ship emerging from the mist. I ducked as an arrow streaked past and felt ashamed when I turned back to Sigurd, who had not even flinched.

‘Well, Raven,’ he said, braiding his hair for battle, his scarred face haggard and his blue eyes doused of their usual fire, ‘what Loki scheme are you weaving?’

I almost shook my head and turned round, for I was sure Sigurd would not go for my plan. I was not even certain I wouldn’t rather take my place in the shieldwall and face the Franks than go through with what had weevilled into my mind. But, though Sigurd was preparing to fight, his eyes held the same fragile hope that I had seen in the others, as though he half dared to believe that I knew of a way to see his Fellowship escape an ill-fated end. So I told Sigurd my scheme. And his face crumbled like dry snow.

‘Forget I said it. We could fight instead, lord,’ I said. ‘If we hit them hard, bleed them quickly, they might turn tail before their friends get here.’

Sigurd put a hand on my shoulder and shook his head. ‘It is a fine scheme, Raven, a Loki scheme if there ever was one. Thank you.’ He moved past me towards the hold. ‘Now help me, lad.’

We pulled the oiled skins back to reveal
Serpent
’s hoard. In the middle stood the five barrels of silver Alcuin had paid for the peace we had soon sent up in flames. Around those barrels were all of our other treasures too, from cloaks, brooches and torcs to antler, amber and whetstones. With Sigurd I began
pulling these things out and laying them on the deck as the men at the oars forward of the hold looked on dubiously. Then we began to pull up the planks that lay across the floor timbers to keep the cargo safe from the seawater that inevitably seeped up into the ballast. Sigurd called Bjarni over and had him help me lash these planks together and when we had finished we had four small rafts, each big enough for a man to lie on with his arms outstretched, though his arms from the elbows down would get wet. We laid thick furs across these rafts and then we hefted the barrels from their safe place and tipped their glittering treasure across those furs so that the coins and hack silver were half buried amongst the long reindeer hair.

Some of the men moaned and complained, at last realizing what was happening, and word spread from man to man. But Sigurd ignored them because like me he could see a knot of Franks at the prow of their ship making ready with ropes and grappling hooks.

‘We must hurry, lord,’ I said, hefting a pair of solid silver candlesticks and laying them across the carpet of coins on one of the rafts, at which Bjarni groaned mournfully.

‘Svein, help us,’ Sigurd said, and the big Norseman stowed his oar and came over, sweeping his sweat-soaked red hair back from his face.

‘Thór’s balls, this is a black thing, Sigurd,’ he griped, taking one side of a raft with Bjarni as Sigurd and I lifted the other side. Then he shot me a sour look which I ignored, grimacing at the enormous weight of the thing as we carried it to the side and rested it for a moment on the sheer strake.

‘Good men died for that,’ Orm grumbled, leaning back in the endless rhythm.

‘And so will you if you don’t hold your damn tongue,’ Olaf barked. Then we lowered the raft over the side and dropped it the last of the way and the river half swallowed it so that one of the candlesticks rolled off and shot like silver lightning into the
dark depths. But to our relief the raft was buoyant and did not tip but rode the current like a leaf in a stream, the old sodden reindeer pelt dark and slick as otter skin.

‘Now the others,’ Sigurd said. One by one we lowered the rafts, setting our great hoard, our hard-won treasure, adrift. Almost immediately our speed increased, the loss of weight raising
Serpent
so that there was less of her in the water for the oars to have to pull along. But that was only part of my plan and Sigurd and I rushed to the stern to see if the other part would work too. I was appalled to see that Bishop Borgon’s ship was still coming and I was about to beg my jarl’s forgiveness when Sigurd began to shake. I thought he was about to rupture, to turn on me spewing rage like Ragnarök for losing his hoard. But then a great peal of laughter burst from him, rolling like thunder.