Raven: Sons of Thunder (5 page)

‘Swallow what?’ I asked, as always wary of this man and his strange magic that fed on blood sacrifice.

‘You are Óðin’s brat.’ He screwed up his wind-ravaged face. ‘Or, at the least, your life thread is woven into the All-Father’s cloak.’ His brown teeth built a smile that sent a shudder through me. I wondered by what seidr he had known what I was thinking.

‘Sigurd was right about you, for all the good it has done us.’ He nodded, planting the spear’s butt in the sand. ‘You are marked. How else are you still breathing? Half of the warriors who
set out with Sigurd are gone. You have stood in the shieldwall with men four times your measure, some of the finest blood-loving wolves our land has weaned. Yet here you are alive and spitting.’ He shared that horrible grin with Cynethryth, who frowned back, ill at ease around the godi. ‘This one’s wyrd is safely hidden beneath the Far-Wanderer’s hat, girl,’ he said in Norse, which Cynethryth could not understand, ‘or the worms would have been sucking his guts by now.’ He screwed up his face, adding, ‘Isn’t that right, Raven?’

‘I have been lucky, Asgot,’ I said, aware that my hand rested instinctively on the sword hilt at my hip. We touch our weapons for luck and the Christians scorn us for it, but why should we not? Our weapons keep us alive. I have seen the Christians sign crosses over their chests with their fingers. Perhaps that brings them luck. I would like to see them try it in the clash of shieldwalls.

‘Lucky, you say?’ Again Asgot glanced at Cynethryth, the bones plaited in his hair rattling. His faded blue eyes widened, stretching the old wind-burnt skin at their corners. ‘Then perhaps that explains why our jarl’s luck is dripping away like snot from a troll’s nose. You have stolen Sigurd’s luck, Raven. It has jumped,’ he suddenly hopped from one foot to the other, ‘from him to you, boy, like a louse.’ He grinned sourly at Cynethryth, pointing a bony finger at her. ‘You should stay . . . away from him,’ he said clumsily in English. ‘Death follows him. Like a stink.’

‘It is your own fetid stench that taints the air, old man,’ Cynethryth said, turning her back on the godi. ‘Walk with me, Raven. My legs are happy to be on solid ground and itch to move.’ We left Asgot cackling with a sound like breaking finger bones.

Further along the beach I saw Bram and Svein bent low, spears in hand, creeping up on a group of five or more slumberous seals, several of which had fox-red fur. I could not imagine two
more conspicuous men, and yet by the grin in Bram’s beard they seemed confident enough.

‘We’ll gather some wood for the cookfire,’ I told Cynethryth, nodding towards the high ground beyond the beach. ‘There should be some at the top of that bluff.’ Of course, the higher we went the more chance I would have of catching sight of
Fjord-Elk
riding the dusk waves, though I knew she was more likely to be moored up somewhere for the night, just like us. Still, I stepped ahead of Cynethryth and she followed me, and though I was relieved that Asgot no longer seemed to want to introduce my throat to his sacrificial knife, his talk of my stealing Sigurd’s luck froze my chest like January rain in a barrel.

TWO GREAT IRON COOKING POTS WERE FETCHED FROM
SERPENT
and into them we put the meat and some of the blubber from four seals. Now that the tide was high, the creatures were sleeping in the water, floating upright with just their heads breaking the surface, and we were relieved that they had stopped their strange singing. To the broth we added handfuls of whatever shellfish we had managed to scrounge in the bay, including cockles, mussels and winkles. Arnvid found a clump of fennel and another man, Bothvar, pulled up three large roots of horseradish, which he chopped up and tossed into the bubbling stew, so that our mouths burnt no matter how much water we drank. Bram insisted that ale was the cure, so long as you were prepared to drink enough of it, and we followed his advice wholeheartedly. We soaked this tasty stew up with stale bread taken from the tents on the Wessex shore spread with the remaining seal blubber, which had been melted with a palmful of salt.

‘It was a shame to kill that red seal, hey Svein,’ Bram said, his bird’s-nest beard glistening with grease by the cookfire’s stuttering light.

‘I am still sad about it,’ Svein replied, slurping the broth from a deep spoon. ‘She had such pretty eyes.’

‘Aye, reminded me of your sister,’ Bram dared, winking at Arnvid, who chuckled.

Sigurd had sent men inland to search for any settlements or houses, warning them to make sure they were not seen. The last thing we wanted was a Frankish levy waking us up in the middle of the night, for Father Egfrith had it in his mind that the holy spirit, so strong in this land, would warn the good Christians of the presence of heathens and they would march as one to kill us, brandishing flaming crosses and swords dipped in holy water.

‘Then let them come, monk,’ Sigurd had said, ‘for I’ve yet to see a wooden cross fare well against a Norse axe, and whether these Franks keep their blades in holy water or barrels of virgins’ piss means nothing to me. Such blades will be rusty and not worth fearing.’ The Norsemen had laughed at this, but we kept one eye open, just in case.

There was no sign of
Fjord-Elk
. At any one time there were at least six men with their eyes turned to the channel beyond the bay. Even after dark Sigurd set three watches of two men each and these men stared out by the light of the moon and stars in case Ealdred had been daring or stupid enough to follow the coast at night. So we waited, lulled by the ceaseless sighs of the ocean.

I slept next to Cynethryth, which meant I was also close enough to Father Egfrith to hear his constant sniffing and fidgeting. I suspected that being a follower of the White Christ did not protect you from fleas and his habit must have crawled with the biting bastards. I would have wagered the thing would shuffle along the ground of its own accord if the monk ever took it off. But Cynethryth seemed to find some comfort in the man and for this, at least, I was grateful.

As Cynethryth was never far from Egfrith, so the Wessexman
Penda was never far from me. Penda wanted his ealdorman dead as much as any of us did, maybe more so. He no doubt imagined himself swinging the deathblow as payment for Ealdred’s treachery, for the ealdorman had as good as killed every Wessexman who had marched into the lands of the Welsh with us. But Penda’s bloodlust made him no less wary of the men he now travelled with. For all his wild battle fury and death-skill, the spiky-haired warrior was still a Christian, and as such it was no easy thing for him to find himself in the company of those who kept to the old ways. Yet Penda and I had fought and bled together. We two had survived when death had claimed so many and no matter what our differences, we had a bond as strong as Gleipnir, the magic fetter forged of a mountain’s roots and bird’s spittle which restrained the wolf Fenrir. Penda also kept one eye on Cynethryth, though I judged it protective rather than Freyja-stirred. Certainly it was not the same way I had seen him look at a red-haired beauty in Wessex. To my eyes the redhead had looked a loose woman, perhaps even a whore, but Penda had talked of marrying her and so I reckoned he was merely soft for Cynethryth because she was from his own land, or because she was a woman amongst brutal men, or because he had loved her brother Weohstan. Nevertheless, none of this would be enough to save her father when the time came. In this regard also, he and I were joined.

Dawn broke late because of a skein of low grey cloud through which the sun was hard pressed to burn. A drizzle had filled the air since the early hours and we woke damp and irritable, not least because the local inhabitants, the seals, were keening again as though they had forgotten all about our spears. The men of the last watch returned yawning, their eyes red and heavy as they stoked up the fire and hunkered under their blankets and oiled skins. Egfrith handed me a cup of rainwater and I grunted thanks before drinking and passing the cup to Penda. Cynethryth’s blankets were empty and Penda must have
read the lines on my brow because he grinned and nodded over towards the rocks, of which there were many more now that the tide was out. Cynethryth’s gown lay on one of them whilst she bathed out of sight and for a moment I imagined her washing in the cold, plunging surf, but the image was as tormenting as it was beguiling and I shifted uncomfortably, steering my mind to something else.

Penda nodded up to the high ground above the beach where sea thrift and white stars of chickweed fought for their place amongst prickly sea holly and coarse grass.

‘Sigurd has been up there since before first light,’ he said.

‘He wants his ship back,’ I said, choosing not to mention Sigurd’s fear that his luck was on the wane, for death had followed the Fellowship like a hungry shadow and the man who had betrayed us had escaped. ‘If
Fjord-Elk
were mine I’d want her back, too.’

Penda nodded. The cormorant had returned, barking somewhere in the grey morning, as miserable about the drizzle as we were.

‘What will he do when he gets her?’ Penda asked. ‘Are we enough to crew two ships?’ Somehow his thick hair was still standing in spikes despite the damp. We should have gathered sticks and stuck them in the sand to make tents of our oiled skins, but the night had been fine and dry when we had turned in. It was too late now. We were already soaking.

‘Sigurd will know what to do,’ I said, scratching my beard. In truth it was still not much of a beard. A good breeze would have blown it off, but I was proud of it, though it itched like Father Egfrith’s fleas. To make matters worse, the biting flies that love summer drizzle were gathering in faint brown clouds and beginning to test our patience. ‘That hoard we got from Ealdred must be fat enough to buy another dragon the equal of
Serpent
or
Fjord-Elk
,’ I said. ‘We are rich men, Penda.’

He shook his head. ‘It shines well enough, that trove,’ he
said, gesturing to
Serpent
, which sat serene, gently dipping in the low tide, ‘but for me it’s like looking at another man’s wife.’ Two Norsemen had swum out to replace Bjorn and Bjarni, who were now wading ashore, their swords and shields held above their heads. ‘I will earn my own silver, lad,’ Penda said gruffly, touching the spear beside him. He stretched out a leg, kicking a burning stick back into the fire. It hissed angrily. Other Norsemen sat around more fires, waking slowly, drinking and talking in hushed voices. The day was foul but the air smelled green and fresh.

‘Sigurd knows your worth,’ I said, recalling the slaughter I had seen Penda make. The Wessexman was a rarity, a warrior worthy to join Sigurd’s wolves. He must have known it too, yet he still ached to prove himself as all warriors do.

He shrugged. ‘When we run into that treacherous bastard Ealdred, your Jarl Sigurd will see me for what I am. My sword will talk for me. It will sing, Raven, like a good scop.’ He grinned, snatching some invisible thing from the air. ‘Then I will take what I am owed.’

And so we spent the day complaining about the weather, playing tafl, looking to our war gear again – a constant job in wet weather – and being bored. Other than the scouting parties, we dared not venture far from the bay for risk of running into any Franks or in case we had to put to sea quickly because
Fjord-Elk
was seen in the channel beyond. But
Fjord-Elk
did not come. We ate seal again that night because the creatures were too stupid to get away from us, and the sky continued to spit on us, and this time there were few jokes around the fires.

Sigurd brooded. The jarl kept his own company and Olaf was the only one who dared talk to him, though even he said little, wrapped in his own thoughts. Perhaps he thought of his son, white-haired Eric who had died full of arrows outside Ealdred’s hall. He had been Olaf’s only son and now there was no one to carry Olaf’s bloodline forward. I wondered if the
man would ever return to the dead boy’s mother or whether he had set his course by another wind; a wind that would whip his own name into a story to be sung in future years in the stead of a living heir. For I had seen Olaf offer war against unbeatable odds on the English shore and this had made me believe that his heart was broken.

The watches were set again and this time I was part of them. I was pleased to climb the wet hill, clutching tall saltbush stems and pulling myself up, the shield on my back, the sword at my hip and a spear in my hand. Penda went with me, though I guessed he was as reluctant to leave Cynethryth as I was.

‘The monk will watch over her,’ I said, breaking the silence as we climbed. We were about a hundred paces from a narrow ledge that wound steeply up and to the right above the northern end of the bay. This sheep path would take us to a headland crag of limestone, one of the lookout places from which a man named Osk from the previous watch said he had seen the Wessex coast, though the others said it was just low cloud on the horizon.