Thunder God (20 page)

‘Seventy or 120,’ said Ingolf, his voice gone suddenly hoarse. ‘It might as well be 1000 pounds because we will never be able to get it.’

I caught sight of Olaf standing at the back. He was studying the faces in the room, as if trying to guess which way the vote would go.

I looked around for Cabal, expecting to see his shaggy head towering above the rest, but he was not there. I wondered why he had stayed away.

Now Guthrun stood, and cast his gaze about the room, seeming to stare at each person in turn. ‘We cannot surrender to blackmail, no matter how much they want. What will be left of this town if we give in?’

‘Its people,’ said Kari.

The crowd turned to look at her. They seemed surprised to hear Kari’s voice.

‘And its houses,’ she continued, ‘and its animals and everything else we can see with our eyes and touch with our hands. Perhaps it is the will of the old gods that we no longer hold them sacred anymore. Maybe we are not supposed to survive. Not as we are now.’

As her words cleaved into my head, I glimpsed us long into the future, so far beyond the boundaries of our lives that the only thing left of us was the dust of our cremated flesh, pitted swords and rotten shields, just silhouettes of rust and bone. We would live on only in stories, like Sasser Greycloak, the truth so patched with lies as to make us strangers even to ourselves.

‘It is about more than just the old faith and the new,’ I said. ‘Without that money, Trygvasson will take everything, and he will become the god we pray to, the one we beg to go on living. Is that the life you want?’ As I spoke, I felt an utter helplessness, knowing the decision did not rest with me.

So I kept silent, hearing the tide of argument ebb back and forth.

Then a voice boomed out, ‘So you have given up already.’

The room grew suddenly quiet, as everyone in it turned to see Cabal filling up the doorway. He must have been standing outside the whole time. He looked dishevelled, as if he had not slept in a long time. He stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. ‘Trygvasson knows you cannot find the money. He wants only to break you, so that you have no choice but to do what he says. And do you think that when he has finished building churches all across this country that he will simply leave you in peace? Give in now, and you will never stop giving in.’

‘So what would you have us do?’ asked Ingolf.

‘I know how you can get that silver,’ he replied, ‘and plenty more besides.’

‘You’re talking about a raid,’ said Olaf. They were the first words he had said.

‘More like a robbery,’ replied Cabal, ‘and if it is done right, no one will be hurt.’

Now Olaf pushed his way forward, until he stood in the centre of the room. ‘A raid? Arobbery? Call it whatever you want. How is it to be done? With one ship which happens to be mine? With our host of
warriors
?’ He swept his arm around the room. ‘There are barely enough weapons in this town for one person to commit suicide, let alone start a fight.’

‘We may not be warriors,’ said Ingolf, in a rare moment of defiance, ‘but we could try to get the job done.’

‘You could take along that little statue of yours,’ hissed Tola, ‘and throw it at whoever gets in your way.’

Ingolf turned to her. For a moment it looked as if he might say something, but then he just shook his head and fell silent.

‘Are you saying that we go on a raid every time we have to pay these taxes?’ asked Kari.

‘No. All we need is a fair chance,’ said Cabal, ‘to put the past behind us and begin again.’

In that moment, I knew he was talking only to her, and the past he wished to put behind him was his own.

Now Cabal looked around the room. ‘Have you never dreamed of streets paved with stones instead of mud? What about a ship-building yard, a decent foundry and herds to graze the meadow, instead of the few straying cows and goats and sheep you own right now?
That
is the kind of place that can pay 120 pounds of silver and not be turned into a village of beggars at the same time. If you bring wealth to Trygvasson, he will not meddle in your affairs. No farmer will slaughter a cow that is producing milk. As you are now, you have nothing to
bargain with. You live at the mercy of whatever thug comes walking into town to take whatever he wants. Why will you not fight for what you have?’

‘This is not some warring outpost at the end of the world,’ said Olaf. ‘We will fight, just as most people will fight, but only as a last resort.’

‘This
is
your last resort! If you wait any longer, it will be too late, because of what these Christians are doing to you, and you do not even know it.’

‘What are they doing?’ asked Ingolf.

‘They are writing,’ said Cabal, pinching the air in front of him and raking his hand madly back and forth. ‘Scribbling the history of their time, in which they call you a scourge sent down by their own God to punish them for their sins. You are not even real to them! You are a figment of their God’s imagination. But the silver I can get for you is real. It is ten days sailing from here, maybe less, and stored in a church, a
Christian
church, in a little village on the coast of my old country. You have two choices now. You can all leave, just pack up and go, so that when those tax collectors return all they find are ruined and abandoned houses. Or you can stay,’ he continued, ‘and get on with your lives, and even make them better than before. If you want that, you come talk to me.’

Then he was gone. The slammed door boxed our ears.

I followed Cabal out into the dark. ‘If this is such a simple task,’ I asked, ‘why has another raiding ship not made off with the silver already?’

‘They do not know it is there,’ he replied. ‘Most of the churches that have been raided are those whose spires can be seen from the water. This church is in a village called St David’s. It is impossible to spot the church from the sea, because it was built without a spire, to hide it from the raiding
ships that come across from the Norse colonies in Ireland. I know because I was apprenticed to a monk in that place.’

‘And that is where you learned to hate them.’

‘It is,’ he replied.

‘And still you will not tell me why.’

‘Some secrets are meant to be kept,’ he said. ‘You know that much yourself. And the secret those Christians have kept at St David’s is that they have a tunnel beneath the church for hiding their money. I saw them carry chests of money down into that tunnel, even helped to carry them myself. It was all done at night, so that even the townspeople would not know what was hidden there. The village lies upstream from a narrow river which feeds into the sea. I can guide us there. If we go into the town at night, I can lead you straight to the church. I can get us into the tunnel and we will be gone again by sunrise. The two of us alone could do it, if we had someone to bring us there and back.’

‘We would need Olaf’s boat, and I do not know if he will agree.’

‘I thought as much myself, and whether Olaf agrees or not, his boat is the one we will use.’

‘But he will have to sail it. No one else has the skill.’

Cabal kneaded the muscles of his neck, setting the bones straight with dull clicks under the skin. ‘You speak to Olaf. Tell him if he refuses, I will see to it that he never sails his boat again, or walks without a stick.’

‘It is a long time since you last saw that church,’ I said. ‘What makes you sure the money is still there?’

‘If the money was safe, why would they move it? Unless you have a better plan, this is our only chance.’

When I walked back inside, all faces turned towards me.

Guthrun stood out in front. ‘We have decided,’ he said. ‘We trust you to do whatever is best for the town.’

I nodded. ‘Cabal and I will leave as soon as we can.’

In twos and threes, the crowd stepped out into the night, the restless children sleeping now on the shoulders of their fathers and the old ones plodding arm in arm along the stony path.

I asked Olaf to stay behind.

When he and I were the only ones left, I closed the door behind us. While I threw some more logs on the fire, Olaf walked over to the pillars. He rapped his knuckles against each one, as if to summon out whatever lived inside. Then he turned and smiled at me. ‘I wonder if I can guess what you want.’

‘I expect you can,’ I sat down by the fire and warmed my hands before the crackling wood.

He knotted his hands behind his back and began to pace in front of me. ‘It seems to me you are out of luck.’

‘Are we?’ I asked.

He spun around to face me. ‘Yes, you are. You, in particular, are out of luck.’

‘Are you going to sail the boat for us or not?’

‘Gladly. I will take you there and bring you safely back again. Is that what you want to hear?’

‘Yes,’ I said cautiously, watching him over the tops of the flames.

‘What I have to say next, you might not want to hear, but you had better listen anyway.’

‘Think carefully before you speak, Olaf. At this moment, we might not be the friends we used to be, but we are not enemies, either. Do not alter that if you can help it.’

‘At this moment, whether we are friends or enemies is of no consequence to me,’ he said. ‘As soon as I have brought you back, you will hand over the temple, saying only that you have had a change of heart.’

I breathed out, shifting the smoke. ‘And if I refuse?’

‘Then you will watch everything you have done for this
town, and everything you dreamed of doing, vanish under the floorboards of a Christian church. I told you this was not over, and I told you I would not give up. I have endured a life of ridicule from the people of Altvik because I have never stopped believing that I deserved what I am now going to get. I have waited too long for this chance, and I am not going to wait for another.’

A darkness was moving across my mind, like the shadow of a cloud across a field. ‘Olaf,’ I said, ‘What you want, you will not find by doing this.’

‘From now on, I decide what I want!’ he shouted. ‘Now leave! You do not belong here any more.’

I found Cabal waiting for me halfway down the hill.

He was standing on a rock, wrapped in his cloak, which whipped around his legs with a sound like the beating of wings.

It took me a moment to chase from my mind the image of Greycloak. Time and again over the years, I had returned to the memory of myself as I ran out after him, into the crashing jaws of the storm. I would wake from a dead sleep, calling out to myself to stop, to turn back before it was too late, but my old self never heard. It scrambled on until it disappeared into the lightning’s roaring fire.

‘What did he say?’ asked Cabal.

I told him what had happened.

Cabal stared up at the temple, where a sliver of orange firelight flickered through the half-open door. The rest of the temple was hidden in such darkness that the fire seemed to be standing by itself, an almost human shape.

‘Tell him we have agreed,’ said Cabal.

I knew what he was thinking. Olaf would bring us there and back, but he would never live to set foot in this town again.
Cabal would snap Olaf’s neck like a piece of kindling wood. Then Cabal would feed him to the fish.

‘You hesitate,’ said Cabal.

‘Of course I hesitate,’ I replied. ‘I have known him since we were children, and even if I despise what he is doing, I cannot help but understand his reasons.’

‘The time for reasoning is past,’ snapped Cabal. ‘From this point onwards, we owe him nothing, not even his life.’ He jumped down from the rock and set one huge, blunt finger against my chest. ‘The man I knew in Miklagard would not have hesitated even for a moment.’

‘I am not that same man, anymore.’

‘Even so, the purpose of your voyage home is still the same. You can no more let him steal from you what is yours by right than we can let these Christains steal what little wealth these peope here possess. Even if you try to forget who we were in the Varangian, you cannot forget the codes by which we lived. Those belong to the present as much as they do to the past.’

I stared at the ground, wrapped in silence. Then I raised my head and looked him in the eye. ‘Why would you lead us in a raid against your own people?’ I asked.

Cabal gave no answer. All he said was, ‘Think no more about it. This is as good as done.’ Then he set off down the hill.

I stood there, alone in the dark. I though about Olaf. In my mind, he was already dead. I imagined his pale and lifeless face, sinking to the bottom of the sea.

Morning fog drifted across the beach, smelling of seaweed and rain.

Olaf, Cabal and I loaded water barrels into the rowboat.

Cabal made no sign that he knew about the deal Olaf had made. There was almost a gentleness in the way Cabal spoke with him now, the way a condemned man is spoken to, with old grudges set aside as he prepares for the last journey of his life.

Olaf himself was quick to smile as he lifted the barrels from the sand and set them in the boat.

We realised that there were not enough weapons even for the three of us. My sword now belonged to that Bulgar trader. Olaf had no shield and his sword was better suited to measuring cloth than swinging in a fight. Only Cabal was fully armed, with an axe, sword, spear and his round, white-painted shield.

Olaf brushed aside our concerns. ‘Hakon will come with me this afternoon, and I will return with all the weaponry we need.’

The first sign of anyone stirring in the town was the creak and thump of the alehouse door as it opened and closed. I knew it was Ingolf without even turning to look, as the door had such a particular sound, like that of a weary person trying
to get up out of a chair. Then came Ingolf’s heavy footsteps and the slap of the leather apron against his knees. He carried an old sword in a wooden scabbard, one of his purchases from Olaf. ‘Here I am,’ he said.

‘What of it?’ Cabal sat against the rowboat, one heavy leather bag in each hand. The bags were filled with salt, for seasoning food on the trip.

‘I will come with you.’ Ingolf patted the scabbard. ‘I am ready to go.’

‘And you have been training?’ Cabal nodded at the flimsy sword.

‘I know enough,’ said Ingolf.

‘Draw it then,’ said Cabal.

‘What?’ he asked, his face turning pale. ‘The sword? Now?’

‘Now,’ whispered Cabal.

Ingolf set his hand on the hilt and began to draw the blade.

But the sword had not left its scabbard before Cabal swung one of the salt bags into the left side of Ingolf’s head.

Ingolf tilted over, the sword wobbling out of his grip. He was on his way down when the other salt bag thumped into his right cheek. For a moment it looked as if Ingolf had steadied himself again. But then he collapsed and lay at Cabal’s feet.

We all stared down at Ingolf in wordless disappointment.

Ingolf groaned and sat up. He lifted his apron and pressed his face against it, and when he let it drop again, the soggy imprint of his cheeks and forehead were smudged into the leather. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘You fell over,’ said Cabal. ‘Eventually.’

Ingolf climbed slowly to his feet. ‘Let me come along. What do I have to look forward to for the rest of my life except making ale and wiping those wretched tables fifty times a day? I cannot stay here doing nothing.’

‘What do you have to look forward to?’ Cabal slung the salt
bags into the bow of the boat. ‘Old age! To throw away your life proves nothing. Take some advice and stay home.’

‘Ingolf,’ I said, ‘Cabal is right. Give up the alehouse if you cannot stand it anymore, but do not give up your life.’

Ingolf rubbed the side of his head, where the salt bags had slapped against his temples. ‘I told her I was coming,’ he said.

We did not need to ask who he was talking about.

Ingolf sighed heavily. ‘At least promise me you will talk about it.’

‘We will talk,’ said Olaf, and patted him gently on the back.

When Ingolf had gone, Olaf turned to Cabal and me. ‘Is there anything to say?’

We shook our heads.

‘Then here he stays, but that old witch who calls herself his mother will never let him hear the end of this,’ said Olaf. The muscles of his jaw flinched with anger as he spoke.

Olaf and Cabal shoved the skiff out into the bay and rowed towards the Drakkar. All that could be seen of them above the fog was their heads. Their muttering voices reached across the morning mist.

While they were out at the Drakkar, Tola came down to the beach.

I was coiling a length of walrus-hide rope. ‘What is it, Tola?’

‘The things I said …’ She pressed her hand against her mouth and slid her fingers down over her lips. ‘I never thought he would ask to come along. He is not a brave man. You cannot let him go.’

I straightened up. ‘Why not?’

‘He will get himself killed.’ Her voice was weak and hoarse.

‘There is that possibility.’ It was all I could do not to spit in her face.

She moaned. ‘You would risk the life of a friend just to spite me?’

‘There are several lives at risk.’

‘I love him. I know it does not always show –’

I cut her off. ‘No, it does not show.’

She jabbed her finger at me, sudden anger in place of her sadness. ‘If he goes, you will be responsible for him! I will hold you to it.’

I stepped forward, crowding her space. ‘But you are responsible for his asking to come with us, and I will hold you to that.’

She walked away sobbing.

I was not going to say anything else to her, but then I changed my mind and called her back. ‘If I tell him to stay,’ I began.

‘Please!’ She held her clawed and begging hands beside her face. ‘Please do not bring him with you.’

‘You will never mention it,’ I said.

Slowly, she lowered her hands. ‘Never,’ she said quietly.

‘Nor will you humiliate him again in front of the whole town,’ I said in a low voice. ‘Do you not see? He would rather die than go on living like that. Can you not understand how much he loves you and how much he hates you as well?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘Promise me, Tola.’

She nodded, then she sniffed and swallowed.

I began to coil the rope again.

She opened her mouth to speak.

‘Go now,’ I said, and turned away.

Later that morning, Olaf and I sailed out of the bay, then turned south, hugging the shore.

He did not say where we were going, but there was no need for me to ask. We soon sighted the cove in which he had watched the raiders land all those years ago. Then we lowered our sail, dropped anchor and rowed ashore.

Olaf was nervous as we walked up the shingle beach. At the
high-tide line, dried seaweed, crumpled and black, lay tangled in amongst old sea shells, twisted driftwood and the empty armor of dead crabs. ‘This is where it happened,’ he said, almost whispering, as if afraid someone would overhear us.

I wondered how many nights the grey faces of the dead had lunged at him from the darkness of his sleep, stalking him across the years.

Under the canopy of pines, the bones of the raiders were still lying on the ground. Even though they were green with mould and cracked from age, I had not imagined they would be so well-preserved. There were even fragments of clothing and curled and brittle shreds of leather from their shoes. In silence, we walked among the slender ribs, the scattered dice of spine and hooped bones of pelvises.

I thought about the bears that had done this. I wondered if they still lived here. There were bears in these hills, but they were rarely seen these days. Sometimes, in the early summer, older males would chase the younger ones down from the high ground. I had seen them lumbering across the grazing fields, their fur dark brown or silvery or black, rarely the same colour twice. Sometimes they would rise up on their hind legs and sniff the wind. That was when you could see how big they really were.

In the gloomy green light which sifted down through the trees, Olaf found the place where he had stashed the weapons. We pulled aside the rocks and uncovered the swords and armour sheathed in spiders’ webs. We sorted out the things we could still use, smearing our hands with decades of grime.

The wooden shields had rotted, as had the leather-wrapped wood of the sword scabbards, but the sword blades inside them were in fair shape. The helmets and chain-mail vests seemed usable once we had shaken them out, showering our feet with flecks of rust.

As I lifted the swords and handed them to Olaf, I realised my hands were shaking. Amemory had returned, of myself on that other raider’s ship. I felt a sudden rage take hold of me. In the madness that it brought, I wanted to conjure these men back to life, to bind their rotten skeletons with ribbons of vein and slippery knots of muscle, to jam new eyes into their hollow heads and pour the blood back down their throats until their hearts gasped into motion. Then I would kill them all over again, for what they had done to Olaf’s childhood and to mine.

When we returned to Altvik, we handed over the gear to Guthrun, who made no comment about where we had found these things. Either he already knew, or he was wise enough not to ask. He resharpened each sword blade, scrubbed off the rust with a mixture of oil and sand, then removed the old leather and wire wrapping from around the handle, replacing it with simple leather cord.

Olaf chose a sword with a winding pattern of serpents and vines on the hilt.

I took one of simpler but more sturdy construction. Then I brought down my chain-mail vest from its hook by the door, as well as my old shield and spear. After tipping out a bat who had been living in the hollow of the boss, I wiped off the dust and painted over the white paint with red.

Cabal did the same with his.

We looked at the shields, the paint still shining wet, drops of it stretching from the rims, then breaking and splashing on the ground in tiny bloody sunbursts.

‘It is no good painting those things white,’ said Cabal. ‘They always end up red again.’

Later in the day, I headed down towards the beach, carrying Cabal’s gear as well as my own. We would leave on the outgoing
tide. On the way, I stopped off at Kari’s house, knowing that Cabal would be there.

I found them standing on the doorstep, arms wrapped around each other.

‘It is time to go,’ I told Cabal.

Slowly, he released her and stepped back.

I handed Cabal his weapons and his shield.

‘Look at you now,’ she said to us. ‘I thought you had left your pasts behind you.’

‘We thought so, too,’ I said, ‘but they caught up with us again.’

‘None of this will have been worth it if a single life is lost,’ she pleaded.

‘And if we do not take the risk,’ replied Cabal, ‘how many lives will we lose later in the name of Jesus Christ?’

Kari saw that it was no use arguing. ‘Promise me you will look after each other. I have already lost you once,’ she told me. Then, turning to Cabal, she said, ‘And you I could not stand to lose at all.’

Despite what she said, there was a blankness in her her expression, a sadness beyond tears which told me that she did not expect to see either of us again. The happiness, which had only just begun to seem permanent, now took on the blur of an illusion. Even as she implored us to take care and to come home, we were already freezing in her mind into a thing which belonged in the past and only and forever in the past.

It was evening when we left town. We ran up the sail. Its belly filled with the breeze and ropes creaked as they drew taut. The walrus at our bow nudged out into the open ocean. Soon I felt the familiar yielding of the boards under my feet as the deepsea waves slid by beneath us.

Our shields hung along the outside, strapped to the oar ports. Sea spray cut across them, beading on the new paint.

I checked the bearing dial, while Olaf stood beside me at the tiller.

Cabal watched the land vanish slowly into the water, colour draining from his face as he lost sight of the Grimsvoss mountains. He turned to me and smiled weakly, lips pinched bloodlessly together. A few minutes later, with the motion of the water churning in his stomach, he roared his guts into the waves, hands white-knuckled on the rim of the boat.

Olaf and I shook our heads. The ocean had already set its rhythm in our bodies.

We sailed hard with a leading wind, south by south west as Cabal had told us. At night, we hauled the spare sail over the bow to make a canopy, then took turns sleeping beneath it.

For two days, Cabal lay curled up under sea-sprayed blankets, hungry but too sick to eat. Now and then, he lolled his head over the side and streaked the warshields with his retching.

When it was time for a meal, I would join Olaf at the steerboard, handing him slabs of bread with dried meat and cheese on them. We drank rain that poured in rivulets from the steerboard arm, or scooped our wooden mugs into the casks we had brought on board.

Olaf could not hide his happiness at the reward which he thought was waiting for him once we reached Altvik again. ‘I only want to show you, and everyone else, that Tostig made a mistake. The opportunity was not given to me, so I was forced to take it. I will see to it that you are provided for. You will be welcome to work for me once things are settled.’ He slapped me on the shoulder. ‘You will not go hungry, I promise!’

I played along and smiled, but inside I felt so cold it was as if every vein in my body had turned into branches of red glass.

On the morning of the third day, Cabal announced that he was well again. He more than made up for the food he had
missed with the huge portions he devoured now. Then he stood at the bow, riding the waves, as if to smell the English coast approaching.

‘We are coming to a stormy sea,’ he told us. He had many names for the wind which I had never heard before. The damp and gentle breeze which came in from the east he called the Cigfran. If it blew from the west, he called it Heligog. A southern wind was Morfran.

I found myself trying to memorise these new words, as if knowing their names might help me to control them.

The wind to fear, Cabal said, was from the north, the Arador, which ploughed the sea into a frenzy so relentless that you could not sail into it, nor reef your sail and ride it out. The only thing you could do was to slacken sail and run with it as far as it would take you, then hope you could find your way home when the wind let up. ‘The Arador is alive,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘I mean it is alive, like you and me. It has a voice. I have heard it.’ Cabal looked around, as if he heard it still, like the beating of wings above our heads.