Cynethryth turned round, palming sweat from her forehead, and I swear her face was as green as a new fern. She caught my eye and seemed embarrassed so I looked away, pointing out to Black Floki a length of tarred rope caulking which was working itself free of two of the strakes beside him. The Norseman grunted and with a gnarled thumb began to press the thin rope back in. Once I had thought Floki hated me, but we had since grown close, as sword-brothers do. Today though it seemed he was back to his miserable, brooding self.
Father Egfrith, as far as I could tell, suffered no ill-effects from Serpent’s motion and maybe that had something to do with Glum’s having cracked open his head with a sword blow. Somehow, the little monk had survived. Worse than that, he had chosen to come aboard – an odd path for a monk to board a ship full of heathens – and maybe that had something to do with the sword blow too. He was a sniffling little mörd, a weasel, but in a strange way I admired him because he must have known that any of us could squash him like a louse if he gave us reason, or merely for want of something to do. Truly, the Christ slave believed he would turn Serpent into a ship full of Christians, just as he boasted his god had turned water into wine. Though if you ask me, turning Norsemen into Christians would be more like changing wine into piss. Perhaps he even hoped to change Serpent’s name to Holy Spirit or The Jerusalem or Christ’s Hairy Left Ball or who knows what? Egfrith was a fool.
By the time the day’s heat had been chased away by a cold breeze whipping off the sea and the gold disc of the sun had rolled into the west, we had yet to set eyes on Fjord-Elk. At Serpent’s prow Jörmungand nodded gently, its faded red eyes staring seaward, tirelessly searching for her sister ship. I almost believed the snarling figurehead would give a roar of triumph if Fjord-Elk came into sight.
‘I am thinking that the crawling piece of pig’s dung might have set a more easterly course than our own,’ Olaf said, dipping a cup into the rain barrel and slurping. He stood by Knut, who gripped the tiller with the familiarity of a man holding his wife’s hand. Sigurd was behind and above them, standing on the fighting platform, looking out as the sun which plunged towards the world’s rim washed his long fair hair with golden light.
‘You think he’s that shrewd?’ Knut asked, hawking and spitting a gob of phlegm over Serpent’s side. Olaf shrugged.
‘I think he’s got the sense,’ Sigurd said, ‘to take the shortest crossing and then head south within spitting distance of the coast rather than crossing the open sea as we have done. Then he will enter the mouth of the Sicauna, that great river that eats into the heart of Frankia.’ Olaf raised one bushy eyebrow sceptically, but I thought Sigurd was probably right. As a Christian lord, Ealdorman Ealdred would have less to fear from Frankish ships patrolling the coast than we as pagans would. He would also have more to fear from open water than us, for even though the sailing conditions were perfect now, a sudden change in the weather or an irreparable leak could make a man wish he had stayed in sight of land. And Ealdred did not know Fjord-Elk.
A quizzical look nestled itself amongst Olaf’s bushy beard, like a dog settling in a pile of straw. ‘So, that English arse leaf is sucking the coast like it’s his mother’s tit,’ he said, ‘and that’s why we’ve not had so much as a sniff of him.’
Sigurd pursed his lips, scratched his own golden beard, but did not reply. He looked up at the square sail, studying the way the wind moved across it, rippling the cloth. He watched the dance of the thick sheet ropes and the direction of the waves and then he looked towards the sun. It was low, so gave him a reliable east–west bearing. His thick lips curled like a wolf’s just before the teeth are bared, because if he was right and Ealdred had crossed the shortest stretch of sea, putting him further north along the Frankish coastline, then all we had to do when we came to the coast was choose a mooring with a good view of the open channel. And wait.
With dusk came land. Frankia. I knew nothing of Frankia then, but even so the word was a heavy one. It was a word that meant power, a word that carried with it, at least to pagan ears, the threat of sharpened steel and hateful warriors and the new, ravenously hungry magic – the magic of the White Christ. For the king of the Franks was Karolus, lord of Christendom. Emperor they called him, as the Romans had named their kings who ruled lands as far and wide as the skies above. And despite his fealty to the nailed god, men said this Emperor Karolus was the greatest warrior in the entire world.
‘Can you smell that?’ Father Egfrith called. He was standing at Serpent’s prow, being careful not to touch the carved beast-head of Jörmungand. Perhaps he feared it had a taste for Christians. ‘You can smell the piety!’ he called, sniffing eagerly, crinkling his weasel-like face in pleasure. The coast loomed ahead, a low, green line broken by grey rock. ‘The Franks are a God-fearing people and their king is a light in the darkness. He is the cleansing fire that guides men from iniquity, like a beacon, a great, wind-whipped flame which saves ships from splintering against the rocks,’ he said, taking altogether too much pleasure in the comparison. ‘If we are lucky, Raven, we will meet the great king, and because God loves him, and because Karolus is said to be a generous and gracious king, maybe you will be given the chance to wash your black soul. Scrape the sin from it like fat from a calf’s skin. Christ the Almighty will drag Satan out of your blood-filled eye by his gnarly ankle.’ The mörd was grinning and I wondered what it would feel like to put that grin through the back of his head. But then I smiled, because although Egfrith thought I was the spawn of Satan, worthless as snail slime, there was something about him that I had come to like. No, not like. Rather the little man amused me.
‘Your god had better have strong arms, monk,’ I said, encompassing Serpent’s Norse crew with a sweep of my own arm, ‘if he is to yank the devil from us all. Perhaps he will find Satan hiding in Bram’s armpit, or skulking up Svein’s arse.’
‘Sin has no refuge, young man,’ Egfrith chided, as Serpent reared a rogue wave, causing him to unbalance and stumble, though he somehow kept his feet without reaching for Jörmungand. ‘For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord!’
‘What’s the little man creaking on about, Raven?’ Svein the Red asked, turning to me, his massive head cocked to one side. He was tugging a new ivory comb though his thick red hair and I guessed he had already forgotten about his old one with the missing teeth. Svein was the biggest man I had ever seen, sons of thunder a fearsome warrior of few words, and he was watching Father Egfrith the way a battle-scarred hound watches a playful pup.
‘He says his god wants to look for Satan up your arse,’ I said in Norse. ‘I told him you might enjoy that.’ The others laughed but Svein frowned, his hairy red brows meeting above his bulbous nose.
‘Tell him that he and his god are welcome to anything that comes out of my arse,’ he said, rousing more ‘hey’s. Then he lifted his right buttock and farted and Rán must have heard it at the bottom of the sea. ‘There you go, Christ slave,’ he said, ‘come and get it while it’s warm.’
The smile was still on my face when I caught Cynethryth’s eye. I clenched my teeth and cursed myself for an insensitive fool. Cynethryth’s eyes, the colour of ivy, were distant and heavy, as though she saw in mine the terrible events that had ripped her life apart. Her soul was singed by those memories like silk left too near a flame. Her face was pale and drawn from the seasickness and yet she was still beautiful. She blinked slowly, as though in nothingness there was freedom, then she turned away to watch the distant shore as Serpent slithered through the sea. The girl, thin as a birch sapling, had all but carried me away from a fight with the Welsh when I was too weak to carry myself. Together we had hidden in a hollow oak and she had stitched my shoulder and fed me berries from the forest and kept watch for our enemies. But her father had betrayed us and now, with the Frankish coast looming, Cynethryth must have known it would not be long until we faced Ealdred. She knew also that we had nothing for that treacherous worm but cold, ripping steel.
Every man aboard was a better warrior than I, except for Father Egfrith I dare say, and so now, despite what I had hoped earlier, it seemed unlikely that I would be the one to kill Ealdred. Yet for his betrayal of my jarl and for the hurt he had caused Cynethryth, but most of all because I was young and ruled by pride, I wished Ealdred to die by my blade. Maybe with the ealdorman dead and cold Cynethryth would gain some peace. But maybe she would hate me.
CHAPTER TWO
‘REEF THE SAIL, LADS. WE’D BETTER REIN HER IN A LITTLE, UNLESS any of you whoresons can swear on your mother’s milk that these Franks don’t have rocks in their sea,’ Olaf called from the tiller, stirring a flurry of movement from six Norsemen who seemed relieved to have something to do. Two of them released the halyard, lowering the sail some way down the mast, and this itself was enough to slow Serpent. The other four rolled the bottom surplus of the sail tightly and evenly, then lashed it with the short lanyards. The men on the halyard hauled rhythmically, stretching Serpent’s faded red sail up again so that the wind caught it with a loud snap. The whole manoeuvre took the time it takes a man to empty his bowels, and Olaf’s indifference suggested he expected no less efficiency from his crew. Olaf was Jarl Sigurd’s second, his most trusted captain and his friend. He had been the first of Sigurd’s wolves, the first to swear his life and his sword to the jarl, and the other men affectionately called him uncle because he was older and more experienced than any of them except old Asgot, Sigurd’s godi.
Olaf, Sigurd and Knut had been deep in conversation at Serpent’s stern since before the yellow sun touched the western sea. Now, somewhere beyond our senses, the hiss of fire in water declared the day’s end and so we had to make landfall before we risked running Serpent on to submerged rocks. According to the steersman Knut, the land towards which the dragon ship’s prow pointed was a place called Bayeux. We would have to turn into the wind now and point east or else risk being blown past the Sicauna’s estuary, which would then mean a slow and dull tack north against the wind. This could ruin our chances of catching Fjord-Elk before she entered the river’s mouth.
‘Now, Raven, we have to make a choice,’ Sigurd said. ‘Do we want to frighten these Frankish spirits away? Or do we come in peace?’ I knew he referred to Serpent’s carved prow, Jörmungand, which was either left in place or stowed depending on the Norsemen’s intentions. We could leave it staring balefully at this new land, but perhaps the land spirits, who were unknown to us, would be provoked rather than scared away and maybe those spirits were powerful.
‘I would stow her,’ I said, nodding at the figurehead, ‘until we know more about this land.’
He nodded. ‘Bjorn! Bjarni! We are traders today!’ he called, and the brothers grinned as they stood from their journey chests and weaved their way to the ship’s bow. They would detach Jörmungand and place her in Serpent’s hold. There the beast would wait patiently in the dark beneath a layer of skins, red eyes always staring, tooth-filled maw ever hungry.
I knew, despite his orders, that Sigurd had not made his decision on my counsel. Sigurd was an awe-inspiring warrior, but even he would not come as a blood-crazed bear to an unknown land. He had been testing me, for Sigurd always believed that a jarl should possess both the low cunning of Óðin and the brute strength of Thór. He owned both qualities in equal measure and that was why his men would follow him to the ocean’s end.
But even though we would come in peace, we must prepare for a fight. There was a flurry of activity as the men readied for landfall. We helped each other into our mail, never an easy thing on a moving boat – one man holding the brynja up so his pal could wriggle into it. Bram Bear helped me with mine and as always I was surprised by the sudden weight of the thing. It had belonged to Sigurd’s oathman Glum, but Glum had been a greedy lump of goat shit. He had betrayed Sigurd and now he was dead.
I twice thanked the Welsh blades that killed him, first because he deserved to die and secondly because his fine brynja was now mine. Few men owned mail, but every warrior in Sigurd’s Wolfpack did, and good mail will turn a blade aside, which meant that one of Sigurd’s wolves was worth four men in leather armour. And in those days I was young and eager to prove that I deserved that brynja and was worthy to wear what cost a fat hoard to buy.
‘We want a quiet mooring,’ Sigurd said to his steersman.
Knut pulled his long thin beard through his fist and nodded. ‘Somewhere sheltered but with a nice view of the sea, hey,’ he said.
‘A wolf must have his lair,’ Sigurd agreed, throwing his green cloak around his shoulders and pinning it at the neck with a silver wolf’s head brooch. All the men were putting on cloaks so that their mail brynjas would be mostly concealed, at least from any distance, and I made sure my own brown cloak hid the sword at my hip. That sword too had belonged to Glum and it was a fine thing. It had a five-lobed pommel with silver inlay and twisted silver wire. On the crossguard the smith had traced eight tiny Thór’s hammers, four on each side, and each was perfect, showing that the smith knew his work and was skilled. Glum must have paid much silver for the weapon or else killed a rich lord in battle and taken it. Perhaps he had even stolen it, though I doubted it, for even though in the end Glum had broken his oath and betrayed his jarl, he had once been an honourable man. But he was a simple man too, and Sigurd’s ways had befogged him. Where Glum would have made blood sacrifice, slaughtering a man for no better reason than because Glum feared the Norns and the gods, Sigurd would trust his own judgement. Where Glum would strike first and think later, Sigurd would weigh possible outcomes like hack silver on the scales, choosing the course that he could most easily read. Not that Sigurd was necessarily more cautious. I believed he would wrestle the Midgard-Serpent if he knew the skalds were watching, so that they could sing of it and their descendants’ lips would still be wet with it a hundred years after his death.
As I looked at Sigurd then, in his fine mail and with his great sword, the sword of his father, I thought of the hero Beowulf who slew the monster Grendal, whose stories had filled my head on cold nights around the hearth. I thought of brave Týr, god of battle, of mighty Thór the Lord of Thunder, and of Óðin god of war, Father of the Slain and Master of the Fray. For Jarl Sigurd was the marrow of our ambitions. He was the legends and the tales and the fireside whispers. But the ledge he walked was a narrow one and I think he knew it, too. Either the gods would love him and favour him because he was a great warrior and wise, or they would be jealous of him and seek his destruction. These were the thoughts that filled my head as we came to the Frankish coast, a stone’s throw from rocks and small islands, seeking a bay in which to plunge Serpent’s anchor.
My mouth was as dry as a herring hung in the wind, but I was not the only one on edge. I saw other Norsemen licking salt-cracked lips, clenching and unclenching their fists, and plaiting their hair to keep their hands busy. The coast we had come to, as dusk filled the world, looked windswept and empty, but that was not to say there were not warriors waiting in the long grass, crouching behind boulders and lurking in the shady marshes. A lookout on a high bluff would have seen Serpent’s red sail long before we could have seen him, and by now there might be a hundred warriors waiting to cut us down when we waded through the surf. We rounded a bluff where the water broke, sucked and plunged, and beyond it we came to a bay carved out by an eternity of wind and waves. As we drew closer the air filled with a keening noise, which at first I took to be an effect of the wind, perhaps made louder by the surrounding rocks. Then I noticed that the sounds were slightly different in pitch and suddenly I understood. Seals! The black and brown ‘rocks’ were not rocks at all. Dozens of seals were hauled up on every kelp-slick skerry and crag, moaning and crying without seeming to, the way bees or flies hum.
‘Get the sail down, lads,’ Olaf called, gesturing for two men to ready the anchor, which was a boulder wedged into a wooden frame tied to a length of thick rope. ‘Oars out. Easy now.’ He moved to Serpent’s bow so that he could watch out for submerged rocks.
Hastein, a squat man with a round face, red cheeks and yellow hair, was already there, leaning over Serpent’s sheer strake, taking depth measurements. He used a line on the end of which was tied a lead weight. Every time the weight reached the ocean bottom, Hastein hauled it back in and measured the line against the distance between his outstretched arms. He tapped the lead weight’s hollow bottom against his palm, depositing a dollop of wet sand there and holding it up for Olaf and Knut to see. Olaf nodded.
Raven: Sons of Thunder Page 2
