Raven: Sons of Thunder

by Giles Kristian

  ‘It’s a nice sandy bottom!’ he called to Sigurd. ‘And a rising tide.’

  Sigurd nodded because these conditions favoured us. We could, if we wished to, ride Serpent right in, beaching her above the high water mark. I plunged my oar’s blade into the swelling surf with short chops, thinking that we were lucky and that the omens were good. But Sigurd had other ideas. He strode down giles kristian from the stern fighting platform and marched along the deck, past us all, towards Hastein.

  ‘How tall are you, Hastein?’ he asked.

  The man frowned. ‘Five and a half feet, lord.’ I suspected he was shorter and so did Sigurd by the smile that touched his lips.

  ‘Then you had better shout when we come to five feet of water, Hastein, otherwise you’ll hope you’re here because your mother fucked a fish.’ He turned to face us all. ‘Hitch up your skirts, ladies. I have heard the water in Frankia is especially wet.’

  There were a few groans because no one liked to get seawater in his mail. There was also the very real possibility of a man’s drowning if he jumped off a boat wearing his brynja.

  ‘Stop your whining, you farts,’ Olaf bellowed, tying his helmet’s leather chin strap. ‘You’ll be lucky if Karolus himself isn’t somewhere up there waiting to send the White Christ’s legions against us with swords of fire and pagan-gutting spears!’

  ‘I’d rather jump into the middle of a hundred Christians than paddle to shore like a dog,’ Svein the Red grumbled, thumping his helmet down as the anchor was lowered over Serpent’s stern with a splosh. Two bow ropes would be taken ashore and tied to trees or rocks, making the ship fast in the bay where it would be safe from rocks and enemies alike. I wondered what Svein had to complain about, as he was so tall that the water would only come up to his chest whilst it leaked into other’s mouths.

  ‘Bjorn and Bjarni, you’ll stay aboard with Knut and the girl,’ Olaf said as we dipped the oars in the darkening water, carefully manoeuvring Serpent so that her prow remained facing the beach, whilst Hastein and a man named Yrsa slipped over the side with the thick mooring ropes. When Serpent was leashed, we stowed the oars and plugged the ports. Then we dropped into the cold sea, each of us holding his sword above his head so that the fleece-lined scabbards would not fill with salt water and take an age to dry. I gripped Serpent’s sheer strake whilst my feet sought something solid and I knew that the shield slung across my back would prove a terrible encumbrance in the waves and currents.

  ‘I want to come, Raven,’ Cynethryth said suddenly, leaning over to me as I hung there afraid I would lose my footing and that the mail would drag me spluttering to the seabed. I tried to hide the panic in my face but must have only succeeded in looking angry. ‘Why should I stay aboard? My head has been churning all day and my stomach hurts from being sick. I just want some time away from you stinking men! I want some privacy. Can you understand that?’

  I clung to Serpent, up to my chest in cold water, dreading letting go of the ship. The sea is a killer of men, and the Franks were killers of heathens. A wave rolled over me and the salt water went down my throat, making me retch horribly. ‘Besides,’ Cynethryth said, the hint of a smile playing at the corners of her lips, ‘you look as though you need some help. The others are halfway to the beach already.’

  ‘Do what you want, woman,’ I said, then let go, splashing into the sea. I was relieved when my toes stirred the soft seabed. I turned to the shore. There was another splash and suddenly Cynethryth was beside me. Then she was swimming ahead, as assuredly as an otter, whilst I lumbered and tiptoed along, looking up at the purple and black rimmed sky and holding my mouth tight against the swells.

  ‘Wait for me, Cynethryth!’ Father Egfrith called. It seemed he had finally summoned the courage to go ashore. ‘By all the saints, girl, wait for me!’ Another splash followed and I gritted my teeth and sprang forward, careless of the sea and Rán’s white-haired daughters, because I would rather take on every one of those greedy bitches than let a Christ monk beat me to the shore.

  We squeezed the water from our sodden cloaks, jumped up and down in our clinking mail, and squelched about in our boots, all of which made the nearest seals waddle away or slip into the sea. The ones further away paid us no attention at all and I guessed that some of them would wish they had soon enough, for we were hungry. I could see from the high water mark further up the beach, where the sand gave way to rocks and jagged ledges, that the tide was more extreme here in Frankia than it was on the Wessex coast. I hoped Knut had noticed this too and had moored Serpent far enough out to prevent her becoming grounded at low tide.

  Black Floki was already loping ahead up the beach, spear in hand, his black plaits and shield bouncing as he ran up a narrow trail, heading for a high point from which he could keep watch and gain some idea of where we had landed. Egfrith looked like a drowned rat, his sodden habit clinging to the puny body beneath. I noticed that Cynethryth’s dress was clinging too, in an altogether more pleasing way, and after a moment I looked away, feeling a stab of anger when other men did not. Freyja, goddess of beauty, makes men lustful and even shivering from cold, her sopping hair stuck to her white skin, Cynethryth drew men’s eyes like a silver torc.

  Sigurd pulled his wet yellow hair back, tying it at the nape of his neck, and looked back to Serpent, which was nodding gently in the sheltered bay.

  ‘She is so beautiful, hey, Raven.’ Low evening light spread pink and orange across the calm water, broken only where the surf rolled in with white hissing foam.

  ‘She is magnificent, lord,’ I said, still thinking of Cynethryth.

  ‘There is still a chance the worm Ealdred will pass by this place before dark. But I think it more likely he will have moored somewhere by now and will pass at dawn. So, we stay on this beach until Fjord-Elk comes.’

  ‘If we are lucky Njörd will blow her into this very bay,’ I said, watching two shrieking gulls high above tumble and plunge in the cooling air. Men said that Njörd loved sunlit coves and creeks because they were home to his sacred sea birds, and so he must have loved this place. Beyond the sand, pink sea thrift grew in low clumps, its bright blossom vibrating in the breeze so that it seemed in that twilight that the ground itself was shivering. Further up, dense sandthorn bushes sat stiff and steadfast, their pale silvery green leaves bearing thousands of bitter berries that would be orange by September.

  ‘Do you still think I deserve my name?’ Sigurd said, catching me off guard with the question. I knew he referred to ‘the Lucky’. He turned to me, his eyes temperate and unjudging.

  ‘Serpent’s hold could not take another brooch pin,’ I said, nodding towards the ship. ‘You have made your men rich with silver and all kinds of treasures.’ I smiled. ‘Svein is happy as a hog in shit and all it took was a new comb! And Floki . . . he’s content so long as he has something to brood about. Before I saw those seals I thought the noise was just Floki moaning because he was hungry.’

  Sigurd dragged his teeth across his lip and made a low hum in his throat. He held my eye a while longer and then blinked slowly, giving the slightest nod. Then he turned on his heel and marched up the beach, his left hand clasping his sword’s pommel, barking orders for men to find their own bit of high ground and keep a lookout for Fjord-Elk. For a moment I watched him go, taking a deep breath and filling my nose with the oniony smell wafting off the sea thrift’s crisp flowers. Then I turned to see Cynethryth appear from behind three sea-smoothed rocks in the surf. I wondered if she was already regretting her decision to leave Wessex and come with us, for she could not hope to enjoy such privacy often amongst the Fellowship. The sun had gone completely now, leaving only gashes of orange light in the grey clouds to the west. On a rock out at sea a cormorant, which had been drying its great black wings, took to the sky, its croak loud and hollow across the water. I sensed Cynethryth beside me.

  ‘He is troubled, your jarl,’ she said, her eyes following the bird skyward as it stretched its long neck and flapped away into the gathering n
ight.

  ‘He thinks his luck is falling through his fingers. Like sand,’ I said, toeing a wet-looking tangle that looked like a worm. They were everywhere, as were the tiny holes from which they had been excavated. ‘He worries that the gods have turned against him and that he cannot give his men that which they desire above all else, above silver and furs and new ivory combs.’

  ‘And what do they want, Raven?’ Cynethryth asked and I knew she was really asking what did I want. Her eyes searched mine and I felt conscious of my blood-eye, the eye which had caused most men to hate and fear me but for which Sigurd had spared me, thinking I was touched by the gods, by Óðin himself. Before I could answer, something jabbed me in the back and I turned to old Asgot, Sigurd’s godi, who seemed about to poke me again with the butt of his spear.

  ‘I’ve swallowed it now, boy, so you might as well,’ he said in his ancient, cracked voice. I was upwind of the man but I still caught his stink and so did Cynethryth, because she put her knuckles to her nose.

  ‘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.

  CHAPTER THREE

  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 fo
r 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.