Raven: Sons of Thunder

by Giles Kristian

  The riders heard us, for they yanked their reins round, the animals screeching with the thrill of it, and then galloped towards us, fish scale armour and helmets glinting. I wanted to look back to see if Egfrith had made it to the woods, but the first rider was on me. He swung his sword, but I leapt back and it flew wide. Then another rode in and his couched spear snared in the sleeve of my habit so that he had to let go as his mount took him past. I picked up the spear and turned as another Frank was upon me. One-handed, I thrust the spear into his left shoulder, then spun, scything my sword through the air, just missing a man’s back as he galloped by. Penda had taken two riders down and I saw him hack off a dismounted Frank’s arm at the shoulder before I turned to face two others whose intention was to ride either side of me, leaving their spears in my chest as they passed. Dozens of Franks had cleared the houses west of the city walls and were running across the pastureland towards us, their cloaks flying behind them. An arrow snagged in the flapping wool between my legs and I cursed because I was not wearing my brynja and I knew it would only be moments before Frankish steel tore my flesh.

  Then the flat of a sword clanged against the back of my head, sending me stumbling, but I still gripped my sword. I tried to raise it as a rider came straight at me, but the beast ploughed into me, knocking me halfway to the next world. I lay in the grass for what seemed like an age, looking up at the stars, unable to move. I felt the dew softly falling on my face and saw bats whirling above me. Then the blue cloaks were there, dragging me on to legs that I could have sworn did not belong to me.

  ‘You still breathing, lad?’ It was Penda. The Franks were all over him but still they seemed afraid of what he might do to them, as three men lay broken in the dew-laced grass. ‘Looks like the bastards want us alive, so we might as well kill a couple more if we can,’ he barked, almost smiling despite the arms binding him. The Wessexman was as vicious a man as I had ever known. He could kill without even trying. As for me, I had not managed to kill a single Frank, though one was nursing a bruised shoulder, and I gained a new respect for their fish scale armour. The mounted soldiers were ranging across the pasture now, their firebrands streaking through the night like lightning bolts from the heavens as they searched for Cynethryth. ‘See her safe, Floki,’ I murmured, aware that my hair was sticky with blood.

  The fact that we were still alive meant that either someone thought they could get a good price for us at the slave market, or else someone – maybe the Abbess herself – intended to show us the error of our ways. Or perhaps both. If I could have chosen then, I would have slapped the manacles on myself rather than face Abbess Berta again after what I had done to her. Later, I would change my mind, preferring anything that big bitch could have thrown at me.

  They took us back to the city but not to the convent and not to the palace either. Instead, they led us through the north side of Aix-la-Chapelle, through streets that were filthy and whose gangplanks the oozing mud had reclaimed long ago. The houses here were cluttered and pitiful, little more than shelters draped with rotting skins and blankets. Even the whores were nowhere to be seen. I saw the naked body of a newborn bairn half buried in the sludge, and a threadbare dog chewing at the rotting ribcage of another. This was a part of the great Christian city Father Egfrith had not told us about, and the place made my flesh crawl. I felt an overwhelming longing to be aboard Serpent with the salt wind whipping my hair. But I was a prisoner now and could expect only death, which would almost have been a blessing, for I suspected that Frank’s sword must have cracked my skull like a hazel nut. My head was a sickening tangle of pain and dizziness, leaving me unable to do anything but go where the booted feet and spear butts pushed me.

  We passed a small wooden church outside which a great wooden cross had been set in the earth. Next to that cross several men were sleeping on freshly laid straw, each swaddled in a faded blue cloak. Then the sprawl of hovels thinned and I soon smelt why. A two-foot wide reeking ditch ran from the south of the city and out under the north wall. It was a sluggish stream of shit and most of it came from the better half of the city, some perhaps even from the imperial arse itself. Around this fetid trench the shelters seemed as though they would soon dissolve into the mire, with no living thing having the slightest care.

  We crossed this ditch and eventually came to a palisade of sharpened stakes. Our captors banged on the gate and we were taken inside. A longhouse sat in the middle of the compound, its windows covered with thick skins. Next to it were smaller buildings, also of wood, but well made, their thatch still golden, sound protection from cold and rain. As for the longhouse, it would have been impressive in its day. It was easily eighty feet long with a hefty skeleton of thick beams and great sloping roof, which covered an area sufficient to graze twenty goats. But the thatch was patchy and rotten, the daub walls were crumbling, and I guessed the house had stood here long before the emperor’s buildings of smooth white stone rose up on the hill.

  ‘Maybe they’ve prepared a feast for us, Raven,’ Penda suggested, earning a smack around the head with the butt of a spear. Our captors spoke with the enclosure’s guards, warning them that we were not monks and that they should be wary of us. I thought this should have been obvious enough given not only our build and the state we were in, but also the blue-cloaked corpses flung across three horses who now nuzzled the few sprouts of grass poking through the mud. The Franks shoved us towards the longhouse. A soldier unbarred the door whilst another opened it, and a smell I shall never forget hit me like a hammer blow. It was the rank, putrid stench of death, and Penda and I were cast into its maw. The longhouse was a prison. And it was full of stinking, starving, dying men. Most did not even move to see what we were, but some white eyes stared out of the darkness, watching as the Franks shoved through a tangle of shifting bodies, creating a meagre space into which they slotted us, stirring moans from the closest inmates. They foraged in the stinking darkness, emerging with a length of chain on to which they shackled us with wrist manacles, and I soon realized that this chain coiled through the whole noxious place like a great iron serpent, enfettering a hundred or more souls. Having no wish to remain with the dead and dying, the guards scrambled free, their cloaks held to their faces, and in moments the door clunked shut behind them.

  ‘Some feast, Penda,’ I said, testing the iron bindings. Unfortunately for us they were the newest thing in the whole rotten place and would probably hold Fenrir himself.

  ‘It could be worse, lad,’ the Wessexman said.

  ‘How by Thór’s hairy balls could it be worse?’ I moaned, trying not to breathe because of the stink.

  ‘They could have chained you to that fart-faced old cow the abbess,’ he said, and despite my pounding head and the shackles I laughed, because Penda was right.

  ‘Is something funny, English?’ a thickly accented voice rasped somewhere in the darkness. And that accent had the deep cold of the fjord about it.

  ‘What is it to you?’ Penda growled back.

  ‘We are laughing because I punched a Christ bride, which is the most Týr-brave thing I’ve ever done because she was bigger than me,’ I said in Norse. A few dry chuckles broke the tension.

  ‘Who are you?’ the Norseman asked cautiously. I shifted, trying to find the man, but then the men between us shuffled and bent low to give us a view of each other. He must be an important man in this death place, I thought. He sat two spear-lengths away to my right and despite the clinging darkness I made out the gaunt angles of his face.

  ‘I am Raven of the Fellowship of Sigurd the Lucky,’ I said, ‘and this is my sword-brother Penda of Wessex.’

  ‘Hrafn?’ he said, the Norse for raven. ‘A Norseman travelling with an Englishman?’ The man spoke Norse but his accent was unfamiliar.

  ‘And who are you?’ I asked.

  ‘I am Steinn, son of Inge,’ he said. ‘We are Danes.’

  ‘So the dragons at the wharf are yours?’

  ‘Not mine,’ Steinn said. ‘They belong to Yngve, our
jarl.’

  ‘Where is Yngve?’ I asked, glancing at the shadow-cloaked faces around me.

  ‘He is over there,’ Steinn said with a rattle of chains as he pointed to a corner of the longhouse. I strained to see in the blackness, past dark huddled forms, then made out the outline of a big man leaning against the rotting daub wall. ‘You can probably smell him. He has been dead for nine days,’ Steinn said. ‘The wound fever finished him eventually.’

  I translated for Penda, who I knew would be rankling by now at not knowing what was being said. ‘The men here, Steinn, they are all from your Fellowship?’ I asked.

  ‘Those that still breathe,’ he said. ‘This land has been our curse. We should never have come here.’

  ‘Your jarl was a fool to fight this Christian emperor,’ I said, which caused some men around me to bristle and grunt threateningly.

  ‘We came to trade,’ Steinn said, which was probably a lie. ‘Our mistake was to trust these Franks.’ Your mistake was to fight them, I thought, and now your jarl is worm food and your Fellowship rots in the darkness. But that looked like my fate now, too. I imagined the three Spinners sitting somewhere looking at the tapestry they had woven for me and laughing. ‘Did you fight them?’ Steinn asked. ‘Where is your jarl and the others?’

  ‘The Franks caught us breaking into their convent,’ I said, knowing what these Danes would assume that meant. But I saw no reason to explain it all. ‘The others are safe. They are with our dragons at the wharf.’

  ‘Will they come for you?’ Steinn asked. I let that question hang for a long while in the thick darkness, thinking this Dane would have the patience to wait, seeing as his name meant ‘stone’.

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  OVER THE NEXT THREE DAYS TWO MORE DANES DIED OF WOUND rot or thirst. The Franks would sometimes open the door and throw in water skins and scraps of food, but some of the Danes were by now too weak even to chew the scraps from a bone. For these there was no hope, so those who still clung to life took whatever they could get their hands on, devouring it like dogs, their pride long forgotten. There was very little talking, for no one wanted to waste their strength, and besides, what was there to talk about? There was nothing to do but wait for the slow, miserable death that was coming. After that I lost track of time. The days and nights were just one long nothingness of stomach-twisting hunger pains. At first we were so thirsty that it became almost unbearable, but as we became weaker we hardly noticed the thirst, which Penda suggested must be a very bad sign. My skin dried and cracked like the daub walls of our prison and my lips split so that I always had the taste of blood on my swollen tongue. We had to shit and piss where we sat, but there was not so much of that because our shrivelled bowels were empty. And still no one came for us. Once I was woken by the clink and rattle of the chain as one of the Danes strangled his friend, giving him the small mercy of a quick death. We all listened in the darkness, clenching our teeth at the Dane’s last struggles, until eventually it was over and the killer’s heavy breathing turned to sobbing. I am sure I cried too, with pity and anger and shame, though my eyes had no tears to give. These Danes had been like the Wolfpack once: free and full of boasting and life. Now they were nothing, and I cursed myself for being taken alive when I should have died with a sword in my hand.

  Some time after the strangling I was drifting in and out of consciousness when I slowly became aware of a ruckus in the enclosure outside. Soon after, the door was unbarred and daylight flooded in, blinding me completely so that I had to turn my head away. The Franks were bringing in another prisoner and I wanted to shout to him, to tell him he would be better off fighting now with all his strength and dying under their blades than letting them put those manacles on his wrists. But I said nothing. I was too exhausted to do anything other than watch as the poor soul was shoved into the stench-ridden place. Flies buzzed everywhere now, feeding off the rotting Danes, and you could hear the soft, sticky sound of maggots writhing in flesh. Sometimes you could even hear rats gnawing on bone, and when you know it is the bone of a man it is a sound to freeze your blood. Then the Franks were gone and pitch darkness claimed the longhouse once more. My eyes had begun to close again when a voice I knew brought me back.

  ‘Is this the way you welcome me to your shit hole longhouse, Raven? Óðin’s teeth, I’ve smelled sweeter things come out of Svein’s arse!’

  ‘Bram?’ I said.

  ‘So you are in here, lad. Well, that’s something. Who are these other reeking pigs’ bladders?’

  ‘They are Danes,’ I croaked feebly, feeling the blood in my veins again at hearing the Bear’s gruff voice. ‘What happened, Bram?’ I kicked Penda awake and the Wessexman groaned.

  ‘What happened is that the blue cloaks set on me and threw me in here with you,’ Bram said.

  ‘You fought them?’ I asked.

  ‘Fought them? Has your little brain got wood-rot, lad? If I had fought them I wouldn’t be in this rancid pit, would I? I’d have smashed their pus-filled heads in. No, lad, I had to let them beat me. Sigurd’s orders. Sigurd’s plan. Had to start a little fight in some fleapit tavern in Aixla . . .’

  ‘Aix-la-Chapelle,’ I helped him.

  ‘Aye,’ Bram said, ‘had to break a few noses and eventually the blue cloaks came and . . . well . . . here I am. Not very homely, is it? Lacks a woman’s touch, that’s what Borghild would say.’

  Just knowing that Bram was with us and that he was still strong and had recently been with the others raised my spirits, though not as much as the words ‘Sigurd’ and ‘plan’ did. But we could not take any chances and so I hoped Steinn was as resilient as his name suggested.

  ‘Steinn,’ I called. ‘Steinn, are you still with us?’ There were a few murmurs. ‘Steinn, are you a man to give up?’

  ‘I’m here, Raven of Sigurd’s Fellowship,’ the dry voice rasped. ‘What do you want with me?’

  ‘I need your men to help me, Steinn. I need to move closer to my friend Bram. Tell your Danes to move with me.’

  ‘They are not my men. They are Yngve’s men. Let them die in peace.’

  ‘Yngve is a rotting lump of worm food,’ I said. He did not reply to this. ‘Steinn, your men do not want to die in here. This was not in their minds when they packed their journey chests and set out on the whale road. There is no glory in this death. There is no Valhöll.’ I let those last words sink in, for they were heavy words. ‘You Danes. Do you want to see your ships again? See your women again? I can get you out of this stinking hole. I can give you back your lives.’ Men were stirring now. Chains were clinking and tongues that had whispered their death prayers now ripped free of dry, sore-encrusted palates.

  ‘If you really can get us out of here we are yours,’ Steinn said in the darkness. ‘Men of Trelleborg. Find your strength again. Help this Norseman. Yngve was a great warrior, no man can say otherwise. But Yngve led us to death. This Hrafn says he can lead us back to life, so help him, you sons of whores.’ Men groaned and grunted like beasts, moving half-dead limbs and dragging the corpses of those beside them so that I could inch closer to Bram. Penda and I still had some strength and we did what we could. In the end we all collapsed in our new places amongst other men’s shit and congealed blood.

  ‘You smell worse than a troll’s armpit, Raven,’ Bram muttered, his teeth glinting in the darkness.

  ‘And so will you before long,’ I grumbled. ‘How is you getting flung in here going to get us out? Are you sure you didn’t just wake up drunk in some whore’s lap after breaking a priest’s head?’

  ‘Me?’ He sounded surprised. ‘I told you, lad, Sigurd planned it. And it’s low cunning, Raven,’ he growled with a grin. ‘Loki-low cunning.’ The whites of Penda’s eyes shone as he watched us. Bram had been stripped of his brynja and cloak and, wearing only his tunic, breeks and boots, did not appear to be in much of a position to break us out. Then he lifted his manacled hands to his head, to one of his thick plaits, and pulled the th
ong from it. But the plait was stiff, so he began to tease the braids loose and as he did so his smile widened even more. From that plait he pulled a piece of steel the length of a finger. The thing was clearly missing its small wooden haft and the frame meant to hold the serrated blade under tension, but even in the darkness I knew immediately what it was. It was a hacksaw, its tiny teeth no bigger than a mackerel’s but wickedly sharp and steel strong.

  ‘It would take you a year to cut through a lump of cheese with that,’ Penda croaked, but Bram did not understand the Englishman and nor was he listening. He was sawing. Hours passed. The teeth of the blade were so fine that they made little noise as Bram patiently worked on the thin iron of his manacles. Even so, it helped that one of the Danes was groaning constantly with wound fever now, which was accompanied by enough coughing and spluttering in that place of death to cloak the work. It seemed that Bram’s coming and Steinn’s words had stirred the last embers left in these Danes’ souls so that they realized they were not dead yet and might still see another dawn. But gods it was slow work. Only half its original length and lacking the tension frame and haft, the saw was barely useful and soon Bram’s thick fingers were slick with blood, though he did not slow, but let the blood cool the blade to prevent its breaking.

  He was almost through when the door of the longhouse creaked open and five Franks came in, each holding a spitting firebrand. Usually they threw slops at us, collected the empty water skins and retreated as quickly as they could, retching as they went. But this time they came further into the place than usual, poking men with their spears to check who was alive and who was dead. Perhaps they had more prisoners to chain up and would take the corpses away to make space. Or perhaps it was a routine check. Either way two of them were now barely a sword-length away from where we huddled in the foul, flame-licked shadows, and if they noticed that Bram had cut through his manacles we would be dead. The Norseman hunched over, trying to hide his hands, but one of the Franks seemed suspicious and put the blade of his spear into Bram’s beard to lift his chin. This is it, I thought. Bram is dead.