A Gathering of Ravens

by Scott Oden

  But Étaín paid him little heed. She pulled herself to the rune-etched stone and peered at the writing. Familiar patterns in the runes caught her eye, forming names she’d seen before as a child when she’d steal into the library at Glastonbury and read from the Venerable Bede’s work on the history of England. She traced them with a trembling finger:

  HENGIST THE YOUNGER,

  SWORD-THEGN OF CENWALH,

  SLEW GADEON OF THE DUMNONII

  AND TOOK HIS DEATH-WOUND.

  “Impossible,” she muttered. Étaín climbed to her feet and stumbled to the edge of the hill. She glanced back … and stopped. The same familiarity she’d seen in the runes repeated itself in the lay of the land. She described a slow circle; with each step, that sense of familiarity grew.

  “Well?” Grimnir said, breaking her reverie.

  “It … it can’t be!” She took a lurching step and fell forward onto her hands and knees. “No, it can’t be!”

  He sprang to his feet; with bounding steps he reached her side. He planted his sandaled heel against her hip and shoved her onto her back. Tears streamed down Étaín’s cheeks. “Tell me?”

  “This place,” she sobbed. “I kn-know this place. It’s Heathen’s Howe, in the Sallow Wood. When … When I was a child this place had an evil reputation as a haunt of goblins and witches.”

  “It is England?”

  An hour ago I was in Sjælland.

  “Is it Wessex?” he bellowed.

  Étaín nodded. An hour ago I was in Sjælland and it was not yet winter; an hour ago I fell across a threshold, and now I am in England, and it is spring! “G-Glastonbury is but a half a day to the west,” she whispered as the full measure of her plight crushed down on her. England was a hateful land, so disgusting to her that she had welcomed rape and slavery at the hands of the Danes so she might be free of it. And now, I am back.

  Grimnir grunted. “Praise that little maggot’s black soul, then. There are villages round about?” Étaín nodded again. “Good. We will start there. One of these English bastards will have heard the name Bjarki Half-Dane.”

  BOOK TWO

  THE KINGDOM OF WESSEX, IN THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND

  1

  Étaín had seen bodies left to rot; she had watched the executions of Danish captives outside the walls of Exeter, their heads left on stakes as a warning to their shipmates; she had seen a man drawn and quartered, one boiled in oil, and another who was flayed alive as her husband, the chief magistrate of the city, hunted for traitors in his midst after the Danes returned in force. But that hateful old prick, Godwin, who had bought her from the abbot of Glastonbury before her fourteenth birthday, never imagined the traitor might be in his own bed. She had seen all manner of death on the night she betrayed Exeter to the Danes. Yet, save for images of the Redeemer on the Cross, Étaín had never seen a crucified body.

  It looked like a manikin crafted from aged leather, stretched taut over a frame of bone. Heavy nails flecked with rust and long-dried blood pierced its wrists and went deep into the trunk of an ash tree, where it hung like an offering to the heathen gods—or in mockery of the Christ. The poor fellow had no nose to speak of, and his lips and eyes had long since gone into the belly of a raven. Empty sockets stared down at Étaín; a beard like bleached corn silk framed a collection of broken yellow teeth, his mouth frozen in a perpetual rictus of agony.

  “Been dead a year, at least,” said Grimnir, as if it were nothing unusual to stumble upon a crucified body along a forest path. “Must be a village close by.” Étaín stared at the corpse for a moment longer before hurrying after him.

  The Sallow Wood had an evil reputation. It was like the myrkvithr of legend, the great troll-haunted forest that spread halfway across the world. They followed a narrow, weed-choked footpath that meandered between the twisted and moss-furred trunks—one of a dozen such trails they’d come across since leaving Heathen’s Howe. Grimnir guided them ever north and west. In that direction, Étaín assured him, stood a number of towns on the forest’s eaves.

  “Why not south, to the coast? To this Wight’s Isle you spoke of?” Grimnir’s eyes had narrowed with suspicion.

  “Six months ago, yes. But it’s the raiding season, now,” she had replied. “If you want to find empty longhouses and deserted beaches, then the Isle of Wight is our best choice. But, if you want to find a Dane or a Saxon who might know your man, then we needs must find out where they’re striking.”

  At that, Grimnir had grunted his assent and led the way.

  Hour after endless hour they walked, the trees awash in green and alive with birdsong; in that forced monotony, Étaín tried to come to grips with what had happened. “A test,” she had declared aloud, receiving a glare from Grimnir that spoke louder than any curse. But she did not doubt her epiphany: this ordeal was a test, it was. She was sure of it. For did not God test those who would serve Him? Like Job, she had had her comforts stripped away. The Almighty had cast her adrift on a sea of heathen chaos and made her captive to a monster of legend; the Father of Glory had subjected her to sorceries and visions that could have easily left her faithless and broken. But they had not. She had emerged whole, with her sanity intact and her faith stronger than ever. As a feeling of triumph swelled in her breast, she forced Grimnir to stop by an ivy-draped cross on the edge of a forgotten road through the Sallow Wood; there, she knelt and sang a prayer of thanksgiving.

  Now, footsore and hungry, with the sun sliding into the west and dusk coming on faster than she’d like, Étaín wondered what fresh tests lay ahead. When would it end? What did the eerie corpse nailed to a tree portend? Would Njáll—

  Grimnir stopped, and so lost was she in her own reverie that she nearly trod upon his heels. His hand dropped to the hilt of his seax, and Étaín heard him mutter a curse. Ahead, she could see the cause of his discomfiture.

  They had come suddenly upon a village.

  It was small, like most of the forest settlements, a dozen wattle-and-daub buildings arrayed around a crude stone church, the whole surrounded by a ditch and a loose hedge of sharpened stakes. Even at first glance, Étaín could see why they came upon it unawares: no fires burned on the hearths; no dogs barked a warning at their arrival. She could not hear the clangor of the village blacksmith, nor could she hear the chatter of women drawing water at the wells, of children going about their chores, or of men going about theirs. The village was dead.

  Grimnir motioned for her to follow. Sunlight slanted through the trees, giving the air beneath an emerald hue that echoed her nightmarish journey under the boughs of Yggðrasil. She shivered and followed him past small fields overgrown with weeds and a pasture with a fence of broken hurdles, now bereft of livestock. Even before they reached the ditch, Étaín could see signs of destruction—burned thatch, charred timber, and blackened stone. The church itself was a shell, roofless and gutted. She wondered if the End of Days had taken place, after all.

  Grimnir splashed through the shallow water at the bottom of the ditch and pulled himself up through the hedge of stakes, where weeds and sparse grass grew unchecked; Étaín clambered up beside him.

  “They make no sound,” Grimnir said, to himself more than to her. He sniffed the air, then crouched and snuffled like an animal. “Like they’ve forgotten what they are.”

  “Who?”

  Grimnir glanced sidelong at her. “The landvættir. Bah! This is your Nailed God’s doing.”

  “So you’ve said. What are landvættir?”

  “Spirits of rock and tree. And in a forest like this, without you lot around to stifle them…” Grimnir trailed off.

  “And where are ‘my lot’?” Étaín jerked her chin toward the village.

  Grimnir snorted. “Them? How should I know? This is old work. At least a year, like the bastard nailed to the tree.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Grimnir didn’t answer. For some reason, the knowledge that this was the result of human agency and not the work of the Lord eased some of the ten
sion in Étaín’s shoulders.

  The forest path entered the village and became a street—if she could give such a lofty name to a wide, rutted track lined with huts. It ran to the center of the village, where the church squatted like a stone-browed overlord draped in ivy, before continuing past and out again into the forest. The trees thinned in that direction, which Étaín knew was a good sign they were on the eaves of the wood.

  She followed Grimnir in silence as he walked up the road, glancing right and left. His hand never left the pommel of his seax. Midges and lacewings buzzed in the warm air; Étaín’s wool habit—meant for a Danish winter—was damp with sweat. She did not pepper him with questions. It did not matter who burned out the village or why; she knew the bodies of the slain would rest in a shallow grave somewhere, and she knew the crucified man was likely the village’s elder or its priest. Étaín did not need Grimnir to spell these things out for her.

  She stopped and peered into one of the huts. Its thatch was half gone, and nettles had grown up through the packed dirt floor. Whoever destroyed the village had long since ransacked it and looted anything of value. Now, only detritus remained; she saw broken spindles and loom weights, splintered wood from a table, and a scattering of rotted fabric that might have been clothing. Something nearly hidden among the weeds caught her eye. Étaín reached down and pulled it free—it was a delicately carved head belonging to a child’s doll, bleached white and faceless. The sight of it, so forlorn and alone, drove a spike of sorrow through her heart. Gently, she put the doll’s head back where she’d found it, made the sign of the cross, and said a silent prayer for the villagers who once lived here.

  “Foundling,” Grimnir called after her. He had reached the church, a simple construction of local reddish sandstone, poorly cut and mortared into place. It had a rudimentary porch of charred timber and narrow windows, their scorched shutters hanging askew on rusted iron hinges. The door had two holes hacked into it at waist level, a heavy length of chain threaded between and connected by a thick rivet.

  Grimnir motioned for her to join him. With a cold ache in the pit of her belly, Étaín mounted the porch and followed his lead. She held the sun-warmed stone and leaned out on the balls of her feet to peer over an ivy-draped windowsill. She knew, then, that she’d been wrong. She would find no shallow grave.

  “There’s your lot.”

  Carpeting the nave and extending back to the church’s shadowy chancel were the scorched and broken bones of the villagers. Skulls, rib cages, vertebrae, long bones, finger bones, teeth … from the skeleton of an infant tucked in its mother’s bony embrace to huddled knots of children to the skulls of men who died from axe blows to the head. Étaín imagined their horrified screams …

  “This is heathens’ work,” she said, looking away. “No God-fearing man, no matter how desperate or cruel, would dare defile a church like this.”

  Grimnir’s lips peeled back in a savage grin. “Good! That gives us a trail. Doubt the bastards came all this way just to sack this little pisshole, so maybe they took a richer prize, eh? Maybe these towns you spoke of? Maybe they’re still hanging about…”

  Étaín shrugged, and then nodded. “Perhaps,” she said slowly.

  “What?”

  Étaín looked around. “Njáll and I … we were in Sutton last year, on the border with Cornwall, making ready to sail on a pilgrim boat to the Frankish coast. We heard nothing of any raid, much less one this deep into Wessex. It’s just curious, is all.”

  “When we find a Dane you can ask him about it,” Grimnir muttered. “Let’s move. We can still go a ways more before nightfall.”

  He headed off down the rutted path that would carry them to the forest’s eaves. Étaín made to follow, but stopped. Turning back, she surveyed the tiny village. By summer’s end it would be little more than a clearing choked with nettle and thorn. Its timbers would rot away in the humid air; its stone foundations would crumble, and the church would fall in on itself to create a cairn over the bones of the dead. What was its name? she wondered. In a way, this place had become like her—an orphan, sundered from its identity, from its history by the cruel knives of Fate.

  With a prayer of peace for the restless spirits of the slain, she turned and followed Grimnir.

  2

  There was no well-defined border to the Sallow Wood; the ancient arboreal giants simply gave way to younger trees that thinned and spread over open hills clad in heather and gorse. Though the land was green and idyllic, Étaín spied the telltale signs of war: groves and hedges hacked and burned, fields left fallow, small villages and halls like the skeletal corpses of the fallen, picked clean by rapacious scavengers. A smear of smoke rose some miles distant, a thin black veil against the ruddy face of the setting sun.

  “No, this is wrong,” Étaín said, shading her eyes and staring at the smoke. “This is more than a raid. This reeks of war, and we would have heard of it in Sutton. Deserters, refugees, someone would have brought word. Christ! We would have heard about something like this in the Danemark!”

  The trail leading out of the forest joined a rutted track that came up from the south; it bore upon it the signs of heavy use—not just wagons, but that peculiar churning of the earth that marked the passage of horsemen.

  “Aye. Aye, but we’re in it now, eh?” said Grimnir, rising from a crouch. “We’re getting off this miserable road until we know the tale of things. Wouldn’t do to get skewered by a pack of horseboys, would it?”

  Sharp-eyed, Grimnir led the way across the countryside toward the rising smoke. They skirted hilltops and ridges, keeping instead to the twilit hollows and valleys where already a chill mist was forming; they came across a fast-moving stream with a deep and rocky bed, swollen with springtime runoff, which ran in the same direction they were headed—ever north and west.

  Bone weary, Étaín staggered after him. Her mind was numb, her limbs leaden; the sweat-damp wool of her robe left her shivering, and a gnawing ache in her stomach reminded her she’d not eaten since snatching a handful of berries at midday. She ran on pure will. Even that, however, had its limits. Étaín stumbled in the deepening gloom and came up hard against a knotted oak; coughing, she slid to the ground.

  How long she sat there, she could not say. It might have been a moment, only; or it might have been an hour. Regardless, the next sound she was aware of was Grimnir’s harsh whisper in her ear.

  “Up, my tender little fool,” he said. “This is no place for a nap. I’ve scouted ahead. A bit further and then you can rest.”

  Nodding, Étaín struggled to her feet. Grimnir caught her by the upper arm and loped along beside her—guiding her, prodding her, even dragging her when need be. Soon, she felt the cold shock of water splashing about her calves. Shaking off her stupor, Étaín glanced around and tried to recall how long it had been since night had fallen.

  Grimnir half-carried her across the stream, at a shallow ford where the water splashed into a stone-lined channel. On the far bank, lit by an orange glow that seeped over the low hillside, she could see the squat shape of a ruined mill, its wheel long since rotted away; it was an ancient structure whose foundation stones bore the tool marks of dead and forgotten craftsmen. Grimnir helped her onto dry ground, near the mill.

  The land along the stream was overgrown: tall willows stood sentinel over a riot of thorn and honeysuckle; reeds clogged the mill channel. A footpath led up to the crest of the hill, where the rambling silhouette of a ruined villa stood, limned by distant fire. Sounds came from the far side of the hill: a cacophony of horses and men, brazen horns and pounding drums, shouted orders and screams of rage.

  Grimnir motioned for Étaín to follow as he ascended the footpath, taking care in those places where the archaic cobblestones peeked through the weeds, rounded and gleaming with moisture. Oily light pierced the heart of the villa, which was little more than a few crumbling stone walls clad in ivy and broken columns holding up the memory of a roof, several generations gone to rot. In places, É
taín could still make out where a veneer of fine plaster covered the stone, and underfoot—beneath the mud, decayed wood, and leaf mold—she caught glimpses of wondrously colorful pebbled mosaics. In Grimnir’s wake, she crept through the heart of the ruined villa to where the front gate must once have stood. An empty archway that opened now on the belly of Hell.

  Raging bonfires lit the smoke-clouded night sky as hundreds of men converged on a town sitting on an island in the middle of a shallow river—one that the stream they had crossed was tributary to. Earthworks and a scarred palisade protected the muddy banks of the island, and a second palisade rose beyond that; inside, houses with fresh-thatched roofs and gabled halls clustered around a burned-out church. Men and women alike defended the town’s outer palisade.

  A volley of flaming arrows lofted skyward, arching over both palisades to strike inside the town, setting thatch to smoldering—that smoke adding to the choking miasma of mud, unwashed bodies, piss, blood, and rotting excrement. A desultory flight of javelins and arrows answered the volley.

  “Do you know this place?” Grimnir said, looking sidelong at Étaín.

  She shrugged. “I can’t be sure…” She racked her brain for the name of this well-fortified island town; only one came to mind. “This is Nunna’s Ford, I think. We’re west and a bit south of the forest.”

  Grimnir grunted. “Fight’s almost over.”

  The besiegers—mailed soldiers fighting under a banner displaying, as far as Étaín could discern, a white willow tree on a black field—concentrated all their efforts on the sagging gates of Nunna’s Ford. A troop of brawny men, stripped to the waist, caught up a ram made from logs banded in iron and set off for the gates. Others bearing shields trotted alongside them, offering a measure of protection from the defenders’ javelins. Companies of fighters massed behind, ready to surge forward. From the slight height advantage they had on the hilltop, Grimnir and Étaín could see that the defenders, too, were making ready for the final spear-shattering.