A Gathering of Ravens

by Scott Oden

  She screamed as they reached for her; with pitiless laughter, they stripped away her cowl and her habit, leaving her shivering in only a threadbare linen shirt.

  “Damn my eyes!” a voice growled, as feral as a dog. “It’s a woman!”

  “Lord works in mysterious ways, huh?” More laughter erupted. Someone kicked her in the belly, flipping her onto her back. Hands groped her. “And a right fetching little Danish minx, at that, for all that she looks like a boy.”

  Étaín tried to crawl away, but a man’s foot pressed to her shoulder shoved her back into the circle of soldiers. Despairing of escape, she pulled herself up and onto her knees, clasping her hands together. Her vision blurred. She was unable to focus; the whole of her head felt swollen, bruised, and inflamed. Still, she found her voice.

  “O C-Christ the Redeemer,” she said in the tongue of the West Saxons; her throat was so dry that the words crackled like tinder. “Remember the horror and sadness, th-the spiteful words and harsh torments, which your enemies afflicted upon you. I beseech you, Lord Jesus, to deliver me from all my enemies visible and invisible, and to bring me under your protection to the perfection of eternal salvation. Amen.”

  The men around her fell silent. They glanced at one another, suddenly unsure. For most of them it was one thing to despoil a heathen, but to do the same to a sister in Christ smacked of mortal sin. They looked beyond their circle to where another man stood with his back to them, watching the final moments of the siege.

  “She ain’t no heathen, Captain,” one of the soldiers said.

  “Is she not?” The captain turned. He was tall and well-built, broad across his mail-clad shoulders. Gray flecked his rust-colored beard. His fine cloak was war-stained and fringed with ermine; he fingered a heavy silver crucifix that lay upon his breast. “Perhaps she is but a good liar.” He came closer, looking her over like a merchant sizing up a bale of wares. “Verbum mendax iustus detestabitur—”

  “—impius confundit et … et c-confundetur,” Étaín finished for him.

  The captain’s eyebrows inched up. “You’re familiar with the Proverbs of King Solomon, then? Impressive, especially for a woman.” He gathered his cloak about him and crouched near her. “What is your name?”

  “É-Étaín.”

  “We are in a bit of a predicament, Étaín,” the captain said. “For all that these dogs appear to be Hell’s own wastrels, they are actually a pious and God-fearing lot. I’ve given them leave to have their way with any heathen whore they should happen across, but upon pain of death they’re not to despoil good Christian women. Thus, here is our quandary.” The captain gestured over his shoulder, beyond the circle of men, to where a grizzled sergeant held the Saxon lad by the scruff of his neck. “That boy claims you’re a Dane, one of a pair of spies. Worse, he claims you’re a witch in league with Satan, himself. But, your manner and your prayers confuse us. Which is it, Étaín? Are you a spy? Are you a witch out to guile us?”

  The ring of soldiers drew in, tightening the circle around her. She looked up at the captain and fervently wished she’d kept her head down. His features swam; a nimbus of light surrounded him, a muddy red glow shot through with black. Étaín squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m … I’m n-neither.”

  “Ah, then he bears false witness? That is an affront to God.” The captain nodded to the man holding the young Saxon. “Kill him.”

  A knife flashed in the firelight; the boy screamed. Étaín started forward to grasp at the captain’s boot. “No!”

  The captain held up a hand, arresting the lad’s execution. “Then he speaks the truth in naming you a witch and a spy for the Danes?”

  “He … He does not.”

  “My dear Étaín,” the captain said, raising his voice over the mutters of disbelief coming from his soldiers. “The truth may have many sides and many facets, but it cannot be both true and false.”

  Slowly, Étaín shook her head. “It … It is a c-complex story…”

  “Then explain it to me. Why were you hiding in the ruin? If you are neither spy nor witch, then why did you run from my men?”

  “I didn’t.” She cradled her bloody face. “Ask … Ask the one who did this if I ran from him.”

  Her honesty wrong-footed the captain. He started to speak, but then clamped his mouth shut as a messenger from Nunna’s Ford barreled into their midst—a wild-eyed youth clinging to the back of a flyblown nag.

  “My lord, the gate’s about to give!”

  The news galvanized the Saxons; the captain stood. “Make ready, lads! Time to crush this foreign rabble under heel! Has Cynewulf returned? No? Ah, he must be on the trail of her confederate! May God smile upon Brother Cynewulf and his hunters!” The Saxons cheered their captain.

  Étaín felt the world tilting beneath her; her vision clouded, and the buzzing of voices in her mind became a screaming tumult of noise—howls, cries, shrieks, curses. She clutched her skull and toppled onto her side, instinctively curling into a ball.

  “What about her?” a Saxon muttered. “Do we wait for Cynewulf to return with the other one and execute them both at once, or might the lads have a bit of sport, first?”

  Étaín heard the captain suck his teeth. “No,” he said after a moment. “Put her on a wagon and watch her close. We’ll take her back to Badon with us. Lord Hrothmund demands tribute in heathen flesh and he has a special fondness for traitors.”

  The captain’s boots squelched in the muck as he turned and ordered his men forward. She felt hands lift her, again—this time more gently than before. She felt a sense of pity emanating from them. Pity and fear. “Lord Hrothmund?” one man muttered. “Best kill her now, no matter her crimes.”

  After that, the blackness rose up and Étaín knew no more.

  8

  The sky above glowed brighter as the town of Nunna’s Ford burned, throwing the ruins into sharp silhouette; screams filtered over the crown of the hill and down to the stream bank. Grimnir’s keen ears picked out faint cries of triumph mingled with pleas for mercy. But the miasma of thatch smoke and roasting flesh filling his nostrils told him there would be none.

  Shielded by bulrushes and willow fronds, Grimnir crouched and watched his Saxon enemies. The man called Cynewulf had dismounted and now knelt by the body of Wulfric.

  “Find me this God-forsaken Dane!”

  He dispatched a trio of soldiers to search the mill while the rest of his men crept carefully through the undergrowth on both sides of the path. Cynewulf himself walked slowly to the water’s edge. His eyes raked the far bank.

  Aye, he’s a smart one, Grimnir thought. Too smart by far. The swine knows someone’s watching him.

  “Hej!” Cynewulf called out suddenly in the tongue of the Danes. “Hey!” His Saxons started at the sound, but Cynewulf silenced their growing clamor with a sharp word. He returned his gaze to the far bank. “Can you hear me? I know you’re there, Dane. Wulfric, the man you killed … he was my cousin. I demand weregild. Show yourself, and let us settle this like men.”

  Grimnir gave a low chuckle. He barely raised his voice, so that it reached the soldiers’ ears no louder than a silky whisper. “Nár! An old ruse, Saxon. Get me out in the open so your lads can stick me full of arrows.”

  “It’s no ruse.” Cynewulf turned to his men. “Put your bows down. Put them down!” Nervously, his Saxons complied. “See? I only wish to talk.”

  “Fetch me the girl, then,” Grimnir said. He moved slightly, setting the bulrushes to rustling. Cynewulf turned toward the sound. “She belongs to me. Fetch her back here and maybe we can parley.”

  “The girl? What girl?”

  “The one you captured.”

  “You mean the other spy? I did not know it was a woman. No, Dane … she is beyond both our grasps, now.”

  “You killed her?” There was a dangerous edge to Grimnir’s voice.

  “Not I. I merely seized her and sent her on to my captain, Lord Æthelstan. No doubt he will question her and give her to the m
en for sport. Once they have had their fill of her, they will add her body to the pyre of heathens, Dane.” Cynewulf indicated the sky behind them, thunderheads of smoke lit from beneath by the light of a burning village. “The question now is what do we do with you, eh?”

  Grimnir snarled and spat. “Me? I go my way, little fool.”

  “Look around and tell me who is the fool, Dane!” Cynewulf said. “Your people are gone. You have no ships. Your village will be nothing but ash and burned timber by dawn. Where do you think you will go? I know this land like I know my wife’s thighs. Hide and I will ferret you out. Come; surrender yourself to me, Dane. Upon my word, I will make your end quick—as quick as poor Wulfric’s.”

  “Your word?” Grimnir felt rage build inside him. He drew upon it, tendrils of white-hot fire that crawled through his muscles. He ground his teeth, tasting blood. “Your word means nothing to me, filthy wretch! I said I go my own way. Stop me, if you’ve got the balls to try. As for your weregild…” Grimnir drew a small leather bag from beneath his armor and slung it across to the far bank. It struck near Cynewulf’s foot, the faint tinkle of coins like an unspoken taunt.

  Willow fronds rustled as Grimnir backed away from the bank, a silhouette moving through deeper shadow. A few of the Saxons raised their bows. They scanned the darkness, sensing the overhanging trees and thickets of bulrushes, starting at each noise. He did not present them with a target. As he crept away, he heard the echo of Cynewulf’s voice:

  “Dane! Why make this more difficult than it need be? Dane? DANE?”

  9

  Cynewulf stood for a long moment, staring out into the darkness at the far bank of the stream. He had been a soldier all his life, first with his father in the wars against the Welsh and later as one of Lord Æthelstan’s lieutenants against the invading Danes. He had known pain, deprivation, hunger, fear—not fear of death, for he was right with God; but rather, fear of capture and torture. He knew what that sort of fear tasted like, how it smelled, how it wormed its way into a man’s guts and turned his bowels to water. What’s more, he knew how to conjure it in other men. He would make this God-cursed Dane’s last hours an exercise in terror. That would be the blood price for poor Wulfric.

  And after he had wrung every exquisite ounce of terror from him, Cynewulf would kill the Dane, slowly …

  The Saxon chief smoothed his tangled beard. “Gather round, lads. How many of you have ever hunted a Welsh boar?”

  10

  Grimnir was near enough to hear those wretched swine cross the ford; near enough that he could see two knots of torches, one heading left and the other right—motes of ruddy light flickering through the leaves, accompanied by the jangle of harness and the snapping of undergrowth. Neither group of Saxons made any effort to muffle their passage. Beaters, Grimnir reckoned, a sneer curling his lips, meant to flush him out into the open.

  Grimnir’s nostrils flared as he exhaled, creating the faintest snort of derision. A good plan … if he were fool enough to run around these unfamiliar woods like the half-witted Dane they thought he was. No, in his long years he had slipped many a noose, laid by far more fearsome hunters than these. With apish strength, he caught the lower limb of a mighty oak near the game trail leading to the stream and hauled himself up into the thick foliage; there, he perched like a raptor, waiting.

  Grimnir’s slitted eyes raked the darkness between the two knots of men. It was as quiet as a tomb, save for the occasional rustle of leaves that could have marked the passage of some night creature. The limb beneath him vibrated slightly; he felt faint stirrings of revulsion emanating from the landvættir, from the spirit of the oak—a sensation that was distant and confused, reminding Grimnir of an aging lord waking on his deathbed only to discover a rat in his beard.

  “The oathbreaker…” moaned the spirit of the oak.

  He patted its trunk in mock sympathy. “Go back to sleep, little acorn. I will be gone soon enough.”

  Movement caught Grimnir’s eye. He peered closer, flashing a humorless smile at the four figures he spied creeping through the night. Grudgingly, he admired their stealth. Cynewulf and the three Saxons who followed him had divested themselves of cloaks, belts, and scabbards. No loose metal clashed on their persons; Cynewulf and another carried spears in their hands, the bright steel heads dulled by a layer of mud, while the other two moved with bows ready, arrows on the nock and half drawn.

  Making scarcely a sound, they passed Grimnir’s hiding place, unaware that he perched not even a spear’s length above their heads. He heard their shallow breaths, smelled their rank sweat. They were night-blind and Grimnir knew it, each man dreading the feel of cold fingers about his throat, fearing the bite of iron. They drew strength from the knowledge that they were many while their enemy was alone—in their minds he could not possibly kill them all. Grimnir let them pass, and the four men continued on another fifty yards to a clearing, thick with fern and brambles, where he lost sight of them.

  Grimnir gave no thought to simply slipping away, which he could have done with ease; no, Cynewulf had chosen to make this about a kin-slaying, which his own people took seriously. If the tables were turned, Grimnir would hound him until the blood price was paid—even as he now hounded Bjarki Half-Dane. Best to end it here. But how? Grimnir mulled the question over in his mind. If he attacked these four head-on, the other Saxons trampling around the edges could stand off and put arrows in his gullet. What he needed was one of their bows. He needed to blind them, to rid them of their cursed flaming brands. He needed to thin their ranks and make them fear the dark, once more.

  A savage gleam kindled behind Grimnir’s eyes. He dropped from his roost as lightly as an owl upon its prey and stalked away to the left. He pursued the first knot of torch-bearing Saxons, making no more noise than a breath of wind across the grave.

  11

  Cynewulf knelt in the tall grass of the clearing. Overhead, stars gleamed through rips in the smoke and clouds, shining down upon the earth like the lights of Heaven. Torches flickered in the distance, their ruddy glow illuminating leaf and bole as his soldiers beat the brush, looking for the Dane. If all went as planned, their raucous search would hinder the bastard’s escape and drive him back toward the stream … and onto the steel of Cynewulf and his three companions, men he knew from the border wars with the Welsh. The Saxon chief felt these battle-hardened veterans behind him, arrayed in a loose circle and facing outward; in this way, each man’s flanks and back were protected—arrows poised and spears at the ready. All that remained for them to do was wait.

  Taking slow, measured breaths, Cynewulf cocked his head to the side and listened to the sounds of the forest: the intermittent craak of insects, the faint rustle of leaves high in the trees; he listened for the heavy noise of a body moving through the ferns, for the snap of a twig, or the scuff of a foot on a gnarled root. He strained to hear the rustle of cloth or the thump of a scabbard against a man’s hip or the creak of a leather belt. It did him no good to sniff the night air, for the reek of the siege and the miasma of burning thatch yet filled his nostrils. Nor did Cynewulf place much stock in what he could see, for it was as dark as a tomb beneath those trees, and even in the clearing he could barely spot his fingers flapping in front of his face; no, he would hear any Dane long before he could see or smell him.

  One of his veterans shifted his weight and touched Cynewulf’s left biceps. The Saxon chief turned in that direction in time to see one of the distant torches wink out. There had been four when they crossed the stream; now there were only two. The sounds of a commotion reached his ears, voices raised in alarm. “He’s here!” “Look out, Eomer! Behind you!” “Watch—!” A strangled cry as the third torch wavered and blinked out of existence, leaving a single mote of light on the left flank. It burned for but a moment before it, too, was extinguished. A terror-filled scream echoed across the forest, ending in a wet gurgle …

  The three men around him tensed, eager and ready to move. A hiss from Cynewulf forestalled th
em. Instead, they watched the half-dozen men stream in from the right flank, their own torches bobbing as they hurried to the aid of their comrades. Cynewulf saw their silhouettes reach the left flankers; he saw a man kneel down as though in prayer. Jags of light flickered from drawn swords as they milled about.

  “Cynewulf!” a man called out, a tinge of desperation in his voice. He held a torch on high. “Cynewulf? Are you there? They’re all dead!” The Saxon chief had to bite his lip to keep from bellowing out a reply. “Cyne—!”

  There came a thudding sound, like a cleaver striking a haunch of beef, and the silhouette crumpled; his torch flared before the darkness swallowed it up. Once more, the left flank erupted in a chaos of flickering torchlight, shouts of alarm, and bloodcurdling screams. Steel clashed and rang. Cynewulf could feel his killers straining to be let loose, like hounds scenting blood, but still he held them back. He was wary. Let the Dane exhaust himself, first. He—

  Suddenly, Cynewulf heard one voice cry out above the others: “Almighty G-God! What … What are you?”

  Laughter answered him—laughter as cold and cruel as a serpent’s hiss—punctuated by the drawn-out scream of the soldier. And then, silence.

  “What the devil was that?” the veteran to his left whispered. His face was a pallid smear in the night. “This cannot be the work of one Dane.”