A Gathering of Ravens

by Scott Oden

  “So be it,” the sonorous voice said from beneath him.

  Grimnir turned toward Badon. He heard rather than saw the myriad birds infesting the town’s gables and eaves take flight; almost in unison, every cur inside those walls loosed a fearful howl.

  Amid screams and cries of alarm, the Shepherd of the Hills reached deep into the earth and stirred the bones of Ymir.

  19

  The blood dried on Étaín’s flanks as she hung from her chains; helpless, she watched while Hrothmund and his rat-faced minion, Fordræd, transformed the eerie cathedral into an abattoir in the name of God. The pair started with the hapless survivors of Nunna’s Ford. “Stop this, for the love of all that is holy!” she pleaded as the two burly jailers dragged the first wounded Dane up from the cellar and to the chancel. “They’ve suffered enough! Please!”

  No one paid her any heed. As Hrothmund prayed and commanded the Dane to repent, Fordræd bound the man to an upright frame and took up a barbed scourge. He dealt the man thirty-nine lashes—the same number as the Lord received; after the thirty-ninth lash fell the Dane barely clung to life, the white of his spine and ribs gleaming through the gory wreckage of his back. Étaín watched, horrified, as Fordræd then took up a crown of twisted wire with thorns of black iron and hammered it down onto the poor man’s skull. The Dane convulsed, a bloody froth spraying from his lips. Étaín heard a faint sigh as an ethereal shape drifted from the man’s body only to vanish into the air. She sagged against her chains.

  “Another!” Hrothmund said. And one by one, every man, woman, and child captured at Nunna’s Ford was brought up into the cathedral and tortured to death. Étaín wept when the guards hauled the old crone past; despite the infirmity of years, she did not quail or quaver. She spat full in Hrothmund’s face when he commanded her to repent, tried to kick Fordræd in the groin as he struggled to tie her to the whipping frame, and bit the hand of one guard when he tried to shut her up. The first few lashes brought fresh curses and a promise of doom at the hands of Odin. By the twentieth lash, she no longer spoke; by the twenty-fifth, she hung lifeless from the whipping frame.

  “We will array their corpses around your pyre, witch,” Hrothmund said, drunk on the stench of blood. “Let them watch you burn!”

  Skjald came next, already broken and on death’s threshold; Étaín prayed for divine mercy and again for thanks when the Almighty granted it: Skjald’s soul fled even as Fordræd prepared him for torture.

  “No matter,” Hrothmund said. “Bring the last one, that devil, Óspak!”

  The guards hurried to do their lord’s bidding even as a terrible clamor arose beyond the walls of the cathedral. The spirits gibbered and howled, as though stung by some supernatural presence.

  The willow spirit dominating the body of Hrothmund smiled. “Can you hear them? The old gods scream for my blood. They claw at the veil between worlds, their talons like nails scraping across shale. I feel them plucking at my soul! Devils, they are! But each drop of heathen blood spilt brings their doom ever closer, even as each heathen I condemn to eternal damnation strengthens Him!” He raised his bloody hands toward Heaven, toward the crucifix. “Praise Him with me, child!” In a strange and dissonant voice, Hrothmund began to sing:

  Hail now the holder of Heaven’s realm,

  That architect’s might, his mind’s many ways,

  Lord forever and father of glory,

  Ultimate crafter of all wonders,

  Holy Maker who hoisted the heavens

  To roof the heads of the human race,

  And fashioned land for the legs of man,

  Liege of the world-born, Lord Almighty.

  Hrothmund’s self-righteous zeal sent Étaín into a rage. “Fool!” She lunged against the chains that bound her to the pole. “Faithless creature! I adjure you; take yourself back to your grove and leave the world of men in peace! Is this how you keep the word of Christ? Through torture? You would consign the souls of the Danes to eternal damnation, whereas a true man of God would strive to save them! Go into the world and preach the gospel to every creature; that was our Lord’s command!”

  “And he that believes not shall be condemned!” Hrothmund rounded on her. “Do not adjure me, child, for I am no devil to be cast out! I have read the works of the sainted Apostles. Brother shall betray his brother unto death, and the father his son; and children shall rise up against their parents and shall work their death. But he that shall endure unto the end, he shall be saved! I will endure, witch! I will endure to the end and I will be saved! And as Christ Almighty commands, no heathen flesh shall be spared! Their blood shall fill the baptismal font, and with it I shall wash away a thousand years of sin!” Hrothmund roared to goggle-eyed Fordræd: “Fetch Æthelstan, now!”

  “My lord!” Fordræd scurried from the chancel and down the long nave.

  There was silence for a dozen heartbeats, and more. Étaín relaxed; a sense of calm settled over her. In Hrothmund’s tirade, she apprehended the roots of the willow spirit’s apostasy. “The beauty of Hrothmund’s faith is secondary to you, isn’t it? You sought the word of God for your own salvation. What did you see when that poor man died in your presence? Did he show you the truth of the love of Christ, or the truth of the Hell that awaits all those who deny Him as their Savior?”

  “Both, for are both not true?”

  “They are true for the sons of Men.” Étaín shook her head. “But not even water drawn from the River Jordan by the hand of Saint John the Baptist, himself, can save you. Not the guise you wear—for the soul of Hrothmund has long since gone on to receive the rewards of Heaven—but you, willow spirit … salvation is for mankind, alone. For your kind there is nothing. No reward for your toils save the long, melancholy twilight before the fall of deepest night.”

  “No, witch!” Hrothmund said, spittle flying. “I have seen my end! Once I have cleansed this land of its heathen blight, I shall go to the king and make my confession; I shall fast and pray, and with the rising of the sun on Midsummer’s Day I shall take Holy Communion. Once anointed, I shall cast off this shell and join our Lord in Heaven! Such have been my dreams, and my dreams have ever rung true!”

  Hrothmund turned as the great doors of the cathedral opened. The guards hustled down the nave, one-eyed Óspak between them. In their wake came the Saxon captain, Æthelstan, and an unctuous Fordræd, his rat nose twitching. They dragged the Danish chief past Étaín. “Never give up hope, jarl!”

  Óspak grinned fiercely, beard bristling as they hauled him toward the bloody whipping frame, surrounded by an orchestra of ripped and discarded corpses.

  Æthelstan stopped shy of the chancel. He glared sidelong at Étaín, but snapped his gaze forward as the lord of Badon approached. The captain stood rigid, fear of his master evident in the way he averted his eyes. “My lord.”

  “I need more heathens, Æthelstan.”

  The red-bearded captain hesitated before shaking his head. “There are no more in Wessex, my lord, save for the war band she traveled with. Have you asked after their whereabouts? Who leads them? Or who shelters them, for surely someone has offered them succor?”

  Hrothmund turned slowly, transfixing Étaín with a look of otherworldly passion. “A war band, you say? No, the witch failed to mention that.”

  Fear knotted in her belly. “He’s wrong, Lord Hrothmund,” she said. “I did not travel with a war band. It was only I and another.”

  “Lies!” Æthelstan snarled. “Her confederates killed seventeen of my men, good Cynewulf among them! One man, alone, could not have done that! Lend me pincers and hot irons, my lord. I’ll get the truth from her, yet.”

  “Interesting,” Hrothmund said. A slow smile spread across his face.

  Étaín recoiled, chains rattling. “I swear to you, my lord, upon my faith in the Almighty, only one other traveled with me, and I was his captive. I—”

  Suddenly, a terrible explosion shook the cathedral, followed by the grinding of stone and the dull roar of displaced a
ir. Men screamed. Étaín felt the ground beneath her buckle and shake, as though a coil of the Miðgarðr Serpent tightened mercilessly around the Rock of Badon. The pole tilted, dumping her forward onto her knees as debris showered down around her. Wood splintered nearby and she added her voice to the terrified shouts. Dust choked her; the reek of sulfur filled the air. She heard the tinkle of glass as the colorful lamps shattered down the length of the nave. Tree-columns cracked and fell. Torches guttered and went out. And above it all, she heard the exultant voice of Óspak, roaring the name “Odin!”

  And as the world spun and shook, the spirits answered Óspak’s cry with a subdued whisper, a name in myriad languages, a sibilant hiss brimming with hatred and fear. Huddled in the darkness, Étaín knew something ancient and vengeful had come to Badon.

  20

  The earthquake was terrible to behold. Grimnir could only marvel at the sudden and absolute destruction wrought by the Shepherd of the Hills. He heard a deafening roar as the land bucked and twisted; though their foundations were solid, as solid as anything crafted by the hand of man, Badon’s ancient walls could not stand before the Shepherd’s onslaught. Stones that had endured since the time of the Caesars ceased to exist, causing the patchwork of brick and timber above them to crack and slough away. Defensive towers now bereft of their legs swayed and crumbled, a cascade of stones toppling inward to crush wood, thatch, plaster, and flesh with equal dispassion. Fissures opened in the ramparts, widening as the ground itself ran like water from a stream.

  The bastion that was the city’s South Gate disintegrated before Grimnir’s eyes, collapsing in on itself. Embers from burning cressets sprayed across the ruins and ignited the rising clouds of pulverized masonry, a deadly brew of dust mixed with residue from centuries’ worth of spilled pitch, bitumen, and oil. Grimnir shaded his eyes from the searing light of the sudden firestorm, glad not to be in the middle of it. He spared not an ounce of pity for the men baked to death in that makeshift oven of rubble and less for those burned alive at its edges. They were his enemy, and if the tables were turned they would doubtless dance a jig on his ashes.

  Then, as abruptly as it started, the cataclysm came to an end. Grimnir felt the earth settle back onto its bones like cerecloth on a corpse as the Shepherd of the Hills withdrew his power. “The way is clear, kaunr.” The now-weary voice issued from the Cruithne stones. “Go quickly. Follow the spirits, and return with my wayward thrall.”

  Grimnir needed no coaxing. He set off at a run, cutting back through the tangled wasteland to reach the arrow-straight road—its cobbles ruptured, now, with some dangerously tilted. Nimble-footed, he hastened past where the road intersected a cart trail, leaping the shattered remains of a cross as a river of night-black crows winged down from the lightening sky, their brazen cries like the shouts of a victorious army. They led the way; skirting the fiery ruin of the South Gate, Grimnir clawed his way up and over the wall through a rubble-filled cleft. To his left, a knot of mailed Saxons sat huddled atop a portion of the parapet that survived intact. None of them thought to challenge him, nor did they seem to mark his presence, so dumbfounded were they by the unexpected violence the earth itself had visited upon them.

  Grimnir descended into utter chaos. Flames licked the night sky; acrid smoke belched from pyres of thatch and timber that had once been hovels, creating a choking curtain drawn by the hand of a god across a thousand little scenes of tragedy. He saw bodies sprawled in the street, pale and bloody, skulls and spines shattered by the rain of debris. Others he saw floating in pools of steaming water, caught when the hot springs beneath the town spewed from their grottoes and sluiced through the narrow lanes, boiling alive all caught in their flow. Still more bodies lay in grotesque contortions, strangled by the noxious clouds of vapor that settled in the hollows created by the rubble.

  Survivors tore at toppled stone and wood, frantic in their search for missing loved ones; children tried to rouse fallen parents, mothers cried over slain children. Dogs nipped at the heels of their dead masters, or else ran amok among the herds of cattle and goats that were suddenly bereft of their herdsmen.

  Beneath the wails of agony and the calls for succor, Grimnir heard the fearful echo of spirits chanting his name in a dozen languages. The sound guided him through Badon’s ruined heart, and led him to the sheer-sided Rock, where the burning ruins of a cathedral flared like a beacon in the rising light. Cracked stairs rose to a pair of tall iron-bound doors that sagged open on now-ruptured hinges. Wooden scaffolding lay in heaps, and chunks of stone from the façade had wrought horrible slaughter among those who had sought to flee out into the open. Burning oil dripped from broken cressets, pooling into a lake of fire that flickered over the waxen faces of the dead. A handful of survivors streamed out through the doors, servants and courtiers covered in dust and ash and caked blood.

  Snarling, Grimnir scattered them like sheep and plunged into the burning heart of the cathedral.

  21

  Flames lit the transept. Étaín was grateful for their lurid glow as she struggled out from beneath the twisted pole. Wrought from cold iron, it had saved her life when it wedged against the wall of the cathedral. It caught and held the aged oak timbers as they crashed down from the ceiling, which in turn shielded her from the hail of dressed stone and masonry that followed. Repeated impacts had sheared away one link in the chain securing her to the pole; though still manacled, Étaín was able to drag her trembling limbs free of the debris.

  Iron rattled and rasped as she crawled toward the center of the transept; she heard other sounds: a gurgling breath, a muttered prayer, the low rhythmic chanting of spirits. Debris shifted and clattered, and the flames consuming the old timbers crackled. The air was heavy with the reek of smoke, stone dust, blood, and charred flesh. Étaín coughed and spat. She spied Fordræd not far away, where the transept met the chancel. He lay on his back, his body crushed from hip to knee by a jagged piece of the ceiling, its faint frescoes splashed with bright blood. A stone flake as sharp as a Dane’s axe had lopped off half the rat-faced jailer’s skull. Of Æthelstan, she saw no sign.

  “Óspak?” Her voice profaned the silence. No reply. She called out again, louder: “Jarl Óspak?”

  This time, she heard a weak answer. “H-Here, girl.”

  Étaín saw a hand move, not far from Fordræd’s corpse. She staggered to her feet and, dragging the length of chain behind her, made her way to his side. The one-eyed Dane had taken the brunt of a falling joist; though he had clawed his way out from beneath it, Étaín could see that the skein of his life was nearing its end. She sagged down beside him.

  “What … What can I do?” she said, grief etching her brow.

  Óspak gave her a weak smile. “I would kiss you, girl, if you’d but fetch me a horn of mead. But, since there’s none to be had in this pisshole of a city, let’s get those irons off you, instead.” With bloody and broken fingers, he managed to work the catch securing her manacles. The heavy cuffs clanked to the ground. Then, he fixed her with his good eye and shook his head. “Don’t look at me so. It’s a small matter, this death. A better end than torture, but still … this is not the death I had hoped for. No honor. No glory. The Choosers of the Slain will not be drawn here, and I shall be as a beggar outside the Allfather’s hall—” Óspak’s voice caught in his throat.

  Étaín grasped his hands. “Christ will welcome you as a brother. You need only ask for His blessing.”

  The old jarl laughed. “I would be a poor companion at your White Christ’s board, girl. I imagine my songs would not be welcome, there.” A sudden coughing fit racked the Dane’s body. Étaín tore a strip of cloth from the hem of her linen undershirt; she dabbed at the scarlet froth staining Óspak’s lips, then smoothed his craggy brow. “Odin has avenged us all,” he muttered.

  Étaín nodded. “He has.”

  Before she could say more, Étaín heard the sharp intake of breath behind her, followed by the dissonant voice of Hrothmund. “Blasphemy!” The lord of Ba
don emerged from the smoke; the willow spirit was unscathed, but the vessel he wore was torn and lacerated, the glamour that made him appear alive weakened. No blood oozed from his injuries, and his flesh had a deathly pall to it. He stepped over Fordræd’s corpse, his eyes blazing and his face a ghoulish mask of ash-streaked dust. “Revenge is mine, say the Scriptures,” he said. “The day of destruction is at hand, and the time makes haste to come.” He stooped and scooped up a hardwood club studded with bronze nails.

  “Vengeance has come, but not for you,” Étaín replied. Summoning up her courage, she clambered to her feet and put herself between Hrothmund and Óspak. “Do you not hear them? The landvættir? The spirits you betrayed? They name your doom.”

  Hrothmund cocked his head, listening. “Cucullo Tectus? Yr un-Chwfl? Grímr? I know what they name, witch! The Hooded One, child of the Plague Folk, spiteful son of Bálegyr. A lonely beast that dwells far to the north—”

  “No! He was my captor. It was he who brought me from Sjælland in the Danemark to Wessex, by way of the dark limbs of Yggðrasil. It was he who killed your men outside Nunna’s Ford. He has come for me.”

  Hrothmund’s snarl could not fully mask his apprehension. “Then he has come to greet his own death!” He crossed himself and gestured with his club at the image of Christ, still hanging from the shattered timbers of the chancel’s vaulted ceiling. “The grace of God will shield me from the unclean hands of the orcnéas, and from the black sorcery of his impotent gods! I wear the armor of Christ!”

  “It is stolen armor, and stolen grace,” Étaín said. “Against him it will avail you nothing. He comes!”

  The lord of Badon snatched a handful of Étaín’s hair. “Not soon enough to save you, child of Satan!”