A Gathering of Ravens

by Scott Oden

  “Not a tin farthing,” Étaín said quietly. Shaking her head, she turned away.

  Around clenched teeth, Grimnir’s jaw champed and writhed as though he chewed a foul-tasting word. Finally, he spat it out. “Wait,” he said. He moved the bowl aside and gestured for her to sit.

  Étaín sighed. She made no move toward him. “I have no stomach for bickering.”

  “Nár.” He wore a painful grimace. “No bickering. Sit.”

  And so, mindful of the crumbling edge, Étaín joined him. Grimnir fished a chunk of venison from the bowl, and then offered the bowl to her. She looked at him as if he’d gone mad, but then shrugged and plucked out a piece of her own. They ate in odd, uncomfortable silence. Finally, Grimnir spat out a bit of gristle he’d been worrying and scrubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. He glanced sidelong at Étaín.

  “Old Gífr, he’s the one who taught me about oaths and debts,” Grimnir said. “Never swear the one lightly, and never forget the other. He was right on that score, the useless git!” Grimnir gave a bark of gallows laughter. “Miserable wretch had as many debts owed him as he had debts he owed others. Me, I never got a taste for owing anybody for anything—not for food, not for shelter, and not for blood. But”—his lip curled in a moue of distaste—“you pulled my fat out of the fire, fair and square. I owe you. And on my oath, I will make this debt right.” Grimnir reached for the hilt of his seax, but Étaín’s hand on his arm brought him up short.

  “What say we call it even?”

  “Even?”

  Étaín nodded. “For what you did at Badon.”

  Grimnir sucked his teeth for a moment before slowly nodding. “It’s even, then.” He gave her a sly look. “Though…”

  “What?”

  “If you’re such a stickler for fairness, then I’m still owed for saving your wretched hide on the Ash-Road.” Grimnir bared his teeth in a malicious grin.

  Étaín’s expression hardened. “Well, if we’re splitting hairs … I’m still owed weregild for my dead friend, Njáll.”

  At this, Grimnir’s mouth clamped shut; his brow lowered in a scowl. He looked away, muttering under his breath something about their accounts perhaps being even, after all. Étaín snorted, and then laughed aloud.

  “God bless you! You look like you just ate a turd! A ripe, stinking floater!” she said, and added, “Can I confess something to you? When we left him in that cave back in Sjælland, Njáll wasn’t dead.”

  Grimnir looked askance at her. “The Christ-Dane? Nár! My hands were around his throat! I know I choked the life out of him!”

  “No.” Étaín shook her head. “You hurt him, but he was very much alive when we left.”

  Grimnir cursed and spat, though Étaín sensed a measure of admiration in him. “You miserable kneelers! Can’t even trust you to die right!” He lapsed into silence.

  The sun reached its zenith and began its decline into the cloud-wreathed west; the shadows beneath Carraig Dubh lengthened and the river below turned to a ribbon of fire. “He knows I’m here,” Grimnir said at length. “Bastard knows I could put right a five-hundred-year debt with a single thrust to his black heart. So he hides behind those wretched walls and draws more flies to his stink, thinking they’ll save him from the reckoning.” Grimnir nodded away to the west, where a column of smoke marked the approach of the other army. “But who are these swine? More of Half-Dane’s cursed allies? Out for a lark and burning the countryside?”

  Étaín realized, then, that Grimnir wasn’t aware of Ériu’s current strife. There’d been no time to tell him what she knew before they left Wessex, and even less time since washing up on these shores. “No,” she said. “That’s the army of Ériu’s high king, Brian mac Cennétig. He makes for Dubhlinn with the intent to crush an uprising led by that witch’s brother, King Maelmorda of Leinster. Half-Dane is his ally—well, more like the instigator of the whole thing—and in Óspak’s words he’s ‘offering plunder, slaves, and land to every jarl and gold-giver from here to Helheimr who answers his call to arms.’ I’d wager those ships bear Manx reavers and freebooters from Orkney.”

  Grimnir’s eyes blazed with interest as he studied the landscape anew. “Just like Rastarkalv,” he said, half to himself. “Back then, Bjarki goaded the sons of Bloodaxe into rising up against that idiot, King Haakon.”

  “Why?”

  Grimnir slowly rose from his crouch, his limbs creaking and cracking as he stretched his muscles. “Reputation, mostly. He wanted the Norse to see him as a powerful goði, so he spooled off some lies about prophecies and omens and then manipulated the situation to fit his needs. What’s his play, this time?”

  “A throne, perhaps,” Étaín said. She, too, clambered to her feet.

  “Could be. I need to get closer.” Grimnir’s gaze shifted to the approaching army. “This high king of theirs, what do you know of him?”

  Étaín shrugged. “Not much. He is an old man, I’ve heard. A good king and a devout man of God. Jarl Óspak thought enough of him to sail from Mann in his defense, even against his own brother.”

  “That one.” Grimnir jabbed a thumb over his shoulder; down the slope from the precipice, their makeshift camp lay hard by the yew thicket. Bran of the Uí Garrchon rested there, beneath an awning of branches and blankets. She could hear him moaning in feverish agony. “Is he one of the high king’s men?”

  “He was going to join up, he and his mates.”

  The fetishes in Grimnir’s hair ticked together softly as he drew on his jerkin and laced it up, bending his back, twisting at the waist, and rolling his shoulders to work the stiffness from the leather. His shirt of rust-flecked iron rings came next, followed by the belt supporting his seax in its scabbard. His cloak of tattered wolf fur he left rolled on his satchel. “Take that wretch on to their camp,” Grimnir said. “I’ll rig up a drag and you can use one of those flea-bitten ponies.”

  Étaín shook her head. “He’ll not survive. That arrow…”

  “He won’t survive either way, but if he dies down amongst the Gael we can at least use it to get you into the old king’s good graces.” Grimnir shoved his satchel into her hands. “Take this and leg it, foundling.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re asking of me,” Étaín said.

  Grimnir leaned in closer; she was reminded of something, then. Something close proximity had caused her to forget: here was a creature wrought from ten centuries of strife, twenty mortal lifetimes bound into a monstrous form most men would kill if they had half a chance. And she was colluding with it. “We’re between rock and ruin, foundling. Two starveling wolves, we are, outcast and alone. But we have a chance to change that. So I need you to be yourself. Be a good cross-kisser and all, brimming with the milk of human kindness. I need you down there amongst the Gael and spinning your yarn. And spin it loud, for any who will listen.”

  “If I do,” Étaín finished his thought for him, “then, perhaps, the wolves won’t be quite so alone.”

  22

  Grimnir crept down from the heights of Carraig Dubh as the day waned. His path brought him through the forest of pine and oak blanketing the mountain’s flanks, along logging trails used by the town’s woodcutters, and past empty camps where Danish shipwrights once gathered to dicker and trade over the best wood for keels, spars, masts, and oars. Logging trails became horse and cart paths as forest gave way to fallow fields. These Grimnir crossed at speed, pausing only to examine the weed-choked walls of a burned-out farmstead. “Old work,” he muttered.

  Étaín he had sent in the other direction, down the gentler path that would bring her and that cursed Irishman out in the rear of the approaching army. “Keep clear of the vanguard,” he told her as he cut four yew branches and lashed them together to make a drag. “The young ones, eager to blood themselves and make a name … they’ll lead the army. Look for the rabble that will be following the main body, and ask for one of your cursed priests. By the looks of him, this one’s going to be needing your death-rites
.”

  “His name is Bran,” she said, her voice hard. “Bran of the Uí Garrchon.”

  “Whatever this wretch’s name is, make sure you sing out your story—and sing it loud. You want their miserable king to hear it.”

  “Why does it matter if it reaches King Brian’s ear?”

  Grimnir paused in his efforts to truss the drag to one of the ponies, its ears flattened to its skull in terror. “It matters. Something happens to me, a king is a good ally to have, foundling.”

  Grimnir chuckled at himself. Listen to him! He sounded like some soft-bellied matron. All this hand-wringing over Étaín’s safety? Faugh! He didn’t care. All that mattered was weregild—the weighing of the blood price and the slow, terrible extraction of that price from Bjarki’s worthless hide. When the blade met the bone, Grimnir reckoned all bets, all allegiances, would be off.

  Farmland gave way to creek-laced meadows, rich in tall grasses and orchards; rain-swollen, these watercourses drained into a pair of rivers—the smaller was sluggish and black; the larger, fast-moving and tidal. At their confluence Grimnir spied a deep black pool that opened on the sea, and on a promontory above it sat the fortress-city of Dubhlinn.

  Grimnir crept closer, through an apple grove gone to seed and into the thin shelter offered by the stone foundations of a long-ruined church. From there, he surveyed the town’s defenses and found them formidable. The walls were stronger than Badon’s, constructed of stone, earth, and timber, well-kept and well-manned, to boot. The black pool served as a harbor, and even from Grimnir’s vantage he could see it was packed with ships—dragon-prowed and shield-hung, keels beached in the soft loam; a second palisade protected the landward bank of the pool. Doing a quick tally of the masts, taking into account others he could yet see in the glass-blue waters of the bay, beyond, gave him a rough estimate of sixty ships—well over two thousand fighting men.

  Grimnir hawked and spat; he scrubbed his chin with the back of one hand. “Bastard’s as snug as a maggot in a dead man’s arse.”

  Undeterred, he slunk out of his hiding place and retraced his steps through the apple grove before setting off on a track parallel to Dubhlinn. Grimnir reached the overgrown banks of the more sluggish of the two rivers—its waters black with silt and peat; it ran deep, but he was able to ford it with the help of low-hanging branches and a fallen log. The ground rose on the far bank, giving him ample vantage to study the main landward gate into Dubhlinn.

  Like the walls, the gate was strongly built of iron-bound wood and flanked by earthen ramparts topped with a timber palisade. It stood open to let in a flood of refugees from the hinterland—Norse settlers driven from their homes by the advancing Gaels; long-faced men bearing axes and spears stumped behind trundling oxcarts laden with the dross of their miserable lives, wives and squalling brats raising a clamor that set his teeth on edge.

  Grimnir considered slipping in with the refugees. Creep in like some peaching sneakthief … but then what? Knife Bjarki in the dark, in his bed? Or fight him in the open and hope to kill him before his lads carve me up and feed me to the crows? No, as formidable and well-ordered as the defenses surrounding Dubhlinn were, Grimnir knew he could find a way in. His problem would be getting close to that snake Bjarki—and thornier still would be getting out again with his head unbroken once he had done the deed.

  For the better part of an hour Grimnir crouched there in the tall grass, watching the gate. Bastard knows I’m here, he thought. How could he not? The witch would have told him, even if he missed the shrieking of the night hags when I set foot on this cursed isle. He knows … but he won’t run. Not this time. Little fool has too much invested in this bit of treachery—armies marching at his command, kings bowing and scraping, the cursed gods looking on. What, then? How can I get close—? Grimnir suddenly rapped the side of his head with the heel of his hand three times in quick succession. Nár! You’re a stupid git! That’s what he wants! He wants me hemmed inside those blasted walls! Then, no matter where I turn he’ll have his swine ready to nail me to the ground, damn his yellow liver!

  Suddenly, Grimnir’s eyes narrowed to slits; flaring nostrils caught the acrid scent of smoke, underscored by the savory stench of roasted flesh. He knew what that reek portended, better than most. Shading his eyes with one grimy palm, Grimnir looked off to the west. Beyond a low range of hills two columns of smoke stained the sky; closer to hand, he heard a horn blare from atop the battlements, followed by the creak and pop of hinges as the gates of Dubhlinn slowly trundled shut. The refugees left on the road raised a clamor, screaming and cursing and scrambling to get inside.

  Using the sudden cacophony as cover, Grimnir scuttled to a new position just below the brow of the hill; the grass was thinner, here, but it afforded him a clear view of the heavily rutted road. As he looked on, the men among the retreating Norse chivvied their families away from the ponderous oxen and bid them run. Older children scooped up their younger siblings amid cries and terrified bawls, and those closest to the gate exhorted the stragglers to hurry before it closed. Only a handful slipped inside before the gate’s iron-banded bar fell into place with the cold finality of a death sentence. The rest who remained on the road scattered like hares. A quarter of a mile from the walls of Dubhlinn, the men turned about and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their grim-faced women, spears and axes ready, as the Irish vanguard thundered into view.

  They were outriders, and there were scores of them—howling, half-wild Gaels mounted on shaggy ponies, armed with spears and bearing small round shields but not a hauberk or helm among them; theirs was the discipline of a pack of feral dogs. As a mob, they bore down on the ragged line of refugees. Knowing they faced death, those stalwart men and women nevertheless gave a good accounting of themselves. Their spears brought down a handful of ponies; their axes soaked the hard-packed earth with good Irish blood. But the refugees could not stand long. Grimnir hissed a silent warning as riders swung out and got in behind the Northerners. Half of them turned to fend off this new threat and got a spear in the back for their troubles.

  In the blink of an eye, the uneven skirmish became a slaughter. Grimnir saw a red-bearded Dane, wounded unto death, drive a knife into the throat of the woman who stood alongside him; they sank down together, husband and wife, as the Irish storm broke over them. Riders threaded in among the oxcarts, spearing stragglers as they ran, snatching up children and dashing their brains out, and dragging what women they could find out into the open and stripping them naked. Butchery gave way to rape.

  Grimnir expected some response from those hard-eyed Norse who peered over the walls of Dubhlinn. A strong sally to retrieve the dead, a flight of arrows to serve as an iron-tipped rebuke, something. But he did not expect silence. Grimnir’s lip curled in a snarl of disdain. It reeked of Bjarki’s handiwork—the sniveling yellow bastard! He would hide behind his walls; he would hide behind the spears of these Norse curs who thought he was something that he wasn’t. Just like Rastarkalv.

  “So be it!” He could play that game again. But Grimnir wouldn’t just skulk around the edges of the fray the way he did in those days, when he was content to let the sons of Bloodaxe call the strokes. No, this time he meant to guide the spear. That meant forging an alliance with the cross-kissing Irish king, Brian mac Cennétig. That meant using Étaín to get in his good graces …

  That meant patience. Grimnir ground his teeth in frustration. Patience! The wretched maggot was right there, closer than he’d been in half a century, and it galled him to sit on his hands and do nothing. Still, the idiot was snake-cunning; it wouldn’t do to come so far only to end up with his hide hung on a bramble because he was too reckless to think things through.

  Near at hand, a horse snorted and shied as it caught Grimnir’s scent. He cursed under his breath; he knew he’d tempted the Norns, those fickle bitches who wove the fates of all, by creeping too close to the fray. Grimnir watched as the horse’s rider, a fiercely mustachioed Irishman with triple-plaited red-gold hair and a
pox-scarred face, stroked the beast’s neck and cooed in its flattened ears. Eyes the color of hoarfrost flickered across the crest of the low hillock. He saw something that didn’t sit well with him, his blood-spattered brow furrowing. The Irishman straightened abruptly; as he turned at the waist and whistled for the others to give heed, Grimnir slipped back over the crest of the hillock—his movements hidden by the gentle sough and sigh of the grass as the wind rustled through it.

  23

  Cormac O’Ruairc whistled up a few lads. These men of the vanguard, like himself, were Connacht-born, the bloody-handed Uí Ruairc from the hills and deep valleys around Lough Gill. And like him, they had pledged their oaths not to that doddering old fool King Brian, but to his savage-minded son, Murrough—a prince of the Dalcassians whose temperament closely matched their own. But while the father preached against rapine and slaughter, the son had given him explicit instructions to harrow the ground with the blood of these filthy Northron invaders. Make them rue the day they ever set foot on Ériu’s blessed soil. And that was what he did. That was what his lads were best at …

  Only a handful of riders paid any heed to O’Ruairc’s summons, so intent were they on despoiling the dead. The few who cantered up were older men, for the most part, who had no use for lusts that fired the blood of their younger kinsmen. “Saw one slinking off, yonder,” O’Ruairc said, jerking his chin toward the low hill and beyond. “And he didn’t look like a farmer, either. A spy or I’m a feckin’ priest! A few of you lads go and track him down. We’ll finish up this lot before the Northrons get their dander up and try to drive us off.”

  Cormac O’Ruairc turned away as five of his lads vanished over the crest of the hill; a distant gleam caught the Connacht chief’s eye: sunlight on mail links. He espied a delegation watching them from the battlements of Dubhlinn Castle. O’Ruairc grinned, his mustaches bristling. “Look lively, lads!” he called out. “Their ruddy king’s come out to take a gander! Little Silky-beard has crawled out from under his bitch-mother’s skirts!”