I clutched the monk’s arm. ‘Hold your tongue,’ I growled, ‘or you’ll find a rope round your neck and your feet off the ground.’ His weasel face was a knot of anguish and misery and I saw an emptiness in his eyes like the emptiness I had seen in Halldor’s eyes before Sigurd had killed him. The monk looked broken.
‘You will not go far from the camp again without your jarl’s leave,’ Black Floki gnarred. ‘That goes for you too, Asgot.’ The Danes grunted their assent but Asgot curled his lip at Floki, thumbing some small bones over in his hand, which might have been a threat. Floki eyeballed him and the Danes twitched nervously until Sköll cut the silence with a howl that stiffened the hairs on my neck. The two crows flapped into the sky, kaahing angrily, their stealth undone. Cynethryth knelt in front of the beast, her forehead against its snout, and whispered tenderly. Then, somewhere to the east, another wolf howled and Sköll narrowed its golden-yellow eyes and pulled back its ears.
‘Let’s move,’ I said. Because the darkness was coming and there were gods amongst us.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘SHE HELPED THAT BLOODTHIRSTY OLD CUNNY STRING THEM UP?’ Penda asked me, throwing another branch into the fire pit. I watched the flames lick the new wood which began to bubble and spit because it was still green. All around us folk were turning in, having heard Asgot and the Danes’ tales of their offering and the All-Father’s visit to that grove of the dead. They had listened like children, eyes wide, mouths framing unspoken questions. Many had seemed grateful to Asgot. And to Cynethryth.
‘I think it’s worse than that,’ I said. ‘I think the whole thing was Cynethryth’s idea.’
Penda shook his head. ‘No, Raven. I know she’s changed.’ I felt his eyes on me as I watched the flames. ‘She is not the girl she was, I’ll admit that, but—’ He scrubbed his head with a fist. ‘She would not do that. By Christ, they were nuns, lad!’
‘They think she has power,’ I said, thumbing at a knot of Danes, seeing no reason now to flinch from the truth. I had hated seeing those Christ brides hanging there, stiffening in the cold. Even if their deaths had bought us the favour some had thought lost, I despised their murder. I have always thought it a cowardly thing to kill a woman, and that night I had known I was not alone in that. Some of the men had frowned at the tale, Sigurd amongst them. Though he knew the power in such an offering, he could not spit out the bad taste it left in the mouth. But what curdled my guts, made me feel like taking my sword and ramming it down Asgot’s throat, was the thought of Cynethryth putting the ropes round the nuns’ necks. That thought twisted my mind like corpses twisting in the wind. Because I knew then what I had feared for a long time – that Cynethryth was lost to me for ever.
‘And what about you, Raven?’ Penda said. ‘Do you think that she has … power?’ I heard the grimace through which his words seeped.
‘It doesn’t matter what I think. The others believe so. That damned wolf, too.’
Penda tossed another branch into the flames, sending a dense swarm of sparks into the night sky. I followed their flight, turning over in my mind the black threads that had been woven into Cynethryth’s wyrd and wondering if I could have unpicked any of them.
We saw another three full moons on Lyngvi, during which time we made repairs to the ships, grew fat on meat and humped the blauvifs to keep warm. We spent Yuletide gorging on the flesh from small bulls we had found wandering the fen. They were wily creatures, which is likely why we had not come across them sooner, but once we had found their drinking pool we just had to wait with ropes downwind amongst the rushes. At first we had tried bows but we found that these sturdy beasts could sprout ten or more arrows and still charge off into the scrub, so that when we found them bled out the meat was tough as leather. With ropes and enough men we could catch them, hold them, and cut their throats, and this was the best way. But even the beef could not make up for the lack of ale and mead. Bram was not the only one who moaned that this was the first Yuletide he could remember spending sober, to which Bjarni added that it was the first Yuletide he could remember at all, and as such if it had not been for the dark beauties warming his bed it would have been the worst Yuletide ever.
As for myself, I had grown fond of Amina and might have loved her if we could have understood each other better. As it was, she taught me scraps of her language and I tried to teach her some English and Norse. Mostly, though, we clung to each other amongst our furs as the scourging wind moaned across the marsh or the freezing fog slung thick as broth over our camp. Amina and the others had been quick to discard their colourful tunics and shrouds because they were too fine to keep out the cold. Instead they had made clothes from our stock of skins, so that you would hardly have recognized them now as the amir’s women. They looked more like some strange wild tribe from old men’s tales, and yet even drowning in massive furs and pelt hats you could see they were beauties. Often we would joke about how the fat amir must be missing them though his ears were likely enjoying the peace.
Father Egfrith was cheerless and wretched. He had not shaved his head for many weeks now and had even let his beard grow. If not for the threadbare habit he still wore under an old bear’s pelt you would not have guessed he was a Christ slave. Penda said that the monk had given up all hope of bringing any of us unto his God’s fold and now carried a burden of guilt and failing.
It is always the way in my experience that when men are in far-flung lands they observe even more fiercely the habits and customs of their home. So it was with us. Men favoured certain trees or deep pools, leaving offerings of food or making animal sacrifices to Óðin or Frey or Njörd. Even those who had listened to Egfrith’s talk of the White Christ before, if only because any story was better than none, now had no time for the monk. Asgot had proved the more powerful of the two of them, his blood-offering of the nuns keeping us in favour with the gods, so that we had spent a winter if not in comfort nevertheless full with food and safe from attack. The only men who listened to Egfrith now were the Wessexmen Penda, Gytha, Baldred and Wiglaf. And even they spent less time around the monk these days, perhaps because they too enjoyed the company of the blauvifs for which they had had to endure Egfrith’s tongue-lashing. So Egfrith kept to himself now, brooding and sour as a crab apple, and I think he would have left us to our sinful ways and gone if he had not been stuck on that sodden island in the heart of winter.
When the northerly wind lost some of its teeth we began making preparations to leave Lyngvi. Every few days one of us would follow the brackish channels back to the wave-lashed shoreline to judge the sea’s mood and the sailing conditions. We marked the sun’s journey through the sky, watching it climb a little higher each day and take longer to fall behind the western horizon. Our shadows across the mudflats shortened and lone flying insects became swarms best avoided. We watched buds swelling on bushes and trees and looked to the sky for birds flying north, all of which told us that winter was ending.
But the winter had not been kind to Goliath. The ship had been buffeted by wind and flayed by icy rain and seething seas. Without men to bail it, the bilge was knee-deep in water and much of the deck was rotting. She was rolling slightly to the steerboard side, too, and Knut and Olaf agreed that if we took her out into the open sea she would more than likely fall apart at the first sniff of heavy weather. We took what was useful, including much of the rigging and the sail, which we had stored in Fjord-Elk’s hold over the winter, and also some of the wood that was still strong, and we left the rest of her to the sea. We struck camp and carried our sea chests back to the ships and the blauvifs were put aboard the snekkjes with the Danes because Sigurd would not have them on Serpent or Fjord-Elk. It took Cynethryth a long while to persuade Sköll to walk Serpent’s boarding plank. The beast seemed to shrink, tucking its tail between its legs and flattening its ears, but in the end Cynethryth tempted it up with a raw bull’s heart and once aboard the creature cowered in the bows, whimpering and shivering, so that I almost pitied it.
We c
ould just as easily have waited for the wind to change so that we could sail those waterlogged ditches and channels back to the sea, for a day here or there would make no difference. But Sigurd said that we had lived softly for too long. That journey from the mere would remind our shoulders and arms how to row again before the sterner test of the open sea, and in truth we were glad to grip the staves once more and turn some of that meat into muscle. The men were in good spirits as men always are when water is turning either side of the bow again after a long time on land. We were happy to be leaving that island too, though we all agreed that it had the promise of being a fine place to live in the summer so long as the biting flies were not too many.
We passed Goliath sitting forsaken in the estuary. To me she looked like the rotting carcass of a whale, her plundered hull the creature’s ribs where the flesh has been picked away. But our ships had been protected and repaired and cleaned, and we rowed into the open sea, then east towards the rising sun, so that I could feel the warmth on my back, and Serpent’s hull shivered with the thrill of being free again. I filled my lungs, letting my hair loose, for the sea air to wash the cloying damp smell of Lyngvi from it. When our muscles began to cramp and burn because they were not used to the work, Sigurd made us row some more – and none of us could complain, for our jarl rowed too, sweating as much as any of us. When at last we stowed our oars and sank the anchors with the sun, we were as tired as thralls at harvest time; almost too tired to eat though our bodies craved food. But it felt good being rocked to sleep by the sea’s endless rolling furrows, listening to the creaking of the ropes and the mast and the strange yet comforting sound of bubbles playing across the strakes on the underside of the hull.
Next day, we came tired and stiff to the oars and the day after that was even worse. But by the fourth day our oar rhythm was as good as it ever had been and the aching in my muscles had dulled to a faint reminder not to leave it so long next time. The men we had freed along with Yngvar and Völund we put on Fjord-Elk’s row benches and found them to be good oarsmen, though Fjord-Elk’s original crew were not too keen on sharing deck space with men whose language they could make no sense of. Now and then the lightening sea would swell or the wind would suddenly build, warning us that we had perhaps left the safety of Lyngvi a little early in the season, but we had all itched to move on. So long as we stayed near to the shore and kept one eye on the sky and the other on the sea, we believed all would be well. Besides which, trading galleys were thick as gulls round a herring skiff in that sea. Not a day went by when we didn’t see a sail or two straining full of the warming air, and if merchants were not afraid to be out then men as sea-bold as us should not give it a thought, though of course we did. We kept our dragon heads mounted on our prows but it was likely that these other ships would have avoided us anyway, which was what we wanted for now.
Ten days after leaving Lyngvi we came to the land of the Romans. Most of us had heard tales about them, how in the olden times their kings had ruled lands and peoples stretching beyond the farthest horizons in all directions. These emperors would send great armies against their enemies, their warriors numbering more than the stars in the sky. They had built enormous halls of stone, much bigger even than the ones we had seen in Frankia, and even the poorest of the Romans had thought himself a lord amongst the men of other lands. Those days were long gone, but a man of no less power than the emperors of old held dominion there now: Emperor Karolus.
‘The Vicar of Saint Peter, His Holiness Pope Leo himself placed the ancient crown of the Roman emperors on Karolus’s head,’ Egfrith said as we looked for war ships amongst the vessels moored in the harbour off our port bow. It looked a busy little place, with traders and fishing boats lashed to the wharf and stalls set out along the strand, though most of the buying and selling had stopped as folk stood looking out to sea, shielding their eyes against the glare off the water.
‘I am beginning to think that we could sail off the world’s edge and still land in this emperor’s lap,’ Sigurd said, shaking his head in wonder. ‘Perhaps we were lucky to escape with our lives the last time we met Karolus, hey monk?’
Egfrith’s eyebrows bounced. ‘Lucky? It was miraculous,’ he said. The monk had been sulking for a week but, having recognized the flat coastline and some of the islands from descriptions he had read in church books, he now seemed gripped by a little of his old vigour. For days we had been following a coastline of soft, inviting, keel-friendly sand beyond which the land was flat enough to spot a war band coming, and seeing this harbour had further whetted our appetite to make landfall. We did not need food: we had smoked enough waterfowl, beef, and fresh and saltwater fish to last us halfway to Ragnarök. What we wanted was mead.
‘Looks safe enough,’ Olaf said, his lips pursed within his dense beard.
Knut agreed. ‘I’m happy to take her in,’ he said, looking for his jarl’s approval.
Sigurd nodded. ‘We’ll moor with the prows turned to the sea,’ he said, stirring a few grumbles from us, for it would mean we would take longer to berth. But it was the wise thing to do because we could be away much more quickly if something did go bad. Olaf gave orders to drop the sail and Bram called across to the captains of the other three ships what we were doing. Then we all fetched our oars and returned to our own sea chests and got ready to begin the difficult task of manoeuvring the stern into the berth, which, as it happened, was easier than expected because crewmen from five traders were frantically hoisting sails, weighing anchors and casting off.
‘I don’t know what they’re afraid of,’ Bjarni said, turning back with a smirk and pushing his oar.
‘What harm could four ships of heathens do to a quiet little port like this?’ I said, watching Olaf who was telling us all when to pull and when to push. When we had moored, Sigurd ordered the other crews to stay aboard their ships until he and a landing party had taken a sniff around the port.
‘What is it my father always used to say?’ Olaf said, picking up his spear with one hand and scratching his neck with the other. ‘Never wander too far ahead of your spear. You can’t feel a fight in your bones or know when danger’s near.’
‘Wasn’t your father killed by a broken neck, Uncle?’ Osk said, frowning. Olaf nodded.
‘He tripped over his spear,’ Yrsa Pig-nose mumbled, and Olaf swung his fist against Yrsa’s chin, dropping him to the deck.
‘Let’s go then,’ Olaf said, and I followed him over the sheer strake on to the wharf, leaving Pig-nose sitting there watery-eyed and confused. Most folk scattered from us like birds from a fox, but not all. Some of the merchants saw the chance for profit and flocked towards us, chattering in their tongue about whatever they had to sell, and not for the first time it struck me that merchants are often not given enough respect for their bravery. For we were five warriors, sea-bedraggled and fierce-looking and armed with swords and spears. And our eyes had the glint of the mead-thirst in them, so that if you did not have mead or ale you would be better served getting out of our way. Sigurd and Olaf led and I followed with Black Floki and Svein the Red. Behind us scurried Egfrith, trying his Latin on the locals though from what I could tell it made as little sense to them as it did to me.
We stepped from the wharf and our boots sank into the sand as we turned this way and that, half looking for warriors, half looking for anything worth having. Old fishermen sat mending their nets, having no need to fear the likes of us, for their only silver was in their hair. Two boys were pulling the stiff dried weed and crisp small fish from another net spread across the sand. Three older boys tracked us, keeping a safe distance whilst their leader, the tallest, with a nest of curly black hair and the spiteful look of the hungry, seemed to be weighing up when would be the right time to approach us. Another group of old men were sitting in a beached skiff playing some game that looked like tafl, though their eyes were on us too, now.
Instinctively, we had followed the sweet smell of fish sizzling with onions and herbs and now Olaf handed a nervous b
oy a silver coin the size of a fingernail and the boy’s eyes grew and he turned to his father who gave us a wide grin and threw out his arms, inviting us to claim the delicious-looking food spitting above the coals. Olaf tossed me a fish and I threw it from hand to hand, blowing on it, then peeled back the skin and took a bite of the hot, fragrant flesh, grinning at Svein. The giant bit into his own fish and could only have looked happier if he’d had something strong to wash it down with.
‘Better than wind-flayed herring,’ I said, wiping grease from my lips and beard.
‘Better than anything Arnvid fishes out of the pot,’ Sigurd said, flashing a grin at the boy, who gave a gummy smile and puffed his little chest like a robin.
‘Arnvid could burn water,’ Black Floki put in casually, eyes scouring the length of the strand and the line of green scrub inland. Beyond that scrub to the east was a clutter of poorly built dwellings which we guessed belonged to the fishermen who would sell their catch further inland or along the coast.
The three older boys made their move, cutting across our path, the two shorter ones taking their place either side of the tall thin boy in a fluid manoeuvre that spoke of practised ease. Their feet were planted in stride rather than square, in case they should have to run for it, and they gave us well-greased smiles that did not touch their calculating eyes.
‘I’ll wager these are just the little sea-urchins we want to talk to,’ Olaf said.
‘Talk then, Uncle,’ Sigurd said, at which Olaf shrugged, coughed, and spoke, addressing the boys in Norse. Immediately the leader shook his head and wagged a finger at Olaf, spewing something in reply. Olaf turned to me, palms to the sky.
‘Monk!’ Sigurd called, and Egfrith tried speaking to them in Latin, at which one of the other boys, a callow-looking lad with a face full of pustules, tugged the leader’s sleeve and gabbled something to which the older boy simply nodded, irritation flashing across his face. The older boy then made a ring of his thumb and forefinger through which he poked the forefinger of his other hand. That was clear enough in any language and Sigurd shook his head.
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