Raven

by Giles Kristian

  ‘No, I would not do that,’ he said unhappily, resigning himself to what would be. I had never seen his eyes look so heavy, as though his brows were house eaves dangerously laden with snow. He looked sad.

  ‘Raven,’ he said after a silence swollen with unspoken words. ‘If it comes to it, fight it. Do not give in. Do you understand me?’ His eyes were riveted to mine once more and now they held their old spark. ‘The gods have their patterns for us, but I say fuck the gods.’ And this was Sigurd’s burden. His whole life had been a battle against the gods. Asgot had said that Sigurd did not respect the gods as he should, but Sigurd had long ago broken free of the fetters that bound most men. I believed that the gods admired him for it. Though one day they would tire of him. And now the jarl was telling me to defy my wyrd. ‘You must live tomorrow,’ he said, his lips curled in ire. ‘Fuck the gods and their feigr. When death comes for you tomorrow I want you to fight with every part of your heart and marrow and spirit. You live, Raven. And together we will weave a tale that will keep skalds’ tongues flapping for a thousand years.’

  I tried to smile but the skin over my face bones felt as though it had shrunk. My friends thought I was feigr. They knew as surely as wounds bleed that I would be dead before the next day’s end. And now I was on my way back to them, to drink more wine and boast of killing.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE AMPHITHEATRUM FLAVIUM WAS ALL SEETHING MADNESS. IT was different standing at ground level, looking up at the stone terraces that were filling with the crowds who had come for blood. The place was filled with their sound, like the whir of a thousand arrows through the air, and the sweat stink of them was thick enough to taste. It was like being at sea in the eye of the storm. All is strangely calm and yet you know what is coming. I could not see clearly the individual faces but I knew well enough where the Fellowship were. They had come in war gear in case of trouble with the pope’s or emperor’s men, and were massed on the bottom level on the west side, as far away from any of the White Christ churches and altars that had been built into the stand as they could get. They had hung Sigurd’s banner – a wolf’s head on a red cloth – from the wall below them and I kept looking at it because it gave me courage. Had he been sitting among them Svein could have hurled a spear in any direction and not hit anyone, because the Romans and other crews had not dared get too close to so many iron-sheathed, battle-ready men.

  I wondered whether Cynethryth was amongst them; I could not see her but that was not to say she wasn’t there. Besides, I knew Asgot would be present, for he would be drooling at the prospect of seeing how his scheme would unfold, and so there was every chance that Cynethryth had come too.

  ‘If you get the Vindr Berstuk, go for his left side, lad,’ Bram said, rolling his shoulders and stretching his neck. ‘He’s got an old injury in his lower leg that makes him favour his right. Hides it well but it’s there all right. Go for his left and you’ll either get lucky and cut him, or he’ll overcompensate and leave his right side open.’ He grinned. ‘And then cut him.’ The crowd were chanting now. They were happy because the sky was blue and the sun was shining and there was money to be made. Lord Guido stood behind a table on which three ironbound chests sat with their lids open. His soldiers were trying to keep order, corralling the hordes into lines so that they could place their wagers. Men were eyeballing us, weighing up what kind of men we were before they parted with their silver. ‘Now, if you get The African, run him around for a while,’ Bram went on. ‘Keep moving. Make the whoreson chase his own tail like a damn dog.’ He pressed a thick finger into my chest. ‘But when you can, go for his legs.’ He tilted his head towards Svein. ‘These big trolls always leave their legs vulnerable. I’ve never seen a tree that couldn’t be cut down with a good blade on the end of a strong arm.’

  I nodded. My mouth was as dry as a long-dead corpse’s fart. ‘What if I get the Greek?’ I asked. Bram thought about this for a while and then gave a slight shake of his beard.

  ‘Then run, Raven,’ he said. ‘And I’ll kill the cur just as soon as I’ve finished with my own snot-swilling son of a crone.’

  ‘We could just take those chests,’ Svein suggested, nodding towards Lord Guido and his Long Shields. Svein was right. There were enough of us to kill the Long Shields and carry the silver back to the ships. I doubted the Romans or the visiting crews or anyone else would try to stop us.

  ‘You know as well as I do, Red, that this isn’t about the money any more,’ Bram said, and I knew he was right too. Svein nodded, finishing off a thick red braid, for it does not do for a man’s hair to fly in his eyes when he is trying to avoid sharp steel. ‘We’ll leave this place with a fame-hoard that’ll outshine Baldr’s golden ball sack,’ Bram said, tightening straps and tugging a fold of his brynja up and over his belt to spread the weight of it.

  Lord Guido had made us walk into the middle of the arena so that everyone could watch how we moved and get a look at our weapons. And we must have looked like war gods. The rings of my brynja glinted in the sun and my helmet was polished, so that it looked more like silver than iron. I was wearing my tall boots and had sheathed my lower legs and forearms in boiled leather because I had seen too many men take cuts in those parts. It was not for nothing that many men’s swords were named Leg-Biter. I had sword, long knife, short knife, shield and spear. Bram was armed the same as me, but Svein hefted the long two-handed axe and its edge was honed to the keenest, thinnest, most wicked smile. We wore no cloaks, because a cloak can snag a blade or trap your arm, but were iron men ready to plough flesh and sow death. Whatever the reputation of the three champions we were to fight, if I were in the crowd that day I would not have been quick to put money against us.

  ‘Here, lad, give me your hand.’ I turned to Olaf, who had come to wish us luck. Cynethryth was with him. Wide-eyed, she was looking up at the crowds, perhaps imagining what the place must have been like in the time of the old emperors. I held out my right hand, letting Olaf tie a braided leather thong around my wrist. The thong had a slip loop on the other end. ‘If it comes to sword work, pull that tight over the grip,’ he said, nodding at the looped end. The thong was so that when I died I should still be able to grip my sword, and that thought soured my guts even more. ‘It’s just in case, lad,’ he added, slapping my shoulder and smiling through his beard. ‘I expect you to spear-gut your man before it ever gets to swords.’

  ‘Thank you, Uncle,’ I managed, rolling my tongue around my mouth, trying to stir some saliva. Olaf reached into the scrip on his belt and pulled out a silver coin.

  ‘Put this under your tongue. It will help.’ I did and it did. ‘I’m proud of you, Raven,’ Olaf said then, looking up at the time-ravaged walls of the Amphitheatrum Flavium. ‘Sigurd is too. More than he’d ever like you to know.’

  I took the coin out of my mouth and smiled weakly. ‘He told me to fuck the gods,’ I said. Olaf turned back to me, his eyes blue as glacier ice.

  ‘Then fuck them,’ he said.

  Olaf went over to speak to Bram and my eyes met Cynethryth’s. I had not been this close to her for a very long time and at that moment we were the only two people in the Amphitheatrum Flavium, so that I was only faintly aware of the din of the crowd like the murmur of some distant seashore, and of my own blood gushing through my veins.

  ‘Did you know, Cynethryth?’ I said, the frost in those words making my face bones tremble.

  ‘Know what?’ she asked. Her hollow cheeks were pools of shadow that defied the midday sun. Her once golden hair was a greasy tufted crop and her skin was as pale as the dismembered statues that still looked down on us from the heights.

  ‘That Asgot put the raven’s wing in his sack,’ I said. Her green eyes flickered at that. ‘You think I would be standing here if I had a choice?’

  She frowned. ‘All I know is that Asgot fears you,’ she said. ‘He believes you are Óðin-shielded, though he will not admit it. He thinks that shield is our curse, Raven.’ Try as I might I could not penetrate
her gaze. It was as though she were the other side of a smoky hearth. ‘For the Father of the Slain’s name means frenzy and his love of chaos clings to you.’

  ‘So you believe in our gods now, Cynethryth?’ I said. One brow lifted and her lips twitched like a fishing line between finger and thumb.

  ‘Death follows you, Raven. Or perhaps you follow death.’

  ‘Then I am well named,’ I said through my teeth. She came closer and I could smell her. A sweet, pungent, burnt sage smell. It sickened me because she smelt like Asgot. She took something from round her neck – a small purse on a string of twisted horsehair – and reached up to place it over my head.

  ‘Do not take it off until the fight is over,’ she said, tucking the purse into the neck of my brynja. ‘Do not even open it. Just give it back to me afterwards.’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, my chest so tight I could hardly breathe.

  ‘Something to keep you safe,’ she said.

  ‘You have barely looked at me since Frankia.’

  She stepped back and for a heartbeat I saw through the bitter smoke the girl I had known. ‘You once swore to protect me, Raven,’ she said. ‘How can you do that if you are dead?’ And with that she walked away and the sound of thousands came crashing down on me like a great wave.

  ‘It’s time, lad,’ Bram said, gripping my shoulder.

  ‘Kill them,’ Svein snarled, slapping the haft of his axe.

  In front of us Lord Guido’s champions stood waiting, their deadly-looking weapons glinting in the sunlight. ‘Gods help us,’ I whispered, because those grim-faced men looked terrifying. At the arena’s edge men were near enough throwing their coins at Guido and his men, desperate to make their wagers while there was still time. The rest of Guido’s Long Shields marched into the killing ground and formed a large ring of steel, their sun-browned faces fish-eyed, so that it was impossible to tell what they were thinking. In this way they were as different from Norsemen as cats from dogs.

  Guido strode over and stood before us, his dark eyes probing, the faintest keel-twist of his lips betraying a man who loathes the mired path he must take to get to the feast. He was a warrior, this one. His were an eagle’s eyes, keen as rivets and predatory. His mouth was the tight line of a man who takes no joy in food or drink and the only hair on his face was a short black beard trimmed to a perfect wedge.

  ‘What are we waiting for, Guido, your damned beard to grow? It looks like a girl’s cunny pelt,’ Bram growled as Guido eyeballed him. Guido said nothing and, seemingly satisfied with Svein and Bram, turned those eagle’s eyes on me. He could not have known how it was that we three came to be standing before him, and would have expected us to be the best fighters Jarl Sigurd had. Which was why that keen gaze lingered on my stripling’s beard and the clench of my jaw that kept my teeth from chattering with fear. For my feigr was upon me, clinging to me like the stink to a shit bucket, and Guido’s beak nose must have been full of it.

  He spun on his heel, pointing at Svein with his left hand and the bald-headed African with his right. The two giants glared at each other with enough flint and steel to start a blaze, which I took to mean that they were both happy with the match. Then Guido matched Bram with Theo the Greek, which meant I would fight the Wend Berstuk. Guido gestured that we should step back to put some ground between us and the men we were soon to fight, which we did, edging back to the Long Shields.

  ‘Remember what I told you, lad,’ Bram growled. ‘He’s weakest on his left.’

  I had watched the Wend fight and kill over and over again and had seen nothing weak about him, but I nodded to Bram anyway as we spread out, each against his opponent as the noise inside the arena surged. It was not even a third full and yet the clamour was horrendous. It has always been a place of death. Gregor’s words rolled around inside my skull.

  ‘Thór be with you, little brother,’ Svein boomed above the crowd’s din. I could not look at him because I did not want him to see the bowel-melting fear in my face. It was bad enough that Guido had seen it, but rather him than my oath-brothers. I rolled my shoulders because the shield on my left arm felt as heavy as Serpent’s anchor. My feet were rooted to the ground like Yggdrasil, the World-Tree, so that I feared I might topple over on to my face the moment I tried to move my legs. My heart was thumping against my ribs. The hairs on my neck bristled. Cold sweat sluiced between my shoulder blades, the muscles in my thighs began to tremble and I eyed the spear in the Wend’s hand. The Aesir must use such a weapon, I thought, to gut Sæhrímnir, the giant boar which those in Valhöll feast on. The iron-sheathed shaft was two heads taller than Berstuk and the blade was Frankish, huge and winged to stop it sticking too deeply into a man’s flesh. My flesh.

  He wore no brynja, instead protecting himself with furs and boiled leather, but he is a fool who thinks a man with such poor war gear will be easier to kill, for such armour will often stop a blade better than any brynja. Besides, Berstuk must have killed men enough to own spoils including a brynja or two, and yet he spurned iron in favour of animal skins, which told me he was confident enough in his own way of fighting. No one had killed him yet, and many had tried.

  His helmet was iron, though, taken from a dead blauman I guessed, for it was pointed like those we had found beneath the blaumen’s turbans. This one looked too tight for Berstuk. As it was, the Wend was an ugly troll, all grizzled beard, bulbous nose and pus-spilling boils, but that helmet squeezed his brows, so that his eyes were little piss slashes in dirty snow. It made a scowl not even a mother could love and was enough to wither my balls and make me wish I had died in my sleep the night before.

  He must have untangled his name from the tumult of voices, for he turned to the crowd and raised his shield and spear as I had seen him do before.

  ‘Norseman, do you know the name Berstuk?’ It was one of the Long Shields who had called out, his English thick with another tongue’s twisting. He was a short, thickset man with a neat beard and deep dark holes for eyes. ‘You have not heard the name?’ he asked. I shook my head. ‘Berstuk is the name of an evil god that his people believe in. A god of the forest.’ He dangled those words before me like a hooked and baited line, his eyes waiting expectantly.

  ‘Then the god must be uglier than an old sack of arseholes,’ I said, ‘if this lump of stinking pig shit is anything to go by. Little wonder shame makes him hide in a forest.’ I felt better for that, perhaps because the dark-browed soldier’s eyes widened a hair’s width in surprise. Then Guido was gone and the others began to close the distance, eager to stop standing and start fighting. So I put one foot forward, relieved because I did not fall, and went to face my doom.

  Svein and The African struck first, their shields clashing like the antlers of two great bull elk. The crowd roared and that sounded like the thunder a burning hall makes when the thick roof beams catch and the fire makes its own wind.

  Then the Wend came. He swung the spear like an axe and that heavy blade would have scythed my head off my shoulders but I got my shield up in time and the blade clattered against it. He edged round to my right and made a straight thrust which I parried with my own shaft, then I rammed the point at his face but he ducked and the blade glanced off his helmet, at which the crowd cheered.

  I could hear the clashing of the other men’s weapons: of Svein’s axe against The African’s shield boss, the Greek’s spear clacking against Bram’s. I could hear their visceral grunts but I dared not tear my eyes from the ugly Wend whose big, iron-sheathed spear was light in his hands and seemed to come at me from all places at once. That winged blade bit splintered chunks from my shield and I kept my feet moving, desperate not to give the Wend an easy target. He stabbed under my shield, the blade sliding off the leather shin-guards, then he thrust high and I was not quick enough and the point burst into my brynja, sending broken rings flying like water in the sun. The blood-hungry mobs yelled and I staggered backwards with the searing pain, but when I looked down there was no blood and I knew that my leather gambe
son had held. Go for his left side … he’s got an old injury … Bram’s voice growled in my head and so I lunged for Berstuk’s left thigh. He shield-blocked. I lunged again. And again. He crabbed left so that I had to turn with him and even then I could not get through. I knew that without all that hard training with Sigurd and Black Floki, I would already have been bleeding out in the dirt. And yet feigr is feigr.

  ‘Some fight, hey!’ Svein yelled, but I had not the spit to waste on words and I don’t think Bram had, either. He was a raging storm of steel in my peripheral vision, but the Greek was quick and strong and was dealing with everything the Norseman could throw at him, like a man bailing out the bilge.

  I shield-blocked a high thrust, sending the blade higher, but Berstuk used that momentum, turning the shaft end over end then stepping wide and ramming the butt towards my face, which I dropped, taking the blow on my helmet. It must have knocked my eyes spinning in my head for I was blind and stumbling and Berstuk came on, plunging that blade again and again, and somehow, by luck more than skill, I got my shield in the way.

  ‘Stand, Raven!’ Bram yelled. ‘Stand!’ But my knee bones were slipping in their joints and I was slewing sidewards, foot over foot. Then I hit a wall. Not a wall. Svein.

  He took a massive blow on his shouldered shield, grimacing as he levered me upright. ‘Kill that ugly fucking Wend,’ he sneered, launching at The African with a brutal axe dance that put the blauman on his back foot, as I squinted through blinding pain and circled left. The Wend’s spear was too long and I could not get near him with my own. I strode backwards, needing time, and luckily for me the Wend took the opportunity to crow to the crowds, raising his arms again as though I were dead already. He had more swagger than a jarl with a golden cock, that one. Changing to an overarm grip, I rolled my shoulder, threw back an arm made brawny by rowing and spear work, and let fly. But Berstuk’s instinct was as sharp as his Frankish spear and he spun back, lifting his shield, so that my spear clattered off it, falling harmlessly somewhere over his left shoulder. And then he grinned because he thought I had wagered and lost.