Raven

by Giles Kristian

  A flame licked somewhere out there, rising and falling with a ship’s roll. Fire streaked up into the night. I heard the muffled whisper of it as it soared, lingered for a breath, then fell. It was not the liquid fire, which so terrified us, but rather this was the work of any man: a cloth-bound arrow set alight and shot into the gathering dark. Another flaming arrow went up, inscribing a brassy grey smoke arc in the pewter sky, then vanishing again. Óðin’s arse but I don’t think I breathed until the third arrow went up. But then I blew out a stale breath because that arrow flew south, meaning that whilst the Greeks must have suspected they were not alone out there on the Hellespont, they did not know where we were.

  The water was slapping our hull now as her impetus spent, gave herself over to wind and current and still we waited, Serpent,Fjord-Elk and Wave-Steed drifting silently in the gloom off our stern. Part of me wanted to yell out, to break through the thick ice of that mute terror, for even chaos would be better than waiting – than expecting the fire to reach out of the night and eat your flesh. But I clamped my jaw shut as tight as my fists were on the smooth oar stave, and in my mind I heard Bram growl that he was fed up with skulking like naughty children and would rather face the slick-bearded Greeks and be done with it.

  Someone farted. There were some choked laughs at that and then, turning back to us, Sigurd rolled an arm, which was the signal for us to start rowing again. I think we were all glad to pull the oars again, for the strokes were deep and strong, dragging the sea past hull and goading her to slick Serpent’sspeed from a standing start. I saw Nikephoros nod to Sigurd, his handsome face still clenched tight, though touched now by the finger ends of relief at having got past his own dromons. The emperor must have been sweating like a blacksmith’s arse throughout all this. Whenever we weighed anchor and came to new lands we could expect trouble for we were raiders, but Nikephoros was an emperor. It would be some cruel wyrd that saw him burnt alive by the very men whose pay comes from his own treasury.

  ‘Part of me wanted to see those ships vomit their liquid fire again,’ Gap-toothed Ingolf said a while later when the rowing was steady and we were sure that the Greek ships were far behind.

  ‘That’s because you have all the sense of a shrew, Ingolf,’ Black Floki said without turning to look at the man. Ingolf glowered as he pulled the oar and I chose not to say that I knew how Ingolf felt and that part of me had wanted to yell out and turn that still night into seething madness. Instead we had crept even closer to Miklagard, like three hungry wolves stalking up to a rich, well-stocked farm.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  IT WAS STILL NIGHT WHEN WE CAME TO THE ISLAND CALLED ELAEA in the Marmara Sea. There were several islands we could have moored at, but this one had a ragged coast of creeks and sheltered bays in which we could easily hide once we had dropped the tallow-smeared fathom weight over the side to test the depth and seabed. In daylight we would have been able to use our own eyes, for the water was so clear, but even so it is better to use a knotted line than to find yourself cursing another man’s eyes as the sea gushes in through a torn hull.

  We had come out of the dark narrows and suddenly what moonlight there was had flooded across the Marmara Sea, so that we felt about as inconspicuous as Svein the Red in a White Christ church. I could even see Kjar’s face at Fjord-Elk’s tiller and I should think he could see all of our faces who were turned towards Serpent’s stern as we rowed. But it was a wide sea compared with where we had come from and on the open sea we Norsemen are without equal. We had Sigurd. And Sigurd was the most sea-bold Norseman of all.

  Not that we needed boldness now. What we needed was sleep, which is not easily gained when your blood is still up and the fingers of fear are still grasping. Yet, other than the soul peace that swamps you after a good swiving, the sound of waves rolling themselves on to the shore is the best thing to get you into sleep and keep you there. Someone must have stayed awake, taking first watch from the stern and gawking out at the moon-played waves, but it wasn’t me. Nor did anyone wake me for my turn, which was probably because we were already at the arse end of the night and dawn was swelling somewhere in the east.

  The early part of the morning, when there was still a breath of freshness in the air, was far too short. I had barely been upright long enough to work the previous day’s rowing knots out of my shoulders before the crushing heat filled the world. You could see it shimmering like water above the brown rocks on the shore and Penda moaned that he thought he was drunk until he remembered he hadn’t had a decent drop of anything for weeks and his mouth was drier than a burnt bush. I told him he had that right enough for we were all thirsty. Even what little wine we had was sour and foul-tasting now and we would look up at the endless blue sky, hoping to see rain clouds that were not there. Men had gone ashore looking for fresh water and others had begun rigging skins in the thwarts for shade.

  Some of us gathered as close as we could to Sigurd and the Greeks who stood on the fighting platform at Serpent’s bow. It was always the same faces these days, those men who were close to Sigurd or who felt they wanted their say in whatever schemes the jarl wove. Olaf, Black Floki and Asgot were there of course, as were Svein the Red, Bjarni, Aslak, Knut, Penda, Bragi the Egg and a couple of other Fjord-Elk men. Of the Danes, Rolf, Beiner and Yngvar were always nearby, along with the blauman Völund. More often than not Egfrith joined us too, though he was a different man these days. Whereas he had used to chatter like a bird, now he rarely spoke and looked nothing like the monk he was, for his beard was brown streaked with ash grey and his thinning, unkempt hair was almost down to his shoulders.

  Cynethryth joined the gathering too, though I could not look at her these days without thinking of Bram and the black seidr magic she had spun, taking my doom and putting it on to him. A heavy secret that, like a pair of quern-stones grinding in my soul.

  ‘This will be no simple raid,’ Sigurd told us, ignoring the streams of sweat coursing down his sun-browned face and dripping from his golden beard. He spoke in Norse, which I translated for Penda though I suspected the Wessexman no longer needed me to. Nikephoros, his general and the warrior Theo stood dumb as posts but watching us all.

  ‘I would like to tell you it will be as easy as burning Jarl Alrik of Uppland’s hall,’ Sigurd said. Some happy rumbles at that memory, though not many and Sigurd seemed to reflect on that a while – how many faces he had lost along the way, men who now drank in the hall of the slain. ‘But you all know that the further a man rides along the whale road, the more dangers he will face.’

  ‘There are more ways to die than there are fleas on an old hound, as my father used to say,’ Olaf put in, sweat glistening on his scarred barrel chest. Most of us were bare-chested, letting every slight breeze off the sea cool our skin, but Sigurd wore a light blue tunic whose neck and sleeves were edged with criss-crossed red braid. He was silvered, too, with a jarl torc at his neck and rings braided into his hair. He looked every inch the Norse chieftain, a ring-giver, and even though he knew his men were oath-tied and loyal, there was no harm in reminding them whom they served, especially when there was an emperor around.

  ‘Emperor Nikephoros has laid bare the bones of it,’ the jarl went on, glowering at us. ‘He has a son and the chances are that the man who is now eating at Nikephoros’s table has the boy locked up with a knife at his throat in case his father should come looking for his favourite mead horn.’

  ‘It’s what I would do,’ Olaf murmured, though I was not clear whether he was talking about the knife business or the mead horn part. Still, we all agreed that an all-out attack would likely see the emperor’s son Staurakios killed, if the traitor Arsaber was holding him, and whilst that did not overly concern most of us, it was something the Greeks were keen to avoid.

  It was time to start Loki-scheming, then, and I said as much, at which Sigurd nodded.

  Nikephoros leant on the rail and looked out to sea. ‘We are not the first men to cast our anchors into Elaea’s waters on our way to wa
r,’ he said, turning his face back to Sigurd. ‘A king of Athens called Menestheus brought fifty black ships here on his way to fight against the Trojans in the great war. Though from what I have read I do not think he was a brave man.’

  ‘I have heard this story,’ Egfrith said, frowning with the mind-strain of digging up the memory. ‘The war was over a woman, I believe. Thousands of fools died over a woman.’

  Nikephoros said this was true, but added that any man would have given his life for Helen of Troy. He cocked one dark eyebrow. ‘She was the most beautiful woman in the world.’

  ‘No point in dying for the wench then,’ Olaf put in, shaking his head at Svein. ‘You can’t swive a beauty if you’re dead. She’ll be off rolling around with someone else whilst you’re left with the maggots.’

  ‘Being dead is the only way an old fart like you could get stiff enough for swiving,’ Bothvar said, rousing some good laughs and earning himself a glower from Uncle. But Sigurd silenced them with a hand.

  ‘I want to hear more about this war over a woman,’ he said, gesturing for the emperor to continue, and it seemed he was not alone in thirsting for a good story. Men were clustering like flies on a carcass, tilting their ears towards the Greek, bracing to catch every word. For such men a fine tale will almost make up for a dry throat and empty belly.

  Nikephoros nodded and I sighed because I was getting tired of turning English into Norse.

  ‘King Menestheus was one of Helen of Troy’s suitors,’ Nikephoros said, ‘though she married the Spartan King Menelaus. Things turned bad when a Trojan prince called Paris, who was visiting King Menelaus, stole Helen. He carried her off back to Troy.’ He smiled then. ‘I suspect she had fallen in love with this Paris,’ he said, ‘but that would have been harder for the Spartan king to swallow.’

  ‘All this talk of marriage and love is sending me to sleep,’ Bjarni moaned at me as though it were my fault. ‘You can leave those bits out, Raven.’

  ‘You’ll get what you’re given and be thankful for it, Bjarni,’ I gnarred as Nikephoros continued with the story.

  ‘Either way the Greeks wanted her back and King Menelaus gathered the mightiest army the world has ever known.’

  The tale was a long one and got better as it went, ending with some low cunning by the Greeks involving a wooden horse and plenty of killing and plunder, which is the way all good stories should be.

  At the end of it Nikephoros looked exhausted and Egfrith whispered that he suspected the imperial tongue was not used to flapping quite so much, because in Miklagard Nikephoros had others to do his talking for him.

  No one had enjoyed the story of the Trojan War more than Sigurd, who seemed to like the idea that a warrior king had moored on this same shore all those years ago.

  ‘I will go to Miklagard myself and see with my own eyes what we face in helping Nikephoros back on to his throne,’ he said, looking north. Some ayes and nods at this, but more rumbles and moans, perhaps because they did not want their jarl putting himself at risk, or perhaps because they were jealous that he would see the Great City before them. ‘The emperor will stay here.’ He grinned at Nikephoros, who gave a slight nod, thumb and forefinger worrying at his crow-black beard. ‘How can he pay us if he’s caught or dead?’ Sigurd said, which stirred murmurs of approval. ‘General Bardanes and the warrior Theo will show me what I need to see.’

  ‘You can’t go off with them alone!’ Svein the Red gnarred. He spat dryly. ‘I don’t trust either of those two. Slippery as two snakes in a bucket of snot they are.’

  ‘Black Floki and Raven will come too,’ Sigurd said, which did nothing to wipe the frown off the giant’s face, because Svein had not heard his own name mentioned.

  ‘I speak some Greek,’ Egfrith said with a shrug, easing those words between us all like a twist of resin-soaked hair between two ship strakes.

  Sigurd stared at him for a heartbeat, then nodded. ‘The monk comes too,’ he said, piling more misery on to Svein.

  As for me, my skin was prickling at the thought of being one of the first to see the golden city. The hairs on the back of my neck were still bristling at dusk two days later when Wave-Steed sneaked back into our cove with her captured prey – a fishing boat – trailing at the end of a rope lashed to her stern post.

  The fisherman was silver-haired, brown as old shoe leather and spindly and shrunken with age. His boat had been repaired many times and looked less than seaworthy, which was all to the good, said Sigurd, for no one would pay such a boat approaching Miklagard any notice. As it turned out its owner was a better fisherman than I, for the bilge of his skiff was choked with a great mound of shifting silver. Maddened by their own silver-lust, gulls wheeled and tumbled above, the bravest of them diving now and then but veering off at the last moment.

  We would have taken the Greek’s fish anyway, but we did not need to, for when Bardanes told him he was in the presence of his emperor he fell to his knees and began to tremble so that I thought his old bones would crumble with the force of it. As all he had was his boat and his fish he offered all his fish to Nikephoros, which was at least wiser than giving away his old boat. Bardanes questioned him and was none too friendly about it either, so far as we could tell from the bits Egfrith translated and some scraps that Bardanes himself threw our way. In a stuttering voice as rough as oak bark the man said he was a simple but loyal subject who knew nothing of imperial affairs. He claimed he did not even know that Basileus Nikephoros had been usurped, which looking at him I thought was likely to be true.

  ‘This man is a free man?’ Bjarni asked, scratching the bristles on his upper cheek.

  ‘He’s free,’ Olaf said, ‘but I know what you mean. Even the most worthless of my thralls back home doesn’t show me the respect this shrivelled old hole shows his lord.’

  Bjarni shook his head. ‘He’s terrified, Uncle,’ he said. ‘He’s wearing the same face I’d put on if Thór appeared before me bollock naked with Mjöllnir over his shoulder still dripping giant’s blood.’ We all thought that was well said by Bjarni and it made us look at Nikephoros again. Here was a man as powerful as King Karolus. Or at least he would be if some upstart hadn’t stolen his throne from under his imperial arse. Now it was our job to get him back on that throne and one of the first things that had to happen to do that was for the fisherman to take us to the Great City.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  IT WAS FURTHER THAN I HAD THOUGHT, ESPECIALLY IN A LEAKY, old, fish-stinking skiff with five other men to upset the balance every time one of them moved to scratch his arse or undo a cramp. Bardanes had not come with us as it turned out. Nikephoros would not risk his general being recognized in the city and this was probably wise because if the emperor’s enemies captured Bardanes they would know that Nikephoros was not far away. So Theo was to be our guide and that itched more than a little. It is hard work trying to be well-mannered towards a man who has killed your friend, though I suppose that the fight being fair should have made it a touch easier. And so we five, simply dressed and armed only with knives, along with the fisherman were crammed into that boat like salted cod in a barrel, hoping the wood would not split and spill us out to sink to the bottom like wyrd-cursed nithings. But the fisherman, whose name no one cared to use or remember, was as good a sailor as he was a fish killer and he handled the small sail deftly, hopping in and out of our tangle of legs and arms to get the most out of the wind, for with us aboard his boat was heavier than it should have been.

  Through the milky fog of breaking dawn we saw one of those terror-stirring Greek dromons tacking down the eastern coast, making great sawtooth turns against the wind. But we had no reason to fear it in that worthless skiff. There was more chance, Black Floki said through a twist of lips, of some sea-creature thinking we were an insect fallen on to the sea and swallowing us, than of our being burnt.

  ‘Like Jonah and the whale,’ Egfrith chirped, though no one knew what he was talking about and we didn’t ask either.

  Through the d
awn mist we began to see many other craft coming and going, yet none took any interest in us, and it was not until daylight broke, a pale gold wash flooding out of the east, that we saw it.

  ‘By the gods,’ Sigurd breathed.

  ‘Merciful Father,’ Egfrith murmured, making the sign of the cross.

  Black Floki’s eyes looked as if they would burst, as if they were simply too small to hold such a sight. I felt my mouth gaping, warm air on my tongue, and Theo half smiled, clearly pleased with our reaction.

  Miklagard! The Golden City revealed itself, like a treasure hoard through the smoke of a burning hall: the great domes of Christ churches and palaces pushing head and shoulders above the vast swath of tightly packed white dwellings and all tumbling off seven hills in a glittering array. It was a sight that sucked your breath out of your belly, casting it windward to leave you gasping like a fish.

  ‘Don’t tip us out now, Greek!’ Black Floki growled to the old silver-hair whose yellow teeth worried his bottom lip as he worked the sail ropes, threading us between two larger trading vessels that were passing in opposite directions. Some men peered over one of those ships’ rails and laughed at us – five men and a monk packed into a skiff that boasted barely a hand’s breadth of freeboard, so that one good wave would swamp us and be the end of it. Sigurd snarled at the indignity of it and hurled a curse back at Rolf on Elaea for not finding a better boat to take his jarl to the Great City. Then, unbelievably, one of the jeering men lobbed a chicken’s leg bone at us, which hit Egfrith. The monk grabbed the fleshy bone and held it up like a rune stick.