Raven

by Giles Kristian

  ‘I only came at all because I was drunk as a rat in a barrel of mead and lost a wager against Penda over who could walk along a spear,’ I groused, ‘and look what I got out of it.’

  He cocked one furry eyebrow and told me that the workings of the Lord truly were curious, which I ignored, instead asking him what the others made of what had happened. I had killed our godi and that thought lay heavy as rocks in my vomit-racked guts.

  He frowned. ‘That hit them hard as a storm,’ he said. ‘And some would not believe Asgot was dead. Not until they saw his corpse with their own eyes and even then they seemed to be waiting for him to rise again.’ He scowled. ‘They burnt him like the others. Two days ago.’

  ‘A hero’s pyre for that rancid old dog!’ I spat, thinking I would spew again.

  Egfrith leant closer. ‘You are in deep water, Raven,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Some were for tearing your arms and legs off! They wanted to finish what that beast had started.’ He shook his head. ‘Lord, but they’re quick to temper. You Northmen are slaves to your own base instincts.’

  ‘So what stopped them?’ I asked.

  ‘Black Floki,’ he said, as surprised as I was.

  ‘What about Sigurd?’ I muttered. ‘What does he think?’

  ‘With Sigurd who knows? Though it seemed to me that he is with the rest on it. In their eyes you have done a very dark thing. They talk of curses and spells and all sorts of heathen nonsense.’ Then he glared at me, his eyes briefly reflecting the terror I had seen in them when he had been riveted to the wall like his nailed god to the cross. ‘I should not say it but I will. I am glad you killed that man.’ He made the sign of the cross over his chest. ‘He had Satan’s wickedness in him. He was twisted.’

  ‘It means nothing what you think, monk,’ I said. ‘You are not the one who wants to tear off my arms and legs.’

  I stayed in that room for another three days, letting the Greek physicians feed me, change my dressings and tip their potions down my throat, for I did not relish the thought of facing the others. I had killed their godi and I knew they would not know what to make of that, for the godi spoke to the Aesir for all of us and without him how would we know how we stood in Óðin’s one eye, or in Thór’s or Njörd’s? The men would fear that we were like a ship without its rudder now, drifting where the wind and tides took us, unable to read the threads of our wyrds. But what was done was done and I would have to face them eventually. I would have to face my jarl.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  IT WAS BJARNI WHO CAME FOR ME, STUMPING IN ON HIS RUNE-CARVED leg, his face taut as a sail cloth in the wind.

  ‘There’s to be a ting,’ he said, scratching his beard awkwardly. ‘Sigurd has called it.’

  ‘When?’ I asked, swallowing dryly and reaching for the watered wine on the table by my bed, hoping Bjarni could not see the dread that was rising like sap in my bones.

  ‘Tonight,’ he said, then shrugged. ‘There’s been a lot of growling.’

  ‘Growling about what?’ I asked, knowing full well what. Bjarni drew his brows like little bows, which showed what he thought of my question.

  ‘Asgot has been around since Yggdrasil was short enough for you to piss on its top branches,’ he said. ‘The old goat’s prick was braiding his beard when Thór was getting his arse switched for making the girls cry.’ Bjarni shook his head. ‘He was our godi, Raven.’

  ‘He was a toad-licking old cunny,’ I said, looking out of the windhole at the harbour, which bristled with ships of every kind, and letting a wall of silence build between us.

  ‘How is it?’ Bjarni asked eventually. I looked up and he nodded at my right arm, which was slung across my chest.

  ‘The bone broke,’ I said, twitching my shoulder because I could not move the forearm at all. ‘But the Greeks say it will weave itself whole again.’ I smiled weakly. ‘That wolf had an appetite like Svein.’ But those words were poorly chosen given Asgot’s death now after so many others, and Bjarni only managed a slight twist of the lips. The original Fellowship was thin as gruel these days.

  Then the door creaked open and the old Greek who tended me most often walked in, frowning when he saw Bjarni, so that his face looked like ancient leather. His beard was long and grey and not a hair of it was out of place as he drifted over to check the dressings on my left shoulder, ignoring Bjarni completely.

  ‘Tonight then,’ the Norseman said. ‘At the ships.’ I nodded and he looked around the simple chamber as he lifted the wooden leg with two hands, turning it round to face the door as he had not yet got the knack of moving the remaining stump with the wood attached. ‘You can’t hide in here for ever,’ he said. He was right but I said nothing, waiting until he got to the door before I said his name. He stopped but did not turn round.

  ‘How is your shoulder these days?’ I asked. Once – it seemed like a hundred years ago now – I had shot a hunting arrow into Bjarni’s shoulder. I had been living in Abbotsend and he had been my enemy then. After, we had become friends. I did not know what we were now.

  ‘It aches when there’s damp in the air,’ he said. ‘But wounds are good for reminding a raiding man where he has been. They are good spice for saga tales, too.’ I could not see his face but I heard the smile on it then. ‘I look forward to hearing you telling grey-beards and young’uns of the giant wolf that ate you alive then spat you back out,’ he said. Then he stumped out of the door and was gone, leaving me with the Greek, who tutted when he saw that I had not eaten any of the sour, face-twisting fruit he had put in a bowl by my bed.

  And I felt one less stone in my gut, because Bjarni was still my friend.

  It felt good to fill my nose with Serpent’s scent again: of her seasoned timbers and the pine resin between her strakes. Of the slick ballast stones in her bilge and the coarse tang of her great woollen sail tightly furled and waiting patiently. But though there was comfort in it there was no joy, nor would there be until I knew how I stood within the Fellowship. Everyone had gathered it seemed, apart from Cynethryth, which had been some feat what with men spreading themselves across Miklagard like bees over a great swath of summer meadow. Now they waited on the quayside, some looking out across the harbour, others looking west across Miklagard, watching the sun slip behind the domes and whitewashed houses cluttering the city’s hills. All eyes turned to me now though and the trickling brook burble of men’s voices became a river in spate as I strode into the knot of them, jaw clenched so that my teeth ached.

  Men with whom I had stood in the shieldwall stood as though they were in the skjaldborg now, faces hard as granite cliffs, fists white knots of knuckle and edge. This does not look good, I thought, glancing at Egfrith, who nodded to show that at least he was with me. It has come to something, I thought, when I am thankful to have a weasel White Christ slave on my side.

  ‘I have called this ting because every man here has a right to put what has happened in his scales and weigh it up,’ Sigurd announced. At least all eyes were on him now. ‘Raven has broken the oath that binds us all.’ Those words struck me so hard that I could hardly breathe. But I kept my chin high and glared at them all as though daring them to condemn me. ‘He has killed a brother,’ Sigurd said, letting the words sink in like blood across dry earth. In my head I heard words from the oath we had all sworn long ago in Frankia. The oath I had broken by killing another who had spoken it. If I break this oath I betray my jarl and my fellowship and I am a pus-filled nithing and may the All-Father riddle my eyes with maggots though I yet live.

  ‘Oath-breaker,’ someone growled.

  ‘The lad must be moon-mad, killing a godi!’ the Dane called Skap said.

  Words rose in my throat but I kept them behind the wall of my clenched teeth. There was nothing I could say to make the thing weigh less heavily on us all. Besides which, I was not going to beg them to understand why I had killed Asgot, why I would do it again given the choice. So I stood there, letting the anchor rope of it play out as it would, come what may, half know
ing it would end up round my neck, throttling me.

  ‘Asgot was my father’s godi when he raided in Sjælland and Lolland and before that,’ Sigurd said, ‘when he burnt halls in Borre and Oseberg and fought for King Hjorleif Hjorsson.’ There were chuckles at that because Hjorsson had earned himself more fame for humping his way round Norway’s southern coast than he had for winning any hard fights or silver hoards. ‘I will not stand here and tell you that I had much liking for Asgot,’ he went on, ‘for I often found scant honour in his blood-letting. Asgot’s love of the old ways blinded him.’ There were a few nods at this, especially from some of the original Fellowship, men like Bjarni, Osk and Gunnar. ‘But,’ Sigurd said, raising a ringed finger, ‘he was a godi. A man closer to the Aesir than other men. To kill such a man, no matter the reasons, is a dark thing.’

  ‘Maybe he has doomed us all not just himself,’ Osten suggested, not meeting my eye. I could not blame him for fearing that though and maybe it was true.

  ‘A blood price must be paid,’ Arngrim the Dane said, and men listened to him because he was the closest thing we had to a skald, though those words had little skald-weave to them. They were sharp as ship rivets.

  As the only White Christ men other than Egfrith left, Penda, Gytha and Wiglaf stood to one side trying to unravel the knot of it all for there was no one turning the words into English for them.

  ‘A test,’ Black Floki said. Men turned to him, so that I could see him standing there braiding his black hair into one thick rope that hung down the left side of his face as I had seen on Wends in Rome. ‘Raven is Óðin-favoured,’ he said simply. ‘You would have to be a witless fool not to know this.’

  ‘Wolf-slayer!’ Bjarni called, not so much proving Floki’s point as sharpening it. Though I knew I had been lucky in that fight, for Sköll had been a bag of bones compared with how he was when Cynethryth first tamed him. Unlike men who called themselves sea-wolves, it seemed that real wolves did not like being at sea at all.

  ‘So we test him,’ Black Floki suggested. ‘If the Aesir demand their blood price for Asgot then so be it. But if not, let that be an end to it.’

  This got ayes all round, for though it appeared that no one was about to gut-spear me for killing their godi, they all seemed keen that the gods should have their revenge if they wanted it. Better that, they thought, than for all to be ensnared in my feigr and who could blame them?

  So the next day I was taken aboard Wave-Steed and the only good thing about that was that there was a brisk southerly which meant at least I was not made to row towards my test, which would have been spit in my eye on top of what was coming.

  I had heard of ordæl, whereby an accused man is made to walk over red-hot ploughshares, or carry scalding iron nine paces, after which he is judged innocent or guilty depending on how his wounds heal. The Christians did it often, counting on their God to spare the innocent and condemn the guilty, and what the ting had chosen for me was as like the ordæl as to put the terror in me.

  We sailed to a small island north of Elaea and there, by a copse of gnarled olive trees, Sigurd himself and Olaf dug a hole in the dry, sun-baked earth. A man-sized hole it was, too, which was lucky for them seeing as I was to go in it. Floki was there and Rolf and some of the others and they all stood a little way off, grim-faced and watching me the way an owl watches the long grass from atop a post.

  Earlier I had told myself that I would keep a hold on my pride and let them do what they must, my head high and my back spear-straight. When it came to it I fought like a beard-frother, even one-armed managing to knock Olaf on his arse and smash out two of Byrnjolf’s rotten teeth, which earned me a split lip. But Bragi the Egg and Skap grappled the fight out of me and between them all they shoved me into that hole and began to pile the earth back in, so that I was choking on the dust and filth as I cursed them all in rage and terror.

  ‘We will come back in three days, Raven,’ Sigurd announced solemnly, as a muttering, bloody-mouthed Byrnjolf stamped the earth down around my face, taking altogether too much pleasure in it so it seemed to me. I could hardly breathe for the earth pressing against my chest. There was only a finger’s length between my chin and the scalding sand, and my arms – one of which was broken anyway – were buried somewhere down by my sides and about as useful as tits on a boar.

  ‘This is the silver you give me … for feeding … the birds with your enemies,’ I snarled at Sigurd, fighting for the breath to spit insults. ‘Hounds are better treated! You are all whoresons! Wait for me in the afterlife, you pus-filled horse-fuckers!’

  ‘I will not doom the Fellowship for one man,’ he said, glancing up at the sun, which was in the west now, beginning its slide towards the world’s lip. ‘Not even for you, Raven, whom I have treated as a son.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘If our gods are with us here … if they can see so far, they will decide your wyrd.’

  Olaf worried at his bird’s nest beard and scratched his tanned cheek below the white creases he had gained round his eyes from squinting against the southern sun. There were tears of frustration in my own eyes as the men murmured and nodded at their work and made to leave me there alone on that deserted place beneath the blazing hot sun.

  ‘Uncle!’ I yelled, tasting the sweat on my lips. ‘Don’t leave me here! Uncle! You arse-maggots!’ But they did not even look back and disappeared through the trees and were gone and I closed my eyes against the glare, even then seeing the red threads blooming bright inside my eyelids.

  I was alone. Left to whatever fate the gods, who are spiteful and capricious, chose for me. And yet even if the gods wanted me alive, because they love to torment us and I was young enough still to have a hundred threads of anguish braided into my wyrd, how could they keep me alive? Four days and three nights in that heat without a slurp of water, without shade or food and left to whatever creatures came sniffing by in the dark. Even a crow could dig the eyes out of my head and I could do nothing about it.

  Now that the others were gone, the fury was melting in my chest, turning into ice-cold fear. This was no way to die. I would rather turn green with the wound rot and have Penda cut my throat than be buried and left for the worms and thirsting to death. I was scared enough to piss myself and feel no shame for it.

  Because I was a dead man.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  BLACK-HEADED GULLS CAME FIRST, A NOISY SWIRL OF THEM TRYING to work up the courage to land and get their beaks in me. The first to dare sidled up to my face, mistrust and greed swimming in its beady red-rimmed eye as its friends circled above, laughing with the thrill of it all. I yelled, sending the bird shrieking into the purple bruise of dusk, then cursed because I knew that there were other creatures that came out at night and could not be scared off so easily.

  For a while I tried to move, hoping that the slightest shift in the packed earth would enable me to eke out more room to squirm. But the only things I could move were my toes and that only made it worse because it made every other limb and muscle scream with frustration and resentment. Perhaps it was the weight of earth on my chest and the painfully shallow breaths that made me drift in and out of sleep, but some time later I woke as if I had been stabbed, my mind flailing to catch the memory of what had happened to me. The terror was a beast and my soul was in its jaws, being shaken viciously. Yet my body was as still as a corpse in its coffin.

  Night had fallen and there was no moon. Insects were chirruping in the breeze-stirred grass and I could hear the sea lapping at the shore in long, lonely sighs. Something was crawling up my face and I tried to twist my mouth and blow it off me, but whatever the creature was it had enough legs to cling on and so I tried to put it from my mind, knowing that it was the least of my problems.

  My ears were straining at every sound: the snap of a twig in the olive grove, a rustle in the nearby gorse. But it was not my ears that warned me I was no longer alone. Somehow I just knew. It was a prickle in my blood, a cold wind scuttling up the back of my neck. I held my breath, desperate to
sift through the night sounds, to discover where this other living thing was. Then my heart thumped in my chest hard enough to hurt, because whatever it was was behind me. Again I fought with every sinew, hoping that by some miracle I could break out of that tomb if not by brute strength then by strength of will. But it was no use and I blinked the cold sweat from my eyes and waited. Then I smelt it. Wolf. It was pungent and unmistakable and if anyone should know the smell of a wolf it was me. I clenched my eyes shut and held my breath, waiting for the teeth to rip into my face, for the beast to chew the flesh from my skull. I would be eaten alive. That was the wyrd those bitches the Norns had spun for me.

  But the bite did not come and, slowly, I half opened my eyes. Teeth glinted in the dark but the eyes were not a wolf’s eyes. Even by the dim light of the stars I could see that. They were green. Beautiful.

  ‘Cynethryth,’ I rasped like a sword across a scabbard’s throat.

  She was crouched, head cocked to one side, and staring at me as though she had never seen a man buried up to his neck in the earth before. Though if anyone should have been staring it was me, for she had a wolf’s pelt draped over her back, the beast’s face, jaws and all, resting on her head, its silver hair ruffling in the night breeze. It was Sköll, or rather what was left of it. Even dead I did not like it being near me.

  I noticed Asgot’s knife in Cynethryth’s hand and I grimaced at the sight of that blood-hungry thing, because I thought she had come to avenge the godi.

  ‘Better to die by a blade than be pecked to death by gulls,’ I said through a snarl that matched Sköll’s.

  ‘I have not come to kill you, Raven,’ she said, the tug of a smile at the corner of her mouth. ‘I have come to make sure you live.’ She pursed her lips. ‘If that is what the gods want.’

  ‘They do want it,’ I gnarred, ‘so get me out of this fucking hole.’ But Cynethryth shook her head at that.