Shadow of the Raven: Sons of Kings: Book One

by Millie Thom

  Sigehelm would see his acceptance of the name as a betrayal, a denial of who he was and his true heritage: everything he’d tried to keep alive in Eadwulf since the day the Danes destroyed his family, and his home. And made him the thrall he still was.

  But now he was a Dane, and proud of it. He’d raided and killed like the rest of them. And Bjorn valued him so highly. Or did Bjorn still just see him as a useful thrall?

  Confusion continued to rage. He sought desperately to find that comfortable, dark place; the place where he’d found such solace after he’d been wounded.

  But oblivion eluded him.

  Twenty Four

  Aros: early October 857

  ‘Well, Eadwulf, I’m truly glad to see you back. I confess I feared the worst. We all did.’

  Sigehelm found it hard to keep his voice on an even keel. His relief at seeing his former pupil safe and well was marked, despite a whole day having elapsed since his return. He wanted to ask Eadwulf so many questions, but didn’t know how to begin. He’d caught much of Bjorn’s embellished account of events at last night’s homecoming feast, but from Eadwulf he’d heard nothing.

  Thora’s uncharacteristically impatient tones interrupted his thoughts: ‘The evening meal must be nearly ready when the jarl and his sons return from their rounds of the village,’ she snapped at the thralls. ‘The men won’t want to resume their merrymaking surrounded by vegetable peelings and animal guts!’

  Eadwulf would be a part of those celebrations, as Sigehelm had seen last night. Bjorn would insist.

  It had been another hectic day. Family reunions continued and people pursued their work, hampered by the after-effects of last night’s excesses. Sigehelm’s own routine had changed little – he still had his tutorial and clerical duties to perform for the jarl – but the disruption around the village could not be ignored and he was pleased that the day would soon be drawing to a close.

  ‘The autumn gales and treacherous waters of the Northern Sea could so easily have taken you,’ he continued, shuddering at the thought. He would never lose his fears of those vast, grey depths.

  ‘Ulf. My name is Ulf now.’

  Sigehelm blinked at the terse rebuke, his quill poised over his parchment. He stared at Eadwulf, whose head was bent over the boot he was buffing, his body stiff, a pained expression on his face. ‘Of course,’ he acknowledged, ‘I recall someone saying as much yesterday. But I can’t remember the reason why you changed your name.’ He glanced at eight year old Ubbi, practising his letters at the end of the table. But the women were making too much noise chopping vegetables for the boy to hear. ‘Eadwulf is a fine old Mercian name; a name to be proud of.’

  ‘I don’t feel like a Mercian any more,’ Ulf snapped, doggedly polishing without looking up. ‘I’m not a Dane – and I’m still a thrall. I know that. But what’s the point of harking on about my Mercian heritage? I’ll never go back. And I’ve earned the privilege of being named Ulf, so please call me that in future.’

  Ulf dropped the boot and polishing cloth to the floor, pushing back his hair as he raised his head. Sigehelm noted how the thick mane hung unkempt about his shoulders, in dire need of grooming. It had grown considerably since the spring. He held Ulf’s gaze, desperately seeking the boy he once knew. But Eadwulf – Ulf – was now very much a man. The once boyish features had sharpened and red whiskers sprouted from his chin and upper lip. His physique was powerful and well muscled, his every reflex that of a warrior. At seventeen he was a head taller than Sigehelm and looked so much like . . . He swallowed hard. Ulf was a mirror image of how he remembered Beorhtwulf to be.

  ‘Bjorn is my master,’ Ulf said with a one-shouldered shrug. ‘He re-named me Ulf and I must obey his orders. But it’s more than that, Scribe! You’ve always had your God – your Christ. I could never understand your trust; your faith.’

  Sigehelm struggled to grasp the connection between Eadwulf’s change of name and his own faith. His former pupil was watching him, doubtless reading his confusion, and when he spoke his tone had softened.

  ‘You’ve always taught me that Christ would be the salvation of his followers. But I could find no comfort in such a belief, Sigehelm, you know that. Bjorn has been my only salvation. If not for him, Ivar would have killed me years ago.’

  ‘I do believe that when Bjorn took you under his wing it gave you relative freedom and the chance to get away from Aros and see some of the world. Heaven knows, you’ve not seen summer here for five years. You could undoubtedly sail one of those dragonships singlehanded!’ Ulf’s lips twitched at Sigehelm’s quip but he said nothing. ‘Bjorn certainly took you away from the intolerance of Aslanga,’ Sigehelm continued, glancing about to ensure the mistress was still in the fireroom, ‘and the constant taunts of Ivar and Halfdan. But whether Ivar would have killed you is doubtful indeed.’

  ‘Believe it,’ Ulf spat. ‘You don’t know the truth of it!’

  Sigehelm gasped, the unexpected discourtesy astounding him. At a loss for words he looked away to collect his thoughts. He’d put down his quill in haste and unwittingly knocked over the ink pot. The black liquid streamed across his parchment, rendering his work utterly ruined. He felt the unaccustomed prickle in his eyes as memories of a day long ago resurfaced and he looked at Ulf.

  Ulf glanced at the parchment and then at Sigehelm, his features impassive. He picked up Bjorn’s boot and recommenced his polishing.

  * * *

  The hall was stifling, the heat from the hearthfire intense, and Ulf’s face burned, his body uncomfortably clammy. Rowdy singing filled his head – or was it screams he heard? He needed time to think; time to contemplate the significance of recent events, unscramble his tangled emotions. His sense of self had become so deeply buried he didn’t know who he was any more. Was he Eadwulf, or Ulf? Mercian or Dane? Whoever he was, he wasn’t the same person who’d set sail for Francia in the spring. Did his deeds in Francia make him evil and depraved? If so, why had he done those things . . . slaughtered and raped? They contradicted everything he’d once believed in; every principle his parents had instilled in him. But when all was said and done, he’d really had little choice over his actions: Bjorn had simply expected him to act in accordance with the rest of the men. When Ulf contemplated how he’d felt about that, he had to admit he’d had no objection to doing so. And once caught in the frenzy of the moment, there’d been no turning back, no time to consider the wantonness, the very wrongness of it all. And he’d so desperately wanted to please Bjorn and earn acceptance as a warrior. Being the lowliest member of his master’s crew was no longer enough.

  He slunk outside, the heaviness in his chest weighing him down. How could he have been so contemptible to Sigehelm, his one true friend; his one true link to his real self? Tomorrow he’d apologise, tell Sigehelm about Francia. He would not dwell on the raids. How could he explain to Sigehelm things he did not understand himself?

  Drinking in the sweet, cool air, he basked in the peace away from the hall. The blue skies of the October day were now cloaked in the velvet shades of night, the waxing gibbous moon bathing the land in pale light. Millions of stars twinkled and beguiled, some swept in bands across the heavens like huge brushstrokes, others massed into clusters. Countless millions of others shone alone. His heavy eyelids closed, his tense muscles began to loosen, his mind to wander.

  He’d seen so many night skies on his sea voyages over the past five years and never ceased to feel small and insignificant beneath such grandeur. He wondered whether Asgard lay somewhere beyond the stars, and whether Odin, Thor, Frey and other Danish gods were looking down on the antics of humans from their magnificent halls. Could the Christian god be there with them? It seemed to Ulf more likely that there were no gods at all, that Thor’s storms and Odin’s ravens were just part of the nature of things.

  On clear nights at sea, when their sun compass was rendered useless and the routes of seabirds u
nseen, their navigators would use the stars to locate their position. Ulf had learned a little of that skill and could name several of the stars and constellations. The most important star was the North or Lode Star, which was easy enough to find, since it sat between two great constellations with unmistakable formations. His eyes were drawn to a group of stars called Odin’s Wagon, for Odin was ruler of the wagon road of the heavens. Ulf found this seven-star arrangement intriguing. Four of the stars formed the body of the wagon itself, the other three the pole, or handle. His gaze moved from the two pointer stars at the front of the wagon until it rested on the North Star. On the opposite side of the North Star from the Great Wagon, Casseopeia sat in its great zigzag formation. He followed an imaginary line drawn from the open end of the first V of this zigzag and again located the North Star.

  There were many old myths about these wonders of the heavens. Bjorn had once told him how the sun, the moon and the stars had been formed at the beginning of time. The story told of a hot, bright, glowing land guarded by the fire giant, Surt. This was the land of Muspelheim. It was said that the warm air of Muspelheim had drifted into the opposite cold, dark land of Niflheim, melting the ice and causing Aurgelmir, the father of the evil giants, to be formed. The gods themselves took the sparks and burning embers of Muspelheim and placed them in the midst of the vast space above and below the Earth. These became the sun, the moon and the millions of stars.

  Ulf found the story little more than interesting. To him it was just that: a story.

  At first Ulf had felt lost and alone at sea, surrounded by men more at home in their ships than on land. He’d been so young five years ago, so ignorant. But he was learning. Sailing with Bjorn, he’d seen places he hadn’t known existed, places even Sigehelm hadn’t heard of: trading towns and ports, peaceful villages, and mountains so breath-taking he’d felt totally humbled. Sometimes, they’d sailed into settlements to trade. At others they’d looted and killed.

  He snapped his mind shut to the raids and thought of the Norwegian lands of the far north, close to where the world of humans abruptly ended and those strange and beautiful lights danced across the skies as the gods played. He’d quaked with fear the first time he’d sailed past the Lofoten islands to the fishing settlement of Tromsø. The crew had teased him relentlessly and he couldn’t help smiling at the memory . . .

  ‘If we sail much further north,’ Leif had told him, wide-eyed, ‘we’ll surely be thrust from the edge of Midgard into that wild ocean where the most hideous of all serpents, Jormungandr, lives. The monster will close his foul, gaping jaws around us and swallow us all in a single gulp!’

  The men had kept up the pretence for days. Only much later had Ulf learned that ships often sailed even further than Tromsø. As a boy, Bjorn had sailed with Ragnar over the very top of the Norwegian lands, continuing east at the edge of a vast, cold ocean the Norwegians called the Whale’s Road until they reached the land of the Finns. Bjorn had seen nothing of any monstrous serpent, just an abundance of whales and great floating lumps of ice.

  A feeling of warmth swept through Ulf as he recalled those early voyages. The Danes had taken to him, a lad of thirteen, as one of their own, even though he cleaned and cooked and fetched for them. He had his allotted place in their company, and been respected for it.

  Hearing footsteps he spun round to see a young woman coming toward him from the hall. Her unbraided hair shone like pale silk in the moonlight. She stopped and stood there, hands on her hips, glowering at him. ‘

  I hope you’re truly ashamed of yourself, Eadwulf. I feel ashamed for you!’

  Ulf immediately bristled. ‘You know your brother named me Ulf!’

  Freydis advanced on him, fury shaping her features. ‘Oh, I know all right. I also know why Bjorn gave you that name, and I commend your actions. But you seem to have let it go to your head! What gives you the right to treat Sigehelm with such disrespect?’ she demanded. ‘We’ve all benefited from his learning, and he’s earned the respect of us all. And he cares for you more than anyone else in all of Midgard. He’s a fine person with a noble heart, Christian or not. But you just–’

  ‘And what gives you the right to try to put me in my place? I’m not your thrall!’

  With a hiss of rage, Freydis leapt to stand barely an arm’s length before him, tilting her head back to glare up at his face. Ulf glared defiantly back. ‘I can put you in your place because you are a thrall!’ she seethed, punctuating her reply with sharp jabs to his chest that sent jolts of agony through his shoulder.

  His reaction was instinctive: he grabbed Freydis’s wrist in a vicelike grip, fuming at the affront. Sudden pain contorted her face, a glimmer of fear momentarily flashing in her eyes. Then the anger took over. Her eyes fixed on Ulf’s hand on her wrist before moving up to his face. ‘I could have you flogged for this! Then my father would throw you into the pit and give you to Odin at next week’s ceremony.’

  ‘Then run and tell him, Freydis.’ Ulf released her in a sudden gesture, his hand still raised, fingers splayed, clawlike. ‘Run and tell Ragnar whatever you like. You’re right; he wouldn’t hesitate to have me strung up if he thought I’d laid so much as a finger on you. I’d be just another thrall to forfeit his life to appease your vengeful gods.’

  Freydis stepped back, rubbing her wrist, her expression softening with uncertainty. Her eyes glistened in the moonlight, searching Ulf’s face. He felt a wrench at his heart as he watched her gnawing her bottom lip. This was not how he’d expected to greet Freydis on his return. In the spring they’d parted as the friends they’d always been. And as long as that friendship remained within the bounds of mistress and thrall, it was acceptable in the eyes of the Danes. But Ulf’s feelings for Freydis had developed into something so much deeper over the years.

  ‘I don’t understand you any more,’ Freydis said, shaking her head. ‘Where’s the Eadwulf I knew, the Eadwulf who would not have hurt people’s feelings? He seems to have been left behind in Francia, and a stranger returned in his stead.’

  Ulf squeezed his eyes shut, stung by the accuracy of her observation.

  ‘Can’t you see that Sigehelm is very worried – no, he’s upset about you?’

  ‘I know!’ Ulf snapped, turning his back on her. ‘By Odin I feel badly enough without you rubbing it in. I’d already decided to talk to Sigehelm tomorrow.’ He rubbed his aching brow, his shoulders slumping with weariness. ‘And now I’ve made matters worse by offending you. And you have only ever shown me kindness.’

  The sensation of her fingers on his back shot through him like a bolt. He caught his breath, its release coming as an involuntary shudder. Turning to face her he forced a smile. Freydis had such a troubled look on her face that he desperately wanted to hold her, assure her that he was still the same person deep inside. But a thrall could never take such a liberty with a jarl’s daughter.

  She smiled weakly in return. The front of her white pinafore was stained in patches, the colours indistinguishable in the moonlight: probably berry juice from the pancakes she’d made. Freydis had spent all afternoon in the fireroom, and a night of serving at the feast, and had every right to feel exhausted. Yet all her concern was for Sigehelm – and himself.

  ‘I know my behaviour has been unacceptable,’ he admitted, unconsciously brushing flour from her cheek. ‘I just need a little time to adjust to new expectations of me.’

  Freydis covered his hand with hers and turned her face into his palm. Her gentle kiss sent such a frisson of passion through him that he groaned. ‘Freydis, we–’

  ‘Hush,’ she said, pressing her fingers to his lips. ‘I know what you would say and I don’t want to hear it. There is always hope. Don’t give up on yourself, or on me . . . But,’ she went on, ‘it appears I’ve been too hasty in my assumptions about you. I should know things aren’t always what they seem. And I shall have strong words with my scoundrel of a brother. Ubbi knows he shouldn’t ea
vesdrop on other people’s conversations.’

  ‘I did wonder how you knew about that.’

  ‘I know a lot of things about you, Ulf. Did you think Bjorn and I wouldn’t share our secrets? But don’t worry; I never betray a trust – and Bjorn knows that.’

  Freydis’s smile was disconcerting and soothing all at once. ‘I know that one day you must leave us to fulfil your destiny,’ she murmured. ‘You are the son of a king, and I know in my heart you have become a thrall for a purpose, as part of your learning about life, perhaps, or about people. I can see by your face you are sceptical. But, much as you’ve become a Dane in manner and appearance, underneath you’re still the proud Mercian you were born to be. You will always despise our people for snatching you from your home and killing your father.’

  She gazed up at the starlit sky and heaved a sigh. ‘There is much about our world that we don’t understand, Ulf. What is out there, amongst and beyond all those stars, for example? They are so far away that even the birds cannot reach them. And though our lives may be a continuous quest for knowledge, we can only ever scratch the surface of such mysteries. So we put our trust in our gods, who must surely know all things. And I believe that you are that red-headed warrior of Ivar’s dream.’ She laid her hand on Ulf’s arm. It felt comforting and he savoured the sensation. ‘It frightens me to think of it but what is fated to be, must be. You are destined to become a great warrior, and I a simple healer. We are surely opposites, you and I. But I know deep inside that you could never be evil. You are nothing like my two brothers.’

  Ulf shrugged. He didn’t believe himself to be truly evil; did not believe that killing in battle was evil. But, raiding the homelands of innocent people . . .?

  ‘I’ve never shared my knowledge of your heritage with anyone except Bjorn: not even with Thora,’ Freydis assured him with a small smile. ‘And whatever Sigehelm knows about your parentage he would never divulge to anyone. His loyalty to you is steadfast, as is my own.’ She reached up and took Ulf’s face gently between her hands, standing on tiptoe to kiss his lips with a tenderness that felt no more than the brush of a butterfly’s wing. She smiled again and turned to walk back to the hall, her silken hair white in the moonlight.