The Raven's Table

by Christine Morgan

  Despite the fire’s welcome warmth, Osbert shivered. He chewed his bottom lip. His eyelids twitched, the eyes themselves rolling upward and jittering. His nostrils flared at a scent that wasn’t there. His mouth went both dry, and awash with strange flavors.

  “The… the Danes will come,” he heard his own voice say, as if from a great distance. “There will be a battle, killing and death… screaming, they die screaming…”

  His breath caught in his lungs. A gloom-veil obscured his sight with smoke and shadows. He slid from the stool, feeling the helpless spasming jerk of his limbs.

  Then the bishop was there, lifting him, holding him cradled in one arm. “Shh, now, Osbert,” he said. “Drink this, just a sip, it’s only wine, that’s a good lad.”

  He sipped and coughed, then recovered, flinching under a keen awareness of the other men scrutinizing him. “Should I… should I bring the tray to Brother Leomund now?”

  “Yes. Yes, do that. Thank you.”

  “You would not favor the fits and visions of a widow’s-son scullery boy over the word of the king’s own messenger?” Harold asked. Then, looking closely again as Osbert hastened to collect the empty cups, he added, “Though I do see he favors you, as well, Lord Bishop…”

  Aelfstan grumbled at that, but Cenric ignored Harold’s words.

  “Lord Aelfstan,” the bishop said, “we will have the men stay gathered, a while longer at least.”

  ***

  Osbert revived in damp straw, head aching, and pushed himself upright.

  Not much time had passed, he judged, by the bustling activity around him. The screams of the dying on the battlefield had stopped; the moans of the injured who’d been carried within the log palisade replaced them.

  Bishop Cenric knelt at his friend Aelfstan’s side, pressing him down with firm hands even as he spoke in soothing tones. Two monks, arms splashed red to the elbows, tied a tight strap around the lord’s thigh. His lower leg was a ruin, splintered bone and raw muscle held together with tatters of sinew. The ground beneath him was sodden with blood. A third monk, looking ill but grim, held an axe, while a fourth stoked the fire to heat the cauterizing iron.

  Wincing—he liked Lord Aelfstan, and that was a dreadful wound for any man to suffer—Osbert hurried away.

  No one paid any notice to a lone boy slipping through the open gates to follow the townsfolk searching for loved ones or plundering loot from the dead.

  He did not want to join in that grim scavenging, but he knew that he must. He could not rely on the monastery’s charity forever.

  Death made the men all the same, no matter their side. Cold grey faces and stiffening limbs… mouths hollowly gaping… sightless eyes bulging where they had not yet been plucked from their sockets to feed the hunger of ravens… spilled guts in congealing piles… blood and shit, piss and vomit…

  Most of the town’s defenders had been poor, farmers and herdsmen. But here and there among their remains glinted cheap wealth. The warrior Danes were the richer, displaying the arm-rings of which they boasted and seemed inordinately proud.

  Osbert picked up a few coins and brooches from the churned, muddy ground. He passed others bent to similar tasks, making his way toward the center where the fighting had been thickest.

  A bright gleam of gold caught his eye. It was a Dane’s arm-ring, worked into a pattern like snake’s-scales, with chips of green gemstone where a snake’s eyes might have been. Osbert’s heart sprang up with excitement—it was worth more than the rest of what he’d found combined.

  The ring girded the outstretched arm of a Dane, sprawled face-down atop a mound of corpses as if he’d been crawling over them when his last life-strength fled. He’d left a broad swathe of gore in his wake as he did so. Yellow hair hung in blood-matted tangles around his head.

  Grasping the arm-ring, Osbert tugged but it would not pull free. He tugged harder, struggling, until his efforts dislodged the Dane’s body. It rolled from the mound and thumped heavily to the earth, landing on its back.

  The Dane grunted, and opened his eyes.

  Osbert yelped. The Dane’s muddled, bleary gaze rolled toward him. Danish words mumbled, incomprehensible, from his lips.

  From left shoulder to right hip, a great stroke had cut. His mail-coat was shredded. Jagged rib-ends poked out through mangled flesh. He should not have lived, could not have lived, but somehow did. In terrible, mortal agony… and not for much longer… but he lived.

  The pain-filled eyes were imploring. Osbert found himself putting a hand of comfort on the Dane’s unhurt shoulder.

  “It’s all right,” he said, though he did not know why. Perhaps because no man deserved to die alone and uncomforted. Even if he was a Dane, a pagan, an invader and an attacker.

  The Dane mustered himself and spoke in halting, accented English. “… sword…”

  “I don’t have a sword—”

  “… a sword… give you… to me…” The Dane’s right arm, the one that had been outstretched when he’d collapsed atop the corpses, made a fitful reaching effort.

  Osbert saw the weapon then, some little distance away in the war-carnage, half-hidden under a broken, discarded shield and the headless body of a Saxon.

  “The fighting is over,” he told the Dane. “I won’t hurt you.”

  “My… sword!”

  If it meant so much to him, if he’d crawled over the dead to try and retrieve it…

  “I’ll get it,” he said, and did so.

  Grateful relief eased the Dane’s tormented expression when Osbert lowered the sword-hilt into his waiting hand. His fingers curled weakly around it. His bearded face creased in a smile. His eyes shut.

  Light flared from above and behind Osbert’s head, a terrible light casting his shadow stark upon the dying Dane. He whirled and looked up at what only he could see, at the rift in the sky and the dark beast bursting from it.

  Each hoof struck sparks as the black horse came galloping on the wind. On its back was a rider, clad in golden mail-coat and billowing cloak of scarlet, bearing a red shield with ornate boss and rim, and a long ash-spear tipped with sharp gold.

  Mane and tail rippling, silver-bridled head tossing, the dread steed descended at a proud-gaited canter that passed yards above the corpse-strewn battlefield. It stopped not far from Osbert and the Dane.

  The rider, whose tall mail-clad shape proved that of a woman, reined in her mount. Gold, too, was her helm, with eagle’s wings upswept to either side. Long hair flowed from beneath it like a river of flame.

  Her voice rang out, fire and steel. “Who stands between Huldbrynne and her chosen slain?”

  Osbert stared at her, jaw-dropped.

  The woman’s eyes—white-burning embers through the gold eye-pieces flanking her helm’s nasal—narrowed.

  “You see me?” she asked. “You hear me?”

  His head bobbed in a nod.

  “What beardless boy-child of Midgard dares look bold-faced upon a Valkyrie?”

  Bold-faced? About that, Osbert was uncertain; he had never felt less bold. His throat gulped as he worked to swallow.

  “O-O-Osbert,” he said in a squeak.

  “Then move aside, Osbert, and delay me no further!”

  The woman nudged the horse a stride forward. It pranced, then reared up, startled, as Osbert managed a shout.

  “Leave him be!” he cried. “He’s suffered enough!”

  And, somehow, he’d snatched the sword from the Dane’s dead hand. He brandished it clumsily. The point dipped and weaved. It was heavy. He knew this to be foolish, but raised his chin defiantly.

  “You are brave,” Huldbrynne said to him.

  He struck at her with the Dane’s sword.

  She laughed as, with her shield, she batted it aside.

  Then she plunged her spear deep into his chest, piercing his heart with its sharp golden point.

  Some years previous…

  Osbert wept as they folded the shroud over his mother.

  No sicknes
s had come to the town, no plague ravaged the land. Just this sole pestilence had grown seething inside her, raddling her bones like wood-lice raddled a tree’s trunk and branches.

  He’d known it was there. Sometimes it seemed he could see it. Eating away at her. Devouring her from within. She’d known it as well, though they’d never spoken of it except in the vaguest of terms.

  Until the very end, when she grew tired and weak, she’d kept as busy as ever, as hard-working and cheerful. She did not concern herself with what some folk said—that the pestilence was her punishment, the cost of her sins come due—and as a result, neither did Osbert.

  Her final thoughts had been for her son. She’d stroked his hand, and told him how she loved him, and that he would need to be strong to carry on without her but she would watch over him always.

  The monks tied twine around the linen-wrapped bundle at neck, waist and feet, then hefted it to take outside where the cart waited. Osbert followed, head down and cheeks damp, hair hanging in his eyes.

  They buried her in the graveyard.

  Osbert stayed there a long time, long after the monks and townsfolk had drifted away. He heard a step beside him, and felt a touch upon his shoulder.

  “Your mother was a good woman,” Bishop Cenric said. “She is with God now.”

  “In Heaven?”

  “In Heaven. With Christ and all the saints and angels, rejoicing in God’s holy light.”

  “Does she still hurt?”

  “No. There is no more pain for her, young Osbert. No more weariness or toil. There is peace everlasting, and life eternal.”

  “I miss her.” Fresh tears welled in his eyes.

  Cenric knelt beside him, putting an arm around the boy. “I know.” He sighed. “As do I. As do we all.”

  “She said she’d watch over me.”

  “She will.” The bishop smiled, if sadly. “So, you must make every effort to live in a way that would make her proud.”

  “Will I ever see her again?”

  “One day, yes, you’ll be together in Heaven.”

  “After I die?”

  “Yes.”

  Osbert stifled a sob. “Why must we die?”

  “It is God’s will. He gifts unto us our time on this world, to love and serve Him to the best of our faith’s ability. When that time is done, we depart our earthly bodies and He gathers our souls home to His embrace.”

  “But I’m so frightened…”

  “It can be frightening to think of,” Cenric said. “You must remember… your mother loved you very much. She’ll be waiting for you, waiting to greet you with open arms… and you’ll be with her again.”

  “Forever?”

  “Forever.”

  ***

  His head jounced and lolled. His arms flopped, loose and boneless. His feet dangled. His stomach ached from a swaying pressure that he first mistook for nausea.

  As his senses and wits slowly returned, Osbert realized he’d been slung belly-down over the back of a horse at full gallop.

  A strange wind whipped past. It smelled of a brisk sea-breeze, the air of a clear midnight before the winter’s first snow-storm, a rainy green-spring morning, and sunset, if sunset had a scent. It smelled of all of those things at once, and none of them. It was not warm and not cold.

  Sounds came to him next… snorting breath, the jingle of tack and mail… and when he peeled his reluctant eyelids open, it was to an upside-down view of the powerful legs in motion… and the ground… the ground…

  The ground beneath the flying hooves was not ground.

  It was…

  Colors and mist and light, a banded shimmer and blur of color and mist and light.

  The ground beneath the flying hooves, the road along which the black steed galloped, was made of those things.

  And it wasn’t.

  It was a rainbow. A rainbow not seen from afar as a hazy arc but here, and real, solid and smooth as old Roman glass or mother-of-pearl… less substantial than a whisper and fluid as water…

  He groaned, letting his head fall again, letting the grey fog wash over his sight.

  When he next revived, it was to find the galloping stopped, and his limp body being dragged backward by his tunic’s rope belt. Osbert got his feet under him before he fell onto his rump.

  Gasping, badly shaken, he set a hand to his chest. Only then did he realize he felt no injury there. No blood, and no pain… though he had felt the gold spear-point sink into his flesh. He looked down to find the wool cloth undamaged, the skin beneath likewise.

  Beside him was Huldbrynne, the woman with the flame-river hair and eyes white-burning. She tossed the reins to a man huger and uglier than any Osbert had ever seen, a man in coarse thrall’s rags with a copper collar at his neck.

  They were in the midst of a wide stable-yard, cobbled in slabs of stone and sprinkled with silvery straw. Along one side were stalls in which more horses stood, being tended and groomed by others of the huge, ugly men.

  A building rose above the stable-yard, a building big as a mountain, a great hall so immense that Osbert could not begin to count the number of doors that led from it. The hall’s roof was shingled in huge round plates of gold. A tree sprouted from that roof, branches spreading wide against a day-bright blue sky where night-stars sparkled and flashed.

  There was a pen upon the roof as well, its log-beams larger than ship’s masts. In the pen was a goat, and if the hall was a mountain, the goat was a hill. She grazed with ease from the shining leaves of the towering tree. Liquid drizzled from the fat teats of her immense udder, filling into a vat the size of a lake.

  A stag also nibbled at the leaves of the tree. From his majestic crown of antlers, clear water gushed like well-springs.

  Osbert had gained his feet and so not been dumped on his rump, but a glimpse of these monstrous creatures hamstrung him. He crumpled to the cobbles, shuddering.

  “Am I dead?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Huldbrynne replied.

  Dead?

  But…

  Heaven… God’s light… Christ and saints and angels rejoicing… peace everlasting, life eternal… his mother…

  This was nothing like any of that.

  “Get up, boy.” She prodded him with the butt-end of her spear. “Valhalla is no place for worm-cowering.”

  When he was too slow at it, Huldbrynne bent, seized the back of his collar, and hauled him upright.

  “And cease that sniveling,” she added.

  He swiped his sleeve under his nose. “V-Valhalla?”

  Her head tilted, her white-burning gaze narrowing at him again. “The hall of Odin All-Father, where the Einherjar join great heroes and kings… are you foolish?”

  The bafflement of his expression must have convinced her he was, for she scowled. Her grasp still rough on his collar, she turned him and pointed with the spear toward the beasts atop the huge hall’s golden roof.

  “Look,” she said, impatient. “There stands Heidrun, the she-goat most bountiful, from whose udders flow the endless mead, honey-sweet! There stands Eikthyrnir, the stag-jarl, whose antlers are the font of many rivers! They graze upon the leaves of Lerad, of which only Yggdrasil itself is the more renowned tree!”

  Horror washed over him as he understood. These were pagan things, this was a pagan place! This war-witch was a pagan, a she-devil, a wicked demoness who’d stolen him away!

  “Behind the hall is the yard where the feasting-boar Saehrimnir is kept,” she continued. “Each day he is butchered and cooked, and each night, unhurt, he is made whole again! You must know of that!”

  Female laughter, like a cascade of brass coins, resounded. The interruption spared Osbert from having to speak, when he had no notion what he might have said.

  “What is it you’ve brought, sister?” a mirthful voice called.

  “So tiny to be a warrior,” said another.

  “And young,” said a third. “They’ll be sending cradle-babes to the battle next, at this rate!”
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br />   Huldbrynne turned, and Osbert turned with her.

  A group of mail-clad women approached, each fiercer and fairer than the next. They swaggered as men did, helms under their arms, hands resting easy on the hilts of belt-weapons.

  Terrifying though she was, he found himself shrinking closer to Huldbrynne.

  “This boy is Osbert,” she told her war-witch sisters. “Osbert—” Breaking off with her words, she frowned down upon him. “What is the name of your father?”

  “I… I have none,” he said. He cast his eyes at his feet, this admission one that often brought scorn.

  But Huldbrynne merely made an indifferent noise. “This boy is Osbert,” she told her sisters again. “He saw me; he shares far-seeing Heimdall’s keen vision.”

  “He saw you?” echoed one whose hair tousled wild in black curls.

  “An Englisher boy, and a Christian at that?” This from another, blonde-braided, blue-eyed, whose cruel beauty was such that Osbert almost could not bear the sight.

  “Saw me, defied me, and struck at me with a dead sword-Dane’s blade,” Huldbrynne said, with a touch of what might have been pride.

  “He would be wasted, then, in their milk-sop god’s house,” said the blonde-braided one. “You should have him washed, though… he stinks like a Saxon.”

  With that, she strode off, and the others went with her. Huldbrynne looked Osbert over and nodded.

  “Sigfridda is right. You’re a walking filth-wallow, boy.”

  The next that he knew, she’d relinquished him to bath-house thralls, who subjected him to the most heinous indignities.

  They scrubbed him top to toe—in hot water, no less!—until he was clean as a Dane, when everyone knew the pagans used their sinful vanity to tempt goodly women. They combed and trimmed his brown hair. They scoured under his nails, and clipped them. They scraped wax from his ears with a thin walrus-bone scoop.

  All around him were men undergoing similar treatment, though hardly objecting, and even enjoying themselves. Naked skin glistened on muscular bodies. Some splashed and tussled, playful as otters.