Raven (10 page)

Beiner stepped back without looking at the wound, for he knew it was nothing serious. ‘That was a low thing to do,’ he said, spitting on the ground between them. ‘I wasn’t ready.’

The dark warrior jumped high into the air, his knees almost striking his chest, then landed in a crouch and leapt back up, spinning round, his sword slicing the air, and I wondered how
it was possible to move like that in mail. His friends cheered his skill, then looked to Beiner for his response. But Beiner just stood there rooted to the ground like an ash.

‘Heimdall’s hairy ball sack!’ he said, ‘he’s a giant flea.’ The man darted in again, this time cutting low and gashing Beiner’s right leg just above the knee. Beiner swung his axe but his enemy was already out of range. ‘I felt that one,’ Beiner muttered, and I was about to tell him to make his axe dance, but the big Dane had already thought of that and the axe began to carve great rings through the air above his head. And Beiner began to roar.

I looked beyond the warriors but could see no sign of the Wolfpack.
What are you waiting for, Sigurd?
‘Just keep that axe dancing,’ I said.

‘It’s easy for you to say!’ Beiner spat, puffing like an ox at the yoke, as our enemy’s champion began to circle him with neat sideways steps, each foot crossing over the other in deft turns. Beiner shuffled his own booted feet, his eyes wide as he sought to keep the lethal, heavy axe head between him and his opponent. And he was doing well. The man knew one end of an axe from the other and every warrior there, including the Danes watching from Gerd’s Tit, knew that all Beiner had to do was hit the little man once and the chances were it would be over. But no one knew that better than the blauman, who moved as nimbly as a new bed-slave, and must have been much stronger than he looked.

I heard the next strike slice into Beiner’s flesh along the ribs beneath his right arm. He yelled in pain and fury, spittle flying from his beard, and strode towards the smaller man, looping the axe as though his intent was to sever the Midgard-Serpent’s head from its monstrous, coiled body. The other man was grinning and I ached to see those white teeth fly through the back of his skull, because he was going to slice Beiner up piece by living piece and the Dane would die a death of red agony and it would be my fault. Then, from Gerd’s Tit, I heard men
howling like wolves. The door was open and the Danes were running towards us, yelping wildly.

‘Beiner, to me!’ I shouted, and the big Dane stopped his axe mid-swing and hitched backwards as I drew my sword. I thought the Danes had killed us all then, for against fifty we stood no chance. But then some of the blaumen turned their backs on us and others scrambled to mount their horses as Sigurd and the Wolfpack ran down the crest, their painted shields a chaos of colour and their blades gleaming dully in the reddish dusk.

‘I was just about to gut that whelp,’ Beiner gasped, his chest heaving and his breath rattling like a sword in an ill-fitting scabbard.

‘I could see that,’ I said, planting my feet for the coming fight. Then the Danes were around me and we made a wall even without shields, and a heartbeat later nearly fifty well-armed warriors beneath a wolf’s head banner crashed into the panicked press of robed men.

‘Hold!’ I yelled. ‘Hold, you Danish dogs!’ Not because we were poorly armed and without brynjas, but because if the enemy had any sense at all they would break through us and run for Gerd’s Tit, which would then protect them as it had us.

‘Wait!’ Penda bawled, grabbing a blood-hungry young Dane by one thick braid and yanking him back, and that made me think of Griffin of Abbotsend and his dog Arsebiter. ‘Stay here, you witless bastard!’ Penda snarled and the Dane suddenly understood though he did not look happy about it. Horses screamed as Sigurd’s men hamstrung them whilst their riders tried desperately to kick their way clear. The iron stink of blood bloomed in the air and swords rang against metal and chopped into wet meat. Black Floki rammed his spear straight through a man’s head and had drawn his sword before the man even knew he was dead. Bram Bear hacked off a horse’s foreleg with his short axe and blood sprayed across the nearest men,
so that they all broke off for a moment to wipe it from their eyes. Sigurd gripped a spear in each hand and launched them both together, the first time I had seen that done, and each one plunged into its mark and Sigurd was laughing at the battle joy of it all.

‘Now!’ I yelled, striding forward into the fray. My first swing took a man’s head clean off his shoulders as Penda and the Danes howled, released to the slaughter. Some of the dark men fought, and fought well too, but others we killed easily because they were too blinded by fear and their panic to escape the butchery.

‘Kill the bloodless things!’ Tufi yelled, throwing an arm round a man’s neck and plunging a short blade into his spine. The man screamed like an icy wind through Hel as Tufi twisted the knife, grinning viciously and mocking his victim’s wailing.

The fight eddied around the dark-skinned champion who was keeping Bram and Bjarni at bay, his sword streaking at them to bite their shields. The two Norsemen seemed unsure how to deal with the man, reminding me of two bears trying to paw a fish from a stream, when Beiner limped up behind the blauman, looping his big axe through the air, then hammered the blade down, through the man’s left shoulder and out above his right hip, cutting him into two halves. Beiner roared in savage triumph and Bram and Bjarni looked at each other’s blood-spattered face, their eyes sharing an appreciation of Beiner’s axe-work. That man’s death bought the others their lives, for when our enemy’s lord saw his champion slaughtered he threw his curved sword on to the ground and Aslak would have hacked him down if Sigurd had not bellowed for him to stay his hand.

‘Enough!’ the jarl yelled and his men raised their shields and stepped backwards into space, instinctively finding the shoulder of a comrade. The blaumen followed their lord’s lead and cast their weapons down; though some of them must have thought that was a stupid thing to do, they did it anyway. The
Wessexman Ulfbert lay dead, a hand axe wedged into the gristle and bone of his neck. Baldred, Wiglaf and Gytha stood round him, shaking their heads and scratching their beards. Nearby lay the bodies of Geitir and another Dane whose name I didn’t know, and several other men were clasping gashes or bruised limbs, awaiting their jarl’s orders.

The sun fell behind the western horizon, retreating from the enormous swath of shadow that swept from the east across the land and vanquished the warmth of the day, so that the sweat on my back felt suddenly cold and clammy. Ignoring Aslak, the lord of the blaumen turned to the east and raised his hands to the sky and his men did the same.

‘Allahu akbar!’ he called, and the other men repeated the same words and then another man began the wailing we had heard from them before. Black Floki glanced at Sigurd, who nodded, then Floki strode over to the wailing man and cracked a fist into his mouth, dropping him like a rock. But this didn’t stop his companions raising their arms and bowing. We looked at each other in disbelief and some of us touched amulets or sword hilts to ward off this ill-seidr. Meanwhile, old Asgot muttered counter spells, invoking Óðin to shield us from the blaumen’s sorcery.

‘Should have just killed them,’ Bothvar moaned, holding his spear out towards one of them, his shield raised as though it could protect him from their strange words.

‘You all know what to do,’ Sigurd said. ‘If any of the dogs resists, kill him.’ Aslak was the first. Grinning, he yanked the gold ring from the dark-skinned warlord’s cloth-covered helmet and tossed it to Sigurd. Then he grabbed the man’s scale brynja at his neck and tugged viciously so that the man understood what was required of him. We all did the same with the men nearest to us and reluctantly the blaumen began to pull off their war gear bit by bit, and I suddenly realized why Sigurd had stopped the killing. For it is much easier if a man gives you his mail voluntarily than it is to strip him of it when his corpse
is stinking of blood and piss and shit and starting to stiffen. When we had gathered everything worth taking we left the blaumen shivering in their underclothes and still they seemed more concerned with their strange rites, so that we were happy to leave them be and be gone. Penda had believed they were praying to their god and I for one hoped that was the truth of it. Rather that than they had been weaving some powerful seidr against us. But I wondered what kind of god made his followers fall on their knees and touch their faces to the filthy ground to show their fealty. Such a god as that was either a hard and cruel god or else his followers were not proud men like the Norse.

We watched the defeated dark-skins shamble off into the night, taking their dead with them on the surviving horses, which we had left, having no use for them. We knew we would have the time to load food and plunder on to our ships and sail off before they returned with more warriors. But even so it was generous of Sigurd to spare them.

Rolf had questioned the decision, his thin face creased in puzzlement.

‘A fox will kill every chicken in the coop just because he can,’ the jarl said. He had put the lord of the blaumen’s gold ring round his own helmet and was carrying the man’s fine leather saddle as well as his curved sword and scale brynja. The pitch-skinned lord’s helmet was tied to the jarl’s belt, stripped of its linen wrapping which Sigurd had used to clean his sword. ‘But a wolf …’ he said to Rolf, who walked beside him equally cumbered, ‘a wolf takes one lamb at a time and the sheep grow to fear him. Next time we meet the blaumen there is a good chance that they will run and not fight.’ Sigurd smiled, obviously happy with the day’s work. ‘I don’t know about you, Rolf, but I find I can heft twice as much plunder when my arms are not tired out from fighting.’

The Dane laughed and so did the rest of us. For our scheme had worked and the blaumen had blundered into our trap like
witless animals and we had killed and robbed them of everything they had that was worth taking to our ships. We had lost a handful of good men, which always leaves a bad taste in the mouth. These men, five Danes and a Wessexman, we buried together inside a ring of stones laid out in the shape of a long-ship, which did them some honour though Sigurd sent them on their way across Bifröst with only spears and some of the Danes moaned about that. But we still had need of good swords and could not spare them for the dead. At first the Wessexmen had wanted to bury Ulfbert separately and in the Christian way. In the end, though, when the stone longship was finished, they decided to lay him in it beside the others.

‘He will surely find heaven eventually,’ Baldred had said, scratching his balding head, ‘but let him sail with the heathens one more time for he did so love the sea.’

Sigurd now had enough war gear to properly equip every wolf in his pack. On the jetty before
Serpent
and
Fjord-Elk
,
Wave-Steed
and
Sea-Arrow
, by the silver light of a waxing moon, the Danes who had borrowed gear from the Norsemen returned it with thanks, complimenting the owners on the sharpness of their blades, the toughness of their shields and the comfort of their helmets. Then Sigurd doled out spears and mail, short axes, strange-looking helmets and the blaumen’s light, single-edged but wickedly sharp curved swords. Every Dane was grateful for the weapons he was given, for surely some of them were worth a heavy silver price, and when it was all done, the oath words whispered in my head.
I will not flee from any man who is my equal in bravery and arms. I will avenge any of my oath-bound brothers as though we are brothers by blood
. The wolves had fought for their jarl and made a slaughter to feed the crows and the worms, and Sigurd had played the part of the ring-giver, rewarding his warriors with fine arms.
If I break this oath I betray my jarl and my fellowship and I am a pus-filled nithing
.

‘They might have decent blades but that doesn’t make me
happy about standing next to them in the shieldwall,’ Black Floki said, his words dispersing my thoughts like a pebble thrown into a pool. ‘They fight like wild dogs.’

‘Aye, but they killed their share,’ Olaf said. ‘Old Uncle Olaf will just have to teach them a few things,’ he added, his teeth white in the moon’s glow as he examined a blauman’s sword more closely, catching the reflected light on the blade as he looked along its edge.

‘I would not stand too close when you do, Uncle,’ Osk said, tramping along the wharf, a butchered goat’s leg over each shoulder. He passed the legs down to Bram in
Fjord-Elk
and Bram smacked his lips together eagerly. It felt good to be stocking our holds with fresh meat, though we would wait until we were a little further along the coast before eating it.

‘They’ll learn, Osk,’ Olaf said, slicing the air with the sword, which looked too small in his hands. ‘There was a time when you couldn’t hit your head on a low beam, lad. I’d seen monks of the White Christ handle whores with more skill than you did a spear.’

Osk swore.

‘I remember those days too, Uncle.’ Bram snorted like a bull, passing the meat to another man, who hefted it to
Fjord-Elk
’s steerboard side and passed it over to a man in
Serpent
, moored alongside. ‘Young Osk couldn’t piss on his own shoes!’

‘Fuck you, Bram,’ Osk said, climbing down into
Fjord-Elk
. Then the crowing really started.

‘He couldn’t hit my wife’s arse with an oar!’ ugly Hedin called.

‘They used to say Osk once jumped into the sea and missed,’ Svein bellowed.

‘He was such a bad shot with a bow that for the first fifteen years of his life his parents thought he was blind!’ another man called, and in the end even Osk could not hide the smile in his beard.

Laughter was coming from
Sea-Arrow
, too, blending with
the soft crash of the surf as her crew boarded in the moon-silvered dark, lugging the booty they had taken. I hoped the shine of that well-earned plunder might hold the Danes’ eyes so that they would not linger on the newly turned earth on the ridge above the beach, in which their brothers lay beside an Englishman. I needn’t have worried from the sound of it. As I took to my sea chest a Dane began to sing: