Raven (13 page)

‘Kill them!’ Olaf bellowed, thrusting his shield’s boss into a blauman’s face, then plunging his sword’s point into the man’s foot.

A warrior screamed something at me and slashed his sword
but I caught the curved blade on my own sword and lunged forward, smashing the hilt into his face. His eyes filled with shock and his mouth hung crooked, his jaw smashed, and he tried to step back but could not because of the press of men around us. I swung my sword at his forward leg and he dropped his shield but my move was a feint and I reversed the blade, sweeping it up into his throat, ripping out his windpipe in a spray of bloody gore. These blaumen had lured us into a trap to kill us and take what was ours and now they were dying because they had underestimated us. Many were shedding their buff leather jerkins and arms and leaping overboard; these men would drown because we were far from the shore, but they preferred that death to the one we offered them.

I saw the man who had thrown us the rope. He was on his knees, throttling a blauman whose eyes bulged like those of a fish dragged up from the depths, and I realized he was not one of the Danes but must be a slave of the blaumen. The veins in his bare arms looked like hemp cords and his skin looked to have suffered burns and healed over again. Other oarsmen cowered pathetically, two to a bench, half gripping their staves, half shielding their heads.

‘The ship is ours!’ a Wessexman yelled. To my right the first of the Danes were boarding, eager to earn their own kills. Kveldulf, one of
Fjord-Elk
’s crew, spun round, hot blood spraying me from a gash across his face, then a blauman’s spear burst through his chest and he fell to his knees. Blood flew and men screamed and the battle joy filled us. Swords rang and shields clashed and the clamour of it all drenched the world.

‘Shieldwall!’ Sigurd yelled.

‘Shieldwall!’ Olaf roared, pushing through the press to stand with his jarl. It was a good idea because in that sort of chaos you are as likely to be killed by one of your own side as by the enemy, especially on a rocking ship. Building a shieldwall would make sense of the tumult and once formed we could sweep the deck in a line of wicked sharp steel, and finish it.

‘They won’t be trying to snare us again, hey!’ Svein the Red said, shoving between two Norsemen to take his place in the growing bulwark of shields that already spanned the width of the deck. At the ship’s stern the Danes were making their own shieldwall and they looked impressive now, if strange, in their new mail and wielding the blaumen’s curious weapons. Between those two walls of death our enemies tried to regroup, pulling themselves into some sort of order but not knowing which way to turn. Many of the slaves cowered at their row benches still, chained and helpless or else too frightened to fight. Others lay wounded or dead in pools of blood. The few who had fought free and survived, including the man who had thrown us the rope, had gathered by the mast, where they stooped uncertainly, not knowing where their best chances lay. Men hurled insults at each other, clutched bloody wounds, gasped for breath, bellowed with pain, or died quietly.

‘Hold!’ Sigurd yelled, and so we made sure our shields overlapped and we planted our feet as the ship gently rocked, unlocking our knees with each pitch and roll. Then we waited, our chests heaving and our mouths drier than a dead dog’s ashes.

‘Norsemen!’ It was Filthy Beard, the man who had helped us board the blaumen ship. ‘Do not kill us. I am from Aggersborg.’

‘Not another Dane,’ Bram Bear muttered through a beard whose bristles held beads of blood.

‘We are slaves of these dogs,’ Filthy Beard said, spitting towards the surviving blaumen, who were fear-soaked and staring like wretched, beaten curs. There were perhaps thirty of them still armed and in a fit state to fight, but they could see their sister ship in the distance and see too that her bows were pointing the wrong way. ‘I have rowed for these dark dogs for two burning summers. But I knew a good crew of Týr-brave men would come from the north and slaughter the whoresons. I am Yngvar.’

Sigurd stepped forward and from the look on Yngvar’s face he knew instantly that Sigurd was our jarl.

‘It was you who threw us the rope?’ Sigurd asked.

‘It was, lord,’ Yngvar said, dipping his head though you could see the pride in him.

‘That was well done, Yngvar,’ Sigurd said. The other slaves were all blaumen and they watched in desperation, not knowing what lay in store for them. ‘I am Jarl Sigurd and these are my oathmen. Do you speak the blaumen’s tongue?’ Sigurd asked Yngvar, pointing his gory sword at the enemy warriors, some of whom were muttering strange words under their breath.

Yngvar shook his head. ‘Would a Norseman eat goat droppings?’ he asked. There were chuckles at that. ‘But my friend speaks their filthy words.’ He gestured at a blauman standing proudly amongst the slaves. He wore no clothes but for a cloth to cover his modesty. He was heavily muscled, his corpse-black skin glistened with sweat, and like Yngvar’s his body was covered in welts from his master’s whip. ‘We have shared these rusting fetters,’ Yngvar said, moving his leg, so that a short length of severed chain rattled along the deck, ‘and pulled the same oar for a long time. I have taught him our words but …’ he shrugged his scarred shoulders, ‘my dog back home can speak it better.’

Sigurd nodded. ‘Tell the blaumen that I will spare them if they put down their weapons.’ Yngvar looked horrified, but I knew it was the right thing, for we did not want to risk our own lives if we did not need to.

‘But my lord, these dogs deserve only your blades,’ Yngvar said. ‘They lured you in with that trader and would have killed you all or made thralls of you. Even you, Jarl Sigurd, would have been beaten and treated worse than a beast of burden.’ His eyes hardened. ‘Kill them.’

‘Just give the word, Sigurd, and we’ll send these draugar back to their graves!’ Rolf called from the stern, his men bristling with violence.

‘Kill them all, Sigurd!’ Yngvar said.

‘Watch your tongue if you want to keep it, cur!’ Olaf warned, pointing a finger at Yngvar. ‘Do as you have been told before I have you standing in your own rancid guts.’

Yngvar grimaced and gestured to his friend to step forward, then told him what Sigurd had said. The blauman nodded and turned to those who had kept him in chains for who knows how long. He all but spat the words at their feet. The blaumen did not move.

‘Well?’ Sigurd said. ‘Are they in such a rush to get to the afterlife?’ One of the blaumen spoke to Yngvar’s oar-mate, who locked his eyes with Sigurd’s.

‘They do not trust you to keep your word, because you are heathen devils.’ It was the strangest thing hearing Norse words from a man who looked like that.

Sigurd laughed. ‘They sound like Christians, even if they don’t look like them,’ he said, then turned to Olaf. ‘Well, Uncle, these walking corpses do not trust us. Perhaps we should lay down our weapons to prove ourselves.’

Olaf grinned. ‘Aye, and we could bend over and let them fuck us, too. Just to show that we mean what we say.’ The blauman spoke again.

‘They say Allah the almighty will protect them. They will fight,’ Yngvar’s oar-mate said.

Sigurd frowned.

‘This Allah must be one of their gods,’ I said.

‘There is only one god,’ Yngvar’s blauman friend said.

‘They
do
sound like Christians,’ Sigurd said. Then he shrugged at Olaf and lifted his shield. ‘Are you ready, Rolf?’ he called.

There was a thumping of shields from the Danes behind the blaumen.

‘Aye, Sigurd! Gleipnir couldn’t hold the lads back!’ Rolf replied.

Sigurd nodded. ‘Leave no man alive,’ he said to us and I
gritted my teeth and lifted my shield, eyeing the blaumen for the one I was going to kill. Penda loosened off his neck and Svein slapped the haft of his long axe.

Then a sword clattered on to the deck. A grey-bearded blauman stepped from the press of warriors, his chin held high. He studied us down a beak of a nose, as though we were the shit bucket that needed emptying. Some of his men stepped in front of him protectively, raising their curved swords at us threateningly, but a few sharp words from their lord stung them into stepping back, heads bowed.

‘That’s the vicious son of a troll who likes to whip men who are chained to the deck,’ Yngvar said, the words dripping with putrid bile.

The blaumen’s lord barked at Yngvar’s friend and you would have thought the man was still chained to an oar.

‘He’s got balls, this one,’ Bram said admiringly.

Yngvar’s friend nodded at the blaumen’s lord and looked back to Sigurd.

‘He says you may kill him but only if you let his men go,’ Yngvar’s friend said. ‘Otherwise they will fight you and many of your men will die.’ I did not know how many men we had lost, but surely some were already crossing Bifröst.

Sigurd dragged the knuckles of the hand holding his sword across his chin, then eyeballed the blauman who had offered his life for his men’s.

‘Aye, Bram, he is brave for a dead man,’ Sigurd said.

Seeing a chance to appease the gods, Asgot stepped forward, the bones rattling in his braids. ‘Sigurd, the All-Father will look kindly on a blood offering.’

Sigurd seemed to consider this, then shook his head.

‘No offering, godi. Óðin might think we had dug up a corpse and killed it again,’ he said and even Asgot admitted that perhaps it was not such a good idea. ‘You say that this man whipped you, Yngvar?’

‘Even when we were rowing well, my lord,’ Yngvar said.

Sigurd nodded again. ‘Tell him I accept his offer.’

Yngvar glared at us, clearly horrified at the thought of letting his captors live. But then he nodded, for it does not do to gainsay a jarl. Besides which, he did not know what we were going to do with him.

When Yngvar’s oar-mate confirmed Sigurd’s acceptance, the blauman dipped his head and muttered something, to his god I think, but even then he had some nerve, demanding that Sigurd put his men ashore before the heathen brought his filthy blade anywhere near him.

‘Gut the draugar, Sigurd,’ Bram Bear said.

‘I will throw his guts to the fish.’ Svein the Red pointed with his axe, gripping the long haft’s throat in one massive hand.

Sigurd shook his head. ‘Uncle, can a small crew sail this blauman ship?’

Olaf pursed his lips. ‘In this weather ten men could handle her, I think. If they’ve any sea-craft.’ He looked up at the sky, eyeing the cloud, which had thickened into heaped layers of shorn wool drifting north-east. ‘But if it turns …’

Sigurd nodded, turning to Yngvar. ‘Choose nine good men and tell them I will pay them three large silver coins each if they sail this ship until I can sell it.’

Yngvar glanced at his oar-mate, whose eyes were yellow as butter against his dark skin. ‘Her sail alone needs ten men, Jarl Sigurd,’ Yngvar said. ‘Specially when the wind is up.’

‘Then fifteen men will each get two coins, or the same weight in silver,’ Sigurd said, to which it was impossible to guess Yngvar’s thoughts. ‘Uncle, take the rest of the blaumen aboard
Fjord-Elk
and put them ashore.’

‘You want me to give them food and water too?’ Olaf asked, wide-eyed.

‘They have their lives,’ Sigurd said, implying that that was enough.

And so we watched as the blaumen, slaves and erstwhile masters together and none of them armed, were loaded aboard
Fjord-Elk
and rowed to the shallows. Bragi would not risk
Fjord-Elk
’s belly for the sake of those men and so made them jump overboard at the points of his men’s spears, about three boat-lengths from the surf that rolled up the dark gold sand. Of the two groups there were many more slaves and the rest of us watched, wondering if they would turn on the others in vengeance now that they were free. But, to the disappointed groans of many, the crowd split like an oak and the sorry-looking freed men shuffled off like a herd of sheep, leaving the others staring out to sea from above the water line. For those were loyal men and hated abandoning their lord to us.

‘If a man beats his slave he must be certain that the slave will never taste freedom,’ Sigurd said to the blaumen’s lord, ‘for that first breath of free air will bring to his mind every bite of the whip and every blow of the fist.’ But the blauman did not understand, or at least he showed no signs of understanding, and simply glared at Sigurd with eyes as cold as Hel. ‘Yngvar,’ the jarl went on, ‘it is not right that a man from the fjords should be in thrall to a walking corpse like this. Worse still that this burnt goat’s prick should beat the men who are pulling his oars.’ Sigurd glanced at Bag-eyed Orm who lay against the hull bleeding to death from a spear thrust that had split his mail and pierced his belly. Uncle had poured a gruel made with onions down Orm’s throat and now he was on his knees sniffing the wound as Orm bit into a comb against the pain. He looked up at Sigurd and shook his head, meaning he could smell onion in the wound and so Orm’s stomach was holed. There was no hope for Orm now.

Sigurd half grimaced and looked back at the blauman. ‘Do what you want with him, Yngvar,’ he said.

Now Yngvar grinned and his oar-mate stepped forward but Yngvar batted him away with a brawny arm. ‘I felt the whoreson’s lash more than you. You can have what’s left when I’m finished.’

But in the end there was nothing left. The blauman had not
raised a finger, which some of the Norsemen thought was a pale-livered and shameful way to behave. But I agreed with Floki, who cursed those men for their thick-headedness. For the blauman not to have at least tried to defend himself was not cowardice. It was one of the Týr-bravest things I have ever seen. He stood there on the deck of his own ship, taking blow after blow, until Yngvar’s fists were torn to bloody pulp. And even when his face bones were broken and he could no longer stand, he had clasped his own hands together over his stomach, shaking and pain-racked as the Dane stamped him to death. The man knew he would soon be feeding the crabs. Knew that any resistance would be useless and worse, would look wretchedly pitiful. And so with iron will he made his death one that others would remember. Perhaps his men on the shore saw the way he died, but most likely they did not. Either way they would not have recognized what was left of their lord when it was over. And yet, even as Yngvar’s dark-skinned oar-mate tipped the bloody meat of the blauman overboard, I admired the man’s bravery. And I thought that this Allah, who was the blaumen’s god, must be a powerful god indeed, to fill his people with that kind of courage.