Raven (36 page)

When Osten blew our war horn, signalling to the other ships that we were hunting, Rolf replied with three long bellows of his own horn, which meant he wanted to talk to his jarl.
Sea-Arrow
came alongside and it turned out that Rolf and his Danes wanted the honour of being the first crew to strike the galley, like the lead wolf that sinks its teeth into a deer’s haunches to sever the tendons so that the prey cannot escape. Then the rest of us would hit, ripping out its throat and eating our fill. Sigurd warned Rolf of the wager he had with Bardanes, but this only made the Danes grin, for they were eager to prove themselves now that they were armed like war gods, with ringmail and good helmets and swords that were hungry for blood.

‘We will be close as a jealous wife, Rolf,’ Sigurd yelled.

‘Don’t concern yourself, Sigurd,’ Rolf called back, ‘we will leave you some scraps and a seat at the table.’

And then all four ships were squalling with crews working ropes and fighting sails, trying to yoke the shoulders of that hot wind so that we could run down our prey – so that we could show these Greeks what dragon ships could do.
Sea-Arrow
was true to her name, streaking across the shimmering sea like a shaft shot from a good bow, her crew thronging the thwarts like penned beasts. I remembered how those Danes had fought the blaumen and I shuddered because they were
savage as Úlfhédnar, the wolf-skins whose battle frenzy can chill the blood of even the most skilled and bravest of men.

I was wriggling into my brynja now, wishing I had kept it in the cool of my sea chest longer for the rings were scalding to the touch.

‘Who is the other prow man with me?’ Svein the Red asked Sigurd, his eyes wide with the realization that Bram would not be up there with him this time. You always put your strongest warriors either side of the prow beast to strike fear into the enemy and land the first blows. But Bram was gone and no one felt his loss more keenly than Svein, for those two had been close as brothers. The giant gripped his long axe, its head and his enormous brynja glinting in the sun. His red beard was already dripping sweat in that fierce heat.

Sigurd’s hesitation revealed that he, like the rest of us, had simply expected Bram to muscle his way to the bow, his prideful swagger parting the crew like a hot blade through butter.

‘Penda, hang your English balls round Jörmungand’s neck!’ he said, at which the Wessex warrior grinned like a troll in a nunnery. I slapped his back because he deserved the honour of being the new prow man, had earned it long ago. Svein nodded, pleased with the choice even if some were not, for there were some rumbles that Penda was not big enough to be a prow man. But those rumbles had no real grouse in them because, honour or no, being at the prow in a fight was like smearing your naked self in honey and wandering into a bear’s cave, and no one else was volunteering. Besides which, every man aboard knew that the Wessexman had a gift for killing and would work well with Svein.

‘That crew would be better off jumping over the side while they still can,’ Bjarni called, tying the helmet strap under his chin and grimacing as the nasal bar singed the skin between his eyes.

‘They’ll wish they had when the Danes climb aboard,’ I said, tucking a hand axe into my belt. A short axe is a useful weapon
in a ship fight because it is easier to use in a press of men than a spear or even a sword. We were gaining on the Moor galley fast and were now close enough to see her crew. They wore white robes and turbans, but that was not to say they were not wearing armour beneath and that put the idea in our heads to keep our cloaks on so that they mostly covered our brynjas and kept the sun off the iron rings. I took a deep breath that was hot and stale as old water and did not seem to fill my lungs. The puckered scar along my ribcage thrummed like old men’s bones before a storm and I was suddenly filled with the fear of being cut again, of steel slicing into skin and flesh and the searing agony of it. I told myself that Rolf and the Danes would have savaged the enemy before we sank our grappling hooks into their hull. Or else the Moors would yield without giving us a proper fight of it.

‘She is fast, Sigurd,’ Bardanes admitted, putting a foot up on the mast step and strapping an iron greave over his lower leg. Beneath the scarlet cloak his cuirass glittered with hundreds of golden scales, each of them like a miniature sun, so that the armour looked like something Baldr, Óðin’s handsome son, fairest of all the gods, would wear into battle. Mine were not the only eyes scouring it.

‘You think it could stop a good sword blow?’ Wiglaf muttered, his face still burnt red though other men’s had long since turned brown.

‘I think the thing is more likely to blind you before you could get close enough to wallop him,’ I said, tearing my eyes away from Bardanes and back to
Sea-Arrow
, which was now less than twice an arrow’s flight behind the galley.

‘They look like bloody golden fish,’ Baldred spat through his dense black beard, because Nikephoros was there now and he too wore scale armour, gold greaves and an iron helmet with a gold cross on it, the cross’s upright stretching from nasal to crown.

There was a knot of blaumen at the galley’s stern now,
nocking arrows and preparing to defend her thwarts. Shield bosses reflected the sun which was climbing into the sky on our steerboard side and would burn more fiercely still before the real killing started.

‘Go on, Rolf, rip the whoresons apart,’ Bjarni hissed, fist clenched around a spear’s shaft. Men were slotting spare shields into the rail to give height to the ship’s side, creating a bulwark for when we came alongside the enemy vessel, for it had higher sides than
Serpent
, which was something we were getting used to though we liked it not one bit. We could see arrows flying from the galley’s stern now: black shafts streaking up into the blue then swooping down like starlings to barley stubble.

‘Fools are shooting too early,’ Olaf growled. ‘Something must have them spooked,’ he added with a smirk.

The Moors had turned and were running with the wind now towards the shore, perhaps hoping to outrun us on land because they knew they could not outrun us out here. So said Sigurd, adding that either way we’d win, for we’d take their ship if nothing else. But Rolf saw what the blaumen were trying to do and suddenly
Sea-Arrow
was slashing east, having caught the wind in her sail and flung her rudder hard over, so that she was heeling wildly, no more than a hand’s length of freeboard between her and the hungry, drowning sea. She righted again and the Danes began loosing their own arrows – no easy thing on a moving ship – banging swords against shields and yelling threats and insults at the blaumen. I saw big Beiner and Gorm hurl grappling hooks into the galley’s foreship and I heard the Danes cheer as those iron claws gouged into the wood and held fast. The Danes hauled on the ropes but the blaumen cut one of them, flinging a knot of Danes back into the thwarts.

We had turned too and were racing towards the shore and would hit the galley’s stern in the time it takes a drunk man to piss. I stood between Black Floki and Bjarni and pressed my helmet firmly down, gripping a long spear and a shield. The air was thick with the smell of sweat and leather and iron. Behind
me men were nocking arrows and readying throwing spears. Others clutched ropes and grappling hooks and still others had long spears with winged blades which were good for stabbing at faces over men’s shoulders but also for hooking on to another ship’s sheer strake so that you could haul it closer. At the stern Egfrith was on his knees praying to his god and Cynethryth was comforting Sköll, for the beast was shaking like a hound before a beating, its ears flat against its huge head, eyes wide as coins.

Wave-Steed
and
Fjord-Elk
were swooping like eagles upon the Moor ship’s port side, their crews brandishing their killing tools and whooping with the thrill of it. The sun was like a god’s golden shield, blazing down on a sea that was bright blue and burnished white, and we were sea wolves.

‘Sigurd!’ Svein roared from the fighting platform at the prow. He was pointing to a low scrub-covered island off our enemy’s steerboard bow.

‘Thór’s hairy arse,’ Olaf rumbled.

‘Not another fucking trap,’ Gytha said, spitting over the side, because two more dromons had burst from behind the island, their oar banks beating like enormous wings as they came against the wind. Sigurd was already barking orders and men were hauling on ropes, trying to get the wind across the sail so that we could turn back out to sea. Osten was blowing the horn so that the other skippers would know that they were to fly from this, like carrion crows fleeing a carcass when a fox comes, for we did not need a full battle with its carnage and corpse piles.

Nikephoros fought his way through to Sigurd, teeth flashing white against his neat black beard. ‘You need to get your men away from the Moor ship now!’ he said.

‘Rolf is no fool, he knows what to do,’ Sigurd snarled between hurling orders here and there. But it was no good and the jarl knew it. The wind was behind us and it would take too long to try to turn under sail and so he yelled at his men to lower
the yard, which they did, others desperately reefing as the sail came down.

‘Holy Christ on his cross!’ Penda clamoured. ‘Fire!’ The two dromons had come round the Moor ship’s stern, so that the wind was behind them and now, though I hardly believed what my eyes were seeing, fire was spewing from the dromons on to the Moors’ deck and suddenly men were flailing and burning and screaming.
Sea-Arrow
’s
crew had cut the ropes, so that the two ships were no longer tethered together, but they were struggling to disengage from the bigger vessel because the wind was pushing them on to it.

‘Don’t just stand there, you slack-mouthed sons of whores!’ Olaf screamed, grabbing Osk by the shoulder and yanking him back from our shieldwall. ‘Get your damned oars in the damned sea and row, you feckless goat farts!’ And so we dropped our weapons, scrambled to the oar trees, grabbed our staves and took to our sea chests, our minds reeling from what we had just seen: ships breathing fire like dragons. The sail was down, meaning we had a clear view over
Serpent
’s stern, though I wished we had not. Because
Sea-Arrow
was burning.

‘By all the gods, how is it possible?’ Sigurd gnarred. We were rowing hard, putting water between us and the fire-breathing ships now, but
Wave-Steed
had not heeded Sigurd’s command to flee. She was swooping down on her sister ship despite the fire and the arrows that were flying in dark flocks from the two dromons, and that was Týr-brave.

‘They are my ships, Sigurd,’ Nikephoros called from the side where he stood gripping
Serpent
’s sheer strake, knuckles white as bone. ‘I know their captains. They will attack any warships they come across.’

‘Your ships?’ Sigurd took off his helmet and swept sweat-drenched hair from his forehead. ‘Greek ships breathe fire?’ he said, eyes flaying Nikephoros.

‘If not for our liquid fire the Moors would be hammering on
the gates of Constantinople by now,’ Bardanes put in through clenched teeth. He was not rowing, having claimed that his duty was to protect his emperor. Sigurd had not had time to argue.

‘What in Hel’s hole is liquid fire?’ Olaf asked, eyeballing Bardanes and Nikephoros both.

‘See for yourself, Norseman,’ Bardanes replied and Olaf turned his gaze back to the inferno that was the Moor ship now. Blaumen thrashed in the water, their screams of agony carried off east by the wind, and by some foul seidr magic they were still flame-shrouded. They were burning even as they drowned.

‘Water cannot kill liquid fire,’ Bardanes said, a cold edge of pride to his voice that I did not like at all. There was no saving
Sea-Arrow
now. Her pitch-lined strakes were burning wildly, belching thick black smoke that added to the chaos, blooming dirty against the bright blue of sea and sky. The Greeks were now raining arrows on the blaumen, their archers bunched thick as gorse in a wooden castle by the main mast.

‘Good for Burlufótr!’ Bothvar called. Egill Ketilsson, by-named Burlufótr, ‘clumsy-foot’, for his limp, was
Wave-Steed
’s skipper and it was because of his crew’s bravery that the men of
Sea-Arrow
were not joining the blaumen in flaming, drowning death. Burlufótr had
Wave-Steed
’s stern against
Sea-Arrow
’s prow, the only part of Rolf’s ship that was as yet untouched by fire, and from there her men were helping pull their fellow Danes aboard. The Greeks were streaking arrows over the burning ships, but for the moment the smoke was the Danes’ friend because it meant that the Greeks were shooting blind. Not for long though, as the further of Nikephoros’s dromons was nosing round the doomed vessels, skirting the wind-whipped flames to attack the other snekkje.

Sigurd raged like the burning ships, violence coming off him thick as black smoke as he stood at the stern, his back to us, watching
Sea-Arrow
’s doom. We knew he wanted nothing more
than to turn his own dragons round, give their beast-headed prows sight of the Greeks, and strike them with cold iron and fury. But fire is a ship’s worst enemy. It will devour seasoned, pitch-lined timbers with insatiable fury, as it did now, our eyes full of the blazing horror of it.

One of the basileus’s ships belched another stream of fire, but in their impatience the Greeks had loosed that fire too early and the wind was not with them, so that the searing red gush fell a spear-length short of
Wave-Steed
’s stern as she pulled away. Her oar banks were beating fast as crow’s wings, every available blade chopping into the sea, and some of the Danes were loosing arrows whilst others hefted shields, protecting the rowers. Behind them the sea burnt, and around me men cursed and shook their heads because flaming water is about as natural as a talking corpse.

‘There’s some god’s hand in that, mark me,’ someone gnarred behind me.

‘Ah, we’ve all seen Finna breathe fire when she’s caught you swiving one of your small-titted thralls, Hastein,’ Bjarni said, though there were few laughs at this as we pulled the oars, watching the black bloom of smoke stain the sky now that we could no longer see the blazing ships over
Serpent
’s stern. I looked over to see
Fjord-Elk
matching us stroke for stroke, Nikephoros’s men apparently rowing well enough now that the alternative was burning to death.