Raven (45 page)

My mouth was dry as sand, which was just as well for any spit I might have had to swallow would not have squeezed past the lump in my throat anyway. I caught Penda’s eye and he nodded. Bjarni gripped my shoulder and I tried to smile.

‘When we go we go like Thór-farting thunder,’ Olaf growled, his bird’s nest beard resting on his barrel chest.

‘It is easy,’ Black Floki said with a grimace. ‘Just kill them.’

Shields began appearing where the others had managed to slip them out of the rail and slide them under the tent wall without the palace guards noticing. The rest would have to get theirs at the last moment. The rancid stink of our greased brynjas started to catch in my throat.

‘Ready?’ Sigurd asked. I slipped my arm through the shield straps, wiped a trickle of sweat from my cheek and nodded.

Then we followed Sigurd. Screaming.

We were off
Serpent
’s bow on to the quayside in a few heartbeats, so that the Greeks barely had time to level their spears. Sigurd hit first, knocking a spear aside and reversing his blade, scything it across the man’s face in a spray of blood and teeth. Svein the Red was bellowing like a bull and I saw him swing his long axe at a man who desperately raised his shield only for the axe head to cut through both shield and the arm holding it so that the man dropped to his knees, the gory stump spurting blood. I put my shoulder into my shield and slammed into a Greek, expecting to knock the man aside, but he was strong and took the blow, planting his feet and yelling. I glanced down and saw his foot beneath my shield, so I plunged my sword into it and his yell turned to a shriek. He pulled the foot back and my weight turned him, allowing Bjarni to slice the length of his sword across the man’s exposed neck, drenching me.

‘Kill them!’ Olaf roared. ‘Kill every goat-fucking one of them!’

Blades flashed and men grunted and we were through their ragged-arsed shieldwall like an axe through kindling, the others fast on our heels, yelling battle cries and curses as they rolled over what was left like a killing wave. But two of the Greek soldiers had run, disappearing into the colonnaded passageway that ran from the quayside along the front of the palace. We ran too into that brazier-lit tunnel, our boots scuffing against the wide steps which led to an ironbound door on which we found the two spearmen hammering, their pleas slapping noisily around that stone passage, so that we hoped the door would open. But it did not and the two men turned to us and one of them pissed himself as they cowered and fell to their knees. They died like dogs beneath Penda and Floki’s swords, their blood flinging itself across the door that those inside wisely kept shut.

Then Svein and Beiner were there, hacking into the wood with their axes, sending splinters flying. They would have to be quick, for the dromons would be coming now, drawn back to the wharf by the clash of swords and the screams of the dying.

‘Stand back!’ Sigurd clamoured, but it took Bothvar yelling in Svein’s ear before the giant, his red beard full of frothing spit, lowered his axe and stepped back, wild-eyed and chest billowing.

Bardanes thrust a key into the lock and the iron clunked and with a roar to shake the boughs of Yggdrasil we pushed the door open and swarmed into the Bucoleon.

Four Greeks half blocked the candle-lit passageway, their shields overlapped, the faces above grim because they knew they were about to die. One of them threw his spear, which clattered against Aslak’s shield boss. The Norseman grinned and we barely broke stride as we made our own shieldwall and smashed into them, our flanks closing around them so that the
Greeks were hacked into red clumps with their death shrieks still in their throats.

I stepped round the stinking, steaming mess and we took a ragged-breathed moment to look around. Coming from the dark outside my eyes sifted through the flame-lit interior easily, flicking over marble columns and walls brightly painted with dark-skinned, arse-naked hunters and sharp-clawed beasts. Sigurd ordered five Danes to bar the door we had come through and hold it against any harbour guards or soldiers from the Greek dromons who could otherwise attack our rear. The rest of us followed the narrow passage, which widened as it went, coming to a large open space that blazed with light from dozens of polished candelabra. There were two wide marble stairways, one going left, the other right, and in between at the bottom there was a massive golden cage full of shrieking birds of every colour you can imagine, such as we had never laid eyes on before.

‘Heimdall’s hairy arse! What now?’ Olaf panted. His face was blood-spattered. Somewhere men were yelling, their voices swirling, so that you could not tell where they were coming from.

‘Do you think they know we are here?’ Bjarni asked through a grin.

‘That way,’ Bardanes said, pointing with his sword towards the right-hand stairway, and I wished he had said the other way, because men were gathering where his blade pointed. Lots of men, their mail and helms gleaming dully. These Greeks made a wall of their long shields a few steps from the top, which was good battle cunning for it meant we could not outflank them, and from behind that wall spears began to streak down at us, slamming into shields and clattering across the glittering marble floor. More soldiers lined the marble rail either side of the stairway and I saw two with bows.

Sigurd sent Rolf and ten or more men up the left-hand stairway and they ran howling like beasts after prey. We mailed men
bunched and raised our shields, five behind five, and began to stomp up those stone steps, beating out the rhythm with guttural heys as we climbed. I was in the front line with Floki and Penda on my left and Svein and Aslak on my right and that climb never seemed to end. I slammed each foot to the stone, trying to stamp the shaking out of my legs. My face was into the shield so that I could smell the limewood and the leather and the iron tang of the rivets. Something hit my shield hard but I could not stop because Beiner was behind me growling like a beast. We were close now. I caught the onion sweat stink of these Greeks, smelt the fear wafting off them and heard the shallow breaths of the men behind those long shields. Then I felt Svein expand like a sail cloth caught in the wind and knew it was time to fight and so I swung my sword over and it crashed into a shield. But my job was not to swing like a blind man trying to piss in a bucket. My job was to lean the shoulder in and push so that the men behind me had a rampart from which to kill.

Blades flashed and probed, seeking flesh between wood and iron. Stinging sweat filled my eyes, blurring my sight, but it did not matter so long as I pushed. So long as we held. For if you build a shieldwall you had better make sure you lay the foundations well and that means having hard men at the front. Men grunted with the strain, their neck cords bulging, lips drawn back across teeth and beards white with spittle.

‘Kill them!’ Beiner bawled. ‘Cut their rancid guts out!’ Someone clearly listened to Beiner, for a few hammered heartbeats later a slew of purple gut rope slapped to the steps and slithered down between our feet. Up we went, one agonizing step at a time, my legs burning with the effort of pushing the Greeks back and my boots threatening to give way on the slippery gore of blood and piss. Sigurd was plunging forward, wedging himself between me and Floki and hacking at men over our shields, his eyes wild and spit-drenched curses flying from his lips.

An arrow tonked off my helmet and I swore savagely because
it hurt, having been shot from less than a good spit away. Our men had wisely kept hold of the spears the Greeks had thrown and now they thrust those spears back into our enemies’ faces and gouged shins with them. The man on the other side of the shield I was shoving was yelling in panic now, calling for help perhaps and so he might, because a gap had appeared on his left where Svein, in his eagerness to get amongst the fray, had driven into them like a rockslide and they had been unable to hold him, so that the giant was now two steps higher than the rest of us. That fissure in the Greeks’ wall was all Bjarni needed. He lunged from my right, skewering my Greek through the neck so that he dropped his shield and I saw his face properly for the first time. He glared at me as though I had killed him, then Bjarni’s blade ripped free, the gory mouth-like hole spewing warm blood across my face and lips. I lifted my shield up and over the dead man and the others came with me so that we were now stepping over corpses. Every breath was searing hot and my spit was thick enough to clag my throat and mouth, so that when I yelled and cursed at Floki and Penda to move up with me to plug the gap it came out like an animal’s bellow.

Then Svein went down. He must have slipped on the iron-stinking mess and the Greeks cheered and lurched forward. Svein was now on one knee, his shield raised before his face.

‘Push! Push, you Norse whoresons!’ Olaf yelled, swinging his sword high and pivoting his wrist to bring the blade over the shield of the man opposite Aslak. Aslak drove his left shoulder into his own shield, pushing his right foot against the wall to get more purchase and give Svein a chance to stand. Svein’s roar rolled like thunder as his oak legs braced against the strain and began to unfold, his face blood-red with the effort.

‘Óðin! Óðin!’ someone hollered. Through the clamour I could hear dull thuds somewhere behind and guessed that the Greeks were smashing the door we had left a handful of men guarding. I heard Aslak curse and glanced across to see
an arrow sticking from his exposed leg, yet he kept it wedged against the wall as Svein forced himself up, the giant’s fury like the worst storm I have ever known. I heaved with every sinew, my teeth clamped so tight that my whole skull pounded, then something buffeted my legs and I looked down to see Asgot. The godi squirmed and writhed through men’s legs like a snake through gorse, his wicked, blood-hungry knife in his hand. He was getting a battering, so that I thought his old bones must crack or be ground to dust inside the bag of his skin, but on he wriggled and the next moment one of the Greeks screamed. And another, his leg strings sliced or his balls sawn off. And the Greek shieldwall shuddered at Asgot’s nasty work, its lifeblood running down the steps.

With a great Thór effort we climbed and the men behind us hacked and stabbed, and then someone shouted that there were Greeks behind us. They had broken through the door and were fighting the men at our rear and I was filled with ice dread then because I knew Cynethryth must be back there somewhere.

Up we went. I looked down and saw Asgot, his yellowed eyes glowing dully in a face sheeted in gore and then I was past him and we had reached the top. The men behind us would not stay there any longer. They pushed down the flanks and tore into the Greeks, who were panic-gripped now. A shieldless man lunged at me with his spear and I ducked, so that the blade scraped my helmet, then I threw my shield arm up, deflecting the blade, and hacked into the Greek’s left shoulder. My sword lodged in bone and the man vomited into his black beard as I tried to shake him off. Another man swung a sword at me and I let go of my own grip and grabbed my shield, taking the blow on the boss. He swung again, and again I took the impact on my shield, then Black Floki ran him through from behind, the Norseman’s sword bursting from the man’s mailed chest in a spray of iron scales and blood. I turned back and found the other Greek still standing there, puke-covered and with my
sword wedged in his shoulder meat like a butcher’s cleaver. His eyes were swollen like boiled eggs, his mouth oozed slime and he just stood there with the chaos swirling in clamorous eddies around him.

‘I’ve got you, lad,’ Penda called, half crouching, scanning the carnage around us. ‘You’ll want that sword back.’ So I stepped up and gripped the hilt with two hands and put my knee into the Greek’s side and yanked, trying to free the blade from bone and sucking meat. This seemed to bring the man back to the moment for he began to wail and I suddenly thought I should have finished him off with my knife first. But battle is red madness and you don’t think rationally. You just cut flesh and try not to let another man cut yours.

‘Hold it tight!’ Penda yelled at me then swung, hacking the Greek’s arm off at the shoulder so that it hung from my sword and I was able to put my foot on the pulsing wrist and pull the blade free. The Greek crumpled and bled out and I slammed my shield into another man, the blood-thirst on me as never before. Then the men who had taken the left stairway appeared and made a shieldwall, crashing into the flank of the last of the Greeks and sending a shudder through the press of the enemy.

‘We need to end this now!’ Olaf yelled, taking a sword blow on his shield and replying with a massive blow that cleft his opponent’s shield in two. Men were fighting below in the main chamber, their screams and yells mixing with the frantic shrieks of the caged birds, so we knew we had to find Arsaber before it was too late.

The Greeks were trying to regroup. They closed ranks and hefted shields and backed away, obeying the orders of the one man they hoped could keep them alive. That man was Karbeas. I saw him for the first time since the blood had started to fly and he looked as composed as any man could who was fighting for his life. I saw him clash shields with Bothvar, the Norseman eager to kill him and stop the rallying cries flying from his
mouth. But Karbeas was strong and managed to turn Bothvar, enabling another Greek to ram his spear into Bothvar’s face. Bothvar twisted horribly and the spear came away spilling wet grey chunks, so that I knew that was the end for him.

‘That way! Now!’ It was Bardanes yelling, his sword red-slick and his face a wild grimace because he knew time was slipping away like the tide for us. So Sigurd edged forward and we fell in behind him, making the boar-snout and moving as one mass of iron, wood and steel. We carved into the knot of Greeks, who tried to part to allow a big, bare-chested man through who seemed keen to die. He shoved towards us, whomping an enormous sword into Beiner’s shield, splitting the thing in half before the Dane had a chance or the room to swing his long axe. Then Beiner’s face turned white as snow and he looked down and so did I. Once through the shield, the sword had sliced through his brynja too and his gut rope was a straining purple knot, bulging from the tear in mail and leather. Penda plunged his sword’s point into the big Greek’s armpit then twisted the blade for good measure before tearing it free and moving on, leaving Beiner on his knees trying to stop his insides coming out.