Raven (31 page)

‘Then I am well named,’ I said through my teeth. She came closer and I could smell her. A sweet, pungent, burnt sage smell. It sickened me because she smelt like Asgot. She took something from round her neck – a small purse on a string of twisted horsehair – and reached up to place it over my head.

‘Do not take it off until the fight is over,’ she said, tucking the purse into the neck of my brynja. ‘Do not even open it. Just give it back to me afterwards.’

‘What is it?’ I asked, my chest so tight I could hardly breathe.

‘Something to keep you safe,’ she said.

‘You have barely looked at me since Frankia.’

She stepped back and for a heartbeat I saw through the bitter smoke the girl I had known. ‘You once swore to protect me, Raven,’ she said. ‘How can you do that if you are dead?’ And with that she walked away and the sound of thousands came crashing down on me like a great wave.

‘It’s time, lad,’ Bram said, gripping my shoulder.

‘Kill them,’ Svein snarled, slapping the haft of his axe.

In front of us Lord Guido’s champions stood waiting, their deadly-looking weapons glinting in the sunlight. ‘Gods help us,’ I whispered, because those grim-faced men looked terrifying. At the arena’s edge men were near enough throwing their coins at Guido and his men, desperate to make their wagers while there was still time. The rest of Guido’s Long Shields marched into the killing ground and formed a large ring of steel, their sun-browned faces fish-eyed, so that it was impossible to tell what they were thinking. In this way they were as different from Norsemen as cats from dogs.

Guido strode over and stood before us, his dark eyes probing, the faintest keel-twist of his lips betraying a man who loathes the mired path he must take to get to the feast. He was a warrior, this one. His were an eagle’s eyes, keen as rivets and predatory. His mouth was the tight line of a man who takes no
joy in food or drink and the only hair on his face was a short black beard trimmed to a perfect wedge.

‘What are we waiting for, Guido, your damned beard to grow? It looks like a girl’s cunny pelt,’ Bram growled as Guido eyeballed him. Guido said nothing and, seemingly satisfied with Svein and Bram, turned those eagle’s eyes on me. He could not have known how it was that we three came to be standing before him, and would have expected us to be the best fighters Jarl Sigurd had. Which was why that keen gaze lingered on my stripling’s beard and the clench of my jaw that kept my teeth from chattering with fear. For my feigr was upon me, clinging to me like the stink to a shit bucket, and Guido’s beak nose must have been full of it.

He spun on his heel, pointing at Svein with his left hand and the bald-headed African with his right. The two giants glared at each other with enough flint and steel to start a blaze, which I took to mean that they were both happy with the match. Then Guido matched Bram with Theo the Greek, which meant I would fight the Wend Berstuk. Guido gestured that we should step back to put some ground between us and the men we were soon to fight, which we did, edging back to the Long Shields.

‘Remember what I told you, lad,’ Bram growled. ‘He’s weakest on his left.’

I had watched the Wend fight and kill over and over again and had seen nothing weak about him, but I nodded to Bram anyway as we spread out, each against his opponent as the noise inside the arena surged. It was not even a third full and yet the clamour was horrendous.
It has always been a place of death
. Gregor’s words rolled around inside my skull.

‘Thór be with you, little brother,’ Svein boomed above the crowd’s din. I could not look at him because I did not want him to see the bowel-melting fear in my face. It was bad enough that Guido had seen it, but rather him than my oath-brothers. I rolled my shoulders because the shield on my left arm felt as heavy as
Serpent
’s anchor. My feet were rooted to the ground
like Yggdrasil, the World-Tree, so that I feared I might topple over on to my face the moment I tried to move my legs. My heart was thumping against my ribs. The hairs on my neck bristled. Cold sweat sluiced between my shoulder blades, the muscles in my thighs began to tremble and I eyed the spear in the Wend’s hand.
The Aesir must use such a weapon
, I thought,
to
gut
Sæhrímnir, the giant boar which those in Valhöll feast on
. The iron-sheathed shaft was two heads taller than Berstuk and the blade was Frankish, huge and winged to stop it sticking too deeply into a man’s flesh. My flesh.

He wore no brynja, instead protecting himself with furs and boiled leather, but he is a fool who thinks a man with such poor war gear will be easier to kill, for such armour will often stop a blade better than any brynja. Besides, Berstuk must have killed men enough to own spoils including a brynja or two, and yet he spurned iron in favour of animal skins, which told me he was confident enough in his own way of fighting. No one had killed him yet, and many had tried.

His helmet was iron, though, taken from a dead blauman I guessed, for it was pointed like those we had found beneath the blaumen’s turbans. This one looked too tight for Berstuk. As it was, the Wend was an ugly troll, all grizzled beard, bulbous nose and pus-spilling boils, but that helmet squeezed his brows, so that his eyes were little piss slashes in dirty snow. It made a scowl not even a mother could love and was enough to wither my balls and make me wish I had died in my sleep the night before.

He must have untangled his name from the tumult of voices, for he turned to the crowd and raised his shield and spear as I had seen him do before.

‘Norseman, do you know the name Berstuk?’ It was one of the Long Shields who had called out, his English thick with another tongue’s twisting. He was a short, thickset man with a neat beard and deep dark holes for eyes. ‘You have not heard the name?’ he asked. I shook my head. ‘Berstuk is the name of
an evil god that his people believe in. A god of the forest.’ He dangled those words before me like a hooked and baited line, his eyes waiting expectantly.

‘Then the god must be uglier than an old sack of arseholes,’ I said, ‘if this lump of stinking pig shit is anything to go by. Little wonder shame makes him hide in a forest.’ I felt better for that, perhaps because the dark-browed soldier’s eyes widened a hair’s width in surprise. Then Guido was gone and the others began to close the distance, eager to stop standing and start fighting. So I put one foot forward, relieved because I did not fall, and went to face my doom.

Svein and The African struck first, their shields clashing like the antlers of two great bull elk. The crowd roared and that sounded like the thunder a burning hall makes when the thick roof beams catch and the fire makes its own wind.

Then the Wend came. He swung the spear like an axe and that heavy blade would have scythed my head off my shoulders but I got my shield up in time and the blade clattered against it. He edged round to my right and made a straight thrust which I parried with my own shaft, then I rammed the point at his face but he ducked and the blade glanced off his helmet, at which the crowd cheered.

I could hear the clashing of the other men’s weapons: of Svein’s axe against The African’s shield boss, the Greek’s spear clacking against Bram’s. I could hear their visceral grunts but I dared not tear my eyes from the ugly Wend whose big, iron-sheathed spear was light in his hands and seemed to come at me from all places at once. That winged blade bit splintered chunks from my shield and I kept my feet moving, desperate not to give the Wend an easy target. He stabbed under my shield, the blade sliding off the leather shin-guards, then he thrust high and I was not quick enough and the point burst into my brynja, sending broken rings flying like water in the sun. The blood-hungry mobs yelled and I staggered backwards with the searing pain, but when I looked down there was no
blood and I knew that my leather gambeson had held.
Go for his left side … he’s got an old injury
… Bram’s voice growled in my head and so I lunged for Berstuk’s left thigh. He shield-blocked. I lunged again. And again. He crabbed left so that I had to turn with him and even then I could not get through. I knew that without all that hard training with Sigurd and Black Floki, I would already have been bleeding out in the dirt. And yet feigr is feigr.

‘Some fight, hey!’ Svein yelled, but I had not the spit to waste on words and I don’t think Bram had, either. He was a raging storm of steel in my peripheral vision, but the Greek was quick and strong and was dealing with everything the Norseman could throw at him, like a man bailing out the bilge.

I shield-blocked a high thrust, sending the blade higher, but Berstuk used that momentum, turning the shaft end over end then stepping wide and ramming the butt towards my face, which I dropped, taking the blow on my helmet. It must have knocked my eyes spinning in my head for I was blind and stumbling and Berstuk came on, plunging that blade again and again, and somehow, by luck more than skill, I got my shield in the way.

‘Stand, Raven!’ Bram yelled. ‘Stand!’ But my knee bones were slipping in their joints and I was slewing sidewards, foot over foot. Then I hit a wall. Not a wall. Svein.

He took a massive blow on his shouldered shield, grimacing as he levered me upright. ‘Kill that ugly fucking Wend,’ he sneered, launching at The African with a brutal axe dance that put the blauman on his back foot, as I squinted through blinding pain and circled left. The Wend’s spear was too long and I could not get near him with my own. I strode backwards, needing time, and luckily for me the Wend took the opportunity to crow to the crowds, raising his arms again as though I were dead already. He had more swagger than a jarl with a golden cock, that one. Changing to an overarm grip, I rolled my shoulder, threw back an arm made brawny by rowing and
spear work, and let fly. But Berstuk’s instinct was as sharp as his Frankish spear and he spun back, lifting his shield, so that my spear clattered off it, falling harmlessly somewhere over his left shoulder. And then he grinned because he thought I had wagered and lost.

‘You look like a troll whore’s armpit,’ I growled at him, spitting a thick string of spittle over my beard as I drew my sword. The crowd were baying for blood. ‘Your mother must have fucked a rancid corpse.’ I could not tell if he knew what I was saying but it made no difference for the Wend wanted to kill me badly enough anyway. And now he thought it would be easy because I had lost my spear. He came within spitting distance and I realized he was even uglier than I had thought. A twist of a smile split an angry boil above his lip, spilling yellow slime into his beard, and he was growling like a stiff-hackled dog. A man bellowed in pain and the crowd roared but I did not know who was hurt.

‘Come then, Wend,’ I said, showing my own teeth. I beckoned him on with my sword, for I realized then that the fear had gone out of me, knocked out by Berstuk perhaps, and if I was feigr then so be it. I thought I heard Olaf’s voice cut through the surge and my blood began to simmer like broth over the hearthfire. ‘Come and cut my life’s thread if you think you can,’ I snarled.

His winged blade probed low and I blocked it with my blade, then the Wend reversed his spear and stepped into my low thrust, binding it to the right. Our shields clashed and for a heartbeat I smelt him, then we broke, Berstuk shoving me off because he knew that inside his spear blade I was dangerous. Now that blade flashed like lightning and my shield was everywhere at once, the arm behind it burning with the effort. I was strong, but so was the Wend. I cursed because I was not good enough to find his weakness and I wanted to wipe the stinging sweat from my eyes but knew that to take my eyes from that spear even for the beat of a bird’s wing was to die. His eyes
flicked to my chest and my sword was already coming inside to block, but then he pulled the thrust and my blade wheeled down and out, hitting nothing. His blade streaked in, gouging into my brynja and sliding along my ribs. Vicious, molten iron pain scorched my flesh and I did not have to look down to know I was cut. From the crowd’s thunder they knew it too.

Berstuk swung the spear from far right, around his head, no easy thing one-handed, and the iron-sheathed shaft hammered against my sword, knocking it from my grasp. But I did not lose it, for it hung from Olaf’s leather braid as I blundered out of reach of his killing blow, grasping for the sweat-slick grip. Then the spear scythed down on to my shield’s rim and Berstuk yanked it back so that the iron wings hooked on the shield’s edge, ripping it from my grasp.

My feigr reared like a dragon prow mounting a spumy rolling wave and I knew death was coming. So I roared defiance to the All-Father, blindly swinging my sword with all the strength I possessed, and it cut through iron and wood, lopping off the last three feet of Berstuk’s spear. I threw my left foot forward and slammed my sword’s hilt into his beard, but his neck was thick as a young oak and the blow did no more than anger him, so that he hurled the broken shaft aside and pulled his sword rasping from its scabbard. Then the swirling rage of sound leapt like a flame and I turned to see Bram on his knees, blood cascading over his gaping eyes and streaming from his beard. One arm hung limp but the other stretched out like a crooked branch, fingers grasping. Even Berstuk watched as Theo the Greek bent and picked up Bram’s sword by the blade, offering the Norseman the grip. The Bear’s trembling hand grasped it and he slumped back, his great shoulders caving in and his blade biting dirt.

The Greek turned to Lord Guido, palming sweat from his eyes, his chest billowing. Guido glanced up to where Sigurd and the rest were sitting, then nodded to his man, who stepped up neatly, putting the point of his sword on the inside edge of
Bram’s collar bone. Svein and The African were still fighting and I was too far away and then, with two hands on the hilt, the Greek plunged the blade deep into Bram’s chest, ripping into his great heart. Blood spewed from the cave of his mouth and he toppled sidewards and Svein must have known what had happened for he bellowed loud enough to shake the beams in Valhöll.

Berstuk grinned savagely and came again, hungry to finish me himself before the Greek could join the kill. Our swords clashed and the right side of my chest screamed in pain. My brynja’s rings were blood-slick and life must have been sluicing from the wound, because shadows were crowding my vision and my head felt light as feathers, as though my spirit was halfway out of my body. I was still swinging, sometimes hitting his shield, mostly hitting nothing, and I spat another curse at the gods and the Norns whose warp and weft had led me to that place and no further.