Raven (32 page)

Then the Greek was there behind Berstuk, still puffing, but the Wend snarled at him to stay back. This would be his kill, another hack-silver death for his fame-hoard. I staggered backwards, my hands losing feeling, so that I thought I must drop my sword. I was in a shadow world now and was no longer even aware of pain, just of pieces of myself floating away like jetsam on the tide.

Our swords clashed and the crowd’s roar was as muffled as distant thunder. I was aware that my sword was hanging again from Olaf’s rope at the end of my numbed arm, then Berstuk rammed his blade into that loop and sawed through it. I did not hear my blade hit the ground. Over the Wend’s shoulder I saw Svein’s great axe slice the massive African’s head from his shoulders, the Norseman’s mouth cavernous with a triumphant howl that I could not hear. Berstuk kicked my sword away and somewhere in my mind I heard a god laugh because I would never cross Bifröst, the Rainbow-Bridge, and sit at the high seat of Óðin’s hall.

I felt no pain as I bit into my bottom lip, bursting it, but I did smell the Wend’s fetid breath as he snarled a curse at me, which was all slaver and snot hitting my face. He took hold of my neck and brought his sword up to shoulder height, pulling it back for the killing thrust. And that was when I blew a mouthful of hot blood into his eyes, at the same time pulling my long knife. Blinded, he thrust the sword, which slid across my shoulder as I hammered my blade into his mouth, breaking through the back of his skull. I smelt his piss as he died, then yanked my knife free, sending wet, grey gobbets flying, and stepped back to let the corpse fall face-first on to the ground.

The noise of the crowd flooded back in and I bent and snatched up my sword, striding and stumbling towards where Svein, his helmet off and his long red hair lank with sweat, now fought the Greek. His axe wove a deadly pattern through the air and the Greek, having no shield now, could not get close enough with his sword. Neither had he seen me coming and most likely thought me dead. Then Svein turned his opponent so that Theo’s back was square on to me and I could not fail to hack him in two from neck to arse. But before I could, the Long Shields came at us, closing the ring of iron and steel, their spears levelled, and Theo spun, backing into that ring as neatly as a knife into a sheath.

Svein looped his axe, inviting the Long Shields to come and die, and then I heard the howling of wolves and looked up to see Sigurd and Floki and Penda and all the rest pounding across the arena, blades and teeth glinting in the sun. The short soldier who had told me about the Wendish god of the forest was yelling at the other men, including Guido who had drawn his sword ready to fight, his eagle eyes wide as coins. As one, soldiers threw down their spears and shook off their long shields, raising their hands to show they were unarmed, which was either very brave or very stupid with a Fellowship of warriors coming to kill them. But Sigurd hollered and his men heard. He yelled at them to sheathe their blades, which they
did just in time, and I was glad to see it, for sometimes killing cannot be stopped even by a jarl.

Penda and Bjarni came to me, throwing my arms around their shoulders before I could fall. The others were slapping Svein’s sweat-drenched back and still others were gathering over Bram’s corpse.

‘You are Jarl Sigurd?’ the short soldier asked of Sigurd. Guido stood at this man’s shoulder, eyeing Sigurd fiercely.

The jarl nodded. ‘And these are my men,’ he announced, chin high. Then he glared at Guido and pointed accusingly. ‘Bring your money,’ he said. ‘We have won.’ Now he pointed at Theo the Greek, who stood ashen-faced amongst his men. ‘That worm would be dead now if your men had not stopped the fight.’

‘You will have your money, Norseman,’ Guido said. ‘But you will have to wait.’ He looked up at the baying crowds who perhaps felt cheated of the blood they had come for. ‘I could not risk keeping so much near these savages,’ he said.

Sigurd shook his golden head. ‘My friend is crossing the shimmering bridge,’ he said, his voice heavy as storm clouds, ‘and I must see to him. We are camped at the stone wharf west of the Palatine Hill. You will bring the money tomorrow at dawn.’ Guido nodded. The short soldier eyed Sigurd like a man who stares at the sky wondering if rain is coming.

‘You will have your silver, Sigurd,’ the short man said.

‘If not I will flay the skin from your flesh and nail it to my ship’s mast,’ Sigurd threatened him. Then he turned his back on them and went to see to his friend, whose blood mixed with the dirt of that ancient place of death.

WE HAD WON, BUT IT DID NOT FEEL LIKE IT TO ME. THEY CARRIED
Bram’s corpse back to the wharf, where they laid him on a fine bear’s pelt and cleaned the crusting blood from his head, beard and face. He was death-stiff now and his hand still gripped his sword, so that it would have taken a stronger man than Svein to prise his thick fingers from the grip, and Black Floki muttered that that was how it should be, given the warrior that Bram had been.

I had been barely conscious by the time we came to the river, but I was alive enough to be surprised when Asgot came to help Olaf see to my wounds. I lay on a pile of furs on the quayside next to
Serpent
, looking up at the dark blue sky in which gulls wheeled and cried. Bjarni said I was corpse-white like Bram, because so much blood had leaked from the gash between the third and fourth ribs on my right side. But when I suggested through torn bloody lips that I was perhaps still feigr, Bjarni had barked a laugh.

‘That scratch won’t do for you,’ he said, nodding at the wound as Olaf washed it with clean water hot off the boil. It stung like Hel but I knew worse was coming. ‘It seems even the gods can’t kill you, Raven.’

‘Perhaps it was they who spared him,’ Asgot suggested. Bjarni considered this deeply, then smiled.

‘That blood-spitting trick was Loki-cunning,’ he said. But I could not answer. My teeth were clamped down on a leather knife sheath because Asgot was bringing a red-hot iron towards my torn flesh. I cannot explain the pain of it. I do not have the skald-craft to whet those words sharp enough. But when Asgot pressed that searing iron to the wound because I had lost too much blood already and could lose no more, I would have chosen death if I could. I did not even pass out from the pain as men usually do at such things, and perhaps this was something to do with the herbs Asgot had tipped down my throat in the arena. Or perhaps it was the All-Father’s way of punishing me for defying my own wyrd, for surely I was supposed to be dead, another corpse bled out for the people of Rome. I spat the sheath out and screamed as the blood hissed and the smoke bloomed and the iron stink of my own burnt flesh brought tears to my eyes. I was half aware of Olaf telling me to scream louder, to wake Rome’s rotten dead and bring them whining from their graves, in between trying to pour neat wine into me.

‘At least you won’t feel the other cuts and bruises for a day or two,’ Penda said, coming to see how it was going. ‘Christ, Raven, I lost count of the hits you took.’ But luckily most of those hits had been from the butt end of Berstuk’s long spear.

‘The bastard was playing with me,’ I squeezed through my teeth. ‘Killing me slowly.’

Olaf’s brows hoisted. ‘Aye, well he won’t do that again,’ he said, cutting newly bought linen into strips.

Asgot spread a foul-smelling poultice across the ravaged, blackened furrow and Olaf bound it tight. The wine stung my burst lip but not enough to stop me trying to drown myself in it, and Penda was good enough to keep filling the horn I clutched white-knuckled. The Wessexman pointed out happily that I was not leaking from the wound, which I took to mean he was
relieved I was not belly-pierced. Then he said: ‘It wouldn’t do to waste half-decent wine,’ and filled his own horn to the brim.

The others were building a hero’s pyre. You need a lot of wood to burn a man properly, but the only wood near the river was from gorse and thickets and good for nothing more than the cookfires. Neither were there many proper trees in the city itself and so Sigurd had offered a crew of rough-looking Frisians more silver than they could refuse for their boat which was moored downriver against the wooden quay. It was bigger than a faering but smaller than our snekkjes, and as a boat it had seen better days, the kind of craft only good for rivers or island-hopping. But Sigurd did not want to sail it, and now Svein, Knut, Bragi and Gunnar were breaking up the timbers with axes whilst others laid the pyre.

‘We will burn our brother tonight so that the flames of that great warrior will sing in the darkness,’ Sigurd said, crouching and lifting the fur covering me to appraise Olaf’s handiwork. ‘We won, Raven,’ he said, the words as hollow as the horn I still clutched.

‘Only just,’ I said, trying to keep the pain out of my face in front of the jarl. Truth was it didn’t feel as though we had won, not with Bram stiff and cold.

‘You fought well. You’re still clumsy as a beardless boy with his first whore,’ he said through a sad smile, ‘but your spear work was almost good. The Wend was a great fighter.’

‘The Wend was ugly as a week-old turd,’ I said. Then I remembered the small leather bag which Cynethryth had hung round my neck before the fight. Gingerly, I felt under the fur and was surprised how relieved I was that it was still there. ‘Will you tell Cynethryth I would speak with her?’ I asked. The wine was at last taking the edge off the pain and filling my head with wool. Sigurd looked at me sceptically.

‘There are some fights a man should walk away from,’ he said. ‘You know that, don’t you? Blades or Loki-cunning cannot help you when it comes to women.’

‘I just want to talk with her,’ I said, those words sliding off Sigurd like water off greased leather.

‘Get some rest, Raven,’ he said, standing. ‘Speak to the girl and then sleep. I’ll wake you when we light the fire.’ I nodded, easing myself up on to a rolled fur bolster as Sigurd steered Rolf and some of the others away who had come over to see how I was.

Just moving my right arm brought fresh waves of agony flooding over me and so I tried to keep it stone still, with my left hand yanking the purse from my neck to break the horsehair thong. I worried the draw-string loose with my teeth and tipped the contents of the purse on to my chest. And I felt Yggdrasil, the World-Tree, crash down, so that my insides shook with the force of it. On the white linen bindings on my chest, glossy as a mussel shell from a thousand clutchings, was Bram’s bear claw charm. Now I clutched it, hoping that no one had seen it, shivering with the fjord-cold omen of it.

‘I told you not to open it, Raven.’ Cynethryth’s voice pulled me to the surface, where I gasped for breath. I had not heard her coming but something in her face told me that she had been there a while. She stood on the wharf’s edge, the sinking sun over her right shoulder blinding me and making spun gold of the strands of her hair that were lifting in the breeze. Behind her, their timbers sun-gilded, like treasures from Fáfnir’s hoard,
Serpent
and the other ships rested hull against hull. ‘It would have been better if you had never known.’

‘What have you done, Cynethryth?’ I could near enough smell the seidr magic in it.

‘You were feigr.’ She said it like an accusation. ‘I took that feigr and put it on Bram instead.’ She shrugged. ‘You would be dead otherwise.’ She was watching the men breaking up the last strakes of the Frisians’ old boat, seemingly lost in the dull hammer rhythm of the axe heads on seasoned wood. Where her tunic sleeves ended I saw she had cut runes into her skin, the lines dark with old blood and charcoal.

I closed my eyes, hoping it was all some wine- and pain-woven dream, or perhaps a stupor wraith summoned by Asgot’s healing herbs. But when I opened them again Cynethryth was still there. ‘Are you a völva now, then?’ I asked, and now I was accusing, because a völva is a witch and it was not so long ago that Cynethryth was a Christian.

‘Asgot says I have talent.’ She was glaring at me, her dark green eyes made black by the sun’s glare behind her.

‘Asgot is a putrid lump of goat shit,’ I said. ‘He tried to kill me and came within a flea’s cock of doing it, too.’ I took a fur from the pile and threw it at her, wincing with the pain of it. She laid it down next to me and sat, hugging her knees the way she always did.

‘I told you. He was testing the gods,’ she said. ‘He needed to know if you really are Óðin-favoured like they say.’

‘And what does he think now?’ I asked, hatred for the godi snarling my words.

Cynethryth considered this for a moment, then cocked her head to one side.

‘He doesn’t know what I did. He is surer than ever that you are favoured.’ I grunted and shook my head. I did not feel favoured, lying there with a gash of seared, stinking flesh as long as a drinking horn between my ribs. ‘But he is also certain that other men die because of you,’ she said. ‘The All-Father loves chaos. He demands blood.’ She gave a poisonous grin. ‘And so men bleed.’ Men like Bram, I thought.

‘You should never have done it,’ I said. And then because I was angry with her and heartsick that my friend had, through Cynethryth’s foul seidr, been saddled with my feigr, I tried to hurt her. ‘Weohstan would hate you now,’ I said, watching where that arrow landed. Weohstan, who had been her brother and whom Cynethryth had loved so dearly. But Weohstan was in the grave now.