Raven (35 page)

It turned out that the Emperor of the Romans needed more than our swords. He needed our ships too if he was ever going to get back to Miklagard. They had scuppered the imperial dromon on the coast south of Rome and walked three days across country, arriving at the city’s walls footsore as common pedlars. It had been quite some ship, Nikephoros told us sorrowfully, but they could not afford for it to be recognized and so now it sat broken on the seabed, scoured by sea wrack and lived in by fish. This was truly the part of the Greeks’ story that Sigurd found the saddest. ‘It is a dark and gloom-stirring thing to sink your own ship,’ he had said, shaking his head at the misery of it. ‘But you will like
Serpent
,’ he announced, pride shining in his eyes. ‘She is the best ship in the world.’ Bardanes had raised an eyebrow at that, but it seemed to me that Nikephoros took pleasure in the jarl’s obvious pride and he nodded appreciatively at every part of
Serpent
that Sigurd pointed out to him.

So the basileus, his general, and the warrior Theophilos sailed with us aboard
Serpent
, whilst the remaining sixteen Long Shields pulled
Fjord-Elk
’s oars, so that she was no longer crew-light. But they were not sailors, these Greek Romans. Bragi called across from
Fjord-Elk
’s stern fighting platform that he had seen cows with more sea-sense than the new men in his thwarts. Of course
Fjord-Elk
being short of rowers had not been the only reason why Sigurd had put the soldiers
aboard a different ship from their masters. We did not know these men well enough to trust them and could not risk their trying to take one of the ships, but we now realized there was more chance of Bragi sprouting braids, a bird’s nest beard and a bristly arse. They shipped oars like a forest in a storm, hitting each other with the staves and sending Norsemen ducking for cover. They rowed too deep or too shallow, and raggedly, their blades hitting the water like a handful of lobbed pebbles.

‘They are palace guards,’ Nikephoros explained, embarrassed, watching
Fjord-Elk
’s skipper trying to establish some order aboard his ship. ‘They are good fighters,’ the basileus added, clenching a fist, ‘with iron discipline. You will see, Sigurd.’

Sigurd frowned, still watching
Fjord-Elk
off our steerboard stern. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘if they don’t drown themselves and sink my ship before we reach Miklagard.’

I wasn’t rowing. The wound in my side showed no signs of rot, no matter how often Penda or Olaf or Egfrith came to sniff at it like dogs round a bitch’s arse. But to row risked tearing it open and so I was free to perch on my sea chest, letting the sun warm my eyelids and bailing every now and then when a pool slewed my way. Bram’s death and my part in it still scuttled round my thought cage like a spider, nibbling away at my mind and spinning a gloom-web that wrapped me round and round. It was an anchor weight in my gut, too, and I wanted desperately to tell someone how Cynethryth had put my feigr on to Bram. But I knew I could not. Not because they would hate me, though that thought was no mood lightener, but because they would hate Cynethryth for doing it, for Bram had been to the Fellowship what her oak keel was to
Serpent
.

On the journey back down the Tiberis to the sea Bjarni had looked up from a carving of Týr he was working on and said to me that at least no one had mentioned for a while the silver we’d lost in that Frankish river – for which everyone knew I shouldered the blame, they having slung it squarely on me.

‘You’ve just mentioned it, Bjarni,’ I’d said.

‘Ah, so I have,’ he’d admitted, brows hitched.

‘I haven’t brought it up for a while,’ Svein had said, tugging his red beard.

‘Nor me,’ Aslak had chipped in. ‘All that silver you pitched overboard never to be seen again. I have not spoken of it for weeks.’

‘You’re all piss-dribbling goat-fuckers,’ I had gnarred at their grinning faces. At least they could smile about it now, with their jarl’s sea chest half full of coin and the promise of much more to come. I had helped buy those smiles with my blood and the fame-hoard we had won in the arena.

Now we were on the open ocean again, back on the sea road, the ancient city of wonders far behind, and to a Norseman there is nothing better. Gulls tumbled and wheeled above, shrieking noisily. The warm sea turned an even paler blue, so that it was unlike any sea most of us had ever seen, for the cold, endlessly deep waters of the fjords can be black as night. Osk said that if it were his wyrd to drown he would rather drown in this clear blue sea than the Norsemen’s black one.

‘At least I’d be able to see your crying faces as I sank to the bottom,’ he said thoughtfully, pulling his oar.

‘More likely you’d see us sharing out your gear and banging our mead horns together,’ Bothvar corrected him, getting a few laughs, for it was a sleeping sea and the rowing was easy. Not that General Bardanes thought so. We had been barely out of the river’s mouth when Sigurd had ordered Theo and Bardanes to heft an oar from the trees and row. Theo had simply done as he was told, taking his place amidships next to Svein, but Bardanes had glowered at the jarl with those eagle eyes, and I’d wager I was not alone in wondering what kind of talons the man had if it came to it. He was broad-shouldered and well muscled by the looks, but that does not always make a good fighter. Sometimes those things are no more use than the decoration on a sword hilt collar, as Bram had told me once.
Sigurd could have shown the man a little more respect, but then why should he? His ship, his rules. And, instead of asking again or leaving Bardanes on his roost to preen his feathers, Sigurd gave the man a choice. Either he could row with the others, or he could be given a knife and lowered over the sheer strake to scrape the barnacles off
Serpent
’s belly. The Greek had looked to his emperor for support, but Nikephoros had flashed his palms, wanting no part in the dispute, and still Bardanes had refused, seething like hot iron in the quench trough. Until Sigurd fetched a coiled rope, an old knife, and Svein the Red. Now, the general was rowing and sweating with the rest of us. To the man’s credit and our surprise, he handled an oar well, keeping his rhythm neat as a sheathed blade, which is a sound way to earn a Norseman’s respect.

I was healing well because I was young and because Asgot and Olaf were good with wounds. By burning the gash in my side they had not only stopped the blood but had also sealed it so that the wound rot could not seep in, which was the least the old godi could do given it was his fault I had ended up in the arena at all.

Now, there was a glossy welt of new skin that looked much worse than it felt, and soon I was able to row again, though I was careful not to stretch my arms above my head for fear of ripping the scar open.

The days and weeks passed uneventfully and we enjoyed fair weather and fairer seas. All must at some point have reflected on what a strange company we were nowadays. Norsemen, Englishmen, Danes, Greeks, a woman, a monk, a blauman, an emperor and a wolf, all sharing labour, food and drink and the rolling sea road, and all destined for the Great City, Miklagard. We passed the country of the Langobards and rounded the southern tip of the land that marks the western edge of Basileus Nikephoros’s empire of the Romans, as the Roman Greeks call it. Then on we ploughed into the Western Sea’s cauldron of cultures, as Father Egfrith put it. He also called it the womb
of civilization and many other names which flew into my right ear and out of the left, claiming that the sun-scorched islands had been home to heroes, deep-thinkers and master craftsmen since long before we men of the north had learnt to rob the earth of iron or hew oaks into ocean-going craft. We knew nothing of the truth of all that, but we did know it was hot as the smith god Völund’s anvil on that glittering blue sea. Tunics, cloaks and bad-weather gear were stuffed into sea chests. Our backs and shoulders blistered, peeled like dry hoggorm skin, then turned brown as leather. When we were not rowing we sought the shade of
Serpent
’s sail and often, when the sun was low in the sky but still hot enough to melt the pine tar between the strakes, we mounted shields in the rail and slunk into their cool shadows.

I had never seen so many craft and neither had anyone else apart from the Greeks. Vessels of every size and shape harnessed the sea breezes. Huge, beaked dromons rose and dipped, their bows raising billows of white spray, oar banks dipping even with the sails up. Broad knörr-type boats swayed like wide-hipped wives on their way to market, and fishing skiffs bobbed free as the gusts. White sails were everywhere and it was a hard thing not to wriggle into brynjas, put men and axes at the prows and see what we could pilfer. Bothvar said it was like laying a slab of meat before a hound and telling it not to lick its lips, and he was right, for patience in a raiding man is as rare as a happy marriage. Even if he tries to cling to it, it almost always proves as fleeting as a belch.

On we sailed, each dusk mooring in a different sheltered bay, for there were so many pine-fragrant islands strewn across that glimmering sea that it was an easy thing to let the wind lift us and carry us from one to another like bees from flower to flower. The waters being so clear, we would peer over the sides to look out for hull-splitting rocks, or else use a fathom weight smeared with tallow to discover what the seabed was made of. If we could not get close enough to use the planks, we sometimes
dropped our anchors off shore then used the snekkjes to ferry us in because their draughts were more shallow even than
Serpent
’s and
Fjord-Elk
’s. We would go ashore to stretch our legs, light fires and cook our night meals, hunting hare, boar and fox amongst olive, cedar and a green tree which Egfrith called Saint John’s Bread because some long-dead preacher who baptized the White Christ had survived on the tree’s seed pods in the wilderness. We found them good eating when roasted, though we all agreed life would not be worth living if that were all there was to eat. We saw many creatures we had never set eyes on before and we tried eating all but the most ugly ones. The best-tasting was a sea creature that would scuffle ashore to lay its eggs. Some of these were almost the size of a shield, with broad backs as hard as toughened leather that could stop an arrow. Not that we needed to shoot them, for once ashore they were the slowest creatures I had ever seen and even a man with one leg could have caught one without breaking a sweat.

Rome was a distant, sun-faded memory now. Miklagard, the Great City, the golden thread of our future wyrd, was still far away. The scorching days had begun to weigh heavily on the Fellowship, souring men’s moods like old milk and the truth was we were restless. It was only a matter of time before Bothvar’s hound licked its lips. Bardanes was the flint and steel of it, our own silver-thirst was the kindling, and a Moor galley was the slab of meat. This is how it began: three days before, we had caught a gusting westerly wind, letting it push us across a wide stretch of glittering sea called the Aegean, before pointing our prows north and hugging the dry, jagged coast of Nikephoros’s eastern empire.

Dawn was rich molten copper seeping up the sky’s deep blue hem. We had cast off from a deserted island off the coast of a place called Ephesus and as usual Olaf and Bardanes were goading each other for want of something to do, using Egfrith and his Latin as the sling for their taunts. Those two got along like ringmail and rain. From what I could gather of it that
morning, Bardanes was saying that though we Norsemen were brave fighters, we could not match the Greeks for ingenuity and war-craft. Olaf had taken the bait, claiming that there was more truth in a fart than in anything that comes from a Greek’s mouth. He went on to ask why, if he was so cunning and crafty a warrior, Bardanes had let a man whose name sounds like arse steal the throne from under his emperor’s backside. Sigurd and Nikephoros usually kept their distance when Olaf and Bardanes locked horns, but this time they were drawn into the rut, which had turned to the matter of sea-craft now. Perhaps the jarl and the basileus were bored too, but when Rolf yelled across from
Sea-Arrow
, pointing north at a billowed sail through the hot wind’s shimmering haze, I knew what was coming.

‘If we were aboard the basileus’s ship we could run down that Moor galley,’ Bardanes said, shaking his head.

‘Ha! You think your ships are faster than ours?’ Olaf said, hoisting his brows at Sigurd, who raised his in return.

‘My people have been sailing these waters since long before the Lord Christ’s disciples were casting their nets in the Sea of Galilee,’ Nikephoros said, a proud tilt to his chin. Then he stepped up on to the raised fighting platform at
Serpent
’s stern and gripped the sheer strake with both hands. ‘Galleys like her prey on my people, Sigurd. The Moors are a plague on us.’

‘She is labouring like a pig in mud,’ Sigurd replied, a sour curl to his lips. ‘I’ll wager she cannot sail as close to the wind as we can.’ The jarl was right, for even as we watched, the distant galley showed us her length as she turned into another long tack.

‘And I’ll wager that you can’t catch her, Sigurd,’ Bardanes said, smoothing his oiled beard through finger and thumb.

‘You hear that, Sigurd?’ Olaf said in Norse, thumbs tucked into his belt. ‘This slippery badger’s cunny of a Greek wants to lose more money to us. You would have thought he’d given us enough.’

‘Who are we to piss on such generosity, Uncle?’ Sigurd
replied, then he turned to Bardanes and accepted the wager, suggesting that whoever lost would have to fill the other’s helmet with coin. Bardanes blanched a little at that for it was quite a hoard to lose, more silver than a man could hope to get his hands on in four or five decent raids. He avoided his lord’s eye, though if he had looked at Nikephoros he would have seen the basileus shake his head and steel his eye enough to show his disapproval. But Nikephoros kept his tongue locked up behind the wall of his teeth, because he knew warriors and their pride well enough not to get between them, specially now, having fallen so far from power and a throne that was being fart-warmed by someone else.