Raven (52 page)

She cocked one eyebrow beneath Sköll’s muzzle. ‘I had to let Penda in on it,’ she said. ‘He drew his sword on Black Floki, demanding to know what had happened to you.’ She shook her head. ‘I think the fool would have fought them all, Sigurd included, if I had not whispered the truth of it to him.’

Good old Penda
, I thought, though I feared what Black Floki would make of being challenged. Floki was not the kind to let a thing like that sail quietly over the horizon.

‘Penda gave me this to give to you,’ she said, putting a skin to my mouth. I drank deeply and the warm rush of it filled my body, so that for a heartbeat I thought I could feel my limbs again, for that skin was bulging with neat wine. ‘I have brought water too,’ she said, ‘but Penda said no man could be expected to stay buried in the ground without a proper drink.’

‘He’s right,’ I said as Cynethryth began to feed me again. ‘Bury the crumbs this time,’ I told her. ‘I had a beardful of ants all night.’ She grinned wickedly, stuffing smoked fish and
cheese into my mouth, and all too soon she was gone again, leaving me to the night.

Cynethryth came one more time and when she left she took with her the skins and my hat – which I had come to love dearly – and left the ground around me looking as it had when they had shoved me into that hole. The next day Sigurd and the others returned to see what had become of me and some of them seemed surprised to find me alive and said as much, to which I answered that whilst that might be so, I had rarely felt closer to being dead thanks to them.

Sigurd was all teeth and smile and Olaf was chuckling and even Black Floki could not hide the grin in his beard as they swarmed around, looking down at me, which was a humiliation I could have done without.

‘Stop grinning, you whoresons, and dig me out!’ I snarled, at which Byrnjolf and Skap hoisted brows, clearly amazed that my tongue had not dried up and shrivelled like an old man’s tarse and balls. ‘Dig and run, Byrnjolf,’ I said, ‘for when I get out you’re going to be on your knees looking for the rest of your stinking, fetid teeth.’

But even Byrnjolf grinned then because he knew there was no fear of my taking revenge on him. When they had dug the earth away, getting on their hands and knees to pull the last of it away with their hands, I could not climb out. My muscles were cold and dead, so that Sigurd and Olaf had to grab me by the shoulders and drag me out and then, as I lay helpless as a caught fish, Olaf began to pummel me the way you do to someone who has been caught in a blizzard and is half frozen to death.

‘It seems old One Eye does not want to share his mead with you just yet, lad,’ Olaf said, grinning too much. Not that I could feel the thumps and slaps he was delivering anyway.

‘You must be starving, lad,’ Bragi the Egg said, chewing a hunk of bread but not thinking to offer me any.

‘My belly thinks my throat’s been cut,’ I lied. Then Arnvid
and Rolf shared a grimace and together they stepped back, the Dane pinching his nose.

‘You stink like a cesspit,’ Rolf said, which was true enough for my nose was just about the only part of me that still worked – unfortunately – and I reeked of piss. Shit, too.

‘What did you expect, Rolf, you Dane whoreson?’ I growled up at him, not even giving them the satisfaction of feeling ashamed for fouling myself. ‘I’ve been in that hole for four days. The All-Father whispered to me that he would keep me alive,’ I said, glancing at Sigurd, ‘but he flat refused to clean my arse.’

Some of them did not know how to take this and I left that knot for them to pick at, for surely there had been some seidr at work here. How else could I still be alive enough to pay them with insults for sticking me in the ground? A man should die after four days without water. Yet here I was, with enough wet in my mouth to call Bragi a bald bairn’s backside and Byrnjolf a troll-faced, dim-witted stump.

But for all that they seemed glad that I was alive and as soon as my legs could carry me I stumbled to the shore and plunged into the surf to wash the filth and the memory of that hole away. Then Black Floki pulled me aboard
Wave-Steed
and the others rowed her back to the Bucoleon wharf whilst I sat enjoying the prickling inside my limbs as the blood began to flow again.

‘So Cynethryth is our völva now?’ I asked Sigurd after those who were around had acknowledged my return with grins and nods and heavy slaps across my back. The sun was high and we sat in the shade of the palace’s south portico, the same one we had stormed those many weeks before. When Svein and Aslak and Bothvar and the rest of them had still been alive.

‘The men need someone to tell them the will of the gods,’ Sigurd said with a shrug.

‘And you believe Cynethryth can speak with the gods?’ I
asked, passing him the wineskin I was drinking from to dull the throbbing pain of my broken arm.

A little way off, Penda was talking with Wiglaf and Gytha, the only Wessexmen besides Egfrith left now. I knew Penda was waiting for me, knew the look on his face too. It was the one he wore when we were in for a long, hard night’s drinking.

‘The girl has proved to be useful to me,’ Sigurd said. ‘She’s been useful to you, too, I think.’ He almost smiled at that.

‘She holds my soul in her hand,’ I said through a twist of lips. It was a heavy thing to tell my jarl, but somehow it felt better being out. Like a man being dragged from a hole by his shoulders.

Sigurd nodded. He knew where the winds came from and where they went. He knew me.

‘We will have to come up with a scheme, you and I,’ he said, squinting against the glare of the Marmara Sea which was, as ever, alive with craft coming and going, filling the emperor’s coffers with the gold and silver on which the Great City was built. ‘The men are getting soft. They are bathing in hot water and wearing Greek clothes.’ He shook his head. ‘They don’t lift a finger if they can throw a coin at someone else to lift it for them. I am fearful that our wolves will become sheep. Fat ones.’ He pursed his lips in thought. ‘We shall let them lighten their sea chests first though. Men are like ships, Raven, they move more easily when their holds are empty.’

‘You want to leave Miklagard, lord?’ I said, knowing now that he did, yet needing to hear it from him. For Miklagard had been the hoard we had sought for so long. He did not answer that, instead smoothing the golden beard at the corners of his mouth as he looked out to sea.

‘We are rich, Raven,’ he said. ‘Richer than we could have ever hoped to be. We have woven a saga-tale that will warm men’s hearts on cold nights for many years to come.’ He looked at me then, his blue eyes boring into my own like ship’s rivets. ‘Is it enough?’ he asked.

And now I did not answer, for I did not need to. I looked at the warrior ring on my arm, the silver ring Sigurd had given me so long ago when I had proved myself in a hard fight. Then I looked out to sea, watching a fat trading vessel wallowing on the merest ripple of wave, her crew bellowing at each other like cattle. And I smiled, lips pulling back from my teeth.

It is never enough.

SHALL I GO ON? I COULD, YOU KNOW, FOR WE ARE STILL IN THE
early part of it all. But that seems the proper place to end it for now and it has been a long night, though there is no sign of morning yet. If morning dares to show its face amongst that maelstrom out there. Are you here, monk? Ah, there you are, skulking in the gusty corner and filthy reeds, scratching away on that vellum like a rat worrying an old boot. What are you writing anyway? Never mind, I don’t want to know. I couldn’t give a fart about it so long as you have done all I’ve asked. You’ll have the silver I promised, then you’ll go and waste it on prayer books or the wretched poor who kneel in the filth to your nailed god. But that’s your affair. You must feel like a lamb out of the fold on a dark night, here in my hall. Yet you need not fear these men, Father. Most of them would slice off their own bollocks if you gave them a sword. Don’t you eyeball me, Hallfred, you son of a goat. I’ve seen you fall out of a tree and miss the ground! Aye, monk, they’re no Wolfpack this lot, for all their bristles and growls.

So, where was I? Ah yes, at the end. Which is also the beginning really. We few had put the Emperor of the Romans back on his throne. Even to my ears that sounds like a skald’s story
stretched too far and yet that is how I remember it and I still have some pretty Greek coins to prove it. We were rich. Gods, we were rich. We had a glittering fame-hoard too and were known far and wide as hard men. We’d forged a reputation as a war band without equal, but the iron of that reputation had been quenched in the blood of our brothers, whose loss was as keen as a slender blade between the ribs. Bram Bear, Bjorn, Svein the Red and Aslak, men who had sailed with Sigurd from the beginning, were gone. When the Norns rob you of friends like those you come to learn the hardest truth of all, a truth which is anchor-heavy and dark as storm clouds. And that is that all the silver and fame you can think of is cold comfort if those who did the most to win it all are not around to boast of it.

If I try, I can still hear Bram now, and Svein too, though their faces are hard to summon and faint as draugar through pelting rain. I hear their laughter. I hear them swearing and chafing and moaning about the food or the mead or the raging sea. And yet they are long gone. They are all gone …

Shut the damned door will you? Before we all get snow in our mead! Ah, boy! Don’t just stand there like a post. Come here. Let him through, you drunken whoresons, he’s one of my ravens! So what news do you have for me, lad? Here, I won’t bite. Closer, so I can hear every word over the fire’s roar.

You have done well, boy. You, pass my sword! Arnor, give me my shield. This sword was Sigurd’s once and his father’s before him. It has never lost its thirst.

So, how many, lad? Ah, that is good. It will take more than one. Even now.

Well, you bloated pig’s bladders? Are you going to sit by the fire for ever, or would you rather come outside into the freezing dark and watch a wolf kill his prey?

I feel compelled to thank you, dear reader, for coming with me on this incredible journey. Whilst I have been finding my way, yours have been the arms and shoulders pulling the oars. You all have been the best Fellowship an adventurer could hope to sail the sea road with and it really has been my honour. I always knew I’d write a Viking novel. It’s in the blood, literally, and the stories have been weaving themselves in my mind one way or another since I was a young boy. But if you had not climbed aboard for the first tale,
Blood Eye
, there would not have been another saga. Thank you for taking the plunge, not knowing what you would find. That you’ve stayed with me for the next two journeys I find humbling. I have had so much fun writing these books. It is a joy and a privilege. I like to think they’re getting better, too, heading in the right direction, and although the trilogy finishes with
Óðin’s Wolves
, I suspect the Norns are spinning still. They have not finished with my crew yet. I sense it like snow in the air, hear it like the rattle of pine trees in a chill, north breeze. I hope you come when the war horn sounds.

I’d also like to thank my fellow authors who have accepted me into their brother/sisterhood with such warmth and kindness:
M. C. Scott, Robert Low, Bernard Cornwell, Lesley Downer, Paul Sussman and Ben Kane. You all inspire me and I’m glad to know you.

Thanks as ever to my wife, Sally, who is my constant inspiration and who has shared every high and low. To my little Viking girl, Freyja Rose; you are more precious than my poor art can express and have brought untold joy to our lives.

I’d like to thank my publisher, Transworld, for believing in my stories and sharing them with you all. We have a great team behind us, Raven and I, and they know their business like my Vikings know the sea. Thanks to Lynsey for helping get the word out and to my editor, Simon, who took me on with gusto and in whose red pen I now trust. And to Katie Espiner who began it all for me, what can I say? Thank you feels short measure but I trust you know what your belief means to me.

So, dear reader, until next we meet. Keep the mails coming, I appreciate every one. We shall journey on together soon enough, though we leave shieldwalls and longships behind. For I hear the distant drum and the clatter of musket balls amongst a forest of pike staves. It will soon be time to march!