Raven: Sons of Thunder (37 page)

‘Maybe this has nothing to do with Sigurd,’ Penda suggested as we ran through the tumult, hoping the soldiers would not notice a bear-like man who could not have looked more like a heathen, and two monks in ragged habits carrying arms. Yet not a single blue cloak challenged us. Beyond the city walls the wind was whipping enormous sheets of flame through the tightly packed timber houses and those gluttonous flames roared like the ocean. The burning wood popped and cracked in violent anger. Then we were clear and I turned, coughing horribly, and saw the first of the threadbare Danes spilling through the houses and out into the pastureland like so many tortured souls.

‘Look!’ Penda yelled, pointing at a smoky streak whirring through the air. ‘That’s no fire arrow.’ Then the thing tumbled from the sky, leaving a wisp of dissolving smoke against the blue. We ran over to it and to my disbelief I saw that it was a little bird. Then we saw others lying here and there, smouldering amongst the grass. I picked the dead creature up by its feet and the three of us stared, breathless, stunned and coughing. Someone had tied shavings of fur to the bird’s back and that fur was charred but still glowing with an ember because it had been smeared with wax and set alight.

‘They must have used nets, or Óðin knows what, to catch so many,’ I said, nodding towards the forest beyond the boundary ditch. It must have taken hundreds of birds to do what they had done. But Sigurd had known the birds would wing back
to their roosts under the eaves of the Franks’ houses, and now those houses were burning.

‘No one will believe this,’ Penda said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t believe it myself.’ Now a quarter of the city was ablaze and the emperor’s soldiers were too busy trying to save the rest of it to care that we had escaped.

‘Come on,’ Bram said as I tossed the poor creature aside. ‘They’ll come for us soon.’ We ran towards the sound of rooks high up in the ash on the edge of the woods, where we knew Sigurd would be waiting.

SIGURD, BLACK FLOKI AND TWENTY OTHERS WERE WAITING AMONGST
the ash. They were dressed for battle and their beards split with smiles when we met them.

‘I was wrong when I said you two make good Christ slaves,’ Halldor laughed, finding our wretched state funnier than he should have done.

‘Hungry, lad?’ Sigurd said, pulling a loaf of bread from a sack and handing it to me. I ripped a hunk off and gave the rest to Penda. There was a glint in the jarl’s eyes that I had not seen since before the hólmgang, which I put down to joy at seeing his scheme weaving itself into a wondrous pattern. ‘You stink worse than a troll’s fart,’ he said, taking a step back and laughing.

‘It seems hard to believe,’ I said, ‘but the Franks did not invite us to bathe in the hot pools we have heard talk of. The spiteful cunnies.’ I was suddenly aware of the fleas biting my skin and crawling beneath the filth-stained habit. I glanced round for Cynethryth, hoping she would not see me looking so foul, but of course she was not there, for this was a war band.

‘They won’t be wasting water on bathing now, Raven,’ Sigurd said, ‘not with their arses on fire.’ Satisfied, he planted his spear butt into the forest litter and turned to leave, but then he stopped, seeing that some of his men had been alerted by the snap and crack of twigs. We made ready to fight.

‘It’s all right,’ I called, ‘they are Danes. They escaped with us.’ The first of the Danes stumbled through the trees towards us, their gaunt faces gripped by fear. They looked like hunted animals and did not know whether to come nearer or bolt off into the woods. ‘They helped us, Sigurd,’ I said. ‘And their jarl is dead and rotting.’ Sigurd seemed to consider the skeletal, long-bearded Danes in their rags, and the Norsemen looked to their jarl, awaiting his order. ‘They will follow you, lord,’ I said, ‘and they are brave. They must be hard men to have survived in that place.’

‘Follow me?’ Sigurd said, scratching his golden beard. ‘They can barely walk, Raven. These Danes could not follow a stream.’ More Danes were joining their comrades so that there were now at least twenty, almost all gasping or doubled over with exhaustion, their hands still manacled. Sigurd picked up the food sack, took a step towards the Danes and hurled the sack to the nearest man. Then he turned and his men turned with him. ‘They can come, Raven,’ he said. ‘But if they are not at the wharf by dawn we leave them to the Franks.’ And with that we set off with long strides, leaving the Danes to struggle after us.

It was night time when we reached the wharf. I could wait no longer, and asked after Cynethryth. It turned out that Black Floki and Halldor had been watching for us from the woods when they had seen the mounted blue cloaks with their firebrands ranging across the pasture. There were too many Franks for them to break cover, so they had waited and eventually they had found Egfrith lying exhausted beside a fallen elm, Cynethryth beside him. Knowing they could do
nothing for Penda and me, Floki and his cousin had brought the monk and the girl back to the ships.

Egfrith was tending to Cynethryth now in a makeshift shelter before
Serpent
’s hold, for, Olaf told me gently, it seemed that the girl’s mind was in a dark place and the monk was trying to tempt it back to the light.

‘I will go to her, Uncle,’ I said, still trembling from the exertion.

Olaf put a big hand on my shoulder. ‘Give her some peace, Raven,’ he said. ‘Let the monk see to her. She doesn’t need the likes of us sniffing around. Get some rest, lad.’ I nodded because I did not have the strength to argue. Penda and I and even Bram were dog-tired, and after changing back into our own clothes we collapsed on to furs with handfuls of meat and skins of ale. Sentries were posted and
Serpent
and
Fjord-Elk
were made ready in case the Franks attacked, though the orange glow in the sky to the east told us that they still had other worries.

Sigurd was wrong about the Danes being unable to walk. Somehow, throughout the night and into the dawn, sixty or more of them made it to the wharf. They came as though the river itself had summoned them, as though their wretched souls heard in the gushing water a promise of life and freedom for which they had clawed their way back out of Hel. When the Norsemen saw the strength of will that must have driven these men to reach us, they broke into our supplies and fed and clothed them as best they could and helped them cut off the manacles.

‘I wonder how many did not make it,’ I said to Penda, thinking of the Danes who even now lay stiffening in the woods between us and Aix-la-Chapelle, wound sickness or starvation having killed them in the dark as surely as any Frankish blade.

‘You and Sigurd have given them back their lives,’ Penda said, rubbing his wrists where the irons had left their mark.

‘If not for Sigurd we would be rotting, too,’ I said, thinking of the jarl’s incredible cunning in using the little birds to burn the town. It was surely the most ingenious plan ever conceived, though it could have been no easy thing to catch so many birds and tie bits of fur to them.

With dawn came rain, which was bad for us and good for the Franks. A brown pall still hung in the east, mingling with the low grey cloud that slid in from the north to douse the day. The thatch fires would probably be out, but new embers would be growing in the hearts of the Franks and these would soon ignite into the fires of revenge.

Many of the craft moored at the wharf had gone now, their captains uneasy berthing next to so many warriors, even though the Norsemen and the Wessexmen had let them and their crews go about their business. But now, at Sigurd’s order, Svein the Red was hacking into the cross at
Serpent
’s prow with his great axe and this was enough to see the last Frankish boats slip their moorings and slide downriver. The Danes were busy preparing their own ships, which, though no
Serpent
or
Fjord-Elk
, were well made and seaworthy, their graceful lines and the carvings on their prows marking them as heathen-made. A man named Rolf seemed to be the nearest thing to their leader and he was doing a good enough job overseeing the checks to ballast, rudder, caulking and sail lines, so that despite their sorry state the Danes might be ready in time.

Penda and I had drunk so much ale and mead, trying to wet our bones, that we were falling down drunk when Kalf and Osten ran from the woods, their slung shields bouncing against their backs and their spears held low. We gathered round to hear their news.

‘We’ve pissed in a bear’s cave, lord,’ Kalf said to Sigurd. ‘The blue cloaks are getting ready to fight. And not just them; the people have armed, too. I am thinking they are not happy that we burnt their houses.’

‘That piss-thin Christ slave is leading them,’ Osten said, meaning Bishop Borgon, ‘and he’s even waving a sword around.’

‘Pah!’ Olaf said. ‘I’d wager the bony bastard’ll cut his own leg off before he gets here.’ Borgon had been itching to fight us since the day Sigurd was supposed to be baptized and now he had his chance. Sigurd glanced at
Serpent
, perhaps thinking of the immense treasure hoard resting in her belly.

‘Then now is a good time to leave,’ he said. ‘Make ready to cast off, Uncle.’

Now that we had really made enemies of the Franks, the only way for us was north, away from their heartlands and the snaking rivers along which they could ambush us a hundred times over. North meant downriver, and on any other day that would mean we could raise the sails, catching whatever wind there was and riding the current. But there was no wind to speak of and there had not been much rain, which meant that the river was sluggish and we would have to row or risk being caught by the Christians. Rowing drunk is not easy. Assuming you do not fall off your bench you really have to concentrate to stay with the rhythm, making sure your blade bites the water and doesn’t just knock the spume off the surface. But at least Penda and I were drunk enough not to know how weak we still were, which was just as well, and I think we matched the others stroke for stroke.

In our wake the three Dane ships were moving well too, their shorter oars dipping smoothly, which was impressive given the state of the men who worked them. Rolf knew to push his men hard enough to keep close astern of
Serpent
and
Fjord-Elk
, riding the water we had broken, and because there were three of them they took turns to slipstream us. Luckily for them
Serpent
and
Fjord-Elk
were heavy with silver and arms and rich wares, so that we sat lower in the water than normal and were much slower. It would be unlucky for us, though.

‘Your skinny-arsed Danes are rowing well, Raven,’ Knut shouted from the steerboard. ‘But ploughing a river downstream is not the same thing as ploughing the sea.’ His lips were curled in the smile that always rested on his face whenever his guiding hands gripped the tiller which they had worn smooth.

‘I hope they get the chance to prove themselves, Knut,’ I replied, for none of us knew how far it was to the open sea or what we would find along the way. As for myself, beyond that I knew even less. We had fought great battles, made powerful enemies and woven schemes that Loki would be proud of. As warriors we had earned glory so that the name of Sigurd’s Fellowship would carry far, the tales of our deeds weaving around men’s hearth fires like sweet smoke to be inhaled by young and old. Our dragons’ bellies were so full of silver that we were all rich men now and Sigurd would likely become a king of his people, though he might have to kill a king first. For once out in the open sea the jarl would surely turn our prows north toward the fjordlands. Eventually I would set foot on the rocks these Norsemen talked of so fondly, and I truly believed that when I did the fog in my mind would clear and I would remember. I would know why old Ealhstan had found a heathen knife hanging round my neck. I would know that the fjordlands were my home. For why else had I obsessed with the oaks in the forest near Abbotsend if it was not some seidr memory of searching for the straight limbs from which to make the keel of a dragon ship like
Serpent
? Why did my heart beat with the rhythm of a sword against the back of a shield? Why did my breath measure against the plunge of spruce oars into cold water?

‘That was quick,’ Svein the Red on the steerboard side said, pulling back in the stroke with his inexhaustible strength. We looked over to see mounted imperial soldiers appear in the hackles of marram grass along the ridge of the east bank. There
were five of them, scouts most likely, because they appeared lightly armed. Then, as quickly as they had appeared, the blue cloaks galloped off north in the direction our prows were pointing.