Raven: Blood Eye (35 page)

I did not sit with Cynethryth, but was given a place amongst the men I would lead out next morning. Not the forty I had asked for, but thirty. Ealdred feared to strip his lands of so many warriors and was quick to point out that King Coenwulf had done just that, which was why the Wolfpack had been able to steal the gospels of Saint Jerome and burn down his hall. Neither were the thirty all proper fighting men. I learned that twenty of them were fyrdsmen, farmers and merchants fulfilling their obligation of sixty days' armed service to their lord. And that night there was no shortage of mead to make them brave, even though it was a false courage that they would piss away come morning. The other ten were warriors, grizzled veterans of many fights who wore their battle scars as proudly as they wore their warrior rings, and I was glad of them. They reminded me of Mauger and each was eager to earn more silver rings fighting the Welsh. I wondered which of them we had fought in this very hall weeks before.

Many times during the night I tried to catch Cynethryth's eye, but she sat amongst cousins and aunts and high-born friends who were making such a fuss over her that she was never likely to notice me. I thought our eyes met once, but she looked away so quickly that I wondered if I had imagined it, so I began babbling to the man beside me to take my mind off the girl. At the high point of the feast, when the clamour in Ealdred's hall sounded like the wild song of the shieldwall, I saw Cynethryth give an empty smile, whisper in her father's ear and then leave the bench.

'I need to piss,' I said, breaking free of the throng to go out into the night. The new oak door creaked closed behind me, muffling the rowdy voices within as I drank in the cool night air, hoping to clear my head. If anything the fresh air along with the absence of others made me feel worse and for a moment I thought I would vomit. I had no idea where to look for Cynethryth and I doubted my tongue would speak any sense even if I found her, so I cursed and turned to go back in. Then I saw her by an ancient yew, the tree's dark branches silhouetted against a sentry fire before the fortress's main gate. Cynethryth leant against the gnarled trunk, staring into the flames.

'Cynethryth?' I spoke the name softly so as not to startle her, but she did not move and I thought she must not have heard. 'Cynethryth? Is everything all right?' She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, then turned to face me, and I saw she had been crying. 'What is it?' I asked. 'What's wrong?'

'How could anything be wrong?' she asked coldly, turning back into shadow. 'Everyone is happy. Is it not a feast to remember, Raven?' She gestured to the noisy mead hall. Cracks leaked a warm yellow glow out into the night and a wave of dizziness washed over me. I was about to confirm that I had never been to a greater feast, but then I thought better of it.

'I don't understand, Cynethryth,' I said, scratching the short beard on my cheeks.

'Why would you?' she snapped. 'You're a man.' She shook her head. 'My father is ealdorman and they all fall over themselves to please him while he drinks himself out of his mind.' I held in a belch, wondering how much mead I had poured down my throat. 'Ealdred will piss himself and take some girl to his bed and when the sun comes up he'll go hunting with the girl's father.' She stepped away from the yew tree and turned to look me in the eye. 'What about my brother? Damn Ealdred! What about his
son
?' she exclaimed. 'Weohstan is barely cold and they celebrate with goose and swan and God knows what else, but I know it should not be eaten tonight. Not tonight.'

'Ealdred is happy to have you safe home, Cynethryth,' I said. 'What father wouldn't be?'

'Oh, Raven, pull your head from the mud. He is happy to have the damned book. That's why he celebrates,' she said. 'Because of the book. Don't be fooled by his piety!' The word was heavy with disdain. 'Silver is my father's god. Can you imagine what the book is worth?' Just then the mead hall's door swung open, releasing curses, shouts and laughter into the night. A man staggered out and dropped to his knees to puke. I thought of the Norsemen we had laid out in the mud before throwing their corpses into the sucking surf.

'Your father is an important man, Cynethryth,' I said. 'Of course his heart aches to have lost his son. But a lord cannot show weakness. Not in front of his warriors.' I remembered the empty look in Olaf's eyes when his son Eric with the white hair was killed by bowmen three hundred paces from where I now stood. The Norseman had put the sadness away so as not to weaken the younger men's resolve. I reached out and took Cynethryth's hand. 'Ealdred will grieve in his own way,' I said quietly.

She pulled away. 'He would not be grieving at all if he had not sent you and your devils to King Coenwulf's hall. If you had not come. It is because of you that Weohstan is dead. Because of you, Raven!' I had no reply to that and so I watched a plume of black smoke rise into the star-filled sky. 'And I am not the fool you take me for. You and my father are the fools if you think I believe your lies.'

'I don't understand, Cynethryth,' I said.

'He told me that you are leaving tomorrow to find Jarl Sigurd.'

'And I am,' I said, frowning.

'It has nothing to do with Weohstan?' she asked, daring me to lie. There were many things I would have gladly done to Cynethryth then, beautiful Cynethryth with her golden hair and her green eyes and strong nose, but lying was not one of them, and so I looked away. 'I know you're going to cross King Offa's wall to look for my brother. Well, you're a fool. Weohstan is dead and you will soon be dead, too, and because you are a heathen you will go to Hell and you will be damned for all eternity.' And though Cynethryth probably believed this, there was a gleam of light in her eyes, like the last ember amongst the ashes, and that gleam was Weohstan. She would not say it, but she had not given up hope of seeing her brother alive and that was enough for me to walk into a hundred Welsh spears, spitting fire and fury as I trod.

Then Cynethryth ran off into the night, and I was left staring up at the stars, which would not seem to stay in their places.

At cock's crow I awoke amongst the reeds in Ealdred's hall. The place stank of mead breath, sweat and stale food, and I stepped over stirring bodies to collect my war gear and move outside. It would be a warm day. The scent of violet bellflowers, yellow birds-foot, and magical red clover rose on a June breeze as men and women began their day's work. Chickens clucked and scratched in the dirt, dogs barked, cattle lowed and the forge rang out. I stretched my aching neck, drew some water from the well and tried to wipe the sleep from my eyes.

A hand gripped my shoulder and I turned to greet Penda, one of Ealdred's household warriors who had been recalled from a scouting mission along the Wessex coast. Penda looked like a man who would kill you for the fun of it. You could almost smell the violence coming off him. He wore no beard or moustache – a great livid scar carved from his left cheek to beneath his chin, on which no hair would grow. But the hair on his head stuck out in all directions. During the feast the man had made it clear that he disliked me, though he had grudgingly admitted I could drink well for a pup. He did not know that late in the night, when the timber roof had begun to spin around my head, I had left the table and puked my guts into a hawthorn bush.

'Feels like someone pissed in my ear while I was asleep,' he grumbled, squinting in the daylight and holding the back of his head. His arms were heavily tattooed with swirling shapes and his taut muscles showed beneath a simple mail brynja. It was too warm now to wear a thick gambeson beneath the mail and so most men wore a thinner one of toughened leather.

'I feel as fresh as a corpse,' I replied with a grin.

Penda drew in a deep breath, his eyes following a young redhaired girl as she left the well with two heavy pails. 'It's a fine day for killing Welshmen, Raven,' he said, pursing his lips and whistling after the girl, whose tunic was thin enough to reveal the swell of her behind as she walked. 'It's always a fine day for killing Welshmen,' he repeated, never taking his eyes from her. Penda wore silver and gold warrior rings on both arms and a beautiful sword whose grip was adorned with silver wire and whose pommel was set with amber. He saw my eyes fix on the weapon. 'Here,' he said, drawing the sword and handing it to me. 'I'll let you touch it, but be careful. I don't want your mother taking a poker to my arse if you cut yourself.'

'It's beautiful,' I said, testing the sword's balance and slicing it through the air.

'Got it from a Welsh chief,' Penda said, 'after I cut the bastard into joints.'

'It's a Welsh blade?' I asked, making another cut through the air, which Penda frowned at because it was clumsy.

'Of course it's not a Welsh blade, whelp!' he said, bemused. 'Their swords are as likely to shatter as cut cleanly. Their smiths are idiots. Or else their iron's no good. That's why they're always raiding. Fucking thieving sods. The mad bastard who waved this at me must have taken it from a rich Mercian. Like to think it might have belonged to King Coenwulf himself. Can't be many with a blade like it.'

I shook my head. 'I've seen Coenwulf,' I said, 'and he's a big bastard. Wouldn't use a toothpick like this. But don't worry, Penda,' I teased, handing the sword back to him, 'if the Welsh put a spear in your belly, I'll look after it for you. I'll even clean the blood off it.'

He leant forward and waved a hand before my eyes. 'You still drunk, lad? A Welshman ending Penda the Fierce?' Then he spat a gob of phlegm that narrowly missed a beetle crawling past my foot. 'There's more chance of a Norseman becoming king of bloody Wessex,' he said.

'Could happen one day,' I said, imagining Sigurd sitting at the head of King Egbert's mead bench.

'You
are
still drunk,' he growled.

'Maybe,' I said, 'but drunk or not, we need to get going.' I nodded towards the hall. 'Go and shake the sleep from those sorry-looking whoresons in there.' I found a louse in my beard and squashed it with my thumbnail. 'I don't think they like me,' I said.

'I
know
they don't like you,' Penda laughed, 'but I'll screw a flea-bitten, saggy-titted Welsh whore before I'll do your dirty work, whelp.' And with that he set off after the red-haired girl. 'You're bloody well leading them into Wales,' he called, 'so you can start by leading them out of their beds.'

I took a spear that was leaning by the open door and used the blunt end to wake the drunken farmers, traders and craftsmen I would be taking to fight the black-shielded Welsh. And I wished I were leading Norsemen.

THE PEOPLE OF EALDRED'S FORTRESS GATHERED TO WATCH US
set out. Children fought with wooden swords, enacting the victories we would have over the Welsh, whilst their folks looked on with apprehension. The men of the fyrd made a brave show of it, proudly displaying whatever weapons and helmets they possessed, though only a couple of them owned any mail and the others were dressed in toughened leather. The real warriors made no fuss at all. To them it was just another raid.

'They don't look much, but they'll fight well enough,' Penda said as I cast my eye over the war band preparing to march out. 'Wessexmen know how to fight, Raven. It's in their blood. Even the merchants.' He grinned. 'Getting their guts cut out is bad for business. So they learn how to kill.'

They did not look like fighters to me. 'The Welsh will piss their breeches when they catch sight of us,' I murmured.

'They might when they notice that eye of yours,' Penda said. 'Even the Welsh believe in the Wicked One.'

'The Wicked One?' I said.

'Aye, old Belial.' I shrugged. 'Crooked Serpent. Abaddon,' Penda added. 'Satan, lad!' he shouted.

'Crooked Serpent?' I asked.

'Aye, that's one of his names, whelp. Thought you'd know that, you being a bloody godless heathen.' I thought of Jörmungand, the Midgard-Serpent who the Norse believe encircles the earth and after whom Sigurd had named his ship's dragon figurehead. 'You got a girl somewhere, lad?' Penda asked. 'Cos God help her if you do. The poor bitch must shiver at the thought of you planting another like you in her belly.'

Just then I spotted Cynethryth. She was standing beneath the old yew tree where she had left me just hours ago, before the sun had risen to cast the hard light of doubt on our undertaking. She wore a blue mantle that ended a finger's breadth above the ground, over a pale yellow smock whose sleeves were embroidered with fine blue thread. A narrow belt emphasized her slender waist and her golden hair hung loose and uncovered. Nor was she wearing a brooch befitting her rank. Instead, a simple silver chain hung across her chest, suspended from two small round mantle pins. Her skin was pale, her mouth was a tight line and her eyes were unreadable. And by Freyja she was beautiful.