Raven: Sons of Thunder (19 page)

Cynethryth slept between me and Father Egfrith and when a stiff breeze began to whistle through the oar ports and over the sheer strake she shuffled up against me, the curve of her back inviting me to roll on to my side and envelop her. So I did, rearranging the skins so that they covered us both together, my right hand holding her hip and my right knee tucked snugly in the crook of hers. I slept breathing in the soothing scent of Cynethryth’s golden hair and if Karolus himself had climbed aboard waving a sword alight with holy fire, I would not have moved a muscle.

The morning broke grey and damp and smelling of the weed and green slime that crept up the muddy holm and the river’s banks. The Sicauna had summoned a mist that rose sluggishly from the water like an unwilling soul departing a body. Men
yawned and farted and stood along
Serpent
and
Fjord-Elk
’s sheer strakes, their steaming piss splashing and spattering into the river as they shook the sleep from their heads and rubbed the dreams from their eyes. Hair was wild and beards were crushed and we scratched and searched our clothes for fleas by the weak dawn light. I put the back of my hand to my nose and my stomach knotted itself because I could smell Cynethryth on my skin.

Waking aboard a boat is a beautiful, unearthly thing. Yes, you are always damp and sometimes your bones complain about the ship’s hard ribs and hull, and often you feel like grass that’s been trodden underfoot and you just want to spring back up in the wind. But the seidr magic spans a boat’s deck like an unseen bridge to the spirit world. Men speak in low voices and all sound is muted and even our futures are silent, as though the Norns yet sleep or have not the light by which to see the life patterns, the wyrds, they weave for us. As for us mortals, the day is new and untarnished and we have woken upon the back of a dragon and so we are free to roam the sea road.

After a breakfast of cheese, dried seal meat and the last of the bread, which was by now harder than seasoned oak, we made ready to head upriver. Men tried to look busy, scheming to get out of having to untie us from the stakes in the sucking filth, but you could only take so long stowing furs, tying back your hair and fetching oars from the oar trees. And this time Olaf chose five Norsemen to help him, perhaps not wanting to aggravate the Wessexmen again, though more likely because we had laughed at him the day before, and I was unlucky enough to be one of them. We slipped and fell and slithered in the mud like new lambs in their mother’s birth fluids, but eventually we untethered the ships and when we had finished we were covered in seven layers of shit. Cynethryth had watched the whole sorry adventure from
Serpent
’s prow and
when I petulantly barked at Bjorn to throw me a rope so I could hang on to it and wash myself in the river she giggled and that made me even more cross. Then Bram hauled up the slime-covered anchor and we threaded the oars through their ports and dipped them into the calm water, setting off towards the sun, which, in its pale golden chariot, rolled slowly but inexorably into the sullen sky. And with it rose my spirits. The morning swim might have washed the scent of Cynethryth from my skin, but it had also washed the sourness out of me, and as my hair dried and the rowing warmed my muscles I could almost see the funny side. Still, I would remember not to laugh at Uncle again.

In our wake,
Fjord-Elk
sliced as smoothly as a hot blade through tallow, her oars dipping in flawless unison, more so than ours for the lack of inexperienced Englishmen at her benches. By the cross at her prow stood her captain, Bragi the Egg, named so because there was not a strand of hair to be found on the man from his head to the soles of his feet. Sigurd had made Bragi
Fjord-Elk
’s captain after her old captain, Glum, had betrayed him, and the Egg seemed to have the knack of it from what I could see. His brother Kjar was the new steersman, taking over from Glum’s kinsman Thorgils, who had died with Glum and big Thorleik that night outside the shepherd’s hut in the Welsh hills. I did not know Kjar well, but his pride at being made
Fjord-Elk
’s steersman was as blatant as a horse’s hard-on, and this I thought was a good sign as I watched him standing at her stern, the tiller safe in his sure grip.

Even on a dull day like this the country through which we rowed was as colourful as the richest tapestry, and ever changing. We slid past bright limestone cliffs and valleys in which cattle grazed contentedly on lush green grass. We passed boundless fields of ripe yellow flax, yet even these eventually gave over to woodland of chestnut, beech, oak, walnut, fir and pine, amongst which pigs and boar rooted, their snouts muddy
and their grunts carrying to us on the water. Deer could be glimpsed if you looked long and hard and Bothvar called out when he saw a huge silver wolf padding away from the river bank, though when we looked it was gone.

‘Who’s to stop us grabbing some of this emperor’s meat?’ Bram Bear offered to no one in particular. And no one had an answer for him, so a little later we tied up to a couple of willows on the bank and caught and butchered four pigs, an old boar, and three chickens which Black Floki found wandering free. Bjorn and Bjarni took skins and spears and built a smoking tent on the shore. Inside it above slow-burning oak and apple wood they hung the cuts of meat and then they joined the rest of us around a great open fire above which we turned the old boar and the three chickens which Cynethryth and Egfrith had plucked, stuffed with onions and rubbed with Wessex butter, coriander and salt. The smell of this made our mouths slippery and when Yrsa and Red-faced Hastein came round with bulging skins of mead, pouring the frothing liquid into horns and cups, I thought I must be in Valhöll.

‘This land tastes good,’ Bram mumbled through a mouthful of meat, wiping grease from his lips with the back of his hand. ‘More food here than a man can eat.’

‘And none of it guarded,’ Svein the Red said, a huge grin splitting his glistening red beard as he tore off another hunk of meat. To the Fellowship meat and mead were as fine if not finer than gold and girls. ‘These Franks are too generous,’ Svein added, sucking his fingers. ‘But no swineherds to batter. That takes the fun out of it.’

Black Floki sighed, shaking his head. ‘Why do you think that is, you great lump of giant’s snot?’ he asked, raising his dark eyebrows at Svein.

Svein held a chicken leg up like war booty, then made a great show of biting into it. ‘Their White Christ told them to feed the poor heathens?’ he suggested, chewing with a great smile as the
others chuckled. Even the Wessexmen, who could not understand what we were saying, seemed happy enough filling their faces. All except for Ealdred, of course, who ate with them but could not have seemed further away.

‘This meat was not penned because whoever owns it believes no one will steal it,’ Floki said casually. ‘You are not in the north now, Red. I am thinking there are laws here, laws strong enough to keep these Franks blade-straight.’ He pulled a piece of gristle from his mouth and examined it by the light of the fire. ‘This Frank emperor holds his land and its people in a tight grip,’ he said, flicking the gristle into the fire.

Svein shrugged, smacking his lips together contentedly as though he did not have a care, but Floki’s words gave the rest of us something to chew on. Of course, he could have been wrong. Maybe the swineherd had fallen ill and could not tend the animals this day. Or perhaps the creatures we found had escaped from a nearby thorp. But somehow we smelled the truth in what Floki said. He was a brooding son of a she-wolf, but his nose had a talent for sniffing out a situation before others even knew which way the wind was blowing. Added to this, the shore guard ships that had swept upon us, and the towers we had seen along the coastal cliffs, all pointed to this Karolus being a man who knew how to bridle a horse and ride it too.

That night half of us slept aboard the ships and half slept onshore, and all slept with one eye open. The next day we set off again with full bellies and holds packed with delicious joints of smoked pork which would feed our muscles and keep our oars churning the coils of the Sicauna. Occasionally smaller craft heading downriver clung dangerously close to the muddy banks to stay out of our reach. One knörr, a new and unweathered vessel by its look and laden with three fat cows, a clutter of barrels and six crew, even ran aground trying to keep away from us. Her keel dug into the submerged bank,
stopping the boat dead and flinging her crew forward. The Franks yelled at the frightened beasts which were stamping in terror, and the beasts lowed back at the Franks, and we slid past the chaos, leaving nothing behind but a wake of Norse and English laughter.

Others we passed without incident. We would wave and smile at whoever we saw and Father Egfrith would greet the boats’ crews and yell his god’s blessings as freely as if he were tossing them apples, and sometimes folk would wave back cautiously, but most frowned or shrugged because they feared us and could not understand the monk.

‘My beautiful Latin,’ Egfrith mourned through tight lips late that afternoon. Three old fishermen in a faering stared at us wide-eyed and slack-mouthed, none the wiser for the monk’s swift sermon. ‘The tongue of Pope Leo himself no less, God preserve His Holiness. Wasted on these clods,’ Egfrith went on under his breath as we passed, still smiling and waving and blessing. ‘Wasted like good wine on a Norseman.
Dominus illuminatio mea! Dominus vobiscum!
’ he called after them. Then he shook his bald head. ‘It may as well be the honking of a goose for all they know. Ignorant swine.’ He looked at me for support but then rolled his eyes because he knew he would get none from me.

‘You can’t blame them for looking baffled, monk,’ I called from my row bench, dragging the river past with my oar blade. ‘They have never seen a talking weasel before.’ Penda laughed and Egfrith glowered which made me laugh, but Cynethryth scourged me with a look so I tried my best to look chastened then, though my best was not very good.

By dusk the cloud had rolled away to the south and the blue sky began to darken, revealing stars which flashed and pulsed like embers from an ancient fire – some old god’s death pyre. The moon hung impossibly bright. It poured cold silvery shadows across the river and fields on either side as we moored
in some shallows amongst rushes where marsh hens and mallards guarded their nests with flapping wings and angry curruks, quorks and quacks. Gone was the brackish, tidal water of the estuarine reaches where freshwater and seawater fish live. Gone were the mudflats where geese and wading birds peck at water plants and shadflies, and gone were the rasping sand martins whom we had watched in the last few days leave their burrows to fly south for the coming winter. Here in the Sicauna’s middle course the river flowed more gently, making the rowing easier, though we still hoped for a change in the wind that would enable us to stow the oars and hoist the sails. We would see tomorrow. For now we secured
Serpent
and
Fjord-Elk
, tying their bows to ancient gnarly root tangles laid bare in the bank by eternal coursing water, and sinking their anchors from the stern.

Those who had gone ashore the previous night remained on board this time. Sigurd had learnt a hard lesson on the English shore when Ealdred had attacked from land and sea with the use of fishing skiffs packed with men brandishing firebrands. From now on there would always be enough men aboard the ships to row them out of harm’s way at a moment’s notice. Those on shore could always run along the bank and meet the dragons further on, away from whatever threatened them. It was cunning craft and even though it meant half of us spending the night amongst hard oak ribs and sea chests, we did not mind. The fire scars that still pock-marked
Serpent
served as a painful reminder of how close we had come to losing her. We owed it to her now to keep her safe.

There was a faint orange glow in the sky to the south-east, which we took to mean there was a town there, or at least a village, beyond the bumpy silhouette of the woods further inland. Perhaps its people knew we were there and had lit fires to prevent our coming unseen amongst them. Or perhaps their fires were part of some celebration or rite, a marriage or a
death. Either way we would not bother them if they did not bother us.

Ealdred and the Wessexmen were ashore, though the ealdorman was kept apart from the others as Sigurd wanted as much as possible, short of killing Ealdred, to break the bonds between his men and him. Penda and I nestled amongst skins at
Serpent
’s stern, playing tafl and drinking mead. Others aboard were sleeping already, making the most of rare space, or talking in low voices or doing tasks that the rowing had kept them from. Behind us, Cynethryth and Father Egfrith sat on the fighting platform and I had been thinking how quiet they were being when I realized they were fishing. The stone weights took their nettle-hemp lines spear-straight to the riverbed, yet for all their quiet patience the girl and the monk had caught not so much as a sprat.

‘She thanked you properly yet for saving that bastard father of hers?’ Penda asked, gesturing over my shoulder. With his spiked hair, scarred face and wild eyes Penda could not help but look savage, even on a clear, calm night like that and playing tafl. ‘A little reward for young Raven, eh lad?’ he said, eyebrows dancing. ‘A dip in the honey pot?’

I shot him a sour look, appalled that Cynethryth might have overheard, but he just grinned his best imitation of a mischievous young boy.

‘Keep your mind on the game and leave the fishing to them,’ I muttered, sliding a scallop shell across to capture one of Penda’s blue-black mussel shells. ‘I’d wager even Svein could beat you, Penda.’

He scowled. ‘You take so long to make every move I’m almost asleep when it comes to my turn. Playing you is about as much fun as watching trees grow,’ he said sulkily.