Raven: Sons of Thunder (32 page)

‘What of Cynethryth? I called to Egfrith through the gusts, but he seemed not to hear me as he took another unsteady step. ‘How is she, Egfrith?’

‘Later, Raven,’ the monk snapped, his breath short as the cold water squeezed his heart and lungs. ‘Do not interrupt the Lord’s work.’

‘Screw the lord’s work, tell me now,’ I barked.

‘Hold your tongue, heathen!’ the pockmarked priest blurted, and I turned to him, a terrible heat rising in my belly. ‘Do not obstruct the will of God!’ he yelped, his eyes little holes of malice.

Bishop Borgon put a hand on the shorter man’s shoulder. ‘Peace, Arno,’ he soothed, then prattled to him in the Frankish tongue, but he pointed at me and I heard the name Cynethryth and then the word
diabolus
which I knew from Egfrith meant devil. The hollow-cheeked bishop pulled his silk-trimmed cloak around his thin frame as the pockmarked priest tilted his head and eyeballed me, so that my hackles were stiff as frozen grass.

‘Then it is no wonder Abbess Berta is struggling to unburden the bitch of Satan’s seed,’ he said in English just for me. ‘I shall take my own hazel switch to the girl. Beat the filth out of her myself, by the Lord’s grace.’

I flew at him. In a heartbeat the priest’s throat was in my fist and I was squeezing so that only the gristle of his gullet stopped my fingers and thumb from touching.

‘No, Raven!’ I heard Father Egfrith yell amongst the clamour of other voices, but my belly was full of rage and I was snarling
like a beast and shaking the priest like a hound with a hare. Then something struck the side of my head and I dropped to my knees, flashes of white light ripping through my head. The great hulking figure of Borgon’s bodyguard loomed over me. I fumbled for my knife and slashed into his thigh below the fish scale brynja. He roared and slammed the butt of his spear against my helmet, dropping me again. It felt as though the sky had caved in and all was swimming pain and swirling blue cloaks as the emperor’s men came. A blade scythed towards my face but another met it with a loud ring and Bjorn was there. He chopped a Frank’s face in half, spattering me with blood as I tried to rise. Another Frank hacked into Bjorn’s back and he yelled in fury and turned, taking his hilt in two hands and ramming his sword deep into the man’s chest. Hands gripped me and I could not break free but was forced back down to my knees. Through a blur as though I was underwater I saw Sigurd slipping and falling as he struggled out of the river. Behind him Egfrith thrashed madly.

‘Thór!’ Bjorn roared as Frankish blades ripped into his brynja, carving the flesh beneath so that blood and broken iron rings mixed in a slick gore.

‘Bjorn!’ I screamed. As quick as a breath he grinned at me and then Bishop Borgon’s man swung his short axe, taking off Bjorn’s head, which landed in the long grass, the blond plaits somehow still perfect.

‘Hold! Hold!’ Sigurd yelled to the Wolfpack, for the shield-wall had broken and men were running to help Bjorn. ‘Get back and hold, damn you!’ Sigurd yelled, the cords in his neck straining, because without the shieldwall we were all as dead as Bjorn and the jarl knew it.

‘The silver! To me!’ Olaf yelled and a knot of warriors ran with him and stood over the hoard, shields locked and spears facing the Franks, who seemed unsure what to do next.

‘Enough! No more!’ Alcuin cried, repeating the order in the
Frankish tongue. A knife, gripped by one of the men holding me, began to bite into my throat. ‘In the name of the emperor, sheathe your blades,’ Alcuin implored. He might have been old and frail but the blue cloaks listened to him. ‘My children,’ he said to them, ‘we did not come here to fight these men. Let us not spill blood on the feast day of Saint Crispin and his brother Saint Crispinian. Let us all be brothers today!’

‘That devil tried to kill a priest of God!’ Borgon protested, saliva flying from his old mouth as he gestured at the pockmarked worm whom I had not strangled quickly enough. The little turd was holding his neck and wheezing, spittle at the corners of his lips, as the other Christ slaves sought to comfort him. The main bulk of the Fellowship stood in a solid wall with their backs to the wharf and
Serpent
and
Fjord-Elk
, but Olaf and some fifteen men, including, I noticed, some of the Wessexmen, were horribly vulnerable where they stood before that glittering hoard. The Franks could close round them like a river round a monk’s skinny body. Yet I knew Olaf and the others would all die trying to protect that silver. I remembered then that Óðin means ‘frenzy’, and I suddenly knew he had been watching it all, maybe even had a hand in that chaos, moving us like tafl pieces and laughing as the blood flew.

Egfrith stood shivering in his dripping undergown behind Sigurd, who had found his sword and now came to me, pointing the blade at the knot of men who still held me down.

‘Let him go or I will kill you where you stand,’ the jarl growled and the men looked to Alcuin, their grip on me tightening, though the knife drew back from my throat. Borgon’s giant, his leg blood-slick, stepped towards Sigurd – without limping, I noticed – his spear and axe raised to strike, but then the bishop shouted something and the Frank stopped dead as all eyes looked to Alcuin. The old man nodded his grey head and the Franks stepped back, allowing me to get to my feet, my head still ringing and my sight fogged. Sigurd nodded at Alcuin,
then went over to where Bjorn’s head lay in the grass. Carefully, he picked it up, the once blue eyes now grey and staring, and walked the five paces to the Norseman’s body, placing the head on the bloody stump of Bjorn’s neck, making his corpse whole. ‘The hoard is mine,’ Sigurd declared to the mass of Frankish soldiers. ‘It is the blood-price for this man, who was called Bjorn.’

‘All that silver for one man?’ Borgon asked, his old, ink-stained palms outstretched.

‘He was worth it and more,’ Sigurd said, holding Bjarni’s eye a moment. Bjorn’s brother was in the shieldwall between Svein and Aslak and his handsome face was drawn with the agony of seeing his brother killed. ‘Take your men and leave this place, Alcuin,’ Sigurd warned, ‘before it is too late. A man who puts his hand in a wolf’s mouth cannot be surprised when he is eating his next meal one-handed.’

Alcuin watched as some Frankish soldiers dragged away the two men Bjorn had killed before he himself had fallen, a great prize for Óðin’s death maidens. Then Alcuin’s watery eyes stared at Sigurd and he seemed to tremble slightly though not through fear. ‘We will leave, heathen,’ he said, ‘but do not mistake reason for weakness. You are lucky you are facing me today and not the emperor, for he would see this field blood-slick before noon. He would cut you down himself. I am old and tired of men killing each other. One day you too may tire of it, though I fear you will never grow old, Sigurd son of Harald.’ He pointed to the longships. ‘Take to your ships and leave. Take the silver, too.’ He grimaced. ‘It is the price of peace. Now go while you can.’ He gestured to a soldier with a crested helmet who roared orders at which the Franks flowed like water into two columns of eight abreast. Then at another command they turned their backs on us, stamping their boots so that I felt the ground tremble.

Bishop Borgon looked horrified, as though he could not
believe they were just going to walk away from all that silver and, worse, the hurt done to his priest and through that the insult done to him. And yet it was clear that Alcuin, though no soldier, held the reins of this army in the emperor’s absence. Borgon’s giant stared balefully at me and I stared back with my blood-eye, promising him pain I could not inflict.

‘Father Egfrith, come with us,’ Borgon snapped, beckoning the monk with sharp gestures. ‘You have tried your best and cannot do more. Some men are beyond salvation. Even the gates of Heaven are closed to such as these.’

The Wessexman Wiglaf gave Egfrith a cloak, which he wrapped round himself and clutched at his neck. ‘Thank you, my lord bishop, but I will stay,’ he said, adding: ‘by your grace,’ with a slight bow. ‘My course is set and even the fiercest wind will not turn me from it.
Deus vult
.’ He sniffed loudly.

Borgon looked surprised. ‘God wills it?’ His thin lips curled. ‘Then may He grant you the patience of Job,’ he said, then turned and with his bodyguard and the other churchmen joined Alcuin as the blue-cloaked columns began to march.

‘How’s your head, lad?’ Penda asked as the shieldwall broke and men pissed their nerves away and drank long and deep from mead skins.

‘At least it’s still on his shoulders,’ Svein said, looking at Bjarni who was kneeling by his brother’s corpse. ‘Óðin gains a great warrior today.’

‘Bjorn saved my life,’ I said.

Svein swung the great bearded war axe on to his shoulder. ‘It was a good death,’ he said, walking off to help the others pile the silver back into their barrels.

‘Egfrith, what of Cynethryth?’ I asked. ‘If you had told me before, Bjorn would still be alive.’ In truth I knew Bjorn was dead because of me, because I had let the pockmarked Frankish priest feed a fire in my soul. But Egfrith did not deny
the accusation. Instead his little eyes were full of pity, which I liked even less.

‘I would have told you after the baptism, Raven,’ he said, ‘on my word I would have told you everything, but Christ was calling Sigurd and I must not be deaf to the Lord.’ He glowered. ‘Thanks to you your jarl’s soul remains in darkness.’

‘Spit it out, monk,’ I snapped, touching the egg-sized lump on the left side of my head, and Egfrith sighed, closing his eyes a moment.

‘Very well,’ he said with a nod. ‘Cynethryth is confined to the convent at Aix-la-Chapelle. Abbess Berta has her beaten,’ he grimaced, ‘and worse, I suspect. For she believes the girl’s soul has been defiled.’

‘By me,’ I said, anger rising inside me again.

‘Because she has lived with heathens outside the Lord’s shadow,’ Egfrith said, touching my arm. ‘I pleaded for her, Raven. It broke my heart to see what they had done to her. But the abbess is a powerful woman and I am just a monk. She even accused me of being tainted by heathen sin.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I am sorry. I know you care for the girl in your own way.’

‘Do not be sorry for me, monk,’ I snarled. ‘Save your pity for that foul bitch abbess and any other who has laid a hand on Cynethryth.’

A gust plucked at my cloak and Egfrith shivered, shaking his head glumly before walking away. And I stood with Bjorn’s blood cold and sticky across my face, my soul seething in its dark place.

THAT NIGHT WE BURNT BJORN’S CORPSE ON A GREAT PYRE AND THE
slick flames taunted the darkness beside the river where we camped. We dared not leave our ships or the hoard and go into the town, but neither were we going to skulk away from Alcuin’s threat like a whipped hound. The next day I went into the beechwoods with Bjarni and we found a boulder with one flat side and on to that rock Bjarni inscribed a rune pattern which spoke of his brother. It took the whole day and half of the next day too, but when he had finished the carving it was beautiful. A serpent coiled in the rock and inside the beast’s length was written,
Bjarni son of Anundr carved this stone in memory of Bjorn, who sailed with Sigurd and cut down his enemies. We will meet again in Óðin’s hall, my brother.
Into the carving we rubbed red clay dug from near the river and when we were done, the other Norsemen thought it was a very fine rune stone and drank themselves senseless in memory of the sword-brother they had lost.

‘Bjorn’s name will live for ever,’ Sigurd said, slapping Bjarni’s shoulder. ‘Old Anundr would be proud to see this stone so far from your home.’

‘He was a good brother,’ Bjarni said with a nod, emptying the drinking horn down his throat, and for me that stone was a powerful seidr thing, for it would whisper Bjorn’s tale until the end of the world. I still think of it sometimes, standing in that beechwood half swallowed by thickets, its red runes still as clear as the day Bjarni carved them with his chisel those many years ago.

We were rich. We were richer than any of us had ever believed possible and when we loaded the barrels of silver on to
Serpent
she creaked in complaint and sat a little lower against the wharf. We had honoured Bjorn and now it seemed many thought it was time to take the sea road north again before the winter came. We had certainly done enough to ensure that the name of the Wolfpack would be spoken around hearths by old men who had once sailed their own dragons to far-off lands, and by young men eager to test themselves and taste their own glory. Asgot was as happy as a fiend. That night, during a feast of roasted meats, he pointed at me from the far side of the fire, cackling and spilling glistening juices into his beard.