The Raven and the Cross

by C. R. May

  Erik spun around as he landed, his hand reaching up to retrieve Jomal as a dip of the shoulder allowed his shield to slip down on its carrying strap. The big board came up the instant his fingers curled about the handle, and Erik moved into a fighting stance as Helgrim was thrown back from the roof to land on his back before him with a grunt.

  Two spearmen were coming through the gate, snarls of hatred twisting their features as they sought to skewer the invaders before they could recover from the leap. Erik recognised the men as the pair who had been wheeling the barrel towards the foot of the staircase, and he congratulated himself that his own attack must have drawn men away from Arinbjorn’s own as they came. Before they could close, one of his opponent’s features changed from belligerence to horror as a javelin arced through the air to pierce his neck, punching through muscle, bone and sinew to emerge in a jet of blood as the man pitched forward onto the sets. Sparks flashed as a second dart skipped up from the stone courtyard to disappear into the gloom, and Erik knew that the men on the walls were attempting to rake the attackers before they could close up with their king. But the survivor had realised too, and he increased his pace to close the gap between them knowing that a backward step would quickly prove fatal.

  Committed to his attack now the man came on, and Erik watched the point of his spear quickly grow in size as he timed his counterstrike. The moment the man’s shoulder moved to thrust the weapon Erik shot forward, knocking the spearpoint aside as he swept his axe across in a low strike to take off his opponent’s leg at the knees. Erik had used the move to disable foemen wherever he had carried Jomal against an enemy. It rarely failed, but this spearman was wily, and Erik was forced to skip aside as the man vaulted the axe and swept his spear back around in one fluid movement. Erik was still moving and a roll of his shoulders was enough to send the point of the blade whistling past his chin, but his opponent recovered quickly, darting backwards on the balls of his feet as Helgrim swung his sword blade at his legs from his position on the ground.

  Erik moved across to cover his huskarl as he clawed himself to his feet, watching his opponent’s eyes widen in alarm as he did so. Before he could move forward to renew his attack the spearman stabbed out forcing him to throw himself aside, but as the blade jerked back Erik realised it had been a bluff, and thrown off balance he could only watch helplessly as the man darted through a doorway and made his escape.

  It was only when Thorstein’s familiar voice spoke calmly at his shoulder that Erik understood, and he turned his head to the sound and blinked at the sight which met his eyes. Warriors were still pouring across the palisade all along the length of Dublin’s northern wall, as others bunched at the head of the stairs before hurrying down into the town itself. It seemed that the styrismen on the little snekkjur had managed to beach their longships on the bank of the Liffey at last, and a snatched glimpse of a familiar face here and there in the crush confirmed it. Thorstein repeated himself, and Erik tore his eyes from the sight as his huskarl flashed a smile. ‘I said taking the stairs is too easy for you then lord?’

  A breath of wind found its way into the confines of the town, and Erik dipped his head to look out beyond his own bloodied axe banner as it was teased out before him. Directly opposite the place where they were stood, a set of steps led down to the street which skirted the base of the wall. They must have been a few paces away when he had launched himself from the walkway, but the truth was they had been too close. With his attention captured by the fighting all along the wall he had failed to notice the staircase almost under his nose, but he knew that his leap would have been seen by the men of the army and given the choice he would do so again. Not only had they witnessed their king become the first man to enter the town itself, but the manner in which he had achieved the feat would be told and retold around campfires and hearths all across the North. It would add to his reputation and a warrior’s reputation, as all worthy men knew, was worth more than a dragon hoard of gold.

  The courtyard was filling quickly as the men of the Draki rallied to their lord’s side; his huskarls were surrounding him, as watchful as any wolfhound as the clatter and din which told of heavy fighting began to carry to them from the western wall. ‘That will be the Irish attack,’ Kolbein said as he cocked an ear to listen. ‘It was nice of them to draw the enemy away.’

  ‘It’s true, we had it easy,’ Erik admitted. ‘King Conalach has only been high king for a year, and although the title is largely symbolic he needed a victory over the Finngaill, the fair foreigners as they call us, here in Dublin to prove his worthiness.’ He gave a shrug. ‘If he is prepared to trade the lives of his warriors for personal glory, maybe that is their way. Their loss is our gain, but if they have breached the defences we will have to move fast.’ Erik swept the area with a look. A sea of faces were turned his way as they awaited his decision, and Erik snapped out a command as he realised the danger that the momentum would bleed from the attack. ‘Move into the town boys,’ he said. ‘But don’t go beyond the first road which crosses your path. Hold the perimeter until I return. Remember,’ he said with a look. ‘We are just as much Finngaill as Blacaire Gudrodsson’s boys in the fortress to our brave allies. If you are approached by any Irishmen encourage them to move along.’ He lowered his gaze to the knot of men immediately surrounding him as the others began to filter through the alleyways. ‘You lot follow me. As fine a town as Dublin looks there is no time to lose if we are to pull this off, I want us to be in and out of here like a sawyer’s elbow.’

  Erik led the way back to the nearest steps as the huskarls followed on. Thorstein was back at his shoulder, Erik’s banner thrust high as it marked the location of the king. Men were still hurrying down from the walkway above, but they pressed themselves against the wall, thrust out their chests and grinned like fools as the begetter of their overwhelming victory bounded past them. Up on the footway Erik looked out across a town now clearly in the throes of ransack. Away to the west the warriors of the Irish clans were still surging across the paling, the flames which marked the progress of the earlier waves casting a wraithlike glow all around. Immediately below him the big doors which opened on to the waterfront had now been dragged inward, and the last of the warriors from the snekkjur were streaming through to add to the mayhem. As the last of the men to climb the krage moved down into the town Arinbjorn and Helgi skipped up past them two steps at a time, wearing a smile as wide as Trondheim fjord. ‘That couldn’t have gone much better!’ He nodded down at Erik’s side. ‘Are you leaving that there as a keepsake, or are you going to use it to hang your gloves on in winter?’

  Erik looked, and his mouth gaped as he saw the arrow lodged in his side for the first time. Much to Arinbjorn’s amusement Erik blinked in surprise as his mind attempted to recall where he had received the injury, but the memory returned as Thorstein and Helgrim reached them. ‘On the ladder,’ he said in amazement. ‘When I reached up for a handhold there was a stab of pain in my side!’

  ‘Arrows tend to do that,’ Helgrim replied as the others chuckled happily, ‘that’s what they are for. You got that just before I bundled you up to the parapet.’

  Erik felt along the shaft, moving a hand to discover where the arrow head had exited. He gave it a delicate tease as he braced for the reaction, but the pain when it came told him that he had had a lucky escape; the dart had been deflected by the rings of his mail shirt, luckily away from his innards. ‘I will get it seen to when we have finished here,’ he said, and flashed them a smile. ‘Unless I decide to keep it. The men will like it.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Thorsten said. ‘Anlaf told me to look after you, and you know what an old woman he can be; that’s coming out now.’ As he moved off to find a flame, Helgrim crouched and began to trim the goose feathers from the shaft where it protruded from Erik’s side. It was not the first arrow that Erik had ever taken and he knew what was to follow, but he had a battle to plan and he turned to Arinbjorn as his mind returned to the progress of the attack and
Helgrim’s knife chipped away. ‘What can you tell me about our right flank?’

  ‘It is going well, lord. Gamli has set up a perimeter facing west and I have anchored my shield wall to his position with my left wing here, on the men of the Draki.’ He cocked his head. ‘If you still intend to round up the thralls and head back to the ships, I doubt that all of the crews will follow Erik. Our own will of course, but the cutthroats we added to the fleet will have their own ideas. Once men like that get their feet inside a town the size of Dublin they are loathe to turn back until they have plundered enough to fill their sea chests and drained their balls a few times.’

  ‘Let them,’ Erik replied. ‘Give them free rein to move into the town. If they have yet to return when the Liffey ebbs and the slaves are aboard we go without them.’ He pulled a rapacious smile. ‘They will not be sailing south with us, and the fewer men who know where we are heading the better. If they are still here when we depart, I wouldn’t give much for their chances.’

  ‘You still don’t trust King Conalach then?’

  Erik shook his head. ‘As I said to my lads earlier, we are just as much Finngaill as Blacaire Gudrodsson and his men holed up in the fortress. Even my own father cautioned me never to trust the Irish when I was a youth, the night he gifted me Jomal and named me Bloodaxe. They will fight anyone, even themselves, and they outnumber us three or four to one; why share the spoils with hated Norsemen when you can add to your own plunder and glory with another victory and sell the survivors to thraldom?’

  ‘So we round up the best of the slaves and catch the tide, lord?’ Kolbein asked. ‘Do you want me to find out how the lads from Orkney are getting on?’

  Erik shook his head as he gingerly kneaded his side. ‘Helgrim and Thorstein will come with me once they have taken care of my latest war wound. You go and make sure that the boys hold their ground and await my orders.’ He turned back to his foster-brother. ‘Arinbjorn, let my sons know that they are to be ready to move when I send word. Once the high king gets wind that we are returning to our ships anything can happen.’

  Helgrim had been busily trimming the arrow shaft as near to the entry wound as he could manage, cutting back Erik’s padded undershirt and splaying rings of mail to get a better look. He blew the last of the shavings away as he straightened his back. ‘That should do it,’ he said proudly. ‘That’s a proper job if I say so myself.’

  Arinbjorn threw Erik a look of sympathy at the pain to come, before clapping him on the shoulder and leading Helgi away to do his bidding. Thorstein was trotting up the staircase, the warm glow from the small iron pot swinging at his side and the knife handle poking above the rim revealing that he had been successful in locating a flame. ‘It’s not quite a forge,’ he said as he reached them, ‘but it will have to do.’

  The high walk was clear of men now that the doors to the harbour were open save for the odd body still lying where it had fallen, and Erik scanned the ground below as Thorstein let a ball of spit drop onto the blade and watched it sizzle. In the town itself the line of fires marking the progress of king Conalach’s army of Irishmen had reached midtown; they would have to move faster or risk being caught pinned against the wall. Workshops and the larger bulk of warehouses crowded the small alleyways which ran away from the northern wall, and Erik forced his mind to work on the defence as the searing heat of the blade approached his skin and he clenched his jaw against the pain to come.

  11

  THE TAOISEACH

  Erik strode between the pens, running his eyes across the goods as he tallied the likely profit. ‘And these are the best?’

  Erland gave a shrug. ‘They all look fit and healthy lord, not a trace of disease that I can see. That is the beauty of raiding slavers, they know what they are about and have already sorted out the barley from the chaff.’

  ‘And what does Skuli say?’

  ‘He can take the lot. He said it will be a bit of a squeeze, but they are hardly in a position to complain after all.’

  Erik nodded. ‘Get them all onboard then. We added him to the fleet for his knowledge of slaving, it would be absurd to waste time on this when we have a tide to catch.’ He lifted his eyes to look out across the slave pens as he saw the trader casting an experienced eye over his cargo of misery. Short and slight the man looked waif-like against the burly warriors surrounding him, but Erik had accumulated enough knowledge of the world on his own travels to know that such men often made up for lack of size with a burning determination to outwit those who underestimated him and turn their scorn against them. Allied to a business mind as sharp as any sword blade, Skuli had risen to own a fleet of three knarr and become wealthier than many of the traders who plied the Irish Sea.

  ‘Shall I fetch him?’ Helgrim said.

  Erik flicked a look at his guard as he replied. ‘Just tell him to load them aboard. And let him know that he had best get a move on, or he may find that he is a guest of the high king and a bevy of irate slavers searching for their stock.’

  Erik turned back to Erland as Helgrim moved away. ‘Where are my sons?’

  The Orcadian indicated a large warehouse with a jerk of his chin. ‘Beyond that, they are anchoring the flank along with the men from my brother Arnkel’s ship.’

  ‘And the other snekkjur crews?’

  Erland blinked as if he had been dreading the question. ‘They are somewhere in the town lord.’ He indicated the nearby passageways and alleys with an apologetic flick. ‘As soon as we were inside the walls they took off. I tried to tell them that we had been ordered to hold the perimeter until you came up but they wouldn’t listen. As far as they were concerned they had taken an oath to enter the town; once inside that oath had been fulfilled and they were free to plunder at will.’

  Erik nodded. ‘I just had much the same conversation with Arinbjorn and a few of the others, if my hunch is correct they may not be alive very much longer to regret their choice. When they do come across the high king’s warriors, I daresay they will not be in the mood to ask them whether they gave their oath to Erik Haraldsson or Blacaire Gudrodsson. Any Norseman will become an enemy to men drunk on victory and looted ale, and once men start dying it is a very difficult thing to stop.’ A gleam came into Erik’s eye. ‘We may even recoup the first payment of silver they were paid before we left Orkney. If they die or go missing in the town before we leave we shall carry away their hulls; I doubt that many of them had the opportunity to stash their loot on the way here, and they will not be needing them again if they are still in the town once we sail.’

  He clicked his tongue as he ran through the plan a final time and his eyes searched the southern skyline. All of Dublin appeared to be ablaze now, with only the southeastern corner where the beleaguered Norse and their allies still held out in the hilltop fort overlooking the Black Pool itself shrouded in darkness. The indiscipline of the ship men who had bolstered his force was unfortunate but to be expected; such men were landless freebooters out for what they could get. ‘As soon as Skuli and his men have hustled the thralls through the gates I will send word for you to follow on, then I will pull the men of the Draki back to the main gate.’ He cast a look towards the wall, where the sapwood of the kragi carried to Dublin in Erland’s Valkyrie shone white in the light of the flames. ‘You entered the town here so you will not have seen it, but there is an open area between the gate and the nearest buildings with the roadway running straight ahead into the centre of Dublin itself. We will form up there, and hold the gateway until the men from both flanks file behind us back to the dockside. Cast off and await us midstream, just in case we need spears and bowmen to cover our own backs when we regain our ship.’

  Helgrim was pushing his way through the crowd as he returned from speaking to the trader, and Erik narrowed his eyes in question as he saw his huskarl raise his spear and point to the west. Thorstein had seen it too, and the banner man supplied the answer to his lord’s question before he could turn his head. ‘Hauk is on his way, and he doesn’t look lik
e he is coming to ask us what we fancy for dinner.’ Erik turned and found that his hirdman had already rushed up.

  ‘Kolbein sends word that some of the high king’s men have reached our outer perimeter lord.’

  Erik nodded. ‘How do they appear? Friendly? Sober?’

  Hauk shook his head, snorting as he did so. ‘Neither friendly nor sober, they are parading Norse heads on spears; Kolbein recognised a few of them from the men we brought along and thought that you should know.’

  Erik turned back to Erland. ‘It’s started then. Get the thralls out of the town and into the knarrs as quick as you can.’ He looked across. Skuli was prising the mouth of a raven haired girl open as he examined the condition of her teeth. ‘Use your own men if our friend is too slow, but get them to the ships as fast as you can. Don’t wait for any word from me; as soon as they are on their way pull in your horns and follow on. We need to catch the ebb tide or we risk being stranded here alongside an army of drunken Irishmen. Now that they have tasted our blood there is no telling how much control Conalach has over the various clansmen in his army, even if he wanted to halt the fighting.’

  Erland’s lips curled into a savage smile. ‘Or we could take the fight to them, lord. If we drive them from the city, we can keep the riches here and still carry away the slaves.’

  ‘We could and we would prevail,’ Erik replied, flashing a smile in return. Conalach’s army is an army in name only. The high king calls upon the chieftains who owe him allegiance to provide fighters and they gather the clansmen. Every man fights his hardest under the eyes of his kin; but the strength is also their greatest weakness. Many of the clans harbour grievances and hatreds of their own which go back through generations; they can hate the men fighting alongside them more than the enemy. But I am not going to fight myself to a standstill, just so that Blacaire and his men can sweep down from the fortress and finish us off. As much as we would like to drive these Irishmen from the city, we stick to the plan.’