Raven: Sons of Thunder

by Giles Kristian

  ‘You can’t touch Ealdred, Penda,’ I shouted in English to the Wessexman.

  ‘Who says I can’t?’ he yelled above the clamour of men rousing themselves to violence with curses, prayers and howls.

  ‘Sigurd says it,’ I called, and Penda spat at his feet and growled something foul. Penda wanted his own revenge, but like the rest of us would have to wait. In the Fellowship Sigurd’s word was law and that law was backed by his own right arm and his father’s blade.

  I leant back in the stroke, heaving, relishing the swell of the muscles across my shoulders, for I was broad now and proud of it. Sweat began to pour down my back beneath my leather gambeson and mail. I wondered how Penda could spit, for my own mouth was as dry as old pine needles, though I was not the only one whose nerves were dancing. Two of the men not at the oars were pissing over the side even as we sped to a battle. I could hear old Asgot shouting at Serpent’s prow, invoking Óðin Lord of War, Thór Slayer of Giants, brave Týr the battle god, and other gods too, gods whose names I had never heard, to help us kill our enemies, slaughter them for being followers of the White Christ who was a god of lepers and weaklings. And whatever I thought of Asgot, there was comfort in his wild keening. We all put some stock in the godi’s magic because he was old and skinny and had fought with Sigurd’s father and yet was somehow still alive when stronger men were not.

  ‘Oars in!’ Sigurd yelled. We moved like a squall, pulling the oars back through the ports and stowing them with a thump and clatter before stuffing leather plugs into the holes. Now I got my chance to see what was happening. Fjord-Elk was all seething panic. Ealdred must have recognized Jörmungand and known then that Sigurd had come for him and if he had any sense at all he must have been terrified. His steersman had changed course, trying to take the ship out of our path and into the open channel. He might as well have been hoping for a boatload of young virgins to carry him away on a ship made of silver and gold. If they had seen us earlier they might have stood some chance, though not much of one. As it stood, our prow would strike Fjord-Elk amidships, and when that happened corpses would be made.

  I gripped my spear tight enough for the knuckles to whiten, for I did not think that ramming the other ship would be a good thing for anyone. I could see faces now, perhaps even Ealdred standing at Fjord-Elk’s stern. I took a deep, stuttering breath and glanced at Sigurd, thinking that being amongst that clamour without clamouring myself was somehow like being underwater.

  ‘Now, Knut!’ Sigurd roared, dropping his arm, his eyes suddenly wild. Knut pushed the tiller and Serpent heeled violently so that some of us fell and I looked back just as our hull sent a wave crashing into Fjord-Elk with enough force to rock her like a child’s cradle and send the crew reeling.

  ‘Kill them!’ Sigurd screamed, hurling his spear into the panicked press of the enemy who were desperately trying to arm themselves.

  ‘Gut the leaking-arsed mares, you blood-loving wolves!’ Olaf bellowed, throwing his own spear, which took a huge, grey-haired man in the face. We all screamed and hurled our spears and it was devastating, for when a man with shoulders of iron from years of rowing launches a spear it is not always stopped by flesh; sometimes it tears right through the body. Our enemies had been under sail on a level sea with no reason to expect trouble, so were not wearing mail, and now there was a desperate press by Fjord-Elk’s shallow hold as they clamoured and brawled to get to the weapons stowed there. With the enemy packed so tightly it was hard for us to miss and blood-soaked screams rent the dawn. In the crush some of the Wessexmen tried to use each other as shields. Black Floki and Bram already had two grappling hooks biting into Fjord-Elk’s hull and they grimaced as they heaved on the ropes to pull the ships together. Osk and Arnvid threw two more hooks. Osk’s did not catch but Arnvid’s did and Bjarni gripped that rope with him and hauled. Once the grappling hooks were in the wood the only chance the enemy had was if they cut the ropes, which was no easy thing with spears streaking amongst them like lightning bolts. Three white-faced, wide-eyed Wessexmen stood at the stern, drawing bows and sending arrows into us, but the ships were rocking in the fray enough to spoil their aim. Still, one or two hammered into us, bouncing off shields or glancing off brynjas as the ships came together with a thump.

  The Norsemen roared and that sound was thunder. Sigurd was the first to leap across, battering two Wessexmen with his shield and taking a third in the neck with his sword. All along Serpent’s length, Norsemen jumped, axes and swords swinging, carving into Fjord-Elk’s unprepared crew, and I jumped after Penda, slipping on Fjord-Elk’s deck which was already blood-slick. A man jabbed a spear at my chest but I met the blade with my shield and scythed my sword into his shoulder where it stuck like a knife in a tough joint of meat. He screamed and I rammed my left boot into his belly, doubling him over, and the blade came free so I whomped it down into his skull. It was easy killing. The English were not used to moving around Fjord-Elk and they tripped and fell as we hacked them to pieces, their torn flesh steaming in the morning air so that a dragon’s breath fog hung over the deck.

  ‘Ealdred! Ealdred! Where are you, worm?’ Sigurd was yelling through the din. Men were begging for mercy, but when they saw they would find none some jumped over Fjord-Elk’s side and Norsemen ran across the deck to spear them like fish. A man dropped to his knees before Penda, wringing his hands and babbling as Penda swung his sword to send the man’s head thumping across the oak deck, spraying blood as it bounced. Seeing this, another man who had thrown down his sword bent and clasped the leather grip again. If he knew Penda he must have known that begging would help about as much as fouling his breeks, so he chose a good death instead.

  ‘Tell Satan that your bastard lord will suck his prick soon!’ Penda snarled, knocking the man’s sword aside. But the man was quick enough to parry Penda’s next attack, which made Penda half smile and step back, holding his sword wide and inviting the man to try to kill him. The man suddenly screamed and swung his sword furiously and Penda leapt back and spun full circle on his heel, scything his blade into the Wessexman’s neck, carving a splinter from his collarbone on the way, and that terrible white sliver pointed skyward as the man dropped to his knees. Bright blood spurted and stuttered from the wound and his jaw hung slack, a black hole in his black beard.

  ‘Hungry?’ Penda gnarled. ‘Eat this.’ He rammed his sword into the man’s mouth and the blade burst out the back of his skull and still the Wessexman stared.

  The bloodlust had barely taken a grip on me when I realized it was all but over. We had ploughed through the Wessexmen with sickening ease and now we stood amongst torn bodies and stinking open bowels and dead white faces that were twisted and frozen in shock and pain. Instinctively, we made a shieldwall, four lines deep across Fjord-Elk’s deck before the mast step. I looked back to Serpent and saw that Asgot and seven or eight Norsemen were still aboard her, as there had not been room for everyone to join the fight for risk of us getting in each other’s way. These men stood ready with spears or bows, watching the English survivors who stood in a last desperate knot before their lord at the bow. They were big, grim-faced men, Ealdred’s household warriors. Mauger, his bodyguard, was there and he must have known what lay in store for him, that the worms would soon be sucking his flesh. Though if he was afraid he showed no signs of it. There were five of them. All must have been putting on their mail whilst we were killing their countrymen and that had taken some nerve, meaning we would be fools to take such men lightly. They stood in a pitifully small but perfectly tight shieldwall before the dark wooden cross they had mounted in place of Sigurd’s proud dragon’s head. Ealdred’s long moustaches were shiny with grease. His dark eyes stared out balefully.

  Sigurd stepped from our shieldwall, his sword slick with dark gore. I could imagine all too well what he thought of the cross at Fjord-Elk’s bow.

  ‘You are a man of no worth, Ealdred,’ he said in English, ‘and your word means less than the shit from a cow. You betrayed me. You even kille
d your own son.’ Sigurd spat because this last was so disgusting to him. ‘I have only steel for you, Ealdred. I have only the raven to peck the flesh from your bones, the wolf to chew the marrow and the worms to feed on the filth that remains until you are nothing but a stain in the mud.’

  The Wessexmen held their shields firm, waiting for us to attack. They stood proudly even as they stared at their own deaths and I admit I did not want to kill them. They were fathers and husbands, but mostly they were warriors and they showed no fear, nor did they beg for their lives. It was their ill-wyrd that their lord was a milk-livered nothing and I hoped they could be saved even as I knew they could not.

  Splashes at our rear told me that Norsemen were tipping the English corpses over Fjord-Elk’s side before their filth could seep into the oak deck. Even the sea breeze could not chase off the stench of shit and blood and I did not look forward to the hard scrubbing we would have to do when this was over.

  Ealdred stepped up on to the bow’s fighting platform so that he stood head and shoulders above his men, a tempting target to our bow- and spearmen.

  ‘I am a lord of Wessex!’ he said. ‘What are you? You are heathen scum writhing in the shadows like maggots in a sheep’s carcass. I do not deal with such as you. No Christian man should, unless he wants a spear in his back. Come, Sigurd, you son of a goat. Come and taste our English steel. Or do you only fight unarmed men?’

  In truth it was well said, even if most of the Norsemen were none the wiser. We hefted our shields and moved forward, but Sigurd bawled that we should hold.

  ‘Good, Ealdred,’ the jarl said. ‘I would have wagered that you would beg like the huglausi you are.’ Coward was a heavy word to throw. ‘But it pleases me to see you would rather die a man’s death even though you have lived as a nothing. Wessex is fine land. A honeycomb like that will need men who are ready to die with a sword in their hands, or else it will swarm with Norsemen in twenty years. Norse bairns will tug your women’s skirts and those bairns will grow into men who whisper to Óðin and Thór. Your White Christ will be a piss stain of a memory.’ Ealdred eyeballed Sigurd fiercely, his long moustache trembling.

  ‘I’ll fight you, Sigurd!’ Mauger bellowed, his broad face red and hateful. ‘Fuck the gods! Let us see what men can do.’

  Some of the Norsemen grumbled and murmured that we should just finish them all instead of talking. They could not understand most of what was said, but they knew a challenge when they saw one and it unsettled them. Mauger was Ealdred’s best warrior; a granite-hard man who had lived through many battles. I had heard it said that Mauger was the greatest warrior that Wessex had so I did not want Sigurd to fight him. But Sigurd was a born warrior too and even a jarl can be in thrall to his honour. To Sigurd such a challenge shone brighter than a journey chest brimming with hack silver.

  ‘Ealdred, first you will fight me yourself and if you do I will let your men go free after I have killed you. They are loyal men, it seems to me. They deserve better than to die for such as you.’ He raised his sword and pointed it at the ealdorman. ‘What do you say? Will you fight me?’

  Ealdred’s lip curled like old leather. ‘I will not,’ he sneered. ‘But I will send Mauger in my stead, to fight you or any man.’ Mauger nodded resolutely. The muscles in his bare arms squirmed beneath his many warrior rings and tattoos. He was a grim, grizzled, stone-faced thing and I shuddered for any man who had to fight him.

  ‘I’ll take the bastard!’ Penda yelled, eyeing Mauger hungrily.

  ‘What are they saying, Raven?’ Bjorn hissed beside me. We were in the third line peering over other men’s shoulders to see what was happening.

  ‘Mauger has challenged Sigurd,’ I said in Norse, raising a ragged hail of insults from Norse mouths.

  ‘I’m going to shit on your heart!’ one man yelled.

  ‘Your own mothers will not be able to piece you together, you fucking farts!’ another hollered. Black Floki and Svein the Red pleaded with Sigurd to let them fight Mauger instead, but Sigurd told them to hold their tongues.

  ‘As jarl it is my right,’ Sigurd said, sheathing his sword. ‘Put down your weapons, men of Wessex, and I give you my word that you will not fatten the ravens this morning. I accept Mauger’s challenge. If he wins you will all go free.’

  ‘And if he does not win?’ one of the Wessexmen asked, getting a sibilant rebuke from Ealdred for his trouble. I guessed that his situation had made the man bold enough to ask the question, for surely his fear of his ealdorman was shadowed now by his fear of us.

  Sigurd shrugged. ‘If I win I will weave your wyrds myself. Perhaps you will die. Perhaps not.’

  The English warriors looked at each other then and their minds must have squirmed like snakes, for they had to balance the chance of Mauger winning against the certain but honourable death they would win by fighting us now rather than laying down their arms. A man’s fate, his wyrd, is a fog-veiled thing. These Wessexmen could not have known just hours before, as they sailed the sleeping sea, what that dawn would bring. Heathens had appeared as if from their piss-soaked childhood nightmares. Those same heathens whom they had thought destroyed had come for vengeance. We had taken the threads of these Wessexmen’s futures and we had severed them. But they were household men, proud warriors loyal even to the end, and at Ealdred’s word they bent and laid their swords on Fjord-Elk’s deck.

  ‘It’ll be the hólmgang,’ Bjorn said, the glint of excitement in his eyes, ‘done in the old way.’

  ‘But I am thinking it will take more than the first spilt blood to settle this one, brother,’ Bjarni said with a grimace.

  We split into two groups with Olaf taking charge of Fjord-Elk, and I found myself back on Serpent with Jarl Sigurd and our English captives. There were just enough men to row both ships, though both would lack for speed and this was a problem Sigurd would have to consider at some point. On the other hand, with smaller crews they were lighter, despite the packed holds, and under sail they would fly like winged dragons.

  ‘Tie them up,’ Sigurd commanded as we wriggled out of blood-slick mail and took off sweat-soaked helmets. They would stay filth-covered until the wind was enough to raise the sails and then we could clean them. It did not take long for the flies to come. They landed on mail, on our arms and on the deck, feeding on the congealing gore, and for a time we swiped at them but after a while we gave up. Men talk of the raven and the wolf as the eaters of the dead, the scavengers who come to every field of the slain. Rarely do they mention the damned flies.

  Jarl Sigurd nodded, spitting over the ship’s side. ‘Cast us off, Uncle,’ he called.

  ‘Aye,’ Olaf said, shaking his head and tutting as he yanked the grappling hooks out of Fjord-Elk’s sheer strake. The scars would be shameful reminders of how we had let the ship fall into the hands of our enemies.

  ‘Ah, we can replace those sheer strakes easy enough, Uncle,’ Bram said, slapping Olaf on the shoulder before moving to another hook. The ships rocked gently, bumping together in the still dawn sea. In no time we were free and Ealdred’s men were bound and made to sit at Serpent’s bow beneath Jörmungand. Sigurd did not tie the ealdorman’s wrists, which was an insult rather than a sign of respect for the man’s rank. It was Sigurd’s way of showing that he considered Ealdred no warrior and no more threat than a woman or a child.

  The rising tide had carried both ships nearer to the shore and so we rowed out to sea, giving the rocky promontory a wide berth before re-entering the bay where Cynethryth and Father Egfrith waited on the beach. I was anxious to be with Cynethryth and so I suggested that Penda take my oar and get some rowing practice whilst it was just a matter of countering the current and holding Serpent in one place. He was not what I would call an eager apprentice. I could tell this because he called me a dog’s arse and told me to screw a mountain troll backwards.

  ‘You have to learn some time, Penda,’ I said, feeling the smile behind my eyes. ‘Better now than out there in the teeth of a storm. Just watch Arnvid and do
the same. I have faith in you.’

  ‘You impudent whelp, how hard can it be?’ he said. It’s true my grin did not make him any keener to prove himself, but after a few more insults he sat on my journey chest and gripped the smooth spruce stave.

  ‘An Englishman at our oars! You trying to sink us, Raven?’ Bjorn called, stirring a smattering of laughter and a few prayers to Njörd.

  ‘I hope the girl and the Christ slave can swim, Raven,’ Sigurd said as we looked to the shore. ‘This high tide will be hiding rocks I would rather avoid. They will have to come to us.’

  ‘Cynethryth swims like a fish, lord,’ I said, remembering my struggle to keep up with her that morning. Lying with her in the sheltered cove already felt like a lifetime ago. Now her father was our prisoner and I did not know what Cynethryth would think about that. ‘As for the monk, lord, I don’t know if he can swim that far. I hope he can’t.’ Sigurd chuckled. ‘Or perhaps Asgot can ask Njörd to send a sea monster to swallow the weasel,’ I said.

  ‘Then I would pity the monster,’ Sigurd said, ‘for I am thinking that Egfrith would taste foul. Like rancid milk or rotten eggs . . . or worse.’ He began to tie his thick golden beard into one plait. ‘It was an easy fight, hey, Raven?’

  ‘Too easy, lord,’ I replied, slapping at a fly that would not give up some crusted blood on my arm. ‘I almost felt sorry for them.’

  He shook his head, tying off the plait with a strip of leather. The sound of chopping wood hammered across the water as Fjord-Elk’s crew dealt with the cross at her prow. ‘Felt sorry for them? They would have cut off your balls and fed them to you if they could have. You are a strange one, Raven. Loving your enemies is better left to the Christ slaves. I took you into the Fellowship because you share Thór’s love of a good fight, not so that you could pity the men who want to wind-dry your innards.’