Raven: Sons of Thunder

by Giles Kristian

  ‘I said I almost felt sorry for them, lord,’ I said. ‘Then one of them pissed himself and soaked my boots and I thought to Hel with them.’

  Sigurd laughed. ‘That’s better, lad. That’s my Raven, my son of thunder.’

  We gestured to Cynethryth and Egfrith that they would have to swim out to us and I could see Cynethryth encouraging the monk, even taking his hand and dragging him into the surf. In the event they swam easily, making me wonder if Egfrith was more otter than weasel. We lowered a rope which they clung to for a while, catching their breath whilst we backed oars to counter the current, then we hauled them in like fish and gave them blankets. Then Cynethryth saw her father below Serpent’s prow and her face, already pale from the cold water, turned death white.

  ‘I want to talk to him,’ she said, water dripping from her long hair and spotting the deck. I saw Ealdred’s eyes fall on his daughter. He looked as though he had been struck in the face with an oar blade. He stood though, raising his chin, and gave the girl a strained smile whilst the Englishmen around him kept their eyes lowered. They had their own fates to think of now. I turned to ask Sigurd if Cynethryth could go to her father, but the jarl swung his eyes over my shoulder and I turned back to see that Cynethryth was already halfway along the deck, tying up her hair as she went, her wet blanket discarded.

  ‘Make sure she doesn’t kill him, Raven,’ Sigurd said, scratching his bearded cheek.

  I followed Cynethryth.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I STOOD AT CYNETHRYTH’S SHOULDER, STARING BALEFULLY at Ealdred who ignored me completely. His eyes were on his daughter’s and they seemed to have wilted like his moustache.

  ‘Have these devils harmed you?’ Ealdred asked Cynethryth.

  I wanted to tell Ealdred what I thought of him. Instead, I clutched the pommel of the sword at my side and bit my tongue.

  ‘No, Father,’ she said. ‘Why should they harm me? I did not betray them.’ The words sounded flat as barley bread but the accusation struck Ealdred for all that, for he clenched his sharp jaw, the muscles bouncing in his cheek as he stood swaying with Serpent’s gentle roll.

  ‘Why are you here, daughter? Amongst these . . .’ his eyes flicked to me, ‘these savages? This scowling fiend has bewitched you, is that not so? Otherwise how could you stand to be near him, daughter? He is the spawn of the Dark One. You must know of the loathsome things they believe? Of their uncivilized ways?’

  Cynethryth looked at me and I swear she seemed to be weighing the truth in this. I folded my arms and raised my eyebrows, inviting her response, but she turned back to the ealdorman. ‘My brother’s death is on you,’ she said. ‘You might as well have killed him with your own hands.’

  ‘Are you forgetting that it was the heathens that took him? Took you both in bonds from Coenwulf’s land? If anyone killed my son it was them. You think I don’t grieve for Weohstan? For my son? Now I have nothing. God has forsaken us, Cynethryth. I believe that now.’ Ealdred was trembling and I hoped for his sake he would not cry like a meyla, a little girl. ‘He has turned his back on our family. Look at us, girl.’

  ‘Weohstan loved you,’ Cynethryth said. Her voice was grief-hollow, wrung out like an old cloth. ‘He was a better man than you.’

  ‘Ah, Cynethryth,’ Ealdred said, leaning towards her and forcing a grim half-grin, ‘at least we agree on that.’

  I touched Cynethryth’s elbow. ‘Come. Leave him to stew in his own grease,’ I said. Two gulls screeched and tumbled above Serpent’s prow and one of them skimmed the sea, rising with nothing but a desolate cry. Cynethryth seemed about to speak again, then she gave a slight shake of her head and turned and walked with me to the stern.

  ‘He’ll be worm food before sunset,’ Sigurd growled in Norse as we passed him at the mast step.

  ‘The sooner the better, lord,’ I muttered in the same language, bending to pull a dry blanket from the hold for Cynethryth. I gave it to her and she went to my row bench and sat by Penda with the blanket round her shoulders, hugging her knees and looking out to sea. I wanted to go to her, to try to recapture some morsel of what we had shared that dawn in the sandy cove. And yet I felt that whatever it was was already dissipating on the morning’s breath of a breeze, like vapour from an open wound, and would be lost for ever. To my mind, Ealdred’s presence poisoned the waters for Cynethryth and me. I would have been happy for Asgot to walk over to Serpent’s prow, slit the ealdorman’s throat and dump him into the ocean as an offering to Njörd or any other lord of Asgard the godi was on talking terms with.

  I took over from Penda at the oar, which the Norsemen were happy about. The Englishman was happy too, judging by the way he fled before I had even taken a grip of the oar so that the stave slipped through the port and we might have lost it if I had not leapt for it, smashing my knee against the hull for my trouble. Some of the men swore and I was embarrassed, but Penda did not seem in the least concerned. He sat on the deck, took a whetstone from his belt, spat on it and began to sharpen his sword.

  Egfrith had found the gospel book in Fjord-Elk’s hold. None of the Norsemen had wanted anything to do with that White Christ thing and so Knut had had to bring Serpent alongside Fjord-Elk so that the monk could scramble aboard.

  ‘Here it is! By the grace of the Almighty, here it is!’ Egfrith had screeched after a while rummaging in Fjord-Elk’s hold, talking to himself or perhaps his god the whole time. He had clutched a silk bag against his chest and his little eyes had been wide and wild. ‘I have found it! The book is safe again!’ he yelled. ‘Praise the merciful Lord, who has entrusted the precious words of Saint Jerome to His humble servant. Calix meus inebrians, hey Raven? My cup makes me drunk.’

  ‘I have known little girls who can outdrink you, monk,’ I had said, to which he had batted a hand as though I had not the wits to understand anything.

  With our English prisoners, the gospel book of Saint Jerome, and Fjord-Elk riding our wake, we set an easy rhythm at the oars, heading south along the coast. We did not hug the land so closely now, as Sigurd did not want to run into any Frankish vessels that might be patrolling the shallow waters. Nor did he want any fishing skiffs returning to Frankish hearths with news of two surf dragons prowling offshore. But we were told to keep a lookout for an island, or the mouth of the Sicauna river, or a secluded monastery ripe as a windfall apple nestled along that green coast. For such a place, stuffed with silver and guarded by monks, was not a thing any good sword-Norse could ignore. If the river came first we would turn our bows and sail north again, for Karolus’s kingdom was no place for heathens. As for a deserted island, that was what we needed, or rather what Jarl Sigurd needed to observe the age-old tradition of the hólmgang.

  ‘Hólmgang?’ Penda asked, tilting his sword in the sunlight, checking its length for notches. ‘What heathen horseshit is a hólmgang?’ Cynethryth’s eyes were on me too as I pulled on the oar in perfect unison with Arnvid in front. Her face was pinched, her lips tight, and I guessed she was feeling seasick again.

  ‘It’s a fight, Penda,’ I said, ‘between two men. It must be on an island, I think.’ But that was as much as I knew and so I asked Bjarni.

  ‘It is a set-to over honour,’ Bjarni said, his rowing fluid and effortless. ‘A man’s honour is like a set of scales evenly balanced, poised in harmony. A man must never let that balance be disturbed. If that happens, he is not on even terms with his people, and his family can be spoken of with scorn. Any man worth his skin will fight whoever has caused offence. He will win back the honour taken from him. But it is never a brawl. There are rules. The fight should be on land where no man lives. Or else at a place set aside for such things. My village has a place.’ His blue eyes grew. ‘The grass itself sprouts red now because of the blood spilled there since before any can remember.’

  Behind me, Black Floki grunted. ‘A man’s honour can be a blood-hungry thing,’ he mumbled.

  As Bjarni explained the hólmgang to me, I explained it to Penda and Cynethryth. It seemed th
ere was no such thing as the hólmgang in Wessex or, as far as Penda knew, in any kingdom in England. There, blood feuds turn like cartwheels and revenge killings lie in corpses, one on the other, generation after generation until the original offence is long forgotten.

  ‘The fight usually ends with a disabling wound to the leg,’ Bjarni went on, ‘but I have seen them end with both men corpses. The strangest one I ever saw was when I was a beardless boy. It happened four days’ walk from my village but every man and his dog made the journey because of who the fighters were.’ Bjarni’s thick lips curled into a smile and from the neck up you would never have known he was rowing. ‘One was a man named Gnupa, a hard son of a bitch from the north who had a reputation for ploughing any woman who so much as glanced in his direction and some who didn’t, too. He was also a known killer, which was how he got away with getting his leg over other men’s wives. Anyway, Gnupa often came to our village to sell his reindeer bones and bear skins and such. Made some good money too, then he’d drink himself stupid, cause a fuss, and leave before his shit got too big to be swept out of sight. The other man was Kraki, the son of our chief. A promising young man he was, strong and agile, and who knows why Kraki’s young wife – I forget the whore’s name – decided to part her legs for Gnupa’s face, but she did. Least that’s what folk said. Our chief tried to talk it off as nothing more than trade turned sour, hot words over Gnupa’s prices. Tried to smooth over the crack in his son’s pride. But Kraki demanded the hólmgang and I think the old man was proud of his son for it, for all he did not want it to happen.’

  I stopped Bjarni so that I could translate his story to Penda and Cynethryth before I forgot too much of it, then nodded for the Norseman to continue.

  ‘Well, they met at a place of Gnupa’s choosing, which was miles from anywhere. I think he did not want too many to see him kill the chief’s son. Bad for business. Still, as I said, we all turned out to watch. We liked Kraki and there were more than a few men there who hoped to see the lad do what they lacked the guts to do. Womenfolk turned out too.’ Bjarni chuckled. ‘Perhaps their private parts were slippery for Gnupa.’ I left that last bit out. ‘Both men spurned shields, which was unusual . . .’

  ‘Fucking halfwits,’ Black Floki put in.

  ‘Aye, but brave,’ Bjarni said. ‘They started cautious, mind, circled each other like wolves, experience against youth, both right-handers.’ He grinned. ‘We thought we were in for a rare fight. We itched for it. Then both men yelled and stepped up swinging and each took the other’s head clean off! Their neck stumps spewed gore over us and their heads bounced twice, finishing in the muck, eyes wide as the world and dirty. Gnupa fell sideways and shook like a fish but Kraki, he collapsed to his knees and there he stayed, headless and dead as a rock, his hand still gripping his sword. We were too thunderstruck to feel cheated of a good fight. We just looked at them, our mouths catching flies. And that was it. Over. Never seen anything like it since. By the next full moon our chief was dead. His heart cracked, so my grandmother said.’

  I took a breath and finished the tale in English.

  ‘That is a horrible story, Raven,’ Cynethryth chided. I think she was gulping down vomit.

  ‘It wasn’t my story,’ I said defensively.

  ‘Well I liked it,’ Penda said, scratching the scar on his face thoughtfully. ‘Especially the ending. Saw an idiot hack his own leg half off with an axe once.’ He shook his spiky head. ‘But never anything queer as that. Ask the heathen if he has any more stories.’

  I looked at Cynethryth who had shuffled nearer Serpent’s side as though she was about to spew. ‘Maybe later, Penda,’ I said.

  ‘She’s just seasick, Raven,’ he protested. ‘A good story will take her mind off it.’ But the truth was that I did not want to hear any more such tales either. My thoughts were dark enough without more blood to stain them, for Sigurd was going to fight Mauger, the champion of Wessex, and there was every chance it would be his doom. And what would we do without Sigurd?

  Three times that day men called out boats they had spotted nearer the shore and once a longboat sailing east on the northern horizon. There was little breeze and what there was was warm enough to let us row bare-chested, relishing the stir of the air as it dried the streams of sweat rolling down our bodies. The sky was still clear for the most part and we were beginning to make out palls of brown smoke hanging against the blue beyond the coastal hills and cliffs. If we did not come to the Sicauna that day we surely would the next, so Sigurd decided to make landfall one last time before turning the ships’ prows to the north. There were matters to be settled and blood to be spilled and in a perfect world the hólmgang would take place on an island, some skerry where no man held dominion. But it was not a perfect world and we had come across no such places. Sigurd’s fight with Mauger would have to happen on the Frankish shore.

  ‘A hólmgang on Christian land?’ Asgot spat, shaking his head so that the lank hair rattled the bones plaited in it. ‘I warn you against it, Sigurd. The man you will fight is a Christian. His god will be powerful there.’ He nodded to the coast. The rest of us kept to our rowing but our ears were catching what they could.

  Sigurd pulled his golden beard through his fist. ‘What do the bones say, godi?’ he asked.

  Asgot curled his lips. ‘The bones are unclear,’ he admitted. ‘The future is hidden. We should wait.’ He gestured to the English prisoners huddled beneath Jörmungand. They were talking amongst themselves now and seemed to be encouraging Mauger, their faces hard and fierce. ‘Take them north, Sigurd. Kill the English and throw them into our cold waters. That will please the gods. Those worms are your enemies. You owe them nothing. Give them only death, my jarl. That is what they would give us.’

  Sigurd seemed to consider this for a while, his brow heavy and his teeth worrying his thick bottom lip. Then he shook his head.

  ‘The deal is made,’ he said. ‘I will fight the whoreson before the moon rises and the matter will be settled. When Mauger’s blood dries on my sword I will give you Ealdred. Do with him what you want.’ At this the godi’s yellowing eyes flashed maliciously and his talon-like hand dropped to the knife hilt in his belt. He bowed to Sigurd, then turned with a flourish and made his way to the prow, where I heard him tormenting the Wessexmen in his bad English with promises of pain and death.

  We stowed Jörmungand so as not to offend the land spirits, and Serpent and Fjord-Elk came safely to the shore, their hulls crunching on the gravel beach and us jumping off with ropes to pull their hulls clear of the surf. There were no boulders to tie up to, so we used eight sharpened stakes kept for the purpose and hammered them into the beach with the butts of our great axe heads. Then as usual Black Floki and several other Norsemen loped off to get an idea of the land, whilst others got on with the important task of gathering wood for the cookfire. When we knew it was safe, the iron cauldrons were brought from the ships and Olaf ordered a party of five to scrub the gore and filth from Fjord-Elk’s deck. He told me to watch the English, especially Ealdred, which I was happy to do because it involved no scrubbing. Blood soaks into oak and it takes a barrel’s worth of elbow grease to get it out and even then it’ll stain till Ragnarök.

  Further up the beach were thousands of stones as smooth as hens’ eggs and beyond them stood a wall of rowan, ash and elder, their green scent checked by the sea’s slick tang but breaking through to waft down to us every now and then.

  Asgot sent Bram and Svein the Red hunting for a fox or badger or hare or whatever creature this land had to offer, giving them strict orders that the animal should be alive when they brought it back. It did not hurt to make the gods a blood offering before your jarl fought a renowned warrior. By the time they returned we had eaten our night meal, a broth of seal meat and mushrooms, and by their faces and the late hour we knew they had not been successful. The big men slumped by the birchwood fires, taking the steaming bowls of food they were offered and eating in silence, and no man dared ask them about the hunt.
Even Asgot held his tongue, though his face, sour as old milk, told me he saw in their failure some bad omen. We fed the prisoners too and Sigurd himself handed Mauger a bowl full to spilling so that the Englishman could not blame his coming defeat in the hólmgang on hunger weakness. Not that the loser would be in a state to blame anything, not in this life. Still, Mauger acknowledged the act with a curt nod and when he had finished slurping his second bowlful an ant could not have filled its belly with what was left. The fires cracked and popped as the birch split along its grain and the low murmur of the Norsemen hung above the flames like strands of some tale not yet told. What would become of the Fellowship if Mauger won? I presumed Olaf would lead us and I was sure the Norsemen would follow him, but where would we go? Would the men swear an oath to Olaf as they had to their jarl?

  ‘It’s time,’ Sigurd said, standing and draining the mead horn he was clutching. He was the other side of the fire, whose light played over the sharp bones of his face so that he might have been carved from seasoned oak. ‘Uncle, you will be my second.’ Olaf nodded solemnly. I looked at Bjarni.

  ‘In the hólmgang both men must have a second, a shield-bearer,’ Bjarni explained, palming mead from his own lips. ‘This man must be unarmed and cannot get involved in the fight. Oh, and . . .’ he held up four fingers, frowned drunkenly, then folded one of them, ‘both fighters are allowed three shields.’ He sniffed. ‘Shields don’t last long in the hólmgang.’

  ‘Raven,’ Sigurd said, pointing off to where the prisoners sat, ‘you will be Mauger’s second.’