Raven: Sons of Thunder

by Giles Kristian

  Just then there was a shout and the soldier turned. A Dane hammered his arms against the back of another guard’s legs so that the Frank buckled and then the Dane was on him, smashing his face with his manacled wrists. The Franks tried to help their comrade but the Danes grabbed and clawed at them like animals so that the blue cloaks struck out left and right, trying to carve paths to their friend. Then one of them broke through the throng and yelled, plunging his spear into the Dane’s shoulder. The other Franks fought their way through and joined in sticking the Dane over and over as their bleeding comrade crawled free to gather his firebrand and spear. His eyes were wide with fear and shock and his face glistened with blood. Then it was over and the brave Dane who had saved us from being discovered was nothing but a lump of raw, hacked flesh. In the retreating flamelight as the Franks left the longhouse I saw the mutilated mess of his back and under my breath I asked Óðin to take the Danish warrior into Valhöll. Because it was Steinn.

  Bram went back to work as though nothing had happened and it was not long before he had cut through his irons. Then he began on mine. I told him to do Penda’s first, as Penda was a much better fighter than me, but Bram would not listen.

  ‘I’ll not cut an Englishman free before a Norseman,’ he said in his gruff voice, though it made little difference anyway, because he was not even halfway through mine when the little hacksaw snapped. His curse roused the half-conscious Danes around us.

  ‘What now?’ Penda asked, to which I shrugged and Bram leant back against the wall, his face sweat-glistening. At least he was free of the great chain, but he could not do much alone.

  ‘Why didn’t the idiot bring the other half of the saw in his other plait?’ Penda grumbled. ‘Or even up his arse come to that?’

  ‘Tell that ugly English whoreson if he gives me that look again I’ll twist off his head and bounce it off the roof beams,’ Bram growled, talking to me but looking at Penda.

  ‘So what is the rest of Sigurd’s plan, Bram?’ I asked, thinking that having these two at each other’s throat was the last thing we needed.

  Bram chewed his bottom lip and scratched his head. ‘He didn’t tell me, lad,’ he said. ‘But I’d wager my beard he knows.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  WHEN THE FRANKS HAD LAST COME IN IT HAD BEEN LIGHT OUTSIDE. We waited a while and, guessing that night had fallen, Bram began slowly and carefully to dig into the rotten wall of the longhouse using what was left of the little saw. Eventually a small but delicious gush of fresh air told us he had broken through and the Norseman soon confirmed it, saying he could see braziers burning and soldiers moving around the compound. The hole was small enough not to be noticed by the Franks but large enough to give us at least some awareness of what was going on in the world beyond those wretched walls. Then we waited, hoping that Sigurd would come, but fearing his coming too, for it must surely ignite a full-on battle with the Franks, which he could not possibly win.

  With the loss of Steinn the Danes were beaten again and a desperately heavy atmosphere pervaded that hall, which stank of the utter loss of hope. But we three stirred when an age later there were shouts in the enclosure beyond.

  ‘What is it, Bram?’ I muttered, lifting my heavy head.

  ‘I can’t see,’ he said. ‘Wait. Smoke. Coming from the west, I think.’

  ‘What else?’ I asked feverishly.

  ‘Nothing, lad. Just smoke,’ he said. ‘But the Franks don’t sound very happy about it.’ We waited. And waited. The clamour of voices began to rise as panic started to spread its dark wings. Now and then a blue cloak flashed past Bram’s spy hole, but eventually he turned to us, his eyes shining in the puncturing shaft of light. ‘I have to move now,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope I can get through this,’ he tapped the rotting daub wall, ‘before the Franks stick me. With Thór’s luck they will be too busy shitting their breeks to notice.’

  I wanted to tell Bram to wait a little longer, to give Sigurd, if it was Sigurd, more time. But I knew this might be our only chance and so I nodded, feeling helpless chained up to a hundred dead or half-dead men. Bram was on his feet, and being Bram had decided to kick his way out for better or worse, rather than burrow away with the broken hacksaw. ‘I’ll have those chains off you soon enough, Raven,’ he said. ‘You too, Englishman,’ he added in Norse to which Penda nodded. Then, with all the power in his oak-strong legs, he slammed his booted foot against the daub, which split and crumbled like cheese. Again and again Bram kicked and we thought he must have alerted every Frank within a mile, but eventually he had made a hole big enough to crawl through. Then in a heartbeat he was gone.

  I could smell smoke now, not hearth smoke but the acrid smoke of damp, ancient thatch burning. I had smelled that same smell when Sigurd had burnt my village and now as then it knotted a coil of fear in my gut.

  ‘Fuck, we don’t need that,’ Penda murmured and I looked up to see a pall of smoke swirling beneath the old roof.

  ‘Why would they burn this?’ I said, instinctively testing the iron manacles for the thousandth time. ‘They know we are in here.’ Panic was welling in my gut at the thought of being burnt alive.

  Then Bram was back, gripping two Frankish hand axes, one of which was bloody.

  ‘Are you coming or not?’ he asked with a grin, then crawled back inside. I held my hands still against the floor so that he could chop through the rest of the shackle to finish what we had started with the hacksaw, for the shackles were made of soft iron and the axe blade was edged with good Frankish steel. Even so, he ruined the axe cutting through Penda’s manacles. But we were free.

  ‘Now them,’ I said, pointing to the men who were watching us, the whites of their eyes pathetic and plaintive as worn-legged hounds.

  ‘They are Danes,’ Bram said.

  ‘I gave them my word, Bram,’ I said, taking the good axe from him. We did not have the time or the tools to break all of their irons, so I waded into the middle of the hall and the Danes shuffled out of the way to give me the room I needed. Then I took what was roughly the middle of the length of chain that passed through every man’s bound arms and I cut it. Penda and Bram helped me to haul the chains out from the dead and the living, until the Danes were free. Their hands were still in irons but those that had the strength could now at least escape that place of death. ‘Get to the river if you can,’ I told the Danes who were rising on unsteady legs, wide-eyed like men who had just dug their way out of their own grave barrows. They looked unlikely to make it beyond the palisade, let alone the day’s walk to the river. ‘Your ships are moored at the wharf. We will help you if we can.’

  ‘Raven,’ Bram growled, and so I turned and nodded and followed him out into the light. At first glance the stockade looked deserted. Two blue cloaks lay dead by the front of the longhouse; the Bear’s work, I knew. But then two young guards came round the corner of the hall and their eyes nearly popped with the shock of seeing us free. They seemed unsure whether to attack or run, but then a ragged knot of Danes flew at them, heedless of the Franks’ spears and ravenous for revenge. In a heartbeat the Franks had disappeared beneath the Danes, who were like rabid wolves gouging and tearing and snarling.

  ‘Bastards are hungry,’ Penda muttered as we left the Danes to it and broke into the three small huts, in the last of which we found our swords and some spears, shields and helmets. The air was thick with yellow smoke, most of which was drifting in from the west. The thatch of the western eaves of our former prison had sprouted a hungry flame and there were many men who, had they not been looking to their own survival, would have enjoyed watching that place burn to the ground. We ran for the main gate, which had been left open, and then we were in the mud-slick thoroughfares of the poor quarter of Aix-la-Chapelle. The thatch of one or two shabby dwellings smouldered dangerously, but most had no thatch to burn, which would be their saving.

  ‘There’s something to be said for living by a river of shit,’ Penda said, then he looked to the west. Black smoke billowed into t
he blue sky, most of it seeming to come from the houses outside the western gate, but plenty of houses were burning inside the city too. The local Franks were standing around, staring like us, though when they saw the Danes spilling from the rotting longhouse many of them crossed themselves and hurried off. Dozens of imperial soldiers were running towards the smoke, including no doubt those who had been posted in the longhouse enclosure, which was why we had not been challenged.

  ‘I told you Sigurd had a scheme,’ Bram announced proudly as we set off at a loping stride towards the flames, gripping our Frankish spears and shields. I was weak from hunger and the running made my head swim, but Penda must have been just as frail and if he could run then so could I. When we reached the west side of the city the place was seething chaos. Men and women were flinging pails of water into their thatch, hoping to prevent a leaping flame or falling cinder doing to their homes what they had done to so many. Imperial soldiers were amongst the traders and craftsmen, helping where they could, their captains trying to bring some order to the desperate work. But the Wolfpack was nowhere to be seen and we could not understand how they were burning the place.

  ‘Maybe this has nothing to do with Sigurd,’ Penda suggested as we ran through the tumult, hoping the soldiers would not notice a bear-like man who could not have looked more like a heathen, and two monks in ragged habits carrying arms. Yet not a single blue cloak challenged us. Beyond the city walls the wind was whipping enormous sheets of flame through the tightly packed timber houses and those gluttonous flames roared like the ocean. The burning wood popped and cracked in violent anger. Then we were clear and I turned, coughing horribly, and saw the first of the threadbare Danes spilling through the houses and out into the pastureland like so many tortured souls.

  ‘Look!’ Penda yelled, pointing at a smoky streak whirring through the air. ‘That’s no fire arrow.’ Then the thing tumbled from the sky, leaving a wisp of dissolving smoke against the blue. We ran over to it and to my disbelief I saw that it was a little bird. Then we saw others lying here and there, smouldering amongst the grass. I picked the dead creature up by its feet and the three of us stared, breathless, stunned and coughing. Someone had tied shavings of fur to the bird’s back and that fur was charred but still glowing with an ember because it had been smeared with wax and set alight.

  ‘They must have used nets, or Óðin knows what, to catch so many,’ I said, nodding towards the forest beyond the boundary ditch. It must have taken hundreds of birds to do what they had done. But Sigurd had known the birds would wing back to their roosts under the eaves of the Franks’ houses, and now those houses were burning.

  ‘No one will believe this,’ Penda said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t believe it myself.’ Now a quarter of the city was ablaze and the emperor’s soldiers were too busy trying to save the rest of it to care that we had escaped.

  ‘Come on,’ Bram said as I tossed the poor creature aside. ‘They’ll come for us soon.’ We ran towards the sound of rooks high up in the ash on the edge of the woods, where we knew Sigurd would be waiting.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  SIGURD, BLACK FLOKI AND TWENTY OTHERS WERE WAITING AMONGST the ash. They were dressed for battle and their beards split with smiles when we met them.

  ‘I was wrong when I said you two make good Christ slaves,’ Halldor laughed, finding our wretched state funnier than he should have done.

  ‘Hungry, lad?’ Sigurd said, pulling a loaf of bread from a sack and handing it to me. I ripped a hunk off and gave the rest to Penda. There was a glint in the jarl’s eyes that I had not seen since before the hólmgang, which I put down to joy at seeing his scheme weaving itself into a wondrous pattern. ‘You stink worse than a troll’s fart,’ he said, taking a step back and laughing.

  ‘It seems hard to believe,’ I said, ‘but the Franks did not invite us to bathe in the hot pools we have heard talk of. The spiteful cunnies.’ I was suddenly aware of the fleas biting my skin and crawling beneath the filth-stained habit. I glanced round for Cynethryth, hoping she would not see me looking so foul, but of course she was not there, for this was a war band.

  ‘They won’t be wasting water on bathing now, Raven,’ Sigurd said, ‘not with their arses on fire.’ Satisfied, he planted his spear butt into the forest litter and turned to leave, but then he stopped, seeing that some of his men had been alerted by the snap and crack of twigs. We made ready to fight.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I called, ‘they are Danes. They escaped with us.’ The first of the Danes stumbled through the trees towards us, their gaunt faces gripped by fear. They looked like hunted animals and did not know whether to come nearer or bolt off into the woods. ‘They helped us, Sigurd,’ I said. ‘And their jarl is dead and rotting.’ Sigurd seemed to consider the skeletal, long-bearded Danes in their rags, and the Norsemen looked to their jarl, awaiting his order. ‘They will follow you, lord,’ I said, ‘and they are brave. They must be hard men to have survived in that place.’

  ‘Follow me?’ Sigurd said, scratching his golden beard. ‘They can barely walk, Raven. These Danes could not follow a stream.’ More Danes were joining their comrades so that there were now at least twenty, almost all gasping or doubled over with exhaustion, their hands still manacled. Sigurd picked up the food sack, took a step towards the Danes and hurled the sack to the nearest man. Then he turned and his men turned with him. ‘They can come, Raven,’ he said. ‘But if they are not at the wharf by dawn we leave them to the Franks.’ And with that we set off with long strides, leaving the Danes to struggle after us.

  It was night time when we reached the wharf. I could wait no longer, and asked after Cynethryth. It turned out that Black Floki and Halldor had been watching for us from the woods when they had seen the mounted blue cloaks with their firebrands ranging across the pasture. There were too many Franks for them to break cover, so they had waited and eventually they had found Egfrith lying exhausted beside a fallen elm, Cynethryth beside him. Knowing they could do nothing for Penda and me, Floki and his cousin had brought the monk and the girl back to the ships.

  Egfrith was tending to Cynethryth now in a makeshift shelter before Serpent’s hold, for, Olaf told me gently, it seemed that the girl’s mind was in a dark place and the monk was trying to tempt it back to the light.

  ‘I will go to her, Uncle,’ I said, still trembling from the exertion.

  Olaf put a big hand on my shoulder. ‘Give her some peace, Raven,’ he said. ‘Let the monk see to her. She doesn’t need the likes of us sniffing around. Get some rest, lad.’ I nodded because I did not have the strength to argue. Penda and I and even Bram were dog-tired, and after changing back into our own clothes we collapsed on to furs with handfuls of meat and skins of ale. Sentries were posted and Serpent and Fjord-Elk were made ready in case the Franks attacked, though the orange glow in the sky to the east told us that they still had other worries.

  Sigurd was wrong about the Danes being unable to walk. Somehow, throughout the night and into the dawn, sixty or more of them made it to the wharf. They came as though the river itself had summoned them, as though their wretched souls heard in the gushing water a promise of life and freedom for which they had clawed their way back out of Hel. When the Norsemen saw the strength of will that must have driven these men to reach us, they broke into our supplies and fed and clothed them as best they could and helped them cut off the manacles.

  ‘I wonder how many did not make it,’ I said to Penda, thinking of the Danes who even now lay stiffening in the woods between us and Aix-la-Chapelle, wound sickness or starvation having killed them in the dark as surely as any Frankish blade.

  ‘You and Sigurd have given them back their lives,’ Penda said, rubbing his wrists where the irons had left their mark.

  ‘If not for Sigurd we would be rotting, too,’ I said, thinking of the jarl’s incredible cunning in using the little birds to burn the town. It was surely the most ingenious plan ever conceived, though it could have been no easy thing to catch so many birds
and tie bits of fur to them.

  With dawn came rain, which was bad for us and good for the Franks. A brown pall still hung in the east, mingling with the low grey cloud that slid in from the north to douse the day. The thatch fires would probably be out, but new embers would be growing in the hearts of the Franks and these would soon ignite into the fires of revenge.

  Many of the craft moored at the wharf had gone now, their captains uneasy berthing next to so many warriors, even though the Norsemen and the Wessexmen had let them and their crews go about their business. But now, at Sigurd’s order, Svein the Red was hacking into the cross at Serpent’s prow with his great axe and this was enough to see the last Frankish boats slip their moorings and slide downriver. The Danes were busy preparing their own ships, which, though no Serpent or Fjord-Elk, were well made and seaworthy, their graceful lines and the carvings on their prows marking them as heathen-made. A man named Rolf seemed to be the nearest thing to their leader and he was doing a good enough job overseeing the checks to ballast, rudder, caulking and sail lines, so that despite their sorry state the Danes might be ready in time.

  Penda and I had drunk so much ale and mead, trying to wet our bones, that we were falling down drunk when Kalf and Osten ran from the woods, their slung shields bouncing against their backs and their spears held low. We gathered round to hear their news.

  ‘We’ve pissed in a bear’s cave, lord,’ Kalf said to Sigurd. ‘The blue cloaks are getting ready to fight. And not just them; the people have armed, too. I am thinking they are not happy that we burnt their houses.’