A Gathering of Ravens

by Scott Oden

  Grimnir’s hand dropped to the worn hilt of his seax. “Oh, you’ll do this and you’ll not do that, eh? That’s enough from you. The only question is do you walk or do I truss you like a pig and drag you to England?”

  Étaín sat with her head bowed, eyes closed in prayer. Was this to be her lot in life? To return to a land she hated, as much a captive now as when she left it, perhaps more so? She asked God for a sign, but the only answer was the soft click-click-click of Grimnir’s fingernail as he tapped impatiently on the pommel of his seax.

  “Well?”

  Finally, Étaín opened her eyes. “I will come quietly,” she said, “if first you help me bury him.”

  Grimnir looked from her to the corpse and back again. “Your word. Swear it by your Nailed God.”

  “I swear it,” she said.

  Before she could even so much as move, Grimnir had crossed the space between them and knotted his fingers in her copper hair. He hauled her to her feet and bent her head back at a cruel angle. She gasped. “You break your oath,” he hissed, “and my hand will be the weapon of your wretched little Christ’s retribution as easily as it was the weapon of Odin’s. You understand?”

  Étaín nodded. Suddenly, she found herself praying for the End of Days …

  6

  If Étaín thought Grimnir would go out, hack a hole in the stony ground, and help her lower Njáll’s body into it, she was mistaken. Instead, he took the Dane’s axe off his pack and attacked the dead tree, felling it in no time at all. He worked effortlessly, shearing off branches and sectioning the gnarled trunk with blows powerful enough to split an iron-rimmed shield. She watched and wondered. And then it hit her. She had a horrified image in her mind of Njáll laid out on a pyre like his heathen ancestors. He was going to burn him!

  “No!” she cried. “He must be buried! Buried in the ground, his body whole and unburned! His head must face east, so he might look upon the rising sun and witness the coming of Christ on Judgment Day!”

  Grimnir paused in his effort. He spat. For an instant, he looked as though he might argue with her, but then he cast his gaze up and around. Something he saw satisfied him. He motioned to her. “Arrange his limbs, then. Make him pretty for the coming of your Nailed God.” He sank the axe in the dead wood and sat on the stump.

  Étaín frowned at him. But she went to where Grimnir had scattered their possessions and gathered a few things: his blanket, a flask of water, two squares of fine linen that had protected the strewn vellum, a slender codex with stained leather covers—an incomplete recension of the Gospel of Saint John, which she’d been using to teach him Latin—and pieces of the broken cross. The sight of those fragments tore a sob from her breast. He’d been so proud of it. Now, to see his loving handiwork wrecked was almost too much to bear.

  She brought these things to his side. His body was still warm, the joints pliant as she reverently put his feet together and brought his arms to his sides. She straightened his head. Moistening one of the linen squares, she cleaned the blood from his face as best she could. Étaín used the other square to shroud Njáll’s proud visage; she wrapped his blanket around him and laid the codex with the splinters of their cross on his chest.

  “East is that way,” Grimnir muttered, pointing at the back of the cave.

  “He must face east once he’s in the earth,” she snapped. “There must be good ground nearby, perhaps down by one of the beaches on the fjord.”

  Grimnir stood and walked over to where Njáll’s body lay. Étaín moved aside. Reaching down, he grabbed the Dane by the ankles and dragged him round to where his feet pointed east.

  “He’s in the earth,” Grimnir said flatly. “No sense lugging his carcass around. Gather what you need and let’s be off. You’ve wasted enough time.”

  “You mean leave him here? You vile wretch! You said you would help me bury him!”

  “Aye. And we have—in a barrow fit for a king.”

  “Barrow?” said Étaín. “This is no barrow! It’s nothing but—”

  Grimnir cut her off. “It’s a barrow if I say it’s a barrow! If you don’t like it, we can burn the useless bastard! Choose!”

  There was no choice, really. Étaín knew it—and she was half convinced the skrælingr knew it, too. Burning the body was anathema. Without a body, how could poor Njáll rise from the dead to be reunited with his soul when Judgment Day dawned? No, his tomb must be this cave in the wilderness; a tomb no less humble than that of the Redeemer himself. Étaín sighed. She crouched beside Njáll’s body and gently put his limbs back in order. Leaning down, she kissed his brow through the linen shroud. “Our journey is at an end, my beloved friend,” she whispered. “Go with God, and dwell forever in the magnificence of the Lord.”

  But as she made to stand, something happened. Something that filled her with equal measures of hope and dismay: a low moan escaped Njáll’s lips. The sound caused her spine to go rigid; she cast a surreptitious glance over her shoulder to see if her captor had heard it. Grimnir, though, was busy rooting once more through the detritus of their belongings. He had taken it upon himself to gather a few things he deemed to be hers and was stuffing them in a sack. Étaín quickly turned back to Njáll. She hesitated, and then placed a trembling hand upon his chest as if offering a silent benediction.

  Though weak, his heart thudded in its cage of bone.

  Étaín drew her hand back as though burned. “God’s teeth,” she muttered, unsure now of what to do. One thing was certain … Grimnir would finish him off if he got close enough to realize Njáll yet lived. But would he die regardless if she left his wounds untended? The next agonizing seconds seemed to stretch on for hours as Étaín tried to divine the will of God. But it was through the skrælingr that His desires became manifest.

  “Get up!” snapped Grimnir. “You’ve knelt there long enough. We’re wasting daylight.”

  And with sudden clarity Étaín knew what course she must follow. She had to commend Njáll to God’s keeping and go with Grimnir. To stay meant risking death for the both of them. This way, at least one of them would survive. She nodded. Leaning over him once more, she whispered: “Come find me, Red Njáll, son of Hjálmarr, slayer of Prince Eothred of Wareham and the Scourge of Exeter. Come find me, if God wills it.” And with a last kiss to his brow, Étaín rose to her feet and turned to face Grimnir. “I am ready.”

  He tossed her the bag with her belongings, caught up his pack, and jerked his head up toward the cave entrance. “You first.”

  With a silent prayer, she pushed past Grimnir and clambered up the stone steps, leaving Njáll to his fate. And me to mine, she thought, glancing back down at his prostrate form. Until God sees fit to weave them together, once more.

  7

  From the cave, they headed south along the trail. It snaked to the right as it cut through the low hills, clinging at times to the steep side of the valley formed by the glittering fjord. The trail followed the tree line; on their left hand were the crests of the hills, an expanse of windswept heath where Étaín could see the scorched and jagged footings of an ancient and once-formidable longhouse, stark against the cold blue sky. Soon, their path took a steep plunge into wooded country where gold and brown leaves rattled in the wind.

  Here they left the trail, which bore sharply right, and Grimnir led them overland, avoiding settlements and skirting fields left stubbled by the year’s last harvest. At times, he maintained a punishing pace, driving her along almost at a jog; other times, they prowled forward like spies infiltrating the camp of the enemy. At these intervals, Grimnir kept his nose low to the ground or snuffled the air. Once, around midday, she caught him having an animated conversation with a gnarled tree—cursing at it in a harsh tongue she took to be the native speech of the skrælingar.

  “Your Nailed God has infected them,” he said, spitting in disgust.

  “Infected who? The trees?”

  Grimnir fixed her with a hard-eyed stare. “The landvættir, little fool! You wretched hymn-si
ngers! You spread your filth like a pox; raising these nithing poles you call crosses that only serve to bleed the land dry of its seiðr.”

  “Seiðr is sorcery, yes?” Étaín felt a measure of her old fire return. “And sorcery is the domain of the Devil. So a land liberated from the grasp of sorcery—and from all the unclean things that thrive on it, like your landvættir—is a land that is pleasing to God. For the Lord abhorreth all these things, and for these abominations He will destroy them at thy coming.”

  “Then your miserable god is a dolt who would cut off his own nose to spite his face,” Grimnir replied. He shoved her along. “Move! You’re wasting precious time.”

  With the waning of the day came shreds of clouds from the west; the chill became more pronounced even though the wind faded to a mere breeze. Étaín was stumbling from exhaustion when they emerged from the trees above a rocky shingle, a sheltered inlet that opened on the root of the fjord: a broad lake whose surface gleamed like molten copper in the late-afternoon sun. Great stands of fir and pine and red-leafed oak ran nearly to the water’s edge. Down on the shingle, well above tide level, stood a small cluster of timber buildings—a village, eight houses arranged around a central hall. Firelight twinkled, and smoke drifted up from the hearths. On the edge of the village, she saw half a dozen small fishing boats drawn up for the night.

  “Too far south,” she heard Grimnir mutter. He crouched there for a long while, sitting on his haunches in a peculiar fashion, with his knees drawn up under his chin. He stared first at the village and then at the far shore—a purple haze on the western horizon.

  Étaín could make no sense of Grimnir’s intentions. If his plans were to sail from Sjælland to England—which was madness this time of the year—they should be making for the west coast to find a ship to take them across the Kattegat to Jutland. From there, if they followed the same route that she and Njáll had taken on their sojourn east, Grimnir would need to secure passage from Ribe on a ship bound for the Frankish coast, and from there cross the British Sea to the shores of East Anglia or Wessex. But, as near as Étaín could tell, the paths he chose were those that led inland.

  Finally, as the first stars flickered to life among the thickening clouds overhead, Grimnir stirred. He caught her by the arm and dragged her close, his voice soft but full of menace. With his other hand, he tugged a length of plaited leather rope from his pack. “Listen close and listen good. We’re going down to that stinking little shithole of a village and we’re taking a boat. That last one, there. The one farthest from their wretched houses. We’re going fast and we’re going quiet, and if the Sly One’s with us these fish-fuckers will be none the wiser till morning.” Quickly, he looped the rope around her right wrist and tied it cruelly tight. She gasped, clawing at it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Do I look like a fool? You’re thinking, ‘Ha! Here’s my chance to be rid of him! Here’s my chance to slip away!’ Try it, or try to raise an alarm, and I promise you this: I will not harm one hair on your miserable little head, but I will kill every last man, woman, and child I find down there. Make a sound and I will gut them alive, boil their bones for a stew, and make a cloak from their skins. Do you think I’m lying?”

  Étaín shook her head, her eyes wide.

  Grimnir grunted. “Good. You’re not as stupid as I thought. Stay close and watch where you step, because if you fall I will drag you across that shingle. Do you understand? Remember what I said.”

  Grimnir stood and shouldered his satchel; Étaín followed suit, clutching her meager sack to her chest. And then they were off. Grimnir loped along like a wolf, low and fast; Étaín struggled to keep up. The ground flashed by underfoot. Between them, the rope stretched taut, distending her wrist and twisting it near to breaking. She grabbed on to the rope with her hand to relieve the pressure, and put her trust in God. By some miracle she kept her legs under her. She was breathing hard by the time they reached the rocky shingle and trying not to make a sound as she gulped air. Grimnir wasn’t even winded. He stopped, crouching in the lee of a boulder. The boats were twenty yards distant.

  Étaín wondered why he had paused; why not make straight for the boats? But she dared not give voice to her question, for fear someone else might hear. How many children dwell within? Seconds later, she saw the reason why: a gray-bearded Dane was walking along the line of boats, patting each one as though they were his prize stallions. He wore a pale red tunic, heavy with embroidery around the neck and down the sleeves, and baggy trousers; a woolen cap warmed his balding pate. Grimnir’s nostrils flared, lips peeling back from his teeth. He dropped the rope and loosened his seax in its scabbard.

  The Dane stopped at the last boat—a nine-foot-long skiff with oarlocks and a high prow. He stood there, hands thrust into his belt, his head tilted up as he studied the clouds filling the starlit bowl of Heaven. His breath steamed in the frosty air. Then, he turned slowly and began to retrace his steps.

  Étaín didn’t hear Grimnir stir; she didn’t miss his presence until she turned to raise a questioning eyebrow. Only then did she notice the low black shadow creeping across the shingle, soundless, the drawn seax glittering like a spike of starlight. Étaín clapped a hand over her mouth; she dared not utter a word. But knowing what was to come, she commended the old Dane’s soul to God …

  “Afi!” a child’s voice cried. Suddenly, there came a flurry of movement from the far end of the line of boats as a towheaded boy dashed into view, waving a wooden sword. Grimnir froze; the boy skidded to a halt; and Étaín tasted blood from where she’d bitten her tongue. The old Dane held his arms out to his grandson. The boy, though, had gone as pale as a winding sheet. He dropped his sword, gave an earsplitting scream, and ran crying back to the village. Bemused, the old Dane turned around to see what had spooked the boy so …

  … and saw only the empty shingle behind him.

  Étaín exhaled into her hand, silently thanking God, for Grimnir had ducked down alongside the boat, out of sight though still prepared to strike. She saw the old Dane shake his head; he hurried after his grandson lest the boy get the whole village in an uproar.

  Grimnir did not move until the old man reached the edge of the village; then, with acrimony to spare, he gestured for Étaín and put his shoulder to the boat’s keel. Wood scraped stone as he shoved the boat into the calm waters of the inlet.

  Étaín caught up his satchel and hustled over to where Grimnir waited. “Ymir take that mouthy little rat,” he was muttering to himself. “Should have gutted the both of them. Hurry up! Get in! Are there oars?”

  Étaín clambered over the side of the boat and immediately located a pair of oars; there was also a short mast and a rolled sail beneath the seats, where she stowed his pack. She nodded to Grimnir and almost fell across one of the seats as he gave the keel a tremendous heave and vaulted over the strakes. The boat pitched and bobbed. He took the middle seat, ran out the oars, and fell into a rhythm of long, smooth strokes that set the water hissing against their prow. In no time they were clear of the inlet and heading into the deeper water of the lake itself.

  From the village, Étaín saw a line of torches wending their way toward the boats. The old Dane was in the lead, followed by a few other men and women from the village; he held his grandson, intent on showing him there were no monsters lurking on the shingle. Grimnir saw it, too. She heard him curse between oar strokes.

  “Will they follow?” she asked, though in her bones she knew they would. These boats were the lifeblood of the village, and they would sail to the edge of the world to repay the insult of its theft. But they had darkness on their side: the men of the village would be hard-pressed to track them across the water.

  Grimnir’s silence only reinforced her belief.

  He bent to the oars, setting an even pace that would have exhausted a man, even such men as Njáll and his kin. Étaín shivered. Grimnir demanded nothing of her, so she sank down in the ribs and clawed at the rope around her wrist until she prize
d it off. Her shoulders trembled; she tugged a length of sailcloth from beneath the seat. The salt-stiff canvas became a makeshift blanket. She could hear the faint sounds of pursuit, the splash of oars and angry cries. But they were distant, dreamlike. The motion of the boat was hypnotic—surge and rest, surge and rest. Grimnir sniffed the wind and made minor adjustments in their course, taking them on a southwesterly tack across the lake.

  As she lay in the bottom of that gently rocking boat, her mind drifted to poor Njáll. She wondered if he had survived the day; she prayed for him, for his succor as well as for her own. He will find me, if it is the will of God, she said to herself. But in that quiet moment she wondered what had happened to her. Where was her strength? Where was her famous resolve? Had she not told Njáll, just yesterday, that God helps those who help themselves? And here she was acting like some shy and shrinking Andromeda, chained to a rock and praying her Perseus would arrive in time to save her from the beast. Vividly, she saw herself, axe in hand, striking the skrælingr’s head from his shoulders, then carrying that grisly trophy back to Njáll. Étaín smiled. But you gave him your word, a small voice whispered in the back of her mind. You swore to Christ you would go quietly. She could not deny that.

  Exhaustion snared her; she yawned. Sleep tugged at the edges of her consciousness, and her body slowly surrendered to it despite her best efforts. In those final moments of awareness, she realized something … an oath made under duress, and to a heathen, was no oath at all. God will forgive me.

  And the dreams that followed, dreams of her captor’s headless corpse flopping at her feet, filled Étaín with a sense of warmth that was far from Christlike …

  8

  Grimnir rowed like some mechanical beast forged of gristle and iron. Only dimly did he feel his limbs burning with exertion, and then only if he allowed himself to feel anything at all. He had no time for weakness, no need for rest—he’d learned from his mother’s brother, Gífr, what would happen if he succumbed to some half-felt desire of the flesh. Faugh! He loved that old bastard, in his own way, but Gífr had ever been too quick to give in to weakness. Rest bred indolence, and from indolence came melancholy and, hard upon its heels, the black sleep of death. That was the curse of his people: no poison could touch him, no disease could lay him low, but the weight of his long years could harrow him like a pox, if he but allowed it.