A Gathering of Ravens

by Scott Oden

  Cynewulf’s reply came no louder than an exhalation. “Steady.” He strained to hear what he could not see. Eleven men had gone silent. Had they stumbled into a trap? Did the Dane have a band of confederates, in truth? A part of him thought about ordering his men to withdraw—Wulfric’s weregild be damned—but his veterans would never obey such an order. They were vengeance-minded, now; blood called out for blood. “Let’s move.”

  Keeping in a low crouch and moving slowly, Cynewulf led his trio of warriors toward the left flank. Ruddy light flared. Cynewulf stopped, eyes averted from the unexpected glare. A fallen torch must have kindled a bit of dry brush … or so he hoped. Surely their enemy could not see them?

  Something moved, and by that meager light Cynewulf watched a silhouette rise up and stagger toward them. It was man-high, broad, and it gleamed as though slathered in blood; it clutched a notched sword in one hand and a severed head in the other, and as it came closer it gave forth an eerie moan.

  “There!” cried the veteran to Cynewulf’s left. In one fluid motion, he stood, drew his nocked arrow to his ear, and loosed. The second archer’s shaft was barely a heartbeat behind the first. Both razor-tipped darts flew straight, striking the sinister figure dead center. It pitched back, arms flailing, and for a single heartbeat Cynewulf discerned a Saxon face, eyes gouged out and blood dribbling from a slit tongue …

  Cynewulf knew it was a trap; he turned, ready to warn his men, even as an answering arrow hissed past his ear and tore through the first archer’s throat. He spun and stumbled, blood spraying from his severed jugular. The second archer snatched a fresh shaft from his quiver bag; he no more than touched it to the string when another dart hissed from the darkness. It caught him a hair’s breadth above his left eye, the broad iron head slicing through flesh and heavy bone to pierce the soft gray curds of his brain. He dropped like a rag doll.

  Cynewulf cursed. He leapt the fallen body and caught the last veteran by the scruff, shoving him back the way they’d come. “Go! Get back to the stream!”

  12

  Grimnir slapped his blood-sodden thigh; his sides shook with mirth at the sight of the last two Saxon swine taking to their heels. They’d played right into his hands. For all that they clad themselves in the finery of war and carried the tools of the killers’ trade, these piss-blooded scrods were just farmers—spear-fodder good for little more than filling a levy and blunting the edge of an enemy sword.

  Fools! Still, enough dogs could bring down a wolf, and Grimnir could ill afford to let these two rouse an army against him. With a last chuckle, he lit off after them with his last three arrows clutched in one taloned fist.

  It took no effort to keep pace with the miserable wretches. As they blundered through the night-black wood, Grimnir could have tracked them by the scent of their fear alone. But a sickle moon was rising in the east, and though it filtered through a haze of clouds and smoke and leaves its faint glow was better than torchlight for sharp-eyed Grimnir. He saw the two Saxons break into the clearing, its tall grasses and ferns edged in silver—and he watched, bemused, as the one called Cynewulf suddenly dropped to all fours and scuttled away to the right, ducking down alongside a knot of heavy roots.

  The other bastard slowed, panting as he looked for the game trail. If he knew what Cynewulf was about, he gave no sign. Instead, he plunged ahead, sparing not even a backward glance for his chief. Grimnir snarled; he nocked an arrow, drew, and loosed in one smooth motion. The Saxon had gone barely a dozen paces when the shaft pierced his right knee. With a desperate cry, the veteran crashed to the earth. He clawed at the weed-choked ground; gasping, he tried to stand, to get his good leg under him. Grimnir let him. The man struggled. He called upon his Nailed God and spat curses and pulled himself nearly erect. In answer, Grimnir’s second arrow—its broad iron head wickedly barbed—slammed into the center of the Saxon’s back. This time, the bastard went down hard.

  Silence descended on the glade. Grimnir could hear the fallen Saxon weeping in agony; he could smell the blood, the sweat, and the piss; he could hear the subdued panting of Cynewulf, who thought himself clever. Slowly, Grimnir fitted his last arrow to the bowstring. He moved to his left where he could glimpse the Saxon chief. The man’s face was pale, his eyes as wide as a cornered stag’s; he clutched his spear shaft like a talisman.

  The injured Saxon groaned and called out. “Cyn-Cynewulf? I c-can’t feel my … my legs. Almighty G-God! H-Help me…”

  Cynewulf put a finger to his lips, and then gestured for the man to stay down.

  “P-Please … help me.”

  “Yes, help him, little fool,” Grimnir said. Cynewulf flinched at the harsh grating voice. “I know you’re there, swine! By that root ball.” The Saxon chief nearly came out of his skin when Grimnir’s final arrow thocked into the root, not a handspan from his head. It vibrated like a harp string. Grimnir tossed the bow away; he grasped the hilt of his seax. “And if you’re not going to help your man, I will.” The rasp of steel on leather echoed as he drew the blade.

  Cynewulf did not reply. Grimnir bared his teeth. A Northman would have taken the challenge—like Hrolf Asgrimm’s son, back in the Danemark, who called down the valkyrjar and gave a good account of himself. But this Saxon had the air of a Roman about him, milk-livered and arrogant; he trusted he could still win by guile what was lost to him by the sword.

  “Have it your way,” Grimnir spat; he stalked out into the open.

  “Wait,” Cynewulf said, finally. “Wait, Dane. Let us parley, you and I.” Carefully, he climbed to his feet and came around the bole of the tree, his spear leveled as though he expected treachery.

  “Parley? A parley is for equals. And I am no wretched Dane.”

  “What are you, then? A Swede? A Norseman? How—” Cynewulf’s words faltered as he got his first clear look at Grimnir, wreathed in pale moonlight. He saw a creature that was saturnine and bloody, his long black hair woven with bits of silver and bone. Eyes smoldered like embers in a wolfish face. The Saxon chief recoiled and nearly fell; his spear clacked against the trunk of the tree, and he made the sign of the cross with his free hand. “Mother of God! Wh-What…?”

  Grimnir reached the stricken Saxon veteran. The man lay in a lake of blood; he thrashed weakly, digging furrows in the slick earth. He fought on even though the skein of his fate was woven. Grimnir stooped, seized a handful of the man’s hair, and wrenched his head back. “I am Serpent-born and Wolf-brother! I am the Hooded One, little manling,” he said, glaring at Cynewulf. “And if you would have your weregild in blood, then come claim it!”

  With sudden vehemence, Grimnir carved his seax through the Saxon’s throat. He slashed once. Twice. And on the third blow vertebrae crunched as the dead man’s head came free. Grimnir straightened, holding his prize by its long hair.

  Cynewulf’s face paled. His brow gleamed with fear-sweat. But despite the haze of terror his mind raced; Grimnir could read it in his eyes: even now, he sought a way out, an avenue of escape.

  “Run,” Grimnir hissed, “and I’ll make you beg for death. I have a question, little fool. Answer it, and you may yet live.”

  Cynewulf nodded. “Wh-What do you wish to know?”

  “Where do the Danes make their camp in this wretched land?”

  “They don’t,” Cynewulf replied. A measure of confidence returned to him, to judge by his fading pallor. “They don’t. When Forkbeard died, we were able to unite and drive his son, Cnut, back into the sea. If you want to find the Danes now, you needs must travel far to the north, to Mann and the isles off the Scottish coast, or to the Hebrides, or distant Orkney … or perhaps across the Irish Sea to Dubhlinn.”

  Grimnir loosed a sulfurous tirade of curses. He dealt a savage kick to the headless corpse at his feet and cast about him for something else to kill. From beneath heavy brows, he pierced the Saxon chief with a baleful stare. He grew ominously silent, and then: “Have you heard the name Bjarki Half-Dane?”

  Cynewulf hesitated; he weighed his a
nswer carefully, as though he could sense its import. He tightened his grip on his sweat-slick spear shaft. “No.”

  “Pity.”

  Grimnir moved, and his motion was the motion of a striking serpent. Before Cynewulf could react Grimnir slung the severed head at him with sinew-cracking force. That ungainly missile—a grisly twelve pounds of flesh and bone—struck Cynewulf near the juncture of his right shoulder and arm. The impact spun the Saxon chief around. His spear clattered off into the darkness. Cynewulf lost his footing; he fell to one knee. With an oath he reeled up and cast about for his fallen weapon.

  Grimnir was on him in two leaping bounds. He clamped Cynewulf’s throat in a taloned vise and slammed him against the knotty roots, his spine bent near to breaking. The Saxon kicked, feet thumping in the leaf mold. He clawed at Grimnir’s forearm, scratched at his face; he fought to prize those iron fingers away from his windpipe.

  To no avail.

  Cords of muscle and sinew stood out against his dusky hide as Grimnir slowly squeezed the life from Cynewulf. He didn’t release him until he felt neck bones crack beneath his thumbs.

  Grimnir shoved the corpse away and sat on the knot of roots. A good night’s work, almost a score of men slain and none fit to stand in the shadow of the old Dane, Asgrimm’s son; he exhaled, and then coughed from the exertions of the last few hours. Through the canopy of trees, a savage glow yet lit the sky from the burning of Nunna’s Ford. Grimnir stared up at it with a jaundiced eye. “Now you’re in it, my wretched little hymn-singer.” He leaned to the side, hawked, and spat. “And what miserable bastard is going to pull your fat from the fire, eh? What little goblin?” Grimnir scrubbed his nose with the back of his blood-crusted hand. “Faugh! I should leave you to it.”

  Grimnir knew deep in his marrow he should just put Étaín from his mind and go north, to Mann or the Scottish Isles, where some useless scrap of Danish filth would have heard the name Bjarki Half-Dane. He should follow rumor, half-truth, and even outright legend, if need be, until he had that son of a whore under his knife, ready to pay the price for Hrungnir’s murder. He should …

  But, he wouldn’t. By Ymir! He would steal her back from her captors—if only to gloat over how a heathen skrælingr saved her from murder at the hands of the Nailed God’s followers. Now that would be rich, indeed! After, and with her in his debt, they’d head north.

  Grimnir cleaned his seax on Cynewulf’s soiled trousers, sheathed it, and stood. He set about looting the bodies of the two men he’d killed in the clearing, searching their corpses for food and drink, coin and precious metal. As he worked, a plan formed in his mind. He would scout the burning town ere the sun rose to see if he might spot his wayward little hymn-singer. If she lived, he would shadow their column on its return to whatever pisshole they called home and spirit her out from under their useless noses. If she did not survive … well, then by the Sly One’s grace he could perhaps reach the lands of the Scots in a fortnight. There, he might find himself a new guide. A new hymn-singer.

  Grimnir caught up Cynewulf’s spear; he eyed the corpse at his feet, a slow smile twisting his thin lips. First, however, he would send these West Saxon bastards a message.

  13

  Rain like slivers of ice pattered from the leaden sky. Étaín groaned, averting her bruised face from the stinging droplets. But the cold drizzle helped rouse her from her stupor. Her head throbbed beneath the damp tangle of copper-colored hair. A heel … a heel smashed into her forehead. Étaín shivered and coughed, tasting blood as she pried her swollen eyes open.

  She lay on her side in the bed of an ox-drawn wain, surrounded by half a score of men and women, battered and bedraggled—Danish captives from Nunna’s Ford. Close at hand a child sobbed; Étaín turned toward the sound and saw an old woman with a seamed face and lank gray locks cradling a toddler to her chin. The child had scabs and burns over her arms and legs, and the crude bandages about her abdomen were crusted black with old blood. She whimpered with each juddering clack of the wagon’s wheels. The old woman tried to soothe her with cord-bound hands. Knotted rope encircled Étaín’s own wrists, the fibrous hemp as sodden as the straw beneath them.

  “Cruel English,” the old woman muttered in Danish. “Why do they not give this child a blanket? Clean her wounds?” Her eyes added: or deliver her from her misery?

  “I d-do not know, old mother,” Étaín replied with effort, her tongue thick against her teeth. She struggled into a sitting position.

  Around them, leather creaked and harness jingled as three-score mounted thegns on blown horses, weary from long campaigning, escorted the wagon across an ancient bridge spanning a narrow and sluggish river. The Avon, she presumed. The world beyond was sere-gray and lifeless, leached of all color, joy, warmth, and contentment. The twisted branches of trees, the leaves, the decayed stone of the bridge, the wood of the wagon, and even the cloth and leather of the soldiers’ gear bore streaks of charcoal and ash, as though the world itself were the victim of a great burning. No, she corrected herself, not devoid of all color. Étaín blinked. To her mazed vision, every living thing appeared wreathed in a thin nimbus of crystalline vitality. She saw hints of every shade imaginable: emerald and jade, citrine and amethyst, sapphire and lapis, ruby and garnet, diamond and quartz and even onyx, which wormed through the spray of color like a harbinger of death. It was as if the gray veil of reality hid a secret jewel-crusted world.

  Étaín blinked again; her limbs shook with fever. She sank down, abrading her elbows as she dragged herself closer to the old woman and the child. The thin cloth of her linen tunic clung to her, providing little protection from the rain or from the chill moaning wind.

  “Why waste a good cloak on the dead while the living are in need?” the old woman hissed, jerking her head toward the end of the wagon. Étaín followed her gaze and saw a corpse laid out with reverence, its limbs and foreshortened trunk wrapped in a blood-smirched cloak that had once been green.

  Cynewulf. She remembered the name. Brother Cynewulf, who had led his hunters in search of a so-called Danish spy but had instead found death in the woods outside Nunna’s Ford. Death and defilement. How long had it been since the captain had his men put the body in the wagon? Two days? Three? She could not recall, as the hours since her capture ran together in a fevered blur.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Late,” the old woman replied. “Night comes fast upon us.”

  The wagon gave a violent lurch to the right as one wheel bounced into a rain-gnawed crater in the roadbed. The sudden motion drove Étaín’s bruised skull against the wagon’s wooden slats. The myriad colors flared and died as knives of agony flensed all reason from her; she sobbed, squeezing her eyes tight as a wave of nausea broke over her. Searing bile stung the back of her throat.

  “Are you ready to confess, Étaín?” The captain’s voice cut through the pain. She drew a rasping breath and trembled; with effort, she opened her eyes. The Saxon waited alongside the road as the wagon plodded over the bridge. As it passed, he clicked his tongue and urged his horse alongside. He did not wear his victory well, looking instead more bedraggled and careworn than he had outside Nunna’s Ford; he sat hunched in the saddle, his gaze flickering to the cloak-bundled corpse. Étaín felt a deep sadness emanating from him. “We used to play together as children, he and I. I remember long summers in the valley of the Severn River where we ran amok, much to my father’s chagrin.”

  “This child … these people, they need—”

  “WILL YOU CONFESS?” the captain roared.

  Étaín shook her head; when she spoke, again, her voice was barely above a whisper. “I … I h-have told you: I was a c-captive.”

  “Cynewulf was a good man. A solid man. He was the sort who would have ridden to the very gates of Hell to save you from these God-forsaken heathens, if he had but known. So why do you protect his killers?”

  “I … I’m not protecting anyone,” Étaín replied.

  “Liar!” The captain sm
ote the side of the wagon with a balled fist, causing the child to wail in terror. The old woman glared at him with undisguised hate. Étaín watched his manner change, rage replacing grief. He leaned over her and hissed like a coiled serpent. “We found sixteen corpses alongside Cynewulf! Do you think they killed themselves? Do you think he nailed his own head to a tree?”

  “No…”

  “The boy said there were two of you, but that was a lie, wasn’t it? How many more lurked in the shadows? Whose war band was it? Give me the name of the bastard who led you here!”

  Étaín shook her head; the pain caused her vision to narrow. She wanted to tell him the truth, tell him about being kidnapped by the skrælingr on the road to Roskilde; she wanted to tell him about the journey south and the maniacal dvergar, whose sorcery let them walk the branches of Yggðrasil, bringing them forth at Heathen’s Howe some fifteen years later. She wanted to tell him, but no sane man would believe her. It was too outlandish a tale. She opened her mouth, closed it and scowled.

  “The time for games is long past.” The captain leaned back in his saddle. “Lord Hrothmund is a pious man, a good soldier of Christ, but he has no patience for traitors and heathens. Tell me what I want to know and perhaps I can mitigate your punishment.”

  Étaín stirred. “Punishment for what? I am neither traitor nor heathen. There was only one other with me, and he was my captor. I owe him no allegiance.”

  The captain grunted and spat. “Do you take me for a fool? One man alone does not kill a warrior of Cynewulf’s caliber, much less his sixteen companions. He—”

  “I never said it was a man.”

  The Saxon made no reply; he stared hard at Étaín, his features an inscrutable mask. Finally, he shook his head. “No matter. Play your games, Étaín—if that truly is your name. Keep your secrets a while longer. Yonder are the gates of Badon. Trust my word on this: Lord Hrothmund will pry the truth from you, even if he must do it an ounce of flesh at a time. And as you scream for his mercy, as you beg him for the sweet release of death, just remember I could have helped you.”