Raven

by Giles Kristian

  ‘That was a good fight, hey!’ Bram said, folding his brawny arms and nodding contentedly.

  ‘My man must have got dust in his eyes,’ Svein grumbled at Black Floki who gave him a wicked grin.

  ‘I wonder what they were fighting about,’ Bram said.

  ‘A woman,’ Svein suggested. ‘It is usually over a woman.’

  But the bloodshed was not done, for no sooner had men claimed their winnings than two more warriors stepped into the arena. One was a blauman with a curved sword and a small leather shield, and the other was a Frank with no shield but two wicked-looking hand axes.

  ‘This has nothing to do with women,’ Olaf said, shaking his head. ‘It’s about hard, cold silver.’ The others nodded and ayed and I suddenly remembered what Gregor had said about the Amphitheatrum Flavium having always been a place of death. ‘Raven, take this,’ Olaf said, handing me five small silver coins, ‘and put it on the Frank.’ He rubbed his hands together like a man who has just traded a threadbare, flea-ridden pelt for a good knife or a pair of soft shoes. ‘Move your arse, lad,’ Uncle called after me as I fought through the press. ‘That Frank has the look of a proper killer and he’s going to make me some money.’

  As it turned out the blauman won. He cut off half of the Frank’s foot, which caused much beard-shaking amongst us for we thought that was a low thing to do. The Frank had no balance without his toes and for all his skill with the axes, all the blauman had to do was walk circles around him until he fell over. Then the curved sword sliced off his limbs one by one and even the crowd who had wagered on the blauman groaned to see that.

  The next fight made up for it. Two skilled blaumen fought long and hard and both took bad wounds before eventually Red-Cloak stopped the fight because neither had the strength left for a killing blow. The one who looked most likely to live was proclaimed the winner and I made two gold solidi and we all thought it was the best fight of the day.

  The crowds poured out of the Amphitheatrum Flavium, buzzing with the strange thrill of having watched men fight to the death, and we made our way back to the ships as dusk’s dark blue blanket draped itself across the ancient city and the air turned cold enough to make me shiver. We found Gregor waiting for us on the quayside.

  ‘I thought you were supposed to keep your eye on us,’ Wiglaf said, gnawing the flesh from a spiced pork rib and slapping Gregor’s shoulder as he passed.

  ‘Aye, why did you leave, Gregor?’ I asked, slapping the small scrip at my belt. It clinked satisfyingly. ‘You could have won some money.’

  He shook his head, glancing round nervously. ‘What is happening at the arena is an abomination,’ he said. ‘I could not stay and be a part of it. The worst of man is tainting this city as it did when Rome was young. I am a Christian, Raven.’ He shot an accusing look at Wiglaf, because he must have known that the Wessexman was also in thrall to the White Christ, though sometimes even I forgot that. ‘How can a Christian in good conscience enjoy watching men maim and kill each other? Worse still to profit from it.’ He shook his head again. ‘I told you it was a place of death. Men have killed and been killed in the Amphitheatrum Flavium since it was built. And all for the crowd’s delight.’ There was accusation in that.

  ‘Those Romans were blood-loving bastards,’ Penda said. ‘Still are, I would say.’

  ‘Not all of us,’ Gregor said, wrapping his cloak tighter around his shoulders against the chill coming off the river.

  ‘Enough of you are,’ Penda added. ‘There are going to be more fights in two days.’ He must have seen my surprise and he shrugged. ‘I met a Mercian coming out of the arena. Been here for two years he has and we got talking.’

  ‘Don’t you usually kill Mercians?’ I asked, grinning.

  ‘This one shared a wineskin with me. If not I would have gutted the whoreson.’ He grinned back. ‘The fights began two weeks ago, he said. At first not many people came to watch. They were afraid that the pope or the emperor would cut off their balls for putting wagers on the fights. It’s not Christian. But neither Pope Leo nor Karolus has made a move to stop it.’

  Gregor nodded. ‘I have seen the Holy Father’s soldiers outside the arena. But they never stop the fights.’

  ‘Of course they don’t stop the fights.’ The voice cut through the river’s ceaseless surge. It was Father Egfrith and I had not even noticed him sitting on the edge of the wharf, his cowled face towards the Tiberis’s west bank. He turned now, so that the glow of the city’s myriad torches touched his weasel face. ‘They don’t stop the fights because they can’t.’ Sigurd and Olaf came over, eager to hear what the monk had learnt whilst we had been watching men die. ‘Ask Gregororovius about the mood of the people these last months. Blood was being spilled upon the well-worn streets before they reopened the doors of the Amphitheatrum Flavium.’

  We looked at Gregor, who made me think of a worm that is trying to burrow into the ground because the birds are about.

  ‘Men were hungry,’ he said. ‘Their families were hungry. A man expects to be able to buy food, to feed his children. But we could not even get bread. Some blamed His Holiness, others the emperor. Armed bands roamed the city, stealing what they could and killing any that did not give them their food. So the traders who had supplies hid them away and that made it worse. Powerful men fought for control of the city and, as Father Egfrith says, much blood was spilled.’

  ‘Did Karolus do nothing?’ Sigurd asked. ‘The Romans are his people, yes?’

  ‘The emperor is far away,’ Gregor said.

  ‘Lucky for us, hey,’ Olaf put in, half smiling.

  ‘Maybe His Holiness Pope Leo has enough soldiers to beat the gangs, but …’ Gregor turned his palms to the night sky. ‘Maybe the lords of Rome would join their forces. Maybe they would attack Saint John Lateran.’

  ‘Attack a saint?’ I said.

  ‘Saint John Lateran is the basilica – the church in which His Holiness the Pope lives,’ Egfrith explained. I nodded, feeling stupid. ‘Leo has his enemies. The lords of Rome resent his humble beginnings and would rather their pope was of noble stock. He is also accused of adultery and perjury and many other crimes of which I am sure he is wholly guiltless.’

  Gregor nodded. ‘Only four years ago His Holiness was attacked by men whose purpose was to root out his tongue and gouge out his eyes.’ He grimaced. ‘We thank God that those evil men failed. We are fortunate that now he enjoys the emperor’s protection, for it was Pope Leo who put the crown on Karolus’s head. And yet His Holiness still has enemies in Rome who would bring him down.’

  I told this again in Norse for Bram and Svein and some of the others who were standing nearby sharing wineskins and bread soaked in butter and garlic and admiring a new flock of whores who had blown in on the breeze.

  ‘This pope is the lord of all the White Christ followers,’ Bram said, ‘and he lives here in Rome?’

  ‘Their god whispers in his ear day and night,’ I said, snapping my fingers and thumb together.

  ‘I’ll wager that sheep-swiving son of a rancid cunny has some treasures worth plundering,’ he said, sharing a vicious grin with Svein, and I wished then that I hadn’t mentioned it, for it would be just like those two to kick down Pope Leo’s door and yank the rings off his fingers regardless of the consequences. I left them with those silver-heavy thoughts and turned back to Gregor.

  ‘Since the fights began in the arena, peace has returned to Rome,’ he said. ‘Bread is being baked. People are eating.’

  ‘Men are happy when they are making money,’ Olaf pointed out, tapping his own scrip, which was much heavier than mine by the looks.

  ‘Word has been sent to the emperor,’ Egfrith warned. ‘Those barbarous fights in the Amphitheatrum Flavium will be stopped. Karolus will not allow Rome to return to its Godless days.’

  Gregor made the sign of the cross and looked sheepishly at Egfrith. ‘I pray that you are right, Father Egfrith. And I for one will be nowhere near the arena when the emperor comes.’ />
  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  TWO DAYS LATER WE MADE SURE WE WERE EVEN CLOSER TO THE fighters than we had been the first time. The dark-haired fighter that Floki had put his money on was known as Theo the Greek. We watched him kill the blauman who had butchered the Frank who’d fought with two short axes, and I lost the two solidi I had made earlier. There were two more warriors who had, it seemed, made names for themselves in the arena: Berstuk the Wend and the man they called The African. Berstuk had won five fights, The African four. Both were fearsome-looking warriors who bore the scars of countless fights and both were natural killers. Big, powerful, fast, skilled, they had everything a great warrior needs and over the next two weeks, in between trading and provisioning the ships, we watched them kill again and again.

  ‘There’s a stink to it all, Sigurd,’ Olaf said one night, passing a wineskin to the jarl and dragging the back of his hand across his lips. We lay amongst pelts on the wharf where half of us had put up rough shelters to give everyone more room. No one had stopped us, because the pope did not want any trouble, and so we did what we liked. ‘Why is it that the Greek, the Vindr, and the African never fight each other?’ Olaf went on. Further down the wharf a group of men were arguing. Someone nearer belched loudly. We were drinking ourselves stupid and arguing about which of the fighters we had seen was the best.

  ‘They are worth too much to Red-Cloak alive, Uncle,’ Sigurd said. ‘They bring in the crowds and so long as his best warriors keep fighting, there will always be men who think they can beat them.’

  A fight had now broken out on the wooden wharves and we half watched a maelstrom of punches and kicks. Then blades were drawn and that must have persuaded some of them that the disagreement was not worth dying for, because the knot of men split, both sides backing off amidst insults and curses. Ships of all shapes and sizes were arriving daily, their crews spilling off the river into Rome and most of them armed to the teeth. There was no sign of the harbour master Gratiosus nowadays and not even Gregor knew where he was, which was good for us because it meant he was not around to squeeze us for more berthing money. ‘He’s likely pulled those scales of his out in front of the wrong crew and they’ve fed his Roman guts to the river rats,’ Bram had suggested and we thought that was probably the truth of it.

  ‘But Red-Cloak must be losing money in wagers,’ Bjarni said, coming up for air from a pretty whore’s tits. ‘Who would wager their silver against those three? It seems to me that we have not seen anyone half good enough to beat them.’

  I sluiced my insides with a great splash of wine and shuddered because it was sour. ‘Red-Cloak is weaving their fame,’ I said, ‘that’s what it is about.’ Eyes turned to me then because I talked of fame and fame is what a Norseman craves even more than silver. ‘Gregor told us that in the olden times, even when Rome was the most powerful kingdom in the world, its emperors still feared their people.’

  ‘That’s because there were so many of them, like fleas on a damn dog,’ Bram said. Or maggots in a carcass, I thought.

  ‘To win favour and keep the peace the emperors would hold fights between slaves.’ Someone barked a laugh at that. ‘Not just any slaves,’ I said. ‘These men were trained by the best fighters in the world until they were ready for the arena.’ I looked at Sigurd. ‘Can you imagine that place choked to the sky with blood-hungry Romans?’

  Sigurd shook his head. ‘The noise must have been like thunder.’

  ‘So this Red-Cloak thinks he’s an emperor,’ Bjarni said, picking his teeth with a sliver of wood.

  ‘He’s a crafty son of a goat, that’s what he is,’ Olaf said, ‘because he is getting rich while other men are getting dead.’ There were chuckles at that because it was well said. Yet even through the false light of flames and the moon-glow off the foam-flecked river, I could see the men’s eyes as they talked of meaningless things and of home and women and friends gone to the grave. They drank sour wine and weak ale and ate pork ribs cooked in garlic oil. But their eyes shone like golden solidi. And I wished I had not talked of fame-hoards, for that was like putting a fleshy bone beneath a hound’s nose at night and expecting the meat to still be on it in the morning.

  Some days later Sigurd told us to fill our ships’ bellies with food because we were leaving Rome. If what Egfrith had learnt from his brother Christ slaves was true and Emperor Karolus really was on his way to support Pope Leo and put the lords of Rome back in their places, it would be better for us if we were not there. We had crammed our eyes with the countless impossible wonders of the ancient city. We had eaten foods that tasted so good you didn’t want to finish eating them, and other things that tasted so bad they turned your face inside out. We had made some money, too, selling furs, amber, bone and some of the weapons we had taken from the blaumen, though we had lost most of it again in the arena. It was time for our prows to taste the salty ocean once more, for we had not set our hearts on Rome but on Miklagard, the Great City. And so we were leaving. Little did we know that that was not what the Spinners had woven for us.

  ‘Tell them, Raven. They’ll lap this up!’ Penda, Gytha, Baldred and Wiglaf had returned from the market at the foot of the Esquiline Hill where Gregor had told us we could buy the best smoked cheese in all of Rome. Each of the Wessexmen had come lugging a greased linen sackful, the sweet, woody fug of that delicious treasure billowing in their wake. But it was not the cheese that had them slobbering.

  I felt my brows bend like drawn bows. ‘I think we should say nothing about it, Penda,’ I said, thinking back over the story I had just heard. Gap-toothed Ingolf passed and I slapped the fragrant slab of smoked beef ribs on his shoulder. The men were thrumming as they always did when we prepared to leave a place and take to the sea road again.

  ‘I’d tell them myself if it were not for my honest Christian tongue,’ Penda gabbed, grinning at Gytha and the others. He rolled it over his bottom lip. ‘Just can’t find its way round those filthy, heathen words of yours,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not telling them,’ I said, pointing at him. ‘Besides, we’re leaving in the morning. It’s too late.’

  ‘Tell them.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell them.’

  My eyes rolled in their sockets.

  ‘At least tell Sigurd,’ Baldred put in, several black teeth showing within his even blacker beard. The Wessexmen were glistening with sweat because the afternoon was warm and they had walked far.

  ‘Heya Raven, what are the little Englishmen bleating about?’ Svein said, stopping nearby to get a better purchase on a barrel of ale he was hefting across the rain-slick quayside towards Serpent. Rain had blown in from the north-east and it was that same wind, which seemed to come every morning and last till midday, that we would catch in our sails next day to push us back down the Tiberis to the sea.

  I knew I should keep my lips riveted together. I knew I should swallow the words that were rising in my throat like bubbles in good ale. But there is a part of me that loves chaos, that revels in the clatter of the runes across the deck, in that moment when nothing is certain and anything is possible. All warriors, I think, hear the echo of sword against shield in the beat of their own hearts and are savagely drawn towards it. That is why I told Svein and Bram and anyone else within earshot what Penda had told me: that the word jumping like a flea across Rome was that Red-Cloak had issued a challenge. Three warriors had beaten every man brave enough to fight them. Theo the Greek, Berstuk the Wend, and the man they called The African were, so Red-Cloak said, the greatest fighters to wield a blade since the days of the gladiators. Now these three would fight together as sword-brothers, in the greatest spectacle the Amphitheatrum Flavium had seen for four hundred years. Were there any three men in all of Rome to match those three in courage and skill? African, Moor, Northman, Frank, Wend, it mattered not, so long as they dared.

  ‘And supposing there are three half-witted men foolish enough to accept this challenge,’ Egfrith piped up, ‘and suppose by some miracle they defeat those
three killers. What would they get for it?’

  ‘One thousand, two hundred and fifty libra,’ I said, ‘which is—’

  ‘Which is five men’s weight in silver,’ Sigurd said, glancing at Olaf, who tugged his beard at the thought. Men whistled and murmured and tried to imagine that much silver.

  ‘What’s the bone in the broth?’ Olaf asked, suspicion slitting his eyes.

  ‘That whoever fights those three will probably die, Uncle,’ I said. ‘And that they have to pay Red-Cloak five hundred libra for the pleasure.’

  ‘Then they just make sure they win, hey!’ Svein said with a shrug of his massive shoulders.

  ‘And whatever happens Red-Cloak will make enough silver in wagers to become an emperor after all,’ Sigurd said. ‘Uncle, get everyone together at sundown. Here, by Serpent. Tell Asgot to bring the runes.’ Olaf nodded and marched up the wharf. ‘Raven, go and find Red-Cloak. Tell him that Óðin’s Wolves who are moored in the embrace of the river’s coil accept the challenge and will pay six hundred libra tomorrow if he turns down any others.’

  ‘Lord?’ My head was swimming, my ears trying to grip on to the words coming out of my jarl’s mouth.

  Sigurd eyeballed me fiercely. ‘Raven, do you think men like us can ignore such a challenge? Did we come to Rome just to see the ruins of men long dead? You knew, Raven.’ His brows lifted. ‘Even before the words tumbled out of your mouth, you knew that it would be this way.’ He was right. I had known. Yet I also knew that part of me loved chaos. And so I nodded to my jarl as Norsemen, Danes and Englishmen simmered like water above coals and forgot all about setting sail. And I went to find Red-Cloak.

  Father Egfrith went with me because he could speak Latin, which might be useful for all we knew, having no idea where Red-Cloak was from. At first the monk had refused, saying that he wanted nothing to do with our bloodthirsty schemes and would rather spend his last days in Rome visiting shrines and churches and the grave of a saint called Paul. Sigurd threatened to leave him behind if he did not help us and I believe Egfrith half liked the sound of that threat, for in his gloom he believed he had failed as far as converting us into kneeling White Christ followers went. But Egfrith was also as inquisitive as a crow. As much as any man he thirsted to see Miklagard, or Constantinople as he called it, maybe even more so now that he had seen Rome. And so he wandered the city with me and we asked a hundred people if they knew where we might find the rich, dark-skinned man who held the purse strings in the arena. The ones who understood us eyed us suspiciously and refused to speak of the arena, perhaps thinking we were in the pay of Pope Leo or the emperor and were trying to trick them into confessing they had attended the fights.