Raven

by Giles Kristian

  This was the gist of it so far as I could tell through my wine-and herbs-soaked pain. There was no doubt Bardanes was as slippery as a snot-covered eel. He seemed to me the kind of man who could talk a bear into stepping out of its skin and rolling it up for you. As for Pope Leo, the way I saw things he could not have been a fool or else he would not have risen so high amongst the White Christ followers. And yet he went along with Guido’s plan, or at least turned a blind eye to it, and I was thinking that strange until I heard the bit where Guido had promised Leo a cut of the money he made from folk’s wagers. The pope’s coffers were light these days in large part thanks to the warships and crews he maintained to protect the coast from Moors.

  ‘There was never any shortage of fighters,’ Nikephoros said. ‘Dozens came to fight and thousands came to watch and my chests began to fill. Openly, Pope Leo condemned the fights. He had to, of course. Some of his soldiers broke a few heads to make a show of it, and the crowds watched the fights with one eye on the doors. But they still watched the fights. After two weeks we let the grain flow again. The people had their bread. After three the fountains were clean and there were no more riots.’

  ‘And now?’ Sigurd said, his eyes reflecting Bram’s dying pyre.

  ‘Now we have silver to raise an army and the pope has his city back,’ Nikephoros said simply. ‘Leo will never know we were here. He will bury all evidence of what has happened in the Amphitheatrum Flavium. Perhaps he’ll build another church over the blood. And he will minister to his flock.’

  ‘Why did you stop the fight?’ Sigurd asked, his eyes meeting mine for a half-breath, then riveting back on Nikephoros. It was a good question, I thought, for there was no denying that how it ended had taken a little of the shine off our winning.

  ‘Theophilos is one of my best men,’ Nikephoros said, scratching his oiled beard. ‘As you can see, I don’t have the army I once did. I will need men like Theo in the days to come.’

  Sigurd greeted this with a low grunt. ‘That was a good tale,’ he said, raising his horn to Nikephoros and Bardanes and sweeping sweat-lank hair out of his face.

  ‘There could have been more fighting in it,’ Olaf moaned, one eye closed and the other pointing Thór knew where, because Uncle was as drunk as the Thunder God at a Yule feast.

  Then Sigurd frowned whilst Bjarni leant over to refill his horn from a wineskin. ‘The ending was poor though,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Uncle is right. A good ending must have a generous spattering of blood or else no one is happy.’ He scratched the back of his head as though there was a mouse nesting in his hair. ‘Now I am thinking about it, it wasn’t a good story at all.’

  ‘I could not tell you the ending because it hasn’t happened yet, Jarl Sigurd,’ Nikephoros said, one dark eyebrow hitched. ‘But I can assure you that there will be blood. Arsaber will die and his snakes with him.’

  ‘Good,’ Sigurd said. ‘I am happy about that. My friend Bram would be happy about that too. He liked a bloody tale.’ Olaf banged his horn against his jarl’s and wine spilled.

  ‘Perhaps you want to see how this story ends for yourself, Sigurd,’ Nikephoros suggested, and though it shames me to admit it, that was the first time I saw through the smoke the pattern that these Greeks had been weaving since they came to our wharf and sat amongst our furs. Here was an emperor sharing piss-foul wine with rough men and heathens. He could have sent any of his men to deliver what he owed us, but here he was, biting his tongue and biding his time, and I had been a fool not to see it sooner. This emperor wanted us.

  ‘At last, Uncle, I think we are through to the bone!’ Sigurd bellowed. Men looked at each other with shrugs and beard-scratching. I levered myself up on to a higher bolster, swearing at Halfdan and Gunnar who were blocking my view.

  ‘Your men fought well in the arena today, Sigurd. They did you great honour. Truly I did not think my fighters could be beaten.’

  ‘Every one of these wolves wanted to fight your men,’ Sigurd said, which was not quite true but near enough. ‘We drew lots for the honour.’ Nikephoros shared a look with Bardanes then that told us they were even more impressed, for surely they had thought we had simply sent our best fighters.

  ‘Then your reputation as great warriors is well deserved,’ the basileus said to the growing press of men around him, though the flattery was mostly wasted on the blind drunk and those who knew no English. ‘What impressed us most was your men’s loyalty to each other.’ He grinned, revealing good teeth. ‘You flew down like hawks to protect the giant and that young warrior when we moved to guard Theophilos. I admit that I sweated a few drops at that moment.’ Bardanes stifled a grimace at that and I guessed he was still pride-hurt from yielding to a few crews of heathens. If he truly was the emperor’s war leader he must have been used to commanding thousands. Now he led eighteen men.

  ‘We were a flea’s ball bag away from carving you into joints of meat for Rome’s mangy curs,’ Olaf said in drunken Norse, forgetting to use English. The men cheered. ‘That would have got the crowds stiff!’ he barked, making a fist and shaking his forearm.

  Nikephoros ignored him and pointed to the ironbound chest which now sat between Sigurd and Olaf, its contents having been weighed and found to be as promised. ‘Compared with the riches that lie in my treasury, that which you have won today is like a candle against the sun,’ the basileus said.

  ‘I think it is not your treasury any more,’ Sigurd pointed out, drinking. Wine spilled into his beard as he smiled. Those words stung Nikephoros like a wasp.

  ‘My people are loyal, Jarl Sigurd. They will rejoice to see me back on my rightful throne. As for the army, they are simple men. They fight for whoever carries the pay chest.’ He nodded resolutely. ‘With your help that will be me again.’

  Sigurd laughed. ‘All the men I have are here as you see them. Aye they are killers. Every sharp-clawed, growling one of them. But I have seen Roman armies before. They are like swarms of flies or fleas on a dog.’

  Bardanes glanced at Nikephoros, who nodded his permission for the general to take the reins of the conversation.

  ‘All we need to do is cut off the serpent’s head,’ he said, ‘and then the rebellion dies. It has always been this way in Constantinople.’

  ‘It is true, Sigurd,’ Egfrith said warily. ‘Just three years ago the Empress Irene ruled in Constantinople.’ Nikephoros’s eyes bulged and Sigurd waved a hand at Egfrith.

  ‘He is a Christ monk,’ the jarl said, as though that explained everything.

  ‘As the emperor has told you,’ Bardanes went on, ‘we will kill Arsaber and secure the treasury. Then it will be over. Help us do this simple thing and we will make you richer than kings.’

  ‘I have heard this before,’ Sigurd rumbled.

  ‘Not from the emperor of the richest city in the world you haven’t,’ Bardanes said.

  Sigurd pursed his lips at this. ‘As it happens, we were going to Miklagard anyway,’ he said, at which Olaf nodded, biting into a hunk of meat that was cooling on the end of his knife. Sigurd gave Bardanes his wolf grin. ‘We were coming to raid. We were going to fill our ships’ bellies with as much treasure as they can take. But it seems to me that the All-Father’s hand is in this. How else can it be that the Emperor of Miklagard happens to be sitting on my furs drinking my wine?’

  ‘So you will fight for me?’ Nikephoros asked, tiny flames dancing in the whites of his eyes.

  ‘We’ll put your Greek arse back on your golden chair,’ Sigurd said, nodding. ‘If Óðin wills it,’ he added. ‘And you will fill our ships to their sheer strakes with silver.’ He nodded at the crown on Nikephoros’s head. ‘And gold,’ he said. ‘What say you, Uncle?’

  Olaf frowned, meat juices glistening on his lips.

  ‘Anyone with a name that sounds so much like arse needs to be kicked,’ he said. The four men leant together and grasped each other’s forearms in the warrior way.

  And we were going to Miklagard.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN
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  WE SPENT TEN MORE DAYS IN ROME. WE FOUND YOUNG Gregororovius again, or rather he found us. We had not seen hide nor hair of him for days and it turned out that he had been made the new harbour master because Gratiosus, to whom we owed several weeks’ berthing tax, had never been found. Penda suggested to Gregor that he might be better off finding another trade unless he wanted to end up food for the river rats, which had likely been the last harbour master’s fate. But Gregor gave his handsome smile and assured the Wessexman that he would be safe enough now that the trouble in Rome seemed to have passed and His Holiness the Pope’s soldiers were patrolling the streets again. Whether that was true or not, he let us off the money we owed and this made me think that Gregor would be just fine, for he had enough cleverness in him to tell which way the wind was blowing and rig his sail for the smoothest ride. He also took Sigurd to the best blacksmith in Rome, who worked a forge in the shadow of the great wall east of the Amphitheatrum Flavium, because there were still seven Danes who needed good mail. The smith had four brynjas already, which he altered to fit the Danes, but he and his workers made the final three brynjas from the first ring to the last, and to do this in ten days was unheard of by any of us. Still, it cost Sigurd no small part of the coin we had won with our blood and for a hoard like that I was willing to wager the smith would have happily gone without sleep for a month.

  The day we slipped our moorings, our four prows sniffing the sea air on the wind, was the day we heard that King Karolus had entered Rome from the north. We had no desire to meet the warrior king again and neither had Basileus Nikephoros, and all in all we felt like mischievous children creeping out of the orchard at the bark of the farmer’s hound.

  It turned out that the Emperor of the Romans needed more than our swords. He needed our ships too if he was ever going to get back to Miklagard. They had scuppered the imperial dromon on the coast south of Rome and walked three days across country, arriving at the city’s walls footsore as common pedlars. It had been quite some ship, Nikephoros told us sorrowfully, but they could not afford for it to be recognized and so now it sat broken on the seabed, scoured by sea wrack and lived in by fish. This was truly the part of the Greeks’ story that Sigurd found the saddest. ‘It is a dark and gloom-stirring thing to sink your own ship,’ he had said, shaking his head at the misery of it. ‘But you will like Serpent,’ he announced, pride shining in his eyes. ‘She is the best ship in the world.’ Bardanes had raised an eyebrow at that, but it seemed to me that Nikephoros took pleasure in the jarl’s obvious pride and he nodded appreciatively at every part of Serpent that Sigurd pointed out to him.

  So the basileus, his general, and the warrior Theophilos sailed with us aboard Serpent, whilst the remaining sixteen Long Shields pulled Fjord-Elk’s oars, so that she was no longer crew-light. But they were not sailors, these Greek Romans. Bragi called across from Fjord-Elk’s stern fighting platform that he had seen cows with more sea-sense than the new men in his thwarts. Of course Fjord-Elk being short of rowers had not been the only reason why Sigurd had put the soldiers aboard a different ship from their masters. We did not know these men well enough to trust them and could not risk their trying to take one of the ships, but we now realized there was more chance of Bragi sprouting braids, a bird’s nest beard and a bristly arse. They shipped oars like a forest in a storm, hitting each other with the staves and sending Norsemen ducking for cover. They rowed too deep or too shallow, and raggedly, their blades hitting the water like a handful of lobbed pebbles.

  ‘They are palace guards,’ Nikephoros explained, embarrassed, watching Fjord-Elk’s skipper trying to establish some order aboard his ship. ‘They are good fighters,’ the basileus added, clenching a fist, ‘with iron discipline. You will see, Sigurd.’

  Sigurd frowned, still watching Fjord-Elk off our steerboard stern. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘if they don’t drown themselves and sink my ship before we reach Miklagard.’

  I wasn’t rowing. The wound in my side showed no signs of rot, no matter how often Penda or Olaf or Egfrith came to sniff at it like dogs round a bitch’s arse. But to row risked tearing it open and so I was free to perch on my sea chest, letting the sun warm my eyelids and bailing every now and then when a pool slewed my way. Bram’s death and my part in it still scuttled round my thought cage like a spider, nibbling away at my mind and spinning a gloom-web that wrapped me round and round. It was an anchor weight in my gut, too, and I wanted desperately to tell someone how Cynethryth had put my feigr on to Bram. But I knew I could not. Not because they would hate me, though that thought was no mood lightener, but because they would hate Cynethryth for doing it, for Bram had been to the Fellowship what her oak keel was to Serpent.

  On the journey back down the Tiberis to the sea Bjarni had looked up from a carving of Týr he was working on and said to me that at least no one had mentioned for a while the silver we’d lost in that Frankish river – for which everyone knew I shouldered the blame, they having slung it squarely on me.

  ‘You’ve just mentioned it, Bjarni,’ I’d said.

  ‘Ah, so I have,’ he’d admitted, brows hitched.

  ‘I haven’t brought it up for a while,’ Svein had said, tugging his red beard.

  ‘Nor me,’ Aslak had chipped in. ‘All that silver you pitched overboard never to be seen again. I have not spoken of it for weeks.’

  ‘You’re all piss-dribbling goat-fuckers,’ I had gnarred at their grinning faces. At least they could smile about it now, with their jarl’s sea chest half full of coin and the promise of much more to come. I had helped buy those smiles with my blood and the fame-hoard we had won in the arena.

  Now we were on the open ocean again, back on the sea road, the ancient city of wonders far behind, and to a Norseman there is nothing better. Gulls tumbled and wheeled above, shrieking noisily. The warm sea turned an even paler blue, so that it was unlike any sea most of us had ever seen, for the cold, endlessly deep waters of the fjords can be black as night. Osk said that if it were his wyrd to drown he would rather drown in this clear blue sea than the Norsemen’s black one.

  ‘At least I’d be able to see your crying faces as I sank to the bottom,’ he said thoughtfully, pulling his oar.

  ‘More likely you’d see us sharing out your gear and banging our mead horns together,’ Bothvar corrected him, getting a few laughs, for it was a sleeping sea and the rowing was easy. Not that General Bardanes thought so. We had been barely out of the river’s mouth when Sigurd had ordered Theo and Bardanes to heft an oar from the trees and row. Theo had simply done as he was told, taking his place amidships next to Svein, but Bardanes had glowered at the jarl with those eagle eyes, and I’d wager I was not alone in wondering what kind of talons the man had if it came to it. He was broad-shouldered and well muscled by the looks, but that does not always make a good fighter. Sometimes those things are no more use than the decoration on a sword hilt collar, as Bram had told me once. Sigurd could have shown the man a little more respect, but then why should he? His ship, his rules. And, instead of asking again or leaving Bardanes on his roost to preen his feathers, Sigurd gave the man a choice. Either he could row with the others, or he could be given a knife and lowered over the sheer strake to scrape the barnacles off Serpent’s belly. The Greek had looked to his emperor for support, but Nikephoros had flashed his palms, wanting no part in the dispute, and still Bardanes had refused, seething like hot iron in the quench trough. Until Sigurd fetched a coiled rope, an old knife, and Svein the Red. Now, the general was rowing and sweating with the rest of us. To the man’s credit and our surprise, he handled an oar well, keeping his rhythm neat as a sheathed blade, which is a sound way to earn a Norseman’s respect.

  I was healing well because I was young and because Asgot and Olaf were good with wounds. By burning the gash in my side they had not only stopped the blood but had also sealed it so that the wound rot could not seep in, which was the least the old godi could do given it was his fault I had ended up in the arena at all.

  Now,
there was a glossy welt of new skin that looked much worse than it felt, and soon I was able to row again, though I was careful not to stretch my arms above my head for fear of ripping the scar open.

  The days and weeks passed uneventfully and we enjoyed fair weather and fairer seas. All must at some point have reflected on what a strange company we were nowadays. Norsemen, Englishmen, Danes, Greeks, a woman, a monk, a blauman, an emperor and a wolf, all sharing labour, food and drink and the rolling sea road, and all destined for the Great City, Miklagard. We passed the country of the Langobards and rounded the southern tip of the land that marks the western edge of Basileus Nikephoros’s empire of the Romans, as the Roman Greeks call it. Then on we ploughed into the Western Sea’s cauldron of cultures, as Father Egfrith put it. He also called it the womb of civilization and many other names which flew into my right ear and out of the left, claiming that the sun-scorched islands had been home to heroes, deep-thinkers and master craftsmen since long before we men of the north had learnt to rob the earth of iron or hew oaks into ocean-going craft. We knew nothing of the truth of all that, but we did know it was hot as the smith god Völund’s anvil on that glittering blue sea. Tunics, cloaks and bad-weather gear were stuffed into sea chests. Our backs and shoulders blistered, peeled like dry hoggorm skin, then turned brown as leather. When we were not rowing we sought the shade of Serpent’s sail and often, when the sun was low in the sky but still hot enough to melt the pine tar between the strakes, we mounted shields in the rail and slunk into their cool shadows.

  I had never seen so many craft and neither had anyone else apart from the Greeks. Vessels of every size and shape harnessed the sea breezes. Huge, beaked dromons rose and dipped, their bows raising billows of white spray, oar banks dipping even with the sails up. Broad knörr-type boats swayed like wide-hipped wives on their way to market, and fishing skiffs bobbed free as the gusts. White sails were everywhere and it was a hard thing not to wriggle into brynjas, put men and axes at the prows and see what we could pilfer. Bothvar said it was like laying a slab of meat before a hound and telling it not to lick its lips, and he was right, for patience in a raiding man is as rare as a happy marriage. Even if he tries to cling to it, it almost always proves as fleeting as a belch.