Authors: Giles Kristian
Someone said my name and I turned to meet Ealdred who wore a dark green cloak edged with white ermine fur. Beneath it he wore a fine mail brynja, its rings polished to a lustre. But the brynja was not new. It had seen battle.
'My lord,' I greeted him, checking that my sword, which had been Glum's, came cleanly from the scabbard. That morning one of Ealdred's smiths had sharpened the blade and his apprentice had dripped melted sheep's fat into the sheath's wool lining. I could still smell it.
'Find my son, Raven,' Ealdred said. He looked past me at the warriors assembling, his face expressionless behind the long moustache, though I thought I caught a hint of doubt in those hard eyes.
I nodded. 'I'll find him, lord. Then I'll be back for my jarl's silver.' Ealdred held my eye for a moment, then nodded, and I watched his back as he walked away towards his daughter.
'Don't even think about it, lad,' Penda said, following my eyes to Cynethryth. 'Ealdred would have someone like me cut your throat for even dreaming about her lily white arse.' But I watched Cynethryth anyway, until she flushed and tugged on her father's sleeve, drawing his attention elsewhere so he would not notice my staring. Then, as the sun rose higher in the east, casting its brilliance on to helmets and spear blades and shield bosses, I and thirty men of Wessex marched out of Ealdorman Ealdred's fortress.
After the first few miles, the levy men began a drinking song and I thought of the Norsemen who were always singing, yet by the time the sun began to slip from his throne the only sounds were of boots striking the earth, sword scabbards banging against shield rims, and iron and leather fittings jangling and creaking. I was sweating heavily in Glum's brynja and helmet, carrying his shield across my back and his sword at my waist, and I prayed to Týr Lord of Battle that I would not dishonour the fine arms as Glum had. That dog had betrayed his lord and his Fellowship and I imagined his one-armed soul wandering the afterlife, spurned even by his ancestors. Surely such as he would have no place in Valhöll at Óðin's mead bench. But if he was amongst the chosen, I wondered what would happen when the Valkyries bore Sigurd son of Harald to the All-Father's hall. For not even death can turn aside vengeance, and the ancient beams of Valhöll would shake then and their dust would fall like dry rain upon the living.
We crossed streams still swollen from the winter rains and marched through forests of oak, ash, and elm, even cutting through a great enclosure used by kings of Wessex for hunting red deer. We tramped through meadows where white lady's smock grew so thick it looked like a mantle of fresh snow, and crossed fields where knapweed and marsh bedstraw were losing their heads to grazing sheep. That night, we ate well and slept soundly and next morning we woke to another fine day full of the noise of marsh tits and song thrushes. Swallows twisted and turned effortlessly, plucking winged insects from the sky, whilst yellow wagtails as gold as dandelions ran nimbly between the feet of grazing cattle. Life was everywhere in a day that gave no whisper of the death to come.
The Wessexmen resented me. It was in their eyes and in the way they looked to Penda to lead them. But I had expected as much, for I was an outlander to them and had never stood beside them in the shieldwall. Furthermore, I was a pagan and a Norseman, and Englishmen have always despised both.
By the third day, we had left King Egbert's kingdom and I found myself once again in Coenwulf's land, in Mercia. At dusk a man called Eafa made his feelings towards me plain.
'Hey, Egric, did you know that Norsemen screw their neighbours' pigs? Not their own, for that is considered uncivil, but they screw their neighbours' animals. Did you know that?'
'No, I did not,' Egric said, glancing at me. 'Why would they do that?'
'Because the pigs don't smell as bad as their women,' Eafa said.
It was not the first insult Eafa had aimed at me, but at last the man had found the courage to speak them loud and plain rather than letting them escape like farts. The other men laughed, their own way of slighting me.
'Are you going to let that prick make a fool of you?' Penda mumbled. Eafa was a fletcher by trade and a big man, but his bulk came from fat, not muscle.
'You think I should put my spear down his throat?' I asked, scanning the sun-touched hills for Mercians or Welsh raiders.
'I try not to think, lad,' Penda growled, 'but the men won't stand with you in the shieldwall if
they
think you're a coward.' I knew Penda included himself in this and for a moment I was tempted to open Eafa's belly to show Penda I was no coward. Instead I turned and Eafa's eyes widened as I rammed the butt of my spear into his gut, making him double over. Then I brought the haft down on his helmeted head and winced because I thought I might have killed him. But Eafa had a fat head, too, and he struggled to his hands and knees, shaking his head and moaning.
'We have too few men as it is, Penda,' I said loud enough for the others to hear. 'I'd be a fool to kill one of them, even a useless pig's bladder like Eafa. Better to let the Welsh do it.' Eafa was in no state to fight me and I don't know that he would have in any case, because I had embarrassed him once and once was enough for Eafa. Some of the men cursed me and others helped the fletcher to his feet, but none made a move against me, and I was relieved. I had taken a risk and it had paid off.
'I'd have hit him harder,' Penda said as we continued on our way. Later I wished I had hit him harder, because Eafa's mouth began flapping again so that after two days I admit I admired his imagination where Norsemen and animals were concerned.
And then we came to Offa's wall, which marked the western edge of Mercia. The ground before the barricade had been cleared of trees and bushes that might have provided cover for raiders, and a great ditch had been dug before the high earthen bank on which stood a palisade of sharpened oak stakes.
'Are we going to flap our arms and fly over it?' a man named Alric asked as we lay on our bellies on a hillcrest overlooking the barrier.
'Bloody right we are, Alric,' Penda said, 'should be easy seeing as we're all bloody angels!' He scratched the scar across his face. 'Or else, just for the fun of it, we could wait till dark and climb over the damn thing. You hear that, Eafa?' he said, looking at the fletcher. 'Think you can haul your fat arse over that little wall down there?' Eafa grimaced and Penda turned to me. 'Raven, you'll catch Eafa if he falls, there's a good lad.'
'Like a pig on a spit,' I said, holding Eafa's eye and tapping the haft of my spear. 'We're exposed up here,' I said, turning back to Penda. 'We'll take cover now and come back tonight.' The Wessexman nodded and we began to crawl back from the ridge. 'You still think we should cross here, Penda?' I asked as we gathered our shields and prepared to seek cover till nightfall. 'We could move north and cross the river in boats.' For a little further north the wall ended, replaced by the river Wye which formed a natural territory marker coursing eastward before snaking back into the Welsh lands. Only near a place called Magon does Offa's bank and palisade rise again, attesting to Mercian dominance. I had learned all this at Ealdred's feast before the mead had emptied my head of sense.
Penda shook his head. 'Here, we'll have to cross the wall
and
the river behind it.' He grinned at the Wessexmen. 'Making it the most difficult part.' They grumbled, though they saw the sense in it, for no Welshman would expect raiders to take the most difficult path. 'With any luck, the sheep-shaggers won't be watching this area too closely,' Penda said, and I was glad to have him with me.
That night we became shadows. We used ropes to climb over the oak stakes, which was easy for most of us, and then found a shallow part of the river to cross, which was not easy. Ealdred had given us wine skins and we blew these up and used them to keep our heads, swords, and rolled up brynjas above the water as we crossed. I whispered my thanks to Loki the cunning that there were no Welshmen waiting to greet us as we clambered shivering in our undergarments from the Wye's muddy west bank. Then, throwing my wet hair back, I remembered the men who had attacked us at the shepherd's hut, and I scooped up a handful of mud and smeared it across my face. 'It will make us invisible, like spirits,' I said in answer to questioning looks. Some of the men muttered under their breath and others made the sign of the cross as though my words offended their god, but soon every man had covered his face and hands with thick mud so that by the stars' silvery half-light only the whites of our eyes gleamed to suggest we might be men, not demons.
We knew that if we followed the river we would come across villages and settlements, for folk will always live beside fresh water, but there was no way of knowing where Weohstan had been taken. One of Ealdred's household warriors, a solidly built man named Oswyn, seemed to know the land better than most.
'There's a settlement on the next bend in the river,' he said, his teeth bright against his blackened face. 'It used to be a big place, but we burned it three years ago.'
'I remember,' Eafa said with a grimace, examining the fletchings on one of his arrows. 'They'd taken some little 'uns from Hwicce, seven or eight of 'em, I think. So we burned seven or eight of their villages.' He ran the feather flights across his tongue. 'Bastards rebuild 'em faster than we can raze 'em.'
'Then we hit them tonight,' Penda said, 'and if Weohstan is not there, we move on while it's still dark. Try the next place.'
'No, Penda,' I said, gripping Glum's thick ash spear. 'If we hit the place now, some will get away. Bound to. They'll run to their kinsmen and we'll have Welshmen all over us by sunrise.'
'Aye, we'll be haring back to Wessex,' Oswyn said, 'and we'll be damned lucky to get half the way before they do for us.' He spat at the thought.
'So what do you suggest, Norseman?' Penda challenged. All eyes fixed on me and I took a deep breath, accepting that the Norns might be weaving a pattern that would have me lead these men to their deaths.
'We take one man from this village Oswyn talks about and we make him tell us what he knows. Word will have spread if Ealdorman Ealdred's son is being held round here. They'll need to have something to show for losing so many warriors.' Penda nodded grudgingly and I pushed on. 'We find out where they're holding Weohstan and we get the bastard to take us there.' I said these words remembering my first meeting with Sigurd and Olaf, and the terror that had turned my bowels to liquid when they had made me take them to my village.
'You want to walk into a man's house and drag him from his bed,' Penda asked, 'hoping that neither his woman nor any other Welsh bastard notices us?' I grinned at Penda and in the darkness I saw his teeth flash like fangs.
Oswyn was right. The place was small. There were only nine or ten dwellings, though you could still see the blackened stumps of old timbers sticking up from the ground like burnt fingers, their charcoaled surfaces catching the starlight reflected off the river. Perhaps the timbers had been left as memorials to the dead, though it was more likely that the survivors had their own lives to look to. We crouched in the darkness like wild dogs choosing our prey.
'That house there,' I said, pointing to a crude dwelling built beside a tumbledown woodpile. 'The lazy bastard who lives there shouldn't give us much trouble.'
Oswyn shook his head. 'No, Raven, that's the place we want,' he said, nodding at another house, nearer the water.
'He's right,' Penda said. 'The noise of the river will cover us.' I nodded, acknowledging Oswyn's cunning with a smile. 'Any volunteers, ladies?' Penda asked in a low voice. White eyes stared back at him and I wondered what I looked like, for my blood-eye must have been invisible.
'I'll go,' I said, unslinging the shield from my back and taking off my sword and scabbard. I would have to move silently, like a Valkyrie across the field of the slain.
Penda nodded, removing his own gear. 'Two of us should be enough,' he said, giving his own shield to a warrior named Coenred. 'Be ready to move, lads, as soon as we have the scrawny devil by the scruff of his neck.' Then the two of us crept towards the house by the river and I wondered what we would find inside.
We were flat on our bellies by the time we reached a pigpen woven from hazel. The stink filled my head, making my eyes water, and some of the animals grunted softly, stirring in their sleep as we studied the round, thatched house. The door faced north. There had once been another house facing it, but no longer, and again I wondered why these people chose to begin every day faced with the remains of ruined lives.