Raven: Blood Eye (40 page)

'Raven! Can you hold?' Penda yelled, smashing his sword across a man's face. He thrust his shield forward into the space and the men around him roared and took a step forward. Dread filled me for I knew our shieldwall was growing ragged and gaps were appearing. Still, Penda's surge gave us heart and other Wessexmen struggled to push level with their friends. 'Can you hold?' Penda shouted again, for an instant fixing me with blood-crazed eyes. His mouth was a snarl.

I blinked through stinging sweat, and nodded. 'Push them back to their bitches!' I yelled, giving another great shove, and Penda left the shieldwall, dragging another man with him to hold our left. In a heartbeat he was killing men, a natural warrior, fast, strong and skilled, but also a wild thing, a dealer of death. But without Penda in the heart of the wall the Wessexmen were dispirited. We lost more ground as we were forced inexorably backwards. Blows rained down on me from left and right, my fine mail and helmet marking me as a worthy kill. A sword deflected off my helmet, striking my shoulder as a spear blade came under the shields to gouge my shin. I howled in pain and fury, pure rage surfacing again after having been anchored in the fight's rhythm.

We could do nothing for the Wessexmen who had fallen. They were dead men. All we could do was retreat in ragged order, keeping our shields locked and our heads down. We had been pushed back as far as Ealdorman Ealdred's leaping stag banner and I cursed as the green cloth was swallowed by the Welsh. Beside me, Egric heaved forward, stretching out an arm as though he believed the banner would fly to his hand.

'Leave it, Egric,' I growled, sinking my sword into a man's belly. I had long since lost my spear. Then hot blood sprayed my face as Egric's arm was severed, vanishing beneath trudging feet. The screaming Welshman then slammed his axe on to Egric's skull, and I heard it crunch above the din.

If you ask me now how to survive in a fight I will tell you it depends on your legs, on whether they can carry you far enough away from the carnage to enable you to screw your woman, raise fine children and live out your life in peace. But if you have to fight, if you love slaughter or if there is no choice, then I would say the best thing you can do is wear a helmet. Not a leather skullcap like the one that mixed with Egric's brains on that field long ago, but one of iron and steel.

The man at my right shoulder fell and my shield shuddered beneath a great blow that tore at the muscles in my left shoulder, shooting burning pain the length of my arm. It was all I could do to grip the shield as another blow rattled it, and another, and I dropped my sword and used two hands to hold the shield, which was splintering, all the while stepping backwards with the others. Týr Lord of Battle knows we were finished then. Our shieldwall was smashed and the real slaughter had begun. I put my shoulder against the shield and thrust the iron boss into my enemy, then screamed wildly and threw the shield at him, stooping to grab my sword. I would die with it in my hand so that the Valkyries might take me to Óðin's mead hall. But a Welshman slammed his war club into my face and I spun to the ground, bursts of white light blinding me.

'Get up, lad!' someone yelled. Through a blur I saw Penda standing above me, hacking wildly, taking down any man within reach. He had lost his helmet, his short hair stuck up in vicious spikes, and he was drenched in blood. 'On your feet, Raven! It's not over till I tell you! You hear me? You filthy bastard heathen son of a goat! Up you get.' The bloody grass around me was littered with Wessexmen, but others lived still, fighting with every searing breath, every screaming sinew – not for glory, not for Wessex, but because a man's life is all he has and he will not let another take it if he has the strength to fight. Penda hauled me to my feet. 'Fight, Norseman,' he snarled, 'or die here. Now. Fight, damn you!' Somehow, as though the All-Father, the Lord of Fury, had filled my lungs with his own breath, I was beside Penda, swinging my sword wildly, unable to see for blood and sweat and filth. 'That's it, lad!' Penda screamed. Unbelievably he was laughing. 'That's my boy! That's my blood-loving heathen son of thunder! Kill like the heathen bastard you are!' Blood hit my face. Screams filled my ears and the stink of shit filled my breath. Then another sound came to me and it was like a voice from another world, from the afterlife. It was a low sound, but clear and true, cutting beneath the battle's roar the way a spear bites a shin beneath the shield's rim.

The Welsh seemed to shudder as one man and their shrieks pierced the air. Suddenly there was empty space around me. My head pounded, still crammed with white sparks when I blinked, and I turned towards the familiar sound, gulping deep breaths as the Welsh re-formed their shieldwall. The ragged mass of black discs shuffled backwards over mangled corpses and writhing wounded, and I turned, shutting my eyes to the miraculous sight before me, believing it would be gone when I opened them. But it was not gone. It grew clearer and more real as I filled my belly with foul breath. A red banner showing a black wolf's head fluttered in the building breeze. Around it were shining warriors in mail and helmets, hefting round, painted shields, spears, swords and axes. It was a host to chill the blood, and the Welsh must have thought the gods of war themselves had come down from Asgard to make their slaughter. But these were not gods. They were Norsemen. I let out a roar of pain and triumph and fell to my knees. For Sigurd had come.

The Norsemen came from the east, perhaps forty of them, their shields overlapping to form a wall of wood and iron comprising not millers and merchants, but trained killers. It was a deadly wave. And it was perfect. With the sun behind them they swept across the hill, intercepting the retreating Welsh, and though the Welsh vastly outnumbered them still, they were all but helpless and must have seen their own deaths in the newcomers' cold blue eyes.

'Friends of yours, Raven?' Penda asked in a dry, cracked voice as he hacked into a fallen man's neck to finish him. He tried to spit but his mouth was too dry.

'Óðin's wolves,' I said, trying to blink away the pain and staring at the slaughter being done down the hill. The greybeards and children come from Caer Dyffryn to watch us die were running back to the gate now.

'One Norseman within a stone's throw is enough for me, lad,' Penda said, watching the Norse shieldwall carve up the disorganized Welsh. 'Heathen swine know how to kill,' he acknowledged in a growl. 'So long as they don't turn on us. I'm tired as a whore's tits.'

Most of the Wessex fyrdsmen lay dead. Fat Eafa was dead. His white hands clutched the broken bow stave. Coenred's corpse lay close by, as did Alric's. Further down the slope more men of Wessex lay tangled with their enemies in death: Saba the miller, Eni, Huda, Ceolmund, Egric, and big Oswyn whom I had liked, but whose face was a bloody caved-in mess. In all, twenty-two of Ealdorman Ealdred's men had died. Of those that lived, five were experienced warriors and three were men of trades who stood stunned as though they had somehow clawed their way out of Hell back to the land of the living. Their eyes were vacant and their bodies trembled. Perhaps as many as fifty Welshmen littered the field, their bodies broken and their insides open to the sky and the flies, and the stink was awful. Those dead would soon be joined by their kinsmen who fought on against the Wolfpack below.

'Well, Raven?' Penda said, nodding towards the carnage. 'Do I have to drag you down there by your pretty hair?' He turned. 'Come on, lads, are we going to let the heathens finish what we started?' The Wessexmen, stunned and blood-soaked and exhausted, took up their gore-slick arms without a word and trudged after Penda.

I climbed to my feet, stooping to grip a battered, discarded shield. 'Penda!' I called, wiping blood from my face with the back of my trembling hand. 'Wait for me.'

THOSE WELSHMEN WHO COULD SCRAMBLED TO SAFETY BEHIND
Caer Dyffryn's timber walls, leaving their kinsmen to be torn apart by the Wolfpack and the remaining Wessexmen. It did not last long and most of the men I killed then died with my blade in their backs. A few arrows fell amongst us, shot from the fortress walls, but they were released in panic by inexperienced men and did little damage. When we had broken the Welshmen's hearts and torn the life from all but a few, Sigurd bellowed an order to retreat. We raised our shields to the fortress and backed away out of bow range, Norseman and Wessexman, heathen and Christian, side by side, brothers in slaughter.

'Freyja's tits, Raven!' Sigurd exclaimed, turning his back on the Welsh fortress and embracing me in a great bear hug. Behind him I saw Svein the Red, Bjorn, Bjarni and the rest, all grinning at me through blood-splattered faces. 'I might have known you would be starting a war somewhere!' He gestured towards Caer Dyffryn. 'What did those savages do to upset you, hey?'

Bjarni stepped up, thumped my aching shoulder, then turned to his brother. 'Someone should have taught the lad the difference between rich pickings and a dung heap.' The Norsemen laughed.

Bjorn removed his helmet, wiping its bloody crown on a tuft of grass. 'We watched for a while,' he said, gesturing to the high ground to the east, 'just to make sure we were coming in on the right side.'

'It never hurts to watch the English die,' Bram growled in Norse.

I removed my own helmet, shook out my hair and wiped the sweat from my brow. 'My lord Sigurd . . .' I began, though my mouth was dry and my tongue swollen, 'how . . . where have you been?' He stepped up and touched the raven's wing still plaited into my hair, and he smiled, and I smiled too because my jarl had come for me. 'Glum took us, lord,' I said. 'That night in the forest . . .'

Sigurd raised a hand and with the other removed his own helmet, letting his sweat-matted golden hair fall to his shoulders. 'I know, Raven,' he said. 'I know that dog's treachery.' He spat in disgust, as though he could not say his old shipmaster's name, and then he snarled. 'And I confront Óðin Far-Wanderer in anger,' he said, pointing his spear at the blue sky, 'that I was not the one to open the coward's belly.'

'Careful, Sigurd,' old Asgot hissed, blood-smeared and terrifying and holding up a finger in warning. Sigurd seemed to accept the caution, though he rammed the butt of his spear into the ground.

'Bram is right, maybe I should be thanking these Welsh, not killing them,' Sigurd said. 'That night, when you and the English brats were taken . . . well, that was not so important,' he smiled, his hand sweeping the air, 'but to lose the White Christ book . . .' He scratched his thick beard. 'I was a fool. I did not see that greed had blackened Glum's heart. I am a proud man, Raven. I did not believe my shipmaster could betray me. I hope the All-Father remembers Glum's worthier deeds and grants him a place at the mead bench.' He spat a wad of blood, his mouth twisting into a grimace. 'I will enjoy beheading his shade.'

Then I noticed that one of the Norsemen was missing.

'Where's Black Floki?' I asked, looking around me for his grim, flinty face.

'You'll know it all soon enough, lad,' Olaf assured me with a nod towards the Englishmen, which I took as reluctance to say too much in case one of them should understand Norse. Penda and the remaining Wessexmen were climbing the hill to strip the dead before the Norsemen could get to them, and I hoped for their sakes that they were quick about it. 'We saw riders in the forest, lord,' I said. 'King Coenwulf's men. We thought they must have ambushed you.' Though now, having the Wolfpack before me in all their viciousness, it seemed impossible that the Mercians could have routed them. 'Was there a fight?' I asked, scanning the Norsemen's faces in case there were others absent.

Sigurd smiled wryly. 'Black Floki caught their stink before they were a hundred paces from our fires,' he said. 'Gave us time to arrange a decent welcome.' He shrugged. 'But it was darker than Hel's cunny and some of them got away. We lay low as a snake after that.' He laughed. 'Seemed every whoreson in Mercia wanted to nail a Norseman's skin to his door.'

'Ah, there was no real slaughtering done, lad,' Olaf said, batting Sigurd's words away with a hand and glancing down at my brynja whose rings were filled with dark, congealed blood. 'You would have hated it,' he said.

'It is good to see you, Uncle,' I said, stepping up to embrace him.

He slapped my back hard. 'It is good to see you, too, Raven.'

'I've been spending too much time with the English,' I said.

'So, have they made a Christian of you?' Bjorn asked, slapping his hands together as if in prayer and looking at me with a solemn expression that reminded me of poor Father Egfrith, if Father Egfrith had been a bearded, gore-spattered killer.

'Not yet, Bjorn,' I said, laughing at his impression. 'But you would be surprised, my friend. They are not all prayer-hungry priest-lovers.' I looked up the hill at Penda who was stripping Welsh corpses of buckles, beads, knives, and any other small objects of value. 'Some of them are more savage than you.' His look was one of scepticism, then suddenly the fortress door gave a loud clunk and the Norsemen turned, thumping down their helmets in readiness for a Welsh sally. But the gate opened only wide enough for something to be dumped on to the hard, bare-trodden earth.