Raven of the Waves (15 page)

Still the stubborn man did not fall but fought back, sword against shield. Gunnar struck three more times before the swordsman fell, his dark skull matter bursting from his helmet.

Ulf killed a guard with one blow and then, as he struggled to free Long and Sharp from the sinews of a neck, another man stabbed at him with a long blue sword, and another, with a dark, forked beard, slashed with a shorter knife, neither man strong nor accurate, but together troublesome.

Ulf took a deep breath and gave a great cry. “Spjothof!” he cried, so that the men of this place might know the name of the village their slayers came from. At the sound of the name of Ulf's home, the blue sword came alive, and Ulf pressed his enemy to the wall.

Lidsmod stayed close to his oar mate, sword heavy in his hand. Ulf hammered with shield and blade. A shield could be an excellent weapon, and Ulf knew how to use it. He struck with his shield and struck with his sword, in an alternating, relentless rhythm.

Lidsmod struck at a shield thrust before him. More hall guards crowded around Ulf and Lidsmod, driven around the hall by the attack of the Spjotmen. Lidsmod fought blindly, Ulf beside him, both of them attacking a blur of iron and leather. Lidsmod could not draw a breath to cry the name of his home. Both men staggered, their shields hammered by ax and sword. Their backs were to the earthworks. Let Frey support them, prayed Lidsmod, the earth power at their backs and in their legs.

Blood whipped across shields. A human bear roared, and steel cracked into bone.

28

Torsten was at work, slashing, ripping. Three men down, then five. Gorm appeared beside him, slipping past Ulf and Lidsmod. Gorm killed quickly, silently. He stabbed at throats, thighs, crotches, plunged at eyes, butchering men as they buckled.

There was a cry above them. A white-haired warrior stood on the roof of the hall. He lifted a sword and called to his men in their tongue, speech the Spjotmen could nearly understand. His men fought harder now, and yet Torsten slaughtered them easily. Gorm too had little trouble, parrying, lunging, dirt churned to blood-soaked mud at his feet.

The white-haired warrior called again, urging his men. Gorm laughed and leaped, grasping the edge of the roof with one hand, clutching at the thatch, hauling himself up and onto the roof.

The white-haired warrior turned to face Gorm. The old man had a sword in his hand but carried no shield. Gorm straightened in surprise. The man's eyes were white with milky film. He was blind—Gorm was about to fight a blind man! This, Gorm knew, was the great jarl who had planned this defense. This was the proud man who would be sacrificed to Odin. This would be the blood eagle.

It was too easy. Gorm stepped to the nobleman's side. The old warrior was not weak, but Gorm closed his hand over the man's sword fist and tripped him. The jarl fell, staring about with his sightless eyes.

The hall guard ran, struggling over the earthwork, fighting to escape. They ran toward the forest; many of the Spjotmen followed, although the fleeing men were fast and reached the forest long before the Spjotmen could catch up.

The silence was a shock.

Birds cheered in distant trees. A black bird, nearly like a raven, called at the far edge of the sky.

“Bind Torsten,” Gunnar snapped. The berserker struggled, and more men fell upon him, holding him down. At last Opir joined in, and Torsten stopped roaring.

Lidsmod surveyed the blood-slicked dead. His sword was hacked in one place, a silver nick. A man had slashed at Lidsmod and Lidsmod had stabbed back, striking nothing. But he was satisfied. He had been attacked, and had fought back.

It was enough for an evening tale. “He attacked me, sword against sword, and I stood my ground,” Lidsmod would say during a long fireside winter years from now.

But the battle had been nothing like a saga. The wounded had bawled. Men had fought bravely only until they could run. Spearmen had wept. Men had died quickly, or had been hacked bit by bit.

“Find yourself a shield,” said Ulf.

This was not the Ulf that Lidsmod knew. He was spattered with gore, and he looked larger than the usual Ulf—swollen, powerful. It was eerie to hear the voice of Lidsmod's friend coming from this battle beast.

Lidsmod could not speak. He had seen Ulf at work, killing. He felt he did not know Ulf again, or any of his friends. And he did not recognize the great feeling in his heart—exultation, half composed of relief that he was unhurt, and half heady with pride. Their enemy had run so hard!

“Here's a stout leather-and-bronze shield,” said Ulf kindly, showing Lidsmod how to wrap his fingers around the grip.

The hall door was made of black timber. Opir and Trygg axed it, the high sweet song of steel twisting in wood resonating as men watched, swords poised. There was a roar as the door fell inward, and the Spjotmen stormed the hall.

But quickly they ran out again, spears clattering behind them, a band of defenders still maintaining a stronghold deep within the interior.

Lidsmod panted beside the door. A spear had just missed him. The shaft had whispered into his ear like the lusty woman he dreamed of sometimes, whispering his name as he mounted her. He was giddy with the knowledge that he had nearly eaten a spear, and he crouched for a moment outside the hall, feeling a shaky sensation very much like joy.

“Three men could hold off a hundred,” said Ulf.

Gunnar considered. He lifted Keen. “Follow me!”

Lidsmod did not look back. Perhaps two men followed Gunnar, perhaps thirty. Lidsmod lifted his all too heavy blade, and rushed the darkness.

A spear slammed into Lidsmod's shield. The point punctured all the way through the wood, and the weight of the spear dragged the shield down. A spear sang off Lidsmod's helmet, a sharp, painful blow. He struck at nothing, and at nothing again, whirling, slashing, until he met iron with his sword.

The Spjotmen were with him then, and it was quick work. There were only a handful of hall guards, boys and withered, scrawny men whose heads rattled in their helmets. They fell at once. There were five men in black robes, men from the gold fortress. They knelt, offering their heads to the steel; two men from
Landwaster
killed them.

Later Lidsmod wondered if he had touched flesh with the edge of his sword, and told himself that he had nipped a forearm and cut a helmet so badly that the man wearing it cried out.

He had not killed, but each breath was wonderful—he had survived!

Riches.

It was like dream gold, beautiful, seeming to radiate silence and power. The flames of the hall fire glittered in the gold and garnets and sapphires. The arms of the seafarers were laden with the heaviness of treasure.

“But no women,” Opir taunted Gorm. “The women knew that Gorm the stallion had arrived. They ran away!”

But the gold was enough to please anyone, Lidsmod thought. Men carried it to the edge of the village, where Eirik sorted it at Gunnar's direction. There were figures of the bleeding man; images of golden suns bearing faces with dark eyes; images of torture—of suffering, gashed sides. This was solemn treasure, the treasure of a people who had seen violence and understood it. But there was something more here, a presence Lidsmod could not name. If the men and women of this field-strewn land paid homage to this tortured figure with nails through his hands, perhaps these treasures had power.

Perhaps some unknown divinity guarded such hoards. These images must have some magic, Lidsmod considered uneasily. Black-robed men alone without weapons could not think to protect these golden, hilt-shaped objects. Lidsmod's mother had told him tales of mountain sprites and of the voice of Thor itself in thunder. Lidsmod guessed there was some charm at work in these golden prizes, or some spirit that defended them.

These sheepskins covered with runes, these chalices blistered with opals and amethysts—Lidsmod did not trust these objects. Perhaps the Norns had special love for such gold themselves. The figure they saw dying on the sword hilt of gold: what could he be but someone who was being tortured? Perhaps he was a warning that whoever stole this gold would suffer such a death.

“Blood eagle!” cried Gorm.

The old jarl was dragged, bound and naked. His white, wrinkled body was tied to a post. His hands were lashed before him, around the green wood pole, and Gorm approached, his sword bright in the sun, to make the eagle.

Men gathered, cheering. Odin had been generous—there had been great slaughter, and not a single Spjotman hurt. The men knew that Odin would love the death of this great jarl. This man was blind, a handicap Odin would appreciate, and he had been brave. This was a worthy foe, and a fit gift for the one-eyed god.

Gorm stabbed the man along his spine and cut downward. The man bellowed in pain. Blood gushed. Ribs snapped. Gorm stabbed into the back on the other side of the spine as the old man slumped, and sawed easily through rib and muscle.

Gorm spread the wings, opening the man like a shuttered window, the ribs spread wide, the lungs dripping black.

The Spjotmen cheered.

Lidsmod raised his voice too, his ragged cry a prayer to the god that spared young warriors from the blade.

29

Aethelwulf led the women and children out of the forest and back to their village.

Dunwic was not a dwelling place any longer. Few walls were still standing. Smoke rose from stones. Charred sheep bones littered the road, and the mud was dark with the blood and remains of husbands and fathers, their mortal flesh, spoiled under the sky, probed by blue-black crows.

The dead were buried by Aethelwulf and the grieving women, working with the mattocks and a charred shovel. Aethelwulf prayed, and the women prayed with him. The abbot spoke of the promise of God's solace like a man walking a path he knew well, a trail he could follow blind.

Eadgifu, Wiglaf's mother, approached the abbot when he thought no one observed him blotting tears with his sleeve. “My Wiglaf was the son I gave to God,” she said. “For God to save and keep in His hand's hollow.”

For a moment Aethelwulf struggled to think of words of consolation, some way of giving strength to this worn, stout woman.

“I believe he is there still, good Father,” she continued. “Wherever Heaven has found him.”

Was it possible, thought Aethelwulf, that this peasant widow was offering him comfort? Had he returned to the pride of his youth, when he thought of women as little more than keepers of the hearth or pleasure givers? Because it was true that, so many years ago, Aethelwulf had tasted carnal joy. He was ashamed of himself for thinking so little of womenfolk even now. “Eadgifu, you are wise,” he said.

“Oh, no, Father Aethelwulf, not myself,” she responded, as though embarrassed by his praise.

“Wise in your love,” he said. “Which I have read in books,” he added with gentle irony, “is the only power that matters under Heaven.”

So many people remained, and they all depended on the old priest's strength.

Even a few men trickled in from the woods—hunters who had been far beyond the river, woodsmen who now mourned their fallen brothers. The abbey walls remained standing, blackened and roofless. The fallen timbers of the roof were scaled and silvery. Aethelwulf asked God to make him strong, as wholehearted as the peasant widow. He made the blessed Sacrament from coarse barley meal, and he found an only partly shattered firkin of wine.

Later Aethelwulf searched among the ashes. Something rustled at his feet, and he stooped. It was an ampulla, a fire-stained flask. He stooped again and discovered a pyx, the box for the Sacrament. The pyx was brass, not gold, which was why it had not been stolen. It was still warm from the fire it had escaped.

He was not hunting for cast-off or neglected treasure. He was hunting for Wiglaf's bones. He grieved for every person who had died. But his own special, personal loss, was the eager young shepherd.

The abbot's faith was sturdy. But he had been shaken by what had happened in a way he had trouble putting into words. He had seen himself with a sword in his hand, ready to take a life. Certainly Jesus, who had warned against the sword, could not have loved this sight. But Aethelwulf could not have stood by and let his sheep be slaughtered. Didn't men have a duty to fight for their children?

The survivors could eat the mutton of the sheep that some were already gathering from the fields. They could slaughter an ox or two. But so much of the stored barley had been burned—all but a few measures of it. This would be seed barley, and it was past time, nearly, for the planting.

Redwald would have to buy peasants, or their labor, from another lord. There was a future, Aethelwulf consoled himself, but it would be hard.

When would Lord Redwald receive word of this, and when would he ride from the great city with an army large enough to protect them all? Because the strangers had rowed upriver, by all accounts, and they would pass this way again.

A spring rain fell. Work could cure even grief. Aethelwulf went from person to person, encouraging them, helping to set up canopies against the rain. They had few blankets, but certainly, he told everyone, the cold weather was long behind them.

Firewood had to be gathered, cows milked. Buckets could be salvaged. Aethelwulf thought of Wiglaf and closed his eyes against tears.

When they heard the rider they gathered together, ready to run for the forest. The hoofbeats thudded from upriver, from the direction of Hunlaf's village and the king's fortress in the distant city.

It was all the worse when they did not recognize the horseman, his steed sweating, trembling with exhaustion.

“Father Aethelwulf?” said a voice from the mud-dark face, a city man's accent.

“I am he,” said Aethelwulf. And he added the ancient welcome formula: “And you are welcome to our bread and to our board.”

He meant no irony, but the rider gave a doubtful smile as he eased from his saddle. “I have word from Lord Redwald.”