Raven: Blood Eye (3 page)

After the time it takes to put a keen edge on a knife nothing had taken the hook, and I thought about trying another spot where I had once pulled in a rough-skinned fish as long as my leg with wicked, sharp teeth. It was then that I caught a strange sound between the rhythmic breathing of the surf. I wedged the rod in a crevice, the line still in the sea, and scrambled higher up the rocks above the shingle. But I saw nothing other than the sea-stirred vapour, which seemed alive like some strange beast writhing before me, concealing and revealing the ocean time and again. I heard only the shrieks of white gulls and the breaking waves, and was about to jump down when I heard the strange sound again.

This time I froze like an icicle. My muscles gripped my bones rigid. The breath caught fast in my chest and cold fear crept up my spine, prickling my scalp. The thin hollow note of a horn sounded again, and then came the rhythmic slap of oars. As if conjured from the spirit world, a dragon emerged, a wooden beast with a belly of clinkered strakes, which flowed up into its slender neck. The monster's head was set with faded red eyes, and I wanted to run but I was stuck to the rock like the limpets, fixed by the stare of a great bearded warrior who stood with one arm round the monster's neck. His beard parted, revealing a malicious smile, then the boat's keel scraped up the shingle with a noise like thunder and men were jumping from the ship, sliding on the wet rocks and falling and splashing into the surf. Guttural voices echoed off the rocks behind me and my bowels melted. Another dragon ship must have beached further down the shore beyond Hermit's Rock. Men with swords and axes and round painted shields stepped from the mist, their war gear clinking noisily to shatter the unnatural stillness. They gathered round me like wolves, pointing east and west, their hard voices rousing shrieks from gulls overhead. I mumbled a prayer to Christ and His saints that my death would be quick, as the warrior from the ship's prow stepped up and grabbed my throat. He shoved me at another heathen who gripped my shoulder with a powerful hand. This one wore a green cloak fastened with a silver brooch in the shape of a wolf's head. I saw the iron rings of a mail shirt, a brynja, beneath the cloak and I retched.

Now, after all these years, I might essay a few untruths. I doubt any still live who could prove my words false. I could say that I stuck out my chest and took a grip of my fear. That I did not piss myself. But who would believe me? These outlanders leaping from their dragons were armed and fierce. They were warriors and grown men. And I was just a boy. A strange and frightening magic fell across me then. The outlanders' sharp language began to change, seemed to melt, the percussive clipped grunts becoming a stream of sounds that were somehow familiar. I swallowed some of the fear, my tongue beginning to move over these noises like water over pebbles, awakening to them, and I heard myself repeating them until they became no longer just noises, but words. And I understood them.

'But look at his eye, Uncle!' the man with the wolf brooch said. 'He is marked. Óðin god of war has given him a clot of blood for an eye. On my oath, I feel the All-Father breathing down my neck.'

'I agree with Sigurd,' another said, his eyes slits of suspicion. 'The way he appeared in the mist was not natural. You all saw it. The vapour became flesh! Any normal man would have run from her.' He pointed to the ship with its carved dragon's head. 'But this one stood here as if he was . . . as if he was waiting for us. I want no part in his death, Sigurd,' he finished, shaking his head.

I prayed they would not see the fishing rod in the crack in the rock and I hoped the mackerel were still asleep, for mackerel fight like devils and if one took my hook the line would jump and the heathens would see me for what I was.

'I can help you,' I spluttered, buoyed suddenly by the hope that the outlanders were lost, blown off course on the way to who knew where?

'You speak Norse, boy?' Wolf Brooch asked, his strong, weathered face open now. The others were spreading out cautiously and peering northwards through the mist. 'I am Sigurd son of Harald. We are traders,' he said, staring at me as though wondering what I was. 'We have furs and amber and bone. The bellies of our ships are full of good things the English will like. We will trade with them' – he grinned – 'if they have anything we want.' I did not believe they were traders, for they wore ring-mail and leather and carried the tools of death. But I was young and afraid and did not want to die. 'Take us to the nearest village,' Sigurd demanded, his eyes so piercing it took all my nerve to look into them, and, just as no mackerel had swallowed my hook, I knew this man would not swallow my lie.

'Hurry, boy, we have much to give the English,' a giant red-haired heathen with rings on his arms said, grinning and clutching the sword's hilt at his waist.

So, with a sickness in my stomach and a spinning head, I led these Norsemen towards my home. And in my heart I knew I should have let them kill me.

I stumbled across the rocks and shingle, trying to keep my footing as the Norsemen pushed me on. I guessed there were about fifty of them, though half stayed with the ships as the rest of us climbed the grassy dunes where red-beaked oystercatchers trilled noisily, fleeing their scrapes among the tufts as we approached. The Norsemen gripped spears, axes and shields as though off to battle, none speaking now as the dunes gave way to solid ground and we climbed the scree-covered path leading to the summit of the hill overlooking my village. I let my mind tell me they would have found the place without my help. Abbotsend was just the other side of the swell and if they had taken to the high ground they would not have missed it. But the truth was I was leading them, as Griffin's dog might lead him to a badger's sett, and if there was blood it would be on my hands, for I had lacked the courage to die.

The Norsemen stopped on the ridge by the old crumbling watchtower, taking in the small settlement: a loose clutter of sixteen thatched dwellings, a mill, a hall and a small stone church. That was Abbotsend, but it must have been enough, for some of them grinned. The grip on my tunic was released and I seized my chance. I hared down the hill, throwing my arms out for balance and yelling to wake the dead. Folk looked up, then scattered, their panicked cries carrying up the hillside. Even back then we had heard of the heathens' savagery and thirst for plunder, and now the Norsemen were running too, to reach the village before its people could hide their possessions or find their courage.

I tripped sprawling into the mud between the houses where some of the men of Abbotsend were already forming a thin shieldwall. Others grimly hefted axes and forks, anything sharp enough to kill a man. I got to my feet as Siward the blacksmith lumbered from his forge, a bundle of swords in his heavily muscled arms, some without grips and pommels, others still black, yet to be polished and honed. He was handing them to any man prepared to stand and face what was coming. I ran to him.

'Out of the way, boy!' Griffin growled, grabbing Siward's arm before the blacksmith could give me a blade. I tried to take the blade anyway, but Griffin growled again and Siward turned his back on me and took his place beside the warrior. 'Hold the line! Straighten up, lads!' Griffin yelled to the eight men now standing with him. Griffin was the most experienced fighter of our village, but he had had no time to fetch his mail shirt or his shield and so stood armed only with his great sword. Arsebiter was beside him, his yellow teeth bared in a rolling snarl.

Ealhstan appeared at my shoulder, his eyes twitching madly.

'They said they were traders,' I said. By now, the Norsemen had formed their own shieldwall facing Griffin's, but theirs was longer and two men deep.

You brought them here? Ealhstan's eyes asked. The old man crossed himself and I saw he was trembling. They don't look like traders, boy! his face said. By Christ, they don't!

'They would have killed me,' I said, knowing they were the words of a coward. Ealhstan hissed and pointed towards the eastern woods but I ignored him and he hit me with a bony fist, again pointing to the trees. But I had brought the heathens over the hill, and if I ran it would make me less than cuckoo spit.

'What do you want here?' Griffin demanded. There was no fear in his voice. His chest swelled beneath his tunic and his eyes narrowed as he assessed the men facing him. 'Go now and leave us in peace. Whoever you are, we have no quarrel with you. Go before blood is spilled.' Arsebiter's hackles bunched as he echoed his master's warning with three coarse barks.

Sigurd, his sword still in its scabbard, glanced at the beast, then stepped forward. 'We are traders,' he said in English, his accent thick. 'We have brought furs and much deer antler. And walrus ivory, if you have the silver for it.' The Norsemen behind him bristled with violence, like hunting dogs themselves straining at the leash. No, not dogs but wolves. Some began thumping their sword pommels against the backs of their shields in a threatening rhythm. Sigurd raised his voice. 'Will you trade?' he asked.

'You don't look like traders to me,' Griffin answered, spitting on the earth between them. 'Traders have no need of war shields and helmets.' Griffin's men murmured in agreement, taking heart from their leader's defiance. More village men had gathered now, having seen their families safe, and some of them had shields. These pushed into Griffin's line, whilst others stood behind armed with hunting spears and long knives.

Sigurd shrugged his broad shoulders and grimaced. 'Sometimes we are traders,' he said, 'sometimes not.'

'Where are you from?' Griffin asked. 'We don't get many outlanders here.' I saw him glance away and realized he was buying time for the village women who were dragging their children towards the eastern woods, though a slamming door said at least one had chosen to stay.

'We are from Hardanger Fjord. Far to the north,' Sigurd said, 'and as I told you, we are sometimes traders.' The word
sometimes
cast the shadow of warning.

'Do not threaten us, heathen!' boomed Wulfweard the priest, marching from his church holding a wooden cross before him. He was a huge man, a warrior once some said, and he set himself before the Norsemen like a squared stone from his church. He eyed Sigurd fiercely. 'The Lord knows the blackness of your hearts and He will not let you bring blood to this peaceful place.' He raised the wooden cross as though the very sight of it would turn the Norsemen to dust, and in that moment I believed in the power of the Christian god. The priest turned to me, plain hatred twisting his face. 'You are one of Satan's minions, boy,' he said calmly. 'We've always known it here. And now you have brought the wolf into the fold.'

Ealhstan grunted and dismissed Wulfweard's words with the flick of an arm.

'He's right, Wulfweard,' Griffin said. 'They'd have come anyway and you know it. The lad never rowed 'em here!'

Sigurd glanced at me as he drew his sword with a rasp, and Wulfweard looked at the weapon scornfully. 'You pagans are the last of the Devil's slaves and soon you will be dust like all non-believers before you.' He grinned then, his trembling red face full of the power of his words. 'The armies of Christ are washing your filth from the world.'

Some of the Norsemen shouted for Sigurd to kill Wulfweard then, as though they feared his strange words were the weaving of some spell. But to show he had no fear of words, Sigurd turned his back on the priest, lifted his great sword and thrust it into the earth before his men. Seeing this, the Norsemen took their own swords and spears and plunged them down with grunts of effort, sinking the blades into the soil where they quivered like crops in the breeze. Sigurd turned back to Wulfweard and threw his round shield at the priest, who jumped back. It struck his shin and must have hurt, though he showed no sign of it.

'We have come to trade,' Sigurd announced to the English shieldwall. 'I swear on my father's sword,' he said, placing a palm on the earth-sheathed weapon's silver pommel, 'I mean you no harm.' He glowered at Wulfweard. 'Does your god forbid you from owning fine furs? He is a strange god who would have you freeze when the first snows cover this village.'

'We would rather our blood froze in our veins than trade with Satan's underlings,' Wulfweard spat, but Griffin stepped from his line and thrust his own sword into the earth beside Sigurd's.

'Wulfweard speaks for himself,' he said, never taking his eyes from Sigurd, 'and that is his right. But the red deer are thin on the ground this year because our king covets the silver they fetch and his men hunt them greedily. A good fur can keep a man alive. We have families.' He flicked his head towards the men behind him. 'We will trade, Sigurd.' And with that he stepped up and gripped Sigurd's arm and the two men smiled because instead of blood there would be trade. I exhaled and slapped Ealhstan's back as the folk of Abbotsend welcomed the outlanders with gestures and handshaking, and the relief of those who have avoided death by a hair's breadth.