Raven: Blood Eye (42 page)

'Maybe we should stay up here for a while, Svein?' I said, scanning the darkening hills. 'Our fire could bring men from every village this side of Offa's wall. They'll think Caer Dyffryn is in trouble.'

'It is.' He grinned.

'We're not staying to keep watch?'

'We're not,' Svein said, wriggling into his massive brynja. His red hair appeared first, followed by his broad face and bushy beard. 'If they come, we'll kill them,' he said simply. And with that we left the seething flames and climbed back down the tor to join the others facing the southern gate.

The fire had taken a hold on their homes, so the Welsh had no choice but to come out and face us, which they did bravely, old and young taking their places behind their warriors in the shieldwall. But it was butchery. For the second time that day the dry grass was made wet with the blood of the slaughtered. Their chief, the man who had met Penda and me between our two war bands at the beginning, was taken bloodied but alive. As the sun set, old Asgot performed the Blood Eagle on him and sent his soul screaming to the afterlife. There were other screams too, those of women whom the Wolfpack used for their own enjoyment. My hands were still shaking, my muscles still shivering with the battle clamour, when Svein brought me a girl, small and black-haired and no older than sixteen with terror in her eyes. I was covered in dark, stinking gore and must have looked like some hellish creature as I stood in the darkness which was stirred by the glow of burning timbers.

'Here, Raven. The lads were slobbering over this one,' Svein said, 'but I told them she was your pillow for the night.' He laughed. 'You look like a sack of horseshit. Have some fun, lad. Celebrate the happiness of still breathing and still having all your bits where they belong. Come and find me when you're done. We'll drink till we can't remember our own names. It's been some day, eh?' He pushed the girl to me and I took her arm without a word. Svein nodded and flashed his teeth, then turned and walked off into the shadows, back towards the cauldron of noise amongst the ruins of Caer Dyffryn.

There was a small thatched shelter by the fortress's main gate, in which guards must have been stationed, and I took the girl into that dark hut. At first she fought. She did not cry out – not once – but she scratched my face and even bit my cheek. I was slathered in the blood of her people and she must have tasted that blood in her mouth. I felt filthy to the soul, far worse than the lowest beast. And yet the self-disgust, the shame that burned in my heart, did not make me stop. If anything, it urged me on, blinding me to the tears that must have soaked the girl's face. When I had finished, I rolled on to the filthy earth and let the emptiness claim me. Exhaustion and loathing pulled at my deepest being, dragged me down like some malevolent shadow spirit from Satan's pit, and I let it take me.

When I woke, the girl was still there, shivering beside me whilst other women's screams pierced the night. We sat in the darkness and after a while I took her hand and, perhaps because she was afraid and feared I would hurt her, her fingers curled round mine. I thought of Alwunn from Abbotsend, whom I had lain with once. But now I could not remember Alwunn's face, though I could remember Cynethryth's.

When the noise inside the fortress died down I gave the black-haired girl some smoked ham and cheese and led her through the darkness away from Caer Dyffryn. Once out of sight, I told her to go but she could not understand me, or perhaps she had nowhere to go. So I took three silver coins I had taken from a dead Welshman and put them in her hand. I turned my back on her and I did not hear her go, but when I eventually looked behind me there was no sign of her.

Finally, when his men had finished with them, Sigurd let the women run off into the night and I wondered how many Norsemen had planted their seed in Welsh bellies. I wondered if I had planted my own seed in the black-haired girl and I felt sick at the thought of what I had done. Added to this, the wound in my shin now stung like fire, though it was not enough to make me forget about the girl. Asgot smeared the cut with a poultice of herbs, then bound it tight with rough linen from a dress and when he was finished I sat alone in the darkness watching out for torches in the Welsh hills. And I was afraid because I did not know who I had become.

We burned the bodies of three Norsemen and two Wessexmen killed by the Welsh in their last struggle, and then we, along with the six remaining English, carried Weohstan into the fortress whose palisade stood mostly untouched by fire. Inside, we searched for food and ale by the light of the fires still burning and found plenty of both. We gorged on pork and beef too and it was not long before we dropped beside collapsed fires, our beards wet with ale and our ears full of song.

'Pagan or Christian, a man is never happier than when he has emptied his balls and drunk his fill,' Penda shouted, his words sliding into each other and his eyelids heavy. For a few hours at least, the Englishman would forget the friends who had died beside him.

Sigurd must have ordered men to stand watch that night, but if he did I was not aware of it. We saw no sign of the Welsh and I don't believe any of us thought they would come whilst the fires yet burned in the fortress of Caer Dyffryn. As for the Welsh dead, if their souls still clung to the place, deaf to the call of the next life, they would have thought their killers dead too, such was the stupor that lay over us. We were exhausted and drunk and relieved to be behind stout wooden walls for once, protected in a hostile land.

By dawn, Weohstan was conscious enough to eat the warm but dried out pottage Penda had found above a Welshman's hearth, and though the young man had suffered, he was safe now and would shortly be reunited with his father. As for us, we would soon be aboard our ships. I imagined
Serpent
and
Fjord-Elk
sitting low in the water, their bellies heavy with English silver as the wind filled their great sails and carried us across the sea.

It was strange to see Norsemen and Englishmen sharing the spoils of a beaten enemy and that night I learned that violence and slaughter can sometimes bind men, forging unseen chains. In blood and fear and chaos, these men had forgotten their differences, laid aside the shackles of faith and come together. Hah! Perhaps I am speaking words that were nowhere near my tongue or even in my mind at the time. I was young then and arrogant and blinded by blood. But is it not often the case that the old, having the advantage of experience, cast the spear of acquired truth into the heart of their memories? Am I alone in wishing I knew back then what I know now?

WE WOKE AMONG THE SMOULDERING REMAINS OF THE FORTRESS
village of Caer Dyffryn, holding our aching heads and rubbing our smoke-reddened eyes.

'How is your leg, Raven?' Sigurd asked. Even he looked weary, the creases around his eyes lined with black soot.

'It will be fine in a day or two,' I said, coughing and spitting sooty phlegm and pulling up my breeches after a lengthy morning piss.

Sigurd ran a hand through his hair and tilted his face to feel the new sun's warmth upon his closed eyelids. 'It always troubles me, you know,' he said, suddenly opening his eyes at the crack of a smouldering beam, 'how the world just goes on as though nothing has changed.' I looked at him questioningly, not wanting to interrupt as he gathered his thoughts. 'How many men did we send into the afterlife yesterday?' he asked.

'I don't know, lord. Many,' I said.

He nodded. 'Look around you, Raven. The birds still sing and the dogs still piss up trees. Even the women we took last night will wet their faces and pin on their brooches. They'll begin the new day and forget the last. If they can.'

I thought of the black-haired girl, of what I had done that night. The memory sent a shiver down my spine and I hoped Sigurd could not see my shame. 'The world is stronger than any of us, my lord. It goes on,' I said, remembering that Ealhstan had conveyed as much to me once in his own way. 'It has always been so.'

'Yes, it has,' Sigurd said, turning to face me. 'And that is why we must do great things. I don't just mean killing. By all the gods, there must be greater things than sowing death amongst your enemies. No, we must achieve things that are beyond most men. Only by doing what seems impossible will we ensure men remember our names and sing of them around their fires when we are long gone.' He put a hand on my shoulder. 'I see something in you. I cannot explain it yet but I know I am bound to you.'

'Bound, lord?'

He nodded solemnly. 'The gods have marked you and my sword will honour their favour.' Something caught his eye, a shiny black beetle crawling from a pile of smoking, white ash. 'The world goes on,' he said, 'despite the chaos we make. May Óðin grant us the time to carve our names in the earth, Raven, so that others must watch where they tread.'

I touched the carving of the All-Father hanging round my neck and whispered a prayer that it be so.

After a breakfast of cold meats we prepared to set off back to Wessex. The men were in good spirits, if a little sore-headed. For the Wessexmen, though, the new day brought with it the harsh reality that they had lost many friends and neighbours whose wives and children they would soon have to face. Sons and apprentices would become millers and smiths and fletchers and farmers before their time. Perhaps some women would have to take on their dead husband's work to survive.

Weohstan was weak and pale as death, but refused the pony Penda offered him, saying he would walk out of Wales so as to remember the ground beneath his feet for when he returned with men and swords. He spoke little, saving his strength for the journey, but he did thank me for coming for him, and asked after Cynethryth. 'I will never forget what you have done for me, Raven,' he said, choosing the words carefully, his tone hard and unyielding. He showed little sign of the pain he was surely in and seemed a different man from the one who had walked into Coenwulf's church. It was as though his very soul had hardened like ice.

'Have you forgotten I'm a filthy heathen savage?' I asked, gripping his forearm to seal our friendship. 'Did the whoresons beat you round the head with iron bars?'

'I know what you are,' he said with a grimace, 'and I'm alive because of it.'

My muscles were raw with pain and my head was aching terribly from the ale, so I did not notice the rider when we came to King Offa's wall. Bjorn pointed out the figure standing motionless on the far bank of the river Wye, his cloak and the horse's brown coat concealing both against the dark wood of the palisade behind them.

'Could be one of the ealdorman's men come to see if we have the boy,' a grizzled Wessex warrior said, raising an arm in greeting.

'Could be a Welshman come to spit in our eye,' Penda warned. But the rider seemed to be alone, the treeless flat ground on this side of the wall affording few hiding places for anyone with bloody intent. We approached the river and the earthen bank with caution but without fear, and it was Weohstan who recognized the horse and the small, hooded figure on its back.

'Cynethryth!' he called, smiling so that his face looked hideous for the missing teeth and swollen eyes. 'It's Cynethryth!' The mare lowered her head to the ground, pulling Cynethryth forward and giving a screeching neigh, then the beast began to circle until Cynethryth pulled her sharply round with the reins.

Weohstan fell. 'Steady, lad,' Penda warned, putting his shoulder beneath the man's arm. 'We're nearly there. You'll be with your sister soon enough.'

The skins we had used to float across the river lay discarded further along the bank and Cynethryth must have seen them and hoped we would re-cross the river at the same point. But we did not need the skins now, because Olaf had a coiled rope over his shoulder and he threw one end across a narrow point to Cynethryth on the other side. She tied it to the half-buried roots of a fallen willow and one by one we slid into the Wye and pulled ourselves along the rope until we stood dripping on the far bank. Offa's wall was deserted. With luck we would cross the southern border of Mercia into Wessex without running into a Mercian levy. The Norsemen had begun to talk of their longships again, eager to put to sea after so long. But we would soon be made to forget about the blue sea and Rán's wind-stirred, white-haired daughters, and the silver promised us by Ealdred of Wessex.

Cynethryth wrapped her arms round Weohstan, the water from his clothes soaking her own as she clung to him. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

'What are you doing here, Cynethryth?' Weohstan demanded, holding her at arm's length. 'Are you mad? It's not safe.'