Raven: Sons of Thunder (18 page)

‘You dirty Frankish whoreson!’ he yelled. ‘Who are you to call us Danes? My sword still rings from crushing heathen skulls! Those scum came like hungry dogs to our land and we beat the bastards! Gave them each seven feet of earth, we did, and if you call us Danes again I’ll swim over there and cut out your rancid tongue. Fucking Franks!’

The Norsemen tensed and some reached for helmets, thinking we had been betrayed, but the other Wessexmen on the
steerboard side lifted their oar blades from the water and, with one hand, gripped the crosses hung around their necks, holding them up for the Franks to see.
Good lads
, I thought, hurrying across and throwing an arm over the Englishman’s shoulder.

‘Calm down, Leofmar,’ I said, smiling. ‘Fulcarius is just doing his duty and means no offence.’ Egfrith glanced at me with raised eyebrows, then his eyes flashed shrewdly and he looked back to Fulcarius, who was talking to a fat man beside him. ‘It is a bad thing to call a Wessexman a Dane, Fulcarius,’ I called with a shrug of my shoulders. ‘We Wessexmen are God-fearing but quick to anger. He is a fool who pokes a bull with a sharp stick.’ The fat man spoke again to Fulcarius and I realized that that man spoke English and Ealdred realized it too.

‘I have business with the emperor and very far to go, Fulcarius,’ the ealdorman called, spitting on his fingers and smoothing the errant hairs of his moustache. Because he was not a big man, the silver cross on his chest stood out even more. ‘If there is a tax to pay, let us be done with it, for we must be on our way.’ Again Fulcarius talked with the fat man.

Beside me, Egfrith held out his palms helplessly, shaking his head and frowning. ‘
Auribus teneo lupum, Fulcarie!
’ he crowed to the shore guard knörr. ‘I hold a wolf by the ears!’

Fulcarius had chewed this meat enough and understood then that he risked starting a fight with a Christian lord of Wessex and his two ships of warriors. I guessed he decided he was not getting paid enough for that, for he spoke to the fat man, who smiled and nodded.

‘Two pounds in silver coin is the tax for going upriver,’ the fat man called. ‘Three in hack silver if that is all you have.’

‘Stupid Frank bastards,’ Penda muttered under his breath as Olaf stifled a grin and Ealdred agreed to the price. It was no easy thing keeping the dragons leashed against the fast-flowing river, but the Norsemen worked the oars masterfully whilst the English amidships did the best they could.

‘Fetch the coin, Raven,’ Sigurd said. Then he made a show of dipping his head respectfully to Ealdred. ‘How do we know we won’t have to pay another tax ten oar-strokes further up the river?’ he growled to the ealdorman through a smile. Ealdred nodded and asked Fulcarius, whilst I looked towards the river’s banks. The people of the place were still eyeballing the exchange, those armed with spears and shields having gathered into a war band of a hundred or more. I was trying to count them when off
Serpent
’s stern a salmon leapt, a streak of silver that splashed into the water, which looked like beaten iron in the late afternoon light. Above us, low grey cloud mottled and bubbled, slowly encroaching on the last patches of blue so that soon the smoke from Frankish hearths would be trapped and would spread like a pungent blanket across the river.

‘For another pound of silver Fulcarius is willing to give you a token,’ the fat man called, ‘a banner to tie to your back-stay to show that you sail upriver with the blessing of his highness the holy emperor’s shore guard.’ I saw his teeth. ‘Of course, there are no guarantees.’

‘What’s an Englishman doing sailing with Franks?’ Penda said distastefully, for it was clear from his accent that the fat man was no Frank.

‘What is an Englishman doing sailing with Norsemen?’ I accused him under my breath, at which Penda frowned and scratched the long scar on his face so that you might have thought I had asked him to count the grains of salt in the sea or the hairs in Bram’s beard.

The deal was made and I stood amidships, holding three leather bags heavy with coin and hack silver whilst, a spear-throw away, Fulcarius barked commands at his crew. Those with arrows nocked or throwing-spears ready lowered their weapons, rolling and stretching the iron out of tense muscles. Those at the oars made ready to row.

‘They’re coming for the silver, Sigurd,’ Olaf warned, brows
stitched together. He knew the English would see our war gear – brynjas, swords and helmets – in piles at our feet.

‘Just keep that piss bucket away from
Serpent
, Uncle,’ Sigurd said, watching the Frankish knörr like a hawk, his gaunt, bruised face slick with wound fever. Olaf nodded and took an oar from those stowed and Bram did likewise. At the bow of the knörr some Franks already gripped thick fender ropes and long staves to stop the ships crashing together in the currents. I could see Fulcarius clearly now and from the eager expression on his craggy, wind-burnt face I doubted he would notice even if Heimdall, warden of the gods, appeared then aboard
Serpent
and blew the Gjallarhorn to announce that Ragnarök was upon us. For Fulcarius’s eyes were stuck like slug slime to the fortune in my hands. But one of the others would surely realize what we were, even if they waited until they had the silver before they let on.

In ten oar-strokes they would be upon us.

‘All-Father, give me strength and luck,’ I whispered, then I leant back and with all my strength hurled the first bag of silver high into the air and to my amazement it landed amongst Fulcarius’s men, who were roaring in anger and disbelief.

‘Have you lost your mind, Raven?’ Olaf growled in Norse as the other Norsemen, equally appalled, swore and complained under their breath, but I was already pitching forward and the second bag was in the air and that one landed by the knörr’s mast and must have split open, for there was a mad scramble amongst the crew. Fulcarius was all flailing arms, screaming at his men to keep their hands up where he could see them.

‘Raven, you fucking fool,’ I heard Penda say as I sent the last bag flying, but I misjudged this one, putting too much muscle into the throw given that the knörr was closer now, and that bag of silver would have splashed into the sea beyond her stern had one of the Franks not leapt brilliantly and caught it, toppling backwards into the river for his efforts. But this was
proper Óðin-luck for us because the Franks began immediately to back oars, thrashing in their own wake to save the man, or more likely the silver, before it was lost. Fulcarius’s ship was all seething madness and Ealdred, trying to justify what I had done, yelled across to them that some of our timber strakes were old and we could not risk a collision, though I doubted any of the Franks even heard him in their panic. Oars banged and snared and Frankish curses hammered the still air. Then, as Sigurd gave the order for us to pull off and Olaf called the rhythm in heys, wild yells of triumph rose from the shore guard knörr and as I grabbed my own oar and pushed it through the port to join the rest, I saw the half-drowned hero hauled over the side on to the deck. Through a momentary gap in the throng I saw the man standing panting but victorious, holding the bag of silver above his head like a champion and grinning as his fellows cheered wildly, their backs towards us as we churned the iron-grey river and left them behind.

SIGURD AND EALDRED BOTH SUSPECTED THE SCRAP OF BLUE CLOTH
we tied to
Serpent
’s back-stay was not worth spit, even guessing that this Fulcarius had quickly cut the weft from his own cloak in order to wring more silver out of us. But even three pounds had been a small price to pay for avoiding a fight and for the freedom to sail upriver. That much silver was, as Bram put it, a fart in a storm next to the hoard we would get from the emperor for the gospel book. Lucky for me it had turned out well, but that did not stop some of the Norsemen shaking their beards at me disapprovingly for taking such a risk with so much hard-won silver.

Aslak in particular took a dim view of it. ‘That much silver would get you a fine brynja and a good strong helmet,’ he called from his journey chest on the port side, ‘or even two or three big-titted thralls to warm your bed. And you nearly sent it to the seabed! Damned reckless I call it. Makes me think you’ve been swilling Bram’s secret mead store.’
Some secret
, I thought. Everyone knew of the bulging mead skins Bram had stashed beneath two silver wolf pelts in
Serpent
’s hold, but only a brave man or a half-wit fool would wet his beard
with that nectar without the Bear’s consent. I wondered what that had made me when I had been dipping into that store to keep Penda’s tongue wet so that he would keep quiet about my feelings for Cynethryth. None of that mattered now, I thought, leaning back with the stroke and looking over to Aslak, whose nose I had broken though you could not tell, much to my disappointment since he had also broken mine which has been crooked as a hare’s hind leg ever since.

‘It would have bought us Rán’s favour, Aslak,’ I said, ‘which if you think of it is well worth having.’ What
I
was thinking was that if I ever met the Frank who had caught the last bag and gagged on the Sicauna for his efforts I would buy him a mead horn as long as my leg to wash the slime from his throat.

‘Rán’s favour?’ Bram bellowed. ‘For three pounds of silver the old bitch would have climbed aboard and humped you dry as a dead man’s fart!’

But Rán had not got her hands on our silver, Fulcarius had, and because of that we were now rowing deeper into Frankia, our faces catching the molten iron light of the sun which was sinking in the west far beyond
Serpent
’s stern. Those Franks who had kept up with us, trudging along the river’s banks, began to disperse now, deciding that we were no threat, or at least guessing that we were not going to make landfall near their homes, meaning that we were someone else’s problem now, and I felt relieved to shed some of the weight of all those eyes. The river here was wide and free-moving. There were few houses along the banks of this stretch, for it is no easy thing to launch a boat in fast-flowing water, or even to moor one there – one slip and your boat will make a bid for freedom faster than an Irish thrall slathered in goose fat, and you will never see it again. Up ahead, the river would snake again, taming the waters, and on that coil there would be more houses, wharfs and moorings. And no doubt more curious Franks.

The Wessexmen had played no small part in fooling Fulcarius
and his Franks. By brandishing their crosses they had done as much as they could, though one man in particular deserved our thanks and that was the man who had upbraided Fulcarius and threatened to swim over and cut out his tongue. His name was not Leofmar but Wiglaf. He was a thickset man with short, thinning black hair which he palmed forward so that a few strands stuck against his sweaty temples. His face was red, his nose long and pointed, and his chin round like a crab apple, and maybe he had not been helping us fool the Franks at all. Perhaps Wiglaf was truly riled at being called a heathen and a Dane and really would have jumped overboard to slice the tongue from Fulcarius’s mouth. The man certainly looked shocked when Sigurd called him to
Serpent
’s stern and gave him a gold finger ring pulled from his own left hand. We had taken anything of value from the Wessexmen after the channel fight, swords, knives, brynjas, belt buckles, brooches, rings and strap ends, leaving them with only the clothes they stood up in and the wooden crosses some of them wore, which we did not like touching if we could help it. By being rewarded now Wiglaf was taking the first step towards regaining his pride as a warrior, and though he accepted the jarl-gold dourly under the gaze of Ealdred and his countrymen, he must have felt the embers of hope stir in his chest. He might have been Ealdred’s man and a Christian, but he was a fighter too and had seen Sigurd beat Mauger, who had been a formidable warrior. Wiglaf might have hated Sigurd but he must have admired him. Whatever, he put that gold ring on his finger and returned to his row bench, smoothly slotting the oar through its port and dipping the blade in time with the rest. His countrymen said nothing, but the big warrior Baldred, who had escaped Asgot’s knife, nodded brusquely and that gesture was loud enough.

That night, as a chill dew seeped through our clothes and made everything aboard clammy to the touch, we moored in the shelter of a small holm in the middle of the river. Flat and
muddy, it glistened by the light of the moon, which had cut through the clouds to curdle in long pennants and curls on the racing water. There was nothing on the holm to tie up to so both ships dropped their anchors and Olaf took the Wessexmen on to the mud to hammer in mooring stakes, and when they climbed back aboard they looked like walking turds with eyes. So they clung to ropes and washed in the river until they were clean and shivering, and all the while we laughed at poor old Uncle, who was a big, wet, white, naked growling monster. Then they hung their clothes over
Serpent
’s sheer strake to dry in the wind whilst they huddled in furs and Olaf asked us why it was that he, as the second oldest man aboard, was the one left to secure the ships whilst younger men sat around scratching their arses. It had been too dark to continue upriver but neither did Sigurd want to moor on the bank without knowing more about the river’s temperament, the surrounding area, and the mood of the local Franks. Moored to this mire we could not go ashore, but the ships were protected and we were safe from the Franks. Tomorrow we would choose where to make proper landfall before it got too dark to see where we were going.