Raven: Sons of Thunder (36 page)

‘If you really can get us out of here we are yours,’ Steinn said in the darkness. ‘Men of Trelleborg. Find your strength again. Help this Norseman. Yngve was a great warrior, no man can say otherwise. But Yngve led us to death. This Hrafn says he can lead us back to life, so help him, you sons of whores.’ Men groaned and grunted like beasts, moving half-dead limbs and dragging the corpses of those beside them so that I could inch closer to Bram. Penda and I still had some strength and we did what we could. In the end we all collapsed in our new places amongst other men’s shit and congealed blood.

‘You smell worse than a troll’s armpit, Raven,’ Bram muttered, his teeth glinting in the darkness.

‘And so will you before long,’ I grumbled. ‘How is you getting flung in here going to get us out? Are you sure you didn’t just wake up drunk in some whore’s lap after breaking a priest’s head?’

‘Me?’ He sounded surprised. ‘I told you, lad, Sigurd planned it. And it’s low cunning, Raven,’ he growled with a grin. ‘Loki-low cunning.’ The whites of Penda’s eyes shone as he watched us. Bram had been stripped of his brynja and cloak and, wearing only his tunic, breeks and boots, did not appear to be in much of a position to break us out. Then he lifted his manacled hands to his head, to one of his thick plaits, and pulled the thong from it. But the plait was stiff, so he began to tease the braids loose and as he did so his smile widened even more. From that plait he pulled a piece of steel the length of a finger. The thing was clearly missing its small wooden haft and the frame meant to hold the serrated blade under tension, but even in the darkness I knew immediately what it was. It was a hacksaw, its tiny teeth no bigger than a mackerel’s but wickedly sharp and steel strong.

‘It would take you a year to cut through a lump of cheese with that,’ Penda croaked, but Bram did not understand the Englishman and nor was he listening. He was sawing. Hours passed. The teeth of the blade were so fine that they made little noise as Bram patiently worked on the thin iron of his manacles. Even so, it helped that one of the Danes was groaning constantly with wound fever now, which was accompanied by enough coughing and spluttering in that place of death to cloak the work. It seemed that Bram’s coming and Steinn’s words had stirred the last embers left in these Danes’ souls so that they realized they were not dead yet and might still see another dawn. But gods it was slow work. Only half its original length and lacking the tension frame and haft, the saw was barely useful and soon Bram’s thick fingers were slick with blood, though he did not slow, but let the blood cool the blade to prevent its breaking.

He was almost through when the door of the longhouse creaked open and five Franks came in, each holding a spitting firebrand. Usually they threw slops at us, collected the empty water skins and retreated as quickly as they could, retching as they went. But this time they came further into the place than usual, poking men with their spears to check who was alive and who was dead. Perhaps they had more prisoners to chain up and would take the corpses away to make space. Or perhaps it was a routine check. Either way two of them were now barely a sword-length away from where we huddled in the foul, flame-licked shadows, and if they noticed that Bram had cut through his manacles we would be dead. The Norseman hunched over, trying to hide his hands, but one of the Franks seemed suspicious and put the blade of his spear into Bram’s beard to lift his chin. This is it, I thought. Bram is dead.

Just then there was a shout and the soldier turned. A Dane hammered his arms against the back of another guard’s legs
so that the Frank buckled and then the Dane was on him, smashing his face with his manacled wrists. The Franks tried to help their comrade but the Danes grabbed and clawed at them like animals so that the blue cloaks struck out left and right, trying to carve paths to their friend. Then one of them broke through the throng and yelled, plunging his spear into the Dane’s shoulder. The other Franks fought their way through and joined in sticking the Dane over and over as their bleeding comrade crawled free to gather his firebrand and spear. His eyes were wide with fear and shock and his face glistened with blood. Then it was over and the brave Dane who had saved us from being discovered was nothing but a lump of raw, hacked flesh. In the retreating flamelight as the Franks left the longhouse I saw the mutilated mess of his back and under my breath I asked Óðin to take the Danish warrior into Valhöll. Because it was Steinn.

Bram went back to work as though nothing had happened and it was not long before he had cut through his irons. Then he began on mine. I told him to do Penda’s first, as Penda was a much better fighter than me, but Bram would not listen.

‘I’ll not cut an Englishman free before a Norseman,’ he said in his gruff voice, though it made little difference anyway, because he was not even halfway through mine when the little hacksaw snapped. His curse roused the half-conscious Danes around us.

‘What now?’ Penda asked, to which I shrugged and Bram leant back against the wall, his face sweat-glistening. At least he was free of the great chain, but he could not do much alone.

‘Why didn’t the idiot bring the other half of the saw in his other plait?’ Penda grumbled. ‘Or even up his arse come to that?’

‘Tell that ugly English whoreson if he gives me that look again I’ll twist off his head and bounce it off the roof beams,’ Bram growled, talking to me but looking at Penda.

‘So what is the rest of Sigurd’s plan, Bram?’ I asked, thinking that having these two at each other’s throat was the last thing we needed.

Bram chewed his bottom lip and scratched his head. ‘He didn’t tell me, lad,’ he said. ‘But I’d wager my beard he knows.’

WHEN THE FRANKS HAD LAST COME IN IT HAD BEEN LIGHT OUTSIDE.
We waited a while and, guessing that night had fallen, Bram began slowly and carefully to dig into the rotten wall of the longhouse using what was left of the little saw. Eventually a small but delicious gush of fresh air told us he had broken through and the Norseman soon confirmed it, saying he could see braziers burning and soldiers moving around the compound. The hole was small enough not to be noticed by the Franks but large enough to give us at least some awareness of what was going on in the world beyond those wretched walls. Then we waited, hoping that Sigurd would come, but fearing his coming too, for it must surely ignite a full-on battle with the Franks, which he could not possibly win.

With the loss of Steinn the Danes were beaten again and a desperately heavy atmosphere pervaded that hall, which stank of the utter loss of hope. But we three stirred when an age later there were shouts in the enclosure beyond.

‘What is it, Bram?’ I muttered, lifting my heavy head.

‘I can’t see,’ he said. ‘Wait. Smoke. Coming from the west, I think.’

‘What else?’ I asked feverishly.

‘Nothing, lad. Just smoke,’ he said. ‘But the Franks don’t sound very happy about it.’ We waited. And waited. The clamour of voices began to rise as panic started to spread its dark wings. Now and then a blue cloak flashed past Bram’s spy hole, but eventually he turned to us, his eyes shining in the puncturing shaft of light. ‘I have to move now,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope I can get through this,’ he tapped the rotting daub wall, ‘before the Franks stick me. With Thór’s luck they will be too busy shitting their breeks to notice.’

I wanted to tell Bram to wait a little longer, to give Sigurd, if it was Sigurd, more time. But I knew this might be our only chance and so I nodded, feeling helpless chained up to a hundred dead or half-dead men. Bram was on his feet, and being Bram had decided to kick his way out for better or worse, rather than burrow away with the broken hacksaw. ‘I’ll have those chains off you soon enough, Raven,’ he said. ‘You too, Englishman,’ he added in Norse to which Penda nodded. Then, with all the power in his oak-strong legs, he slammed his booted foot against the daub, which split and crumbled like cheese. Again and again Bram kicked and we thought he must have alerted every Frank within a mile, but eventually he had made a hole big enough to crawl through. Then in a heartbeat he was gone.

I could smell smoke now, not hearth smoke but the acrid smoke of damp, ancient thatch burning. I had smelled that same smell when Sigurd had burnt my village and now as then it knotted a coil of fear in my gut.

‘Fuck, we don’t need that,’ Penda murmured and I looked up to see a pall of smoke swirling beneath the old roof.

‘Why would they burn this?’ I said, instinctively testing the iron manacles for the thousandth time. ‘They know we are in here.’ Panic was welling in my gut at the thought of being burnt alive.

Then Bram was back, gripping two Frankish hand axes, one of which was bloody.

‘Are you coming or not?’ he asked with a grin, then crawled back inside. I held my hands still against the floor so that he could chop through the rest of the shackle to finish what we had started with the hacksaw, for the shackles were made of soft iron and the axe blade was edged with good Frankish steel. Even so, he ruined the axe cutting through Penda’s manacles. But we were free.

‘Now them,’ I said, pointing to the men who were watching us, the whites of their eyes pathetic and plaintive as worn-legged hounds.

‘They are Danes,’ Bram said.

‘I gave them my word, Bram,’ I said, taking the good axe from him. We did not have the time or the tools to break all of their irons, so I waded into the middle of the hall and the Danes shuffled out of the way to give me the room I needed. Then I took what was roughly the middle of the length of chain that passed through every man’s bound arms and I cut it. Penda and Bram helped me to haul the chains out from the dead and the living, until the Danes were free. Their hands were still in irons but those that had the strength could now at least escape that place of death. ‘Get to the river if you can,’ I told the Danes who were rising on unsteady legs, wide-eyed like men who had just dug their way out of their own grave barrows. They looked unlikely to make it beyond the palisade, let alone the day’s walk to the river. ‘Your ships are moored at the wharf. We will help you if we can.’

‘Raven,’ Bram growled, and so I turned and nodded and followed him out into the light. At first glance the stockade looked deserted. Two blue cloaks lay dead by the front of the longhouse; the Bear’s work, I knew. But then two young guards came round the corner of the hall and their eyes nearly popped with the shock of seeing us free. They seemed unsure
whether to attack or run, but then a ragged knot of Danes flew at them, heedless of the Franks’ spears and ravenous for revenge. In a heartbeat the Franks had disappeared beneath the Danes, who were like rabid wolves gouging and tearing and snarling.

‘Bastards are hungry,’ Penda muttered as we left the Danes to it and broke into the three small huts, in the last of which we found our swords and some spears, shields and helmets. The air was thick with yellow smoke, most of which was drifting in from the west. The thatch of the western eaves of our former prison had sprouted a hungry flame and there were many men who, had they not been looking to their own survival, would have enjoyed watching that place burn to the ground. We ran for the main gate, which had been left open, and then we were in the mud-slick thoroughfares of the poor quarter of Aix-la-Chapelle. The thatch of one or two shabby dwellings smouldered dangerously, but most had no thatch to burn, which would be their saving.

‘There’s something to be said for living by a river of shit,’ Penda said, then he looked to the west. Black smoke billowed into the blue sky, most of it seeming to come from the houses outside the western gate, but plenty of houses were burning inside the city too. The local Franks were standing around, staring like us, though when they saw the Danes spilling from the rotting longhouse many of them crossed themselves and hurried off. Dozens of imperial soldiers were running towards the smoke, including no doubt those who had been posted in the longhouse enclosure, which was why we had not been challenged.

‘I told you Sigurd had a scheme,’ Bram announced proudly as we set off at a loping stride towards the flames, gripping our Frankish spears and shields. I was weak from hunger and the running made my head swim, but Penda must have been just as frail and if he could run then so could I. When we reached
the west side of the city the place was seething chaos. Men and women were flinging pails of water into their thatch, hoping to prevent a leaping flame or falling cinder doing to their homes what they had done to so many. Imperial soldiers were amongst the traders and craftsmen, helping where they could, their captains trying to bring some order to the desperate work. But the Wolfpack was nowhere to be seen and we could not understand how they were burning the place.