Raven of the Waves Page 9

  Lidsmod did not allow himself to show his relief, lest Gorm see. Lidsmod doubted that the boy was worth much gold. He might be magical, but who could tell in such a strange land?

  “We have ourselves a mighty warrior,” said Opir. “The mightiest in this mighty land!” Twin bleeding crescents marked Opir’s legs.

  Ulf dragged the boy outside. “Tie him up,” said Opir to Lidsmod.

  “Gorm will kill him,” said Lidsmod, meaning: my ax and my arm will not be strong enough to protect him.

  “Never!” Opir laughed. “Here is a new Leg Biter,” he said, to complement the famous sword of the same name. “I’ll stay with Fotbitr,” he said, and Ulf laughed too. They had a living Biter, like the dead horse, and like the sword.

  Let Gorm touch Leg Biter, Lidsmod thought, tying a walrus-leather rope around the boy’s legs. If the boy is so much as bruised, Gorm will suffer.

  “Go feed your hungry ax,” said Opir with a laugh, meaning: good luck with your first kill.

  Lidsmod hurried to find the source of the rough cheers and taunts.

  A knot of villagers had gathered on the muddy road. A stone rang off the boss of Torsten’s shield. Torsten lifted his spear. He scowled and seemed to sniff the air.

  Some of the dark-haired villagers continued to heave stones, and one man swung a sling. The men of Spjothof appreciated the power of a thrown rock. It was not a warrior tool, but enough rocks could batter an army. The villagers backed off, however, as soon as the Spjotmen fell into formation.

  Torsten stepped alone up the road. The men of Spjothof were silent. It was a great mistake for the men of this village to make Torsten angry. A rock bounded beside Torsten, and another.

  The men of the village spread across the road, making themselves more visible, the way a cat arches its back to seem big. It was a poor battle formation. The men of Spjothof could fan out, enclose the village, and attack this inexperienced group from the flanks. Nonetheless Lidsmod had to admire their startled courage. The villagers brandished axes, and the younger ones continued to hurl rocks.

  “They’re delaying us,” said Gunnar. “While the women and children escape, and the animals, and while they take their hidden silver or bury it in the earth.” His voice grew louder. “They are stealing our gold!” he cried.

  “Gold!” cried the men of Spjothof.

  Ahead of them Torsten threw his spear high into the air. It glinted in the light of the late day and when it fell, it struck earth far behind the backs of the axmen in the road.

  One of the villagers laughed. “Your best spearman cannot throw any better than a child,” the laugh seemed to say. The taunting villager stepped forth. He was broad-chested, with hair black as ship tar. He called to them unintelligibly, shaking a fist. “Come on and fight,” the man seemed to cry.

  The men of Spjothof were silent. The spear act, throwing a weapon over the heads of the enemy, had consigned these men to Odin. As every man watched, Torsten began to pant. His neck thickened, and his head shrank into his swelling shoulders.

  Torsten was filling with bear spirit, and the men before him were about to die.

  20

  Aethelwulf put his arm around the fowler with the blood-gilded face.

  Alfred the mud cutter knelt beside the injured man, supporting him. Everyone seemed to move slowly. The man was lucid, as injured men sometimes are, and described the strangers as “very big, but looking much like men.” The man’s head wound was a gash where a sword had sliced into the flesh. Aethelwulf had seen such injuries in Frankish land disputes, when as a young monk with a surly humor he had been asked by the king’s men to bind their hurts.

  “How many strangers are there?” Aethelwulf asked, pulling the man toward Beornbold, Lord Redwald’s hall.

  “Thousands!” said the man.

  “Armed with sharp-edged weapons?”

  “Swords, axes, spears, shields—every weapon you can imagine!” As they reached the hall, the fowler began to stumble.

  Aethelwulf ordered one of Redwald’s men to send word to their lord.

  “This is something I cannot do, Father.” The spearman was heavy with duty. The sight of blood had made him alert, but it was a wary alertness, one of concern that he might make a mistake or, with bad luck, be bloody himself before long.

  Lord Redwald was in Eoforwic, the spearman said. No one knew when he would return. He was in the city to see Lord Sigan on royal matters.

  Aethelwulf wanted to throttle the man, but he pushed his way into the hall instead. Spearmen and peasants were helpless without a leader. A few spearmen lounged about the hall, looking at Aethelwulf with mild interest, but the bleeding fowler won their attention when he stammered his story.

  The retainers looked at each other in disbelief. It was like trying to awaken men of oak, or worse, of stone. It was like announcing that an army of skeletons had risen from their graves.

  “Surely,” hissed Aethelwulf, “one of you can act!”

  The men murmured. They had never known an abbot to command a hall guard before. They knew Father Aethelwulf, however, as he knew them, and a young man stood up from an ale bench. “I can ride, Father,” said the young spearman, a thick-necked lad called Hoc—lurching drunk, as were all the others.

  “Good!” Aethelwulf tried to sound brave and confident. “Hoc the Brave they will call you. You must ride to Eoforwic. It’s the most urgent ride a man has ever taken. Take my ring as passage proof. Tell Redwald we are attacked by strangers, and that men are dying like beasts.”

  A few of the spear guard trudged behind Aethelwulf, moving sluggishly in their still-unstrapped armor. The fighting men were reeling with ale, one of them falling down as he tried to force his head into his helmet. Why, Aethelwulf thought, is everyone so slow? Even me! His own legs were trembling, and he prayed that his body would have enough strength in it for the burden of this day.

  It had not taken long for the cattle to be driven, lowing, into the woods by the women and children, and for Sigemund and his sons and other field men to gather in the street mud. A bad sight lay ahead as Aethelwulf and the hall guard panted up to meet them. Smoke climbed the sky: The sanctuary was burning. The abbey would soon follow. All the brothers must be dead—and Wiglaf! Wiglaf, jewel of his heart.

  The field men stirred, leaderless and angry. “We’ll stop them, Father,” said Sigemund. “Come on, men. We’ll slaughter them like sows!”

  “Wait!” Aethelwulf embraced him. What could he tell these men? To kill was a sin, and yet surely God did not expect them to stand slack-armed as their village was destroyed. “Stay here and block the road. The abbey is already lost.”

  “Don’t worry, Father,” said Sigemund. “We’ll butcher them all, every one of them, and spread their guts for the rooks!”

  “We want to slow these strangers down, if we can’t drive them away entirely,” the abbot replied. Aethelwulf looked at the uncertain, angry faces around him. The peasants were ready to fight; the spearmen were ready to bolt.

  “Christ was a warrior,” said Aethelwulf. “He stretched upon the tree and suffered the blows of swordsmen so that we would not be afraid. Christ did not flinch under the Romans’ lash. He did not hang his head. God in our fists! Jesu in our blades! Stand across the road, good Sigemund. You are the chief here.”

  The hall guard looked down, unhappy to be led by a peasant.

  The men of Dunwic spread across the road. There were so many strangers! But as the abbot counted them, he realized there were fewer than one hundred. Many fewer, perhaps seventy or eighty men. Bearded, yellow-haired, with flowing mustaches and gray or blue eyes under peaked helmets. Aethelwulf directed the spearmen to take positions along Sigemund, the abbot speaking as though he had been a shield carrier his entire life.

  Forni, one of Wiglaf’s brothers, looked at Aethelwulf and gave him a tight, scared-man’s grin. “Don’t worry, Father. Look—Laughs Back is eager for a fight!” Forni held forth his ax as though it were the answer to every fear. Forni bega
n talking to his weapon, muttering quietly. Men often spoke to their axes, and plowmen named their favorite tools.

  Sigemund brandished a scraping ax, a lighter weapon. Let his sons handle the tree ax and the mattock. Sigemund was heavier than they were, but would probably tire more quickly.

  This shock, this sudden attack, no longer surprised Aethelwulf. Life was made of bone and blood. He was not afraid.

  “Their guts to the sky!” cried Sigemund, and the men behind him cheered.

  21

  Edwin threw a stone, and then stooped and threw another. The stones bounded among the strangers. One field lad had a sling, and the round stones darted toward the strangers like frightened swallows. What harm could they do, Aethelwulf wondered, these little orbs of rock? Edwin found a good black stone and threw it with all the power in his arm.

  It struck a shield. The men of Dunwic gathered together. They were one army now. Forni lifted Laughs Back so the strangers could see it. These strangers were huge men, stout and thick-legged. They deployed in wedges of fighters, armed with axes and swords. One man detached himself, perhaps their leader, Aethelwulf thought, armed with a spear.

  Sigemund, in a display that made Aethelwulf’s mouth go dry, taunted the strangers. The stranger leader threw his spear high, and when it landed far behind Aethelwulf, with a strangely harmless-sounding clatter, like a mattock tossed to earth, Sigemund called, “A little boy can throw better than that!”

  The men of Dunwic lifted a cheer, a taunting cry. The strangers were weak as infants! The strangers were little children sucking at their mothers’ teats. Were there no men among these strangers?

  “Their guts for the rooks!” piped Edwin.

  The leader of the strangers strode toward them alone. The rest of the strangers whooped, a sound that made Aethelwulf’s bones turn to water.

  The leader made his slow way toward the men of Dunwic. He was a stocky, bearded man with a shield and a sword. His beard was the color of autumn, and beneath the body leather he was wearing a shaggy black fur that hung unevenly below his waist.

  The leader was taking great breaths. His chest swelled in and out within the armor, and his face was flushed. The man spread his legs and stooped forward as Edwin threw a rock, and two spears glanced from his shield. The man seemed to shrink, bunching inward, gathering.

  He roared. He flung back his shoulders, flung back his arms. His teeth were white, his armored chest exposed. The man attacked, shoulders forward, shield up. He crashed into the men of Dunwic. Bodies sprawled. Spears and swords clattered on the leather shield, and the madman’s sword rang against the villagers’ weapons.

  Spearmen were hacked as they lay tangled. Three of them died in three flashes of the sword, and as Sigemund struck the stranger’s shield with his ax, he fell too. He tried to call out, but his throat let out only a whisper, a gout of air.

  Edwin fell face forward into mud like a man letting himself drop into a straw bed. A spear was slashed into two pieces as it was stabbed toward the madman’s legs, and another spearman coughed, his death yell turning into a spray of blood. Every remaining hall guard was butchered as he offered spear or sword, stiffly, in movements filled with uncertainty. The madman slaughtered them, roaring, black now with their blood. Boy and man ate his sword, as though they were struggling, clumsily, for the next opportunity to die.

  Forni lunged forward. “Laughs Back!” he called. The noble ax buried itself in the madman’s shield, and the madman turned, his savage grin all teeth.

  Forni ran, leaving Laughs Back, leaving father and brother in the road. Forni wept, and Aethelwulf ran with him, shocked at what he had witnessed and at the beautiful, terrifying stream of blood pulsing down Forni’s legs.

  An arrow glinted through the late afternoon light, missing Aethelwulf by a handbreadth.

  Too far, said a voice in Aethelwulf’s soul.

  The woods are too far away.

  22

  The men of Spjothof cheered as Torsten slaughtered the villagers.

  Lidsmod was glad to see the ax-wielding villagers fall. But he had heard the tales of battle and knew what was likely to happen next.

  The few remaining villagers ran, one of them staggering, and Torsten ran after them, still roaring. Gunnar ordered his men forward, Trygg fitting an arrow to his bow.

  As Lidsmod had feared, Gorm leaped upon the bodies in the mud and slashed with his sword. He butchered as though for an evening meal. When Gorm rose from his work, the men were in pieces scattered across the road.

  Gorm was disgusted. These men had no gold. He had not expected thrall-like men to wear much in the way of treasure. But they did not even have antler-ivory pins, or bone fastenings, or any of the adornments the most common man in Spjothof would wear. Their clothes were coarsely woven, their belts cracked with use. Their weapons were adequate, but hardly trophies. The armor of the dead spearmen was serviceable, but unbeautiful. Gorm was repulsed by contact with such poverty. He hurried after the stream of Spjotmen, eager to sack the village.

  Swords chimed. Gorm raced toward a knot of new spear carriers who had just run up through the village. Torsten slashed; two men fell. A spear splintered. Gorm lanced a man’s unprotected side, and when a spearman turned to battle Gorm, he feinted, paused, then stabbed the man in the throat.

  When the spearmen were all dead, Gorm searched the bodies, stabbing where flesh still quivered or where breath still moaned in and out of a bloodied mouth. More poverty. More worth-poor men with no adornment of any kind.

  Gorm hacked at a body and kicked it, so the air groaned out of the corpse’s lungs. Gorm swore to himself that he would take this impoverished country by the neck, and strangle it.

  Lidsmod led their prisoner to the ships, and Njord trussed the young shepherd like a goose, with deft, shipwright knots. “Go back to your fighting, Lidsmod,” he said. “You don’t want to miss any moment of the slaughter.”

  Lidsmod caught something in the shipman’s tone. Was it possible that Njord did not enjoy the sight of blood any more than Lidsmod?

  “Go on,” said Njord. “It’s a brave sight, sea warriors against swineherds.”

  Lidsmod lifted his ax and roared with the other men as Torsten destroyed a dwelling. The berserker splattered hot barley porridge all over the interior and sliced into a roof support with his sword. The blackened wood was red where he scalloped it, and as Spjotmen looked on, the timber was carved to a spindle, then a splinter, and then to nothing.

  The roof groaned. Torsten attacked the walls, and mud and straw flew. The Odin worshiper roared, and soon he had gouged his way through the wall, slashing a new door cavity. He turned to another wall and sliced another ragged light hole, and then he attacked the clay pots and the iron pots and the blankets, then did battle with yet another wall.

  Even a fellow shipmate would not survive in the same building with Torsten, so the others spread through the village. Floki tracked a rooster, dived and missed, and a young fighter from Landwaster helped him. They both fought with the rooster, until the bird was torn and they were both freckled with gobbets of rooster and feathers.

  Whenever a spot of disturbed earth was discovered, men dug like dogs. Many times in the past, Danish villagers had buried gold, hoping to return. Sometimes villagers had even hurled gold into a spring. Eirik was lowered into the well on a rope.

  The well was crude. A tree trunk had been burned hollow and inserted as the lining of the well shaft. This showed some little craft, Lidsmod thought, but it was a coarse, foreign method, and not pleasing to a man from Spjothof.

  When they found no gold, they burned everything. They burned every loom and crushed every loom weight. They burned every blanket and every wooden tool, and threw chickens into the burning heaps and roared as the birds ascended, birds-of-fire until they could not move, living, charred things men killed and ate half raw.

  There was a fury in each man because there had been no gold, no women, and no livestock for a feast. And when men were sent to the s
heep pasture, they discovered that the sheep had been driven into the forest. Some straggled behind, bawling as sheep will, but the great triumph feast had been snatched from the Spjotmen, and they were angry.

  Darkness.

  Gunnar and Lidsmod found Torsten tearing a hole in the ground with his sword, a hole big enough to stand in. Torsten was battling the dirt, as though wanting to do combat with Frey, the god of earth and harvest. Torsten stabbed, dug, plunged, still roaring.

  Gunnar waited until Torsten leaped from the hole, and then threw him to the ground. Many others were waiting for him, at Gunnar’s direction. Three men fell upon Torsten’s sword arm and three on his legs. Even so, Torsten climbed to his feet, men clinging to him like ants to a tree. If Ulf had not dived at Torsten’s feet, the berserker would have run into fire to singe off his captors.

  Fire was golden in the night, and the heat of it made a wind that streamed through Lidsmod’s hair.

  When Lidsmod found a leather helmet lying in the flickering shadows, he put it on. Some spearman had worn this, some hall guard who had fled, or spilled his belly to the dirt.

  Lidsmod wondered if one of his shipmates would laugh at the sight of an untested warrior wearing a spearman’s helmet, but when he met Gunnar’s eye the leader said, “Help us Lidsmod—if we don’t search quickly, some real fighting men will find us, and you’ll need that helmet.”

  23

  Under the night sky the victors fired the roofs, destroyed every mead bench, and drank green ale from earthenware pitchers.

  Lidsmod returned to the ship with a newly discovered sword and scabbard. Opir hooted at the sight of Lidsmod with a weapon hanging from his belt. He laughed at Lidsmod’s stride, his walk made more difficult by the weight of the blade.

  Ulf knelt and took the new thrall’s head in his hands. “So, my little wolf. You don’t like us yet.”

  “He should love us as old friends,” said Opir. “The boy’s an idiot, it’s plain to see.”