Blood Eye(11)

Then it was over. Only one of the Norsemen had been killed, but all sixteen who had faced them lay in their own blood and the heathens made short work of any still living. Except for Griffin. They dragged him through the gore to the man with the piercing eyes and the wolf's head brooch. To Sigurd.





'Before you die, you will see your village swallowed by flames,' the jarl growled, pointing to the houses whose hearth smoke still leaked through the thatch as though it was just another day, 'and in the afterlife you will know that you brought death to your people.'





'The Devil piss in your skull,' Griffin managed. Skin and hair flopped horribly from the side of his head and I saw the broken bone beneath. Blood ran down his face like threads of a web, dripping from his short beard. But his body would not die. 'You . . . will beg . . . Christ's forgiveness at the coming of judgement,' he threatened in a dry voice. 'I swear it.' Brave Griffin smiled as he said the words.





Sigurd laughed. 'Your god is weak. A woman's god. They say he favours cowards and whores.' The other heathens scoffed and shook their heads as they wiped their gore-covered blades on dead men. 'You are not weak, Englishman,' Sigurd went on. 'You killed a great warrior today.' He glanced at the dead Norseman, who had been stripped of his mail so that he looked no fiercer than any young man of Abbotsend, but for the many scars carved into his white skin. Sigurd frowned. 'Why do you follow this White Christ, Englishman?' he asked. Griffin's eyelids grew heavy and I hoped he would pass out. The Norseman shrugged. 'I give you to Óðin so that in death you will see a true god. A god who can make his enemies run from a battle back to their women in shame.' He then commanded his men to search the houses for booty, making sure to look in the hearth ash and in cooking vessels, even the thatch itself, for hidden treasures. The heathens did this quickly, fearing the arrival of the local levy, and began carrying bags of coin, tools, cloth, weapons and cured legs of lamb and pork over the hill to their ships. There were some screams, but not many. Most of the women had escaped into the woods and would not yet know their men lay butchered. I had seen Alwunn's father killed, but I knew she and her mother would have had the sense to get away. Poor Alwunn. But I had never loved her, and I am sure she did not love me.





I knelt by Ealhstan, waiting for the heathens to notice us, for then they would kill us along with Griffin. I dragged my arm across my lip and looked at the bright blood, realizing that I no longer trembled. The carnage I had witnessed had somehow cured me of fear. I gritted my teeth. Griffin must despise me for what I had done, but he would not see me cower at the end.





The Norsemen gathered seasoned timbers and built a pyre on which they laid the warrior whom Griffin had killed. One man took a spear and scratched a circle in the earth and dragged Griffin into it by his bloody hair. By now he was barely alive. The first thatch roofs broke into patches of flame and the dead Norseman's pyre began to crackle as the old grey-bearded warrior with bones plaited in his hair invoked their gods in a dry, low voice. A raven cried in the old ash tree, its head jerking hungrily as it watched the work of men, and I knew it was the same bird I had seen the previous daybreak by the watchtower above the beach. It opened its heavy beak and fluffed its throat feathers so that they stuck out like spikes. I looked back to Griffin and my stomach squeezed warm vomit into my throat.





Ealhstan groaned, trying to stand, but I pulled him down. 'Keep still, old man,' I hissed. Half of his face had swollen into a livid purple bruise. He sniffed the air. 'It's burning,' I confirmed, my eyes too full of Griffin's mutilation to be drawn to the flames now crackling angrily. 'They're doing something to Griffin. It's the Devil's work, Ealhstan.'





Griffin moaned pitifully, his ebbing life revived by horrible pain. Ealhstan grabbed for my arm, then flapped his arms, his rheumy eyes wild. 'The Eagle,' I breathed and those wide eyes said, Don't watch, you fool! Christ save us, don't watch.





But I did watch. I watched as the old godi used his hand axe to hack into Griffin's back. Again and again he smashed the ribs away from the spine and my world was filled with a proud man's screams. The two Norsemen holding Griffin down were spattered with his blood as he writhed in agony. Then the heathen godi hooked clear the last of the ribs, exposing the meat within, and his hands plunged into the gore and pulled out Griffin's lungs, laying one on each side of his ruined back like glistening red wings.





'They've opened his back,' I said to the old man, who had turned away. Then I lurched forward and retched, but my stomach was empty and there was just dry pain. 'The Blood Eagle,' I murmured, horrified to see in the flesh what I had only heard men talk of in whispers. Ealhstan crossed himself and began to make a low moan in his throat, as Griffin's screams became horrible, liquid gurgles lost amongst the crackle of burning wood and thatch and the roar of flame.