Blood Eye(110)

But I was a Norseman. And my eye was red.





'I will kill Ealdred,' I said, pushing on, 'and I will throw the White Christ book into the sea as an offering to Njörd.' My war shield thumped against my shoulder and the iron rings of my brynja chinked. My enemy's daughter walked on in silence, her wet face towards the new dawn.





As we neared Ealdorman Ealdred's lands, we tried to make ourselves inconspicuous. We stopped at a mill on the banks of a fast-flowing stream and I paid the miller two small silver coins for an empty flour sack into which I put my war gear, except for the shield which I kept slung across my back. Cynethryth washed off her brother's blood and then raised her hood so that it partly hid her face, and in her simple dress of undyed linen – though it was now stained brown in places – no one would know her for the ealdorman's daughter. Even so, the sight of my battered war shield was enough to make folk wary of us as we moved along the well-worn paths leading to Ealdred's hall. The locals had seen plenty of warriors come and go over the last weeks and they must have caught a whiff of blood in the warming summer air, for they gave us a wide berth and eyed me suspiciously.





Next morning, we arrived before the timber walls of Ealdorman Ealdred's small fortress, having travelled through the night. I hated watching Cynethryth walk through the gates alone, for I feared what Mauger might do, if he still lived, to prevent her from telling Ealdred the truth about Weohstan's death. But she assured me that even if Mauger had made it back to his lord after the fight in the forest, he would not dare harm her here, despite her having ridden to warn me of the Wessexmen's ambush. Nor could Cynethryth believe that her father would hurt her. I promised to wait until she returned with news of how things stood within the walls, and though she was probably right, I whispered a prayer to Loki the maker of mischief that she would be back soon and unharmed. I did not pray to Óðin, because I was unsure how I stood in the Far-Wanderer's eyes for having fled from the Wolfpack when all was against them. With the prayer barely past my lips, I put my rolled-up cloak beneath my head and fell asleep in a ditch beside a thick hedgerow of hawthorn and hazel.





'Wake up, Raven.' Cynethryth's voice was low and urgent. She was back before my dreams had taken shape. 'Wake up. Ealdred is at the coast already. He waits for a good wind to take him across the sea. And he has his silver with him.' She was holding a linen sack.





'My jarl's silver,' I said groggily. She nodded, coming into focus as I knuckled my eyes. 'Ealdred's a fool, taking his fortune on to a boat. A boat he has never sailed before. Rán's white-haired daughters will smell the silver and spill it into the sea and him with it.' I rubbed my aching neck.





'The Lord God will turn your tongue black for saying such things and it will fall out one day and you will be left mute,' she chided, frowning. 'Food,' she added, following my eyes to the sack in her hand. I nodded, my belly rumbling. 'Godgifu the cook said Ealdred intends to sell the gospel book of Saint Jerome to the great Emperor Charlemagne.'





'Charlemagne? Are you sure?'





'We have to hurry, Raven!' She pulled at my brynja.





'So Ealdred was never going to give the book to King Egbert?' I asked. Egbert was king of Wessex back then, after Beorhtric, though he had yet to become Bretwalda, ruler of all Britain.





'I don't know. I don't think the king knows anything about it,' Cynethryth replied, handing me my shield.





'That makes sense,' I said, slinging the shield across my back and picking up my helmet. 'King Egbert would not have had Sigurd's Norsemen roaming his land. Of course he wouldn't. How would it look to his people? To his churchmen?'





'And our people went along with it because Ealdred told them it was their king's wish,' Cynethryth said, putting the puzzle together. 'They had no choice.'





'Ealdred plays a dangerous game,' I said. 'He's a scheming bastard, I'll say that for him.'





Charlemagne was a legendary warrior by then, the most powerful Christian alive, but for the Pope. Though some said even Pope Leo bent the knee to Charlemagne. If God wouldn't listen, you prayed to Charlemagne. That's what the Christians said. Still do and the man's been dust for years.





'I hope the wind blows his piss back into his face,' I said, meaning Ealdred and feeling the breeze across my eyes and wondering if even that would side with the ealdorman to carry him out of my reach. Cynethryth handed me a hunk of bread and cheese and some salted meat and we set off, bypassing Ealdred's fortress to get to him before the wind changed.





Also in Cynethryth's sack were peas, leeks, turnips and two small onions, and this food kept our strength up on the two-day journey to the southern Wessex coast. But it was a different kind of hunger that stirred in my guts when I eventually smelled the sea, long before its wild sound filled my ears or its grey vastness crammed my eyes.