Blood Eye(45)

'You are a thief,' Ealdred stated without judgement in his voice. 'You and your men would not be standing on English earth if you did not lust for plunder. Father Egfrith assures me that such is your people's nature from the moment you slip into the world until the day you are cast into Satan's pit.'





'Why don't you send your dog?' Sigurd gestured to Mauger who was stretching the muscles in his thick neck. 'Or any of those whelps,' he added, pointing at the anxious bearded faces in the darkness twenty paces behind the English lord.





Ealdred sighed. 'Because they are Christians, Sigurd,' he said in a voice too low for his men to hear, 'even Mauger here, though you might wonder, and Christians know the value of such a book. The spiritual value,' he added quickly, raising a finger. 'Finding such a holy treasure in his possession might tempt even an honest Christian to betray any oath he had previously sworn to me. I fear he would keep the gospel book pressed against his heart and vanish like morning mist to live out his life a hermit on some seagull-shit-covered spit of land in the grey sea.'





Father Egfrith nodded solemnly. 'For a believer, the book is more precious than life itself,' he said and it was clear he was describing himself.





'As I cannot trust a Christian to do it, I must look elsewhere,' Ealdred said, looking at Sigurd intently, as though he knew he was taking a great risk. 'You, Sigurd, you are a heathen. To you the book is nothing. You can't understand its power. By Christ, I'll wager you can't even read.' Sigurd scratched his beard and Mauger grunted as though he believed reading to be a waste of time best left to weaklings. 'But I know you understand silver, Sigurd,' Ealdred said, 'you read that well enough. We shall pay you in silver for the book.' The ealdorman's lips spread in a thin line because he anticipated the Norseman's next words.





'How much silver, Englishman?' Sigurd asked.





'Enough to buy yourself a kingdom and the men to make you king of it,' Ealdred replied, his eyes like chips from a broken icicle.





Sigurd scratched his beard. 'I will speak with my men,' he said, replacing his helmet. Behind him Olaf still bristled, his sword gripped tightly and his shield raised. 'Perhaps they would rather sail up your east coast and find more stone houses filled with gold and slithering worms like him,' Sigurd said, nodding at Egfrith.





Ealdred shook his head slowly. 'You are not leaving here in your boats, Sigurd. My king would take my head if I let you sail away to murder and plunder God's houses.'





Sigurd drew his sword, the rasp of steel splitting the night. I drew mine too and stepped back just as Mauger raised his own blade and put himself between his lord and Sigurd. Some of the English clamoured for blood and behind me the Norsemen began to thump their swords on the backs of their shields.





Sigurd's face twisted with indecision and Ealdred, who had not drawn his sword, held out his arms as though weighing two objects. 'Now, Sigurd, where do we go from here? Fight and lose your ships and your lives, or become richer than you ever dreamed. I have heard it said that your race was spawned from a red-haired Irish bitch and a sharp-tusked boar, which accounts for your fast anger and slow minds,' he stepped boldly in front of Mauger, raising his wounded arm to hold the warrior back, 'but I don't believe any man would turn his back on what I offer.'





'Come, Norseman,' Mauger mouthed, beckoning Sigurd on with his free hand. Sigurd's lips pulled back and his men bawled that they would cut the English down. The rhythmic thump of swords on shields grew louder and I thought the night would drown itself in blood and that I would die. My arm fell to trembling again as the battle thrill gripped me.





But then Sigurd slowly sheathed his sword and the thumping and jeers subsided. He turned, fixing me with his fierce eyes.





'It is not our time, Raven,' he said. 'Only when we're worthy of remembrance will Óðin's dark maidens take us to Asgard.'





Then he turned his back on the English, showing no fear of them, and raised his hand into the dawn sky for all his shieldwarriors to see. 'We are going to fill Serpent's belly with English silver!' he roared, his breath misting in the cold air, and his men cheered.





Shadowed by the English, we returned to the beach to find that Glum and his men had saved the ships from the rain of fire. They were still arrayed in battle formation, weary and pale as the sun which had broken free of the eastern horizon. The English skiffs still bobbed on the waves, their men out of Glum's reach but close enough to the longships to threaten them again with fire born of the embers kept in earthen vessels aboard. But there had been no real fight, because the English had too few trained spearmen to close with the mailed Sword- Norse. Still, Glum and the others were clearly relieved to see us coming towards them with Sigurd and Olaf at our head. Ealdred's men gripped their spears and arrows and axes and swords ready, should we turn on them, and now, in the daylight, we could see that there were even more of them than it had seemed in the night. Not all were warriors; many were farmers and craftsmen bearing the tools of their trades as make-do weapons, but even a scythe wielded by a strong arm will kill a man well enough. Sigurd had already lost good men and had no wish to lose more.