Blood Eye(50)

'There are spirits here, Raven,' Bjarni said, his eyes rolling up to the leafy canopy. 'Can you feel them?' We entered a glade where the sun broke through, dappling the men with blades of golden light.





'Yes, I feel them, Bjarni,' I said. 'We all do.'





'They're watching us, brother, these spirits,' Bjorn said, running a hand over the dark moss creeping up an ancient tree stump. 'But they stay hidden. They are safe in the forest. Safe from the Christians who would banish them to some dark, foul, stinking place.' He gestured to Father Egfrith up ahead. 'Don't be fooled by his puny body.' He grimaced. 'His kind can kill spirits.'





'For once, the young speak wisely,' old Asgot put in, the words dry and brittle, the first he had spoken for hours. 'This land is sick with disease. The Christ followers have turned their backs on the old ways and the spirits hate them for it.' He swept an arm through the air. 'We must be careful,' he warned. 'The shades of this place must not mistake us for Christians.'





'How do we tell them what we are, old man?' Bjorn asked. 'Should we sing one of the old songs?'





'Not enough, Bjorn,' Asgot muttered. 'Not enough.'





'A sacrifice,' Black Floki said flatly, his top lip curled with ire. 'We should sacrifice the monk.' I looked back at old Asgot who now grinned like a child.





'No need to dull your blade, Floki,' I said, hoping my eyes did not betray the fear that twisted in my guts at the memory of Griffin's slaughter. 'The spirits are not blind, they are ancient and wise.'





'What do you know of shades, boy?' Asgot asked. The man hated me.





'I know there is more chance of Floki being mistaken for a March lamb than a Christian,' I said. Floki smiled at this and the others grunted their agreement. I hoped their thoughts of a blood offering had been borne away on the moss-scented breeze.





Deep in the forest we came across animal tracks, the muddy ground worn smooth by badgers, foxes, weasels and hares, though we never encountered the animals themselves. I hoped one of the Norsemen might take down a deer with his bow, but it was a foolish hope, for we were forty-seven men and must have sounded like thunder as we crashed through the ancient stillness. The only creatures we saw were birds and insects, though there was always the chance that a boar might charge from the undergrowth to smash someone's leg bones to splinters. I have known the beasts to be so intent on foraging that, when startled, they have fled from one hunter and impaled themselves on another man's spear.





We were still in the heart of the forest when the air turned cool and the gathering darkness made it dangerous to go on. Old Ealhstan was ashen-faced, tired and breathing hard. I saw him rubbing his hip, which often pained him, so I gave him a straight ash limb to lean on. But Sigurd would not risk one of his own men twisting an ankle on an exposed tree root or smashing his head on a low branch, and announced that we would spend the night on the mossy banks of a trickling stream. It was too early in the year for the biting flies that make brown clouds in such places, and so it was a good place to rest. And we were not alone in thinking it. Clearly, animals came here to drink from the stream, and deer gnawed the bark from nearby trunks so that they gleamed smoothly in the twilight. A huge fallen ash lay like a sleeping giant, slender saplings growing up around it, reaching for the light created by the old tree's demise. Ripped from the earth, the ash's enormous root balls were suspended some twenty feet up, resembling the giant's shaggy hair. The trunk would shelter us, whilst a large rock some ten paces away would provide cover for a fire and bounce its heat on to us as we slept.





The fire was crackling and popping angrily when Asgot began to cut a strip of bark as wide as his arm from the fallen ash. I watched the godi from a distance. Ealhstan saw me watching and slapped my face to break the spell.





'I'm just curious, Ealhstan,' I said, rubbing my cheek, but the old carpenter made the sign of the cross and pointed to the Norse sword beside me and shook his head, the last of his wispy hair floating in the breeze. 'A man should know how to use a sword,' I said, 'it is how he protects what he loves.' I remembered plump, red-cheeked Alwunn from Abbotsend and wondered if I had loved her. I didn't think I had. Then I looked back to Asgot, but Ealhstan tugged my shoulder and pointed at my face. Then he looked up at the leafy boughs above us and pretended to spit. I knew he meant that by taking on the ways of the Norsemen I was spitting in Christ's face. 'I don't want to make cups, old man,' I said tersely, half regretting the words, though it was the truth. Ealhstan pointed at my hands and sneered as though to say I did not have the skill for carpentry anyway. Then he turned his back on me and lay down. We rested quietly until the silence grew too heavy, and I left the growing warmth of the fire to see what Asgot was doing.