Blood Eye(67)

'The gods will be watching you, lad,' Olaf said with a nod. His face looked kind in the morning light. 'Sigurd says your life thread and his are woven together. You'll be fine.'





'I hope so, Uncle,' I said, managing a smile. My palms were clammy and my bowels turned to liquid as they wrapped me with my sword in the leather cloak so that even my face was covered. I wore no mail or helmet. Stealth would be my only armour once inside the fortress.





'Orm has cut air holes in the sides,' Sigurd said. 'They're small. You can't see them when the lid's on.' He patted my chest. 'Remember to keep stiff.' He grinned. 'The bishop has been dead a good many hours.'





I made no sound, nor moved a muscle when Svein hoisted me on to his shoulder and carried me to the open ground before the main gate and the Mercians, whom I felt watching me even from inside the skin, and there the Norsemen laid me in the oak coffin and sealed the lid with pine tar. That was when I smelled the rotting hare Black Floki had placed in the coffin to add the stench of death to the ruse, and I cursed him for having thought of it.





I heard a clink which I took to be Grey Beard's purse of silver coins hitting the ground.





'Leave the bishop there and retreat one hundred paces,' Grey Beard called. The next thing I heard was the creaking of the heavy gates and the grunts of the Mercians as they hefted me into their fortress, cursing the heathens for their wickedness. Eventually, they set the coffin down and I guessed I must be in King Coenwulf's church, as the Mercians' voices echoed off stone walls. I stayed as still and as quiet as a dead bishop. I waited for an eternity in the stinking dark and prayed that my gods were watching and that the Christians' god was not.





After a long time, I began to feel things crawling on my skin and knew they must be maggots from the dead hare. Slowly and painfully, I repositioned my right arm and pulled the leather wrap below my eyes, then peered through a breathing hole. Sigurd was right; the hole was small and I could see nothing of the room beyond, but I guessed that night had fallen and that I had been in the coffin too long, constrained more by fear than the stifling casket. For all I knew, King Coenwulf might have been fighting Sigurd in the meadows beyond the palisade whilst I lay in that foul-smelling space. I could do nothing about the maggots and so closed my eyes, concentrating, stilling every sinew to help my ears decipher the world beyond. I heard nothing but the flickering of a torch and the scrabbling of mice on the rush-strewn floor. I was drenched with sweat, and the maggots crawled, and my body ached from keeping so still, and when I did try to move, my legs prickled horribly so that I had to clench my teeth to keep from cursing. Eventually and painfully, through small movements, my limbs came back to my body and I suddenly knew that I had to escape the coffin before it convinced me I was truly dead, before the maggots began to feed on living flesh. But even then it took an age to inhale the courage to break out, for I knew those breaths, however shallow and suffocating, might be my last.





Orm had spread only a thin layer of pine tar at the top end of the coffin's lid and several thumps, which I feared would alert a guard, proved enough to break the seal. My lungs drank the cool air as I prised off the lid and clambered out into the dark interior of Coenwulf's church. Then I whispered thanks to Loki that I was alone. And my heart froze. There, by the small stone altar, a warrior in a short brynja was sleeping, his ash spear across his lap and his head resting back against a priest's knee cushion. The man was snoring loudly and I was amazed I had not heard him before. Beside him, on the oak altar illuminated by a spitting tallow candle, lay the holy gospel book of Saint Jerome. And it was beautiful! Its cover was a plate of silver beaten to a knife blade's thickness and inlaid with a gold cross studded with dark red and green gems. I stared at it and I shivered, because I knew that by seeing it I was somehow inviting it to try its power over me. But it was not mine yet and I was not its.





The guard was snoring happily, but I could not risk his waking when I opened the church door. I put my sword to his throat and watched his Adam's apple rise and fall a hair's breadth from the blade's point. 'Óðin, guide my sword,' I whispered, though I could not miss. I gritted my teeth and thrust, but the blade stuck in the gristle of the man's gullet. His eyes opened in terror and I shoved the blade further until the point struck the stone wall behind. The man gurgled wetly, horribly, and dark blood drenched his mail. It pooled in his lap as he died, and I did not feel elation, but instead felt treacherous. Then I picked up the book, which was heavy because the back cover was also a silver plate. I placed it in a leather sack slung across my shoulders and walked to the church door, pulling it open a finger's width to peer out into the night. People with torches were moving about the place, the flames throwing strange shadows across the wooden buildings and palisade. The Mercians were finding it hard to sleep with a Norse war band prowling beyond their walls. Then my stomach lurched, because two figures broke free of an eave's dark shadow and were coming towards me, their hands clasped, arms swinging. I pushed the door shut, too hard, and stood behind it, gripping my sword and wishing I wore my mail. Five heartbeats later, a woman giggled. Then the door creaked open.