Blood Eye(69)

I was walking beside Sigurd who was rolling his shoulder as though it pained him. He glanced at me. I looked away.





'What's on your mind, lad?' he asked. 'If there's a bad taste in your mouth it is better to spit it out.'





I hesitated. 'Are you injured, lord?' I asked. It was a poor attempt to deflect him.





He gave me a knowing look and I took a deep breath. 'Why did you attack the Mercians, lord? I had the gospel book. We could have been away without so much bloodshed.'





Sigurd seemed to consider this for a while, then he nodded, acknowledging that my question was a fair one deserving of an answer.





'These men risk their lives every time they unfurl the dragon's wing or dip their oars in the grey sea,' he said. 'Each day we spend in this land could be our last. Even a hunting dog must be let off the leash, Raven, to taste his freedom and be what he is.' He nodded towards the Norsemen in front. 'And these are wolves.' He smiled. 'A jarl should reward his men for standing in the shieldwall, don't you think? Silver. Women.' He shrugged. 'Whatever they hunger for.'





'I understand, lord,' I said. And for the first time I did understand. These men lived at the edge of life and they thrived in that place, like a wind-whipped pine on a desolate outcrop. Plunder was their reward. Enough had died for it. As for myself, I trained with these Norsemen. I ate and drank of their ambitions. Most of all, I had become a killer of men, like Black Floki and Bram and Svein, and yet I wondered if I would come to savour the killing as they seemed to.





'We don't have the men to row both Serpent and Fjord-Elk home,' Knut said, scratching at a patch of dried blood that filled the rings of his brynja. We had stopped to drink from a narrow brook. 'We'll need a good wind.'





'Raven, tell the Englishman that that bastard Ealdred better stick to his side of the bargain,' Bram added, belching loudly. 'If there's so much as a scratch on Serpent that wasn't there before . . .' He twisted an imaginary head off an imaginary body. We had drunk every drop of ale in King Coenwulf's hall before burning the place to the ground, and now our heads ached and our eyes were sore from the smoke.





'You'll get your ships, heathen,' Mauger said, after I had translated Bram's threat. 'Once Lord Ealdred has the book, you'll have your ships. The silver too.' The Englishman staggered off to piss.





Father Egfrith seemed impossibly happy. There was no sign of the scarlet cloak and he wore his simple habit again. He had been singing his psalms, but thankfully was now reduced to humming them because Black Floki had introduced him to the butt of his spear. In truth I preferred the monk when he was feigning death and, what was worse, he seemed grateful to me for my part in retrieving the holy book, which he now carried on his back. He seemed somehow taller, more vital, with the thing in his possession, and I know I was not alone in wondering what Christian magic lay beneath the bejewelled silver sheath, amongst the vellum and ink.





'Your jarl was wise to trust the holy gospels to my care,' Egfrith said proudly. Now that we had the book, Sigurd wanted nothing more to do with it. He would not even look at it. 'It could not be in safer hands,' the monk went on. 'Besides, simply being near the wonder's sacred leaves might cause a heathen horrendous pain.' I looked at the monk. 'Oh yes, Raven.' His eyes widened. 'It has the power to blister a heathen's skin and rot his bowels. That you bore it from Coenwulf's church without harm gives me reason to believe there is still hope for your soul. Slender hope, of course.' He stopped to consider me carefully. 'I think you will burn in hellfire for all eternity.' He scratched his head. 'But there may be some slender hope. Do butterflies not begin life as hairy worms?' He seemed pleased with the comparison.





'I care more for a dog's turd than your precious book, monk,' I replied, staring at him with my blood-eye. The little man recoiled, making the sign of the cross before my face, then shuffled off to annoy someone else. Though some of what he said knotted a worm of fear in my gut, the fear of an unseen power, I had chosen my god and he was not a god of the meek.





Sigurd made me responsible for the hostages and so I walked beside them, though I did not expect them to cause any trouble. Their hands were tied, they were surrounded by blood-stained heathens, and they looked terrified, but at least they still breathed, and this must have given them a glimmer of hope – enough perhaps to stop them from trying something desperate. Looking at them reminded me how wretched I had felt in their position. I thought of Ealhstan and the memory stirred a gloom in me, like an oar blade reaching beneath the sun-gilded surface of the sea. But the old man was gone now and it served no purpose to think of him, so I watched our prisoners, wondering what life we had torn them from.