THE BLAUMEN came out of the red glare of the east. The first arrived on tall, lissome horses and lined the scrubby ridge above the beach, which suggested they were no fools. They must have ridden along the coast trying to find our ship, which would give them an idea of how many we were. I was sure Ogn and the men aboard Sea-Arrow would have been keen-eyed enough to see the riders coming. They would have sailed out of the blaumen’s reach and would be holding in the bay a short distance offshore. But we were now cut off from the sea, and so the blaumen thought they could finish us.
“Your eyes are younger than mine. How many do you see?” Penda asked. We were up on the lookout platform of Gerd’s Tit, shielding our eyes against the rising sun. That dawn was dry and fine, and the sky was a bowl of blue stretching beyond imagining. High up, higher than the black specks of birds, a few thin clouds skated east across the roof of the world on winds that did not reach us far below.
“It’s hard to count them when they keep moving like that,” I said. “Twenty-five? Thirty?” The horses were tossing their heads and whinnying, excited perhaps by their riders’ nerves and the prospect of a fight. Beasts are like that; they can smell blood before it’s even spilled. Perhaps those are ravens up there, I thought, glancing up at the sky, patiently waiting because they know there will be flesh to feast on soon enough.
“There’ll be more before long,” Penda said. “The silver-light bastards who have to walk on their own two legs will turn up, and then we’ll have a fight on our hands.” He was right, for in the time it takes to put an edge on a sword, another war band had appeared from the north. Their spear blades, helmets, and buckles glinted in the sun as they checked their weapons, stretched their limbs, and practiced spear thrusts. They wore the same white robes and bundles of linen on their heads as the men we had killed the day before, and they had the same metal-skinned shields too. Some of them were probably the same men who had run from us when we attacked the place, but they were back now, and they wanted revenge as any man would.
Our men were milling around the base of the building, checking their poor weapons and nervous now in the cold light of day, their blood sluggish and their instincts telling them that they were outnumbered and in a poor position. I turned and saw Gorm carefully lining up a row of earth-filled pots along the balustrade.
“Did you bring the heads?” I asked, my stomach growling in complaint at the tough goat meat I had eaten the previous evening.
Gorm’s wind- and salt-cracked lips spread into a thin smile. “I brought them,” he said, understanding now why I had asked for anything heavy. “They’re on the steps in there,” he said, nodding toward the door that led back inside the building. “I thought it was best to keep them out of the sun. Don’t know how long we’re likely to be up here.” He frowned. “I could let them warm up a little,” he suggested mischievously.
“They’ll do fine as they are,” I said. I smiled, trying to smother the fear whose icy fingers were beginning to caress my guts. “Hard and cold or warm and stinking, it’s all the same. No one likes an old severed head dropped on them from a height.” Gorm grinned, and I thought him as ugly as Völund’s hairy scrotum yet a good man to have with you when you were in a strange land and outnumbered by men coming to kill you.
Rolf came over and leaned on the rail, his jaw set and his eyes fixed on the mounted men, who had not moved from the ridge three bow shots away to the southeast. He spit over the side. “How bold do you want to play this?” he asked without turning his head. I had not known whether Rolf would look to me to lead, or Penda, or whether he might have his own ideas. My guts tightened like a fist gripping water.
“Say something, lad,” Penda muttered, and I realized I had not answered Rolf. “Anything will do, but give him something,” Penda growled.
“We are the anvil, Rolf,” I said, remembering my jarl’s words, “and the blaumen are the lump of iron that must be placed on the anvil.”
Rolf nodded, still staring at the riders. “And Sigurd?” he asked.
“Sigurd? Sigurd is the hammer,” I said.
“Even their damn banner is black,” Penda said, jerking his chin toward the north, where the horseless warriors had planted their banner in the earth. Then a strange, plaintive sound carried to us, a keening voice rising and falling as quickly as water over pebbles, as nimble as a thin wind through a forest. As one, the dark men dropped to their knees and touched their foreheads to the ground. Then they climbed back to their feet before dropping again as the voice melted away to silence. They repeated this action, and the weird voice grew, twisting and writhing like a serpent made of smoke, and from the corner of my eye I saw Rolf touch the cheek of the short ax tucked into his belt to ward off evil.
“That is some seidr,” he said. “I have never heard a man bawl like that.” He scratched the crook of his elbow. “Makes my damn skin itch.”
“The Christians are always singing,” I said, “and it can tempt your ears to jump off your head. But this … this is different.” I looked at Penda questioningly.
“Sounds like a couple of wolves chewing on a lamb,” he said unhelpfully. “And Christ alone knows why they keep putting their faces in the dirt.” He grinned. “Poor bastards must be hungry.” But even Penda must have felt that sound worming up his spine, for he made the sign of the cross before drawing his long knife and checking its edge.
To the southeast the riders had dismounted and were performing the same strange rite, their horses waiting patiently, some of them dipping their heads like their masters as though the seidr filled them too.
“Stay up here, Gorm, with two others,” I said, to which he nodded, calling the names of two Danes. “And don’t drop anything on us or you’ll wake up to find your own head in a barrel of piss.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Gorm said, grimacing at Rolf. Then, while the blaumen greeted the dawn with their faces in the dirt, we descended into Gerd’s Tit and readied for a fight.
There were thirteen of us waiting for the blaumen to attack, with three more above us on the lookout platform whose job it was to keep an eye on the enemy and call down to us with their movements.
“Let’s hope they come,” I muttered to Penda as we stood in a dog’s leg line so that half faced the northeast and the foot soldiers and half faced the mounted men to the southeast. We were a good spear’s throw from the open doors of Gerd’s Tit, meaning we would have to retreat forty paces over that hard-baked ground, and so it would all be in the timing.
“They’ll come, Raven,” Penda said, taking his spear in great circles to loosen his arm muscles. “They’ll come eager as crows to a hanging. We burned their village. Some of it, anyway.”
Columns of gray rose lazily into the blue sky from smoldering piles of ash where lean-tos, cattle stalls, and simple shelters had stood the day before. Many of the surrounding stone houses were scorched, their doors burned where they stood, hacked to splintered ruins, or taken to feed our fires. Chickens scrabbled in the ashes, pecking for food. Penda was right. The blaumen would come because we had brought death and fire to their homes. But they would also come because we looked like a sorry bunch of raiders with barely five or six decent blades among us. I glanced up at my spear’s blade, noting that it could use a good whetstone. Then again, I knew that even a blunt spear can gather enough speed in the air to pass through a man’s body. Not that I intended throwing it, not unless I had to.
“Danemen!” Rolf yelled in a voice that was bigger than he was. “You will take your orders from Raven. Do as he says and soon we will be back aboard Sea-Arrow with a decent silver catch and another tale for the skalds.”
“I was killing men when Raven was still clawing at his mother’s tit!” a man named Beiner shouted. I glanced over at him and he glared at me and shrugged, and I had no doubt he was telling the truth. He was a big man and had held on to some of his muscle even chained like a mad dog in that Frankish Hel. “Why should I take orders from a whelp? My woman has more of a beard between her legs!” The other Danes laughed at that, and Rolf rounded his cheek and hoisted his brows as though to say it was up to me to convince Beiner and any of the others who needed convincing. But I knew that I was beginning to get a reputation as a killer. Even Beiner must have heard how I had slaughtered the giant Frankish warrior who had leaped aboard Serpent, but reputations are hungry things and you must feed them to keep them alive. So without telling Penda what was going on, I undid my belt and handed it with the scabbarded sword to the Wessexman. Then I stepped out of the line and walked toward the blaumen to the northeast. And after just ten paces I cursed under my breath, because to my right two riders had urged their mounts forward and were now coming toward me, and I would rather have faced men on foot.
“Get back here, you bloody heathen fool!” I heard Penda yell, but I kept going, thinking to myself how the gods love to watch us mortals abandon good sense and throw ourselves into the Spinners’ web to see whether the strands will hold or snap. “Raven! Get your arse back here!” The spear suddenly felt light in my hand because the blood in my veins was beginning to tremble like water over coals, as it always has before a fight. And yet strangely, my legs felt heavy, so heavy that I feared that if my nerve failed and I turned and ran, I would make it barely halfway back to the Danes before the blaumen cut me down. But that was a good thing because it meant that even though I was tempted to turn and run, I would not.
“Thór’s hairy whore,” I muttered in relief. One of the riders had stopped, and the other was coming on alone, his shield held wide to show he came in peace. I glanced up at the birds, dark specks still, jostling against the blue at the edge of the eyes’ range. I had noticed that the sky seemed to grow bigger the farther south we sailed, and not just bigger but higher too, so that I wondered how Yggdrasil the World-Tree could be so huge that I could watch birds among the beams of the world yet still not see its branches.
The breeze shifted, bringing the stink of horse sweat and leather to my nose as the distance between the rider and myself closed. I could see his face clearly now, which was as dark as pitch, and his eyes, which were proud verging on haughty. He rode with his chin high, studying me down the length of a strong flaring nose. His mustaches and beard were short, neatly trimmed, and glistening, and the white robes beneath a short mail brynja were dusty and mud-spattered, though the linen wrapped around his head was as clean as fresh snow. When he was three spear lengths away, his eyes narrowed and his thick lips gathered, the expression of arrogance melting to a deep, cold revulsion because he could now see my blood-filled eye.
“Al-majus,” he said, tossing his head and tugging the reins to halt his bay mare. The beast whinnied and pulled its lips back from its yellow teeth, not liking the look of me either as the blauman burbled on at me in a tongue that I doubted even he could unravel. So I smiled and nodded, and the blauman frowned, half turning back to his companion fifty paces behind. Then I took my spear in both hands and ran forward and plunged the blade straight through the mail and into his chest. The man yelled in shock and fury, and his mare swung its head into me, teeth gnashing, almost knocking me off my feet, so that I let go of the shaft and staggered backward, leaving seven feet of ash jutting from the rider’s chest. Blood frothed at the blauman’s mouth and hung in gobbets from his short beard, and he died in the saddle, feebly clutching the spear, his mouth forming a scream that never came.
I heard the thunder of hooves and men yelling, and I turned and ran. I would rather have walked in my own time, heedless of the armed riders bearing down on me, my jaw firm, eyes cold as a nun’s tit. That is the way a skald would weave it, but the truth was that I ran as fast as I could, and no doubt my eyes were stretched wide as a whore’s legs. It’s likely I was yelling, too, in fear and with the sheer thrill of it, because I was unarmed and the hooves were striking the earth and my heart was banging as fiercely as Thór’s hammer. The Danes held their line, constrained by Rolf’s bawling, but they were howling and punching the air with spears and axes, spurring me on, willing me to make it back to the line before the blaumen rode me down. Then Penda was running toward me, which told me that the riders must be close, and I pumped my legs and hoped Odin Spear-Shaker was shaking Valhöll’s oak beams with a belly laugh like thunder.
“Down!” Penda screamed, hurling my scabbarded sword to me and then launching his spear, and I threw myself into the dirt and rolled to my right just in time to see the Wessexman leap and wrap his left arm around a horseman’s neck so that the man toppled backward off his mount, and Penda was flung through the air like a hare from a hound’s jaws. I scrambled to my feet, grabbed my sword, and saw that the rest of the blaumen were almost upon us, their curved swords held wide, ready to scythe our heads from our necks.
I hauled Penda to his feet, tensing as I turned to face the riders, who hauled on their reins, their horses screaming with anger.
“To us, Raven!” Rolf yelled, and I spun around to see that the Danes had moved up, still in line and horribly exposed, but there had been enough spears in that poor defense to deter the blaumen, or perhaps their horses, from riding into it. We began to step backward under a thin rain of javelins, joining the Danes.
“Everyone back!” I roared, and the Danes kept their spear blades up as we retreated raggedly. Rolf knocked a javelin out of the air with his spear, saving another man from being belly pierced. “Faster!” I shouted, because Gorm was yelling from Gerd’s Tit that the other band of blaumen was coming for us now, and the Danes knew as well as I did that if we did not move faster, we would be trapped.
“If they get behind us, we’re dead!” Tufi said, cursing as an arrow whipped past his face.
“Then move faster, Tufi, you son of a three-legged dog,” I yelled. Among the bristling knot of horsemen in front of us I saw a man gesture to the others that they should ride around our flanks and get behind us.
“We’ll be the bloody lump on the anvil soon enough,” Penda spit through a grimace, clutching his shoulder. The rider he had hurled himself at lay a distance off, his neck broken.
“Give them your spears!” I yelled. “Then break and get to the tit!” I knew they did not want to lose their spears, but we had to buy some time, and so with curses the Danes pulled back their arms and launched their shafts toward man and beast. “Now run!” I yelled, and we turned and legged it, and beside me a Dane went down but two others took an arm each and ran as if their arses were on fire. The first to reach Gerd’s Tit held the doors open, and we piled inside, half the Danes continuing up the stone stairwell while the rest of us barred the door and bolstered it with timbers taken from the surviving lean-tos.
“Why didn’t they ride us down? Why didn’t they fight?” Byrnjolf said, doubled over and gasping for breath. Candles still burned peacefully, chasing shadows into the dark corners of that strange empty place.
“Why would they?” Rolf answered, scowling at a slice in the shoulder of his jerkin. Dark blood stained the leather. “Now that we’re holed up in here like rats in a pot, all they need to do is wait for us to starve.”
“Soot-faced sons of whores,” Tufi gnarred, then kicked a chicken that had strayed from the others to peck the stone floor by his foot.
“I don’t think they will wait for long,” I said. “This place means something to them. It’s important. They made a stand out there yesterday,” I said, nodding toward the barricaded door, “and they will not be happy about us being in here.” As if in answer, something pounded against the door. The nearest candles guttered, and a cloud of dust bloomed, making Beiner sneeze.
“They want to come in, Gorm!” I yelled up into the hollow space above us. “Show them some famous Danish hospitality!” I don’t know whether Gorm up there on the platform heard me, but within a few hammering heartbeats a succession of loud cracks, thumps, and yelps told us that he and the others were dropping their stones and earth-filled pots.
“That’s it,” Beiner called through another enormous sneeze. “Flatten some heads!”
Outside, the shouts faded, meaning Gorm and the others had persuaded the blaumen to leave, at least for now.
“They’ll be back,” Byrnjolf said, testing the blade of a short knife against a strip of leather.
“Aye, and when they do, what have we got to give them? Tooth and nail?” Tufi said, throwing his arms wide. He had nothing on him more dangerous than his eating knife. “Whoresons will stick us with our own damn spears.”
“Don’t piss your breeches, Tufi,” Beiner said, gripping the throat of his long two-handled ax and slapping its cheek. “I’ve still got something to show those Svartálfar out there.” Svartálfar are the dark elves that live underground, and that word made some of the Danes spit or touch the Thór’s hammers at their necks. Now, for the first time since he had challenged me, I locked eyes with Beiner, unsure how things stood between us.
“I saw that your legs are swifter than your sword arm, Beiner,” I said, eyeballing him as I looped my belt with the scabbarded sword back around my waist. “Stronger too, I think, as your spear fell far short of any of the blaumen.” In truth I had not even seen the big Dane throw his spear, but I knew I had to finish what I had started outside when I had killed the horseman who had come to talk. “I admit you are a fast runner for an old man,” I said, feeling men’s eyes on me as the insult hung for a moment in that musky air.
Beiner glanced at Rolf, who gave nothing but a clenched jaw so far as I could see. Then the big warrior grinned, cutting his grizzled beard with teeth.
“You must be a Dane, boy!” he said, shaking his head and drawing in his friends with a sweep of his arm. “You’ve got bats in your skull,” he added, flapping his big hands. “Only a Dane would take on a swarm of Svartálfar—or draugar or whatever in Hel’s reeking cunny they are—on horseback, armed only with a bent spear and his own crooked cock.”
I smiled, mostly in relief that the big Dane didn’t seem about to use that big ax on me. “Does that mean you’ll do as I say, Beiner?” I asked.
The Dane scratched his cheek and hoisted his brows. “Do you want us to go out there and ask for our spears back?”
“I want you to take that ax of yours and kill some chickens,” I said, pointing into the shadows where the birds clucked and scratched quietly. “I’m hungry.”
“Fucking bats in his skull,” Beiner muttered, swinging his ax from his shoulder into his right hand and shambling off, musky smoke billowing in his wake. Rolf looked at me, bewilderment on his face, and I shrugged, unable to hide the surprise in mine.