THE AMPHITHEATRUM Flavium was all seething madness. It was different standing at ground level, looking up at the stone terraces that were filling with the crowds that had come for blood. The place was filled with their sound, like the whir of a thousand arrows through the air, and the sweat stink of them was thick enough to taste. It was like being at sea in the eye of a storm. All is strangely calm, yet you know what is coming. I could not see clearly the individual faces, but I knew well enough where the Fellowship was. They had come in war gear in case of trouble with the Pope’s or emperor’s men and were massed on the bottom level on the west side, as far away from any of the White Christ churches and altars that had been built into the stands as they could get. They had hung Sigurd’s banner—a wolf’s head on a red cloth—from the wall below them, and I kept looking at it because it gave me courage. Had he been sitting among them, Svein could have hurled a spear in any direction and not hit anyone, because the Romans and other crews had not dared get too close to so many iron-sheathed, battle-ready men.
I wondered whether Cynethryth was among them; I could not see her, but that was not to say she wasn’t there. Besides, I knew Asgot would be present, for he would be drooling at the prospect of seeing how his scheme would unfold, and so there was every chance that Cynethryth had come too.
“If you get the Vindr Berstuk, go for his left side, lad,” Bram said, rolling his shoulders and stretching his neck. “He’s got an old injury in his lower leg that makes him favor his right. Hides it well, but it’s there all right. Go for his left and you’ll either get lucky and cut him or he’ll overcompensate and leave his right side open.” He grinned. “And then cut him.” The crowd was chanting now. They were happy because the sky was blue and the sun was shining and there was money to be made. Lord Guido stood behind a table on which three ironbound chests sat with their lids open. His soldiers were trying to keep order, corralling the hordes into lines so that they could place their wagers. Men were eyeballing us, weighing what kind of men we were before they parted with their silver. “Now, if you get the African, run him around for a while,” Bram went on. “Keep moving. Make the whoreson chase his own tail like a damn dog.” He pressed a thick finger into my chest. “But when you can, go for his legs.” He tilted his head toward Svein. “These big trolls always leave their legs vulnerable. I’ve never seen a tree that couldn’t be cut down with a good blade on the end of a strong arm.”
I nodded. My mouth was as dry as a long-dead corpse’s fart. “What if I get the Greek?” I asked. Bram thought about this for a while and then gave a slight shake of his beard.
“Then run, Raven,” he said. “And I’ll kill the cur just as soon as I’ve finished with my own snot-swilling son of a crone.”
“We could just take those chests,” Svein suggested, nodding toward Lord Guido and his long shields. Svein was right. There were enough of us to kill the long shields and carry the silver back to the ships. I doubted the Romans or the visiting crews or anyone else would try to stop us.
“You know as well as I do, Red, that this isn’t about the money anymore,” Bram said, and I too knew he was right.
Svein nodded, finishing off a thick red braid, for it does not do for a man’s hair to fly in his eyes when he is trying to avoid sharp steel. “We’ll leave this place with a fame hoard that’ll outshine Baldr’s golden ball sack,” Bram said, tightening straps and tugging a fold of his brynja up and over his belt to spread the weight of it.
Lord Guido had made us walk into the middle of the arena so that everyone could watch how we moved and get a look at our weapons. And we must have looked like war gods. The rings of my brynja glinted in the sun, and my helmet was polished so that it looked more like silver than iron. I was wearing my tall boots and had sheathed my lower legs and forearms in boiled leather because I had seen too many men take cuts in those parts. It was not for nothing that many men’s swords were named Leg-Biter. I had sword, long knife, short knife, shield, and spear. Bram was armed the same way, but Svein hefted the long two-handed ax, and its edge was honed to the keenest, thinnest, most wicked smile. We wore no cloaks, because a cloak can snag a blade or trap your arm, but were iron men ready to plow flesh and sow death. Whatever the reputation of the three champions we were to fight, if I were in the crowd that day, I would not have been quick to put money against us.
“Here, lad, give me your hand.” I turned to Olaf, who had come to wish us luck. Cynethryth was with him. Wide-eyed, she was looking up at the crowds, perhaps imagining what the place must have been like in the time of the old emperors. I held out my right hand, letting Olaf tie a braided leather thong around my wrist. The thong had a slip loop on the other end. “If it comes to sword work, pull that tight over the grip,” he said, nodding at the looped end. The thong was so that when I died, I should still be able to grip my sword, and that thought soured my guts even more. “It’s just in case, lad,” he added, slapping my shoulder and smiling through his beard. “I expect you to spear gut your man before it ever gets to swords.”
“Thank you, Uncle,” I managed, rolling my tongue around my mouth, trying to stir some saliva. Olaf reached into the scrip on his belt and pulled out a silver coin.
“Put this under your tongue. It will help.” I did, and it did. “I’m proud of you, Raven,” Olaf said then, looking up at the time-ravaged walls of the Amphitheatrum Flavium. “Sigurd is too. More than he’d ever like you to know.”
I took the coin out of my mouth and smiled weakly. “He told me to fuck the gods,” I said. Olaf turned back to me, his eyes blue as glacier ice.
“Then fuck them,” he said.
Olaf went over to speak to Bram, and my eyes met Cynethryth’s. I had not been this close to her for a very long time, and at that moment we were the only two people in the Amphitheatrum Flavium, so that I was only faintly aware of the din of the crowd like the murmur of some distant seashore and of my blood gushing through my veins.
“Did you know, Cynethryth?” I said, the frost in those words making my face bones tremble.
“Know what?” she asked. Her hollow cheeks were pools of shadow that defied the midday sun. Her once golden hair was a greasy tufted crop, and her skin was as pale as the dismembered statues that still looked down on us from the heights.
“That Asgot put the raven’s wing in his sack,” I said. Her green eyes flickered at that. “You think I would be standing here if I had a choice?”
She frowned. “All I know is that Asgot fears you,” she said. “He believes you are Ódin-shielded, though he will not admit it. He thinks that shield is our curse, Raven.” Try as I might, I could not penetrate her gaze. It was as though she were the other side of a smoky hearth. “For the Father of the Slain’s name means frenzy, and his love of chaos clings to you.”
“So you believe in our gods now, Cynethryth?” I said. One brow lifted, and her lips twitched like a fishing line between finger and thumb.
“Death follows you, Raven. Or perhaps you follow death.”
“Then I am well named,” I said through my teeth. She came closer, and I could smell her. A sweet, pungent burned sage smell. It sickened me because she smelled like Asgot. She took something from around her neck—a small purse on a string of twisted horsehair—and reached up to place it over my head.
“Do not take it off until the fight is over,” she said, tucking the purse into the neck of my brynja. “Do not even open it. Just give it back to me afterward.”
“What is it?” I asked, my chest so tight that I could hardly breathe.
“Something to keep you safe,” she said.
“You have barely looked at me since Frankia.”
She stepped back, and for a heartbeat I saw through the bitter smoke the girl I had known. “You once swore to protect me, Raven,” she said. “How can you do that if you are dead?” And with that she walked away, and the sound of thousands came crashing down on me like a great wave.
“It’s time, lad,” Bram said, gripping my shoulder.
“Kill them,” Svein snarled, slapping the haft of his ax.
In front of us Lord Guido’s champions stood waiting, their deadly-looking weapons glinting in the sunlight. “Gods help us,” I whispered, because those grim-faced men looked terrifying. At the arena’s edge men were near enough to throw their coins at Guido and his men, desperate to make their wagers while there was still time. The rest of Guido’s long shields marched into the killing ground and formed a large ring of steel, their sun-browned faces fish-eyed so that it was impossible to tell what they were thinking. In this way they were as different from Norsemen as cats from dogs.
Guido strode over and stood before us, his dark eyes probing, the faintest keel twist of his lips betraying a man who loathes the mired path he must take to get to the feast. He was a warrior, this one. His were an eagle’s eyes, keen as rivets and predatory. His mouth was the tight line of a man who takes no joy in food or drink, and the only hair on his face was a short black beard trimmed to a perfect wedge.
“What are we waiting for, Guido, your damned beard to grow? It looks like a girl’s cunny pelt,” Bram growled as Guido eyeballed him. Guido said nothing and, seemingly satisfied with Svein and Bram, turned those eagle’s eyes on me. He could not have known how it was that we three came to be standing before him and would have expected us to be the best fighters Jarl Sigurd had. That was why that keen gaze lingered on my stripling’s beard and the clench of my jaw that kept my teeth from chattering with fear. For my feigr was upon me, clinging to me like the stink to a shit bucket, and Guido’s beak nose must have been full of it.
He spun on his heel, pointing at Svein with his left hand and the bald-headed African with his right. The two giants glared at each other with enough flint and steel to start a blaze, which I took to mean that they were both happy with the match. Then Guido matched Bram with Theo the Greek, which meant I would fight the Wend Berstuk. Guido gestured that we should step back to put some ground between us and the men we were soon to fight, which we did, edging back to the long shields.
“Remember what I told you, lad,” Bram growled. “He’s weakest on his left.”
I had watched the Wend fight and kill over and over again and had seen nothing weak about him, but I nodded to Bram anyway as we spread out, each against his opponent as the noise inside the arena surged. It was not even a third full, yet the clamor was horrendous. It has always been a place of death. Gregor’s words rolled around inside my skull.
“Thór be with you, little brother,” Svein boomed above the crowd’s din. I could not look at him because I did not want him to see the bowel-melting fear in my face. It was bad enough that Guido had seen it, but rather him than my oath-brothers. I rolled my shoulders because the shield on my left arm felt as heavy as Serpent’s anchor. My feet were rooted to the ground like Yggdrasil, the World-Tree, so that I feared I might topple over onto my face the moment I tried to move my legs. My heart was thumping against my ribs. The hairs on my neck bristled. Cold sweat sluiced between my shoulder blades, the muscles in my thighs began to tremble, and I eyed the spear in the Wend’s hand. The Aesir must use such a weapon, I thought, to gut Sœhrímnir, the giant boar that those in Valhöll feast on. The iron-sheathed shaft was two heads taller than Berstuk, and the blade was Frankish, huge and winged to stop it from sticking too deeply into a man’s flesh. My flesh.
He wore no brynja, instead protecting himself with furs and boiled leather, but he is a fool who thinks a man with such poor war gear will be easier to kill, for such armor will often stop a blade better than any brynja. Besides, Berstuk must have killed men enough to own spoils that included a brynja or two, yet he spurned iron in favor of animal skins, which told me he was confident enough in his own way of fighting. No one had killed him yet, and many had tried.
His helmet was iron, though, taken from a dead blauman, I guessed, for it was pointed like those we had found beneath the blaumen’s turbans. This one looked too tight for Berstuk. As it was, the Wend was an ugly troll, all grizzled beard, bulbous nose, and pus-spilling boils, but that helmet squeezed his brows so that his eyes were little piss slashes in dirty snow. It made a scowl not even a mother could love and was enough to wither my balls and make me wish I had died in my sleep the night before.
He must have untangled his name from the tumult of voices, for he turned to the crowd and raised his shield and spear as I had seen him do before.
“Norseman, do you know the name Berstuk?” It was one of the long shields who had called out, his English thick with another tongue’s twisting. He was a short, thickset man with a neat beard and deep dark holes for eyes. “You have not heard the name?” he asked. I shook my head. “Berstuk is the name of an evil god that his people believe in. A god of the forest.” He dangled those words before me like a hooked and baited line, his eyes waiting expectantly.
“Then the god must be uglier than an old sack of arseholes,” I said, “if this lump of stinking pig shit is anything to go by. Little wonder shame makes him hide in a forest.” I felt better for that, perhaps because the dark-browed soldier’s eyes widened a hair’s width in surprise. Then Guido was gone, and the others began to close the distance, eager to stop standing and start fighting. So I put one foot forward, relieved because I did not fall, and went to face my doom.
Svein and the African struck first, their shields clashing like the antlers of two great bull elks. The crowd roared, and that sounded like the thunder a burning hall makes when the thick roof beams catch and the fire makes its own wind.
Then the Wend came. He swung the spear like an ax, and that heavy blade would have scythed my head off my shoulders, but I got my shield up in time and the blade clattered against it. He edged around to my right and made a straight thrust that I parried with my shaft, and then I rammed the point at his face, but he ducked and the blade glanced off his helmet, at which the crowd cheered.
I could hear the clashing of the other men’s weapons: of Svein’s ax against the African’s shield boss, the Greek’s spear clacking against Bram’s. I could hear their visceral grunts, but I dared not tear my eyes from the ugly Wend whose big iron-sheathed spear was light in his hands and seemed to come at me from all places at once. That winged blade bit splintered chunks from my shield, and I kept my feet moving, desperate not to give the Wend an easy target. He stabbed under my shield, the blade sliding off the leather shin guards, then he thrust high and I was not quick enough, and the point burst into my brynja, sending broken rings flying like water in the sun. The blood-hungry mobs yelled, and I staggered backward with the searing pain, but when I looked down, there was no blood and I knew that my leather gambeson had held. Go for his left side … he’s got an old injury … Bram’s voice growled in my head, and so I lunged for Berstuk’s left thigh. He shield blocked. I lunged again. And again. He crabbed left so that I had to turn with him, and even then I could not get through. I knew that without all that hard training with Sigurd and Black Floki, I would already have been bleeding out in the dirt. And yet feigr is feigr.
“Some fight, hey!” Svein yelled, but I had not the spit to waste on words, and I don’t think Bram had, either. He was a raging storm of steel in my peripheral vision, but the Greek was quick and strong and was dealing with everything the Norseman could throw at him like a man bailing out the bilge.
I shield blocked a high thrust, sending the blade higher, but Berstuk used that momentum, turning the shaft end over end and then stepping wide and ramming the butt toward my face, which I dropped, taking the blow on my helmet. It must have knocked my eyes spinning in my head, for I was blind and stumbling. Berstuk came on, plunging that blade again and again, and somehow, by luck more than skill, I got my shield in the way.
“Stand, Raven!” Bram yelled. “Stand!” But my knee bones were slipping in their joints, and I was slewing sideward, foot over foot. Then I hit a wall. Not a wall. Svein.
He took a massive blow on his shouldered shield, grimacing as he levered me upright. “Kill that ugly fucking Wend,” he sneered, launching at the African with a brutal ax dance that put the blauman on his back foot as I squinted through blinding pain and circled left. The Wend’s spear was too long, and I could not get near him with my own. I strode backward, needing time, and luckily for me the Wend took the opportunity to crow to the crowd, raising his arms again as though I were dead already. He had more swagger than a jarl with a golden cock, that one. Changing to an overarm grip, I rolled my shoulder, threw back an arm made brawny by rowing and spear work, and let fly. But Berstuk’s instinct was as sharp as his Frankish spear, and he spun back, lifting his shield so that my spear clattered off it, falling harmlessly somewhere over his left shoulder. And then he grinned because he thought I had wagered and lost.
“You look like a troll whore’s armpit,” I growled at him, spitting a thick string of spittle over my beard as I drew my sword. The crowd was baying for blood. “Your mother must have fucked a rancid corpse.” I could not tell if he knew what I was saying, but it made no difference, for the Wend wanted to kill me badly enough anyway. And now he thought it would be easy because I had lost my spear. He came within spitting distance, and I realized he was even uglier than I had thought. A twist of a smile split an angry boil above his lip, spilling yellow slime into his beard, and he was growling like a stiff-hackled dog. A man bellowed in pain, and the crowd roared, but I did not know who was hurt.
“Come, then, Wend,” I said, showing my teeth. I beckoned him on with my sword, for I realized then that the fear had gone out of me, knocked out by Berstuk perhaps, and if I was feigr, so be it. I thought I heard Olaf’s voice cut through the surge, and my blood began to simmer like broth over the hearth fire. “Come and cut my life’s thread if you think you can,” I snarled.
His winged blade probed low, and I blocked it with my blade, then the Wend reversed his spear and stepped into my low thrust, binding it to the right. Our shields clashed, and for a heartbeat I smelled him; then we broke, Berstuk shoving me off because he knew that inside his spear blade I was dangerous. Now that blade flashed like lightning, and my shield was everywhere at once, the arm behind it burning with the effort. I was strong, but so was the Wend. I cursed because I was not good enough to find his weakness, and I wanted to wipe the stinging sweat from my eyes but knew that to take my eyes from that spear even for the beat of a bird’s wing was to die. His eyes flicked to my chest, and my sword was already coming inside to block, but then he pulled the thrust and my blade wheeled down and out, hitting nothing. His blade streaked in, gouging into my brynja and sliding along my ribs. Vicious, molten iron pain scorched my flesh, and I did not have to look down to know I was cut. From the crowd’s thunder, they knew it too.
Berstuk swung the spear from far right, around his head, no easy thing one-handed, and the iron-sheathed shaft hammered against my sword, knocking it from my grasp. But I did not lose it, for it hung from Olaf’s leather braid as I blundered out of reach of his killing blow, grasping for the sweat-slick grip. Then the spear scythed down onto my shield’s rim, and Berstuk yanked it back so that the iron wings hooked on the shield’s edge, ripping it from my grasp.
My feigr reared like a dragon prow mounting a spumy rolling wave, and I knew death was coming. So I roared defiance to the All-Father, blindly swinging my sword with all the strength I possessed, and it cut through iron and wood, lopping off the last three feet of Berstuk’s spear. I threw my left foot forward and slammed my sword’s hilt into his beard, but his neck was thick as a young oak and the blow did no more than anger him, so that he hurled the broken shaft aside and pulled his sword, which rasped from its scabbard. Then the swirling rage of sound leaped like a flame, and I turned to see Bram on his knees, blood cascading over his gaping eyes and streaming from his beard. One arm hung limp, but the other stretched out like a crooked branch, fingers grasping. Even Berstuk watched as Theo the Greek bent and picked up Bram’s sword by the blade, offering the Norseman the grip. The Bear’s trembling hand grasped it, and he slumped back, his great shoulders caving in and his blade biting dirt.
The Greek turned to Lord Guido, palming sweat from his eyes, his chest billowing. Guido glanced up to where Sigurd and the rest were sitting, then nodded to his man, who stepped up neatly, putting the point of his sword on the inside edge of Bram’s collarbone. Svein and the African were still fighting, and I was too far away, and then, with two hands on the hilt, the Greek plunged the blade deep into Bram’s chest, ripping into his great heart. Blood spewed from the cave of his mouth, and he toppled sideward; Svein must have known what had happened, for he bellowed loud enough to shake the beams in Valhöll.
Berstuk grinned savagely and came again, hungry to finish me himself before the Greek could join the kill. Our swords clashed, and the right side of my chest screamed in pain. My brynja’s rings were blood-slick, and life must have been sluicing from the wound, because shadows were crowding my vision and my head felt light as feathers, as though my spirit was halfway out of my body. I was still swinging, sometimes hitting his shield, mostly hitting nothing, and I spit another curse at the gods and the Norns whose warp and weft had led me to that place and no farther.
Then the Greek was there behind Berstuk, still puffing, but the Wend snarled at him to stay back. This would be his kill, another hacksilver death for his fame hoard. I staggered backward, my hands losing feeling, so that I thought I must drop my sword. I was in a shadow world now and was no longer even aware of pain, just of pieces of myself floating away like jetsam on the tide.
Our swords clashed, and the crowd’s roar was as muffled as distant thunder. I was aware that my sword was hanging again from Olaf’s rope at the end of my numbed arm, and then Berstuk rammed his blade into that loop and sawed through it. I did not hear my blade hit the ground. Over the Wend’s shoulder I saw Svein’s great ax slice the massive African’s head from his shoulders, the Norseman’s mouth cavernous with a triumphant howl that I could not hear. Berstuk kicked my sword away, and somewhere in my mind I heard a god laugh because I would never cross Bifröst, the Rainbow-Bridge, and sit at the high seat of Ódin’s hall.
I felt no pain as I bit into my bottom lip, bursting it, but I did smell the Wend’s fetid breath as he snarled a curse at me, which was all slaver and snot hitting my face. He took hold of my neck and brought his sword up to shoulder height, pulling it back for the killing thrust. And that was when I blew a mouthful of hot blood into his eyes, at the same time pulling my long knife. Blinded, he thrust the sword, which slid across my shoulder as I hammered my blade into his mouth, breaking through the back of his skull. I smelled his piss as he died, then yanked my knife free, sending wet gray gobbets flying, and stepped back to let the corpse fall face-first onto the ground.
The noise of the crowd flooded back in, and I bent and snatched up my sword, striding and stumbling toward where Svein, his helmet off and his long red hair lank with sweat, now fought the Greek. His ax wove a deadly pattern through the air, and the Greek, having no shield now, could not get close enough with his sword. Neither had he seen me coming, and most likely he thought me dead. Then Svein turned his opponent so that Theo’s back was square on to me and I could not fail to hack him in two from neck to arse. But before I could, the long shields came at us, closing the ring of iron and steel, their spears leveled, and Theo spun, backing into that ring as neatly as a knife into a sheath.
Svein looped his ax, inviting the long shields to come and die, and then I heard the howling of wolves and looked up to see Sigurd and Floki and Penda and all the rest pounding across the arena, blades and teeth glinting in the sun. The short soldier who had told me about the Wendish god of the forest was yelling at the other men, including Guido, who had drawn his sword, ready to fight, his eagle eyes wide as coins. As one, soldiers threw down their spears and shook off their long shields, raising their hands to show they were unarmed, which was either very brave or very stupid with a Fellowship of warriors coming to kill them. But Sigurd hollered, and his men heard. He yelled at them to sheathe their blades, which they did just in time, and I was glad to see it, for sometimes killing cannot be stopped even by a jarl.
Penda and Bjarni came to me, throwing my arms around their shoulders before I could fall. The others were slapping Svein’s sweat-drenched back, and still others were gathering over Bram’s corpse.
“You are Jarl Sigurd?” the short soldier asked of Sigurd. Guido stood at this man’s shoulder, eyeing Sigurd fiercely.
The jarl nodded. “And these are my men,” he announced, chin high. Then he glared at Guido and pointed accusingly. “Bring your money,” he said. “We have won.” Now he pointed at Theo the Greek, who stood ashen-faced among his men. “That worm would be dead now if your men had not stopped the fight.”
“You will have your money, Norseman,” Guido said. “But you will have to wait.” He looked up at the baying crowds who perhaps felt cheated of the blood they had come for. “I could not risk keeping so much near these savages,” he said.
Sigurd shook his golden head. “My friend is crossing the shimmering bridge,” he said, his voice heavy as storm clouds, “and I must see to him. We are camped at the stone wharf west of the Palatine Hill. You will bring the money tomorrow at dawn.” Guido nodded. The short soldier eyed Sigurd like a man who stares at the sky wondering if rain is coming.
“You will have your silver, Sigurd,” the short man said.
“If not, I will flay the skin from your flesh and nail it to my ship’s mast,” Sigurd threatened him. Then he turned his back on them and went to see to his friend, whose blood was mixed with the dirt of that ancient place of death.