Raven: Sons of Thunder Read Online Free PDF Page B

Father Egfrith to hear his constant sniffing and fidgeting. I suspected that being a follower of the White Christ did not protect you from fleas and his habit must have crawled with the biting bastards. I would have wagered the thing would shuffle along the ground of its own accord if the monk ever took it off. But Cynethryth seemed to find some comfort in the man and for this, at least, I was grateful.
    As Cynethryth was never far from Egfrith, so the WessexmanPenda was never far from me. Penda wanted his ealdorman dead as much as any of us did, maybe more so. He no doubt imagined himself swinging the deathblow as payment for Ealdred’s treachery, for the ealdorman had as good as killed every Wessexman who had marched into the lands of the Welsh with us. But Penda’s bloodlust made him no less wary of the men he now travelled with. For all his wild battle fury and death-skill, the spiky-haired warrior was still a Christian, and as such it was no easy thing for him to find himself in the company of those who kept to the old ways. Yet Penda and I had fought and bled together. We two had survived when death had claimed so many and no matter what our differences, we had a bond as strong as Gleipnir, the magic fetter forged of a mountain’s roots and bird’s spittle which restrained the wolf Fenrir. Penda also kept one eye on Cynethryth, though I judged it protective rather than Freyja-stirred. Certainly it was not the same way I had seen him look at a red-haired beauty in Wessex. To my eyes the redhead had looked a loose woman, perhaps even a whore, but Penda had talked of marrying her and so I reckoned he was merely soft for Cynethryth because she was from his own land, or because she was a woman amongst brutal men, or because he had loved her brother Weohstan. Nevertheless, none of this would be enough to save her father when the time came. In this regard also, he and I were joined.
    Dawn broke late because of a skein of low grey cloud through which the sun was hard pressed to burn. A drizzle had filled the air since the early hours and we woke damp and irritable, not least because the local inhabitants, the seals, were keening again as though they had forgotten all about our spears. The men of the last watch returned yawning, their eyes red and heavy as they stoked up the fire and hunkered under their blankets and oiled skins. Egfrith handed me a cup of rainwater and I grunted thanks before drinking and passing the cup to Penda. Cynethryth’s blankets were empty and Penda must haveread the lines on my brow because he grinned and nodded over towards the rocks, of which there were many more now that the tide was out. Cynethryth’s gown lay on one of them whilst she bathed out of sight and for a moment I imagined her washing in the cold, plunging surf, but the image was as tormenting as it was beguiling and I shifted uncomfortably, steering my mind to something else.
    Penda nodded up to the high ground above the beach where sea thrift and white stars of chickweed fought for their place amongst prickly sea holly and coarse grass.
    ‘Sigurd has been up there since before first light,’ he said.
    ‘He wants his ship back,’ I said, choosing not to mention Sigurd’s fear that his luck was on the wane, for death had followed the Fellowship like a hungry shadow and the man who had betrayed us had escaped. ‘If Fjord-Elk were mine I’d want her back, too.’
    Penda nodded. The cormorant had returned, barking somewhere in the grey morning, as miserable about the drizzle as we were.
    ‘What will he do when he gets her?’ Penda asked. ‘Are we enough to crew two ships?’ Somehow his thick hair was still standing in spikes despite the damp. We should have gathered sticks and stuck them in the sand to make tents of our oiled skins, but the night had been fine and dry when we had turned in. It was too late now. We were already soaking.
    ‘Sigurd will know what to do,’ I said, scratching my beard. In truth it was still not