Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned: Stories Page 19

  “I wish it was,” I said. “But I’ve got bruises I could show you. Hey, if I ever come around asking to be your sweetheart, do me a favor and remind me about last night.”

  He was all upset. “Go to hell, Harald. You’re not funny. Nobody thinks you’re funny.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Guess you haven’t had a whole lot of practice lately having a body beside you at night.”

  He rested on the oar a second. “So what if I haven’t.”

  Thanks to the easy wind bellying our sails, we crossed fast and sighted the island six days early. One of the hockchoppers spotted it first, and when he did, he let everyone know it by cutting loose with a long, obnoxious battle howl. He drew his sword and swung it in figure eights above his head, causing the men around him to scatter under the gunwales. This boy was a nasty item, with a face like a buzzard’s, his cheeks showing more boils than beard. I’d seen him around at home. He had three blackened, chopped-off thumbs reefed to his belt.

  Haakon Gokstad glanced up from his seat in the stern and shot the boy a baleful look. Haakon had been on more raids and runs than the bunch of us put together. He was old and achy and worked the rudder, partly because he could read the tides by how the blood moved through his hands, and also because those old arms were poor for pulling oars. “Put your ass on that bench, young man,” Haakon said to the boy. “We got twelve hours’ work between here and there.”

  The boy colored. He let his sword arm hang. He looked at his friends to see if he’d been humiliated in front of them and, if he had, what he needed to do about it. The whole boat was looking over him. Even Djarf paused in his song. The other kid on his bench whispered something and scooted over. The boy sat and took the oar. The rowing and the chatter started up again.

  You could say that those people on Lindisfarne were fools, living out there on a tiny island without high cliffs or decent natural defenses, and so close to us and also the Swedes and the Norwegians, how we saw it, we couldn’t afford not to come by and sack every now and again. But when we came into the bright little bay, a quiet fell over all of us. Even the hockchoppers quit grab-assing and looked. The place was wild with fields of purple thistle, and when the wind blew, it twitched and rolled, like the hide of some fantastic animal shrugging in its sleep. Wildflowers spurted on the hills in fat red gouts. Apple trees lined the shore, and there was something sorrowful in how they hung so low with fruit. We could see a man making his way toward a clump of white-walled cottages, his donkey loping along behind him with a load. On the far hill, I could make out the silhouette of the monastery, which still lacked a roof from when we’d burned it last. It was a lovely place, and I hoped there would still be something left to enjoy after we got off the ship and wrecked it up.

  We gathered on the beach, and already Djarf was in a lather. He did a few deep knee bends, got down in front of all of us and ran through some poses, cracking his bones and drawing out the knots in his muscles. Then he closed his eyes and said a silent prayer. His eyes were still closed when a man in a long robe appeared, picking his way down through the thistle.

  Haakon Gokstad had a finger stuck in his mouth where one of his teeth had come out. He removed the finger and spat through the hole. He nodded up the hill at the figure heading our way, “My, that sumbitch has got some brass,” he said.

  The man walked straight to Djarf. He stood before him and removed his hood. His hair lay thin on his scalp and had probably been blond before it went white. He was old, with lines on his face that could have been drawn with a dagger point.

  “Naddod,” Djarf said, dipping his head slightly. “Suppose you’ve been expecting us.”

  “I certainly have not,” Naddod said. He brought his hand up to the rude wooden cross that hung from his neck. “And I won’t sport with you and pretend the surprise is entirely a pleasant one. Frankly, there isn’t much left here worth pirating, so, yes, it’s a bit of a puzzle.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Djarf. “Can’t tell us anything about a hailstorm, or locusts and shit, or a bunch of damn dragons coming around and scaring the piss out of everybody’s wife. You don’t know nothing about any of that.”

  Naddod held his palms up and smiled piteously. “No, I’m very sorry, I don’t. We did send a monkey pox down to the Spanish garrison at Much Wenlock, but honestly, nothing your way.”

  Djarf’s tone changed, and his voice got loud and amiable. “Huh. Well, that’s something.” He turned to us and held up his hands. “Hey, boys, hate to break it to you, but it sounds like somebody fucked something up here. Old Naddod says it wasn’t him, and as soon as he tells me just who in the hell it was behind the inconveniences we been having, we’ll get back under way.”

  “Right.” Naddod was uneasy, and I could see a chill run through him. “If you’re passing through Mercia, I know they’ve just gotten hold of this man Aethelrik. Supposed to be a very tough customer. You know, that was his leprosy outbreak last year in—”

  Djarf was grinning and nodding, but Naddod looked suddenly ill.

  Djarf kept a small knife in his belt, and in the way other men smoked a pipe or chewed seeds, Djarf liked to strop that little knife. It was sharpened down to a little fingernail of blade. You could shave a fairy’s ass with that thing. And while Naddod was talking, Djarf had pulled out his knife and drawn it neatly down the priest’s belly. At the sight of blood washing over the white seashells, everybody pressed forward, hollering and whipping their swords around. Djarf was overcome with crazed elation, and he hopped up and down, yelling for everybody to be quiet and watch him.

  Naddod was not dead. His insides had pretty much spilled out, but he was still breathing. Not crying out or anything, though, which you had to give him credit for. Djarf hunkered and flipped Naddod onto his stomach and rested a foot in the small of his back.

  Gnut was right beside me. He sighed and put his hand over his eyes. “Oh, Lord, he doing a blood eagle?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Looks that way.”

  Djarf raised his palm for quiet. “Now I know most of the old-timers have seen one of these, but it might be a new one on some of you young men.” The hockchoppers tittered. “This thing is what we call a blood eagle, and if you’ll just sit tight a second you can see—well, it’s a pretty wild effect.”

  The men stepped back to give Djarf room to work. He placed the point of his sword to one side of Naddod’s spine. He leaned into it and worked the steel in gingerly, delicately crunching through one rib at a time until he’d made an incision about a foot long. He paused to wipe sweat from his brow, and made a parallel cut on the other side of the backbone. Then he knelt and put his hands into the cuts. He fumbled around in there a second, and then drew Naddod’s lungs out through the slits. As Naddod huffed and gasped, the lungs flapped, looking sort of like a pair of wings. I had to turn away myself. It was very grisly stuff.

  The young men roared, and Djarf stood there, conducting the applause. Then, at his command, they all broke out their sieging tackle and swarmed up the hill.

  Only Gnut and Haakon and Ørl Stender and me didn’t go. Ørl watched the others flock up toward the monastery, and when he was sure no one was looking back, he went to where Naddod lay dying, and struck him hard on the skull with the back of a hatchet. We were all relieved to see those lungs stop quivering. Ørl sighed and blessed himself. He said a funerary prayer, the gist of which was that he didn’t know what this man’s god was all about, but he was sorry that his humble servant had gotten sent up early, and on a bullshit pretext, too. He said he didn’t know the man, but that he probably deserved something better the next time around.

  “Cross all that water for this damn stupidity, and a flock of sheep to shave at home,” Haakon grumbled.

  Gnut smiled and squinted up at the sky. “My God, it’s a fine day. Let’s go up the hill and see if we can’t scratch up a bite to eat.”

  We hiked to the little settlement on the hill. Some ways over, where the monastery was, the young men were on a real bing
e. They’d dragged out a half-dozen monks, hanged them from a tree, and then set the tree on fire.

  Our hands were stiff and raw from the row over, and we paused at a well in the center of the village to wet our palms and have a drink. We were surprised to see the kid with the thumbs in his belt bust forth from a stand of ash trees, yanking some poor half-dead citizen along behind him. He walked over to where we were standing and let his victim collapse in the dusty boulevard.

  “This is nice,” he said to us. “You’d make good chieftains, standing around like this, watching other people work.”

  “Why, you little turd,” Haakon said, and backhanded the boy across the mouth. The fellow lying there in the dust looked up and chuckled. The boy flushed. He plucked a dagger from his hip scabbard and stabbed Haakon in the stomach. There was a still moment. Haakon gazed down at the ruby stain spreading across his tunic. He looked greatly vexed.

  As the young man realized what he’d done, his features fretted up like a child trying to pout his way out of a spanking. He was still looking that way when Haakon cleaved his head across the eyebrows with one crisp stroke.

  Haakon cleaned his sword and looked again at his stomach. “Sumbitch,” he said, probing the wound with his pinky. “It’s deep. I believe I’m in a fix.”

  “Nonsense,” said Gnut. “Just need to lay you down and stitch you up.”

  Ørl, who was softhearted, went over to the man the youngster had left. He propped him up against the well and gave him the bucket to sip at.

  Across the road, an old dried-up farmer had come out of his house. He stared off at the smoke from the monastery rolling down across the bay. He nodded at us. We walked over.

  “Hello,” he said.

  I told him good day.

  He squinted at my face. “Something wrong?” I asked him.

  “Apologies,” he said. “Just thought I recognized you, is all.”

  “Could be. I was through here last fall.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “Now, that was a hot one. Don’t know why you’d want to come back. You got everything that was worth a damn on the last going-over.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re having a hard time figuring it ourselves. Came to see your man Naddod. Wrong guy, looks like, but he got gotten anyway, sorry to say.”

  The man sighed. “Doesn’t harelip me any. We all had to tithe in to cover his retainer. Do just as well without him, I expect. So what are you doing, any looting?”

  “Why? You got anything to loot?”

  “Me? Oh, no. Got a decent cookstove, but I can’t see you toting that back on the ship.”

  “Don’t suppose you’ve got a coin hoard or anything buried out back?”

  “Jeezum crow, I wish I did have. Coin hoard, I’d really turn things around for myself.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t suppose you’d own up if you did.”

  He laughed. “You got that right, my friend. But I suppose you got to kill me or believe me, and either way, you get nothing out of the deal.” He pointed at Haakon, who was leaning on Gnut and looking pretty spent. “Looks like your friend’s got a problem. Unless you’d like to watch him die, why don’t you bring him inside? Got a daughter who’s hell’s own seamstress.”

  The man, who was called Bruce, had a cozy little place. We all filed in. His daughter was standing by the stove. She gave a nervous little cry when we came through the door. She had a head full of thick black hair, and a thin face, pale as sugar—a pretty girl. So pretty, in fact, that you didn’t notice right off that she was missing an arm. We all balked and had a good stare at her. But Gnut, you could tell, was truly smitten. The way he looked, blanched and wide-eyed, he could have been facing a wild dog instead of a good-looking woman. He rucked his hands through his hair and tried to lick the crust off his lips. Then he nodded and uttered a solemn “Hullo.”

  “Mary,” Bruce said, “this man has developed a hole in his stomach. I said we’d help fix him up.”

  Mary looked at Haakon. “Aha,” she said. She lifted his tunic and surveyed the wound. “Water,” she said to Ørl, who was looking on. Gnut eyed him jealously as he left for the well. Then Gnut cleared his throat. “I’d like to pitch in,” he said. Mary directed him to a little sack of onions in the corner and told him to chop. Bruce got a fire going in the stove. Mary set the water on and shook in some dry porridge. Haakon, who had grown rather waxen, crawled up on the table and lay still. “I don’t feel like no porridge,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Bruce said. “The porridge is just for the onions to ride in on.”

  Gnut kept an eye on Mary as he bent over a small table and overdid it on the onions. He chopped and chopped, and when he’d chopped all they had, he started chopping the chopped-up ones over again. Finally, Mary looked over and told him, “That’s fine, thank you,” and Gnut laid the knife down.

  When the porridge was cooked, Mary threw in a few handfuls of onion and took the concoction over to Haakon. He regarded her warily, but when she held the wooden spoon out to him, he opened his mouth like a baby bird. He chewed and swallowed. “Doesn’t taste very good,” he said, but he kept eating anyway.

  A minute passed, and then a peculiar thing occurred. Mary lifted Haakon’s tunic again, put her face to the wound, and sniffed at it. She paused a second and then did it again.

  “What in the world is this?” I asked.

  “Gotta do this with a wound like that,” Bruce said. “See if he’s got the porridge illness.”

  “He doesn’t have any porridge illness,” I said. “At least, he didn’t before now. What he’s got is a stab hole in his stomach. Now stitch the man up.”

  “Won’t do any good if you smell onions coming out of that hole. Means he’s got the porridge illness and he’s done for.”

  Haakon looked up. “Talking about a pierced bowel? Can’t believe it’s as bad as all that.”

  Mary had another sniff. The wound didn’t smell like onions. She cleaned Haakon with hot water and stitched the hole to a tight pucker.

  Haakon fingered the stitches, and, satisfied, passed out. The five of us stood around, and no one could think of anything to say.

  “So,” Gnut said in an offhand way. “Were you born like that?”

  “Like what?” Mary said.

  “Without both arms, I mean. Is that how you came out?”

  “Sir, that’s fine a thing to ask my daughter,” Bruce said. “It was your people that did it to her.”

  Gnut said, “Oh.” And then he said it again, and then really no one could think of anything to say.

  Then Mary spoke. “It wasn’t you who did it,” she said. “But the man who did, I think I’d like to kill him.”

  Gnut told her that if she would please let him know who it was, he’d consider it a favor if she’d let him intervene on her behalf.

  I said, “I would like a drink. Ørl, what have you got in that wineskin?”

  He said nothing. The skin hung from his shoulder, and he put his hands on it protectively.

  “I asked what have you got to drink.”

  “Little bit of root brandy, for your information, Harald. But it’s got to last me the way back. I can’t be damp and not have something to take the chill off.”

  Gnut was glad to have something to raise his voice about. “Ørl, you’re a sonofabitch. We been three weeks on the water for nothing, Haakon is maybe gonna die, and you can’t even see your way to splash a little taste around. Now, that is the worst, the lowest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  So Ørl opened up his wineskin, and we all had a dose. It was sweet and potent and we drank and laughed and carried on. Haakon came to. His ordeal had put him in a mawkish bent of mind, and he raised a toast to his pretty surgeon, and to the splendid day, and how much it pleased him that he’d get to see the end of it. Bruce and Mary loosened up and we all talked like old friends. Mary told a lewd story about an apothecary who lived down the road. She was having a good time and did not seem to mind how close Gnut was standing. No on
e looking in on us would have known we were the reason this girl was missing an arm, and also the reason, probably, that nobody asked where Bruce’s wife had gone.

  It was not long before we heard somebody causing a commotion at the well. Me and Gnut and Ørl stepped outside. Djarf had stripped to his waist, and his face and arms and pants looked about how you’d figure. He was hauling up buckets of cold water, dumping it over his head, and shrieking with delight. The blood ran off him pink and watery. He saw us and came over.

  “Hoo,” he said, shaking water from his hair. He jogged in place for a minute, shivered, and then straightened up. “Mercy, that was a spree. Not much loot to speak of, but a hell of a goddamn spree.” He massaged his thighs and spat a few times. Then he said, “So, you do much killing?”

  “Nah,” I said. “Haakon killed that little what’s-his-name lying over there, but no, we’ve just been sort of taking it easy.”

  “Hm. What about in there?” he asked, indicating Bruce’s cottage. “Who lives there? You kill them?”

  “No, we didn’t,” Ørl said. “They helped put Haakon back together and everything. Seem like good folks.”

  “Nobody’s killing them,” Gnut said.

  “So everybody’s back at the monastery, then?” I asked.

  “Well, most of them. Those young men had a disagreement over some damn thing and fell to cutting each other. Gonna make for a tough row out of here. Pray for wind, I guess.”

  Brown smoke was heavy in the sky, and I could hear dim sounds of people screaming.

  “So here’s the deal,” Djarf said. “We bivouac here tonight, and if the weather holds, we shoot down to Mercia tomorrow and see if we can’t sort things out with this fucker Aethelrik.”

  “I don’t know,” Ørl said.

  “No deal,” I said. “This thing was a goose chase as it is. I got a wife at home and wheat straw to bale. I’ll be damned if I’ll row you to Mercia.”

  Djarf clenched his jaw. He looked at Gnut. “You, too?”

  Gnut nodded.