Raven by Giles Kristian Page A

cross? Frigg knows they don’t look like other Christians. But it could still be a church. Do you really feel that your god is near?’ I asked, a slight shiver crawling across my skin because Penda’s god and mine were enemies.
    The Wessexman scratched the long scar on his cheek as we walked together back to the north-east side, and when we were back where we had started from Penda shook his head and turned to me. ‘A church would have something in it. Something worth protecting,’ he said. ‘This place is something else. For one thing it is a good place to watch out for raiders,’ he admitted, thumping the wooden balustrade appreciatively.
    ‘They didn’t see us coming,’ I said, sheathing my sword again.
    ‘Aye, but we shall see them,’ he said, and now it was his turn to grin.
    We set three of the Danes to watch from the platform whilst the rest of us paired up and went from house to house, kicking down doors and looking for anything of worth. The people of the place had fled while their warriors had fought us in the shadow of the great building, and Penda suggested that perhaps those warriors had wanted us to think they were protecting something inside so that their folk could escape. This seemed likely to me and in truth I was glad of it because I knew what the Danes would do to anyone they found.
    ‘Do you expect these godless bastards to lay out their loot for all to see?’ Penda asked, pulling a clinking leather pouch from a small box beneath a child’s crib. He pulled the string and poured a stream of silver coin into his palm. ‘That bony slash of piss Rolf and his bunch of berserkers will be stuffing coins into their arse cracks to keep them from Sigurd, you mark me, lad. They’ll be rattling like an old whore’s teeth.’
    ‘Are you going to share that little hoard, Penda?’ I asked, nodding at the dully gleaming pile in his hands.
    Penda scowled. ‘You can wipe that grin off your face, lad,’ he said, tipping the coins back into the pouch. ‘This is mine by rights for being the bait in the trap.’ He stuffed the purse into his belt and rolled his shoulders with a crack. ‘Well, lad, let’s not stand here getting old.’ He tapped the pouch affectionately. ‘There’s more where this came from and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the bloody Danes get their filthy hands on it.’
    Rolf suddenly appeared in the doorway and I did not miss how his eyes flicked down to the purse in Penda’s belt. ‘Gorm has found something you should see,’ he said, turning back into the night.
    ‘I hope it’s something we can eat,’ Penda grumbled. ‘A pig would go down well. Anything with legs would be good. I’ve eaten enough dried fish to last till Judgement Day.’
    But what Gorm had found was not something even a mangy dog would chew on.
    ‘I thought it must be ale. Even wine,’ the Dane announced, hands on hips before a barrel whose lid he had prised off. Most of the others had gathered, eager to know what Gorm had found and each one moonstruck by the thought of swigging the rest of the night into oblivion. Gorm glanced at Rolf, who nodded, and Gorm grabbed the barrel’s rim and threw the thing over on to its side, so that liquid splashed across the hard ground. With it came heads. And stink. There were five of them and but for their ashen colour all looked as fresh as if they had been lopped from their necks that very morning.
    ‘Gods!’ a Dane exclaimed. Penda made the sign of the cross over his chest as Byrnjolf prodded one of the heads with his spear.
    ‘There must be some strange seidr in the water they were in,’ Rolf said, ‘for surely those men were not breathing the same air as us these last days.’ And I thought Rolf must be right because the wound beneath each head’s chin was the same dull grey as the rest of the skin, rather than being like butchered flesh.
    ‘We found something else, too,’ a Dane called Tufi said, hefting up a silver Christ cross and washing it