by Robert Low
‘So thralls rule us now,’ he growled and I felt a surge of anger; any less a man would have had my fist on him.
‘She is no thrall,’ I answered, stung. ‘A princess in her own lands and as valuable to us as a queen. And no-one rules us, not even me and, for sure, not you.’
He saw the thunder in my face and realised he had gone too far. Unable to row back from what he had said, he simply turned and rolled off down the ship to the prow, pulling off his crumpled hat and scrubbing his head with confusion.
The men I had sent out came back when the birds had finished yelling at the dawn.
‘They saw us,’ Kuritsa said, ‘just as the sky got light. We managed a shot or two, but they rowed off. There were only two.’
‘My fault,’ added another of the trackers wryly, a lanky Svear called Koghe. ‘I am not as skilled as Kuritsa here and let them see me.’
Kuritsa waggled his head from side to side, a gesture that meant the matter was neither here nor there. He also voiced an opinion that had been in my head, too.
‘It means the second man from tonight is still somewhere around.’
He had done more than well, what with this and other matters and I looked at him and knew what I had to do. Gripping him by one shoulder I bellowed it out so that everyone could hear.
‘I see you.’
Men turned; a few ‘heyas’ went up, for they liked Kuritsa and had long since stopped treating him as a thrall – which meant not noticing him at all. Now I had declared him as noticed and had Red Njal bring my drinking horn, filled with the last scum of the ale. Grinning, he handed it to Kuritsa, who then handed it to me. I drank and gave it back to him. He drank and everyone cheered, for Kuritsa was now a free man.
In some places there is more to it, involving six ounces of silver – if the thrall is buying his freedom – and him brewing ale from three measures, which is a powerful drink to present to his former owner, but all that is colouring the cloth of it.
‘Well,’ Crowbone said brightly, ‘now that we have no more thralls, we will have to rely on Finn Horsehead’s cooking.’
Which, of course, was what we had been doing already, for Finn was known for his excellent meals, but it raised a laugh as men clattered about, sorting themselves, trying to find sleep again and mostly failing. When the light was enough to see by, the ship was shoved off from the bank, the rowers settled on to their sea-chests, slid out the oars and bedded themselves into the rhythm of it, helped by Trollaskegg’s loving curses.
Dogs, he called them one minute and maeki saurgan the next, which strangers take as an insult, since it means ‘dirty sword’. They miss the part of how such a sword came to be so stained, by proving its worth and not breaking.
I took Pall by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to where Finn sat.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘Aim your scowls at this instead of me, Finn. This Pall might be useful yet, even if only in one of your stews.’
Finn managed a twist of his mouth, for he did not want a quarrel any more than I; Pall hunkered miserably, but I saw his thin face turn this way and that, cunning as a rat. A thought struck me and I cursed myself for a nithing fool.
‘Where were you going?’ I demanded. ‘Before you thought to be clever with our boat.’
He flicked his adder tongue over dry lips and I reached round into the small of my back, under the cloak, which made him flinch and cup his finger-short hand in the other.
‘Upriver,’ he answered in a voice as whiny as the wind, then, seeing me produce the truth knife, added hastily: ‘To warn the Saxlanders you are coming. Pallig wants you dead for killing his brother.’
‘Dare not do it himself, all the same,’ I pointed out scornfully.
‘Crucify him,’ Finn advised, then, remembering the Rus punishment for Christ-worshipping criminals, added: ‘Upside down.’
‘Christ Jesus,’ moaned Pall and collapsed to the deck, no doubt believing he was on his knees to his White Christ while the reality was he babbled with his nose in Finn’s boots; Finn laughed and prodded his face with a toe, while I added this latest bad cess to the growing heap of problems.
The rain started again and the wind swirled and circled, sometimes strong enough to catch the prow or the steerboard and lurch the ship sideways, like a balked horse. The current was strong, too and, in the end, I had us back at the east bank with the rowers drooling and panting. It had thicker woods nearby, so we stayed the rest of that day, sending men hunting or fetching firewood and fretting at having little food and less ale.
It gave me too much time to think, about when Odin would take me as his sacrifice, about what Thorgunna and the others at Hestreng would be doing and about the night-sneak by Pall and his oarmate.
When I had spotted it, I was thinking it one of the crew stealing up on Dark Eye, and tried to tell myself the feelings I had had were because she was valuable to us. Since then, she only took those eyes from me when she scanned the banks, as if hoping to see a face she knew. Even with my back to her I could feel the heat of those eyes.
She was young, yet old enough to grip the interest of all the crew, but she seemed like some animal fresh from a burrow in the woods, thrown into somewhere strange; I saw a hunger in those eyes, which I took to be for the woods and hills of her own place. I knew that hunger. Mine was for a fjord and misted cliffs and a distant blue line of mountain, like something seen on the inside of your eyelids when first you close them at night. I tried hard not to think of hers as another hunger and mostly failed.
That night we had a bigger blaze, just to cheer us and the glow of it fired the river and drowned the dark with blood red. I saw her, when everyone had gone to snores and grunts, a sharp profile against a sudden unveiled moon.
She turned and the firelight caught the shadow of a smile on a mouth that was neat as a hem, yet full enough for me to wonder if she knew how to kiss.
THIRTEEN
The woods seemed still until you were in them, when things moved and made noises; a brown bird flickering in a bush of berries, a fox picking delicately through the sodden edge of the meadow, rooks arguing in a tangle of trees, their new-hatched joining in with an uncertain clamour of young voices as broken as Crowbone’s.
I was enjoying this, a hunt and a scout both and free of the ship and the grumbling, quarrelsome crew, even if my bow-skill was likely to shoot my own foot as something tasty for the pot.
The scouting was more important – the day before we had spotted smoke, a thread in the weak, faded blue, no more – but it spoke of fresh food and ale and perhaps even women, so here we were, Kuritsa and me, plootering as quietly as we could through the damp woods in a sudden burst of warmth which brought out the insects in stinging swarms.
For all that I was bitten and had to keep spitting them out, felt them in my hair and trying for my eyes and nose, the pests could not make me unhappy. At times, a silence fell so that I thought I could hear the new buds straining to be free on all the branches, that I could hear the grass hiss and rustle out of the ground. It was during one of these moments that I caught the movement, like alfar at the edge of my eye.
I froze and turned, but Kuritsa had already seen it, no more than a shadow sliding in shadows – then I lost it. A curlew called, sharp and two-toned and I saw it, wings curved and gliding, so that just the tips of them fluttered; a mallard hen bow-waved out of nearby reeds, fluffing in anger and followed by a string of ducklings; the river swirled in fat, slow eddies.
Kuritsa placed his fingers on his lips and it was clear he did not like even that much shifting, so I stayed where I was in the willows and peered, feeling the sweat trickle and the insects nip; their whine became the loudest noise.
Somewhere behind, coming up with long, slow, easy strokes, was Short Serpent, looking to us for warning, for they were close to the east bank, the west being where the sharpest current swung downriver. And I was sure now that we were not alone here, even if only Kuritsa seemed to know that other men were about. Pallig’s men? P
erhaps the two who had escaped in the boat, or the one who had fled on foot.
I was offering prayers to Odin that it be them when I saw the man, no more than an arm’s length away through the screen of new brush.
He was bareheaded and had dark hair done in braids, with soot-stripes down his cheeks and across his forehead, to break his face up in the brush, like the dapple of a deer. That alone marked him as no friend, for only someone trying to remain hidden from sharp-eyed men would do that, but the bow, nocked and ready with a big, barbed battle arrow, was a clear sign of what he hunted.
The curlew called again, hovering over the nest the man had gone too near and he glanced up towards the sound, knowing he had given himself away to anyone who could read the sign. Then the stripes on his cheeks dropped away as his eyes widened at the sight of me.
There was no time for a bowshot. I dropped it and leaped ahead, crashing through the willows and trying to haul the seax out of the sheath across my front. The man grunted and tried to back off, give himself some room to shoot, but it was too late for that; I felt branches whip my face and try to snag my tunic.
He dropped the bow, flailed a wild slash at me with the arrow and I crashed on him, grabbing his hand as he grabbed mine; face to face we heaved and grunted and I tasted the onion breath and fear-stink coming off him in waves, saw the bursting beads of sweat roll darkly through the charcoal streaks.
He brought his knee up and almost caught me in the nads, but I had half-turned and he hit my thigh instead which dead-legged me. I knew I should call out, but that would bring his friends as well as mine and he had clearly worked out the same, for we fought in grunting, panting silence, straining like lovers.
I stumbled on the numbed leg, twisted myself and dragged him over on me; we crashed through the willow twigs and shrubs and my knee was up between his legs when he landed on me and I heard him cough out a grunt that turned into a thin, high whine when he lost my knife hand and knew his doom was on him.
I got the seax round then, got it right around and slid it into him, feeling the slight give and the skidding on ribs before it found the gap between and sank all the way. He freed my other hand then and I clamped it across his mouth. His eyes, inches from mine, went big and round with desperation, almost pleading, as if to beg me to take back the knife, the moment of it going in. I saw a tear pearl along the lower lashes of his right eye, then I rolled him off and scrambled back, panting.
He flopped on his back, eyes open, and kicked once or twice. The fingers of one hand moved, almost like a farewell wave from a child.
Kuritsa came up then and I whirled, panicked as a deer, so that he held up both hands and stopped where he was until I saw him. I spat a sour taste in my mouth, blinking the rivers of sweat that poured in my eyes, while the insects whined and pinged, joyous with the iron stink of fresh blood welling and soaking through the rough undyed wool tunic he wore.
‘Men ahead,’ Kuritsa whispered, his mouth so close to my ear that the hot breath scalded. ‘Hiding in the reeds in those wood and skin boats they have.’
He had eyes like a dog, the dead man, like a sad, whipped, gods-cursed dog. I should have rifled him, armpits to boots, for what he carried, though I was betting-certain he had less than an empty bag. Finn would have searched him, or Red Njal, or Hlenni, puddling in the blood and his last shit to find his riches, but I was not that good a raiding-man at this moment.
I stumbled away, dragging my bow and his war arrows, Kuritsa leading the way.
There were seven or eight boats, long fishing efforts made of hide stretched over a wood frame and each crammed with at least ten men. If we had not found them, they would have shot out of the reeds and been on Short Serpent in seconds and, though these folk did not look much and had no helmets or armour, they had bows and short spears and desperation enough. They might even have succeeded.
Instead, as they crouched and sweated and batted insects as silently as they could, they suddenly discovered themselves ambushed. My first shot took a man just below his rough-chopped hair, almost in his ear; his scream was as shattering as a stone in the quiet, slow-eddying river. Seconds later, he was in the river and it thrashed with bloody foam.
We shot all the big battle arrows, about ten, one after another, fast as we could and if we missed a mark, I did not see it. Then, as the men howled and scrambled and dived into the water from their boats to escape, we slid away, then ran and ran until, laughing and sobbing, we burst free of the bush and trees and saw Short Serpent, swan-serene, walking down the river to us on all its oarlegs.
Heads bobbed up from behind racked shields and stared in astonishment at Kuritsa and me, hanging on to each other, panting drool and spraying sweat and laughter at getting away unharmed.
Not long after, when we all came up to the place, we found one boat upturned and four or five bodies, turning and bobbing in the current. Another man lay on the bank, half-in, half-out. I did not want to splinter through the willows to find the one I had knifed.
‘Well,’ said Finn, ‘we have found the source of the smoke we saw.’
‘We have found that they are not friendly,’ Alyosha pointed out. ‘Even after taking the prow beast off.’
I had agreed to that, though I did not think it would matter much – Short Serpent was no little hafskip, or river strug. It was a drakkar, a raiding ship and looked as friendly as a fox in a hen coop, but the men wanted to try and appease the spirit of this land and so the prow beast came off and was stowed gently away.
‘Why would they want to attack us?’ Yan Alf asked Pall and that one’s mole-face split in a twisted grin.
‘Perhaps they think you are the sort who would string a man up and cut off his fingers,’ he answered bitterly and Trollaskegg smacked him hard on the back of his head, so that he pounded forward three steps.
‘Perhaps,’ I added, while Pall sullenly rubbed the back of his scalp and scowled, ‘someone has been telling them how bad we are. Your friends, I am thinking.’
Finn blinked as the idea took root in him, then he growled, so that Pall scurried a few steps away from him.
‘No, no – they are in as much danger here as we are,’ he whined.
‘They think you are slave-takers,’ said a soft voice and we all turned to where Dark Eye stood, wrapped like a little Greek ikon in my cloak. ‘In a ship like this, coming upriver, they will think you come to raid early.’
She had the right of it, sure enough, though raiding men with a drakkar would not usually come up this far – it was easier to buy such slaves cheap in Joms, having left it to the Wends to raid Polanians and the Polanians to raid Wends. Sometimes, I had heard, their respective chiefs even raided their own villages and took folk to sell if they were silver-short that year.
I was anxious for news, of Randr Sterki and of a monk with a band of Sorbs and a boy. Even so, there was more sense in rowing on and leaving the whole matter, as I pointed out. Other voices, hungry for cheese and meat and ale, wanted to see if this misunderstanding could not be put right. And one of my names was Trader…
Since there were scowls that made it clear this was all my fault, I did not think it clever to refuse. I dropped thirty of us, about half the crew, on the east bank, then had Trollaskegg move the ship to the opposite side, out of immediate harm.
‘If you see us running like the dragon Fafnir was breathing flame on our arses,’ Hlenni said, scowling at Trollaskegg, ‘you had better be within leaping distance of this bank before I get to it, or matters will be bad for you.’
‘If I am not, you will be dead, I am thinking,’ chuckled Trollaskegg good-naturedly, ‘and so no danger to me.’
‘Even dead,’ Hlenni yelled back as we moved off, ‘I am a danger to you. Black-faced and with my head under my arm, I am a danger to you.’
Which was not, considering matters, a good thing to let the gods hear you say, as Red Njal pointed out.
It was not hard to find them, these lurkers in reeds – there were tracks everywhere and signs,
like sheepfolds and marked tillage, that a settlement was close. Not that we needed them, as Finn said.
‘Just follow the screamers,’ he growled, trying to cuff Pall, who was dragging on the end of a rope leash like an awkward dog.
It was not surprising, I was thinking, that folk fled from us, yelling and waving their arms and leaving kine and sheep behind. One man, with scarcely a backward glance, even left a toddler, all fat limbs and wailing; Hlenni scooped him into the crook of one arm and jogged him, though the red-cheeked, yellow-haired boy only started to gurgle and grin when Hlenni took his helmet off.
‘Lucky it was Hlenni and not Finn,’ Red Njal chuckled, sticking out a dirt-stained finger for the boy to grab. ‘To win over bairns and maids takes a gentle lure, as my granny used to say. That wean would have shat himself if Finn had taken his helmet off.’
‘I think he has anyway,’ mourned Hlenni, sniffing suspiciously at the boy’s breeks.
‘Na,’ said Finn, seeing his chance. ‘I am thinking that is just how Hlenni always smells.’
There was laughter and no-one thought Orm Trader could not gold-tongue and silver-gift his way out of this matter and into the smiles of the settlement. I was not so sure; we were all byrnied, helmeted, shielded and armed, moving with a shink-shink of metal, cutting a scar across their pasture and ploughland to where they perched on a mound behind a log stockade. Besides – we had just killed a lot of them; even before we had come within hailing distance, I heard the gates boom shut.
That brought us to a ragged, uncertain halt. It was a small settlement and the stockade was dark with age, yet it looked solid and the gate had a big, square tower with a solid hat of wood to cover it. Men appeared, just their heads and shoulders showing above the rampart edge. So did the points of spears.
‘You are the jarl and so should speak to them,’ Crowbone said and winced a little at the withering look I gave him.
‘Just so,’ I said. ‘Hold a little. I will learn their tongue while we make a fire. Perhaps Finn can make us a stew while we wait?’
