Oathsworn 03 - The Prow Beast

by Robert Low

  Finn, squeezing the water from his beard so that it squirted through his knuckles, had squinted from under the drooped, sodden brim of his weather-hat and smiled, a quizzical, knowing smile I tried to ignore, all the while feeling it nag me as badly as the ache in my ankle.

  She had clasped me tight when we lumbered, sodden and uneasy, spilling hurriedly onto Short Serpent and sliding off into the dark, rain-hissing river. In the storm’s searing white light, her face was raised to mine, eyes bright, streaming with rain so that she looked as if she wept. I almost kissed her then, but the corner of my eye caught Finn’s scowl in that eyeblink of light and I patted her like a wet dog instead.

  In the dark, we had hauled a little way upriver, all that could be managed, before settling on the east bank to wait for daylight and the storm to growl out. By then the river was mud-coloured, frothing like a mad dog in the sullen light of morning and it stayed that way for the next few days, with no sign of stopping, so there was nothing to be done but pull.

  ‘Bank is not made for towing,’ Onund growled at me, coming up with an oar to fend off something that rolled and turned, shapeless in the water.

  ‘Nor the current for rowing, nor the wind for sails,’ I answered, more sharp than I had intended, for the truth of it nagged me like a broken tooth.

  ‘Trees down to the water,’ Onund added, which was true. Once they had been the edge of a considerable wood, set back from the river, but it had spilled over and swamped them; hipdeep in it, the men looped rope over one shoulder, padded a tunic, or a cloak or a spare serk under it and hauled, stumbling and sliding. To their left, Alyosha and a handful of men, weighed with shields, weapons and ring-coats, splashed to keep up, as a flank guard.

  ‘The mast might go,’ added Trollaskegg, watching the bowing curve of it.

  ‘Or the line,’ added Yan Alf, almost cheerfully.

  I wondered if anyone had something good to say and asked it aloud. No-one answered – then Kuritsa appeared, sloshing calf-deep through the water and calling out, so that men stopped pulling and braced instead, holding Short Serpent against the current.

  He came up to where the water deepened to the river proper, stopping when it got to his waist. He had his unstrung bow in his hand and a young doe draped round his shoulders like a fur cloak, the hooves cinched on his chest; men yelled at him and grinned, for this meant good hot eating at the end of a wet misery of hauling.

  It took some time, but we got Short Serpent closer to him, while he came out until the current threatened to sweep him off his feet. Crowbone threw him a line, he tied the deer to it and it was hauled aboard; another line drew him in like a fish, until he stood on the deck, streaming water and grinning. The rain had stopped.

  ‘Good hunt,’ I told him and he nodded, blowing snot from his nose. He pulled off his leather cap and checked that the bowstring was dry, then coiled it up again and stuck the hat back on.

  ‘Up ahead is trouble,’ he said. ‘A barrier of drift.’

  Trollaskegg grunted; that was a bad thing to have happen now, but you could have foreseen it without throwing rune-bones, on a river like this and weather like we had.

  It was a fallen tree, undercut and ruined, a fine big oak – a keel tree, as Onund pointed out. If we had been wanting one that would be cause for grinning, as I told him; those nearest laughed, though it was a sound as grim as tumbling skulls.

  Drift had piled against it, sodden birch and gnarled pine from far upriver, willow branches swollen with new buds, all forming a great dam the length of twenty men out from the east bank and solid enough that men could walk on it.

  Around the end swept the water, rippling like muscle, then breaking into dirty-white foam and growling up spits of spray. The air stank with the cloy of death, for there were bloated bodies here, sheep and cattle that had drowned, bobbing and sinking and rising again as they spun in a stately dance down to the sea.

  Onund and Trollaskegg and others walked, cat-careful, out onto the barrier and peered and prodded here and there, while the men stood like patient oxen, hock-deep in the water and braced to stop Short Serpent spiralling backwards with the flowing current.

  A tree came down, with an animal on it and men yelled and shouted cheerfully; it was a water-slicked wildcat, yowling and snarling, running this way and that as the tree caught the water’s flow and half-turned beneath it.

  ‘Shoot it,’ Crowbone yelled to Kuritsa, who merely shook his head.

  ‘Not me,’ he declared. ‘I almost died from shooting one once and I will not do it again.’

  ‘How could you die from shooting a cat?’ demanded Yan Alf, watching the tree in case it came too close. Kuritsa, his face serious, said it was the speed of the beast that had been his undoing and Crowbone made the mistake of asking how that was so.

  ‘I came upon one while hunting deer,’ Kuritsa said. ‘Suddenly, without warning. I do not know who was the more surprised – but I had an arrow nocked and shot it, straight down the open mouth.’

  He paused and shook his head.

  ‘This was my undoing, for that cat, like all of its breed, was faster than Perun’s thrown axe. It spun round to run away and my own arrow shot out of its arse. I felt the wind of it on my cheek; an eyelash closer and I would be dead.’

  People laughed aloud and watched the tree and the yowling misery of its passenger spin away downriver.

  Then Onund hauled himself aboard, dripping like a walrus, with Trollaskegg not far behind. Their faces were gloomier than Hel’s bedspace.

  ‘It will not be chopped up this side of summer,’ Onund declared.

  ‘Nor will it be hauled apart,’ added Trollaskegg.

  There was a pause and I waited, trying to be patient. Onund grunted and shrugged, the hump of his shoulder rising like a mountain.

  ‘We will have to pull round it,’ he said and all our hearts sank at that. It meant tethering Short Serpent and bringing everyone on board to take an oar – then loosing the lines and bending to rowing to the west bank. We would lose way, of course, probably back to where we had started pulling that day, before we could tether on the opposite bank. Then we would have to pull all the way back again, this time with the threat of Saxlander horsemen.

  It would be a long, hard pull, too, for we would have to put some distance between us and the barrier; no-one wanted to spend a night on the west side of the river, so we would have to repeat the process to take the ship to the east bank again, on the far side of the barrier – with enough room to allow for losing way that would not carry us smack into that gods-cursed drift of trees and sodden corpses in the fading light.

  The black, wet misery of it settled on us as we grunted and cursed and slithered the ship to where it could be tethered. The panting, exhausted crew slackened off, the linden-bast rope was hauled in and loosed from the masthead and folk spilled wetly over the side, sloshing towards rowing ports, sorting out their sea-chest seats.

  I nodded to Finn and he went round with two green-glass flasks and men grinned wearily and brightened as the fiery green-wine spirit was passed down the line. Dark Eye and a couple of others offered soggy bread and hard cheese, pungent with its own sweat; men chewed and grunted and, slowly, began to chaffer and argue, so that I knew they were recovered.

  Then Yan Alf called out that there was a boat snagged in the barrier.

  This time, I went with Finn and Onund and others, stepping cautiously out onto the slick, wet tree, treacherous with stubs and broken ends, draped with crushed willow. The boat was half-swamped, cracked like an egg and ragged with splintered wood, but clearly a strug, the solid riverboats Slavs made. It would not have been important at all – there were lots of them and it was hardly a surprise to find one as part of the wreck of this swollen river – save for the crew it still held.

  He was snagged by his own belt, hair drifting like weed, pale face fat with water and curdled as old cheese. For all that, it was a face I knew and I remembered him, stumbling back from where he had dug up my silver, showi
ng handfuls of it to the rest of his oarmates, that bloated face bright with the wonder of it. Hallgeir, I remembered suddenly. His name was Hallgeir.

  Finn nodded and growled when I told him this, peering up the river; he pinched one side of his nose and blew snot down into the wreck.

  ‘So, Randr Sterki has met with some trouble,’ he growled. ‘Which can only be a good weaving for us, thank the Norns.’

  I did not answer; I was too busy searching the water for signs of a small corpse, my belly sick with the thought of Koll, turning in a slow, stately dance like the sheep dead in the mucky water.

  The oak finally behind us, days melted, one into the other and went unnoticed. No-one saw much else other than the red-brown water and the sucking mud as they stumbled, heads down and rope over one shoulder, through the shallowest parts they could find. The boat, that great shackle they were fastened to, fretted this way and that, the prow beast snarling and jerking.

  The land changed, started to roll into short hills rising out of the flood, some of them flat-topped, others already undercut by the merciless waters. Half-drowned trees shouted out all their green buds even as they died; others huddled like herded cattle on the hills above the water.

  The rain sighed itself out and the sun broke through, so that the ground steamed up a crawling mist and the insects came, bloated and fat on carrion, yet still wanting more from the living.

  Gudmund died, raving and bursting sweat off him, despite Bjaelfi’s best prayer-runes binding the black-rotted holes where the hayfork had gone in, so we rolled him into the water and consigned him to Ran and Aegir, which was as much as we could do in that place.

  Freed from that, Bjaelfi now went to treat the ones shivering and sweating and leaking their insides down their legs from some sickness or other – probably in the water, Bjaelfi thought, or perhaps poison from the insects.

  ‘Not good, Orm,’ he told me, as if I needed him to inform me of that. He slapped angrily and cursed the stinging insects.

  ‘Perhaps it will rain again,’ Crowbone offered cheerfully, ‘and drive the insects away.’

  ‘Not as if you suffer,’ Yan Alf countered gloomily. ‘I want that charm you have.’

  Those on board – bailing, poling, or too weak and sick to pull – laughed, but uneasily, for the way the biting hordes avoided Crowbone was too close to magic for comfort and most remembered the reputation of the odd-eyed boy.

  ‘They do not bite him,’ Finn declared, bellowing from where he leaned on the sweep, fighting to keep the prow beast snarling into the current, ‘because he has no man-juice in him.’

  ‘They do not bite you, either,’ observed Dark Eye suddenly, her clear voice made stranger by the silence that had gone before from her. Finn squinted calculatingly, then grinned.

  ‘They do, but if you look closely, you will see them falling dead at my feet,’ he growled, ‘since there is too much man-juice in me for those little bodies to handle. One taste is all it takes.’ And he winked lewdly at her, so that I found myself bristling like an old hound and had to turn away with the shock of it, hoping no-one could see.

  The next day, hungry and wet and tired as always, men looked sideways at Crowbone and at me, him for bringing the rain back, or so it seemed and me for…everything else. They were muttering more openly now, about forging on after this boy when there was little else in it for anyone. Yet they were fairly trapped, for they could not go downriver now, into the clutches of the waiting Kasperick. Ahead was not any more attractive.

  Ahead, growling and spitting white lances and ferns, another storm fretted; the river, fresh fed, surged again the next day and the men started to stumble and fall and it was all I could do to keep them moving. We were close to the Vrankeforde now and I knew Randr Sterki would be there, what men he had as worn out as ourselves; if we were fast enough, he would not have time to find others, for when he thought he had enough, we would not have to chase him – he would come for us.

  Then, so close I could almost taste the woodsmoke fires of Vrankeforde, there was a day that began under a vaulted sky of milk-silver, where the air clung to the skin and the men hauling and falling up the river, mouths open and panting, had almost lost the strength to put one soaked foot in front of another.

  I saw Gunnliefr, best spearman we had, sink to his knees and weep, all his strength gone. I watched Osnikin, from Sodermannland, fall with a great splash and have to be hauled up by Murrough, or else he would have lain there and drowned.

  ‘Orm,’ Trollaskegg began and I did not need him to tell me what was best, so that my look was harsher than a slap and made him click his teeth on his next words.

  ‘Pull, fuck your mothers,’ roared Finn, seeing my face. ‘Haul away, you dirty swords.’

  She moved beside me and I felt a hand on my forearm, but when I turned, she was that little wooden carving, staring out over the river, saying nothing, looking at the distant rolling black of cloud, dragging all our eyes to it. As if, some said later, she had magicked it up.

  The air tightened, twisting like the iron rods of a smith starting on a new sword. The wind rose, knotting with force, hissed stipples on the river and the dark swooped like a cloak of crows.

  The storm broke on us, a great laughter of Thor howling out of the sudden new dark, his Hammer sparking blue-white with a banging that seemed to split the air and fist our ears. The men leaned and the linden bast threw up skeins of water and trembled, while the mast bowed and sang like a harp string.

  ‘It will break,’ shrieked Trollaskegg, but the wind grabbed his words and whirled them away down the river, which was a mercy for Yan Alf, since he was clinging to the top of that whipping pole, searching the river ahead while the rain drowned his eyes.

  It was the end and it came swift as a secret knife. Through the sheeting veils of rain, I watched a tree blaze and heard the sky crack, looked up and half-expected to see the wheelrim of Redbeard’s goat chariot breaking through the dome of the world.

  Instead, there was Yan Alf, clinging to the rakki as the mast swung and sawed, his face a pale blob in the dark, shouting something the wind snatched away. He pointed out beyond the prow beast where, looming up like some snake-head goddess, the great tree crashed down on us, a huge ram with horns of clotted roots.

  The prow beast rose up, dragging the men on the bank backwards, tearing the rope and the skin from their hands. I had time to turn, to think that all our struggle, all the days of effort to this place, hung on a thin, stretching line and the skidding crew who held it – when the linden bast spurted water, snapped and whipped back. Ospak yelped with the lash of it, spun half-round and went over the side.

  The drakkar, locked in what seemed a raging battle, spun round; timber shrieked, planks splintered and men were mouthing bellows no-one could hear. The ship seemed to rear up like a stallion in a horse fight, right up until the stern went under and it tilted. I saw oars and chests slide away – saw Dark Eye slide away and milled my arms to try and grab her.

  Water slapped me, snagged me, dragged me down and round and round, so that the silver trail of bubbles from my mouth circled me like a flock of birds.

  I saw them, like pearls, like the last thought trailing from my mind – Odin would have to fight Aegir for his sacrifice offering.

  Then there was only darkness.

  The moon was a bright eye and an owl shrieked, a thrown chip of a cry. From the rolling charcoal of hills came the scream of some animal, high and thin and trembling with loneliness and then there was Vuokko, sitting beside me on a flat, black rock, cradling his drum.

  ‘I can only do this because it is Valpurgis,’ he said, ‘when the veil between the worlds is thinnest.’

  May Eve, when the Wild Hunt staggered to a halt. Einmanuthur, the lonely month. I felt the crush of it, wanted to be home…

  ‘There is a loss coming,’ Vuokko said. ‘Keener than winter. Odin will take his sacrifice soon.’

  I wanted to be home more than ever, wanted to tell the Sea-Finn, who I kne
w was soaring in the Other watching me die, to take messages with him, of love and friendship and last words. But when I started to speak, he hit his drum and kept on hitting it, a thundering sound that jarred me, pounding on and on and on…

  The blood thundered in my ears and my chest ached with each huge, retching breath; my throat burned and my nose throbbed. There was the iron taste of blood in the back of my throat. Ospak peered at me long enough to make sure I had come to my senses, then stopped pounding my chest and rose up, his knees cracking.

  ‘It is a bad habit to get into,’ he declared, ‘this having to be hauled out of water just before you drown.’

  Dark Eye, cat-wet and scowling, glared at him and then turned a soulful look on me.

  ‘I shall try and break it,’ I managed to hoarse back at him and he chuckled at that and the slap from Dark Eye as he reached out a grimy hand towards my nose.

  ‘That neb of yours is cursed, I am thinking,’ he said and then tilted his head slightly. ‘It is only straight on your face if I stand like this. And it looks flatter than it did.’

  If the pain was anything to go by, I did not doubt it, but I was more concerned with what had happened. I had thought him dead, for sure, a thought I shared with him while Dark Eye fussed.

  ‘I thought the same when I went over,’ he told me grimly and showed me the blue-black welt on his upper arm. ‘That rope seemed set with a life of its own and it took me a while to get clear of it.’

  ‘Double thanks, then,’ I rasped, ‘for hauling me out.’

  He chuckled. ‘Not me. The Mazur girl did that.’

  I looked at her and she smiled.

  ‘I was supposed to save you,’ I said to her and she fixed me with her seal eyes; it came to me then that we were alone, the three of us, soaked to the skin on a patch of wet barely raised above a black swamp where the mud and water oozed and new, sodden reeds stood straight up like hairs on a boar snout.