Oathsworn 03 - The Prow Beast

by Robert Low

  ‘Randr Sterki will not thank us, all the same,’ muttered Red Njal; I had been thinking the same myself and thought to leap that stream when we were near falling in it.

  There – two figures, one half-falling, slower than the rest, stumbling. The taller one, black, stopped, hauled the little one up into his arms and half-staggered, half-ran to keep up; I could hear the rasp of his breathing from here, but I was puzzled as to why the monk should care so much to rescue Koll.

  A man fell, got up and stumbled on, then fell again. Sick, I was thinking as the monk reeled past him, then let Koll slip to the ground, taking him by one hand. The pair of them ran on and the horsemen were closing fast, spraying water and clotted muck up.

  ‘An ounce of burnt silver says that small one is first to die,’ Eid muttered close to me, nudging his oarmate, one of Finnlaith’s Dyfflin men.

  ‘You never had an ounce of burnt silver,’ this one replied and Thorbrand’s curse was reeking.

  ‘That small one is the boy we came all this way to get,’ he spat at them.

  Out on the sodden plain, the first of Randr’s men had reached the foot of the low hill and we could hear the desperate, ragged dog-panting of them. Randr himself stopped and half-turned, bellowing at those who lumbered past, almost on all fours, what he wanted them to do when they got the shelter of the trees. It was a good plan, but I was thinking to myself that none of his men were up for it.

  The weak man fell yet again and the first long-shot arrows skittered and spat up water behind him, so that he scrambled up and weaved on, almost at a walk now. A dozen steps further on and he fell again and this time he lay there, so that the horsemen, almost casually, shot him full of arrows, whooping as they ran over him.

  ‘The boy…’ growled Eid and sprang to his feet. Thorbrand followed and, with a curse, so did the Dyfflin man. They roared out of the treeline, leaving me speechless and stunned with the speed of it all.

  The horsemen, felt hats flapping, their bow-nosed ponies at full stretch, were heading for the bulk of the fleeing men; more arrows flew and two or three men went down. Randr himself stopped bellowing and started scrambling up the low hill towards us.

  Two or three horsemen had turned off towards Koll and Leo the monk, but they had their sabres out, planning to run them down and slash them to ruin. The monk shoved Koll to the ground and then dived and rolled as the first horseman came on him, lashing out with his left hand as he did so; my heart thundered up into my throat, but the horseman missed and Leo’s slap had no effect, or so it seemed, while the others over-ran the pair.

  Then Eid and the other two came howling down the hill like mad wolves and the horsemen, bewildered, milled and circled. Two of them whipped out arrows; the third turned back to Koll and Leo. After that, I remember it in fragments, like a shattered mirror flying everywhere, all the pieces with a different reflection.

  Two arrows felled Eid as he ran. Thorbrand and the Dyfflin man crashed down on the two horsemen, stabbing and hacking. The third man’s horse staggered and fell as if Daneaxed, just as the rider urged it towards Koll and Leo; poison, I was thinking, even as I turned to fight. Enough in Leo’s stab to fell a horse in a few heartbeats – so he did have a hidden dagger after all.

  The rest of the horsemen came up the slope, slinging their horn and wood bows and hauling out that wicked curve of sabre, a long smile of steel for hacking down on the fleeing. They were Vislanians, I learned later, who wore skin breeks and felt coats and caps and could climb under their ugly dog-ponies and up the other side at full gallop.

  Not in the trees, though. They reined in from a gallop; Randr Sterki’s men were on their knees, frothing and gasping, with no fight in them and it looked to be easy enough for the riders – until they discovered the hornet byke they had stepped in.

  Kuritsa began it by putting the last of his war arrows in the chest of one of the horses, so that it reared up and rolled its great eyes until the whites showed, pitching the rider off with a scream.

  Then it was blood and shrieks and mayhem. Red Njal ran at them, hirpling on his lame leg, bellowing like a bull and his spear took one of the horsemen in the belly, so that his head snapped forward and he went over the plunging horse’s arse. Red Njal let the spear go and whipped out his seax.

  Axes scythed, spears stabbed, swords whirled. It was bloody and vicious and my part in it was brutal and short – I came up on the man doing the most shouting, sitting on his dancing, wild-eyed pony, waving a crescent-moon of steel and bellowing.

  He saw me come at him and raised the sabre, his eyes wide and red, his black moustaches seeming to writhe as he yelled; then something seemed to catch his arm as he raised it and I saw the shaft, through his forearm and into the shoulder, pinning his arm – a hunting arrow from Kuritsa.

  The sabre fell from his fingers and he looked astonished, though he had only a few seconds to think at all, before I took Brand’s sword in a whirling, two-handed backstroke at his waist. Finn and others called this ‘opening the day-meal’ and it was a death-blow even if the victim did not die at once, for his belly split and everything in it fell out, blue-white, red, pale yellow.

  He fell like a gralloched stag – and the rest of them tried to flee.

  Cut them down, I heard myself screaming, though it sounded far away. None must escape to tell of what had been found and where we were.

  The Oathsworn wolfed them, snarling and clawing. The last man turned his pony and flogged it back downhill, men chasing him, screaming. Kaelbjorn Rog, panting and sprinting, fell over his feet, bounced up and hurled his axe at the fleeing back in a fury of impotent rage, but it fell well short.

  The arrow hissed out, a blur of speed and the smack of it hitting the rider’s back was almost drowned in the great roar of approval that went up as the fleeing man spilled from the saddle. The pony kept going and I knew, with a cold, heavy sink of feeling, that we had failed.

  There was a heavy silence, reeking of blood and vomit and moans. Men moved, counting the cost, clapping each other on the shoulder in the sudden ecstasy that comes with surviving a battle, or else retching, hands on their knees and bent over.

  Randr Sterki lay flat out, a great bruise on the side of his face and Onund looming over him like a scowling troll. He had made for Randr as soon as the fight started and slammed him in the face with the boss of his shield. Now Randr lay on his back, propped up on his elbows and spitting out teeth and blood.

  ‘I owe you that and more,’ Onund growled at him, touching his chest where, under his stained tunic, the glassy scars of Randr’s old burning still wept.

  ‘The severed hand seldom steals again,’ Red Njal pointed out, scowling. ‘And a head in a tree plots only with the wind.’

  ‘Your granny was never one for a boy to snuggle into,’ Crowbone muttered, hunching himself against the black glare Red Njal gave him in passing.

  The rest of Randr’s men, cowed and gasping, sat sullenly, aware that they had leaped out of the skillet into the pitfire. As I came up, Onund handed me a sheathed sword, taken from Randr; it was mine, taken when he had me prisoner and the V-notch in it undammed a sudden, painful torrent of remembering – of my sword biting into the mast of the Fjord Elk, of being slammed into the water, of Nes Bjorn’s charred remains, of the loss of Gizur and Hauk and all the rest.

  Randr must have seen that gallop across my face like chasing horses, for he stayed silent.

  There was a survivor from the horsemen, a sallow-faced scowler with blood on his teeth and still snarling, for all that he had the stump of a hunting arrow in his thigh and his left arm at the ugly angle only a twisted break would allow.

  I wanted answers, but his black eyes were sodden with anger and pain and defiance. Then Dark Eye came up and spoke to him, a string of coughing sibilants. He replied, showing bloody teeth in a snarl. She answered. They shot sounds like arrows, then were silent.

  ‘He is a Vislan,’ she said. ‘That tribe are all Christ worshippers.’

  ‘All that fo
r so little?’ I answered and she sighed.

  ‘He called me names. He calls you all flax-heads, which is what they call the Saxlanders. Barbarians.’

  There was more, I knew, but caught the warning spark from her and let Finn erupt instead.

  ‘Barbarian?’ he bellowed. ‘I am to be called this by a skin-wearing troll?’

  ‘Quisque est barbarum alio,’ said a weary voice and, turning, we saw Leo the monk, with Koll behind him and Thorbrand trailing after.

  ‘Everyone,’ Leo translated, with a wan smile at Finn, ‘is a barbarian to someone.’

  I gave him no more than a glance, my attention on Koll, who came up and stood in front of me.

  ‘You have fared a fair way from home,’ I said, awkward and cursing myself for not having more tongue-wit than that.

  ‘I knew you would come,’ he answered, staring up into my face with the sure, clear certainty of innocence. He was thin and his bone-white colour made it hard to see if he was ill or not, but he seemed hale enough. Yet the pale blue eyes had seen things and it showed in them.

  ‘Well,’ drawled Finn, circling the monk like a dunghill cock does hens. ‘You have led us a long dance, monk.’

  Leo acknowledged it with a wry smile. His hair was long and stuck out at odd angles and he had gathered the tattered ends of his black robe up under his belt, so that it looked like he wore baggy black breeks to the knee; beneath them, his legs were red and white, mud-splattered and bloody from old cuts and grazes. He reeked of grease and woodsmoke and did not look much, but I knew he had a needle of poisoned steel on him and said so.

  He widened his eyes to look innocent and Finn growled at him.

  ‘Find a rope,’ Red Njal spat. ‘Make him dance a new dance. The breathless tongue never conspires.’

  ‘No.’

  It came from two throats – Koll’s and Finn’s – and took everyone by surprise, even the pair who had hoiked it out.

  ‘Kill him another way,’ Finn growled, scrubbing his beard as he did when he was discomfited.

  ‘Do not kill him at all,’ Koll declared defiantly. ‘He helped me, saved me when the rest of these pigs wanted to sell me to the Magyars. Him and Randr Sterki stood against them.’

  I knew why Randr would want to keep the boy, but not the monk and I said so to Leo, who shrugged.

  ‘I took him as a counter in a game,’ he said diffidently. ‘He still had value.’

  Koll blinked a bit at that, but I had expected not much more. I put my hand on the boy’s shoulder, to show him he was safe once more – then Randr Sterki struggled weakly to his feet and growled to me across the trampled, bloody underbrush of the clearing.

  ‘Well? Will you finish it, Bear Slayer? What you started on Svartey?’

  I wondered how many of the Svartey crew were left and wondered it aloud; the answer was straight enough – only him alone. All the others had died and the men of his crew who sat, shivering and sullen, had no connection with that old strandhogg.

  ‘Kill him and be done with it,’ Styrbjorn said and Randr Sterki curled a lip at him.

  ‘So much for fighting shoulder to shoulder,’ he answered bitterly. ‘Well done is ill paid, as the saying goes. Here is the dog who fought, the chief who led and the ring-giver who paid – only the fighting dog dies, it seems.’

  I looked from Styrbjorn to Leo and back to Randr. He had the right of it, for sure – all of those who had helped the Norns weave the wyrd of what happened were here, including the Oathsworn, who had scoured Svartey in one bloody thread of it.

  ‘Matters would have gone better for me,’ Randr Sterki went on morosely, ‘but for this bloody habit of slaughter you Oathsworn have. The death of that village you visited has called out an army of Pols, all bent on skewering Northmen – my bad war luck to run into them before you.’

  ‘Truly,’ agreed Onund coldly, ‘when you annoy the gods, you are fucked.’

  Finn added his own bloody growl to that by cutting the throat out of the Vislan and, while he choked and kicked, Abjorn and Alyosha counted the cost of the fight and the heads left.

  There were fourteen of Randr’s men left, including himself. We had two dead and four men wounded; the two dead were Eid and the Dyfflin man, whose name, I learned from Thorbrand, was Ranald. Finn could not understand what had made them charge out as they did and asking Thorbrand only brought a weary heave of his shoulders and the answer that he had followed the other two. I thought I knew, for I had felt it myself – little Koll, the prize for all that had been suffered, was in danger of being snapped up by someone else.

  It had cost us, all the same and we would need Randr and his men, I was thinking and I said that to them and him. Red Njal cursed and one or two others made disapproving grunts, but I laid it out for them; we were alone and together made no more than sixty. Somewhere, hordes of Pols hunted us.

  ‘Turn Randr Sterki and his men loose, then,’ Kaelbjorn Rog offered truculently. ‘Let the Pols hunt them down while we get away.’

  ‘Tcha!’ spat Red Njal. ‘At least make it easy for the Pols – the foot removed cannot scurry far.’

  ‘I am now sure I dislike this granny of yours,’ Crowbone said, shaking his head, then stared his odd-eyes into the pig-squint glare Red Njal tried to burn him with.

  ‘If the wind changes, your face will stay like that,’ he added grimly. ‘My ma told me that one and she was a princess.’

  ‘It is too late for running,’ I said, before matters boiled. ‘The Pols will know where we all are in a few hours.’

  ‘Why so?’ demanded Crowbone, moody because he had been effectively kept out of the fight by his iron wet-nurse, Alyosha. ‘We have killed all these dog-riders.’

  ‘But not their horses,’ Alyosha told him, seeing it now. ‘They will track back and find us.’

  It was then that folk realised some of the bow-nosed ponies had galloped off and those who knew their livestock knew what horses did when riderless. They went home. I knew it, as well as I knew we could not stay here to fight, nor run somewhere else out on the wet plain.

  There was only one place we could go which would give us a chance of fighting at all and it was not one I wanted to visit. When I laid it out, the words fell into a silence as still as the inside of an old howe, which was answer enough.

  Save for Leo, who always had something to say, even about stepping into a plague-ridden fortress.

  ‘A fronte praeciptium, a tergo lupi,’ he declared and turned to Finn, who stunned the monk even as he opened his mouth to translate it.

  ‘A cliff in front, wolves behind,’ Finn translated. ‘I have heard that one before, priest. It is the place the Oathsworn fight best.’

  EIGHTEEN

  His breathing, as Bjaelfi took pains to tell us, was just a habit, for the fever had fired him so that his blood had boiled up into his thought-cage and destroyed his thinking entire. What was left sucked in air the way a deer kicks long after you have gralloched it.

  It was a habit strong in him, for he took three days to be quit of it and, at the last, was open-mouthed and desperate as a fish. Ulf, his name was, called Amr by his oarmates, which meant Tub on account of his considerable belly. Well, it had been considerable, but in three days of vomit and leaching sweat he had melted like grease on a skillet, become a wraith, his face pocked red and white and pus yellow and his eyes gone white as boiled eggs.

  Bjaelfi tied his mouth back up with a scrap of cloth and we sat back and stared; Ulf, the emptied Tub, first to die of the Red Plague and lying there with drooping hare-ears of cloth on top of his head, making him look as if he was being silly to amuse bairns.

  ‘They are coming again,’ roared a voice from outside the dim hut.

  I heaved myself wearily up, took up the blood-gummed shaft of the bearded axe and looked at Bjaelfi.

  ‘Burn him,’ I said and he nodded. Then I lumbered out to war.

  We first saw our enemy when they filtered out onto the soaked plain in front of the grod not long after we had pan
ted our way into it and barred the gate; we made it easier for them to find us, for we burned the main hall, after tying bound cloths round our faces – for all the good it would do – and dragging all the scattered, half-chewed bodies there, where most of them already festered.

  Their horsemen trotted up, spraying water up from the steaming ground, to be greeted by great black feathers of reeking smoke; close behind came foot soldiers in unbleached linen and only helmets and spears and round shields. Behind them came a knot of iron-clad horse soldiers, sporting lances with proud pennons and one huge banner with what appeared to be a wheel on it. Dark Eye said that was the mark of the Pol rulers, who had been wheelwrights until the favour of their god raised them up.

  ‘They will think we slaughtered all the folk of this place and burned some of it,’ Styrbjorn said bitterly. ‘Someone should tell them there is pest here and that we are doomed. That will send them running as far from this place as they can get.’

  ‘It would send you scampering,’ Alyosha replied, watching the enemy closely as they assembled – counting heads, as I was. ‘What they will do is keep a safe distance and shoot anyone who leaves with arrows. When we are all dead, they will burn it. The last thing these folk want is us running all over their land, spreading Red Plague.’

  ‘Better they do not know we have disease here,’ I said, loud enough for others to hear and spread the sense of it. ‘It will mean the reddest of red war and no-one will be able to throw down their weapons and be spared.’

  Finn and I exchanged looks; we knew no-one would be spared anyway, once the talking had stopped.

  ‘I make it four hundreds, give or take a spear or two,’ Alyosha said, coming quietly to me. I had much the same; the rest of the men, grim and silent on the ramparts, knew only that the plain in front of the grod was thick with men who wanted to kill us.

  ‘Get them working,’ I said to Alyosha, ‘for busy hands mean less chance to think on matters. Send Abjorn to the river wall – there is a small gate in it, used by the fishermen, I am thinking. It may also be the only way to bring water in from the river unless you can find a well. We have small beer but not enough, so we will have to drink water in the end. Finn – since you can tally a little without having to take your boots off, find out what we have in stores. Slaughter the livestock if we cannot feed them, but leave the cows until last, for they at least provide milk.’