Oathsworn 03 - The Prow Beast

by Robert Low

  ‘It is, then, a matter of bargaining,’ he said and smiled. ‘You are, after all, a trader as well as a slayer of white bears and a finder of treasure.’

  ‘You are short of items to trade,’ I answered.

  ‘I have the boy,’ he replied and I cocked my head and told him it was the other way round.

  ‘You seem to wish to die here,’ he said, as lightly as if passing judgement on the cut of my cloak, or the state of my shoes. ‘What will happen to your men? To the boy?’

  I had not thought beyond them drifting to safety and saw the mistake. Leo wiped the man’s fat neck with one hand, the other resting comfortably at his side. The sick man’s belly trembled as he breathed, low and rasping.

  ‘The quickest way to safety is through the Bulgar lands,’ Leo said. ‘I am more of the Emperor’s envoy there. In the Great City, I can provide help and aid for those who survive.’

  He turned his face, less moon and more gaunt these days; life had melted some of the sleek off him.

  ‘I can ensure the boy is returned to his father from the Great City.’

  ‘For a price,’ I spat back bitterly. Leo waved his free hand, then settled it, like a small moth, lightly back on his leg.

  ‘What do you care – you are dead?’ he replied, crow-harsh in the dim; I heard Bjaelfi grunt at that.

  ‘I will return the boy, unharmed to this father,’ he went on. ‘I will make sure Jarl Brand knows that this is because of what you have done, so that you fulfil whatever vow you made. I know how you people value such vows. If there are other agreements made – what of it? The boy is still safe and your fame is safer still.’

  This last was sneered out, as if it held no value at all – which, him being steeped in the Great City’s way of doing things, was accurate enough. Yet there was merit in this and he saw me pause, knew he had gaffed me with it.

  ‘What is the price?’ I demanded and he waved his free hand again.

  ‘Little enough – freedom of movement. When the time comes, let your men know you trust me to guide them, so they will take pains to help both me and the boy.’

  I pondered it.

  ‘Of course,’ he went on smoothly, ‘it also means you cannot carry out your plan to kill me when the enemy breaks down the gate.’

  He turned his bland smile on me. ‘That was your plan, was it not?’

  It was not, exactly. I had planned to leave him tethered for the Pols to find and stake him for the red murder of Jasna and the threat to Queen Sigrith. I had the satisfaction of seeing him blink; I could feel his hole pucker from where I stood and laughed.

  ‘How was that killing done?’ I asked. He recovered and shifted wearily, then paused in his endless wiping of the man’s head and neck.

  ‘One day,’ he replied slowly, ‘you may profit from the knowing.’

  Then he smiled his bland smile. ‘Of course,’ he went on smoothly, putting aside the cloth and lifting the man’s limp, slicked arm up high, ‘all this is moot. This one is called Tub, I believe. He is leaking a little and he is the first, I think. It may be that no-one goes home without God’s mercy.’

  I stared at the accusing Red Plague pus-spots crawling down the arms and up the neck of Tub and heard Bjaelfi curse as I left.

  In the morning, all our enemies were at the gates.

  There was no skilled planning; Czcibor used his foot soldiers like a club and they came piling across the narrow causeway, fanning out under the looming cliff of earthwork and timber ramparts, throwing up makeshift ladders.

  We had one good bow – Kuritsa’s – and a few more hunting ones we had found, but the horsemen had been dismounted and launched great skeins of shafts to keep our heads down, so we could do little but lob heavy stones from cover.

  When the Pol foot soldiers, in their stained oatmeal tunics, finally got to the lip of the timbers, their archers had to stop firing; then we rose up and the slaughter started.

  That first morning, I plunged into the maw of it, sick and screaming with fear, sure that this was where Odin swept me up and trying to make it quick.

  I kicked the head of the first man who appeared, open-mouthed and gasping, so that he shrieked and went backwards. I cut down at the ladder, hooked the splintering top rung with the beard of my axe and then ran, elbowing my own men out of the way and hauling the ladder sideways; men spilled off it, flailing as they fell.

  Some others had made the top rampart anyway and I plunged towards them, took a slice on the shaft of the axe, where metal strips had been fitted to reinforce the wood. In the same move, I cut up and under, splintering his ribs, popping his lungs out so that he gasped and reeled away.

  Another came at me, waving a spear two-handed, so I reversed the axe and batted him off with the shaft, my left hand close up under the head – then gripped the spear with my free hand, pushed it to one side and sliced the axe across his throat like a knife.

  The blood sprang out, black and reeking of hot iron, and he fell, half-dragging me as he did so, so that I staggered. Something spanged off my helmet; a great white light burst in my head and I felt the rough wood of the walkway splinter into my knees.

  Then there was cursing and grunts and a hand hauled me away; when I could see, Red Njal was standing over me, his own axe up and dripping.

  ‘You will get yourself killed with such tricks,’ he chided, then hurled himself forward, now that I was climbing to my feet.

  Between us we pitched the struggling men back over the ramparts; no sooner had the heels of the last one vanished than two arrows whunked into the wood and we dived behind the timbers, panting and sweating, to listen to the drumming of others, flocking in like crows on offal. Crazily, I was reminded of rain on the canvas awning on the deck of the Fjord Elk, though I could not remember which Fjord Elk that had been.

  ‘Five days,’ Red Njal said and spat, though there was little wet in his mouth, I saw. I was thinking the same thing – these would be five long days.

  The rest of it is a dull, splintered memory, like a tapestry shredded by a madman. I am certain sure that it was on the day we tied up Tub’s mouth that we suffered a moon-howling loss that drove us a little mad.

  It was the same as any other attack, though the ramparts by now were scarred, the timber points black and soaked with old gore, the walkway both sticky and slick. They came piling up over their own dead, threw up the ladders and did what they had been doing for what seemed years.

  And we stood, we three, last of the band of old brothers, struggling and slipping and sweating and cursing, while Uddolf and Kaelbjorn Rog and others fought their own battles a little way away, for we were veil-thin on the rampart now.

  Red Njal set himself behind his shield, took a deep, weary breath and shook himself, like a dog coming out of water.

  ‘Fear the reckoning of those you have wronged,’ he muttered, moving forward. ‘My granny said it, so it must…’

  The spear came out of nowhere, a vicious stab from the first man up a ladder we had not seen. It caught Red Njal under the arm, right in the armpit, so that he grunted with the shock of it and jerked back. It had hooked and stuck and, even as we watched, the man who owned it fell backwards, ladder and all, as Finn smashed The Godi into his chest. Fixed to the spear, like a fish on a gaff, Red Njal was hauled over the rampart, a silent slither of ragged mail and leather.

  I was stunned; it was the roof collapsing, the earth vanishing beneath my feet. I could not move for the sick horror of it – but Finn screamed, skeins of mad drool spilling down his beard and launched himself at the pack on the walkway, hacking and slashing.

  I roused myself, moving as if I was in the Other, walking in a mist and slowed. Twice, I know, I held his back, stopped the crash of a blade on him, but I only came into the Now of matters when he was pounding the head of the last man on the walkway, screaming at him.

  ‘What is it called?’ he shrieked. Slam. Slam. ‘This place? What is it called?’

  The man, leaking blood from his eyes and ears an
d nose and mouth, spattered out a word, so that Finn was satisfied enough to haul him up under the armpits and heave him over the rampart.

  We huddled in the lee of the black-stained points, sitting in the viscous stink and staring at each other, while the arrows wheeked and whirred and shunked into the wood. Eventually, Finn wiped one bloody hand across his bloody beard.

  ‘Needzee,’ he said slowly and my blank eyes were question enough.

  ‘Name of this place,’ he explained. ‘I was thinking we should know where we are dying.’

  That night, he and Kaelbjorn Rog and Ospak flitted down the rampart on knotted ropes, but it was dark and they dared not show any lights, so they could not find Red Njal in the heap, some still groaning, at the foot of our stockade.

  His death was a rune-mark on matters coming to an end.

  The end came two days later, when eighteen of us were rolling with sweat and babbling and twenty more had died, three from the plague. Almost everyone else was wounded in some way.

  Worst of all, Koll was sick. The red and white spots started under his armpit and down his thighs in the morning and then erupted on the pale circles of his cheeks. By nightfall he looked as if someone had thrown a handful of yellow corn that had stuck to his face, each one a pustule that festered and stank.

  The monk sat with him, in between tending the others, while Bjaelfi, half-staggering with weariness, moved back and forth, Dark Eye with him like a shadow, answering a whimper here, a cry there.

  In the fetid, blood-stinking dark, we gathered round the fire, streaked and stained and long since too weary to wash. My braids were gummed with old blood and other, even worse, spills from the dead and my clothing stained and ripped; no-one was any better.

  We carried Koll to the fire; no-one minded, for there was no escape from the pest and if the Norns wove that red thread into your life, that was it. Only Styrbjorn scowled, thinking that distance meant more safety.

  Behind us, torches burned at the raised wooden platform that marked the centre of the village – Needzee, Finn had called it, but Dark Eye had put him right on that. The luckless man had gasped out ‘nigdzie’ as Finn pounded his head to ruin, screaming to know what the name of this place was that we were all dying for, the place where Red Njal had gone to meet his granny.

  Nowhere, the man had said in his own tongue and Finn had thrown back his head and bellowed with cracked laughter when Dark Eye told him that.

  Now Dark Eye lit torches and knelt on the wooden platform, praying to her four-faced god, while the shadows flicked and men, too tired even to eat or talk, huddled in a sort of stupor, heads bowed, watching the smoke writhe. A pot steamed on an iron tripod and the men lay in a litter of helms and weapons, slumped with shields as backrests, crusted ringmail puddled like old snakeskins at their feet.

  When Dark Eye wraithed herself back to the fire, a few heads lifted and dull eyes took her in. Styrbjorn, always ready with his mouth, curled his lip.

  ‘Praying for rescue?’ he asked.

  ‘Only the fearful pray for rescue,’ she replied, pooling herself into a comfortable squat. Styrbjorn stirred uncomfortably, for everyone could see that promised stake up the arse occupied most of his waking hours.

  ‘The man who says he is not afraid in this matter is a liar,’ he responded.

  ‘Tell Finn that,’ Uddolf chuckled harshly. ‘He is well-known for having no fear.’

  ‘Perhaps he can tell you the secret of it, Styrbjorn,’ Onund added with his usual bear grunt. ‘Then we will be quit of your whine.’

  ‘As to that,’ Finn said softly. ‘Since we are all about to look our gods in the face, it may be that you want to know the secret of having no fear.’

  Now men were stirring with interest, me among them.

  ‘When I was young,’ he began, ‘I did matters which were not agreeable to certain men in Skane and, when they caught me, there was no Thing on it, no outlawing. Justice was rougher in those days and none rougher than Halfidi. He was as white-haired as any kindly uncle and as black-bowelled as a draugr. Slátur, men called him.’

  There were chuckles at such a fine by-name – Slátur was a dish made by stitching pungently strong black-blood sausage into a lamb’s white stomach.

  ‘They kicked and beat me,’ Finn went on, ‘and starved me for a week, which was to be expected. Each day Halfidi, or one of his sons, would dish out the meat of a whipping and take delight in telling me when I would hang. At the end of that week, they took me to the top of the cliff they used, where a rope was fastened to an iron ring. They put the other end round my neck and tied a cloth round my eyes. Then they spun me and pushed me to walking, so that I did not know where the cliff edge was.’

  Men grunted with the cruel power that vision brought.

  ‘Three days they did this,’ Finn said, soft, lost in the dream of it. ‘On the second day the shite was running down my leg and I was babbling promises not even a god could keep if they would let me go. On the third day I did the same, only for them to let me see.’

  He stopped. Men waited; the fire flared a little in a wet night wind, throwing up a whirl of sparks.

  ‘On the fourth day, they were careless with the bindings and I worked one hand free, so that when they came to prodding and pushing, I tore the cloth from my eyes. There were eight of them, who all saw I had one hand free and so they came at me with spears.’

  He paused, a long time this time, until Styrbjorn – that child would never learn when to put his tongue between his teeth – demanded to know what happened next.

  ‘I went over the edge,’ said Finn. All breathing stopped at the dizzying vision of that, of what it had taken to do it.

  ‘And died, of course,’ sneered Styrbjorn. ‘I heard this tale when I was toddling.’

  ‘I did not die. I went over the edge and, when I hit the end of that bast rope it snapped clean through. I should have had my neck cracked, but had my free hand taking a deal of the strain, so I was spared that. I hit the sea and got through that, too.’

  Men were silent, for such a matter was a clear intervention of the hand of some god. Frey, suggested one. Odin himself, another thought and those who favoured Slav gods offered their own thoughts on the matter.

  ‘I have had no fear since,’ Finn said. ‘It was snapped from me by that bast rope. Nothing and no-one since has made me drip shite down my leg through terror.’

  ‘That is why you did not want that Vislan hanged,’ I said, suddenly seeing it and Finn admitted it.

  ‘And why you follow the prow beast,’ Kaelbjorn Rog added. ‘Since you cannot return to Skane while Halfidi and his sons are waiting.’

  Finn said nothing.

  ‘They are not,’ I said softly, staring at him, rich with sudden knowing. ‘But you can still never go back, can you, Finn Horsehead?’

  Finn stared back at me, black eyes dead as old coals. ‘I went to their hall in the night. That same night. I barred all the doors and fired it. No-one got out.’

  It might have been the wind, or the trailing finger of that horror, but men shivered. The burning of a hall full of his own kind was the worst act a Northman could do and he was never forgiven for it.

  It was cold, that burning revenge, for there were women and weans in it. It came to me then that humping a dead woman on the body of a dying ox was neither here nor there for a man such as Finn. I had been wrong, telling Brother John bitterly that I was leading the charge into his Abyss, for no matter how hard I ran down that dark, steep way, Finn would always be ahead of me.

  ‘Heya,’ growled Rovald. ‘That was a harsh tale – what did you do that so annoyed this Halfidi?’

  We expected robbery, dire murder or killing his ma – or all of them, after what we had just learned. Finn stared at the fire, leaned forward and stirred the cauldron.

  ‘I fished his river,’ he answered. ‘Fished it once by moonlight for the salmon in it. He was not even sure it was me that one of his men saw.’

  No-one spoke for a long time af
ter that – then Onund suddenly leaped sideways with a curse and lashed out. Folk sprang up, hands on weapons and Onund looked at them back and forth for a moment, then grunted sheepishly.

  ‘Rat,’ he said. ‘Ran over my hand. I hate rats. They come out for the raven’s leavings.’

  Crowbone’s new voice was still more of a clear bell than others and heads lifted when it spoke.

  ‘Pity the rat,’ he said. ‘It was not always as you see it now.’

  He shifted his face forwards, to have it dyed by embers. His odd eyes were glinting glass chips.

  ‘In the beginning of the world,’ he said. ‘When Odin was young and still had both eyes and so was more foolish than now, he was more kind-hearted. So much so that he did not like to see folk die. So one day he sent for Hugin, Thought, who was his favourite messenger from Asgard to men. He told that raven to go out into the world and tell all people that, whenever anyone died, the body was to be placed on a bier, surrounded by all the things precious to it in life and then freshly-burned oak wood ashes were to be thrown over it. Left like that on the ground, in half a day, it would be brought back to life.’

  ‘A useful thing to know,’ Styrbjorn announced. ‘Find some oak ash and we will have our own army round these parts by tomorrow’s rising meal.’

  ‘Not now,’ Crowbone announced sorrowfully. ‘When Hugin had flown for half a day he began to get tired and hungry, so when he spotted a dead sheep he was on it like a black arrow. He sucked out the eyes and shredded the tongue and made a meal of it. Then went to sleep, entirely forgetting the message which had been given him to deliver.

  ‘After a time,’ Crowbone went on, looking round the rapt, droop-lipped faces, ‘when the raven did not return, Odin called for the smallest of his creatures – the rat. It was not a skulker in sewage and darkness then, but a fine-furred beast, even if he had no discernible use other than sleeping. Odin, in his foolishness, sought to raise the rat in life and sent him out with the same message.’