The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 3

by Robert Low

  Blood in the water. Odin’s cunning plan to get us to this place.

  The way to the truth of it all was red-dyed in the blood of those we had come to save, most of them killed by a weeping, slashing Finn. The others in the band were not much better; all of them knew now what I had known before – our oath-brothers were the leaders of the brigands, the gelded eaters of the dead.

  I came across Geirmund Solmundarson, who had helped me back to have my ankle seen to after I had done it in chasing Vigfus Quite the Dandy across Novgorod roofs for Einar. I found him bleeding from half-a-dozen wounds and too dying even to speak.

  Then there was Thrain, whom we’d called Fjorsvafnir, Life Taker, after he had won a contest for killing more lice than anyone else, running a brand down the seams of his clothes and popping them in the flame. Now the bubbles of his life broke pink and frothing on his lips.

  And Sigurd Heppni, which was a bad joke on him, for he was not Sigurd Lucky at all. From his sprawled corpse I took a familiar stick: Martin’s holy spear.

  Them and others, all dead, all the ones we had come to rescue.

  The last stood in the ruins of Herod’s topmost tier, backed up to the balcony, the rune-serpent sword a savage grin in one fist, the Goat Boy struggling in the other. Finn, snarling and bleeding, the Godi dripping blood in fat splats of sound, faced him on one side; Botolf, the great byrnie-biter in his massive fist, glared at him on the other.

  Not again. There was a flash of another time, another place, the bird-heart tic of the Goat Boy’s throat under a blade, reddened in the torchlight and gripped in Svala’s hand.

  Like her, Valgard Skafhogg was not ready to give up. Skafhogg, the chippie. The closest Greeks could get to it was pelekanos, of course. And he was black-hearted now, for sure.

  ‘Give up the boy,’ Finn was yelling, trembling on the edge of a mad rush, like mead in an overfull horn. ‘Give it up, Valgard, you nithing …’

  ‘I may be cut,’ Valgard said, ‘but I still have enough balls for this, Horsearse.’

  ‘We came for you,’ howled Finn, almost weeping now. ‘We came all the way from Miklagard for you. You were Oathsworn …’

  ‘Oathsworn no more,’ Valgard said with a shake of his head. ‘The first cut ended us all as men, the second ended us as Odinsmenn. He abandoned us – Einar’s doom, right enough. What we have done since to survive would not get us a straight look from the ruined half of Hel’s face.’

  His voice was quiet and calm and more chilling than if he had snarled and slavered like a rabid wolf. He was burned dark as a Masmoudi, wore robes and the remains of a turban, was leached of fat and moisture, honed down to bone and desperation. Even his reason was thin, I saw, just as he spotted me.

  ‘Well, well, young Baldur is here.’

  It was a voice shorn of everything save weariness, but his eyes blazed when he met mine and he twitched the sabre meaningfully; a shaft of light caught the sinuous runes snaking down the blade.

  ‘Starkad said this blade was yours once, boy,’ he said. ‘A rune blade. He said you got it from Atil’s tomb.’

  Starkad had said a lot, I was thinking, as you do when someone is carving your ribs from your backbone and you are looking for a reason for him to stop. Valgard blinked when I said all this to him, so I knew it was so exactly what had happened that he was wondering if I had been there, seidr-hovering and invisible, to witness it.

  ‘I took it from him,’ he replied, challenging, yet wary and uncertain, trying to convince himself that if I had any seidr-magic powers, the sword gave them to me – and now he had it. His fear-sodden hand worked fingers on the hilt, flexing and loosing; his sweat slid into the grooves that told where unimaginable riches lay.

  ‘Now I will take it from you,’ I told him mildly, aware of Botolf sidling further round, trying to work into Valgard’s blind spot. The Goat Boy was still, his big round eyes fixed on me, his right hand clutching the Thor amulet round his neck. ‘You have put your jarl to a deal of trouble and expense, Valgard Skafhogg, but I kept my Oath.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I came for you. I am jarl of the Oathsworn, after all.’

  He smiled then, one as warped as a dry bucket. I jerked my chin at the Goat Boy. ‘What now, Valgard? Your men are fled and there is a Saracen jarl who wants to ram a stake up your arse.’ I hoped I sounded smooth and easy, for the terror of the moment howled in me.

  ‘And you will save me?’

  ‘I am your jarl.’

  His mouth twisted in a spasm of rawness and he could barely get the words out. ‘No jarl. Of mine. You nithing boy.’ His face was a bruise of madness and his eyes, sunk like wells of despair, now held only the faintest gleam, but his voice was harsh and edge-sharp. ‘We have paid the price,’ he went on. ‘Us. The ones Einar left behind like a sacrifice.’

  ‘Everyone paid the price for Einar,’ I countered. ‘But that is over. Odin smiles.’

  I heard a crow-rasp laugh, rheum-thick and bitter with loss. ‘Odin smiles? Are you godi also? If so, you know One Eye smiles only when the stink of sacrifice hits his nose.’

  I knew that, of course. I had known it and had not shared it with the others before we fought. All the ones who had broken their Oath so badly had to die – and he the last of them. Finn knew it now and looked frantically from me to him and back.

  I shrugged as languidly as I could manage and rubbed my beard, a gesture I had picked up from Rurik, shipmaster of the Oathsworn before he had died at Sarkel. I know Skafhogg saw it, with a flicker of recognition. They had been friends, the shipmaster and the shipwright, but I saw that things had gone past all friendships.

  Botolf shifted and Valgard moved the sabre edge closer to the Goat Boy’s neck and said: ‘One more move, Giant Ymir, and I will have the head off this boy. I want to hear blades hitting the stones.’

  Finn slumped wearily and flung the Godi down with a clang of disgust. I saw him look at Valgard and remember that they had been oarmates long before I had joined the Elk. I saw, too, that Valgard did not have the regard for it that Finn had and that Finn knew it, was drained by it so that he had to hunker down, all strength to stand gone.

  Botolf’s byrnie-biter clattered down and Valgard looked at me.

  I dropped my sword and he eased a little, though stayed clenched as a curl on his little hostage. The Goat Boy’s face was pale, but his eyes were steady and I cringed for him. To be like this once for our sake was bad enough, but twice … I vowed then that, if Odin spared him, the boy would never be put at risk again.

  ‘It was a surprise when this little one ran in out of the storm,’ Valgard said, caressing the Goat Boy’s cheek with fingers from the hand that gripped him close. ‘I knew then there were problems – and that he was an answer to them.’

  ‘Give him up,’ Finn managed to wrench out hoarsely.

  Valgard said nothing and his eyes scoured Finn’s face with scorn. He would not give up: not he who had done what he did to survive, who could chew on another man’s warm liver, or order a blood-eagling on his hated enemy.

  Botolf shifted. He caught my eye. And winked.

  My mouth went dry and I forced my tongue from the roof of it. I knew I had to keep Valgard’s fluttering madness focused on me.

  ‘What will you do with the boy?’ I asked, offering extravagant promises to Odin to keep my voice from trembling.

  ‘Hold him close until promises are given and sherbet drunk,’ he said and laughed. ‘Oaths sworn, too, maybe.’

  He knew what he was about, for sure. If he drank sherbet from Bilal al-Jamil, it meant he had been accepted as a guest and could not then be killed. If he got us to swear an Odin-oath for the same, he would actually Loki his way out of this.

  But the Arab would offer no chilled cup in return for the life of a skinny Greek boy – Odin would make sure of that, for he wanted the life of Valgard the oathbreaker and not even the Norns would deny him. Not even Allah.

  Botolf leaned and shifted slightly and I saw Valgard’s head st
art to turn towards him, knew Botolf was poised for a desperate leap. Odin settled gold on my brow.

  ‘You will never manage it, Skafhogg,’ I said scornfully. ‘You think this scrawny-arsed boy is a good exchange for letting you escape? Do what you will with him, Trimmer. But eat him quick, for it will be the last meal you have.’

  The howl from Valgard had everything in it, from rage to shame and back. He flung back his head and wolfed it all out to the sky – and Botolf hurled himself forward.

  I knew he would never make it. Valgard snarled and cut viciously. That snaking curve of blade should have snicked Botolf’s great, stupid head clean off his shoulders; he knew it, too, and was roaring himself into Valholl.

  It was then that the Goat Boy took his hand from his Thor amulet and elbowed Valgard in the groin. Afterwards, he said he had felt it hit just where he had thought it would after having seen Inger’s naked body being washed: on the length of reed that allowed Valgard to piss.

  It drove up into the soft depth of him, into the bladder. Valgard doubled up and screamed and the cut took Botolf in the left leg, a handsbreadth below the knee. The limb flew off in a lazy curve, slathering blood everywhere, and, even as he toppled like a mast-pine, Botolf’s right hand came up and took Valgard by the throat, shook him left, then right, like a dog with a rat. Then he fell, howling and pushing Valgard backwards.

  There was a sharp scream as Valgard hit the balcony and it crumbled like old bread. He went over like a flipped louse, flailing his limbs and with a short bark of sound that could have been laugh or curse, drowned out in the sound of the rune-serpent blade scoring a shrill, grating screech all the way down the support pillar until he hit the cracked paving far below with a wet slap.

  Finn hurled himself at Botolf as the giant sprawled, the pair of them almost spilling over the edge of the balcony. The Goat Boy hurled himself at me and I knelt and swept him up; the pair of us were trembling and I was closer to sobbing than he was.

  ‘I was not afraid this time either, Trader,’ he said, shaking so hard he could hardly get the lie between his teeth for chatter.

  I couldn’t reply for holding him and watching Finn drag Botolf back from the edge and strap his tunic belt round the bloody ruin of his leg.

  Eventually, slick with the slime of it, he looked up as the blood trickled to a close. He grinned through the red mask of his face as Botolf groaned and told him to get his shoe, just before his eyes rolled into his head and he passed out.

  Finn chuckled, blood outlining his teeth. ‘The big idiot will live – but he’ll be shorter by a foot after this.’

  EPILOGUE

  The most prized possession of a sea-raider isn’t a good blade, or fine mail, or rings of silver. It’s a sea-chest, slightly longer than a sword, a hand-span wide and deep as your arm up to the elbow.

  It holds everything you have of worth and you should be able to leave everything that isn’t in it behind you with merely a shrug of regret. It is your seat at an oar, your pillow when wrapped in a cloak, your first waking thought and your last dream of the night, for in it is your life.

  Mine still has some of the silver coins we got from the Sarakenoi, who were true to their word and not only handed out fat bags of the stuff, but took us to the coast, where we sent word to Gizur. He sailed down to us in the Elk with a crew lent by Jarl Brand, for there were barely enough Oathsworn left by then to move it under oars when we had it to ourselves and all had hurts of some kind. Bar me, of course, and Kvasir fixed me with his one good eye and smiled, shaking his head at my foolishness for believing the rune serpent on that sabre held such powers.

  The sabre. I climbed down and prised it from Skafhogg’s dead grip and could not help but examine the blade, having heard it shriek like triumph down the stone as he fell. There was no mark on it. Even the sunlight stepped carefully along the gleaming length of it and the strange warped and twisted reflection of my own face slid down the long serpent of runes, curling and crooning their secret to the steel.

  This had cost us pain and death. This sensuous curve, grinning like the smile on a skull, had led us to an Odin-forge of a country, where the One-eyed God hammered and folded us into what he desired, casting aside the dross.

  And for what? To be given the gift of all the silver in the world? To be worthy of this rune-serpent blade? I wrapped it in a tattered Arab serk and snugged it up in my sea-chest, cheek by jowl with the equally cursed spear which had helped make it, both buried under a spare tunic, breeks and a folded cloak. Yet I could feel the seidr heat of them all the time, feel the scratches I had carved on the hilt, the secret to Atil’s silver. After all that had happened, I still had no idea of Odin’s purpose, only what it had cost.

  In that chest also was a withered leaf, the one I took from Arnor’s mouth after the battle by the mulberry trees. It reminded me of how we had lost him and Vlasios, the Goat Boy’s brother, among others, and of the deaths I could have prevented, but did not. As Jarl Brand said, what were Roman blood-feuds to us? Still, I tasted the jarl-torc silver of it for a long time, that blood-metal tang that makes you want to spit.

  It also held Starkad’s silver torc until I handed it to Brand when we reached him, just as he was stowing a heap of dirhams for giving up Antioch and sailing for the Dark Sea, as he had planned. Svala was gone, sold to an Arab, and I would have been angry save for the relief – and the shame for feeling that. So we joined his ships as chosen men, as he had promised.

  My sea-chest also held a short length of ship’s rope from the Fjord Elk, tight-wrapped and stitched with cord, thickened with pine tar to stop it fraying. I have it still.

  When I open the chest for a bone needle, or dry socks, the smell of it brings back the sea and the Elk and all the Oathsworn of that time: the Goat Boy, serious, pale and thin, with limbs like knotted thread and the great white-mauve scar on his side; Finn’s savage grin; Botolf, raving and locked in wound-fever while his leg-stump wept; Short Eldgrim, who woke up to find he could not remember anything much from one day to the next, the inside of his head scoured clean.

  There, too, are the dead: Valgard Skafhogg and Bristle Beard, Thrain Life Taker and the others who had lost their manhood and their Odin faith and finally their lives, fetches drifting like jinn and forever lost in the Serkland sand.

  Balancing that on One Eye’s scales were those who survived: Finn, Gizur, Kvasir, Hlenni Brimill, Thorstein Cod Biter and the others, scarcely more than two handfuls, but all Odin-forged Oathsworn brothers now. They took the Fjord Elk’s oars in their calloused fists and rowed away with Jarl Brand to the promise of waters where the spray froze like silver beads.

  The Elk’s prow turned north and they heaved up the sail, sure that the Bear Slayer, favoured of Odin, would steer them yet to that secret hoard now that he had his rune-serpent sword back. And if some wondered about their jarl, hunched and brooding over a silly nub-end of pine-tarred rope used to beat time for the rowing, they kept their teeth together on it. Orm Bear Slayer, they reminded themselves, had once killed a man in a holmgang with a single stroke.

  The shipmasters, as ever, have their own name for even this stub of unattached line and the Loki joke of it was not lost on me, trying to weigh the deaths of Skafhogg and the others against Odin’s cursed gift of silver.

  They call it a bitter end.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  Making sense of the Middle East of the late tenth century – at any time period, it would seem – makes your head hurt.

  The Sunni Abbasid Caliphate was slowly crumbling under the weight of its own Mamluk armies, composed of Turks, Slavs and Berbers, with a succession of trembling caliphs appointed and then murdered by the Buyyid family in Baghdad. At the same time, another dynasty, the Hamdanid, held Aleppo as an independent fief, but still flew the black Abbasid flags, vowing lip-service allegiance to the caliphs in Baghdad.

  Meanwhile, the triumphant Fatimid Shias stormed across North Africa, took Alexandria and renamed it Cairo (Victorious), then pushed north, bri
nging an end and a measure of stability to the chaos of little kingdoms in Syria and Palestine, one of which was ruled by the self-styled Ikshid Muhammad ibn Tugh from Jerusalem.

  At the same time, a resurgent Byzantine Empire fought over Antioch and Aleppo and a series of campaigns by Nicephoras Phocas led to the taking of Tarsus and, in the year or so covered by this book, a great raid which laid waste the Jezira.

  Some two years later, Nicephoras Phocas was murdered by John Tzimisces (Red Boots) and Leo Balantes – with the connivance of the Empress Theophano – while he slept in his palace. John became the new Emperor and there are those who believe this act actually saved the Byzantine Empire. Red Boots – and after him Basil II – finally took control of Antioch, as well as half of Syria, the Halab and most of Palestine all the way south to Nazareth, in a religious reconquista that anticipated the First Crusade by a century or more.

  The Jarls Brand and Skarpheddin are based on several accounts of Norse chieftains ousted in various conflicts – mainly from the north of what is now Sweden – who went raiding in the Mediterranean with entire populations of men, women and children, mainly in Spain, which was ruled by al-Hakam II until 976 and afterwards by the legendary al-Mansur.

  There is no record of a massive battle at Antioch involving the full panoply of the Byzantine forces at this time but there were almost certainly several large ones. Since I wanted Orm and the Oathsworn to take part in such a conflict, I engineered a great battle with no shame.

  As ever, when anyone writes of this period, a debt is owed to Leo the Deacon (Leo Diaconus), born around the year 950. In his early youth he came to study at Constantinople and, in 986, took part in the war against the Bulgars under the Emperor Basil II, was present at the siege of Triaditza (Sofia), where the imperial army was defeated, and barely escaped with his life.

  Around 992 he began to write a history of the empire, presumably at Constantinople, but he failed to finish before he died. The history, divided into ten books, covers the years from 976: that is, the reigns of Romanus II (959–63), Nicephorus Phocas (963–9) and John Tzimisces (969–76).