by Robert Low
Lyut fell backwards, over an ale bench and into the hearthfire. It took no more than an eyeblink or two to realize he was not getting up on his own, but his hair was on fire by then. Those nearest dragged him out and beat out the flames.
Now Sveinald’s men were roaring and growling with anger, for this was another matter entirely. Sveinald himself kept his seat, his knuckles white on the fancy gilt-rimmed horn.
Sigurd, his silver nose gleaming, moved a little closer to his charges, the young prince and his now-constant companion, little Crowbone. On that one’s face I saw no fear, only a studied interest, as if he had found a new kind of bird.
Finn turned, his face streaked with Lyut’s blood, the seax held in one hand. He glared round them all and the roaring subsided.
‘I am Finn Bardisson from Skani, called Horsehead,’ he said softly. ‘Is there anyone else wants their foot kissing?’
Silence.
‘SPEAK UP, YOU DOGS!’
Behind him, Lyut whimpered and men were carrying him away, to where the women would balm his toasted face with goose fat.
‘Sit down Finn Bardisson from Skani, called Horsearse,’ Gyrth Steinnbrodir called out into the silence. ‘You have taught the boy how to dance on one foot and not to sit so close to the fire and now I want to get back to my drinking.’
There was a chuckle or two, then the hall noise washed back in like a tide on the turn and Finn shunked Lyut’s seax into the ale bench and took his horn back, raising it in toast to Gyrth. I raised my own to him and he acknowledged it, while I felt Sveinald staring, could hear him ask through clenched teeth who this Finn Bardisson was and who this Jarl Orm.
I was swelled with the pride of it, that my name was on lips all over the hall and aware also, with a sick, sinking feeling, that we had done neither ourselves nor little Vladimir any favours.
Then, in the cold light of morning as everyone sorted themselved out for the day, the bird fell from the rafters and little Crowbone, his face whalebone-pale, cheeks flushed from the cold, started in to speaking about white ravens.
He was wearing a fine tunic the colour of a robin’s egg, wool breeks, fur-trimmed Slav boots and a white wool cloak trimmed with a swathe of sable fur that came up round his ears and met the rough curls of a fine goat-wool cap.
He peered at the dead starling, while the great elkhound with him sniffed it and warily watched our own deerhounds. That huge white-grey beast, as like a wolf as a brother, only added to the unease surrounding Crowbone, for it had eyes of different colours, exactly like his.
When he had first appeared with it, the warding signs made a flutter like bird wings and Klepp Spaki had been busy since, carving protection runes on bits of bone. Only Thorgunna, on whom seidr magic was wasted, was unafraid.
‘My, you look like a little prince now, right enough,’ she said, beaming – then broke off to cuff the Scots thrall woman for dropping her pin case and spilling the bone needles out of it.
All Olaf’s finery – even the white, wolf-ruffed elkhound – was gifted from Prince Vladimir. It was, as Kvasir had already pointed out quietly, just as well I hadn’t decided to sell Crowbone as a thrall, since it seemed the little turd had charmed the ruler of Novgorod and had gone from slave to prince in one hare-leap. Things, he added, could be much worse.
‘How much worse can it already be?’ grunted Finn, red-eyed from the night before and just as sullen in the chill daylight. ‘The world is lining up to rob us.’
‘If you would rather have a stake up your arse,’ I snapped back at him, stung by his scowling, ‘I can probably arrange it.’
One of the deerhounds laid its great bony head on my knee and sighed mournfully into the mood of the hall. The other snarled at the too-close elkhound, whose ruff stiffened.
‘Bleikr,’ chided Olaf. ‘Stop that.’
Bleikr – White Fair, it meant to us, though most tongues could translate it no better than Pale. Whatever his name, the dog paid Olaf no heed, but was wise enough not to take on both deerhounds. None of the dogs wanted a fight, but the elkhound’s ruff stuck out like hedgehog spines and the rough brindle hair on the deerhounds’ back was clenched and dark. We watched warily, not eager to get between them.
Then Thorgunna gave a little grunt of annoyance at our holding back and moved in fearlessly, cuffing right and left. The dogs scattered, yelping.
‘Bleikr,’ she said, tucking a stray wisp of hair back under her braids, while warriors did not dare look at each other for the shame of it. ‘There is nice. Now you have a new dog – and kin, too, I hear. Your mother’s father in Bjodaskalle and her sisters, too. Not forgetting your Uncle Sigurd here.’
Crowbone nodded, though it was clear that Bleikr was deeper in his heart than these folk, who were only names to him. Even Sigurd. It came to me then that little Crowbone was a boy alone and, after all that had happened to him, might well be for all his life.
Finn looked at the white dog and grunted cynically. Olaf frowned.
‘You do not like the name?’ he asked. Then he pointed to the deerhound who had slunk back to Finn’s knee.
‘What is this one called, then?’ he challenged.
‘Dog,’ Finn said flatly. Olaf, thinking he was being made fun of, scowled and pointed to the other deerhound.
‘And this?’
‘The other dog,’ Finn answered, then cocked himself to the side and farted.
Kvasir chuckled as Olaf started to get his own hackles up.
‘There is a wise rule we use,’ he said, clapping the boy on one shoulder, ‘and it is this – never give a name to something you might have to eat.’
Olaf was taken aback at that and looked down at his new pride and joy, now trying to lick its own balls. ‘Eat Bleikr?’
‘Well – not that one’s tongue, perhaps,’ Kvasir said and folk laughed.
‘Aye,’ growled Gyrth, surfacing from under a pile of cloaks and pelts, where he had been trying to keep warm and sleep. ‘If we go to find that cursed hoard in this weather, we will end up eating worse than that before we are done. Helmet straps will taste good, mark me.’
‘Do you no harm,’ Finn answered and Gyrth patted his belly and smiled.
I was aware of the winter steppe, the Great White, brooded on it all the rest of that long day while the men in the hall surfaced, stretching and farting and shivering into the breath-smoking chill, dousing their heads and breaking ice in the bowls and buckets to do it, roaring and blowing.
Thorgunna and Thordis, who had wisely avoided the affair and the risk of being upended and tupped by drunks – and the obvious reactions of Kvasir and everyone else to that – were the freshest faces in that hall and made sure their healthy cheerfulness set everyone else’s teeth grinding. They and the thralls bustled in, stirring the hearthfire to life, hanging pots, rattling skillets.
Eventually, chewing feast leftovers and picking their molars, most of the men all wandered off to sort out their lives – Sveinald’s men were heading home and I heard that Lyut was having to be litter-carried. That he was alive at all was good luck, I was thinking.
My own crew were staying, of course, and getting as ready as they could for a trip into the open steppe in winter. Most of them were unworried by what I had done – they still thought they would get a share as they had been promised, and few looked beyond that. Some counted the involvement of Vladimir as jarl-cleverness by me, since it would mean more protection and better supplies for such a dangerous trip.
Outside the keep, in the crushed snow of the kreml, there was now noise and purpose and carts with sledge-runners, the wheels slung on the sides like shields on a drakkar, just in case they were needed. There were strong little horses for pulling and others for riding and supplies being loaded and men sorting out gear and weapons.
Vladimir had expected me to point to his carefully-drawn vellum chart and mark it with the location of Atil’s cursed tomb, but when it came to it, there was just a dot that read ‘Biela Viezha’, which was the Slav name for Sa
rkel, and acres of grey-white skin. Nor was I daft enough in the head to lay out the X of it, for him then not to need me at all.
No-one but me knew exactly where the tomb lay and the path of it was scratched on the hilt of my rune-bladed sabre. Short Eldgrim had a rough idea of it, for he had helped me with the runes I made, but even he did not know all the steps. Neither did I unless we got to Sarkel, the first landmark.
They saw it, of course, Vladimir and big Uncle Dobrynya. They looked from one to the other as I glanced scornfully at the vellum.
‘I can take you,’ I said, hoping my sweat was not visible in the dim light of that private room. ‘There is no landmark on this chart.’
Silence, in which I was sure I heard men greasing a stake. Then Dobrynya rolled up the chart with brisk movements as he said: ‘Of course you will.’
Now I wondered. The steppe in winter was as grey-white an emptiness as Vladimir’s vellum chart and a sick chill washed me; I was loading a lot of lives and hope on those few runes I had scratched out.
Ostensibly, the Oathsworn were free to come and go – yet all had been brought into Vladimir’s own hall, even Martin the monk. Dobrynya had insisted: everyone who knew anything of the matter was to be kept where they could be seen. Now Martin was thrashing around like a fish in a keep-net.
He scurried up to me in the cold light of the morning, as Olaf chucked and snapped his fingers at the unresponsive elkhound, finally following it as it wandered off.
‘Which pup is taking which for a walk?’ demanded Finnlaith and others laughed, though they did so when they were sure little Olaf Crowbone could not hear and none of them was ashamed of being afraid of a nine-year-old boy.
‘Speaking of dogs,’ growled Hauk Fast-Sailor and nodded towards the hurrying figure of the monk. I sighed; the deerhound sighed. Neither of us wanted to be bothered with this.
‘You must speak to the prince,’ Martin declared, his eyes wild and black from under his tangled hair and matted beard. ‘I will not go on this cursed fool’s errand.’
‘Must I?’
‘I will not go.’
I leaned slightly towards him, thinking – yet again – that I should have killed him when I had had the chance.
‘Vladimir has decreed it. I do not want to go and yet I must,’ I answered, more weary than patient. ‘If I cannot get out of it, what makes you think I can make him leave you behind?’
‘Christ will provide,’ intoned Finn, in what he fondly believed was a mock of the Christ-priests. Martin savaged him with a glare, then folded his arms and stuck his chin out until his beard bristled.
‘I will not go.’
‘Then stay and sit on a sharp stick,’ Kvasir said with a shrug, raising his head slightly from repairing the strap. ‘You mistake us for folk who worry about you.’
‘This is no matter of mine,’ Martin insisted. His ruined mouth made white foam at the corners. ‘I want no share in this silver foolishness.’
‘Good,’ grunted Finn morosely, ‘then we’ll take your share. If any of us get a share at all, that is.’
He shot me a knowing look but, to my surprise, it was Martin who managed to knock him off his perch.
‘Why do you want it, this silver?’ he snapped.
Finn blinked owlishly, for it was clearly a stupid question, which he said, then added: ‘A hoard of silver? Why would you not want it?’
‘For what it can buy?’ countered Martin. ‘The fine food, the best drink and the most beautiful of women. And so you have them all – what then, Finn Horsehead?’
‘A magnificent sword,’ commented Pai wistfully. ‘Fine furs for a cloak.’
‘Ships,’ Jon Asanes threw in, grinning.
Martin nodded, but Finn was frowning.
‘Until you have them all and more,’ the monk said, flecks spilling from his ruined mouth. ‘Then what? More of it until you puke and your prick drops off? What is the use of a magnificent sword if you never use it for raiding, eh Finn? Yet what is the point of raiding if you already have all you can want and more?’
‘Ha,’ said Red Njal, waving one hand dismissively. ‘You are a Christ-priest, so what do you know of such things? You want riches, too – that spear is your hoard. Deceit sleeps with greed, as my granny used to say.’
Martin’s glance was sour, then he turned it back on Finn.
‘I know it is no good thing for folk such as you to end your days bent-backed and stumbling with age, drooling on a bench and wondering if you have hidden your coin well enough to fool all the women who laugh because you can do nothing with them now, while your sons conspire and cannot wait for you to die.’
That straw-death vision silenced everyone and I was surprised to see something slither across Finn’s face that I had never seen before.
Fear.
Into that long, painful silence, Jon Asanes offered: ‘You will still have to go, I am thinking.’
‘I will not go,’ Martin said stiffly.
‘Say that once more, you streak of piss and I will make it come true – you will stay here forever,’ growled Red Njal. ‘Put to the sword those that disagree, said my granny and she had the right of it there, for sure.’
‘I am, at one and same moment,’ chuckled Gyrth, ‘both sorrowed and glad that I never met this granny of yours.’
‘You will go,’ I answered Martin, staring back into the black coals of his eyes. ‘I have a stick that you will follow.’
He blinked, hesitated. His face twitched, but a new hook was in and deeper than any. ‘You promised me the Holy Spear for what I told you,’ he snapped, hoarse with anger, trembling with it, so that his fingers shook and clenched.
‘Things change. I don’t care if you end up spitted, but Vladimir thinks you belong to me and so I am responsible. You will put no-one at risk. Obey me and you will get your little stick at the end.’
‘Disobey,’ added Runolf Harelip with a twisted smile, ‘and you get a little stick IN your end.’
Martin sucked in breath as if it pained him, while everyone else laughed.
‘Am I to believe this promise above the last?’
‘I swear it, as Odin is my witness.’
He sneered out a black grin. ‘You swore that before, on your pagan amulet in the square in Novgorod. You swore to give me Christ’s Holy Lance in return for the news I brought you. Is this new oath any better than that one?’
My head jerked at that – who was he to dare accuse the jarl of the Oathsworn that he did not hold to any oaths? I leaned over and opened my sea chest, drew out a cloak, the runed sabre and the wrapped bundle that he wanted. He was fixed by the sight of it and his tongue darted like a snake’s. I almost waved it back and forth to see if he would follow it with his eyes.
‘I promised you your silly spear and so you will have it. I did not say when.’
I dropped it in the tall, narrow sea chest and slammed the lid, so that he jumped with the bang of it. His eyes were poison pools, but I held the stare, for I hated him enough in return.
‘If you run,’ I said. ‘We will bear the hurt of it and Vladimir and his uncle will hunt you down with all the power they have. So will Oleg. So will Jaropolk. All of them will want what you know and all of them will stake you out rather than have you tell the others.’
‘But I know nothing,’ Martin declared angrily. ‘I was not part of your silver-greed, as you know. Tell them.’
‘You think they would believe me? Anyway – you know what Eldgrim and Cod-Biter remembered. It is not as good as what I know, but it is good enough for Vladimir to keep you close. You know too much, monk – even Lambisson will want you dead now. Little Vlad only keeps you alive now because you are a holy man and he fears the curse of your White Christ if he has you killed.’
He blinked once or twice. Then his shoulders slumped as the weight of what he knew to be true crushed him. The safest place was with us, even if it meant coming into the steppe snows of the Great White. More than all that, he would follow the spear, snuffling for
it like a dog after a bitch in heat.
‘Anyway,’ said Gyrth, wandering into the middle of this tense moment to peer hopefully in the pot and hunker by the fire, ‘it is worse than that for you, monk. The White Christ followers are never staked here.’
Surprised, we all looked at him and he became aware of the eyes, stopped searching for more food and grew flustered at our stares.
‘I had it from a Jew trader,’ he explained. ‘They hang those condemned who are Christ followers upside down. Like their god on the tree, only the other way up.’
Martin’s eye twitched, for it was a terrible thing, it seemed, for Christ men to be hung – crucified, they called it – upside down. It was also a hard and long way to die.
‘Our little Christ priest is used to that,’ Finn sneered. ‘He has been hung upside down before.’
Those who remembered Martin from the first time we had met him – slung from the mast of our ship, spraying tears and piss on to the planks together with everything he thought we might want to know – chuckled.
‘He can do it standing on his head,’ agreed Kvasir sombrely and the hoots and thigh-slaps chased after the flapping hem of Martin’s robe as he strode from the hall.
‘He will run,’ Kvasir said, tilting his head to peer closely at his strap work.
‘Not without his little stick,’ Finn declared.
They took odds on it but I knew he would run only when he had the spear cradled in his arms and was sure of being able to run to somewhere safe; out on the winter steppe, I was thinking, the only safe place was with us.
Finn and others, meanwhile, muttered with their heads touching about how, when the time came, we might have to fight the druzhina of Vladimir to get their silver hoard. I let them; it was as lunatic as trying to throw a loop around the moon, but it kept them from becoming too morose. All the same, when the time came, I was thinking, I would have to come up with some gold-browed plan or they would be looking upward and shaking out hopeful rope.
