The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 3

by Robert Low

  ‘Sweat blood,’ repeated Jon Asanes wonderingly. I looked at the bloodsoaked palm of my mittened hand, where it had smacked off that huge brass rump. Finn stumped off, making soft growls at Thordis and Thorgunna, as close as he came to a soothing noise, for the loss of Skirla.

  ‘Just so,’ agreed Avraham, then turned to me.

  ‘Dobrynya wants you. It seems we have another problem today.’

  The other problem stood on the village earthwork and grinned cheerily down at us from under the tangle of his yellow hair. One hand rested quietly on the frost-glittering points of the rampart timbers and the other twirled a great long axe on its butt, so that the head flashed in the weak red sun of the dying day as he spoke out of a twisted smile.

  ‘He hath need of fire, who now is come,

  Numbed with cold to the knee;

  Food and clothing the wanderer craves

  Who has fared o’er the rimy fell.’

  Which let me know, from his accent, that he was more Slav than Norse and more learned than most – though one of the wise Sayings of the High One was scarcely gold-browed versemaking.

  ‘No,’ he added to Vladimir as I came up with Finn and the others, ‘I do not think I am inclined to let you in, for all that you have done me the service of chasing off those madwomen. There is room enough only for me and my men.’

  ‘Then there must be more than a few with you,’ Dobrynya answered smoothly. ‘Perhaps if you told us how many were in there, we could count out a suitable number that would not steal the food or shelter from you.’

  ‘It is of no consequence how strong we are here, Uncle Dobrynya,’ chuckled the man, thumbing his cold-reddened nose, ‘since we are not letting any of you in. You should know that we are strong enough, all the same.’

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ demanded Vladimir indignantly and the man chuckled again.

  ‘You are the young prince Vladimir. Your father is dead and you are now so far from Lord Novgorod the Great that you are in more danger here than I am and from your own brothers, too. You should have listened to your Uncle Dobrynya, boy, for I am sure he has advised you to go home.’

  Vladimir flushed and fumed, for that was a solid hit to the mark. Dobrynya, seeing the boy fighting his horse, made anxious by nervous jerking, reached out a hand and touched his shoulder.

  ‘We should talk this out later,’ he said.

  Vladimir rounded like a snake. ‘Do NOT touch me. Ever.’

  Dobrynya paused, then inclined his head in a bow. The man on the ramparts laughed out loud and everyone, myself included, was annoyed that the prince had behaved like a charcoal-eating nithing. Dobrynya stayed smooth and cool as a still pond.

  ‘As you say, my prince,’ he said to Vladimir, ‘but this great fool has made it clear that he prefers to be staked rather than deal with us pleasantly. Let us not disappoint him.’

  Still furious, Vladimir half-reined his horse round, then paused and stared up at the man.

  ‘You know me,’ he piped, fury making his voice all the more shrill. ‘Tell me your name also, that I might have it marked on the stake I have driven up your arse for this.’

  ‘Farolf,’ the man said, not smiling now. ‘I know you – but I know the one with you better. Orm Bear Slayer, I am thinking.’

  I jerked at the sound of my name and the by-name that went with it, the one that men used like a sneer, just before they challenged you. He grinned down at me and inclined his head in a mocking bow.

  ‘I have heard much of you from Lambisson,’ Farolf said. ‘I heard more from that little scar-faced man he has, the one with his wits addled.’

  ‘Then you know more than you did before,’ I replied. ‘Do you also know where Brondolf Lambisson is?’

  ‘Gone from here,’ replied Farolf cheerfully. ‘Him and his little empty-head. Dead, probably – those ball-cutting women have gone after him and left some here to see if we would be stupid enough to walk out and ask them to slaughter us.’

  ‘Now those Man-Haters are gone,’ I answered carefully, ‘and we are here instead. It would be wise to lower a knee to the prince and the bar from the gate. We are not women and we will not wait for you to come out.’

  ‘No,’ he replied seriously. ‘I was thinking that. You and the prince seek the same thing Lambisson seeks. You are a power, even though you look a little … diminished. For all that, I cannot see you getting in this gate.’

  ‘You have left Lambisson,’ I said, seeing it clearly. He nodded and smiled and it was his smiling that made me uneasy, for he was sure of himself, polished as a well-used handle. The others listened, swinging eyes from me to him and back, as if it was holmgang fight.

  ‘Did you betray him, or he you? Not that it matters – you now go your own way,’ I went on, half musing to myself, working the weft of it in my head as I spoke. ‘Yet you will not join us, which means you have plans of your own. If you seek the silver, then you seek Atil’s howe …’

  It came to me then, in a rush and sick lurch of my belly. He knew where he had to go, or thought he did. The only way he could know for sure was if someone had told him. Short Eldgrim had gone with Lambisson, which left …

  He saw my face and laughed, then made a signal. Men, all leather and snarls, brought Thorstein Cod-Biter forward and he hung in their grip like a sack, raising his face at the last. Face was what it had been once. Now it was a bruise with eyes in it.

  ‘Heya, Orm,’ he said through puffed and bloody lips. ‘What kept you?’

  Before I could say anything, Farolf jerked his chin at his men and they dragged Thorstein away and non-too gently at that – I heard the thumps of him being clattered down the rampart steps.

  ‘Now go away,’ Farolf said, ‘or else I will hang him upside down from the ramparts and cut his throat.’

  I said nothing, conscious of Vladimir’s tense, white face, his uncle, Sigurd and all the rest. Farolf had no doubt thought it a good ploy and if it had just been the Oathsworn it might have been a problem, but Cod-Biter meant nothing to anyone else, alive or dead and little Vladimir would not offer the smell from his shit for his safe return. He wanted revenge and stakes and if he had not been mounted he would have stamped his little booted foot and screamed.

  Farolf, of course, wanted us to assume he had forced Thorstein to tell all he knew and so could carry out his threat to kill his hostage – but Cod-Biter had nothing true to tell him; he did not know the way to the howe, though a man will babble any lie under blade, blow or hot iron.

  I turned away, for there was nothing left to say. Or so I thought – but Finn had something and he stepped forward, just as Farolf turned to leave.

  ‘The unwise man thinks all to know,

  While he sits in a sheltered nook;

  But he knows but one thing,

  What he shall answer,

  If men put him to proof.’

  It was another verse from the same place Farolf had found his, so apt an answer and so astounding coming from Finn that I could not say anything. Nor was I alone in this; the gold-browed cleverness of it settled on us slow and gentle and warming as broth in the belly, so that the fire of it took time to seep in. When it did, men hoomed and cheered and rattled weapons on shields.

  But all we had done was made Farolf scowl. To do more, as Dobrynya and Sigurd pointed out, would take the Oathsworn.

  ‘My lads fight from horseback,’ Sigurd declared, as we hunched round a miserable fire that failed to prevent the ice forming on our moustaches. ‘I can get them on foot, but they will not be good at it and their ring-coats are too long.’

  ‘They have bows,’ said Dobrynya. ‘They can keep heads down while others get over the walls, but it is as Sigurd says – they are horsed fighters.’

  Not even much of that, I was thinking moodily, remembering them reacting to the Man-Hater’s attack. What the Oathsworn had to do would not be easy; the village defences had been built to keep out the marauding Khazars and Pechenegs and consisted of an earthwork topped with a palisade
of rough-hewn timbers. It was taller than two men, so we would need ladders to get over it and that would take wood we did not have. The only trees for a good walk in any direction were some scrawny birches huddled in a copse.

  ‘We could break up a cart,’ offered Sigurd and Vladimir, only a red nose in a heap of fur-trimmed cloak squeaked out in his annoyed little voice, ‘No more carts. How will we haul away the treasure if we break them all up?’

  There was a moody silence and then Dobrynya cleared his throat. ‘So, we cannot go over the walls. Nor can we go through the gate, which will take a ram we do not have and cannot get.’

  If it was not for Cod-Biter we could go away, I was thinking, while the silent little Olaf, Vladimir’s constant shadow, poked the fire with a stick and sent sparks whirling up. From the walls, as if to mock us, we heard someone stamping to keep out the cold.

  ‘We will burn it,’ declared Vladimir. ‘The gate. We will set it on fire.’

  ‘With what?’ I countered. ‘Those timbers are iced solid. They will not burn without oil. Do we have oil?’

  ‘Then you work out a way,’ Vladimir shrilled angrily. ‘You won’t, though, for you don’t want to, since as soon as you do …’

  He clipped the rest off, realizing what he was about to say and buried his face right into the furs to hide his shame.

  As soon as we attacked, Cod-Biter would die. It was possible, if Farolf saw all was up for him. If we were quick, all the same …

  I got up, stiff with cold, and dragged the ice burrs off my beard, then walked away, conscious of their eyes on me. The darkness beyond the fire took me in even colder arms and hurried me towards the one the Oathsworn had lit, in the lee of a wagon and under a wadmal canopy. Behind, I heard the level rumble of Dobrynya, no doubt gently chiding his prince and telling him how much he needed Orm and the Oathsworn

  Fuck them, I thought, sullen as a storm sky, for I could see no way out of this mess and wondered – not for the first time – what game Odin played now.

  ‘So?’ challenged Finn. ‘What does the princeling want us to do?’

  I told them and Kvasir grunted. Thorgunna said what I had been thinking, that we should just go away and I expected a sharp growl from Finn, was surprised when he stared into the flames and said nothing.

  ‘Can we do that?’ demanded Ospak. ‘Surely we would be ridden down by those big Slav turds of the druzhina if we just took off?’

  ‘A good long-handled axe will see that lot off,’ muttered Gyrth, who had just such a weapon.

  ‘A sword drenched in blood easily finds its mark,’ agreed Red Njal, ‘as my granny used to say.’

  ‘The hacked-off foot cannot scurry far,’ Hlenni Brimill countered, grinning and Red Njal frowned, considering the matter.

  ‘The lame man runs when he has to,’ he said eventually. Men groaned, but Tjorvir spat in the fire and scowled at them both.

  ‘I came for silver. Bad enough we have to split it so many ways without running away empty-handed after all we have been through. As my own granny would say if she was here.’

  Voices grunted assent, unseen in the dark.

  ‘Are we so to split this great treasure?’ Thorgunna’s voice was light enough as she stepped into the firelight, but the eyes she laid on me were firm and black.

  ‘Why else are we here, then?’ demanded Ospak.

  ‘To keep the stake from certain people’s arses,’ Hauk Fast-Sailor grunted. ‘Namely our own.’

  ‘Aye, but,’ Ospak began and Gizur cut him off.

  ‘But no buts,’ he said. ‘It is Vladimir’s treasure now, sold to save us from what that little axe murderer Olaf Crowbone got us into, make no mistake on it.’

  ‘Odin’s arse it is,’ spat Gyrth. ‘It is our treasure.’

  ‘Our treasure,’ mimicked Finn suddenly. ‘Our treasure? You are come late to that feast, Steinbrodir.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ Gyrth said uneasily. Then, more indignantly, he added: ‘I am Oathsworn now, just as you. My arse is freezing here, just as yours is.’

  ‘Did it burn in Serkland?’ grunted Hauk Fast-Sailor. ‘Did you fight under the walls of Sarkel the first time we came here in search of this hoard?’

  ‘I am here now,’ returned Gyrth steadily. ‘And others like me. Without us, you would still be clucking at hens in Oestergotland, Hauk Fast-Sailor.’

  ‘We should not quarrel over this,’ Red Njal said and Hauk rounded on him.

  ‘What? No granny-wisdom about arguing over all the riches of the world, Njal?’

  Red Njal shrugged and favoured Hauk with a face as dour as a gathering storm. ‘Brawl with a pig and you come away with its stink,’ he said.

  There were some chuckles and grunts of agreement at this, while others started in to arguing one way or the other and Hauk, blinking furiously at Red Njal, was clearly working up to serious anger. I silenced them all, surprised that I was the only one, it seemed, who could see the truth of it.

  ‘It is not our treasure. Or Vladimir’s. Or even Atil’s. It is Odin’s – and he gifts it to those he thinks most fitting.’

  I stared at them all, one by one while their eyes slithered icily away.

  ‘Bone, blood and steel,’ I added pointedly. ‘Cod-Biter is in there. We will not run off and leave our own to die.’

  There was silence at that, sullen and dark, for the truth of it bit as deep as the cold. Eventually, Finn stirred, blinked and poked sluggish embers out of the fire.

  ‘Aye, well, first we have to get to over those walls. One step, then the other, as my old granny used to say.’

  ‘You never had an old granny,’ accused Red Njal.

  ‘I did,’ answered Finn. ‘And a cunning woman she was. Knew about when folk would die by watching birds and that if you dreamed a dream three times in a row it would come true.’

  ‘Sounds like Olaf Crowbone,’ muttered Kvasir. ‘Perhaps you are also his uncle. If you are, you have my sympathies.’

  ‘Did this full-cunning mother’s mother of yours have a way of leaping walls or walking through doors?’ I demanded, which clamped their jaws shut as if they had been stitched.

  ‘Well?’ I demanded, feeling the eyes resting on me, dragging the weight of the jarl torc until I swore it dug into the flesh of my neck. ‘We need to get over those walls or through the gate, so if anyone has some clever in him, now is the time to hoik it out for us all to share.’

  They ran through the ram and ladders and I explained why that would not do. Jon Asanes came up with the idea of an upturned cart with men under it, running at the gate as a ram, which was not bad at all. We gave that one up because we could not be sure the cart would be strong enough, or the men to carry it, for that matter.

  Eventually, Kvasir stretched and yawned. ‘If we cannot go over the walls and through the gate, then we will have to go over the gate.’

  There was a pause; those who had not heard it properly asked their neighbours what Kvasir had said. When they were told, they were no wiser than any the rest of us, so he laid it out and it became clear that, while we had been talking, he had been thinking.

  When he was finished, we all chewed on it, looking for flaws in it until we realized that Kvasir had seen more with his one eye than all of us with our two.

  ‘Can you do that?’ Dobrynya asked, when I walked back to his fire to tell him what the Oathsworn would do when morning came.

  ‘We will do it,’ I answered, ‘for we are the Oathsworn.’

  I was glad they could not see my clenched belly and curled-up balls and discover how firmly I believed this.

  Dobrynya glanced at Sigurd, then over at the sleeping Vladimir, little Olaf huddled beside him, and nodded wearily. I hunkered down beside him and we stared at the fire for a while, while the pair of them raked around for the delicate words to find out what the prince’s pillars needed to know – if I had been so offended by this boy prince that I would leave or, worse, seek revenge.

  I had no reason to do it, but saved them the trouble of speaking.


  ‘In return for the lives he held in his hand,’ I said to the fire, ‘I agreed to hold up the prince’s breaking sky. True, no oath was spoken on it – as you know, we oath only to each other, in the eye of Odin – but I am still shouldering the burden.’

  There was silence while the fire found ice in its food and spat irritably. Then Dobrynya cleared his throat.

  ‘He is young, but growing well,’ he said. ‘There will come a time when you will welcome the friendship of such a prince. The death of his father has flung him into this too early and unprepared.’

  I nodded. The friendship of a prince would be welcome if I survived the winter – or if he did. I said as much and Sigurd grinned, which pinched the flesh white around his silver nose.

  ‘The one thing I have learned,’ he growled, ‘is that some are born to greatness. He is one. Little Olaf there is another. They will survive.’

  Even if everyone else has to die, I was thinking, while his little Olaf smiled and showed teeth bloody with firelight, as though he had just lifted his head from a fresh kill. Yet, for all his cub fierceness and his strange seidr magic, he was afraid most of the time. Afraid and alone, for all his Uncle Sigurd and his distant, unknown relatives, for Crowbone would always be fastened to Klerkon’s privy, waiting in vain for them to rescue him.

  Near him, Vladimir stirred and moaned, now only a boy in his sleep and one who could not ever have his father say all the things a father should, nor say all the things a son should.

  I knew how they both felt, which was why I held up their sky.

  That night, I dreamed of Hild, the woman who had led us originally to Atil’s howe and had gone mad there – or been possessed by the fetch of Atil’s dead bride who had, legend said, killed him and been fastened alive to his throne in that tomb.

  I saw Hild as I had last seen her, hair flying like black snakes, the sabre she had, twin of my own, whirling like a skein of light as she slid away, back into that dark place, screaming curses at me while the flood-water rose round her.