by Robert Low
Thorgunna brought me flatbread and sat while I tore chunks off and stuffed it in, trying to look as if I relished eating, but glad of the skyr to wash down the great tasteless lumps, my throat too filled with the fear of those bearcoats. Somewhere in the questing dark they prowled, waiting for the scouts to bring them news. Then they would be unleashed on us.
‘Will they stop then, when we reach the other side of the mountains?’ she asked, as if reading my thoughts.
I did not know. I did not think so. I was thinking only death would stop Randr Sterki — but Styrbjorn’s man, this Ljot, wanted something else and I did not know what it was and that part I mentioned to her.
Thorgunna hauled a cloak round her shoulders as the rain-chilled air smoked her breath into the night.
‘Styrbjorn is King Eirik’s nephew and so his heir,’ she answered, slowly working it through her head. ‘He was so until he became such a ranter and raver that he was thrown out for his pains. But he still is heir and will be king if Eirik dies.’
‘Aye, maybe,’ I said, forcing a final swallow. ‘Though more than few will not like the idea much. Anyway, he is young yet, though it seems he does not want to wait to be king.’
‘He will not be at all,’ Thorgunna answered meaningfully, ‘if Eirik has a son.’
There it was, like a cunning picture of little tiles seen too close up; step back from it and it swam into view; Queen Sigrith. Styrbjorn wanted Sigrith — well, he wanted the child she carried and he wanted it dead.
Thorgunna watched my mouth drop like a coal-eater and then she rose, taking me by the hand. I followed her through the bodies huddled round the fire or close together under shelters, dank with misery. In one of the wagons lay a bulky, moaning figure and, squatted next to her like a bull seal, was Jasna, stroking and crooning soothing balm into the groans of the other.
‘How is she?’ asked Thorgunna and Jasna raised her pudding face, jowls trembling, and patted the sweat-greased cheeks of Queen Sigrith.
‘Not good. No easy birth. Soon, little bird, soon. All the pain will be over and then a beautiful son, eh…’
I looked wildly at Thorgunna, who said nothing, but led me a little way away.
‘The queen will birth, in a day, perhaps less.’
It was as good as an axe to the hull of all our hopes, that simple phrase; there would be no swift moving from here, banging her about in the back of a cart and, soon, we would have to stop entirely until the bairn was birthed. I thought I heard the bearcoats roar their triumph to the wet-shrouded moon.
Botolf added another log to the fire as Aoife collected wooden platters, Cormac locked to one hip and nodding, half-asleep. Thorgunna came to me with dry breeks and tunic and serk, made me strip and change there and then, taking my sea-sodden boots to be rubbed with fat.
I sat next to Finn, sticking my bare feet closer to the flames as he cleaned the clotted blood from The Godi. The rain spat on the wadmal canopy and hissed in the fire just beyond it. Ref came up, carrying my sword; I had not even realised I had let it go, probably when Thorgunna hugged me.
‘Not too bad,’ he said cheerfully. ‘There’s a great notch out of it and I cannot grind it out, for it is all of the edge metal from that part.’
Then his face changed, like a sudden squall on a mirror fjord.
‘Cannot grind it out properly anyway,’ he added with a sigh. ‘My forge is gone and all the tools with it.’
He handed it to me and I looked at the v-notch he pointed to. The sliver was in the mast of the Elk, for sure and I told him so. We all went quiet then, thinking of the black fjord and the sunken Elk and our oarmates, rolling in the slow, cold dark with their hair like sea-wrack.
‘We should make blot for them,’ Finn said and Abjorn came up at that moment, with little Koll at his heels.
‘I have set watchers,’ he told me from the grim cliff of his face, then jerked a thumb at the boy behind him. ‘Like me, young Koll wishes news of his father.’
‘I have none,’ I answered, feeling guilty that, of all the fledglings who had occupied my thoughts, the one I had been charged with fostering had not been one of them. I signalled him closer and he stepped into the light and out of the rain, the firelight on his face showing up the white of him and the grit of his jaw, making a fierce light in his pale eyes.
‘You are safe here,’ I said, hoping it was true. ‘Your father, once he has dealt with Styrbjorn, will come and help us defeat these nithings. Until then, we will get a little damp and have an adventure in the mountains.’
‘My mother…’ he said and I felt a stab, felt foolish. Of course…he had heard at the beach how Styrbjorn had dealt with all his family. Ingrid swept in then, gathering the boy into her apron and making soothing noises about honey and milk and sleep, for it was late.
I looked round the fire then, at all the expectant faces — Klepp Spaki, the blank, strange mask of Vuokko, the droop-mouthed Ref, bemoaning the loss of his forge and tools, Red Njal and Hlenni and Bjaelfi, staring at me across the flames, faces bloody with light and hoping for wisdom.
And there, in the shadows, no more than a pale blob of face, was Leo the monk.
‘Roman Fire,’ I called to him and he stepped forward, all the faces turning from me to him.
‘So I heard,’ he answered, arms folded into the sleeves of his clothing. ‘Though we call it Persian Fire. Sometimes Sea Fire.’
‘No matter what you call it,’ I spat back into his plump smile, ‘it is never let far from the Great City. Nor into the hands of such as Styrbjorn. I had heard it was a great crime to do so.’
‘Indeed,’ he replied sombrely. ‘The ingredients of what you call Roman Fire were disclosed by an angel to the first great Constantine. It was he who ordained that there should be a curse, in writing and on the Holy Altar of the Church of God, on any who dare give the secret to another nation.’
He paused and frowned.
‘Whether this is giving the secret is a matter for debate — the likes of Styrbjorn could not learn how to make it from what he has been given. However, such an event is cause for concern among many departments of the Imperium, where such weapons are strictly regulated.’
Concern? Burned ships and dead men were more than concern and I bellowed that at him. The rage gagged in my throat, both at his diffidence and the implication that the northers were barbarians too stupid to find out the secret of Roman Fire from weapons handed out like toys to bairns. It did not cool me any to know he was right in it, too.
He nodded, smooth as a polished mirror and seemingly unconcerned by my glaring.
‘Indeed. I would not be surprised if certain of those departments took steps to find out what has happened to their missing amounts.’
‘Such as sending someone to find out?’
He inclined his head, face blank as an egg.
‘I would not be in the least surprised.’
I watched him for a moment longer, but nothing flickered on it, no firm sign that he was the one sent to find out. He was young — not in the way we counted it, but certainly in the way the Great City did — but I suspected he had been sent and that made him a man to be watched. In the end, I broke the locked antlers of our eyes, turning to tell everyone that Styrbjorn had sent warriors here to end the life of Sigrith and the child she carried in her belly, so that he would remain sole heir to the high seat of the Svears and Geats.
The women grunted, while the men stayed silent. I did not say anything about why Randr Sterki had — I was sure — begged Styrbjorn to be the one to take on the task; those who remembered what we had done on Svartey did not need reminding of it. I told them all we would move north, across the mountains, as soon as it was light enough to see, trying to keep my voice easy, as if I was telling them when we would sow rye and in what field that year.
Afterwards, when others had rolled into skins and cloaks, I sat with Finn listening to Botolf snore — alone by the fire, for he had given his space beside Ingrid to Helga and Aoife and the other ba
irns, for better warmth. In the dark, I heard Aoife cooing softly to Cormac to soothe him — beautiful boy, she said. Where’s my lovely boy, white as an egg, then?
‘If it comes to it,’ Finn said eventually, ‘I will fight Randr Sterki.’
‘Why you?’ I countered and he shrugged and looked at me, half-ashamed, half-defiant. The memory of him humping away at the dying wife of Randr Sterki slunk sourly between us.
‘I killed his boy,’ I said sourly. ‘So it should be me. Red Njal, I am remembering, killed others of his family. Perhaps we should take it in turns.’
Botolf woke himself with a particularly large snore and sat up, groaning and wiping sleep from his eyes.
‘Odin’s arse…my shoulder and back hurt. I hate sleeping on the ground in winter.’
‘A hard raiding man like you?’ snorted Finn. ‘Surely not.’
‘Shut your hole, Finn,’ Botolf countered amiably, sitting up and wincing. ‘The worse thing is the itch in my wooden leg.’
There was silence for a moment; a last log collapsed and whirled sparks up.
‘What are we going to do?’ demanded Botolf suddenly.
‘About what? Your itching log-leg?’ I asked and he waved his arms wildly in all directions.
‘All this. The queen and weans.’
‘We take them to Vitharsby and then east to Jarl Brand,’ I told him.
‘Just like that?’ Botolf snapped. He rubbed his beard with frustration. ‘Hunted by toad-licking wearers of bear and wolf skins? And at least a ship’s crew of hard raiders? With a woman about to pup and half the bairns in the country?’
‘One of them your own,’ Finn pointed out poisonously. ‘Another is mine. Do we begin throwing them over our shoulder as we run, then? We will start with Helga Hiti.’
I saw Botolf’s face twist and frown as he fought to work all this out, only succeeding in fuelling more anger.
‘What do you think we should do?’ I asked and it was like throwing water on a sleeping drunk. He blinked. He blew out through pursed lips and surfaced with a thought, triumphant.
‘We ought to leave the queen and ride off with our own,’ he declared. ‘We could go to Thordis’ place, which will be Finn’s when he marries her. What are the fate of kings and princes to us, eh?’
It was astounding. I remembered Jarl Brand had said something of the same when we were in Serkland, only it was about the back-stabbing in high places that went on in the Great City. It never stopped amazing me, the things that stuck in Botolf’s thought-cage.
‘She is our queen,’ Finn growled, flailing with one hand, as if trying to pluck the words he needed out of the air. ‘We have to protect her. And Thordis’ steading is only a short ride from Hestreng — if it was not behind the hills here, you could probably see it burn.’
I looked at him, but if the thought of everything he might one day own going up in smoke bothered him, he did not betray it by as much as a catch in his voice. Botolf flung his arms in the air.
‘Protect the queen? Why? She would not give the likes of me the smell off her shit,’ he grunted sourly. ‘And how do we protect her? There is barely a handful of us.’
‘We are Oathsworn,’ Finn declared, thrusting out his chin. ‘How can we do anything else but guard a queen and the heir to the throne of Eirik the Victorious?’
There was silence then, for fair fame had closed its jaws and even Botolf had no answer for the grip of them. We were Oathsworn, Odin’s own, and would die before we took one step back, so the skalds had it. Not for the first time I marvelled at how fame had shackles stronger than iron to fasten you to a hopeless endeavour.
‘Might be a girl,’ Botolf offered sullenly and I shook my head. Thorgunna had done her hen’s egg test and it had come up as a boy, no mistake. I said as much.
‘Ah well,’ Finn said as Botolf continued to glower. ‘Perhaps you have the right of it, Botolf. I never did care much for wealth and glory; after all, we have all we need, though rebuilding Thordis’ place — if it is burned and if I wed her — will be expensive and all gold is useful.’
He stretched, winked at me where Botolf could not see and farted sonorously.
‘Anyway,’ he went on. ‘Once I have a ship under me I am a happy man — so perhaps we should tether the queen here like a goat and head for safety.’
‘Aha!’ Botolf declared triumphantly, looking from me to Finn and back. Then he frowned.
‘What wealth and glory?’
I shrugged, picking up from Finn as he looked wickedly at me from under his hair, pretending to wipe a scrap of fat-rich fleece carefully up and down The Godi.
‘The usual stuff,’ I said. ‘Meaningless to the likes of us, who have silver and fame and land enough already.’
‘I have no land,’ Botolf growled and I felt a pang of shame, for I had known this was a fret for him, since Ingrid constantly nagged and chafed him over it, wanting him to be first in his own hall rather than just another follower in mine. That was why I had mentioned it.
‘Oh, aye,’ I said, as if just realising it, then shrugged. ‘Still. We would have to bring the queen and bairn safe back to King Eirik before he showered us with rings and praise and odal-rights on steadings — after all, it is his first-born and the heir to his wealth and lands. What would he not give for such a safe return? But — too dangerous, as you say. Better to cut and run, pick up the pieces of our old lives once these hard raiders have gone.’
There was silence, broken only by the rain hissing in the dying fire and the snores of the sleepers nearby.
‘Would they really give us land?’ Botolf asked after a while.
‘Aye, sadly, for we are men of the sea, after all,’ Finn replied. ‘Still — skalds would write whole sagas about you.’
‘Fuck that,’ Botolf grunted. ‘I have such sagas already. You cannot graze goats on a saga. And for a man of the sea, Finn Horsearse, you are talking of steadings readily enough.’
He was silent for a moment and I decided enough was enough; somewhere, through the rain mist, dawn was racing at us. I half rose and Botolf looked up and spoke.
‘Do you think we can win against ulfhednar?’ he asked suddenly. Finn laughed, quiet and savage; I sat down again, chilled by the term, which was used for madmen in wolfskins.
‘Have we ever been beaten?’ Finn demanded.
Botolf considered it for a moment, then stood up, nodding and serious.
‘Then you are right. We are Oathsworn. We never run from a fight and this is our queen. I am with you, for sure. Now I am off to a warm bed, if I can squeeze in between bairns.’
Finn watched him stump off into the dark beyond the fire and shook his head wearily.
‘By the Hammer — there are stones with more clever than him.’
We both knew, all the same, that all Botolf had needed was an excuse to do what he already knew to be right, to have someone persuade him to it.
Then Finn turned to me, sliding The Godi back into the sheath.
‘Do you think we can beat them?’ he asked.
We had to. It was as simple as that. I said so and he nodded, rising and heading off for his own bed, leaving me with fire-shapes and weariness.
Thorgunna, when I went to her, was awake, sitting hunched up and wrapped in blankets and almost under the wagon in which the queen of all the Svears and Geats groaned and gasped. Nearby, Kuritsa huddled under a cloak — not his own, I fancied — under the canopy and out of the rain and his black eyes watched me arriving. He was a thrall and his name meant ‘chicken’ because, when I had bought him, he had a shock of hair like a cock’s comb before it was cut to stubble.
‘No-one sleeps tonight,’ I said, trying to be light with it. Thorgunna pulled me down beside her, tenting me under her cloak and blankets, giving me her warmth. Her head was heavy on my shoulder.
‘Kuritsa just arrived,’ she said. ‘The two who ran off with him are still missing and Kuritsa does not know where they are. But he killed a man, he says.’
That
was news and I sat up. Kuritsa sat up, too, looking warily at me from out of the cave of his face.
‘You killed a man,’ I said to him and he nodded uneasily; I was not surprised at his wariness, since thralls found with weapons were almost always killed outright.
‘I took his little knife and killed him,’ he said, almost defiantly. ‘Then I took his bow and shot at his friend, but it was dark, I was hasty and I am out of the way of it. I missed.’
He produced the bow and three arrows, thrusting them towards me, his square, flat-nosed face proud. He grinned.
‘I was not always a thrall,’ he said. ‘I hunted, in my own land.’
I looked at him; he was thin, dark-eyed, dark-haired and far from his own lands, somewhere in the Finnmark — yet he had a tilt to his close-cropped chin that would have had him beaten if matters were different. I told him to keep the bow, that he would need it sooner or later.
Kuritsa blinked at that, then smiled and held the weapon to his chest as if it warmed him.
‘They hunt in fours,’ he offered suddenly. ‘One of the ham-ramr and three with him, tracking and offering him their shields. I had the favour of gods when I found two trackers and no ham-ramr.’
I looked at him; the word ham-ramr was an interesting one, for it was used on a man who changed his shape in a fit that also gave him great strength and power. Small wonder, then, that all the thralls had run off screaming — and more power to this one, who had not. Yet Thorgunna muttered under her breath, something about the direness of arming a thrall.
‘You should sleep,’ I told her and had back the familiar scorning snort.
‘I am too old to enjoy cold nights and wet ground,’ she replied. ‘Still — this will make your son into a raiding man, for sure, since it seems that is all his lot.’
I ignored her dripping venom and put my hand on her belly then, feeling the warmth, fancying I could feel the heat of what grew in it. I thought, too, about what it would feel like to lose what was snugged up in the harbour of that belly — and the belly, too. All hopes and fears buried in the earth, given to Freyja and, with them, a part of me in that cold, worm-filled ground.
