The Prow Beast

NINE

It was an island humped like Onund’s shoulder, where green slopes ran down to meet sand, then water; on a day of bright sunshine and birdsong it would have been a pretty place to be, but on this day, with what we had come for and the rain in our faces, it had no charm.

On the shore were buildings, mean as sties most of them, but others large and prosperous-looking, with carved wooden doorways and thatched roofs. In the quiet curve of this cluster of houses lay a series of wharves, like spokes on a half-wheel, where ships were tied up; more vessels were run up on the beach not far away and most were the solid, heavy riverboats the Slavs call strugs, carved from a single tree. The others were fat trading knarrer, but the only raiding ship other than the one I stood on was hauled up for careening; I knew it at once as Ljot’s ship.

‘Look at them run,’ laughed Ospak, pointing and a few others joined in, harsh with the excitement of it all. They were all the newer crew, who had never been anywhere; the old hands hardly looked up.

There was a clanging noise from the solid fortress, a square of fat timber piles, their sharpened points softened by age and moss, with square towers at each corner and flanking the gate. I had taken the prow beasts off, but the settlement swarmed like an anthill and the alarm was sounding in the fortress which glowered over it.

‘Send a man to the prow,’ I said to Crowbone. ‘Unarmed and without byrnie. Let him stand there with his arms out and weapon-free, to show we mean no harm.’

He acknowledged it with a small nod and passed it on to Alyosha, who cut a man from the pack and sent him. So far, so good — but having Crowbone and his crew as Oathsworn was like walking on the edge of a seax; I would not have done it had it not been for Jarl Brand and Koll.

Jarl Brand had been the only one not at the feast King Eirik gave for the safe return of his queen and his son. As Finn had said, once we had done with our greetings, that was not because Brand was lacking the strength or grit for it, but just because he had a wounded face that would put folk off their eating.

Not that everyone at the feast, where King Eirik presented his son, had an appetite; too many of the guests were strange company for that.

There were Christ priests, a gaggle of them from the West Franks and the Saxlanders of Hammaburg, all gabbling about baptisms and chrism-loosenings while glaring at each other and trying to make sure they had no horse meat in their bowls.

Then there was Haakon of Hladir, ruler of Norway which he had from the hand of Denmark’s King Harald Bluetooth and which hand he was now trying to bite. Bluetooth, not quite a broken-fanged dog, was snarling back and so Haakon was seated at King Eirik’s left, looking for help and smiling politely through the teeth he had to grit every time he heard Crowbone called ‘Prince of Norway’.

Eirik himself, though crowned king of the Svears and Geats, still had troubles up and down his lands and Bluetooth had designs on them that he was not about to give up, so any enemy of Bluetooth was a friend of King Eirik and Haakon had been handy for the fight against Styrbjorn.

Then, astoundingly perched in the guest bench, was Svein, Bluetooth’s son, who had also helped against Styrbjorn, though he was scarce older than that cursed youth. Young enough, in fact, not have fleeced up the chin-hair that would give him his famed by-name in later life — Forkbeard — he was here to annoy his da, for he wanted more say in Danish matters and Bluetooth had no liking to let him.

Then there was Crowbone, fresh broken to manhood and following Queen Sigrith with his dog-eyes. For her part, she was dressed in a blue so dark it was almost black, trimmed with white wolf and dripping with amber and silver, every inch the queen she wanted to appear, pleased with herself for presenting a son to her king, rich and ripe with life because she and the boy had survived the affair. Better still, of course, was her man’s acceptance of little Olaf, for he had not been near the birth himself as was proper and that was a matter doubled when kings were involved.

So she knew the effect she had on the new man that was Crowbone and revelled in the power of it while spurning him, as you would a little boy, with witty flytings wherever possible.

Some trader had brought a talking-bird all the way from Serkland, a green affair with a crown of blood and Haakon had bought it for show. It sat, hunched, with its feathers falling out and miserable from the cold and dark of the north as well as the lack of proper food — the thrall weans kept trying to feed it flakes of fish, as if it was a gull.

‘It speaks,’ Svein called, trying to make himself a presence, ‘in that tongue they use in Serkland.’

Then he turned to me, a twisted little smile smeared on his face and called out the length of the table: ‘Orm Bear Slayer, you speak some of that. What does it say?’

It gave the proper response to a greeting in the Mussulmann tongue, as well as phrases such as ‘God is great’ and ‘There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet’ and so people oohed and aahed when it seemed that I chatted amiably to the bird. My standing, fame-rich already, was confirmed and it was clear from his scowl that Svein had not meant that to happen. Nor, it seemed, was Haakon any happier and he did not like me to begin with because of my closeness with young Crowbone. I could not blame him for that — he was king in Norway and sitting a few careful benches down from a boy claiming to be the true prince of that land.

‘Perhaps the Bear Slayer can use this gift to command the return of his fostri, Koll Brandsson,’ he said nastily and smiled a sharp-toothed grin. I marked it, pretended disinterest and continued to tell the thralls charged with caring for the bird that it needed berries and nuts, should be kept out of the cold and put in the sun, when it actually shone.

Then, eventually, I turned into his smile and ignored it, looking at King Eirik instead.

‘A marvellous bird,’ I told him. ‘Seldom seen in these parts and so doubly strange that Jarl Haakon here has come into possession of it.’

‘Strange?’ Eirik asked.

‘Aye,’ I mused. ‘I know Gunnhild is old and fled from Norway — but her seidr is still strong enough.’

The smile died on Haakon’s face; panic and fear chased over it like cat and dog and he looked wildly from me to the bird and back again. He had ousted Gunnhild, and the last of Bloodaxe’s sons, from Norway five years ago — they had fled to Orkney and were causing trouble there — but he feared the witch Mother of Kings still. She was reputed to be able to take the shape of any bird and fly through the Other, far and wide, to perch and listen to plots and plans.

‘Such seidr,’ I added, lightly vicious as the kiss of a fang, ‘has no effect on me.’

Which, because they had heard all the skald tales of the witches I had supposedly killed and the scaled trolls and all the rest, was a boast accepted easily by the company and they laughed, though shakily.

As a result King Eirik had the bird removed from the feasting hall and Haakon watched it all the way out of the room; later, I heard he had it thrown to his deerhounds and felt sorry for that, even though I knew the bird would have died soon anyway.

One other watched that bird leave the room. I had forgotten that Crowbone had developed his way with birds because of Gunnhild’s reputation; she, of course, had hunted the young Crowbone after killing his father to get the throne Haakon now sat on. It was that which prompted Crowbone to do what he did next, I am sure of it, for he always acted on the signs birds offered up to him and there was no more singular bird than that blood-headed talking one from Serkland.

‘If you go after Koll Brandsson,’ he whispered to me, ashenfaced, ‘I will take your Odin Oath and follow you.’

I blinked at that; the idea of Crowbone as one of the Oathsworn was one I did not wish to think about at all for the dangers in it — but there was no easy way to refuse it, especially when it became clear that I needed him.

That was after the feasting was done and the real business commenced. King Eirik promised thralls and timber and men who knew how to build, as well as fat ships to transport all of this and supplies enough to see Hestreng through the lean time of summer to the first harvest.

‘I cannot spare fighting men,’ he added, frowning, ‘nor raiding ships, for I am battle-light in both and my right arm is felled for now.’

Eye to eye and alone in his closed room in the prow of the hall, he leaned closer, blood-dyed by torch glow. His neat-trimmed beard was faded red-gold and under the hat he wore for vanity he was bald save for a fringe round his ears. His feasting horn of mead was elsewhere; now he toyed with a blue glass goblet of wine and had offered me some, but I stuck with an iron-banded horn of nutty ale. Clear heads are best when dealing with kings — besides, my head hurt enough from the scar on my forehead and my blood-clotted nose to add wine fumes to it.

‘The Greek monk, Leo, has taken Koll as hostage and sailed with Ljot Tokeson,’ he said, pinching salt on bread to rid himself of the cloy of mead in his mouth. ‘Ljot is brother to Pallig Tokeson and Styrbjorn is with them both.’

Pallig, Lord of Joms. King Eirik looked at me with rheumy eyes and saw I knew the name, then waved a hand and sighed.

‘I know, I know — Styrbjorn is a young fool and will need to be punished — but he is my nephew and still has uses. I want him returned to me.’

I did not think Styrbjorn would want to return until he was sure of mercy rather than wrath and I said so.

‘Just so,’ Eirik said, looking at me. ‘So when you go to get your fostri, you may like to carry my mercy with you and let him know of it.’

‘Jarl Brand, lord?’ I asked, as bland and polite as I could make it. King Eirik stroked the neat trim of his beard and scowled.

‘It will sit hard with him, but he has placed his hands in mine and I will pay any blood-price for his losses at the hand of Styrbjorn, who is kin, after all.’

So there it was — King Eirik wanted Styrbjorn around, for his son was a bairn and bairns are fragile wee things; Styrbjorn was the only other heir he had. It came to me that Brand might not suffer it as lightly as King Eirik thought — what was the blood-price for a dead wife and the hostaged son of someone as powerful as Jarl Brand? Not enough if it was my wife and bairn.

He saw something of that in my face and, to my surprise, laid a friendly hand on the length of my forearm.

‘You are a good man, Orm Bear Slayer,’ he said slowly, as if picking his words from a chest of coins and wanting all the whole ones. ‘You have silver-luck and fame-luck and men follow you for it, for all that your birthing was awkward. You have served me well these past years.’

He paused and I said nothing, though it smacked me like a blow, the fact that a king thought my birthing awkward; if he did, then others thought the same.

The fact of it is that, in the north, knowing who fathered a child to an unmarried woman was important enough to have its own law. According to it, the old Bogarthing Law, a woman was asked the father’s name at the point of labour and, if she stayed silent, the child was considered a thrall from birth. If she named a man, he became ‘half-father’ and had responsibilities to the child.

My mother, of course, had married Rurik while filled full with me and he had claimed fatherhood. The truth was that another, Gunnar Raudi, had been the seed of me and was thought dead. By the time he returned, I was born and my mother dead of the strain of it — so I had avoided thralldom by the merest whisper of Rurik’s breath. All of which made the awkward matter the king spoke of.

He looked at me and took a breath; I braced for more daggers to come.

‘I would not do you offence,’ he went on, ‘but for those reasons and some others you will never be more than a little jarl and, for all your women and weans and sheep and horses, never a landsman farmer.’

He stopped, studying me carefully to see my reaction and the air in the room became as still and thick as a curtain. I kept my face bland and my hands on the table where he could see them; the truth was that he had the right of it, for sure, and though the blood was in my face, I could not do anything other than admit it by a silence like the stillness of rock.

‘You follow the prow beast,’ Eirik went on, ‘taking the Aesir with you out onto the whale road. Here on the land…’

He paused again and waved his glass to encompass his kingdom, slopping wine on his knuckles. ‘Here on the land, matters are differently done. Like the Christ priests at my table.’

‘I saw them,’ I gritted out.

The king nodded, sucked wine from his hand and sighed.

‘They come from the Franks and Otto’s Saxlanders and snarl at each other,’ he said. ‘Do you know why, Jarl Orm?’

‘They like to argue about their Tortured God,’ I answered and he blinked and smiled gently.

‘Aye, just so — and not so. What think you of the Christ Jesus?’

I gave him the answer I gave all who asked me that — I have never met the man. Then I added that I would say nothing more, for it was not a good thing to malign the Tortured God in a place thick with his priests and Eirik shifted a little on his bench at that.

‘They come and snarl at each other and smile at me because there is more to this White Christ matter than worship,’ he said eventually, then leaned forward a little, as if imparting some great secret.

‘They are always the first men to come. What follows is a binding among kings. Alliances, wealth and power,’ he hissed. ‘There are Frank priests and Saxland priests and even ones from the Englisc, all looking to bring their White Christ to my lands rather than suffer someone else to bring the White Christ here. They offer much in return for a dip in water. That is kingship.’

‘They offer a white underkirtle,’ I answered flatly, ‘or so I had heard.’

Eirik’s smile was lopsided and wry. ‘Kings do a little better — though sometimes I am thinking the prizes glitter well, but are not worth all the kneeling and praying they say has to go with it.’

‘So much the better for kicking them all out and offering a sacrifice to Odin for having the clever to do it,’ I answered stubbornly, more sharply than I had intended, but Eirik simply squeezed my forearm and shook his head sorrowfully.

‘Out on the whale road that may seem clear,’ he answered and, in that moment I saw he envied the thought of that and realised the true burden of the crown he wore.

‘So — you have Christ priests looking to prise you away from the Aesir,’ I growled, irritated with the maudlin king, more so because he was right in what he said. ‘What has this to do with the matter of Styrbjorn?’

King Eirik blinked and drank some wine.

‘You are a clever man,’ he said. ‘You know it was this Leo who brought the silver that let Styrbjorn buy Pallig, Ljot and their bearcoats. You have yet to ask yourself the why of it.’

I blinked, for he had it right and I felt the blood flush to my cheeks at this, as sure a sign of being a little jarl as he had claimed. King Eirik nodded.

‘All the Christ priests here are from the West,’ he said. ‘No Greek ones, the ones who cross their chests the opposite way. Vladimir of Novgorod has no Greek ones at his court either, which makes us friends. His brothers do, which makes them my enemies.’

I saw it then, in a sudden churn of belly and mind. Vladimir of Novgorod, facing off against his brothers Oleg and Jaropolk, was for the old gods of the Slavs, though he tolerated Christ worshippers for his grandmother had been one. His brothers had priests of the Greek type swarming all over them, but Vladimir did not care for those monks much.

This was the Great City at work. Vladimir stood in the way of their turning all the Rus to the Greek Christ — and so to the will of Constantinople — so it would try to oust him using his brothers. King Eirik, of course, had sent warriors to help Vladimir, so the Great City would prefer it if that changed. Enter Styrbjorn.

He saw I had worked it out at last and sighed.

‘I am thinking Styrbjorn’s failure makes him useless to them now. They will try another way. I may even have to accept that monk Leo back at my court, offering me rich gifts to turn my eyes away from Vladimir. Or a secret death in my wine or food. What they cannot force they will try to buy or kill.’

I felt pity for him then, this man who would be king, who had to bend and twist himself into unnatural shapes to make his arse fit the seat of it. I drank to take the taste away, but that only made it worse.

‘Go to Pallig Tokeson, where the monk Leo has fled,’ Eirik said. ‘If Pallig sees there is no trade to be had other than my friendship for the boy’s return, he will give your fostri back,’ King Eirik said. ‘If he has any clever in him at all.’

There was much said about Pallig Tokeson but excessive clever was not part of it. He controlled Joms, which the Saxlanders called Jumne and the Wends, Wolin. There were other names for it, but the skalds — gold-fed by Pallig, no doubt — sang silly tales of the warriors of Joms, who never took a step back in battle and who all lived in a great fortress, where no women were allowed. For all that his men were no Northmen at all, but Wends, he had enough of them to be a dangerous man — and still had some bearcoats, which I mentioned.

‘Styrbjorn himself will help,’ King Eirik declared, ‘for he will want me to know how sorry he is for all that has been done and so will put himself at some risk to make Pallig see sense.’

The fact that I was putting myself at risk, of course, was neither here nor there, it seemed. I still did not think Brand would be so amiable about matters and was surer still after Finn and I went to see him, later in the night.

Brand had taken an arrow in the face, to the right of his nose and just below the eye. It had been a hunting arrow, which was wound-luck for him, for the shaft sprang free and left the head, which was not barbed. Normally, a hunter would cut the valuable arrowhead out of the animal and use it again — but now it was driven six inches deep through the cheek and into the back of Jarl Brand’s skull.

Ofegh, they called Jarl Brand. It was a good by-name for him and meant ‘one whose doom is not upon him’, though a man with four eyes would be hard put to see that in the face that turned to Finn and me. His main wife, Koll’s mother, was dead and his own life was down to a single strand of Norn-weave, it seemed to me.

In the light of a fat, guttering tallow his bone-white hair was lank and stuck to his yellowed face by sweat, but his eyes were still hot and fierce and his wrist-clasp strong. He had what seemed to be a tree growing from his face, though it turned out to be thin, stripped withies of elder, dried and stitched into silk marked with suitable runes, though they were not our own sort.

This was to widen the wound down to where the arrowhead was and, once the healer — a Khazar Jew — was certain it was deep enough, he would insert some narrow-point smithing tongs and take the thing out. Until then, there was only the great, raw-wet lipless mouth of the widened wound and endless agony, which had carved itself on Brand’s face, shaved clean for the first time I had known him.

‘Bad business,’ Brand said in a voice mushed with pain; the withies waggled as he spoke and the Khazar fussed with cleaning probes made from flax soaked in barley, honey and what looked like the pine resin tar we used on fresh ship planks. It stank.

‘Aye — it looks a sore one, right enough,’ I answered, which seemed inadequate when I could see Brand’s back teeth and his tongue waggle as he spoke. He waved one hand as if chasing a fly.

‘My son,’ he said. ‘That priest.’

‘I will get him back,’ I answered and he closed his eyes briefly, which was a nod, I worked out, the real thing being too painful for him. So was talking, but he did it.

‘The king will help. Styrbjorn.’

He meant he was owed by the king for what Styrbjorn had done. I told him what the king had said about him helping to free Koll and being brought back as if nothing had happened at all.

Jarl Brand blinked his blink.

‘Kingship,’ he mushed, which was answer enough, I now knew.

Men appeared suddenly, quiet and shuffling, bareheaded and twisting their hands — Rovald, Rorik Stari, Kaelbjorn Rog, Myrkjartan and Uddolf, with Abjorn at their head.

‘Nithings,’ Jarl Brand hissed and would have said a lot more if it had not been agony for him to speak at all. Instead, he waved a hand and sent them off, droop-headed and shamed, dismissed from his service — and into mine, of course.

‘Take care of them,’ he growled at me and twisted his face in what tried to be a smile, but failed for the pain of it. Then he flapped his hand again and a man appeared holding a sheathed sword. Brand took it and handed it to me.

‘I hear,’ he said, pain gritting his teeth between the words, ‘Randr Sterki took yours. Take this. Get your fostri back.’

Then he looked at me, pale eyes lambent with meaning.

‘Use the blade well, as I would,’ he forced out and gripped my hand like a raven’s claw.

It was his own blade and so a rich offering doubled. The hilt was worked with carved antler horn and silver, the sheath whorled and snaked with gripping beasts in fine leather. The gift-price of it did not go by me — I knew he wanted me to bury it in Styrbjorn — nor did his phrase: ‘Get your fostri back.’

Not his son. My fostri. My responsibility, my shame for losing him and my shame doubled if I did not get him back unharmed. I had known that and knew also that Brand was just cutting the runes of it clearly, like a prudent father, so I allowed no offence, bowed politely, took the sword and left, thinking to myself that it did not matter, that nothing mattered to a man as wyrded with doom as myself.

I hoped Odin might hold off enough to let me save Koll, all the same — and kill Styrbjorn, if possible. I brooded on that, sitting under the prow beast as it carved across the slate-water to the mouth of the Odra, saying nothing much and aware that folk were looking at me. I remembered, years before, we had all looked at the Oathsworn’s old leader Einar the Black in much the same way, when we were sure his doom was on him and so on all of us, too.

I spoke with Finn on it all, partly because I had to charge him with some of the task if Odin decided to take his sacrifice sooner rather than later. I wanted to mark it out clearly for him to follow — but this was Finn.

‘Get the boy back. Kill Styrbjorn. I need no tally stick for that,’ he growled.

I sighed. ‘Get the boy back, but kill Styrbjorn carefully. Remember — Jarl Brand wants him dead. King Eirik wants him alive. Both have power over the ones we leave behind us.’

Finn scrubbed his beard with frustration, but he nodded, blinking furiously. I spent the rest of the time trying not to pick the itching scar on my forehead, blow bloody snot out of my aching nose and brood on how Finn, a man who thought a quiet, subtle killing was not screaming a warcry and leaving your named sword in the corpse, would carry off the death of Styrbjorn if it fell to him. Or, for that matter, how I would.

Heading into the maw of Pallig Tokeson and his Jomsvikings did not help. The Joms borg was feted far and wide as a powerful fortress of sworn brothers, the best fighting men around, but that was all skald-puffed mummery; the reality was a moss-pointed square of timbers with a clanging alarm and a mad scramble of ragged-arsed Wends.

We backed water beyond long arrow range and waited, me standing in the beastless prow with my arms held out, until I was sure they had seen us and the peace-signs we made. Then I had the ship rowed beyond the main wharves, where Hoskuld, called Trollaskegg — Trollbeard — brought us to the beach with almost as neat a movement as Gizur or Hauk might have done.

The mar on it was a hard bang against the shingle, but Crowbone beamed, for the ship was Short Serpent and most of the sailing crew was his. They had all sworn the Oath, of course, but I knew the braiding of us together was a loose affair so far.

‘Is it not the finest ship afloat?’ he yelled, bright with the excitement of it all and his men, used to his ways, laughed with him.

Onund Hnufa snorted.

‘You do not think so, Onund Hnufa?’ demanded Crowbone sharply — then took an involuntary step backwards as the great bear-bulk of the shipwright loomed over him, the hump on his back like a mountain. Onund did not have to use the word ‘boy’, for his whole body and voice did that for him.

‘You had this ship from Vladimir in Novgorod,’ he rumbled and Crowbone managed to squeak that he had the right of it. Onund grunted. Men paused in spilling over the side, armed and ready.

‘It was not a question,’ he went on. ‘It is an old ship, left there long ago, when Novgorod was more known as Holmgard — in my grandfather’s day, I am thinking. Maybe the crew sold it, for it was damaged and it is certain Slavs repaired it — look there. The original ribs of it are good oak, but several have been replaced and the oak is poor quality and cut too thick. Where those have been placed makes the ship less of a snake in the water, too stiff, like a wounded old bull.’

We looked; Crowbone gawped.

‘Planks were also replaced — see there?’ Onund growled. ‘The original rivet holes were burned all the same size — good work, from folk who knew and had pride in their skill — and so the rivets fit tight. The new ones were badly done and some of the holes are too big, so they leak. You need to pine resin it fresh, inside and out. Not oak resin, which will crack when the ship moves. You need to replace the oar-strap — it is loose and the steer-oar does not answer quick enough to the helmsman’s hand. That’s why we dunted the beach so hard.’

He paused. No-one spoke, but Hoskuld was nodding.

‘Anything else?’ Crowbone demanded bitterly, recovering himself.

‘Teach your crew and your helmsman better,’ Onund said and there were growls at that from the men formed up on the shingle, so he rounded on them like some angered boar and they all shrank back a little.

‘Who is it that keeps dragging the boat out of the water on rocks and gravel? The keel is no doubt scarred and there is no avoiding that — but any sailor with the least clever in him knows to lift the steer-oar off. It is worn nubbed and splintered from such dragging — my teeth look better.’

And he snarled blackly at them to prove the point, while Abjorn and Uddolf and the others who had sailed Black Eagle nodded agreement, which did not endear them to the men of Short Serpent. With the few old Oathsworn, there were three crews here, not one; that would have to change, I was thinking.

There was shamefaced silence, then Crowbone opened his mouth to speak — and I used the moment. I may not have had what King Eirik thought of as jarl-greatness in me, but I had enough to know the timing of such a thing.

‘While we are talking with Pallig here,’ I said to Onund, ‘replace the oar-strap. The rest will have to wait until we can beach her and sort it out — at which time the crew, I am thinking, will be carrying the steer-oar as if it was their own bairn.’

There were wry chuckles at that and Crowbone, furious at being interrupted, opened and closed his mouth; I was aware, somewhere behind me, of Alyosha, watching and listening. He said nothing, for I was leader here, even if Crowbone had not realised it yet.

‘I am sure Crowbone here will want you to build his next ship, Onund,’ I added with a light laugh. ‘When he is king in Norway. He plans to call it Long Serpent and make it the biggest boat in the world.’

‘I will be long dead by then,’ grumbled Onund and that raised a louder laugh; Crowbone’s mouth was working like a dying fish, but I was spared mentioning it by the arrivals from the fortress, moving along the shingle in an ungainly half-trot.

They were ring-coated, helmed and armed with shield and spear, about a dozen led by Ljot, who wore only coloured clothing and a green, fur-trimmed cloak, so I relaxed a little, for this arrival had been the awkward moment and it seemed to have passed off well enough.

‘Olaf, son of Tryggve,’ he said politely, bowing to Crowbone, for he had fixed his eyes on the boy and the rest of us were just well-armed retainers, he thought. ‘Welcome to Jomsburg.’

‘Olaf Tryggvasson thanks you,’ I said, before Crowbone could get his mouth working. ‘Jarl Orm of Hestreng is come to the Joms borg.’

Ljot finally saw me and jerked his head to me and back to Crowbone, confused; he had seen and recognised the ship and made assumptions from that. I nodded and grinned a wolf grin at him. Finn slung his shield on his mailed back and gave a bark of laughter.

‘Aye — here is your worst nightmare, Ljot,’ he snarled. ‘Crowbone is now one of the Oathsworn of Jarl Orm of Hestreng. We have come for our property.’

Ljot gaped and stuttered a bit, then looked at me with narrowed eyes.

‘If you plan trouble here,’ he began and I waved a silencing hand. Finn chuckled.

‘No trouble,’ I answered, ‘but this is for Pallig’s ears, not all these.’

Ljot glanced round at the ringmailed and gawping growlers he had at his back, Wends mostly, with a scattering of those tribal trolls who always gather round trade places. He nodded and led the way up to the borg proper, off the beach and tussocked grass and on to the raised half-log walkways.

I called Finnlaith over, just before I fell in behind them all.

‘Keep these thievers off the ship,’ I told him. ‘And keep the girl hidden.’

He nodded, then scowled. ‘Why we have her is not clear to me, sure,’ he grunted. ‘She is a strange one and no mistake.’

I had no quarrel with him on that and said so, which made him grin. Then he called up his Irishers, Ospak among them and I heard them chaffer and bang shields together, as if they had won a good fight, as we went off after Ljot.

I was glad of Finnlaith and Ospak, old Oathsworn who had arrived at Hestreng while Finn and I were with Jarl Brand. They had come ‘for the raiding’ and heard in Hedeby that there was trouble at Hestreng.

They had left Dyfflin some time ago and arrived on a trading knarr owned by someone who knew me and trusted that the half-a-dozen mad Irishers with their bearded axes and strange gabble were unlikely to cause harm to him or his cargo.

‘A timely arrival,’ Finnlaith had said, once beams and wrist-grips had been exchanged, ‘for sure. It is a sad thing, so it is, to see Hestreng reduced to ashes.’

Then he had brightened a little and said that now that the Ui Neill had arrived, the war against those who had done it could commence and made out that he had come all the way from Dyfflin just for that.

The truth, of course, was that the Irisher lands were in flame — again — and the Ui Neill were not getting the best of it. Meanwhile, the Norse in Dyfflin laughed at the Irishers quarrelling over who was king of the dungheap, when they controlled the trade and so the wealth.

‘But sure,’ Finnlaith had added, when he had finished bewildering me with all their names, ‘we will go back presently and sort this Brian Boru lad out.’

Meanwhile, he was back with his old oarmates, enjoying the craic at the entrance to the Odra and thinking it a good day, even with the rain sifting down on him, because he had friends, a bearded axe slung on one shoulder, a handful of silver in a pouch under his armpit and the prow beast telling him where to go.

I envied him as we clattered over the slick walkways through the town, all smells and curious people, to where the buildings thinned until there were only a few scattered round the meadow. Mounded above it, the Joms borg itself squatted like a troll moody over his lost bridge.

Finn nudged me as we went, pointing out the forge and the mill — and the Christ church, where a priest, his brown robe caught up between his legs to make short, baggy breeks, worked a patch of vegetables, looking up only once at us. Most of the folk we saw, including the leather-clad guards on the gates, were Wends.

Pallig waited at the threshold of the hall, surrounded by three women; the youngest — barely a woman at all — he presented as his wife and a thumb-sucking boy he proudly announced was Toke, his son.

‘No women allowed at all,’ Finn whispered scornfully to me and then laughed at the lies of skalds.

I had expected a different look to Pallig, for his brother was of a good height with no belly on him and reasonable in his looks, making the most of them with his neatness. All of which made his name — Ugly — a joke. Pallig, on the other hand, was sow-snouted, bald save for a straggling fringe of dirty flax and had a paunch that trembled like a new-shelled egg yolk.

Ale was brought and bread and cheese. Crowbone sat apart, chatting animatedly to Pallig’s wife and, after a scowl or two, Pallig decided that he was too young to bother with. We sat on benches and Pallig, beaming and jovial, hooked one knee over the arm of a high seat and spread his hands expansively. No-one was fooled; he and the cat-wary Ljot were ruffled by the arrival of the Oathsworn and, for all his bluster, Pallig was not sure he could handle such trouble if it came to a fight.

Still, he played a tafl game of being unconcerned.

‘Welcome to my hall, Orm of Hestreng,’ he announced. ‘The Oathsworn fame has travelled far and wide and is almost as great as my own. It is an honour to have you here.’

Then, unable to resist it, he peered at me and gave a little laugh. ‘You look a little battered — was it a rough crossing?’

I said nothing, for the high seat he was on, like a perilously perched pig, had the familiar carving on the back, of Thor arrogantly fishing for the World Serpent. He saw me look and smiled, for it had all been planned that way.

‘You admire my high seat? It is very fine.’

‘I know it well,’ I answered. ‘It belonged to Ivar Weatherhat until recently. Then my arse was on it until Ljot came to Hestreng.’

Pallig feigned surprise.

‘Then you must have it back,’ he declared expansively.

I shook my head and his smile wavered a little, for refusal had not been in his design. But I knew how the game was played and had shoved words around the board with better men than him.

‘Keep it,’ I countered. ‘For Ivar had it and was burned out of all he had and I had it and enjoyed the same luck. The Norns, as they say, weave in threes. I can always get another seat.’

‘Once you get another hall,’ Ljot offered, with a dangerous sneer that made Pallig shoot him a hard look. I felt Finn shift a little beside me, to ease his hilt nearer his hand.

‘Oh, that is being built,’ I said lightly. ‘It will be finished by the time we return to Jarl Brand with his fostri, the boy Koll whom your man Leo took.’

The brothers exchanged looks then, no doubt remembering — as I had intended — the Oathsworn tales of unlimited silver. Then Pallig, in an attempt to counter this unexpected move, slathered a vicious smile on his face and waved one hand. Men came forward — two of the bearcoats I had last seen sidling away to burn Hestreng, I noticed — and Styrbjorn between them. He was pale, but smiling and wore good coloured clothing and his hands were unbound, though he had no more than an eating knife on him.

‘Orm Bear Slayer,’ he acknowledged with a nod. Pallig watched my face and, finally, I turned into his pouched gaze.

‘King Eirik would like Styrbjorn returned to him,’ I said. ‘He is confident you will not oppose him in this.’

Styrbjorn laughed, showing too many white teeth.

‘I am sure my uncle would like me to walk into his mouth and be eaten,’ he replied, ‘but, as you see, I am among friends.’

Pallig said nothing and even Styrbjorn was not convinced by what he said so confidently.

‘The king speaks of mercy and forgiveness,’ I said. ‘He will pay weregild to Jarl Brand for what was lost. He swears no harm will come to you.’

Styrbjorn’s whole body seemed to sag a little, then he straightened, beaming.

‘Well — so it is, then,’ he declared to Pallig. ‘A king swears it, so it must be true.’

There was silence and Styrbjorn blundered on into it, like a ram in a thicket. ‘I will put myself at the mercy of my uncle and king, so bringing this affair to an end. You have my thanks, Pallig, for your hospitality.’

There was a heartbeat of silence, then Pallig broke contact with my eyes and looked at Styrbjorn, as if just noticing that he was there at all.

‘I can see that you have served your purpose,’ he growled. ‘So now you have, it would be best if you stayed silent. Better still if you waited somewhere else for the grown men to finish their business.’

Crowbone could not stifle a snort of delight at Styrbjorn’s look, which was ugly and red, tight around the eyes and mouth. He drove to his feet, clattering over the bench; the ringmailed men on either side of his shoulders clamped him with hands hard as wolf bites, so that Pallig waved them to be still.

‘You forget who I am, Pallig,’ Styrbjorn said, his mouth twisted and wet. ‘You would do well to remember it.’

‘Who are you?’ Pallig challenged. ‘Nephew to King Eirik, no more than that. If he wishes you back and swears not to kill you, then he is a fool — and a fool is easily parted from money. Will he pay to have you back, do you think?’

He looked at me as he spoke, but I made my face a cliff and, with a scowl, he turned back to Styrbjorn.

‘You are a nithing boy, with no men and less ships and such battle luck as to attract none. Besides, the Great City has disowned you.’

Everyone was too occupied in marvelling at the colours Styrbjorn was turning in his rage to notice the real import of that last bit, but I did. While the bearcoats hauled the youth off, I pilled some bread idly and thought matters through.

Leo the monk was gone.

It came to me then that perhaps King Eirik and I and everyone else had woven the tapestry of this in the wrong colours. After a while, I asked: ‘So, where did the Greek monk go, then?’

Pallig frowned for a moment, then glanced at Crowbone. He was wondering, no doubt, if tales of little Olaf’s bird-magic were true and that, somehow, the monk’s arrival and departure had been seen by some seidr-possessed crow on a branch. Crowbone grinned at him and I saw the realisation flash in Pallig that he had been the one to give it away, like a bad move in a game of tafl.

‘Gone back to the Great City,’ he said, scowling. ‘Down to Ostrawa and into the Magyar and Bulgar lands.’

The old Amber Road; I had not thought that trail still existed and Ljot, while his brother fumed at his slip and poured ale to cover his annoyance, explained that it was not much of one, not for boats unless they flew, nor carts. Pack horses could make it and men with small loads, so it was usually little stuff that got carried that way — amber and furs, or the cargo that carried itself, slaves.

‘Small boys and monks?’ asked Crowbone. Pallig managed a laugh.

‘Aye, probably slaves by now, or dead. They went together and the monk hired some men — Sorbs — as guards.’

So there it was. Pallig had not been the final destination of the fleeing Leo. The little turd of a monk was heading for home, though it was unlikely he would ever reach it, as Finn pointed out.

‘Sorbs,’ he said and would have spat if there had been anywhere to do it without offending. Pallig cocked an unapologetic eyebrow.

‘What is this monk to me now?’ he said. ‘He came, he invited us to fight for Styrbjorn and he came back when all had failed. I do not expect him to return in a hurry to invite us again. He took the boy with him, thinking to use him to control Jarl Brand and through him influence King Eirik since Brand is his right arm, as everyone knows.’

He stopped and laced his hands across the trembling belly, frowning.

‘This Styrbjorn business was ill-paid. It is not good to have such a stain on your fame,’ he grumbled and looked at me. ‘You know how it is, Jarl Orm — this is just red war and the way such matters are done. Having poor battle luck is bad for the fame at Joms.’

‘Perhaps you will think differently, when such red war visits you one day,’ I told him and watched his eyes narrow.

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘I am sorry you were caught up in this and for your losses. I want no trouble from you. I will pay blood-price for what was done at Hestreng and it is this — I will permit you to leave and tell King Eirik that he can have that useless lump Styrbjorn if he offers me a fair price. Then you should go back to Hestreng, fasten the peace-strings on your hilt and be grateful the Northmen of Joms are not turning out on you.’

This was enough for Finn, who leaned forward with his face as hard and ugly and grim as a hidden rock in a sound.

‘You wobbling nithing,’ he began. ‘All your Northmen are Wendish trolls and never saw a decent vik…’

Before I could act, Crowbone laid a quiet hand on Finn’s arm, which made the man blink from his rage and look round. The boy shook his head and smiled; Finn subsided like a scrap-fed hound, to my amazement.

The spell of it broken, I stood up and nodded.

‘As to Styrbjorn,’ I said with a shrug, ‘you may do as you see fit — but when we leave we will go upriver, not down.’

Ljot shook his head and Pallig made a pig-grunt of sound.

‘Not good,’ Ljot said, then smiled a rueful, apologetic smile. ‘Look you — I know Jarl Brand’s boy was taken and that he was your fostri, so it will sit hard with both of you. The boy is gone, all the same — almost certain dead or a slave of the Sorbs or the Wends or the Pols, which is all the same thing. That monk was a chief of the gestir of the Great City’s emperor, but it will make no difference — those skin-wearing trolls along the river are all supposed to be Christ men, but they will kill him, just the same.’

Gestir, he had said. Well, it had been obvious enough, but it was good to have it said out loud. There are two kinds of oathed men in a king’s hall. The first are the great louts, like those standing guard at Pallig’s door. The second are the gestir, clever men who can spy and make trade agreements and treaties and more. Leo the monk, it seemed, was one of them, working for the emperor in Constantinople and so a man of considerable skills — among them, I was sure, the ability to deal with skin-wearing trolls along the Odra.

‘Besides,’ Pallig grumbled. ‘I do not want you going upriver. You will cause upset in a boat like that and interrupt the trading.’

He dipped one finger in his ale and drew a wet, wiggly line on the table.

‘Here is the Odra, flowing south from the mountains beyond Ostrawa to us in the north. It is a frontier land. Here we are at the mouth of it, where are the Wends, who you call trolls and the Saxlanders call Wilzi and others call Sorbs. There are many small tribes of them, on both banks of the river, but most are subject to the Saxlanders on the west.’

He stopped and sucked his wet finger while we all peered at the wiggly line as if it were about to come alive on the table and snake along it.

‘On the east bank are more Wends and Sorbs and such, but also the Pols of Miesko, who are coming north pretty fast — only last year they beat the Saxlanders at Cidini which is very close to us. Now the Saxlanders and Pols glare at each other across the river and the trade on it is a fud-hair away from being ruined.’

He frowned and wiped the wiggly snake away with a sweep of one hand, breaking the spell on us.

‘No-one will want to see a raiding boat such as yours on the river,’ he added. ‘Otto’s Saxlander forts on the west bank will think I sent you up to cause trouble. The east bank has Pol forts who will think the same.’

‘Not that you will get that far,’ added Ljot, almost beaming with the finality of it, ‘for there are other tribes, who will eat you.’

No-one spoke for a long heartbeat, then Pallig cleared his throat and spread expansive arms.

‘Well, there is the way of it,’ he said, then beamed. ‘I would not wish you to sail away from here feeling less than well-treated so I invite you and the young Prince Olaf here to be feasted in my hall tonight.’

I agreed and smiled, which was hard work on the cheek muscles since I was working against a lot of scowl. There was the arrogance of these brothers, the problem of Styrbjorn and how to free him and, worst of all, the thought of what the Polanians — the ones the brothers scornfully called ‘Pols’ — would do if they found the Mazur girl they thought safely hostaged in a foreign land with the daughter of their king.

Not for the first time, I wondered what Vuokko had seen in his drum later on that feast night for the return of Eirik’s bairn. The Sea Finn had appeared out of the shadows like some nightmare, just as Finn and I were picking our way in the salt-tanged dark to see Jarl Brand.

‘I have called it and the drum has spoken,’ he told us in his rheum-thick accent. ‘It says to take the Mazur girl.’

With three runes to speak with it might have said more, but I had gone to Sigrith in the night, half-ashamed at doing it just because of the Sea Finn’s drum, and asked her to let me have Blackbird, whose real name was Dark Eye. She, even knowing the worth of the girl to her father and where I was headed, did so, as she said, ‘for the loss of her Birthing Stool’.

Now Blackbird was stowed like baggage on Short Serpent and as nagging as a broken nail in my mind as we clumped back down to the ship, where Finnlaith and Alyosha were growling at men to get them loading supplies.

They crowded round, wanting to hear what had been said and by whom, so I laid it out for them.

‘Take these Joms bladders now,’ growled a big Swede called Asfast when I finished.

‘Burn them,’ snarled Abjorn, ‘as Ljot burned Hestreng.’

‘Ljot did not burn Hestreng,’ Rorik Stari pointed out. ‘It was Randr Sterki who did that.’

There were rumbles for and against charging up and cutting them down, calls for blood and fire. There were also growls about going upriver at all, for there was little in it that raiding men could see.

So I put them on the straight course of that simply enough.

‘There are two matters that must be done,’ I told them. ‘One is to free Styrbjorn, for King Eirik’s sake.’

Finn grunted, but said nothing, for only he and I knew that it was also to kill him, for Jarl Brand’s sake, though neither he nor I had worked out a way to make a square out of that circle.

‘I am also going after my fostri,’ I added, ‘for it is my honour and good name here. You may follow if you choose, but will break your Oath if you do not. The only other way is for one of you to become jarl.’

That silenced them, so much so that I was sure they could all hear the bird-fluttering beating of my heart at the idea of one of them challenging me for the dragon-torc of jarl. Fame, that double-edged sword, held them at arm’s length, for this was Orm, single-handed slayer of white bears, killer of scaled trolls, who had once won a holmgang with a single stroke and only recently had fought and killed berserkers, two at a time.

Yet they were sullen about it and a broad-faced growler called Gudmund could not let the bone of it loose.

‘Pallig does not want us to go upriver,’ he offered moodily.

‘So?’ spat Red Njal, fanning the flames of it. ‘Who is Pallig Tokeson to tell the Oathsworn of Orm Bear Slayer where they can go or not?’

‘He is kin to Harald Bluetooth,’ Crowbone offered brightly. ‘The wife he took pains to introduce us to is Bluetooth’s daughter and the sister of the Svein who was at King Eirik’s feast.’

He stared into the astonished faces, then innocently up into mine and I knew now what he had been doing, while seeming to play the eyebrow-batting boy with the womenfolk.

Bluetooth was not a name you ignored lightly, as Gudmund persisted. Finn spat and pointed out that we had been ignoring Bluetooth for years, had stolen his ships and killed his men and were none the worse for it, which cheered everyone, for they knew we were going upriver, no matter what.

Then Onund cleared his throat, which he always did before he said something important and we all stopped, thinking it would be ship talk and being as wrong as a two-headed cow.

‘If it is such a bad thing to be going upriver, for the trouble it will cause the brothers of Joms,’ he rumbled thoughtfully, ‘I am wondering why they let Randr Sterki and his dogs go up?’