The Prow Beast

THIRTEEN

The woods seemed still until you were in them, when things moved and made noises; a brown bird flickering in a bush of berries, a fox picking delicately through the sodden edge of the meadow, rooks arguing in a tangle of trees, their new-hatched joining in with an uncertain clamour of young voices as broken as Crowbone’s.

I was enjoying this, a hunt and a scout both and free of the ship and the grumbling, quarrelsome crew, even if my bow-skill was likely to shoot my own foot as something tasty for the pot.

The scouting was more important — the day before we had spotted smoke, a thread in the weak, faded blue, no more — but it spoke of fresh food and ale and perhaps even women, so here we were, Kuritsa and me, plootering as quietly as we could through the damp woods in a sudden burst of warmth which brought out the insects in stinging swarms.

For all that I was bitten and had to keep spitting them out, felt them in my hair and trying for my eyes and nose, the pests could not make me unhappy. At times, a silence fell so that I thought I could hear the new buds straining to be free on all the branches, that I could hear the grass hiss and rustle out of the ground. It was during one of these moments that I caught the movement, like alfar at the edge of my eye.

I froze and turned, but Kuritsa had already seen it, no more than a shadow sliding in shadows — then I lost it. A curlew called, sharp and two-toned and I saw it, wings curved and gliding, so that just the tips of them fluttered; a mallard hen bow-waved out of nearby reeds, fluffing in anger and followed by a string of ducklings; the river swirled in fat, slow eddies.

Kuritsa placed his fingers on his lips and it was clear he did not like even that much shifting, so I stayed where I was in the willows and peered, feeling the sweat trickle and the insects nip; their whine became the loudest noise.

Somewhere behind, coming up with long, slow, easy strokes, was Short Serpent, looking to us for warning, for they were close to the east bank, the west being where the sharpest current swung downriver. And I was sure now that we were not alone here, even if only Kuritsa seemed to know that other men were about. Pallig’s men? Perhaps the two who had escaped in the boat, or the one who had fled on foot.

I was offering prayers to Odin that it be them when I saw the man, no more than an arm’s length away through the screen of new brush.

He was bareheaded and had dark hair done in braids, with soot-stripes down his cheeks and across his forehead, to break his face up in the brush, like the dapple of a deer. That alone marked him as no friend, for only someone trying to remain hidden from sharp-eyed men would do that, but the bow, nocked and ready with a big, barbed battle arrow, was a clear sign of what he hunted.

The curlew called again, hovering over the nest the man had gone too near and he glanced up towards the sound, knowing he had given himself away to anyone who could read the sign. Then the stripes on his cheeks dropped away as his eyes widened at the sight of me.

There was no time for a bowshot. I dropped it and leaped ahead, crashing through the willows and trying to haul the seax out of the sheath across my front. The man grunted and tried to back off, give himself some room to shoot, but it was too late for that; I felt branches whip my face and try to snag my tunic.

He dropped the bow, flailed a wild slash at me with the arrow and I crashed on him, grabbing his hand as he grabbed mine; face to face we heaved and grunted and I tasted the onion breath and fear-stink coming off him in waves, saw the bursting beads of sweat roll darkly through the charcoal streaks.

He brought his knee up and almost caught me in the nads, but I had half-turned and he hit my thigh instead which dead-legged me. I knew I should call out, but that would bring his friends as well as mine and he had clearly worked out the same, for we fought in grunting, panting silence, straining like lovers.

I stumbled on the numbed leg, twisted myself and dragged him over on me; we crashed through the willow twigs and shrubs and my knee was up between his legs when he landed on me and I heard him cough out a grunt that turned into a thin, high whine when he lost my knife hand and knew his doom was on him.

I got the seax round then, got it right around and slid it into him, feeling the slight give and the skidding on ribs before it found the gap between and sank all the way. He freed my other hand then and I clamped it across his mouth. His eyes, inches from mine, went big and round with desperation, almost pleading, as if to beg me to take back the knife, the moment of it going in. I saw a tear pearl along the lower lashes of his right eye, then I rolled him off and scrambled back, panting.

He flopped on his back, eyes open, and kicked once or twice. The fingers of one hand moved, almost like a farewell wave from a child.

Kuritsa came up then and I whirled, panicked as a deer, so that he held up both hands and stopped where he was until I saw him. I spat a sour taste in my mouth, blinking the rivers of sweat that poured in my eyes, while the insects whined and pinged, joyous with the iron stink of fresh blood welling and soaking through the rough undyed wool tunic he wore.

‘Men ahead,’ Kuritsa whispered, his mouth so close to my ear that the hot breath scalded. ‘Hiding in the reeds in those wood and skin boats they have.’

He had eyes like a dog, the dead man, like a sad, whipped, gods-cursed dog. I should have rifled him, armpits to boots, for what he carried, though I was betting-certain he had less than an empty bag. Finn would have searched him, or Red Njal, or Hlenni, puddling in the blood and his last shit to find his riches, but I was not that good a raiding-man at this moment.

I stumbled away, dragging my bow and his war arrows, Kuritsa leading the way.

There were seven or eight boats, long fishing efforts made of hide stretched over a wood frame and each crammed with at least ten men. If we had not found them, they would have shot out of the reeds and been on Short Serpent in seconds and, though these folk did not look much and had no helmets or armour, they had bows and short spears and desperation enough. They might even have succeeded.

Instead, as they crouched and sweated and batted insects as silently as they could, they suddenly discovered themselves ambushed. My first shot took a man just below his rough-chopped hair, almost in his ear; his scream was as shattering as a stone in the quiet, slow-eddying river. Seconds later, he was in the river and it thrashed with bloody foam.

We shot all the big battle arrows, about ten, one after another, fast as we could and if we missed a mark, I did not see it. Then, as the men howled and scrambled and dived into the water from their boats to escape, we slid away, then ran and ran until, laughing and sobbing, we burst free of the bush and trees and saw Short Serpent, swan-serene, walking down the river to us on all its oarlegs.

Heads bobbed up from behind racked shields and stared in astonishment at Kuritsa and me, hanging on to each other, panting drool and spraying sweat and laughter at getting away unharmed.

Not long after, when we all came up to the place, we found one boat upturned and four or five bodies, turning and bobbing in the current. Another man lay on the bank, half-in, half-out. I did not want to splinter through the willows to find the one I had knifed.

‘Well,’ said Finn, ‘we have found the source of the smoke we saw.’

‘We have found that they are not friendly,’ Alyosha pointed out. ‘Even after taking the prow beast off.’

I had agreed to that, though I did not think it would matter much — Short Serpent was no little hafskip, or river strug. It was a drakkar, a raiding ship and looked as friendly as a fox in a hen coop, but the men wanted to try and appease the spirit of this land and so the prow beast came off and was stowed gently away.

‘Why would they want to attack us?’ Yan Alf asked Pall and that one’s mole-face split in a twisted grin.

‘Perhaps they think you are the sort who would string a man up and cut off his fingers,’ he answered bitterly and Trollaskegg smacked him hard on the back of his head, so that he pounded forward three steps.

‘Perhaps,’ I added, while Pall sullenly rubbed the back of his scalp and scowled, ‘someone has been telling them how bad we are. Your friends, I am thinking.’

Finn blinked as the idea took root in him, then he growled, so that Pall scurried a few steps away from him.

‘No, no — they are in as much danger here as we are,’ he whined.

‘They think you are slave-takers,’ said a soft voice and we all turned to where Dark Eye stood, wrapped like a little Greek ikon in my cloak. ‘In a ship like this, coming upriver, they will think you come to raid early.’

She had the right of it, sure enough, though raiding men with a drakkar would not usually come up this far — it was easier to buy such slaves cheap in Joms, having left it to the Wends to raid Polanians and the Polanians to raid Wends. Sometimes, I had heard, their respective chiefs even raided their own villages and took folk to sell if they were silver-short that year.

I was anxious for news, of Randr Sterki and of a monk with a band of Sorbs and a boy. Even so, there was more sense in rowing on and leaving the whole matter, as I pointed out. Other voices, hungry for cheese and meat and ale, wanted to see if this misunderstanding could not be put right. And one of my names was Trader…

Since there were scowls that made it clear this was all my fault, I did not think it clever to refuse. I dropped thirty of us, about half the crew, on the east bank, then had Trollaskegg move the ship to the opposite side, out of immediate harm.

‘If you see us running like the dragon Fafnir was breathing flame on our arses,’ Hlenni said, scowling at Trollaskegg, ‘you had better be within leaping distance of this bank before I get to it, or matters will be bad for you.’

‘If I am not, you will be dead, I am thinking,’ chuckled Trollaskegg good-naturedly, ‘and so no danger to me.’

‘Even dead,’ Hlenni yelled back as we moved off, ‘I am a danger to you. Black-faced and with my head under my arm, I am a danger to you.’

Which was not, considering matters, a good thing to let the gods hear you say, as Red Njal pointed out.

It was not hard to find them, these lurkers in reeds — there were tracks everywhere and signs, like sheepfolds and marked tillage, that a settlement was close. Not that we needed them, as Finn said.

‘Just follow the screamers,’ he growled, trying to cuff Pall, who was dragging on the end of a rope leash like an awkward dog.

It was not surprising, I was thinking, that folk fled from us, yelling and waving their arms and leaving kine and sheep behind. One man, with scarcely a backward glance, even left a toddler, all fat limbs and wailing; Hlenni scooped him into the crook of one arm and jogged him, though the red-cheeked, yellow-haired boy only started to gurgle and grin when Hlenni took his helmet off.

‘Lucky it was Hlenni and not Finn,’ Red Njal chuckled, sticking out a dirt-stained finger for the boy to grab. ‘To win over bairns and maids takes a gentle lure, as my granny used to say. That wean would have shat himself if Finn had taken his helmet off.’

‘I think he has anyway,’ mourned Hlenni, sniffing suspiciously at the boy’s breeks.

‘Na,’ said Finn, seeing his chance. ‘I am thinking that is just how Hlenni always smells.’

There was laughter and no-one thought Orm Trader could not gold-tongue and silver-gift his way out of this matter and into the smiles of the settlement. I was not so sure; we were all byrnied, helmeted, shielded and armed, moving with a shink-shink of metal, cutting a scar across their pasture and ploughland to where they perched on a mound behind a log stockade. Besides — we had just killed a lot of them; even before we had come within hailing distance, I heard the gates boom shut.

That brought us to a ragged, uncertain halt. It was a small settlement and the stockade was dark with age, yet it looked solid and the gate had a big, square tower with a solid hat of wood to cover it. Men appeared, just their heads and shoulders showing above the rampart edge. So did the points of spears.

‘You are the jarl and so should speak to them,’ Crowbone said and winced a little at the withering look I gave him.

‘Just so,’ I said. ‘Hold a little. I will learn their tongue while we make a fire. Perhaps Finn can make us a stew while we wait?’

‘I can,’ said Finn, ‘if I had water and someone found some roots and Kuritsa shot something tasty.’

‘I thought we brought Pall for talking to them?’ Crowbone persisted.

‘Aye,’ growled Finnlaith, giving the answer before I could speak, ‘but can you trust what the little rat tells you is being said?’

‘We brought Pall because I like him where I can see him,’ I pointed out and Crowbone, seeing it now, frowned a little and nodded. It did not diminish the truth of what he said, all the same. There was nothing else to be done, otherwise we had come all this way for no reason — but I did not have to like it.

Hlenni, Red Njal, me, Finn and the leashed Pall and Styrbjorn all moved out — the latter because I did not want him out of my sight — with Finnlaith and Ospak as shieldmen in case matters turned uglier than Hel’s daughters. Every step into the place where arrows might reach made my arse pucker and my belly contract. When I thought we had come close enough to be heard without bellowing at the edge of voice, I stopped and hailed them.

A head appeared, this one wearing a blue hat with a fringe of fur round it, probably what passed for the rank of riches in this place — everyone else I had seen was bareheaded. The iron-grey beard beneath that blue hat hid a mouth I knew would be a thin line.

He was hard, this headman, a nub of a man worn by toil even if he had managed to work himself up to a blue hat with fur round it; even at a distance I saw the lines on his face, etched deep by wind and worry.

‘We come to trade,’ I yelled, hearing the stupidity of it in my own voice, for we had just killed a half-dozen of his people, a hard dunt of menfolk loss in a settlement this size. He was not slow to point this out and I was surprised to hear him say it in halting Norse.

‘It seems we will not need you today, Christ-rat,’ growled Styrbjorn nastily and gave Pall a kick so that he yelped.

‘Go away, slavers,’ Blue Hat added, his voice carrying clearly with the faint wind that drove from him to us. ‘Nothing easy is here for you today.’

‘I seek a monk,’ I yelled back. ‘A Greek one in black. He had a boy with him.’

There was silence for a moment, while the damp warmth seeped and the insects annoyed us.

‘Escape you?’ came the reply. ‘Good.’

I sighed; this was going to be a long, hard day.

‘We can trade,’ I began, trying to keep the weary desperation out of my voice…but Hlenni stepped forward suddenly and held up the yellow-haired boy, swung him up and into the air at the end of both of his hands so that he could be clearly seen. The boy chuckled and laughed, enjoying it.

‘See?’ he bellowed. ‘We mean no harm.’

A woman screamed — probably the mother; I wondered how her man had explained how he had run off and left the lad.

Hlenni moved forward and someone — Red Njal, when I thought on matters later — called his name uncertainly, but Hlenni strode forward with the boy in his arms and set him down almost under the gate.

‘Growl not at guests, nor drive them from the gate,’ Hlenni said, grinning back at Red Njal. ‘As your granny used to say.’

The boy toddled a bit, lost his balance, fell forward, crawled a bit, then rose up, wobbling. Abandoned, uncertain, he began to bawl.

‘Cautious and silent let him enter a dwelling,’ Red Njal muttered. ‘To the heedful seldom comes harm.’

There was an argument above and a woman’s voice sounded shrill, so it was not hard to work matters out.

‘Your granny,’ Hlenni said, turning to grin at Red Njal, ‘was…’

Then someone hurled the rock at him from the ramparts.

A big one it was, big as Hlenni’s stupid head and the crack of it hitting in the curve of his neck and shoulder was loud; louder yet was the roar of disbelief and rage that went up from us. Hlenni pitched forward on his face and Red Njal howled and leaped forward.

Arrows came over with a hiss and shunk, some skittering through the wet grass. Finnlaith caught Red Njal as he hirpled past, caught and held him, though Njal raved and struggled and frothed and Ospak stepped in front of them both, shield up against the shafts.

Eventually we dragged Red Njal away out of range, where he subsided, gnawing a knuckle and trembling, his eyes fixed on the fallen Hlenni.

The gate opened and men darted out, grabbed the bairn and took Hlenni by the heels and dragged him in, which set all the men off again until Finn and I had to crack heads and draw blood.

Sweating, we crouched like wolves after a failed hunt, panting with our mouths open, sick with loss.

‘Perhaps he is alive,’ Styrbjorn ventured, thoughtful as only a man who did not really care could be. ‘They may regret what they have done and bind his wound.’

No-one spoke. I blinked the sting of sweat from my eyes and tried to think. In the end, though it wove itself around like a knot of mating snakes, matters came out the same way. I rose up and went back to the stockade to hail them.

I had barely bellowed when something arced over the stockade wall, smacked into the wet earth with a crunch and then rolled almost to my feet. I did not have to look to know what it was; none of us did.

Red Njal howled until the cords on his neck stood out and spittle flew, roared until he burst something in his throat and coughed blood. The rest of us did not speak for a long time and I only had to nod to send long-legged Koghe loping back to fetch the rest of the crew, for the sight of Hlenni’s bloody, battered head, the rough-hacked neck trailing tatters of skin, had sealed the wyrd of this place.

Hlenni. Gone and gone. One of the original Oathsworn from long before my time, who had survived everything the gods could hurl, save a stone from some dirty-handed, skin-wearing troll of a farmer.

‘I do not think,’ Finn said bitterly to Styrbjorn, ‘that they have bound his wounds. Or regret what they have done.’

Red Njal lifted his face then, a stream of misery and hate poured up at the stockade, his eyes cold as blue ice.

‘They will,’ he rasped.

I found Blue Hat, eventually. He was in the Christ hall, for these folk were followers of the White Christ and had built his temple partly in stone, thinking it a refuge for times of trouble. But they had never come on trouble like the Oathsworn, wolf-woken to revenge.

We took our time on it, too, cold as old vomit, while the rain drizzled. We took all but ten men from the boat and stood behind shields, beyond arrow range of the wooden walls, the rain dripping off the nasals of our helmets and seeping through the rings of iron to the tunics beneath.

We were howe-silent, too, which unnerved the defenders and when I sent others to cut wood, that steady rhythm of sound must have seemed, in the end, like a death drum to those in the stockade, for they stopped their taunts.

‘Well,’ growled Finn as men came back lugging a solid trunk, trimmed and sharpened. ‘What is the plan, Jarl Orm?’

Most of the others looked surprised, for it seemed clear to them — under cover of our shields we would knock the gates in with this ram then storm the place. Apart from deciding what insults to bellow, that was usually the way and surely the way the famed Oathsworn would do it.

Finn knew me better than that and even Crowbone, stroking his beardless chin like some ancient jarl considering the problem, knew more than older heads.

‘You do not care for that way, fame or not,’ he said while men gathered to listen.

I admitted it then and have done since. I am like other men and desire proper respect and esteem, when it is due. In the end, though, Odin taught me about fair fame — it was a tool, an edged one that can cut the user unless it is properly used. I said so and Abjorn grunted a little.

‘You do not agree?’ Finn challenged and Alyosha chuckled, one jarl-hound to another, it seemed to me.

‘It does not seem quite right,’ admitted Abjorn, but it was Styrbjorn, all fire and movement, like a colt new to the bridle, who hoiked it up for us all to look at.

‘A man’s reputation is everything,’ he spluttered. ‘Fair fame is all we have.’

‘Once I thought so,’ I answered. ‘Like the Oath we swear, it binds us. It weakens us, too, for it makes us act in ways we would not usually do.’

‘Like charging through the gates of that place like mad bulls,’ Crowbone added brightly. Styrbjorn subsided, muttering, but Abjorn nodded slowly as the idea rooted itself.

In the end, it was simple enough. I had men run forward, shields up and shouting, so that heads popped up on the ramparts and a flurry of shafts came over. No-one was hurt and we collected some.

‘Hunting arrows,’ Finn said with satisfaction. It was what I had been thinking; Kuritsa and me had shot off what war arrows these people possessed. Hunting arrows we could protect ourselves from.

The sky lowered itself like a gull on eggs, all grey and fat and ugly. Twenty men, led by Finn, went into the woods carrying bundles and axes and more chopping sounds came. This time, though, they were making ladders and the bundles held all the spare tunics folk had, which they put on under their mail, up to four of them. Then they circled, unseen, to the far side of the stockade.

I sent men with the ram against the gates, moving up under shields where there was only pant and grunt and fear. Rocks clattered on us, shafts whumped into shields, or struck and bounced, skittering like mad snakes through the wet grass.

On the far side, while the gate thundered like a deep bell, Finn slapped ladders against the almost undefended rear wall and led the others up and over. There were only twenty of them, but they were skilled men, mailed, shielded and moving as fast as their bulk would let them, fast as a shuffling trot, hacking at anything that came near and heading for the bar on the gate.

The folk in the settlement panicked when they saw such a group, iron men slicing through their meeting square, toppling the cross-pillar, scattering chickens, splintering carts, kicking buckets, some of them stuck with arrows which went through byrnie and one layer, perhaps two — but would not go through ring-coats and the padding of four tunics.

Hedgepigs in steel, they were and that broke the will of the defenders, so that they ran, screaming and throwing away their hayforks and hunting spears.

When the gate broke open, then, all I saw was a shrieking, milling crowd running this way and that and it was like mice to cats — the very act of them running in fear brought what they dreaded on them, launched the howling Oathsworn at them, flaming for vengeance over Hlenni Brimill.

Arrows flicked at the edge of vision and I ducked, for I wore no helmet, thanks to the still healing scar across my forehead and my tender nose and I could hear my father, Gunnar, snort in my ear at that — if you have the choice of only one piece of armour, take a helm, he had dinned into me. Never go bareheaded in a fight.

Well, it did Koghe no good, for the arrow that flew past me hit him and there was a wet, deep sound. I half-turned; tall Koghe staggered past with the force of his own rush, the arrow through his mouth, a fud-hair below the nasal of his helmet. Choking on his own blood and teeth, pawing the shaft, he was dead even as he gurgled and fell.

I saw the bowman then, ran at him as another arrow was fitted to the nock, held my sword — Brand’s splendid blade — in front of my body until the last moment before I got to him, for I knew what the archer would have to do.

He snapped the arrow into one hand and stabbed with it and I took it round in an arc down and right, smashed in with my shoulder and knocked him flying, arse over tip. He was still struggling like a beetle on his back when I chopped him between neck and shoulder.

Shouts and screams soaked the air, almost drowning out the high, thin sound of a bell; I sensed a shadow and stepped back sharply. A body struck the ground, the wood axe meant for my head spilling from one hand and then Styrbjorn stepped up, grinning, the seax and the hand that held it thick with gore.

‘The Christ place,’ he said, nodding towards the building and I realised that someone was calling the last defenders to him there. Still grinning, he let me lead the way and I realised he had probably saved my life with his handy backstab.

Blue Hat was the bellringer and he was dead by the time I got to him, through a madness that was as like Svartey as to have been its crazed brother. Men moved like grim shadows, killing. There was no plunder, no tupping women in the dust. Only killing.

I walked through it as if in a dream; Uddolf ran across my path, chasing a fear-babbling youngster up to a wall, where he ran at him with his spear, so hard that it broke and the boy, pinned, screamed and writhed like a worm on a hook. Uddolf, shrieking, beat the boy’s face bloody with the broken haft.

Ospak kicked away a young woman, begging on her knees with her hands clasped round his calves, then split the head from her mother with two strokes; yellow marrow oozed from the bone of her neck.

The Christ place was dim and silent and I slumped against the painted wall, feeling the shadows and the quiet like a balm. Then my eyes grew used to the light.

Under the cross with its Tortured God, Red Njal stood on splayed legs, head bowed, panting like a bull after mating. At his feet was Blue Hat and I would not have known the man had it not been for his headgear, for Red Njal had not been kind.

‘Hlenni…’

I followed Red Njal’s glazed look and saw the body, strange with no head, but linen-wrapped neat enough. Nearby was a dead Shaven Priest in his brown robe, killed kneeling in prayer.

They had bound Hlenni’s wounds after all, it seemed. Just a little late.

It was all too late. Dull-eyed men staggered, too exhausted to kill now but it did not matter for everyone was dead. No, that was not right, I saw. Every thing was dead, even the dogs and the goats and the hens. Everything.

I found myself in a long hall, a meeting place perhaps, for these folk did not do chieftain’s hovs. Yet it was like one as to bring a rush of memories and I ran to them with my arms out, to try and wrap myself from what went on outside.

There was a pitfire, cold ash now, but the smell of it and the seasoned wood of the pillars flooded Hestreng back on me, a Hestreng unburned. This was the time of year when the sap shifted in everything and the sun came back, so that you could peg out furs and bedclothes and let the sun drive out the lice and fleas. Men would work half-naked, though it was this side of too cool to be comfortable; there was enough food, but most of the ale was finished, so fights were few.

Summer was the lean time between harvests, so that the unlucky could starve to death eating grass while the sun poured down like honey.

There were sheep and goats to be taken to upland pastures, but not the ones reserved for the horses; sheep and goats ate the grass down to the soil, leaving nothing — but they gave wool for wadmal, and milk for curd and cheese and this was the time when skyr was made. I remembered it, thickened whey, white as a virgin’s skin, lush off the wooden spoon.

But Hestreng was black timber and ash. With luck, a new hall would be up and giving shelter, the wood reeking of newness and tar, but there would be no time for skyr and few furs or bedclothes to peg out.

The outside noise yelled me back to a strange, cold, dead hall; someone burst in, saw me and backed out. I rose, feeling as if my legs had turned to wood, but having to move before the tale went round that Orm, White Bear Slayer, leader of the famed Oathsworn, slayer of were-dragons, tamer of the half-women, half-horse steppe creatures was sitting by himself staring at fire ash and near weeping.

Outside, those with life left in their legs and arms had started to look for plunder, moving as if the air was thick as honey; I picked my way through the litter of corpses, feeling the suck of bloody mud on my boots.

I stopped only once, in the act of stepping over a corpse, at first just one more among so many. It was smaller by far, though, with fat little limbs and yellow hair, though there was a lot of blood in it now and the little, budded, thumb-sucking mouth that had smiled at Hlenni Brimill was slack and already had a fly in it.