The Prow Beast

FIFTEEN

The place stank like a blot stone, all offal and roasted meat and was not much of a prison, just a large cage in an old storeroom strewn with stinking straw, the bars made from thick balks of timber reinforced with iron.

The cage was up against one wall of this stone room, part of the lower foundations of the keep and once an underground store for the kitchens, for the stone walls were cold. Now the place was hung with chains and metal cuffs, dark with stains and leprous from the heat of the brazier. There were two thick-barred squares to let in light and circling air but they did not do much work on either.

The Saxlanders flung us into the cage and one locked the door with a huge key, his tongue between his teeth as he concentrated on getting it right. They had taken away everything of value and left our weapons on a nearby table where we could see them, but not get to them.

When they were gone, leaving us alone in the half-light, a grinning Finn fished in one boot and brought out his long, black Roman nail.

‘If those Saxlanders had any clever in them,’ he said, grinning, ‘it was well hidden. Unlike my nail, which they should have found even if they were looking for my money — boots, balls and armpits, as any raiding man knows.’

He went to the lock and discovered, in short order and at the cost of a bloody finger, that this prison was no little chest of treasures with a dainty lock that could be snapped. The one penning us in was huge and solid and would not be cracked open with a Roman nail, which was also too thick to use as a pick.

‘That Bjarki,’ Finn growled, sucking the grimy, bleeding finger as if that man had done it to him personally. He shoved the nail back in his boot.

‘This is not much of a prison,’ Crowbone mused, looking round. It was not, as I agreed, but it was enough of one for me; what bothered me most were the wall chains and cuffs, the glowing brazier and the thick, scarred wooden table littered with tools I did not think belonged to a forge-man, though some of them were similar.

‘I did not like the look of that Kasperick at all,’ Red Njal grunted. ‘He has the eyes of one who likes to see blood spilled, provided it is not his own and there is no danger in it. A man who, as my granny used to say, prefers to build the lowest fences, since it is easiest for him to cross.’

‘Well,’ said Finn, settling down with his back to one wall, ‘we will find out soon enough.’

I did not like the idea and was envious — not for the first time — of how he could sit with his eyes half-closed, as if he dozed on a bench near a warm fire after a good meal and some ale. I said as much and he grinned.

‘The smell, I am thinking,’ he answered wistfully. ‘It reminds me of the feast we had at Vladimir’s hall, the one just before we all went out on to the Grass Sea to hunt down Atil’s treasure.’

‘Is that the one where you threw someone in the pitfire?’ Red Njal demanded, though he grinned when he said it and I was pleased to see that; the death of Hlenni had been sitting heavy on him.

‘Not someone — the son of the advisor to Prince Yaropolk, Vladimir’s brother,’ Crowbone pointed out and both he and Finn laughed.

‘One side of his face now looks like Finn’s left bollock,’ Crowbone added, ‘wrinkled and ugly.’

‘You never saw my bollocks, boy,’ Finn countered, ‘for you are not struck blind and dumb with amazement and admiration — besides, it was not for quarrels that I remember that feast night. It was for the blood sausage. I ate one as long as my arm.’

‘You were as sick as a mangy dog,’ Red Njal reminded him and Finn waved a dismissive hand.

‘That was a swallow or two of bad ale,’ he corrected. ‘Anyway — I ate another arm-length after, to make up for what had been lost.’

That feast had seen great cakes of bread and fried turnips and stewed meat, fished out of pots on the end of long spits, I remembered, for Vladimir held to the old ways of his great-grandfather. But the smell of a man’s face and hair burning in the fire had soured much of it for me and left us with a lasting enemy — another one, as if we did not have enough of them.

Boiled blood and spew, that’s what this place reminded me of and I said as much.

Finn shrugged.

‘I recall it now only because we were all in prison there, too,’ he added. ‘You, me and Crowbone at least. And we got out of that.’

True enough. We had been flung in Vladimir’s pit-prison when Crowbone put his little axe in Klerkon’s forehead, which was not a bad thing in our eyes. However, he did it in the main square of Holmgard, Vladimir’s Novgorod, which had not been clever. That time, we faced a stake up our arses; now we faced a hanging-cage until we starved or were stoned to death.

‘Any tales that might help?’ I asked Crowbone and he frowned; it was one of his better stories that had made us all laugh and got us hauled out of the pit-prison, since laughter was not usually the sound that came from such a place.

‘It would be better if I stopped telling such tales,’ he answered moodily. ‘They are child’s matters and I am a man now.’

‘Your voice has snapped,’ Finn pointed out, ‘which is not the same thing. Let me know when your own bollocks drop like wrinkled walnuts and then I may consider calling you a man.

‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘I like your tales.’

Which was an astounding lie from the man who had once rattled Crowbone into the thwarts of a boat at the announcement ‘Once there was a man…’. Crowbone merely looked at Finn with his odd eyes narrowed.

‘So we die here,’ Red Njal grunted, in the same voice he would have used deciding on where to curl up and sleep for a while. ‘Well, not the place I would have chosen, but we wear what the Norns weave for us. Better ask for too little than offer too much, as my granny used to say.’

I was thinking we would not die, for this Kasperick wanted the Mazur girl and the profit that could be had selling her to the Pols — or her own folk, whichever paid most — but he had to lay hands on her first. He would use us to trade with the crew of Short Serpent.

‘He is a belly-crawler,’ Finn pointed out when I mused on this. ‘He will not hold to such a trade and will kill us anyway.’

Then Bjarki came in, sliding round the storeroom door like rancid seal oil, his grin stretched to a leer by the ruined side of his mouth.

‘Kill me now,’ Finn growled when he saw him, ‘rather than have to suffer the gloat of a little turd like this.’

Bjarki, who was alone, came and sat carefully out of reach beyond the bars.

‘No easy death for you, Finn Horsehead,’ he slurred through his twisted mouth. ‘Nor, especially, for you, Orm Bear Slayer. I owe you an eye and a scar.’

‘When you meet Onund,’ I warned him, ‘be ready to pay more than that.’

‘Expecting a rescue, Bear Slayer?’ Bjarki jeered.

‘You should be afraid,’ answered Crowbone, ‘for the Oathsworn are coming.’

Bjarki curled his lip.

‘You are a little diminished,’ he pointed out. ‘A king with no crown, a prince with no hird. A shadow of what you were, boy. Soon even that will be gone.’

‘A shadow is still a powerful thing,’ Crowbone said. ‘Once there existed somewhere in the world — do not ask me when, do not ask me where — a place where the Sami learned to be workers of powerful seidr magic. Wherever this place was, it was somewhere below ground, eternally dark and changeless. There was no teacher either, but everything was learned from fiery runes, which could be read quite easily in the dark. Never were the pupils allowed to go out into the open air or see the daylight during the whole time they stayed there, which was from five to seven years. By then they had gained all they needed of the Sami art.’

‘Ha,’ scowled Bjarki. ‘What a poor tale. How did they eat in all this time, then?’

‘A shaggy grey hand came through the wall every day with meals,’ answered Crowbone without as much as a breath of hesitation. ‘When they had finished eating and drinking the same hand took back the horns and platters.

‘They saw no-one but each other and that only in the dim light of the fiery runes,’ he went on and Bjarki, scowling, was fixed by it. ‘Those same runes told them the only rule of the place, which was that the Master should keep for himself the student who was last to leave the school every year. Considering that most folk who knew of the place thought Loki himself was the Master, you may fancy what a scramble there was at each year’s end, everybody doing his best to avoid being last to leave.

‘It happened once that three Icelanders went to this school, by the name of S?mundur the Learned, Kalfur Arnason, and one called, simply, Orm; and as they all arrived at the same time, they were all supposed to leave at the same time. Seven years later, when it came to taking the bit of it in their teeth, Orm declared himself willing to be the last of them, at which the others were much lightened in mind. So he threw over himself a large cloak, leaving the pin loose.

‘A staircase led to the upper world, and when Orm was about to mount this Loki grasped at him and said, “You are mine!” But Orm ducked his head, slipped free and made off with all speed, leaving Loki the empty cloak. However, just as he reached the heavy iron yett beyond the door, it slammed shut. “Did you imagine that the Father of Tricksters would be fooled by that?” said a dark voice from the blackness.

‘A great hand reached out to drag Orm back just as he saw the sun for the first time in seven years, a great blaze of light which fell on him, throwing his shadow onto the wall behind him. Orm said: “I am not the last. Do you not see who follows me?”

‘So Loki, mistaking the shadow for a man, raised the yett and grabbed at the shadow, allowing Orm to escape — but from that hour Orm was always shadowless, for whatever Loki took, he never gave back again.’

There was silence and then Bjarki gave an uneasy laugh, while Finn beamed like a happy uncle and clapped Crowbone on the back.

‘As I said — I like your tales. They seldom miss the mark.’

‘A boy’s tale,’ Bjarki scowled back. ‘There will be no shadow-escape for you and the Oathsworn are unlikely to be storming this fortress.’

He broke off and smeared a grin on his face, ugly as a hunchbacked rat.

‘Well — here is one of your saviours coming now, fresh from this hero-saga,’ he added as sounds clattered at the door. It swung open and two huge Saxlanders dragged in a slumped, dangle-headed figure. Two more men scowled their way in after them.

Bjarki moved to the prisoner and lifted his head by the hair; it was Styrbjorn and the surprise of it must have showed in all our faces, for Bjarki frowned; he had not been expecting that. His face twisted even more when one of the Saxlander guards slapped his hand free with a short, phlegm-thick curse. The other fetched the key, opened the door and slung Styrbjorn in, so that he crashed to the floor and bounced.

Bjarki sniggered, hovering by the door and the irritated guard shoved him back, so that he staggered and almost fell; one hand flew to the dagger at his belt and the guard, ringmailed and helmed and armed with a great stave of spear looked inquiringly at him, then laughed when Bjarki saw what he was about to do and took his hand away.

‘You are not as welcome here as you make it seem, little bear,’ Finn said with a dry laugh. One of the men who had followed Styrbjorn into the room, bald-headed and stubbled on a sharp chin, spat at him then, which narrowed Finn’s eyes.

‘Your welcome is worse,’ Stubble-Chin said. ‘This Styrbjorn killed Pall, which is red murder. No matter what happens, he will swing in a cage for it.’

‘Which one are you?’ asked Crowbone. ‘Freystein? I did not ever hear the name of the fourth man.’

‘I am Freystein,’ said the second man and jerked a thumb at the bald-headed one. ‘He is Thorstein, Pall’s brother.’

‘Ah,’ said Finn knowingly. ‘Same litter — I thought I saw it, but was not sure. All rats look the same to me.’

The door opened again and the Saxlander guards straightened a little as Kasperick came in, lifting the trailing hem of his robe from the floor of the place. He surveyed the scene with a satisfied smile and moved to the table where our possessions had been left, lifting Crowbone’s sword admiringly.

‘A fine and cunning weapon,’ he said, drawing it out and swinging it once or twice. ‘A little light, but perfect for a boy.’

Then he drew mine, which was Jarl Brand’s and he smiled like a cream-fed cat over that one. Then there was Styrbjorn’s; the silk wrapping was gone. When he drew The Godi, Finn growled, hackled like a hound on a boar scent.

‘Four swords of price,’ he declared. ‘Not a bad day — you three can take the rest of their possessions as reward. Get out.’

Bjarki and the others blinked and Bjarki looked as if he would argue, but the two huge guards leaned forward a little and the three of them left, summoning up as much swagger as they could, which was not much.

‘They expected more,’ I said, ‘for whispering in your ear about the Mazur girl.’

Kasperick waved a languid hand. ‘They are little yaps, from that large dog Pallig Tokeson. One day, we will deal with Pallig, but his little pups are useful and of small account to me when they have barked. To each other, too, I am thinking — the death of Pall will not concern them much, save that they can now split the reward I gave them into thirds instead of fourths.’

He settled his rump on the edge of the table and looked us over.

‘You will send word to release the Mazur girl,’ he declared. ‘In return, I will release all of you — except the one they call Styrbjorn, for he is guilty of murder.’

‘Styrbjorn? What does one of Pallig’s little yappers matter to you?’ I countered and he nodded, a nasty smile on his face.

‘Nothing,’ he agreed, ‘save that justice must be seen to be done — anyway, I have gone to all the trouble of lighting a brazier and started heating up instruments. I will not have all my enjoyment removed.’

The threat was plain enough and he saw it had hit home as he slid his arse off the table.

‘You have until first light to think,’ he added flatly. Then he swept out, followed by the two guards; the door banged shut behind them, leaving us alone in the fetid half-dark.

‘One who sees a friend roasting on a spit tells all he knows,’ Red Njal noted. ‘My granny said so and it remains true.’

‘Spit-luck for us, then, that Styrbjorn is a few wrist-clasps short of a friend to any of us,’ Finn answered and prodded the luckless subject with one toe. Styrbjorn groaned and Red Njal bent briefly to look at him.

‘Lump like a gull’s egg and a bruise, nothing much more,’ he growled, straightening. Finn took the pisspot and emptied the contents on Styrbjorn, who surfaced, wheezing and blowing.

‘Better?’ Finn inquired as Styrbjorn blinked into the Now of it all. The enormity of where he was crashed on him like creaming surf and he subsided.

‘I thought it was a dream,’ he groaned.

‘If it is,’ Red Njal told him, ‘dream me out of it.’

‘No dream,’ I told him harshly. ‘What did you do to Pall?’

Styrbjorn shifted, rolled over and sat up slowly, like a sobering drunk after a feast. He touched the lump on his forehead and winced.

‘Pall made straight for his three friends,’ Styrbjorn explained. ‘We just looked for the cheapest, noisiest drinking place in the settlement and, sure enough, there they were, having already poured Pallig’s poison in the ear of this Kasperick about us. Pall told them of the value of the Mazur girl, said we should tell Kasperick and he would surely reward us.’

‘I said he was a rat and that releasing him was a bad idea. And you went with them,’ Finn growled meaningfully. Styrbjorn held his head and groaned.

‘Aye, well, I was not all that welcome there, since they blamed me for much that had happened, especially the one called Bjarki — silly name for a grown man, is it not?’

No-one argued with that, so he sat up a little more and then began sniffing suspiciously at the damp on him.

‘The other three went off, saying that Pall and me should watch the ship — what did you just pour on me, Finn Horsehead?’

‘Healing balm,’ I said, wanting him to keep to the sharp of his tale. ‘What happened then?’

He blinked and made himself more comfortable, closing his eyes. I remembered a time when I had taken a dunt to the head and almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

‘Then we waited in the rain for a while,’ Styrbjorn went on after a moment. ‘We saw the crew coming back, not all at once, but in ones and twos and seeming to be easy and light about it until they were aboard. Pall said the ship was getting ready to leave, which was clear to any sailing man; he said he was off to warn Bjarki that the prize was slipping away.’

He paused and frowned, then sniffed again.

‘This is piss,’ he declared accusingly.

‘What happened?’ I snarled and he raised an eyebrow at me, then shrugged, which act made him wince. This time I felt no sympathy.

‘I thought it best not to let him,’ he said. ‘So I slit his throat and dropped him in the river.’

‘Heya,’ growled Finn admiringly and Styrbjorn smiled. I looked at the youth with some new and grudging respect; he had decided to save us and killed a man without so much as a blink — yet it was a throat-cut in the dark.

I was thinking that was what kept Styrbjorn from being the hero-king he wanted to be. He could kill, right enough, but would rather be sleekit about it than face a man in a fair fight; even his saving of me was a stab to my enemy’s back.

Nor had he been sleekit enough about the killing of Pall, either, since he got caught.

‘Aye,’ he agreed wryly when I pointed this last fact out to him. ‘I was making for the ship, for it was now the safest place for me to be after dropping the little turd in the water, when Bjarki and the others turned up with some armed men. They grabbed me and Bjarki asked where Pall was, so the whole matter came out in the open soon after.’

He paused, defiantly.

‘If it had not been for them being so bothered with me,’ he added, ‘the ship might not have pulled safely away at all.’

I let him think it, even if I doubted it to be true. Not that any of that helped us here, as I whispered to Finn, drawing him a little apart from the others.

‘Aye,’ he answered, then grinned. ‘Though there may yet be a way out of this cage. Best if we wait for dark. Best also if I keep it to myself, just in case this Kasperick grows impatient for spit-roasts and questioning.’

The thought that he had a plan when I did not was nagging enough, but the idea that he did not want to share it made matters worse. As the faint light from the barred squares in the wall faded we sat in silence; I did not know what the others were thinking, but home swam up in the maelstrom of my thoughts.

I dreamed up a new Hestreng, with soaring roof and many high rooms, grand as any king’s and rich with cunning carvings. I summoned up Thorgunna in it and a fine-limbed boy and thralls and a forge and sturdy wharves where all my ships swung gently.

It was a good dream, save for some annoyances; the face of the fine-limbed son was always Koll and accusing. Nor could I place myself anywhere in this neatly-crafted hall.

Worst of all, I could not put a remembered face on Thorgunna at all and summoning up the night moments, hip to hip and thigh to thigh, languorous and loving, only brought a small, tight-muscled body and a sharp face with those huge, seal eyes.

‘Well,’ said a voice, cracking Hestreng apart; I was almost grateful to see Red Njal hunkered near.

‘Well?’ I countered and he gave me a look as glassed and grey as a Baltic swell.

‘I am thinking we will not get out of this.’

‘A man’s life is never finished until Skuld snips the last thread of it,’ I said.

‘Aye, right enough — but best to search while a trail is new, as my granny told me. I can feel the edge of that Norn’s shears and wish only to make it known to you and the gods that I bear no malice, for we are oathed to each other and I took it freely. I would not want to come as a draugr to bother your family.’

It took me a moment to realise he meant he would die because of my wyrd, which I had brought on myself with my sacrifice-promise to Odin. I swallowed any venom I had to spit at him for it all the same and thanked him nicely, though I could not help but add that it was only my wyrd to die and not his. Perhaps the gods would be content with just the one death, I told him, just to watch him brighten like a bairn who had been promised a new seax for his name-day.

‘Ah, well,’ he answered. ‘I thought to mention it, all the same. Care gnaws the heart when a man cannot tell all his mind to another.’

‘Your granny was a singular woman,’ I told him, straight-faced into his delighted grins.

And all the while I felt Einar at my back, the old leader who had brought his own wyrd down on himself and whom we had cursed for it, sure he was leading all the Oathsworn of that time into their doom. Not for the first time, I knew how Einar the Black had felt.

‘I do not think it is my wyrd to die here,’ frowned Crowbone and that did not surprise me either; the arrogance of youth was doubled and re-doubled in that odd-eyed man-boy.

‘Then you can be the one to rescue Koll,’ Finn decreed.

Styrbjorn sniffed and tentatively marked out the edges of pain on his lumped forehead.

‘Jarl Brand is a good man,’ he agreed, ‘and a generous ring-giver, it is true — but would we be plootering through the rain after him if Orm did not owe him it as foster-father to his son?’

Again my fault and I let some anger slip the leash into my voice.

‘Would you not go after the boy only to save him, then?’ I demanded. ‘It is all your wyrd that he is taken and we are in this mire.’

Styrbjorn thought about it, frowning and serious.

‘You have the truth of it being as a result of my quarrel with my uncle,’ he admitted, then waved one hand to dismiss it. ‘That is the way of such matters and folk cannot go putting all the blame of it on me — war is war, after all.

‘As to the boy,’ he went on, ‘if the reward was good for me, I would go after him. For you it is losing the stain on your fame and regaining the friendship of the jarl who gave you land and a steading. Good reasons — the fame and the friendship of great men is half the secret to ships and men, as you know, Jarl Orm. The other half is silver. But there is too little fame here for me, while Jarl Brand is too small a friendship for a man of my standing.’

He was a nasty twist of a youth, this one, and his arrogance sucked the breath from you. I saw it then, clear as Iceland’s Silfra water — Styrbjorn would die from his unthinking attitude, one day or the next.

‘You would not try for rescue at all, then?’ Finn growled, a twisted grin on his face. ‘From where I look, wee man with a lot to say for yourself, you have no standing. You are sitting in piss, with a dunted head and no good fame at all.’

Styrbjorn did not answer, but Crowbone fixed him with that odd-eyed stare.

‘You would go if you knew what the lad felt,’ he said, in a voice which had deepened considerably since it had snapped free of boyhood. ‘If you were far from home, among enemies, treated as a thrall, thrashed and bound and starved, all that would keep you taking one breath after another was the hope that someone was coming to get you.’

We all remembered, then, the saga of Crowbone’s life to this point — a fugitive from the womb, his father dead. A thrall at six, his foster-father slain, his mother the usage of Klerkon’s camp, bairned by Kveldulf and then kicked to death by him. At nine, he had been freed by me into the world of the Oathsworn, which was no gentle place for a growing boy.

He looked at me and acknowledged that rescue with only his eyes. Now, at twelve, Crowbone’s last foster-father, his Uncle Sigurd, was also dead and, though he had sisters and kin somewhere too dangerous still to visit, he was more alone than the moon. It came to me that this was the reason, more than any, which had made him take our Oath — any family, even the Odin-hagged Oathsworn, was better than none.

‘Aye, such a wyrd would be a sore one to swallow,’ Styrbjorn agreed, then beamed and slapped Crowbone’s shoulder. ‘Skalds would make a fair tale about someone so rescued. You have convinced me that there is, after all, enough fame in it — we will hunt down the little bairn and bring him safe home, even if Orm ends up swinging in a cage here.’

‘A comfort, for sure,’ I muttered darkly and he laughed.

‘Where is Randr Sterki going, I am wondering?’ Finn asked, frowning. ‘I thought he wanted us to come to him, so why is he running?’

For the lack of men, I was thinking. He would want to find a place where there were shiftless swords for hire, for I was betting sure he was crew-light now. I said so and Styrbjorn chuckled.

‘Well,’ he said brightly, ‘in a way you have me to thank for that.’

I could not speak at all, but Red Njal always had a ready tongue.

‘The jarl would favour you,’ he pointed out, his mildness only adding to the venom of it, ‘save that it is unlikely you will survive, even if this Saxlander lord does release us for the Mazur girl. You he wants to keep and play with.’

Styrbjorn’s fear slid under the clear surface of his face and he swallowed.

I could scarcely see their features now; their faces were white blobs in the dim and the glow of the brazier coals seemed brighter now that the dark had raced in like Sleipnir, One-Eye’s eight-legged stallion.

‘If you have a spell to snap this lock, Finn Horsehead,’ I grunted, annoyed by their talk of my Odin-wyrd — and, I confess it, belly-clenching afraid of it, too. Finn chuckled and drew out his iron nail, a slash of black in the grey.

‘No spell, but duergar-magic, all the same,’ he said. ‘I need your leg bindings, Red Njal.’

Slowly, Red Njal unwound one leg. Once they had been fine, green wool bindings, embroidered in red and with silver clasp-ends — but the ends had gone on dice or drink long since and the frayed ends of wool, now stained to a mud-dark with only the memory of embroidery, were tucked roughly in the bind itself.

For all that, he passed an unravel of them over sullenly, one breeks leg flapping loosely over his shoes. We all watched Finn tie one end of the wool length to his nail and swing it like a depth-line, testing weight and knot — then, sudden as a spark, the whole room lit up in blue-white light.

For an instant, everything stood out, stark and eldritch and the barred squares were etched on the far wall. I saw the faces of the others in that eyeblink, flares of fright and bewilderment and knew my own was no different.

In the utter dark that followed, we heard the millstone grind of thunder, slow and low and then a hiss of rain, faint through the high, barred squares. A storm; the darkness had indeed raced like Sleipnir for it was not proper night, this.

‘I came to knowing of this thanks to the rot,’ Finn said calmly, ignoring the light and noise as he adjusted the knot. ‘I like this iron nail, for it has served me well from the day I picked it up. On Cyprus, as you will remember, Orm and Njal, when Orm fought the leader of some Danes in a holmgang. We used nails like this as tjosnur, to properly mark out the fighting boundary.’

The light flared again, flicking him in an instant, frozen image, as he draped the dangling nail through the bars, swung it backwards and forwards a few times, then lobbed it out, trailing the wool binding behind it. The nail whispered through the darkness and slammed on the table, hard enough to leap everything upwards; a wooden beaker fell over on its side and rolled.

The great, rolling rumble of thunder swallowed all sounds of it, seemed to tremble the backs of my teeth and come up through my feet from the floor. Red Njal looked up, just a pale blob of face in the darkness, blooded on one side by the brazier. The brightest thing in that face was the white of his eyes.

‘Thor is racing his chariot hard tonight,’ he muttered. ‘Plead all you please with the gods, but learn a good healing spell, as my granny used to say.’

Thor could race his goats until their hooves fell off, I was thinking, for it hid the noise of Finn’s nail-madness — he hauled it off the table onto the flags of the floor and what should have been a bell-loud clatter went unheard in the grinding of the Thunder-God. Finn pulled it back to him and might just as well have been dragging it over eiderdown.

‘Being iron,’ he said into the silence between thunders, ‘it needed careful attention, but I saw that it did not get the same rot as other things of iron. Swords, for example, and axe-heads.’

‘Different rot?’ muttered Red Njal, with the voice of a man who thought Finn addled. The light flared; Thor’s iron-wheeled chariot ground out another teeth-aching rumble.

Finn swung the nail back and forth and launched it again; one more crash on the table set the cup bouncing off with a clatter. Once more the nail hit the floor with a clang and was dragged back.

‘If your plan was to alarm the guards,’ Styrbjorn muttered, ‘it may yet succeed, despite Thor.’

‘The rot,’ Finn went on, as if Styrbjorn had not spoken at all, ‘on most swords and every axe-head I have seen, is the colour of old blood. Everyone knows that and even the best of swords gets it. It leaches from the metal like sap from a tree.’

Thor hurled his hammer in another blue-white flare. The nail trailed its wool tail through the air and slammed into the table-top again. My bone-handled seax fell off this time — together with the key to the cell lock.

‘Aha,’ said Crowbone. ‘Careful when you pull it off the table…’

He fell silent when Finn jerked the nail off the table and made no attempt to try and hook the key with it — which, I was thinking, would have been a clever trick if he could have managed it, for he would have to somehow get the nail through the ring of the key, if it was large enough even to take it…

‘So,’ Finn went on, winding his nail back to him, ‘I am watching my nail for signs of blood rot and seeing none. Instead, I am finding grit on my fingers, black as charcoal.’

A cold wind through one of the barred squares set the brazier glowing enough to send up some sparks, then trailed fingers through our beards, with the smell of rain and turned earth and escape. Finn bent low and slithered the nail out, underhand, towards the key. It overshot by a few finger-lengths. Again the thunder rumbled and the blue-white scarred our faces into the dark.

‘This, I thought, was also rot, so I scraped it all off first time I found it, then laid the nail down to fetch some fat to grease it with,’ Finn went on, tentatively tugging the nail this way and that with the wool. ‘Yet, when I came back to it, all the grit I had scraped off was back on the nail again.’

He looked up into our silent, gawping faces and grinned at the sight of them.

‘It was Ref who put me right on it,’ he said, giving a last tug, ‘for he knows iron as a farmer knows rye. The iron that leaches red rot is made from bloodstone, which is the most common iron, the stuff you fish out as a bloom on bog-grass. The iron that made my nail is rare, from a dug-out stone, where it is found in little black studs, like pips in an apple.’

He moved the nail a last nudge; the key slid towards it, stopped, slid again and then snugged up next to it. No-one could breathe for the wonder of it and even the thunder did not seem as loud.

‘Ref says,’ Finn went on, half to himself as he slowly dragged his nail, the key stuck to it as tight as a resin-trapped fly, ‘that this iron embraces all the other iron it sees.’

He scooped the nail and key up and grinned at us, dangling it, swinging it gently back and forth.

‘Be happy this key is not made of gold.’

The lightning seared the image of us staring at him, fixed by the sight of that key, sucked firmly to the side of the nail. The Thunder-God boomed out a laugh.

‘There is clever for you,’ muttered Red Njal, sullenly splintering the silence that followed. ‘Can I have my binding back? There is a cold wind blowing right up the sheuch of my arse.’

Thor-light flicked us when we wraithed through the door of the storeroom; an eyeblink of stark, white light showed us the long, gentle slope up to the surface, a ramp where once barrels of salted meat and ale had been rolled. That was before Kasperick had taken the place over for his own sick-slathered pleasures.

At the top should have been a pair of double-doors, shut and barred on the outside and only fixed with chains and a lock when something of true value was inside. And guards, always guards, at least one against the pilferers when it was a store, two, I was thinking, now that it was something else. Yet they were more to prevent folk coming across what Kasperick did in his pleasure room rather than keep his prisoners getting out.

But the rain snaked in hissing waves and the two guards Kasperick had left had opened the doors and crept inside a little way for shelter; the startling flash showed them, crouched, draped in iron and rightly afraid of attracting Perun’s eye, fixed as rabbits on the stoat of Thor-lights.

No-one had to speak; Finn and Red Njal moved up like a pair of boarhounds, almost in step with one another. Red Njal’s seax gleamed briefly and one guard went sagging against him, scarcely making more than a sigh as his throat was cut.

Finn made a mess of it. Though he had done this before, his Roman nail was no edged weapon and relied on his brute strength and placing skill to tear out the voice of the guard as well as rip through the heart-in-the-throat, where life pulsed.

The guard half-turned when he saw his oarmate go down to Red Njal, a movement that put Finn’s perfect thrust off by a hair; the Roman nail ripped in and blood spurted straight back in Finn’s eyes. Blinded and cursing, he let the nail and the man go to sweep the gore away.

The nail clattered to the stone flags and the guard, his mouth opening and closing like a dying fish, staggered out into the hissing downpour, his hands clamped to his throat and blood spraying through his fingers. He could not yell and the air hissed and bubbled from his torn throat as he tried, but he reeled in circles in the rain — and someone saw him.

The yell went through me like one of Thor’s ragged blue-white bolts. Finn scooped up his nail, still cursing and sprang forward; one thrust took the nail into the gasping guard’s eye, an in-out movement that sent him backwards like a felled oak.

Too late, I was thinking as someone started smacking the alarm-iron, far too late…

‘Row for it, lads!’ roared Finn.

Make for the main gate. I heard myself screaming it like a chant and sprinted into the rain, sword out. It was not proper night and the main gate would still be open, for folk came and went on all sorts of business in a fortress such as this.

The confusion helped us. The alarm was beating, but no-one knew why, or who they were looking for and we were most of the way across the yard before I heard someone bellowing out to close the gates. I spun in a half-circle, blinking rain out of my face and saw the others closing on me. A lancing fern of blue-white fretted the dark and, in the flicker of its life, showed us to each other; the great crash that followed was a mountain falling, drowning all other sound and leaving my mouth fizzing with each ragged breath.

‘Keep Crowbone in the middle,’ I yelled and did not have to add the why of it; he was too small and light in a fight. Finn came to my shieldless side, Styrbjorn on the other and we splattered through the muddy yard — so close now, I could hear the creak and groan of bad hinging and wood as men put shoulders to the gates.

We passed them, slashing left and right and they scattered, unarmed for the most part. Styrbjorn gave a yelp as someone snarled out at him with a fistful of steel, but he took the blow on his blade well enough and back-slashed, hardly pausing at all and not bothering to see if he had done damage. Shouts went up behind us. Arrows whicked by my head and one shunked into the back of a fleeing gateman, so that Crowbone had to hurdle him.

We were through the gate, skittering on the slick, uneven log walkway and the yells were different behind us, fewer and more commanding as the garrison sorted itself out; the stark, white, flash of Thor-light sent the luckless caged leering at us as we sprinted down their avenue.

We passed two side streets; folk scattered and screamed. At the third, I yelled for everyone to go right, but I was guessing. The dark rumbled and spat white fire, while a wind sprayed rain and flattened a dying, discarded torch flame; a lantern swung and rattled.

I could not be sure and spun in a half-circle, almost falling off the walkway and the others panted up to me.

‘Which way?’ Styrbjorn wanted to know, jerking this way and that, brimming on the edge of panic. I chose one, a left turn which sloped down. Down was good. Down led to water.

There were screams and the distant clanging of the alarm; Finn growled at a head which stuck out of a doorway and the owner jerked it back again. I stepped off the walkway by accident, a long drop that jarred my foot and pitched me on my face in the clotted mat of rot, split by a running stream. Spitting and coughing, I clawed my way up and back onto the walkway.

‘They are closing,’ spat Red Njal, which made us all turn to see the dark figures moving down through the buildings. Moving fast, too.

‘Fuck,’ said Finn, disgustedly. ‘I am running from Saxlanders.’

‘Good,’ snarled Styrbjorn, shoving past him and skidding on the slick logs, ‘keep running.’

Finn smile was twisted, his face flared by another flickering message from Thor.

‘Take the boy,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I am tired of running.’

‘Boy…’ began Crowbone, shrilling it in his anger; Red Njal grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him after the retreating Styrbjorn.

‘It is not seemly,’ he yelled as he pushed, ‘to interrupt a man when he is dying to save you. That is not my granny’s saying, but one of my own.’

The dark shapes bobbed and lumbered down the darkness towards us and Finn glanced sideways at me.

‘This walkway is narrow enough for one,’ he grunted. ‘And high enough.’

‘Just another bridge,’ I answered and his teeth were white in the shadow of his face.

‘Bone, blood and steel,’ he grunted.

The thunder grumbled and, in the next fern of white light, I saw the Saxlanders, uneasy in their ring-coats and spears with Himself banging around the sky, throwing anger about. They milled uncertainly when the light showed two men with bright blades waiting for them.

‘Get them,’ shrieked a familiar voice. ‘Take them alive.’

Kasperick. I hoped he would come within reach but if I knew that man he would lead from the back. I wiped rain from my face and squinted into the shadows of a day gone night. There were splashes.

‘They are off the walkway,’ I warned — then a dark shape was on me, panting out of the dark, slick with rain and fear. He was below me, in the mud and filth, glittering with old fishscales and stuck with feathers and hair. He sliced at my ankles with the spear, for he could not see me clearly and thought a scything blow would sweep me off my feet if it failed to cut me.

I hopped up awkwardly, landed badly and on my weak ankle, which shot fire through me. On one knee and cursing, I heard him suck in a triumphant breath and lurch forward; the spearhead, trailing droplets of water, slid past my eye and I slashed wildly, felt the edge hit and heard him scream and the splashing of him stumbling away.

‘If you have rested enough,’ Finn panted from above me, ‘I would be glad of some help.’

Two Saxlanders were at him, one on the logs and one off, slithering to keep his balance, ankle-deep in clinging mud.

Finn turned from the one on the walkway, took two steps, swung The Godi up as if for a great downward cut and then kicked the Saxlander spearman in the face as he followed the arc of it, his mouth slightly open. The man hurled backwards with a strangled choking sound; one boot was left stuck in the mud.

During this, I scrambled up and took on the other man, who crabbed and stabbed and huddled behind his shield, so that the best I could do was fend him off. Then he saw Finn was coming for him and backed off into the frustrated bellows of Kasperick, urging his men on.

They were wary, but circling, dropping off one walkway, slogging through the mud and on to another; the flash of white light showed them, dark as hunting wolves and almost behind us.

That same flash showed them stop, almost in mid-step. The darkness that followed was blacker still, but Finn had seen them and stood up straight, throwing out his arms, scattering water droplets like bright pearls.

‘I am Finn Bardisson, known as Horsehead, from Skane,’ he roared. ‘You want me? Here I come, you nithing, chicken-fucking, Saxlander whoresons.’

He hurled himself forward roaring, nail in one hand, The Godi in the other and I tried to snag him before he went, but failed. I half-stumbled on that cursed ankle, feeling the fireache of it and the sick, belly-dropping certainty that this was the moment Odin took his sacrifice and that I had doomed Finn with me.

The white light split the darkness again — and they fled.

The Saxlanders turned and ran, stumbling, away from the mad, wild-haired Finn and Kasperick stopped bellowing at them to get us and ran with them. I knelt, panting, bewildered, heard a noise and staggered up on one good foot, whirling round to face the dark shapes behind.

They loomed up, silent and grey-grim against the black. Then the lightning flashed again and I saw them, as the Saxlanders must have seen them, ring-coated and helmed, sharp with edges and grins, their faces streaked black with charcoal and sheep-fat.

Familiar faces — Alyosha, Finnlaith, Abjorn and the others.

‘That was a good trick of Finn’s,’ Styrbjorn said, pushing through to the front, ‘waiting until he saw us come up and then charging them. That set them running, for sure.’

Finn strolled back, The Godi over one shoulder, his nail in his teeth. He took it out and shoved it down one boot, then shouldered into the stone-grey ranks of men as we all backed off, heading for the river. I stood, trembling with reprieve.

‘You are a fool,’ I said to the grinning Styrbjorn, as Abjorn and Ospak helped me hirple away, ‘if you think Finn noticed any of you were there at all before he ran at them.’