The Prow Beast

SEVENTEEN

We scarred the laden drag-poles over a sodden land steaming in the new sunshine, ripe with new life and old death, thick with the smells of dark earth and rotted carcass. We scattered birds from the raggled corpses of drowned cattle and, at the end of the first day, sent up a cloud of rooks like black smoke from dead sheep the retreating waters had left hanging in gnarled branches like strange fruit.

‘Why are we pushing so hard?’ panted Kaelbjorn Rog, who only voiced what others thought. ‘We are leaving a trail a blind wean could follow, never mind some Magyar scouts.’

I said nothing, but grimmed them on through the fly-stinging, sweat-soaked day, the sick tottering along with the shite rolling down their legs rather than be bumped in drag-poles, for it was not the Magyars I feared, nor was I entirely running from enemies. Only Crowbone shared my thoughts on why we truly scowled our way so swiftly across the land and he was still mourning the distance between him and his uncle’s silver nose.

Jutos had seen Crowbone’s reaction and knew something was not quite right; slowly the tale of it was hoiked up and sense was made of things that had been said earlier, of northers encountered and hard bargains being struck.

The Oathsworn had not been the first band of Norse the Magyars had met; that honour had been given to Randr Sterki and some eighteen or so survivors of his own river-wyrd, stumbling out on the floodplain, starving and thirsting, for they dared not drink the foul water they sloshed through.

‘My father wanted the boy they had,’ Jutos told us, ‘a rare child, white as bone. Their leader, a man with skin-marks on him, offered us a Greek Christ priest, but that was no trade for us. We said to take him to the Pols, who might give them a little food, for I thought the Pols might know better what to do with a priest from the Great City.’

‘Where did they go?’ I asked and Jutos shrugged, waving vaguely in the direction of the distant blue mountains.

‘South, this side of the Odra,’ he replied. ‘After he had traded this marvellous nose for enough supplies.’

He paused and grinned widely. ‘If you happen to have ears that match, we will make ourselves go hungry to acquire them.’

I told him the torc was rich enough and tried to get the nose back, for Crowbone’s sake. In the end, though, we got supplies only — and the only bargain in it came as we were leaving, hauling the drag-poles away on a surprising gift of three horses.

Jutos came up and thrust out his hand, so I took it, wrist-to-wrist, in the Norse fashion and he nodded.

‘We part as traders,’ he said formally, then paused. ‘I will give you a day, then send riders to find the Pols and tell them of you and the Mazur girl. That will stop them raiding us when they find out we helped you. The horses we have given you will let you travel faster away from them.’

It was as fair as you could expect from Magyars and, at the end of that first day, I told the rest of the Oathsworn what we could expect and that Randr Sterki and the boy we had come to rescue lay just ahead. There was silence, mainly,

and Finn had the right of it when, later, he demanded to know what else I had expected from the crew.

‘The fact that we have enemies ahead as well as behind is not a joy of news,’ he added, to which I could find no answer.

The next day we had grown used to the smell of rot, so used to it, in fact, that we stumbled into horror when we should have been warned long since.

When we came round the side of a hill and saw the grod, we slowed and came to halt; men unshipped weapons and shields and stood uncertainly, looking from one to another and then at me.

It was a good grod, a well-raised earthwork, wooden stockade surrounding a cluster of dwellings, with a big covered watchtower over the gate. It had been built on a hill above the floodplain and the rising waters had swept round it like a moat, save for a narrow walkway of raised earth and logs, which led to the gate. The watery moat had since sunk and seeped almost back to the river, leaving bog and marsh which steamed in the sun.

The gate in the stockade was wide open and there was not a wisp of smoke. No dog barked, no horses grazed. Then the wind shifted slightly.

‘Odin’s arse,’ Finn grunted, his face squeezed up. He spat; the stink was like a slap in the face, a great hand that shoved the smell of rot down your throat.

‘A fight, perhaps,’ Styrbjorn said. ‘Randr Sterki and his men, I am thinking. The villagers have all run off, save for those he has killed.’

Styrbjorn grunted out that this was good work from only eighteen men, but most ignored him, cheered by the idea of a whole village lying open and empty and ripe as a lolling whore — perhaps Randr and his men had left some loot, too.

Then I pointed out that Randr and his men might still be there, waiting to ambush us.

‘Send Styrbjorn the Bold in,’ Abjorn declared and men laughed, which made Styrbjorn scowl and go red.

I chose Finn, Abjorn, Kaelbjorn Rog and Uddolf to go with me, leaving Alyosha to organise the others into a cautious defence; when we moved to the gates, magpies and crows rose up, one by one, flapping off and scolding us.

The place was empty, just as we had hoped. Wooden walkways led to a central raised platform of wood, with a tall pole on it, carved with four faces — their meeting place, with their god presiding over it. No Christ worshippers these. At first there were no bodies either, yet the smell of death was thick as linen as we prowled, turning in half-circles, hackles up and wary as cats. A goat skipped out of an alley and almost died under Abjorn’s frantic axe; a cow bawled plaintively from an unseen byre.

Uddolf poked a door open and then leapt back with a yelp; two dogs sidled out, whimpering, tails wagging furiously, tongues lolling from want of water — but they were full-bellied and the smell made my hair rise, made me breathe short and quick, not wanting to get the air anywhere deep in me.

I peered in, squinting through the gloom at the three bodies, black, bloated and chewed by the dogs. A man, his clothes tight against puffed flesh. A woman. A youngster, who could have been girl or boy.

After that we found others, one by one, two by two; a woman slumped against a wall, part-eaten, part-pecked. A boy whose face seemed to be peppered with scabs. A man with a bloated face that looked like oatmeal had been thrown at it and stuck. I grew afraid, then.

‘Sickness,’ Kaelbjorn Rog declared and he was right, I was sure, so I sent him back to fetch up Bjaelfi, who knew about such matters. We prowled on uneasily.

There were two handfuls of long timber houses, where kettles and cauldrons, horn spoons and looms sat, waiting for hands. There were storerooms and barns, hay in the barns and barrels of salted meat in the storehouses, while the bawling cow had teats swollen and sore, being so overdue for milking. The strange stillness became even more hackle-raising.

‘The livestock has been turned loose,’ Finn said, nodding to a brace of chewing goats. ‘So someone was alive to do that.’

Not now. We found them when we came up to a larger building, clearly a meeting hut. Here the truth unravelled itself from this sad Norn-weave.

‘Look here,’ Abjorn called and we went. A man and a woman lay at the door of the meeting hut, part-eaten but not as long-dead as the others. The woman had a wound in her chest, the man a knife in his throat and we circled, calling the tale of it as we read the signs.

‘The last ones left alive. He stabbed the woman,’ Finn declared.

‘Thrust the knife in his own throat,’ added Uddolf, pointing. ‘Missed, but bled. Did it again by putting it against his throat and falling on it, so he could not fail.’

We wore that little tragedy like a cloak as we filtered through into the meeting hut, almost having to push again the smell. Here they were, on pallets or slumped against the walls, dead, swollen, scabbed, eaten by scavengers, brought here to be more easily cared for, though there was no care that kept them from dying.

Bjaelfi came up, the fear slathered on his face. He had seen the other corpses, but he took one look at the stabbed woman’s body and turned it with his foot so that the flies rose up with the stink. One arm flopped and he pointed at the untouched, mottled flesh down her arm, where small red and white dots stared accusingly back.

‘Red Plague,’ he said and it hit us like a stone, so that we scrambled from the place. Fast as we were, the news of it was faster and, by the time we were hawking the bad air out of us, everyone knew.

Red Plague. We moved away as fast as we could, but I knew we would not outrun the red-spotted killer, that we probably carried it with us. I had expected to die for Odin, but the thought of thrashing out my life in a straw death, the sweat rolling off me in fat drops, my face pustuled and no-one wanting to be near me, was almost enough to buckle my knees.

We made camp at the top of a hill, in the shelter of some trees, where two fires were lit, smoking up from wet wood. Beyond a little way, bees muttered and bumbled, stupid with cold and spilled from their storm-cracked nest; men moved, laughing softly when one was stung, fishing out the combs of honey and pleased with this small gesture from Frey.

Warmth and sweetness went a long way to scattering the thought of Red Plague, as did Finn’s cauldron of meat and broth, eaten with bread and fine, crumbling cheese. Their bellies no longer grumbled, but it would not be long, as I said to Finn when our heads were closer together, when their mouths did it instead.

That night one of the sick died, a man called Arnkel, who had bright eyes and a snub nose and told tales almost as good as the ones Crowbone had once given us. Bjaelfi inspected him for signs of plague, but it was only the squits he had died of and he had been struggling for some time.

‘Ah, well, there’s an end to truth entire, then,’ Red Njal mourned when Bjaelfi brought the news of it to the fire in the dull damp of morning. ‘No more tales from him.’

‘Truth?’ demanded Kaelbjorn Rog, his broad face twisted with puzzlement. ‘In bairns’ tales?’

‘Aye,’ Red Njal scowled. ‘Told by those old enough to remember. Wisdom comes from withered lips, as my old granny told me.’

‘Was this just before she told you one of her tales?’ Kaelbjorn Rog persisted. ‘Made up completely, for sure.’

‘Only those written down,’ persisted Red Njal and men craned to listen, for this was almost as good entertainment as one of Arnkel’s tales.

‘You mean,’ Abjorn offered, weighing the words slowly and chewing them first to make sure the flavour was right, ‘that stories are only true if they are not written?’

Red Njal scowled. ‘If you are laughing at me, Abjorn, I will not take it kindly. Let no man glory in the greatness of his mind, but, rather, keep a watch on his wits and tongue, as my granny said.’

Abjorn held up his palms and waggled his head in denial. Finn chuckled.

‘Ask Crowbone. He is the boy for stories, after all.’

Crowbone, staring at the flames of the fire, stirred when he became aware of the eyes on him and raised his chin from where it was sunk in his white, fur-trimmed cloak.

‘When you hear something told, you can see the teller of it and pass judgement. But if you read it, you cannot tell who wrote it, and so cannot say whether it is true or not.’

Red Njal agreed with a vehement growl and Finn chuckled again, shaking his head in mock sorrow.

‘There you have it,’ he declared, ‘straight from an ill-matched brace of oxen, who cannot read anything written, not even runes — so how would they know?’

‘You do not understand,’ Red Njal huffed. ‘There is magic in such tales and if you needed the measure of it, remember Crowbone when he told them.’

Which clamped Finn’s lip shut, for he did remember, especially the one which had once snatched us from the wrath of armed men. He acknowledged it now with a bow to Crowbone and, seeing the boy only half notice it, added: ‘Perhaps the prince of storytellers will grace us with the one he is dreaming of now?’

Crowbone blinked his odd eyes back from the fire and into the faces round it.

‘It was not a tale. I was remembering the whale we found once.’

Short Serpent’s old crew stirred a little, remembering with him and, bit by bit, it was laid out…on a desolate stretch of shingle beach, pulling in for the night, they had come upon a small whale, beached and only just alive. No matter that it was another man’s land, they flensed it, cutting great cubes of fat, thick as peats, thick as turf sod. They ate like kings, bloody and greasy.

It was the dream of home, of north water and shingle and it fixed us all with its brightness. For a reason only Odin could unravel, I kept thinking of the patch of kail and cabbage at the back of Hestreng hov. Thorgunna had grown a lush crop there, using the stinking water from the boilings of bairns’ under-cloths and it had survived everything, untrampled and unburned, when Hestreng was reduced to char and smoulder.

Uddolf crashed into the shining of this, asking for men to come and howe Arnkel up. His closest oarmates went and, in the end, we all stood by the mound; as godi, I placed one of my last three armrings in it, to honour him, which went some way against the grey grief of his loss.

It was a cloak that descended on us all. Onund wept and when he was asked why, said it was for the black sand and milk sea of his home. No-one mocked him, for we were all miserable with similar longings.

Through it all, two figures caught my sight. One was Dark Eye, still and slight and staring at the dark beyond the fire while men sighed and crooned their longings out; it came to me that this was how she must feel all the time, yet bore it without a whimper.

The other was the fire-soaked carving of the Elk, proudantlered, lashed to its spear-haft. I was thinking that a prow beast was leading us still, further than ever from where we wanted to be.

In the morning, stiff and cold, men moved sullenly in our camp on the hill, hidden in trees where the mist shredded and swirled. I was gathering my sea-chest together when Styrbjorn came up, with men behind him. Everything stopped.

‘We have been talking among ourselves,’ Styrbjorn said. Finn growled and men shifted uncomfortably. I said nothing, waiting and sick, for I had been expecting this.

‘It seems to us,’ he went on, ‘that there is nothing to be gained by continuing in this way and a great deal to be lost.’

‘There is a deal to be lost, for sure,’ I answered, straightening and trying to be light and soft in my voice, for the anger trembled in me. ‘For those who break their Oath and abandon their oarmates. Believe me, Styrbjorn, I have seen it.’

The men behind him shifted slightly, remembering that they had sworn the Oath, but Styrbjorn had not. One scowler called Eid cleared his throat, almost apologetically, and said that when they had held a Thing, as was right for bondi to do when they thought I was dead, it was generally understood that whoever was chosen would lead them home.

Men hoomed and nodded; I saw no more than a handful, all from Crowbone’s old crew of Short Serpent and that, while Styrbjorn stood with his arms folded, pouting like a mating pigeon, it was to Alyosha that these men flicked their uneasy eyes.

‘Now I am returned and there is no need for such decisions,’ I said, though I knew it would not silence them.

‘If I had been chosen,’ Crowbone added defiantly, ‘we would still be after the boy.’

Eid snorted. ‘You? The only reason any of us are here at all is because Alyosha was sensibly tasked by Prince Vladimir to keep you out of trouble after he gave you the toy of a boat and men. If anyone leads here, it is Alyosha.’

Crowbone stiffened and flushed, but held himself in check, which was deep-thinking; if he started to get angry, his fragile voice would squeak like a boy. Styrbjorn, on the other hand, started turning red, though the lines round his mouth went white as he glared at Eid; he did not like this talk of Alyosha leading.

‘Prince Vladimir gave Short Serpent to ME,’ Crowbone answered his crew, sinking his chin into his chest to make his voice deeper. ‘He gave YOU to me.’

‘No-one gave me anywhere,’ growled Eid, scowling. ‘What am I — a horn spoon to be borrowed? A whetstone to be lent?’

‘A toy, perhaps,’ grunted Finn, grinning and Eid wanted to snarl at him, but was not brave enough, so he subsided like a pricked bladder, muttering.

Alyosha, markedly, stayed stone-grim and silent, with a face as blank as a fjord cliff, while Styrbjorn opened and closed his mouth, the words in him crowding like men scrambling off a burning boat, so that they blocked his throat.

‘And there is the girl,’ added a voice, just as I thought I had the grip of this thistle. Hjalti, who was named Svalr — Cold Wind — because of his miserable nature, had a bald pate with a fringe of hair which he never cut, but burned off and never got it even. He had an expression that looked as if he was always squinting into the sun and a tongue which could cut old leather.

‘The girl is another matter,’ I answered. Styrbjorn recovered himself enough to smile viciously.

‘A sweetness we have all missed,’ he replied, ‘save you, it seems.’

I shot Ospak a hard look and he had the grace to shrug and look away, acknowledging his loose tongue and what he had seen and heard by the Magyar fires.

‘Am I a chattel, then?’ said a new voice and I did not have to turn to know it; Dark Eye stepped into the centre of the maelstrom, a hare surrounded by growlers. ‘A thrall, to be passed around? A horn spoon or a whetstone, as Eid says?’

No-one spoke under the lash of those eyes and that voice. Dark Eye, wrapping her cloak around her, cocked a proud chin.

‘I have a purpose here. The Sea-Finn’s drum spoke it and those who have heard it know its truth,’ she spat, then stopped and shrugged.

‘Of course,’ she added slyly, ‘if all it takes for such hard men to seek Jarl Orm’s fostri is a sight of my arse-cheeks, I will lift my skirts and lead the way.’

There was a chuckle or two at that and Styrbjorn opened his mouth. Dark Eye whirled on him.

‘You had all best move swiftly and catch me first,’ she said loudly, ‘for Styrbjorn is skilled at stabbing from behind.’

Now there was laughter and Styrbjorn turned this way and that, scowling, but it was too late — men remembered him for the sleekit nithing he was and that he had been the cause of all this in the first place. For all that, like a dog with a stripped bone, some still thought there was enough meat to gnaw.

‘This chase is madness.’

His name was Thorbrand, I remembered, a man who knew all the games of dice and was skilled with a spear.

‘Ach, no, it is not,’ Red Njal offered cheerfully. ‘Now, mark you, mad is where you chase a band of dead-eaters, who chase a thief, who is chasing a monk, and all in the Muspell-burning wastes of Serkland. That is mad, Thorbrand.’

‘Aye, madness that is, for sure,’ agreed Thorbrand. ‘What fool did that?’

Finn grinned at him and slapped his chest. ‘Me. And Orm and Red Njal and a few others besides.’

He broke off and winked.

‘And we came away with armfuls of silver at the end of it. The best fruits hang highest, as Red Njal’s granny would no doubt have told him.’

Styrbjorn snorted.

‘That sounds like one of the tales Red Njal likes so much. Is it written down anywhere? I am sure it must be, since it smacks of a great lie.’

‘As to that,’ Finn said, moving slowly, ‘I could not say, for reading other than runes is not one of my skills. But I can hear, even with just the one ear and I am sure you just called me a great liar.’

The world went still; even the birdsong stopped. I stepped into the silence of it.

‘There is only one safe way to stop heading the way I am steering you,’ I rasped, feeling my bowels dissolve, ‘and that is for one of you to become jarl. And there is only one way for that to happen — what say you, Styrbjorn? You will also have to take the Oath you have so far managed to avoid.’

There was a silence, a few heartbeats, no more, where Styrbjorn licked his drying lips and fought to rise to the challenge, even though his bowels were melting faster than mine. I relied on it; I knew how Styrbjorn liked to fight and it was not from the front.

It stretched, that silence, like the linden-bast rope that had held Short Serpent to the bank and the fear-heat spurted from it like water.

Just before it broke, Kuritsa loped up and parted it with a slicing sentence.

‘Fight later — men are running for their lives and one of them is Randr Sterki.’

They were running like sheep, all in the same direction but only because they blindly followed a leader; the water sluiced from under their feet and their laden drag-poles were flung to one side.

‘They will never get away,’ Abjorn grunted, pointing. He had no need to; we could all see the horsemen, big as distant dogs now and closing.

‘They are heading right towards us,’ Red Njal said, his voice alarmed.

Of course they were — Randr Sterki was no fool and he saw high ground with trees on top, knew if he reached it the horsemen would be easier to fight if they decided to charge in and, if they balked at that, the trees would provide cover from the arrows.

‘Form up — loose and hidden,’ I ordered, peering out, searching for what I had not yet been able to see.

‘We are going to rescue Randr Sterki?’ demanded Styrbjorn incredulously. ‘After all he has put us through? Let him die out there.’

Finn spat, just missing Styrbjorn’s scuffed, water-stained boots.

‘Fud brain,’ he growled. ‘The boy is there.’

Styrbjorn, who had forgotten why we were here at all, scowled, while Alyosha and Abjorn slid away to give orders; men filtered forward into the trees, half-crouched, tightening helmet ties, settling shields.

‘Randr Sterki will not thank us, all the same,’ muttered Red Njal; I had been thinking the same myself and thought to leap that stream when we were near falling in it.

There — two figures, one half-falling, slower than the rest, stumbling. The taller one, black, stopped, hauled the little one up into his arms and half-staggered, half-ran to keep up; I could hear the rasp of his breathing from here, but I was puzzled as to why the monk should care so much to rescue Koll.

A man fell, got up and stumbled on, then fell again. Sick, I was thinking as the monk reeled past him, then let Koll slip to the ground, taking him by one hand. The pair of them ran on and the horsemen were closing fast, spraying water and clotted muck up.

‘An ounce of burnt silver says that small one is first to die,’ Eid muttered close to me, nudging his oarmate, one of Finnlaith’s Dyfflin men.

‘You never had an ounce of burnt silver,’ this one replied and Thorbrand’s curse was reeking.

‘That small one is the boy we came all this way to get,’ he spat at them.

Out on the sodden plain, the first of Randr’s men had reached the foot of the low hill and we could hear the desperate, ragged dog-panting of them. Randr himself stopped and half-turned, bellowing at those who lumbered past, almost on all fours, what he wanted them to do when they got the shelter of the trees. It was a good plan, but I was thinking to myself that none of his men were up for it.

The weak man fell yet again and the first long-shot arrows skittered and spat up water behind him, so that he scrambled up and weaved on, almost at a walk now. A dozen steps further on and he fell again and this time he lay there, so that the horsemen, almost casually, shot him full of arrows, whooping as they ran over him.

‘The boy…’ growled Eid and sprang to his feet. Thorbrand followed and, with a curse, so did the Dyfflin man. They roared out of the treeline, leaving me speechless and stunned with the speed of it all.

The horsemen, felt hats flapping, their bow-nosed ponies at full stretch, were heading for the bulk of the fleeing men; more arrows flew and two or three men went down. Randr himself stopped bellowing and started scrambling up the low hill towards us.

Two or three horsemen had turned off towards Koll and Leo the monk, but they had their sabres out, planning to run them down and slash them to ruin. The monk shoved Koll to the ground and then dived and rolled as the first horseman came on him, lashing out with his left hand as he did so; my heart thundered up into my throat, but the horseman missed and Leo’s slap had no effect, or so it seemed, while the others over-ran the pair.

Then Eid and the other two came howling down the hill like mad wolves and the horsemen, bewildered, milled and circled. Two of them whipped out arrows; the third turned back to Koll and Leo. After that, I remember it in fragments, like a shattered mirror flying everywhere, all the pieces with a different reflection.

Two arrows felled Eid as he ran. Thorbrand and the Dyfflin man crashed down on the two horsemen, stabbing and hacking. The third man’s horse staggered and fell as if Daneaxed, just as the rider urged it towards Koll and Leo; poison, I was thinking, even as I turned to fight. Enough in Leo’s stab to fell a horse in a few heartbeats — so he did have a hidden dagger after all.

The rest of the horsemen came up the slope, slinging their horn and wood bows and hauling out that wicked curve of sabre, a long smile of steel for hacking down on the fleeing. They were Vislanians, I learned later, who wore skin breeks and felt coats and caps and could climb under their ugly dog-ponies and up the other side at full gallop.

Not in the trees, though. They reined in from a gallop; Randr Sterki’s men were on their knees, frothing and gasping, with no fight in them and it looked to be easy enough for the riders — until they discovered the hornet byke they had stepped in.

Kuritsa began it by putting the last of his war arrows in the chest of one of the horses, so that it reared up and rolled its great eyes until the whites showed, pitching the rider off with a scream.

Then it was blood and shrieks and mayhem. Red Njal ran at them, hirpling on his lame leg, bellowing like a bull and his spear took one of the horsemen in the belly, so that his head snapped forward and he went over the plunging horse’s arse. Red Njal let the spear go and whipped out his seax.

Axes scythed, spears stabbed, swords whirled. It was bloody and vicious and my part in it was brutal and short — I came up on the man doing the most shouting, sitting on his dancing, wild-eyed pony, waving a crescent-moon of steel and bellowing.

He saw me come at him and raised the sabre, his eyes wide and red, his black moustaches seeming to writhe as he yelled; then something seemed to catch his arm as he raised it and I saw the shaft, through his forearm and into the shoulder, pinning his arm — a hunting arrow from Kuritsa.

The sabre fell from his fingers and he looked astonished, though he had only a few seconds to think at all, before I took Brand’s sword in a whirling, two-handed backstroke at his waist. Finn and others called this ‘opening the day-meal’ and it was a death-blow even if the victim did not die at once, for his belly split and everything in it fell out, blue-white, red, pale yellow.

He fell like a gralloched stag — and the rest of them tried to flee.

Cut them down, I heard myself screaming, though it sounded far away. None must escape to tell of what had been found and where we were.

The Oathsworn wolfed them, snarling and clawing. The last man turned his pony and flogged it back downhill, men chasing him, screaming. Kaelbjorn Rog, panting and sprinting, fell over his feet, bounced up and hurled his axe at the fleeing back in a fury of impotent rage, but it fell well short.

The arrow hissed out, a blur of speed and the smack of it hitting the rider’s back was almost drowned in the great roar of approval that went up as the fleeing man spilled from the saddle. The pony kept going and I knew, with a cold, heavy sink of feeling, that we had failed.

There was a heavy silence, reeking of blood and vomit and moans. Men moved, counting the cost, clapping each other on the shoulder in the sudden ecstasy that comes with surviving a battle, or else retching, hands on their knees and bent over.

Randr Sterki lay flat out, a great bruise on the side of his face and Onund looming over him like a scowling troll. He had made for Randr as soon as the fight started and slammed him in the face with the boss of his shield. Now Randr lay on his back, propped up on his elbows and spitting out teeth and blood.

‘I owe you that and more,’ Onund growled at him, touching his chest where, under his stained tunic, the glassy scars of Randr’s old burning still wept.

‘The severed hand seldom steals again,’ Red Njal pointed out, scowling. ‘And a head in a tree plots only with the wind.’

‘Your granny was never one for a boy to snuggle into,’ Crowbone muttered, hunching himself against the black glare Red Njal gave him in passing.

The rest of Randr’s men, cowed and gasping, sat sullenly, aware that they had leaped out of the skillet into the pitfire. As I came up, Onund handed me a sheathed sword, taken from Randr; it was mine, taken when he had me prisoner and the V-notch in it undammed a sudden, painful torrent of remembering — of my sword biting into the mast of the Fjord Elk, of being slammed into the water, of Nes Bjorn’s charred remains, of the loss of Gizur and Hauk and all the rest.

Randr must have seen that gallop across my face like chasing horses, for he stayed silent.

There was a survivor from the horsemen, a sallow-faced scowler with blood on his teeth and still snarling, for all that he had the stump of a hunting arrow in his thigh and his left arm at the ugly angle only a twisted break would allow.

I wanted answers, but his black eyes were sodden with anger and pain and defiance. Then Dark Eye came up and spoke to him, a string of coughing sibilants. He replied, showing bloody teeth in a snarl. She answered. They shot sounds like arrows, then were silent.

‘He is a Vislan,’ she said. ‘That tribe are all Christ worshippers.’

‘All that for so little?’ I answered and she sighed.

‘He called me names. He calls you all flax-heads, which is what they call the Saxlanders. Barbarians.’

There was more, I knew, but caught the warning spark from her and let Finn erupt instead.

‘Barbarian?’ he bellowed. ‘I am to be called this by a skin-wearing troll?’

‘Quisque est barbarum alio,’ said a weary voice and, turning, we saw Leo the monk, with Koll behind him and Thorbrand trailing after.

‘Everyone,’ Leo translated, with a wan smile at Finn, ‘is a barbarian to someone.’

I gave him no more than a glance, my attention on Koll, who came up and stood in front of me.

‘You have fared a fair way from home,’ I said, awkward and cursing myself for not having more tongue-wit than that.

‘I knew you would come,’ he answered, staring up into my face with the sure, clear certainty of innocence. He was thin and his bone-white colour made it hard to see if he was ill or not, but he seemed hale enough. Yet the pale blue eyes had seen things and it showed in them.

‘Well,’ drawled Finn, circling the monk like a dunghill cock does hens. ‘You have led us a long dance, monk.’

Leo acknowledged it with a wry smile. His hair was long and stuck out at odd angles and he had gathered the tattered ends of his black robe up under his belt, so that it looked like he wore baggy black breeks to the knee; beneath them, his legs were red and white, mud-splattered and bloody from old cuts and grazes. He reeked of grease and woodsmoke and did not look much, but I knew he had a needle of poisoned steel on him and said so.

He widened his eyes to look innocent and Finn growled at him.

‘Find a rope,’ Red Njal spat. ‘Make him dance a new dance. The breathless tongue never conspires.’

‘No.’

It came from two throats — Koll’s and Finn’s — and took everyone by surprise, even the pair who had hoiked it out.

‘Kill him another way,’ Finn growled, scrubbing his beard as he did when he was discomfited.

‘Do not kill him at all,’ Koll declared defiantly. ‘He helped me, saved me when the rest of these pigs wanted to sell me to the Magyars. Him and Randr Sterki stood against them.’

I knew why Randr would want to keep the boy, but not the monk and I said so to Leo, who shrugged.

‘I took him as a counter in a game,’ he said diffidently. ‘He still had value.’

Koll blinked a bit at that, but I had expected not much more. I put my hand on the boy’s shoulder, to show him he was safe once more — then Randr Sterki struggled weakly to his feet and growled to me across the trampled, bloody underbrush of the clearing.

‘Well? Will you finish it, Bear Slayer? What you started on Svartey?’

I wondered how many of the Svartey crew were left and wondered it aloud; the answer was straight enough — only him alone. All the others had died and the men of his crew who sat, shivering and sullen, had no connection with that old strandhogg.

‘Kill him and be done with it,’ Styrbjorn said and Randr Sterki curled a lip at him.

‘So much for fighting shoulder to shoulder,’ he answered bitterly. ‘Well done is ill paid, as the saying goes. Here is the dog who fought, the chief who led and the ring-giver who paid — only the fighting dog dies, it seems.’

I looked from Styrbjorn to Leo and back to Randr. He had the right of it, for sure — all of those who had helped the Norns weave the wyrd of what happened were here, including the Oathsworn, who had scoured Svartey in one bloody thread of it.

‘Matters would have gone better for me,’ Randr Sterki went on morosely, ‘but for this bloody habit of slaughter you Oathsworn have. The death of that village you visited has called out an army of Pols, all bent on skewering Northmen — my bad war luck to run into them before you.’

‘Truly,’ agreed Onund coldly, ‘when you annoy the gods, you are fucked.’

Finn added his own bloody growl to that by cutting the throat out of the Vislan and, while he choked and kicked, Abjorn and Alyosha counted the cost of the fight and the heads left.

There were fourteen of Randr’s men left, including himself. We had two dead and four men wounded; the two dead were Eid and the Dyfflin man, whose name, I learned from Thorbrand, was Ranald. Finn could not understand what had made them charge out as they did and asking Thorbrand only brought a weary heave of his shoulders and the answer that he had followed the other two. I thought I knew, for I had felt it myself — little Koll, the prize for all that had been suffered, was in danger of being snapped up by someone else.

It had cost us, all the same and we would need Randr and his men, I was thinking and I said that to them and him. Red Njal cursed and one or two others made disapproving grunts, but I laid it out for them; we were alone and together made no more than sixty. Somewhere, hordes of Pols hunted us.

‘Turn Randr Sterki and his men loose, then,’ Kaelbjorn Rog offered truculently. ‘Let the Pols hunt them down while we get away.’

‘Tcha!’ spat Red Njal. ‘At least make it easy for the Pols — the foot removed cannot scurry far.’

‘I am now sure I dislike this granny of yours,’ Crowbone said, shaking his head, then stared his odd-eyes into the pig-squint glare Red Njal tried to burn him with.

‘If the wind changes, your face will stay like that,’ he added grimly. ‘My ma told me that one and she was a princess.’

‘It is too late for running,’ I said, before matters boiled. ‘The Pols will know where we all are in a few hours.’

‘Why so?’ demanded Crowbone, moody because he had been effectively kept out of the fight by his iron wet-nurse, Alyosha. ‘We have killed all these dog-riders.’

‘But not their horses,’ Alyosha told him, seeing it now. ‘They will track back and find us.’

It was then that folk realised some of the bow-nosed ponies had galloped off and those who knew their livestock knew what horses did when riderless. They went home. I knew it, as well as I knew we could not stay here to fight, nor run somewhere else out on the wet plain.

There was only one place we could go which would give us a chance of fighting at all and it was not one I wanted to visit. When I laid it out, the words fell into a silence as still as the inside of an old howe, which was answer enough.

Save for Leo, who always had something to say, even about stepping into a plague-ridden fortress.

‘A fronte praeciptium, a tergo lupi,’ he declared and turned to Finn, who stunned the monk even as he opened his mouth to translate it.

‘A cliff in front, wolves behind,’ Finn translated. ‘I have heard that one before, priest. It is the place the Oathsworn fight best.’