The Prow Beast

NINETEEN

We had left it too late; Czcibor had more men and bigger boats on the river; it cost us three dead to find that out and Styrbjorn came staggering back from the little river gate, clutching his bloody arm and ranting with the fear howling in him, for we were trapped.

That was the day we started burning corpses in a mad, desperate fear-fever that sought to try and scour the Red Pest out before it killed us all.

That was the day they brought up the ram and smashed in the gate.

They had tried fire, but lacked oil for their arrows and we had water enough to soak the gates and timbers where they tried it. Then we saw men hauling back a good tree, sweated out of the river further down, where it had lodged. It was, as Finn pointed out, as good an oak for a ram as any he had seen.

We had to watch it being crafted, too, for there was no place to hide out on that plain and every hammer and axestroke that shaped it rattled us to the bone, for we had no way of stopping such a beast. Their archers would keep our heads down — it was almost impossible to put your head above the timber-teeth of the rampart now, unless there were enemy climbing over it — and the ram would come up to the gate and splinter it to ruin.

‘Barrier the inside of the gate,’ I suggested and Alyosha nodded, then grinned.

‘Battle luck for you, Orm Bear Slayer, that you have skilled men here. Better than a barrier is our wolf-teeth.’

Alyosha and the Rus were old hands, having fought in sieges on both sides of the ramparts and they knew what was needed.

They had a house demolished for the great timbers of the roof-tree and lashed them together like a cradle. Then they gathered up spears and split the heads from them, or cut the shafts short, so that they were fixed to the cradle, all odd lengths and all deadly.

After that, it was shifted to a point just beyond where the curved groove of dirt showed how far the gate opened inwards.

‘Wolf-teeth,’ Alyosha said, when his chosen men had sweated it into place; they beamed with satisfaction. Finn and others strolled round it, eyeing it with a professional air, for we were raiders, when all was said and done and avoided anything that looked like this bristling terror.

‘A place to hang their cloaks and hats when they come,’ Finn said eventually, which was admiration enough to make Alyosha beam.

‘Growl not at guests, nor drive them from the gate,’ Ospak added, ‘as Red Njal’s granny would say.’

‘No more on that,’ Finn growled. ‘Without it coming from his mouth, I would sooner see Red Njal’s granny laid to rest.’

Ospak merely nodded and smiled, twisting his dirt and blood-crusted face into a hard knot.

Not long after, hidden watchers peering through slits on the gate tower announced that the enemy were coming again.

I stood behind the barrier with Finn at one shoulder and Ospak at the other, fetid with fear and old blood, rot-red with rust. My bowels curled like waves on the shore and the first great boom of the ram on the door almost loosened them entirely.

On the ramparts, Finnlaith and Alyosha and others hunkered down and heaved the last of our stones as well as spike-studded timbers down on the heads of the ram party; we heard them clatter and bounce off the roof of shields, though there was an occasional scream to let us know they were not having it all their own way.

We sweated and shivered behind the wolf fangs, while the gate rang like a bell and heaved in another little bit with each blow, the bar on it creaking and dancing in the locks. Great gouts of muddy slurry spurted up from the hinges.

Crowbone slid up to the tower steps with a party bringing up more timbers, manhandling them up the ladder, with the gate bulging in right at their ears. Alyosha, his helmet flaps up and laced across the top of his head so that his ears were free and he could hear better, saw it and bellowed out something, lost in the mad din. Crowbone merely waved at him and Alyosha, scowling, half-stood to make his way to the steps and tell Crowbone to go away.

The arrow took him in the neck, just under the ear; if he had had his helmet flaps down it might have saved him, but they were up like little birdwings and the arrow went in one side and out the other. He jerked and pawed at it, a puzzled look on his face, then reared up; blood came out of his mouth in a great, black gout and he fell sideways and clattered down the steps to Crowbone’s feet.

The boy howled — but someone grabbed him just then, dragging him back and under the cradle of wolf fangs, just as the gate crashed open with a splintering rend of wood and hinge.

The first man through was a mad-mouthed frother, black hair flying, lunging in with a spear up and a leather helmet askew on his forehead; he had time to see what he was running at, time to skid to a halt — then the ones behind crashed on him and he was shot forward, shrieking for his ma, to be impaled like a shrike’s breakfast.

The first half-dozen ended up like that — there were longer blades with two and three bodies on them; some of the shafts snapped under the weight.

Those behind realised something was up when they were brought up short and found they could go neither ahead, nor to the side, while those in the gate tower above were hurling slabs of spiked wood down on them.

I hacked and stabbed and cut and slashed; the wooden cradle started to shift and slide back under the press, so men put their shoulders to it on our side and shoved, while others elbowed for room to fight. There was a fine haze of steam and stink and misted blood, a great bellowing shriek of fear and dying; the earth under the gate tower churned to a thick broth of muddy blood.

I saw Finn take a jaw off with a wild stroke. I saw one of Randr Sterki’s men eat the point of a spear and go down, gargling. Arrows whirred and shunked and men from both sides screamed and died; the Pols were shooting through the open gateway, heedless of who they hit.

Yan Alf went crazed then and leaped up on top of the wolffang cradle and its smother of hanging bodies, then hurled himself, screaming, into the middle of the pack; I never saw him alive again. Finnlaith, screaming ‘Ui Neill’ and spittle, followed him, leaping off the top of the watchtower and I saw him once after that, rising through a frothing sea of enemy like a breaching whale; then he disappeared.

That broke them. One minute I was slashing and stabbing, my breathing high and shrill, my arm aching, seeing the blood curve off the end of the axe blade in fat, greasy spray — then I was slumped against the scarred, gouged cradle where bodies writhed and groaned. The Pols backed off through their own arrows and Finn yelled out a warning as the full weight of shafts fell on us.

Shields up, we stood there until men brought up some thick timber doors torn off the houses and used them as shelter. In the end, the arrows stopped and men went out to heave corpses aside and shut the gates again, though they were so badly splintered that they could not be barred.

I know I shouted instructions for some of this, for Finn told me. I know I helped carry Alyosha away and consoled a weeping Crowbone, while the crew of Short Serpent — what was left of them — stood, covered in gore and grim silence while Alyosha was shield-carried to a pyre. Ospak and Murrough, the last Irishers left, stood like dumb posts, unable to go out and find Finnlaith; in the end, Onund whacked their shoulders and gave them work to keep their minds off the loss.

I know all this, but was aware of none of it. I only came back to life later, when Bjaelfi was binding up my ankle — the old injury, which burned like fire. I had gone over on it, according to folk who saw, and limped about for a long time until Bjaelfi and others managed to pin me down and tend my wounds.

I had a scratch down one cheek, my ribs ached from a blow I did not even know I had come by and my nose thundered with pain and trickled new blood, so that Finn, unharmed and grinning through the stains on his face, shook his head.

‘That neb of yours will not last much longer if you persist in getting it dunted,’ he noted and Ospak, staggering past with an armful of timber to be spiked with spear and arrow points, stopped long enough to look and tilt his head almost onto his shoulder.

‘Every time I look at it,’ he said, ‘I have to stand at more of a list to steerboard than before, just to keep it straight on your face.’

Then he laughed, a shrill, high sound. They all laughed, those that were left, hair stiff with clotted filth, armour red-rusted and weapons stained with gore. They moved as though their legs were wood — yet they moved, getting ready for the next attack.

Finnlaith was dead, Yan Alf was dead. Thorbrand was dead. Hjalti Svalr had the Red Pest, had lost most of his right hand and was groaning and babbling of home. Others were stacked like winter wood, their weapons bound to cold hands. And those who were left mourned with laughter, like wolves.

I had no belly left for laughing. As the shadows lengthened and weary fires sprang up, Bjaelfi came to me, his face scored with misery, carrying a limp little bundle which he laid at my feet like an offering. It was so small, that bundle, yet it broke us all like a falling tree and men groaned and bowed their heads; some even wept, leaving wet white streaks through the filth of their cheeks.

Koll. He was wrapped warmly and his face was so swollen his father would not have known him but for the bone-white of his hair. One hand rested on his chest under the warm wrap, but one had flopped free and the blue veins on it stood proudly out, so proud it was hard to believe that blood did not pump through them. The rest of the hand was pale, the shrinking flesh spatterered with white pustules.

Bjaelfi looked at me, waiting to take the small body to the burning; men stopped and made Hammer signs for mourning and not just because Koll was dead. He was what we had struggled all this way to get, had fought for, had watched oarmates die for — and we had failed.

I tied his little hands round the hilt of his father’s sword and gave him to the Odin-fire. It was like the death of hope itself, watching that small, wrapped body smoke up into the dark.

That night, Dark Eye came to me, silent as a summer breeze, yet when I reached for her she was limp and slick-sheened with sweat, hot as embers in my arms. To the question in my eyes, she simply slithered from her shapeless tunic-dress and raised her arms; even in the dark, where her silver shape glowed, the red spots on her thighs and under her arms were clear, almost as big as the tender tips of her hard breasts.

She shivered and sweated.

‘In the morning,’ she said, ‘I will go to them.’

I argued. I swore. I ranted. I babbled. In the end she pressed hot, cracked lips on mine to silence me.

‘This is my wyrd,’ she said, her breath fetid on my cheek. ‘This is best. I am what they want — let them take me, for it will be their own doom. This is what the Sea-Finn’s drum saw.’

I saw it, then, hot in her eyes, with a coldness deep in my bowels. It was her wyrd — at one stroke she saved us, saved her people and would spread the red, ruinous pest through Czcibor’s army.

‘It must be done in the morning,’ she said, ‘before I am too weak to pretend.’

I nodded then, still frantic with the loss of her, with the sight of those great, liquid seal eyes already filming blue-white with sickness. I held her most of that night, leaving her only long enough to take a stained, unbleached linen scrap and wrap it round a shield.

There was not enough dark in all the world that would keep back the creeping dawn.

When it spilled up, staining the rampart, making it like the jaw of some snarling prow beast, men stood, shaking and weary, beards and hair stiff with filth, eyes bright with the knowledge that today they would stand before their gods — and were amazed to see me walk Dark Eye to the gate.

I handed my axe to Finn and left Dark Eye with him while I shoved through the splintered ruin, stepping over the bodies and through the bloody crust of mud. I held the linen-wrapped shield high, hoping it was white enough to be noticed as a truce-sign. I paused only once to look Randr Sterki in his red-rimmed eyes. His grin was a curve of snarl.

Picking my way through the festering dead, I stumbled out to where Czcibor sat on his horse; he looked more gaunt now, I was thinking and I wondered if the Red Pest had already reached his army.

‘Be quick,’ he said harsh and haughty, so I was.

‘Is she trade enough for our lives?’ I asked and he looked over my shoulder to the small figure in the broken gateway, having to look across the heaped bundles of his own dead men, having to see the spears and blades still defending the rampart, the cradle of wolf-teeth gleaming just inside the gate.

When he looked back at me, his eyes were hard and cold and bleak, which did not bother me much — I knew he would agree, for he could not stay here longer. He ached to stake us out, but the cost was high and he was too much of a good commander to let his hate ruin his army and his ambition.

What stabbed me to the bone was the rest of his look, the bit just behind his eyes which curled a sneer at me for giving up this slip of a woman to save our lives.

Perhaps it choked him, perhaps he was too tired to do more — but he nodded, which was enough.

I walked back to the gate and took my axe back from Finn. Dark Eye, impassive as a carving, wrapped the tattered cloak round her and walked out, the way she had always walked, as if she had gold between her legs, into the maw of the Pols. She did not look back.

I came back into the faces of those who knew the business was finished and that they would not die today. Yet there remained, hovering like a waiting hawk, the knowledge that it had been the girl the Pols had wanted all along — but no-one who saw my face wanted to bare their teeth on that, all the same.

Save one, of course. There is always one.

‘You fuck,’ yelled Styrbjorn, trembling with the nearness of that fearful stake. ‘It was the girl. All this time. We died so you could have a hump while the…’

I hit him with the haft of the axe, a wet smack in his face that sent him crashing to the ground, where he lay and snored out bubbling blood and teeth. Uddolf moved to him, turning him over so that he would not choke.

I was cold with it all, cold and sick. A little shape was burning on a pyre, another was staggering away to die among enemies and both had held skeins of my wyrd in their hands; with their loss, I could not see one more step in front of me. I was almost on my knees, begging Odin to take his sacrifice and I half-turned to where Randr Sterki stood, silent and watchful, almost willing him to make his move.

‘Good blow,’ said Bjaelfi after a swift look at Styrbjorn. ‘Though I am thinking it would have been better to have used the edge. A head hacked off cannot conspire, as Red Njal’s granny would say.’

Finn shifted slightly and cleared the rheum from his throat.

‘Make that the last of Red Njal’s granny,’ he growled, so that everyone could hear, ‘and be content that our Orm used the shaft and not the edge. He was always the one for leaving folk alive who should be dead, yet is known for a man who can fall in a bucket of shite and come up with a handful of silver. Perhaps there is worth in Styrbjorn yet.’

He frowned down at the groaning Styrbjorn, then hefted The Godi and clawed everyone with his gaze.

‘This needs cleaning. Then we can quit this Nowhere place.’

There were twenty of us quitting, no more; the rest were dead, and those who were not, we killed for mercy’s sake and then burned them, with all their gear and even their sea-chests, the black feathers trailing accusingly into a sullen sky behind us as we moved across fresh green and birdsong.

For most of that first day we moved grim and fearful, a scar on the land, always looking over one shoulder, for no-one trusted the Pols and we were on their side of the Odra now, heading for a tributary river called Notec, which we would have to cross. After a while, when it seemed as if we had, truly, escaped, men began to look round at the green tips and buds, to turn to where a raven harshed, or a small bird peeped.

They took deeper breaths of spring air and started to grin at each other — except the sick, who staggered or were carried, babbling. The Red Pest stayed with us, tagging along like a dog that could not be sent home and still they grinned at each other, as if they had thrown particularly good dice.

I was the only one not exulting in survival, not cheered by avoiding the cliff and the wolves, moving like a man already dead and waiting, waiting, waiting, for Odin to strike. I was a scowl on the face of their cheerfulness and men avoided me, all save Finn and Crowbone — and the monk, strangely, who strode out alongside me now and then, the uneven dagged ends of his black wool robe flapping round his calves.

Eventually, because I knew he was waiting for me to do it and would never break the silence first, I asked him what he wanted.

‘To knit you back, like the broken bone you are,’ he said, easy enough with the words and looking ahead at the trail. Crowbone loped past us, an old bow in his hand and three arrows in the other.

‘I am going hunting,’ he declared and I knew it was to take his thoughts off the dead Alyosha, so I fought for words to rein him in and yet not make it seem so, for his nursemaid was gone.

Kuritsa appeared and slapped Crowbone manfully on the shoulder.

‘Nothing with legs is edible when you kill it,’ he declared. ‘You gutshoot it and the meat is bitter when it runs. I will go with you and teach you how to hunt.’

He shot me a look over one shoulder, a reassuring grin with it, then the pair of them moved off ahead of the trail, with men chaffering them, pleased that there might be more than old bread and oats that night.

‘I do not need your Christ for my salvation,’ I told the monk and he nodded.

‘Then I do not offer him. But you need something.’

I was wondering why he cared and said so.

‘I need you to get me back to the Great City,’ he said, which was truthful enough, if not exactly the warm spirit of caring I had imagined. I laughed, the sound echoing as if my head was in a bucket and he smiled.

‘See? Now matters are better.’

‘What happens when we do get to the Great City, monk?’ I demanded. ‘It comes to me that taking such a dangerous man as yourself back to the place where he is powerful and we are not is foolish. Perhaps we should kill you here; it is no more than you deserve.’

Leo walked in frowning silence for a while, then smiled suddenly, bright and wide.

‘You will just have to trust me,’ he said. ‘I will be more use alive in the Great City than dead in a heap out here.’

‘So I will not have to offer some jewelled cross for our lives, then?’ I offered wryly. ‘Now that your bargaining counter is burned to smoke?’

‘Jesus died on a wooden one,’ he answered and I had no answer to that and felt suddenly washed with weariness, so that we walked in silence through the wood, which seemed never to end — so much so that I remember saying so and asking how far we had to walk into it.

‘Only half-way,’ Finn answered, peering at me, ‘then we are walking out of it, as any sensible man will tell you. You look like eight ells of bad cloth, Trader. Perhaps you should rest.’

The day had slithered into grey twilight, where the alfar flickered and I was only vaguely aware of Finn calling a halt for it seemed that the grey light smoked round me, so that I saw and heard them as if in a mist.

There was a steading. Once, it had been a substantial hov, a shieling of some note, built low to the ground, but it had fallen to ruin, so that the moss had reclaimed it to a mound of green; grass hung, dried and withered off what was left of the roof, drooping like the bodies of the dead on the ramparts we had so recently left.

I woke to find myself under the shelter of the only roof-space left, sharing it with groaners with sweating, plaguey faces, or wounded from the fight, or moaning with belly-rot and boils. Fires were lit, the rest of the men huddled outside, under the stars and what cloaks they had, sharing them with those who had none.

Kuritsa and Crowbone had returned, the big archer with a buck over his shoulders and it was jumped on, gralloched, cut up and spit-roasted; the smell of meat sang round the house like a memory of better times.

They brought me slivers of succulent deer, bread softened and savouried in the blood-juices of it, but I had no hunger, which I found strange and even the bit I forced down tasted like ash. Bjaelfi came and peered at me and it was then I realised, with a shock, that I was sick.

For a time, I lay and listened to the men mutter softly and start in to weaving themselves together; straps were repaired, weapons cleaned, men tried to sponge the worst stains from clothing and cloaks.

They dragged out combs — all of them had them, good bone ones and, even if some of those implements grinned like gappy old men, they still dragged them through clotted, raggled hair. Bjaelfi produced shears and some of the worst matting was cut off; beards and hair were trimmed and Leo shook his head with wonder, for he had not realised that norther warriors are more vain than women.

In the end, I drifted off in my jarl-bed under the roof with the murmuring sick, listening to the gentle shift of Bjaelfi and the monk, moving like soft, clucking hens.

I moved into a dream of smoke and water, where familiar people and places shredded mistily away when I looked at them, living only at the edge of my dream-sight, like alfar. When I surfaced from this, it was like breaching from the ocean, whooping in air and shivering, blurred and blinking. Sweat rolled off me and I shook; I knew what ate me.

I got up and the place heaved gently as if I stood on a deck in a swell; my feet seemed too far below me and did not even seem to be mine as I moved, slowly, like an old, blind man, out past the soft glow of the fire, the snorers and farters, out to where a man stood on watch in ringmail and helm.

He looked at me and I stared blankly back at him; it took long seconds for me to recognise Ospak, by which time he had come close enough to give me his concern.

‘You should go back to the fire, Jarl Orm,’ he said flatly. I wanted to tell him to leave me alone, that I needed a shit — which was a lie, of course. What I needed was privacy to find out what I already knew in my heart.

All that I croaked out of me, all the same, was ‘shit’. He nodded slowly, and turned back to his guard duty. I struggled on, to where the dark ate the fireglow and beyond, to where only the half-veiled moon gave light.

I dropped my breeks, bent my head to look. I saw the red spots crawling out of my groin and on to my thighs like embers from a forge-fire. I touched the burn of them, knew the truth and either it or the fever swam my head, so that I half stumbled and nearly fell.

‘Steady, Bear Slayer,’ said a voice, cold as quenched iron. ‘I would not wish you hurt. That is my pleasure alone.’

Randr Sterki moved blackly out of the dark to stand in front of me, where I could see him if I could raise my head. I could do that only a little but the blade he held gleamed like an old fang in the moonglow. Naked from the waist, the white of his body seemed eaten by whorls of darkness, which I slowly realised were his Rus skin-markings.

The stupidity of him made me laugh and I saw myself as he saw me — swaying, head-bowed, breeks around my ankles. It only made matters funnier and the laughing choked me, so that I suddenly found myself with my arse on the wet grass.

‘Get up,’ he hissed angrily. ‘Or die on your knees.’

On my arse, I wanted to correct. I am on my arse here and dying of the Red Pest and whether you slit me here or wait for me to die makes no difference and will not bring any of the ones you loved back again. Odin takes his sacrifice-life — in the cruelest way, of course, that being the mark of One-Eye.

But all that came out was ‘arse’. Which, given the moment and the matter, was not gold-browed verse likely to sway him from his path.

He grunted, moved like a lowered brow, black and angry and the sword silvered through the shadows, seemed to leave a trail behind it as it moved, like the wake of a ship on a black sea. My sword, I noted dully; I could see the V-notch in it, as if the dark had taken a bite from the blade.

‘Hold, Randr Sterki,’ growled a voice and a figure scowled out of the shadows and grabbed Randr’s arm. ‘Do not kill him. We need him…’

Randr yelped with the shock of it and we both saw it was the monk, black-robed and tense as coiled wire, his hand gripping Randr’s sword-arm. Randr, with a savage howl, flung Leo away from him and cursed in pain as he did so.

‘Get away, you Christ-hagged little fuck,’ he snarled, rubbing his forearm and scowling. ‘Once I deal with this dog, you will be next.’

Leo rolled over and came up to his knees. Strangely, he was laughing through the blood on his mouth. Behind him, I saw Finn sprinting forward, The Godi in one fist, nail in the other.

‘You nithing fud,’ he shrieked, but it was desperation, for he knew he would never make it. I knew he would never make it, watched the slow, silver arc of my own sword curl on me like a great wave. I smelled crushed grass and new earth, heard Odin laugh — though it may have been Leo. This way was better, I was thinking. Quicker than the Pest, praise be to AllFather after all.

The laugh sounded softly again as the wave of that silvering sword cracked and broke; Randr’s hand faltered, seemed to lose the strength to grip and the blade fell from it, tumbling point over haft to land in the crushed grass. He stood, shook his head a little, looked like a bull which had just butted a rock.

‘I…’ he began and rubbed his forearm with his spare hand, the forearm where Leo had gripped him so tightly.

‘Itches,’ said Leo gently and spat a little blood from his mashed lip. ‘Those scratches are deep.’

I almost felt Randr Sterki nod. He stood like a blot ox waiting for the knife, one which had been fed enough mash to still it, so that it barely managed to hold the great mass of its own head up.

Finn arrived in a rush and skidded to a halt, panting, uncertain, as Leo held up one hand to stop him striking Randr.

‘Kill,’ said Randr, blinking and dull-voiced. ‘You. All.’

‘I do not think so, Randr Sterki,’ Leo said flatly.

Randr staggered two steps and then fell toward me, toppling like a great wind-blown oak; his head bounced at my feet.

There was silence for a moment — then shapes moved in the dark, sliding easily to the side of the stunned Finn, armed and ready and alerted by Ospak.

‘It would be better, I am thinking,’ said Crowbone, ‘if someone were to help me with Jarl Orm. You, Styrbjorn, since you brought all this on us.’

Styrbjorn licked his lips, looked from one to the other and back again and could have been on the edge of pointing out how it had been Crowbone’s bloody vengeance that had brought all this. He stayed silent and stared, finally, at the toppled giant that had been Randr Sterki, the fear of seidr magic washing off him like heat from a sweating stallion.

There was no magic here, as Crowbone pointed out.

‘Battle luck for you, Jarl Orm,’ he said, stepping past where the monk still sat, working the jaw Randr had hit, his left hand sitting quiet as a white spider on one knee. Crowbone picked up my sword, handed it to a bemused Finn and looked at me with chiding sorrow.

‘You should have paid more heed when I told you how the monk ate his food,’ he added.

I blinked like a light-blind hare; then it came to me. Leo ate with his right hand — like a Mussulman, Crowbone had said. In fact, he did everything with his right hand. I had never seen Leo use his left hand at all, save to strike with. We had all wasted our time looking for a cunningly hidden needle.

The monk shrugged and held up the white spider, where long nails on thumb and forefinger, both splintered from use, gleamed balefully in the light.

‘I have no idea how much is left,’ he said, ‘after so long without renewing.’

Enough to kill Randr Sterki dead as a flayed horse, I thought but could manage no more words. I watched Leo smile his bland smile, his face wavering as if he sat under water, while Bjaelfi and others pounded up, shouting.

‘You are strong,’ he said to me, though he seemed to be receding, growing pale as mist. ‘With God’s help and some simple skills, we will all get safe to Constantinople.’

‘Aye,’ said Finn, flexing his fingers on both sword hilts and glancing at the poison-dead Randr Sterki. ‘You have saved our jarl for sure, monk — but forgive me if I do not grasp your wrist in thanks over it.’

Hestreng , high summer

The rock was old and stained from use. Just a stone on a hill, flat here and hollowed there, small enough for a tiny body. It was here, then, that Odin had claimed the life I had offered him and there was nothing left to show for it after so long, for the birds and the foxes had picked it clean and scattered the remains.

A long, hard birth, Aoife told me, weeping with the memories of it. The bairn — a boy — had arrived with a head too big and a leg too short and the little chest heaving for breath, so that Aoife knew, as they all knew, that it was broken inside as well as out.

It was the last of Thorgunna’s womb, too, and she must have known that wee crippled mite was all the bairn she would ever have, all the son she would ever give, for a man she did not even know would come safe home.

Yet it lived, so Thorgunna did what all good wives did when a bairn was born who would never be whole. She stumbled with it up to this place, offered blot to the gods to wrap it safe and warm in their hall and left it there, naked on the rock.

She had never been back to it, Thordis told me, even after she had been brought from the brink of death herself. Not, she added with bitter accusation, in all the time I had been away.

Yet the bairn on the rock lived in front of Thorgunna’s eyes every day, so that she could see nothing else and sat, staring. She left her own life on that rock, all that she was, all that she would ever be and Thordis took a long, hard time telling me how she had gone off with a Christ priest and others who followed him. West, Thordis said, to Jutland, perhaps even to Saxland or beyond, for the god of the White Christ, it seemed, did not condemn twisted bairns to the wind and rain and cold.

A hand on my shoulder; I knew it was Finn, his eyes doglike and round. The others were there, too, standing awkwardly as you do when you see someone you care for so stricken and not able to offer anything other than mumbles of sympathy.

I climbed to my knees from that stone and looked up at the sky, that great, cold, blue eye of Odin that watched all I did and regarded me now as I worked out the measure of what I had offered as sacrifice. It had been a puzzle, intricate as a secret box, when I recovered from the Red Pest with only a few pockmarks to show for it. Down on the strand, a knarr with our battered elk prow crudely tied to it rocked heavily, fat with flagons of olive oil and bales of silk; our rich prize from a grateful Leo. I had lived and prospered and did not understand why Odin had spared me and taken little Koll.

I heard Aoife calling on her son and turned, knowing what I would see.

The pale of him, the bone-white of little Cormac running in and out of the tide-shallow as men splashed back and forth. Laughing, with his hair like spume on a wave, he brought back the crushing sight of Brand when I had told him his son was dead.

He was already a wasted man, the muscle and bulk burned off him with wound-fever so that his knees and elbows were big as galls on an oak, while one side of his face was a scarred horror. I told him his son, my fostri, was dead and sent to Odin with his sword. I told him his enemy, Styrbjorn, lived.

He said nothing, but when I left I knew there would be no more visits from him and that what friendship we had was ended. Soon, he would ask me for the boy Cormac and his mother, too, in a way that could not be refused, even if I had a mind to. Not long after that he would find a way to take Hestreng back.

One-Eye had been cold and cruel and wolf-circling as ever. He had taken the life I offered as surely as if he had struck me down with the spear Gungnir — Dark Eye, Thorgunna, my son, Hestreng, all made as dust, so that there was now nothing for me in the world save the Oathsworn of the Fjord Elk.

I looked at Finn and Ospak, Kuritsa and the others — Crowbone, his odd-eyed stare bland and cool and Onund Hnufa, his face strange, a cliff that set itself hard against the terror of old memories. I saw his unnatural, crooked shoulder and the way he stared at the flat, hollowed, stained stone and knew, with a shock of understanding, that this should have been his wyrd, yet somehow he had avoided it. I wanted to ask him how he had done it, but he caught my look, held it until it was me who looked away, sliding from gaze to gaze until I was back at the hollowed stone, feeling the eyes of the Oathsworn rest on me.

The Oathsworn, still bound one to another tighter than the ties of brothers — and now the only family I knew. In the bleak dark of me, a small ember glowed warmly.

‘Heya, Jarl Orm,’ Finn said softly and stared out to sea, his eyes narrowing against the glare. ‘I am told that raiding has started again in the lands of the Englisc. Good pickings to be had, I hear.’

‘Vladimir will want us in Novgorod, for sure,’ Crowbone countered, with a glare at Finn. ‘To fight for him against his brothers.’

‘Anywhere but back to the Wendish lands,’ added Ospak and looked meaningfully at me. ‘I hear red sickness rages there.’

There was a long pause which the wind filled with a mournful, gentle sigh. I looked at them, one at a time, finally settling back on the grim-faced hunchback.

‘We will need a new Fjord Elk,’ I said to Onund Hnufa.

Down on the blue-grey water, the prow beast rocked, nodding as if satisfied.