The Prow Beast

SIX

I woke to screams and fire, scrabbling for a sword and cursing the sleep out of me; then a soft voice I knew well told me to put on a tunic and stop shouting.

Thorgunna squatted by a goat, working the teats relentlessly into a bowl. It was dark, but there were fires everywhere it seemed and the place bustled with movement and purpose; somewhere, a woman moaned and then yelled aloud.

‘Why are you milking a goat in the dark?’ I asked, still stupid with sleep and Thorgunna, grunting with the effort of bending, jerked her head in the direction of the yelps.

‘Her waters broke. I need the milk to bathe the bairn in.’

The mother-to-be appeared a second later, out from where she had been moved for more comfort, which had banished me and all the other men to find sleep and shelter where we could. She moved ponderously, splay-legged, held up by Aoife on one side and Thordis on the other.

‘She has no strength,’ Thordis hissed. ‘She needs a birthing stool.’

‘Aye, well,’ grunted Thorgunna, sharp as green apples, straightening with the bowl of milk held in the crook of one arm. ‘It was a thing I forgot in all the confusion of finding things for food and shelter in a hurry, with my husband’s enemies at my heels.’

I shrugged into my tunic, seeing the fires lit in a circle to keep the alfar at bay, for there is nothing those unseen, flickering creatures like better than stealing a newborn wean and leaving one of their own twisted wee horrors.

Ingrid appeared, dripping blood from her hands and the other women fell back a little in deference. She came up to the moaning Sigrith and clasped her rune-cut, bloodied palms on the queen’s joints, to give her strength and ease. I knew Ingrid was Hestreng’s bjargrygr, the Helping Woman for all the steading’s births, which role had some seidr work in it, too; Thorgunna and her sister, I knew from old, had no seidr in them at all.

‘Jasna…’ moaned the queen.

‘We cannot support her and deliver the bairn,’ Thordis insisted. ‘Especially at the last.’

I knew this was when the mother got on her elbows and knees, the bairn delivered from behind. Ingrid moved busily, undoing knots and loosening straps and buckles where she saw them, another spell to ease the birth. The women’s hair was also unbound, tucked into their belts at the waist to keep it out of the way.

The queen moaned and sagged. ‘Jasna,’ she said.

‘I have a birthing stool,’ Ingrid said, then waved to the shadows and all heads turned as Botolf stumped into the middle of the fires, grinning. Thorgunna and Thordis looked at each other; no men were allowed at a birthing by tradition and usage.

‘Oh, I am half a bench,’ grunted Botolf, sitting himself on a sea-chest, ‘so half of me is not here at all. The other half will close my eyes if you like.’

He hauled the queen to him, holding her in powerful arms, her legs splayed over his knees, her head resting, intimate as a lover, on his great chest.

‘You’ll ruin those breeks,’ Thorgunna said wryly and Botolf chuckled.

‘I could take them off.’

There was a chorus at that and, suddenly, the queen, sheened face raised, muttered: ‘Not seemly. I will buy you a new pair, Birthing Stool.’

‘That’s better, my pet,’ Ingrid said, sure that her palm-carved runes were working. ‘A little pain and sweat and then the joy of a son.’

‘Jasna…’ whispered the queen.

‘Will someone rout out that fat cow Jasna from her sleep?’ bellowed Thorgunna angrily.

Ingrid looked pointedly at me. I realised I was not welcome in the circle of fires and backed off hastily, while Botolf crooned softly to the bundle in his arms and Ingrid raised her arms and started a muttered prayer-chant to Freyja.

Beyond, where men were, seemed darker away from the fires and I almost fell over Finn and Abjorn, talking urgently with each other.

‘Banished, were you?’ chuckled Finn. ‘Just as well. No place for a man, that. I pity the stupid big arse who is now high-seat for a birthing queen.’

I told Abjorn to send out watchers and he nodded, his face grim and grey in the dark.

‘Those fires…’

He let it trail off, for there was little need to voice it all. Those fires were a sure beacon and I could see the hunting packs of bearcoats and Randr Sterki’s skin-wearing trolls slithering through the dark towards us.

‘There is worse,’ growled Hlenni Brimill, looming out of the dark, dragging a squirming figure by the hair; the Mazur girl yelped as he swung her into the circle of us.

‘That fat cow of a thrall woman is dead,’ he declared. ‘When I went to get her, she was cold and stiff — and this one made a bolt out from under the wagon she was in.’

I blinked. Dead? Jasna?

We went to the wagon in a crowd, the Mazur girl dragged back with us and yelping whenever Hlenni jerked her savagely by her hair. Bjaelfi was climbing out, rubbing his chin and spreading his hands.

‘She is dead, right enough,’ he announced. ‘Not a mark on her I can see — but it is hard enough in torchlight. Perhaps daylight will let me know more.’

‘Not a mark,’ muttered Red Njal from over Bjaelfi’s shoulder. ‘That is seidr work, if ever I saw it. Her hand will wag above her grave, as my granny used to say.’

Desperate eyes raked the girl, who felt them and struggled until Hlenni jerked her hard and she shrieked. An answer came from the dark, from where the fires blazed and I had had enough of it all.

‘Let her go, Hlenni,’ I said and he reluctantly opened his fist; the girl sank to the ground, then stood, with a visible effort. She squared her shoulders and looked at me, chin out, eyes dark and liquid as a seal. I felt a lurch in my stomach, for I had seen such looks before on women and all of them had been rich in seidr and had done me no good with it.

‘Drozdov,’ I said. ‘Is that your name?’

‘What they call me,’ she answered, her Norse of the eastern type and further bent out of shape by her accent; those eyes were fixed on mine, swimming at the brim but not spilling over.

‘Chernoglazov,’ I remembered and she nodded, then said, ‘Yes, lord,’ before Red Njal had lifted his hand to correct her.

‘Did you kill her, then?’ I said, waving one hand at the dark, dead bulk in the wagon.

‘No…lord. Someone came in the night. I heard her make little noise and then silent. I stay hidden.’

‘Someone came?’ demanded Finn, the scorn and suspicion reeking in his voice.

She turned those dark, seal eyes on him. ‘A man, I think. Silent.’

‘What did he do, this silent man?’ I asked and she frowned and shook her head.

‘Something,’ she answered, then the frown disappeared and her face turned to mine like a petal to the sun. ‘Lord.’

‘I knew it was not good,’ she added. ‘So I hid.’

Yes, she would be good at hiding by now, good at staying out of the line of sight and the strong light. Finn looked at me, then at Bjaelfi and shook his head.

‘Was she armed?’ I asked Hlenni and he shook his own shaggy head, reluctantly.

‘You looked?’

He nodded, then added sullenly: ‘No blade is needed with seidr, Jarl Orm.’

A scream split the night and made us all start.

‘Odin’s hairy balls,’ Finn swore, then swallowed another, for it was not good to malign the gods while the Norns were so close, weaving a new life out of the Other.

‘Shave the hairs from your arm,’ muttered Klepp Spaki fearfully.

I looked at the girl again, all wet eyes and defiance in the tight-strung little body. I told Hlenni to watch her the rest of the night, in turns with Red Njal. In the morning, I promised, Bjaelfi, Finn and I would look at the body and find out what had happened and that I was no stranger to seidr and worse.

They had heard the Oathsworn tales — some of them had been there when they were made — so they went off, muttering, to huddle in the damp dark and listen to Sigrith pant and shriek a new bairn into the world.

It took a long while; I dozed until wakened with a shake on my toe, came up with a seax in my fist — which was why Thorgunna, clever woman, had shaken only my toe and stayed clear of a swinging blade. She knew all the men were tight-wound and likely to be armed and leaping from sleep.

‘Done,’ she said wearily and I blinked in the light of her flickering torch; beyond it, the dawn was a thin smear.

‘A boy,’ she added. ‘Healthy and loud. The mother is alive, too, which is good.’

It was good; too many first mothers died giving birth and, in the clearing round the dying fires, I saw the weary, gore-handed women and the blanket-wrapped bundle that was Sigrith. Botolf, a little way away, stretched stiffly and gave me a smile and a wave as I came up, the rest of the men behind me save for those on watch.

‘That was a bloody affair,’ he growled, moving slowly and shaking his head. ‘Odin’s arse, lads, I have stood in shieldwalls that had less hard work in them and less blood and shit and fewer screams.’

‘Take off those breeks,’ Ingrid said to Botolf, bustling forward with a fur bundle which had a squashed red face nestled in it. Underneath, I knew, each limb would be linen-wrapped to keep it straight and fine, having been washed in hot milk and salt. His little mouth was a sticky bud, for the women had rubbed honey in his gums, to promote appetite.

‘First,’ said a waft-soft voice and we stopped, staring at Sigrith, ‘since you did most to bring him into the world, Birthing Stool, you can name him. His father says he is to be Olaf.’

Botolf stopped and scrubbed his beard with confusion, pleased and embarrassed in equal measure. Ingrid handed him the bundle and he played the father, raising it to us over his head, standing proud and tall in his slathered breeks as he called us all to attend.

‘Heya,’ he bellowed. ‘This is the son of King Eirik the Victorious. This is Olaf, Prince of the Svears and Geats.’

We stamped and cheered and there was more than duty in it, for that bairn had come to be the focus of all our lives and we watched as Ingrid handed it to Sigrith — watched, too, as she took it back moments later, when the exhausted slip of a girl fell asleep.

I was remembering that surviving the birthing was only the first step and that making it through the days that followed it were fraught for mothers. Too many of them died and I felt a stab deep in me when Thorgunna came up to stand beside me, all bright with the promise of our own child.

‘It went hard with her,’ she said quietly to me, as people murmured themselves into a new day. ‘She needs quiet and rest and a wet-nurse, for she cannot feed the wee soul properly herself.’

‘Will he die then?’ I asked, alarmed, seeing the whole of our efforts crumbling. She shook her head and gave me one of her black-eyed, pitying looks.

‘Of course not — the idea. We can feed him, as we do kids and calves with no mothers.’

That I knew well enough, for I had done it myself with a foal I favoured, using a sheep’s bladder as a teat and a little drinking horn full of milk. It was an awkward, messy business and I said so.

‘That is children all over,’ she answered and clasped her belly as she leaned into me. I nestled her there for a moment or two, patting her absently while my mind raced on how there was unlikely to be a fast remove from here and my eyes scanned the lightening day for signs of bearcoats. I could feel them, like hot breath on the back of my neck.

She felt it in me and leaned away from me then, was about to speak when Toki bounded up in his breathless way, saying Bjaelfi wanted me.

I knew where he would be and there were others gathered round that wagon. Hlenni had laced the hands of the seal-eyed Mazur girl with a thong and tied it to his own wrist. Red Njal, Klepp, Vuokko and others gathered, while Bjaelfi knelt beside the corpse in the wagon bed.

‘Well?’ I asked, hauling myself in. Bjaelfi said nothing, simply drew back the wool cloak that covered her and pointed.

There was nothing but the blue-white dead flesh, the grey-streaked hair…and the trickle, thin as a slug trail and dried so that it seemed black in the new light of a day. It had run almost to her jawline and tracked back, curling a little, to where a drop had dried and crusted on one lobe.

‘The only mark on her,’ Bjaelfi said, loud enough for all to hear. ‘A flea-nip on an earlobe.’

The word leaped from head to head. Seidr. No Norse killing that. Gunnhild, Mother of Kings, was said to have been able to arrange such deaths, secret and stealthy in the night, shapeshifting to further the cause of her ambitious sons all over Norway.

I sat back on my heels, turning the coin of it over and over in my mind’s fingers, testing the worth of what I worked out. A deadly fleabite? Even Gunnhild, noted shapechanger that she was, had never slipped into the body of anything so small. Or that killed so easily.

This was no seidr. This smacked too much of a place where poison needles settled more quarrels than blades — the Great City. I jerked up then, cursing, shouting orders that were far too late. In a moment, it was confirmed — Leo the priest had gone.

‘And his sharp little needle with him,’ growled Finn, when I told him what I had been thinking. He smacked an open hand on the side of the wagon, making it rock. ‘Turd.’

‘I am having trouble thinking this one out,’ confessed Hlenni, looking from the Mazur girl to me and back again. Finn leaned over, his little eating knife flashed and cut the thongs; the girl rubbed her wrists and Hlenni scowled.

‘He killed Jasna thinking it was Sigrith,’ I said, working it out in my own head as I spoke. Thorgunna had moved the queen, but the little Greek had not known that and, in the dark, had felt softly along the bulked shape of what he believed to be a pregnant woman and stuck his needle in her ear, quick and sharp and away into the night, so that she scarcely made a yelp. A grunt, a scratch at another of many little bites — and then the long sleep of death. Poor Jasna, dead of her own fat belly.

‘I might as well still be in the dark,’ growled Bjaelfi, confused, ‘since now I know how it was done and by whom, but not why a monk from the Great City would want Queen Sigrith dead.’

Because the Great City had backed Styrbjorn and the monk had been sent, not to find out who had supplied Roman Fire, but bringing it to make sure the enterprise went off, then slithering himself to the side of the target, just in case. I had no idea why the Great City wanted Styrbjorn as king of the Svears and Geats, but that was the way they worked and I knew it well.

Once, I had been at the sacking of the Khazar city of Sarkel by Sviatoslav, Prince of Kiev, and he had been given engineers by the Great City. He needed them to help him knock that fortress down because it had been built for the Khazars by engineers of the Great City. They were a snake-knot of plots, were the Greeks who called themselves Romans in Constantinople.

Now Styrbjorn had failed, so the whole enterprise seemed doomed and the leader of it fled — but not to ruin if he was still the only heir to the high-seat. His uncle would think twice about having him killed in that case and where bearcoats seemed to be stumbling, a silent, grim little Greek with poison thought he could do better. Thankfully, he had not.

‘Aye, well, you would know, for sure, Orm,’ Onund Hnufa said, lumbering out of the sour-milk dawn to hear me lay out the length of this for folk to measure. ‘I have seen and heard you dealing with the Great City and it is a marvellous thing how you can fathom the way their minds work, right enough.’

Everyone agreed with it, with nods and hooms.

‘So perhaps you can be after telling me this, then,’ Onund added. ‘Why has this Greek taken little Koll with him?’