The Prow Beast

SEVEN

It was a fine bridge, as long as two tall men, wide enough for a wagon to pass over and made of good stone. Beneath it, the river that had cut the gorge burbled and sang to itself, while the green-mossed stones of the mountain flashed with quartz and trickled with silver water. Jewels of the Mountain King, Finn said, in a skald moment.

We were like that, standing there waiting, for I was thinking that this was where the Norns’ weave came to an end for me. I had offered a life to Odin and I knew One-Eye would take his sacrifice. Provided he kept to his part of the bargain, I told myself, it was worth it.

Still, life was sweet and seemed sweeter still, standing there, waiting for the bearcoats to come, with the clouds piled up like snow and a sea-swallow, ragged by the wind and yet swooping for the sheer joy of it, grating a shriek that scoured a sky as blue as a newborn’s eye.

That, too, made my heart leap painfully into my throat; I would never live to see the son Thorgunna carried. Yet, if Odin held to his part, another babe would find a life, the bairn Botolf carried in the crook of his arm, stumping his unseen way up to the headland overlooking the fjord.

A scramble down the other side and he was safe. A hard scramble for a man with two good legs, as Finn pointed out when we made this plan, never mind one who was half a bench, with the thought-cage of a mouse and a wean under one arm. He said this where Botolf could not hear it, all the same.

‘And a boy with him, too, dragging a goat,’ I added, trying to make light of it. Toki, hearing the word ‘goat’, looked up, beaming, and gave his charge a pat between the thick horns.

Finn grunted his answer to that, then Botolf himself came up, his broad face braided in a smile, the babe wrapped up so warm it looked no more than a bundled old cloak held against his chest.

‘Here,’ said Thordis, shoving a bag at Finn. It was a good waterproofed walrus-hide bag and he peered in it, thinking to find food and warm clothing. Instead, he found linen squares and moss.

‘Am I expected to eat this, woman?’ he grumbled and she slapped him smartly on the arm.

‘No,’ she answered, but less tartly than she might have, since she was afraid for him. ‘You are expected to use it on the bairn’s arse, to keep it clean. From the state of your own breeks, it is a lesson you should learn for yourself, too, before we are wed.’

Finn grunted as if hit at this last and those closest laughed, the too-hearty laughs of those straining to find humour. Botolf slung a similar bag over one shoulder, with all that was needed to feed the sleeping prince, then turned and grinned at Toki and his goat.

‘Ready, wee man?’ he demanded and Toki, trembling with the excitement of it all, nodded furiously, then scowled as Aoife, winking on the brink of tears, dragged him into an embrace.

‘Look after my little hero,’ she demanded of Botolf and he patted her shoulder. Then he turned to the wagon and the figure in it, propped up on pillows and pale as winter wolfskin.

‘Take care of my son, Birthing Stool,’ said the queen in a voice with no more in it than wind.

‘He will be safely delivered,’ Botolf promised and Finn, hearing the firm resolve in his voice, shook his head at the memory of the man who had so recently wanted to leave queen and wean both and run for the hills.

It had seemed a fair plan in the cold light of dawn; take the bairn, leave the queen, confuse the enemy and split them. It was the queen’s bairn they wanted, so the rest of the women and weans might be left alone, considering there were men willing to fight and nothing to be gained taking them on. Well — only for those who wanted bloody revenge and I was hoping the bearcoats would not think fit to join in with that. Meanwhile, we could take the little prince to safety, getting a headstart and travelling fast and light.

‘With a goat?’ demanded Finn.

‘What milk will you find to feed a bairn?’ countered Thorgunna. ‘And Toki is to goats what Botolf seems to be to that wee prince.’

At which the big man grinned, for it was a strange sort of almost-seidr he had and he was not ashamed of it at all. The newborn prince wailed, no matter who cooed or shushed or rocked him — even his too-weak mother — until he was placed in the fat-biceped crook of Botolf’s arm, where he closed his eyes and went silently to sleep.

Red Njal and Hlenni Brimill came up and we clasped, wrist to wrist. I had already made them swear to do all in their power to recover little Koll from wherever he had gone and told them I suspected the one called Ljot Tokeson would get him, for he was Styrbjorn’s man.

The only reason for the Greek to have taken Jarl Brand’s son was to use him as a hostage against Brand and so against King Eirik.

Randr Sterki would not give the snap of his fingers for Koll, or the new little prince of the Svears and Geats; it was vengeance he wanted and he would keep after Thorgunna and the others with what was left of his men — but the bearcoats would not, or so I hoped. The bearcoats would come after us and the bairn, in the hope of rescuing the whole endeavour at the last.

That’s what I told them and they nodded, millstone-grim and silent. I did not tell them of the vicious gnawing in my heart and belly at what I had done to Koll. Too taken up with everything else, I had been happy to have him cared for by the women — and grateful for the soft, consoling words that the priest seemed to be offering him. My words, they should have been — but I was too busy with the work of protecting him to notice how he had strayed into danger.

Some foster-father me, and now I was thinking I would never find out if I might have improved on the task, for him or me, or both, would be dead soon.

Others came up and said their farewells, so that I was glad to leave in the end, away from the weight of their sadness. Their faces, pale blobs of concern in the whey-light of dawn, looked at me with that hard, miserable stare I had given others I knew I would never see again.

But it was only Thorgunna’s face, stricken and skyr-pale, that stayed with me all the way to the bridge.

It was a fine bridge — Finn said so. Narrow enough for two men to hold against many.

So Botolf looked at us, from one to the other, the babe crooked in his arm and one hand on the head of Toki.

‘Bone, blood and steel,’ Finn said and gave him the bag of arse-wrappings. Nothing more was said, just a nod and a clasp for each of us, wrist to wrist, then Botolf turned abruptly and hirpled over the bridge, Toki and the unwilling goat trotting behind him.

Botolf did not look back, yet I knew he was seeing us there and would see us for the rest of his life, standing on that bridge and not dead. Like Pinleg, long ago, dying under a shrieking pack of swords on a beach, allowing us to sail safely away — if we did not see his death happen, then perhaps he was fighting there still.

‘That is that, then,’ Finn said, when the big man and the boy and the goat had vanished. He peered over the side of the bridge, as if checking for trolls, then hauled out The Godi and inspected the edge.

‘Your doom is not on you,’ I said to him, though my bowels were water as I spoke it. ‘You should go with him.’

Finn cocked one eyebrow, looking at me from under the tangle of his hair, which he refused to tie back — it revealed that he only had one good ear, the other mangled in a fight.

‘Who knows what the Norns weave?’ he replied with a shrug. ‘This could be my day or not — but you cannot hold this bridge alone.’

He grinned.

‘Bone, blood…’ he began.

‘…and steel,’ I finished.

He took off his sheath and shed his cloak, for he did not want them tangling his legs in the fight. He checked the straps on his helmet and put it on, hunched his shoulders a few times to settle the rust-streaked ring-coat he wore, for it was not his own, then sat, leaning back against the stone of the bridge, while the water splashed and sang.

I envied him and hated him in equal measure; Finn, the man who feared nothing. How could he not tremble and find a great spear in his throat that made it impossible to swallow? Frothing madmen in skins would come after us and he had the wit to imagine what would happen. But all he did was open a lazy eye and wonder who Assur had been.

It was the inscription, weathered and lichen-streaked, on the grey stone by the bridge — Helga, Thorg?iRs dottir, systir Sygro?aR auk??iRa Gauts, hun let gi?ra bro??ssa auk r?isa st?in??nna?ftir Assur bonda sinn. SaR waR wikinga war?r m?? G?iti. Si?i sa manr is?usi kubl ub biruti.

‘Helga, daughter of Thorgar, sister of Sygrida and Gauts and others, she had this bridge made and this stone raised after Assur, her husband. He was an oathsworn guard with Gauts. Let him practise seidr, the man who this monument destroys.’

‘A good curse, that last — see, it is written as if in warning to anyone who desecrates the monument, but also that the monument itself will destroy. A good runesman, that.’

‘A well-thought-of man, this Assur,’ I noted, seeing the power of the runes there. Only his name survived, but this Assur would be remembered for as long as stone and we knew he had a loving wife and sisters, who thought enough of him to make runes for him.

‘A sworn man, like us,’ Finn noted and grinned. ‘Good place to die, then, under a monument to a sword-brother.’

I was not so sure — a silly stone bridge leading to nowhere. Fitting, all the same, for the life we had led. Finn scowled when I blurted this out.

‘Once it led to the best trees for miles around,’ he pointed out. ‘Good pine for ship planks and resin. No matter the place — we stand defending the back of a prince and what could be more fitting for the famed Oathsworn of Orm Bear Slayer than that? Besides, even now, it is a place of beauty.’

Once, I wanted to point out to him gloomily, it had been the famed Oathsworn of Einar the Black, save he was now dead — so where did it get him? But Finn had the right of it about the place and I raised my head to the sun and the joyous sea-swallow and the clouds like snow. Below, life bubbled in a stream, which started with the melting of snow in the mountains, flowing and merging out to the warm sea, where the sun sucked it up and dragged it back over the mountains to fall as snow again.

The Norns’ loom of life; I drank it in, sucked it in like a parched man with water.

Then Finn slid to his feet and said: ‘They are here.’

They came loping up the rough path to the bridge and stopped; two men, spear-armed and without armour or helmets, though they had shields and I saw knives at their belts. They stopped, wolf-wary at the sight of two ringmailed warriors, well-armed and shielded.

Randr’s trackers, I was thinking, and Finn agreed, with a derisive spit in their direction. I would have added one of my own if I had had any water in my mouth.

They crouched a little, the two men, and one looked over his shoulder. In a moment, three other men appeared and I felt Finn shift a little, settling himself behind his shield; the bearcoats were here. Three only — I wondered where the others were.

One was tawny-haired, with a massive beard plaited in at least four braids, heavy with fat iron rings. Over stained clothing that had once been fine, he had a stiff-furred cloak — a boar skin it looked like to me — and he carried a sword with a deal of silver on it, but a blade notched as a dog’s jaw.

A second wore the pelt of a wolf, the head and top jaw over his leather helmet, the paws tied on his chest, so that when he lowered his head and loped up, it raised the hairs on my arms, for he looked like a wolf on its hind legs — but the two swords he carried, one in either fist, were his true fangs.

The third wore ringmail and a bearcoat, had a dark beard cut short and his hair braided tight and coiled — a careful man, then, who did not want anything for an enemy to grab. He carried a long axe and I did not like the look of this one at all, knew him for their leader by the way the other two glanced at him, looking for instruction.

He stopped then and rested one hand casually on the top haft of the long axe, resting his chin lightly on the inch or so of wood above the bitt. It was as if he was meeting old friends.

‘Stenvast, they call me,’ he called out. ‘I see you.’

‘Ingimund,’ bellowed the tawny one, slapping his sword on his shield. ‘Son of Tosti, son of Ulfkel, son of Floki Hooknose of Oppland. I fear no man.’

Finn sighed, as if weary.

‘I am Finn Bardisson of Skane,’ he replied, just loud enough to carry the distance between them, ‘and I can change that.’

‘Randr had the right of it, then,’ Stenvast said. ‘Three men, a boy and a goat — milk for the bairn, was it?’

‘Aye,’ agreed Finn easily. ‘He is a sharp one, that Randr. He will cut himself one day — or someone will. He should have sent more of you, all the same. This is not a little insulting.’

‘Best if you stand aside,’ Stenvast said, ‘but I see you will not do that.’

‘I am Guthrum,’ the wolfskin said to me. ‘You are Orm, leader of the Oathsworn. I see you and have come to take your life.’

‘Three men guard my life,’ I answered, hoping my voice did not sound hoarse with fear, ‘Odin, Thor and Frey. None may harm me, unless he is greater than they.’

He made a sign against that old charm and I laughed at him, but my top lip stuck to my teeth and I hoped he had not seen that.

We stood and waited and that was part of what little plan we had; they were beserker and so a strange breed, having a power that made folk afraid, which fear fed the power. Some, like Pinleg, could summon it in an eyeblink and others needed time, needed to pace like trapped animals and growl and work up to it, believing they were sucking up the strength and speed of the skins they wore. It was said that others licked the strange slime off the backs of toads, or drank bog myrtle brews, but I had not seen any of that myself.

Let them do what they will, we had agreed, for every minute we held them at the bridge was a stride or two more for Botolf and Toki.

‘I say the boar will get to it first,’ Finn growled at me, without looking away from his man. ‘An ounce of silver says he will go piggy-eyed and charge before any of the others.’

I should have taken his bet, for it was the wolf-skin who reached his power first, throwing back his head and howling it out — then he came at me, all blinding hand-speed and fast shuffle, so that I fell back a little and heard the blades score down my shield and shriek off the boss. All I could manage in return was a half-hearted wave of my blade, then he was bounding back, crouching and boring in again.

Like a wolf, I thought. He attacks, low and fast, trying for the soft spots, trying to disable and bring me down like a bull elk…but you needed a pack for that. One was not enough and I cut him badly on his third attack and he bounced back, looked at his forearm and shook his head, grinning with foam-smoked lips. There was no blood and no pain — and no focus in his mad eyes when he came at me again.

There were clangs and grunts and yells from my left but I dared not look — but a flicker on my right made me half-turn my head; Stenvast slid past me and, for a moment, I thought he was going to take me from behind and felt a shriek of terror at the thought of two of them. Then Guthrum slithered in again, blades whirling and I had to block and cut and dance with him.

‘Finn…’

It was a stupid, desperate call and might have been the death of Finn if he had been a lesser fighter — but he did not turn his head, simply cursed and yelled back that he was a little busy at the moment. Stenvast vanished over the bridge and up the trail.

Guthrum howled and leaped and bounced and I cut back at him when I could, but knew the best I could do was hang on and not let him kill me. My breath rasped and wheezed loud in my ears under the helmet; a blade scored the ringmail sleeve of my sword-arm, another spanged off the hilt of my sword.

He bored in again, a high cut that I barely blocked with the shield; it sliced slivers off the edge and scored along under the rim of my helmet above one eye, so that I saw, for a glimmering moment, the pits in the blade-metal and the change in colour where core met cutting edge. I stumbled back, felt the coping stones of the parapet on the backs of my thighs and twisted desperately to one side, not wanting to go over.

There was a great, soft roaring in my ears and the world went black, then red. I felt a blow on my belly, thought to myself, well, there is the soup-wound, no pain yet but here it comes, the death and the offering to Odin, make it quick, One-Eye…

Light flashed, red-smeared. A great, filthy finger poked me in the eye and Finn’s face loomed, streaked with sweated rust from under his helmet. The hand came again, with a rag in it, and he wiped my face.

‘Nasty wee cut, Bear Slayer. Lots of blood, but no real damage. Good scar, though, which will make women swoon and men back off.’

I struggled upright. Finn handed me the blood-soaked rag and sank down on one knee; one sleeve was bloody at the forearm and three men were dead behind him.

‘What?’ I said, shaking the red mist from my eyes and the inside of my head.

‘Aye, all dead,’ Finn answered cheerfully. ‘That wolf man included, unless he can survive a long drop and a dookin in the river below us. Neat trick that, Bear Slayer — I thought he had you until you turned him off the bridge.’

I blinked and got up on shaky legs, looking round.

‘I did not turn him,’ I said. ‘At least, I did not mean to. At least, I do not think I meant to.’

‘Do not fash,’ Finn replied, getting off his knee and wincing as he did so, holding his ribs.

‘He got you one then,’ I noted and Finn snorted.

‘Not that bladder Ingimund — I killed him in a heartbeat, but then had to knock his legs out from under him, which is the way of these mouth-frothers. No, it was those goat-fucking spearmen who caused me trouble.’

I did not doubt it; two spearmen who knew the work, acting together on a single enemy, was the worst thing a warrior could face — other than an archer in a place too high to reach.

‘Aye,’ Finn agreed, scowling. ‘I took a poke which would have burst me if it had not been for that ringmail. Battle-luck that I was the same size as Red Njal — but, look you, I will have to pay him for it now.’

He stuck fingers in the shredded hole and waggled them; we grinned and then laughed and clasped each other.

Alive. Enemies dead and us alive — Odin had not claimed me yet. I had forgotten that he liked to play with his prey, like a cat does. I felt my legs shake then and had to sit; I did not know how Finn felt no fear and said so.

‘I was too afraid even to run,’ I added, half-ashamed, half-defiant, but Finn grinned and clapped me on the shoulder.

‘There,’ he grunted. ‘Now you have the secret of it.’

Too afraid even to run. I looked at him, wondering if it was true, or just Finn being Finn. Then the memory of what had happened on the bridge flooded in, leaping me to my feet.

‘Stenvast,’ I said and Finn scowled.

‘Aye.’

We hirpled off up the trail, leaving the bridge and the dead and the gathering crows. The cut started to bleed again, running with the sweat into my eye and stinging it, so that I had to shake it away in fat, scarlet drops.

It started to rain.

Toki told us what had happened, half-awed by it, half-shaking. We found him right at the top of the headland, where the trail ended on a scarp of rock, like the scalp of a bald man. Once, there had been trees here, but overcutting had taken them and the rain, without the bind of root, had washed away the top soil; what trees were left clung here like stray hairs, gnarled and stunted by the wind.

Beyond, the trail to safety led down into the last stands of thick pine on a slope too steep to cut trees, but it was clear that Botolf and Toki had just started down it when Stenvast came up on them. The way Toki told it, in his wide-eyed child’s way, this giant had appeared, waving a big axe and bellowed at Botolf to stop.

Botolf had handed the bairn to Toki, telling the boy to be fast on his way down. The giant, said Toki, made to cut him off, but Botolf moved to block it.

‘He only had a seax,’ Toki said, then half-sobbed. ‘It was not fair.’

‘What happened then?’ asked Finn, looking round; I knew he searched for bodies, but there were none, which was a puzzle. The rain fell, shroud-soft and silent and the slate-blue fjord was white-capped in the background. The bairn squalled in Toki’s arms and I took it from him.

‘I wanted to go,’ Toki said with a sniff. ‘But I could not move and the goat would not move and the wean was greetin’ fit to burst…’

‘What happened with Botolf and the giant?’ I asked gently, settling down beside him. I pulled the hood of his kjartan up against the rain and the goat nuzzled, trying to get under his armpit, so that he took it and stroked its muzzle, absently.

‘The giant told Botolf to stand aside and that his name was Stenvast and that he had come for the bairn. Botolf said his name was Botolf and he would not get the bairn and then the giant looked at Botolf a little, sideways, the way Thorgunna looks at Finn sometimes when he has done something unexpected, like fetch the milk unasked. Then he asked if this was the same Botolf, the cripple who had broken the back of Thorbrand Hrafnsson and Botolf said he had snapped the spine of a man, but that Stenvast must be mistaken, for he was no cripple and then the giant…’

He stopped, hiccuped and shivered and I patted him while Finn prowled, scrubbing his beard furiously, which he did when things did not tally up for him.

‘What then?’

Toki scrubbed his red eyes.

‘The Giant Stenvast said to Botolf that he was a man who had come up leg short and blade short against a better one and that he had the brain of a beetle if he had the idea he was going to win this fight. But Botolf grinned and wagged one finger and said that was your first mistake, I have the thought-cage of a mouse, not a beetle, for a good friend said so.’

Toki stopped and looked at me, brow furrowed, face streaked with tears and snot.

‘I did not understand this,’ he went on and I told him it did not matter. He hiccuped.

‘The giant did not understand it either,’ he went on. ‘He whirled his axe and cut and Botolf stopped it with his seax, but he could not leap out of the way and the giant cut the other way and it hit Botolf in the leg, his wooden one, so that it snapped and he pitched on the ground. The giant said now you are a cripple and Botolf got on one good leg and he turned and winked at me.’

My heart froze, for I knew that wink. Toki blinked and tears spilled.

‘He said I was to watch out for wee Helga and when she was older, tell her he was sorry her da was not there, but a prince got in the way. Then he said to the giant, you have the bettering of me right enough, for you have a longer blade and a stronger leg, but there is something I am betting sure I can still do that you cannot.’

Toki stopped then and the tears spilled to the brim of his wide, bright little eyes.

‘What was it that Botolf could do, then?’ demanded Finn, still scouring everywhere with his eyes, looking for blood or bodies and finding none.

‘Fly,’ said Toki and I felt the world fall away from me in a dizzying rush, as if I had been carried up on wings myself. I heard a groan, which was me, found myself blinking at the ground.

‘He leaped off his good leg,’ Toki said, ‘and took the giant in the belly with his head and they both went over the edge. I saw Botolf spread his arms. He had wings. Black ones.’

Toki stopped and bowed his head and the tears fell, soft as rain.

‘I was sure he had wings.’

My belly had dropped away, leaving a black void filled with loss — I remembered Vuokko saying it: ‘a loss, keenly felt’. I had thought, in my arrogance, that it would be me.

Finn, his eyes desperate, looked from me to Toki and then out over the headland to the fjord. He made a half move, no more than a step, towards it, as if to hurl himself over.

‘Arse,’ he said, in a voice thick with grief. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid great arse.’

‘He will come back,’ Toki said, but his voice was uncertain. ‘He dreamed sometimes he had big black wings, like a raven he said and I saw them. I am sure I saw them.’

Finn peered out over the headland, as if to find Botolf hanging grimly by a fingernail a few feet down, which is how the skalds would have it. Instead, he shaded his eyes with a hand and then half-turned to me.

‘A ship is leaving the fjord,’ he called and I moved to his side; it was Ljot and his crew, rowing hard for the open water. That meant only Randr Sterki was left.

‘Why is he leaving, I wonder?’ Finn asked. I did not care, it was what he had on board that worried me — one Greek monk and my fostri.

‘He will fly back,’ said Toki, dragging us back to why we stood at the edge of the cliff in the first place, so that the loss crashed in like a huge wave. I handed him the squalling bairn and gathered the pair of them to me as the sun burst out like a wash of honey, turning the fine rain to a mist of gold.

We all saw it, then, the great arch of Bifrost, the rainbow bridge which only appears when a hero is crossing to Valholl.

So we knew Botolf was not flying back.