The Whale Road

he said through pain-gritted teeth.

Hring picked up the chest and shook it. It rattled with coin and he beamed at Einar.

`You have a head for business right enough, Einar.'

The answer was a dangerous growl and a shake that sprayed everyone with warm droplets, like a dog climbing out of a stream.

Martin stumbled forward, my hand on the nape of his neck. He tried once to shake me off and I tightened my grip, at which he gave up struggling and trembled, part with anger, but mainly with fear.

`The chest,' he managed and Einar took it from Hring, opened it, shot a look full of questions at the monk.

Òn the thong . . .' muttered Martin. Einar started raking about in the chest.

`Time to go, Einar,' warned Skapti. 'Lambisson will raise the whole Borg in another blink.'

Einar fished out a leather loop, dangling from which was a heavy coin, punched with a hole to take the thong. It swung, gleaming in the flickering lights.

`The woman had it round her neck,' Martin said, thick-voiced with the pain in his head.

We all craned to see it, but it was just a medallion to me.

`See it,' Martin urged. 'On one side and the other . . .'

Einar turned it over and over in his fingers, while Skapti hovered by the door. 'Einar . . . in the name of Thor, move your arse.'

‘On one side, Sigurd . . .’ Martin wheezed.

And I saw it, as it turned and flashed. On one side, the head of Sigurd, slayer of Fafnir. On the other, the dragon head. `Volsung-minted; he went on. 'From the hoard Sigurd took. There is no other coin like it out in the world.'

Skapti slammed the doorpost with his forehead and roared his anxious frustration at us all.

Àll the others, its brothers and sisters,' Martin breathed, 'are buried with Attila the Hun.'

Then we were out into the little room, composing ourselves and stepping as quietly as we could, controlling our ragged breathing with effort, to face the guard on the steps.

`Wouldn't that weasel-faced little fuck help then?' asked the guard sympathetically. Beside me, I felt Martin stiffen and poked him meaningfully.

`No. We will do it with our own rites,' answered Einar and moved on, keeping his head turned as far from the man as possible, so the blood wouldn't show.

We were halfway down the stairs when Einar stopped. A red flower bloomed in the dark, beyond the Borg walls. Shouts followed it. Another flower bloomed. The guard above us peered disbelievingly.

`Fire . . . ?'

Èyvind,' said Einar bitterly, as if the very same was a curse. Which, of course, it turned out to be.

Just then, the fortress alarm bell clanged out. Lambisson. The guard on the steps whirled, confused.

Helpfully, I said, 'Must be a fire in the town. That will be bad in this gale.'

The guard nodded, now unsure of whether to rush to the gate and find out, or stick to his post. Instead he said, 'Get on now. Hurry.' Then he turned into the fortress.

`Move!' hissed Einar, but that was a whip we didn't need. We almost scampered across the main gate, where the guards were staring. Only two now—it seemed Sten had taken the others to help against the fire, which was luck, since he seemed to know my face.

The ones on the gate couldn't give a rat's arse whether we had found a monk or given our comrade suitable burial, being too busy craning to see what was happening.

They waved us through and we headed off along the walkway, moving towards the town wall. The reek of smoke, shouts, a whirl of sparks and flame showed that Eyvind's handiwork was excellent. I remembered the raven, the doomed voice of Eyvind saying: I was looking at the town and thinking how easily it would burn.

A group of men and women with buckets charged past us, pushing along the walkway. Shouts whirled away with the wind, but some were louder up ahead, where a fresh red flower bloomed.

`There he goes!'

Eyvind stumbled from the cover of darkness, vaulted a fence, fell on the walkway and got up again. He was wildeyed and seemed to be laughing. He saw us and sprinted. Behind him, a crowd of pursuers made ugly noises.

`Fuck his mother,' hissed Ketil Crow. `He'll have them all down on us . . .'

There was confusion. All the weapons were hidden with the woman on the corpse bed. Eyvind, half stumbling, laughing with relief, charged up the walkway to us, to safety and his oathsworn oarmates.

Einar stepped forward, whirled, wrenched my breeks to the knee and whipped out the hidden seax, all in one movement that left me frozen in place—which was just as well, since I felt the wind of that edge trail past my naked balls.

Eyvind was trying to speak, gasping for air. Einar stepped forward, for all the world as if to embrace him, and drove the seax up under the ribs and straight to the heart. Eyvind simply collapsed like a bag into Einar's arms and he promptly threw the luckless dead man back towards the pursuing crowd, sprawling him bloodily on the walkway.

He turned to me and said, 'Pull up your breeks, boy. This is no place or time to have a shit.'

Then he swiftly—piously—laid the bloody blade on the chest of the swathed figure on the corpse bed, switched a covering edge over it and signalled us to move on.

Some of the baying pack had seen what had happened, others further behind had not, saw only that their quarry was down and a boy was trying to take a shit in the walkway. There was laughter, confusion.

The crowd milled up to the dead Eyvind like some giant, slavering cat whose prey had suddenly dropped dead before it could be played with. They pawed it with kicks for a while, then started to string up the corpse as we passed.

The owner of the house they wanted to use was arguing furiously about having it hang from his eaves.

More sparks whirled on the wind from the last fire Eyvind had started. Not one of them queried how he had died or that we had done it with a weapon we shouldn't have had. It was, I noted numbly, pulling up my breeks, as if we were invisible.

We went through the town gate, out past the garrison, now stumbling into life in response to the clanging bells, the shouts, the fires.

In the confusion, we melded into the darkness beyond. When I looked back, it seemed the whole of Birka was burning

5 As my father said at the time, we should have hauled the Elk higher up the shingle, for this was no time to be out in a boat.

It was bad enough scrambling up the straked sides of it in the dark, with the freezing water sucking and slapping you, but once aboard, the rowers bent to it and took her out to where the black waves were white-tipped with fury in a howling night.

Then we fought the storm and the fear of splintering on Birka's hidden rocks; three men leaned on the steering oar and the rest of us huddled in a sort of dulled stubbornness. I was charged with looking after the woman, who moaned and rolled eyes made even whiter by the night and gabbled incessantly in some tongue that almost approached the familiar.

In the blue-white flashes of lightning Which seared through even closed eyes, I Could see the pale face of her, like a skull, hair plastered slick to it, eyes sunk in deep, dark pools, mouth opening and closing on her meaningless sounds. I wrapped her and myself as tight as I could in a sodden cloak and her arms went round me.

We leached warmth from each other as the Elk staggered forward recklessly into the night and, at one point, I saw Illugi Godi, standing alone at the prow, an axe in either hand, chanting prayers. Then he threw them overboard, an offering to Thor, master of the wind and rain.

Dawn came up like thin milk in a bowl. We were alone under the great, white pearl that is the inside of the ancient frost giant Ymir's skull, which is the vault of the sky. The wind no longer roared at us, but hissed a steady, cold breath, driving us north and east, up the great, grey-black, glassy swells, spilling white spray from their frayed ends—my father had instinctively headed for Aldeigjuborg, which the Slavs call Starya Ladoga.

The Fjord Elk slid up them, water foaming aft, staggering now and then as the bow knifed and water swirled down the deck into the nooks and crannies of her.

She was a good boat, the Elk. Not a long-ship in the sense everyone thinks they know: those are the drakkar, expensive warships built to carry warriors and not much cargo, with barely four or five paces in the beam. You can't travel far in a longship before all those men need water and food you haven't got and you have to call in somewhere to replenish it.

Nor was the Elk the fat-bellied little trading knarr that ploughs stubbornly through the blackest seas with tons of cargo in her well.

Which was why Einar did what he did next. Later, I worked out why. Vigfus in his little knarr would wait out the storm before heading north in search of the god stone he thought we were after. He had too many men for such a little ship and such overcrowding would be deadly in a storm, for such a ship depended on its trim to stay afloat.

Starkad, also, would wait, since he dare not risk his expensive ships. However, he would then race hard as those dragons can sail, aiming to make it to the same place faster than any of us and before his stores ran so low his men starved and thirsted. He would know where to go, because Lambisson would tell him, having no choices left.

So Einar spoke with Valgard and Rurik, huddled together, with much shaking of heads on their part and much curled lip from him. In the end, they broke apart and Einar announced: 'Shields and oars.'

There was a general shifting around at that. Those who knew what was about to happen seemed as uneasy as those who hadn't a clue. Gunnar Raudi scrambled up to me, forking a lump of bread out of a leather pouch and handing it to me and the woman. In the light of day, she looked no better, seemed no more sensible—but she chewed the bread avidly, which was a good sign, even if her dark eyes were strange and pewter-dull.

I caught Gunnar's sleeve as he turned to go, asked him what was happening.

`We run,' he said and flashed a gapped grin full of half-chewed bread. 'Hold on tight.'

Shields were fetched out, the bosses knocked from their centres and carefully stored in pouches, along with the rivets. The oars were run out, which was a puzzle, since I already knew it was madness to try rowing in that swell. Perhaps they were going to try to turn the ship for some mysterious hidden land my father had found in his seidr way.

Then the bossless shields were slickdown on to the oars, which were turned blades flat to the sea. The shields were locked in place on the side and the oars couldn't even be moved. I had never seen or heard of this before; quite a few others were similarly puzzled. But those who knew looked grim about it.

The oars, uniformly fixed in place, stuck out pointlessly, blades flat to the swell, like the ridiculous legs of an insect.

Ùp sail!' roared Rurik.

No—a mistake, surely? In this wind and swell? We would run so fast we'd go arse over tip, plunge the bow into the waves and swamp her. I had heard such things—we had no keel for such travel . . .

But the crew sprang to it, the spar lifted off the rests, the great sail, soaked despite the sheep grease and seal oil, flapped, strained, bellied out like some grass-fed mare and the Elk leaped like a goosed good-wife.

The ignorant gasped and some yelled out with fear, but the Elk shook itself and sped ahead, the oars acting like the deep keel it didn't have.

My father came across to me, squinting up at the sail, then back to the steering oar, Where Skapti stood braced with it under his armpit and three others waited close by, in case he had to try to turn.

`Not that he could,' my father chuckled. 'We run hard, fast and true—faster than anything. The drakkar will fall over themselves under full sail in this sea and are too big to try this trick—we have near half as much again on them and are rigged so that the inside of every wave adds more speed.'

It was true and men hung on as if about to be swept away. The Elk . . . flew. It planed up one side of the swell, surfed down the other, kissing the water with the oars, I sweeter and faster than anything, while the wind thrummed the walrus ropes and, if you leaned out, you could see parts of the crusted strakes not normally exposed except during careening.

`Get your arse inboard,' roared Valgard, catching me by the belt and hauling me in with a cuff. I did not care. I was exhilarated, drunk on the sheer beauty of it.

Once, as a boy, I had dared to ride Gudleif's best and fiercest, Austri, named after one of the dwarves who sit at the four corners of the sky. With no saddle or bridle or reins I sprang on him and he had taken off.

His mane whipped my face, the wind ripped tears from my eyes, but I felt the surge of him under my thighs and calves, the sheer power and grace as we flew in a thunder over the meadow.

Of course, the red weals of that mane had given me away. Gudleif had beaten me for it but, through the snot and tears afterwards, I was still mazed in the feeling. The Elk did the same for me that day, too.

Gradually, as they grew used to the wonder of it, men relaxed—until Valgard had them watch the oars, lest one catch the water too hard and shatter.

I lay next to the softly muttering woman, feeling the heat of her, watching the weathervane swoop and soar with the rise and fall of the swell in long circles, listening to the endlessly-repeated sound that went with it, from the creak of the mast stays, the thump as it shifted in its socket, the snake-hiss of the water under the keel, the deep-throat hum of the wind in the ropes, like a struck harp.

Towards midday, I reckoned, a watery-eyed sun came up and everyone cheered; it was the first sun we had seen in a long time. Martin the monk watched Illugi Godi give thanks for it, his face dark as the black water under the keel. Einar watched Martin, stroking his beard.

Gunnar handed out sour milk and gruel and wet-mush bread later, together with a half-cup of water. The woman's dull-eyed muttering only stopped when she ate, but even that was half-hearted. She felt hot and I palmed her forehead, which was clammy.

`How is she?' demanded Illugi, suddenly appearing at my side. I told him and he checked, grunted, moved to Einar and spoke with him. He nodded, looked at the sky, then called Rurik and talked to him. My father rubbed a hand across his wild, thin hair—a sign I now knew spoke of his unease—and moved to the side.

He studied the water for a long time, on both sides of the boat, looked at the sky, squinted at the weak sun, which was losing itself in a milky haze. He said something to Einar, who nodded and hauled Gudleif's already tattered fur tighter round him.

Water dripped from my nose and we ran on towards night, heedless of land, of skerries, of shoals, of anything.

We were on the whale road.

As the light thinned, Einar waved me to him and murmured to Ketil Crow, who fetched the monk. With Illugi Godi, we huddled under the little upturned faering which stood as the nearest thing to a shelter on the boat and which, of course, Einar claimed as his due.

`Well, we are escaped, monk, and at no small cost. Now tell us why you should not go over the side as a sacrifice to Thor,' he growled at Martin.

I refrained from saying anything, because the taste of it was bitter in my mouth. The cost was Eyvind's and he had paid it in full, betrayed by the man who had made much of oath-swearing. That and the fact that the time to have thrown the monk overboard was at the height of the storm, when Thor and Aegir needed an offering.

Martin, wet and miserable and cold, with a great black bruise down one side of his face, sniffed snot into the back of his throat. Gone was the smooth, urbane scholar who had invited us to dine, but the drowned rat that remained still, he thought, had some teeth.

`You would do well to treat me better, Einar the Black,' the monk answered bitterly. Ì hold the secret of what you want, after all.'

`The god stone holds that secret,' answered Einar coldly. 'Between Illugi, who can ken the runes, and Orm, who reads Latin, I think we can prise out the secret. Give me another reason to keep your feet dry.'

Martin glanced sourly at me and nodded, slowly. 'I wondered how you had known of the stone. I had not thought a boy would have such learning, though.'

He had marked me, that was clear, and the knowledge of it made me shiver. He seemed, to me, far too calm and cool about it all. To Einar, also, I saw.

Ìndeed,' said Einar and nodded to Ketil Crow and another burly man, Snorri, who had a god mark on his face almost the same shape and in the same place as the monk's bruise. They grabbed Martin; he shrieked and struggled, but they wound a good rope round his ankles and hauled him up the mast a little way, where he waved wildly and swung.

Einar stood, stretched, yawned and farted. Then he drew out a little knife I had not seen before, too small for a fighting seax and not his eating knife. He grabbed the little monk's left hand and sawed off a finger at the first joint. Blood sprayed; the monk howled and jerked. Einar examined the digit, then tossed it casually over the side.

`This is a magic knife,' he said, bending close to the monk. 'It can tell lie from truth and every time it finds a lie it will remove a finger until all are gone. Then it will start on toes, until all are gone. Then it will start on your prick and your balls . . .'

Ùntil all are gone,' chorused those in the know, with roars and huge, knee-slapping laughs.

`Just so,' said Einar, without the hint of a smile.

`Let me down, let me down . . . !'

He babbled well, did Martin. He wet himself—we knew because it steamed pungently—and prayed for oblivion, but his White Christ didn't hand him that, for it was well known that a man upside down, with the blood in his head, can't faint. He pleaded, offered everything in this world and, by virtue of his knowing his god personally, the next.

And he revealed everything. That Atil's treasure existed. That the god stone didn't matter, but the woman did. Vigfus, it seemed, had been sent to where the god stone originally stood, after Martin had found that the Christ ikon he sought had been taken there to be forged into part of Atil's treasure: a sword, it seemed.

This was part of the gifts given to Atil by the Volsungs when they knew the only way to defeat that almond-eyed snake of a steppe lord was by sacrifice and cunning—a final great gift, of swords and silver and a bride, one of their own, a seidr witch called Ildico. Who killed him on their wedding night.

Martin, seeking clues, had sent Vigfus to find the forge, or any reference to swords or spears. Vigfus, who couldn't find his arse if someone shone a light on it, failed to find anything, had seized the woman who now shivered and raved beside me because the local heathens seemed to hold her in high esteem, in an attempt to force the knowledge from them.

They had attacked Vigfus, killed more than a few of his men, and forced him to flee back to Birka with only the woman.

Martin, however, had seen the amulet she wore for what it was, had then remembered St Otmund and his mission, thought perhaps there might be a clue in his writings about the forge and sent us to Strathclyde. But there had only been reference to a god stone.

`So,' Einar demanded, while the monk's blood dripped fatly on the deck and the snot ran into his eyes,

'why are you now fearful of Lambisson, whose purse you have plundered for all this? If you are on the track of the Great Hoard, surely he would be pleased?'

The monk hesitated for the first time., Ì . . . he . . . we simply disagreed. On a point of principle . . . Let me down. I will be sick.'

À point of principle?' Einar growled, narrowing his eyes. He reached for the mutilated hand and the monk howled.

`No, no . . . wait, wait . . . the ikon. It was the ikon . . . !'

`That's what Bluetooth wants,' I said, suddenly realising. 'This Christ charm. To convert the Danes with.

For that bishop who wore the red-hot glove.'

And Martin was sick, spilling it into his nose and his hair, choking on the slime-green of it until Einar, seeing he might well die upside down, nodded to Snorri, who lowered him to the deck. Seawater was thrown over him until, shivering and wretched, he could breathe again.

`Has Orm the right of it?' demanded Einar.

Martin, unable to do anything else, nodded and retched.

`So,' Einar continued, `Bluetooth knows nothing about Atil's treasure, only that there is a god charm the Christ-followers revere. You did not tell Lambisson of it, but spent his money finding it for yourself . . .' He was stroking his moustaches, thinking, thinking. 'What is this Christ charm everyone wants?' he asked, giving Martin a kick.

The monk spluttered, wiped his nose, coughed out an answer. 'A spear. Once. Thrust. Into the side of our Lord by the Romans.'

Àh,' mused Einar.

Illugi Godi nodded sagely. 'Touched by the blood of a god, it would be a powerful thing.'

`Forged now into a sword,' someone said. The whole crew, I realised, was spellbound, for the monk's answers had been screamed out for all to hear.

A sword. Made from god-touched metal. It was saga stuff, mother's milk to the likes of us. There were great things in the world: silver hoards, fine horses, beautiful women. But no prize was better than a runespelled sword.

Ànd the woman? What is she to this?'

Martin spat and heaved in breath. He looked like a rat fresh from a cesspit. 'She is of the blood of the smiths who made the sword. She . . . knows where it is.'

No one blinked at that, though some shot anxious glances back towards the woman, for a witch was bad luck on a ship. Bad luck anywhere, I was thinking.

`Does Vigfus know this?' Einar demanded and Martin, rocking back and forward, ruined hand cradled in his good one, shook his head and whimpered.

`He knows of the god stone, though,' Ketil Crow offered. 'He will seek it, not knowing it will do him no good—nor us, for it will bring him in the same direction as we travel now.'

À runesword,' growled Einar, ignoring him. 'A man with that would be a hero king indeed.' He looked around and grinned. 'A man with that, a mountain of silver and a crew like the Oathsworn need fear no kings.'

They whooped and cheered and pounded on each other, the deck, anything. As it died away and they went back to duties, or to huddle against the mirr, Einar turned, his grin fading as he saw my face, which I foolishly failed to disguise. Its black, scowling ugliness made him recoil a little.

`That's a face to sour milk,' he noted, annoyed. 'When everyone else laughs.'

Èxcept Eyvind,' I pointed out, 'who is not here.'

Then he knew, as did Illugi Godi who was close enough to hear and put a hand on my arm.

Èyvind broke oath with us,' Einar growled. 'He put us all in danger with his Loki curse for firing everything.'

Àn oath is an oath. The one I swore did not say that foolishness or a curse made it worthless and got you killed.'

Illugi Godi nodded, which Einar caught. His scowl deepened. 'I think you are smarting because you had to lose your breeks in the street,' he said slowly. 'It seems to me that your gift is in need of maturing before it is of use to me. It seems to me that you would be better staying with the woman.'

He stared at me and I knew I had been mortally insulted and was entitled to be angry. But this was Einar and I was so new I squeaked still. I quailed under that glass-black gaze.

Ì will call if I need you,' he added and jerked his head in dismissal.

I stumbled away on watery legs and slumped down next to the woman. I heard Einar bark something angrily at Illugi and then there was silence, save for the creak-thump of the mast and stays and the hiss of the keelwater.

My father and Einar then huddled briefly and Martin was dragged over to join them. It was clear that a course was planned.

The sail came down, the shields and oars came in—you could not heel the boat over on a tack otherwise—then the men bent to it and hauled the Elk's head round on to the new course, where the whole ship was re-rigged once more and sprang into its mad gallop.

I did not have to ask my father where we headed, for it was obvious: to the forge where the woman was taken. She was going home.

The rain fell, the woman muttered and rolled her eyes up into her head and the Elk sped on, out along the whale road—and nothing was the same again.

Four days later the woman was burning with fever and babbling and Hring was casting hooks on lines behind, baited with coloured strips of cloth in a forlorn attempt to catch fish.

But, as Bagnose observed gloomily, they would have to be flying fish to catch up with the Fjord Elk.

Meanwhile, the water in the stoppered leather bottles was being filtered through two layers of fine linen to get rid of the floaters.

Then an oar snapped with a high, sharp sound as a blade finally caught sideways on to the waves. The shards flew, the butt end leaped up and the shield slammed back across the thwarts. A man howled as it cracked his forearm.

And Pinleg, in the prow as lookout, called out, 'Land!'

My father turned expectantly to Einar, who glowered and said nothing. So my father gave a short curse, then yelled out, `Shield oars inboard. Sail down. Move!'

For a moment, I thought Einar would leap to his feet, and braced myself to spring at him. But he only shifted, as if cocking a buttock to fart, then settled again, stroking his beard and staring blackly at the deck.

The speed came off the Elk like ice melting under salt. It felt like we were wallowing suddenly.

`To oars.'

Stiff, wet, we climbed up and took position on our sea-chest benches. I hauled with the rest of them; the head of the Elk came round, slowly, slowly, and she started to inch her way across the swell, rolling like a drowned pig now, all grace gone.

We slithered into the shelter of a bay, with a low, grey headland where tufts of harsh grass, tawny as wheat, waved softly and patches of green showed through the russets and yellow. Seaweed and lichens crusted the stones studding a beach of coarse, wet sand, meadow-grass was already sprouting shoots beyond that and there was a flush of green shoots on the birch and willow clumps. Two small rivers trickled together to empty into a shallow tidal estuary.

We splashed ashore, dragging the Elk a little way up the sand, as far as we could on shaky legs and on that tide. Birds sang and the resin-tang of life was everywhere. When the sun came out, everyone was cheered; Bagnose began more verses and the Oath-sworn swung back into the rhythm of things.

But nothing was the same.

Shelters were built, short-term affairs of springy branches roofed with wadmal cloth, the stuff we used to repair tears in the sail.

Some men took off on a hunt, having spotted deer slots, Steinthor and Bagnose among them, quartering ahead like hounds. Hring and two others dug trenches in the sand shallows to catch tidal-trapped fish, while I scuffed along the wide curve of the beach, gathering dulse and mussels until my back ached.

By nightfall, fires were lit and everyone had eaten well. The hunters had come back with some small game and a wild duck, shot in mid-flight by Steinthor, who claimed it was a lucky strike, though others disagreed. Bagnose, on the other hand, had missed and was still grumbling about having lost the arrow.

People began to dry out clothing and I had managed to wrap the woman in something warm, in a dry but where a fire was lit just for her, since Einar knew her value. He had also paired Martin and me to make sure she lived and if ever anything spoke of his anger with me, that was it.

I was less angry than I thought I would be. Caring for the woman was a lot better than the back-breaking task I would surely have been given: four hours of bailing out the Elk for Valgard.

And there was something about the woman. I had stripped her with the monk's help, although he was less than helpful since he insisted on doing it with his eyes averted, - which was awkward, to say the least.

In the dim, gloomy light of the horn lantern, guttering because the whale oil in it was thick and old, she was fish-belly white, so that the bruises and welts stood out on her skin.

Illugi Godi, when he arrived with a wooden bucket of cold seawater for compresses, sucked his teeth and glared at Martin when he saw it.

`Vigfus; sighed the monk mournfully, hugging his ruined hand under one armpit. 'He misused her, I am afraid.'

She lay, feverish, open-eyed and staring, but seeing nothing. I cleaned a lot of the filth from her, saw the flare of cheekbones and the full, ripe lips and realised she was a beauty.

À princess, perhaps,' Martin agreed, wringing out the cloth. From outside came the mutter and growl and bursts of raucous laughter that marked contented men relaxing. I wanted to be there. My father was there and I saw, with a sharp pang, that I didn't fit with him, or them. That perhaps I never would.

Ì'm hungry,' I said. 'I will watch her if you fetch food.'

Martin scrambled to his feet, wincing. I could almost feel the throb of that wounded finger, which he should have had cauterised, lest it fester and the rot spread so that his hand or even arm might need to come off. I told him so and he paled, whether at the idea of losing the limbs or having it seared with a hot iron, I did not know. Both, probably.

The woman stirred on the pallet of soft rushes and cloth, spoke again in that infuriating speech, so near to something I could understand, yet still foolishness. Her eyes opened; she saw me, stared, said nothing.

`How do you feel?' I asked.

Nothing.

Ì am Orm,' I said slowly and patiently, as to a child. Òrm,' I added, patting my chest. `You?' And I indicated her.

Her mouth moved, but nothing came. After all that babble, I thought wryly, now there is no sound at all.

Martin reappeared with two bowls of what smelled like meat stew. There was bread, fire-dried and with most of the mould cut off, and his arms were full of leather cups and a matching bottle.

The woman saw him and thrashed wildly, backing away. I held her, made soothing noises, but her wild eyes were fixed on him and she bucked and kicked until, exhausted, she couldn't move.

`Leave the food and go,' I said, 'otherwise she will be like this and no help to herself. Or Einar.'

He blanched at that name. 'I did nothing to her,' he bleated. But he left my bowl and cup and went.

I fed her small portions of the meat stew, which she sucked greedily, but seemed too weak to make much of. But when I looked, a fair bit of it had gone down her neck.

'Hild,' she said, suddenly, as I wiped gravy as gently as I could from lips whose fullness, I realised, had a lot to do with being swollen and split.

'Hild,' I repeated and grinned, pleased at this progress. She almost smiled, but her lips cracked open and oozed blood and she winced. Then, abruptly, she stiffened.

`Dark,' she said, staring at me, though I realised she couldn't see me at all. 'Dark. Alone. Dark. In the dark . . .'

Her eyes rolled up to the whites and she was gone, back into the babble. But I had understood her, saw now that she spoke some broad dialect of which I could understand one word in four. It was some form of Finn, which I had known because of Sigurd, Gudleif's other fostri, who had come from that land.

A tear squeezed, fat and quivering, from under one eyelid and rolled down her neck. When Illugi Godi came with salves he had made for the bruises and welts, I told him what had happened and he sat back on his heels and considered, pursing his lips. A louse moved in his beard and he plucked it absently and crushed it, still thinking.

`Well, at least Einar will have some more of this puzzle, but whether it solves anything is harder to tell,'

he mused. 'At least he may be more pleased with you, boy.'

`Not I with him,' I responded and he nodded sadly.

Àye, he is in the wrong. Eyvind deserved better and to break an oath is a bad thing. I think he knows it, too.'

`Perhaps the message from Odin's raven was meant for him then,' I offered and Illugi looked at me cautiously.

`You have too many years for one so young,' he muttered tersely and left, leaving the salves behind.

That night I dreamed of a white bear I couldn't seem to avoid, one with black eyes who chased me round a wind-lashed room full of spars and sails and finally landed on my chest, a great weight, bearing down . . .

I woke with something warm and heavy on my body, the but lit only by the remaining embers of the fire.

I tried to sit up but a hand shot out, long and white and strong enough to shove hard on my breastbone and force me back on to the bed.

Her hair was hanging down in mad tangles, her cheekbones flaring in the red light, her eyes clear and black—black as Einar's own, I noted. There were shadows under them and harsh lines carving the sides of that slapped-red mouth. The strong hand which fastened me to the bed had stark blue veins, proud on the pale skin.

Mesmerised, I watched her sway above me, lean down, stare into my eyes.

Òrm,' she said and I could not move. 'I know what you seek. I know where the forge is. I went there, but was too big to get in, too afraid. The other . . . the Christ priest's hound caught me. But I must go back. Take me back. I have to find a way to the dark . . . to the dark place where she is.'

And she was gone, fallen forward on to me, with no more weight than a husk and for all that it was a thump, it drove no breath out of me—just the opposite. I found myself holding her, caging her as her head lay on my chest, with the Thor hammer/cross biting into her cheek.

And I fell asleep like that, holding her—though, in the morning, she lay asleep in her own pallet and I wondered if I had dreamed it, but she woke and smiled at me and I saw that she was scarce older than I was.

And then she talked.

After I had fetched her gruel and water, I went to Einar and found him cross-legged under an awning, fixing the boss of his shield back on. Men were busy with tasks; I saw Hring, out in the faering, trying for fish at the mouth of the estuary.

I sat down opposite Einar and waited, Eventually, he deigned to look up at me, taking some rivet nails from his lips under the black waterfall of his hair.

`The woman is called Hild,' I told him. `She is a Finn and her village is two days up the coast from here.

Her father was called Regin and his father before him and so on back into the dim. Every smith was called Regin and the village name is Koksalmi.'

The black eyes fixed mine. 'How can you talk to her?'

Òne of Gudleif's other fostris was a Finn. I learned enough from him.'

Einar stroked his moustaches and looked towards the hut. 'What makes this Finn woman so special?'

`She is revered because she has the blood of the old smiths,' I went on. 'There is no smith there now and has not been for many years. The last one made the sword for Atil, she says, and no one but her knows the way into the forge now. All those with the blood seem to know it, but of this part I am unclear. She, too, I think. It does not seem to be a secret passed on, just something that . . . is.'

`Why is the forge important? Why is she?'

I nodded, having anticipated that. 'The monk found out that this magic Christ spear he sought had been taken there long ago and sent Vigfus to see if it was still hidden there and, if so, get it. When Vigfus failed, he tried to seize Hild, seeing she was so esteemed by the villagers and hoping they would hand it over in return for her life. She fled, to the forge, I am thinking . . . I stopped, for here her tale had splintered into fragments.

Ànd?'

I shrugged. 'Something happened there. Something that drove her into the clutch of Vigfus—but something that haunts her dreams still.'

À fetch?' demanded Einar.

I nodded. The restless spirit of the dead, the fetch, sometimes invaded other bodies, or walked around in their old shape until some strange design of their own had been accomplished. Everyone knew it.

`She says she must get back to the forge. I don't know why, but it seems if she does, she will know where the Atil sword now lies. And the hoard with it.'

Einar stroked his moustaches. He had, I noticed, shaved his cheeks and his hair was washed and nit-combed clean. I felt my own filth more as a result.

Ìnteresting,' he mused. `Vigfus is far behind and heading in the wrong direction, towards the god stone that is no use to him. Starkad knows only this village by name and seeks a Christ ikon that no longer exists in the same shape.'

`So, if we can get to this forge and the woman really does then know where the hoard is . . .' I added.

`We can leave them all behind,' finished Einar. He tapped in a rivet and nodded sombrely at me. 'You have done well. Let us forget the unpleasantness between us. You have, as Illugi Godi is pleased to remind me, an old head on young shoulders.' He squinted at me. 'Shoulders which, I am noticing, have filled since last autumn.'

He rose, moved to his sea-chest and rummaged in it, coming out with a long hauberk of mail. It was, I recalled, the one stripped from the dead fyrd leader after the fight at St Otmund's chapel.

I caught it when he threw it at me and, when I slipped it on over my raised arms, the weight made me stagger a little, but it fitted well round the shoulders and was suitably loose round the waist that a cinched belt would take the rest of the weight off.

He nodded. 'Take it. You have earned it.'

I bowed to him, as I had seen others do with Gudleif, and that pleased him. I fastened on my swordbelt and swaggered back to the fires, one hand on the hilt, salt-stained seaboots stumping.

There were good-natured catcalls and jeers and backslaps when the rest of them saw it—and not a few envious stares from older hands, who would have loved such a gift and thought a beardless youth didn't deserve it.

My father was prouder than I was of it and offered advice on its care. 'Roll it in a barrel of fine sand for a day,' he advised and everyone hooted tears at that—fine sand for a day. On this gods-cursed shore.

But all the time I was thinking to myself that I would not trust Einar, oath or not.

And, across the fire, I saw the fierce, yellow-eyed stare of naked hatred that came from Ulf-Agar, for all that he was still weak and bruised.

Life, I thought, bending and wriggling the mail off, to the thigh-slapping roars of laughter at this first attempt, was simpler when I climbed sheer cliffs for gull eggs.

6 The way the tales tell it, raiders from the sea always arrive out of the mist. Even our own sagas have followed this in recent times, with high-prowed shapes, black against the sea mist, sprinting for the unsuspecting shore to spew out armed warriors like strewn dragon teeth.

This, I know now, is because the only ones who can write about it at all were usually not there and heard it from those who hadn't sailed anywhere. Monks, the curse of truth.

And the truth is always less than the tale. We arrived at a place called Kjartansfjord out of a mist thick as gruel, gliding on black water and moving so slowly an old man swimming could have overtaken us.

Out in front, in a leaking coracle of withy and sealskin, was Pinleg, a torch in hand and more oil-soaked wrappings at his feet to keep it fed. I was on the oar and a long line ran back to the prow of the Elk, so that it looked as if we were towing her.

In fact, we were making sure there was nothing that would splinter her, while not getting lost in the mist ourselves.

In the prow of the Elk I could see my father, peering at the water. Beside him, swathed in my long, hooded cloak, was Hild and it was her we had to thank for being able to find this fishing village and fjord at all, which lay at the mouth of an estuary, further east and north than we cared to be, right up in the Karelian lands of the Finn.

Some twenty miles up the river lay her home—and the forge—so she knew the landmarks and that was just as well, for even my father's skill would never have found this place in the fog.

We crept in, like fearful sheep. Those not at the Elk's oars were armed and grim, for no one could be sure what waited for us here.

`Ship,' called Pinleg and waved the torch side to side, a signal for the Elk to back water.

Ìt's a knarr,' he added a moment later and looked at me, licking lips that were as dry as my own, despite the slick mist-wet that soaked us. We waited, slipping so slowly through water so flat and still it could have been ice; we made scarcely a ripple on it.

`Not Vigfus,' Pinleg said a moment later, the relief clear in his voice, 'but I don't know whose ship it is.

Besides it, there are only fishing boats.'

The knarr turned out to belong to Slovarkan, a trader from Aldeigjuborg. A number of the Oathsworn, being Rus from Novgorod and Kiev, had wives and family in that place, which stood at the mouth of the Tanais, and which had featured in my dreams ever since I'd heard someone say of my father that he was 'off down the Tanais'.

In my daydreams, the Tanais was a silvered serpent of a river, gliding through a land of fables, rich with treasure and adventure.

It doesn't exist at all, though, being a single name for the Volkhov, the Syas, the Mologa and all the rivers, portages, rapids and cataracts that lead from Aldeigjuborg in the north to Kiev and, eventually, the Black Sea. Along the Tanais came glass from Serkland, silk from the far Cathay lands, narrow-necked bottles from east of the Caspian, embroidered pouches from the lands of the steppe tribes—and, once, silver from beyond the steppe, from places with names like Tashkent.

But, as Slovarkan bemoaned moodily, when he realised we were less of a threat than he'd first thought, there was no silver. Sviatoslav, the great Prince of the Rus, was thrashing about against the Bulgars and the Khazars and had stopped the flow. Some, Slovarkan added darkly, were saying it was even worse, that the mines of Serkland and Tashkent were played out, which probably meant the end of the world.

We listened politely and sorted out our gear, made shelters on the shingle and, when the sun burned off the mist, went up the beach to the huddle of houses that marked the small village to try to tempt the fled people back.

Small was too big a word for it. Its name—Kjartansfjord—was bigger than it was. It was a fishing port, loud with screaming gulls and whitened with their shit. Its one big feature was a stone-built jetty where the terns dipped and wheeled. The shingle beach was webbed with strung nets.

Einar, I knew, would rather not have stopped here at all, would rather have used the mist to sneak past into the river and on up it without trace. But we needed food and water and ale. We needed time to dry out, repair, replace—but the best we could find in Kjartansfjord was some coarse, hard bread, some new rope, ships' nails and all the fish we could store away once the people realised we hadn't come to rob them.

In the end, they robbed us, which was what always happened when the Oathsworn tried trading.

Slovarkan had a cargo of hoes, axes, saws and spades, practical stuff likely to be in bigger demand than exotic bottles from east of the Caspian—but he also had three dozen bolts of good wool cloth in various colours. Since Einar had a bucket of silver, both parties were delighted to trade and a morning was spent weighing, clipping and sorting hacksilver while the ragged Oath-sworn went off with cloth to try to replace the worst of their clothing.

Einar, at first, was all for sailing on upriver the next day, as Slovarkan's knarr slipped out on the tide, southbound. He was convinced that either the trader would meet Starkad, or Starkad's drakkar would arrive at any moment.

Of course, Valgard and Rurik then pointed out that the Elk needed attention and that, if Einar sailed it upriver, he was as good as penned like a sacrificial ram. Better, they said, if the Elk hauled off down the coast a way with a minimum crew. Repairs could be done—nails had worked loose, the mast stays were frayed—while the rest went on to the forge.

That day, under wool-cloth shelters—no one wanted to stay in the stinking fish huts of the locals, even if it pissed down—two things happened that made Einar decide to send the Elk away.

The first seemed innocent enough. Pinleg was Odin's man—I found out why this day—and very devout, almost as deeply as Valknut. Whenever we made landfall, he would make a cairn of stones and decorate it with raven feathers, much frayed with use, that he kept for the purpose.

There were also Christ-followers—Martin the monk was now to be found sitting with them—and it had never been a problem. But that weasel of a monk knew what he was about and it was this day that made Einar realise what a danger he was and made me wish I had kept my blade edge-on to his tonsured head.

I was sitting, boiling leather strips to soften them and wrapping them round the metal rim of my shield before they hardened. Then I would tap them home with some rivet nails I had managed to get.

I had wanted to do this since the fight at St Otmund's chapel, when the boy's sword had bounced off the rim in a shower of sparks. The wild bounce of it had almost laid my cheek open, so I had decided then to give an enemy edge something to bite on rather than leap off.

Not that it had done that boy any good. I remembered the rain pooling in his open eyes and shivered, at which Hild placed her hand quietly on my shoulder. She was sitting behind me, braiding my hair, which had grown long and was falling in my eyes as I tried to work on the shield.

I felt the touch and tried not to let my face flame. The winks and nudges of the others, the first time she had done something like this—repairing rents in my cloak had made me wish she'd go away. Since then, I found myself enjoying her company. I was almost happy.

In fact, we exchanged smiles, her lips still chapped and swollen. She liked to be busy—it kept her from thinking too much. But nothing kept her from those moments of . . . absence . . . when her eyes rolled up and she was gone elsewhere. Into the dark.

Valknut said this sort of failing sounded to him like the falling sickness, for someone in the farm next to the one he was born on had it: a girl, he recalled. He said it was a disease that came from some Roman king, the one who was so great all the subsequent Roman kings took his name for their glory.

`She used to fall like a cut tree,' he remembered. 'Then she jerked and thrashed and foamed at the mouth, much like a man I once saw hit with an axe that laid his head open so that the inside fell out. But she was whole. Her family were used to it and all of them carried strips of leather to shove in her mouth, otherwise she would have bitten through her own tongue.'

But I did not think this was the same thing at all—or, if it was, it was a lesser version. Hild did not foam at the mouth or thrash. She just hugged herself and wailed and went away somewhere else.

I was enjoying the feeling of her at my hair as I tapped away at the shield and was aware, on the edge of my vision, that Pinleg was at his little cairn, reciting from memory the forty-eight names of Odin.

And Hring walked up to him, stood for a moment, then said, 'We think you should pull that down, for it is a heathen affront to good Christ-men.'

All those who heard it were so astonished they couldn't speak. I saw that all the Oathsworn's Christ-sworn, about a dozen of them, were standing apart, with Martin the monk lurking at their back. I saw, too, that he and Einar were looking at each other across the shingle, a battle of eyes as harsh as two rutting deer locking horns.

Pinleg stopped his reciting and slowly turned to face Hring, leaning slightly to one side as he favoured his good leg. 'Touch that cairn,' he said quietly, 'and I will take off your head and piss down your neck.'

`You are an arch-pagan,' Hring persisted, but he stumbled over the word, so that all those who heard knew it was not his own, Pinleg included. Einar caught Illugi Godi's eye, jerked his head slightly and Illugi moved to intercept the quarrel before it went too far. But he arrived too late.

Àrch-pagan,' repeated Pinleg and curled his lip. 'You can't even say it, you arse. I hear the words, but the voice belongs to that dung-faced little fuck hiding behind you all.'

Hring flushed at that, for it was true and he was aware that he had delivered his challenge badly.

Embarrassment and frustration made him stupid. 'He has two good legs, though,' he said.

There was the briefest of pauses; the world held its breath. It was unspoken, but a rule, that no one made a joke of Pinleg's crippled limb. Even Hring knew he had gone too far. Perhaps, like me, he had reasoned that runty Pinleg was no danger.

When the focus of the quarrel then landed up in his balls, swung with considerable force, driving the air out of him with a savage whoof and the pain into him with a leap of blinding tears, he should have seen sense.

Instead, writhing, his hands clutched between his legs, he screamed out through the snot and tears and pain: 'Holmgang!'

Once out, it couldn't be put back. The news that Pinleg and Hring were to fight spread and even those away on a hunt hurried back.

Illugi Godi, after consulting with a grim-faced Einar, had the proper area paced out and roped off with strips of cloth and as much true ceremony as could be mustered under the circumstances. Then Pinleg and Hring appeared, stripped to the waist, bareheaded and armed with sword and a shield.

The holmgang was simple enough. You fought in an enclosed area with no armour and the same weapons. If you put one foot outside—going on the heel, as it was called—you lost. If your blood was spilled, you lost. If you ran, you lost—and were counted a nithing, with no honour. The only other way out was to win. There's a lot more ceremony and a few more rules, but that's the weft of it and all anyone standing in the square of it needs to know.

Pinleg looked ridiculous, a white body with ribs showing, scrawny as an old chicken. Another of the Oathsworn, who had never seen him fight, actually jeered. Hring was much more powerfully built and stepped up, swinging his sword to loosen his arm.

But I saw Pinleg was muttering to himself, that his head was shaking and I felt the hairs all over my body prickle.

They stepped into the roped area and Illugi Godi began the ritual, cleansing the combat, making sure no bloodprice penalty lasted with the winner from his friends or family.

And all the time Pinleg muttered and his head shook. Little flecks appeared at the corners of his mouth and I believe, around then, Hring began to realise the awful truth and just how much of a mistake this was.

Illugi Godi stepped out of the ring. Hring boldly slapped sword on shield and fell into a crouch. Pinleg stood for a moment, then his whole body spasmed, spittle flew from his mouth as he screamed, the shield went flying to one side and he launched himself across the ring.

I had never seen a berserker. I have heard all the tales since, about them being shape-shifters, turning into bears, or that they got their name from wearing bearskins, or that it was really wolf pelts.

Some say they chew strange herbs, or drink bark brews to get into the state of it, but the truth is that a berserker is a frothing madman with a blade, a man who does not care if he lives or dies as long as he gets to you and kills you. And the only way to kill one is to cut the legs off and hope he can't crawl as fast as you can run.

Pinleg lurched like a troll on wheels, faster than anything I had ever seen, his neck out, his chin jutting. It reminded me, in that fleeting moment, of the snake-headed white bear when it roared at me after falling through the roof.

Hring was taken by surprise, overwhelmed. He had no chance. There was simply the shrieking and then sickening, wet chopping sounds as Pinleg, spraying strings of saliva, hacked Hring into bloody pats of meat and kept on hacking.

`Fuck . . .' said someone.

Kol Fish-hook, one of Hring's Christ-following friends, moved as if to drag Pinleg away, but Einar roared, 'Stay. If you value your life.'

And, realising what they were dealing with, the circle moved cautiously backwards as Pinleg carved and roared.

When he finally ran out of screams, he stood, soaked in blood, his hair sodden with it, his face a mask of clotted red, save for the eyes, which seemed to dull suddenly, like the sea under a cloud. He slumped to his knees, drooled a little, then he fell forward on his face and snored.

Einar stood up as Illugi Godi and Valknut moved to carry Pinleg away. 'You should know that one of the forty-eight names of Odin is Frenzy,' he said, sweeping his black-ice gaze round us all. 'Know also that anyone else who decides what religion will be followed in the Oathsworn will have me to deal with. I will not be as merciful as Pinleg and kill you quickly.' Then looked at Martin and said: 'You made this. You clean it up.'

Stunned at what he had seen, Martin stumbled forward to where the red ruin that had been Hring lay.

Einar would not let anyone help him and, when Martin took up an arm to try and pull the bloody thing away, it tore free in his hands and he fell backwards on his arse into a puddle of blood.

Everyone laughed, even the Christ-sworn, then turned away in sorrow and disgust. Hring had found his death and it had not been a good one. Arguments broke out about whether he would make Valholl, given that he had been a Christ-follower when he died. Some of the others were uncomfortable with this, realising only now what following the White Christ really meant.

I watched as Martin, his robes soaked with red, gathered up and hauled off the bits and suddenly realised I knew nothing much about Hring other than that he liked to fish and he had been the only other one to help consign the Serkland woman to the sea when she died at Skirringsaal.

But something had happened here. Hring had broken his oath and I knew it was because Einar had broken his oath with Eyvind.

I think Einar knew it, too, so that when Valknut came up and announced that Ulf-Agar was gone, it was just another turn of Odin's subtle revenge. Or Loki's. Who knew?

Òne of the fishermen saw a limping man get on that knarr just before it left,' Valknut added.

`He has broken his oath as well,' I said and, for the first time, Einar's black eyes would not meet mine.

The next morning, I stood on the shingle in another spring mirr of rain and watched the Elk slide out and away from the village. All around, watching with me, were the Oath-sworn, all but a dozen—all the Christ-men—who had gone with my father and the Trimmer to safety down the coast.

Watching, too, was Martin, his ruined hand still tucked under one armpit, the puddle at his feet tinged pink from the blood that still seeped from his brown habit. He wore a leather collar now and a leash that attached him to Pinleg like a hound.

When the Elk had all but vanished into the rain mist, we turned in ones and twos and started to collect our gear. Hild, who had a spare cloak that had belonged to my father, had more of my essentials, wrapped in a bedroll.

With scarcely a word, falling into the familiar routine, we formed up, with Bag-nose and Steinthor questing out in front, and started the long march upriver, to Koksalmi and the forge.

Hild knew the way, but Einar didn't trust her, so she was kept close to his side, with Pinleg and the leashed Martin. He would have leashed Hild, too, but Illugi Godi, knowing I would cause trouble over it, persuaded him, I think, that it would be better to have the woman on his side, not an enemy.

We climbed, for an hour at least, through birch and alder, where the sun slanted. As the trees thinned out, we halted, waiting for Bagnose and Steinthor to come back from scouting ahead. It gave everyone a chance to adjust straps and the weight of pack and shield.

I looked back, rubbing a raw place on my neck, feeling the wind, a good onshore blow hammering from a sea that sparkled. Below, somewhere to the right, the river meandered, reed-lined and narrowing.

Hild hunched on a rock, arms wrapped round her knees.

`Can you walk?' I asked and she looked up. Her eyes rolled, focused, rolled again. Then she nodded. I bent to take her bundle as well as my own and her hand, clawed and fierce, caught my wrist. From under the curtain of her hair I heard her say: 'She is waiting. She will guide me. She told . . .’

The voice stopped, the slanted eyes grew slitted with cunning. 'No one is to know,' she hissed.

I liked her—I believe I loved her, in that way first love is. At least I thought I did, because she was the first woman I did not want to upend and fuck. I never thought of doing that casually with her, though I sometimes grew hard thinking of her white body in the dark.

Yet even then I couldn't seem to see it without the weals and the bruises, couldn't see her face gasping in passion without her eyes rolling up, white and dead, and hearing that Other voice, sometimes a hiss, sometimes a rasp.

I now knew that I was afraid of her, of her magic. If it had been me, I would have turned her loose, for all the lure of Attila the Hun's hoard.

Bagnose and Steinthor strode back in, spoke with Einar, then loped off again. The Oathsworn rose, shouldering their burdens, and we set off across a wide, pale plateau carved with rocky gullies and studded with knuckles of green-spotted grey stones. Here and there were stands of birch like white sentinels and mountains rose on either side, faint and purpled in the distance.

Gunnar Raudi fell in step with me, glancing sideways from under the faded red of his tangled curls.

'Faring well, young Orm?'

`Well enough, Gunnar Raudi,' I answered, in between breaths as we stepped out.

He was silent for a while and there was only the creak and clink of gear, the grunts and pants of labour.

Eventually he said, 'We have come a long way in a short while.'

Ìndeed,' I answered, wondering where all this was leading.

Ìt seems to me you are marked,' he went on slowly and I looked at him warily.

`Marked? By whom?'

He shrugged. 'Odin perhaps. But marked. And Einar knows it.'

Èinar?' I was lost now.

He caught me by the arm and we halted, men filtering round us, some with muttered curses at our blocking the trail. 'You are Einar's doom, I am thinking,' he said in a low, urgent voice, looking right and left, waiting until we were out of earshot. 'Everything bad happened to him after you came.'

`Me?' I answered, astonished, then thought I saw what he was about. 'You and I boarded the Elk at the same time. Why are you not Einar's bane? Why me, Gunnar Raudi?'

Ì thought of that,' he replied, perfectly seriously and so honestly I felt ashamed at my suspicions. 'But the white bear was a sign . . . Einar came because of you, took you aboard because of the bear. I do not know which god stole his luck—Odin is my bet, though—but he used you to do it.'

It was nonsense, of course, and I could not shake the feeling he was up to something, so I shook my head and shouldered my gear.

Èinar believes this,' Gunnar Raudi said and now I saw why he had stopped me. Our eyes locked.

`Truly?'

He nodded. Then he clapped me on the shoulder. 'We'd better run, young Orm, or be left behind.'

Towards evening, we hit meadow grass, still yellowed but with new shoots coming through. Then, as the first stars appeared, Bagnose and Steinthor quartered back to Einar's side.

`We saw cattle,' said Bagnose.

À bull and three milch cows,' added Steinthor.

Ànd a boy with yellow hair watching them,' finished Bagnose.

`Did he see you?' asked Einar and got a curled lip from the pair of them. He stroked his moustaches and then announced that we would camp in a hollow, fringed with trees, that we had left behind some minutes before. Only one fire was to be lit and that for cooking, in the centre of the dip, where it wouldn't be seen.

Later, after we had eaten, he called me to where he sat, with Gunnar Raudi and Ketil Crow and Skapti and Illugi—all the Oathsworn's faithful hounds.

Òrm,' he said, his face tomb-dark on the other side of the fire, his hair a shroud for it. 'Tell me the truth of it. Is Hild right in the head enough to go to her people and let them know we mean no harm?'

I thought about it, and found myself scrubbing my chin like my father did found, also, that there was a down there to be scrubbed. I wasn't considering the question—Hild had enough sense for the task—but what it meant.

It meant, I reasoned, that Einar was worried about the villagers, which was sensible. After all, Vigfus's crew had been routed by them and they were, presumably, hard-enough fighters. It meant that he wanted to see if he could persuade the villagers to help. If not, he would stamp them, swift and hard, in the dark.

It's what I would have done.

The problem was, as I told him, that I didn't think Hild would want to do it, that she was following her own saga here and needed to be in that forge. I believed, too, that if we had any hope of reaching the end of this whale road, we needed her to be there.

And the good people of Koksalmi wouldn't stand for that.

`You think they would kill her?' Einar asked. I nodded. Skapti hoomed and then spat in the dying embers of the fire.

`How do you know so much? I know you cared for the woman, but she is out of her head half the time.

And you are a boy—Frigg's tits, you have not even been with us a season, are barely big enough to fit in that mail you strut in.'

I bridled, half rising, and big Skapti waved a placating hand. 'Easy, easy—I meant no insult by it. Do not mistake me for a bear, young Orm.'

There were chuckles and I lost my anger in embarrassment and scrubbed my face again. 'She will lead us to the forge if you give her leave and trust her to do it,' I said, with only a slight twinge of fear that I was wrong. 'Perhaps we can stay quiet and sneak in and out, no harm done.'

Ì thought the forge was in the village?' growled Ketil Crow.

`No. From what I understand, it is in a small hill nearby. The villagers count the place as a god place, but they fear it, too, and never go there, from what Hild says.'

This was stretching the cloth a great deal. It was what I had garnered from Hild's ravings, which was not quite the same thing as a straight fact.

Einar considered it, then nodded. 'In, out and then we move west and south, to where the Elk lies,' he said.

Ànd on to somewhere,' Skapti rumbled, 'where there is something on the cookfire that isn't fish.'

The next morning was misted, tendrils of it snaking round our ankles, lying in the hollows and under the trees like smoke.

We had been moving for no more than a few minutes when we broached the cap of a hill. Below, the mist roiled down the slope as the morning sun burned it off and the bare hillside led down into the beginnings of a fair-sized forest, where the river sparkled.

Hild stood and pointed, right across the river and the trees, to a great craggy outcrop, almost bare save for stunted stands of fir. `The forge lies under that,' she said, then turned to the north. 'And the village is an hour that way. I came here sometimes, but she . . .' She broke off, wrapped her arms round herself, moaned slightly.

Ketil Crow, looking dubious, glanced at Einar. Hild swayed and Illugi steadied her. I moved to her side and heard her say, as if fighting for breath: 'The old entrance is closed. Barred. Only from the top. Barred, Orm. You understand? Barred . . .' Her eyes rolled and she fell against me.

`Fuck,' said Skapti. 'Now we'll have to carry her.'

`What was all that growling about?' demanded Einar. I told him as we moved on, four men sharing the burden of Hild, on another spear-bed.

We moved through the whispering trees, splashed across the fast-running, knee-high stream and on, up to where the ground started to rise and the trees thin. Then there were only withered efforts, like a crone's clawed hands, and Einar called a halt as Geir Bagnose and Steinthor came sliding in.

`We found a track,' said Bagnose.

Ànd a door.'

It was the faintest of trails, and it led to a hacked-out entrance. Sunk a little way into it was a stout wooden door.

Ìt was a mine once,' someone noted and when we looked, we could see the faint remains of the old wooden slats which had carried ore carts long ago.

`This door is a good one,' remarked another, whose name I knew to be Bodvar. He had been a woodworker and knew one when he saw it. 'But it has been repaired a few times, here just recently.'

He pointed and we saw the difference in weathering, the thick new cross-planks.

`Vigfus; muttered Einar and we all saw the remains of axe scores, where his crew had tried to cut through. It was clear someone had come and repaired the damage caused after they'd been chased off. Which meant, of course, that they were not entirely afraid of their mountain forge.

Skapti gripped the edge of a cross-plank and heaved. When nothing happened, he pushed, then stopped, shoved his helmet up and scratched. 'There's a thing,' he said. Ìt's barred from the inside. I can feel it.'

`So there is someone in there,' said Ketil Crow and chuckled nastily. 'Perhaps we should knock.'

`That's what Vigfus did,' Valknut said, pulling off his helmet and wiping the sweat from his brow. 'Look where it got him.'

`The thing of it is,' said Bodvar, 'that this door has not been opened in a long while. Look, there's an old bird's nest in the angle of that hinge.'

He was right. And the more we looked, the older the door was and the longer it had been shut. There was silence and Einar stroked his chin. Finally, he said, `Bagnose, Steinthor, see if you can find another way in round this rock. The rest of us will go to where Hild said to go—the top.'

`This is a mountain,' protested Steinthor. Ìt will take hours to go round the whole circle of it.'

`Then get started,' growled Einar and they left, splitting to right and left. The rest of us hefted our gear and got ready to climb. No one spoke. If challenged, they'd have said they were saving their breath for the task, but their minds were on dwarves and trolls and other things that lived under mountains, guarding the secret of treasure.

I thought most were chewing over the prospect of turning up some of Atil's hoard—and a few droop-lips were just stupid enough to think that it was actually buried here.

But I was wrong. Everyone was too busy wondering who had barred the door inside the mountain.

7 Long, painful, sweaty. There—to say it takes three words and I wish it had been as easy to get to the top of that gods-cursed forge mountain. But I remember the climb as being tough, mainly because I was wearing mail: the weight of a small boy on my shoulders. That and all the other stuff—two shields, because I felt guilty and offered to share the burden of one of those who had to carry Hild up it on the spear-bed.

At the top, I was too busy ripping off my salt-stained boots and woollen socks to care about a cairn of stones. The cold air on my aching, throbbing feet almost made me moan with pleasure and, after I had inspected the rawest bits, I then took time to look around.

Everyone else was in a similar state. Men wriggled out of mail, stripped off layers of linen and wool, sat with their heads lowered, dripping under the unexpectedly warm spring sun. Skapti's face looked like it would burst.

But Einar, if he was suffering, showed no sign of it. He stood, pensively staring at the cairn and the poles that surrounded them. Every one but four of them bore a skull, leering and weatherbeaten. The four that didn't had recognisable heads, with eyes gone, lips peeled back, strips of skin pecked from cheeks.

`Vigfus's men,' said Valknut, who was nearest me, massaging his calf muscles.

I shed my mail like a wriggling snake, then wandered over to have a closer look. The heads were ruins; you couldn't tell if they'd even been men, save for one who had a fringe of beard left.

The cairn was waist height, with fallen stones around it. When I looked more closely, I realised it wasn't a cairn, but a ring of stones round a blackened opening. Peering down revealed only more blackness.

Ketil Crow joined me, as did a few others. And, of course, Bodvar picked up a stone and dropped it in.

There was a short pause, then a faint splash.

À well?' queried Bodvar.

Òn a mountain top?' responded Ketil Crow with a curl of his lip.

Ì wish you had not done that,' Illugi Godi said, frowning at Bodvar, who merely shrugged.

Ìf not a well, what?' demanded Skapti, lumbering up.

À smoke hole,' said Einar absently, then kicked one of the stones at his feet. We all saw that the blackening was an age of soot.

'For the forge,' someone said, enlightened.

`His charcoal is a little damp,' commented Valknut and there were chuckles.

We milled and peered and argued this and that for a while. Einar stood and thought and, apart from the whirr and song of birds, there was only the muttered rant of Hild, that constant background noise we had all become used to.

`Rope,' said Einar. There was some—Valknut had a length; two others had coils of it round their waists.

Einar had a fire lit, made a torch, held it over the hole and let it drop. We all watched it fall, turning lazily, trailing sparks. We saw the shaft, where it suddenly widened out, the gleam of water—then the torch hissed and was gone.

`Take a sounding on that,' ordered Einar and the ropes were knotted firmly, then a bearded boarding axe tied to one end and lowered. When the rope end was reached, it still hadn't gone slack and that meant some two hundred feet. We hauled it up and found it dry.

`That's a deep hole,' muttered Skapti uneasily and everyone agreed. Deep holes were to be avoided: the lair of dragons or black dwarves.

`Let's find out how deep,' said Einar and had us take off the leather neck straps from our shields and fasten them to the rope. Then we lowered it again. At 250 feet, the rope went slack and, when it was hauled up, the last twenty or so was wet.

`So, now we know,' said Einar. 'Who will be lowered, then?'

There was a shifting from leg to leg and a studious attempt to be looking somewhere else.

Ì would go,' offered Skapti and everyone groaned and laughed.

`Just so,' said Einar. 'Someone small and light, then.'

`Send the Christ priest,' shouted someone. `He's scrawny enough.'

There was laughter and Martin's face went white. But Einar shook his head, tugging on the leash a little.

'The black dwarves will eat him,' he said. More laughter.

Ì will do it,' offered Pinleg and there were nods and some appreciative noises at his bravery.

`Can you swim?' added Einar and Pinleg acknowledged his lack with a wry wave.

It took me a while to realise they were silent and all looking at me.

`Can you swim?' asked Einar.

I swallowed, for I swam like a fish, the legacy of sometimes falling off those black gull cliffs. I could lie, but Gunnar Raudi knew, so I nodded.

There was a single exhale of relief and a few hands clapped my back, more because the owners weren't going than at my courage.

Skapti knotted the rope into a kind of sling, which made it a seat rather than round my waist, which cut the wind from you. They made a new torch and I climbed on to the crumbling edge of the cairn, while Skapti wrapped two coils round his ample frame and braced himself. Two others, shoulders humped with muscle from rowing, stood to help him.

`Jerk the rope twice to have us stop,' he growled.

`What if I need to come up in a hurry?'

Ìf the dragon is burning your skinny arse,' he replied, 'we'll hear you scream.'

As the others laughed, Einar lit the torch.

Then I kicked out and started down.

At first they went so fast that I clattered off the sides, but I yelled up to them, my voice bouncing crazily in my ears and they slowed the descent. Turning slowly I was lowered, down and down and down into the dark shaft, the torch guttering.

I saw a small, round opening midway down, set into one side of the shaft like a dark lidless eye. I almost called out, but then I was sinking below it and, suddenly, out of the shaft entirely.

There was the impression of airiness, a great expanse of vaulted rock, which the torch only dimly revealed. Water dripped and the air felt damp and cold and smelled musty. When I saw the water gleaming red in the torchlight, I jerked the rope and stopped.

Swinging gently, I lowered the torch a little, peering around. There was nothing but water. I swallowed the dry spear in my throat and realised I had no way of telling them to haul me up save one.

So I yelled. The sound boomed off the wall. I was jerked up like fish bait, shot back up the shaft so quickly I hit the sides and yelped in pain, which only made them haul harder. I almost shot out into the sunlight, the torch falling back into the darkness.

I was cursing them as they dragged me over the side of the cairn stones and, when they saw I was unharmed, everyone laughed at my fury. I didn't think it was funny; both my elbows and one knee were bloodied.

`You've had worse humping on a dirt floor,' observed Skapti, hauling me up and grinning. Then they all wanted to know what I had seen.

À shaft, widens out into a chamber full of water,' I revealed.

`That much we found out without lowering you,' Einar grunted.

`There isn't much more,' I bridled. 'Short of going in the water and swimming about in the dark, I couldn't find out more.'

Ìt might come to that,' Einar growled and I saw he was serious. The thought of being in that black water in the pitch dark shut me up and focused my mind. I remembered the opening, and thought more about it.

Ì am thinking that there is something of the heathen sacrifice about this place,' Martin the monk said slowly. 'I can smell it.'

`You . . . have the . . . right . . . of it.'

The voice was weak, but so unexpected that we all whirled and stared. Hild was upright, swaying, her face bloodless.

`The only way in is here,' she said, speaking in a rush, as if trying to get it all out as fast as she could.

'Was once to be my fate . . . All who know go into the dark. There is a way to the door if you can find it. If you do, you can choose—to unbar it, or stay. No one has unbarred the door since the woman of the first smith. She went in for her sin, gave sin and secret to her children.' She paused, sagged. 'My mother is in there. When I had provided a daughter, that was to be my fate.'

We all chewed that over. Martin crossed himself. So that was the 'dark' Hild spoke of, the 'she' who haunted her. Her mother. In the black pit of that forge, probably mouldering at the bottom of that lake. And if she still spoke to her daughter, she was a fetch of rare fierceness.

`They threw them in, all the smith's daughters?' demanded Valknut.

`The heirs of Regin,' muttered Illugi. 'I have heard that name before . . .'

The others, even though they did not know the whole of it, were equally uneasy faced with this. Like them, I was thinking that a village capable of heaving their own down a hole were not ones to walk up to as a stranger.

I was so petrified I couldn't stand—and I wasn't going swimming down there, even if Einar cut my bollocks off with his truth-seeking knife.

`There is an opening, midway down,' I babbled to Einar. 'The edges are smoke-blackened, upwards, but not beneath. I think that is the true smoke hole.'

Einar glared at me. 'Can you get in it?'

I paused, trying to think, then nodded. As I peeled off my tunic, I felt Hild's black eyes on me. She was wrapped like a corpse bundle in my cloak and shivering in the warm sun.

`Bodvar, you and Valknut pick three more and go back to the barred door. When Orm here reaches it, he may need help. Send back for the rest of us to come, too.'

Both men groaned at that. The idea of tramping all the way back down that gods-cursed hill was not appealing. On the other hand, I saw, it was still better to them than going down the shaft. And Einar had spoken of 'when' I reached the door. Not 'if'.

I felt Hild at my side, her hand on my naked arm. I looked into the dark eyes and saw fear. But not for me, I thought as I turned away, stuffing a firestarter and my eating knife in my boot.

At the edge of the loose-stone cairn, Einar caught my arm, his black eyes like nails on my face. He said nothing and, after a moment, let me go.

Then I was down the shaft again, torch in hand. When I got to the round opening, I had them stop and swung for a bit, studying it. Then I hooked myself near it, slid my feet in to the knees.

It would be a tight squeeze and what to do with the torch bothered me, for I couldn't take it lit, but maybe couldn't fit with it unlit and stuffed in my belt. And I didn't want to be in the dark wherever that smoke hole ended.

In the end, I worked it out. I undid my breeks and hauled the ties out of them. As they slid and flapped round my boots, I stubbed the torch into sparks and embers, fastened my breeks cord to one end and made a loop at the other.

In the dark, I looped it round my neck, then slithered further into the smoke hole, let go the rope and was alone. In the dark. In a hole no bigger than a burial chamber.

It went down at a sharp angle, as it had to, but I was offering up extravagant sacrifices to all the gods, Aesir and Vanir and any others I could think of, that it didn't get narrower. My hands were out above my head, palms flat on the rough stone—a natural crag, this, I thought with the part of my mind not screaming in terror at the fact that my nose was so close to it.

Like a tomb. Dark . . . I hit an obstacle and stopped. An obstacle. Solid. I was stuck.

There is no feeling like that. The hardest thing I ever did was not scream and thrash. I felt the weight of it above me, had the sweat of fear and labour stinging my eyes, beard the rasp of my own breath in that hot, cloistered dark.

I lay, hands up behind my head, palms flat, pushing. Nothing. My feet were on something solid. I brought my knees a little way up, hard up against the roof of the shaft until I felt them puncture and bleed to try and shove against the obstruction—and found nothing beneath my feet.

I blinked away sweat and gasped and tried to think. It bent. Of course it did. It turned from an angled shaft to a straight one.

I wriggled, legs lowered, felt them slide down and was just sighing with relief when I realised that if it angled down it was a sheer drop. At which I shot forward, ripping the skin from the palms of my hands, straight down, crashing into something that seemed soft, though the hard edges of it cracked my head and an already battered elbow.

There was a choking dust, too. I couldn't breathe; it was smothering me. I thrashed, then lost the last of my courage and, gibbering and choking, floundered out of what I thought was a bed and tumbled, this time on to something hard.

I saw light then, but it was inside my head, and when I eventually groaned upright and felt the place that hurt, it came away sticky. But I was breathing, though I could taste the swirling dust still.

I hauled myself together, along a ladder, it seemed. The torch was still attached, mercifully, and both knife and firestarter were in my boot. Using the firestarter in the dark was no problem and the first brief spark was so bright in that place that I saw, at once, that I was on an ore-track, the 'ladder' being wooden rails.

The next spark, then the next and the dried mosses caught into faint pinprick embers. I blew, slowly and carefully, nurtured it into a flame, fed that to the torch and, suddenly, I had light.

I was in a square chamber. I had fallen maybe ten feet and what I thought had been a bed was the metal-edged forge, the soft landing being the remains of charcoal ash, now settling slowly. I was black with it.

There were barrels and, next to them, a sagging table with dust-shrouded tools. The ore-tracks I lay on stretched ahead and behind, into darkness both ways, half buried in rubble spill. An old shovel lay discarded on them.

I got up, wiping the sweat from my eyes, torch held high. The forge still had the bellows, but when I touched them, they sighed to dust. The anvil, however, was what caught my eye. It was layered with dust and cobwebs, at least as heavy as two Skaptis and rusty. But it had a split in it, deep as the first joint of my finger, across its width.

I spat dust out and moved to the sagging table, passing the barrels and seeing the dark contents spilling from two of them. I bent and sniffed, tasted iron: they were filing and discards. The other had held sand. On the other side of the table was a stone tub which had, presumably, held water for quenching.

The tools seemed to be the sort of thing you would have in a forge: hammers, pincers, mallets, all cobwebbed and rusting. And, on the wall above, something that gleamed.

I moved the torch closer and saw a ledge hewn out of the rock. Above it was a long, single string of runes. I couldn't read them and the thought struck me that it was strange that a Northman could read Latin, but not runes.

In the ledge lay what appeared to be a batten of wood, seemingly oiled and fresh. It had a squarish head, with two bright rivets holding a nub of shining metal, a thumb-length sticking out of the wooden shaft and neatly sheared off. I didn't touch it—after the bellows had fallen apart, I didn't want to touch anything. I was sure the rubble spill had come from the roof; the sheer weight of that place pressed on me.

But it was more than that. There was something about that piece of wood that kept me from touching it, that was strange and Other and I could not work it out.

In the end, though, I picked up a heavy hammer, rusted iron with an iron shaft, too. Having a weapon made me feel better. What good it would do against the fetch of a dead woman was another matter.

I backed away, considering, trying to orientate myself so that, when I chose a route out of that room, I wasn't heading off down into some labyrinth of forgotten and dangerous mineworkings, but towards that barred door.

I was still trying to work it out when the torch guttered and my heart nearly stopped. I looked wildly at it, but it was nowhere near burned down. I held it up; a breeze caressed it and I cursed myself for a ninny and followed where the breeze was coming from.

The door, when I finally saw it, was almost an anti-climax. The bar was stiff and I had to force it up with the hammer until it finally toppled out. Then I shoved, heard shouts, saw a sliver of light and then fingers curling round the exposed edge of the door.

With a wrench and a shower of dust, it racked open, spilling sunlight into the shaft. I shuffled out, my breeks manacling my ankles.

Valknut loomed up, Bodvar and the others behind. They stopped, recoiled, stared. Then Valknut seemed to sag, wrapped his arms round himself and reeled away. Bodvar pointed, his mouth working.

Scared witless, I whirled round in case something was creeping up, but there was nothing. I heard them gasp and wheeze and choke and, with a sudden burst of fury and shame, realised they were helpless with laughter.

It took them ages to recover and my sulking only made it worse. Bodvar actually volunteered to reclimb the hill to get the others because, he said later, he'd have burst from laughing.

Valknut later admitted he'd thought it was a black dwarf stumping out to tell them all to piss off, his hammer at the ready, and had nearly wet himself with terror. The relief when he saw who it was made him laugh all the more.

I saw the funny side. Eventually. The door opens and there is a boy, naked but for his boots, his breeks tangles round his ankles, black with charcoal dust, streaked white with sweat runnels and blood . . . I would have hooted, too.

I was still like that an hour later––though my breeks were up and the sun a lot less warm, so that I was shivering and goose-bumped. I needed water to wash, but there was none spare for that, so I stayed black and gave everyone a fresh laugh.

Einar nodded appreciatively, as if he knew what I had done. Ordinarily I would have swelled with proud delight at this, but there was too much doom about Einar now for me to hold him in such esteem.

More torches were lit and I led them, less four to guard the open door, back to the forge room, Hild staggering at my side. Martin kept darting eagerly ahead, just like the dog Einar had made him, tangling his leash and making his keeper, Skapti, curse.

We crept in and I showed them what I had found: the forge, the bellows, the barrels and the table.

Both Illugi Godi and Martin the monk dropped to their knees, to the astonishment of all––what could have made that pair worship together? They, too, were astonished, not realising what the other had seen.

`The spear,' Martin breathed reverently. 'The spear . . .' He couldn't say anything else, just sat with his hands clasped and prayed.

`That?' queried Ketil Crow. 'There's only a shaft.'

Ìt is—was—a Roman spear,' Martin said, his voice filled with awe, then he bowed his head and actually sobbed. 'But the pagan devils have removed the long metal point, steeped in the blood of Christ. May God punish them all.'

Ketil Crow, with a scornful look at the weeping monk, stepped forward, making to pluck the spear-shaft from its ledge. Illugi Godi's voice was booming loud when he roared: 'Stay!' He pointed to the rune line. À

runespell. A new one. A new runespell.'

That stunned us all. Valknut dropped to his knees and bowed his head at the enormity of it.

There were few runespells. Odin himself, who had hung nine days on the World Tree, had only ever learned eighteen, as Illugi now reminded us.

Ànd had a spear thrust into his side, too,' Pinleg growled pointedly to Martin. 'But at least he got Knowledge out of it.'

`Was it?' interrupted Valknut. 'I thought it was Wisdom.'

`Perhaps the pair of you need to hang on the same tree,' Illugi Godi said wryly. 'That way one of you would have the wisdom or knowledge to shut up.'

Ìt's all pagan nonsense,' Martin declared.

`Take your prize, then,' Einar offered. `Surely some pagan nonsense is no danger to you, under the protection of your god? After all, didn't your Bishop Poppo wear a red-hot iron glove and come to no harm?'

Martin licked his lips, looked as if he would try it, then settled back like a sullen dog.

Ketil Crow, shaken at his narrow escape—the runespell might have cursed him, or worse—wiped his dry mouth with the back of one hand. Unless you know what you are doing, you walk warily round a runespell, neither speaking it aloud nor laying a hand on it.

`There's no rust on that spear-shaft,' Valknut noted and I blinked, realising only now what the strange Otherness had been. No rust. Or dust. Or cobwebs. Everything. looked as if it had been made the day before.

There was a general backing away. I saw Hild stagger, heard her mutter, moved. closer and put one arm round her shoulders. She was cold, but sweating and swaying wildly, like a mast in a high wind.

`So what happened?' demanded Ketil Crow. 'Did they forge a sword out of bits of an old spear? Is that the right of it?'

Èssentially,' muttered Illugi Godi, leaning forward to study the runes and speaking absently, his voice sounding like a man speaking underwater. 'It was written here by someone . . . who knew . . . how to do it well. For the smith to copy on to the sword he was forging.'

Ketil Crow shrugged. 'I can't think that you would get much of a sword out of some old spearhead,' he scoffed and Illugi peered briefly at him.

`Depends on the spearhead. With the blood of a god on it . . .'

He left the rest unsaid, but Ketil Crow had it terrier-gripped and would not let go. `Not one of our gods.'

À god is a god,' Illugi remarked. 'Ours are more powerful, obviously . . .'

Martin's snort stopped Illugi, but Ketil Crow wanted no theological debate. He kicked the metal forge moodily, for he had wanted lots more—treasure, swords, all the stuff of sagas. 'I still don't see that a sword made from an old spear is much of a weapon.'

`Perhaps you should look at the anvil,' said Einar laconically, 'where they tested it.'

That great cut across the anvil, where the smith had tested the edge of his blade, made Ketil Crow click his teeth sharply together. Everyone craned to see and Valknut gave a low whistle of appreciation.

`Deep. Through mail, a cut like that. And helmet-steel, maybe more. Solid iron, that anvil.' He turned and nudged Ketil Crow. `Some spearhead. Some sword.'

Ketil Crow scowled, but it was half-hearted and the old, avaricious glow was back in his eyes.

`What's this?' asked a voice and everyone turned, thrusting torches. The man—a grey-bearded veteran called Ogmund Wryneck because of a head-jerking tic he had—stood looking up another shaft, behind the barrels. The wooden rungs of a ladder led upwards.

`Well spotted, old eye,' Einar said, clapping him on the shoulder. He stepped on the ladder, moved up one rung—and it fell apart with a puff of rotting wood.

`Well, that's that,' he said, then looked at me. 'A strong lad, bracing himself, could work himself up that shaft with a rope if he had a mind.'

`He could,' I answered bitterly. 'When you find one, ask him.'

Illugi Godi, impatiently grabbing the nearest torch, was almost nose to rock now, poring over the runes and muttering, but careful not to touch. But he was not so engrossed that he could not try to grasp more. He turned to me, his eyes wild.

`Yes, yes, you must. There might be another runespell. Think of it! Another spell.'

Òr a sword,' added Ketil Crow enticingly.

Òr some of Atil's treasure,' said Einar. The rest of the faces round me glowed with the greed of it and their eyes burned on me.

Fuck your runes, I wanted to say. Fuck your magic swords. Fuck you, too, godi. You haul your holy arse up the shaft if you feel so strongly about it.

Yet, at the same time, I was taking the offered rope, coiling it round my waist, looping the torch round my neck again and heaving myself into the shaft.

In the end it was an easy climb. The rungs broke into dust, but there were rusted metal sockets for them and they stayed intact for the most part, so it was simple. At the top, I lit the torch and looked around.

There was a collapsed shelf and more barrels, whose splayed staves spilled the contents out. There was a chest which looked Interesting, but only because I tried to move it and knew it was heavy and perfect as an anchor for the rope.

I slung it down, told them that the room was too small for everyone and then turned back to the other thing I had spotted. The door.

It was half open, swung limply on sagging hinges and revealed, at first, what seemed to be an old wooden-framed bed and a collection of rags. Then I realized the rags had form; white gleamed. Bone.

As Einar panted up the rope into the room I realized, from the hanks of hair and the remains of jewellery, that this could be Hild’s mother. Einar, peering over my shoulder, rubbed his moustaches and nodded when I offered my explanation.

‘Interesting,’ he said and then pointed out the obvious, which I had overlooked. ‘If it is, she could have unbarred the door, got out and returned to her child.’

That made me jerk. Perhaps it wasn’t her, after all, but some other luckless relative—a grandmother or older—but why she hadn’t walked out was still a mystery. However, as I pointed out to Einar and Illugi, the only two who came up, best not to mention this to Hild.

Thy nodded, though I wasn’t sure they heard. Illugi was too busy hunting for more runes an stirring up only the old dust of dried beans and insect husks. Einar, however, was at the metal chest and working a seax into the rusted lock.

It gave with a dull sound and he lifted the lid. We all peered, half expecting gold, swords, gem-studded crowns. Instead, there were a lot of cloth bundles which, when we unwrapped them, unveiled a series of blackened tin plates, some bound together through holes with the remains of leather thongs.

`Like the book of leaves in St Otmund's temple,' I pointed out and Einar nodded, rummaging furiously and annoyed that there was only this and the metal was only tin.

Ìndeed,' said Illugi, his eyes gleaming, `that's what it is. Hold the torch closer, Orm. Let's see . . . Yes, runes. Excellent . . . ' A moment later, he straightened, the disappointment palpable. 'Apart from advice on never allowing two blades to lie across each other and a list of plants to rub into the anvil to give it more strength, there isn't much here on smelting that I haven't heard before.'

Ùseless, god-fucked place,' muttered Einar moodily. 'No treasure, no clues.'

`There is the runespell on the wall below,' Illugi said brightly.

`Know what it says?' demanded Einar.

Ì think it is something about truth, or being true. And there's an eternity rune there, which means long-lasting. And, of course, it all depends on how you cut them . . .'

`You have no idea, do you?' Einar challenged and Illugi shrugged, grinned sheepishly and admitted that to be true.

Ìt seems to be what you'd expect to find on a good sword—a runespell to make a blade true and long-lasting,' he said. 'But the runes are old, different from the ones we know now.'

The shriek made us all jerk, an earsplitting sound that bounced off the walls, ringing the whole place like a bell.

`What the fuck . . . ?'

Einar was down the rope in a fast slide that must have flayed skin from his palms. I followed, only marginally slower, since I was almost certain I knew who had screamed.

I was right. Hild stood in the centre of a ring of wary warriors, clutching the spear-shaft to her chest. She was still as a carved prow, her eyes wide and staring at nothing, her mouth open and chest heaving, as if she, could not breathe.

`The monk made her do it,' Bodvar said. `We were all thinking it a bad idea when she started to, but that little rat said someone had to and it might as well be her.'

Einar glared at Skapti, who tugged the leash so that Martin jerked. Halftroll shrugged and said, 'He wasn't wrong, Einar. Someone had to risk it.'

Martin, straightening, adjusted his cowl and smiled. 'I was right. I have been right all along. This Hild is linked to the sword made here, a powerful weapon now thanks to the blood of Christ on that holy spearhead they used to forge it.

`The heathens may have perverted the Spear of Destiny, but the blood stays true. True also is the blood of the smiths—she knows where the sword is and so also where the Great Hoard is.'

`Kill the little fuck now,' growled Ketil Crow.

`He has the right of it,' announced Hild in a strange, gentle, calm voice. 'I am linked by the blood of the smiths who made this sword.'

`How many spears were stuck in this Christ, then?' Finn Horsehead demanded to know. 'For I have heard that the Emperor of the Romans in the Great City has hundreds of Christ ikons, from a little cloth with the god's face on it to a crown made of thorns. And a spear that was thrust in the side of this Jesus as he hung on his tree.'

`False. I have the real spear,' snapped Martin angrily and Einar whacked him on one ear, sending the little monk stumbling.

`You have nothing at all, monk,' Einar said in a voice thick and slow as a moving glacier. 'You have your life only by my leave.'

Hild shook her head, as if scattering water from her. 'I know where the sword of Attila is. I can take you there, far to the east, along the Khazars' river.'

`Where in the name of Odin's arse is that?' demanded Einar.

Ì know,' said Pinleg like an eager boy. No one laughed now, not after what they had seen him do. 'It's down the Don,' he announced triumphantly.

`The Don?' repeated Einar.

`That's Khazar territory,' insisted Pinleg. Ìf it is the same Khazars who spit little arrows at you and worship the god of the Jewish men.'

`The same,' Hild said and there was silence, loud as a clanging hammer. The shock of it all was still chilling us when one of the door guards came in out of the dark tunnel, blinking into the light.

`Rurik says to come quick,' he told Einar, `for something has happened.'

`Rurik? What is he doing here?'

We charged out, back along the passages and into the daylight, where the weak sun seemed searing and blinding. Blinking, we saw Rurik and Valgard Trimmer and four others. My father, grim-faced, stepped forward and I saw he had a bloody, unbound cut along the length of his forearm, seeping thickly through the rent in his tunic.

Òne of Starkad's ships came,' he said, `with Starkad and Ulf-Agar. There was a fight; eight of us were killed.'

`How did you get the Elk away with so few?' demanded Einar.

My father paused, scrubbed his face and the sickening realisation was dawning on us all before he even told us.

`We didn't. We came overland, with Starkad hot on our heels. We left the Elk burning to the waterline.'

8 It was at that moment that most saw how Einar's doom was on him and most blamed it on the fact he had broken his oath. Einar, too, knew it, but he needed the crew still—more than ever at that moment—and I saw him meet his wyrd standing straight and with Loki cunning.

`Well,' he said with a whetstone smile, looking round the stunned, angry faces to men who knew they were stranded on a hostile shore. 'Now we need the Oathsworn.'

And he turned, moving away from the forge mountain as the sun started dying on the edge of the world, heading uphill.

There was a flurry of mutters, argument traded for argument. One or two, either those who had worked it out, or those who would follow Einar into Helheim, shouldered their gear one more time and loped after him, long shadows bobbing. One was my father. Eventually, the others followed, grumbling about everything and especially why they were going uphill yet again.

`Hold, I'll bind that,' I called and my father turned, grinning at the black sight of me.

`You need to wash behind your ears, boy,' he growled and I laughed with him and tore up my last clean underkirtle from my bundle to use on his forearm. It was a long, wicked cut, oozing blood.

`Seax,' he grunted.

`You should have kept out of the way, old man,' I said with a smile. His eyes, when they met mine, were brimming. He had lost the Elk. I felt it for him, but could do nothing more than concentrate on my knots and finish the binding.

`What now?' I asked him as he turned away and, to be fair, he knew what I meant at once.

Ìn the end, everyone will see the same thing,' he said quietly. 'Einar broke oath and the gods are taking his luck. So now every man will be wondering what it will cost him to do the same.'

Èinar broke oath with Eyvind, so I can break oath with Einar,' I replied angrily. 'So can you. So can anyone. The gods can find no fault with that, surely.'

My father patted my arm gently, as if I was still a child. 'You are new to this, boy. Use that gift Einar prizes you for and I an proud of you for.'

Bewildered, I could only stare. The others, grumbling and still arguing, were hefting their stuff and following on up the hill, into the twilight.

My father smiled and said, 'Can you break your oath to Einar, yet keep it with me?'

I saw, with a shock of clarity, what Einar had meant. We had sworn an oath to each other, not just to him, and that would keep us bound, for the more his luck went bad, the more he stood as a monument to what happens when you break the oath.

Yet the worse his luck got, the more we suffered. It went round and round, like the dragon coiled round the World Tree, tail in mouth.

My father nodded, seeing all of that chase across my face. 'An oath,' he said, 'is a powerful thing.'

I brooded on it all the way back to where we camped, halfway up the forge mountain, where Einar sat alone, arms wrapped round his knees, his face hidden by the crow wings of his hair. There were no fires, little talk and, when it was too dark to check blades and straps, men lay down and, if they had them, wrapped themselves in cloaks and tried to sleep.

I wondered if, like me, they felt the doom of it all: a band, oathbound to an oath-breaker, followed a madwoman on a quest after treasure that was more fable than real. A. skald would not dare make it into a saga tale for fear of the laughter.

More than likely, I realised later, they were brooding and miserable because their sea-chests had all gone up in flames, with everything they had left in them.

Skapti and Ketil Crow made sure men kept watch, though I was excused after my labours of earlier. I sat and worried at the problem like a hound with a well-chewed bone, so lost in it that it took me a long while to realise that Hild had come up, silent and stately, hugging the spear-shaft to her like a baby.

She said nothing, just sat down, not quite beside me, not far away. Although I couldn't see him in the darkness, I was aware of Martin, watching, waiting. I was glad he was still leashed to Skapti.

Dawn was another milky-gruel affair, with a creeping ground mist that disturbed everyone, but they generally agreed that Einar, doomed or not, was still a deep thinker for battle. He had taken us above the mist and anyone creeping up would, sooner or later, have to step out on to that bare, cragged skull of a hill and meet us fairly.

Some, of course, were all for getting away, but Ketil Crow, Skapti and the others put them straight: it was far too late for that. Starkad had sent men to follow Rurik and the survivors from the Elk. He was coming and there would be a fight.

And all this time Einar said nothing, though he was found already on his feet dressed for battle and wearing a dark blue cloak, fastened with an impressive ringpin of silver, worked with red stones. He spent the morning staring down the hill at the mists, stroking his moustache, while men sorted out their gear and checked and rechecked straps and shields.

Then, like an eerie wind, there came the sound of a lowing horn, distant and mournful.

`That's not clever,' muttered Valknut. `He'll have those villagers out.'

The horn sounded again, closer. Einar whirled, his cloak billowing, and pointed silently to Ketil Crow, Skapti, Valknut—and me. He looked at us all from eyes deep-sunk as mine shafts, then spoke as if his teeth were nailed to each other. `Skapti, make sure the monk stays fastened to you. He is what Starkad wants most.

Orm, keep the woman with you also. Brondolf Lambisson will have told him much, but he knows little of the woman and nothing of how valuable she is to us. Valknut, break out the banner and guard it.'

He paused, turned to Ketil Crow, whose languid stare never wavered. 'If I fall,' he added, 'you take the Oathsworn back to where the Elk was burned. Starkad's ship is there. It is my intent to cut them up badly here. He has one ship, will have left guards and has, I suspect, a hundred men here, perhaps fifteen or twenty guarding his drakkar. It may be possible to take it and that is what I intend.'

Again he paused and gave a twisted smile. `None can escape their wyrd,' he growled, `but there is no reason why the Norns should have an easy weave of it and I will postpone the final shearing of those three sisters yet.'

We watched him stride off and no one spoke. It was the first time he had come close to admitting his doom and it was unnerving, so that you didn't want to be close to it. We broke apart and went to our tasks.

I was concerned about Hild. I could hardly leash her to me and so would have to stand with her to make sure she didn't take it into her head to run off. That meant I couldn't stand in the shieldwall and, apart from the fact that every blade was needed, it would have been the first shieldwall ever for me. Mailed, I would have been in the front rank, the place of honour—though those in it called themselves the Lost. Except, I thought moodily, I would miss it, guarding this girl.

`You look like a sulky boy,' she said brightly. 'All you need is to scuff the ground with a toe.'

Guiltily, I shot her a look, then chuckled at how right she was. Some front-rank warrior me. She sat, primly adjusting the ruins of my cloak. I saw she wore a pair of men's breeks, too, last seen in Valknut's pack. Saw, too, that she was calm, alert, completely unlike the rolling-eyed maniac of before.

Almost too calm, in fact. As she turned and smiled a lavish smile, my heart turned and my stomach, too, because there was something unnatural about it.

`When the time comes,' she said, 'we will run that way.' And she pointed left, to where the ground dipped into brush.

I had no time to query it, for the horn-blast was on us. Bagnose and Steinthor flitted out to the wings of the forming line and the shieldwall went up with a deep roar and slam as shields locked. The banner unfurled with a snap and, craning, I saw figures filtering out of the mist, forming into a line. A banner flew there, too, and the shock of seeing another Raven Banner was like cold water. When all was said and done, we were fighting our own.

A figure came forward from them, hands raised to show they were empty. He wore a splendid gilded helmet and a flaming red cloak over his long mail hauberk. When he got closer, he peeled the helmet off, to reveal a shock of tawny hair and beard and bright, ice-blue eyes above a wide smile. Starkad.

Èinar,' he called. 'Your ship is ash; your men are too few. All you need do is hand over the monk and what you found in this place and you can go where you will.'

Einar nodded, as if considering the offer. `What you say is true enough. Yet you talk, which means you are not sure of winning, even with all your men. No doubt you have been told of the Oathsworn and you are right to be afraid. Is Brondolf Lambisson with you? Let him tell you of encountering the Oathsworn, as he did in his own hov. Better still, he could show you his keks and the shit on them.'

There was grim laughter at this and a flurry from the ranks behind Starkad, which broke to let Brondolf Lambisson through. Dressed in mail and with a fine helmet and shield, his red-faced anger was plain, but his words didn't carry far enough for the Oathsworn to hear, so they jeered at him, clashing sword and shield until he gave up.

Ìt seems you are determined to visit your own doom on those around you,' Starkad countered, which was cunning and would have flustered a lesser man. But Einar had courage and wit enough, even with the crows practically pecking out his eyeballs.

Àh . . . you have been speaking with Ulf-Agar, I am thinking,' he said, craning as if to see round Starkad.

'Is that nithing here?'

Reluctantly, a figure stepped out, mailed and well armed, but limping slightly. He said nothing, but glared and pointed at Einar with his sword.

Einar shook his head sorrowfully.

`Cattle die and kinsmen die,

Yourself will soon die,

Only fair fame never fades . . .'

His voice rang out the old lines and even I saw Ulf-Agar jerk with shame and anger. Einar, in a voice of ice, added, 'Fair fame has eluded you, Ulf-Agar, for all you sought it. Fame—yes. Men will remember you as an oath-breaker and that you do not stand straight and tall next to the likes of Orm, the White-bear Slayer.'

And it was my turn to jerk with shame, when the Oathsworn cheered and banged their swords on their shields, yelling my name.

Starkad recovered well, though, and his pleasant smile never slipped. 'Well, it seems a fight is certain on this bare hill,' he called out, loud enough for all to hear. 'But why waste good lives? Let's you and I end it, Einar the Black. If I win, your men are free to go or join with me. If you win, likewise.'

Einar shrugged, knowing he could not refuse it with honour. 'When,' he said, stressing the word, 'I win, your men will just go. I want no part of Bluetooth's hounds. Except for Ulf. I want him.'

Àgreed,' said Starkad and I saw Ulf-Agar's face pale and his mouth move, but he had no say in it, being a nithing even in the eyes of those at his back.

So Starkad came up, though the lines held their places. He shed his cloak, hauled out a beautifully hilted sword, settled his fresh, clean shield, which was decorated with a swirling design, and then tapped the edge twice, lightly, with his sword.

Einar, having dropped his cloak, hauled out his own weapon and unslung a pocked and scored shield.

The pair of them circled in a wary half-crouch.

There was a flurry, a tanging of metal and they parted. Einar whirlwinded steel, hacking lumps off that fine, new shield; Starkad backed up, dropped, swung at Einar's legs and he only just leaped back in time.

It went like that until both men were breathing heavily and it was clear that Starkad was stronger and better. His shield was almost wrecked though and I still had hopes—until, in a move all later agreed was as fine a trick as they'd seen, Starkad hooked the fat pommel of his sword inside Einar's shield, wrenched it sideways and cut downwards, in one smooth movement.

Einar was no fool and leaped back, but the blade slashed the shield loops and he had to throw the ruin away. Blood sprayed from his slashed hand as he did so. Starkad's grin was wolf-yellow.

He closed; Einar backed off, backed off further, then suddenly hurled forward, catching inside Starkad's sword with his own and forcing it wide, launched himself on to Starkad's shield. His helmeted head tipped back, came forward like a siege ram and would have splattered Starkad's nose if it hadn't been for the iron guard.

Stunned, Starkad fell backwards. I remembered falling on the hard edge of the forge with the side of my head and knew how Starkad was feeling. Bright lights and sickness: he was doomed.

But he rolled and Einar's cut sliced his leg open from knee to boot top, so that he roared with the pain of it. Lashing with his legs, he tangled Einar, who fell. They flailed wildly at each other and missed.

It was then that the ranks of his men split apart, shouting.

At first we thought they had treacherously decided to run at us. Then we saw the figures, the hurled javelins. They wore no helmets, had no armour, but they had fistfuls of throwing spears and long knives and there were lots of them, spilling out from the thinning mist, right into the back of Starkad's men. The villagers from Koksalmi had woken up.

Einar and Starkad broke apart, panting, staring at each other. Starkad, cursing, limped sideways, away from him, pointing his sword. The blood squeezed out of his boot toes when he moved.

`Later,' he gasped.

Einar saw what was happening, got to his feet, swirled up his cloak and issued swift orders. The Oathsworn started to melt backwards, away from the fight, leaving Starkad to deal with it and taking this chance. It occurred to me, as I took Hild by the arm, that Einar was right—he still had some gods on his side and the Norns' wyrd wasn't so easily woven for him after all.

`This way,' Hild said, almost cheerfully, and I remembered, chilled, her earlier quiet statement.

She was right, too—the villagers had sent men to the flank. They spilled out to my left and she led us to the right, into the brush. I stopped, though, as Skapti lumbered up, dragging Martin on his leash.

Two villagers hurled javelins at the big man. I saw him hit. I couldn't believe it, but he was hit. The javelin went into the back of his neck and came out of his mouth and he stopped and fumbled, then tried to feel round to grab it and haul it out, but couldn't. Black blood gushed out and he looked at me with a stare of pure astonishment and crashed down like the end of the world.

I wanted to dash to him, but Hild held me back and pulled and pulled. I saw Martin jerk the end of the leash from Skapti's twitching hand. Our eyes met, a single locked, mutual glare, and then he scuttled off.

I left, numbed, stumbling after Hild down the slope.

Skapti. Gone.

We came out on to the flat in a scrabble of scree and panic, panting and gasping. Hild stumbled too far and slipped over the bank of the river into the water with a sharp scream and a splash.

Frantic, I hurled myself at the edge, saw her floundering in the shallows and more concerned with hanging on to that gods-cursed spear-shaft than getting out. I grabbed her hair and yanked, angry and afraid, and hauled her out.

`You were always the one for humping,' said a voice, vicious as a bite.

Ulf-Agar stepped from the bushes. He had lost his helmet and his shield, but was still mailed and had a long and wicked sword. `Now it seems you have to drag a corpse out and fuck that,' he added. He moved towards me, dragging his leg where it had been sword cut in the warehouse fight in Birka.

I remembered him, sweat gleaming in the musty twilight, swinging that cooling red branding iron—the one that had left the wet, slow-healing weals all over his body as Starkad's men closed in.

I remembered him guarding my back as I foolishly bounced off the door I could have opened easily if I had thought more about it. I heard him yelling at me to do it, blood spraying from his smashed mouth. Of all the injuries, that was the worst, especially for the likes of him—teeth were more precious than silver for, without them, you sucked gruel where real men chewed meat and bread. And that, too, was my fault, in Ulf s head.

That same mouth was twisted on a face triumphant with hate and I knew he could not be brought to the same memories of then, that reminding him of how I had freed him would simply fuel the fire that ate him. I cursed the gift Einar prized so much: by stepping back in my head I could see that Ulf wanted to be me and could not. So he would destroy me instead.

Yet the hate made him stupid and blind. If he had been sensible he would have said nothing, simply struck. Having said something, he would have stayed beyond sword reach, knowing his limp slowed him.

He would also have realised that I had learned something from the first time he had reckoned me no more than an untrained idiot boy who had, unaccountably, come into all Ulf-Agar's luck in a Loki trick.

But he did have a brain after all. And when I whirled and drew my sword and swung it in a scything arc, all in one swift, practised movement, I released it from the cage of his head.

The edge took a chunk out of the right side of his skull, clean as taking a slice out of a boiled egg. He never even had time for a look of astonishment. And what came out of his opened head was a strange spray of grey pasty stuff, tinged with watery blood and yellow gleet.

I left him still alive, it seemed, for his mouth was working and his limbs were twitching and I could have sworn he saw me drag the bedraggled Hild away, leaving him to the hunting packs of villagers. Even in death, I thought viciously, he'll be shunned. His head's too damaged even to warrant being stuck on a pole round that shrine. Truly, when the gods set their faces against you, you are fucked.

I came across Pinleg, loping quietly ahead. I balked at joining him, not knowing his mood, but he was calm, even cheerful. I told him of Ulf-Agar and he spat.

`Good. And you got the woman. Einar will be pleased. I know where he plans to gather, so let's move.'

We scuttled swiftly along, then stopped to get our bearings. I wiped the sweat from my face and looked at Pinleg. 'I saw Skapti hit.'

Ì know,' he growled, almost annoyed. `Silly big arse.'

`He's dead,' I urged. 'For sure.'

Òf course,' said Pinleg, lumbering off. `No one could have lived with a sharp stick poking out of his gob.'

`But he's dead,' I wailed and he stopped, whirled and grabbed my tunic. I froze, waiting for the spittle and the steel. Instead, he stared at me nose to nose, his breath rank with fish.

Ì know,' he said softly, then let me go and patted my arm. 'I know.'

We met Valknut and Ketil Crow and Einar. The Oathsworn drifted up in ones and threes, panting, sweated, wearing or carrying all they had—everything else had been left behind. There were too many missing but I spotted, with a leap of the heart that surprised me, my father trotting up, grey-faced and with fresh blood soaking through the sleeve of his tunic.

I went to him and he nodded and grinned at seeing me, but shook his head when I moved to check the blood-soaked bindings.

Ì leak like a sprung tub,' he admitted cheerfully, 'but I am not sunk yet, boy.'

Like the others, he met the news of Skapti's death and the monk's loss with cold silence, but Ulf-Agar's death brought a satisfied grunt.

`Well, boy,' my father said admiringly. 'You are surprising even me, who watched you grow for the first five years of your life and saw what a wolf-pup you were then.'

This was new and I wanted to know more, but the others were growling their own appreciations and a few hands thumped my back. I half expected to hear that familiar, deep 'hoom' from somewhere, but it was gone for ever.

`Now we run, hard,' Einar said, once we had splashed across the river and into the trees. 'We beat what's left of Starkad's men back to their own ship and take it. That's the only way off this gods-cursed shore.'

It was bitter, that journey, for the land seemed to want to scream out its beauty and the new life of spring while we grimmed our way through it, bleak with the loss of Skapti and the others, on towards an uncertain fate.

We went through belts of woodland, great oaks and ash burgeoning with fresh bud, and across swathes of fresh green, studded with small blue and pale yellow flowers. Thorn trees drooped with early blossom and every breath of wind scattered sprays of white, while the birds blasted their throats out.

And, black as a lowered brow, the Oath-sworn moved swiftly, a pack of dark wolves that had no joy in any of it.

So fast did we move that we were brought to the little sheltered bay by my father and his uncanny knack just as the sky velveted to dark and the first stars frosted.

Einar halted the grey-faced, panting pack of us—the last few miles had seen more frequent halts, mainly because Hild was exhausted. But I had seen Pinleg grateful for it, while my father and Ogmund Wry-neck and a few others sank down with relief, with hardly the strength to suck up their drool.

Bagnose and Steinthor went wearily out at Einar's command, while the rest of us hunched up in a hollow, hearing the wind hiss over the tufted grass that led to the beach and out to the sea. I tasted the salt of it on my lips. Strange how we had longed for the feel and smell of land when afloat and now longed for the touch of ship and spray now that we were ashore.

No one spoke much, save for Einar, muttering with Ketil Crow and Illugi and my father. I couldn't hear much of it, but I guessed some: my father would be there to tell Einar whether a ship could be worked out of the bay, whether wind and tide were favourable and, if not, when they would be.

Ketil Crow would have counted heads and knew how many of the Oathsworn were left I reasoned about forty, no more, for we had left some on that forge mountain and whether dead or scattered didn't matter.

They were gone from us, like Skapti.

After a while, as a moon slid up, scudded with cloud, Bagnose came back and had words with Einar, who then called us all round him in that shadowed hollow.

`Steinthor is watching Starkad's drakkar. It seems all his men are ashore, with a nice fire and ale. They have posted two sentries only.' He grinned, yellow-fanged in the dark. 'That's the best of it. The rest is that there are about sixty of them and they are well armed. But they are out of mail and have no thought of danger. So we form up and move, now. Move fast and hard, break them and go for the drakkar. If we can scatter them and board, we can get away, for the wind and tide are right for it.'

And, of course, I was given Hild as my task. I was becoming tired of it, to be truthful, for she unnerved me now with her quiet, knowing looks and calm, black-eyed smiles.

So the Oathsworn scrambled wearily out of the hollow, formed into a loose line and loped off in a rough boar snout. I was in the middle, with Valknut and the Raven Banner unfurled and moving steadily beside me.

We came up over the tufted grass and on towards where Steinthor hid and I saw the red flower of the fire and the great expanse of blackness that was the sea behind it. There was a faint lantern swinging there, almost certainly on the prow of the boat, which swung on the end of a stout rope and an iron anchor in the shallows.

When Steinthor saw us, Einar waved for him to form up. He paused, stretched the bow and, as we came up, an arrow whirred into what seemed darkness to me. Moments later, though, I almost stumbled over the corpse of one of the sentries. Half-turned, I saw Pinleg stop, head bowed. He spotted my worried look and waved. 'Go on, Rurik's son. I will catch you up and race you to the beach.'

And he grinned, so I did as he said. It was the last he ever spoke to me.

When I joined the others, they were pausing, for no longer than a single breath, a mere shortening of stride, to let the line form. Then, at the moment the men by the fire all saw us, looming out of the darkness like a frowned eyebrow, Einar yelled, 'Boar snout.' He hurled himself at the apex of the rough triangle, but he was no Skapti and it came in far too fast and loose.

There was no firm shieldwall to hit, though. We ploughed, roaring, through men who were already scattering in all directions, jogged past the fire, hacking sideways at anything that came too close and, when we hit the water, splintered apart and kept going for the ship. I saw Gunnar Raudi grab a man and heave him up, then leap, miss and splash back down into the water.

I was knee-deep and thrashing through it, blinded by spray, hauling Hild along, trying to keep both of us upright while that damned spear-shaft she would not let go of took both her hands and left me to support us both. Men sprang for the sides and the anchor rope, swarmed up . . . we were going to do it.

I gained the side and hauled up and over, then reached down for Hild, while others were wildly dragging themselves, panting and dripping, over the side of the massive ship. My father was screaming at men to get to the oars, for others to get the sail-spar hauled up off the rests.

And I saw the men on the shore forming, swiftly, expertly. They had no armour, only some had helmets, but all had a shield and a sword or an axe or a spear. They were veterans, were Starkad's men and not about to be shamed by the loss of their ship without a fight for it.

The shieldwall formed with a slap and a roar and then they were jogging forward and I knew, with a sick lurch that made me so frantic I almost tore Hild's arm out of her socket getting her aboard, that they would be on us before we gained enough distance.

Then, suddenly, something broke from the shadowed shallows to our right. There was a blood-chilling shriek, a burst of spray and a blur of movement. Like a troll on wheels.

Pinleg came in a shambling run of screaming, whirling death. They didn't know who it was, but they knew what it was and the shieldwall almost fractured there and then. When Pinleg hurled on it, slashing, biting, screeching, it did, like a still pool hit by a stone.

`Haul away, fuck your mothers!' roared my father and the oarsmen, panting, soaked, white with fatigue and riven with panicked frenzy, dug and pulled, dug and pulled.

The sail clattered up, the wind filled it and the great serpent drakkar slid away into the night, away from where the ends of the shieldwall closed, from where swords rose and fell and the bundle of men, like a pack of snarling dogs, stumbled this way and that over the beach, through the fire, hacking and slashing.

One or two tried to break off and run at us, but Bagnose and Steinthor fired at them and, though their strings were soaked and the arrows went wild or short, it made Starkad's men think about it.

We slid into the dark, further and further, faster and faster, until only the red flower was left to mark the place.

That and the shrieking of Pinleg, so that we never heard him die. It was generally agreed that if we didn't hear it, it probably never happened and that he is fighting still, on that beach.

The rowers gave up quickly, exhausted. They barely had the strength left to haul the oars inboard and stow them; one or two even fell down where they were and slept. Certainly everyone collapsed into some sort of deathlike sleep, even Einar.

But Ketil Crow and Illugi and Valgard stayed awake in shifts, manning the steering oar of the huge drakkar and plotting a rough Course by the stars until my father was more himself and could turn his talent to it.

And I saw it all, dull-eyed and slumped in some strange almost-sleep, hearing the shrieking of Pinleg, seeing the astonished look on Skapti's face, made strange by the great, bloody point sticking straight out of his mouth.

By dawn, we were alone on a gently heaving swell, hissing over it steadily, the grey light brightening into a cold, crisp, clear day. One by one the Oathsworn grunted stiffly into this new day, as if astonished they were there at all.

And then we saw what we had got.

It was perfect, from the graceful swan-necked, lavishly carved bow and stern, down the grey-painted strakes of the hull, up to the huge belly of the sail, sewn in strips of three colours—red, white and green—so that the ship looked like some bright banner, sluicing along the swells, hissing through their breaking tops like a blade.

There was carving everywhere, even cut in fluted chevrons on the oarblades, which added to their bite and recovery, I was told. Panels, carved and painted, shielded the steersman from the weather and the steering oar was carved in whorls, to aid the grip. And the weathervane was gold—gilded, Rurik corrected, but no one listened. It was gold, could only be gold, in this marvellous ship.

There was more: all the crew had left their sea-chests on board. There were clothes and jewellery and money and armour and weapons. There were rings and eating knives and cloaks with fur collars, for this was Blue-tooth's dreng— his chosen men—and nothing was too good for them.

There was another huge bolt of cloth, too small for a sail, but in the same striped colours, which my father revealed was for use as a tent when anchored.

There were barrels of stockfish, salted mutton and water. There was even a specially built firepit in the centre of the tiny cargo space, with solid firebricks and a slatted iron grill, so that you could have hot meals and never need to stop or slow down.

The only things missing were the proper carved prowheads, which were probably still back on the shore, removed as was custom.

`First chance we get, lads,' Einar promised as the booty was divided up, 'we will have new elk heads made. For no matter what this ship was, it is the Fjord Elk now.'

They all cheered and, after everything had been found and argued over—even though there was three times as much as any one of the remaining Oathsworn could have used––Illugi Godi supervised the boiling up of Mutton on the marvellous firepit and everyone ate a hot meal and agreed it the best they had ever tasted on this most marvellous of ships, which carried some 140 and could be sailed by three.

'Though the gods put fire in your arses if we hit a flat calm and you have to row her,' Valgard growled when he heard this. Which thought made everyone quieter, for it was a heavy beast of a boat to be rowing crew-light.

'Don't worry, there will be others joining the Oathsworn soon enough,' Einar told them and again they cheered. And he had, it must be said, brought them from the wolf's jaws to a rich prize, so that, like me, they almost forgot that his doom had brought it on them and that men had died.

But even so, the four remaining Christ-followers now reverted to Thor's hammer and were shamefaced that they had ever considered the White Christ, for it was clear to all that some gods still favoured Einar and the Norns were having to unravel some of what they were trying to weave for him.

Still, there were many, like me, who sat pensively, wondering just what we had won from Koksalmi. A useless old spear and a madwoman raving about a treasure hoard only she could find for us. And this marvellous ship and its riches.

We had lost much to weigh against that: Martin the monk had escaped, while Skapti and Pinleg and more besides were dead.

Worse than that, I was thinking, there is only so long you can fend off your wyrd when it is laid on you.

9 We stood with heads bowed on the headland, where the wind hissed in from the sea, bringing the smell of salt and wrack and watched as the sweating men Illugi had hired shifted the man-sized stone into position, heaving on ropes to pull it upright.

It shunked softly into the pit dug for it, where lay spearheads and rings and hacksilver, all given by the Oathsworn as an offering to Pinleg and Skapti and the others we had left behind.

Illugi, who had overseen the purchase and sacrifice of three fine rams—one for Pin-leg, one for Skapti, one for all the rest—turned to where I stood, with Hild, Gunnar Raudi and a few others. And Pinleg's woman, Olga, a big, blonde Slav with fat arms and the faint hint of a moustache.

She was not beautiful—standing beside the pale, fey Hild she looked as solid as a heifer and as handsome—but she had a strong face and her chin was set, even if her eyes were damp. Her hands, with their chafed-red knuckles, gathered the heads of two tawny-haired children into the warm comfort of her apron. A boy and a girl, they were clearly bewildered by all this and their mother's obvious grief.

`What would you have on it?' Illugi Godi asked as the mason stood by, head cocked attentively.

`His name,' she said, tilting her chin defiantly. `Knut Vigdisson. And those of his children, Ingrid and Thorfinn.'

Knut Vigdisson. It came as a shock to realise Pinleg had had a name, like any other man. And named after his mother, too. A good Norse name, like those of his children, though his wife was a Slav here in Aldeigjuborg, that great cauldron of peoples.

Kraut Vigdisson. Pinleg was a stranger to me with that name. Still, he had one—Skapti didn't even have that, only the one the Oathsworn had given him. Halftroll.

Illugi Godi nodded and then asked, politely: 'May we add something on our own behalf?'

That was for form. If it was agreed, the Oathsworn would pay for the stone, which would stand on this spot and shout Pinleg's and Skapti's fame in the ribbon of runes waiting to be cut, and commemorate the others lost with them.

We had agreed it earlier with the carver. Their names and Pinleg's children's names would be added to the simple testament that they were the Oathsworn of Einar the Black, who raised this stone in their honour and then, simply: 'KrikiaR—iaursaliR—islat—Serklat'. Greece, Jerusalem, Iceland, Serkland.

Others wanted something like 'They gave the eagles food' or something even more dramatic and never mind the expense, but Illugi held to what had been agreed earlier at a meeting of everyone, Einar included. I had not realised, until then, how far-fared the original Oathsworn band had been, or how long they had been on the whale road.

Hild said, as we turned away from the windswept headland: 'You lost friends over this matter. I am sorry for it.'

Surprised—she had not volunteered so much speech since the forge mountain, weeks before—I blinked and tried to think of some polite reply, but failed. So I said what I thought, which Illugi Godi always said was best. Experience, even then, with so few years on me, had taught the opposite.

Ì was wondering if Skapti had anyone to mourn for him besides the few of us,' I said.

Ìf he had a name other than Halftroll, I never heard it uttered.'

She nodded, hugging—as always—the ruined Roman spear-shaft to her. 'It is hard to lose friends,' she agreed, sadly.

I took a slight breath, formed up and charged. 'You would know. You have lost your mother and all your friends. You can never return to the village you came from. Not that you would wish to, I suppose, considering what they had planned.'

There was a pause and I wondered if I had gone too far, too soon, but she nodded, blank-faced. We walked on down towards the road that led back to the smoke-stained wooden sprawl of the town.

Behind, I could hear Gunnar Raudi and the others raucously toasting the stone, the carver, the helpers and the dead as was only right. Ahead, Olga walked, solid and ponderous, beside the tall, spare figure of Illugi, nodding as he spoke. On either side, the tawny-haired boy and girl, unaffected by the death of a father they had barely known, scampered and laughed in the spring sun like new lambs.

Àt my first bleed,' Hild said suddenly, 'my mother told me a secret that her mother told her. Then she gave me to the tanner's wife. Not long afterwards, she offered herself to the forge mountain, as my grandmother had done, for it was expected.

`They were not bad people in Koksalmi, but they believed in the power of the smiths. The village had been chosen, long before, to be the place where something great would happen, to ensure that the Old Gods survived for ever.'

`The Vanir, you mean?'

Òlder still.' She fell silent and I saw her knuckles whiten on the spear-shaft, so I tried to comfort her.

`Still, you are safe now. You have faced the curse of the forge and are better for it.'

`Better?'

Confused, I waved a wild hand. 'When first we met you were . . . sick. Now you seem well again. Calmer.

I am glad of it.'

We walked on in silence for a moment, then she turned and laid one hand on my arm. 'Do you like me, Orm?'

Flustered, I felt my face flame. I started to stammer and saw the strangest thing in her eyes. Sadness. I stopped, unable to say anything.

She leaned closer to me. I felt the butterfly wing of a kiss on my cheek and then she pulled back. 'You have been kind. But keep clear. Do not try to . . . love me. Or you will die.'

Her gaze was as sharp as the spear that had once graced the Roman shaft she held fiercely in both hands and, for a moment, I wondered if she would try to stick me with the nub end that was left. Then she whirled and dashed along the road in a flail of skirts. As she passed Illugi Godi and Olga, they looked back at me, both united in the surety that I had offended her in some way.

Not long after, as we came to the sea gate of the town, Olga gathered the purse Illugi gave her—Pinleg's share—and her children and went off. Illugi Godi came to me and jerked his head at where the faint roars drifted; Bagnose was composing verses in a good skald saga for the dead of the forge mountain. 'Should you not be there?'

Ì was tasked with looking after Hild,' I replied moodily.

He smiled. 'It seems our captive princess does not wish to be looked after,' he replied. `What did you do?'

`Nothing,' I answered sharply, then sighed. Ì don't understand women. Well, not this one, anyway. She seems to like me—then looked as if she'd stick me with that spear.'

`She is a strange one,' agreed Illugi, 'even allowing for the wyrd of her life so far.'

`Strange, too,' I mused, 'the way she babbled like a child when first we met. I could understand one word in five, if that—and only because it was like the Finn tongue, but different. She has a secret told to her by her mother and, it seems, told mother to daughter back into the mists. But she has no daughter herself and was so badly handled by Vigfus that it has addled her. She is more to be feared than ever, I am thinking.'

`Yes,' mused Illugi. 'And the way she clutches the spear-shaft, like a child with a doll.'

We passed into the town proper, on to the wooden walkways between herds of huddled houses.

`Martin the monk told me he found the girl through the writings of that Otmund,' he went on, 'the one who was made a saint and whose church we raided. He wrote about the villagers and their beliefs and managed to convert some of them.'

In which case he was a braver man than I, for I would not have argued with any of the people of Koksalmi. Not without an army at my back.

Illugi chuckled, but it seemed bitter. `Brave or stupid,' he said thoughtfully. `Those unconverted ran him and his followers off. I believe then that those who had stuck to the old gods took this god stone away, for they knew others like Otmund would come and seduce more villagers to their lies. The White Christ is winning.'

I looked sharply at him and saw his worried face. Then it cleared and he smiled.

`But Martin believed that the girl would lead him to the Great Hoard somehow, being linked to the sword the smiths made for Attila. The stone, he reasoned, was not necessary.'

`Martin is a rat,' I spat, 'and I wouldn't trust him to tell me a dog's hind leg was crooked. Anyway, Atil's hoard is a tale for children.'

`No,' answered Illugi. 'That part is true enough. When Atil was dead, never having been beaten in battle—because, it was said, of his fabulous sword—his men carried him into the steppe and howed him up in a burial mound made from all the silver taken from those he had conquered. They say it was so tall, snow formed on the top.'

There was silence while we both tried to wrap our heads round that monstrous idea of riches, but it was too much and made my head hurt. It all made my head hurt and I said so.

`True,' Illugi agreed, 'That Christ priest, Martin, seems to be able to swallow it all down, though, but you are right about him being untrustworthy. He thought to cross Lambisson with a false trail using the god stone. Perhaps he wants the treasure for himself.'

I shook my head. Treasure of that sort did not interest Martin, that much I knew. The Spear of Destiny, as he called it: that was what Martin wanted. With that he would become a high priest in his religion, and convert even more to the Christ cause.

Illugi frowned when I spilled this out, but he nodded. 'Aye, you have the right of it, I am thinking. He will be back after that shaft, so we must keep a close watch on it.'

Òn Hild,' I spat, bitterly, 'for she will not relinquish it without a struggle. It is some sort of talisman to her now.'

`Perhaps so,' Illugi mused, then frowned. Ìt is possible there is some Christ magic in it, a subtle, seidr sort of magic that will turn her to the Christ side. Still, a risk we must take if we are to keep her content, for she will not lead us to the hoard if she thinks we are being false with her.'

This sucked my breath away, said so matter-of-factly. Lead us to the hoard? She could no more lead us to a hoard of silver than I could kiss my own arse and I said so.

Illugi's eyebrows went up. 'Martin seemed certain of it,' he answered.

`Martin, we agreed, was a Loki-cunning, crook-tongued, sleekit-as-a-fox horse turd who could not be trusted to tell you a raven was black,' I roared back at him, hardly able to countenance that he believed this.

`He believed his Christ charm, the spear, was in the forge and he was right about that,' Illugi answered mildly. 'Have you noticed anything about that, young Orm?'

The wind having been sucked out from my sails, I floundered. 'Noticed what?'

`The spear-shaft that Hild will not relinquish. The wood is blackened; the rivets are rusted.'

Ìt is old—if Martin is to be believed,' I replied pointedly and he looked steadily at me.

Òlder than anything we have seen,' he answered. 'Yet, in the forge, on its ledge, under the runes . . .'

I felt a shock that prickled my body. He was right. I recalled it then, gleaming polished wood, the little nub end and rivets like new. I shook my head, as to drive the memory away. 'A sea journey. The salt . . .'

`Perhaps—but so quickly?' Illugi mused. Ànd what kept it gleaming new all those years on that ledge?'

Ì . . . don't know,' I confessed. 'What?'

He shook his head, stroked his beard. 'I don't know either. The runes maybe—that was a powerful spell.

Perhaps it ages because the blood of this Christ of theirs, who hung on the cross-tree and was stabbed with it, if you believe such a thing, has been removed with the metal shaft they used to forge the sword. Perhaps both.

`But it ages, Orm, it changes—and there is more. Like a . . . talisman . . . it helps Hild find her way to where the sword lies.'

I can see the enlightened curl their lip at this. Pagan stuff for skalds, for saga tales. The priests of the White Christ have banished this darkness from our minds, they claim proudly. Yet now we have the Devil and his minions. We no longer have Odin, who hung on the sacred tree with a spear wound. Instead, we have Christ, who hung on a cross with a spear wound.

On the beaches at Bjornshafen, I had conjured up trolls and dragons for me and my small warriors to fight with wooden swords. We knew they were all around us, unseen, waiting for the unwary, and just hoped they were far away from the affairs of men at that moment.

And runes were magical, everyone knew. I had heard of runed helmets that brought an enemy to their knees and mail that could not be pierced—though I had never come across any. But I was young and better men said it was so.

Yet, here was this, the world of Other, of gods and frost giants, black dwarves and trolls and magic runes, clutched to the bosom of a young girl under the spring sun of a strange, exotic town. Perhaps, after all, she had the way to a hoard of silver . . .

We had gasped our way north and east, sliding into the River Neva and then into the mouth of the Volkhov, heaving and panting at the oars, far too few to row this new Elk unless we had the flow of the tide and no wind in our face.

Cursing, with the breeze at our back and unable to hoist sail, since that would have sped us too fast to stop in a river of shallows and currents we did not know—we laboriously brought the new Elk to final rest in the harbour of Aldeigjuborg.

So weary were we, in fact, that we did not notice the glances at first. In a harbour crowded with hafskips and knarrer, the great, beautiful drakkar stood out like a gold ring in the gutter and the whole harbour had stopped to look at us.

I raised my head to swallow welcome Water and was captured by the sheer strangeness of it all. Birka had been a port of foreigners, I had thought, but this place, this Ladoga as the Slavs call it, was a different world entirely.

There were throngs of people here, all of them bright and dazzling in some way. Slovenes, Vods, Ests, Balts, Krivichi, big Svears with loud voices and sober clothes, even bigger Dregovichi and Poljanes from Kiev, wearing dazzling colours and fat trousers like Skapti, carrying long curved swords with no crosspieces on their carved wooden hilts.

There were shaved heads, ones with thick braids over one or both ears, or one at the back, or combinations of all of them. There were flat, clean-shaven faces, ones with moustaches which trailed off the end of the chin in wisps, full beards, braided beards, wild hair, carefully manicured locks, ones braided with beads and silver rings.

And there were goods: honey in pots, seal and deer hides, the furs of beaver and fox and great barrels of fine grinding stones, feather pillows and salt in sacks. There was even a sledge, big as a cart, waiting on the jetty to be taken somewhere.

And everyone stopped what they were doing to look at the magnificent jarl ship, crewed by a third of what it should be, by hard men with too much new finery and too many weapons to have come by it all honestly.

Einar stroked his stubble thoughtfully and announced: 'We sleep on board tonight.'

Which was only sensible, though everyone grumbled. They had survived death, rowed until the calluses split and wanted dry land, hot food, ale and women. But Einar had only to point out the sea-chests and what they would lose if the ship was raided in the dark and they unpacked the fancy awning tent and slung it up.

That night, Einar allowed half to go and get drunk, on pain they drank through their nose, as the saying goes—answered no questions and gave no drunken boasts. The next night, it was the turn of the other half and so it went on.

We never moved from that traders' fair awning of a tent; we grew to like sleeping aboard and going about our business in shifts. When we had paid our harbouring dues to the town official and his well-armed bodyguard and showed no aggression and, more to the point, started spending, the town relaxed.

Hild and I went ashore once, me following her like a faithful retainer, armed there were no restrictions here, though that was changing—with sword. As the days progressed, I wore finer and finer clothing.

I bought new boots, new breeks—blue, striped with silver wire and fat, like Skapti had worn—a fine dark-blue tunic, a green cloak with a rich, red-enamelled pin, a new wooden sheath lined in greased sheepskin for Bjarni's old sword.

I swaggered in Hild's wake, knowing that everyone who saw me knew I was off the Fjord Elk, aware of them nudging each other and saying, 'Go and look at her, she is the finest ship afloat and her crew are warriors all, even the young one there.'

And Hild bought clothing, too, to replace the tattered remnants of her own, so that, next day, we wandered the merchants' booths with her in a new dress and sparkling apron, hair unbound. I bought her a braided silver fillet for her brow, which she accepted and wore without protest, but without seeming enjoyment either.

But she looked just like a fine princess, with a fine prince by her side. We ate meat on wooden skewers and drank honey mead and I enjoyed that day. I remembered it afterwards, when all was darker. Even she seemed to enjoy it, though it was hard to tell—and she never took more than one hand off that spear-shaft, not once.

It ended, I remember, with the first of the recruits climbing the shoreplank to the deck of the Elk, where Einar waited. Gunnar Raudi and Ketil Crow and others had been out spreading the word everywhere that the fine ship and its hard crew were looking for good men not afraid to swear a varjazi oath to each other and live with the consequences of that.

When we got back to the ship, we had to push through a throng of them, all out for a piece of the luck that had gained Einar's crew riches and a fine ship. I wanted to shout out the truth to them, but thought better of it.

`Six skills I know,' I heard one say. 'I play 'tafl and scarcely make a mistake reading runes now. I can row and ski and shoot and use both spear and sword.'

And they were all variations of that. Those who passed Einar's scrutiny—I never knew what he saw, one way or the other—were tallied up by Illugi and told of the oath they would swear, in a ceremony to be arranged when we had all the men we needed.

When Einar was unsure, he would turn to Ketil Crow and raise an eyebrow and that man would wave a languid hand and ask something like: 'You are coming to a hall for the first time, walking up to it uninvited as a guest, but certain of hospitality nonetheless. What are you looking for?'

Those who answered that they were making sure where the doors were, in case they had to get out in a hurry, were hired. Those who stammered, or looked lost, or grinned and said 'the women' were sent away.

On the day of the stone-raising we had tallied up the last of them—the most Oathsworn that had been, according to Valknut. One hundred and twenty of us, almost the full complement of a drakkar, and Einar had thought carefully about what came next.

He had bought two fighting stallions, would match them as was the custom, then sacrifice the winner to Odin. On that altar of ground the Oathsworn—all of us—would swear the oath that bound us together once more. Even Einar.

It had been Illugi Godi's idea and, judging by the way luck had been running, Einar was probably right to think there was a chance it would work. He was still working his way to Atil's hidden hoard, sending Illugi to try to flush out any references to it, like ducks from a marsh, while giving nothing away himself.

I did not put my thought—that there was no stone raised to Eyvind anywhere—to either him or Illugi.

But the wyrd was working on Einar and, on that very day, it caught up with us all.

A few days after the stone-raising, the Oathsworn gathered on the Thingvallir, a patch of grass-tufted ground just outside the walled stockade of Aldeigjuborg.

It stretched along the river southwards and had a large flat altar-like stone embedded in it, near which the town had erected a wooden totem statue to Perun. Since, with his hammer and his big, brave bearded face, he was so like Thor as to be his brother, this satisfied Norse and Slav alike. Even though the Great Prince of Kiev, Sviatoslav, wasn't a Christ-follower like his mother, Olga—who was sainted for it later—he was tolerant enough. After all, he was half Khazar and they, I had been told, had chosen to follow the faith of the wandering Moses-men, which seemed beyond kenning; not only were they the very ones the Christ-men hated for having, they swore, killed their Christ, but the original Jewishmen were in Serkland, many miles away, and everyone else around was a Mussulman. Perhaps that was why Sviatoslav fought them, though some said it had more to do with them dominating the eastern trade routes.

Others, round the fires of a night, said that the Khazars were descendants of the Huns and had been sky-worshippers until not so long since. They had changed religion, these men assured us, because their chiefs, whom they called khans, were elected as being favoured of the gods. If they failed just once, it meant the gods no longer favoured them, so they were killed; naturally they thought it a good idea to change this religion. And they had chosen the god of the Jews because they had Christ-men on one side and Mussulmen on the other and thought it deep-minded cunning not to annoy their neighbours.

There were a few dark glances shot at Einar over this and a couple of muttered comments about how the original Khazar religion seemed smarter. If Einar heard it, he made no sign.

But the whole thing was puzzling, that you could put on gods like a cloak on a cold morning. The more I discovered about the gods of the world, the more of a mystery they seemed to be and, for all my long years, I have still not fathomed it.

Once or twice a year, then, the scraggy black cattle and big-fleeced sheep were scattered off this Thingvallir and it was used to settle lawsuits and discuss, in public, town matters.

In reality, the town was run like Birka, by a group of the richest merchants, all elected by each other.

Now and then it pleased them to make it appear that everyone had a say.

The status of Aldeigjuborg was awkward. Originally, the Svears had founded it as a trade centre and it was still supposed to be a part of what would become Sweden during my lifetime, when Olaf, the Lap King, united the Svears and Geats.

Since there was no Sweden and no strong ruler of the Svears—at that time, no one even knew who it was, only that there was a fight for it—the town went its own way and the Norse ran it.

But it was full of foreigners—Slavs and Khazar merchants, mainly—and Sviatoslav and his bold sons were stamping their mark, carving out a Rus kingdom from Kiev, in all directions. They controlled Novgorod, which we called Holmgard and, in all but name, held Aldeigjuborg as well and preferred to call it Starya Ladoga.

Einar had made it known that the Oathsworn would be having a ceremony on the Thingvallir, to coincide with the festival of the Dawn Goddess, Ostara, the one the Saxons call Eostre and the Christ-men were calling Easter. Hundreds turned up to help broach the barrels of mead and ale and wolf their way through acres of spit-roasted meats.

Of course, a few grumbled about the fact that there was no Year King to sacrifice, only a good horse, but they were old and remembered the old ways. No one seriously thought these days about burying a Year King in the field and eating bread made from that grain to share the miracle of rebirth.

Nor were the Greek priests, brought from Constantinople by Sviatoslav's mother, a barrier, since they celebrated the festival, too, it appeared. Illugi Godi, of course, was enraged by this.

`See them,' he railed, as the gorgeously accoutred priests paraded down the muddy walkways, swinging censers and droning. Ìt's not enough that they should declare the true gods are nothing short of paltry bandits, but they have the nerve to steal our worship for their own.' He paused and hawked loudly, then spat.

The nearest priest turned, beard quivering, and saw Illugi, recognised the staff and scowled.

`Turds; Illugi growled. 'Easter, they call this, as if we can't see they have stolen it.'

`Maybe they already had a festival of their own,' offered my father, scrubbing his head as he did when he was unsure.

`Ha! And a god who hung on a tree and was stabbed with a spear?' Illugi argued, thumping his staff on the walkway.

My father looked at me, shrugged and gave up. I grinned. It was, after all, a celebration of my Name Day.

Neither of us could actually remember the exact day, my father being drunk at the time, as he admitted, so I had always celebrated changing age at the festival of Ostara.

And, in this one, I was now sixteen years old and a man.

Not that that mattered to Einar—later, as the mead and meat was being enjoyed, I was standing guard to Hild, watching and sober. Valknut, well drunk, was trying his hand with the flamestick belonging to some fire-dancers. The spear-length, burning at either end, was tricky at the best of times but the lean fire-dancer spun it round his body expertly. Valknut, in contrast, had twice set his hair on fire trying it and Gunnar Raudi, the second time, was gasping with too much laughter to help him put it out. In the end, he threw the contents of his ale horn over Valknut, who went around for a long time with a strange, lopsided hairstyle and the trailing smell of his charred locks.

Moodily, I managed to persuade Hild to see the fighting stallions. They were good, well-chosen beasts—

a black and a grey and, though I'd had no hand in picking them, I was impressed by their quality.

Betting was fierce and loud and, as I watched, a group of half-a-dozen men approached me, led by Valgard and my father.

Òrm, lad, the very man we need,' roared the Trimmer. 'You know fighting horses, your father tells us.

Who will win this?'

`We will share our winnings with you, Bear Slayer,' said one of the men with them and that made me blink. He was one of the new ones, a man older than me with a faint white scar marring the red wind-beaten face up beside one eye. I had never spoken to him and, if I had, would have treated him as one would an older head. But here he was, deferring to me, calling me 'Bear Slayer' in a way that let me know he had heard the tale—probably Bagnose's verses—and was impressed by it.

Yet, even as I felt the heady rush of that, I remembered Ulf-Agar, the man who had wanted the taste of this more than life itself; I saw his twisted mouth and his yellow eyes.

My father—as usual—mistook my pause for reluctance and clapped one shoulder. Òrm, for me, lad.'

`Not the grey,' I said. 'It will not be strong enough.'

My father closed one speculative eye, then whirled on the others and raised his hands in triumph. 'My son has spoken on the day he becomes a man. Now let us make money out of it.'

And they went, a few throwing me a backward glance. I saw admiration and envy there in equal measure.

The horse-fight was almost ready to start; people were drifting in from all over the open area—a few of them wet, where they had been trying to walk logs on the river, because no boat big enough could be sailed up it so they could walk the oars.

I placed my own bets with a few of the locals and watched the brave and drunk dart at the fighting stallions with sticks, trying to goad their favourites to anger by sticking them up the arse or in the balls. The horses were tethered on long lines, but well apart from each other and were already all bared teeth and flying hooves, so it was a dangerous business. I saw one man, slowed by drink, hirple away holding his ribs, already Purpling into a huge, horseshoe bruise and almost certainly broken.

It was then that I saw Gunnar Raudi, moving urgently through the crowd towards me, almost running and looking back over his shoulder. Òrm, move,' he yelled as he came up. 'Back to the Elk . . . Hurry.'

`What . . . why?' I said, bewildered. He shoved me and I staggered. Then he looked back, grunted and dragged out a seax from under his cloak.

`Too late.'

Four men hurtled out of the crowd, which parted rapidly, since they were armed with long knives and one had an axe as well.

I blinked and stood in front of Hild. Einar had told everyone to come with only eating knives, since drunken quarrels were best settled with feet and fists. But, as Hild's guard, I was mailed and armed with a sword, since Einar took no chances with his key to a fortune. I had cursed it at the time as being hot, uncomfortable and unnecessary, but I hauled my blade out and offered thanks to Thor for it now.

The men paused at that. I swept up the hem of my cloak and looped it round my shield-arm, partly to keep it out of the way, partly as a padded block for a cut. Gunnar Raudi and I waited; the crowd yelled and someone shouted.

The men realised they were surrounded by enemies and that, if they were to get this done, they had to be quick. They were good and fast, no thugs. They came swooping in, three on me, with one to keep Gunnar busy.

I took a cut on the padded cloak that sliced it. Another cut me under that arm, on the ribs, the blow sending me staggering and spraying rings from the mail. I slashed and one fell back with a shriek, sword flying, fingers clutching at a bloody shoulder. My backstroke carved the lower jaw off the axeman, but I was wide open and would have taken a hard cut to my sword-arm that the mail maybe would not have absorbed.

Except that Gunnar Raudi nutted his man on the forehead, springing blood from them both and sending the man reeling. He lashed sideways a second later, the blunted point of his seax catching the man who would have cut my arm. It didn't even break his flesh, but the blow drove the wind from him with a wheezing grunt.

That gave me time to smash the pommel in his face, spraying his teeth and blood. Someone yelled: 'Bear Slayer. Bear Slayer,' and blades flashed, showing how many had ignored Einar's orders.

The men fled, dragging each other away through the crowd, some of whom were not even aware of what had happened. Gunnar, shaking his head to get the blood out of his eyes, winced and clearly wished he hadn't done that. He sank on one knee.

Ìs it bad?' I asked and he grinned up at me, blood trickles running either side of his nose.

Ì've had worse,' he said, climbing back to his feet as others swept around us, demanding to know what had happened.

Ì don't know,' I answered, truthfully enough, too concerned with the rent in my good new cloak—and worse, the sprung rings in my mail. My side, too, felt like I had been kicked by the screaming horses. Àsk Gunnar. He had just come to warn me when they burst out after Hild.'

Einar and Ketil Crow came up, with Illugi Godi loping behind, in time to hear Gunnar growl, 'They weren't after Hild. They were after Orm.'

`Me? Why?'

`Good question,' said Einar, looking at Gunnar, who was mopping the blood from the split in his face and accepting, with a grateful grin, a horn of mead. He drank, then passed it to me and wiped his lips with one bloodied hand.

Ì saw Martin the monk,' he said. 'He was pointing you out to those ones.'

`Me or Hild,' I argued, but he shook his head. `You.'

`Martin the monk? Are you sure?' demanded Ketil Crow. Around us, the crowd had gone back to preparing for the horse-fight, save for those of the Oathsworn—the ones who knew of Martin, I saw—who were alert, hands near their hidden weapons.

When Gunnar nodded, Ketil Crow and Einar exchanged glances and fell silent.

Illugi Godi examined Gunnar's head and grunted, 'You'll live. Orm, can you wriggle out of that mail? I want to see that wound.'

It was harder than it looked and no one offered to help, of course. It slithered like a snakeskin to the ground eventually and I straightened up, holding my breath and feeling as bloodless as I looked. Both Illugi and Hild, I saw, were peering closely at my ribs as my tunic was hauled up.

Ìf Martin is here,' I said to Einar, 'then how did he manage it, save with Starkad?'

`Starkad is dead,' Ketil Crow growled. 'I heard it on good authority from the crewman on a knarr, who came upon the other drakkar. He died of wound fevers, from a cut on his leg.'

I looked at Einar, who said nothing.

`The other drakkar took his body back, wrapped in wadmal and salt, for Bluetooth to see,' Ketil Crow went on.

`How long have you known this?' I asked.

'Not long,' Einar replied absently. 'If it is true.'

Ketil Crow's thin-lipped silence was better than words. He clearly believed it. Wanted to believe it. If Starkad was dead and the other drakkar gone back to Denmark, then we were one enemy less. A big enemy, too.

Ìf so, where did Martin come from?' demanded Illugi Godi.

`Vigfus?' I ventured and Einar's brief, lowered-brow gaze told me he had considered that. There was something more there, too, but I could not quite grasp it.

`Well,' he said, eventually, forcing a smile, `there is a horse-fight to be enjoyed and an oath-swearing after. If you are not fit to stay, Bear Slayer, I will hand Hild to two others and you can return to the ship.'

Ì will go with him,' said Hild quickly. Einar looked from her to me and had the grace to keep his thoughts from his face. He bowed acknowledgement, but I said I was fine to stay.

`Stay sober and don't take part in the wrestling,' Illugi Godi said with a smile. `Later, I will bind it with salves. Best to leave the mail off.'

When he had gone into the crowd, I pointedly looked at the mail, then at Gunnar. He grinned his understanding, picked it up and helped me into it.

Hild frowned, clutching her spear-shaft talisman. Ìllugi just said not to do that.'

Ìllugi is not the one armed men are after,' I pointed out.

Gunnar bent to me, under the pretence of adjusting the hang of the mail on my shoulders. 'Thing is,' he whispered, 'I recognised one of those men. Herjolf, the one they called Hare-foot, from the next valley to Bjornshafen. Remember him?'

I did, vaguely, a lanky man who came over with sheep to sell now and then, memorable only because of the long-boned feet that gave him his nickname.

`The further you go,' I mused, 'the more people you meet that you know.'

Gunnar hawked and spat. 'I don't believe in such wyrd,' he growled, while a bemused Hild looked on, one to the other. 'He was here after you. I am thinking that, if we find out where the other men are from, you could probably spit from one of their hovs to the other and all from the Vik.'

`What are you saying?' I demanded.

`Gudleifs sons are here,' he replied and wandered off to get his horn refilled.

That crashed on me like an anvil and left me stunned. I shook my head with disbelief.

Half a year ago—less—I had no enemies at all and now they were lining up to swing a sword at me.

Gudleif's sons. How had Martin got in with them? At the fishing village, perhaps. He could have reached that and met a ship with Gudleif's vengeful sons on board. Or perhaps he was with the surviving drakkar and Starkad's body when they met another ship with Gudleif's sons.

No matter. The wyrd of it was that Bjorn and Steinkel, no older than me and whom I had never seen, were out for bloodprice for the slaying of their father. And not just from me, I remembered.

`Who is Gudleif?' asked Hild.

À fetch who won't lie peacefully,' I answered and her head came up sharply at that, the knuckles whitening on her talisman spear-shaft.

I made my way through the milling, cheering crowds as the horses fought, seeking out my father. I found him as the grey foundered, reeling backwards on his hind legs, the black's teeth in his neck. Screaming, the black bore him to the ground and pounded him to a red ruin as the crowd roared.

Òrm, Orm, you were right and we have won a fortune,' my father roared, beaming and red-faced. 'How did you know, eh?'

`No matter,' I began, but he had the others round him, wanted to bask in the reflected glory of his clever son and insisted.

`White socks,' I said, speaking quickly. `The grey had white socks on the rear hocks. The hair grows white round old wounds or bad bone . . . His hocks gave out, because they were weak. A fighting horse that can't stand on his hind legs won't last long.'

My father beamed; the others nodded, impressed. I caught his arm and dragged him aside. He came, realising now that something was up.

`There was a fight,' I said and his eyes widened, examining me, seeing the missing rings on my mail shirt.

Ì am unhurt. Gunnar Raudi cut his head giving one an Oathsworn kiss.'

`Shits! How many? Where are they? Einar must know . . . He won't want anything to mar this day.'

'Too late,' I said. Then I told him of my and Gunnar's suspicions.

He sagged a little, the joy of the day withered away. 'Odin's balls,' he said, shaking his head wearily.

`Vigfus, Starkad, now my nephews . . . I am getting too old for all this, Orm.'

Ànd me,' I replied with feeling, which made him laugh a little. He straightened and nodded.

`Right. You have the right of it. Fuck Gudleif and fuck his sons, too. If Einar has his way today, none of them will be able to touch us.'

That made me blink a bit and my father laid one finger along his nose and winked.

At which point, a hush fell on the crowd as Illugi Godi stepped up, rapped his staff and began the words of consecration.

It went well. The winning horse, streaming sweat and exhausted, was expertly dispatched, the blood from its cut throat drenching the altar stone, the head removed and stuck on a pole alongside, while the carcass was hauled off to be butchered and eaten. The heart would be left on the altar and Illugi would watch to see what bird came to it first.

Then, one by one, the Oathsworn, new and old, stepped forward and recited their oath of blood and steel and promise, in the eye of Odin.

When it was my turn, it seemed to me that, on the other side of the altar, where the smoke from the cookfires shrouded the river, Skapti and Pinleg and other faces stood and watched silently, pale figures with glittering eyes, envious of the living.

In front of them all, like an accusing finger, was Eyvind.

Einar was last to swear and his voice was strong and clear. Just as he had finished, at the moment when Illugi would close the ceremony with a prayer to Odin, there was a stir and heads turned to look at a party of horsemen, riding on to the Thingvallir.

There were six of them, led by a seventh. They were all mounted on splendid, powerful horses, bigger than our little fighting ponies. They were all mailed and helmeted, with shields slung on their backs, long spears balanced in stirrup cups and curved swords in their belts.

You could not see any of their faces because they had veils of mail drawn across them and the leader wore a splendid helmet with a full-face gilded mask on it, a bland sculpture of a beautiful youth. A huge horsetail hung from the point of it and blew silver-grey in the wind.

Amazed, everyone watched as they cantered up and swung into a line. The man with the masked helmet leaped off, light on his feet for someone in mail and leather. Only his legs, with baggy red silk trousers tucked into knee-high leather boots, had no armour and the mail hauberk hung low, so that they were protected when he rode.

He wore two curved sabres in his belt—the mark of a chieftain, so I had been told—and a magnificent, fur-collared cloak of midnight blue fastened with a silver clasp that was probably worth a couple of farms back in the Vik.

When he unclipped the face-plate and pulled off his helmet, it was a disappointment, for there was no gilded youth, only a boy with pimples. But there were a few intakes of breath and the name leaped from head to head like a drumbeat.

Yaropolk.

The Prince, son of Sviatoslav, was young, round-faced and wisp-bearded. Round his neck was a ring of fat, egg-sized glowing lumps of amber, the tears of the sun. His whole head was shaved, save for a hank of black hair, braided and bound with silver bands, hanging over one ear. I learned later that his father was similarly shaved and that, half-Norse though they were, this was their Khazar clan mark. He stepped forward, tossing the helmet up and back to be expertly caught by one of his men. For all that he was barely as old as me, he played the part of a prince well.

Einar went down on one knee, which didn't surprise me. In his place, I'd have gone down on my face.

‘Welcome, great lord,’ Einar said smoothly and Yaropolk nodded, smiling. Einar waved and Ketil Crow came across, moving faster than I had ever seen him, with a huge silver-banded drinking horn, bought specially for the purpose, I realised later. Yaropolk drank, for all the world like a man who had just dropped in for a chat, then handed it back to Einar, who also drank.

When he had finished, Einar raised the horn and announced that, with this, he was pledging his oath and his life and his band of followers to the druzhina of Prince Yaropolk.

Who graciously accepted it in a voice somewhat spoiled by it breaking here and there. Then Illugi Godi recited his prayer to Odin, but kept it short, since Yaropolk was a follower of the Christ like his grandmother—though his own father stuck with the old gods. A great statue of Perun still stood in Novgorod, but a church was being built nearby, it was said. I saw both myself later and realised that old Perun's time was limited when the bird-shit was left on his stern face. Later, of course, the Perun totem in Kiev, gilded moustaches and all, went into the river at Vladimir's orders.

But this was a stunning moment for all of us, save those in the know. It meant the Oathsworn were now personal retainiers of one of the most powerful leaders in the realm and anyone attacking us, attacked him.

In one clever 'tafl move, Einar had forestalled all his enemies and, in the feasting and drinking that followed, it was generally agreed—even by those who should know better—that Einar's luck was holding.

It was left to Hild to sober us all up as we gathered round the dying embers of the fire, somnolent with food and beer and mulling on the events. Nearby, a couple were humping with noisy enthusiasm and I was, at one and the same time, annoyed by the presence of Hild, which kept me from doing the same, and acutely aware of her and the fact that other women had lost their savour because of her.

She, if she heard anything at all, or thought anything on the matter, gave no sign. She sat, blank-faced as a benign little statue—and then she spoke. 'I have heard,' she said, `that the druzhina of the Princes of Kiev are powerful forces.'

And everyone nodded and agreed that this was so.

`Horsemen, for all the nobles of Kiev are horsemen,' she went on. 'They fight with the bow and the spear and the sword, from horseback, on the open steppe. The Khazars they war against fight the same way.'

And everyone agreed that this was so.

`So . . . why does he need Norsemen, who fight on foot?'

We all looked at each other, for it was a very good question. Around then, some of us began to wonder.

As the couple reached a gasping end, Hild stood, calmly smoothed her dress, cradled the spear-shaft and drifted into the twilight and back to the ship. And I, of course, climbed wearily and painfully to my feet and followed, hearing the chuckles, aware that 'Bear Slayer' was giving way tòHild's Hound'.

The next night, resting by the cookfires, we did not have to worry the bone she had dropped on us. It was announced that the army of Kiev was gathering in that place, to march all the way south, almost to the Black Sea, down the Don river to the Khazars' city there. Sviatoslav would lay siege to it and finally remove this block to the eastern trade routes. And you can't, as Einar airily pointed out, take a walled city with horsemen.

`So you will get us all killed before we can reach the hoard,' grumbled Valknut, but Hild shook her head, her eyes fixed on Einar, who tried to avoid hers. She was quiet, coiled like a snake.

`The city is Sarkel,' she said. 'It lies on the Don. The place we seek is nearby.'

`So you say,' I offered moodily, half to myself, and was surprised at the growls that supported this.

Òrm has the right of it,' Finn Horsehead grunted, jerking his shaggy chin towards Hild. 'It seems to me that we put much of our trust in this woman, who does not inspire me, for one.'

`Nor me,' agreed Kvasir Spittle. 'If she knows so much of it, have her make a chart we can follow.'

Einar looked from one to the other, then back to me and his eyes tightened at the edges as others muttered assent to all this. I swallowed a dry spear in my throat under that gaze.

Einar shrugged and turned to Hild. 'Well, then—will you draw this chart?'

`No.' It was a handslap on a wet stone, a flat refusal that made us all blink.

Finn regarded her with one eye closed. Then he looked at Einar. 'You have a magic knife that would change her mind.'

`Would you trust a chart made that way?' More growls and mutters, as they realised that she could lead them anywhere.

Kvasir scrubbed his head vigorously. 'I just don't like the idea of trailing after a . . . a . . .' He stopped, stumbling on the rocks of it.

À witch,' Hild answered for him, her gaze as black as Einar's. She laughed, a low, throaty sound that raised hackles on everyone. She was trembling.

`You will, I am thinking, have to trust me on this, lads,' Einar said easily, laying one hand gently on Hild's shoulder, so that she stiffened and was still. 'Have you ever seen a chart that made sense anyway? Eh, Rurik? Who uses a chart?'

My father stirred uneasily and said nothing. He looked at me, a gaze as heavy and dark as a slab of slate.

`With or without a chart,' Einar said softly, `the road still leads to Sarkel. If, at the end of it all, young Orm is unhappy, then he can come to me and say so.'

No one spoke. Einar turned away, propelling Hild in front of him. The talk and arguing only started to grow when they had vanished from sight, Ketil Crow and Valknut trailing after like dogs.

`That was . . . ill-advised,' my father growled, sliding up to me and shooting hard looks at Finn and Kvasir. They avoided his gaze and shuffled their feet.

Ì said nothing but what was on my mind,' I protested and my father grunted with annoyance.

`Best if you rein that in from now on, Orm,' he said, his gaze flinty. 'For if you anger him, neither I nor Illugi—nor these here,' he added scornfully, glaring at Finn and Kvasir, 'will be able to prevent what happens next.'

There was a soft chuckle in the twilight and we all whirled nervously to face it.

Gunnar Raudi swaggered into the firelight, picking his teeth with a bone needle and looked us all over, grinning and shaking his head. 'You look like boys caught pulling off behind the privy,' he mocked, then spat on the fire and spoke into the sizzle. Èinar's doom is on him. One day you will all have to face your fear of him.'

Ànd you are not afraid of Einar?' snarled my father, a little more savagely than I thought necessary.

Gunnar shrugged. `Wyrd is wyrd. It is not mine, I am thinking, to go down under the edge of Einar's fame. I will consider fear when I see the edge of his blade.'

`When you go down under the edge of Einar's blade,' countered my father bitterly.

Gunnar Raudi's teeth were bloody with firelight when he grinned.

10 The fur market of Novgorod dripped under a fine mirr of rain that had been falling since dawn and, no matter how hard they tried, the pelt-sellers couldn't keep their wares dry under awnings and ended up dragging waterproofed wool over them, destroying any attempt at display.

The richer traders, those with solid edifices, huddled under the eaves, hardly bothering to rouse themselves since custom was so slight.

`This is a dangerous business,' my father growled, dragging his cloak further up over his head. Einar thumbed snot off his nose and said nothing.

`You are just wet,' I told him and Valknut chuckled. But the truth was that I thought he was probably right. The rain had soaked My perfectly good cloak and the mud had splashed up my fine fat breeks even on the walkway.

The hollow-socket stare of dead animals followed me from under every sheltered eave and from every trestle: long-snouted wolves, fox, highly prized sable, scabby rabbit and mottled hare. There were deer hides and antler-bone for the carvers and, slung from a hook in the middle of one room, a huge bear pelt with the head still on. The stink of hides from the tanners and leather-workers slunk to my nose now and then, brought by the wind and scarcely dampened by the rain.

I tried to be cheerful and failed and I knew the reason. I no longer had Hild to consider. Illugi Godi was with her all the time now, whether by Einar's order or her demand I could not be sure. But she ignored me as completely as she could and I should have been happy with that, but wasn't.

Everyone else knew why, of course—or thought they did. They nudged each other and grinned at my new, permanent scowl and at every pointed Hild slight.

I touched the seax strapped in the small of my back, under the cloak, and felt the rain trickle down my neck. For days we had been hunting for Martin, or Bjorn, or Steinkel. You wouldn't think it so hard in a town, but I discovered that a town is worse than a forest. You can hide everywhere and anywhere.

But Einar wanted him and I knew why. Martin knew of the Great Hoard and that we had Hild, who knew how to get to it. The gods knew how he had collided with Gudleif's sons, but what none of us wanted was to have him flapping his lip to the likes of Vigfus, or anyone else, in pursuit of his own dreams.

I took on this task with enthusiasm. We were stuck in Novgorod until the spate ended; the rivers were too fast-running to travel until at least May, perhaps June. Down at Kiev, eighteen days at least by boat, the river rose around fifteen feet and spread from about half a mile wide to five or even six miles wide.

Eventually, we heard that someone had seen a monk that might be ours and we listened to that one, because they said this monk wasn't of the Roman church, but Western. Since most of the monks and Christ priests in Novgorod were Greeks from Miklagard, we thought this monk likely to be the right one.

And so here we were, looking for Skudi the Finn in the Shelonskaya district, across the bridge from the Podol, the riverside quarter. Skudi was a man who had promised, for a price, to deliver this monk up to us.

So Einar, me, my father and Valknut went to him, trying hard to look like Gotland traders.

Einar, of course, smelled trap, but decided that more men might be too easily spotted and scare off the prize. In the rain of the market, though, I wished we had brought those men and more. I kept seeing thugs in every lumbering, bearded shape, every untrusting face smeared with fat to keep it dry.

Valknut found the Finn, who did not seem to warrant a shop at all, since he huddled on a bench in a cloak with a rat-chewed fur collar, sparse hair splayed on his skull and a calculating look in his watery blue eyes.

`This is Skudi,' Valknut said and the man nodded, hearing his name. I didn't speak so much Finn, so tried East Norse, while my father offered up West and Valknut, to my surprise, added Greek.

In that complex maze of tongues, we managed to haggle out a suitable price and, at the same time, warn the Finn that Einar would slit him from balls to chin if he proved false. Einar fished out a purse from under his armpit and sorted out full silver coins from the collection of sliced and whole and slivers in the bag. The Finn looked at them, shook his head and went off on a long rant in three languages.

`Tell him that's all he is getting,' Einar warned, narrowing his eyes. But that wasn't the problem and I sighed. This was getting complicated.

`He won't take srebreniks,' I said. 'Says there's not enough silver in them.'

The srebrenik was a new Rus coin, minted in Kiev from the same design as the favoured Serkland dirham, but the silver flow was now a trickle and the Rus ones had less in them than the Arab coins.

`His own lord mints them,' growled Einar, ànd that's what he pays us in.'

`Doesn't matter to him. He wants old Rus kunas, or Serkland dirham. Or milaresia from Byzantium if you have any.'

`Fuck him,' answered Valknut and his slit-eyed gesture with a thumb across the throat was eloquent in any language.

But Skudi was a trader and I had to admire him; he was used to hard haggling and never even broke into a sweat. Instead, he pointed to the silver torc round Einar's neck, given by Yaropolk as befits a lord to his commanders.

`That's worth more,' spat Einar. 'He's a cunning little swine, I will give him that.'

I made swift calculations and shook my head. 'No, it isn't. It's a Rus grivna of silver, worth twenty five.

The kuna is the same as a dirham here. He is losing slightly, but he can sell the torc for more since it is pure silver.’

Einar blinked. He had another couple of such rings, as befits a jarl, so could afford to miss this one. My father scrubbed his head furiously and Valknut just glared. Then Einar shrugged, bent the torc off his neck and tossed it to the Finn, who bit it with black teeth and nodded, grinning.

‘How you keep track of all this kunas and dirham and srebrooniks . . .’ muttered my father. ‘My head hurts with it.’

‘ Srebreniks,’ I corrected and marvelled at them. I had already learned a valuable lesson: the Oathsworn and all the other bands like them were good at getting loot, bad at keeping it. A good trader would have the purse from under their armpit without having to beat them into the ground first, providing he could keep in his head the worth of all the different coins swirling around trade centres such as Kiev and Novgorod.

‘Just make sure he doesn’t play us false. I liked that neck ring,’ growled Einar moodily.

The little Finn made the silver circle vanish inside his shirt, then swept his ratty cloak over his head and scuttled out into the rain, us following, looking right and left and expecting trouble.

We left the furrier quarter and the tanner stink behind, splashed and slithered down the walkways until, suddenly, Einar stopped and said, 'That's Oleg's hov.'

We all stopped and Valknut caught the Finn before he could go any further. Oleg, third of the sons of Sviatoslay. Vladimir and our own new lord, Yaropolk, were the other two, though Vladimir was born of a thrall. All of them circled each other like wary young dogs, kept from each other's throats only by their father, the mighty Prince of the Rus.

The wooden structure was impressive, but strange, with wooden pillars holding up a portion of the eaves, under which two fully armed guards looked at us with barely disguised amusement and caution.

The Finn gabbled furiously and, between us, we managed to work out that the monk was part of Oleg's retinue and lived and worked in a place round the back.

Einar stroked his dripping moustaches and then hissed to Valknut to take a casual stroll round. 'Try to see him but not be seen,' he growled. 'There's nothing we can do here and now, but we will come back When there is less chance of being seen.'

We moved, hauling the reluctant Finn with us, to the shelter of another building, away from the eyes of the guards, and waited, trying to look innocent. We all smelled like wet dogs.

Valknut was back swiftly, shaking himself free of rain. 'It's him, right enough. Two young boys with him, about your age, Orm. He is scribbling away in the dry, with a brazier of hot coals, the turd.'

`Those boys will be Gudleif's sons,' I said and my father agreed. Einar released the Finn, who vanished into the mirr without a backward glance.

`We will come back at night,' Einar said levelly. 'And put this monk to the question.'

I didn't bother reminding him that the monk was protected, as part of Oleg's retinue, as we were in Yaropolk's. He knew that already, but what was making him chew his nails was whether Martin had told Oleg anything of our business.

So we were back under the same building hours later, when the rain had stopped, in the pitch black of a moon-shrouded night. There was a lantern spreading butter-yellow where the guards had been, but they were gone and the great timber doors closed. I knew that the hov was where Oleg sat during the day, dispensing justice, interviewing, all the things such princes do.

We slid round the side of the building and spotted the glow of another light, spilling from an unshuttered window. Valknut nodded at Einar and we all moved to the place, a mean timber outbuilding to the splendid hov.

Einar wasted no time; he hoofed in the door with a crash and rushed in, seax out.

Martin yelled and fell off a high stool; the youth with him—only one, I saw—went white with fear and scrabbled for the sword he had laid too far away. Valknut swept it up by the baldric and dangled it tantalisingly in front of him, grinning.

`Martin,' said Einar, as if greeting a long-lost friend. The monk rose from the floor, using the time to recover his composure. He smoothed his brown robe—new, I saw—and lifted the stool up. Then he smiled.

Èinar. And young Orm. Yes, lots of old familiar faces here.'

The boy's head came up and a flush brought colour to those chalk-white cheeks at the sound of my name.

My father spotted it, too. 'Which one of my nephews are you, then?' he demanded.

The boy licked dry lips. `Steinkel.'

`Where's your brother? Bjorn, isn't it?' I asked and he shrugged. Valknut, at a look from Einar, slid back into the darkness to make sure we weren't being ambushed.

Martin climbed back on to his stool and recommenced his work, grinding stuff in a bowl. He caught me looking and smiled. Òak galls in vinegar, thickened with gum from Serkland and some salts of iron,' he said.

Èncaustum, from the Latin caustere, to bite. But you know that, young Orm, for you can read Latin. But you cannot write in any language.'

Now I knew the reason for the yellow-black scorch marks on his fingertips—which was one of the few familiar signs about him now. He had both grown and withered since I had seen him last. He had a beard now and his bald patch—a tonsure, I had learned—was freshly shaven. Yet he was thinner and something had chiselled away at his face, sinking his eyes deeper, while they blazed with a strange, yellow fervour.

He waved at the litter on the table in front of him, while Steinkel trembled and everyone else waited to hear what Valknut found outside. So we listened to Martin.

`These are what will make you and your kind fade to nothing and the word of God triumph,' he went on, grinding slowly and smiling at Einar.

`What is my kind?' Einar countered and Martin's mouth went thin.

`Doomed,' he said.

The silence was something you could taste.

`These are rolls, for tribute and taxes,' Martin went on, to the chink-chink of his grinding. 'These poor heathens used to make marks on tally sticks and even strips of birch bark. But you can't run a kingdom like that. Oleg values me, for I can tell him who owes what and when. In time, his sons and his sons' sons will know. The mixture bites into the vellum and leaves a mark. As my words will bite into the future and leave a mark.'

Àye, you are a clever man, right enough,' Einar answered, unfazed. 'Once before you showed me your cleverness.' And he drew out his little knife and nonchalantly trimmed a thread from the weave on one cuff.

Martin winced at the memory and I saw him pause in his grinding to touch the scabbed stump of his finger. Then he recovered his smile. 'If you had not come to me, I would have come to you, Einar,' he said easily.