The Whale Road

`Just so,' Einar replied. 'It was lucky for us both then that you showed these bold lads and their friends where to find me and mine. Such polite messengers.'

Martin shrugged. 'These boys came to me because I am a priest and they are baptised Christians. When they told me who they were, I knew whom they sought. That was God's work.'

`Just so,' my father said. 'Your god must be pleased at the helping hand you gave him to point these young lads and their killers in our direction. Some guidance from a Christ priest. Are you not supposed to tell them not to kill?'

`You killed my father . . .' Steinkel declared sullenly.

Ì did indeed, nephew,' my father said and I looked at him, shocked. I had always thought it had been Einar. 'He killed my bear,' my father went on. 'And he tried to kill Orm here—'

Ènough,' Einar interrupted and glared darkly at Martin. 'Why would you have come to me?'

Martin put down the pestle carefully as Valknut came back in, looked at Einar and shook his head.

Martin said, 'Take the boy outside.'

Steinkel's head whipped from one to the other, bemused, angry. When Valknut grabbed an arm, he pulled back. 'What are you up to, monk?' he yelled, his voice high and shrill. Valknut wrenched him into an embrace, whirled him round and took the collar of his tunic at the back of the neck, twisting it tight so that it choked him. He hauled the boy up so that his toes danced furiously for a grip on the floor, then the pair of them staggered through the door and into the night.

Einar cocked his head expectantly at Martin, who sighed and put off sharpening his writing quill. 'I have told Oleg nothing,' he declared. 'In return for this continued silence, I want the return of my Holy Lance.'

`Your what?' demanded my father.

`Hild's spear-shaft,' I told him, 'which she won't like to give up.'

My father looked from one to the other. `Why does he . . . What use is that? It has no point.'

If he meant it as a joke, no one laughed. I looked at Martin and knew. 'He has promised Oleg,' I said. 'In return, Oleg has promised . . . what? A Christ church in Kiev, or here in Holmgard?'

Martin's smile was blade-sharp and twisted. 'Kiev. And when he succeeds his father, he will make me bishop there, with the blessing of the Pope. This country seeks a new and Christian religion.'

Ànd it won't be the Greek one from the Great City,' I finished for him. He inclined his head generously in my direction.

`There are two more of Sviatoslav's sons,' my father growled, 'who may not fall in with this great scheme.'

Martin shrugged. I saw he was confident of switching allegiances to whichever brother triumphed—if he had a great Christ charm to promise.

Einar was silent for a moment. Martin and he exchanged sword-cut glances across the room, each knowing what the other was thinking. What was to stop Einar killing Martin now and thus shutting his mouth?

The fact that he was Oleg's man and that would mean trouble. Steinkel would know who had done it, so he would have to die. His brother would suspect, so they would have to find and kill him, too . . . there was too much blood, even for Einar.

`How do I know you will keep your word, monk?' demanded Einar flatly.

`You will surely kill me if I don't,' he replied easily, 'and I will swear it on the Christ cross, an oath if you will. You like oaths, Einar.'

There was a moment of deadly stillness. I saw visions of blood everywhere and then Einar shook his head and I breathed again.

`Swear on your Christ-god if you will,' he said quietly. 'Swear also to Odin.'

Martin hesitated, then nodded. A pagan oath was easily broken in Martin's mind, but one to his own god might hold. Of course, Einar would try to kill him anyway, as quietly and secretly as possible and everyone saw that—including Martin. It would be a harder task to find him after all this, I was thinking.

As we drifted into the night, I was less easy about taking the spear-shaft away from Hild and said as much. No one had a thought on it as we made our way back to the Elk.

In the end, it was surprisingly easy. She held on tight to it, white-knuckled, until Ketil Crow—none too gently, it seemed to me—prised her loose from it. I expected rants, rages, even those rolling-eyed fits.

Instead, she sank down on the deck with a weary sigh, slumped like a sack.

Ketil Crow and Illugi Godi went off into the night to deliver it and witness Martin's oath. As they left, with my warning to watch out for my cousins, doubly mad now, I would wager, she looked blackly at Einar.

`There is a price to pay for this,' she said and the blank chill of it made me shiver. Even Einar, sunk in morose contemplation of the subject, was jerked back by the simple vehemence of it.

`Can you still find the howe of Attila?' he demanded, alarmed, and she nodded, her eyes startling pits of pitch in the yellow lantern light.

`Nothing will now keep me from that burial place,' she declared. 'But I will need something from you.'

We moved to Kiev not long afterwards, in a mad, shouting, frantic chaos of boats and men, leaving Valgard and a dozen Oath-sworn with the Elk.

Novgorod was as far as foreign ships went. All the traders were forced to the Rus boats: the strugi and the larger nasady, which were expensive, but could withstand Baltic storms and the grind of dragging them over portages. It was as sound a way as any of making sure the Prince of Kiev controlled the river trade.

But the traders stayed in the crowded anchorage this time, fuming and cursing, because every boat had been taken by Sviatoslav to move men and gear swiftly down to Kiev the Golden. From there, we'd move across to the Don and down it to face the Khazars.

I remember the journey as one of the laziest I have ever had. The only lazier one was the sail down the Don afterwards.

As part of Yaropolk's druzhina we had nothing to do. Local rivermen poled the boats and all we did was clean our gear, admire each other in our new cloaks—the colour of old blood and the mark of our druzhina status—and speculate on whether the women in Kiev would be better than those in Novgorod.

They were. Everything about Kiev was better and it roared with life, swollen by people from everywhere.

Entire tribes had arrived: Merians, Polianians, Severians, Derevlians, Radimichians, Dulebians, and Tivercians and names even seasoned traders had barely heard of.

They came with horses and dogs and women and children, bringing an incredible babble and swirling life to the place, and we strode through them all, brighter threads in this rich tapestry, a head taller than all of them, rich in dress and ornament and swagger.

The city heaved with life and colour, from the cherries drying on the rooftops of the khaty, their timber and clay houses, to the pears and quinces that glistened in the sun on bowing branches.

Down the Zalozny road came caravans from Serkland with spice, gems, satins, Damascus steel and fine horses. Up the Kursk road still came a vital trickle of silver, which the Volga Bulgars traded from mines even further east. From Novgorod, though, which should have been sending wool, linens, tinted glass, herring, beer, salt and even fine bone needles, came nothing but us, gawping and spitting and roaring.

Kiev was starting to swelter in the heat of a summer sun and Illugi Godi grew increasingly morose, even as the Oathsworn hurled themselves delightedly into the whirling welter of it, hunting out drink and women.

Ènjoy it while you can, boy,' he declared, leaning on his staff as I leaped down on to the jetty, joining a dozen others heading into the teeming streets. 'There will be disease and worse if we stay here for long.'

I waved to him, but I didn't care. The spectre of Hild was like a silent, accusing finger these days. She spent most of her time huddled close to Einar, sharing the gods knew what—not love, certainly.

And then there was my father. I had tried to bring up the subject of Gudleif, of the first five years of my life, of my mother, but he had dismissed it all with a wave, as something of no consequence. Yet it was his brother and I wanted to know . . . even today I don't know what I wanted to know.

That it bothered him. That I could help. That we were blood kin right enough.

Instead, it was as if we had shifted three or four oars down from each other. If it kept up this way, we would be on different boats, he and I.

I wanted drink and women that day in Kiev.

I got them, too. Even now, I can remember little of it and even that is probably what I was told by others.

There was a party of Greeks, engineers sent by the Miklagard Emperor. They had been in Kiev for months cutting timber and building huge siege engines in jointed sections for easy transport and they knew the best places to go.

There were women and I remember humping on a table and was told I had taken a wager I could hump the fattest, ugliest one in the place and won, despite Ketil Crow being convinced I could never get aroused enough with the one chosen. But, as Valknut pointed out, the difference between a reasty crone and Thor's golden-haired wife, Sif, is about eight horns of mead.

I had that and more. I had never drunk so much and remembered only being hauled lip out of a pool of my own mead vomit, my hair sticky with it. There was water that left me dripping, but I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel my lips, or my legs. The memory left me.

Later, I learned that I had been carried back to our Rus riverboat almost in triumph—dropped a few times by the unsteady bearers—and flung on my own fur-lined sleep-bag.

What I do remember—I still jerk awake sometimes in the night remembering—is being kicked and the sound of screams. I saw figures and flames and someone yelled—in my ear, almost, so that my head burst in bright colours of pain: 'Arm yourself, you fuck, we're boarded.'

That staggered me half-upright. I found my sword and fumbled for my shield in the half-light of dawn, bleary-eyed, trying to work out where I was. Keep them next to you, we had been told. Always next to you . .

.

I was on the deck of the Rus boat, which was shadowed with figures who screamed and slashed. Booted feet thundered; blades clashed; shields thumped. I saw Ketil Crow hurl himself like a growling terrier into a pack of men, slashing wildly, then retreat before they recovered enough to hit him back. His mail gleamed redly in the wild torchlight.

I lurched towards him, the half-formed idea of standing on his shieldless side in my head. As I got to him, three men moved forward, half-crouched, wary, but determined. I didn't know any of them, but I knew the threat of a bloody great Dane axe when I saw one.

The blow came and slammed into my shield with a sound like a falling tree and I staggered under it.

Ketil Crow, grunting and panting, was struggling with the other two, being awkward for them because he was left-handed—but the man with the big two-handed axe was mine alone.

Another blow staggered me backwards, then he swiftly reversed and aimed a whack with the butt on my sword-arm, but my own wild flailings bounced it up and it hit the edge of the shield, then the side of my head.

The flare of light and pain was a whole world; nothing else existed. I couldn't see and I heard only a vague screaming. Something monstrous smashed against my shield-arm—then the world hoiked itself back into the Now, where it was me howling, the Dane axe was whirling round again and I was on one knee.

He was good, the axeman. He gave up trying to splinter the shield and thumped the axehead against it, trying to knock it down, then swiftly reversed to try to butt me in the face. Staggering, the drunk fumes burned away in a fire of fear, I managed to fend that off and get to my feet.

As I did, he hooked the blade behind the shield, wrenching it forward to try to break the straps. The butt end stabbed out once more when this, too, failed. It caught me slightly on the chest and even that made me grunt with pain.

He backed off a little, then came in again, snarling and scything the axe low, trying to cut the feet from me. I scampered backwards, collided with someone and battered behind me with the shield, not caring who it was.

He saw an opening, roared the axe back in a half-arc, mouth open in a tow-coloured beard, hair a mass of wild straggles. It slammed into someone to his right and caught. He raged and tore it free and it came whistling round with a flap of cloth attached from someone's cloak—but I avoided it, then struck my first blow, which just missed his forearm.

He leaped back and we paused, heaving for breath. Around us was madness and struggle, but the arc of the Dane axe had cleared a circle round the pair of us, as if by some spell.

'Not bad, Bear Slayer,' he taunted. 'For a boy.'

I sucked air in past the raging brand in my throat. I knew I was dead, that he was better than me. I realised, too, that he knew who I was; he had sought me out. My fame would be the death of me.

He hefted the axe, twirled it deftly in both hands like the fire-dancers do with their flaming poles. It was meant to fix my gaze, like a rabbit to a stoat, but I had seen Skapti do this trick and watched his feet instead.

He took a step, closing for the flurry of blows he knew would end it.

I braced myself, a whimper tearing from between clenched teeth. A horn blew. He paused. It blew again.

He grinned, yellow teeth in that yellow beard, and pointed the axe at me with one hand.

`Not now, but soon, Bear Slayer.'

Then he lumbered heavily to the side of the Rus boat and hurled himself over. I heard him crash to the jetty even as I was on my knees being sick.

The tally was eight wounded: none dead and none so serious they couldn't grumble over it. They had lost one dead, sunk in the river in full mail, and had carried off their wounded.

And one captured. Who turned out to be one of us.

I recognised him: Hogni, who had spoken up proudly to Einar about his skills. 'I can row and ski and shoot and use both spear and sword,' I'd heard him say.

Now he was lashed upside down from the raised mast spar, where he twisted slowly, blood running down his face and off his dangling hair to the deck, while men, still panting and binding wounds, snarled at him, even those who had been his oarmates. Especially those who had been his oarmates.

Einar paced, his mail making soft shinking sounds. He was a controlled, deadly calm, like the black sea on a rising wind. Hild was gone and that had been the purpose of the raid, which Hogni, on his watch, had allowed. One of the raiders had been careless, I heard people tell each other, and the alarm was raised, which was Odin luck for us.

Ì don't need to know who did this,' Einar growled at the man swinging in front of him. 'I know who did this—and Vigfus will pay for it.' He leaned forward, his little knife out. 'I need to know where he is, though, and you will help me.'

There was a flick of his wrist and a scream from Hogni as his finger joint whicked off into the darkness.

`This is a magic knife,' Einar began and I lurched off, away from what was to follow, my guts churning and my head full of Thor hammers. And in the midst of all that, the flare-bright fear of that Dane axe.

I was as doomed as Einar. The bear had been a lie. The first man I had killed had been more inept than me, the second was a lucky strike with a small knife. Then there was Ulf-Agar who had almost killed himself with foolishness. I had never fought a serious fight and knew now that I would die if I did, because I simply wasn't that good at it. Worse, the Bear Slayer was a prize death for anyone to boast of; they would be springing out of holes in the ground after me.

I was retching on nothing when my father came and hunkered down beside me, grunting with the weight and awkwardness of mail. He handed me a leather cup and I drank, then blinked with surprise.

`Watered wine,' he said. 'Best cure for what ails you. If it doesn't work, use less water.'

I drank more, paused to retch it up, drank more.

He nodded appreciatively and scrubbed his stubble. 'I saw you with the axeman—you did well.' I looked sourly at him and he shrugged. 'Well, you are alive, anyway. He looked like he knew the work.'

`He would have killed me.'

My father punched my shoulder and scowled. 'None of that. You're not a whining boy any more. You should take a look at yourself first chance you get. A young Baldur, no less, vulnerable only to mistletoe.'

I drained the cup and never felt less like Baldur.

My father tossed the empty cup in one hand, then started to lever himself up, grunting with the effort.

'Come on. Einar wants us. Hogni has been singing on his perch.'

`Mail,' I said, suddenly realising. 'That's mail . . . that's my hauberk.'

My father grimaced and wriggled in it. `Bit tight round the shoulders, but not much. Another season of rowing, youngling, and you'll find this too small.'

`Why,' I asked pointedly, 'are you wearing it?'

My father's eyes widened at the implied challenge. 'Einar had all those not out on a drunk armed and mailed. He is as nervous as a cat with its arse on fire. With good reason, as it turned out.'

I remembered now. Ketil Crow in mail, Einar, too, and a dozen others. My father mistook my silence and dropped the cup, then bent over at the waist and, hands over his head, shook himself like a furious, wet dog until the iron-ringed shirt slithered off at my feet.

Ì am done with it,' he growled and stalked away. I wanted to call him back, but it was too late and something was nagging me. But my head thundered and wouldn't let me think straight.

Hogni wasn't thinking at all; the last thing to have gone through his head was Wryneck's axe. When I came up to the silent band collected round Einar, Hogni was being wrapped in his own cloak and weighted with a couple of stones.

They lowered him over the side with scarcely a splash, the ripples rolling golden in the rising sun, and I was pleased to see that there were a few green-grey faces in the hard-eyed huddle.

Those whose heads had been clearer to start with—all in mail, I saw—were grim and angry. Not only had a prize been stolen from them—even if some of them did not quite know why she was a prize—but it had been done by a pack they considered dogs rather than wolves.

Worse yet, one of their own had been an enemy and that made neighbour uneasy about neighbour, oath or no.

`Let her go, I say,' muttered Wryneck, scratching the fleas out of his grey beard. This made a few heads turn, for old Wry-neck, along with Ketil Crow, Skapti and Pinleg, had been one of the originals of Einar's band.

`She holds the secret of treasure, old eye,' Valknut said, in a tone that reminded me of old Helga talking to the wit-ruined Otkar.

`Watch your mouth round me, you runehagged fuck,' Wryneck replied, amiably enough but with steel in it. 'I know what she is said to hold. I have not seen any of it yet save for a single coin with a hole through it and I am thinking she is too much trouble for such a poor price. We should let her lead Quite the Dandy around by the nose for a time, while we go and raid something with money in it.'

It was something when a wise head such as Wryneck started in with thoughts such as these. There were some chuckles at his bluntness, but muted ones, for Einar was close. If he heard, he made no sign.

Instead, calm and seemingly unconcerned, he thumbed his nose, stroked his moustaches and said, `Ketil Crow will pick a dozen men. Take only weapons you can hide under cloaks or inside tunics. Those chosen have five minutes to get ready, for we have little time to spare.'

The newer men, oathsworn only weeks before, were the most eager to go, to prove to the others that no more of them were false. Ketil Crow, of course, wanted some trustworthy heads with them and, of course, I was chosen.

It was my wyrd.

11 The sunlight was painful, even filtered through the dust that matted hair and clothes, dulling all colours to a faded memory.

The sight of the milling crowd of hawkers and their haggling customers, draymen hefting great leather wineskins or rolling barrels, butchers with carcasses slung over their shoulders and hucksters with trays of sweetmeats, covered against dust and flies, hazed and danced before my eyes, bringing bile to my throat.

On one side, under an awning, I tried to keep my eyes open against the painful glare that seemed to make my head throb worse than ever, sneezing in the dust. It was hot and heavy with stinks from the dye-makers nearby; the smell of stale piss made me gag.

A little way up, Bagnose was turned towards me, trying to catch my eye from under a ludicrous straw hat, which he fondly believed would hide his face from any one of Vigfus's band who might actually recognise him. How he hoped to avoid it was anyone's guess, I was thinking bitterly, when he had a face like a baby's rashed arse and a nose that wobbled and could light his way in the dark. Even people who had never seen him before would notice him.

The crowd thinned a little as we made our way, weaving in and out of the disorderly street traffic, to where the rutted way turned sharply into the dye-makers' district. Then I saw Bagnose take off his hat, scrub his sweat-soaked, straggled hair and put it on again. I knew it was a signal, but couldn't remember what about—then I saw the two men.

They stood in the doorway of a tannery, heedless of the reek. Beside them was the man we had followed, a tall, rawboned man with white hair and the fiercest red face and exposed arms I had ever seen. Steinthor knew him as White Gunnbjorn and he was a Norwegian with a reputation as a hard fighter.

Behind me, four more Oathsworn tried to look innocent and busy at the same time and were failing so badly I wondered if we would get much closer. I slid a hand up the back of my tunic and loosened the seax, feeling the sweat-damp there and wishing it had been raining as an excuse to wear a cloak and hide a proper blade beneath it.

Bagnose nodded to me, then walked forward with unhurried steps. He stopped, turned and looked incredibly interested in the whole hog's head a butcher was lugging through the crowd, dripping blood and trailing flies.

Another man had joined White Gunnbjorn, not tall, but so thin he seemed taller. He had a sharp face and stringy hair round the sides of his head only, while his beard was long and combed and forked, the ends fastened with ribbons the same colour as his leg-bindings, which were purple. That and a loose, red silk tunic, fat breeks the colour of cornflowers and a belt made of silver lappets made him easy to place, even though I had never seen him.

Vigfus, called Skartsmadr Mikill—Quite the Dandy.

Gunnar Raudi wandered up, as if he had just encountered me in the street, his eyes hard above the cheery grin, his face sheened with sweat and his frosted red curls tucked under a round wool hat that must be broiling his head.

`Vigfus; he said and I nodded. He glanced back, to where Einar was well hidden from any eyes that might know him, and inclined his chin. Presumably he got an answer for he took a deep breath, adjusted his belt and walked unhurriedly up the street towards the four men on the wooden steps of the tannery.

I followed, slightly behind him, and knew the others were following me. I saw Bag-nose turn, too, moving up behind the sweating butcher and his grisly load, using it as cover to get closer.

There was a blur of movement, blasting into the pain in my head, into the glare that had slitted my eyes.

Stunned, I could only watch as a spear arced out of an alley to our left, whicking across the street towards Gunnar Raudi. They had left a cunning watcher and we had all missed him.

The gods know how Gunnar saw it—even he did not know much beyond a flicker at the edge of his vision. He dropped a shoulder, spun in a half-crouch and the spear missed him, the shaft scoring across his shoulder, plunging on into the dimness of a booth, where a screech announced its arrival.

The street was in uproar. Gunnar crashed into two men carrying a bale of cloth; I stood and gawped, until something smacked ringing lights and exploding pain in my head.

`Move, you rat fart!' roared Bagnose, surging forward.

I stumbled, collided with a screaming woman, fell to one knee and raised my head, blinking dust and confusion. I saw Gunnar Raudi vanish down the alley after the spear-thrower, roaring his anger and fear in that direction.

Bagnose had skidded to a halt, since White Gunnbjorn and the two others were whipping out lengths of sharp steel and coming in his direction, slowed only by the skittering, yelling crowd getting in their way.

And Vigfus was bolting into the tanners' building.

I sprang up then and I will never know why—stung by Bagnose's slap, or even my own fear, perhaps. I ran, swerving round White Gunnbjorn, hearing Einar and the others roaring their way up the street behind me, blades out.

For a moment, the transition from dazzling light to the dim twilight of the tannery blinded me and I skidded to a halt, blinking. Then I caught the brief gleam of silver from Vigfus's belt as he skittered up a set of wooden stairs. I was after him, knife out, taking the stairs three at a time.

He bolted down a narrow work hall and shot round a corner into a room bright with daylight from opened shutters. I followed, cursing the worn-smooth soles of my leather boots on the wooden floors. I slid as if on bone skates, straight into a table, scattering shocked tallymen and their sticks and birch-bark notes.

Amid the shouts and the clatter and the pain of a bruised shin, I saw Vigfus reach the end of the room and thought I had him. There was no way out.

Save the open-shuttered window, which he took with a long-legged leap.

Cursing, I scrambled to my feet, fisted a red-faced, shrieking tallyman in the chest out of the way and sprang to the same window.

Beyond was the slanted short roof of the eaves, looking out over the sprawling yard of the tannery and its huddle of buildings. Between was crammed with vats, wooden frames, strung lines and milling, near-naked, sweating men hooking stinking hides on to long poles or feeding fires under boiling vats. The heat and acrid stink sucked the air away, as if I was breathing through wet linen.

Vigfus was skittering along the wooden shingles. He fell over a rope slung up for washing and rugs, rolled and, for one glorious moment, I thought he was over the edge and done for.

But he stopped himself, sprang up to all fours and looked back at me, for that moment like some strange spider. I thought he was set to come at me, so I slid to a halt and brought the blade up. He twisted his mouth into a scornful grin, sprang upright and raced along the short roof, stopped, looked both ways, then leaped outwards, his arms at full stretch, seax in his teeth.

I gawped. He had to be lying in the tannery yard, hopefully head first in a vat of piss. I ran to the spot—

but there was nothing. Then I saw the rope, slung slantwise between buildings, backed up, took a deep breath and did a truly foolish thing, brought on by youth and the sudden grim obsession not to let the fart get away.

I stuck the seax in my teeth and dived out at the slender arc of rope.

I hit it, grasped, swung—as he must have done—and crashed towards a square opening, the shutters half closed.

I splattered the flimsy framework to shreds, felt splinters rip into my arm and plunged into the room beyond in a welter of flying wood, reed flooring and straw from a bed pallet that exploded under me.

I fell and rolled and came up tearing the seax from my mouth and slashing wildly, but the room was empty and all I managed to do was cut my tongue and the side of my mouth.

I saw the doorway, blocked by a simple curtain. I ripped it apart and found myself in another open hallway, filled with shrouded door openings. Stairs led down into the gloom and the smell of pine and tanners' piss was heavy. I felt blood and sweat trickle and spat more on to the floor. The side of my mouth stung with the sharpest pain of them all. I was panting and soaked and desperate at the thought I had lost him.

I ran to the first room and frantically tore aside the hangings on the door openings: boxes, bales, dead rats, live rats. The next one was a room with another square opening blazing with light on the splintered debris of fresh wood; the one after that was a room with a straw bed and nothing . . .

A room with a smashed opening and shards of wood littering the floor. Where he had come in. And gone out again.

I sprang to the window, stuck the seax in my tunic and snaked out of it. I hauled myself upwards this time, on to the sloping wooden shingles, baking in the heat and so dry they cracked like ice. I slithered, cursing, on the ones that came loose.

I saw him then, his red tunic torn and fluttering, one purple leg-binding trailing and the fancy ribbons on one fork of his beard ripped loose. He glared wildly at me and scuttled down the tiles and over the far side.

Odin's arse, would he never stop running? I skated after him, saw the short drystone wall he had dropped on to—astride it, I noted savagely—and was clambering up on, limping painfully and clutching his cods.

People were yelling at us from the tannery yard and on the other side of the wall was the street. I dropped heavily on to the wall, managed not to slam it into my groin, swayed alarmingly for a moment, then caught my balance as Vigfus walked along the uneven, crumbling, narrow wall-top, hands out for balance.

Then I saw Einar and Gunnar Raudi and others, spilling into the tannery yard—but the wall was too high for them to reach him. He saw them at the same time as I did, reasoned at the same time as they did and avoided the weapons they were preparing to hurl at him by leaping down the other side of the wall, with a curse, to the street below.

`Go round, go round!' I shrieked and they all turned and headed the long way round the buildings, elbowing people out of the way.

They'd never make it in time before he vanished, so I leaped after him, trying to cushion my fall by landing in a trestle of stacked fruits. I came up scattering more people and sticky with juices. Angry shouts followed me as I got up, limping. It had been a bad landing anyway and I was flagging now.

Vigfus wasn't in much better shape, but he was starting into a run when I hurled forward in a flying dive and caught the last, trailing edge of his fancy purple bindings.

He gave a sharp yelp as he went over, clattering in to the dusty ruts full on his face. He scrambled away, kicking at me, his face a mask of fury and bloody mud.

Then I saw, with a sick horror, the bone-white head of Gunnbjorn, trotting through the yelling, milling people, hurling them aside to get to his jarl. Vigfus scrambled up and White Gunnbjorn grinned and made for me, a blade in his hand. His eyes, I saw were strange, colourless—even his lashes were white.

`Leave him,' Vigfus gasped. 'Help me—get out of here. Einar is coming.'

Gunnbjorn snarled at me, then hooked a shoulder under his master's armpit and hauled him up. They were four steps further on when, nearly sobbing with the sheer anger and frustration of watching them get away, I hurled the seax.

It whirled through the gap between us and smacked Gunnbjorn in the back. There was a crack and he shrieked and collapsed in a heap, knocking Vigfus over in front of him.

Gunnbjorn was flailing, trying to reach his back, gasping for help. Vigfus, cursing, saw his state, scrambled up and hopped off, vanishing into the milling throng. I tried to follow, but the pain in my ankle made me shriek as loud as Gunnbjorn, so I fell and Einar and the rest found me, sprawled in the street, pounding it with my fists, face streaked with blood and snot and sweat.

Gunnar Raudi rolled me over, had two men haul me up. Einar hunkered down by Gunnbjorn, who was moaning and still trying to reach his back.

`Take it out,' I heard him groan. 'I can't feel my legs. Take it out.'

There was nothing to take out. The seax was no throwing knife; the haft had hit him on the spine and broken something vital.

Einar rolled him over surprisingly gently and spoke quickly, for we didn't have much time left before someone hefty and armed came to find out what the trouble was.

`Gunnbjorn; he said, 'you are done for.'

Ìt would seem so,' the man answered painfully, through clenched teeth. His face was as white as the bone hair plastered limply to his skull, even through the patina of dust. His eyebrows and lashes were white; his eyes were not colourless, I saw, but a faint shade of violet.

Ì can let you die as a man,' said Einar, `with a good blade in your hand and a bench in Valholl.'

You could see the nod in Gunnbjorn's eyes, even if his neck could no longer make it.

Òr I can leave you here,' he said, 'in this street, where you will probably live long enough to be carried to a bed and cared for a little, until you die a nithing.' He paused and shrugged. 'Perhaps you may even live.

I have seen such. A man I saw once in Miklagard had a marvellous seat with an awning and was carried about by thralls after having his legs crushed under a ship he was careening.'

Having made the point, he leaned closer, dangling Gunnbjorn's own knife by the blade, haft tantalising inches from the man's Palm. 'Tell me where Vigfus is going with the girl,' he said.

Gunnbjorn moaned.

`He left you to die here,' Einar pointed out.

Gunnbjorn's voice was scarcely above a whisper now. 'I have a mother, Hrefna Ulfsdottir. In Solmundsteading in the Vestfold . . .'

Ì will send word that you died well. And the purse under your left armpit.'

He closed his eyes then, already seeing the ravens. 'The Sea Storm. The howe of the Sea Storm, looking for Atil's hoard. The girl knows. To the north-west, one, maybe two days, she says.'

Einar dropped the knife-haft into Gunnbjorn's palm at the same moment he slit his throat. Then we left, while the blood pooled into a scarlet mud-puddle beneath his head and the street emptied, for no one wanted to answer questions about a dead man.

It was like being on the sea in a swell. We crossed the seared steppe under a sun like a fist, kicking up puffs of black soil as we moved over the rolling yellow grass, heading for the next green line on the horizon.

Eventually, the line would thicken, grow larger, haze out of the heat into stands of pine and alder and birch. The slow, undulating steppe was studded with them, each huddled like a herd of living creatures round a gulley, where water trickled sluggishly to the Dnepr. Under the trees was heady with resin, thick with needles and mulch, and an even more oppressive heat. But it offered shelter from what we feared most: Pecheneg horsemen.

It was, as Valknut never seemed too tired to point out, a truly bad idea, heading out on to the steppe on foot, with no more than two days' hard flatbread, rank cheese and some of the dried meat strips the Rus horsemen used.

They stuck it under their saddles and cloths, where the horse sweat softened it and juiced it up—mare sweat tasted better, they swore—but we had no such luxury and, at the third forest of the day, I stopped trying to chew it and swore it would be better kept to repair my boot soles with.

`Give it here,' shouted one of the band, a pox-faced half-Slav called Skarti. 'I'll stick it down my breeks for you. Same idea, different sweat.'

They laughed, this dripping, evil-smelling bunch. They panted like dogs and filled leather bottles with river water, softened bread and meat in the stream before trying to eat it, gasped on their needle couches With the weight of the heat—and joked.

Einar had to turn eager men down when he told them of his plan and that he needed sixty good men from the company to get Hild back. He had sent word to Sviatoslav and his three sons that men of Prince Vladimir's druzhina had broken oath and run into the steppe, taking with them a slave from Einar, and that he had gone to bring all of them back. That, he hoped, would excuse his own absence.

Einar's assured calm had gone, replaced by a morose nervous energy, where he stroked his moustaches feverishly and gave every sign that his luck had deserted him.

Then the chosen sixty had struck off north and west, following the signs Bagnose and Steinthor, those two tracker hounds, were leaving as they followed the spoor of Vigfus and his crew to the mysterious howe of the Sea Storm.

And I had gone with them, despite Einar and Illugi and everyone else's misgivings over my strapped-up ankle and the limp I'd had before we'd even started.

But I was determined and Einar didn't put up too much resistance to it. I caught Gunnar Raudi's eye as we started out across the steppe and remembered his words to me, his warnings. Einar, I thought, would be pleased to have me founder on the plains outside Kiev, where he could find a good, sensible excuse to leave me for dead.

The prospect was another good argument for staying behind, but I was more afraid of looking afraid than anything else. That fair-fame trap was closing like steel teeth—I was the Bear Slayer, after all, the young Baldur. I had to go to the howe of the Sea Storm.

`What the hell is the Sea Storm?' Einar had demanded of Illugi Godi, after sending men flying on errands everywhere and gathering gear for the pursuit. He added, in a muttered afterthought. 'What is she doing?'

Ìt is no secret in these parts. Dengizik, the Sea Storm, was a Hun lord,' Illugi corrected. 'They know his name round here. They say he was Atil's son.'

Einar's head came up and he and Illugi looked at each other, exchanging the gods knew what in their glances.

`Perhaps there is a clue there to Atil's hoard,' I offered. 'Maybe that is Atil's hoard and she is leading them to it.'

Einar swung his glare at me, pure black ice, and I felt the weight of it. I should have stopped then, but somehow could not, as children do when they start in on horse-goading for the first time. A savagery comes on them then that those who know watch for, dragging the offenders away and cuffing them round the head.

Ì think not,' Illugi offered pensively. 'This Hun tomb is one everyone knows and almost certainly has been raided already. Atil's hoard, it is well known, is hidden.'

`Just so,' I said, testing the ankle now that I had slung all my gear on. `So well hidden that a madwoman knows how to find it.'

Einar stayed silent, busying himself with his own gear, but Illugi frowned at me as a signal to stop, but I was dancing on the fire-mountain edge now, fearless and capering.

`Hard to say who is more touched,' I went on, not looking at anyone. 'Her with her rolling eyes and shakes and sure wisdom that she knows where these riches are hid, or all of us for following blindly after.'

Then I gazed straight at Einar and said, 'Maybe she is your doom. Sent by Odin, who does not like oath-breakers . . .'

I got no further, for his hand was on my throat and his black eyes so close to mine I could feel the lashes on my cheeks. I could not breathe, dare not move.

`You have not been with us long, Rurik's son, but already I am regretting being so indulgent for your father's sake.'

His grip tightened and I felt my eyes bulge like a frog's.

Èinar,' said Illugi warningly and even through the roaring in my ears I heard the anxious sound in his voice. The steel fingers closed a little harder.

Àn exchange of views?' enquired a new voice, barely heard through the thunder in my head. 'Or are you offering a kiss of peace, as the Christ-men do when they promise friendship?'

The fingers relaxed a little and Einar's voice was booming, even though he spoke in the softest of growls:

'This is no matter for you, Gunnar Raudi.'

I tried to look for him, but Einar's eyes were locked on mine still, great tunnels, like the entrances to dwarven caves.

Ì shall not speak on it, then,' said Gunnar easily. 'I have another who will do that.'

The soft sucking sound of a blade from a sheath was echoed by Illugi's indrawn breath. 'Hold this,' he declared, deep and stern and I knew, without seeing, that he had his staff up. 'Gunnar, put peace-strings back on that. Einar, let the boy go. There is nothing but doom in this for all.'

The release, when it came, was sudden enough to make me fall to the ground, Coughing, my throat thundering with pain and every breath in it a rasp with thorns. When I could finally look up and take Illugi's offered wrist, I found my legs shook.

Gunnar Raudi, his snow-in-bracken hair tied back with a leather thong, stood easily, casually, one hand on the hilt of his sword. Einar, his lips like a scar, stood opposite him, the black cloak of hair framing a face pale as a winter moon.

Illugi stepped forward between them, as if to sever some unseen rope that seemed to be leaning them towards one another.

`This Hun lord,' he went on, as if nothing had interrupted the conversation, 'was the Great City's enemy, so it is believed. He fought them in his time and was slain for it by a general called Anagestes. He was brought back to the steppe lands to be howed up.'

The tension, like a sail emptied of wind, flapped once and was gone. Einar grunted, stuffed gear into a leather bag and looped it over one shoulder. His shield went over the other. No one was taking mail, despite the threats: the heat was too great for that.

`Well, one thing is certain,' Einar said, offering a grin free of any mirth. 'Our Hild is leading him a little dance out on to the steppe.'

Our Hild. Like she was his sister. I watched him combing his hair to try to rid it of the worst of the nits, then tie it back with a leather thong against the heat. My own crawled with lice, but I would not shave it, as others did, since that was the mark of a thrall and I could not bring myself to go so far, sensible or not.

Einar shouldered past Gunnar Raudi and I swear I saw the hair on them rise, like the hackles on wolves, as they brushed against each other. My throat ached and I knew that there would be the mark of five livid bruises on it.

Our Hild. She was no more 'our Hild' than I could fart gold, but Einar clearly thought she was one of the Oathsworn, whether she had sworn or no. He did not, for an eyeblink, imagine that Hild could be playing him false and Vigfus was on the correct track, which was my thought on the matter at the time. Wrong, of course.

Illugi Godi looked once at Gunnar Raudi, then at me and shook his head. 'You are fools, the one for his loose gob, the other for getting into a pissing contest with the likes of Einar.'

Ìf you don't want to get your toes wet,' answered Gunnar Raudi with a chuckle, levering himself off the doorpost, 'then keep your shoes away from my pisser.'

Illugi raised a defiant chin and his staff, the mark of his rank, but Gunnar merely grinned at him and swaggered off.

Àsgard seems a little deaf to you these days, Odin priest,' he threw back over his shoulder as he went—

and I saw Illugi flinch, his head drooping for the first time that day.

There was no hint of any of that now as Einar took a knee, sweat-gleamed and grinning, to face the lolling-tongued dog-men he had led into the Grass Sea.

`We must be close,' he called out, glancing at the sun as it started to die, slow and glorious on the edge of the world. 'Tomorrow we'll be on them and get our Hild back.'

The men growled appreciative responses, muted and weary in the heat.

Einar climbed slowly to his feet and hefted his shield and gear to more comfortable spots. 'For now,' he grinned, 'we move.'

Òur Hild,' I muttered morosely as I got up and Illugi, passing, heard it and cocked his head quizzically.

Òur Hild,' I repeated. 'She has suffered nothing but hard knocks from us. He even took away the one thing she had, that bloody spear-shaft. And yet he imagines she is "our Hild".'

`She suffered worse under Vigfus and Lambisson,' Illugi reminded me sternly, leaning on his staff, 'from which we rescued her.'

I grudgingly admitted that and he eyed me carefully as I limped forward.

`Make no mistake with Einar, though,' he went on, for my ears only. 'He calls her "our Hild" because that is what she is. Not Vigfus's, or Lambisson's, or the property of Martin the thrice-cursed monk. Ours, Orm.

As the Elk is ours. As the silver hoard is ours. I would watch my sullen face and loud tongue round Einar these days. You have become . . . unlucky . . . for him. Next time he may rip the throat out of you.'

I looked straight back at him and saw the harsh lines etched in his face, lines of worry and strain, and Gunnar Raudi's words came back to me. I saw the gods were crushing our priest with their apathy these days and he could find no way to speak to them that would get them to listen.

Ì know it,' I replied and slapped my leg. `Let's hope my limp gets no worse and he has, with all sadness, to leave me behind, eh?'

`He would do it,' Illugi said.

Ì have always known that, I am thinking,' I said flatly. 'The difference here, today, is that now so would you, Illugi Godi. A good offering to appease whatever gods Einar has annoyed, eh, godi? Better than a fighting horse, you think?'

I left him, savage with the triumph of the moment, turning away and limping after the others, out of the twilight forest and on to the baking steppe. Later, I was ashamed of myself for having said it, for Illugi had been patient and good with me. But too much had happened by then.

We reached another huddle of trees as the darkness grew and the stars came out. We had no fires and the night was cold, so that those who had decided not to burden themselves with cloaks found themselves shivering, doubly cold after the baking heat of the day. We shared, then, huddled in twos and threes, silvered by a great wheel of stars and moonlight in a perfect, clear night.

In the washed silver of early dawn we were up and assembled, coughing, farting, sniffing, chewing. Men shivered, took a final piss and sorted out their gear, knowing Bagnose had come in during the night with news.

The tomb was found and Vigfus with it, led by the nose to it, it seemed to me, following on after Hild.

Steinthor was watching the entrance even now.

Einar listened and nodded and clapped Bagnose on the shoulder, then looked over the wolf-eager faces round him, their breath steaming in the dawn chill, and nodded, smiling. 'This is the edge of a big stretch of forest,' he said. 'It is cut up by lots of gulleys and some of them are quite steep and choked with brush, so watch your feet. Our enemy is no more than an hour's walk away, at what seems to be a set of stairs leading to an entrance high in the side of a ravine. With luck, we will trap them all inside and smoke them out.'

He looked at me and his smile widened, so that the feral-sharp teeth at the side of his mouth were exposed, yellow and gleaming. 'Like a bear hunt, eh, Orm?'

The others chuckled. Einar had them bound to the enterprise with the promise of an easy victory and the luck of the Bear Slayer at their command. You had to admire him.

Bagnose hadn't been wrong about the gulleys and the brush. I had been congratulating myself on keeping up, despite the ankle, but this last section ended at the entrance to a sheer-sided gulley, with a river splashing down the middle of it. When Bagnose silently signalled a halt, I sank down gratefully, feeling the pain, as if someone was shoving a hot brand straight through my ankle-bones.

I wanted to look at it, but dared not take the boot off, or remove the bindings, for I knew it would swell like a dead sheep's belly and that would be that. Instead, I stood in the stream and felt the cool water soak into my boot and wash round the throb of my foot.

A bird whirred and insects hummed as we followed the stream, straight towards what appeared to be a vertical wall of exposed rock. The stream curved round and disappeared and I heard the distant splash of water from a fall. The heat was crippling and there was no air at all, for all we were near water, just a strange stillness. Even the plagues of insects had vanished.

Steinthor and Bagnose appeared as we came up, so nonchalant that we all relaxed, for they swaggered out openly, as if there was no danger.

`They went in about two hours ago,' Steinthor said, wiping his streaming face with a cuff. 'They camped at the foot of those steps last night and spent most of the morning cutting what tall trees they could find to make a bridge at the top. Then they went up.'

We all saw the steps, rough-cut in a half-spiral up one side of the gulley. I started for it and something smacked wetly on my bare forearm. I rubbed it absently, then noticed it was water, but gritty.

I looked up at a strange, brass-coloured sky and wished my father with us, for he knew weather better than anyone and this was nothing I had seen before. I have experienced it twice since, trading down the Black Sea and again in Serkland.

Einar left a dozen men at his back and led the rest of us up the steps. At the top, with room for only one or two, we found it was an outcrop, round which the stream bent. Below, spilling from the far wall, was where the stream began, in a waterfall, whose spray was wonderfully cooling.

Spanning the gap between the outcrop and a wide ledge was a rickety bridge of warped timbers, the wood Vigfus and his men had been cutting. On the ledge beyond lay a scatter of bones around what appeared to be three or four sapling stumps, emerging out of the rock.

Steinthor grinned at our confusion, for he had crept up this far and worked it out. `Grave robbers from before,' he said, pointing. 'Look—those were spears, weighted to shoot upwards when that area was stepped on. Right up the crease.'

`Traps,' Einar said and the word was passed down the line on the stairs, from head to head like a leaping spark. 'And traps,' he added loudly, to take the sting out of it, 'mean treasure.'

He strode out on to the timber walkway, took three swift steps and was on the ledge, moving cautiously to where the spear-stumps remained. Ketil Crow followed and the next man, the ever-jesting Skarti, paused nervously, eyeing the chasm under the rickety timbers and the unknown dangers of the ledge beyond. The sweat trickled down between the old pox lumps of his face.

We all waited patiently. Since Vigfus's men had all made it, it seemed to me there was little danger left, but there was also no harm in letting someone else go first. When Skarti reached safety, turning with a grin of relief, we all cheered him.

On the ledge, which was broader and wider than it looked from the level of the stream, about another dozen of us congregated; the rest remained on the steps. A wind breathed and sighed up the gulley, rustling the tinder-dry brush, bringing a welcome coolness.

There was an entrance, blocked once by masonry, which now lay in thick chunks. Illugi Godi picked one up, turning it in his hands. It had symbols on it, or the remains of them. There were more symbols, age-worn, on either side and, with surprise, I saw they were truncated Latin—I knew the words Dis Manibus, recognised ala and started to work out the others.

`That big turd with the Dane axe,' Steinthor said, indicating the masonry chunks. 'He can use the blunt end, too.'

I remembered the yellow beard, the grin, the axe, and shivered.

`They call him Boleslav,' Steinthor went on. 'Saxon, I think. Tough, though. Carved his way through this

. . . stuff.'

`Roman,' Illugi Godi said. 'I have heard of this. They make a gruel and plaster it on like daub, but it sets hard as stone.'

`What are the markings?' demanded Einar and winced as a sudden flurry of wind blew dust at us.

Illugi shrugged. 'Warning? Curse? A request to knock? I can hardly even try to work out what is in pieces.'

`Latin,' I offered, running my fingers over the sigils. 'They say this is the tomb of Spurius Dengicus, khan of the Kutriguri. Carried here to be buried under the eye of Rome by his brother, Rome's friend, Ernak.'

`Spurius Dengicus? That's Roman, not Hun,' said Eyjolf, whom everyone called Finnbogi, since he was from those lands.

Illugi, who knew a few things himself, answered: 'They gave him a proper name for his tomb, doing honour as befits his status. But no respectable Roman family would want their name associated with a steppe lord, so the Roman chiefs found a family that had died out, only the name remaining.

`So it is that all adopted Romans are called Spurius,' he finished.

And so it was. Nowadays, of course, anyone who is considered a shifty lot, not quite what he claims to be, is called Spurius in the Great City.

Ànything else we should know?' demanded Einar, with a pointed look at Illugi. Ànything that will actually help us, that is?'

I frowned and traced the worn letters. `There's something about not disturbing his rest,' I offered.

With perfect timing, there came a distant wail from inside the dark opening, a wolf of a sound that set everyone's hackles up. Men backed away; even the ones on the step heard it.

Òdin's arse,' snarled Bagnose suddenly, `what is happening to the sky?'

Most of it seemed to have gone, eaten by a towering wall of darkness. Even as we looked at it, yellow lightning flickered and the wind rushed at us, like the fetid breath of a dragon, lashing us with a stinging rain filled with grit.

`Thor's goats' arses, more like,' shouted Steinthor above the sudden roar of wind. Men yelled and huddled. Those on the lower steps started to go down, those higher up pushed those behind.

`There's no shelter there!' bellowed Einar above the sudden howling swirl of the wind. Ùp here, into the rock.'

They staggered up and Gunnar Raudi, with Ketil Crow, bent to hold the timber frame, frantic—as were we all—that it would topple, or be swept away and leave us stranded up here. Thunder cracked; the yellow heavens roiled and Illugi Godi stood upright, staff in one hand, both arms upraised.

Àll-Father hear us!'

`Move your fucking fat arses!' screamed Ketil Crow as men stumbled up the steps and across the ledge and into the dark opening like a line of frenzied ants.

Àll-Father, hear us. Send your winged ones to bind the wounds of the sky. Ask Thor why he rides his goat chariot over us. Lift us from this field of battle . . .'

A man, caught off-balance by the wind, shrieked his way into the chasm, disappearing beneath the waterfall.

Àll-Father . . .'

`Save it, godi, no one is listening to you,' snarled Einar and spat into the dust and mud-brown sluice of rain. 'Run, if you value your life.'

And I ran, limping, heedless of the pain, into the dark opening of the tomb.

Inside, someone had sparked up a torch, but the band huddled as close together as possible in the half-light of a stone passage, shivering, wet, cold in the sudden chill of stone. There was a taste of old dust and bones in my mouth.

`Well done for the torch,' Einar panted, coming up with Ketil Crow and Gunnar Raudi, the latter hauling the rickety timber bridge after him. We paused, all sweat and gleaming eyes in the dark, as another of those low, mournful moans drifted up from the light at the other end of the passage.

Light from a torch none of us had lit.

The storm grumbled. Einar pushed his way through the packed mass of us in the narrow passage and peered to where the yellow glow was.

`Well,' he said. 'Such a light in a dark place always means there is gold there, as anyone knows.' He turned, his grin startling in the dark. 'At least it means someone is home. Perhaps they will offer us hospitality on a stormy night. Ale and meat and women.'

The laughs were forced, though, and he moved on, stepping boldly while we cringed and waited for the springing spear or worse.

Nothing happened. We followed, cautiously, out of the passage into a wider area, part natural cavern, part construct. An arch, made from Illugi Godi's liquid Roman stone, led through to where the torch burned brightest and I thought to point it out to the priest—then saw his face, anguished, dead-eyed. He had called his gods and heard nothing but anger.

Shields up—those who hadn't lost them in the panic outside—and blades ready, we crept forward.

Beyond the arch, we all stopped. There was an even wider area, flagged with great squares of stone. The middle squares were bisected lengthways by small ridges, only just raised above the surface, and where one large square of stone should have been was an opening, from which came a faint torch glow.

More light, guttering in the wind hissing from outside, spilled from the red torch held by Hild, who was hunkered next to the opening, head cocked like a curious bird.

As we came in, there was that echoing groan from below and she turned and looked at us, a beautiful, beatific smile set in a face milk-pale, below eyes as black and dead as a corpse. Everyone saw it and came to a sudden halt.

'Hild . . . ?' I asked. She turned those eyes on me, without losing the smile, then looked down into the darkness, holding the torch high.

`Walk only on the raised ledge,' she said in a harsh voice. 'Beyond is a door, barred now. It leads down and round to where Dengizik sits with his warriors. Do not step off these ridged ledges or, like Boleslav, you will pay the price for violating Dengizik's last fortress and lie prostrate at his feet.'

There was another whimper, which I now realised was Boleslav in agony. Hild rose then, in a fluid, fast movement like nothing she had ever done before and thrust the torch at where Einar stood, pale under his crow-wings of hair, which stirred in the heat from the flames.

Ì led them down, then left while they gawped, slipped back and barred the door on them. Only Boleslav was left here and I let him come to me, as he did once before. Only this time I kept my legs closed and my feet in the right place, while he did not.'

Her laugh was cracked. Dry-mouthed, sweating, we all peered down the great square hole into the room beyond. Torches flared and there were crowds of men, I saw.

`There are hundreds of them,' muttered Bersi, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand.

`Those are Dengizik's soldiers,' Hild said harshly. Tigfus is among them now, trying to work out how to get back here. He has seen Boleslav fall.'

`So he's trapped?' demanded a voice: Wry-neck, I recognised. 'Good. Leave him there. When the storm blows out, we can leave this gods-cursed place.'

`What of the treasure? And he might manage to climb back up through that hole,' demanded someone else.

Bersi snorted and spat. 'Let's come back in a few weeks,' he said, 'and see who is left and who has been eaten.'

`No!' Hild's voice was the flat of a sword struck on stone. She quivered as with a fever, but there was no white to the eyes she glared at Einar and her pointed finger was like a blade. 'Kill Vigfus. We agreed. Kill Vigfus and all his men. Then we go to Atil's howe.'

Einar nodded. No one spoke. He stepped on to the narrow ledge, no wider than the palm of his hand, and, lightly, gracefully, took three quick steps and was across.

Swallowing, I took the torch from Hild, staring at her. She stared back and I had to look away from those eyes, like beads of jet. Behind them lurked . . . something else, something even darker.

Ketil Crow was equally graceful; Wryneck, after a quick wipe of his dry mouth, shuffled waveringly across and then I followed, seeing figures below me and the sudden spark of tinder. One by one we crossed.

Einar nodded. 'We finish Vigfus here, lads. There is no escape for him now.'

We agreed. The words gnawed me, kicked in the thought that had eluded me since the fight on the Rus boat. It crashed on me like a sluice of cold water.

She had planned it with Einar. She had spotted Hogni as one of Vigfus's men and had told Einar and then given him her price for leading him to Attila's silver, for giving up her precious talisman, the spear-shaft.

Vigfus. Who had beaten and raped her and now faced her vengeance.

She had plotted with Hogni, pretending to want away from Einar and all with Einar's knowing. He had tried to trap them on the Rus boat—that's why he had all the men armed and mailed, for he knew there would be a raid. But when Vigfus wasn't part of it, he let them take her, thinking then to trap Vigfus in the town.

That had also failed, which wasn't part of the plan . . . but he had trusted that he knew Hild well enough, that she was leading Vigfus to where he could be finally trapped and slain. All he had to do was follow, to this place.

He had sweated a bit and lost sleep over it but she had kept her part in the bargain.

I sank down then, drained of all feeling. There was cleverness in it and ruthlessness and that was no fault.

But there was also a coldness and something sick and black as rot.

Once, when I was hunting wild honey late in the season and thought I'd found a comb in a tree hollow, I had boldly thrust my hand in, for speed can foil bees made sluggish with cold. I had plunged into stickiness and triumphantly seized a handful and pulled it out—only to find the slick remains of dead bees and old comb, a stinking mess that made me gag.

I knew where this malignant rot came from, too. Einar, I thought, had made a bad bargain, no matter what he believed Hild would do for him now. Whatever Hild was before she was something else now, something . . . Other . . . and something that had a plan all of its own.

She wanted, I was thinking, to get to Atil's howe. Had to. Needed us to help her do it—and what then?

Einar's eyes were too full of silver to see clearly and, worse, he was dragging us all along, I saw with cold despair, in the shackles of our own oath honour.

He and Valknut forced out the huge stone beam that barred the equally heavy stone doors. No one wanted to ask how a slip of a girl like Hild had managed to shut and bar the door on her own.

We started down the stairs, reached a landing which led to the left, then continued to where Vigfus's torches lit the room beyond. Two steps further down, we stopped, amazed, afraid.

The room was lined with men, armoured in cobwebs and rotting leather and rusting metal lappets. They sat, cross-legged, spears upright and butted into round holes in the floor. A few elaborately helmeted heads had toppled, some skeletal hands had slipped from the spears, but Dengizik's faithful sat on, in the same position they had once taken up on the day the tomb was sealed.

The enormity of that stunned me into sitting down on the lowest stair. They had marched in, sat down, butted their spears and died. Poison? Perhaps, though I would not have been surprised to learn that Dengizik's faithful guard had simply stayed sitting until they died of starvation and thirst.

They sat in neat lines flanking a flagged approach running from the stair to where Dengizik sat, equally armoured, on a stone throne, a great cross on one side . . . no, not a cross. Cross-shaped, but from the arm of the T hung hair. Horsetails: the standard of a Hun chieftain, I learned later. A great, ornate helmet was set on the top of it and I realised this was because the withered thing on the throne had no head.

I got to know those standards well, for the Khazars, who would not have been out of place at Attila's side, had them, too, as well as the strange disc-standards that marked them as Jewishmen—but I never again came across a howed-up steppe lord with no head.

Nor were the lines quite as neat now as they must have been for centuries. The tilting stones above opened on both sides and Boleslav had slipped down one on the left, straight on to the grounded spears of the long-dead.

His weight had snapped the old wood; he had crashed into the dusty corpses beyond and rolled out on to the flagged approach. Now he lay at Dengizik's enthroned feet, pierced through chest and belly, finished off with a merciful throat-cut.

All that strength and skill, I marvelled, remembering him spinning the giant Dane axe, laid low by a slip of a girl. And I shivered at what he had done to her to deserve that impaled death. I knew well enough and half the shiver was for me.

Do not love me, she had said.

Vigfus stepped forward, splendid in gilded mail and a marvellous helmet that had been new for his great-grandfather, which covered the whole face save for the mouth and eyes and had gilded eyebrows and two huge raven feathers.

Behind and on either side were his men, desperate-grim and hefting their axes and swords and spears.

There was only one sure way out of that room and that was to go through us and there were not nearly enough of them for that.

Someone flitted past me, back up the stairs and I almost followed, thinking we were well out of it—then I saw it was Bagnose, heading back to the opening, which lay above the room, nocking an arrow as he went.

Steinthor, I presumed, was already there.

Ì suppose,' Vigfus said, scowling, 'there is no bargaining here.'

`None,' replied Einar with a twisted smile.

Òne to one to settle this, winner lets the others go?'

Einar shook his head, chuckling. 'What—and let all this planning go to waste? How does it feel, Quite the Dandy, ladies' man, to have been so trapped by my lady?'

Vigfus narrowed his eyes at the full import of what had been said. His men looked anxiously from one to the other.

Ìf she is your lady,' Vigfus snarled, 'I wish you well of her. You pair are suited. Personally, I found her a poor, cold, dry hump but she seemed to want more, so I let my lads have a go. Most preferred to find a goat.'

Some of his men chuckled. Most, realising that that poor, cold, dry hump was what had led them to this wyrd, were less amused.

Ènough talk,' said Einar coldly and snaked forward. An arrow hissed from the opening above and one of Vigfus's men screeched and plucked at the shaft through both sides of his neck. Men closed, steel crashed, shields whumped under blows.

I was cautious, I ganged up with old Wryneck on one man and, between us, we cut him down in a flurry of blows, me hacking deep scores in his arms and one calf, Wryneck battering lumps off his head and swearing.

Another hurtled out of the darkness at us and I twisted to face him. Pain sprang from my ankle and I grunted and stopped. Wryneck clashed with his man and I barely managed to deflect a blow meant for him.

An axe whirred out of nowhere and clattered off Gunnar Raudi's shield. My opponent, black-bearded, screaming, cut a vicious diagonal slash, which I sprang back from. His momentum carried the blow into one of the dead warriors, who exploded in a great eruption of dust and dead insects and toppled sideways. An arrow from above then smacked Black Beard between the shoulder blades, propelling him straight at me, so that he fell on his face and slid to my feet.

His shield smashed into my injured ankle and I went down, sick with the pain of it, dropping sword and shield to clutch the thing, howling. Wryneck, too busy with his own man, never spared me a glance.

Through the sparkling lights of pain in front of my eyes, I saw Einar cut his man down with a swift series of feints and strikes and vicious shield punches. He turned then, to where Gunnar Raudi was trading blows with Vigfus, who scorned a shield and had a boarding axe in one hand and a long seax in the other.

They cut and leaped and spun, elbowing Dengizik's dead men aside with curses. The chamber filled with the dust of old death, the fear-stink and blood of new.

Vigfus was good, too, and I remembered him spidering across rooftops, swinging in and out of shuttered openings, leaping to grab a rope in mid-air. Fast and limber, for all that he had no sense of dress at all.

Twice Gunnar Raudi had almost lost his sword to the boarding axe, Vigfus swirling it round to trap the sword in the curve of its beard, flicking his wrist to lock it, then trying to wrench it out of Gunnar's grasp.

But Vigfus's magnificent helmet was a hindrance and you could see why sensible warriors had given that type up for one with a simple nasal: you couldn't see anything out of the corner of your eye and, in a whirling fight like this, that was suicide.

Gunnar circled. Einar came up behind him and I thought he was moving to Gunnar's sword side, to make it two on one. As he did, Gunnar Raudi stiffened, half turned—and Vigfus's axe hurled round and took him between neck and shoulder, cleaving deep in a splinter of rings and bone and blood.

My scream was lost in the echoing shrieks and yells of the battle. Einar flung himself over Gunnar's body at Vigfus, roaring his challenge, spittle flying. I half stumbled to where Gunnar lay, blood pooling thickly on the dusty floor.

He was gone, already white, barely able to speak. His lips moved in the frosted berry beard, now bright with new, vicious red spilling from his mouth. If he had something to say other than with those frantic eyes, I never heard it. When they glazed over, I closed them.

Vigfus, fingers curling on the wire-wrapped handle of his axe, crabbed sideways, elbowing aside another fighting pair, one of whom aimed a brief, speculative cut at Vigfus as he did so.

In that helmet, he almost missed it, was left off balance and clattered into another of the Oathsworn, who then stumbled into another of those dead warriors, impaling himself on an age-blackened spear.

I have been asked by bright-eyed youngsters who have never fought for their lives with shield and steel what it's like. I never tell them that it is four or five minutes of mad fear and luck, of slashing cuts and savagery, of shit and blood and shrieking.

The sagas tell it better and the one about the battle between Einar and Vigfus would, no doubt, have been memorable for its superior, clever kennings and nobility. Reality was different and vicious.

Einar, snarling, his sword dripping blood, slashed at Vigfus in a flurry of steel and Vigfus danced sideways, raised himself on his toes and swung the axe downwards in a vicious arc, screaming as he did so.

It took Einar's shield just below the rim, a solid pine on pine wheel of wood, and split it lengthwise. With a swift shrug, Einar was out of the straps, both hands on the hilt of his sword and Vigfus, still holding the buried axe, was jerked sideways by the dead weight of the dropped shield.

Too late, he released his grip. Einar's two-handed blow spanged off one side of that helmet, took Vigfus on the top of the left shoulder with the splintering crack of bone and sheared down through mail, bone, flesh and sinew until it popped out of his armpit with a sucking sound and a spray of ruined iron rings.

Vigfus roared, spun away from his falling arm and clapped his remaining hand over the great rush of blood from the stump. The second blow crushed mail rings into his ribs. The third slashed a steak out of his thigh. He went down, bellowing as Einar hacked shreds off him until there was no more noise.

The others of his crew tried to give up, but Hild would not have that. Screeching, hair flying like a Valkyrie, she demanded they all die.

Two of the Dandy's men threw down their weapons and Einar cut them down where they stood with a few swift strokes. After that, the others fought on with the desperate ferocity of the cornered, but it was short and they were all chopped to bloody ruin by packs of Oathsworn.

Then there was silence, save for the pant and gasp of ravaged lungs. Someone was puking, hard and noisy, and the impaled man was growling and yelling as others tried to lever his arm off the spear-point. The iron stink of blood was everywhere; the floor of the tomb was slushed with viscous red mud.

And I sat there in a widening slick of Gunnar Raudi's blood, his head in my lap, watching the other sluggish pool form slowly from the stab wound in his back.

Eight men were dead; twenty-four more had wounds, some of them deep. In the 12 stunned twilight of battle, Ketil Crow and Illugi took me under the armpits and hauled me up and away from Gunnar Raudi.

I let them, numbed by what I thought I knew, never taking my eyes off Einar.

Had he stabbed Gunnar Raudi in the back, hard enough to wound, to distract him?

In that half-light and confusion I turned it over and over and still it vanished like smoke.

In the end, I knew, with a deep, sick feeling, that he had, but there was nothing I could do. He was, I thought with a flush of fear, as fetch-haunted as Hild. And had broken his oath yet again in that mad moment.

Then I kept hearing Gunnar Raudi's warnings and knew, with a nauseating certainty, that I would be next.

None of it would bring Gunnar Raudi back. Illugi and I, working without a word between us while the others bound up wounds and sorted out their gear, cleaned Gunnar Raudi as best we could and laid him out on his back, hands folded on his sword. I had to tear strips off his underkirtle to bind his shoulder back to his body, rather than have that terrible gape, so like a lipless mouth.

Einar came across after we had done this, stared down at the body and where we hunkered near it. 'A good man,' he said. `He died a good death.'

I could not speak. Blood leaked into my mouth from biting the inside of my lip to keep from screaming at him: You killed Gunnar Raudi. You killed him. Like you killed Eyvind.

Einar ordered him laid at the feet of the throne, where the mouldering, fur-rotted remains of Dengizik sat, skeletal hands on the stone arms, the fur rim of his rusting helmet festering on his neck.

Everyone wanted out of that place, especially when Hild drifted like silent smoke down the stairs, to stand over the carved remains of Vigfus and smile her beautiful, fey smile.

`Dengizik has no head,' Einar noted, his voice cracked with dryness.

`The Romans took it and put it on a pole,' Hild answered, her voice seeming sucked out of her in a hiss.

'His faithless young brother Ernak, who would not stand with him against the Great City, had permission to take the body, on condition the Romans sealed the tomb, lest his fetch return. Five hundred years and more it has sat here. My mother told me this.'

There were looks flying one to another, from eyes round and white with fear. Tongues snaked over dry lips as the dust settled, mote by mote and almost sibilant. No one liked talk of a fetch in such a place.

Ìs there anything we need from here?' Einar demanded of her, his voice crow-harsh in the blood-reeked twilight.

`Not for me,' she answered, soft as the rustle of a shroud. 'But this is Atil's son and those swords were made by the same smith who forged Atil's blade from the end of the Christ spear. My distant kinsman, Regin the Volsung.'

Two swords lay across the cobwebbed, dusty brocade of Dengizik's robed lap, but no one even wanted to go near them, never mind claim them as spoil.

We left that place, treasureless and afraid, not even having looted Vigfus's men. By the time we had got back across the timber bridge—knocking it spinning into the waterfalled chasm after everyone was safely across—and down the steps, the storm had ended. The sun was out, the sky a clear-washed cloudless blue, and the ground steamed in the heat. But every leaf had a muddy wash, rapidly drying to dust in the heat.

At the stream, we refilled leather skins and bottles, soaked our heads, and considered how best to go on.

There were seven of us with wounds likely to slow everyone down and I was one of them, but we were paired with others who helped us back up the brush-covered ravines and on to the steppe.

Thereafter, it was simply a long world of pain, step by fire-laced step, hour after hour, back to Kiev.

That ankle has never been right since; it aches in cold weather and, now and then, simply gives out and throws me over like a sack of grain, always when I am trying to impress with my gravitas and dignity. Each time it flicks pain at me, I remember Gunnar Raudi.

Others suffered much more. By the second day, the man whose forearm had been speared was running a high fever and his arm had swollen like a balloon. By the time we reached the outskirts of Kiev he was being carried in a cloak held at all four corners by his oarmates, drenched in sweat and moaning piteously, while the arm had turned black to the armpit.

Illugi tried what he knew, a potion made from bark of aspen, quickbeam, willow and wych-elm: fifteen barks in all made up this one. It failed, so he tried a poultice made from the ashes of burned hair and everyone contributed some, even Bersi, whose waist-length flame-red hair had never, ever been cut and who believed it bad luck to do so.

It was certainly bad luck for Illugi's patient, who died thrashing in his sleep that night in Kiev, having made it to safety. I watched him being wrapped for burial and knew only that his name was Hedin and that he had once kept bees in Uppsala.

On the open steppe we had spotted distant horsemen, beyond arrow range and moving with us like a pack of questing wolves. But they did not come near and everyone agreed it was probably because we had come out of the tomb. Perhaps, it was argued, they thought we were fetch warriors and did not dare to contest us.

I thought it was because of Hild, the only one unconcerned by them. She walked with bold, long strides in her red half-boots, swishing the skirt of her long, blue, red-embroidered dress and only slightly soiled overmantle, a Rus zanaviska, her dark hair spilling free.

She was the perfect picture of a Norse maiden—until she turned to look at you and you saw that almost all her eyes were almost entirely black, all dark pupil, with only a thin corona of white. Regin's kinswoman and, if you knew of him, you could see the resemblance.

Ìs that the same Regin from the tales, then?' demanded Bersi during one rest halt, when we all hunkered and panted, wiping sweat out of our eyes. 'Sigurd's oarmate?'

`So she seems to say,' Skarti growled, glancing uneasily at where Hild sat, neat in her dress and staring at the horizon.

`Not an oarmate,' growled Bagnose, putting one finger to his nose and snotting to the side.

Èh?'

`Not an oarmate,' repeated Bagnose. 'Re-gin had Sigurd as fostri. He was brother to Fafnir, who became a dreaded wyrm through gold-greed and a curse. Regin was a skilled smith, though, who made Sigurd a marvellous sword. Sigurd killed Fafnir the wyrm and ate his heart, which gave him wisdom to see Regin planned his murder, so he killed Regin, too.'

`That's a lot of killing, it seems to me,' Steinthor said, 'even for a saga tale.'

Òver a hoard, too,' noted Bersi and we all fell silent, brooding on that, until it was time to move off.

Ìt's all just tales for fucking children,' growled Wryneck. 'Why we bother with this is the only mystery in it.'

Two other men died in Kiev, of the same sort of thing, their wounds swelling and turning black. A Greek doctor, whom Illugi summoned in desperation, shook his head and said the men must have had something get in the wound, a miasmic rot that festered their injuries.

We never told him where we had been, but knowing looks were exchanged. Dengizik's reach was long, it seemed, and everyone agreed that it had been deep thinking not to have taken his swords, even if they had been Regin's work.

We wrapped and buried our dead in Kiev and I listened to Illugi's soft, long chants on the wyrd of men, one usually sung by mothers mourning children.

Deep into the night before the army left for Sarkel it went on, for Gunnar Raudi, for all the others who had died and, I was thinking, hunched up with my chin on my knees, for Illugi himself and his lost gods:

`Hunger will devour one, storm dismast another,

One will be spear-slain, one hacked down in battle;

One will drop, wingless, from the high tree,

One will swing from the tall gallows,

The sword edge will shear the life of one,

At the mead-bench, some angry sot,

Soaked with wine, his words too hasty,

Will cut one down and make his wyrd.'

A thousand barrels of ale, fifty thousand sheep, the same in bushels of barley, the same yet again in bushels of millet and wheat. Sixty thousand horses, ropes, awnings, tents, hoes, mattocks . . . I heard all this when accounts of the siege were being studiously written up by scholars in the Great City, years later.

I remember one old beard, pen poised, blinking at me as we sat with olives and bread and wine on my pleasant balcony in the Foreign Quarter, enjoying the breeze across the Horn from Galata.

`How many cheesemakers?' he asked and frowned when I laughed.

I told him a number, but I doubt if there were any. I never saw a decent cheese in all the time we floated with Sviatoslav's army down the Don, or sat under those rune-tiled walls at Sarkel, sweating and fevered and scheming and trying not to die before we got rich.

If we had needed cheese, though, Sviatoslav would have provided it. For a man who famously made war on the run, as they say—no wagons, no means of cooking, just strips of leathery meat sweat-soaked under a saddle—he had changed his methods for the attack on Sarkel.

I saw him once, while sweating to load arrows and barrels of salt mutton—no pork, for half of his army wouldn't eat it, for one reason or another—on the boats, already packed with timbers and Greek siege engineers. There was a great commotion along the river bank, men cheering and breaking off what they were doing to run and line the route a cavalcade was taking.

It was Sviatoslav, cantering along in a cloud of dust at the head of his druzhina, mailed men with horsehair-plumed helmets and bright blue fur-trimmed cloaks, mounted on magnificent horses. In this heat, they would be baking ovens, but the forest of their lances never wavered.

He was visiting each of his sons and it was Yaropolk's turn, but we were too late to turn out smartly for it.

To Einar's annoyance, the Oathsworn greeted the moment like gawping yokels, stripped to the waist, streaked and sweating and loading gear like slaves mainly because we didn't trust the slaves to do it properly.

I don't know what I had expected, but the ruler of the Rus, of Kiev and Novgorod, who controlled from the Baltic to the edge of the territory ruled by the Romans of Miklagard, was a burly little man with a nub of nose and a yellow beard.

He wore white tunic and trousers, like all the Rus under their armour, but his were dazzlingly clean. His head was shaved save for that silver-banded braid over one ear. There was the sparkle of a huge gold ring in the other.

`Not much to look at, is he?' grunted Bersi, pausing in his lifting. He wiped his brow, his great mane of red hair plastered to the middle of his back with sweat.

`You can tell him that when he shoves a stake up your arse and leaves you hanging there,' countered Wryneck, swigging watered ale from a skin. He wiped his snow-white beard and tossed the ale skin to me.

Ìs that what they do here? For what?' demanded Bersi incredulously.

'For some, it is saying the Great Lord of Kiev is not much to look at,' a voice broke in and we turned to see one of the magnificent cavalrymen, helmet held in the crook of his arm, his bald head glistening.

He was smiling, as was the boy with him, a lad of about six or thereabouts, so the panic that had gripped us fled. I squinted up at him while others moved quietly, examining the boy's horse and gear, the beautifully crafted mail of the man, the great metal fishscales of his lamellar coat.

We marvelled and questioned. Three years it took to train a cavalryman in the druzhina of a Rus chieftain, we learned. Six for his horse.

The horseman spoke good Norse—East, of course, but most understood him. We admired his two sabres, his lance, the mace that dangled from one wrist, the cased bow.

Àre the Khazars the same?' I asked and he smiled down at me.

`Not so brave or good-looking,' he replied. `But they are the same; all cavalrymen are. You need to be mad to be one and your horse doubly so. It takes the same time to train them—half the army has Khazar blood in them anyway. We always end up fighting our relations in these affairs.'

We chuckled and said it was the same in the north. I tossed him the skin and he drank and gave it back, wiping excess off his moustaches.

Suddenly, Yaropolk was there, with Einar at his stirrup, both scowling.

`Father is leaving, brother,' the pimpled Yaropolk said pointedly to the boy, then flushed and inclined his head graciously to the man. 'Uncle,' he said and we now realised, with a shock, that the boy was young Prince Vladimir and the man Dobrynya, his uncle on his mother's side. The uncle now raised his helmet, slipped it back over his head and then raised one hand in salute.

`Prince Vladimir,' acknowledged Einar and the boy paused as Yaropolk rode off.

Ì like your men, Einar the Black,' he said in a sweet, unbroken voice. Ìf you survive Biela Viezha, we shall speak again.'

And he was gone, leaving us in a cloud of dust. Einar stroked his moustaches thoughtfully.

`What was all that about?' demanded Bersi. Was that really a Rus prince?'

`Kingship was what it was all about,' grunted Einar. 'When you are born to a thrall woman, you need more of it to survive.' Then he bent to a barrel and heaved. 'Back to work, you useless farts.'

As we fell into the rhythm of passing barrel and sack, someone said plaintively, `What the fuck is Biela Viezha?'

The White Castle, the Slav name for the Khazar fortress at Sarkel, was what it was. The great, white-limestone fortress on a dun-coloured rise in a bend of the Don, almost at the Black Sea was what it was. The greatest insult to the Rus was what it was, for they had to pay ten per cent on every trade flotilla that went up or down from the Black Sea and politely beg for permission to do so.

All the way down the Don, floating gently, poled by yelling, sweating Chud rivermen, we had taunted the accompanying horsemen, who rode and walked their mounts along the north bank of the Don, as sweaty as we were cool.

They were the heavy horse; the lighter ones, the bowmen who rode fat-headed, short-legged, hairy dogs of ponies, were further out, wheeling like flocks of starlings on the far steppe, keeping the Khazar scouts at bay.

If there was any fighting, we never heard of it; we spent most of the time dicing, lazing about, trading fighting tips and hurling apple cores and rye-bread crusts at the luckless, sweating cavalrymen, who took it all in good part, it seemed to me.

But when we saw the White Castle, we knew why they didn't mind. It was dazzling, blinding white and the walls were huge and solid, with four towers and two gates and a bloody great ditch. I had been told that the Khazars had cities of tents and flimsy structures, easily destroyed and just as easily rebuilt. Even their palaces were just mud brick and they lived in them only during the winter.

Not Sarkel. It will come as no surprise to anyone to learn that the Great City had a hand in building it, ever-helpful to balance the power in the area. Sarkel was built with solid pillars and Roman know-how—and now they had sent their cleverest men and their biggest engines to knock it down, which is statecraft to these Romans.

As our boat was manhandled into the shore, one of the horsemen broke away and trotted over to us, peeling off his helmet to reveal a beaming, sweating face with a huge curl of moustache. 'Welcome, sword-brothers,' he chuckled and swept his hand towards the huge edifice squatting on the plain. 'I hope you enjoyed the rest and the apples. Now it is time to play your part.'

We looked at each other, then to those yellow-white walls on which we had to hurl ourselves and no one was smiling when he trotted off, his bellowing laugh drifting back to us, echoed by his companions.

He had to wait to see us suffer, though.

The first days were spent tumbling out everything that had been brought, while horsemen raced off everywhere and dust hazed the world. At night, the cookfires were a field of flickering red blossom.

In two weeks, Sarkel had been cut off and the engineers were doing things with the timbers they'd brought. Spearmen—not the druzhina like us, but the great mass of unarmoured levy, sucked in from every tribe for hundreds of miles—stacked their weapons and dug level pits and raised platforms.

We all watched, fascinated, the first time three of these great efforts lobbed sheep-sized boulders across the steppe at the walls to get the range. They hit with a booming crash and a great puff of dust—but nothing happened; nothing collapsed. Disappointed, we went back to the sweaty, stinking job of scraping and boiling cowhides for glue to help fix the assault towers we would use.

That night, hunkered round our own collection of cookfires, we chewed flatbread, sucked down a good meat-gruel, endured the insects and traded our thoughts back and forth.

`There's no place left to shit,' Bersi complained.

`Sit here,' offered my father.

`Shit,' Bersi clarified. 'No place to shit. I'm fed up with stepping in it, everywhere you go.'

It was true enough. I'd heard the army was anything from sixty thousand to a million men and either could be true, though such a number was impossible to get inside your head.

All I knew was that there were a lot of them and even more animals and women and children. Even for people like us, who'd grown up with shit, things were getting out of hand.

Illugi Godi said there would be trouble over it. People would start to get sick. Einar said that, tomorrow, he would have a place marked out and a pit dug. Everyone would shit there and nowhere else.

`Don't try it drunk,' advised Wryneck, who claimed to have had done this sort of thing before, 'or you'll fall in and stink for a week. If you even get out again, that is.'

But it was Ketil Crow who said what we all wanted to say. 'When are we leaving this?' he growled at Einar. 'Before we get slaughtered on those walls, or die of shit-sickness here, I am hoping to hear you say.'

Einar stroked his moustaches. 'We need to plan it well.'

`Plan what?' demanded Valknut, who was burned dark as a Fir Gorm, the black-men thralls from the very south of the world, so that only his eyes and teeth were seen clearly in the twilight. 'We know where to go—what else is there?'

Òf course,' said that quiet voice from the dark behind Einar. 'That's all you really need, after all.'

She was like a cold wind through an open door. Everyone fell silent under the weight of her renewed presence, but Ketil Crow just half glanced at her, irritated, then spat in the fire. `Do we know where to go?'

he demanded. 'I am wondering why I am following some hag-ridden Finn woman.'

`You think I do not know the way?' Hild challenged, squatting so that her knees came up almost round her ears, the dress pooled in her lap. Her feet, I saw, were neat and bare.

No one spoke, or looked at her long, but Ketil Crow looked from her to where Einar sat, his back to Hild, staring at the fire from under the wings of his hair and saying nothing.

`The others may be afraid of you,' Ketil Crow growled, 'but I am not. If you prove false in this I will rip you from cunt to jawline.'

Hild did not flinch, though a few of us did. Instead, she smiled that fey smile. 'It is good you are not afraid, Ketil Crow,' she said in a voice like the whisper of bat's wings. 'You will need that courage, I am thinking.'

Einar stirred then, half turning to where Hild crouched like some black spider. He shook his head and stroked his moustaches again. 'There's more than just finding it,' he said.

`So you say,' growled Wryneck, 'but I am with Ketil Crow in this matter. It seems to me that a witless girl is about to lead us into the sea of grass. I never trusted women and that has always stood me in good stead.'

`You won't become old and rich,' declared Hild suddenly, in a growl so unlike her own voice that everyone froze. The wind hissed, flattening the fire. Wryneck hawked and spat, deliberately loudly, a sneer of sound.

`You bicker like women,' Illugi declared scornfully. 'What has Einar to say on this?'

It seemed to me that if Einar had had anything to say he would have hoiked it out before now. I wondered if Hild had laid some seidr on him that kept his lips fastened on the matter—but he stirred like a man coming out of a sleep.

`We will get there,' he said, so softly that those at the back had to have it repeated to them. 'Then what?'

He looked around us, challengingly. 'We get there and do what? Knock on the door and ask politely if we can have the hospitality of this dead hov? Some ale and meat and, oh, by the way, all the silver we can hold?

What if there is no door, no way in—how do we make one?'

He wiped his mouth, reached for a skin and filled his horn, which was held between his knees, for the ground was too baked hard to stand it upright.

`More to the point,' he added, slashing us all with that black stare, 'how do you carry it away? In our shirts? Stuff it down our boots, or in our hats?'

`True enough,' Bagnose said cheerfully. `There's a mountain of silver. We'll need a few big boots for that.'

They chuckled and Einar explained, 'We need rope and hoes and mattocks and carts to carry all of that—

and to take the silver away in. And ponies to haul the carts. Not oxen, for they are too slow.'

There was silence while we all chewed on that and how to go about it. In the end, of course, Bersi put it to Einar.

`We wait,' he said. No one liked that answer.

'For what?' demanded Ketil Crow. 'We can take all those things—'

Ànd get how far—a mile? Two?' growled Illugi, shaking his head. 'Those horsemen move fast and charge hard.'

`Shouldn't have thrown so many apple cores at them,' offered Skarti, his lumpy face a nightmare in the red fireglow. No one laughed much at that, remembering the horsemen, their armour and lances and bows.

`Wait for what then?' demanded Valknut sullenly, pitching a dung chip into the fire. Ì'm sick of gods-cursed cowhides and glue.'

`Better that than a ladder up those walls,' said a voice from further in, a deep growl I recognised as a Novgorod Slav called Eindridi. There were a few growls of assent at that.

`We wait until we get hungrier than this,' Einar declared quietly. 'Until the animals are being slaughtered and salted because there isn't enough good grass for them around here. Until the saddles of those grain-fed horses go in a notch or two.'

Everyone stared blankly, bewildered. But I knew what he was making them think. Gods, he was clever and cold as the edge of winter, right enough.

`Forage parties,' said Illugi triumphantly. `Good reasons for being away from here with carts and horses and gear.'

`Right enough,' agreed Bersi and chuckled. 'Now there's deep-minded.'

I kept my counsel, for I had already seen forage parties going out, a collection of carts and horses, with thralls and women for the labouring and lance-armed cavalry for the muscle. Never foot warriors of the druzhina, though.

There was only one way, I realised, for varjazi like us to be away from all others, on the steppe with carts and horses and no questions asked, out of deference to our own rituals.

And some of us would have to die first.

`Forage parties. Deep thinking, right enough,' agreed Steinthor and tipped his ale horn empty. 'Now give us a riddle, Bag-nose, and brighten up the evening.'

And, as Bagnose screwed up his face and worked one out in his head, Einar met my stare across the fire, knew what I was thinking, dared me to speak it.

Ì am a strange creature, for I satisfy women, grow very tall and erect in bed, am hairy underneath and, now and then, a brave daughter of some fellow dares to hold me, grips my reddish skin, robs me of my head and puts me in her pantry. She remembers the meeting, her eyes moisten—' Bagnose intoned.

Àn onion,' roared someone from the back. 'Heard that one when I was still crawling . . .'

Eventually, Einar dropped his eyes, but I ached with too much tension to claim a triumph.

13 Up close, the dazzling walls of the White Castle were a disappointing tan and yellow, pocked with the scabs of hurled rocks and scored with lashes of black where fireballs had gored.

Merlons had crumbled, giving it the gap-toothed grin of a crone at whose feet was a litter of smashed tiles: Turk pictures of horses and men that looked like runes to us. Tamgas, they called them, and our battering stones had ripped them away.

The plain before the city seethed like an anthill. Horsemen thundered, lance-tips glittering through the huge pall of dust that hazed everything to a golden fog.

I sweated and longed for a drink. My eyes stung from the dust and it gritted in every crease under the armour and my helmet, even in the corners of my mouth, turning to mud with my spittle.

To my left was Bersi, shield lying against his knees, tying a leather thong round the fourth of his red braids, trembling from fever fits. To my right, Wryneck stuck the finger of one gnarled hand up his nose and dug out a plug of dust and snot, which he wiped absently on his breeks.

I saw the glassy white of old scars on the back of his hand, the mark of seasoned warriors everywhere—

the marks that were still raw and new on my own—since hands were almost always cut in fights, even friendly ones.

Behind us came the screeching groan of a giant with bellyache. It went on and on and ended with a clunk.

Then there was a sudden blast of heat and I shrank my head down into my neck, seeing that others were doing the same.

A pause. A huge blast of hot air and a deep booming thump: the great engine heaved a fireball over our heads, a streak of orange-red, trailing oily black smoke through the golden haze. I never saw or heard where it landed.

I saw a woman and child moving through the Oathsworn ranks, carrying yokes of clay water pitchers into which the men dipped, then drank gratefully. The woman smiled at Bersi, who grinned back through the fat, rolling globules of sweat on his face and said something in her ear that earned him a thump on the shoulder. But as she moved on, she was still smiling. , A horseman, bare-armed and wearing a leather helmet, trotted up to where Einar stood, a silhouette in the dust-gloom.

`Shit,' muttered Wryneck and I tensed, sensing his unease.

The horseman and Einar exchanged words, then the man galloped off and Einar said something to Valknut.

The Raven Banner went up so that everyone could see it. Then it dipped twice, three times in quick succession, the signal to move forward.

There was a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, a coldness that reached to my groin and shrank it to the kernel of a nut. I was in the front rank: the Lost. Behind was another mailed rank and behind that two ranks of unarmoured men with long spears. A fifth rank contained Bagnose, Steinthor and every other man who knew which end of a bow was which.

Twenty men wide, five ranks deep, the Oathsworn tramped through the haze to war.

I had no idea who was to our left or right—or if anyone was. I knew our job was to protect this engine, now thrust close to the walls, which loomed now and then through the swirl of dust and smoke.

Àre we attacking?' I asked Wryneck and he grunted, hefting his shield to a more comfortable position.

'Nah, they are coming at us, I am thinking,' he replied, blinking sweat from his eyes.

The Raven Banner swung side to side. I had forgotten what that meant, but no one moved so I stayed where I was, too. Then I saw bowmen and realised Einar had called them out to skirmish in front of us.

Engines thumped and whooshed, men shrieked and cried in the unseen haze, horses galloped back and forth. Horns blared somewhere. A block of spear-armed men jogged diagonally across our front, heading to our rear. Ours? Khazar? Attacking? Running? I was licking cracked lips and looking wildly left and right when Wryneck nudged me.

`Don't try to eat it, Orm Bear Slayer,' he growled. 'If they come up our arse, there is nothing you can do now to prevent it. If it happens, we will deal with it, but there's no sense in chewing on it. That way, you not only end up with men up your arse, but you have ruined all this perfectly quiet time.'

Perfectly quiet? Horns blasted again.

Horsemen cantered up and past us. I saw one . . . then another . . . and another turn in the saddle, nock arrows and let fly behind them.

`Get ready,' said Bersi, hunching his shoulders.

`Shield!' roared Einar. A pause. 'Wall!'

The shields came up with a single great clash of overlap. My right hand slammed the crosspiece of my sword hard against the join with my neighbour and we were now locked. Einar and Valknut turned and moved to one end, rather than force a way through us.

Arrows hissed out of the murk, skittering along the raw, tramped earth, slapping weakly off a shield here and there. Bersi was shaking, the sweat rolling off him and mixing with the dust to turn his back and underarms to mud.

Our bowmen scampered back, trying to make for the ends of our line. Those who couldn't pitched their bows over our heads and dived for our feet, wriggling like eels between our boots.

The ground trembled. More horsemen appeared, swirling like sparrows when they saw us. They looked no different to our own: men on horses with bows, fur-clad helmets, tan cloaks, white tunics. They shrieked from black-bearded faces, loosed a straggle of arrows and wheeled away, back into their own dust.

We stood. Wryneck reached over his locked shield, swept his sword down and sheared off the shaft of an arrow I had not even seen or heard. I swallowed the hot lump in my throat, but it stuck and choked me.

The ground shook and thunder rolled somewhere.

`Spears,' Einar called and they came hissing past my ear, sticking beyond us, a hedge of points.

'F-fucker,' stammered Bersi, his teeth clattering. 'Nearly had m-m-my f-f-fucking ear then.'

The ground danced; the thunder resolved to a rolling drum of noise. The dust seethed, figures loomed and the Khazar horse crashed out of the gloom.

They were unsure where we were, moving too slowly and too late to speed up when they spotted us.

They were a sally force to wreck the siege engines and were out to hit hard and run, but the sight of a hundred-odd men, mailed, with the obvious red cloaks of a druzhina and the grim faces of seasoned warriors, made them haul on reins.

The spear-points did the rest. That hedge wasn't for them. They came to a halt, rank upon rank crashing into each other, ruining their formation.

Our archers sailed arrows at them from flanks and over our heads, which clattered on them but did little harm. Then they lumbered round, cursing and shrieking, and moved off like some giant, frustrated beast, back into the mirk.

Someone cheered and we all took it up, pounding sword on shield and offering deep `booms' of taunt to them until the dust choked us.

We stayed there for another hour, eating the dry steppe until we were spitting mud, sweltering and baking, locked in the shield-wall, until someone remembered and sent word to stand down.

Weary, we tramped back to our scraps of cloth awnings and tents near the river—anything that gave shade—and dropped, gulping water the women and children brought, too choked and hot and tired to think of food. The whining insect clouds plunged on us at once.

`That was well done,' beamed Skarti, clattering helmet and shield down. 'We saw them off and no one got a scratch. A good day for the Oathsworn of Einar.'

A few agreed with grunts; most were too tired to say anything. We swatted flies when we had the energy and Skarti lost his good humour, maddened by them. 'What did they eat before we came?' he demanded, slapping furiously. Like all of us, he was covered in the red weals of their bites.

À pity Skapti never made it this far,' growled Kvasir from the dark of a makeshift lean-to. 'They could have eaten him all day and left us alone.'

Women slithered between us as the sun died, lighting pitfires and hooking cauldrons on their chains and tripods over them. The smell of woodsmoke made my heart ache for remembered fires and the eye-sting of it was a small price to pay for the disappearance of the insects.

Gradually, as the heat seeped out of the ground, the Oathsworn moved closer to the fires, found fresh energy and started to weave themselves back together. I knew they were recovered when Finn Horsehead hunkered down beside me and shoved a coin into my face. 'What's this, young Orm? You know coins like ostlers know horses.'

`He knows horses like ostlers know horses,' Ketil Crow reminded him and Finn acknowledged it with a wave as I looked at the coin.

It was gold, from the Great City, called in Greek nomisma and in Latin a solidus. It had the heads of Constantine VII and Romanus I, for the Greeks who called themselves Romans nearly always had two rulers, foolish though that was.

`Makes you wonder why they have lasted so long,' growled Eindridi.

`They have big walls,' Valknut pointed out.

Àpart from their big walls,' argued Eindridi, 'which can be scaled.'

`Lots of warriors,' mused Bagnose. 'Who are not sometime farmers, but warriors all the time.'

`Just so,' admitted Eindridi. 'Apart from the walls and the warriors.'

`These,' I said, tossing the coin so that it caught the firelight, turning red and yellow-gold, end over end, and locking all their gazes, like a snake on a rabbit.

Finn snatched it out of the air and the cave of his fist broke the spell. He scowled at them.

Àye,' sighed Eindridi. 'Coins like that would do it, right enough.'

Ìs it any good then?' demanded Finn. 'I had it off a dead man out there, but I have never seen stamped gold before.'

Ìt's a full-weight,' I told him, 'worth twelve of their silver milaresia, which is about the same in Arab dirham. The Great City mints gold coins and the only other ones who do that are the Arabs of Serkland. You can tell the difference because the Serkland coins have no little people on them, only squiggles of writing.'

`Just so,' breathed Finn, while the others craned to see. He held it between finger and thumb, turning it this way and that.

Ìs the treasure of Atil like this?' demanded Wryneck and I missed the bite of his voice and the fact that this was more for the shadowed figure of Einar than me.

`No,' I said scornfully. 'You are lucky, Finn, because this coin was minted about ten years ago. The ones of the new Emperor, Nicephorus, are identical, but gold-lighter by one-twelfth and traders are wary of them.

You won't get any of them in a hoard from the age of the Volsungs. No gold at all, probably, only silver.

Ìn truth,' I ploughed on, 'silver milaresia are always full weight and pure, but getting rarer these days.

The hoard of Atil will be pure, for that is the Volsung treasure that Sigurd took from the dragon Fafnir.

Òf course,' I blundered on, airing my skills, 'pure is a relative term, since it is also cursed—'

I stopped, realising the mire I had stepped into with both feet. There was silence, broken only by the distant droning hum of the army, the soft mutter of women, the crackle and hiss of fire and cauldron.

Òdin's balls, young Orm,' declared Finn admiringly. 'You are the one for business, right enough.'

Across in the shadows, made deeper by the fire's light, I suddenly saw the gleam of Einar's eyes, watching me as Finn showed his marvellous prize to the others and the stare went on and on until the arrival of one of the Greek priests broke the spell.

These priests, invited by Sviatoslav to cater to the spiritual needs of his prized Greek engineers, missed no chance to spread the Christ doctrine, determined to bring the whole of the Rus to their god.

This one, black-bearded and simply robed, introduced himself as Theotokios and had brought a flask of wine, for he knew how to win his way to the fires of the Norse. Wine was a rare treat and we welcomed him, as we had others of his kind, and proceeded to drink his gift and ignore his attempts to convert us.

After we had eaten, as the women were clearing up, Finn pulled one on to his lap and she, being a thrall and having no say in it, gave in to him after a token squeal or two. Certainly having Finn's greasy beard wiped over her face and his fingers in her secret places was preferable to slogging down to the river and washing out pots. Just.

Theotokios made a noise in his throat and Finn looked up from what he was doing, which involved hooking a breast out of the shift the woman wore and popping it in his mouth. 'What are you looking at?' he growled and Theotokios replied—in Greek, which Finn didn't understand.

I had picked up enough of it to tell him Theotokios was concerned for his sinful soul. Finn laughed and shook his head. `That's the problem with Christ-followers,' he said. 'Everything is a sin, it seems to me, if you are tempted. Yet how is it a sin if you can't help yourself? The more beautiful a woman is, the less you can help yourself, so the less of a sin it is, says I.'

I was impressed by this—but Spittle wasn't. He grabbed the woman next to him and pulled her down beside him, grinning as she fought and cursed.

`Nonsense,' he growled. 'As usual, Finn Horsearse, you have the wrong grasp of the Christ way of things.

You will enjoy having your beautiful woman and so that is a sin. Me, on the other hand—' He broke off and jerked the woman forward into the fireglow. She was short, red-faced with anger and pig-eyed with hate, which a squint did not help. Those who liked them fat might have found pleasure in her.

'I won't get much enjoyment out of this,' Spittle declared mournfully, 'so it won't be a sin. In fact, now that I see her clearly, I'll hardly have sinned at all. I may even get to this Christ Valholl, Heaven, on the strength of what I do next.'

Theotokios clearly had more Norse than I thought, for he had followed this and shook his head sorrowfully. 'The way to Heaven is through self-denial,' he intoned sonorously and the laughter brought heads round from neighbouring fires.

Ì prefer a prettier road,' yelled Finn and set to work finding it. Kvasir Spittle, with another mournful look at his catch, let her scramble up and away, amid the laughter and jeers of the others.

Ì do not feel up to being saved for Christ tonight,' he growled. 'Perhaps our Orm will do it for me, for I hear that he can hump a pile of shavings on a wooden floor.'

And that brought more laughter and a thump or two on my back. Across the fire, my father raised his ale horn in toast and, for a brief spark of a moment, I was one with them, this hard family, so that even the weight of Einar's eyes was almost a caress.

But that night, Bersi died raving, burned to a husk by fever.

By the end of the week, the corpses were piling up so fast Sviatoslav ordered them burned, had camps moved—and launched an all-out attack, presumably before his army melted like rendered grease into the steppe.

And that pimpled boy, Yaropolk, curse his memory, demanded the honour of leading the assault with his druzhina.

Us.

He was splendid with us; nothing was too good the night before and he brought ale and soft-skinned, doe-eyed women to our campfires, offered wine and choice food—well, by then, any food without worm in it—and the priests of our choice to cater for our spiritual needs.

But those who weren't shaking and dribbling evil bile were too knotted to eat and too shrunk with fear to attack the women, while the priests were too busy trying to keep the sick alive until morning to be bothered by those wanting simple comfort.

Nor was the friendly reminder that the garrison of Sarkel numbered no more than a thousand any help.

Even with all the able-bodied in their city added in, their forces were outnumbered ten to one. That was supposed to make us feel better, but most of us were depressed by the news that so few could hold off so many.

I saw, to my amazement, that Martin was moving among the fires, scowling and uncomfortable about it, but sent by his master Oleg to help the Christ-men of his brother's druzhina.

Ì thought you'd be safe in Kiev,' I said to him in that red-glow night and saw his white smile in the dark beyond the fire.

`There are God's chosen among you heathens still,' he said, 'and they cry out for succour.'

Ànd you are the only Christ priest of your kind here,' Valknut pointed out grimly, having a sharp grasp of the religious realities. Ìf you did not come, then the Greek Christ priests would score another victory, eh?'

`There is only one true God,' Martin pointed out, kneeling to place a pot on the fire and stir it. Then he stiffened as Einar loomed out of the darkness, Hild a dark presence at his side. She crouched like a hound at his feet, staring at Martin and smiling, her head tilted as if she was sniffing him.

Ìs it safe, priest?' she demanded and he regarded her with narrowed eyes, knowing what she meant.

`Safe from you,' he answered levelly and I couldn't help but admire him, since I did not even dare look her in the eyes these days.

She smiled her fey smile and cocked her head like a bird. 'I may reclaim that stick of mine one day, priest.'

Martin rose, smoothed his ratty brown robes and picked up the pot from the fire. Then he made the sign of the cross at her and she laughed as he moved into the darkness.

Einar, fish-belly pale, knelt by the fire and heated his hands, for it was cold now—that gods-cursed steppe baked all day and then froze at night, so that Bersi had once woken up with his red-gold braids iced to the ground.

Bersi, who was now ash and memory.

`We should run for it tonight,' my father declared morosely from where he sat at my side. I glanced at him, since it was the first time he had shown any sign of such things. But Einar didn't even bother to reply—

it was too late to do that now and I think my father had known it even as he spoke.

So, huddled together and wrapped in cloaks against the cold, we sat and stared at the fire, listening to the shift and stamp and murmur of the vast camp, fiddling with straps and honing the serrated edges of blades, too tense to sleep.

Àfter your mother died,' my father said suddenly, as the sky began to grey out of the night black, 'her father, old Stammkel, whom they called Refr, Fox, on account of his cunning, wanted the farm back. It came as Gudrid's dowry, see, so he had claim on it after she died.'

He was silent for a long time and I was breath-locked with this. I felt I was hovering on the edge of something, as if trying to persuade a sheep back from the edge of a cliff, where one sudden movement would make it shy and plunge over.

Òf course, so did I,' he said eventually. Ànd so did you, though you were barely getting to your feet at the time and were wet-nursed by a good thrall.'

`What happened?' I asked, driven to make a movement, however reckless, when the silence that followed became too harsh to bear.

He stirred. 'He took it to a Thing for judgement. He had many to speak for him and I had no one.'

`What of Gudleif? Or Bjarni? Or Gunnar Raudi, even?' I demanded, astonished that none of those had helped. My father laughed softly.

`Gudleif and Bjarni would not speak against Stammkel. Not big-balls Stammkel, he who roared and bellowed. Not even after he came back from his raid on Dyfflin, which they they went on. Some six hundred men went and four hundred of those never came back and the whole sorry episode nearly ruined Stammkel, which was why he wanted the farm in the first place.' He paused and shrugged, scrubbing his face. 'I think Gudleif and Bjarni felt they could not stand in Stammkel's way, having in some way failed him in the raid.'

`They only got back because of Gunnar Raudi,' I said, remembering what Halldis had told me. 'Didn't he help you?'

My father shifted, as if something dug him in the ribs. Àh,' he said, gentle as a sighing breeze into the night. 'Gunnar Raudi. He was away so long everyone thought him and the others dead . . .'

He stopped for a long moment, then: 'Did you know that Gudrid Stammkelsdottir had hair the colour of yellow corn and could tuck it in the belt round her waist?' He shook his head with the bright memory of it.

'Gold she was. Gold and glowing and slender as a wheatstalk—and everyone wanted her. But she came to me in the end. Came to me when her father came hirpling back from Dyfflin with his balls shrunk to walnuts and too many lives laid at his door.'

He stirred and heaved a long sigh. 'Narrow in the waist she was—and too narrow in the hip, as it turned out. But she wanted me and Stammkel had to give up a farm which he could not afford to do and still keep the partitions from going up in his hall.'

There was silence again.

`What of Gunnar Raudi?' I asked and my father stared at the fire for a moment longer.

`Gunnar spoke for me at the Thing and judgement was given in my favour,' he said, all in one swift sentence and I blinked at that, for I had expected a different tale entirely. Which was stupid of me, for I remember my father telling me he had sold the farm when he fostered me on Gudleif.

Still, I was thinking, this could not be the end of it and said so.

`No,' agreed my father, 'it was not. Stammkel hated Gunnar Raudi before this and, after that, tore his beard out over it and made it known he would have his farm, one way or the other. He hired two known hard men, Ospak and Styrmir, who claimed to be berserkers. Then he sent them round with two thralls to deal with me.'

He stirred a log back into the fire with his foot and watched the embers swirl like red flies in the dark.

`Why did Stammkel hate Gunnar Raudi so much?' I asked and he shot me a sideways glance.

`No matter,' he answered. 'So these men came to the hov this night, as they had announced they would, all four of them and well armed and me with only myself to face them.'

Wide-eyed, I waited and, when nothing came, I demanded, 'What happened?'

Ì died, of course,' he said and grinned as I blinked, then realised he had led me into the oldest and worst joke in saga-telling, which is just what a father does to his child at some point. I grinned back at him, my heart leaping with the warmth of it.

Ìn fact,' he went on, 'I would have done just that, save that Gunnar Raudi swaggers up, as was his way, and winks at me as he passes me. "Hello, lads," he says to these four. "No need for this, for Rurik here has decided to quit this place."

`Which was news to me and must have sounded strange to them, looking at me standing there with a seax in one hand and a wood axe in the other and the look of a man not about to quit anything.'

He shook his head and chuckled. 'A deep thinker was Gunnar. "Listen, lads," he says. "We'll drink on it and part friends and you can tell Stammkel to turn up the day after tomorrow, for then this place will be empty." And he winks at me again and walks all four of them into the hall of my hov and sits them down, calling for ale and food.'

`What did you do?' I demanded and he shrugged.

`What else? I followed them in and sat down with them and we drank until it ran down our noses. After a long while, Gunnar Raudi gets up and announces he is off for a piss and goes outside. After a bit longer, we all remember he went and laugh at him, thinking he had probably fallen in the privy.

'But I had seen him wink on the way out, so I say to Ospak to go find him and he is drunk enough to do just that. After a while longer, of course, Ospak never comes back either and I mention this and put my head on my arms and pretend to sleep.

`So Styrmir gets up and goes out and the two thralls carry on drinking and laughing at me snoring, so that when Gunnar Raudi steps in, his blade all red and dripping, they piss themselves all over my floor.

Ànd that was that,' my father said. 'Gunnar tells the two thralls to carry the bodies of Ospak and Styrmir back to Stammkel and tell him to give up any claims on the farm. "The heads," he says, "I will keep and stick on poles, to watch out for more of Stammkel's foolishness." Which he did.'

He stopped and squeezed his eyes shut, then rubbed them, for he had been staring into the embers too long. 'By the time all this had been done you were toddling around and causing trouble and, though I was left alone after that, I had no stomach for it, so I sold the place and went over to Gudleif with you.'

He looked at me, eyes watering from the staring so that they made my heart thunder, for the moistness was as like tears as not. 'I always meant to return,' he said. 'But I knew you would be safe with Gunnar.

More so with him than me.'

I wanted to ask more, but he clapped a hand on my shoulder and levered himself to his feet, then patted me gently a couple of times, as you would a horse or a dog, and moved off into the dark, leaving me with the fire and my thoughts whirling like the sparks.

At some point, I fell asleep and dreamed, though. Or thought I did. Or stepped into the fetch world, that half-lit Other.

I was in Dengizik's tomb again, alone, in a blue dark, like a night with a shrouded moon. The lines of soldiers, dead but still with eyes that followed me, were sitting patiently and Hild sat at the foot of the throne, chained to it by the neck.

I took a step to her and the soldiers shifted. I took another and they rose, with a hissing rustle like insect wings.

Then I ran and they surged on me, a blinding mass like bats, like a blizzard of dust and fury with no more substance than memory.

And, suddenly, I was there, looking into the great white-rimmed pools of Hild's eyes, while she smiled up at me. My arm rose and fell, the sword in it chopping the withered hand from Dengizik, which held Hild's neck chain.

It fell, slowly, slowly, tumbling, shredding scraps of flayed skin, dusty bone.

Then I was awake, by the fire, staring into the limpid eyes of Hild, who sat astride me, her face inches from mine. Her mouth worked, twisting this way and that; sounds tore from her in a rippling, wheezing hiss:

`Don't . . . go . . . with us. Live . .

Limpid eyes, dewed with . . . tears? I watched them expand, to where the black ate all the white, saw the hands which cupped my face claw like talons, felt her quiver and then, with a sickening liquid surge, rise up over me and step away, into the darkness.

I breathed. I know I did, because I heard it, ragged and thundering in my ears. There was no other sound for a moment, then all the noise of the world crashed back and I blinked at the camp murmur, the hiss of dung-chips on the fire, my father's groan and stir, Skarti's fluttering fart.

I sat up, looked wildly around, but everything was as it should be—and yet nothing was. Had it happened? Had I dozed and woken in my dream? Did I dream still?

All the rest of that night I wondered, staring into the glowing embers until my eyeballs seared.

There were horns and drums sounding, like ships lost in a golden fog. Under our feet the steppe had crumbled, crusted over and was kicked to dust again, hanging in the air, gritting our eyeballs, scorching tongue and nose and throat.

The acrid stink of horses hung in that dust as they sluiced nervous piss and moved to our flanks, ghosts in the murk, to make sure the assault wasn't smacked by a counter-foray from the once-white city.

This time there were just sixty-two of us, half with their teeth clamped tight because otherwise they'd chip or crack them with the fever's jaw-quaking chatter. Twenty more lay under awnings back at a new camp, amid the hundreds of other sick gathered in one place so that what aid there was could be more easily given. Not that there was much . . . they lay and shook and died in pools of their own loosened bowels.

But we stood and waited, while fire and death occupied the space between us and the ravaged city. In the yellow shroud of dust, five dark towers moved, like the fingers of a hand, while archers rushed forward in pairs, one holding a pavise of reeds, the other shooting, then ducking under to reload.

There were hoots and screeches and shrieks and, through it all, the high, thin scream of horses dying, a sound which, to me, seemed worst of all.

I leaned on my shield, on one knee, watching, almost detached from it. Skarti, shivering, was glass-eyed and shit dribbled down one leg, but he didn't seem to notice. The smell of that and dust and oil on steel—

that was battle and any component part of it reaching my nostrils later in my life would bring my head sharply up, like a chariot horse of the Blues when it hears the roar of the crowd.

A block of sweating men heaved and strained, some in front and some behind, moving the tower foot by slow foot towards the walls, from which rained death, unseen in the murk.

Unseen but felt. Like some giant snail, the block of men round the tower left a slick, viscous trail of blood and sprawled bodies behind, felled by arrows, fist-sized stones fired from small engines and large spears fired from bigger engines.

There was a bird, amazingly. It flitted out of the dust and perched briefly on the shaft of one of the hedgehog maze of arrows sticking from the assault tower, then whirred off again, gone in an eyeblink.

Then a flock of small boys appeared, darting out of the saffron haze with bunches of arrows: they got silver for every twenty they recovered. A dog was with them, limp-running on three legs, then four, then three again. The boys plunged on, laughing, panting, sneezing, carefree dancers on the edge of the abyss.

I laughed, too, at the sheer incongruity of it. Skarti heard it and his lumpy head came up, tight-mouthed.

He shook it, saw what made me chuckle and managed a savage grin. He was holding himself to prevent the shakes—even his hair looked clenched yet he leaned forward and spoke.

`S-s-see many s-s-strange things in b-bbattle,' he managed. 'B-b-birds, b-b-beasts, w-w-women, d-dogs.

S-s-saw a s-s-stag once, r-run between two armies.' Then he shut one eye, which fluttered as he did so, and placed a quivering finger alongside his nose in a grotesque parody of the knowing look. `B-but you n-n-never see a c-c-cat on a battlefield,' he finished portentously and, drained, sank back to lean on his shield.

Mounted couriers galloped to and fro. A man on foot spilled out of the shimmer, looked wildly around and spotted the Raven Banner.

He stumbled towards Einar, his tunic streaked with dark sweat patches and worse, spoke quickly, pointed, waved his hands furiously and then, done, slumped down, his legs buckling. Einar began to pace, slowly, up and down.

I realised, eventually, that he was counting. On five hundred of my count, he stopped, signalled to Valknut and the Raven Banner went up, then bobbed three times.

The Oathsworn lurched upright and moved at a walk, then broke into a jog. Skarti weaved and staggered with me and I slowed to let him keep up as he clattered into me and almost fell, caught my shoulder, muttered an apology.

In a loose bunch, shields up, we headed into that sulphurous maw, shrinking ourselves as small as possible and wishing we were anywhere else. I caught sight of others, equally thick with dust, trotting forward in small groups, their own banners up. My father appeared from the crowd, raised his sword briefly in salute, then was gone again. I loped on and the arrows arrived.

The sagas will tell you of arrows like rain, like sleet. Not so. They come in flurries, in flocks, like birds.

You see a brief flicker in the air and then they hit with a drum-roll smack.

I had three in my shield almost at the same time, the shushu-shunk of them making me stagger. Another whicked past my head; Skarti went down, gurgling, drowning in his own blood. Another hit his thigh as he rolled.

I half stopped, wanting to turn to help him, but dared not expose my back. Another bird-flicker through the dust and a man to my right yelled, hirpled a few steps, then started hopping, his injured leg held up, the shaft through the calf from one side to the other.

Àh, fuck,' he yelled, then fell over. `Fuckfuckfuck.'

A dark shape loomed: our assault tower, now hard against the scabbed wall. Close up, that white wall was a yellowed fang, rough and pitted, the base littered with ragbag corpses in dust-tanned white, stained ominously black and clumped on the shards of picture tiles torn from the walls.

Fireflies sparkled in the dust and I stared at them until they whunked into the earth and the tower. One sizzled past me; someone behind screamed and Eindridi staggered out of the pack of men squeezing up the lower entrance, waving his arms wildly, a shaft sticking from his neck and his hair on fire.

`Help me. Tyr help me . . .' But he reeled off into the dust before anyone, man or god, could lay a hand on him.

Fire-arrows smacked the tower. It smouldered already and the haulers were trying to keep the cowhides wet with frantic licks of water from wooden buckets, but the heat was drying them out almost as fast. Inside, men struggled up ladders in a dripping rain of mud, sliding and cursing and sweating.

I waited, shuffling forward with the rest, breathing ragged and still hunched, though the tower offered shelter from the arrows. Almost. The man in front of me—not one of the Oathsworn—half turned to say something to the man next to him and his head jerked with a sudden high clang. He dropped, twitching and I saw there was a huge dent in his helmet and the blood was pouring from his nose.

I pushed past him. Something slammed into the timber nearest me and, unable to go further in the queue, I ended up staring at the round, pebble-sized lead shot embedded there. I swallowed and looked back at the felled man, who was thrashing now, his back arched off the ground and blood coming out of his ears and nose and even streaking down his cheeks from his eyes, like tears.

There was a flurry of movement ahead. I was almost on the ladder when the whole tower shook and, just as I was putting my foot on the first rung, a body plunged to the ground with a clatter of iron and breaking bones.

The tower lurched again, then embers and chunks of burning timber rained down through the muddy drips. Another body crashed down, then several more and people above me were scrambling back down the ladder. I took the full weight of a man on me, scrambling, kicking.

He stepped on me and another one would have done the same if I hadn't lashed out and sent him spinning, which let me scramble back out, away from the tower, which had suddenly gone crazy. The ladder had tilted.

No, not the ladder. The whole tower. As I scrambled away on all fours, losing my shield in the process, the assault tower toppled like a falling tree. The top half was on fire; it had then been hooked with grapples from the wall and hauled over sideways.

It fell with a great bell of a crash and a blast of choking air, thick with dust and smoke. Flaming debris spun and whirled in it, like the end of the world.

I found my shield, got up and stumbled backwards over half-seen figures on the ground, caught my boot and fell over one on to another and lay on it, panting for breath. I levered up, felt stickiness under my hand and heard the clang of steel.

It made no sense—had they sallied? I got up on one knee, looked at the body and blinked. Steinkel. My cousin, last seen being dragged out of Martin's company, scowling and sullen.

Now he lay on his back with dust in his glazed eyes and entrails oozing from between the shattered rings of his fine mail. And something dark and gibbering rose in me. Gudleif s sons.

Fresh clangs, a grunt, a series of triumphant shrieks and, for the first time, I saw the figures nearby, hazed silhouettes in the gold. One crumpled as I watched, the other hacking with frantic blows, each one heralded by a grunt.

I rose and moved, half blurred in my head, and saw the horror of it; saw the fear that had been rising in me, shapeless and screaming, given truth.

Bjorn turned from hacking my father to bloody ruin, his mouth slack, his eyes wild. He saw me and snarled, but his voice came out too high-pitched. 'You. Now it is complete.'

My father. I wanted to brush him aside, not to be bothered by his idiot raving and his quarrel, to get to the side of that bloody, leaking thing that had been my father.

But Bjorn was there and his sword was up, thick, fat blood runnels sliding down the blade. My father's blood.

His face was still young, round with puppy fat, but the mouth was twisted in fear and hatred.

I stepped back in my mind and saw, for a flashing second, through his eyes, what faced him: his age, but leaner, axe-faced and wiry with new muscle, bulked unnaturally at the shoulder by oar and sword, blasted brown by sun and wind.

He was too young and soft, this boy, for trying to exact bloodprice—but he and his brother had hacked my father down.

I went for him then and I don't remember much of it, save that, for the first time, I had no fear. Perhaps that was what Pinleg had found, that disregard for death or harm in the pursuit of something desperate. Maybe berserk was different, but I tasted something of it then, in the dancing golden dust in front of the White Castle.

How did the fight go? A good skald would have made much of it, but all I know is that when I blinked back into the Now of it, Bjorn was laid out on his back with his head all bloody and one ankle almost severed.

I saw that blood was dripping from a cut on my forearm, that my shield was slashed and tattered and that I had lost the last two fingers of my left hand.

My father was still alive when I knelt by him, but only just, and I had nothing to offer, not even water and certainly not help. I knelt there, my hands waving uselessly because I couldn't even work out where to start in the slick gore of what he had been. All I did was drip blood and snot-tears on him and I have always remembered, with shame, how useless I was then.

He grinned at me, his teeth stained red. `Dead, are they?'

I nodded, trapped in silence, hands fluttering.

`Good. Fucks—should have known they'd never leave it alone. Got one—that silly little arse, Steinkel. Had no sword-sense at all. Should both have stayed away. That fucking Christ priest . . .'

He would have spat, but had no fire left to do it. Blood worked into froth at the corners of his mouth and he was gargling when he spoke. He looked at me, still grinning. 'Bad business. That fu-fucking bear. You look like your mother.'

Again I couldn't say anything and the tears were splashing muddily on his shoulder.

`Good woman. Loved her after a fashion and she me, I am thinking. Never had a chance to grow.'

He coughed up more blood and I patted aimlessly, helplessly.

`Lies,' he said. 'For good reasons. We each had our true loves. Mine rode the whale road, swift and sure.

With a good sail on it I could cut a day . . . off any . . . journey anywhere. Find my way by the stars to the end of the world.'

He spasmed; the grin froze. 'You are my pride, though.' His eyes went glassy and he hissed, one hand grasping me by the wrist: `But not my son. Her true love was Gunnar . . .'

And he went across the rainbow bridge, while the world spun and crashed and roared like the sea and all my thoughts were dust.

I would have stayed there, but some others passing dragged me away and dropped me safely out of arrow range, beside the huge engines with their Lebanese cedar throwing arms and sweating Greek engineers.

They loaded and fired, loaded and fired, for the assault had failed dismally and the only way into the city now was to pound the walls to rubble. Some of them, seeing the state I was in, gave me water and bound my wounds up with only slightly dirty rags, while I sat and let them, solid as a stump on the outside. Inside, I was . . . disconnected, like sea-rotted mail, falling link by link.

Not my father. Gunnar her true love. Stammkel hated Gunnar. The new links locked and riveted themselves into place and, though it was patchy, the shape of it was there.

My mother, already carrying me and knowing it, brings herself to my father . . . no, to Rurik, I realised. To Rurik, who marries her and gets a farm for his old age, he thinks, taking someone else's son with it.

Someone thought dead until he turns up, like a ghost at the feast.

Gunnar. No wonder he had stayed at Bjornshafen and no one dared say anything of it. No wonder, too, that Gudleif had to be sleekit about trying to do away with me, for he must have known.

And Gunnar had stayed with Einar because I was there—had died for being a father and kept it all to himself to the grave. I wept for that, splashing muddy tears down my face, for all the things we would not now say to each other, for all the remembered things that now made sense.

Gunnar Raudi. Swaggering, bracken-haired hard man, a sea-raider who had more in him for fathering than Rurik, who had wanted a farm and peace. Somehow, in a Loki joke, they had swapped lives.

Eventually, the dullness lifted and the tears stopped. I thought of him lying out there, dead in the dust and unclaimed. I couldn't let that happen, so I went to find the Oathsworn.

I found a man I knew, Flosi, who had been my oarmate on the old Elk and he greeted me with a weary wave.

'Thought you were gone,' he said, jerking a grimy thumb behind him. 'The rest are over yonder—Illugi is taking a tally. I've been sent to fetch food and water for us.'

He stood there, grinning madly, his hair a wild tangle and his beard stiff with matted blood and all the same tawny yellow from the dust. His eyes showed white and red-rimmed from the crusted scab of his face but he had no colour in anything he wore, just a coating of that dust. It came to me, then, that I looked no different—save for the tear-tracks, which he did his best to ignore.

Nor did any of the others, slumped in slack-mouthed exhaustion round the remains of what had been our camp, trampled by horsemen at some point, our flimsy shelters scattered. Illugi and Einar were finding out who lived, and who did not.

I was greeted with a raise of the hand, or a nod. Einar, blood streaked in his hair, turned and grinned a lopsided smirk, then jerked his head at Illugi. 'Better mark him off the dead roll,' he said.

`Leave the mark,' I replied, heaving up a slack skin of tepid water. I sluiced it over my head, then drank some. It was foul.

`Fair enough,' said Wryneck. 'You look more dead than alive—and you just used all the water we had left, so some of us might kill you anyway.'

`Leave the mark,' I repeated, 'but tally it to my father.'

Àah,' groaned Wryneck. 'Old Rurik? Gone?'

À loss we will feel sorely,' Einar added sorrowfully, 'when we have the wind at our back and a fair sea.

How will we find a course now?'

Àny course will do,' I snarled, 'on the whale road.'

Einar nodded and tried to pat my shoulder as if I was merely overwrought; I glared at him through the streaked crust of my face. Illugi stepped forward, just one pace into that space heating up between us.

Ànyone else you saw go down?' he asked.

I blinked away from Einar, into the ravaged creases of Illugi's worn face, made deeper by the dust caked in them. `Skarti,' I said. 'Took an arrow.'

Ìn the throat,' agreed Valknut, cross-legged. He was trying to comb the matted tangle of his hair and beard.

He looked up, eyes blank, his voice full of wonder. 'He drowned. I heard him drown in the middle of all the dust.'

Ì saw Eindridi,' muttered Ketil Crow. 'At least I think it was him, for I could not see his face. His head was on fire.'

À fire-arrow took him in the neck,' agreed Wryneck. 'I saw him get it, but he ran off before anyone could help.'

`We have to recover our dead,' I said and others growled. Einar nodded, looked round us all, then squinted at the dust. No one mentioned wounded. By now there would be no wounded, for anyone who couldn't make it back off that field would have had their throats cut by looters. From our own side, most likely.

`Wait for this to settle, else you will be blundering around achieving nothing,' Einar said. 'Food and water will arrive for us. Rest, regain strength and then honour the dead.'

It made too much sense to oppose, so that's what we did, all through the settling haze of that golden day, while the great engines thumped and the sick and injured moaned and screamed.

The rations arrived, were prepared by women, some of whom were genuinely weeping for men who were lost. For once, we had more than enough to eat, since they had given rations for more than a hundred and there were, by Illugi's final tally, forty-three of us fit enough to eat.

The dust never quite went away, but cleared enough for us to see the sun begin to die in streaks of gold and purple on a distant horizon, so we went out, naked to the waist in the shimmering heat, shoving the cart that rations had come in.

Until it became too dark to see, we loaded the bodies of those we recognised on to the cart and trundled them back to a place by the river, where the women keened and cleaned them as best they could, even though the entire Don was tinged pink and the twilight insects came in stinging clouds.

I found Rurik, untouched by the hordes of plundering boys, no longer after arrows but out to rob the dead.

Skarti, however, had been stripped, his body white under the soft golden layer of dust.

We prised him from a crusted pool of his own blood, thick with gorged insects, and the arrow in his throat came out with a soft suck of sound and a gobbet of red. The one in his thigh wouldn't come out at all, so I had to saw the shaft short, an awkward job with my bound hand.

All the while I could feel the eyes on me from the cart, the dead eyes of the man I had known as my father, and the storm in me rolled and swelled, for I was angry at him for having kept the secret so long, so that I did not even have my real father. Sad as a wolf-howl for him, too, that he had borne it all this long.

Skarti's pox-ravaged head lolled sideways as I closed his eyes, hearing his voice say: `But you never see a cat on a battlefield,' and we placed him on the cart, too.

We also laid out Eindridi—well, we were reasonably sure it was him, from the shield and weapons he bore, but even his own mother would not have known the blackened, peeling thing that had been his face.

We found Hrut, who knew more riddles than Bagnose, and Kol Otryggsson, who could carve out delicate, swirling patterns in leather with an awl, and Isleif from Aldeigjuborg and Rorik, the half-Slav from Kiev, who had come up to Holmgard for the season and joined us there, had hardly been with us long enough for anything to be known about him.

Then there was Ranvaik Sleekstone-eye, one of the old Oathsworn, his odd-coloured eyes closed for ever, the centre of his face punched bloody by one of those lead pebbles.

And more, each ragdoll body a new keening for the women, another stone in the heart of us all.

Einar and Valknut looked at Ranvaik's corpse, blank-faced and wordless. Ketil Crow, almost tenderly, wiped the crusted mess from the dead face. There were, I knew, no more than a handful of the original Oathsworn left, the ones who had once sailed from where the bergs calved off in floating mountains to the lands where sand was drifted by the wind into a parody of the ocean.

Flosi came back for the cart eventually, eyeing with distaste the smear of fluids streaking it, for our bread and meat had to be piled there. Grumbling, he headed down to the river to clean it out, muttering that he wished he had known all this before he had taken that binding oath.

And, on the way, he flung back carelessly at Einar: 'A new lot have arrived from up north, well-mailed and

-armed Danes. Maybe you can tempt fresh men from them. Their leader is talking to Sviatoslay. Walks with a bad limp, calls himself Starkad.'

14 A wind snaked out of the north and drove a thin spray of grit and dust against me, whipping my cloak so hard I stumbled sideways. It was driving against our shield side and a few had decided to walk with the things up as shelter.

My arm was too sore for that, the pain throbbing out from the missing fingers all the way up to my elbow, so I had hauled up the cloak round my head and hunched into it, wondering whether my ankle hurt more than my hand, or if I had miasmic rot in the stumps of my fingers. I remembered the bee-keeper from Uppsala and his arm, blackening as he raved into the long night.

Up ahead strode Einar, alongside the jolting cart where Hild sat, cross-legged, swathed and veiled in his fine red cloak.

When he had heard Flosi's news, Einar had stopped in his tracks and the matted yellow dust on his face had not hidden how he had paled. Ketil Crow had hawked and spat and said, 'Loki's hairy arse.' Illugi had just looked sick with weariness.

Then Einar shook himself—physically, like a dog, so that the dust came off him like water—and growled,

'Time for us to go, then, I am thinking.'

`Do we have enough dead yet?' I snarled back at him and he whirled, taking a step towards me. I think he expected me to back from him, remembering the steel of his fingers round my neck, but I was savage for it, wanted it more than my life, even though the thought flashed through me that I was dead.

Ènough for what?' asked a bemused Wryneck, with his tic-twitch.

Einar stopped, forced a grin and shrugged. Òur Bear Slayer has lost his father,' he declared, for all to hear, 'and it is not surprising a little of his mind has gone with him.' He turned to Wryneck. 'Look after him, old one, while I arrange for the proper rites for our fallen.'

Then he looked round the rest of us, raising his voice so all could hear. 'Wash. Dress in your finest, for these are your oath-brothers and deserve it.'

So we all straggled out, searching for our scattered belongings from where the horsemen had dragged them, then went down to the river and cleaned ourselves and our clothes, as much as we could in that pink-tinged, mud-tainted flow.

But the Don was wide here and swallowed all our filth. By the time Ketil Crow and Einar came back, with thralls leading a dozen carts, each with two solid wheels and a stringy pony, we were, if not shining, more fitting than we had been before.

But I did it only for Rurik. I wanted to spit in Einar's eye.

We took the bodies north into the steppe as the twilight grew, far out from where the city smouldered, until the fires of our own camp were distant enough for some to be uneasy about getting back. Of course, I knew we weren't going back.

In the half-dark, thralls dug out a great boat-shaped pit in the black earth and placed the bodies in it, for there wasn't enough wood left for a pyre after all the great burnings we'd already had.

It was a dark and silent affair, of hissing wind and the grunts of the thralls as they dug the earth with chopping sounds. Nearby, like a great storm crow, Hild squatted in her dark dress, knees up at her ears, hands clasped in her lap, presiding over it like some idol.

I folded Rurik's hands on his chest over the hilt of his sword and silently asked the All-Father to guide him. Then the thralls filled the pit in with furious, nervous energy, as the dark came down and they grew ever more fearful.

They were right to be afraid. Maybe one or two suspected, but most were scared of the wrong people for, after they had unloaded the head-sized white stones we had begged or stolen from the Greek engineers and placed them as a border round the grave, Ketil Crow had them all seized.

Illugi Godi led the chanting prayers as, one by one, their throats were slit and they were laid out in a circle, head towards the mound, feet away. Hild stirred then, as the iron stink of blood swirled on the steppe wind and unfolded herself.

Àre we done here?' she rasped and heads turned angrily to her, only to be silenced by the cold stare they had in return.

It was a hasty excuse, half-ashamed in the dark, for a proper burial in the old way, with fire and dignity, but I made my own peace with Rurik then, for I thought it unlikely I would be back here—or that the scavengers would leave much. But all were safely across Bifrost, the rainbow bridge.

Afterwards, Einar told them what he planned: to strike out north and east, round the city, then back to the river beyond it and on down to the greatest wealth of silver they had ever seen.

Thirty agreed at once and eight thereafter, reluctant and muttering about every hand being against them.

`Did you think such a prize was to be had lightly?' Einar demanded, as much to all of us as to them.

`No,' answered one of those who still refused—baptised Christ-followers to a man, I noted. 'I did not think to have to pay my soul as the price.'

`Your soul?' snarled Ketil Crow. 'What is this? The afterlife in Christ-Valholl? If so, it seems a poor place, full of poor people and gods who scorn a hard arm.'

The man, a Dane from Hedeby called Aslaf, was not fazed by Ketil Crow and merely shrugged, since he had no goldbrowed argument and Christ hung on him like a new tunic, still creased and scratchy here and there.

For all that, he and his three oarmates would not give in and stood their ground, shuffling their feet and keeping a wary eye and a hand on a hilt.

`You swore an oath,' Illugi reminded them and Aslaf glanced at him, uneasy now that this door had opened. But he had courage, this Dane, and pushed it a little wider.

`Not made to the One God we follow,' he countered defiantly, then licked his lips and stared hard at Einar. 'Anyway, I am not the first to break that old oath. I will not follow a madwoman into the Grass Sea in search of a tale for children.'

The words hung in the air with the flutter and whine of insects and the gutter of new torches in the rising wind.

'Nithing turds,' Ketil Crow growled, waving a dismissive hand. 'I hate fucking Christ-men; they are not even worth killing.'

Hild laughed, high and crazed and cracked like a bell, and half of those who had already agreed to go almost changed their minds there and then, I saw. I was one.

For a moment I thought Aslaf would ruin it all, for his eyes narrowed and I could feel him flush from where I stood. If he fought, he would die, that was certain.

Then he relaxed, took two or three steps backwards, insultingly, until he was beyond range of a backstab, whirled and trotted into the night, back to the sprawling fires of the camp. With a brief wild look at each other, the other three did the same.

Ìf Yaropolk doesn't kill him,' Einar growled to the uneasy stirrings around him, 'then Sviatoslav will. If Starkad doesn't get to them first, that is.'

The men round him growled with bare-toothed, savage delight at that, the fate these oath-breakers deserved. But it was the wolf-grin of the desperate.

There wasn't much left now to bind us. Not oath, certainly—like a badly built hov, the roofbeams of which were splitting. For some, the lure of the hoard was still enough. For most it was the sick realisation that, unsteady as it was, the shrinking band of Oathsworn was the safest place to be for the moment.

And for me? There was only one reason I was going now. A son cannot leave his murdered father without taking revenge.

We moved out through the darkness, keeping the fires to our back until they disappeared. Then we turned east, with Steinthor questing ahead and Bagnose to our shield side.

Now the men knew of the plan, a few were cursing that they had left this or that behind, thinking they'd return. Short Eldgrim and Kvasir were the most loud and furious, since they'd bought a concubine between them and spent almost all they had on her only to have left her behind.

Most were as varjazi always had been. They wore all they possessed, carrying wealth in boot or under armpit. If you could not leave something behind in an eyeblink, you were a fool.

By dawn, the wind had risen to a snake-hiss and we trundled across short grass peeking from between stones, over endless, rolling hills, cut with steep-gulleyed streams, some dust-dry, some trickling with water and almost choked with eager growth.

It was well named, this Grass Sea, a great, undulating vastness unmarked as an ocean. When the city had shrunk behind us to a scab on the distant horizon, Einar put the wind at our back and headed us to the river.

Now and then he spoke softly with Hild, but she made not a sound and no one wanted to go near her, not even me, for the Other rose off her like a sweat-stink and made the hairs on your arms stand up.

We spotted the first dust, whipped away like smoke on a sighing wind, as we tramped tiredly up to another of the steep gulleys, which those Novgorod Slavs among us called balkas. They were annoying, for the shelter let scrub and stunted trees spring up and the carts had to be manhandled over them. Even the tough little ponies were tiring.

Einar decided to rest for a while in one and wait for Steinthor and Bagnose to come back in. Sheltered from the wind, with water and some kindling, we got a couple of fires going and those with the skill for it boiled up meat into a gruel and made flatbread on a griddle.

Bagnose came in, loping like a weary dog, laid his bow and quiver down and took a swig from a horn that was offered. Then he made a face and spat. 'Water, you arses!'

The men chuckled; Bagnose was a lift to the spirits, the one man who really did thumb his nose at the gods and never questioned that what he was doing was the way things should be. The whale road was as natural to him—and Steinthor—as if they were a pair of the great beasts it was named after.

He grabbed a bowl, hauled out a horn spoon from inside his tunic and sucked gruel into his mouth, chewing gobbets of tough gristle, spitting sideways. We all waited until he had finished, then Einar asked,

'Well, Geir Bagnose?'

Bagnose wiped his glistening beard, stuffed flatbread in, washed it down with another swig of water and sighed, then belched. 'Twenty, perhaps thirty horsemen, those little ones on little ponies. Moving north to east, circling us.'

Ènemy?' asked a voice and Bagnose snorted.

Àrse! Every horseman is our enemy now.'

`Those turds on their dog-horses are not fighters,' said Flosi with a sneer and a spit. `You can fight them off armed with a bladder on a stick.'

Bagnose shook his head sorrowfully. 'Tell me more when they shoot you full of arrows from a distance,'

he growled. 'They'll make you look like a hedgepig, then cut off your little bladder on a stick and shove it in your flapping mouth.'

More chuckles and Flosi acknowledged that they were, it had to be said, nasty with their little bows. But all of us had begged, stolen, bought—or, in my case, inherited—the thick underkirtle for mail. It made movement even harder, but kept the arrows off unless the little nithings got to close range, or you had Loki luck. I wore my father close to my skin and there was some comfort in that.

`Steinthor in yet?' asked Bagnose. Ketil Crow shook his head and Bagnose frowned, then shrugged and held out his wooden bowl for a refill. 'Have you heard this one, lads? Stop me if you have. I flee the deep earth, there is no place for me on the ground, nor any part of the poles . . .'

His voice covered me like a blanket and I drifted off to it before I heard the answer—but I knew it already and it was apt enough. I lay watching the clouds scud in the wind until my eyes closed and I dozed until kicked awake. We moved out.

Two miles further on we found Steinthor. His head, at least, stuck on a short spear, straggled hair and beard matted with blood. A great black bird hopped off it, wiping its beak with quick sideways flicks and completely unconcerned.

Illugi Godi made a quick, chanting prayer, but Sighvat, whom we called Deep-minded and whose mother had been the same, gave a snort of scorn.

`That's a crow, a big hoodie,' he said. 'Any minute it will fly off, widdershins, not sunwise.'

As if in response, the bird flapped off to the left, sluggish with Steinthor's eyes.

Sighvat felt our stares and looked at us, bemused. 'What? All crows are left-handed.'

`Crows don't have hands,' Ketil Crow replied, staring at Steinthor's flesh-flaked head.

`Nothing to do with these,' snapped Sigh-vat, holding up his hands. 'It's all here,' he went on and tapped his head. 'Why do you think you are called Ketil Crow?'

And that was true enough. Ketil Crow was corrie-fisted, a left-hander and a fearsomely difficult man to fight.

Bagnose, however, said nothing at all, just stood by that head looking wildly round for the rest of the body. We all spread out and looked, too, but found nothing and it was my thought that he had been killed elsewhere and the head carried to where we could not fail to find it, as a warning.

Illugi Godi and Bagnose lifted the grisly thing off the spear and put it in a hole we dug. We mounded earth over it but, like the bigger mound we'd left far behind, I had a notion that scavengers would dig it up before we'd gone too far.

It was a poor thing for the likes of Steinthor and, for days afterwards, I kept hearing his voice telling the story of finding me with the white bear, in that other world where I had once been a boy whose biggest adventure was finding a gull's nest with four eggs.

That done, we moved on, reaching the river as darkness fell, but Bagnose was not asked to go scouting again. That night, as we huddled round the small fire, eaten by the crushing dark, we knew there would be no more riddles or saga tales from the dark, hunched figure who sat and stared, not at the flames, but into the darkness.

Even whales die on the whale road.

The endless rolling steppe affects your mind, paring away thoughts until there is little more left than the desire to put one foot in front of the other. At one point I had the sick, dizzying feeling that I wasn't walking forward at all, but that the whole steppe was moving backwards.

I even stopped, to see if it carried me backwards and, when it seemed to do just that, as everyone kept on moving, I cried out with fear and dropped to my knees. It was Wryneck, coming up behind me, who grabbed me by the back of my mail and hauled me upright. As my feet stumbled forward I snapped out of it and turned to gasp my thanks.

The flicker of movement silenced everyone, making all heads turn. Hild, in one strange, fluid movement, stood, the red cloak falling from her. She leaped from the cart and strode forward in her bruise-blue dress, long dark hair whipping in that endless, soughing wind.

We all stared. She strode forward for another dozen paces, then stopped. One arm rose slowly and pointed. 'There,' she said. And we looked. And saw only the endless steppe.

À magic, invisible mountain, is it?' growled Flosi. No one else spoke, but we moved forward to where Hild stood—giving her a wide berth, I noticed, as if she smelled bad.

And we gaped, the shock of realisation coming to us as the steppe fell away into another balka, a big one, dust-dry and spilling out in a steep-sided canyon. Not a mountain. A pit. They had dug a pit into the steppe, a vast thing, big as a city, then mounded the middle of it back up in the shape of a great steppe lord's tent, but still below the original ground level.

`They diverted the stream,' Einar marvelled after we had moved down further. `To hide the entrance, they turned a river across it. This was once . . . a lake, a great pool, with water flowing in there'—he pointed—'and running out there to the Don.'

Everyone marvelled, save Illugi. The godi had not said much of anything other than muttered chants.

Once, in the night, I had seen him by the fire casting his rune bones and muttering to himself and thought then that he was growing as dark as Hild in some ways.

Àtil's howe,' breathed Valknut.

Ìf this one is to be believed,' growled Ketil Crow, moving past him to where Hild squatted. She smiled beautifully up at him and he scowled. 'Cunt to jawline,' he reminded her and moved on.

Einar took us in a scramble down the balka, where it led like a road straight to a cleft in the brooding mound.

Hild, silent and hugged to herself, raised one pale hand and pointed at the stones on either side of it, fat stones as tall as a man, ones you would not be ashamed to rune and set up on a hill in memory. But these, though pocked and scarred, were unmarked; however, Illugi looked at them suspiciously.

`The door,' declared Einar with his wolf-grin, his crow-hair flapping in the breeze. `We can set up camp here and start digging at first light.'

Men found fresh energy, unloaded gear and supplies and rubbed their hands with glee. Round the fire that night there was banter and talk of what they would do with all that silver. There was no doubting it now, for we had all seen the marvel of it.

Ketil Crow and Einar said nothing at all, but sat with their own dreams whirling in their heads. I doubted if they shared the same ones, though.

Atil's howe. A mountain of treasure. She had known after all, it seemed, and the realisation of that made me shiver—for how could she have led us so unerringly to this unmarked, unknown place? How could anyone have done that and still be like the rest of us?

I watched her sitting upright in front of those two stones and that cleft, which was like the dark invite of a woman's body. Her hair floated in the wind, a dark snake-crown, and, even with her back to us all, she exuded something that made the fear rise in you like old mead fumes. She sat there all night, was still there in the morning, she had not moved.

Did not move, until the horsemen swept on us.

Einar had split us, sensibly enough. There were those to guard and we wore all our gear, while those digging had stripped to the waist and were hacking away at the earth. A cart was being broken up, so that the wood could be used as shoring, for we had no clear idea of how much we'd have to dig to break in.

The drumming of hooves brought all heads up. The diggers ran for the cover of the carts; those on guard hefted their weapons. Of the twenty, about half knew how to use a bow and were nocking arrows.

But they also had mail and fat padded arms, all of which made drawing and loosing accurately a nightmare.

The horsemen swept down the balka in a cloud of dust, without any shouts or cries. They skidded at full tilt down the slopes we had taken ages to traverse, shooting arrows as they came.

I heard them thud into the earth around me. One hissed over my head. Another smacked my shield boss with a clang and dropped to the ground.

They were true steppe warriors, these, all sheepskins and wool hats and active as cats on those horses.

They didn't so much ride them as climb all over them, shooting their little arrows until they got close, then whipping out their light swords, darting them like snake-tongues at us from the other side of the horse, and swooping away before we could strike.

They swirled and whooped and vanished and appeared again in the dust until we were dizzy with it, whirling our heavy swords and axes at nothing.

A figure stepped out of our ranks into the dust.

`Hold!' yelled Einar. 'Don't let them drag you out into their killing ground.'

But it was Bagnose and he was past caring. He nocked, took aim, shot and a man pitched off. Walking forward, he nocked, took aim, shot and another horseman shrieked.

They saw him then and the arrows hissed. He took two full in the chest, staggering him. But he walked forward, nocked, took aim . . .

He had no mail, no padding, for he was an archer who took pride in it and never missed, wanted nothing to tangle his flights or string.

But Bagnose was already dead, though his legs and heart didn't know it and he was still roaring something when he fell.

We ignored Einar and went after him, of course—it was Bagnose, after all—charging into the dust, screaming. But by then the horsemen had thundered off and all we could do was drag back the corpse, studded with arrows.

`Like a hedgepig,' said Flosi mournfully. Out on the slope of the balka, though, six corpses lay, each killed with a single shot.

`What was he shouting?' asked Valknut, who had been one of the diggers.

`He wasn't shouting,' answered Einar softly. 'He was making verses. On his own death. A good song, but only he knows it.'

Òdin's balls,' Valknut growled, shaking his head. 'The cost of seeing them off was high.'

À test?' Ketil Crow hazarded, wiping his streaming face. `To see how good we are?'

`Now they know,' spat Wryneck with a brief twitch. 'Six for one.'

`Let's hope the price is too high for them,' I offered.

Of course, it wasn't. But they waited until the next day to try to wipe us out.

We dug feverishly, well into the night, taking it in turns to stand guard or swing a pick, so that no one got any real rest. Valknut and Illugi Godi did their own digging, another boat-grave for the animals to dig up, while Hild sat and watched us, perched on a wagon-trace with her knees at her chin. She reminded everyone of a carrion crow.

It was Valknut who speared the first of the treasure, with the very last hack of a mattock, dragging earth back out of the hole we had made between the stones.

He held up what he had found, scraping the dirt off and, in the red glow of a torch, something gleamed.

He spat, polished it and the flash of silver shone. We all gawped.

Einar took it from him, turning it this way and that. 'A bowl,' he hazarded. 'Or a plate, flattened and bent.

Good workmanship, though.'

Ìt's silver, right enough,' breathed Valknut and would have gone back in, save that the stretch he had cleared out needed roof supports and it was too dark to see properly to put them in. The tunnel we had dug was six foot long, three high and leaking loose dirt like water because we were using wood sparingly; we needed all the carts to carry our haul away in.

All night long the men turned that bent semi-circle of age-black silver to and fro, cleaned it, marvelled at it, discovered the delicate border of leaves and fruit, birds in flight and even bees, all embossed in the silver in perfect little portraits.

Sighvat studied it with interest and said, `Those are the dreams of birds.'

`You and your birds,' growled Valknut. `What do they dream of?'

`Songs, mostly,' Sighvat replied seriously, then wagged a finger at Valknut. 'If we scorn the wisdom of birds and beasts, we fool only ourselves.'

`What wisdom?' asked Wryneck, curious now, while he smoothed the notched edge of his sword back to sharpness in a comforting, rhythmic rasp of whetstone.

`Well,' said Sighvat, considering. 'Bees know when fire is coming and will swarm. Hornets and wasps know the very tree that Thor will hurl his hammer at. And a frog is better at being a frog than a man.'

We chuckled at that, but Sighvat merely shrugged and said, 'Could you live naked in a pool all winter and survive?'

`What else?' demanded Wryneck, for this was decent compensation for the sad lack of Bagnose's wit.

`My mother could speak with birds and some beasts,' said Sighvat, 'but never could teach it to me. She told me hedgepigs and wasps will not spy for anyone, but woodpeckers and starlings can be persuaded to tell what they know. And most hawks hate autumn.'

`Why?' demanded Einar, suddenly interested. 'I have hunted a hawk in autumn, but it never does well and I have always wondered why that is.'

`You should have had someone like my old mum ask it,' Sighvat replied. 'But it is simple enough. Here is a bird that hangs in the air, looking for the least little movement on the ground, which is its supper. And there are thousands of blowing leaves.'

Einar stroked his moustaches thoughtfully and nodded.

Valknut waved a dismissive hand, adding: `That's just . . . sense.'

`You did not know it,' Sivhgat pointed out and Valknut fumed, having no answer to that.

'And,' I said, half dreamily, 'you never see a cat on a battlefield.'

There was an amazed silence for a moment, then Sighvat grinned. 'Exactly—you know a thing or two, young Orm.'

Àll I know is that this'—Valknut held up the battered silver—'is a sign that riches lie in that hill.'

`Just so,' declared Einar with a slight smile, 'and here's something for you to think on. Riches are like horse shit.'

We looked at each other. Some shrugged; no one could understand it and more than a few, never having heard him do it before, were not sure if Einar was making a joke.

Einar grinned. 'They stink when they are in a heap in someone else's patch, but make everything fruitful when spread about.'

And we laughed and felt almost like the old brotherhood, sitting by the fire, fretting for light so we could get back to digging.

But when morning did come, we had hardly blown life back into the fire embers, barely had time for a stretch and a fart, before the horsemen appeared on the steppe above the balky and everyone sprinted for weapons and armour.

15 This time, they were heavy horse, men in armour, with spears held low or overarm, with maces and cased bows and curved swords. They carried silver discs on poles that told us they were Khazars.

There was a pause then as we struggled into padding and mail, nocked arrows, hefted swords. Up on the lip of the steppe, two men talked . . . argued, in fact, waving arms. Wryneck chuckled. 'They don't like it one bit,' he said. 'The light horse can get down fast and hard, but we can see them off and even shelter from their arrows. Those big men aren't so happy, for they will not have as easy a time coming down as we did.'

`You have the right of it, old one,' agreed Einar. 'No speed, no shock—and charging into all this guddle underfoot.' He waved one hand at the carts and gear and earth spill and I moved closer to it.

So it proved. The big men left their big horses and came down at us on foot, slithering unsteadily in their great, ankle-lapping armour of little plates like metal leaves, with round hide-covered shields and sabres and maces. Some snapped off their great lances to use as spears on foot.

No shieldwall. This time it was hack and slash and survive.

Illugi, his godi staff discarded in favour of a shield and axe, took a rushing charge at the stand and locked himself in a fierce grapple with the first of these armoured oxen to hit us. Einar and Ketil Crow moved fluidly as a killing pair; metal clanged on metal, curses and blood sprayed.

One came at me, eyes dark and fierce under his helmet rim, his teeth startling white in the bush of a black beard. He stabbed at my thigh and I blocked it, knocking the weapon sideways with my shield. He reversed the stroke with incredible speed, lunging at my head and I had to throw myself back as the point flicked like a snake tongue almost in my eye.

He darted in again. I half dropped, slashed, felt my sword bite and recoil from that armour. His point flicked out again; I blocked and hacked again to no purpose other than chipping metal leaves off him.

Something whirled next to me; the man shrieked and dropped. Wryneck popped up like some mad puppet, rammed his sword straight through the open front of the screaming man's helmet and yelled, 'Too many to go dancing with them, young Orm. Cut the feet from the fucks.'

I remembered, then, Gunnar Raudi's lessons back in Bjornshafen: any way you can. Teeth, fists, elbows—aim for the feet and ankles. My father, teaching me how to survive . . .

There were too many. I had three on me, one with a spear, two flanking him with shields as guards. My breath was ragged; my whole arm throbbed from blows on the shield. The spearman waded in chopping in a cross-pattern, which was lucky for me. It let me know these men had no idea how to fight on foot.

I slapped the iron blade point away with a sweep of the sword, stepped, spun up inside it, rammed the shield against his armoured carapace and slammed the fat pommel of Bjarni's old sword into his face.

I knew where they all were, as if I could see it. I spun out of that, weightless it seemed to me, went into a crouch and scythed round, taking a second one just above the ankles, feeling the blade bite, hearing him howl.

The spearman was on his back now, so I leaped up, landed both feet and drove the air from him as I hurled myself at the third man, who was snarling and swinging his sabre furiously.

The blow hooked up under my shield and slammed into my ribs so hard I felt them bend. Then I hit him hard, felt the searing agony of pain in my shield-arm as we collided, falling together like two steel trees.

I rolled right, over the sword-arm, came up in a half-crouch, shield up. My left arm was pure fire now, but I hacked viciously with the sword as he struggled like a trapped beetle in his heavy armour. It swept up under the nasal of his helmet, took his nose off in a flick of blood, ripped the helmet half off his head and left him yowling and scrabbling away from me.

I sliced again, seeing the spearman wallowing back to his feet, felt the blade shear down into muscle and bone, through Noseless's neck.

The spearman was up, dragging out his sabre and I had no shield-arm, just a mass of fiery pain with a dead weight dragging it. I lunged forward as Black Beard's sabre cleared the sheath, hacked forward, backstroked and he squealed, the sabre flying away, hand still attached.

I was on one knee, sucking air. One was dead, one was rolling around with blood seeping from his boot, one was howling with the stump of a right hand.

And Einar was coming at me, dust spurting under his boots.

He had lost his shield and helmet and his hair was flying like a black net. He had also lost his sword and gained one of their cavalry sabres, the great lazy S-curve of it pointing at me as he roared forward.

I couldn't get my left arm to move. He came hurtling at me and all I could think to do was snarl back at him and slash.

The blow took him hard in the side. I saw rings explode, the straw of his padded jerkin puffed out, then blood sprayed and he shrieked, the sabre curving over my shoulder.

Taking the cavalryman coming up behind me straight in the face.

He hit, we fell together in a grunting heap of dust and blood, spilled apart, lay there. My shield straps broke—mercifully—and I rolled free of it and got up, left arm dangling.

Einar struggled up, grinned at me with bloody teeth, collected his sabre from the face of the man who had been about to kill me and hirpled off, half-bent.

I stared as the dust swirled. Men groaned, yelled. Valknut moved wearily over, finished off the one whose leg I had all but severed—the other one was gone—then walked a few paces forward and raised both arms. Àny more? Have you any more, you pox-eaten holes?'

I hoped they hadn't, but there were some ragged cheers. With my breath thundering in my ears I looked at the cavalryman with the punched-in face. Had Einar saved me? Had he tried to kill me there and was his luck so bad he had actually stopped me from being killed?

I didn't know; I couldn't be sure. But I had hurt him. Ketil Crow was with him, helping him off with his mail. Others, Illugi among them, were moving among the bodies, looking for dead and wounded.

Wryneck lay up against a wagon wheel, pinned to the ground like a hunted boar, thick blood welling round the point where the lance had sliced into the rings and mail and through him to the steppe.

I couldn't speak as I knelt by him. He felt it, opened his eyes with difficulty and grinned, spilling blood all over his white beard. 'She said I'd never get old and rich,' he said and died.

Àre you hurt bad?' I heard and turned to see Valknut looking at me. I stood up, weaving, and he steadied me, looking me over.

`This needs sewing,' he said with a chuckle, flicking the dangling rings round rents in the mail. My ribs, I knew, were bruised, but not cut. The pain in my hand was beginning to subside, too, and I realised I had got off lightly.

So did Valknut, who slapped me on one shoulder and looked at the dead men nearby. 'Not bad,' he said.

'Three in one—but that fourth would have had you if it hadn't been for Einar.'

And he strode off, sword round both shoulders, as if coming off a practice field. Over by the fire, Einar was naked to the waist, grim-faced and white as milk, while Illugi picked rings out of his flesh and heated up a knife.

I saw him force Einar to drink and, an hour later, I could already smell the garlic from his severed gut from where I stood, but Einar gave a little shake of his head when Illugi came to him and put his tunic back on.

Hild crouched nearby, watching like a buzzard waiting for prey to die.

Eight were dead, almost all the others wounded and two of those had soup wounds, which Ketil Crow dealt with. Sixteen enemy corpses were left where they lay, though they were stripped naked. The horsemen had disappeared.

An hour after the battle, half of those still fit started to shore up the tunnel and recommenced digging, those too hurt to dig tended the wounded and prepared food. At noon, I handed Einar a bowl of meat and bread and our eyes met.

He was so pale the veins on his hands were blue ropes, but his eyes locked with mine and were still black and steady and I was first to look away, still unsure whether he had been trying to kill me or save me.

When I collected the bowl again, it was still full, the food congealed. Einar looked asleep, head on his chest, face hidden by the matted wings of his hair, but his hands looked so white I thought, for a second, that I could see through them.

All that day I wondered about him, while the heat grew brassy and the corpses swelled and began to blacken and stink.

`We shall have to get out of here soon,' muttered Kvasir. 'If not, we will get sick and die.'

They called him Spittle as a joke, after the wise man made from the saliva of the gods, because there were stones with more sense than Kvasir. But it is possible that he had made his first-ever joke, since most of us were sick or dying already. Kvasir himself had an infection in one eye that leaked pus: if a cure wasn't found, he would go blind in it.

I wasn't even sure of my own state. The bindings round my lost fingers were filthy and stained, my ankle ached and, once I had peeled the tattered mail and padding off, my ribs were looking anything but healthy under the tunic.

`Looks like Bifrost,' said Finn Horsehead. It was a measure of how bad things were, for he never said much at the best of times. Ìt will have more colours than the rainbow bridge by morning, I am thinking.

Does that hurt?'

It did and I slapped his hand away and told him to leave off prodding it. I could feel it grate when I moved and worried that I had broken a rib or more.

`We are so cursed that we will soon come to envy the dead,' answered Short Eldgrim morosely.

We still called him Short Eldgrim, even though the reason for it—another Eldgrim, nicknamed Long—

was under the mound of earth nearby. Short Eldgrim, slashed badly about the face and hands, didn't look like he would be long in lying next to him.

`You old woman,' answered a man called Arnod, though he made a sign against the evil eye with the one arm that was still good. The other was strapped to his side with two wooden spars on either side, badly smashed by one of the cavalrymen's maces.

Ì would like to see my old woman,' Finn muttered and everyone glanced at him, stunned by this display of affection. He saw it and scowled. 'She owes me money.'

I sat by the fire, whose flames twisted and flattened in the rising wind and listened to them talk, as if they had no injuries worth speaking of, about what they might find inside that gods-cursed howe.

They had everything in there, from Odin's magic ring, Draupnir, to the Mead of Poetry, brewed from blood and honey.

Then Short Eldgrim, hunched and grumbling and in pain from the carvings on his face and hands, moodily pointed out that, if we were descending into the realm of saga tales, there was every chance we'd find Hati, the wolf who chases and tries to devour the moon, or even Nidhogg, the corpse-devouring dragon.

In the distance came a rumbling on the rising wind. As the twilight grew and the wind moaned down the balka, Valknut came up to where we all huddled round the fire, watching the blue-white flashes light up the sky in the distance, listening to the rumbling wheels of Thor's goat-pulled chariot.

He held up a guttering torch, whose flames were nearly flat in the wind. 'We have broken into the howe of Attila,' he said, 'and Hild has gone inside.'

There was a mad scramble from the fire then, a scrabble of eager men heading for the tunnel until they were brought up short by the grim figure of Ketil Crow, standing light on the balls of his feet, his sword, saw-edged with nicks, swinging in one hand.

`Best if only a few go in,' Einar said, moving slowly, half-hunched to one side. His face seemed to have shrunk and had a greenish tinge, the eyes sunk so deep that his face already looked like a corpse. There was a huge seep of blood from his bandaged side. 'The tunnel isn't all that wide, or safe. Ketil Crow, me, Illugi, Sig—Orm, you are fit, I am thinking, so you will go. The rest remain.'

`Prepare the carts, lads,' Ketil Crow added with a grin. 'We will be hauling out a fortune soon.'

That mollified them but it didn't take much—while the lure of plundering a huge hoard of silver was strong, the fear of Nidhogg or worse was stronger. Best, I could see them all reason, to let someone else find out the dangers. There was plenty of opportunity for plunder later.

The dawn horizon flashed and roared behind me as I ducked into the tunnel. I was the last man, almost on all fours, wincing at my various pains and carrying only my sword. Ahead, Einar's arse was barely visible and I could hear him grunt and pant. Up front, Ketil Crow, Valknut and Illugi Godi struggled to keep torch flames from their faces and still avoid elbowing all the shaky timber uprights.

Earth trickled down my neck—a run of it, like thick water, spilled over the back of my hand as I brushed the roof. Something dug into my knee: metal. I dug it out, made out a dull gleam, held it close, saw the wink of silver.

Now that I looked, I could see other lumps of dull, age-black metal. We had dug straight through a wall of silver objects and earth.

I crawled on, feeling my other hand slap into something sticky and, when I brought it close to my face, smelled the iron tang of fresh blood. Einar, leaking like a sprung bucket, slithered along the tunnel and, suddenly, stood upright.

I followed, scrambling out into the howe of Attila.

I had had no idea what we would find, even from the start. A cave, I had imagined, with neat piles of gleaming treasure, like all the sagas seemed to have. Hopefully with no coiled dragon.

But this was no cave. Even in the light of the torches, held high by Ketil Crow, Sigtrygg and Illugi, you could see that his people had done Attila proud.

The howe was the size of a small town, though I only had that impression from the great vault of the roof.

The floor was flagged with stone; the roof, which should have been dirt, was a vague, arched shape in the darkness, its great wooden beams socketed into solid stone pillars and, though crusted with age, still firm.

At one end of this flagstoned square was a huge throne, a magnificent edifice of wood and gleaming silver raised high above the flagged level, with a pile of bright, brocaded robes in red and green and blue lying at the foot of it.

And all around, everywhere, piled to the roof, gleaming here and there, were blackened shapes, ominous and flickering in the torch shadows, a great tumble of forms, like buildings, strange and slanted, holding the gods knew what.

Each arm of that throne was as large as a table and, fastened to one, I saw with a sudden leap to my throat, was a skeleton, held at the neck and wrists by short, thick black chains embedded in the base.

I knew it was a woman, though there was nothing there to let me know that. Naked, she had been chained to the throne of the dead Attila. I knew who she was: Ildico, his bride of one night. The dream rushed back to me, of Hild and the collar of silver.

Ketil Crow saw none of this, just the pile of robes at the foot of the throne and he knew what that meant.

His scream of rage should have echoed. Instead, it was sucked dead by that place. 'The sword. She has taken the sword!'

He rushed forward and raked his own blade in the robes. Yellowed bones and insects spilled out from the bright, curling gold embroidered dragons on it. A skull rolled, part of what was left of Attila, who had been on that throne until flung from it by Hild, tearing free the sword he had held in his lap for centuries.

With a curse, Ketil Crow flung himself at the dark, bulked shapes, searching for her and yelling curses.

Things clattered and fell and he screamed wildly and hurled bits of black metal backwards. He wanted that sword, as badly as Einar wanted the gifthrone.

Einar was now moving like an old man, bent and shuffling. I watched him give a choking, bitter half-laugh and hirple weakly forward, then slowly and painfully climb on to the great silver chair, where he slumped, laughing blood on to his moustaches.

I scarcely noticed, or heard Illugi Godi's muttered chanting. I had just realised, for the first time, what the building-sized shapes really were.

Age-blackened silver. The sheer extent of it sucked breath and reason right out of me. Acres of it, piled high to the roof, round the throne, beyond the throne, the riches of a dozen kingdoms, the craft of a thousand smiths.

Jewelled fans, I saw, with silver feathers. A miniature of a castle gleamed, sparkling with gemstone flags.

A silver ship reared out of a sea of coins, with ropes and stays of silver wire. A shirt of mail, each ring silver, every small rivet gold. Anklets and brooches and rings and tumbled pots on tumbled pots of coins, spilling like waterfalls.

For the first—and only—time, I discovered the silver-lust that so grips a man he loses his reason. I was, on that day, infected and cured of it for ever. I grabbed Illugi's torch from him and I doubt if he noticed.

I fell on my knees, picked something up. A cup, slightly flattened on one side, with stem and embossing.

I picked up another, then another, until I was scrabbling in the piles, heedless of the hurts. A silver pin stabbed me: I stuck it in my tunic. A silver-hilted dagger drew blood on my palm: I stuck it in my belt.

There were rings and armrings, which we still call ringmoney. Plates, shields, helmets, brooches, bowls, ewers, bracelets, necklaces, earrings and coins, thousands of coins. There were knuckledusters of gold and daggers of silver with jewelled hilts.

They were everywhere, piled high, forced together until cups flattened and thrones bent, a fortune, all in silver, wrenched from the world by Attila and his armies, a fitting panoply for the greatest of great steppe kings.

It was the scream that wrenched me out of it, my tunic stuffed, my boots full, my arms laden with a bowl the size of a bath.

`Burning ice, biting flame,' Illugi said. `That is how life began, in the south, in Muspell, where it seethes and shines and no man can look on it.'

In the flickering torchlight, I suppose, all that cold silver, bouncing with flame, could have reminded him of Muspell, the land of molten ice and shining flame where life was first created. At the time I thought his mind had gone. I am still not sure what was right.

The scream came again, then Ketil Crow slid down a hill, stumbling in an avalanche of coin, cursing and shrieking. He had lost his sword and there was blood on his mouth. He hit the flagstones and fell, scrambled up, fell again and tried to crawl to the exit.

Valknut went to him, but he was already sliding out of this world, bleeding in slowing gouts and spilling blue-pink coils from the rip in his stomach that went from groin to throat. Cunt to jawline.

His eyes chilled us. They were livid with fear and he was so gibbering with it that he couldn't speak, his mouth moving like a fish until it stopped and he died.

I stood up and moved, shedding rings and cups and a fork with two tines. I let the huge bowl clatter and Valknut whirled, searching the darkness.

Èinar . . . ?' I asked, but there was silence. I moved to where he sat, like the jarl he had always striven to be, surrounded by all the wealth of the world, on the throne of a ring-giver. He looked like spume on a wave, as if a breath would blow him away.

`Was it worth it?' I demanded of him and the sunken eyes flicked open, the pale face rose a little. One strand of black hair stuck to his cold-sweated cheek like a scar and his grin was as pale as the torc he wore, that mark of his status.

He grinned and touched it, that thick, braided ring of silver, shredded and lopsided where gift-sections had been hacked off.

`You . . . may have . . . to learn . . . for yourself,' he said, with that wolf-snarl of his. 'The weight of a jarl torc like this.'

It was the smile that finished it. I had seen it before, just as he'd reached the back of Gunnar Raudi in Dengizik's tomb.