The White Raven

12

'We came upon a balka, one of those dried-out riverbeds that scar the steppe, but our eyes were fixed on the smoke. Wisps of it, scarring a milk-blue sky, marking a settlement and that meant warmth, shelter and food you did not have to carry under your armpit to be able to chew.

Avraham was out in front, on foot since he had woken to find his horse dead of cold and too frozen to be of use. He cursed the animal; if it had died during the day, when it could be seen, things would have been different.

Those nearest watched for such a moment, when all four legs buckled. Sometimes they would not even wait for a horse to die properly before they were on it, hacking out the warm meat and drinking the blood, flaying the hide off it before it froze. Even if the rider was one of the armoured druzhina he scrambled out of the way and quick, for people with knives — especially the likes of Thorgunna and Thordis — did not always see or care what they cut in their haste.

Morut was off tracking the Man-Haters and our only scout was now on foot, which is why we did not get enough warning. Not that it would have made much difference to us, with our minds dulled and what spark remained fixed on the smoke. The riders whooped up and over the lip of the balka and whirred down on us like a flock of birds. I saw Skirla take an arrow and go down, shrieking, while the stunned druzhina guards were still trying to gather up reins and sort out weapons. Avraham knew better than to try to run and hunkered under his shield as they galloped past him and on to us.

They were women on horseback. They were the Man-Haters and that paralysed everyone as much as the cold and the surprise.

Howling, a strange wolf-yipping series of yowls, they cut daringly through the middle of us on their bony, half-staggering little steppe ponies. I hauled out my sword, cursed the fact that I had long ago packed my shield in a cart as being too much burden; a man without a sword is still a warrior, but one with no shield is just a target.

A druzhina warrior went backwards off his horse, which panicked and bolted, though it was too weak to run far. The arrow that skewered him through the middle of his face came from a shrieking Valkyrie, braids flying, tattoos writhing in the snarl of her long-skulled face as she kicked and turned her shaggy pony towards me, fishing another shaft out.

She was, I was sure, one who could nick the eye out of a gnat at four hundred paces from the back of a full galloping horse and I was a dead man.

Gyrth swept past me, his swathe of cloaks and wadmal wrappings flapping like some huge bird as he lumbered. He paused, swept up the fallen man's big shield and took the woman's arrow in it — the one aimed at me. The shunk of it hitting was a clap of thunder.

Then he ran at the horse. Straight at it, shield up and roaring, the boss smacking the animal on the left shoulder, the rim clattering it in the teeth as he bellowed and shoved. The horse went over in a screaming flail of limbs and the woman, fast and agile, leaped free, rolled and came up, spitting and snarling like a cat. She whipped round to face Gyrth, who was rolling about like a loose barrel and trying to avoid the animal's wildly flying hooves.

She went for him, but Finn was already there. She screamed and hacked and he brought the big heavy sword up, so that her little curved sabre spanged off it with a shower of sparks.

As Gyrth clambered heavily to his feet and the horse kicked itself back upright, snorting and rolling-eyed, Finn cut down, a chopping stroke that she met with the edge of her blade. It rang like a bell, even as it turned his stroke, but the shock of it ran back up her arm to her numbed fingers, tearing the sword from her grasp.

She howled then, all slaver and frustrated anger and even as I closed in on her I saw no fear in her at all. Then another shape loomed, sliding through the confusion and spraying snow, a dazzle to the eyes.

It was a golden horse. Not yellow. Metallic and sheened as if moulded from a single block of polished brass, it pranced between the warrior woman and us, made more splendid by the shaggy steppe ponies it moved through.

I gawped; the woman hurled herself up and back on to her own plunging steppe pony, while the big, gold-gleaming horse danced majestically between us, blowing twin streams out of its scarlet-edged nose. The rider was a silhouette above me, hair black and flying like snakes. I gawped. Something shone in an upraised hand and came down like a scythe of light; Finn yelled a warning.

I put up the big sword, felt the kick of it as it took the blow, heard the high ting of it shattering. The gold horse, high-stepping and snorting, swung sideways and its huge rump slammed into me, into the hand I put up feebly to stop it.

I went over backwards, arse over shoulders, a whirl of sky and snow with my only thought being that it had been warm. The gold horse had been warm and damp to the touch.

When I had sorted myself out, the golden horse was gone.

The women were gone. Only the moans and shouts they had caused were left.

'Odin's arse, Orm,' Finn yelled, scrambling to my side. 'I thought you were dead then, for sure.'

I got up, slowly. Finn looked at the splintered remains of my sword. He whistled admiringly.

'Some blow to have broken that good blade,' he muttered and I looked at it, the hilt in my hand. It did not seem to belong to me, neither the jagged stump of sword nor even the hand.

'You are bleeding,' Gyrth said, coming up on my left and I looked, bewildered, at the watery smear of blood soaking my mittened palm.

'Not mine,' I remembered, as it rushed in like a mad tide on the turn. 'The horse. The gold horse. .'

'Aye,' gasped Jon Asanes, dashing up. 'Did you see that beast? Gleaming as a gold dirham, right enough. Like an amulet on a thong.'

'He saw it, right enough,' replied Gyrth, heaving for breath and chuckling with the exultation that always comes when you find yourself alive at the end of a fight. 'He almost had his head up its arse.'

We laughed, whooping and gasping, skeins of drool freezing the edges of our mouths. I stopped before they did, for I had remembered the rider, with her black hair like snakes writhing. And the sword, that scything sabre of light. My belly churned and I asked Finn if he had seen her.

He nodded, then held up one finger. 'Do not say it, young Orm. Do not. It was just a woman on a fancy horse, no more. Hild is dead. Long dead. Do not bring her back to life. Not now.'

'So this was just a woman?' I demanded, my fear swelling the anger in me. 'With a rune-sword like my own, that can shatter good northern steel?'

'Fuck you, Orm,' Finn said, furiously rubbing his face and beard with one hand, a sign that he was truly confused and angry. 'Fuck your mother, too. It is not Hild. Hild is dead, Bear Slayer. Years since. You saw her die in Atil's tomb.'

I said nothing, sick with a confusion of fear and possibility, my thoughts of gulls that shrieked and swooped and would not stay still to be looked at.

'That was a horse,' Avraham declared, appearing into the middle of this, all unknowing and uncaring. 'A heavenly horse, no less. I never thought to see one.'

'A what?' demanded Ospak. Behind him, keening started as Hekja found the body of Skirla. They had been thralled together almost as babes, that pair and had been with Thorgunna and Thordis for as long.

'A heavenly horse, from far to the east,'Avraham said, jerking me away from the wailing women. 'They are sheened like metal when they sweat, yellow as brass and are so highly prized they are worth their weight in gold. Those steppe heathens say they sometimes sweat blood, too, which is the mark of what passes for their heaven.'

'Sweat blood,' repeated Jon Asanes wonderingly. I looked at the blood-soaked palm of my mittened hand, where it had smacked off that huge brass rump. Finn stumped off, making soft growls at Thordis and Thorgunna, as close as he came to a soothing noise, for the loss of Skirla.

'Just so,' agreed Avraham, then turned to me.

'Dobrynya wants you. It seems we have another problem today.'

The other problem stood on the village earthwork and grinned cheerily down at us from under the tangle of his yellow hair. One hand rested quietly on the frost-glittering points of the rampart timbers and the other twirled a great long axe on its butt, so that the head flashed in the weak red sun of the dying day as he spoke out of a twisted smile.

'He hath need of fire, who now is come,

Numbed with cold to the knee;

Food and clothing the wanderer craves

Who has fared o'er the rimy fell.'

Which let me know, from his accent, that he was more Slav than Norse and more learned than most — though one of the wise Sayings of the High One was scarcely gold-browed verse-making.

'No,' he added to Vladimir as I came up with Finn and the others, 'I do not think I am inclined to let you in, for all that you have done me the service of chasing off those madwomen. There is room enough only for me and my men.'

'Then there must be more than a few with you,' Dobrynya answered smoothly. 'Perhaps if you told us how many were in there, we could count out a suitable number that would not steal the food or shelter from you.'

'It is of no consequence how strong we are here, Uncle Dobrynya,' chuckled the man, thumbing his cold-reddened nose, 'since we are not letting any of you in. You should know that we are strong enough, all the same.'

'Do you know who I am?' demanded Vladimir indignantly and the man chuckled again.

'You are the young prince Vladimir. Your father is dead and you are now so far from Lord Novgorod the Great that you are in more danger here than I am and from your own brothers, too. You should have listened to your Uncle Dobrynya, boy, for I am sure he has advised you to go home.'

Vladimir flushed and fumed, for that was a solid hit to the mark. Dobrynya, seeing the boy fighting his horse, made anxious by nervous jerking, reached out a hand and touched his shoulder.

'We should talk this out later,' he said.

Vladimir rounded like a snake. 'Do not touch me. Ever.'

Dobrynya paused, then inclined his head in a bow. The man on the ramparts laughed out loud and everyone, myself included, was annoyed that the prince had behaved like a charcoal-eating nithing. Dobrynya stayed smooth and cool as a still pond.

'As you say, my prince,' he said to Vladimir, 'but this great fool has made it clear that he prefers to be staked rather than deal with us pleasantly. Let us not disappoint him.'

Still furious, Vladimir half-reined his horse round, then paused and stared up at the man.

'You know me,' he piped, fury making his voice all the more shrill. 'Tell me your name also, that I might have it marked on the stake I have driven up your arse for this.'

'Farolf,' the man said, not smiling now 'I know you — but I know the one with you better. Orm Bear Slayer, I am thinking.'

I jerked at the sound of my name and the by-name that went with it, the one that men used like a sneer, just before they challenged you. He grinned down at me and inclined his head in a mocking bow.

'I have heard much of you from Lambisson,' Farolf said. 'I heard more from that little scar-faced man he has, the one with his wits addled.'

'Then you know more than you did before,' I replied. 'Do you also know where Brondolf Lambisson is?'

'Gone from here,' replied Farolf cheerfully. 'Him and his little empty-head. Dead, probably — those ball-cutting women have gone after him and left some here to see if we would be stupid enough to walk out and ask them to slaughter us.'

'Now those Man-Haters are gone,' I answered carefully, 'and we are here instead. It would be wise to lower a knee to the prince and the bar from the gate. We are not women and we will not wait for you to come out.'

'No,' he replied seriously. 'I was thinking that. You and the prince seek the same thing Lambisson seeks. You are a power, even though you look a little. . diminished. For all that, I cannot see you getting in this gate.'

'You have left Lambisson,' I said, seeing it clearly. He nodded and smiled and it was his smiling that made me uneasy, for he was sure of himself, polished as a well-used handle. The others listened, swinging eyes from me to him and back, as if it was holmgang fight.

'Did you betray him, or he you? Not that it matters — you now go your own way,' I went on, half musing to myself, working the weft of it in my head as I spoke. 'Yet you will not join us, which means you have plans of your own. If you seek the silver, then you seek Atil's howe. .'

It came to me then, in a rush and sick lurch of my belly. He knew where he had to go, or thought he did. The only way he could know for sure was if someone had told him. Short Eldgrim had gone with Lambisson, which left. .

He saw my face and laughed, then made a signal. Men, all leather and snarls, brought Thorstein Cod-Biter forward and he hung in their grip like a sack, raising his face at the last. Face was what it had been once. Now it was a bruise with eyes in it.

'Heya, Orm,' he said through puffed and bloody lips. 'What kept you?'

Before I could say anything, Farolf jerked his chin at his men and they dragged Thorstein away and non-too gently at that — I heard the thumps of him being clattered down the rampart steps.

'Now go away,' Farolf said, 'or else I will hang him upside down from the ramparts and cut his throat.'

I said nothing, conscious of Vladimir's tense, white face, his uncle, Sigurd and all the rest. Farolf had no doubt thought it a good ploy and if it had just been the Oathsworn it might have been a problem, but Cod-Biter meant nothing to anyone else, alive or dead and little Vladimir would not offer the smell from his shit for his safe return. He wanted revenge and stakes and if he had not been mounted he would have stamped his little booted foot and screamed.

Farolf, of course, wanted us to assume he had forced Thorstein to tell all he knew and so could carry out his threat to kill his hostage — but Cod-Biter had nothing true to tell him; he did not know the way to the howe, though a man will babble any lie under blade, blow or hot iron.

I turned away, for there was nothing left to say. Or so I thought — but Finn had something and he stepped forward, just as Farolf turned to leave.

The unwise man thinks all to know,

While he sits in a sheltered nook;

But he knows but one thing,

What he shall answer,

If men put him to proof.'

It was another verse from the same place Farolf had found his, so apt an answer and so astounding coming from Finn that I could not say anything. Nor was I alone in this; the gold-browed cleverness of it settled on us slow and gentle and warming as broth in the belly, so that the fire of it took time to seep in. When it did, men hoomed and cheered and rattled weapons on shields.

But all we had done was made Farolf scowl. To do more, as Dobrynya and Sigurd pointed out, would take the Oathsworn.

'My lads fight from horseback,' Sigurd declared, as we hunched round a miserable fire that failed to prevent the ice forming on our moustaches. 'I can get them on foot, but they will not be good at it and their ring-coats are too long.'

'They have bows,' said Dobrynya. 'They can keep heads down while others get over the walls, but it is as Sigurd says — they are horsed fighters.'

Not even much of that, I was thinking moodily, remembering them reacting to the Man-Hater's attack. What the Oathsworn had to do would not be easy; the village defences had been built to keep out the marauding Khazars and Pechenegs and consisted of an earthwork topped with a palisade of rough-hewn timbers. It was taller than two men, so we would need ladders to get over it and that would take wood we did not have. The only trees for a good walk in any direction were some scrawny birches huddled in a copse.

'We could break up a cart,' offered Sigurd and Vladimir, only a red nose in a heap of fur-trimmed cloak squeaked out in his annoyed little voice, 'No more carts. How will we haul away the treasure if we break them all up?'

There was a moody silence and then Dobrynya cleared his throat. 'So, we cannot go over the walls. Nor can we go through the gate, which will take a ram we do not have and cannot get.'

If it was not for Cod-Biter we could go away, I was thinking, while the silent little Olaf, Vladimir's constant shadow, poked the fire with a stick and sent sparks whirling up. From the walls, as if to mock us, we heard someone stamping to keep out the cold.

'We will burn it,' declared Vladimir. 'The gate. We will set it on fire.'

'With what?' I countered. 'Those timbers are iced solid. They will not burn without oil. Do we have oil?'

'Then you work out a way,' Vladimir shrilled angrily. 'You won't, though, for you don't want to, since as soon as you do. .'

He clipped the rest off, realizing what he was about to say and buried his face right into the furs to hide his shame.

As soon as we attacked, Cod-Biter would die. It was possible, if Farolf saw all was up for him. If we were quick, all the same. .

I got up, stiff with cold, and dragged the ice burrs off my beard, then walked away, conscious of their eyes on me. The darkness beyond the fire took me in even colder arms and hurried me towards the one the Oathsworn had lit, in the lee of a wagon and under a wadmal canopy. Behind, I heard the level rumble of Dobrynya, no doubt gently chiding his prince and telling him how much he needed Orm and the Oathsworn

Fuck them, I thought, sullen as a storm sky, for I could see no way out of this mess and wondered — not for the first time — what game Odin played now.

'So?' challenged Finn. 'What does the princeling want us to do?'

I told them and Kvasir grunted. Thorgunna said what I had been thinking, that we should just go away and I expected a sharp growl from Finn, was surprised when he stared into the flames and said nothing.

'Can we do that?' demanded Ospak. 'Surely we would be ridden down by those big Slav turds of the druzhina if we just took off?'

'A good long-handled axe will see that lot off,' muttered Gyrth, who had just such a weapon.

'A sword drenched in blood easily finds its mark,' agreed Red Njal, 'as my granny used to say.'

'The hacked-off foot cannot scurry fat;' Hlenni Brimill countered, grinning and. Red Njal frowned, considering the matter.

'The lame man runs when he has to,' he said eventually. Men groaned, but Tjorvir spat in the fire and scowled at them both.

'I came for silver. Bad enough we have to split it so many ways without running away empty-handed after all we have been through. As my own granny would say if she was here.'

Voices grunted assent, unseen in the dark.

'Are we so to split this great treasure?' Thorgunna's voice was light enough as she stepped into the firelight, but the eyes she laid on me were firm and black.

'Why else are we here, then?' demanded Ospak.

'To keep the stake from certain people's. arses,' Hauk Fast-Sailor grunted. 'Namely our own.'

'Aye, but,' Ospak began and Gizur cut him off.

'But no buts,' he said. 'It is Vladimir's treasure now, sold to save us from what that little axe murderer Olaf Crowbone got us into, make no mistake on it.'

'Odin's arse it is,' spat Gyrth. 'It is our treasure.'

'Our treasure,' mimicked Finn suddenly. 'Our treasure? You are come late to that feast, Steinbrodir.'

'Aye, well,' Gyrth said uneasily. Then, more indignantly, he added: 'I am Oathsworn now, just as you. My arse is freezing here, just as yours is.'

'Did it burn in Serkland?' grunted Hauk Fast-Sailor. 'Did you fight under the walls of Sarkel the first time we came here in search of this hoard?'

'I am here now,' returned Gyrth steadily. 'And others like me. Without us, you would still be clucking at hens in Oestergotland, Hauk Fast-Sailor.'

'We should not quarrel over this,' Red Njal said and Hauk rounded on him.

'What? No granny-wisdom about arguing over all the riches of the world, Njal?'

Red Njal shrugged and favoured Hauk with a face as dour as a gathering storm. 'Brawl with a pig and you come away with its stink,' he said.

There were some chuckles and grunts of agreement at this, while others started in to arguing one way or the other and Hauk, blinking furiously at Red Njal, was clearly working up to serious anger. I silenced them all, surprised that I was the only one, it seemed, who could see the truth of it.

'It is not our treasure. Or Vladimir's. Or even Atil's. It is Odin's — and he gifts it to those he thinks most fitting.'

I stared at them all, one by one while their eyes slithered icily away.

'Bone, blood and steel,' I added pointedly. 'Cod-Biter is in there. We will not run off and leave our own to die.'

There was silence at that, sullen and dark, for the truth of it bit as deep as the cold. Eventually, Finn stirred, blinked and poked sluggish embers out of the fire.

'Aye, well, first we have to get to over those walls. One step, then the other, as my old granny used to say.'

'You never had an old granny,' accused Red Njal.

'I did,' answered Finn. 'And a cunning woman she was. Knew about when folk would die by watching birds and that if you dreamed a dream three times in a row it would come true.'

'Sounds like Olaf Crowbone,' muttered Kvasir. 'Perhaps you are also his uncle. If you are, you have my sympathies.'

'Did this full-cunning mother's mother of yours have a way of leaping walls or walking through doors?' I demanded, which clamped their jaws shut as if they had been stitched.

'Well?' I demanded, feeling the eyes resting on me, dragging the weight of the jarl tort until I swore it dug into the flesh of my neck. 'We need to get over those walls or through the gate, so if anyone has some clever in him, now is the time to hoik it out for us all to share.'

They ran through the ram and ladders and I explained why that would not do. Jon Asanes came up with the idea of an upturned cart with men under it, running at the gate as a ram, which was not bad at all. We gave that one up because we could not be sure the cart would be strong enough, or the men to carry it, for that matter.

Eventually, Kvasir stretched and yawned. 'If we cannot go over the walls and through the gate, then we will have to go over the gate.'

There was a pause; those who had not heard it properly asked their neighbours what Kvasir had said. When they were told, they were no wiser than any the rest of us, so he laid it out and it became clear that, while we had been talking, he had been thinking.

When he was finished, we all chewed on it, looking for flaws in it until we realized that Kvasir had seen more with his one eye than all of us with our two.

'Can you do that?' Dobrynya asked, when I walked back to his fire to tell him what the Oathsworn would do when morning came.

'We will do it,' I answered, 'for we are the Oathsworn.'

I was glad they could not see my clenched belly and curled-up balls and discover how firmly I believed this.

Dobrynya glanced at Sigurd, then over at the sleeping Vladimir, little Olaf huddled beside him, and nodded wearily. I hunkered down beside him and we stared at the fire for a while, while the pair of them raked around for the delicate words to find out what the prince's pillars needed to know — if I had been so offended by this boy prince that I would leave or, worse, seek revenge.

I had no reason to do it, but saved them the trouble of speaking.

'In return for the lives he held in his hand,' I said to the fire, 'I agreed to hold up the prince's breaking sky. True, no oath was spoken on it — as you know, we oath only to each other, in the eye of Odin — but I am still shouldering the burden.'

There was silence while the fire found ice in its food and spat irritably. Then Dobrynya cleared his throat.

'He is young, but growing well,' he said. 'There will come a time when you will welcome the friendship of such a prince. The death of his father has flung him into this too early and unprepared.'

I nodded. The friendship of a prince would be welcome if I survived the winter — or if he did. I said as much and Sigurd grinned, which pinched the flesh white around his silver nose.

'The one thing I have learned,' he growled, 'is that some are born to greatness. He is one. Little Olaf there is another. They will survive.'

Even if everyone else has to die, I was thinking, while his little Olaf smiled and showed teeth bloody with firelight, as though he had just lifted his head from a fresh kill. Yet, for all his cub fierceness and his strange seidr magic, he was afraid most of the time. Afraid and alone, for all his Uncle Sigurd and his distant, unknown relatives, for Crowbone would always be fastened to Klerkon's privy, waiting in vain for them to rescue him.

Near him, Vladimir stirred and moaned, now only a boy in his sleep and one who could not ever have his father say all the things a father should, nor say all the things a son should.

I knew how they both felt, which was why I held up their sky.

That night, I dreamed of Hild, the woman who had led us originally to Atil's howe and had gone mad there — or been possessed by the fetch of Atil's dead bride who had, legend said, killed him and been fastened alive to his throne in that tomb.

I saw Hild as I had last seen her, hair flying like black snakes, the sabre she had, twin of my own, whirling like a skein of light as she slid away, back into that dark place, screaming curses at me while the flood-water rose round her.

I did not care what Finn believed. I knew Hild, or something like the fetch of her, was out on the steppe, leading Atil's own oathsworn against us.

In the dim light of morning most of us were too numbed to wake, sliding instead into a bleary-eyed awareness of a tiny, white, dreich world, unable to work out whether a night, a morning or a whole day had just gone by.

The strongest kicked the rest of us awake. That was Thorgunna, walking as if her legs had turned to timbers, but still capable of forcing me up, to make me do the jarl-task of forcing everyone else to their feet.

Cracking the skin of rime that had formed on me, clothes and beards and hair, I stumbled around looking for whitened mounds that had been men the night before, thumping them, growling — ranting, even, until the ice and snow cracked and heaved apart.

Slowly, the Oathsworn grunted themselves into the day; the whole camp did, sluggish and reluctant as a thawing river. Two were dead — none of mine, thank the gods — and those were stacked like driftwood, for there was no way even to uncurl them from their last frozen huddle let alone strip them of valuables, armour and weapons.

Ref Steinsson, rummaging in his sea-chest for anything that would give him warmth, showed us what had happened to the bits of poor tin he kept to make repairs on pots — we stared dully at how the cold had crumbled the slivers to a grey powder.

Fires were lit. I choked down some oats soaked in warmed meltwater — the horses had the same — and we armed for the day. By the time the sun was a red half-orb on the lip of the world, we were ready, a band of pinch-faced, sunken-eyed thrall-born, beards dripping with melting ice, faces beaded with melt-water from hair crammed under helmets and heating up, only to refreeze on our faces. We did not look capable of walking to the gate never mind storming it.

Worse than them were the Chosen, of whom I was one. We had taken off byrnies and layers of clothing, down to almost no more than a tunic, a helmet, breeks and boots. The cold no longer seeped, it chewed on us as we stamped and shivered — if it had not been for the battle-fire burning in us, we would already be blue and dying.

Dobrynya rode forward with little Vladimir, now in his silvered mail and plumed helmet, every inch a half-sized warrior. Sigurd led sixty horsemen — the last war horses still capable of being ridden by armoured men — in a long sweep to the far gate, a move designed to drag defenders away from this one. Olaf was with him and gave a cheerful wave.

The rest of the druzhina, on foot and with bows uncased, were lined up and waiting behind the Oathsworn, beyond bowshot range of the defenders. From behind the gate came the sound of hammering; the defenders at work. I worried, then, that they were nailing the bar to the gate, which would make things hard for us.

'A good morning to die,' declared Vladimir sternly, which was something his father had no doubt been fond of saying. I said nothing, for such a statement was far short of a battle speech designed to get our ice-limbed men moving. Beside, unclenching my jaw only made my teeth chatter.

'Time to begin,' declared Dobrynya.

'Just so,' said Vladimir and hefted his little spear. Then the two of them set their shields, kicked their horses and ran straight at the gate.

Say what you like about Vladimir — and many did as he grew into his power — but he had courage. The idea was Dobrynya's, to test how many archers the defenders had and, I learned later, he had wanted to do it alone. A swift gallop, the throw of a spear into the gate — the traditional way to announce the start of a siege with no quarter — then another swift gallop back to safety.

Vladimir added himself to the plan and showed his deep-thinking even then, for the men were as impressed by this display as they had been depressed by his loss of face in front of Farolf the day before.

He thundered his way up to the walls, hurled his little spear over and then yelled, his voice cracked with youth and excitement: 'Idu na vy!'

The druzhina bawled out their approval. Idu na vy — I am coming against you, his father's war-cry to his enemies. Vladimir's followers were so roaring with what had been done that it leaped to the Oathsworn and the blood surged up in them, too, so that they beat on their shields and howled like wolves. Steam rose.

Only a few desultory arrows flew at the pair of riders as they galloped back and slithered to a stop, the horses panting already, unfit and malnourished.

'Well,' said Dobrynya, his eyes glittering with excitement. and amusement. 'We have done our part, Jarl Orm.'

I turned, the belly-clenching fear of what had to come next filling me. The Oathsworn were ready and I fought for something clever to say — then Odin, as ever, stepped in and made the dog bark inside the village.

All our heads turned. A dog, alive and uneaten. That meant they had food to spare and, even if it was stinking fare, that dog was good eating and belonged to us. I said so and it was enough. Heads went back and howls went up, so that the hackles on everyone else's neck went stiff — the Oathsworn had scented blood.

We trotted forward, shields up. The druzhina bowmen moved forward and fired in staggered volleys; shafts whirred, thunked into timbers. I looked to my left, to where Finn snarled, then to my right, where Ospak loped. Six men raced ahead, three of them with shields.

The gate was a double-door affair set in a frame of timber ramparts. There was no earthwork here, obviously, so two timber squares had been erected on the earthwork on either side of the gate — but the actual palisade was made from the same length of timbers as all the rest. Which meant it was feet shorter with no earthwork to stand on and there was no rampart above the gate, only a solid balk of timber; a man on horseback would have to duck to get through the opened doors.

Six men crashed into the timbers of the gate. The tower defenders bobbed up to shoot them and ducked hastily back down as arrows drummed into the wood near their heads. The three pairs unshipped a shield, grasped it between them and looked back at us.

'Bone, blood and steel,' Finn growled, grinning and savage as a mad dog and Ospak howled up at the sky, his neck cording. Our axes clashed, three as one, our breath smoked together and I found I was sweating-warm, though I could not feel my feet. Then we sprinted, a bearded axe in either hand, running, it seemed to me, on the stumps of our ankles.

We were the lightest — well, save for Finn and I wanted at least one mad fighting man for what we did. Ospak was small and I was no beefy oarsman, so we leaped on the shields and were hurled upwards with ease by those picked for the ox-hump rowing muscle across their shoulders.

I flopped over the top of the palisade, scrabbling on the age-smoothed points of the timbers, then swung my legs and dropped. Ospak, even lighter than me, practically vaulted over; Finn hooked one bearded axe in the top timbers and hauled himself up and over. Already, three more steam-smoked Chosen were hurling themselves at the shieldmen.

I landed with a crash and on my bad ankle. Ospak sprawled beside me and was up in a moment, snarling and roaring. He hurled one axe up and to his right, felling an archer. Then he waited for the rush of armed men.

Finn landed like a cat and did not wait for anything. Roaring, he hurled himself at the nearest men, both axes already blurring in his big fists.

'Get the gate, Orm!'

I got up, half-turned — a body hurled down, fell over cursing and rolled upright. Tjorvir. A second landed nearby, was getting up and an arrow took him in the foot. Howling, pinned to the frozen ground by it, Snorri Littli had to reach down and try to tug it free. Tjorvir cursed his way to the right-hand tower ladder, hurling one axe upwards and snarling at the men above as he forged up to them.

I turned all the way to the gate — and stopped. The bar was there, right enough but there was a man on it. His right hand was nailed to the bar and his left was nailed to the gate on the other side. Thorstein Cod-Biter hung between the double doors, dripping blood and looking at me from the bruised ruin of his face. Farolfs last vicious joke and the hammering I had heard earlier.

'Get the gate!' screamed Finn as Runolf Harelip, crashing over the palisade, scrambled to his side to fight off the knots of defenders, armed with spears and shields and axes. Someone else cursed and slavered on top of the gate timbers and did not jump but I was only vaguely aware of him.

Cod-Biter's eyes met mine, blue and glittering as a summer sea. He grinned from a bloody mouth and I thought he winked, but one eye was already lost in blood and bruises, so I might have been mistaken.

All of that seemed to last a week but, looking back on it now, was no longer than the time it took me to draw breath, hold it and swing one axe at his right hand. It severed it at the wrist, slantwise and too high, so that half the forearm went with it, for I was a bad axeman and it was my left hand, with only a three-fingered grip.

My right-hand axe hooked under the bar and I found myself roaring into the effort of lifting it. I thought it was easy at the time; it came up and out of the sockets as if greased and the gates swung wide and inwards, dragging Cod-Biter, still nailed to the right-hand timbers, the remains of his forearm and hand nailed to the other side. Thor gave me his strength and the muscles on my arm ached for weeks afterwards — even Finn was admiring, for the beam took two men to lift.

I felt nothing at the time. I was busy trying to gently prise Cod-Biter off the timbers of the gate, while supporting his weight to stop the nail tearing through his remaining palm.

I was vaguely aware of men piling through the opened gate, shrieking and howling, cutting, stabbing and cursing but I took no part in it and killed no-one. Even when the man fell from the top of the gate with a crack and a thump I hardly looked up until he started to writhe and scream, high and shrill like a hurt horse. By then I had worked the nail out and Cod-Biter was bleeding so badly that I concentrated on tying cords round his arms and forgot the screamer.

'I will take him now, Jarl Orm,' said a familiar voice and made me look up from the pool of bloody slush I knelt in, blinking at the opaque orb of a face. Slowly, it became Thorgunna, who smiled a sad, blue-pinched smile and knelt. The fighting was over.

'I will take him,' she said and I nodded and stumbled up, feeling Cod-Biter's blood start to congeal and freeze on my knees.

'A rare fight,' said a voice and I looked round to where Dobrynya sat on his thin and weary horse. He lifted his sabre and saluted me. The little prince, of course, was already trotting triumphantly round the village square, demanding that Farolf be brought to him.

Farolf was already dead and Gyrth's long-axe was so buried in his chest that both Finnlaith and Glum Skulasson were hard put to get it out. Finn was nearby, kneeling by the side of Harelip, who had taken two arrows in the back from the tower before the archers could be felled.

'Farolf? Dead is he?' shrilled Vladimir, irritated. 'Well, he shall be staked anyway.'

Gyrth grunted, a coughing sound like a poked bear.

'He is mine. I killed him. He will lie at the feet of Runolf Harelip here.'

Finn, as if coming out of sleep, stirred and blinked, then nodded at Gyrth and extended his wrist for the Boulder Brother to haul him to his feet. They both stared, cold-faced, at the little prince.

Vladimir frowned angrily, then he saw Finn's look and was clever enough to see the mood — for which all the gods had to be thanked, I thought. Still, he was a prince and had been since four, so he was not so easily cowed.

'You fought well,' he agreed, then added imperiously. 'I shall consent.'

'Now there's good of him,' muttered Gyrth. Finn sagged a little then, suddenly seeming old and stiff. He dusted the snow off his knees and turned to me, eyes glassed with misery, one loose-held axe rimed with freezing blood.

'Harelip,' he said to me, almost pleading. 'Harelip, Orm. I sailed everywhere with Runolf Harelip.'

I had no answer for him. There were fewer original Oathsworn left than could crew a decent faering these days. Seven seasons ago, when a boy I no longer recognized scrambled up the strakes of Einar the Black's Fjord Elk, there had been a full crew, sixty or more.

'Aye,' grunted Onund Hnufa, shoving Vladimir's horse aside with the lack of ceremony a man from Iceland always showed to men and kings both. 'It is a hard life at sea, right enough. Now — where is that dog?'