The White Raven

8

When the starling fell from the roof beams, stone dead with cold, Olaf Crowbone stirred it with his toe and said it was the last one we would see this year, for they had all gone into hiding save for this one, who was clearly killed of stupidity.

'Hiding?' demanded Thorgunna, swathed in wool and fur so that only her eyes showed. 'Hiding from what?'

'The white raven,' Crowbone answered, his cheeks rosed in his pale face. A few of those within earshot looked uneasily at the boy and Thordis made a warding sign. Sunken-eyed, she was, from all she had suffered and Finn, standing close to her, moved closer still.

'You should not speak of such things,' Kvasir said, looking up from where he worried a piece of leather into a new strap for his helmet. Crowbone shrugged and pulled the white-furred cloak tighter round him, for snow had blown in under the door of the hall and spread across the floor. A pool of mead was frozen in an amber lump, stuck through with the floor-straw — even the spiders were dead and the nets they curled in trembled in the snell wind, thin and sharply cold as the edge of a shaving knife.

Onund Hnufa gave the grunt that led any speech he made.

'I don't need that bird to tell me it will be a bad winter,' he growled. 'The green wine is icing a month early.'

Jon Asanes leaned over, his breath smoking warmly in my ear. 'White raven?' he asked in a whisper.

I told him of the white raven, which the dwarves held in keeping with all the other secret things of the world — the sound of a cat's paw, the hairs of a maiden's beard, the roots of a mountain, the dreams of a bear, the breath of a fish, the spittle of a bird. All the things that should not be heard or seen, yet had to be kept somewhere.

The dwarves hid them and only revealed them once, when they used some to make Gleipnir, the chain that bound the devouring wolf, Fenris. He was tricked into being tied with it only because the god Tyr placed his hand in the beast's mouth as security that the gods would untie the wolf afterwards. Tyr lost it as a result, but his sacrifice allowed the world-eating wolf to be secured.

The only thing the dwarves made sure they did not use in making Gleipnir was a feather from the white raven, Odin's third pet.

Sometimes old One Eye sends that bird into the world, as he sends the other two, Thought and Memory — but the white one does not come back to whisper secrets in the god's ear. It flies over the world shaking out feathers as snow to make the worst winters; a warning that, one day, it will make Fimbulwinter, the great freeze that heralds Ragna Rok, the end of days.

'So Crowbone is telling us the end of the world is here?' demanded Jon.

Finn gave a sharp bark of laughter. 'Little Crowbone is telling us that the birds think so,' he corrected. 'Since birds have thought-cages so tiny they can only keep a few in them, I am not concerned about what birds think.'

Not all bird thoughts are of songs,' Crowbone said and that brought an echo of Sighvat, long dead in Serkland. I remembered Sighvat, hunkered down on the steppe, looking at the battered silver plate ripped out of the earth as we dug into Atil's tomb. It was the first sign that treasure was there at all, a blackened piece of a plate with pictures round the edges, which Sighvat said were the dreams of birds.

'I never heard of a white raven,' growled Gyrth and Finn told him this was because he was an ignorant outlander. Gyrth gave him a scowl — he was named Gyrth Albrechtsohn and was as big as Botolf, with a belly bigger than Skapti's had been, but solid as a barrel. When he had strolled up like some huge bear to join us in Kiev and claiming to be a Dane, Finn had laughed.

'Gyrth is an Englisc name,' he had chuckled, 'and your da was a Saxlander, which is plain to see. I don't see any Dane there.'

'My ma was,' Gyrth had rumbled back, frowning.

'Perhaps she had a horse, too,' Finn grinned, 'or a fast faering, to have got round so many men. You may not have any Dane in you, but she had, I am sure of it.'

Men laughed and Gyrth blinked and frowned.

'You are Finn,' he said slowly, 'who fears nothing. If you talk of my ma any longer, you will fear me, for I will fall on you.'

Finn held up placatory hands and admitted that having such a rock fall on him would be a fearful experience, right enough. Then he clasped Gyrth by the wrist.

'So Steinnbrodir it will be then — welcome aboard.'

And Gyrth, grinning lopsidely at his new by-name — Boulder Brother — lumbered into our midst like an amiable bear, one Finn was never done baiting, as now

'An ignorant outlander,' Finn repeated. 'Whose marvellously-travelled ma was too occupied to tell him such tales.'

'I saw a white crow once,' Gyrth admitted, frowning. 'All its black brothers stabbed it with their beaks and chased it off.'

'None is found so good that some fault attends him, or so ill that he is not of use for something, as my granny used to say,' Red Njal offered him.

'Never heard of a white raven,' Gyrth persisted stubbornly.

'But the green wine is icing,' Jon pointed out, shaking me back from where I still hunkered with Sighvat on the steppe, into the wither of Finn's frown. The iced wine was a sign you could not ignore.

Made from young wheat, the brew was filtered through seven layers of charcoal and seven of clean, fine river sand and the resulting liquid was as clear as tears and casked in oak, which was Perun's wood. It was then left outside most houses all winter and people passing tried to guess when such a casking would grow the first ice crystals.

They were removed at once, for ice is water and the more you removed, the more powerful — and green — the drink that was left. The colder the weather, the more ice formed on the green wine, the more you removed and the stronger it got.

It had to be cold for ice to start forming on the green wine at all and that was a bad sign this early, as was the snow and the clear, cold air that promised more of the same. This year would produce some of the strongest green wine and only those who had drunk too much of it would head out on to the steppe now.

I had pointed this out to young Vladimir after we had been hauled out of the pit the morning Sviatoslav's death was announced in Novgorod and after I had told him of the hoard and how the Oathsworn were a benefit to him.

'If what you say is true,' he answered in his strong, high voice, 'then this man Lambisson from Birka is already out on the steppe and every day we leave him, the closer he comes to my silver hoard.'

And he looked at me with his clear blue eyes on either side of a frown.

His silver hoard. Dobrynya saw the sick look on my face and offered only a throaty grunt of a laugh from the other side of the table, where I had spent an hour explaining why we should not be staked like Danica, the thrall woman.

'By the time we have done with the rites for your father, the meetings with your brother's representatives and preparing for such an expedition,' Dobrynya then said gently to his young prince, 'it may well be so late in the year as to be better waiting for the thaw.'

Vladimir shook his head angrily. 'Uncle, my brothers may not wait.'

He had the right of it there, sure enough and all that Dobrynya had spoken of was simply time wasted for Vladimir, so that he was fretted like a dog's jaw with impatience.

It took two days of tough talking with the veche and a deal of promises here and there to get them to accept the thrall woman as their only victim. It was finally managed with some cunning from Dobrynya, who told the veche that young Vladimir would not sully the memory of his father with the blood of common criminals. That one they bowed to.

So we were released, but kept in the fortress, supposedly for our own protection, for the next five days. On the sixth day, as Vladimir and all Novgorod prepared to enter into the rituals to mourn the loss of Sviatoslav, Jaropolk's hounds appeared at the gates.

Sveinald and his son Lyut they knew them as here, the father a grizzled old Dane who had served Sviatoslav as a general and who had brought back the remnants of the army after his master's death. Now he advised Vladimir's elder brother Jaropolk, as Dobrynya advised Vladimir.

Jaropolk, though eldest of the three Rus princes, was barely into his teens and easily swayed. Sveinald and Lyut had always been an arrogant pair and now that they held their young prince in thrall they acted as if they ruled Kiev and not he.

They had arrived as Jaropolk's representatives, to honour the funeral rites for Sviatoslav — at least, on the front of it. In reality, they were here to find out what Vladimir would do and had brought at least a hundred men, seasoned druzhina warriors with their armour and big red shields marked with a yellow algiz rune, which had been the symbol of Rurik when he had founded Kiev. Shield, it meant, and alertness, too — but now the Kiev Slavs called it 'a golden trident' from the shape, which was like one of those three-tined forks.

It took four days to send Sviatoslav to the halls of his gods, four days of wailing and bowing and kneeling and bloody sacrifice round Perun's pole, where horse heads were stuck on stakes and young Vladimir exhausted himself, the gore dripping off his elbows. But everyone agreed he had done well for a boy of twelve.

At night he had no rest, having to preside over the feasts in the kreml hall, where his men and the druzhina of old Sveinald snarled at each other, barely leashed. Here, the high table was a tafl game of words as Sveinald tried to find out if Vladimir was going to acknowledge Jaropolk as Prince of all the Rus or resist him and young Vladimir and his uncle tried not to say one thing or the other. Oleg, the third brother, I noted, was not considered at all.

The rest of the Oathsworn had turned up by this time, summoned south from Aldeigjuborg and having brought the Elk with them. Gizur insisted on this despite the sweat and labour on a river already porridge thick during the day and iced over every night, for he did not want it left almost untended near Dragon Wings.

'Klerkon's crew is divided,' he reported. 'Dragon Wings is too laid up for winter to sail and the way out to the Baltic is frozen solid anyway. Half of them are swearing revenge on us, led by Randr Sterki. The other half is leaving, in twos and threes. Most of those are hoping to take service with Vladimir, so they are coming here. They wanted to sail down with us, for they knew we were crew light, but I thought it best to let them find their own way.'

I had all this to chew over — and Finn, scowling-angry because, he said, I had handed away the secret of Atil's tomb, without even a guarantee that we would get anything out of it. We had our lives, I pointed out to him and he grudgingly admitted that to be true, though it did nothing for his mood and it was a foolish man who crossed Finn at times like this.

There is always a fool when you don't need one. Lyut had been elbowing and snarling among his own druzhina on the last feast night. You could see that they were used to it, deferring to him because he was Sveinald's boy and had power over them as a result.

So, flushed and strutting, he made a mistake when Finn slid on to an ale bench to talk to someone he knew slightly.

'You are in my place,' he snarled and Finn looked up in surprise.

'Perhaps, though I do not see your name on it. I will not be here long — look, there is a place here and another over there.'

'Move,' Lyut answered, 'when your betters order it.'

Finn turned. There was silence now from those closest, a silence that spread slowly out, like the ripples from a dipped oar.

'Betters?' he said, raising an eyebrow.

'In fact,' Lyut said, sneering, 'so much better you should kiss my foot and acknowledge it.'

He put his foot up on the same bench Finn sat on. No-one spoke. Sveinald, grinning over his ale horn, looked at Dobrynya, then at Vladimir. It was a challenge, pure and simple and all the ruffs were up now. I did not dare speak; no-one did. The silence began to hurt.

Then Finn grinned, a loose, wicked grin. He inclined his head, as if in acceptance and Lyut smirked. Finn handed his ale horn to his neighbour, then placed both his hands on Lyut's ankle and raised the foot to his lips.

I was stunned. Most of us were. I saw Kvasir half rise in outrage — then there was a yelp from Lyut, for Finn had kept on going, straightening with Lyut's foot in his hands, forcing the man to hop like a mad bird to keep his balance.

With a final, dismissive gesture, Finn threw the foot in the air and Lyut went over with a yell and a crash.

'Kiss my arse, boy,' Finn said, dusting his hands. The hall erupted with hoots and bellows and catcalls and it was clear that half of Sveinald's men were drunk enough to be pleased to see Lyut sprawled in the sick and spilled drink.

Finn was no fool. A man with no clever in him at all would have turned back to his ale horn and the backslaps and appreciative howls of laughter and Lyut, coming off the floor in a scrabbling rush, whipping the seax from his boot, would have had him in the liver and lights.

Instead, Lyut found his knife hand slapping into the iron grip of Finn's left. When he swung a wild fist with the other, he found it shackled in Finn's right. Then Finn grinned his wolf grin and butted Lyut, so that the snarling boy's handsome beak of a nose splayed and blood flew.

Lyut fell backwards, over an ale bench and into the hearth-fire. It took no more than an eyeblink or two to realize he was not getting up on his own, but his hair was on fire by then. Those nearest dragged him out and beat out the flames.

Now Sveinald's men were roaring and growling with anger, for this was another matter entirely. Sveinald himself kept his seat, his knuckles white on the fancy gilt-rimmed horn.

Sigurd, his silver nose gleaming, moved a little closer to his charges, the young prince and his now-constant companion, little Crowbone. On that one's face I saw no fear, only a studied interest, as if he had found a new kind of bird.

Finn turned, his face streaked with Lyut's blood, the seax held in one hand. He glared round them all and the roaring subsided.

'I am Finn Bardisson from Skanii called Horsehead,' he said softly. 'Is there anyone else wants their foot kissing?'

Silence.

'SPEAK UP, YOU DOGS!'

Behind him, Lyut whimpered and men were carrying him away, to where the women would balm his toasted face with goose fat.

'Sit down Finn Bardisson from Skani, called Horsearse,' Gyrth Steinnbrodir called out into the silence. 'You have taught the boy how to dance on one foot and not to sit so close to the fire and now I want to get back to my drinking.'

There was a chuckle or two, then the hall noise washed back in like a tide on the turn and Finn shunked Lyut's seax into the ale bench and took his horn back, raising it in toast to Gyrth. I raised my own to him and he acknowledged it, while I felt Sveinald staring, could hear him ask through clenched teeth who this Finn Bardisson was and who this Jarl Orm.

I was swelled with the pride of it, that my name was on lips all over the hall and aware also, with a sick, sinking feeling, that we had done neither ourselves nor little Vladimir any favours.

Then, in the cold light of morning as everyone sorted themselves out for the day, the bird fell from the rafters and little Crowbone, his face whalebone-pale, cheeks flushed from the cold, started in to speaking about white ravens.

He was wearing a fine tunic the colour of a robin's egg, wool breeks, fur-trimmed Slav boots and a white wool cloak trimmed with a swathe of sable fur that came up round his ears and met the rough curls of a fine goat-wool cap.

He peered at the dead starling, while the great elkhound with him sniffed it and warily watched our own deerhounds. That huge white-grey beast, as like a wolf as a brother, only added to the unease surrounding Crowbone, for it had eyes of different colours, exactly like his.

When he had first appeared with it, the warding signs made a flutter like bird wings and Klepp Spaki had been busy since, carving protection runes on bits of bone. Only Thorgunna, on whom seidr magic was wasted, was unafraid.

'My, you look like a little prince now, right enough,' she said, beaming — then broke off to cuff the Scots thrall woman for dropping her pin case and spilling the bone needles out of it.

All Olafs finery — even the white, wolf-ruffed elkhound — was gifted from Prince Vladimir. It was, as Kvasir had already pointed out quietly, just as well I hadn't decided to sell Crowbone as a thrall, since it seemed the little turd had charmed the ruler of Novgorod and had gone from slave to prince in one hare-leap. Things, he added, could be much worse.

'How much worse can it already be?' grunted Finn, red-eyed from the night before and just as sullen in the chill daylight. 'The world is lining up to rob us.'

'If you would rather have a stake up your arse,' I snapped back at him, stung by his scowling, 'I can probably arrange it.'

One of the deerhounds laid its great bony head on my knee and sighed mournfully into the mood of the hall. The other snarled at the too-close elkhound, whose ruff stiffened.

'Bleikr,' chided Olaf. 'Stop that.'

Bleikr — White Fair, it meant to us, though most tongues could translate it no better than Pale. Whatever his name, the dog paid Olaf no heed, but was wise enough not to take on both deerhounds. None of the dogs wanted a fight, but the elkhound's ruff stuck out like hedgehog spines and the rough brindle hair on the deerhounds' back was clenched and dark. We watched warily, not eager to get between them.

Then Thorgunna gave a little grunt of annoyance at our holding back and moved in fearlessly, cuffing right and left. The dogs scattered, yelping.

'Bleikr,' she said, tucking a stray wisp of hair back under her braids, while warriors did not dare look at each other for the shame of it. 'There is nice. Now you have a new dog — and kin, too, I hear. Your mother's father in Bjodaskalle and her sisters, too. Not forgetting your Uncle Sigurd here.'

Crowbone nodded, though it was clear that Bleikr was deeper in his heart than these folk, who were only names to him. Even Sigurd. It came to me then that little Crowbone was a boy alone and, after all that had happened to him, might well be for all his life.

Finn looked at the white dog and grunted cynically. Olaf frowned.

'You do not like the name?' he asked. Then he pointed to the deerhound who had slunk back to Finn's knee.

'What is this one called, then?' he challenged.

'Dog,' Finn said flatly. Olaf, thinking he was being made fun of, scowled and pointed to the other deerhound.

'And this?'

'The other dog,' Finn answered, then cocked himself to the side and farted.

Kvasir chuckled as Olaf started to get his own hackles up.

'There is a wise rule we use,' he said, clapping the boy on one shoulder, 'and it is this — never give a name to something you might have to eat.'

Olaf was taken aback at that and looked down at his new pride and joy, now trying to lick its own balls. 'Eat Bleikr?'

'Well — not that one's tongue, perhaps,' Kvasir said and folk laughed.

'Aye,' growled Gyrth, surfacing from under a pile of cloaks and pelts, where he had been trying to keep warm and sleep. 'If we go to find that cursed hoard in this weather, we will end up eating worse than that before we are done. Helmet straps will taste good, mark me.'

'Do you no harm,' Finn answered and Gyrth patted his belly and smiled.

I was aware of the winter steppe, the Great White, brooded on it all the rest of that long day while the men in the hall surfaced, stretching and farting and shivering into the breath-smoking chill, dousing their heads and breaking ice in the bowls and buckets to do it, roaring and blowing.

Thorgunna and Thordis, who had wisely avoided the affair and the risk of being up-ended and tupped by drunks — and the obvious reactions of Kvasir and everyone else to that — were the freshest faces in that hall and made sure their healthy cheerfulness set everyone else's teeth grinding. They and the thralls bustled in, stirring the hearthfire to life, hanging pots, rattling skillets.

Eventually, chewing feast left-overs and picking their molars, most of the men all wandered off to sort out their lives — Sveinald's men were heading home and I heard that Lyut was having to be litter-carried. That he was alive at all was good luck, I was thinking.

My own crew were staying, of course, and getting as ready as they could for a trip into the open steppe in winter. Most of them were unworried by what I had done — they still thought they would get a share as they had been promised, and few looked beyond that. Some counted the involvement of. Vladimir as jarl-cleverness by me, since it would mean more protection and better supplies for such a dangerous trip.

Outside the keep, in the crushed snow of the kreml, there was now noise and purpose and carts with sledge-runners, the wheels slung on the sides like shields on a drakkar, just in case they were needed. There were strong little horses for pulling and others for riding and supplies being loaded and men sorting out gear and weapons.

Vladimir had expected me to point to his carefully-drawn vellum chart and mark it with the location of Atil's cursed tomb, but when it came to it, there was just a dot — that read 'Biela Viezha', which was the Slav name for Sarkel, and acres of grey-white skin. Nor was I daft enough in the head to lay out the X of it, for him then not to need me at all.

No-one but me knew exactly where the tomb lay and the path of it was scratched on the hilt of my rune-bladed sabre. Short Eldgrim had a rough idea of it, for he had helped me with the runes I made, but even he did not know all the steps. Neither did I unless we got to Sarkel, the first landmark.

They saw it, of course, Vladimir and big Uncle Dobrynya. They looked from one to the other as I glanced scornfully at the vellum.

'I can take you,' I said, hoping my sweat was not visible in the dim light of that private room. 'There is no landmark on this chart.'

Silence, in which I was sure I heard men greasing a stake. Then Dobrynya rolled up the chart with brisk movements as he said: 'Of course you will.'

Now I wondered. The steppe in winter was as grey-white an emptiness as Vladimir's vellum chart and a sick chill washed me; I was loading a lot of lives and hope on those few runes I had scratched out.

Ostensibly, the Oathsworn were free to come and go — yet all had been brought into Vladimir's own hall, even Martin the monk. Dobrynya had insisted: everyone who knew anything of the matter was to be kept where they could be seen. Now Martin was thrashing around like a fish in a keep-net.

He scurried up to me in the cold light of the morning, as Olaf chucked and snapped his fingers at the unresponsive elkhound, finally following it as it wandered off.

'Which pup is taking which for a walk?' demanded Finnlaith and others laughed, though they did so when they were sure little Olaf Crowbone could not hear and none of them was ashamed of being afraid of a nine-year-old boy.

'Speaking of dogs,' growled Hauk Fast-Sailor and nodded towards the hurrying figure of the monk. I sighed; the deerhound sighed. Neither of us wanted to be bothered with this.

'You must speak to the prince,' Martin declared, his eyes wild and black from under his tangled hair and matted beard. 'I will not go on this cursed fool's errand.'

'Must I?'

'I will not go.'

I leaned slightly towards him, thinking — yet again — that I should have killed him when I had had the chance.

'Vladimir has decreed it. I do not want to go and yet I must,' I answered, more weary than patient. 'If I cannot get out of it, what makes you think I can make him leave you behind?'

'Christ will provide,' intoned Finn, in what he fondly believed was a mock of the Christ-priests. Martin savaged him with a glare, then folded his arms and stuck his chin out until his beard bristled.

'I will not go.'

'Then stay and sit on a sharp stick,' Kvasir said with a shrug, raising his head slightly from repairing the strap. 'You mistake us for folk who worry about you.'

'This is no matter of mine,' Martin insisted. His ruined mouth made white foam at the corners. 'I want no share in this silver foolishness.'

'Good,' grunted Finn morosely, 'then we'll take your share. If any of us get a share at all, that is.'

He shot me a knowing look but, to my surprise, it was Martin who managed to knock him off his perch.

'Why do you want it, this silver?' he snapped.

Finn blinked owlishly, for it was clearly a stupid question, which he said, then added: 'A hoard of silver? Why would you not want it?'

'For what it can buy?' countered Martin. 'The fine food, the best drink and the most beautiful of women. And so you have them all — what then, Finn Horsehead?'

'A magnificent sword,' commented Pai wistfully. 'Fine furs for a cloak.'

'Ships,' Jon Asanes threw in, grinning.

Martin nodded, but Finn was frowning.

'Until you have them all and more,' the monk said, flecks spilling from his ruined mouth. 'Then what? More of it until you puke and your prick drops off? What is the use of a magnificent sword if you never use it for raiding, eh Finn? Yet what is the point of raiding if you already have all you can want and more?'

'Ha,' said Red Njal, waving one hand dismissively. 'You are a Christ-priest, so what do you know of such things? You want riches, too — that spear is your hoard. Deceit sleeps with greed, as my granny used to say.'

Martin's glance was sour, then he turned it back on Finn.

'I know it is no good thing for folk such as you to end your days bent-backed and stumbling with age, drooling on a bench and wondering if you have hidden your coin well enough to fool all the women who laugh because you can do nothing with them now, while your sons conspire and cannot wait for you to die.'

That straw-death vision silenced everyone and I was surprised to see something slither across Finn's face that I had never seen before.

Fear.

Into that long, painful silence, Jon Asanes offered: 'You will still have to go, I am thinking.'

'I will not go,' Martin said stiffly.

'Say that once more, you streak of piss and I will make it come true — you will stay here forever,' growled Red Njal. 'Put to the sword those that disagree, said my granny and she had the right of it there, for sure.'

'I am, at one and same moment,' chuckled Gyrth, 'both sorrowed and glad that I never met this granny of yours.'

'You will go,' I answered Martin, staring back into the black coals of his eyes. 'I have a stick that you will follow.'

He blinked, hesitated. His face twitched, but a new hook was in and deeper than any. 'You promised me the Holy Spear for what I told you,' he snapped, hoarse with anger, trembling with it, so that his fingers shook and clenched.

'Things change. I don't care if you end up spitted, but Vladimir thinks you belong to me and so I am responsible. You will put no-one at risk. Obey me and you will get your little stick at the end.'

'Disobey,' added Runolf Harelip with a twisted smile, 'and you get a little stick in your end.'

Martin sucked in breath as if it pained him, while everyone else laughed.

'Am I to believe this promise above the last?'

'I swear it, as Odin is my witness.'

He sneered out a black grin. 'You swore that before, on your pagan amulet in the square in Novgorod. You swore to give me Christ's Holy Lance in return for the news I brought you. Is this new oath any better than that one?'

My head jerked at that — who was he to dare accuse the jarl of the Oathsworn that he did not hold to any oaths? I leaned over and opened my sea chest, drew out a cloak, the runed sabre and the wrapped bundle that he wanted. He was fixed by the sight of it and his tongue darted like a snake's. I almost waved it back and forth to see if he would follow it with his eyes.

'I promised you your silly spear and so you will have it. I did not say when.'

I dropped it in the tall, narrow sea chest and slammed the lid, so that he jumped with the bang of it. His eyes were poison pools, but I held the stare, for I hated him enough in return.

'If you run,' I said. 'We will bear the hurt of it and Vladimir and his uncle will hunt you down with all the power they have. So will Oleg. So will Jaropolk. All of them will want what you know and all of them will stake you out rather than have you tell the others.'

'But I know nothing,' Martin declared angrily. 'I was not part of your silver-greed, as you know. Tell them.'

'You think they would believe me? Anyway — you know what Eldgrim and Cod-Biter remembered. It is not as good as what I know, but it is good enough for Vladimir to keep you close. You know too much, monk — even Lambisson will want you dead now Little Vlad only keeps you alive now because you are a holy man and he fears the curse of your White Christ if he has you killed.'

He blinked once or twice. Then his shoulders slumped as the weight of what he knew to be true crushed him. The safest place was with us, even if it meant coming into the steppe snows of the Great White. More than all that, he would follow the spear, snuffling for it like a dog after a bitch in heat.

'Anyway,' said Gyrth, wandering into the middle of this tense moment to peer hopefully in the pot and hunker by the fire, 'it is worse than that for you, monk. The White Christ followers are never staked here.'

Surprised, we all looked at him and he became aware of the eyes, stopped searching for more food and grew flustered at our stares.

'I had it from a Jew trader,' he explained. 'They hang those condemned who are Christ followers upside down. Like their god on the tree, only the other way up.'

Martin's eye twitched, for it was a terrible thing, it seemed, for Christ men to be hung — crucified, they called it — upside down. It was also a hard and long way to die.

'Our little Christ priest is used to that,' Finn sneered. 'He has been hung upside down before.'

Those who remembered Martin from the first time we had met him — slung from the mast of our ship, spraying tears and piss on to the planks together with everything he thought we might want to know — chuckled.

'He can do it standing on his head,' agreed Kvasir sombrely and the hoots and thigh-slaps chased after the flapping hem of Martin's robe as he strode from the hall.

'He will run,' Kvasir said, tilting his head to peer closely at his strap work.

'Not without his little stick,' Finn declared.

They took odds on it but I knew he would run only when he had the spear cradled in his arms and was sure of being able to run to somewhere safe; out on the winter steppe, I was thinking, the only safe place was with us.

Finn and others, meanwhile, muttered with their heads touching about how, when the time came, we might have to fight the druzhina of Vladimir to get their silver hoard. I let them; it was as lunatic as trying to throw a loop around the moon, but it kept them from becoming too morose. All the same, when the time came, I was thinking, I would have to come up with some gold-browed plan or they would be looking upward and shaking out hopeful rope.

Later, as I sat with Jon Asanes composing a careful letter to Jarl Brand, I paused to watch the bustle in the courtyard, dictating as Jon scratched in his best hand.

'Now there's the thing of it,' declared Jon, following my gaze as I rubbed one of Thorgunna's salves into the ankle that always gave me trouble in cold weather. 'Old Sveinald there is no fool and could not miss such preparation as this, yet he rides off without a backward glance at all these carts and loading and such. Is he burning too much at what happened to his boy to wonder what we are doing?'

'It is his boy who is burning,' I pointed out, 'and will, I am thinking, for a long while yet.'

'Yet one more trouble to add to the heap,' answered Jon and his voice was so wormwood bitter that I turned to look at him. By then, however, he was hidden behind his hair, hunched over, scratching away at the vellum with his tongue between his teeth.

Jon was smart, even when he sulked. Our going to seek out Atil's silver was the worst secret never kept; the markets were alive with it and men arrived every day to clamour to join Vladimir's druzhina, or the Oathsworn.

Sveinald knew of it, for all his indifference. That meant Jaropolk, whom I had last seen as a spotty youth, knew of it. So would Oleg, the second of Vladimir's brothers and even allowing for the fact that there were stones more clever than him, he would know the importance of it, even if someone had to spell the words of it for him.

It was, I was thinking, as if Odin — a Volsung himself, I remembered — had bent and twisted and heated and forged this treasure hoard into an ever-increasing curse, dragging more and more people into it, beating it white-hot and ever-larger. But for what?

The wet feathers of the white raven drifted, light and cold on my upturned face, making me blink as they fastened on my lashes. Perhaps Crowbone had the right of it after all — perhaps this was Fimbulwinter, the heralding freeze at the end of the world.

Then, on the day the white raven stuck its head under a wing and roosted, permitting a blue sky and a red sun, we left Novgorod and went out on to the wolf sea.