Читать книгу The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 3 - Robert Low - Страница 11

We wintered at Skirringsaal, on the southern tip of Norway, because it was too late in the year to get back to Birka, which was further east along the Baltic and frozen in now. Skirringsaal was handy and had all that the Oathsworn needed: drink, food and women, though it was only a summer trade fair, a bjorkey, which fell quiet in winter.

Einar grumbled; he’d much rather have foisted himself on some minor jarl who, faced with sixty warriors sailing into his fjord, would have been all hospitality and smiles for the winter. Instead, he was forced to dole out hacksilver and have the men split up throughout the town, paying for roof and ale with locals, who were used to foreign travellers.

Einar himself, thanks to the foresight of the local merchants, got himself a hov in a small boatshed and was able to sit in a makeshift high seat, his prows on either side, and lord it like a jarl, with more than a few of the Oathsworn with him. All of the others dropped in daily to take advantage of the free ale and whatever was in the pot.

Almost everyone bought a slave girl at once – to the relief of those traders who thought themselves stuck with them all winter – and the hov was thus fairly crowded, with nothing to do but repairs to gear, or dice, or play endless games of hnefatafl and get into fights about who won.

That and drink and fucking seemed to make up winter, as far as the Oathsworn were concerned.

Because my father was the valued shipmaster, he and I were in Einar’s hov, which was less well built than a turfed hall like Bjornshafen. With so many of us, space by the central hearthfire was at a premium and privacy was a joke. At any one time, one of the band was humping away at a girl and, after a while, it didn’t even excite attention, never mind the senses.

Once, I saw the Trimmer, busy with a game, drop one of the ’tafl counters. It rolled practically under the arse of one of the weary slave girls, which was bouncing on the filthy rush floor under Skapti’s grunting slams. Without even looking, Trimmer shoved her buttocks to one side, retrieved the counter and went back to the game.

Once over the reluctance at doing all this in front of others, humping slave girls was what I did whenever possible.

Several times I was dragged off one so that she could help prepare the food and, once, was slapped by Skapti when I shouted in anger. His casual blow knocked me into three or four more men, scattering whatever they were doing and, as I lay with my eyes whirling, Einar had to come in and lay about them as if they were a pack of snarling dogs.

He, of course, had his own section, hurdled off at the back. Here, he and Illugi, my father and Valgard Skafhogg would sit and scheme. Sometimes Skapti and Ketil Crow would join in.

In the end, because everyone agreed I would fuck myself to an early grave, I was reluctantly dragged, most days, away from the women. No one but Ulf-Agar minded that a beardless boy was at the high seat of things.

As the year ground through the skeins of snow, interest in everything waned. Simply getting through to the thaw became the focus of everyone’s intent; endless, freezing rain and snow, the grey-yellow ice that formed everywhere, the coughs, rheumy eyes, loose bowels, all became a test of endurance.

Except for Einar, who tried to ignore his own phlegm and fluxes, scheming on regardless, like a man pushing a plough through a stony field.

The riddle of the saint’s box had eluded him, it seemed. No one knew for sure, since he never let anyone look at the contents. Instead, he dragged in every trader who was trapped, like him, and had intense conversations with them behind the hurdle.

Then, one day, as the ice dripped from the eaves and men actually started to stagger out of the stinking hov – and it would have reeked to any Greek, used to baths and oiled massages, even before the winter – Illugi, Valgard, my father and Einar were huddled in his little private chamber, as usual.

And me. Youth had made me healthier than the rest and I was still almost permanently aroused. Since everyone else had more or less lost interest in the girls, I could pick and choose and had my eye on one, a dark beauty, almost as dark as the bluemen from the far south who were so prized in Ireland.

I was craning for a look at her as Einar was speaking, which was why I missed most of it and only came in at the end, to hear him say: ‘… before that little shit Martin gets his hands on it. But no one reads Latin here, not even those who think this place is called Kaupang.’

There were dutiful chuckles at that. Foreigners called Skirringsaal kaupang because they’d once asked what it was called and someone – probably deliberately – had told them ‘a market’. So they had continued to call the town that, thinking that was its name.

Einar sighed and shook his head. ‘I hate relying on that Latin-reading Christ priest. It would be nice to know what it is he seeks in this.’ He slapped the ornate chest.

‘Latin is a pain in the arse,’ I said, yawning. ‘If they have three words where one good one would do, they use them.’

There was silence and it took me a while to realise everyone was staring at me. Einar’s eyes were black, ferocious. ‘How do you know that, boy?’

Conscious of his tone, I considered cautiously, then answered: ‘Caomh taught me to read it, back in Bjornshafen—’

I never got the rest of it out. There was an explosion of roars; everyone was talking at once. Einar was trying to hit me, scrambling to get up and out of his furs, Illugi trying to restrain him and my father and Valgard arguing with each other, all at once.

Eventually, when it fell silent again, I raised my head. Einar was glowering at me and breathing as if he’d run up a hill. Illugi was watching him, holding his staff across his knees and between me and him. My father and the Trimmer sat staring at me, one astonished, the other stone-faced.

‘Can you read this?’ Einar demanded, thrusting a few rustling leaves at me, similar to the ones I’d seen torn from that book-chest in Otmund’s temple.

‘I’ve never read from this before,’ I told him. ‘Caomh drew the letters in the sand, or in the dirt.’

It was clearer than that, of course. Easy.

‘“The people here were lost to God’s mercy,”’ I read, squinting at the faded, brown letters. ‘“They wallowed in their idol worship, until God Himself brought His word to them, though His humble servant, bound in duty to …”’ I stopped, scanning the lines ahead. ‘It goes on and on – do you want to hear all this?’

Einar leaned forward, dangerous-eyed, his voice frosted. ‘Read it all,’ he snarled.

So I did. Otmund, it seemed, was full of the joy of coming to the lost people of the Karelians and returning them to the fold like so many strayed sheep. He listed, in considerable detail, his unstinting efforts to do that.

His greatest triumph came, it seemed, when he managed to gain some followers among those skin-wearing trolls.

In the end, as the chief declared for the White Christ, the last believers in the old ways stole their god’s stone, on which lay the secrets of the tomb, and spirited it away south and across the sea, into the lands of the Krivichi at Kiev and to a chief named Muzum.

‘Read that again,’ demanded Einar. Sighing, seeing my chance with the dark girl recede by the minute, I worked my way back, took a breath and laboriously read the passage again. My head hurt with the effort.

‘Secrets of the tomb?’ Einar asked Illugi, when I had finished. Illugi Godi shrugged.

‘Might be Atil’s treasure,’ he grunted. ‘Might be a poor kenning on the nature of gods. And Muzum? I know the Krivichi tribes – we passed through their lands going down to Kiev, some time back. There’s no chief called Muzum.’

‘They always do that, the Latin writers,’ I offered moodily. ‘That’s what I mean about them. They seem determined to write something and make it as long-winded and hard to understand as possible. Usually, if you take the “um” off the end you have a better chance of working out what they really mean with names.’

‘Hmm,’ mused Illugi. ‘Muz? Might be muzhi, but that just means Great Chief. Every ferret-face with two horses and a dog calls himself a great chief along the river banks around Kiev.’

‘Then we’ll just have to find one with a bloody great stone from a god,’ Einar grunted, then looked at me and rubbed his chin. ‘Next time, tell me what you can and can’t do. I wasted valuable time talking to traders – at least half a dozen over the course of this Loki-cursed winter. Now they will be carrying the news of it far and wide.’

‘I didn’t know that you needed anything read,’ I snapped back, annoyance at missing out on the dark one combining with the unfairness of it to make me daring. ‘If you had actually unpicked your lips on this, I’d have known.’

Einar considered for a moment – a long year under that obsidian stare – then chuckled. ‘Faults on both sides, then. The main thing is I now have someone who can read stuff before Martin the Christ priest does.’

‘I can read it if it is kept simple,’ I warned him, wishing now I had spent more time with Caomh and his dirt-scratchings. But who knew then that such a thing would be of more use to me than the best way to get gull eggs from a high cliff?

Einar nodded, considering.

‘What now?’ my father asked. ‘Down to Kiev and the Black Sea again?’

‘Eventually,’ Einar said, ‘but we call in at Birka and fulfil our hire. That way we get paid and I find out if Martin and Lambisson say true, since they will not know that I have all the saint’s chest has to offer. Orm, not a word to anyone else that you can read the Latin. Mind that.’

I nodded and he grinned and clapped my shoulder. ‘Truly, Rurik, you birthed a rare one and I am glad now that you bribed Thorkel to let him take his place.’

My father chuckled and I gawped and everyone laughed at the pair of us.

‘Now go and fuck that Serkland woman before your head swivels off its stalk. Not that she’ll thank you much – she has the coughs and fever all of those women get coming from the warm lands and I am thinking she will not last the winter.’

Still chuckling we moved into the main hov and, as we broke apart, my father caught my sleeve.

‘I did not know that he knew about Thorkel,’ he said quietly. ‘I forgot that Einar is a deep thinker and a cunning man. We’d both do well to remember that.’

Funnily enough, I remembered those words, even as my loins took over the thinking for me. Partly, I think, because Einar was right and the Serkland woman was already too sick to be a good bedmate, but mainly because of what Illugi had said about Atil’s treasure.

‘You sew your lips on that one, young Orm,’ my father said when I mentioned it, looking right and left to make sure no one could hear us. ‘That’s something we are not supposed to know about.’

‘We don’t, I am thinking,’ I answered.

He rubbed his head and acknowledged that with a rueful grin.

‘But this is the same Atil as the tales?’ I persisted. ‘Volsungs? All of that?’

‘All of that,’ agreed my father and then shrugged and scowled when he saw my look. ‘Learned men believe it,’ he argued. ‘Lambisson’s tame Christ priest, we found out, seems to be seeking it to solve Birka’s silver problems.’

I said nothing, but the thoughts whirled and sparked like embers in the wind. If even a tenth of what was said about the treasure hoard of Attila the Hun was true, then it was a mountain of silver you could mine for years.

Sigurd’s treasure, culled from a dragon hoard and cursed, if I remembered the saga tale of it, then handed to the Huns by the Volsungs before they fell out.

‘Just so,’ Illugi Godi said, when I came to him with questions – though his eyes narrowed at the mention of it. ‘You should put your tongue between your teeth over this matter, young Ruriksson,’ he added.

‘No secret here, it seems to me,’ I replied and he hummed and shrugged.

‘Well, so it would appear. No simple saga tale, either,’ he went on. ‘The Volsungs are lost to us, vanished like smoke, taking Sigurd Fafnirs-bane and Brynnhild and all the rest, so that the former is now a dragon-slaying hero and the latter is one of Odin’s Valkyrie. Remembered for that only and not that once they were people, like you or me.’

I sat, hunched, hands wrapped round my knees as I had once done in Bjornshafen, listening to Caomh tell stories of his Christ saints. For a moment, listening to the steady, firm voice of Illugi, I was back in the red-gleam twilight of Gudleif’s hall, full-bellied and warm and safe.

‘Atil, too, was once real, a powerful jarl-king of those tribes who live in the Grass Sea, far to the east. The Volsungs thought him great enough to be allies against the Old Romans, so they sent him a wife: Gudrun, who was once Sigurd’s woman. With her came a marvellous sword as a dowry.’

‘Sigurd’s sword?’ I asked and he shook his head.

‘No. They gave him a sword forged by the same smith who made Sigurd’s own. They called it the Scourge of God and while Atil had it, he could never lose a battle.’

‘Which made it hard for the Volsungs when they found Atil was a false friend,’ I offered and Illugi scowled.

‘Who is telling this?’

He was, of course and he hummed, mollified, when I said it.

‘Just so. The Volsungs knew they could not win; they were beaten time and again by Atil until they came upon another way. They sent him a new wife, Ildico, in peace. To tempt him to take her, she came with a great treasure of silver – Sigurd’s dragon hoard.’

‘Cursed,’ I pointed out and he nodded.

‘On her wedding night, this brave Ildico slew Atil as he slept and waited for the morning beside him, knowing she could not escape.’

We were both silent, brooding on this cunning plot, cold and coiled as a snake, and the sacrifice it had entailed: the Volsungs losing their wealth and Ildico her life, for she was chained to Atil’s death throne alive when he was howed up in a great mound of all the silver of the world, including the Volsungs’ gift. A mound long hidden, with all those who knew of it killed.

Such revenge we in the north knew well, yet even so, the warp and weft of this sucked the breath from you.

The rest of the winter dragged into spring without much event. Many of us got sick, me included, with streaming eyes and nose and coughing. Eventually, we all recovered – save for the Serkland woman, as Einar had predicted. She caught a fever, which went quickly, Illugi Godi said, through all the stages: tertian, quartan, daily and, finally, hectic.

At that point, with her breath rasping in her chest, she simply gave up, turned her head to the wall and died. Einar gave her body to the Christ priests in the town, but they refused to perform suitable rites over her, since they said she was ‘infidel’.

So Illugi Godi commended her to the true gods of the North and then tipped the body into the sea, from a rocky spit a little way out of town, as an offering to Ran, Aegir’s sister-wife, to ensure good sea journeys.

That was because the good merchant council of the town wouldn’t have a thrall howed up in their own yards – though they took Harald, whose cut foot had festered all through the winter, then turned black to the groin and stank, at which point he died.

Ulf-Agar, myself and a new Oathsworn, a fair-haired, bearded man called Hring, brought into the Oathsworn to replace Haarlaug, carried the Serkland woman out. I remember Hring because neither he nor I joined in Ulf-Agar’s cursing about having to carry a thrall to be buried. That and the fact that, because of the lice, he was the first of many to have his head shaved. Perhaps that, the mark of a thrall forced on him by circumstance, made him more aware of her.

As for me, I thought myself the only one who cared, though we had all humped her at one time or another and never had a name for her other than Dark One. But, almost with the splash of her in the black, cold water, I had forgotten; I stopped wondering what she had been in her own hot lands. By the time I was back in the hov, I was already looking for the huskiest of the girls still on her feet and trying to get her off them.

Not long after that all the girls were gone, sold off almost overnight. The winter was done and the Fjord Elk was bound for the whale road again.

No one remembers Birka now. Sigtuna, a little way to the north, now sits in its high seat, though people still speak of Gotland as being the queen of the trade places of the Baltic. But Gotland was no more than a seasonal trade fair beside Birka when it flourished.

At the time, I thought Birka was a marvel. Skirringsaal was big, even winter-empty, but Birka, when I first saw it, seemed to me an impossible place. How could so many live so close together? Now, of course, I know better – Birka was a place of rough-hewn logs that could be placed in a few streets of Miklagard, the Great City of the Romans, and not be noticed.

We came beating up to it in driving rain and a wind that wanted to tear the clothes from us. It thrummed the ropes and heaved out the soaking sail.

Because it was so wet, my father shrugged at the idea of hauling it in and the Fjord Elk ran with it, cutting like a blade through the black water, throwing up ice-white spray, snaking down the great heave of the sea so that you could feel it flex, like the muscled beast it was named after, rutting in some red autumn wood.

It was here that we lost Kalf to the waves. My father, when Pinleg bellowed out that the great fortress rock of Birka, the Borg, was in sight, knew that the sail and spar had to come down on to the rests and be lashed. If not, we would slice past it and on into the Helgo and the tangle of islands where the ice still gripped and calved off into dirty, blue-white bergs that would smash the speeding Elk to splinters.

So we all sprang to the walrus-hide ropes and began to pull, while the Elk groaned and bent and the water hissed and creamed away underneath her.

The sail fought us – and one corner of it tore loose, flapping, deceptive. Kalf leaned out to grab it. A mistake. It was wet; he missed; it slapped him like a forge hammer in the face and I just caught the sight of him out of the side of one eye, flying arse over tit, up and out and into the black water with scarcely a splash.

And he was gone, just like that.

Those who had seen it and weren’t hanging on to rope sprang to the side, but there was no sign. Even if he had surfaced, there was no hope; we were flying before the wind like a horse with the bit clenched. By the time we had got the sail stowed and the oars out and turned to row back, he’d have stiffened with the cold and sunk.

I saw my father mouth at Einar, the wind ripping the words away into the wet sail. Einar simply shook his head and pointed onward. Illugi Godi made a sign against the evil eye and Valgard roared incoherently at us, then moved in, banging shoulders and urging us to pull down the sail.

We smothered the great, wet, squelching mass of sail on to the spar and lashed the spar to the rests, panting and sweating with the effort. The rowing crew took their sea-chest benches and, slowly, the Fjord Elk, like a reined-in, snorting horse, stilled and was turned towards the great wet-black rock that marked Birka.

On it, I saw, was a fortress, a rampart of earth and stone that loomed over the settlement and, at a certain point, Einar had us take down the antlered prows, to show we came in peace and were not about to offend the gods of the land with our arrival.

We rowed on, practically level with the great rock, until the sound of a horn brayed out faintly on the water and Rurik, sharply, ordered oars to rest. We waited, the Elk rolling in the swell, water slapping spray over the side.

‘What are we doing?’ I demanded of Steinthor. ‘Going fishing?’

He chuckled and slapped my shoulder, causing a fine spray of water from the soaked cloth. ‘We wait for the tide,’ he answered. ‘The way into the harbours is dangerous with rocks and only Birka men know where they are. The only safe way in is to wait until the rocks show at low tide – or leave when the water runs really high, like in a storm, and trust to the gods.’

‘Harbours?’ I ventured.

‘They have three,’ he said, almost proudly. ‘The one to the west they actually made; the other two are natural.’

‘Four harbours,’ my father interrupted. ‘The fourth is the salvik, the Trade Place, further to the east. That’s for small ships and those with shallow draught, like us. We can berth there without having all those fat-bellied knarrer in our way, or paying fees for it.’

Steinthor grunted. ‘It is a harbour if you count dragging the ship up the shingle on rollers a harbour. And it’s a long walk to the town.’

The swell grew and the Fjord Elk moved with it, slow and ponderous, like some half-frozen water insect. We slid into the salvik and, with the others, I leaped out, paired myself with Hring on an oar and, using it and the others as rollers, the Fjord Elk was ground up over the shingle and the cracking ice pools.

Valgard fretted and tried to inspect the keel, ducking under the oars as we took them from behind and dropped them in front. One cracked and splintered under the stress; Einar cursed, nodding to Valgard to add that to his tally stick of essential refurbishment.

There were other ships, none as big as the Elk, but many of them, it seemed to me, freshly arrived with the melting ice. But Geir and Steinthor grunted and shook their heads.

‘Fewer than last time and there were few then,’ muttered the former, rubbing his wobbling nose.

Steinthor shrugged. ‘All the more ale for us then.’

Down on the strand, under the flapping tent of a patched sail, a trader had spread out a series of tattered furs, on which were bolts of dyed cloth, wool and linen. Next to him, another had set up a simple trestle bench, with amber beads, bronze cloak ringpins, ornaments of jet and silver, eating knives in decorated sheaths and amulets, particularly Thor’s hammer made to look like a cross, so the wearer got the best of both Other Worlds.

They looked hungrily at the men swaggering off the ship; a few Oathsworn wandered over, but wandered back swiftly enough, glum. Pinleg, rolling even more because he hadn’t got his landlegs yet, scowled and shook his head as he came swaying up. ‘Not buying, selling,’ he growled. ‘Piss-poor prices for anything we want to get rid of. That means we’ll have to hang on to it until we get to Ladoga.’

Illugi Godi came up, carrying a live hare by the ears. It hung from his hands, trembling and quiet. He moved to a large, flat rock, which had clearly been used before, and set the hare flat, stroking it gently. It gathered itself into a huddle and shook.

He cut the throat expertly, holding it up so that it kicked and squealed and the blood poured over its front and flew everywhere with its flying, desperate attempts to leap in the air.

Illugi gave it to the sea god, Aegir, in the name of Kalf, who had died in the black water without a sword in his hand, in the hope that the Aesir would consider that a worthy enough death, and to Harald One-eye and Haarlaug. Men stopped, added their own prayers, then moved on, humping sea-chests on their shoulders.

It came to me then that the Oathsworn had done one journey, from south Norway, round between Wessex and the lands of the Norse in France, north to Man and Strathclyde, then back and on eastwards to Birka. A journey without trouble and a soft raid, according to the salt-stained men of the Oathsworn. And yet three men had died.

Illugi gutted the hare while it kicked feebly, examined the entrails and nodded sagely. He left the red ruin of it aside, started a small fire from shavings, fed it to life and caught me watching. ‘Get me dry wood, Orm Ruriksson.’

I did – with difficulty on that wet beach – and he built the fire up, then laid the remains of the hare on it. The smell of singed fur and burning flesh drifted blackly down to the traders, some of whom crossed themselves hurriedly.

When it was done, Illugi Godi left it on the rock, picked up his own meagre belongings and both of us stumbled up the shingle to the coarse grass and on towards the dark huddle of Birka. On the Traders’ Green, which sat opposite the tall, timbered stockade and the great double doors of the North Gate, was a sprawl of wattle-and-daub huts.

Two substantial buildings squatted there, too, made of age-blackened timbers caulked with clay. One was for the garrison that manned the Borg, the great fortress which towered over to our left, and the other was for those like us, visiting groups of armed men who had to be offered hospitality, without the good burghers of Birka having to invite them into their protected homes.

At the gates, two bored guards with round leather caps, shields and spears made sure no one entered the town with anything larger than an eating knife and, since no sensible man would simply leave his weapons with them and hope to get them back later, there was much cursing from those unused to the custom as they traipsed back to dwellings to secure them with people they knew.

Illugi Godi, busy pointing things out to me as we trudged towards the Guest Hall, stopped suddenly at the sight of one of the Oathsworn, walking up from the beach in a daze, as if frozen.

Puzzled at first, I suddenly saw his face as Illugi Godi took him by the shoulder and turned him to face us. Eyvind, his name was, a thin-faced, fey-eyed man from Hadaland in Norway. My father said he was touched, though he never said by what.

Something had touched him, for sure, and it made the hairs on my arms stand up; he was pale as a dead man, his dark hair making him look even more so and, above his beard, his eyes looked like the dark pits of a skull.

‘What happened to you?’ demanded Illugi as I looked around warily. The wind hissed, cold and fierce, the night came on with a rush and a last, despairing gasp of thin twilight and figures moved, almost shadows. At the gate and up at the fortress, lamps were lit, little glowing yellow eyes that made the dark more dark still. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

Illugi asked again and the man blinked, as if water had been thrown in his face.

‘Raven,’ he said eventually, in a voice half wondering, half something else. Dull. Resigned. ‘I saw a raven.’

‘A crow, perhaps,’ Illugi offered. ‘Or a trick of the twilight.’

Eyvind shook his head, then looked at Illugi as if seeing him clearly for the first time. He grabbed Illugi by the arms; his beard trembled. ‘A raven. On the beach, a rock with the remains of a hare sacrifice on it.’

I heard Illugi’s swift intake of breath – and so did Eyvind. He was wild-eyed with fear.

‘What was in your head?’ demanded Illugi Godi. Eyvind shook his own, muttering. I caught the words ‘raven’ and ‘doom’ as they were whipped away by the wind. I shivered, for the sight of one of the All-Father’s birds on a sacrifice offering was a sure sign that you would die.

Illugi seized the man in return and shook him. ‘What was in your head?’ he demanded in a fierce hiss.

Eyvind looked at him, his eyebrows closed into one, and he shook his head again, bewildered. ‘Head? What do you mean … ?’

‘Were you remembering, or just thinking?’

‘Thinking,’ he answered.

Illugi grunted. ‘What thought?’

Eyvind screwed up his face, then it smoothed and he looked at Illugi. ‘I was looking at the town and thinking how easily it would burn.’

Illugi patted him on the shoulder, then indicated the pile of dropped gear. ‘Get to the Guest Hall and don’t worry. It was Odin’s pet right enough – but not with a message for you. For me, Eyvind. For me.’

The eagerness in him was almost obscene to watch. ‘Really? You say true?’

Illugi Godi nodded and the man scrabbled to collect his things, then stumbled off towards the butter-glow of the Hall.

Illugi leaned on his staff a moment, looking round. I was annoyed; Eyvind thought he had seen one of Odin’s ravens, herald of death, and had then gone off, not the least bothered that the doom of it was claimed by another. I said as much and Illugi shrugged.

‘Who knows? It could have been Thought … That raven is as deep and cunning as Loki,’ he replied. Then he looked at me, his fringe of grizzled, red-gold beard catching the lamp glow. ‘On the other hand, it might have been Memory – Birka has burned before.’

‘You think it a warning, then? Since it came to your sacrifice for the dead?’ I asked, shivering slightly.

‘On yet the other hand,’ Illugi Godi said wryly. ‘Eyvind is Loki-touched. He loves fire, is mad for fire. Twice before people have stopped him lighting one on the Fjord Elk. Oh, he always had good reason – hot food for us all, dry boots and socks – but he was also the one who wanted to torch all the buildings at St Otmund’s chapel, after we knew the fyrd were roused.’

I remembered – so it had been him who had called for it.

‘So he was mistaken?’ I asked as Illugi hefted his belongings and, with no other word, led me to the Guest Hall.

I wanted to ask him what would happen when Eyvind told the others, but should have realised what Illugi already knew: that Eyvind would say nothing. He would now, as the fear and relief fell away, realise what a nithing he had become at that moment and would certainly tell no one how his bowels had turned to water.

The Guest Hall was spacious, clean and well equipped, with a good hearth pitfire and a lot of boxbeds – not enough for us all, so it was a chance to see who was who in the Oathsworn.

Of course, I ended up on the floor near the draughty door, but that was no surprise. My father got a good boxbed, as did Einar and Skapti and others I had expected. To my surprise, Pinleg got one, too and, after a moment of raised hackles and growling, Gunnar Raudi forced Steinthor out of his. Chuckling, Ulf-Agar watched the archer slouch off, scowling.

‘Watch your back, flame-head,’ he advised. ‘You may be picking arrowheads out of it.’

‘Watch your mouth, short-arse,’ Gunnar growled back, ‘or you will be picking my boot out of it.’

At which all those who heard it laughed, including Steinthor. Ulf-Agar bristled, thought better of it and subsided sullenly, for he had also heard of Gunnar Raudi.

I was surprised how many of these hard men had heard of Gunnar and the respect they held for him. I had always thought of Gunnar as someone who lived for free at Bjornshafen and never questioned the why of it.

Now, it seemed to me, Gunnar was known as a hard man himself, but was clearly not at ease with it. I wondered, then, why he didn’t just leave, for it was also clear that he and Einar were wary as big-ruffed wolves round each other.

I had expected Birka to be much the same as Skirringsaal, but it was different. We had women, sent by the merchants who ran the town, but these were no bought thralls, to be up-ended and tupped without thought. They were respectable wives and mothers, in embroidered aprons, with proper linen head-coverings and a beltful of keys and scissors and ear-cleaners. They had their own thralls – some of them pretty enough – but not for the likes of us to grab at.

They had no fear and sharp tongues and the cold-eyed men of the Oathsworn meekly submitted to having hair and beards trimmed and fingernails cut, as if they were children.

So we had meals and minded our manners, after a fashion – Illugi Godi had to cuff a few heads into shamefaced apologies now and then and so respected was he that he could.

I wondered about Illugi. He was a godi, a priest, of course, but most priests were jarls, too. But in the Oathsworn, Einar clearly ruled. It was bewildering for me, this new life – and for others, too, forced to go into the town to get drunk at one of the ale houses set up for foreign travellers and try out the whores there, though they grumbled at having to spend silver on humping that they could never get back.

But even if someone could be persuaded to part with a girl, taking her back to the Guest Hall was a waste of time, since the disapproving eyes of the goodwives, who came and went as they chose, tended to have a shrinking effect. Things, it was generally agreed, were not changing for the better.

There was news, too, brought by traders in coloured cloth tunics and trousers, some dressed like Skapti, who told of those lost in the cataracts of the Rus rivers that year. Like old Boslof, sucked under Holmfors, Island-force, which was an indignity to a man who had survived the insatiable, boulder-strewn torrents of the Drinker, the Courser, the notorious Wave-force and all the rest of the deadly rapids that marked the route to Konugard – Kiev, the Slavs called it. The last seven were so vicious that the Christ-worshippers called them the Deadly Sins after some tale in their holy sagas.

I also heard about Arnlaug, dead of the squits, despite offering up a good ram to the tree on Oak Island, which the Christ-men were calling St Gregor’s Island, the first haven after the last of those seven rapids. Having shat himself with fear going down all of them, it seems this Arnlaug couldn’t stop and wasted away, so that he was a husk when they came to burn him.

Burn him they did. They had turned to the old ways in the east, ever since the Kura raid some twenty years before, when two hundred ships, they say, entered that river south of Baku and put the town of Berda to the flame and the blade, all the Mahomet-worshippers there.

In turn, the raiders were attacked by Mussulmen – and the same sort of squits that took Arnlaug – and had to retreat, whereupon those Aesir-cursed heathens had dug up the respectably buried and stripped them of the fine weapons and armour left in their boat-graves.

Now the traders burned their dead instead, as hot as they could make it, so that armour melted. As well, they broke the swords into three pieces, to be reforged across the rainbow bridge, but not in this life.

That, as one silver-bearded, garrulous old veteran of the rivers and rapids pointed out, was in Igor’s time, who was seventy-five and his wife, the famous Olga, sixty when they gave the Rus their prince, Sviatoslav, whose wars on the Bulgars and Khazars now strangled the silver life out of Birka.

And everyone nodded and marvelled at the wyrd of it and shook their heads over the future.

They shook their heads, too, over the new trade agreements with Miklagard, the Navel of the World, which meant they could not purchase more than fifty gold pieces’ worth of silk and had to have a stamp to prove it.

Nor could groups of more than fifty men, all unarmed, enter that city of New Rome, which they called Constantinople. Ridiculous, everyone agreed – even, admittedly, if fifty gold pieces’ worth of silk made a fair number of trousers.

Except, noted Finn Horsehead, if they were for Skapti Halftroll. He’d be lucky to get a pair and a spare out of that much material. And everyone laughed, even the merchants, who grudgingly admitted they were given free equipment and a month’s provisions for their return to Kiev, which they now had to do, by law of the Emperor, every autumn. Miklagard’s finest did not want roistering Norsemen over-wintering in their nice city.

More to the point, as several men fresh from Denmark’s trade port of Hedeby revealed, King Hakon was dead and gone and Harald Bluetooth was now indisputable ruler of both Norway and Denmark after a great battle at the island of Stord in the Hardangerfjord. There Hakon lost both his life and his throne to those who were once both his bitterest enemies and his closest kinsmen.

And Illugi Godi rapped his staff appreciatively on the hearthstones at the news that Hakon had been carried to Saeheim in North Hordaland and howed up there with Odin rites, so that the king who had followed Christ until his moment of death was now revered by the old gods, joining his eight brothers, the sons of Harald Fairhair, in Valholl.

Now the five sons of Eirik Bloodaxe and their mother, Gunnhild, fairly to be called Mother of Kings, were returned to Norway and the armies were broken up. Most, being farmers and good, steady men, had sensibly gone home. A few – too many for some – were now prowling, looking for fresh work or easy looting.

I listened and watched and learned at the feet of these, the wondrous far-travelled, watching their faces in the flickering red firelight. I saw who was for the White Christ and who was not, who was trading and who watched for a chance to raid.

Especially, I watched Einar listen and stroke his moustache and, when he paused, knew that bit of news was more important. Then he would resume stroking and I could see him turning it over in his head.

The tidings of new armed men was what clearly concerned him: competition in a world already crowded with it. The garrison of Birka was made up of rootless men looking for somewhere to put their boots, a wife, a hall, a hearthfire. Einar could see the value of a good sword-arm drop by the day.

‘If he does not call me soon,’ I heard him confide to Ketil Crow, ‘I will have to get his attention.’

I knew at once the ‘he’ Einar spoke of: Brondolf Lambisson, the leader of the Birka merchants. Einar had sent the saint’s box up to the Borg with Bagnose and Illugi the day after we’d arrived. They gave it personally to Martin the monk and had back assurances that Brondolf Lambisson would speak to them soon – and then, nothing.

I never found out what Einar had in mind to attract attention, because the next night one of the leather-clad garrison slouched into the Guest Hall and told Einar he was expected in the Borg.

So Einar called Illugi and, surprisingly, me, to go with him. As I collected my cloak, he took me by the arm and said, almost in my ear, his breath strong with herring, ‘Not a word that you can read, let alone the Latin.’

For me, it was exhilarating to be out in the town, under the fitful stars and scudding clouds, following the flash and sway of the lantern as the garrison man led the way down the slippery planked walkways, me dodging rain barrels and trying to keep my feet.

I was delighted, amazed and repelled all at once – so much so that Illugi had to cuff my head once and mutter, ‘If you swivel that neck any more, boy, your head will fall off. Watch your feet, or you will end in the muck.’

He paused as a drunk staggered up, tried to avoid the group of us, slipped and crashed off the walkway into the stinking mire on one side. ‘Like him,’ he added, scowling and vainly trying to wipe splashes off his tunic.

Behind us, the drunk spluttered and gurgled and got up blowing, then splashed back on to the planks and squelched unsteadily off.

I have seen the other towns since. Hedeby was bigger, Kiev was better and Miklagard, the Great City, could swallow them both and not notice. But Birka, in the first flush of unfolding spring, was like some wild and garish flower.

Every house had a light and noise from it: laughs, shouts, singing. All the treacherous walkways had people – so many people, in streets that stank of cooking and spilled ale and shite. They say, at that time, a thousand people lived in Birka. I had never seen a hundred people in one place at one time.

I scarcely realised we were climbing until the pulsing crowd of humanity slackened, then disappeared, and we emerged from the shadowed eaves of quieter houses almost under the stockade and main gates of the Borg.

Inside, unadorned and massive, the dark masonry of the fortress loomed, sparked with golden glow here and there. A small, iron-ringed door and a flight of steps took us into a flagged courtyard, on the other side of which some more steps spiralled wearily to yet another door.

Through this I stumbled, following the others, drunk on the sheer sensation of it all, spilling into a great golden glow of light from torches on sconces, which made the guide’s feeble lantern look as if it had gone out.

The place was hung with rich tapestries crusted with gold threads and embroidered with scenes that, in the flickering light, looked as if they were coming alive. I didn’t understand any of them – save a hunting scene – but several had those people with round hats of gold, so I thought they must be to do with the White Christ.

The very floor, of polished wood, seemed to gleam and I felt my boots on it were an affront.

A new figure appeared, nodded to the guide and smiled affably at Einar, quizzically at me and, lastly, offered a fixed politeness to Illugi Godi.

He wore a brown robe tied with a clean, pale rope and soft, slippers. His face was sharp, smooth, clean-shaven, his eyes black and his brown hair cut the same length all round. The torchlight bounced off his bald scalp – no, not bald, I realised suddenly. Shaved and, by the fuzz on it, in need of renewing.

‘Martin monk,’ acknowledged Einar with a nod. ‘Brondolf has news, then?’

‘Our master has something to impart, yes,’ answered Martin smoothly, then turned to Illugi Godi. ‘Still a heathen, I see, Master Illugi? I had hoped Our Lord would see fit to deliver another miracle as we approach Easter.’

‘Another miracle?’ responded Illugi. ‘Has there been one recently, then?’

‘Indeed,’ answered Martin, almost joyously. ‘My own bishop, Poppo, has convinced Harald Bluetooth of the power of God and Christ, who died for our sins. He wore a red-hot iron glove to prove it. So it is that Bluetooth is now to be gathered into the flock of God and given His mercy.’

‘Where is Brondolf?’ Einar demanded.

‘On his way,’ replied Martin easily. ‘He has asked that I offer you his hospitality – please come to the fire. And who is this?’

Einar jerked a thumb at me and shrugged. ‘Orm, son of my shipmaster, Rurik. He has never been anywhere, or seen anything, so I thought to bring him, for the learning in it.’

‘Indeed,’ mused Martin. ‘I see you have seen the Light and been gathered into God’s grace.’

Puzzled, I saw him glance at the cross on my chest and was appalled that he should think me a Christ-follower. ‘I had it from a man I killed,’ I blurted without thinking. Einar chuckled. Martin, unsure whether I had just been witty or stupid, led the way to a table with benches and we sat.

It was here, for the first time, that I found food could be remarkably different. Women came, soft-slippered so that they scarcely made more than a whispering sound, and served up fillets of fish stuffed with anchovies and capers, shellfish which we hooked out with silver picks, cutlets of lamb, bloody-rare, ripe with wild garlic and melting in my mouth, all washed down with wine, which I had never tasted until now.

Food. Until Birka, all food was mud-coloured – brown, or yellow or red – and tasted of fish, even the meat, since we fed livestock on fish leavings. I could hardly breathe for the sight and smell of that table.

And all the while Martin chattered about the storms and the news of Stord and how unfortunate it was that Hakon could not be gathered into the bosom of Christ as was proper, but no doubt God would overlook the heathen propensities of his followers and gather him anyway.

Which prompted a sharp response from Illugi Godi and then they were off into argument, leaving Einar and me behind. I listened with half an ear as Illugi tried to explain that the Vanir were not the same as the Aesir, were older gods and some, like Ull, were not much worshipped.

Einar. I caught him looking at me as I looked at him, and saw that his expensive silver cup was scarcely touched. Then I saw myself as he saw me, cheeks bulging with lamb, gravy on my chin, wild with the sheer, unbelievable sensuality of the whole affair.

I swallowed, sobered. Einar grinned and I followed his gaze to the arguing pair.

Illugi was in heated debate about the tale of Bishop Poppo and the wearing of the red-hot glove and Martin was smiling and answering him blandly.

Suddenly, as if a veil was whipped away, I saw, as I knew Einar did – had done since we arrived – that Martin was stalling. The wine, the food – even the argument – were all a feint, as when a man looks for an opening under a shield.

‘Where, then,’ Einar demanded, ‘is Brondolf?’

If he had hurled the silver cup to the polished wood of the floor he couldn’t have created more of a silence. Martin looked round, blinked and sighed.

‘I had hoped he would be here to tell you himself, but it seems that he has been caught up in events,’ the monk said in his gentle, accented voice. ‘Things are happening in the wider world – Bluetooth, for one – which have to be dealt with.’

‘What was in the saint’s box?’ asked Einar quietly.

Martin shrugged. He paused, then answered, ‘Bones. Some writings, but not what I had hoped.’ He rose and crossed to a small chest, opened it and took out a cloth bag, which chinked softly. ‘Brondolf is disappointed in me, I fear,’ he went on with a wry, deprecating smile, which twisted his face into a gargoyle mask for a moment. ‘He is now looking for more … practical … ways of restoring Birka’s fortunes, since my poor efforts have failed.’

‘And what were these poor efforts?’ asked Einar, leaning forward so that the black pillars of his hair framed his face, making it even more pale than usual, his eyes deep-sunk pools. I was reminded of Eyvind, who had seen Thought, Odin’s raven.

Martin spread his arms dismissively and smiled. ‘I thought I had found a great ikon of Christ, one which would have made a church in Birka a pilgrimage for Christians everywhere. It seems I was wrong.’

‘What was this ikon?’ asked Illugi. Einar’s dark-pool eyes never left Martin’s face and made it hard for the priest to broaden the smile. I knew, at that moment, he was lying and the vision of a great mountain of silver, Atil’s hoard, made my heart lurch. It could be real after all.

Martin spread his thin-fingered hands – stained with what seemed to be burn marks – and shrugged. ‘It scarcely matters, Illugi,’ he said smoothly. ‘You know how many there are. Like so many others, this turned out to be a fake. If you took all the knuckle-bones of St Otmund and assembled them you would find a miracle. He had four hands, at least.’

Smiling, he stepped forward and placed the cloth bag in front of Einar with a soft, chiming chink. ‘Brondolf thanks you for your efforts. You are free to go where you please.’

The air grew still and no one moved. It was as if we were all frozen and the longer the moment went on, the more painful the attempt to move became.

Then Einar, with a swiftness that startled us up like swallows, scooped up the bag and stood. In a second, there was nothing but movement, as if that had released us from some spell. Einar strode off without a word. Illugi Godi, I saw, sensed that something had happened but wasn’t sure what. Politeness stayed him long enough to thank Martin and offer all the usual platitudes and get them in return.

For my part, I saw the monk’s eyes flick, just once, to the door. On the back of it, on a hook, hung a hooded cloak.

Einar waited for us in the courtyard, where a fresh, clean, cold wind drove out the cobwebs, streamed out our hair, hissed over the flagstones and rattled the little gate as we were quietly ushered out and handed a lantern. No guide back to the Guest Hall, then.

‘You might have had more regard for hospitality,’ chided Illugi Godi and Einar, only half listening, grunted a reply.

‘He paid in silver, in a town where silver is scarce as hen’s teeth. He wanted no argument and he wanted no bartering for goods on tally sticks. He wants us gone, does Brondolf Lambisson – but had to leave it to the monk, such a delicate thing. So what could have been more pressing to him that he could not come himself?’ He turned to me suddenly. ‘What did you see?’ he asked.

I knew at once what he meant, felt strange, as if perched on a cliff like some fledgling gull, waiting for a suitable wind, working to that moment of hurling off and trusting to new wings.

‘He was lying,’ I said, sure of it as I was of my own palm. ‘Brondolf is somewhere else, as you say. Since he is so important, it must be someone more important than him. Since, I am thinking, there is no one more important than him in this place, then it must be a foreigner and a chief at least …

‘And the monk was waiting for us to go, for he has business abroad.’

I told him of the cloak on the back of the door. Illugi’s eyes widened and Einar halted, so that we all nearly ran into him. He turned to me, a grim smile on that pale face. I wished he wouldn’t do that, since it was worse than no smile at all.

‘Most men think in a straight line,’ he said, barely audible over the town’s noise and the wind. ‘They see only their own actions, like a single thread in the Norns’ loom, knotted only when they thrust their life on others. They see through one set of eyes, hear through one set of ears, all their life.’ He stared at me. ‘To look at things through someone else’s eyes is a rare thing, which cannot be learned. To those with the gift, it is not hard, nor complicated. But, to survive and be more than any others, it is essential. You have that gift, I am thinking.’

I was stunned and swelled with it. In that moment, I almost loved the great, glorious being that was Einar the Black, yet, even then, the very gift he praised me for slipped a memory, the blade-bright thought: this man had snicked off the head of Gudleif, for almost no reason other than he could.

We tramped back to the North Gate and were almost out when a figure loomed from the dark, with others behind. I saw Gunnar Raudi, Ketil Crow, Bagnose, Pinleg and others, wild-eyed, wild-haired – and sober.

Gunnar Raudi’s grim face, grimmer still in the play of lamplight loomed up to Einar and said, ‘Ulf-Agar is missing. Steinthor says men took him.’