Читать книгу The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 3 - Robert Low - Страница 17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I was wondering if Skapti had anyone to mourn for him besides the few of us,’ I said. ‘If he had a name other than Halftroll, I never heard it uttered.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘The Vanir, you mean?’

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

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

‘Better?’

Confused, I waved a wild hand. ‘When first we met you were … sick. Now you seem well again. Calmer. I am glad of it.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘I was tasked with looking after Hild,’ I replied moodily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘It is old – if Martin is to be believed,’ I replied pointedly and he looked steadily at me.

‘Older than anything we have seen,’ he answered. ‘Yet, in the forge, on its ledge, under the runes …’

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

‘Perhaps – but so quickly?’ Illugi mused. ‘And what kept it gleaming new all those years on that ledge?’

‘I … don’t know,’ I confessed. ‘What?’

He shook his head, stroked his beard. ‘I don’t know either. The runes maybe – that was a powerful spell. Perhaps it ages because the blood of this Christ of theirs, who hung on the cross-tree and was stabbed with it, if you believe such a thing, has been removed with the metal shaft they used to forge the sword. Perhaps both.

‘But it ages, Orm, it changes – and there is more. Like a … talisman … it helps Hild find her way to where the sword lies.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I did not put my thought – that there was no stone raised to Eyvind anywhere – to either him or Illugi. But the wyrd was working on Einar and, on that very day, it caught up with us all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In reality, the town was run like Birka, by a group of the richest merchants, all elected by each other. Now and then it pleased them to make it appear that everyone had a say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘See them,’ he railed, as the gorgeously accoutred priests paraded down the muddy walkways, swinging censers and droning. ‘It’s not enough that they should declare the true gods are nothing short of paltry bandits, but they have the nerve to steal our worship for their own.’ He paused and hawked loudly, then spat. The nearest priest turned, beard quivering, and saw Illugi, recognised the staff and scowled.

‘Turds,’ Illugi growled. ‘Easter, they call this, as if we can’t see they have stolen it.’

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

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

My father looked at me, shrugged and gave up. I grinned. It was, after all, a celebration of my Name Day. Neither of us could actually remember the exact day, my father being drunk at the time, as he admitted, so I had always celebrated changing age at the festival of Ostara.

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

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

Moodily, I managed to persuade Hild to see the fighting stallions. They were good, well-chosen beasts – a black and a grey – and, though I’d had no hand in picking them, I was impressed by their quality.

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

‘Orm, lad, the very man we need,’ roared the Trimmer. ‘You know fighting horses, your father tells us. Who will win this?’

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

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

My father – as usual – mistook my pause for reluctance and clapped one shoulder. ‘Orm, for me, lad.’

‘Not the grey,’ I said. ‘It will not be strong enough.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Too late.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Me? Why?’

‘Good question,’ said Einar, looking at Gunnar, who was mopping the blood from the split in his face and accepting, with a grateful grin, a horn of mead. He drank, then passed it to me and wiped his lips with one bloodied hand.

‘I saw Martin the monk,’ he said. ‘He was pointing you out to those ones.’

‘Me or Hild,’ I argued, but he shook his head.

‘You.’

‘Martin the monk? Are you sure?’ demanded Ketil Crow. Around us, the crowd had gone back to preparing for the horse-fight, save for those of the Oathsworn – the ones who knew of Martin, I saw – who were alert, hands near their hidden weapons.

When Gunnar nodded, Ketil Crow and Einar exchanged glances and fell silent.

Illugi Godi examined Gunnar’s head and grunted, ‘You’ll live. Orm, can you wriggle out of that mail? I want to see that wound.’

It was harder than it looked and no one offered to help, of course. It slithered like a snakeskin to the ground eventually and I straightened up, holding my breath and feeling as bloodless as I looked. Both Illugi and Hild, I saw, were peering closely at my ribs as my tunic was hauled up.

‘If Martin is here,’ I said to Einar, ‘then how did he manage it, save with Starkad?’

‘Starkad is dead,’ Ketil Crow growled. ‘I heard it on good authority from the crewman on a knarr, who came upon the other drakkar. He died of wound fevers, from a cut on his leg.’

I looked at Einar, who said nothing.

‘The other drakkar took his body back, wrapped in wadmal and salt, for Bluetooth to see,’ Ketil Crow went on.

‘How long have you known this?’ I asked.

‘Not long,’ Einar replied absently. ‘If it is true.’

Ketil Crow’s thin-lipped silence was better than words. He clearly believed it. Wanted to believe it. If Starkad was dead and the other drakkar gone back to Denmark, then we were one enemy less. A big enemy, too.

‘If so, where did Martin come from?’ demanded Illugi Godi.

‘Vigfus?’ I ventured and Einar’s brief, lowered-brow gaze told me he had considered that. There was something more there, too, but I could not quite grasp it.

‘Well,’ he said, eventually, forcing a smile, ‘there is a horse-fight to be enjoyed and an oath-swearing after. If you are not fit to stay, Bear Slayer, I will hand Hild to two others and you can return to the ship.’

‘I will go with him,’ said Hild quickly. Einar looked from her to me and had the grace to keep his thoughts from his face. He bowed acknowledgement, but I said I was fine to stay.

‘Stay sober and don’t take part in the wrestling,’ Illugi Godi said with a smile. ‘Later, I will bind it with salves. Best to leave the mail off.’

When he had gone into the crowd, I pointedly looked at the mail, then at Gunnar. He grinned his understanding, picked it up and helped me into it.

Hild frowned, clutching her spear-shaft talisman. ‘Illugi just said not to do that.’

‘Illugi is not the one armed men are after,’ I pointed out.

Gunnar bent to me, under the pretence of adjusting the hang of the mail on my shoulders. ‘Thing is,’ he whispered, ‘I recognised one of those men. Herjolf, the one they called Hare-foot, from the next valley to Bjornshafen. Remember him?’

I did, vaguely, a lanky man who came over with sheep to sell now and then, memorable only because of the long-boned feet that gave him his nickname.

‘The further you go,’ I mused, ‘the more people you meet that you know.’

Gunnar hawked and spat. ‘I don’t believe in such wyrd,’ he growled, while a bemused Hild looked on, one to the other. ‘He was here after you. I am thinking that, if we find out where the other men are from, you could probably spit from one of their hovs to the other and all from the Vik.’

‘What are you saying?’ I demanded.

‘Gudleif’s sons are here,’ he replied and wandered off to get his horn refilled.

That crashed on me like an anvil and left me stunned. I shook my head with disbelief. Half a year ago – less – I had no enemies at all and now they were lining up to swing a sword at me.

Gudleif’s sons. How had Martin got in with them? At the fishing village, perhaps. He could have reached that and met a ship with Gudleif’s vengeful sons on board. Or perhaps he was with the surviving drakkar and Starkad’s body when they met another ship with Gudleif’s sons.

No matter. The wyrd of it was that Bjorn and Steinkel, no older than me and whom I had never seen, were out for bloodprice for the slaying of their father. And not just from me, I remembered.

‘Who is Gudleif?’ asked Hild.

‘A fetch who won’t lie peacefully,’ I answered and her head came up sharply at that, the knuckles whitening on her talisman spear-shaft.

I made my way through the milling, cheering crowds as the horses fought, seeking out my father. I found him as the grey foundered, reeling backwards on his hind legs, the black’s teeth in his neck. Screaming, the black bore him to the ground and pounded him to a red ruin as the crowd roared.

‘Orm, Orm, you were right and we have won a fortune,’ my father roared, beaming and red-faced. ‘How did you know, eh?’

‘No matter,’ I began, but he had the others round him, wanted to bask in the reflected glory of his clever son and insisted.

‘White socks,’ I said, speaking quickly. ‘The grey had white socks on the rear hocks. The hair grows white round old wounds or bad bone … His hocks gave out, because they were weak. A fighting horse that can’t stand on his hind legs won’t last long.’

My father beamed; the others nodded, impressed. I caught his arm and dragged him aside. He came, realising now that something was up.

‘There was a fight,’ I said and his eyes widened, examining me, seeing the missing rings on my mail shirt.

‘I am unhurt. Gunnar Raudi cut his head giving one an Oathsworn kiss.’

‘Shits! How many? Where are they? Einar must know … He won’t want anything to mar this day.’

‘Too late,’ I said. Then I told him of my and Gunnar’s suspicions.

He sagged a little, the joy of the day withered away. ‘Odin’s balls,’ he said, shaking his head wearily. ‘Vigfus, Starkad, now my nephews ... I am getting too old for all this, Orm.’

‘And me,’ I replied with feeling, which made him laugh a little. He straightened and nodded.

‘Right. You have the right of it. Fuck Gudleif and fuck his sons, too. If Einar has his way today, none of them will be able to touch us.’

That made me blink a bit and my father laid one finger along his nose and winked.

At which point, a hush fell on the crowd as Illugi Godi stepped up, rapped his staff and began the words of consecration.

It went well. The winning horse, streaming sweat and exhausted, was expertly dispatched, the blood from its cut throat drenching the altar stone, the head removed and stuck on a pole alongside, while the carcass was hauled off to be butchered and eaten. The heart would be left on the altar and Illugi would watch to see what bird came to it first.

Then, one by one, the Oathsworn, new and old, stepped forward and recited their oath of blood and steel and promise, in the eye of Odin.

When it was my turn, it seemed to me that, on the other side of the altar, where the smoke from the cookfires shrouded the river, Skapti and Pinleg and other faces stood and watched silently, pale figures with glittering eyes, envious of the living.

In front of them all, like an accusing finger, was Eyvind.

Einar was last to swear and his voice was strong and clear. Just as he had finished, at the moment when Illugi would close the ceremony with a prayer to Odin, there was a stir and heads turned to look at a party of horsemen, riding on to the Thingvallir.

There were six of them, led by a seventh. They were all mounted on splendid, powerful horses, bigger than our little fighting ponies. They were all mailed and helmeted, with shields slung on their backs, long spears balanced in stirrup cups and curved swords in their belts.

You could not see any of their faces because they had veils of mail drawn across them and the leader wore a splendid helmet with a full-face gilded mask on it, a bland sculpture of a beautiful youth. A huge horsetail hung from the point of it and blew silver-grey in the wind.

Amazed, everyone watched as they cantered up and swung into a line. The man with the masked helmet leaped off, light on his feet for someone in mail and leather. Only his legs, with baggy red silk trousers tucked into knee-high leather boots, had no armour and the mail hauberk hung low, so that they were protected when he rode.

He wore two curved sabres in his belt – the mark of a chieftain, so I had been told – and a magnificent, fur-collared cloak of midnight blue fastened with a silver clasp that was probably worth a couple of farms back in the Vik.

When he unclipped the face-plate and pulled off his helmet, it was a disappointment, for there was no gilded youth, only a boy with pimples. But there were a few intakes of breath and the name leaped from head to head like a drumbeat.

Yaropolk.

The Prince, son of Sviatoslav, was young, round-faced and wisp-bearded. Round his neck was a ring of fat, egg-sized glowing lumps of amber, the tears of the sun. His whole head was shaved, save for a hank of black hair, braided and bound with silver bands, hanging over one ear. I learned later that his father was similarly shaved and that, half-Norse though they were, this was their Khazar clan mark. He stepped forward, tossing the helmet up and back to be expertly caught by one of his men. For all that he was barely as old as me, he played the part of a prince well.

Einar went down on one knee, which didn’t surprise me. In his place, I’d have gone down on my face.

‘Welcome, great lord,’ Einar said smoothly and Yaropolk nodded, smiling. Einar waved and Ketil Crow came across, moving faster than I had ever seen him, with a huge silver-banded drinking horn, bought specially for the purpose, I realised later. Yaropolk drank, for all the world like a man who had just dropped in for a chat, then handed it back to Einar, who also drank.

When he had finished, Einar raised the horn and announced that, with this, he was pledging his oath and his life and his band of followers to the druzhina of Prince Yaropolk.

Who graciously accepted it in a voice somewhat spoiled by it breaking here and there. Then Illugi Godi recited his prayer to Odin, but kept it short, since Yaropolk was a follower of the Christ like his grandmother – though his own father stuck with the old gods. A great statue of Perun still stood in Novgorod, but a church was being built nearby, it was said. I saw both myself later and realised that old Perun’s time was limited when the bird-shit was left on his stern face. Later, of course, the Perun totem in Kiev, gilded moustaches and all, went into the river at Vladimir’s orders.

But this was a stunning moment for all of us, save those in the know. It meant the Oathsworn were now personal retainers of one of the most powerful leaders in the realm and anyone attacking us, attacked him.

In one clever ’tafl move, Einar had forestalled all his enemies and, in the feasting and drinking that followed, it was generally agreed – even by those who should know better – that Einar’s luck was holding.

It was left to Hild to sober us all up as we gathered round the dying embers of the fire, somnolent with food and beer and mulling on the events. Nearby, a couple were humping with noisy enthusiasm and I was, at one and the same time, annoyed by the presence of Hild, which kept me from doing the same, and acutely aware of her and the fact that other women had lost their savour because of her.

She, if she heard anything at all, or thought anything on the matter, gave no sign. She sat, blank-faced as a benign little statue – and then she spoke. ‘I have heard,’ she said, ‘that the druzhina of the Princes of Kiev are powerful forces.’

And everyone nodded and agreed that this was so.

‘Horsemen, for all the nobles of Kiev are horsemen,’ she went on. ‘They fight with the bow and the spear and the sword, from horseback, on the open steppe. The Khazars they war against fight the same way.’

And everyone agreed that this was so.

‘So … why does he need Norsemen, who fight on foot?’

We all looked at each other, for it was a very good question. Around then, some of us began to wonder.

As the couple reached a gasping end, Hild stood, calmly smoothed her dress, cradled the spear-shaft and drifted into the twilight and back to the ship. And I, of course, climbed wearily and painfully to my feet and followed, hearing the chuckles, aware that ‘Bear Slayer’ was giving way to ‘Hild’s Hound’.

The next night, resting by the cookfires, we did not have to worry the bone she had dropped on us. It was announced that the army of Kiev was gathering in that place, to march all the way south, almost to the Black Sea, down the Don river to the Khazars’ city there. Sviatoslav would lay siege to it and finally remove this block to the eastern trade routes. And you can’t, as Einar airily pointed out, take a walled city with horsemen.

‘So you will get us all killed before we can reach the hoard,’ grumbled Valknut, but Hild shook her head, her eyes fixed on Einar, who tried to avoid hers. She was quiet, coiled like a snake.

‘The city is Sarkel,’ she said. ‘It lies on the Don. The place we seek is nearby.’

‘So you say,’ I offered moodily, half to myself, and was surprised at the growls that supported this.

‘Orm has the right of it,’ Finn Horsehead grunted, jerking his shaggy chin towards Hild. ‘It seems to me that we put much of our trust in this woman, who does not inspire me, for one.’

‘Nor me,’ agreed Kvasir Spittle. ‘If she knows so much of it, have her make a chart we can follow.’

Einar looked from one to the other, then back to me and his eyes tightened at the edges as others muttered assent to all this. I swallowed a dry spear in my throat under that gaze.

Einar shrugged and turned to Hild. ‘Well, then – will you draw this chart?’

‘No.’ It was a handslap on a wet stone, a flat refusal that made us all blink.

Finn regarded her with one eye closed. Then he looked at Einar. ‘You have a magic knife that would change her mind.’

‘Would you trust a chart made that way?’

More growls and mutters, as they realised that she could lead them anywhere.

Kvasir scrubbed his head vigorously. ‘I just don’t like the idea of trailing after a … a …’ He stopped, stumbling on the rocks of it.

‘A witch,’ Hild answered for him, her gaze as black as Einar’s. She laughed, a low, throaty sound that raised hackles on everyone. She was trembling.

‘You will, I am thinking, have to trust me on this, lads,’ Einar said easily, laying one hand gently on Hild’s shoulder, so that she stiffened and was still. ‘Have you ever seen a chart that made sense anyway? Eh, Rurik? Who uses a chart?’

My father stirred uneasily and said nothing. He looked at me, a gaze as heavy and dark as a slab of slate.

‘With or without a chart,’ Einar said softly, ‘the road still leads to Sarkel. If, at the end of it all, young Orm is unhappy, then he can come to me and say so.’

No one spoke. Einar turned away, propelling Hild in front of him. The talk and arguing only started to grow when they had vanished from sight, Ketil Crow and Valknut trailing after like dogs.

‘That was … ill-advised,’ my father growled, sliding up to me and shooting hard looks at Finn and Kvasir. They avoided his gaze and shuffled their feet.

‘I said nothing but what was on my mind,’ I protested and my father grunted with annoyance.

‘Best if you rein that in from now on, Orm,’ he said, his gaze flinty. ‘For if you anger him, neither I nor Illugi – nor these here,’ he added scornfully, glaring at Finn and Kvasir, ‘will be able to prevent what happens next.’

There was a soft chuckle in the twilight and we all whirled nervously to face it.

Gunnar Raudi swaggered into the firelight, picking his teeth with a bone needle and looked us all over, grinning and shaking his head. ‘You look like boys caught pulling off behind the privy,’ he mocked, then spat on the fire and spoke into the sizzle. ‘Einar’s doom is on him. One day you will all have to face your fear of him.’

‘And you are not afraid of Einar?’ snarled my father, a little more savagely than I thought necessary.

Gunnar shrugged. ‘Wyrd is wyrd. It is not mine, I am thinking, to go down under the edge of Einar’s fame. I will consider fear when I see the edge of his blade.’

‘When you go down under the edge of Einar’s blade,’ countered my father bitterly.

Gunnar Raudi’s teeth were bloody with firelight when he grinned.