Читать книгу The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 5 - Robert Low - Страница 18

The fur market of Novgorod dripped under a fine mirr of rain that had been falling since dawn and, no matter how hard they tried, the pelt-sellers couldn’t keep their wares dry under awnings and ended up dragging waterproofed wool over them, destroying any attempt at display.

The richer traders, those with solid edifices, huddled under the eaves, hardly bothering to rouse themselves since custom was so slight.

‘This is a dangerous business,’ my father growled, dragging his cloak further up over his head. Einar thumbed snot off his nose and said nothing.

‘You are just wet,’ I told him and Valknut chuckled. But the truth was that I thought he was probably right. The rain had soaked my perfectly good cloak and the mud had splashed up my fine fat breeks even on the walkway.

The hollow-socket stare of dead animals followed me from under every sheltered eave and from every trestle: long-snouted wolves, fox, highly prized sable, scabby rabbit and mottled hare. There were deer hides and antler-bone for the carvers and, slung from a hook in the middle of one room, a huge bear pelt with the head still on. The stink of hides from the tanners and leather-workers slunk to my nose now and then, brought by the wind and scarcely dampened by the rain.

I tried to be cheerful and failed and I knew the reason. I no longer had Hild to consider. Illugi Godi was with her all the time now, whether by Einar’s order or her demand I could not be sure. But she ignored me as completely as she could and I should have been happy with that, but wasn’t.

Everyone else knew why, of course – or thought they did. They nudged each other and grinned at my new, permanent scowl and at every pointed Hild slight.

I touched the seax strapped in the small of my back, under the cloak, and felt the rain trickle down my neck. For days we had been hunting for Martin, or Bjorn, or Steinkel. You wouldn’t think it so hard in a town, but I discovered that a town is worse than a forest. You can hide everywhere and anywhere.

But Einar wanted him and I knew why. Martin knew of the Great Hoard and that we had Hild, who knew how to get to it. The gods knew how he had collided with Gudleif’s sons, but what none of us wanted was to have him flapping his lip to the likes of Vigfus, or anyone else, in pursuit of his own dreams.

I took on this task with enthusiasm. We were stuck in Novgorod until the spate ended; the rivers were too fast-running to travel until at least May, perhaps June. Down at Kiev, eighteen days at least by boat, the river rose around fifteen feet and spread from about half a mile wide to five or even six miles wide.

Eventually, we heard that someone had seen a monk that might be ours and we listened to that one, because they said this monk wasn’t of the Roman church, but Western. Since most of the monks and Christ priests in Novgorod were Greeks from Miklagard, we thought this monk likely to be the right one.

And so here we were, looking for Skudi the Finn in the Shelonskaya district, across the bridge from the Podol, the riverside quarter. Skudi was a man who had promised, for a price, to deliver this monk up to us. So Einar, me, my father and Valknut went to him, trying hard to look like Gotland traders.

Einar, of course, smelled trap, but decided that more men might be too easily spotted and scare off the prize. In the rain of the market, though, I wished we had brought those men and more. I kept seeing thugs in every lumbering, bearded shape, every untrusting face smeared with fat to keep it dry.

Valknut found the Finn, who did not seem to warrant a shop at all, since he huddled on a bench in a cloak with a rat-chewed fur collar, sparse hair splayed on his skull and a calculating look in his watery blue eyes.

‘This is Skudi,’ Valknut said and the man nodded, hearing his name. I didn’t speak so much Finn, so tried East Norse, while my father offered up West and Valknut, to my surprise, added Greek.

In that complex maze of tongues, we managed to haggle out a suitable price and, at the same time, warn the Finn that Einar would slit him from balls to chin if he proved false. Einar fished out a purse from under his armpit and sorted out full silver coins from the collection of sliced and whole and slivers in the bag. The Finn looked at them, shook his head and went off on a long rant in three languages.

‘Tell him that’s all he is getting,’ Einar warned, narrowing his eyes. But that wasn’t the problem and I sighed. This was getting complicated.

‘He won’t take srebreniks,’ I said. ‘Says there’s not enough silver in them.’

The srebrenik was a new Rus coin, minted in Kiev from the same design as the favoured Serkland dirham, but the silver flow was now a trickle and the Rus ones had less in them than the Arab coins.

‘His own lord mints them,’ growled Einar, ‘and that’s what he pays us in.’

‘Doesn’t matter to him. He wants old Rus kunas, or Serkland dirham. Or milaresia from Byzantium if you have any.’

‘Fuck him,’ answered Valknut and his slit-eyed gesture with a thumb across the throat was eloquent in any language.

But Skudi was a trader and I had to admire him; he was used to hard haggling and never even broke into a sweat. Instead, he pointed to the silver torc round Einar’s neck, given by Yaropolk as befits a lord to his commanders.

‘That’s worth more,’ spat Einar. ‘He’s a cunning little swine, I will give him that.’

I made swift calculations and shook my head. ‘No, it isn’t. It’s a Rus grivna of silver, worth twenty five. The kuna is the same as a dirham here. He is losing slightly, but he can sell the torc for more since it is pure silver.’

Einar blinked. He had another couple of such rings, as befits a jarl, so could afford to miss this one. My father scrubbed his head furiously and Valknut just glared. Then Einar shrugged, bent the torc off his neck and tossed it to the Finn, who bit it with black teeth and nodded, grinning.

‘How you keep track of all this kunas and dirham and srebrooniks …’ muttered my father. ‘My head hurts with it.’

‘Srebreniks,’ I corrected and marvelled at them. I had already learned a valuable lesson: the Oathsworn and all the other bands like them were good at getting loot, bad at keeping it. A good trader would have the purse from under their armpit without having to beat them into the ground first, providing he could keep in his head the worth of all the different coins swirling around trade centres such as Kiev and Novgorod.

‘Just make sure he doesn’t play us false. I liked that neck ring,’ growled Einar moodily.

The little Finn made the silver circle vanish inside his shirt, then swept his ratty cloak over his head and scuttled out into the rain, us following, looking right and left and expecting trouble.

We left the furrier quarter and the tanner stink behind, splashed and slithered down the walkways until, suddenly, Einar stopped and said, ‘That’s Oleg’s hov.’

We all stopped and Valknut caught the Finn before he could go any further. Oleg, third of the sons of Sviatoslav. Vladimir and our own new lord, Yaropolk, were the other two, though Vladimir was born of a thrall. All of them circled each other like wary young dogs, kept from each other’s throats only by their father, the mighty Prince of the Rus.

The wooden structure was impressive, but strange, with wooden pillars holding up a portion of the eaves, under which two fully armed guards looked at us with barely disguised amusement and caution.

The Finn gabbled furiously and, between us, we managed to work out that the monk was part of Oleg’s retinue and lived and worked in a place round the back.

Einar stroked his dripping moustaches and then hissed to Valknut to take a casual stroll round. ‘Try to see him but not be seen,’ he growled. ‘There’s nothing we can do here and now, but we will come back when there is less chance of being seen.’

We moved, hauling the reluctant Finn with us, to the shelter of another building, away from the eyes of the guards, and waited, trying to look innocent. We all smelled like wet dogs.

Valknut was back swiftly, shaking himself free of rain. ‘It’s him, right enough. Two young boys with him, about your age, Orm. He is scribbling away in the dry, with a brazier of hot coals, the turd.’

‘Those boys will be Gudleif’s sons,’ I said and my father agreed. Einar released the Finn, who vanished into the mirr without a backward glance.

‘We will come back at night,’ Einar said levelly. ‘And put this monk to the question.’

I didn’t bother reminding him that the monk was protected, as part of Oleg’s retinue, as we were in Yaropolk’s. He knew that already, but what was making him chew his nails was whether Martin had told Oleg anything of our business.

So we were back under the same building hours later, when the rain had stopped, in the pitch black of a moon-shrouded night. There was a lantern spreading butter-yellow where the guards had been, but they were gone and the great timber doors closed. I knew that the hov was where Oleg sat during the day, dispensing justice, interviewing, all the things such princes do.

We slid round the side of the building and spotted the glow of another light, spilling from an unshuttered window. Valknut nodded at Einar and we all moved to the place, a mean timber outbuilding to the splendid hov.

Einar wasted no time; he hoofed in the door with a crash and rushed in, seax out.

Martin yelled and fell off a high stool; the youth with him – only one, I saw – went white with fear and scrabbled for the sword he had laid too far away. Valknut swept it up by the baldric and dangled it tantalisingly in front of him, grinning.

‘Martin,’ said Einar, as if greeting a long-lost friend. The monk rose from the floor, using the time to recover his composure. He smoothed his brown robe – new, I saw – and lifted the stool up. Then he smiled.

‘Einar. And young Orm. Yes, lots of old familiar faces here.’

The boy’s head came up and a flush brought colour to those chalk-white cheeks at the sound of my name. My father spotted it, too. ‘Which one of my nephews are you, then?’ he demanded.

The boy licked dry lips. ‘Steinkel.’

‘Where’s your brother? Bjorn, isn’t it?’ I asked and he shrugged. Valknut, at a look from Einar, slid back into the darkness to make sure we weren’t being ambushed.

Martin climbed back on to his stool and recommenced his work, grinding stuff in a bowl. He caught me looking and smiled. ‘Oak galls in vinegar, thickened with gum from Serkland and some salts of iron,’ he said. ‘Encaustum, from the Latin caustere, to bite. But you know that, young Orm, for you can read Latin. But you cannot write in any language.’

Now I knew the reason for the yellow-black scorch marks on his fingertips – which was one of the few familiar signs about him now. He had both grown and withered since I had seen him last. He had a beard now and his bald patch – a tonsure, I had learned – was freshly shaven. Yet he was thinner and something had chiselled away at his face, sinking his eyes deeper, while they blazed with a strange, yellow fervour.

He waved at the litter on the table in front of him, while Steinkel trembled and everyone else waited to hear what Valknut found outside. So we listened to Martin.

‘These are what will make you and your kind fade to nothing and the word of God triumph,’ he went on, grinding slowly and smiling at Einar.

‘What is my kind?’ Einar countered and Martin’s mouth went thin.

‘Doomed,’ he said.

The silence was something you could taste.

‘These are rolls, for tribute and taxes,’ Martin went on, to the chink-chink of his grinding. ‘These poor heathens used to make marks on tally sticks and even strips of birch bark. But you can’t run a kingdom like that. Oleg values me, for I can tell him who owes what and when. In time, his sons and his sons’ sons will know. The mixture bites into the vellum and leaves a mark. As my words will bite into the future and leave a mark.’

‘Aye, you are a clever man, right enough,’ Einar answered, unfazed. ‘Once before you showed me your cleverness.’ And he drew out his little knife and nonchalantly trimmed a thread from the weave on one cuff.

Martin winced at the memory and I saw him pause in his grinding to touch the scabbed stump of his finger. Then he recovered his smile. ‘If you had not come to me, I would have come to you, Einar,’ he said easily.

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

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

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

‘You killed my father …’ Steinkel declared sullenly.

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

‘Enough,’ Einar interrupted and glared darkly at Martin. ‘Why would you have come to me?’

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

Martin said, ‘Take the boy outside.’

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

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

‘Your what?’ demanded my father.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ketil Crow and Illugi Godi went off into the night to deliver it and witness Martin’s oath. As they left, with my warning to watch out for my cousins, doubly mad now, I would wager, she looked blackly at Einar. ‘There is a price to pay for this,’ she said and the blank chill of it made me shiver. Even Einar, sunk in morose contemplation of the subject, was jerked back by the simple vehemence of it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They were. Everything about Kiev was better and it roared with life, swollen by people from everywhere. Entire tribes had arrived: Merians, Polianians, Severians, Derevlians, Radimichians, Dulebians, and Tivercians and names even seasoned traders had barely heard of.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then there was my father. I had tried to bring up the subject of Gudleif, of the first five years of my life, of my mother, but he had dismissed it all with a wave, as something of no consequence. Yet it was his brother and I wanted to know .. . even today I don’t know what I wanted to know. That it bothered him. That I could help. That we were blood kin right enough.

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

I wanted drink and women that day in Kiev.

I got them, too. Even now, I can remember little of it and even that is probably what I was told by others. There was a party of Greeks, engineers sent by the Miklagard Emperor. They had been in Kiev for months cutting timber and building huge siege engines in jointed sections for easy transport and they knew the best places to go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The blow came and slammed into my shield with a sound like a falling tree and I staggered under it. Ketil Crow, grunting and panting, was struggling with the other two, being awkward for them because he was left-handed – but the man with the big two-handed axe was mine alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Not bad, Bear Slayer,’ he taunted. ‘For a boy.’

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

He hefted the axe, twirled it deftly in both hands like the fire-dancers do with their flaming poles. It was meant to fix my gaze, like a rabbit to a stoat, but I had seen Skapti do this trick and watched his feet instead. He took a step, closing for the flurry of blows he knew would end it.

I braced myself, a whimper tearing from between clenched teeth. A horn blew. He paused. It blew again. He grinned, yellow teeth in that yellow beard, and pointed the axe at me with one hand.

‘Not now, but soon, Bear Slayer.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘He would have killed me.’

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

I drained the cup and never felt less like Baldur.

My father tossed the empty cup in one hand, then started to lever himself up, grunting with the effort. ‘Come on. Einar wants us. Hogni has been singing on his perch.’

‘Mail,’ I said, suddenly realising. ‘That’s mail … that’s my hauberk.’

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

‘Why,’ I asked pointedly, ‘are you wearing it?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was my wyrd.