Читать книгу The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 5 - Robert Low - Страница 19

The sunlight was painful, even filtered through the dust that matted hair and clothes, dulling all colours to a faded memory.

The sight of the milling crowd of hawkers and their haggling customers, draymen hefting great leather wineskins or rolling barrels, butchers with carcasses slung over their shoulders and hucksters with trays of sweetmeats, covered against the dust and flies, hazed and danced before my eyes, bringing bile to my throat.

On one side, under an awning, I tried to keep my eyes open against the painful glare that seemed to make my head throb worse than ever, sneezing in the dust. It was hot and heavy with stinks from the dye-makers nearby; the smell of stale piss made me gag.

A little way up, Bagnose was turned towards me, trying to catch my eye from under a ludicrous straw hat, which he fondly believed would hide his face from any one of Vigfus’s band who might actually recognise him. How he hoped to avoid it was anyone’s guess, I was thinking bitterly, when he had a face like a baby’s rashed arse and a nose that wobbled and could light his way in the dark. Even people who had never seen him before would notice him.

The crowd thinned a little as we made our way, weaving in and out of the disorderly street traffic, to where the rutted way turned sharply into the dye-makers’ district. Then I saw Bagnose take off his hat, scrub his sweat-soaked, straggled hair and put it on again. I knew it was a signal, but couldn’t remember what about – then I saw the two men.

They stood in the doorway of a tannery, heedless of the reek. Beside them was the man we had followed, a tall, rawboned man with white hair and the fiercest red face and exposed arms I had ever seen. Steinthor knew him as White Gunnbjorn and he was a Norwegian with a reputation as a hard fighter.

Behind me, four more Oathsworn tried to look innocent and busy at the same time and were failing so badly I wondered if we would get much closer. I slid a hand up the back of my tunic and loosened the seax, feeling the sweat-damp there and wishing it had been raining as an excuse to wear a cloak and hide a proper blade beneath it.

Bagnose nodded to me, then walked forward with unhurried steps. He stopped, turned and looked incredibly interested in the whole hog’s head a butcher was lugging through the crowd, dripping blood and trailing flies.

Another man had joined White Gunnbjorn, not tall, but so thin he seemed taller. He had a sharp face and stringy hair round the sides of his head only, while his beard was long and combed and forked, the ends fastened with ribbons the same colour as his leg-bindings, which were purple. That and a loose, red silk tunic, fat breeks the colour of cornflowers and a belt made of silver lappets made him easy to place, even though I had never seen him.

Vigfus, called Skartsmadr Mikill – Quite the Dandy.

Gunnar Raudi wandered up, as if he had just encountered me in the street, his eyes hard above the cheery grin, his face sheened with sweat and his frosted red curls tucked under a round wool hat that must be broiling his head.

‘Vigfus,’ he said and I nodded. He glanced back, to where Einar was well hidden from any eyes that might know him, and inclined his chin. Presumably he got an answer for he took a deep breath, adjusted his belt and walked unhurriedly up the street towards the four men on the wooden steps of the tannery.

I followed, slightly behind him, and knew the others were following me. I saw Bagnose turn, too, moving up behind the sweating butcher and his grisly load, using it as cover to get closer.

There was a blur of movement, blasting into the pain in my head, into the glare that had slitted my eyes. Stunned, I could only watch as a spear arced out of an alley to our left, whicking across the street towards Gunnar Raudi. They had left a cunning watcher and we had all missed him.

The gods know how Gunnar saw it – even he did not know much beyond a flicker at the edge of his vision. He dropped a shoulder, spun in a half-crouch and the spear missed him, the shaft scoring across his shoulder, plunging on into the dimness of a booth, where a screech announced its arrival.

The street was in uproar. Gunnar crashed into two men carrying a bale of cloth; I stood and gawped, until something smacked ringing lights and exploding pain in my head.

‘Move, you rat fart!’ roared Bagnose, surging forward.

I stumbled, collided with a screaming woman, fell to one knee and raised my head, blinking dust and confusion. I saw Gunnar Raudi vanish down the alley after the spear-thrower, roaring his anger and fear in that direction.

Bagnose had skidded to a halt, since White Gunnbjorn and the two others were whipping out lengths of sharp steel and coming in his direction, slowed only by the skittering, yelling crowd getting in their way.

And Vigfus was bolting into the tanners’ building.

I sprang up then and I will never know why – stung by Bagnose’s slap, or even my own fear, perhaps. I ran, swerving round White Gunnbjorn, hearing Einar and the others roaring their way up the street behind me, blades out.

For a moment, the transition from dazzling light to the dim twilight of the tannery blinded me and I skidded to a halt, blinking. Then I caught the brief gleam of silver from Vigfus’s belt as he skittered up a set of wooden stairs. I was after him, knife out, taking the stairs three at a time.

He bolted down a narrow work hall and shot round a corner into a room bright with daylight from opened shutters. I followed, cursing the worn-smooth soles of my leather boots on the wooden floors. I slid as if on bone skates, straight into a table, scattering shocked tallymen and their sticks and birch-bark notes.

Amid the shouts and the clatter and the pain of a bruised shin, I saw Vigfus reach the end of the room and thought I had him. There was no way out.

Save the open-shuttered window, which he took with a long-legged leap.

Cursing, I scrambled to my feet, fisted a red-faced, shrieking tallyman in the chest out of the way and sprang to the same window.

Beyond was the slanted short roof of the eaves, looking out over the sprawling yard of the tannery and its huddle of buildings. Between was crammed with vats, wooden frames, strung lines and milling, near-naked, sweating men hooking stinking hides on to long poles or feeding fires under boiling vats. The heat and acrid stink sucked the air away, as if I was breathing through wet linen.

Vigfus was skittering along the wooden shingles. He fell over a rope slung up for washing and rugs, rolled and, for one glorious moment, I thought he was over the edge and done for.

But he stopped himself, sprang up to all fours and looked back at me, for that moment like some strange spider. I thought he was set to come at me, so I slid to a halt and brought the blade up. He twisted his mouth into a scornful grin, sprang upright and raced along the short roof, stopped, looked both ways, then leaped outwards, his arms at full stretch, seax in his teeth.

I gawped. He had to be lying in the tannery yard, hopefully head first in a vat of piss. I ran to the spot – but there was nothing. Then I saw the rope, slung slantwise between buildings, backed up, took a deep breath and did a truly foolish thing, brought on by youth and the sudden grim obsession not to let the fart get away.

I stuck the seax in my teeth and dived out at the slender arc of rope.

I hit it, grasped, swung – as he must have done – and crashed towards a square opening, the shutters half closed.

I splattered the flimsy framework to shreds, felt splinters rip into my arm and plunged into the room beyond in a welter of flying wood, reed flooring and straw from a bed pallet that exploded under me.

I fell and rolled and came up tearing the seax from my mouth and slashing wildly, but the room was empty and all I managed to do was cut my tongue and the side of my mouth.

I saw the doorway, blocked by a simple curtain. I ripped it apart and found myself in another open hallway, filled with shrouded door openings. Stairs led down into the gloom and the smell of pine and tanners’ piss was heavy. I felt blood and sweat trickle and spat more on to the floor. The side of my mouth stung with the sharpest pain of them all. I was panting and soaked and desperate at the thought I had lost him.

I ran to the first room and frantically tore aside the hangings on the door openings: boxes, bales, dead rats, live rats. The next one was a room with another square opening blazing with light on the splintered debris of fresh wood; the one after that was a room with a straw bed and nothing …

A room with a smashed opening and shards of wood littering the floor. Where he had come in. And gone out again.

I sprang to the window, stuck the seax in my tunic and snaked out of it. I hauled myself upwards this time, on to the sloping wooden shingles, baking in the heat and so dry they cracked like ice. I slithered, cursing, on the ones that came loose.

I saw him then, his red tunic torn and fluttering, one purple leg-binding trailing and the fancy ribbons on one fork of his beard ripped loose. He glared wildly at me and scuttled down the tiles and over the far side.

Odin’s arse, would he never stop running? I skated after him, saw the short drystone wall he had dropped on to – astride it, I noted savagely – and was clambering up on, limping painfully and clutching his cods.

People were yelling at us from the tannery yard and on the other side of the wall was the street. I dropped heavily on to the wall, managed not to slam it into my groin, swayed alarmingly for a moment, then caught my balance as Vigfus walked along the uneven, crumbling, narrow wall-top, hands out for balance.

Then I saw Einar and Gunnar Raudi and others, spilling into the tannery yard – but the wall was too high for them to reach him.

He saw them at the same time as I did, reasoned at the same time as they did and avoided the weapons they were preparing to hurl at him by leaping down the other side of the wall, with a curse, to the street below.

‘Go round, go round!’ I shrieked and they all turned and headed the long way round the buildings, elbowing people out of the way.

They’d never make it in time before he vanished, so I leaped after him, trying to cushion my fall by landing in a trestle of stacked fruits. I came up scattering more people and sticky with juices. Angry shouts followed me as I got up, limping. It had been a bad landing anyway and I was flagging now.

Vigfus wasn’t in much better shape, but he was starting into a run when I hurled forward in a flying dive and caught the last, trailing edge of his fancy purple bindings.

He gave a sharp yelp as he went over, clattering in to the dusty ruts full on his face. He scrambled away, kicking at me, his face a mask of fury and bloody mud.

Then I saw, with a sick horror, the bone-white head of Gunnbjorn, trotting through the yelling, milling people, hurling them aside to get to his jarl. Vigfus scrambled up and White Gunnbjorn grinned and made for me, a blade in his hand. His eyes, I saw were strange, colourless – even his lashes were white.

‘Leave him,’ Vigfus gasped. ‘Help me – get out of here. Einar is coming.’

Gunnbjorn snarled at me, then hooked a shoulder under his master’s armpit and hauled him up. They were four steps further on when, nearly sobbing with the sheer anger and frustration of watching them get away, I hurled the seax.

It whirled through the gap between us and smacked Gunnbjorn in the back. There was a crack and he shrieked and collapsed in a heap, knocking Vigfus over in front of him.

Gunnbjorn was flailing, trying to reach his back, gasping for help. Vigfus, cursing, saw his state, scrambled up and hopped off, vanishing into the milling throng. I tried to follow, but the pain in my ankle made me shriek as loud as Gunnbjorn, so I fell and Einar and the rest found me, sprawled in the street, pounding it with my fists, face streaked with blood and snot and sweat.

Gunnar Raudi rolled me over, had two men haul me up. Einar hunkered down by Gunnbjorn, who was moaning and still trying to reach his back.

‘Take it out,’ I heard him groan. ‘I can’t feel my legs. Take it out.’

There was nothing to take out. The seax was no throwing knife; the haft had hit him on the spine and broken something vital.

Einar rolled him over surprisingly gently and spoke quickly, for we didn’t have much time left before someone hefty and armed came to find out what the trouble was.

‘Gunnbjorn,’ he said, ‘you are done for.’

‘It would seem so,’ the man answered painfully, through clenched teeth. His face was as white as the bone hair plastered limply to his skull, even through the patina of dust. His eyebrows and lashes were white; his eyes were not colourless, I saw, but a faint shade of violet.

‘I can let you die as a man,’ said Einar, ‘with a good blade in your hand and a bench in Valholl.’

You could see the nod in Gunnbjorn’s eyes, even if his neck could no longer make it.

‘Or I can leave you here,’ he said, ‘in this street, where you will probably live long enough to be carried to a bed and cared for a little, until you die a nithing.’ He paused and shrugged. ‘Perhaps you may even live. I have seen such. A man I saw once in Miklagard had a marvellous seat with an awning and was carried about by thralls after having his legs crushed under a ship he was careening.’

Having made the point, he leaned closer, dangling Gunnbjorn’s own knife by the blade, haft tantalising inches from the man’s palm. ‘Tell me where Vigfus is going with the girl,’ he said.

Gunnbjorn moaned.

‘He left you to die here,’ Einar pointed out.

Gunnbjorn’s voice was scarcely above a whisper now. ‘I have a mother, Hrefna Ulfsdottir. In Solmundsteading in the Vestfold …’

‘I will send word that you died well. And the purse under your left armpit.’

He closed his eyes then, already seeing the ravens. ‘The Sea Storm. The howe of the Sea Storm, looking for Atil’s hoard. The girl knows. To the north-west, one, maybe two days, she says.’

Einar dropped the knife-haft into Gunnbjorn’s palm at the same moment he slit his throat. Then we left, while the blood pooled into a scarlet mud-puddle beneath his head and the street emptied, for no one wanted to answer questions about a dead man.

It was like being on the sea in a swell. We crossed the seared steppe under a sun like a fist, kicking up puffs of black soil as we moved over the rolling yellow grass, heading for the next green line on the horizon.

Eventually, the line would thicken, grow larger, haze out of the heat into stands of pine and alder and birch. The slow, undulating steppe was studded with them, each huddled like a herd of living creatures round a gulley, where water trickled sluggishly to the Dnepr. Under the trees was heady with resin, thick with needles and mulch, and an even more oppressive heat. But it offered shelter from what we feared most: Pecheneg horsemen.

It was, as Valknut never seemed too tired to point out, a truly bad idea, heading out on to the steppe on foot, with no more than two days’ hard flatbread, rank cheese and some of the dried meat strips the Rus horsemen used.

They stuck it under their saddles and cloths, where the horse sweat softened it and juiced it up – mare sweat tasted better, they swore – but we had no such luxury and, at the third forest of the day, I stopped trying to chew it and swore it would be better kept to repair my boot soles with.

‘Give it here,’ shouted one of the band, a pox-faced half-Slav called Skarti. ‘I’ll stick it down my breeks for you. Same idea, different sweat.’

They laughed, this dripping, evil-smelling bunch. They panted like dogs and filled leather bottles with river water, softened bread and meat in the stream before trying to eat it, gasped on their needle couches with the weight of the heat – and joked.

Einar had to turn eager men down when he told them of his plan and that he needed sixty good men from the company to get Hild back. He had sent word to Sviatoslav and his three sons that men of Prince Vladimir’s druzhina had broken oath and run into the steppe, taking with them a slave from Einar, and that he had gone to bring all of them back. That, he hoped, would excuse his own absence.

Einar’s assured calm had gone, replaced by a morose nervous energy, where he stroked his moustaches feverishly and gave every sign that his luck had deserted him.

Then the chosen sixty had struck off north and west, following the signs Bagnose and Steinthor, those two tracker hounds, were leaving as they followed the spoor of Vigfus and his crew to the mysterious howe of the Sea Storm.

And I had gone with them, despite Einar and Illugi and everyone else’s misgivings over my strapped-up ankle and the limp I’d had before we’d even started.

But I was determined and Einar didn’t put up too much resistance to it. I caught Gunnar Raudi’s eye as we started out across the steppe and remembered his words to me, his warnings. Einar, I thought, would be pleased to have me founder on the plains outside Kiev, where he could find a good, sensible excuse to leave me for dead.

The prospect was another good argument for staying behind, but I was more afraid of looking afraid than anything else. That fair-fame trap was closing like steel teeth – I was the Bear Slayer, after all, the young Baldur. I had to go to the howe of the Sea Storm.

‘What the hell is the Sea Storm?’ Einar had demanded of Illugi Godi, after sending men flying on errands everywhere and gathering gear for the pursuit. He added, in a muttered afterthought. ‘What is she doing?’

‘It is no secret in these parts. Dengizik, the Sea Storm, was a Hun lord,’ Illugi corrected. ‘They know his name round here. They say he was Atil’s son.’

Einar’s head came up and he and Illugi looked at each other, exchanging the gods knew what in their glances.

‘Perhaps there is a clue there to Atil’s hoard,’ I offered. ‘Maybe that is Atil’s hoard and she is leading them to it.’

Einar swung his glare at me, pure black ice, and I felt the weight of it. I should have stopped then, but somehow could not, as children do when they start in on horse-goading for the first time. A savagery comes on them then that those who know watch for, dragging the offenders away and cuffing them round the head.

‘I think not,’ Illugi offered pensively. ‘This Hun tomb is one everyone knows and almost certainly has been raided already. Atil’s hoard, it is well known, is hidden.’

‘Just so,’ I said, testing the ankle now that I had slung all my gear on. ‘So well hidden that a madwoman knows how to find it.’

Einar stayed silent, busying himself with his own gear, but Illugi frowned at me as a signal to stop, but I was dancing on the fire-mountain edge now, fearless and capering.

‘Hard to say who is more touched,’ I went on, not looking at anyone. ‘Her with her rolling eyes and shakes and sure wisdom that she knows where these riches are hid, or all of us for following blindly after.’ Then I gazed straight at Einar and said, ‘Maybe she is your doom. Sent by Odin, who does not like oath-breakers …’

I got no further, for his hand was on my throat and his black eyes so close to mine I could feel the lashes on my cheeks. I could not breathe, dare not move.

‘You have not been with us long, Rurik’s son, but already I am regretting being so indulgent for your father’s sake.’

His grip tightened and I felt my eyes bulge like a frog’s.

‘Einar,’ said Illugi warningly and even through the roaring in my ears I heard the anxious sound in his voice. The steel fingers closed a little harder.

‘An exchange of views?’ enquired a new voice, barely heard through the thunder in my head. ‘Or are you offering a kiss of peace, as the Christ-men do when they promise friendship?’

The fingers relaxed a little and Einar’s voice was booming, even though he spoke in the softest of growls: ‘This is no matter for you, Gunnar Raudi.’

I tried to look for him, but Einar’s eyes were locked on mine still, great tunnels, like the entrances to dwarven caves.

‘I shall not speak on it, then,’ said Gunnar easily. ‘I have another who will do that.’

The soft sucking sound of a blade from a sheath was echoed by Illugi’s indrawn breath. ‘Hold this,’ he declared, deep and stern and I knew, without seeing, that he had his staff up. ‘Gunnar, put peace-strings back on that. Einar, let the boy go. There is nothing but doom in this for all.’

The release, when it came, was sudden enough to make me fall to the ground, coughing, my throat thundering with pain and every breath in it a rasp with thorns. When I could finally look up and take Illugi’s offered wrist, I found my legs shook.

Gunnar Raudi, his snow-in-bracken hair tied back with a leather thong, stood easily, casually, one hand on the hilt of his sword. Einar, his lips like a scar, stood opposite him, the black cloak of hair framing a face pale as a winter moon.

Illugi stepped forward between them, as if to sever some unseen rope that seemed to be leaning them towards one another.

‘This Hun lord,’ he went on, as if nothing had interrupted the conversation, ‘was the Great City’s enemy, so it is believed. He fought them in his time and was slain for it by a general called Anagestes. He was brought back to the steppe lands to be howed up.’

The tension, like a sail emptied of wind, flapped once and was gone. Einar grunted, stuffed gear into a leather bag and looped it over one shoulder. His shield went over the other. No one was taking mail, despite the threats: the heat was too great for that.

‘Well, one thing is certain,’ Einar said, offering a grin free of any mirth. ‘Our Hild is leading him a little dance out on to the steppe.’

Our Hild. Like she was his sister. I watched him combing his hair to try to rid it of the worst of the nits, then tie it back with a leather thong against the heat. My own crawled with lice, but I would not shave it, as others did, since that was the mark of a thrall and I could not bring myself to go so far, sensible or not.

Einar shouldered past Gunnar Raudi and I swear I saw the hair on them rise, like the hackles on wolves, as they brushed against each other. My throat ached and I knew that there would be the mark of five livid bruises on it.

Our Hild. She was no more ‘our Hild’ than I could fart gold, but Einar clearly thought she was one of the Oathsworn, whether she had sworn or no. He did not, for an eyeblink, imagine that Hild could be playing him false and Vigfus was on the correct track, which was my thought on the matter at the time. Wrong, of course.

Illugi Godi looked once at Gunnar Raudi, then at me and shook his head. ‘You are fools, the one for his loose gob, the other for getting into a pissing contest with the likes of Einar.’

‘If you don’t want to get your toes wet,’ answered Gunnar Raudi with a chuckle, levering himself off the doorpost, ‘then keep your shoes away from my pisser.’

Illugi raised a defiant chin and his staff, the mark of his rank, but Gunnar merely grinned at him and swaggered off.

‘Asgard seems a little deaf to you these days, Odin priest,’ he threw back over his shoulder as he went – and I saw Illugi flinch, his head drooping for the first time that day.

There was no hint of any of that now as Einar took a knee, sweat-gleamed and grinning, to face the lolling-tongued dog-men he had led into the Grass Sea.

‘We must be close,’ he called out, glancing at the sun as it started to die, slow and glorious on the edge of the world. ‘Tomorrow we’ll be on them and get our Hild back.’

The men growled appreciative responses, muted and weary in the heat.

Einar climbed slowly to his feet and hefted his shield and gear to more comfortable spots. ‘For now,’ he grinned, ‘we move.’

‘Our Hild,’ I muttered morosely as I got up and Illugi, passing, heard it and cocked his head quizzically.

‘Our Hild,’ I repeated. ‘She has suffered nothing but hard knocks from us. He even took away the one thing she had, that bloody spear-shaft. And yet he imagines she is “our Hild”.’

‘She suffered worse under Vigfus and Lambisson,’ Illugi reminded me sternly, leaning on his staff, ‘from which we rescued her.’

I grudgingly admitted that and he eyed me carefully as I limped forward.

‘Make no mistake with Einar, though,’ he went on, for my ears only. ‘He calls her “our Hild” because that is what she is. Not Vigfus’s, or Lambisson’s, or the property of Martin the thrice-cursed monk. Ours, Orm. As the Elk is ours. As the silver hoard is ours. I would watch my sullen face and loud tongue round Einar these days. You have become … unlucky … for him. Next time he may rip the throat out of you.’

I looked straight back at him and saw the harsh lines etched in his face, lines of worry and strain, and Gunnar Raudi’s words came back to me. I saw the gods were crushing our priest with their apathy these days and he could find no way to speak to them that would get them to listen.

‘I know it,’ I replied and slapped my leg. ‘Let’s hope my limp gets no worse and he has, with all sadness, to leave me behind, eh?’

‘He would do it,’ Illugi said.

‘I have always known that, I am thinking,’ I said flatly. ‘The difference here, today, is that now so would you, Illugi Godi. A good offering to appease whatever gods Einar has annoyed, eh, godi? Better than a fighting horse, you think?’

I left him, savage with the triumph of the moment, turning away and limping after the others, out of the twilight forest and on to the baking steppe. Later, I was ashamed of myself for having said it, for Illugi had been patient and good with me. But too much had happened by then.

We reached another huddle of trees as the darkness grew and the stars came out. We had no fires and the night was cold, so that those who had decided not to burden themselves with cloaks found themselves shivering, doubly cold after the baking heat of the day. We shared, then, huddled in twos and threes, silvered by a great wheel of stars and moonlight in a perfect, clear night.

In the washed silver of early dawn we were up and assembled, coughing, farting, sniffing, chewing. Men shivered, took a final piss and sorted out their gear, knowing Bagnose had come in during the night with news.

The tomb was found and Vigfus with it, led by the nose to it, it seemed to me, following on after Hild. Steinthor was watching the entrance even now.

Einar listened and nodded and clapped Bagnose on the shoulder, then looked over the wolf-eager faces round him, their breath steaming in the dawn chill, and nodded, smiling. ‘This is the edge of a big stretch of forest,’ he said. ‘It is cut up by lots of gulleys and some of them are quite steep and choked with brush, so watch your feet. Our enemy is no more than an hour’s walk away, at what seems to be a set of stairs leading to an entrance high in the side of a ravine. With luck, we will trap them all inside and smoke them out.’

He looked at me and his smile widened, so that the feral-sharp teeth at the side of his mouth were exposed, yellow and gleaming. ‘Like a bear hunt, eh, Orm?’

The others chuckled. Einar had them bound to the enterprise with the promise of an easy victory and the luck of the Bear Slayer at their command. You had to admire him.

Bagnose hadn’t been wrong about the gulleys and the brush. I had been congratulating myself on keeping up, despite the ankle, but this last section ended at the entrance to a sheer-sided gulley, with a river splashing down the middle of it. When Bagnose silently signalled a halt, I sank down gratefully, feeling the pain, as if someone was shoving a hot brand straight through my ankle-bones.

I wanted to look at it, but dared not take the boot off, or remove the bindings, for I knew it would swell like a dead sheep’s belly and that would be that. Instead, I stood in the stream and felt the cool water soak into my boot and wash round the throb of my foot.

A bird whirred and insects hummed as we followed the stream, straight towards what appeared to be a vertical wall of exposed rock. The stream curved round and disappeared and I heard the distant splash of water from a fall. The heat was crippling and there was no air at all, for all we were near water, just a strange stillness. Even the plagues of insects had vanished.

Steinthor and Bagnose appeared as we came up, so nonchalant that we all relaxed, for they swaggered out openly, as if there was no danger.

‘They went in about two hours ago,’ Steinthor said, wiping his streaming face with a cuff. ‘They camped at the foot of those steps last night and spent most of the morning cutting what tall trees they could find to make a bridge at the top. Then they went up.’

We all saw the steps, rough-cut in a half-spiral up one side of the gulley. I started for it and something smacked wetly on my bare forearm. I rubbed it absently, then noticed it was water, but gritty.

I looked up at a strange, brass-coloured sky and wished my father with us, for he knew weather better than anyone and this was nothing I had seen before. I have experienced it twice since, trading down the Black Sea and again in Serkland.

Einar left a dozen men at his back and led the rest of us up the steps. At the top, with room for only one or two, we found it was an outcrop, round which the stream bent. Below, spilling from the far wall, was where the stream began, in a waterfall, whose spray was wonderfully cooling.

Spanning the gap between the outcrop and a wide ledge was a rickety bridge of warped timbers, the wood Vigfus and his men had been cutting. On the ledge beyond lay a scatter of bones around what appeared to be three or four sapling stumps, emerging out of the rock.

Steinthor grinned at our confusion, for he had crept up this far and worked it out. ‘Grave robbers from before,’ he said, pointing. ‘Look – those were spears, weighted to shoot upwards when that area was stepped on. Right up the crease.’

‘Traps,’ Einar said and the word was passed down the line on the stairs, from head to head like a leaping spark. ‘And traps,’ he added loudly, to take the sting out of it, ‘mean treasure.’

He strode out on to the timber walkway, took three swift steps and was on the ledge, moving cautiously to where the spear-stumps remained. Ketil Crow followed and the next man, the ever-jesting Skarti, paused nervously, eyeing the chasm under the rickety timbers and the unknown dangers of the ledge beyond. The sweat trickled down between the old pox lumps of his face.

We all waited patiently. Since Vigfus’s men had all made it, it seemed to me there was little danger left, but there was also no harm in letting someone else go first. When Skarti reached safety, turning with a grin of relief, we all cheered him.

On the ledge, which was broader and wider than it looked from the level of the stream, about another dozen of us congregated; the rest remained on the steps. A wind breathed and sighed up the gulley, rustling the tinder-dry brush, bringing a welcome coolness.

There was an entrance, blocked once by masonry, which now lay in thick chunks. Illugi Godi picked one up, turning it in his hands. It had symbols on it, or the remains of them. There were more symbols, age-worn, on either side and, with surprise, I saw they were truncated Latin – I knew the words Dis Manibus, recognised ala and started to work out the others

‘That big turd with the Dane axe,’ Steinthor said, indicating the masonry chunks. ‘He can use the blunt end, too.’

I remembered the yellow beard, the grin, the axe, and shivered.

‘They call him Boleslav,’ Steinthor went on. ‘Saxon, I think. Tough, though. Carved his way through this … stuff.’

‘Roman,’ Illugi Godi said. ‘I have heard of this. They make a gruel and plaster it on like daub, but it sets hard as stone.’

‘What are the markings?’ demanded Einar and winced as a sudden flurry of wind blew dust at us.

Illugi shrugged. ‘Warning? Curse? A request to knock? I can hardly even try to work out what is in pieces.’

‘Latin,’ I offered, running my fingers over the sigils. ‘They say this is the tomb of Spurius Dengicus, khan of the Kutriguri. Carried here to be buried under the eye of Rome by his brother, Rome’s friend, Ernak.’

‘Spurius Dengicus? That’s Roman, not Hun,’ said Eyjolf, whom everyone called Finnbogi, since he was from those lands.

Illugi, who knew a few things himself, answered: ‘They gave him a proper name for his tomb, doing honour as befits his status. But no respectable Roman family would want their name associated with a steppe lord, so the Roman chiefs found a family that had died out, only the name remaining.

‘So it is that all adopted Romans are called Spurius,’ he finished.

And so it was. Nowadays, of course, anyone who is considered a shifty lot, not quite what he claims to be, is called Spurius in the Great City.

‘Anything else we should know?’ demanded Einar, with a pointed look at Illugi. ‘Anything that will actually help us, that is?’

I frowned and traced the worn letters. ‘There’s something about not disturbing his rest,’ I offered.

With perfect timing, there came a distant wail from inside the dark opening, a wolf of a sound that set everyone’s hackles up. Men backed away; even the ones on the step heard it.

‘Odin’s arse,’ snarled Bagnose suddenly, ‘what is happening to the sky?’

Most of it seemed to have gone, eaten by a towering wall of darkness. Even as we looked at it, yellow lightning flickered and the wind rushed at us, like the fetid breath of a dragon, lashing us with a stinging rain filled with grit.

‘Thor’s goats’ arses, more like,’ shouted Steinthor above the sudden roar of wind. Men yelled and huddled. Those on the lower steps started to go down, those higher up pushed those behind.

‘There’s no shelter there!’ bellowed Einar above the sudden howling swirl of the wind. ‘Up here, into the rock.’

They staggered up and Gunnar Raudi, with Ketil Crow, bent to hold the timber frame, frantic – as were we all – that it would topple, or be swept away and leave us stranded up here. Thunder cracked; the yellow heavens roiled and Illugi Godi stood upright, staff in one hand, both arms upraised.

‘All-Father hear us!’

‘Move your fucking fat arses!’ screamed Ketil Crow as men stumbled up the steps and across the ledge and into the dark opening like a line of frenzied ants.

‘All-Father, hear us. Send your winged ones to bind the wounds of the sky. Ask Thor why he rides his goat chariot over us. Lift us from this field of battle …’

A man, caught off-balance by the wind, shrieked his way into the chasm, disappearing beneath the waterfall.

‘All-Father …’

‘Save it, godi, no one is listening to you,’ snarled Einar and spat into the dust and mud-brown sluice of rain. ‘Run, if you value your life.’

And I ran, limping, heedless of the pain, into the dark opening of the tomb.

Inside, someone had sparked up a torch, but the band huddled as close together as possible in the half-light of a stone passage, shivering, wet, cold in the sudden chill of stone. There was a taste of old dust and bones in my mouth.

‘Well done for the torch,’ Einar panted, coming up with Ketil Crow and Gunnar Raudi, the latter hauling the rickety timber bridge after him. We paused, all sweat and gleaming eyes in the dark, as another of those low, mournful moans drifted up from the light at the other end of the passage.

Light from a torch none of us had lit.

The storm grumbled. Einar pushed his way through the packed mass of us in the narrow passage and peered to where the yellow glow was.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Such a light in a dark place always means there is gold there, as anyone knows.’ He turned, his grin startling in the dark. ‘At least it means someone is home. Perhaps they will offer us hospitality on a stormy night. Ale and meat and women.’

The laughs were forced, though, and he moved on, stepping boldly while we cringed and waited for the springing spear or worse.

Nothing happened. We followed, cautiously, out of the passage into a wider area, part natural cavern, part construct. An arch, made from Illugi Godi’s liquid Roman stone, led through to where the torch burned brightest and I thought to point it out to the priest – then saw his face, anguished, dead-eyed. He had called his gods and heard nothing but anger.

Shields up – those who hadn’t lost them in the panic outside – and blades ready, we crept forward.

Beyond the arch, we all stopped. There was an even wider area, flagged with great squares of stone. The middle squares were bisected lengthways by small ridges, only just raised above the surface, and where one large square of stone should have been was an opening, from which came a faint torch glow.

More light, guttering in the wind hissing from outside, spilled from the red torch held by Hild, who was hunkered next to the opening, head cocked like a curious bird.

As we came in, there was that echoing groan from below and she turned and looked at us, a beautiful, beatific smile set in a face milk-pale, below eyes as black and dead as a corpse. Everyone saw it and came to a sudden halt.

‘Hild … ?’ I asked. She turned those eyes on me, without losing the smile, then looked down into the darkness, holding the torch high.

‘Walk only on the raised ledge,’ she said in a harsh voice. ‘Beyond is a door, barred now. It leads down and round to where Dengizik sits with his warriors. Do not step off these ridged ledges or, like Boleslav, you will pay the price for violating Dengizik’s last fortress and lie prostrate at his feet.’

There was another whimper, which I now realised was Boleslav in agony. Hild rose then, in a fluid, fast movement like nothing she had ever done before and thrust the torch at where Einar stood, pale under his crow-wings of hair, which stirred in the heat from the flames.

‘I led them down, then left while they gawped, slipped back and barred the door on them. Only Boleslav was left here and I let him come to me, as he did once before. Only this time I kept my legs closed and my feet in the right place, while he did not.’

Her laugh was cracked. Dry-mouthed, sweating, we all peered down the great square hole into the room beyond. Torches flared and there were crowds of men, I saw.

‘There are hundreds of them,’ muttered Bersi, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand.

‘Those are Dengizik’s soldiers,’ Hild said harshly. ‘Vigfus is among them now, trying to work out how to get back here. He has seen Boleslav fall.’

‘So he’s trapped?’ demanded a voice: Wryneck, I recognised. ‘Good. Leave him there. When the storm blows out, we can leave this gods-cursed place.’

‘What of the treasure? And he might manage to climb back up through that hole,’ demanded someone else.

Bersi snorted and spat. ‘Let’s come back in a few weeks,’ he said, ‘and see who is left and who has been eaten.’

‘No!’ Hild’s voice was the flat of a sword struck on stone. She quivered as with a fever, but there was no white to the eyes she glared at Einar and her pointed finger was like a blade. ‘Kill Vigfus. We agreed. Kill Vigfus and all his men. Then we go to Atil’s howe.’

Einar nodded. No one spoke. He stepped on to the narrow ledge, no wider than the palm of his hand, and, lightly, gracefully, took three quick steps and was across.

Swallowing, I took the torch from Hild, staring at her. She stared back and I had to look away from those eyes, like beads of jet. Behind them lurked … something else, something even darker.

Ketil Crow was equally graceful; Wryneck, after a quick wipe of his dry mouth, shuffled waveringly across and then I followed, seeing figures below me and the sudden spark of tinder. One by one we crossed.

Einar nodded. ‘We finish Vigfus here, lads. There is no escape for him now.’

We agreed. The words gnawed me, kicked in the thought that had eluded me since the fight on the Rus boat. It crashed on me like a sluice of cold water.

She had planned it with Einar. She had spotted Hogni as one of Vigfus’s men and had told Einar and then given him her price for leading him to Attila’s silver, for giving up her precious talisman, the spear-shaft.

Vigfus. Who had beaten and raped her and now faced her vengeance.

She had plotted with Hogni, pretending to want away from Einar and all with Einar’s knowing. He had tried to trap them on the Rus boat – that’s why he had all the men armed and mailed, for he knew there would be a raid. But when Vigfus wasn’t part of it, he let them take her, thinking then to trap Vigfus in the town.

That had also failed, which wasn’t part of the plan … but he had trusted that he knew Hild well enough, that she was leading Vigfus to where he could be finally trapped and slain. All he had to do was follow, to this place.

He had sweated a bit and lost sleep over it – but she had kept her part in the bargain.

I sank down then, drained of all feeling. There was cleverness in it and ruthlessness and that was no fault. But there was also a coldness and something sick and black as rot.

Once, when I was hunting wild honey late in the season and thought I’d found a comb in a tree hollow, I had boldly thrust my hand in, for speed can foil bees made sluggish with cold. I had plunged into stickiness and triumphantly seized a handful and pulled it out – only to find the slick remains of dead bees and old comb, a stinking mess that made me gag.

I knew where this malignant rot came from, too. Einar, I thought, had made a bad bargain, no matter what he believed Hild would do for him now. Whatever Hild was before she was something else now, something … Other … and something that had a plan all of its own.

She wanted, I was thinking, to get to Atil’s howe. Had to. Needed us to help her do it – and what then?

Einar’s eyes were too full of silver to see clearly and, worse, he was dragging us all along, I saw with cold despair, in the shackles of our own oath honour.

He and Valknut forced out the huge stone beam that barred the equally heavy stone doors. No one wanted to ask how a slip of a girl like Hild had managed to shut and bar the door on her own.

We started down the stairs, reached a landing which led to the left, then continued to where Vigfus’s torches lit the room beyond. Two steps further down, we stopped, amazed, afraid.

The room was lined with men, armoured in cobwebs and rotting leather and rusting metal lappets. They sat, cross-legged, spears upright and butted into round holes in the floor. A few elaborately helmeted heads had toppled, some skeletal hands had slipped from the spears, but Dengizik’s faithful sat on, in the same position they had once taken up on the day the tomb was sealed.

The enormity of that stunned me into sitting down on the lowest stair. They had marched in, sat down, butted their spears and died. Poison? Perhaps, though I would not have been surprised to learn that Dengizik’s faithful guard had simply stayed sitting until they died of starvation and thirst.

They sat in neat lines flanking a flagged approach running from the stair to where Dengizik sat, equally armoured, on a stone throne, a great cross on one side … no, not a cross. Cross-shaped, but from the arm of the T hung hair. Horsetails: the standard of a Hun chieftain, I learned later. A great, ornate helmet was set on the top of it and I realised this was because the withered thing on the throne had no head.

I got to know those standards well, for the Khazars, who would not have been out of place at Attila’s side, had them, too, as well as the strange disc-standards that marked them as Jewishmen – but I never again came across a howed-up steppe lord with no head.

Nor were the lines quite as neat now as they must have been for centuries. The tilting stones above opened on both sides and Boleslav had slipped down one on the left, straight on to the grounded spears of the long-dead.

His weight had snapped the old wood; he had crashed into the dusty corpses beyond and rolled out on to the flagged approach. Now he lay at Dengizik’s enthroned feet, pierced through chest and belly, finished off with a merciful throat-cut.

All that strength and skill, I marvelled, remembering him spinning the giant Dane axe, laid low by a slip of a girl. And I shivered at what he had done to her to deserve that impaled death. I knew well enough and half the shiver was for me.

Do not love me, she had said.

Vigfus stepped forward, splendid in gilded mail and a marvellous helmet that had been new for his great-grandfather, which covered the whole face save for the mouth and eyes and had gilded eyebrows and two huge raven feathers.

Behind and on either side were his men, desperate-grim and hefting their axes and swords and spears. There was only one sure way out of that room and that was to go through us and there were not nearly enough of them for that.

Someone flitted past me, back up the stairs and I almost followed, thinking we were well out of it – then I saw it was Bagnose, heading back to the opening, which lay above the room, nocking an arrow as he went. Steinthor, I presumed, was already there.

‘I suppose,’ Vigfus said, scowling, ‘there is no bargaining here.’

‘None,’ replied Einar with a twisted smile.

‘One to one to settle this, winner lets the others go?’

Einar shook his head, chuckling. ‘What – and let all this planning go to waste? How does it feel, Quite the Dandy, ladies’ man, to have been so trapped by my lady?’

Vigfus narrowed his eyes at the full import of what had been said. His men looked anxiously from one to the other.

‘If she is your lady,’ Vigfus snarled, ‘I wish you well of her. You pair are suited. Personally, I found her a poor, cold, dry hump – but she seemed to want more, so I let my lads have a go. Most preferred to find a goat.’

Some of his men chuckled. Most, realising that that poor, cold, dry hump was what had led them to this wyrd, were less amused.

‘Enough talk,’ said Einar coldly and snaked forward. An arrow hissed from the opening above and one of Vigfus’s men screeched and plucked at the shaft through both sides of his neck. Men closed, steel crashed, shields whumped under blows.

I was cautious, I ganged up with old Wryneck on one man and, between us, we cut him down in a flurry of blows, me hacking deep scores in his arms and one calf, Wryneck battering lumps off his head and swearing.

Another hurtled out of the darkness at us and I twisted to face him. Pain sprang from my ankle and I grunted and stopped. Wryneck clashed with his man and I barely managed to deflect a blow meant for him.

An axe whirred out of nowhere and clattered off Gunnar Raudi’s shield. My opponent, black-bearded, screaming, cut a vicious diagonal slash, which I sprang back from. His momentum carried the blow into one of the dead warriors, who exploded in a great eruption of dust and dead insects and toppled sideways. An arrow from above then smacked Black Beard between the shoulder blades, propelling him straight at me, so that he fell on his face and slid to my feet.

His shield smashed into my injured ankle and I went down, sick with the pain of it, dropping sword and shield to clutch the thing, howling. Wryneck, too busy with his own man, never spared me a glance.

Through the sparkling lights of pain in front of my eyes, I saw Einar cut his man down with a swift series of feints and strikes and vicious shield punches. He turned then, to where Gunnar Raudi was trading blows with Vigfus, who scorned a shield and had a boarding axe in one hand and a long seax in the other.

They cut and leaped and spun, elbowing Dengizik’s dead men aside with curses. The chamber filled with the dust of old death, the fear-stink and blood of new.

Vigfus was good, too, and I remembered him spidering across rooftops, swinging in and out of shuttered openings, leaping to grab a rope in mid-air. Fast and limber, for all that he had no sense of dress at all.

Twice Gunnar Raudi had almost lost his sword to the boarding axe, Vigfus swirling it round to trap the sword in the curve of its beard, flicking his wrist to lock it, then trying to wrench it out of Gunnar’s grasp.

But Vigfus’s magnificent helmet was a hindrance and you could see why sensible warriors had given that type up for one with a simple nasal: you couldn’t see anything out of the corner of your eye and, in a whirling fight like this, that was suicide.

Gunnar circled. Einar came up behind him and I thought he was moving to Gunnar’s sword side, to make it two on one. As he did, Gunnar Raudi stiffened, half turned – and Vigfus’s axe hurled round and took him between neck and shoulder, cleaving deep in a splinter of rings and bone and blood.

My scream was lost in the echoing shrieks and yells of the battle. Einar flung himself over Gunnar’s body at Vigfus, roaring his challenge, spittle flying. I half stumbled to where Gunnar lay, blood pooling thickly on the dusty floor.

He was gone, already white, barely able to speak. His lips moved in the frosted berry beard, now bright with new, vicious red spilling from his mouth. If he had something to say other than with those frantic eyes, I never heard it. When they glazed over, I closed them.

Vigfus, fingers curling on the wire-wrapped handle of his axe, crabbed sideways, elbowing aside another fighting pair, one of whom aimed a brief, speculative cut at Vigfus as he did so.

In that helmet, he almost missed it, was left off balance and clattered into another of the Oathsworn, who then stumbled into another of those dead warriors, impaling himself on an age-blackened spear.

I have been asked by bright-eyed youngsters who have never fought for their lives with shield and steel what it’s like. I never tell them that it is four or five minutes of mad fear and luck, of slashing cuts and savagery, of shit and blood and shrieking.

The sagas tell it better and the one about the battle between Einar and Vigfus would, no doubt, have been memorable for its superior, clever kennings and nobility. Reality was different and vicious.

Einar, snarling, his sword dripping blood, slashed at Vigfus in a flurry of steel and Vigfus danced sideways, raised himself on his toes and swung the axe downwards in a vicious arc, screaming as he did so.

It took Einar’s shield just below the rim, a solid pine on pine wheel of wood, and split it lengthwise. With a swift shrug, Einar was out of the straps, both hands on the hilt of his sword and Vigfus, still holding the buried axe, was jerked sideways by the dead weight of the dropped shield.

Too late, he released his grip. Einar’s two-handed blow spanged off one side of that helmet, took Vigfus on the top of the left shoulder with the splintering crack of bone and sheared down through mail, bone, flesh and sinew until it popped out of his armpit with a sucking sound and a spray of ruined iron rings.

Vigfus roared, spun away from his falling arm and clapped his remaining hand over the great rush of blood from the stump. The second blow crushed mail rings into his ribs. The third slashed a steak out of his thigh. He went down, bellowing as Einar hacked shreds off him until there was no more noise.

The others of his crew tried to give up, but Hild would not have that. Screeching, hair flying like a Valkyrie, she demanded they all die.

Two of the Dandy’s men threw down their weapons and Einar cut them down where they stood with a few swift strokes. After that, the others fought on with the desperate ferocity of the cornered, but it was short and they were all chopped to bloody ruin by packs of Oathsworn.

Then there was silence, save for the pant and gasp of ravaged lungs. Someone was puking, hard and noisy, and the impaled man was growling and yelling as others tried to lever his arm off the spear-point. The iron stink of blood was everywhere; the floor of the tomb was slushed with viscous red mud.

And I sat there in a widening slick of Gunnar Raudi’s blood, his head in my lap, watching the other sluggish pool form slowly from the stab wound in his back.