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The Whale Road
Robert Low


DISCOVER SOMETHING NEW WITH THIS LIMITED-TIME DISCOUNT ON BOOK ONE OF THE SERIES.The first in the Oathsworn series, charting the adventures of a band of Vikings on the chase for the secret hoard of Attila the Hun.In time with the magnificent British Museum Viking exhibition, comes the Oathsworn series, called ‘enthralling’ by fiction legend Bernard Cornwell, and known for its blockbuster battles and powerful suspense.Life is savage aboard a Viking raider. Young Orm Rurikson is plucked from the snows of Norway to join his estranged father on the Fjord Elk, and becomes a member of the notorious crew – the Oathsworn. Hired as relic-hunters by the merchant rulers, and sent in search of a legendary sword of untold value to the new religion – their mission is treacherous. With only a young girl as guide, their quest will lead them on to the deep waters of the 'whale road', toward the cursed treasure of Attila the Hun. And to a challenge that will test the very bond that holds them together.







ROBERT LOW



The Whale Road

























HARPER






To my darling wife Katie, who makes sure my keel is straight and all my oars are in the water.




Contents


Cover (#u024cdc6e-db7d-5a80-8a61-19a54ce22d97)

Title Page (#u359eb17b-ede2-5d34-a725-6b5af2a94a71)

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

A Note on the History (#litres_trial_promo)

Glossary of Names

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher




Chapter One (#u40e66c95-74fa-5724-a4b9-65c526f2b71f)


Runes are cut in ribbons, like the World Serpent eating his own tail. All sagas are snake-knots, for the story of a life does not always start with birth and end with death. My own truly begins with my return from the dead.

There was a beam, knotted and worn smooth where nets and sails hung, with a cold-killed spider hanging by the slenderest of threads, swaying in the breeze, swimming in my vision.

I knew that beam. It was the ridge beam of the naust, the boatshed at Bjornshafen, and I had swung on those hanging nets and sails. Swung and laughed and had no cares, a lifetime ago.

I lay on my back and looked up at it and could not understand why it was there, for I was surely dead. Yet my breath smoked in the chill of that place.

‘He’s awake.’

The voice was a growl and everything canted and swung when I tried to turn my head to it. I was not dead. I was on a pallet-bed and a face, jut-jawed and bearded like a hedge, floated in front of me. Others, too, peered round him, all strangers, all wavering, as if underwater.

‘Get back, you ugly bollocks. Give the boy room to breathe. Finn Horsehead, you would frighten Hel herself, so I am thinking you should bugger off out of it and fetch his father.’

The hedge-bearded face scowled and vanished. The owner of the voice had a face, too; this one neat-bearded and kind-eyed. ‘I am Illugi, godi of the Oathsworn,’ he said to me, then patted my shoulder. ‘Your father is coming, boy. You are safe.’

Safe. A priest says I am safe, so it must be true. A moment’s vision-flash, like something seen in the night when a storm flickers blue-white: the bear, crashing through the roof in a shower of snow and timbers, roaring and snake-necked, a great mountain of white …

‘My … father?’

The voice didn’t even sound like mine, but the kind-eyed stranger called Illugi nodded and smiled. Behind him, men moved like shadows, their voices ebbing and flowing in a tide of sound.

My father. So he had come for me after all. The thought of that stayed with me as Illugi’s face faded to a pale orb; the others, too, dwindled like trailing bubbles as I slid away, down into the dark water of sleep.

But the priest lied. I was not safe. I would never be safe again.

By the time I could sit up and take broth, the story was round Bjornshafen: the story of Orm the slayer of the white bear.

Alone, when the White Bear, Rurik’s Curse, came for revenge on the son – and then, presumably, the father – brave Orm, a mere boy becoming a man fought it over the headless body of Freydis the witch-woman. Fought it for a day and a night and had finally driven a spear into its head and a sword into its heart.

There was more of the same, of course, as my father told me when he came to me, hunkering by my bed and rubbing his grizzled chin and running his hand through his lank, once-gold hair.

My father, Rurik. The man who had fostered me on his brother Gudleif at Bjornshafen. He carried me there under his cloak when I was no more than fat knees and chubby fists, in the year Eirik Bloodaxe lost his throne in York and was cut down at Stainmore. I am not even sure if that was a true memory, or one patched back to the cloak of my life by Gudleif’s wife, Halldis, who liked me above the other fostris who came and went, because I was blood kin.

She it was who taught me about sheep and chickens and growing things, who filled in the rents in my memory while she sat by the fire, the great hangings which portioned the hall stirring and flapping in the winds which thundered Bjornshafen’s beams.

Patient and still, click-clicking her little bone squares as she wove strips of bright wool hemming, she would answer all my piped questions.

‘Rurik came back only once, with a white bear cub,’ she said. ‘Said for Gudleif to keep it for him and that it was worth a fortune – and it was, too. But Rurik, of course, couldn’t stop long enough to make it into one. Always off on the next tide, that one. Not the same man after your mother died.’

Now here he was, sprung like a breaching whale from the empty sea.

I saw a nut-brown face and, since folk said we looked alike, tried to see more handsome in it than, perhaps, there was. He was middling height, more silvered than fair now, his face roughened by wind and weather and his beard cropped short. His blue eyes laughed, though, from under hairy eyebrows like spiders’ legs, even when he was being concerned.

And what did he see? A boy, tall for his age, with good shoulders and the scrawn of youth almost gone, with red-brown hair that fell in his eyes unless someone rough-cut it with shears. Halldis had done it while she lived but no one much bothered after the coughing sickness took her.

I looked at him with the same blue eyes, staring at his snub-nosed face. It came to me, with a sudden shock, that I would look like this when I was old.

‘You are come after all, then,’ I said, feeling foolish even as I spoke, for it was self-evident he had come – and not alone, either. Behind him, in Bjornshafen’s boatshed, their temporary quarters, were the hard-faced crew of the ship he mastered. Gunnar Raudi had warned of these.

‘Why would I not?’ he answered with a grin.

We both knew the answer to that one, but I would have preferred it said aloud.

‘When word comes that a man’s son is in danger from his own kin … well, a father must act,’ he went on, serious as stone.

‘Just so,’ I replied, thinking that he had taken his time about acting and that ten years was more than a pause for breath in the journey to his son. But I said nothing when I saw in his eyes how he was genuinely puzzled that I would think he wouldn’t rush to my aid.

It only came to me later, when I had aged into life a little, that Rurik had done his task of raising me as well as any father and better than most – but looking at this new man, this rawboned hard man from a boatload of hard men and realising he was the one who had left me in the first place, with no word since and no prospect of one, I grew so angry and twisted with it that I could not speak at all.

He took that for something else – the moment of our meeting, the horror of what had gone before with the white bear and the snow journey – and nodded, smiling.

‘Who’d have thought that bloody little bear cub would have caused such trouble,’ he mused, rasping his chin with horned fingers. ‘I bought it from a Gotland trader, who had it from a Finn, he told me. I thought to sell it in Ireland, to make a jarl’s cloak, or even a pet, but that nithing Gudleif let it go. Arse. Just look at what happened – I nearly lost my son.’

Gudleif had cursed his brother, that bear and, in the end, the one he suspected of letting it go. It had grown too big for its original cage, so had to be tethered loose and fed mountains of good herring; the thrall had grown too afraid to go near it.

There had been about an eyeblink of cheering when everyone saw it had gone, then blind panic that such a monster was loose. Gudleif and Bjarni and Gunnar Raudi had hunted it all that year, but found nothing and lost a good dog besides.

The words were queued up in me, fighting like drunks trying to get out of a burning hall. My father was breathtaking … not one word about where he had been, or why I had been left so long, or what had been my life in the five years before he brought me here. Or even that the bloody bear had been his fault all along.

It was infuriating. My mouth gaped and shut like a fresh-caught cod and he saw it, put it down to the emotion of the moment, of seeing his long-lost father, and made manly of it. He clapped me on the shoulder and said, gruffly, ‘Can you walk? Einar is in the hall and wants to see you.’

Fuck Einar, was what I wanted to say. Fuck you, too. Freydis is dead because of your bloody bear and the fact that you weren’t around to decide what to do with it before someone got tired of it and let it escape. Where were you? And tell me of me, my mother, where I am from. I know nothing.

Instead, I nodded and weaved upright, while he helped me into breeks and shoes and kirtle and tunic, me leaning on him, feeling his wiry strength.

He smelled of old sweat and leather and wet wool and the hair grew up under the neck of his own tunic, all around, curling wads of it, grizzled and darker than that on his head and chin.

And all the while the thoughts in me wheeling and screaming like terns round a fresh catch. The years between us and the wyrd of that white bear. How long was it free? Six years? Eight, maybe?

Yet this winter it had sought me out somehow, tracked me down and brought my father back to me with its death, like an Odin sacrifice.

The wyrd of it made me shiver – those three Norn sisters, who weave the lives of every creature, had started on a strange tapestry for me.

Finally, as I fastened and looped a belt round my waist, my father straightened from doing up my leg-bindings and held out Bjarni’s sword to me. It had been cleaned of all blood; cleaned better than it had been before, for there were fewer rot spots on it than when I had stolen it.

‘It isn’t mine,’ I said, half-ashamed, half-defiant, and he cocked his head like a bird and I laid out the tale of it.

It was Bjarni’s sword, he who had been Gudleif’s oarmate of long standing. He and Gudleif had taught me the strokes of it, and then Gunnar Raudi, unable to watch any longer, had picked it up, spat between his feet and shown me how to use it in a real fight.

‘When you stand in a shieldwall, boy,’ he said, ‘forget all the fancy strokes. Hit their fucking feet. Cut the ankles from them. Stab them up and under the shield and the hem of their mail, right into their balls. It’s the only bits you can see or reach anyway.’

And then he showed me how to use the hilt, my shield, my knees and elbows and teeth, while Gudleif and Bjarni stayed quiet and still.

It was then I saw they were afraid of Gunnar Raudi and learned later – from Halldis, of course – that Gunnar stayed at Bjornshafen because he had got both Bjarni and Gudleif back from a raid to Dyfflin that went badly wrong. Everyone thought them dead and then, two seasons later, in they sailed with a stolen ship, captured thralls and tales of Gunnar’s daring. They owed him their lives and a berth for as long as he breathed.

‘I stole it from Gudleif,’ I told my father, ‘when it was clear he wanted me to die in the snow on the way to Freydis’s hov.’

He rubbed his beard and frowned, nodding. ‘Aye, so Gunnar said when he sent word.’

That had been the day Gunnar had cracked my world, a day that began with Gudleif sitting in his gifthrone with his ship prows on either side and himself swathed in furs, trying to be a great jarl and managing only to look like a bad-tempered cat.

Bjarni had died the previous year and Halldis the year before that. Now Gudleif complained of the cold and avoided going out much. He sat, hunched and glowering, with only old Caomh close to his elbow, the thrall who had come back as a slave from a Christ temple in Dyfflin.

Nearby, the equally old Helga shuttled a loom back and forth and grinned her two last teeth at me, while Gunnar Raudi, just visible in the smoking gloom, worked on a leather strap.

‘I am not up to the journey to the high pasture this year,’ Gudleif said to me. ‘The herd needs to be brought down and some essentials taken to Freydis.’

It was an early winter, the snow curling off Snaefel, the colour leached from the land by cold, so that there were only black tree skeletons on grey under a grey sky. Even the sea was slate.

‘It has already snowed,’ I reminded him. ‘It may be too deep to drive horses down now.’ I refrained from reminding him that I had spoken of this weeks before, when it might have been easier to do.

There was no sound save for the clack-shuff of the loom and the sputter of a fire whose wood was too damp. Halldis would not have made it so.

Gudleif stirred and said to me, ‘Perhaps. If so, you will over-winter there and bring them in spring. Freydis will have prepared.’

It was not an attractive proposition. Freydis was a strange one and, truth to tell, most people thought her a volva, a witch. I had never seen her, in all my fifteen years, though her hov was no more than a good day’s walk up the lowest slopes. She tended Gudleif’s best stallions and mares on the high pasture and was clever at it.

I thought of all this and the fact that, even if she had prepared well, there would not be enough fodder to keep the herd fed through the hard winter it promised to be. Or, perhaps, even the pair of us.

I said as much and Gudleif shrugged. I thought Gunnar Raudi was probably best to go and said that, too. Gudleif shrugged again and, when I looked at him, Gunnar Raudi was busy beside the hearthfire, too concerned with his strap of leather even to look up, it seemed to me.

So I prepared a pack and took the sturdiest of the ponies. I was considering what best to take Freydis when Gunnar Raudi came to the stable and there, in the warm, rustling twilight of it, tore everything apart with a simple phrase.

‘He has sent for his sons.’

And there it was. Gudleif was dying. His sons, Bjorn and Steinkel, were coming back from their own fostering to claim their inheritance and I was… expendable. Perhaps he hoped I would die and solve all his problems.

Gunnar Raudi saw all that chase itself like cat and dog across my face. He said nothing for a while, still as a block of grindstone in the fetid dark. A horse whuffed and stamped; straw rustled and all I could think to say was: ‘So that’s where the faering went. I wondered.’

And Gunnar Raudi smiled a grim smile. ‘No. He sent word by the next valley up. The faering is missing because I sent Krel and Big Nose to row it to Laugarsfel, there to send word to Rurik.’

I glanced at him anxiously. ‘Does Gudleif know?’

He shook his head and shrugged. ‘He knows nothing much these days. Even if he finds out what can he do? Perhaps he might even have done it himself if it had been mentioned to him.’ In the dim, his face was all shadowed planes, unreadable. But he went on: ‘A trip through the snow isn’t so bad. Better than here when Rurik arrives.’

‘If you think so, you take the trip through the snow and I will stay here,’ I answered bitterly and expected his wry chuckle and a growl of a reply. Instead, to my surprise – of both of us, it seemed to me after – he laid a hand on my shoulder.

‘Best not, lad. What Rurik brings with him will be worse than a frozen nose.’

That was chilling and I had to ask. His eyes gleamed in the dark.

‘Einar the Black and his crew,’ he replied and the way he said it told me all I needed to know.

I laughed, but even to my own ears it was forced. ‘If he comes.’

I looked him in the face and he looked right back and both of us knew the truth of it. I was like the white bear: someone else’s property, unclaimed and in the way. My father might not get the news. Even if he did, he might not be bothered.

My father grunted at that part of the tale, as if he had been dug sharply in the ribs. But his glare made me ashamed I had said it.

I told him then that I felt no pang about taking Bjarni’s sword. Or the large amount of salt, or any of the other supplies I thought necessary. Fuck Bjornshafen. Fuck Gudleif and fuck both his sons.

My father grinned at that.

Taking Bjarni’s sword was the worst thing, for a sword then was a thing not to be taken lightly. It was expensive and, more than that, it was the mark of a warrior and a man of substance.

The Greeks in Constantinople – who call themselves Romans, but speak no Latin – think all Northmen are Danes and that all Danes fight in mail and with swords. The truth is that most of us have only the seax, a kitchen knife the length of your forearm. With it, you can chop a chicken or gut a fish – or kill a man.

You get to be good with it, since mail is too expensive for most. Any good blow will kill you unless you avoid it and only if you must do you block it, so that the edge of your precious seax isn’t notched away.

A sword, though, was a magical thing, a rich thing and the mark of a warrior, so not to be trifled with – but I took dead Bjarni’s sword out of spite, right off the hook in the hall, while Gudleif grunted and farted and slept. In the morning I was gone early, before he noticed it was missing.

Bjarni would notice but I made my peace with him on my own and prayed to big, bluff Thor to intercede. Then I added a prayer to Odin, made wise by communing with the new-dead, who had hung nine nights on the World Tree for wisdom. And one to Jesus, the White Christ, who hung on a tree like Odin.

‘That was deep thinking, right enough,’ my father said when I told him this. ‘You can never have too much holy help, even if this Christ-following lot are a strange breed, who say they will not fight yet still seem able to field warriors and sharp steel. As for the sword – well, Bjarni won’t need it and Gudleif won’t mind. Ask Einar for it. He will let you keep it after what you did.’

I stayed silent. How could I tell them what I had done? Pissed myself and run, leaving Freydis to die?

The first sight of those great bear pugs in the snow, maybe two weeks after I had struggled through to her hov, had set Freydis to barring doors and hunkering down. The night it came we had eaten broth and bread by the glimmer of the pitfire embers, listening to the creak of the beams and the rustle of straw from the stalls.

I lay down clutching Bjarni’s sword. That, an old ash spear of her dead man’s, the wood axe and Freydis’s kitchen knives made the only weapons we had. I stared at the glowing embers, trying not to think of the bear, prowling, sniffing, circling.

I knew whose bear it was and, it seemed to me, it had come seeking revenge after all these years.

I woke to soft singing. Freydis sat, cross-legged and naked, the hearthfire glowing on her body, her face hidden by the long, unbound straggles of her streaked hair, one hand holding upright the ash spear. In front of her were … objects.

I saw a small animal skull, the teeth blood-red in the light, the eye-sockets blacker than night. There were carved things and a pouch and, over them all, Freydis hummed, a long, almost continuous drone that raised the hair on my arms.

I hung on to the sharkskin hilt of Bjarni’s old sword while the dead crowded round, their eyes glittering in the dark holes of their heads, pale faces like mist.

Whether she called them for help, or called the bear, or tried to weave a shield against it, I don’t know. All I know is that when the bear struck the wall, the hall boomed like a bell and I jumped up, half-naked, sword in hand.

I shook my head, scattering memories like water drops. A last, brief flash of the curving swipe of paw and her head, spinning, flailing blood to the rafters. Had there been a smile on it? An accusing look?

My father rightly guessed the memories, wrongly assumed I was mourning for the lost Freydis and clapped my shoulder again, giving it a slight squeeze and a half-smile. Then he walked me slowly to the hall across the sun-sparkled snow. The eaves were dripping with melting spires of ice.

Everything seemed the same, but the thralls avoided my eye, keeping their heads down. I saw Caomh down by the shore, standing by a pole with a ball on it – one of his strange White Christ totems, probably. Once a monk, always a monk, he used to say. Just because he had been ripped from his cloister didn’t make him less of a holy man for the Christ. I raised a hand in greeting but he never moved, though I knew he saw me.

Gudleif’s hall was dim inside, misted with cold light from the smoke hole. The hearthfire crackled, breath coiled in wisps and the figures hunched on benches at the foot of the high seat turned to us as we came in.

I waited until my eyes had accustomed and then saw that someone else sat in Gudleif’s high seat, someone with hair to his shoulders, dark as crow wings.

Black-eyed, black-moustached, he wore blue-checked breeks like the Irish and a kirtle of finest blue silk, hemmed in red. One hand leaned on the fat-pommelled hilt of a sheathed sword, point at his feet. It was a fine sword, with a three-lobed heavy silver end to the hilt and lots of workings round the cross guard.

The other hand clasped a furred cloak around his throat. Gudleif’s furred cloak, I noticed. And Gudleif’s high seat – but not his ship prows. I saw them stacked to one side and the ones that flanked the high seat now were the proud heads of an antlered beast with flaring nostrils.

Hard men, my father’s oarmates, who thought highly of him because he was their shipmaster and could read waves like other men did runes. Sixty of them had come to Bjornshafen because he had wished it, even though he did not lead this varjazi, this oathsworn band and their slim snakeship, the Fjord Elk.

Einar the Black led them, who now sat on Gudleif’s high seat as if it were his own.

At his feet sat others, one of them Gunnar Raudi, hands on his knees, cloaked and very still, his faded red tangles fastened back from his face by a leather thong. He looked at me and said nothing, his eyes grey-blue and glassed as a summer sea.

The others I did not know, though I half recognised Geir, the great sack of purple-veined nose that gave him his nickname wobbling in his face as he told the tale of finding me half-frozen and slathered in blood, the headless woman nearby. Steinthor, who had been with him, nodded his shaggy head in agreement.

They were cheerful about it now but, at the time, had been afraid when they found the great white bear dead, a spear in its brain and Bjarni’s sword rammed in its heart. As Steinthor happily admitted, to the grunts and chuckles of the others, he had shat himself.

There were two other strangers, one of them the biggest man I had ever seen: fat-bearded, fat-bellied, fat-voiced – fat everything. He wore a blue coat of heavy wool and the biggest seaboots I had ever seen, into which were tucked the baggiest breeks, striped blue and silver, that I had ever seen. There were ells of silk in those breeks.

He had a fur hat with a silver end, which chimed like a bell when he accidentally brushed it against the blade of the huge Dane axe that he held, rapping the haft on the hard-packed hall floor now and then and going ‘hoom’ deep in his throat when Geir managed a better-than-usual kenning in his story.

The other was languid and slim, leaning back against one of the roof poles, stroking his snake moustaches, which were all the fashion then. He looked at me as Gudleif looked at a new horse, weighing it up, seeing how it moved.

But no Gudleif, just this crow-dark stranger in his chair.

‘I am Einar the Black. Welcome, Orm Ruriksson.’

He said it as if the hall belonged to him, as if the high seat was his.

‘I have to say,’ he went on, leaning forward slightly and turning the sword slowly on its rounded point as he did so, ‘that things turned out more interesting and profitable than when Rurik came to me with this request to sail here. I had other plans … but when your shipmaster speaks, a wise man listens.’

Beside me, my father inclined his head slightly and grinned. Einar grinned in return and leaned back.

‘Where is Gudleif?’ I asked. There was silence. Einar looked at my father. I saw it and turned to look at him, too.

My father shrugged awkwardly. ‘The tale I heard was that he had sent you into the mountain snows to die. And there was the matter of the bear, which had not been settled—’

‘Gudleif’s dead, boy,’ Einar interrupted. ‘His head is on a spear on the strand, so that his sons will see it when they finally arrive and know that bloodprice has been taken.’

‘For what?’ growled the large man, turning his axe so that the blade flashed in the dim light. ‘It was done when we thought Rurik’s boy was killed.’

‘For the bear, Skapti Halftroll,’ said Einar quietly. ‘That was an expensive bear.’

‘Was it Gudleif who killed it, then?’ asked the slim one, stroking his moustaches slowly and yawning. ‘I am thinking I have just been listening to Geir Bagnose recount the saga of Orm Ruriksson, the White-bear Slayer.’

‘Was he then to weigh the cost when it came at him in the dark?’ growled my father. ‘I can see you count it up, Ketil Crow – but by the time you got your boots off to use your toes, it would have been your head split from your body, for sure.’

Ketil Crow chuckled and acknowledged the point with the wave of one hand. ‘Aye, just so. I cannot count, that is true enough. But I know how many beans make five, just the same.’

‘Of course,’ said Einar, smoothly ignoring all this, ‘there is the woman, Freydis, who was killed. No thrall, that one. Freeborn and there’s a price to be paid for that, since her death came because Gudleif let the bear go in the first place. Anyway, the bear was mine and worth a lot.’

My father said nothing about whose bear it was. I said nothing at all, since I had just realised that the pole with the ball Caomh had been standing near was a spear with Gudleif’s head on it.

Einar shifted again and drew the cloak tighter around him, his breath smoking in the cold hall as he declared, ‘In the end, you can argue in circles about whose fault it was – from Rurik bringing the bear here, to Gudleif letting it escape. And then there is why he sent the boy late into the mountain snow to that lonely hall. Perhaps he and the bear were in this together.’

It was half in jest, but Skapti and Ketil both warded off the evil with some swift signs and grasped the iron Thor’s hammers hung round their necks. I realised, even then, that Einar knew his men well.

I said nothing, rushed with a fluttering of memories, like bats spilling from a hole in the ground.

After the bear had slammed into the wall, there was silence, though I swear I heard it huffing through the snow, paws crunching. Freydis droned. The two milk cows bellowed their fear and the bear answered, drove the animals mad and chilled me so much I found myself sitting on the floor, the lantern at my feet, my breath caught, my mouth glued with dryness.

‘So Gunnar Rognaldsson, will you tell all this freely to Gudleif’s sons when they come? Or, perhaps, you would like to come with us? We need good men.’

I shook back to the Now of it, but it took me a moment to realise that Einar was speaking to Gunnar Raudi. I had never heard his real name – he was always just Red Gunnar to us.

And in a dangerous position, I realised. Gudleif’s man and a vicious and deadly fighter, he had been left alive so far because he had been the one to send word to my father about me.

Yet it was clear he and Einar knew each other – and that Einar didn’t trust Gunnar and Gunnar knew it. I saw that Einar would not want Gunnar left to advise Gudleif’s sons. Without him they would think twice about revenge.

Gunnar shrugged and scrubbed his grey-streaked head, as if considering – but the truth was that he had no choice. ‘I had thought to berth here for good at my age,’ he growled ruefully, ‘but the Norns weave and we can only wear what they make. I will come with you, Einar. Coldward and stormward, eh?’

They grinned at each other, but it was the smile of wolves circling.

‘And you, Bear Slayer?’ Einar said, turning to me. ‘Will you join your father on the Fjord Elk? I strongly advise you to do so.’

He didn’t have to say more. Gudleif’s sons would revenge themselves on me if I stayed, for sure, and there was nothing for me here.

I nodded. He nodded. My father beamed. Skapti called for ale.

And so it was done. I joined the Oathsworn – but there was more to taking the blood-oath than a nod and a wink, though I only learned that later.

I ate in Gudleif’s hall for the last time that night. The partition hangings were ripped down (with some contempt, it seemed to me) to make room for all the Oathsworn to come in. It is the mark of a raiding jarl to have a whole hall and those who partitioned it were admitting they’d given up needing the men for raids and therefore the room for them. The Oathsworn held to the old ways and hated a hall with hangings.

We ate round the pitfire, me huddled and listening to the thunder of the wind on the beams. The fire flattened and flared as stray blasts hissed down the smoke hole and through the hall, while these growlers who had taken over Bjornshafen, just like that, fished mutton from the pot, blowing on their fingers and talking about such strange things and places as I’d never heard of before.

They drank, too, great amounts of ale, the foam spilling down their beards while they joked and made riddles. Steinthor, it was clear, fancied himself as a skald and made verses on the bear-slaying, while the others thumped benches or threw insults, depending on how good his kennings were.

And they raised horns to me, Orm the Bear Slayer, with my father, new-found and grinning with pride as if he had won a fine horse, leading the praise-toasts. But I saw that Gunnar Raudi was hunched and quiet on his ale bench, watching.

That night, as the men fell to talking quiet and lazy as smoke drifting from the hearthfire, I fell asleep and dreamed of the white bear and how it had circled the walls and then fallen silent.

I turned to say to Freydis that her walls were well built; I was sure that we had weathered it, that the bear was gone. I was smiling when the roof caved in. The turf roof. Two massive paws swiped and the earth and snow tumbled in and then, with a crash like Thor’s thrown hammer, the bear followed: an avalanche of white; a great rumbling roar of triumph.

Numbed, I pissed myself then and there. The bear landed in a heap, shook itself like a dog, scattering earth and snow and clods, and then got on all fours.

It was a cliff of fur, a rank, wet-smelling shriek of a thing that swung a snake neck with a horror of a head this way and that, one eye red in the firelight, the other an old, black socket. On that same side, the lips had been straked off, leaving the yellow tusk teeth exposed in a grim grin. The drool of its hunger spilled, thick and viscous.

It saw us; smelled the ponies, didn’t know which to go for first. That was when I ran for it and so decided the skein of all our lives.

The white bear whirled at my movement – the speed of it, and it so huge! It saw me at the door, scrabbling for the bar. I heard it – felt it – roar with the fetid breath of a dragon; I frantically tore the bar off and dragged the door open.

I heard it crash, half-turned to look over my shoulder as I scrambled out. It had risen on hind legs and lumbered forward. Too tall for the roof, its great head had smacked a joist – cracked it – and tumbled it down into the fire.

I swear I saw it glare its one eye at me as it shrieked; I also saw Freydis calmly stand, pick up the old spear and ram it at the beast’s ravening mouth. Not good enough. Not nearly a good enough spell, after all. The spear smashed teeth on the already ruined side, snapped off and left the head and part of the haft inside.

The bear lashed out, one casual swipe that sent Freydis flying backwards in a spray of blood and bone. I saw her head part company from her body.

I ran stumbling through the snow. I ran like a nithing thrall. If there had been a baby in my way I would have tossed it over one shoulder, hoping to tempt the beast into a snack and giving me more time to get away …

I woke in Gudleif’s hall, to a sour-milk smear of a morning and the sick shame of remembering, but everyone was too busy to notice, for we were leaving Bjornshafen.

Leaving my only home and never returning, I realised. Leaving with a shipload of complete strangers, hard men for the sailing and raiding and, worse yet, a father I hardly knew. A father who had, at the very least, watched his brother’s head part company from the rest of him and not even shrugged over it.

I could not breathe for the terror of it. Bjornshafen was where I had learned what every child learns: the wind, the wave and war. I had run the meadows and the hayfields, stolen gulls’ eggs from the black cliffs, sailed the little faering and crewed the hafskip with Bjarni and Gunnar Raudi and others. I had even gone down to Skiringssal once, the year Bluetooth buried his father Old Gorm and became King of the Danes.

I knew the place, from the skerry offshore where the surf creamed on black rocks, to the screaming laughter of the terns. I fell asleep at night rocked in the creaking beams as the wind shuddered the turf of the roof, and felt warm and safe as the fire danced the shadows of the looms like huge spiders’ webs.

Here Caomh had taught me to read Latin because no one knew runes well enough – when I could be pinned down to follow his hen-scratching in the sand. Here was where I had learned of horses, since Gudleif made his name breeding fighting stallions.

And all that was changed in an eyeblink.

Einar took some barrels of meat and meal and ale, as part of the ‘bloodprice’ for the bear, then left instructions to bury Freydis and drag the bear corpse in and flay the pelt from it. Gudleif’s sons could keep that and the skull and teeth, all valuable trade items, worth more than the barrels taken.

Whether it was worth their father was another matter, I thought, gathering what little I had: a purse, an eating knife, an iron cloak brooch, my clothes and a linen cloak. And Bjarni’s sword. I had forgotten to ask about it, it had never been mentioned, so I just kept it.

The sea was grey slate, capped white. Picking through the knots of dulse and rippled, snow-scattered sand, the Oathsworn humped their sea-chests down to the Fjord Elk, plunging into the icy sea with whoops, boots round their necks. White clouds in a clear blue sky and a sun like a brass orb; even the weather tried to hold me to the place.

Behind me, Helga scraped sheepskins to soften them, watching, for life went on, it seemed, even though Gudleif was dead. Caomh, too, watched, waiting by Gudleif’s head – until we were safely over the horizon, I was thinking, and he could give it a White Christ burial.

I said as much to Gunnar Raudi as he passed me by and he grunted, ‘Gudleif won’t thank him for it. Gudleif belonged to Odin, pate to heel, all his life.’

He turned back to me then, bowed under the weight of his own sea-chest and looked at me from under his red brows. ‘Watch Einar, boy. He believes you are touched by the gods. This white bear, he thinks, was sent by Odin.’

It was something that I had thought myself and said so.

Gunnar chuckled. ‘Not for you, boy. For Einar. He believes it was all done to bring him here, bring him to you, that you have something to do with his saga.’ He hefted the chest more comfortably on his shoulder. ‘Learn, but don’t trust him. Or any of them.’

‘Not even my father? Or you?’ I answered, half-mocking.

He looked at me with his summer-sea eyes. ‘You can always trust your father, boy.’

And he splashed on to the Fjord Elk, hailing those on board to help haul his sea-chest up, his hair flying, streaked grey-white and red like bracken in snow. As I stood under the great straked serpent side of the ship, it loomed, large as my life and just as glowering. I felt… everything.

Excited and afraid, cold and burning feverishly. Was this what it meant to be a man, this … uncertainty?

‘Move yerself, boy – or be left with the gulls.’

I caught my father’s face scowling over the side, then it was gone and Geir Bagnose leaned over, chuckling, to help me up with my rough pack, lashed with my only spare belt. ‘Welcome to the Fjord Elk,’ he laughed.




Chapter Two (#u40e66c95-74fa-5724-a4b9-65c526f2b71f)


The voyages of the Northmen are legendary, I know. Even the sailors of the Great City, Constantinople, with their many-banked ships and engines that throw Greek Fire, stand in awe of them. Hardly surprising, since those Greeks never lose sight of land and those impressively huge vessels they have will go keel over mast in anything rougher than a mild chop.

We, on the other hand, travel the whale road, where the sea is black or glass-green and can rear over you like a fighting stallion, all roar and threat and creaming mane, to come crashing down like a cliff. No bird flies here. Land is a memory.

That’s what we boast of, at least. The truth is always different, like a Greek Christ ikon veiled on feast days. But if anyone boasts of spitting in Thor’s eye, standing in the prow, roaring defiance at the waves and laughing the while, you will know him for the liar he is.

A long journey is always being wet to the skin and the wind bites harder as a result and your clothes are heavy as mail and chafe you until you have sores where the cloth rubs on wrist and neck.

It’s huddled in the dark, bundled in a wet cloak, feeling the sodden squash every time you turn. It’s cold, wet mutton if you are lucky, salt stockfish if you are not and, on truly long voyages, drinking water that has to be strained through your linen cloak to get rid of the worst of the floating things and no food at all.

There wasn’t even a storm of any serious intent on this, my first true faring; just a mild pitch of wave and a good wind, so that the company had time to erect deck covers of spare sail, like small tents, to give some shelter, mainly to the animals.

Einar huddled under his own awning, aft. The oars were stacked inboard and the only one with serious work was my father.

And my task? A sheep was mine. I had to care for it, keep it warm, stop it panicking. At night I slept, my fingers entwined in the rough, wet wool while the mirr washed us. In the morning, I woke with spray and rain washing down the deck. If I moved, I squelched.

The first week we never saw land at all, heading south and west from Norway. My sad ewe bawled with hunger.

Then we hit the narrow stretch of water which had Wessex on one side and Valland, the Northmen lands of the Franks on the other. We made landfall a few times – but never on the Wessex side. Not since Alfred’s day.

Even then we kept to the solitary inlets and lit fires only when we were sure there was no one for miles. Nowhere was safe for a boatload of armed men from the Norway viks.

We sailed north then, up past Man, where there was much argument for putting in at Thingvollur and getting properly dry and fed. But Einar argued against it, saying that people would ask too many questions and someone would talk and the news would get to Strathclyde before we did.

Grumbling, the men hauled the Elk further north, into the wind and the white-tressed sea.

Three more days passed, during which no one spoke much more than grunts and even the sheep had no strength left to bleat. For the most part, we huddled in solitary misery, enduring.

I dreamed of Freydis often, and always the same vision: her receiving me on the morning I arrived. She wore a blue linen dress with embroidery round the throat and hem, her brooches had strange animal heads and between them was a string of amber beads. She made no movement save for the rhythmic stroking of the growling cat.

‘From the pack, I take it you have come from Gudleif,’ she said to me. ‘Since he would only miss this journey if he were sick or injured, I presume that to be the case. Who are you?’

‘Orm,’ I replied. ‘Ruriksson. Gudleif fosters me.’

‘Which is it?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Sick or injured.’

‘He has sent for his sons.’

‘Ah.’ She was silent for a moment. Then: ‘So were you his favourite?’

My laugh was bitter enough for her to realise. ‘I doubt that, mistress. Why else would he send me through the snow to the hall of a—’ I stopped before the words were out, but she caught that, too, and chuckled.

‘A what? Witch? Old crone?’

‘I meant nothing by it, mistress. But I was sent away and I think he hoped I would die.’

‘I doubt that,’ she said crisply, rising so that the cat sprang off her lap and then arched in a great, shivering bow of ecstasy before stalking off. ‘Call me Freydis, not mistress,’ she went on, smoothing her front. ‘And ponder this, young man. Ask yourself why in … how old are you?’

I told her and she smiled gently. ‘In fifteen years, you and I have never met, though we are but a day apart and Gudleif came every year. Ask that, Orm Ruriksson. Take your time. The snow will not melt in a hurry.’

‘He sent me to die in the snow,’ I said bitterly and she shrugged.

‘But you did not. Perhaps your wyrd is different.’

Then the hall changed, to the one I had sat in under her bloodsoaked sealskin cloak, with the roof caved in. Yet still she sat on her bench, the cat somehow back on her lap.

‘I am sorry,’ I said and she nodded her head off her shoulders, so that it tumbled into her lap, sending the cat leaping up with a yowl …

I woke to the cold and wet, wondering if she was fetch-haunting me. Wondering, too, what had happened to the cat.

Then Pinleg yelled out from the prow, where he was coiling walrus-hide ropes. When he had our attention, he pointed and we all squinted into the pearl-light of the winter sky.

‘There,’ shouted Illugi Godi, pointing with his staff. A solitary gull wheeled, staggered in the wind, dipped, swooped and then was gone.

My father was already busy, with his tally stick and his peculiar devices. I never mastered them, even after he had explained them to me.

I knew that he had two stones, like grinding wheels, free-mounted. One pointed at the north star and the other was fixed to point at the sun. That way, my father knew the latitude, by seeing the angle of the sun stone. He could calculate longitude by using that and what he called his own time, marked on his tally stick.

I never understood any of it – but at the end of four days I knew why Einar valued Rurik the shipmaster, because we found the land at the point where we were supposed to find it, then my father, leaning over the side, watching the water, announced that a suitable inlet lay no more than a mile away, one where we could get ashore and sort ourselves out.

He read water like a hunter reads tracks. He could see changes in colour where, to anyone else, it was just featureless water.

The mood had changed and everyone was suddenly alert and busy. The sail came down, a great sodden mass of wool which had to be sweatily flaked into a squelching mass and stowed on the spar.

The oars came out, that watch of rowers took their sea-chest benches and Valgard Skafhogg, the shipwright, took a shield and beat time on it with a pine-tarred rope’s end until the rowers had the rhythm and away we went.

Pinleg swayed past me, smiling broadly and clapping a round helmet on his head. He had a boarding axe in one hand and a wild light in his eye. It was hard for me to realise that Pinleg was older than me by ten years, since he was scrawny and no bigger than I was.

I wondered how such a runt – his leg was permanently crippled, from birth I learned, so that he walked with a sailor’s roll even on dry land – had ended up in the Oathsworn. I learned, soon enough, and was glad I had never asked him.

‘I’d leave the sheep, Bear Killer,’ he chuckled. ‘Grab your weapons and get ready.’

‘Are we fighting?’ I asked, suddenly alarmed. It occurred to me that I had no idea where we were, or who the enemy would be. ‘Where are we?’

Pinleg just grinned his mad grin. Nearby, Ulf-Agar, small, dark as a black dwarf and with an expression as sullen, said, ‘Who cares? Just get ready, Bear Killer. Pretend they are lots of bears. That will help.’

I glanced at him, knowing he was taunting me and not knowing why.

Ulf-Agar hefted his two weapons – he scorned a shield – and curled a lip. ‘Stay behind Pinleg if you are worried. Killing men is different from bears, I will grant you. Not everyone is cut out for it.’

I knew I had been insulted; I felt my face flame. I realised, with a sick lurch, that Ulf-Agar was probably deadly with his axe and seax, but a slight is a slight…

A hand clasped my shoulder, gentle but firm. Big-bellied Illugi Godi, with his neat beard and quiet voice, spoke softly: ‘Well said, Ulf-Agar. And not everyone can kill a white bear in a stand-up fight. Perhaps, when you do, you will share your joy with Rurik’s son?’

Ulf-Agar offered him a twisted smile and said nothing, suddenly interested in the notching on his seax. Then: ‘I have a spear, Bear Killer,’ he remarked, with an edge-sharp smile. ‘Since you drove your own up into the head of that beast, you may want to borrow it.’

I turned away without replying. Ulf-Agar wanted the tale to be a lie, for it was a task Baldur would have been hard put to manage, let alone a scrawny man/boy. And the nightmare of it hag-rode me to a shivering, soaked waking most nights, which I am sure Ulf-Agar had not been slow to notice.

The nightmare was always one of those where you are running from some horror and yet you cannot get your legs working fast enough – which is what happened when I spilled out of that doorway, leaving Freydis to her wyrd. I was sobbing and panting and struggling in the snow. I fell, got up and fell again.

My knee hit something, hard enough to make me gasp. The wood sled. The bear lumbered forward, spraying snow like a ship under full sail. I had Bjarni’s sword still, was surprised to find it locked in my hand.

I picked up the sled awkwardly, stumbled a few steps and half fell, half hurled myself on it. It slid a few feet, then stopped. I kicked furiously and it moved. I heard the bear grunting and puffing through the snow close behind me.

I kicked again and the sled slithered forward, picked up a little speed, then a little more. I felt the hissing wind of a swiped paw, a fine mist of blood on my ears and neck from its ruined mouth as it roared … then I was away, hurtling down the hill, the bear galloping clumsily after, bawling rage and frustration.

There was a confusion of snow spray and darkness, a howl from behind me, then the sled tilted, bucked and I flew off, spilling over and over in the snow. I came up spitting and dazed. Something dark, a huge boulder, hurtled past me, still spraying snow and blood, rolling down the hill towards the trees. There was a splintering crash and a single grunt.

And silence.

Shaking woke me and I stared up at Illugi, ashamed that I had fallen asleep at all when everything else was bustle and purpose.

‘We are in Strathclyde,’ he said. ‘We have a task inland. Einar will explain it all later, but best get ready for now.’

‘Strathclyde,’ muttered Pinleg, shoving past us. ‘No easy raiding here.’

The landing was almost a disappointment for me. With my sword in one hand and a borrowed shield in the other – Illugi Godi’s, with Odin’s raven on it – I waited in the belly of the Fjord Elk as it snaked smoothly into the bow of land.

Shingle beach stretched to a fringe of trees and, beyond, rose to red-brackened hills, studded with trees, warped as old crones. There were rocks, too, which I took for sheep for a moment and was glad I had not called out my foolishness.

Since nothing moved, everyone relaxed. Except for Valgard Skafhogg, who bellowed at my father as the keel ground on shingle stones, calling him a ship-wrecking son of Loki’s arse. My father bellowed right back that if Valgard was any good as a shipwright, then a few stones wouldn’t sink us and, from what he had heard, Valgard couldn’t trim his beard. Which was a good joke on his nickname, Skafhogg, which means Trimmer.

But it was almost good-natured as we splashed ashore, to a smell of bracken and grass that almost made me weep.

It was bitter cold and you could taste the snow. The sail was dragged out, unfurled and draped over a frame – not as a shelter, since it was sodden; we only wanted it to dry out a little. Then we’d put it back, for when we returned to this place, we’d be in a hurry to get away from it.

Lookouts were posted and fires were lit for us to dry clothes and, above all, get warm. I staked out the sheep, as I had before, on a long line for her to crop what she could of the frozen grass and brown-edged fern and bracken.

She had little time to enjoy it and I was almost sorry when she was up-ended, gralloched and spitted. Brought all that way in damp misery, simply to be the hero-meal before the Oathsworn went into fight: I identified strongly with that wether.

I wondered about the fires, since the wood was wet and smoked and you could see it for miles, but Einar didn’t seem bothered. Now that we were so close, he had tallied that warmth and a full belly was worth the chance of discovery.

My father, now free of any duties, since he had done his part, crossed to where I sat shivering by the fire and trying not to wear my drying cloak until the rest of me had lost some water.

‘You need some spare clothing. Maybe we’ll get some soon.’

I glanced sourly at him. ‘A seer now, are you? If so, tell us where we are raiding.’

He shrugged. ‘Someplace inland.’ He stroked his stubbled chin thoughtfully and added, ‘Strathclyde’s not a place to raid these days, never mind inland. Still, Brondolf is paying good silver for it, so we do.’

‘Brondolf?’ I asked, helping him as he started to erect a shelter from our cloaks, making a frame of withies.

‘Brondolf Lambisson, richest of the Birka merchants. He hires the Oathsworn of Einar the Black this year. And last, come to think of it.’

‘To do what?’

My father tied cloak corners together, blowing on his fingers to warm them. The sky was sliding into dour night and it would soon be colder yet. The fires already looked flower-bright comforts in the growing dark.

‘He leads the other merchants of Birka. The town was a great trading centre, but it is failing. The silver is drying up and the harbour silting. Brondolf seems to think he has found an answer. He and his tame Christ godi, Martin from Hammaburg. They keep sending us out to get the strangest things.’ He broke off at a thought and chuckled, uneasy as all Northmen were with the concept. ‘Who knows what he is doing? Perhaps he is working some spell or other.’

I knew of Birka only from old Arnbjorn, the trader who came to Bjornshafen twice a year with cloth for Halldis and good hoes and axes for Gudleif. Birka, tucked up in an island far east into the Baltic off the coast of Sweden. Birka, where all the trade routes met.

‘Is that where you have been all these years, then: searching out dead men’s eyes and toadspit?’ I demanded.

He made a warding sign. ‘Shut that up for a start, boy. Less mention of… such things … is always safer. And, no, I wasn’t always doing that. For a time I thought to have a white bear safely tucked away, the price of a small farm.’

‘Is that what you told my mother? Or did she die waiting for your return?’

He seemed to droop a little, then looked at me from under his hair – it was thinning, I noticed – one eye closed. ‘Go fetch some bracken for bedding. We can dry it at the fires beforehand.’ Then he sighed. ‘Your mother died giving you birth, boy. A fine woman, Gudrid, but too narrow in the hip. At the time I had a farm, not far from Gudleif as it happens. I had twenty head of sheep and a few cows. I was doing well enough.’

He stopped, staring at nothing. ‘After she died, there didn’t seem much point in it. So I sold it to a man from the next valley, who wanted it for his son and his wife. Most of the money went to Gudleif, when I made him fostri. Some he was to keep and the rest was for you when you came of age.’

Surprised by all this, I could only gape. I had known she died … but the knowledge that I had killed my mother was vicious. I felt clubbed by Thor’s own hammer. Her and Freydis. They’d do better to call me Woman Killer.

He mistook my look, which was the mark of us, father and son. Neither knew the other and constantly misread the signs.

‘Yes, that was the reason Gudleif’s head went,’ he said. ‘I thought him my friend – my brother – but Loki whispered in his ear and he used the money on his own sons. I think he hoped I would die and that would be an end of it.’ He paused and shook his head sadly. ‘He had reason to think that, I suppose. I was never a good husband, or a good father. Always trying to live the old way – but too much is changing. Even the gods are under siege. But when he fell ill and sent for his own sons, thinking he was dying, Gunnar Raudi sent for me and Gudleif knew it was all up with him.’

‘So he did try to kill me in the snow,’ I said. ‘I was never sure.’

Rurik shrugged and scratched. ‘Nor he, I think. If Gudleif had wanted you dead, there were easier ways, though Gunnar Raudi wouldn’t have gone with it. A sound blade is Gunnar and you can trust him.’

He broke off, looked sideways at me and scrubbed his head in a gesture I was coming to know well, one that revealed his uncertainty. Then he chuckled. ‘Perhaps, after all, Gudleif sent you to Freydis to have her make you a man.’ His look was sly and he laughed aloud when my face flamed.

Yes, Freydis had done that, popped me on her the way Gudleif used to put me on his horses when I could barely walk. He made you wrap your hands in the mane and hang on until you learned to ride or fell off. If you fell off, he would pop you on again.

When I thought of it, Freydis was much the same. Blurry with the mead I had brought, greasy-chinned with lamb, she had caught me by the arm and dragged me close, stroking my hair and answered the riddle she had set me and I had failed to understand.

‘I can manage everything, have done since my Thorgrim, curse his bad luck, fell down the mountain,’ she said dreamily. ‘The year after that, Gudleif arrived at my door. I can cart dung and spread it on the hayfields, herd cows, herd horses, milk, make bread, sew, weave … everything. But Gudleif provided the thing that was missing.’

I couldn’t move, could scarcely breathe, though I was hard as a bar of sword-iron and too dry-mouthed to speak.

‘Now he cannot and he sends you,’ she went on and rolled me on her.

‘Come. I will teach you what you were sent here to learn.’

‘Good was Freydis,’ my father said, himself bleared with fond memories. ‘Gudleif swore she was a witch and had made him return every year and stay until he could hardly crawl on the back of a horse to ride off the mountain. If Halldis knew, she kept quiet over it. She was rich as good earth, was Freydis… but lonely. All she wanted was a good man.’

I looked at him and he grinned. ‘Aye, me too. And Gunnar, probably. In fact, if there was a man who hadn’t ploughed that field, then he lived in the next valley but one and was too lame to travel.’

I said nothing. I wanted to tell him of Freydis and her spell and how she had killed the bear with a spear while I ran … A vision, again, of that head, lazily turning, spraying fat drops of blood in an arc. Had she smiled?

When I eventually crawled to the side of it, the bear was already dead, the haft of the spear driven clear up and out the top of its skull by the impact with a tree. It had hit the slope and over-run its own feet. It was still a huge cliff of snow, frightening even when still. I saw, numbly, that the hair under its chin was soft and nearly pure white. One sprawled paw, big as my head, was shaking gently.

I sat down, trembling. Freydis’s spell had worked. Perhaps the price had been her own death. Perhaps she knew. I blubbered and there was no one reason for it. For her. For the knowledge of my own fear. For my father and Gudleif and the whole mess.

Eventually, I was shaking too much to cry. I was half-naked in the cold and had to get back to the hall. The hall and Freydis. I didn’t want to go back there at all, where her fetch might be, waiting accusingly. But I would freeze here.

The bear shifted and I scrambled away. A final kick? I had seen chickens and sheep do that with their throats cut through. I didn’t trust this bear. I remembered Freydis and my fear, took a deep breath, crossed to it and drove Bjarni’s sword into where I thought the heart would be, deep inside the mass of that white cliff.

It was a good sword and I was strong, made stronger yet through fear. It went in so smoothly I practically fell forward on the rank, wet fur; there was no great gout of blood, just a slow welling of fat drops. The sword was in nearly to the cross guard and I couldn’t get it out.

Eventually, shivering uncontrollably, I gave up and slogged back up the slope, through the door and into the ruin of the hall, wrapped myself in her cloak for the warmth and waited, sinking into the cold, where Bagnose and Steinthor found me.

It was a bad enough memory to have rattling round your thought-cage. Now, to add to all that, there was a new horror: a vision of me, like a small bear, clawing another Freydis from the inside out, charging out from between her legs in a glory of gore and challenge. I couldn’t see the face of the woman, my mother, though.

I shook my head, near to weeping, and knew it was for me more than anyone and wanted to back away from that, ashamed.

My father gripped my forearm wordlessly. Probably he thought I was mourning Freydis, or my mother. Truth to tell, I was not even sure which myself.

More alone than ever, I picked my way through the camp, where men chaffered and yacked and busied themselves, out into the trees to get bracken, aware of his eyes following me, aware that he was as much a stranger as all the others.

I wondered if he had taken his brother’s head, or if Einar had. What must it feel like, to have to kill your brother? Even just to watch him die?

Yet they were still men, these Oathsworn. Grim as whetstone, cold as a storm sea, but men for all that.

Most had wives and families – in Gotland, or further east – and went back to them now and then. Pinleg had a woman and two little ones whom he sent money back to by traders he could trust. Skapti Halftroll had more than one woman in more than one place, but he spent all his money on finery. Ketil Crow was outlawed from somewhere in Norway and had no one but the Oathsworn.

There were others, though, who were men apart. Sigtrygg was one, for he called himself Valknut and wore that rune symbol on his shield, three triangles known as the Knot of the Fallen. It meant he had bound his soul to Odin, would die at the god’s command and even the swaggerers walked soft around him.

Einar himself was a mystery, though most people had the idea he was an outlaw, too. Pinleg joked that our jarl, dark and brooding under his sullen, crow-wing hair, had been thrown out of Iceland for being too cheerful. He was the only one who dared joke about Einar.

Later, when bellies were full and the conversation had died, men took to cleaning their weapons, taking great care with the blades to gently grind out all the dark spots they could. Einar stood next to the biggest of the fires and the men gathered silently round him in a half-circle, facing the black sea as it sighed on the shingle. Behind, a wet mist crept stealthily down the mountain.

‘Tomorrow, we head inland from here,’ Einar said, his dark eyes moving from one to the other. ‘Pinleg, you will stay here with nine others and guard the ship and our belongings.’

Pinleg grunted his annoyance at that, but he knew why … in a long, fast march, he wasn’t the best choice.

He also knew, I learned later, that he would get his share of the spoils, since no one kept anything for himself. In theory. Actually, everyone stole a little: silver dropped down breeks into boot-tops, or stowed in bags under his balls or armpits. Those caught, though, suffered whatever punishment the Oathsworn decided, which certainly started by losing all their booty and almost always included pain along the way.

‘We seek what will be easy to find: the Christ temple of St Otmund,’ Einar told us. ‘It will be the only substantial stone building for miles, with outbuildings of wood, so look for that. We raid it and get out, fast. This is a well-defended kingdom and the days of good raiding here are long gone, so take only what you can carry – no slaves, no livestock, nothing heavy.

‘The only thing we must get is a … a … reliquary.’ He stumbled over the foreign word, then looked at the puzzled faces. ‘It looks like a chest, well made, well carved and decorated. That we must get.’

‘What’s in it?’ asked Ketil Crow lazily.

Einar shrugged. ‘Bones, if everything I hear about such items is true.’

‘Bones? Whose bones?’ asked Illugi Godi curiously.

‘St Otmund, almost certainly,’ answered Einar. ‘That’s what these Christ-followers do with saints. Stick their bones in a chest and worship them.’

‘Fuck,’ offered Valknut disgustedly. ‘More spell stuff. What are they cooking up in Birka?’ He made a warding sign and just about everyone followed.

‘Good question,’ growled Skapti. ‘What does Birka want with this pile of bones?’

Einar shrugged and looked darkly at them all. ‘All you need to know is that they are outfitting us for next year. Every man will get enough for a new set of clothes, top to toe, and the Fjord Elk will be fitted with new gear, too. And we get to keep what we take from raids other than what was asked for.’

Everyone fell silent, nodding at that. Skapti hoomed in his throat and growled, ‘Just show me where they are, these saints.’

Those who knew better chuckled and Valknut told him: ‘Saints are dead followers of Christ. Their chief priests vote the best dead people to be gods in their Valholl.’

‘Votes, Sig? Like in a Thing?’ scoffed Skapti. ‘No fighting for it?’

‘They don’t believe in fighting,’ Valknut said loftily. ‘They believe in dying and when they do they are called martyrs. And the ones they think are better martyrs than others become saints.’

People who knew nodded, those who were learning this shook their heads in sceptical disbelief. Skapti hoomed disgust. ‘Well, if that’s the way of it, then we shall make lots of martyrs tomorrow, with little risk.’

Einar held up one hand, his hair like black water breaking round the stone of his face. ‘Don’t be fooled. What the Christ-followers say is one thing, yet this kingdom supposedly follows the White Christ and for people who don’t believe in fighting, they can make a shieldwall that will turn your bowels to piss if we are unlucky enough to meet one. Move fast, stay quiet and we’ll get in and out faster than Pinleg on a woman.’

Laughter and nudgings of Pinleg, who grinned and said, ‘I have heard tales of treasure, Einar. Dragon hoards, no less. I would not like to think I am pissing about in the rain chasing some child’s firepit story when I could be getting in and out of a woman.’

There was a sudden silence and I wondered why Pinleg had voiced that where others, clearly, had kept their teeth together. Later, of course, I found out why Pinleg could say what he chose.

Einar swept his black eyes over them once more. ‘There is such a thing being spoken of …’ He held up a hand as Pinleg cleared his throat to spit. ‘Rest your oar a moment,’ he said and Pinleg swallowed. Einar stroked his moustaches, looking round before he spoke.

‘This Martin, the monk, is a deep-thinker, who can dive into the world’s sea of learning and fish out choice morsels. Lambisson thinks highly of him and keeps him close – and Brondolf is no cash-scatterer, as we know.’

Grim chuckles greeted this and Einar scrubbed his chin. ‘I have … uncovered some things that make me believe there is more to these Birka matters than is carved on the surface. There’s a snake-knot tangle to it, though, so when I know more, you will know more.’

Pinleg grunted and that seemed to be assent. The others milled and muttered to each other.

Einar held up both hands and there was silence. ‘Now, we are Oathsworn and have two here – Gunnar Rognaldsson, known as Raudi, and Orm Ruriksson, known as the Bear Killer. You know our oath … is there anyone who will stand the challenge?’

Challenge? What challenge? I turned to my father, but he nudged me silent and winked.

Slowly, a man stood, uncomfortably it seemed to me. A second stood with him and my father let out his breath with relief.

Einar nodded at them. ‘Gauk, I know you have waited for this moment since your foot went bad on you and you lost the toes last year.’

Gauk stepped into the firelight, his face made more gaunt with the shadows playing on it, and nodded. ‘Aye. Without those toes, my balance is gone. Sometimes, unless I am careful, I fall over like a child. One day I will do it in a fight.’

Everyone nodded sympathetically. If he stumbled in a shieldwall, everyone was put at risk.

‘So you will step aside, with no fight and no shame?’ asked Einar.

‘I will,’ said Gauk.

‘For whom?’

‘Gunnar Raudi.’

And that was that. Gauk would be free to leave here the next day with whatever he could carry away and Gunnar Raudi would take his place. My mouth was dry. I realised that the way into a full crew of the Oathsworn was to challenge and kill someone already in it, then take the binding oath. Unless, of course, that someone volunteered to go quietly.

Gauk and Gunnar were already clasping forearms and Gunnar was (as polite custom demanded, I learned) offering to buy what Gauk couldn’t carry away on his back. Sweating and chilled, I glanced at the other man as Einar turned to him.

‘Thorkel? Are you going with no fight and no shame?’

‘I am, for Orm Ruriksson.’

There was murmuring at that. Thorkel was a seasoned fighter, a good axeman and I was, as Ulf-Agar yelped out, only a stripling.

‘A stripling who killed a white bear,’ my father snarled back at him. ‘I don’t recall any tales of your doings, Ulf-Agar.’

The little man’s dark face went darker still and I knew then what Ulf-Agar’s curse was – that of legend. He wanted one to live after him; he was jealous of those who had what he sought and could not steal.

He was welcome to it, I said to myself, since it was a lie and shame made me hide it from everyone’s sight, though it sickened me.

Einar stroked his chin, pondering. ‘It’s hard to give up a good man for an untried one. That’s why we fight. How do we know what we get if we don’t see newcomers fight?’

Thorkel shrugged. ‘No matter what he is like, he will fight better than me, for I do not want to fight at all. Not against the Christ-followers, for my woman in Gotland is one and I promised her – swore an Odin-oath – that I would not raid their holy places. So best if I leave, for if that is the way Birka’s thoughts are going, I cannot go with them.’

Einar scowled at that. ‘You swore an oath to us all, Thorkel. Is that to be overturned by a promise to a woman? Is your oath to us less than that to a woman?’

‘You have never met my wife, Einar,’ said Pinleg gloomily, his wiry body swathed in a huge cloak. ‘Breaking an oath to her is not done lightly.’

Everyone who knew Pinleg’s woman laughed knowingly. Before Einar could answer, Illugi Godi rapped his staff on a stone and there was silence.

‘It is not a promise to his wife,’ he said sternly. ‘It was an oath to Odin. However stupid that may have been, it is still an oath to Odin.’

‘Our oath is made to Odin,’ Einar argued and Illugi frowned.

‘Our oath is made to each other, in the sight of Odin. Thorkel’s own Odin-oath may be truer, but I am thinking he must live with the consequence of swearing too many oaths. Anyway, he does not break his oath to the rest of us if one stands in his place.’

There was nodding agreement to that and Einar shrugged and turned to me. ‘Well, you take the place of a good man, Orm Ruriksson. Make sure it was worth the trade.’

I stepped forward as bid and clasped Thorkel’s forearm. He nodded at me, then moved off.

And that was it. I was now part of the Oathsworn of Einar the Black.

Later, I saw Thorkel and my father head to head in conversation and something niggled at me and worried and gnawed until I had to voice it.

‘You arranged it,’ I accused and, to my astonishment, my father grinned and nodded, putting a finger to his lips.

‘Aye. Thorkel wanted to go, has done for a time. He has an Irish woman in Dyfflin, which is just across the water from here, but made no Odin-oaths over her. By Loki’s arse, what sane man would do that, eh?’

‘Why does he want to leave?’

My father frowned at that and self-consciously scrubbed his chin. ‘Tales of Atil’s treasure,’ he answered gruffly. ‘Thorkel believes it foolishness, thinks Einar’s thought-cage is warped.’

‘Why didn’t he say that, then?’ I answered, with all the stupidity of youth.

My father batted my shoulder – none too gently, I thought – and answered, ‘You don’t say such things to the likes of Einar, unless you have a head start and fast feet, or are prepared to fight. No, Thorkel wanted out when he got here and didn’t want to fight for it and didn’t want to lose all his stuff.

‘This way, he gets to leave safely with a bag of hacksilver – and you get a good sea-chest, a spare set of clothes and a decent shield.’

‘I have nothing—’ I began and he clasped my forearm, his eyes gleaming in the darkness.

‘I did little enough for long enough,’ he said. ‘I need take big strides to catch up and I will not make old bones on a farm now, I am thinking. So I will spend my shares how I choose.’ He paused then and added, ‘Keep your lips fastened round Einar. He is a dangerous man when his brows come together.’

So, in the star-glimmered dark before dawn, I found myself assembled with the others, sword in hand, clutching Thorkel’s shield with its swirling design of rune snakes, shivering and sick to the pit of my stomach.

We helped shove the Fjord Elk back off the shingle before the tide went out and stranded it there for hours. My father, of course, was staying behind since he was shipmaster and Pinleg would need him if they came under attack. So was Valgard, in case the ship was damaged. The eight others who stayed were hard enough men, but were all those who, for one reason or another, were not the fastest on their feet.

I was surprised that Skapti was going with the main body – not that I was going to say aloud that he was too fat to move fast – and more surprised than that to see him wearing a mail hauberk. A few others had mail, too, but had left off the padding of spare tunics usually worn beneath it.

Later, of course, I learned that no clever man expecting a fight and having good mail will willingly give it up and, since the easiest way of carrying it is to wear it, that’s what they did.

The two who were leaving said their farewells, hefted their bundles and packs and struck off in the opposite direction from the one we would take. By the time we reached the Christ temple, they would be far enough away not to be considered part of the act. If they moved fast, of course.

Ulf-Agar had unrolled his mail from the fleece it was kept in, the sheep-grease fending off the rust. I thought to try to mend the rift between us and stepped forward to offer a helping hand as he hefted the ring-heavy mail by the shoulders.

Instead, he slapped my hand away and scowled. This was too much and I felt my hackles rise. Then Illugi Godi stepped between us and ushered me away, talking the while as if nothing had happened.

‘Good sword you have there, Orm Ruriksson. Here’s a tip, though: run it through the fleece of one of those fresh-killed sheep a few times. It’s been splashed on by the sea and that rots metal faster than anything I know. Really, you need a sheath for it, but not a soft leather one, since that rots the metal fast, too. Better one made from wood, with a sheepskin lining. That way you can use the sheath as a good club if you have to …’

Out of earshot, he clasped my shoulder in friendly fashion and glanced back to where Ulf-Agar’s tousled head was emerging from his mail, his arms flailing. ‘You meant well, but I fear you’ve made things worse. It’s a thing among mail-wearers that if you can’t put it on or take it off unaided you shouldn’t have the stuff. So you just insulted him.’

‘I didn’t know,’ I said, my heart sinking.

‘I think he knows that,’ answered Illugi Godi, ‘but it won’t help. Some evil gnaws him, and until he beats it to a pulp you and he will always be glaring. Unless you can fight him, I’d steer away wherever possible.’

My father came up as Illugi strode away and, at his questioning look, I told him what had happened. He stroked his chin and shook his head. ‘Illugi is a good man, so you can take his advice. Mostly. Like us all, he has his reasons for being in the Oathsworn.’

‘What are his?’ I demanded and he shut one eye and squinted at me quizzically.

‘You want to know a lot. He thinks Asgard is under siege from this White Christ and our gods are asleep.’

‘And you? What are your reasons?’

He scowled. ‘You want to know too much.’ Then he forced a smile and produced a round leather helmet. ‘One of Steinthor’s spares. He picked it up last year, but can’t wear it himself.’

It looked fine to me – a little too big, no fastening strap and a nice metal nasal. ‘Why can’t he wear it?’

My father tapped the metal nose protector. ‘He’s a bowman. Blocks your sighting, does a nasal. Bowmen all wear helmets without them. And no mail – even half-sleeves snag the string. That’s why they stay well out on the edges of a fight and pick people off.’ He spat. ‘No one likes bowmen – unless they are your bowmen.’

We clasped hands, forearm to forearm.

‘Stay safe, boy,’ he said and turned back to the ship.

Einar, helmeted and mailed and wearing two swords in his belt, shield slung over one shoulder, looked at the assembled men. He handed a spear with a furled cloth on it to skinny Valknut. ‘Move steady and quiet. Stay together – anyone who stops for a piss or a pull on the way risks being left on his own and we won’t be going back to find them. We hit fast and hard, collect what we came for and get out. Don’t try and carry off anything that weighs more than you. You’ll either fall behind or have to leave it in the end.’

He glanced around one more time and nodded, then took the head of our pack and led us at a steady, fast walk up through the trees, into the night-shrouded land, towards the first silvered smear of dawn.

It was a good pace, uphill. No one spoke and there was silence until the pace began to tell in louder, ragged breathing. That and the shink-shink of slung shields on mail, the swish of the bracken underfoot and the odd clink and creak of equipment was all that marked the passage of nearly fifty fully armed men.

After an hour, Einar stopped us. The sky was milk-white, shading to grey towards us. Somewhere behind that, a winter sun fought to claw over the thin, black edge of the world. Trees were outlined in skeletal black – and there was something else.

It was a dark bulk with a tower and the faint, reddish glow of a light. Everyone saw it; there was a general, hushed business of tightening straps, unshipping shields, hefting weapons.

Einar had us take to one knee, then sent Geir and Steinthor off into the night. Briefly silhouetted against the dawn sky for us, they would be invisible to any watcher from the tower. I rubbed dry lips, hearing my breathing magnified by the helmet’s cheekpieces into a rasp. That looked like a powerful strong building – and, as the light grew, you could see other, smaller buildings huddled round it.

Geir and Steinthor slid back. We all listened.

‘The light is on the gate in a wooden wall that stretches all round it,’ reported Geir, rubbing his dripping bag of a nose. ‘The gate is the only way in unless you want to go over seven feet of timbered fence. It was built for defence, was this place.’

He paused, for effect as it turned out, since Steinthor grinned and added, ‘But the bloody gate is wide and welcoming open. It’s been a long time since anyone attacked them. They have forgotten.’

‘A big stone temple and six outbuildings,’ Geir added, ‘all wattle and withy. A stable, for sure. Perhaps a smithy – I can smell the banked fire and tinsmith metal. There’s a good covered bread-oven. The others could be anything.’

Einar rubbed his nose and squinted. Then he shrugged. ‘One way in, so that simplifies the planning.’

He rose up and we followed. At a fast pace, we followed Geir and Steinthor, almost running through the bracken and, as we neared the gated wall, where the first rose-light of the rising sun touched the moss-gentled points of the timbered fence, we broke into a silent run, piling through the gate under the light set to welcome weary travellers.

Resistance was slight, almost none. By accident, Ketil Crow stumbled over the watchman, a slumbering man in brown robes, huddled in a little hut beside the gate. Ketil had turned aside and gone into it looking for loot, but couldn’t see anything in the dark.

Until the querulous voice revealed the watchman, he thought there was no one else in the building, which was so small and cramped he couldn’t get room to swing a slashing sword properly. Ketil Crow was flailing around, while the unseen watchman screamed and then the sword stuck in a beam and, cursing, Ketil Crow couldn’t get it out.

By this time, half the company had heard the commotion and, seeing his predicament, were howling with laughter. The watchman, crashing into Ketil and knocking him off his feet, stumbled out of the building, mad with fear and near flying in his panic.

That was when Valknut stepped forward and threw his hand axe, which smacked into the left side of the man’s forehead with a sound like dung thrown against a wall. The force flung him sideways and he fell on his back, gurgling like some strange, long-nosed beast, the blood welling out of the mess of his face in a growing pool.

Ketil Crow hurtled out of the building, dark with anger, and the jeers stopped as he swung this way and that. But, as the men congratulated Valknut on his throw – it was generally agreed to be a fine one, since it wasn’t a balanced throwing axe – there were chuckles and sniggers in the darkness at Ketil’s expense.

Wordlessly, Valknut put one foot on the dead man’s bloody chest and, with a flick of his wrist, removed his axe. It came away with a small sucking sound and Valknut, with a brief, blank look at Ketil Crow, wiped the blood and brains on the dead man’s brown robe and strode off, axe in one hand, spear with furled banner in the other.

Ketil Crow caught me looking and I blinked at his expression, then wisely found the stone temple with the tower more of interest and trotted towards it.

It was, it seemed, one large hall, with an impressive flagged floor. The tower held no archers, nothing more than a bell. There were two brown-robed figures sprawled, spewing blood on the flagstones. Half a dozen others were penned at the far end of this hall by the rest of the Oathsworn and Einar was head to head with Illugi Godi.

It was a strange place and I gawped. It had benches and a sacrificial altar, which was where most of the people were. Behind the altar, above their heads, was a window, filled with pieces of coloured glass in the shape of a man wearing, it seemed, a glowing hat. The walls, too, were painted with strange scenes.

The dawn light that spilled from that window was like Bifrost, the rainbow bridge, and it stained the altar. I did not know it then, but such a window was as rare as teeth on a hen – I did not see another until the Great City, Constantinople.

But it was nothing next to what was below it, stuck on the wall. Two thick beams, one vertical, one horizontal, held the wooden figure of a man, hanging there by his hands. No, not hanging, I saw. Nailed, through his hands and his feet. He had some strange crown, which stuck spikes in his forehead, and what seemed to be another gaping wound in one side. It was a fine carving.

‘Is that their god, then?’ I asked Illugi Godi, much to Einar’s annoyance.

‘The son of their god,’ answered the priest. ‘The Romans stuck him on those poles, but the Christ-followers say he didn’t die.’

That was impressive. I had thought any god who allowed himself to be nailed to a bit of wood wasn’t up to much – ours were clever or strong fighting men, after all – but if he had survived all that and come out smiling, this Christ was to be reckoned with.

‘Finished?’ demanded Einar pointedly. Then he turned to Illugi Godi. ‘So where? You are the expert here, priest.’

Illugi Godi squatted, fumbled in his pouch and came up with his rune bones. I saw the brown figures flailing one hand back and forward on their chests, which seemed to be their way of warding off the evil eye. I laughed. Illugi wasn’t evil.

He cast; the bones tinkled. He took some fine white sand from his pouch and blew it off the palm of his hand towards the altar, then stood and smiled.

‘There,’ he said and pointed at the altar. As a hiding place, it wasn’t hard to work out – it was almost the only thing in the hov of this hall. And, I saw, the sand he had blown hadn’t settled neatly where the altar touched the flagstoned floor. It had sunk into the cracks, which meant it was hollow beneath. He was clever, was Illugi Godi.

Einar and Valknut circled it, but there was nothing: no handle, no mark of any kind. Puzzled, they were scratching their heads when Gunnar Raudi, wiser in the ways of hiding valuables, stepped up, leaned his shoulder into it and gave it a shove.

With a grinding sound, the altar slid back several feet, revealing a set of stone steps. A torch uncovered a small chamber and the contents were soon up and on the flagstones.

There was a thin silver plate, two metal cups – gold, Illugi said – and a couple of hollow silver columns, which Gunnar Raudi said were sticks for holding fat tallow candles. Strange to relate now, but I had never seen the like and was so marvelling at them I nearly missed the next wonders.

Geir came up from the chamber with two chests. The first was clearly the one Einar wanted, a fat, ornate effort about the size of a man’s head. The other was flatter; Geir held it up and turned it round. It was studded with coloured glass and had a huge clasp on it, which Geir snapped off easily, bit and announced admiringly: ‘Silver.’

Then, to my astonishment, the chest fell open in two halves and loads of leaves riffled. Geir turned it over and over while I stared, my mouth dropped open like a droop-lipped horse. ‘It’s full of leaves,’ I said, wondering. ‘With colours on them – and little animals and birds.’

‘It’s a book,’ said Illugi Godi patiently as Geir chuckled. ‘The Christ monks make them. It has their holy writings. Like runes.’

Not much, I thought scornfully. Runes were worked on stone, or wood, or metal; otherwise, how would they last? Geir ripped one of the leaves out to show me how this book thing worked and I heard a brown-robed man, one with silver hair, moan.

Steinthor, more practical, grunted with annoyance over something else. ‘No women, then?’

‘Christ priests don’t go with women,’ advised Illugi Godi and Steinthor shot him a hard glance.

‘Bollocks. I have tupped women before in these Christ places.’

‘There are women Christ priests,’ Illugi said patiently. ‘But they don’t go with men.’

‘Just as well,’ grunted Einar, cuffing Steinthor on the shoulder. ‘No time to plough any fresh furrows here and no one is dragging any shrieking women with us. Anyway, why are you here? Didn’t I tell you to make sure all these brown-robes were rounded up?’

As if in answer, the air was split with a massive ringing boom, followed by another. There was a moment of stunned panic, then Einar roared, ‘The bell. The fucking bell…’

Gunnar Raudi was first, spilling into the little chamber at the far end beneath the tower.

The defiant man in a brown robe lasted long enough for a second pull on the rope before Gunnar’s blow sprayed his teeth and blood and brains against the opposite wall. The bell, as if his ghost still tugged the rope, continued to boom a couple more times before swinging to silence.

In the main hov of the hall, the men were licking their lips, weapons up, uncertain and on edge. Steinthor, aware that he had put everyone at risk, shrugged apology, ducked hastily under Einar’s scowl and scurried off to scout.

Black-raging, Einar swept up the fat chest, indicated to a couple of men to pick up the rest, then turned to Ketil Crow and Ulf-Agar, jerking his chin at the huddled brown-robes. ‘Kill them, then join us at the gate. We’ll have to move fast now.’

I left, half looking back – Valknut pushed me impatiently through the door as the screams began.

Outside, the Oathsworn gathered silently together. No buildings had been torched, the ringing bell had interrupted that and someone said we should do it now, but Einar pointed out how long it would take to get a fire lit. ‘They’ll be coming after us,’ he growled. ‘Now we head for the Fjord Elk – and fast.’

With Geir and Steinthor running ahead, he led us off at a fast pace, almost on the edge of a trot. It was full daylight now, but overcast, smirring with rain. I noticed that the birds were mad with song.

We were halfway to the ship, perhaps a little more, labouring up a slope of red bracken, when they caught us up.

Skapti, huffing in the rear, suddenly yelled out and pointed behind us. We all stopped and turned; dark against the browns and withered greens, the horsemen came on, urging their mounts through the tangling bracken and gorse.

‘Top of the hill, form a line, three deep,’ roared Einar. ‘Move.’

The Oathsworn may have been stumbling and out of breath, but they knew their business. I was the only one who didn’t.

They slid into three ranks, the mailed men in front, the spearmen second and everyone else in the third. Einar saw me as he strode along the front. ‘Guard Valknut, young Orm. Sig, let them see whom they face.’

Valknut slid the thongs from the furled cloth on his spear. A banner spilled out, white with a black bird on it. I realised, with a sudden start, that it was the Raven Banner. I was about to fight under the Raven Banner, as in a saga tale.

Valknut hefted his axe in his free right hand and grunted at me, ‘On my left, Bear Slayer. You are the shield I don’t have.’

I nodded. Geir and Steinthor were on the same side, the left flank of the line. On the other, Skapti took station, where there was room to swing his long Dane axe.

Einar chuckled, wiping the drips from the edge of his helmet. ‘Not horse, these. Fyrdmen on ponies. You won’t have to face mailed horse today, just the fat levy of some local noble.’

I watched the horsemen dismount; saw that most of them were in leather and had shields, spears and axes. Just like us.

One of them, mailed and shouting, bullied them into three ranks, again like us. There were a lot of them, perhaps twenty or so more than we were and they overlapped us. I heard the swish of Skapti’s axe, testing range.

The rain was invisible and soaking. We dripped, waiting in the bracken and heather.

Einar shook rain from his eyes and grunted, peering at the men below us. They were in no hurry to come at us and, suddenly, Einar strode over to Skapti. They had a brief, grunting conversation, then Skapti simply dropped his axe and hauled out the heavier of the two swords he wore, the one he called Shieldbreaker. Einar fell in behind us.

Skapti strode to the front, swinging his shield on to his arm. ‘We can’t wait. That’s what they want and they will be bringing up more men, I am thinking, before they take on the Raven Banner.’

There was a general mutter of agreement and Skapti nodded. ‘Boar snout. We have to break their shieldwall here, scatter them.’

He strode several paces to the front and everyone seemed to slide into position like a cunning toy. Shields overlapped, they crowded into a wedge, shoulders hunched into the shields, pushing. In front, Skapti pushed back, as if trying to hold them, his feet skidding on the bracken, a delicate balance between strength and footwork.

Balked, the men shoved; the power of the wedge grew as it moved downhill, with Skapti as a brake. With nowhere to go, I fell in at the rear, still with Valknut.

About twenty paces from the line of the fyrdmen and their overlapped shields, Skapti roared something and the men behind increased their effort. Skapti took two, three steps, raised his shield, lifted his legs off the ground and was shot forward, a huge battering ram at the point of the boar snout.

The fyrdmen’s shieldwall smashed apart; men were flung sideways. The Oathsworn were in among them then, the fight a grunting, flailing, slipping, sliding mess of whirling steel and blood and flying bone.

On the fringes, some of the fyrdmen dashed forward; two arrows spanged off their shields and they stopped, seeing Geir and Steinthor nocking fresh ones. They huddled behind their big round shields and backed off, all save two, who came on, heading for the Raven Banner and Valknut.

And me.

Valknut backed off a pace, hefted the axe and then hurled it. It cannoned off one man’s shield, spinning through the air into the bodies behind.

With a triumphant roar, he came stumbling at Valknut, who stuck the Raven Banner pole firmly in the ground, whipped out a long seax and, ducking under the swing and the man’s shield, kippered him open with a swipe along the belly. He was still running when his stomach opened and all the blue-white coils fell out like rope, tripping him.

The other one came at me. I was petrified … but I weathered his first rush; I felt his sword whack on my shield, bounce off the metal rim and just miss my nose.

He hacked a backstroke and, before I knew it, I had done what Gudleif and Gunnar Raudi had taken pains to teach me … I slammed the blunt point of my sword at the bottom of his shield, the force of the blow tilting it forward and exposing the whole shoulder and side of his neck.

Then I carved a stroke downward before he could recover. The blade going in felt no different to chopping wood, since it smashed into the shoulder and collar bone, half carving his arm from the socket.

He gave a shriek and fell away, dropping his sword, clutching at the wound as if to fasten the gaping sides together. I stood there, scarcely believing what I had done, my mouth gawping like a dead cod.

‘Finish him,’ growled Valknut and I looked at him, then back to the wounded man. No, not man. Boy. He fell, lay on his back, chest heaving, no longer even groaning. The blood flowed thickly out of him; by the time I was peering at him, the rain was pooling in the hollows of his unseeing eyes. No older than me …

I felt a smack on the back and whirled, sword up.

Steinthor held up a placating hand, chuckling. ‘Easy, Bear Killer. That was well done, as neat as any I have seen – but don’t gawp at it or you’ll end up lying beside him.’

But the fight was over. The fyrdmen – those not groaning or lying like little sacks on the sodden ground – were running, not even waiting to take their horses. The leader was down, carved up under the combined efforts of Einar and Skapti. Panting men knelt or stood, gasping, legs apart, heads down. One or two, I saw, were retching.

Steinthor expertly patted the corpse beside me, gave a grunt of satisfaction and came up with two small slivers of hacksilver and an amulet in the shape of a cross. He tossed the amulet to me and stuffed the silver down his boot. ‘Keepsake,’ he chuckled and moved on to the next.

Einar was cleaning his sword. Skapti Halftroll was moving among the bodies, making sure the fyrdmen were all dead.

Illugi fed something from a flask to one of our own, who lay shivering in the rain, hands clutching his stomach. Blood leaked between his fingers.

‘Tally?’ demanded Einar.

Skapti thumbed one side of his nose and snotted. ‘Eight of them dead, more who will feel how bad their wounds are when the fear that keeps them running wears off.’

‘Us?’

‘A few wounds. Harald One-eye’s serious; someone carved half his foot off, so we’ll have to carry him. And Haarlaug has a belly wound,’ answered Illugi.

‘Bad?’ asked Einar. Illugi paused, moved to the groaning man, knelt, sniffed and then came back to Einar.

‘Soup wound, I think, though it will take an hour to be sure. We’ll have to carry him and that will kill him, for sure.’

Einar stroked his wet chin and then shrugged. He drew out his short seax and moved to Haarlaug. Around him the other men collected themselves, stripping what they could find from the dead. The soft, silent, smirring rain dripped.

‘Haarlaug,’ said Einar. ‘You have a belly wound. Illugi Godi fed you some of his soup and he can smell it even so soon after.’

He let the words hang there. The man grunted, as if hit afresh. His face, already pale, went to milk and he licked dry lips. Then he nodded. He knew what it meant to smell Illugi Godi’s soup from your opened belly.

‘Make sure Thurid, my wife, gets what’s mine,’ he said. ‘And tell her I died well.’

Einar nodded. Someone thrust a seax at him and he took it, then wrapped Haarlaug’s hand tight round the hilt.

‘Give my regards to all those who have gone before,’ he said. ‘Say to them, “Not yet, but soon,” from me.’

Those nearest muttered their own prayers and nodded at Haarlaug, commending him to Valholl. Now that the moment was on him, though, his eyes rolled in panic and his mouth started working.

Einar was swift, lest Haarlaug lose hold and let his fear ruin his dignity. The short seax flashed across the white throat, leaving a red line and he thrashed and kicked for a few minutes, eyes bulging and Einar holding him, one hand on his mouth, the blood soaking his sleeve.

Then he stopped and Einar placed one hand over his face, closing Haarlaug’s wild eyes, leaving it there for a moment, kneeling. Illugi Godi chanted softly, almost under his breath. The blood pooled under Haarlaug’s lolled head.

Then Einar rose up. ‘Strip him quickly, then we go. Ottar, Vig, get the mail and weapons off that leader and whatever valuables he has – there’s a torc round his neck that looks like silver. Finn Horsehead, fetch one of those horses and load Harald on to it. Move.’

In seconds, it seemed, before I had even plodded back to the top of the hill, Haarlaug was a pale, sad shape in the red hillside, laid neatly on his back, hands clasped on the deer-horn hilt of the knife on his chest, the only thing they left. The rest struggled wearily up the hill, clutching a shirt, breeks, boots – even his woollen socks. Ottar and Vig panted to the top, one draped with a mail shirt, the other clutching a sword and an extra shield. Ottar looked back, hawked and spat. ‘No way to leave one of our own,’ he said. ‘He should have been decently howed up.’

I saw the other huddled, still shapes. I couldn’t even tell, now, which was the one I had killed.

‘Move,’ growled Einar and, as he passed, slapped me lightly on the shoulder. ‘Good fight, boy. You’ll do.’

And that was it. Twenty minutes later we were panting and gasping down through the trees and out on to the wet-black shingle, stumbling up to where the Fjord Elk swung.

I remember that I was more afraid trying to board her than I was in the fight, since she was so far out we had to wade to our chests and, if it hadn’t been for them throwing out the boarding plank, none of us would have got on board at all.

As it was, between rain and sea, I landed on the deck, miserable, wet, chafed, shivering and more tired than I had ever been in my life. I couldn’t believe that anyone had any strength left, but the same ones who had just fought dumped their weapons, slithered out of mail, took oars and worked the Elk out into the wind, where the sail was hauled up and we were off.

And all the time, I saw the boy’s eyes, the rain filling them like tears, felt Einar’s hand slap my shoulder and heard him say, again and again: ‘Good fight, boy. You’ll do.’




Chapter Three (#u40e66c95-74fa-5724-a4b9-65c526f2b71f)


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was clearer than that, of course. Easy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Einar nodded, considering.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Who is telling this?’

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

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

‘Cursed,’ I pointed out and he nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he was gone, just like that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Harbours?’ I ventured.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Were you remembering, or just thinking?’

‘Thinking,’ he answered.

Illugi grunted. ‘What thought?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Where is Brondolf?’ Einar demanded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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