The Prow Beast

Afterwards, when others had rolled into skins and cloaks, I sat with Finn listening to Botolf snore – alone by the fire, for he had given his space beside Ingrid to Helga and Aoife and the other bairns, for better warmth. In the dark, I heard Aoife cooing softly to Cormac to soothe him – beautiful boy, she said. Where’s my lovely boy, white as an egg, then?

‘If it comes to it,’ Finn said eventually, ‘I will fight Randr Sterki.’

‘Why you?’ I countered and he shrugged and looked at me, half-ashamed, half-defiant. The memory of him humping away at the dying wife of Randr Sterki slunk sourly between us.

‘I killed his boy,’ I said sourly. ‘So it should be me. Red Njal, I am remembering, killed others of his family. Perhaps we should take it in turns.’

Botolf woke himself with a particularly large snore and sat up, groaning and wiping sleep from his eyes.

‘Odin’s arse…my shoulder and back hurt. I hate sleeping on the ground in winter.’

‘A hard raiding man like you?’ snorted Finn. ‘Surely not.’

‘Shut your hole, Finn,’ Botolf countered amiably, sitting up and wincing. ‘The worse thing is the itch in my wooden leg.’

There was silence for a moment; a last log collapsed and whirled sparks up.

‘What are we going to do?’ demanded Botolf suddenly.

‘About what? Your itching log-leg?’ I asked and he waved his arms wildly in all directions.

‘All this. The queen and weans.’

‘We take them to Vitharsby and then east to Jarl Brand,’ I told him.

‘Just like that?’ Botolf snapped. He rubbed his beard with frustration. ‘Hunted by toad-licking wearers of bear and wolf skins? And at least a ship’s crew of hard raiders? With a woman about to pup and half the bairns in the country?’

‘One of them your own,’ Finn pointed out poisonously. ‘Another is mine. Do we begin throwing them over our shoulder as we run, then? We will start with Helga Hiti.’

I saw Botolf’s face twist and frown as he fought to work all this out, only succeeding in fuelling more anger.

‘What do you think we should do?’ I asked and it was like throwing water on a sleeping drunk. He blinked. He blew out through pursed lips and surfaced with a thought, triumphant.

‘We ought to leave the queen and ride off with our own,’ he declared. ‘We could go to Thordis’ place, which will be Finn’s when he marries her. What are the fate of kings and princes to us, eh?’

It was astounding. I remembered Jarl Brand had said something of the same when we were in Serkland, only it was about the back-stabbing in high places that went on in the Great City. It never stopped amazing me, the things that stuck in Botolf’s thought-cage.

‘She is our queen,’ Finn growled, flailing with one hand, as if trying to pluck the words he needed out of the air. ‘We have to protect her. And Thordis’ steading is only a short ride from Hestreng – if it was not behind the hills here, you could probably see it burn.’

I looked at him, but if the thought of everything he might one day own going up in smoke bothered him, he did not betray it by as much as a catch in his voice. Botolf flung his arms in the air.

‘Protect the queen? Why? She would not give the likes of me the smell off her shit,’ he grunted sourly. ‘And how do we protect her? There is barely a handful of us.’

‘We are Oathsworn,’ Finn declared, thrusting out his chin. ‘How can we do anything else but guard a queen and the heir to the throne of Eirik the Victorious?’

There was silence then, for fair fame had closed its jaws and even Botolf had no answer for the grip of them. We were Oathsworn, Odin’s own, and would die before we took one step back, so the skalds had it. Not for the first time I marvelled at how fame had shackles stronger than iron to fasten you to a hopeless endeavour.

‘Might be a girl,’ Botolf offered sullenly and I shook my head. Thorgunna had done her hen’s egg test and it had come up as a boy, no mistake. I said as much.

‘Ah well,’ Finn said as Botolf continued to glower. ‘Perhaps you have the right of it, Botolf. I never did care much for wealth and glory; after all, we have all we need, though rebuilding Thordis’ place – if it is burned and if I wed her – will be expensive and all gold is useful.’

He stretched, winked at me where Botolf could not see and farted sonorously.

‘Anyway,’ he went on. ‘Once I have a ship under me I am a happy man – so perhaps we should tether the queen here like a goat and head for safety.’

‘Aha!’ Botolf declared triumphantly, looking from me to Finn and back. Then he frowned.

‘What wealth and glory?’

I shrugged, picking up from Finn as he looked wickedly at me from under his hair, pretending to wipe a scrap of fat-rich fleece carefully up and down The Godi.

‘The usual stuff,’ I said. ‘Meaningless to the likes of us, who have silver and fame and land enough already.’

‘I have no land,’ Botolf growled and I felt a pang of shame, for I had known this was a fret for him, since Ingrid constantly nagged and chafed him over it, wanting him to be first in his own hall rather than just another follower in mine. That was why I had mentioned it.

‘Oh, aye,’ I said, as if just realising it, then shrugged. ‘Still. We would have to bring the queen and bairn safe back to King Eirik before he showered us with rings and praise and odal-rights on steadings – after all, it is his first-born and the heir to his wealth and lands. What would he not give for such a safe return? But – too dangerous, as you say. Better to cut and run, pick up the pieces of our old lives once these hard raiders have gone.’

There was silence, broken only by the rain hissing in the dying fire and the snores of the sleepers nearby.

‘Would they really give us land?’ Botolf asked after a while.

‘Aye, sadly, for we are men of the sea, after all,’ Finn replied. ‘Still – skalds would write whole sagas about you.’

‘Fuck that,’ Botolf grunted. ‘I have such sagas already. You cannot graze goats on a saga. And for a man of the sea, Finn Horsearse, you are talking of steadings readily enough.’

He was silent for a moment and I decided enough was enough; somewhere, through the rain mist, dawn was racing at us. I half rose and Botolf looked up and spoke.

‘Do you think we can win against ulfhednar?’ he asked suddenly. Finn laughed, quiet and savage; I sat down again, chilled by the term, which was used for madmen in wolfskins.

‘Have we ever been beaten?’ Finn demanded.

Botolf considered it for a moment, then stood up, nodding and serious.

‘Then you are right. We are Oathsworn. We never run from a fight and this is our queen. I am with you, for sure. Now I am off to a warm bed, if I can squeeze in between bairns.’

Finn watched him stump off into the dark beyond the fire and shook his head wearily.

‘By the Hammer – there are stones with more clever than him.’

We both knew, all the same, that all Botolf had needed was an excuse to do what he already knew to be right, to have someone persuade him to it.

Then Finn turned to me, sliding The Godi back into the sheath.

‘Do you think we can beat them?’ he asked.

We had to. It was as simple as that. I said so and he nodded, rising and heading off for his own bed, leaving me with fire-shapes and weariness.

Thorgunna, when I went to her, was awake, sitting hunched up and wrapped in blankets and almost under the wagon in which the queen of all the Svears and Geats groaned and gasped. Nearby, Kuritsa huddled under a cloak – not his own, I fancied – under the canopy and out of the rain and his black eyes watched me arriving. He was a thrall and his name meant ‘chicken’ because, when I had bought him, he had a shock of hair like a cock’s comb before it was cut to stubble.

‘No-one sleeps tonight,’ I said, trying to be light with it. Thorgunna pulled me down beside her, tenting me under her cloak and blankets, giving me her warmth. Her head was heavy on my shoulder.

‘Kuritsa just arrived,’ she said. ‘The two who ran off with him are still missing and Kuritsa does not know where they are. But he killed a man, he says.’

That was news and I sat up. Kuritsa sat up, too, looking warily at me from out of the cave of his face.

‘You killed a man,’ I said to him and he nodded uneasily; I was not surprised at his wariness, since thralls found with weapons were almost always killed outright.

‘I took his little knife and killed him,’ he said, almost defiantly. ‘Then I took his bow and shot at his friend, but it was dark, I was hasty and I am out of the way of it. I missed.’

He produced the bow and three arrows, thrusting them towards me, his square, flat-nosed face proud. He grinned.

‘I was not always a thrall,’ he said. ‘I hunted, in my own land.’

I looked at him; he was thin, dark-eyed, dark-haired and far from his own lands, somewhere in the Finnmark – yet he had a tilt to his close-cropped chin that would have had him beaten if matters were different. I told him to keep the bow, that he would need it sooner or later.

Kuritsa blinked at that, then smiled and held the weapon to his chest as if it warmed him.

‘They hunt in fours,’ he offered suddenly. ‘One of the ham-ramr and three with him, tracking and offering him their shields. I had the favour of gods when I found two trackers and no ham-ramr.’

I looked at him; the word ham-ramr was an interesting one, for it was used on a man who changed his shape in a fit that also gave him great strength and power. Small wonder, then, that all the thralls had run off screaming – and more power to this one, who had not. Yet Thorgunna muttered under her breath, something about the direness of arming a thrall.

‘You should sleep,’ I told her and had back the familiar scorning snort.

‘I am too old to enjoy cold nights and wet ground,’ she replied. ‘Still – this will make your son into a raiding man, for sure, since it seems that is all his lot.’

I ignored her dripping venom and put my hand on her belly then, feeling the warmth, fancying I could feel the heat of what grew in it. I thought, too, about what it would feel like to lose what was snugged up in the harbour of that belly – and the belly, too. All hopes and fears buried in the earth, given to Freyja and, with them, a part of me in that cold, worm-filled ground.

What was left, I was thinking, would be a draugr, a walking dead man, with only one thought left – revenge. Like Randr Sterki. I knew he would never stop until he was killed.

‘Do you have a plan?’ Thorgunna demanded.

‘Stay alive, get to Vitharsby, then to Jarl Brand.’

‘Death holds no fears for me,’ she said suddenly. ‘Though I am afraid of dying.’

‘You will not die,’ I said and felt, then, the rightness of what had to be done. She looked at me, a little surprised by the strength and depth of my voice; I was myself, for I thought a little of Odin had entered into it, even as he placed the thought in me as to what to do next.

FIVE

Dawn was whey and pewter, sullen with the promise of rain, and we were packed and moving even before it had slithered over the mountains we had to cross.

Jasna levered herself out of the wagon the queen lay in alongside bairns and supplies, for we had little room for those who could not walk or keep up; looking at the fat thrall-woman I was not sure she would manage with all that weight on her splay feet, but, if she felt the pain of trudging, nothing showed on her broad scowl of a face. The Mazur girl swayed alongside her, a skald-verse of walking, as if to show the fat woman in even worse light.

‘Let us hope that Jasna can keep up,’ grunted Thordis venomously, a squalling Hroald sling-wrapped round her. ‘The horses will be grateful the longer we keep her out of a wagon.’

‘And the walking will melt her,’ added a smiling Ingrid, popping Helga into the wagon, where Cormac already sat, gurgling, Aoife looking after all of them and the soft-groaning queen. The cart lurched; the queen moaned.

‘She will not suffer that long,’ muttered Jasna to me in her harsh attempt at Norse. ‘This first birthing time is bad for her. My little Sigrith cannot eat anything but sweet things and I have been feeding her hot milk and honey all night.’

I wondered if it had been spoon and spoon about. Precious little chance of that from now on, I thought, turning away to where Finn and Botolf stood with the limp-footed stallion. Little Toki was there, holding the head of it, for he had a way with horses – and, to my surprise, so was Abjorn and the other five men of Jarl Brand, all ringmailed and well-armed. Abjorn had his helmet cradled in the crook of one arm and a stone-grim look on his face.

‘We will come with you,’ he said, then looked from one man to another and back. ‘There is something we must ask.’

I did not like it that they were all here and not with the struggling column, grinding a way up the mountain pass road – but what we were about to do would not take long.

There was little ceremony. We climbed a little way, to where a flat stone sprawled up above the road and into the realm of the alfar; whom some call Lokke; men hissed now and then when something flickered at the edge of their vision, or when the sun glimmered in a certain way on water, for they knew that it was Lokke, the Playing Man, the alfar no-one ever saw properly – or wanted to.

I kept my heart on my wish and my head up to the sky, away from the glitter of unnatural eyes in the moving shadows. My business was with Odin.

I drew the sword – a good blade, but not the nicked one rescued from the Elk. That was Kvasir’s old blade and I would not be parted from that willingly, yet this was still a good sword which we had taken from the men we had killed near our rune stone and so a rich gift for Odin. I heard the men breathe out heavily, for it was known that the alfar did not care for iron, as I plunged it in the soft, brackened turf in front of the stone. Toki brought the limping stallion up to me.

It snuffled in the palm of my hand hopefully, but found nothing and had little time for the disappointment of it; I plunged a sharpened seax into the great pulse in its neck and heard it squeal and jerk, the iron stink of blood adding to the fear. It kicked and reared and Toki and I hung on to it, our weight forcing it still until the pulse of blood grew weaker and the stone and the sword blade dripped and clotted with it.

Men yelled out, fierce shouts of his name to draw Odin’s attention; Finn moved in and took the sharpened seax, began cutting off the rear haunches – all Odin wanted was the blood and the blade, he had little need of all the meat and the alfar needed none at all, nor clothing. Finn skinned it, too, waiting properly until I had made my wish aloud.

It was simple enough – a life for a life. Let everyone else survive this and take life from me, if one were needed. Men hoomed and nodded; I felt leaden at the end of it, for Odin always needed a life and there was never enough blood and steel to sate One-Eye.

‘So,’ Botolf said, ‘that was why you did not want to eat the horse. Deep thinking, Orm. I should have known better.’

‘A bad thing,’ growled Finn, ‘to bring your doom down on your own head.’

‘Randr Sterki will not stop until he is dead or we are,’ I answered; he knew why, above all the others and shrugged, unable to find the words to speak to me on it.

Abjorn stepped forward then, with a look and a nod to the men behind him.

‘Jarl Orm,’ he began. ‘We wish to take your Oath.’

I was dumbed by this; Finn grunted and found the words which were dammed up behind my teeth.

‘You are sworn already, to Jarl Brand,’ he pointed out and Abjorn shifted uncomfortably, with another glance to the men behind him for reassurance.

‘He gave us to Jarl Orm,’ he countered stubbornly. ‘And Jarl Brand is almost brother to Jarl Orm.’

‘He lent you,’ I offered, gentle as a horse-whisperer, not wishing to anger him. ‘Not gave.’

‘For all that,’ Abjorn pushed, his chin jutting out. ‘We have all agreed to ask – Rovald, Rorik Stari, Kaelbjorn Rog, Myrkjartan, Uddolf and myself.’

As he said their names, the men stepped forward, determined as stones rolling downhill.

‘This is foolish,’ Finn said, pausing in his flaying of the horse. ‘Jarl Brand will be angered by it and with Jarl Orm for agreeing to it. And what if they come to quarrel, what then? Who will you fight for?’

‘We will leap that stream when we reach it,’ Abjorn replied. Finn threw up his hands; a gobbet of fat flew off the end of the seax and splattered on the turf.

I knew why they wanted to take the Oath. They needed it. They had heard that Odin favoured the Oathsworn, held his hand over them and with all that snapped at their heels they needed to know that hand cradled them, too.

So I nodded and, stumbling like eager colts with the words of it, with the stink of fresh blood and the gleam of blot-iron in their eyes, they took it.

We swear to be brothers to each other, bone, blood and steel, on Gungnir, Odin’s spear we swear, may he curse us to the Nine Realms and beyond if we break this faith, one to another.

Afterwards, laden with horse meat – the head left on the stone for the birds to pick – we went back down to the path and hurried to catch up with the others.

Abjorn and the new-sworn men were cheerful, chaffering one to the other and with Botolf and even Toki, when they would not usually have looked twice at a scrawny thrall boy. They were so happy I felt sorry for them, knowing how the smell of blood and iron appeals to One-Eye even as the happy plans of men do not.

An hour later, the ulfhednar caught us.

I did not hear or see them at all, having my shoulder into the back of the rearmost wagon, my whole world taken up by the pothole the left rear wheel had sunk into and not wanting to have to unload it to get it out again. The rest of the column was further ahead, round a bend and out of sight.

So, with Botolf alongside, Finn and Kuritsa on either rear wheel and little Toki trying to get the sagging-weary horses to pull, we strained and cursed and struggled with it. Somewhere up ahead, round the next bend, the others laboured on.

‘Give them some whip!’ bawled Finn.

‘The fucking trail is too hard for this,’ Botolf grunted out and he was right; I had no breath to argue with him anyway.

Then Toki yelled out, a high, piping screech and we all stopped and turned, sweating and panting, to see the four men come round the bend behind us in the trail. It was moot who was more surprised by it.

‘Odin’s arse…’

Finn sprang for The Godi, sheathed and in the wagon; Botolf hurled after his axe, which was in the same place, but all I had was my seax and that was handy, snugged across my lap. But Kuritsa, who had said he had been a hunter in his own land, showed that he had been a warrior, too.

Three of the men wore oatmeal clothing, carried spears and axes and shields, but the fourth was big as a bull seal and had the great, rain-sodden bearcoat that marked him. He whirled and gestured; one of the others started to run back and Kuritsa sprang up on the top of one wheel, balanced and shot – the man screamed and pitched forward.

The bearcoat roared at another, then hefted his shield in the air, caught it by one edge and slung it, whirling in a one-handed throw that sent it spinning at us, like a wooden platter hurled by a woman gone past reasonable argument. Kuritsa, nocking another arrow, did not see it until it hit him, knocking him off the wheel before he could make a sound; he hit heavily and lay gasping for breath and bleeding.

We watched the messenger vanish round the bend and the bearcoat straightened slowly, hefting the bearded axe in one hand. The last man stood slightly behind him, licking his lips.

‘I am Thorbrand Hrafnsson,’ the bearcoat bawled out in a hoarse voice, spreading his arms wide, the great tangled mass of hair and beard matted so that his mouth was barely visible. His eyes were two beasts peering out of a wood.

‘I am a slayer of men. I am a son of the wolf and the bear,’ he roared.

‘I,’ said the man with him, ‘am not eager for this.’

He backed away, shield up but sword hand held high and empty. Thorbrand never even turned round when he spat a greasy glob of disdain.

‘I am known as a killer and a hard man, from Dyfflin to Skane,’ he bellowed, pointing the axe at us. ‘I am favoured by Thor. And you are Finn Bardisson, known as Horsehead, the one the skalds say fears no-one. And you are Orm Bear Slayer, who leads the Oathsworn and who found all the silver of the world. I see you.’

‘You will not see us for long,’ said Finn, hefting The Godi and stepping forward. ‘And if you have heard anything of us at all, you will know you are not as god-favoured as we are.’

‘What about me?’ demanded Botolf angrily. ‘I am Botolf, by-named Ymir. I am Oathsworn. What about me?’

‘You can be last to die, One-Leg,’ answered Thorbrand, ‘because you are a cripple.’

Finn and I moved in swiftly then, just as Botolf bristled like an annoyed boar and we balked whatever he had intended, shouldering him to one side, then moving right and left as Thorbrand flung back his head and howled out a great frothing cry.

Then he went for Finn, but it was a feint, for he suddenly cut back and, only having a little seax and closing on him with it, I was caught flat-footed on muddy scree – so much so that I skidded on my arse, which saved me; the axe hissed at what would have been hip height, save that I was on the ground. It thundered past my nose, big as a house and the wind of it fluttered my braids and beard.

Scrabbling away, I saw Finn dart past, slashing; Thorbrand, slavering madly, eyes red as embers, half fell, then turned like a bull elk at bay. Finn stopped and watched; Thorbrand started a run, but the leg was tendon-cut and would not work – he fell on one knee and rose up. Marvelling, I saw no blood and it was clear he felt no pain, but the leg would not work properly and Finn sauntered, thinking the man was finished. A normal man would have been.

He was ulfhednar and Finn should have known better, as I said later. Thorbrand simply hirpled forward in two great one-legged leaps and Finn, yelping, managed a block before Thorbrand’s bearded axe hooked The Godi, trapped it and flung it out of his hand.

Now Finn was weaponless and Thorbrand, like the bear whose hide he wore, growled and lurched, dragging one leg behind him, but closing fast on the hapless Finn.

I sprang forward, was hit by what seemed to be a boulder and bounced sideways, my head whirring; Botolf stumped down on the bearcoat and was almost on him when Thorbrand heard, or sensed it and whirled round, axe up, the slaver trailing from the edge of his mouth.

‘Cripple, am I?’ roared Botolf and grabbed the swinging axe in both hands, tearing it free, as if ripping a stick from a wean. ‘Now we are even matched.’

He flung the axe away from him. The great, stupid rock flung the axe away, then closed with Thorbrand as if it was some friendly wrestle at a handfasting. Finn scurried to find his sword and I sat up, trying to stop the world rocking and lurching as if we were all on a boat at sea.

They strained; Botolf suddenly took a step back and swung, the crack of his fist against Thorbrand’s ear loud as a whip – but the man was berserk and felt nothing, which fact Finn roared out as he picked up The Godi.

‘Feel this, then,’ grunted Botolf and he gripped and wrenched, so that Thorbrand was spun sideways, the great bear hide ripping free from him and left in Botolf’s hands. He flung it to one side.

‘Stand clear,’ yelled Finn, hefting The Godi.

‘Stand back,’ warned Botolf and went after Thorbrand, who had rolled over and over and now sprang up, as well as his useless leg allowed.

‘No bearcoat now,’ Botolf said, spitting on his palms. ‘More bare arse. Now we are evenly matched, skin to skin, leg to leg.’