He glanced up at Sidroc, as the latter knelt down to get a better look.
“The punch is iron,” Aki told him. “It helps fix the colour, the iron holds it.”
It made sense; dyers often used iron shavings as mordant to hold the coloured dye stuffs in the fabric they boiled.
“I would have a beast, too,” Sidroc said, after watching a few more jabs. “Can you do it?”
Aki blinked up at him. There was still much light in the sky to work. “What would you have?”
“What I have never seen – a dragon. One such as stories are told of. On my chest.”
Aki laughed. “It will be large, and it will hurt. But I will do it.”
Sidroc pulled off his tunic and lay back, and Aki began. First he used shears to snip Sidroc’s dark chest hair close to the skin. After this Aki outlined the design with the point of a burnt stick from the fire ring. The drawing began just beneath the collar bones, and fanned out almost to the shoulders. Then with his pouches of fine coloured dust before him, he got to work with the iron awl, kneeling at Sidroc’s side.
The pricking did indeed smart. As soon as Aki had made ten closely-spaced punctures, he sprinkled the pigment over the bloodied holes, rubbing it in well.
“What are you doing first?” Sidroc asked. He could see none of what was going on, only feel the progress of the jabbing into his skin.
“Always start with the head of any beast,” Aki answered, with another laugh. “You do not want the body writhing about, looking for its brains.”
Aki laboured until the light began to fade, and his eyes tired from the fineness of the work. “We will do more tomorrow,” he told Sidroc. “It will take three or four days to finish, but the outline is there.”
Sidroc too was ready for a pause from the ceaseless puncturing. A number of other men had wandered by, looking on at the progress, jesting at how reddened was the linen scrap Aki used to blot up the blood. Sidroc had no mirror-disc of polished silver, but Aki had a small one of copper. When he stood up Sidroc held it before him.
The first thing he saw was his own face, one long and narrow, marked by the deep scar travelling the length of his left cheek from eye to chin. He quickly canted the copper disc to his chest.
There lay an outline of a serpent-like dragon, with fangs never seen on either snake or wolf. The dark blue body of it coiled about the upper part of his chest, and the tail ended in a barb as fearsome as were the fangs it led with. The bruising and soreness he felt were well worth such a beast.
“I have red ochre, too, for the eyes,” Aki was telling him, tilting his head to where his pack lay.
Over the next few evenings Aki laboured over the design. He had asked as payment the handsome chain of braided silver Sidroc wore. Instead Sidroc gave him a stack of small silver coins for his efforts, whole coins stamped with the visage of the kings of the place, finds on the bodies of those he had killed. Yrling had a scale set, and the coins were equal in weight to the chain taken from the Saxon thegn. He could not give or trade anything from this first battle-gain he had earned; all from this first man he wanted intact. Yet Aki deserved rich reward for the dragon, now made part of Sidroc’s own flesh, and he was glad to give the coinage as he did.
It was said that dragons lived forever. Sidroc knew he could not, but this beast writhing on his chest gave silent witness to his own new life. He had thought he was going to die, or at best suffer the shame of falling prisoner. The shield-maidens had not pointed at him, and he saved himself through his craft. A spiralling dragon springing into flight over his heart suited his sense of re-birth.
“Sif!”
This was Une, calling out to where Toki stood on the margin of a small stream, combing out his still-wet hair. “Leave off combing your hair of gold, and gather wood with us.”
The oath Toki flung back at his summoner only made Une laugh. Toki did take pride in his long and yellow hair, and Une had often teased him by calling him after Thor’s golden-haired wife. But Toki slid his comb of ox horn into its wooden sleeve, jammed it into his pack, and scrambled back to the other side of the stream to join those plucking dried branches from the woodland floor.
Summer was at its height and with it the heat. It was the morning after a strike at a cluster of three farms, and though they had begun roasting the pigs they had carried off as soon as they arrived back at their camp, they had need of much more fuel to aid in the quick cooking needed before the flesh began to grow green.
The last tubs of butter they had were rancid, but with no bread to smear it on its loss could be dismissed. The farmstead of last night had been a poor one despite its size, its milk cows scrawny and likely dry, its rye and barley stores paltry. The ale they had found in a brew-shed was already souring. Even the four pigs they made off with were lean, and with nothing to lard the flanks as they roasted would be dry and tough.
The smell of smoke, reek of blood and the discarded entrails of the pigs all permeated the clearing they had settled in. The mingled odour of slaughter and fire was one more layer of the stench they lived with. The men themselves stank. Toki had not been alone in going for a wash. He was careful of his hair and did in fact spend as much time as a woman combing it; but the grime of so much sleeping out and rough living marked each of them. Common to all were ragged hair and beards, fingernails black with embedded dirt and blood, bodies sore from swift travelling and much fighting. Their teeth were easiest to keep up, for slender green twigs could be snapped from any tree and used to rub teeth and gums. Some still had combs, just as Toki had carefully kept his own by, or tweezers or tiny ear-scoops of bronze to clean their ears; all the kit that any free man would use about his person. But much had gotten lost, either during the storm aboard Death-day, or in the everyday movement from camp to ship to camp again. On the water they were crammed together on the decks of the two ships. They beached to make a strike, then with all speed took ship to safety, where they might eat and rest as they could.
Their clothing too had suffered. With no women amongst them, there was none to keep their tunics and leggings in good order, and to scrub them with washing-lye and pound them clean with wooden bats. Indeed, of these things they had none. Rips and tears went unmended. A few of the men were handy enough with needle and thread, using that kit provided by the Ribe sail-maker to make clumsy patches; but most depended on stripping the bodies of men they had killed to gain the clothing they needed.
It would be thus until Yrling found a place worthy of laying claim to. Then he would have a hall to fill with the men who now followed him, and women too, and thralls to do the work they did themselves. He would know the place when he saw it, one far enough inland to keep raiders such as himself from easy access to what he had won. Until then they would range up the coast, striking inland as far as rivers provided good farms to target, then returning to the North Sea for another day’s venturing.
Each night a watch was set of two men, relieved when the dark was at its deepest by another two. All shared in this guard duty, even Yrling, whose turn this night it was. When he was awakened by the man he was to relieve he went and joined a yawning Bjarne in his slow pacing about the camp site. Though the fire had burnt down to reddened coals, a half and lowering Moon hung in the skies, lending its light. Yrling and Bjarne had not been long at the watch when a rustle in the spreading branches of some young quickbeams made them both jerk their heads. They hoisted their spears, ready, but gave no alarm lest it be only a fox. Yrling took a few strides to the fire, poking it up with a cooking iron to give more light. Then he and Bjarne stood still, waiting. Out from the narrow track between the shaking quickbeams stepped Toki and Bue.
The scowl on Yrling’s face betrayed his rancour even before he spoke. These two must have crept off during the first watch of the night.
Toki had not remembered that his uncle would be taking the second watch, and his eyes opened wide at the sight of him.
“Uncle.” It was clear from Toki’s vo
ice the sight was unexpected. But Toki’s tongue was ever glib, and he determined his best defence was to speak first.
“We went back, looking for silver,” he said.
Those sleeping nearest were already rousing. Yrling’s taut response made them all lift their heads. Sidroc was on the other side of the clearing, but stood up.
“You went back. To the farm we struck at,” Yrling repeated.
Toki had his spear in his hand, and now set its butt end on the ground, as if tired. “Já,” he agreed. “And if we had found silver, we would have brought it to you.”
This claim did not assuage Yrling’s ire. His words were low, but the veins in his neck were starting in anger.
“That farm was my strike. You cross me by sneaking away, to loot it alone.” Yrling now let his eyes flick to he who had emerged with Toki. “Bue,” he said. He had no high opinion of this one from Yellow-sail, and in naming him nearly spat out the word.
His eyes went back to his nephew. “You are more stupid than I knew, Toki. Anyone could have met you there, warriors summoned by those who ran. If you had been caught they would force you easily enough to tell where we were. Your greed put us all in danger. And for what – you found nothing.”
Toki’s spirit would not be easily daunted, not before so many men watching him. He grinned. “We carry back nothing. But we found women.” He paused just a moment. “Some had returned.” Toki’s grin increased, and a few of the men looking on offered up gleeful hoots.
His uncle did not share in their approval. Toki’s lust, either for silver or for women, had endangered him.
“A woman will cause your death, Toki,” he warned. “But if you bring added danger to me, I will kill you myself before that day.”
The tone of voice in which this threat was issued silenced the sniggering surrounding them.
Even Toki straightened up, his grin fading from his face. He had been looking unblinkingly at his uncle’s shadowed face, but now his eyes slipped to the faces of others. It was awkward for all. Uncles often fostered their nephews, deepening the family bond with their sister’s sons, thus tying her kin more closely to the male line she had married into. It was more common for uncles and nephews to set off, either trading or raiding together, than it was for fathers and sons. And it was almost unheard of for an uncle to threaten his own nephew, yet they had all witnessed it. Most of these men liked Toki for his daring, his skill at the harp, his jesting and bawdy singing. Now he was being shamed by their war-chief. But they knew Toki had endangered them.
Toki looked across the fire to where Sidroc stood. The entreaty in Toki’s eyes was all too clear to Sidroc. He could not defend his cousin’s act, yet the threat hanging in the air must be addressed.
Every angry man felt his anger just; Sidroc knew this. And surely most of the men here agreed that Yrling was right in his ire. Toki never saw himself in the wrong, both Sidroc and Yrling had long experience of that. But he must try to shift the tension around the guttering fire. Sidroc would ask his cousin a question, and see how he made answer.
“Toki.” His voice was low, but carried strongly over the glowing bed of coals to where Toki stood by the trees. “Do you know why you have angered your war-chief?”
More than a little petulance was in his cousin’s response. “I was not caught back there, only here,” he answered.
This admission of wrongdoing was as close as any might get from Toki. Sidroc heaved a quiet sigh, and hung what he could on it.
“Já. But you were still caught. Do not forget that.”
They were off in the morning, pointing the prows of the ships North, rounding a vast curving landmass of forest. Late afternoon revealed a small cove with a sheltered place to beach. The next dawn found them awakening to explore the margins of the sandy strip. They were, as ever, hungry. There were several narrow tracks through the trees; one or more of these could lead to a nearby farmstead, hidden from sight by the greenwood. They pulled the ships a bit higher up the sand in answer to the rising tide. As he always did Yrling left men as guards, a total of twelve to keep the ships safe in their absence. One he pointed to was Bue.
More than fifty of them, spears and shields in hand, made their way up the broadest of the tracks. Bringing up the rear were Asberg, Jari, and Sidroc, last. Not knowing what they might find, they wore nearly all their armaments, despite the heat; swords and ring-shirts for those who owned them, helmets too, a knife at every waist. Une did not venture out without skeggox in hand, and a few others also carried this fearsome battle-axe. With as many men as they now were, sometimes little or even no fighting was needed when they appeared thus armed at the woven wattle gates of a farm. The families oftentimes fled upon seeing them, running only to gather babes too young to walk. But this was not what they found when Yrling and Une, at the lead, stepped through the stand of trees into a fronting pasture.
A farm it had been, now burnt nearly to the ground. A few blackened and still upright timbers marked the buildings of it, as did the margins of the remaining wattle fences. Whether their brethren had been here before them, or some cooking or smithing mishap had claimed the place they could not know.
They all filed out from the wood, looking across the high and uncropped grasses of the pasture. Yrling decided to near the ruins, and they spread out, keeping close watch on the more distant trees behind the holding. As they drew closer the smell of charred wood wafted to them. The fire could not have been long ago; a few days at most. Why the folk of the place had not returned to begin their rebuilding was a mystery, one Une voiced.
“They are dead, or taken as thralls,” Yrling supposed. They were now at the long edge of what had been the largest structure. No warmth rose from the pile of flaked and ashy roof supports covering the earthen floor of it. Small handfuls of time-bleached thatch, singed short, lay amongst them.
They lifted a few of the burnt joists, trying to see sign of a treasure-hole which had once been dug in the ground, one that bronze or silver bits had been secreted in. They found nothing.
They gave it up for what it was, a ruin holding nothing of worth. They would head back to the ships and be off; they needed food.
They retraced their steps, the leafy hardwoods over their heads making dim the way back to the beach. The forest floor they trod was mossy, thick and springy underfoot, and their legs brushed against the curling fronds of ferns as they traversed the narrow track. It was not a bright morning, and all about them took on a hue of soft green, shading to the deep browns and greys of rock and tree bark. The cool and green wood seemed a place utterly apart from the despoiled farm behind and the pristine and waiting blue-grey sea just ahead.
They stepped out on the beach. Death-day and Yellow-sail were gone.
Yrling and many others whipped their heads, checking to be certain they had come out upon the right cove. Another glance back to the sand told them they had.
Several bodies lay there, and they ran the distance to them. Just beyond, disturbed grains betrayed the trampled footprints of many men around the long and straight skid marks of the keels and hulls of two ships.
They scanned the horizon. No drekars in sight, but the cove they had beached on sat within a broad and curving promontory. Their ships might be just beyond that.
There was naught but stunned silence for the long moments required to take this in. Then Yrling let out with a stream of oaths that pierced the stillness. Only those too staggered to speak did not join him.
When he could draw breath he let out a final howl, his face tilted upwards to the heavens.
When he returned his gaze he found Jari and Sidroc at two of the bodies, turning them over. Asberg knelt at another, pulling the arm away from where it had fallen across the face. Yrling and Une strode over to them. A fourth body also lay there, one further off. All showed signs of combat. Most still held their shields, though they had been stripped of their spears and knives, and the two who owned them, of their swords. Gap was one of these
, the body furthest off, his opened mouth revealing the lack of his front teeth.
Yrling cudgelled his tumbling brain, recalling who he had set on the watch. There had been five from Death-day, and seven from Yellow-sail.
“Bue.” This was Toki. Bue was not lying on this beach. All the dead were men from Death-day.
Treachery had been repaid with treachery.
A call from the edge of the sand near the encroaching trees made them all look. It was one of the newest of their number, who had joined up with them at the fight at the coast-guard. He had discovered something, and was looking down at it.
They clustered about. A number of smooth grey beach stones, palm-sized, had been laid out with purpose. One long line was crossed at an angle with a shorter line slashed though. It formed the rune Nyd .
“It was Gorm,” the man told them; Gorm the war-chief from Aros whom they had abandoned. “He marks all his strikes with it.”
Those left as guards had been discovered by his passing ship. They had been given the choice to fight, or steal away with the ships. Bue and seven others had chosen the latter.
This finding prompted action from Yrling.
“Gorm of Aros,” he shouted, raising his arms in the air and facing the empty sea. He pointed his thumbs to direct his curse. “One-eyed Odin sees you! May Dauðadagr take you to your grave!”
Some of his men looked a long time at the rune-message, as if the mute stones themselves could tell more than the bald facts of the theft. Yrling took but a single, second glance at it, anger churning in his breast.
Nyd, repeated Yrling. Need; hardship. It stood also for Nothing. That was apt. They were stranded, and with no food stores, kit, or supplies. All they owned was what they had carried into the wood with them – their weapons. And their hunger, which also remained.
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