by Robert Low
‘Listeners at the eaves hear no good of themselves,’ Botolf intoned. Toki dropped from his perch, breaking the spell.
‘Sleep comes hard,’ Ref grunted, ‘too many farters and snorers in the hall.’
We all knew that was not the reason I was here, but I went along with the conspiracy, grunting agreement.
Ref, seeing the flames change colour, lifted his head. ‘Back to the bellows, boy,’ he called, but Toki kept staring – he pointed behind me, away into the dark land where I had set watchers and fire.
‘What is that light?’ he asked.
I did not need to turn, felt the sick, frantic heat of that warning beacon though it was miles away. When I spoke I stared straight at Botolf, so he would know, would remember what he had been told of Klerkon’s steading on Svartey.
‘That light is men who kill bairns and fuck their mother on a dead ox,’ I said, harsh as a crow laugh.
‘Men like us.’
Men like us, following their prow beast up the fjord in a ship called Dragon Wings, grim with revenge, hugging a secret to them with savage glee, for they did not want a fair fight, only slaughter.
You can only wear what the Norns weave, so we sent everyone else off into the mountains and worked the Elk out to meet Randr Sterki. Men struggled and died screaming battle cries and bloodlust there on the raven-black, slow-shifting fjord; the prow beasts bobbed and snarled at each other as men struggled and died in the last light of a hard day – and both sides found the secret of the Roman Fire that burns even water.
THREE
HESTRENG, after the battle
The vault of his head was charred to black ruin and stank, a jarring on the nose and throat but one which had helped bring me back to coughing life. My throat burned, my chest felt tight and my ears roared with the gurgle of water. It was night, with a fitful, shrouded moon.
I blinked; his hands were gone, melted like old tallow down to the bone and his scalp had slipped like some rakish, ratfur cap, the one remaining eye a blistered orb that bulged beneath the fused eyelids, the face a melted-tallow mass of sloughed brow and crackled-black.
‘Nes-Bjorn,’ said a voice and I turned to it. Finn tilted his chin at the mess; the claw of one hand still reached up as if looking for help.
‘Three ladies, over the fields they crossed,’ he intoned. ‘One brought fire, two brought frost. Out with the fire, in with the frost. Out, fire! In, frost!’
It was an old charm, used on children who had scorched or scalded themselves, but a little late for use on the ruin that had been Nes-Bjorn.
‘Came out of the sea like one of Aegir’s own draugr,’ Finn added. ‘Fire had seared his voice away and most of the breath in him. The gods alone know what kept him walking. I near shat myself. Then I gave him The Godi, for mercy.’
He raised the named sword in question and now I saw the raw-meat gape round the throat of the thing that had been Nes-Bjorn, while the wind hissed sand through the shroud of stiff grass, bringing the scent of salt and charred wood with it. Something shifted darkly and slid into a familiar shape that grinned at me and dragged me to sit upright with a powerful hand.
‘You swallowed half the fjord,’ rumbled Botolf cheerfully. ‘But you have bokked most of it up now, so you should be better.’
‘Better than the others,’ Finn added grimly, crouched and watchful and Botolf sighed and studied the thing next to him, while the sand pattered on it and stuck. It looked like driftwood.
‘Aye – poor Nes-Bjorn Klak will never run the oars again after this.’
I came back to the Now of it, realised we were somewhere in the dunes to the east of Hestreng. The charred wood smell came again, stronger on the changing wind and Finn saw my nose twitch.
‘Aye,’ he said, grim as weathered rock, ‘the Elk is burned and gone and good men with her. All of them, it seems to me, save us.’
‘I saw Hauk fall,’ I croaked and Botolf agreed that he had also seen Hauk die.
‘Gizur, too,’ Finn added mournfully. ‘He held on to the steerboard and told me he had made this ship and he would die with it. He did, for I saw at least two spears in him as I went over the side.’
‘Red Njal? Hlenni Brimill?’
Finn shrugged and shook his head. Botolf said, brightly: ‘Onund lives. I saw men drag him off up the beach.’
Finn grunted. ‘He will not be long delayed to a meeting with Hel herself then, for they will kill him for sure. That Roman Fire…it even spread to Dragon Wings and they had to beach it to throw sand on it. They tried water and that only made it worse.’
I struggled to sit up and to think, while the deaths of the Oathsworn were like turning stones, milling the sense and breath from me. Gizur and Hauk…ten years I had known them. And Hlenni Brimill and Red Njal, who had struggled through the Serkland deserts and the frozen steppe. All of them had sought out Atil’s treasure and thought they had won fair fame and fortune…truly, that hoard was cursed.
‘Roman Fire,’ I said hoarsely and Finn spat.
‘Fucking Greeks-Who-Call-Themselves-Romans,’ he said bitterly. ‘Who else would make a fire that burns even water?’
‘Bearcoats,’ I added and turned to where his eyes gleamed in the dark. My throat burned with sea water, making my voice raw.
‘When did Randr Sterki get them?’ I asked. ‘Bearcoats don’t roll up to the likes of him and announce they are his men until death – and not twelve of them. And you cannot buy pots of Roman Fire in some market, like honey, neither.’
‘What are you saying, Orm?’ Botolf demanded. ‘My head hurts and my friends are gone, so I am no good with riddles tonight.’
‘What he means is that there is more to this,’ Finn growled savagely. ‘More than Randr Sterki and his revenge.’
Botolf stirred, then shook his head.
‘Perhaps. I am thinking only that we have become what once we raided.’
No-one spoke, but the memories slithered to us, slimecold and unwelcome and Botolf, who had not been there but had heard some of it, let his massive shoulders slump. He looked at me, eyes white in the darkness.
‘I wish you had not spoken of the woman and the dead ox. Things were clearer to me out on the whale road, when we followed the prow beast and everything we owned was in a sea-chest.’
Finn’s head came up at the reference to the woman and the dead ox and he looked from me to Botolf and back. Then he grunted and hunched himself against the cold memories.
‘Well, we have fame, land, women and bairns,’ he spat angrily. ‘Odin’s gifts. Should we spurn them, then, because of what we are?’
Botolf shrugged. ‘What we were,’ he corrected sullenly. ‘Now we are the ones raided and our women are likely to be humped on a dead ox.’
‘Be dumb on that,’ Finn savaged. ‘What do you know? Look at you. You do not even possess the thought-cage of a mouse. Where would you be without Hestreng? Without Ingrid and little Helga Hiti, eh? That is your wyrd, for sure, and running back to the whale road after the prow beast will not change what we are now, nor what we once did. Aye – and may do again, for I know myself to be a vik-Norse, until they burn me up as a good Odinsmann.’
I was astounded; Finn, above all others, had been the one muttering and raging against the shackles of land, women and bairns. Botolf sulked at Finn’s rage, not knowing that it was because Finn was the humper in the story of the woman and the dead ox. Finn, for all his bluster, was aware that it was that, in part, which had brought Randr Sterki down on us – aware, also, of the threat to little Hroald, the son he did not know what to do with.
‘You should not say such things to me,’ Botolf muttered. ‘About not having the thought-cage of a mouse.’
‘Just so,’ agreed Finn poisonously. ‘I take it back. You do have the thought-cage of a mouse.’
‘Enough,’ I managed to say at last and then coughed and spat; pain lurked, dull and hot in my chest. ‘I am thinking we will not have thought-cages at all, if we do not act. I am thinking Randr Ste
rki will not be content with claiming a victory over the Oathsworn and stealing some chickens and pigs. Not a man who brings bearcoats and Roman Fire with him.’
‘Aye, right enough,’ agreed Botolf, mollified by what he saw as Finn giving in.
‘What do we do, then, Orm?’ Finn asked. ‘It will be a sore fight whatever you decide.’
I shot him a look, for he did not even try to hide the cheerful in his voice. I did not like what we had to do. We had to find out what was happening and to do that someone had to get close. Since there was no flaring fire, the great longhouse was not burned and that was because Randr and his men were using it – so someone had to sneak into the hall and find out what all this was truly about.
They looked at me in the dark, one whose idea of stealth was not to roar when he charged, the other who was half a bench; it was not hard to work out who had to be the fox.
Finn handed me his seax, as if to seal the bargain.
No starlight. A limping moon that stumbled from cloud to cloud, driven by the same wind that whipped the tops off waves and drifted sand through the grass. We moved, soft as roe deer towards the shadowed bulk of Hestreng hall and the lights scattered about.
For all his size and lack of leg, Botolf could move quietly enough and the sand muffled the thump of his timber foot, while Finn crept, shoulder-blades as hunched as a cat’s. We stopped, licking dry lips and sweating like fighting stallions.
The harsh stink of burned wood hit me and I saw the looming shadow, lolling like a dead whale, slapped with soothing waves – Dragon Wings, beached and blackened along half its length. Botolf made a bitter laugh grunt in the back of his throat at the sight and we moved into the lee of it, where the wet char stink was worst and the shadows darkest. Beyond, rocking at its tether near the slipway, was the second ship. I did not recognise it.
I sat down to pull off my sodden boots and handed them to Finn – then we froze at a sharp, high sound. I knew that sound well, that mating fox shriek of frantic fear; someone was being hard-used by pain.
I looked at Finn, then Botolf, then slid towards Hestreng hall, feeling the wet wool of my breeks chafe and tug, the sand sliding under my feet, sharp with shell and shingle. My ankle burned, as if it had one of Ref’s hot nails through it; an old injury, like the stumps of my missing fingers, which itched maddeningly; I knew what Botolf meant about his leg.
I found what I sought and made sure no-one was in it – then I climbed on to the lean-to roof of the privy and up on to the hog-back hall roof. My soles were stabbed by wooden slates I was willing not to crack or creak as I crabbed across it to where the crossed gables with their dragon-head ends snarled blindly up into the night.
There I paused, shivering as the wind keened through my wet tunic, yet sweating. Then I grabbed one of the dragon-heads and swung over into the dark, square pit of the smokehole, just wide enough to take me in onto a beam. Voices growled up through the blue reek that told me the pitfire was still lit.
It was a strangeness, this having a smokehole at either end rather than in the middle and had been done by the previous master of the Hestreng longhouse, a Dane, before he had backed the wrong side. The twin holes had merits – sucking reek the length of the hall and high into the rafters, killing vermin and smoking hanging meats, for one – but none better than letting me slide unseen into the shadows along the roof-trees.
I slithered in, surprised at what it took to squeeze silently through; I had not realised the breadth of shoulder on me and was still a skinny boy in my head. Just as well, or I would have been too afraid to even try this.
The voices were louder, the blue reek stung my eyes; someone had opened the further door, driving the pitfire smoke up, spilling it out of the hole at this end. I touched the hilt of the seax sheathed in my lap and fought to keep my breathing shallow, while my heart pounded and my throat and eyes stung; it had been a time since I had done anything this foolish or daring.
Up in the ash-tainted dark, I perched like a raven on a branch and looked down into the fire-lit dimness, edging forward slightly, one hand on the cross-beams over my head for balance. Below me hung whalemeat and cheeses and fish, smoke-blacked and trembling on their lines; I stepped more softly still – then froze, smelling the mouth-wetting scent of roasting meat wafting in from the outside breeze.
Nithings. Odin curse them to the Nine Hells. They were spit-roasting my brace of oxen in my own cookhouse and, at last, I was bitten by the sense of loss of what was mine. I had some fifteen male thralls somewhere, most of them scattered into the night, shivering and weeping – those oxen cost more than twelve of them to buy and more than all fifteen to keep.
That was because they turned more land than harnessing fifteen thralls to a plough – and now they were greasing the chins of hard raiding men. I tried not to think of it, or of the times I had done it to others, or the dying ox in a yard on Svartey. Instead, I squinted down into the fetid dim of the hall.
I saw a huddle of men and had a heart-leap at the sight of them; two were Red Njal and Hlenni, not dead, but sitting with their arms clasped under their raised knees, wrists bound. Another was Onund, naked and strung up by the thumbs, gleaming with sweat and streaked with darker, thicker fluids. A fourth lay smiling two smiles and seeping blood through cloth wrappings; Brand’s luckless steward, Skulli, whose throat had been cut in his sickbed.
There was litter scattered, what was left after men had plundered the place, and I felt a cutting pang at the sight of eider feathers sprayed like snow; Thorgunna’s favourite pillows, which she would mourn.
There was a man I did not know sitting on a bench with an axe and a sword nearby. He chewed bread, which he tore idly from a chunk, and he was smeared with black – wet charwood, I was thinking, from where he had fought a fire earlier. There was the red line of a helmet rim on his forehead and brown marks on his nose from the noseguard iron-rot.
There were two more. One was a Svear by his accent, with a striking black beard, streaked with white so that he seemed to have a badger on his face. His hair was also black and iron-grey, with a single thick brow-braid on the right side, banded in silver. He was naked from the waist and his right arm, from wrist to shoulder all round, was blue-black with skin-mark shapes and figures – a tree, I saw, and gripping beasts among others.
I knew him from the old days and he had been less salted then. Even if I had not, the skin-marks revealed him as Randr Sterki, for it was well-known that he had adopted this shieldbiter perversion, which was said to be magic, for strength or protection or both. If I had been in doubt of who it was, there was the leather thong round his neck and, swinging on the end of it across the matted hair of his sweat-gleaming chest, was Sigurd’s silver nose.
He strode to the pitfire and shoved a cooled length of iron back in it, then turned to the second man, who watched him with his hands on his hips and a sneer on a clean-chinned face with a neat snake moustache. His yellow hair was caught up in a thong and a braided one round his brow kept any stray wisps off his face. With his blue tunic and green breeks and silver armrings, it was clear he liked himself, this one, while the inlaid hilt of the sword at his waist told me he was probably master of the second ship. I did not know him at all, but he spoke with a Dane lilt.
‘This will not serve,’ he told Randr Sterki. ‘We are wasting time here.’
‘My time to waste,’ Randr Sterki answered, sullen as raincloud, working the length of iron deeper into the coals of the pitfire.
‘No,’ said the other impatiently. ‘It is not. It belongs to Styrbjorn, who has charged us both with a task.’
‘You did not get your men killed and your ship all but burned to the waterline, Ljot Tokeson,’ Randr Sterki bellowed, whirling on the man. ‘I beat the Oathsworn in battle, not you…and somewhere around here is Orm Bear Slayer’s silver to be dug up, his women to be taken and himself…’
He paused and snatched up the sword from the table; the bread-eater shied away as the careless edge whicked past his ear.
‘I have his sword,’ Randr hissed. ‘I want the hand that wielded it.’
I did not know this Ljot Tokeson, but he was clearly one of Styrbjorn’s men and one with steel in him, for few men gave Randr Sterki a hard time of it, especially when Randr had a blade in his hand – my blade, I realised, rescued from the Elk.
Ljot slapped his hand on the bench, with a sound like a wet drum.
‘Not all your men fought and died, Randr Sterki,’ he harshed out. ‘Three bearcoats died. Three. My brother had those twelve with him for four fighting seasons without loss and you have lost three in a day.’
The wind seemed to suck out of Randr then and he slumped down on a bench and took up a pitcher, scorning a cup to drink; ale spilled down his chest and he wiped his beard with one slow hand.
‘They fought hard, the Oathsworn,’ he admitted. ‘That Roman Fire did not help.’
‘Then you should not have lost your head and thrown it,’ Ljot growled. ‘You lost more of your own men to it than the Oathsworn did. It was given as an expensive gift, to make sure you succeeded in what Styrbjorn sent you to do.’
Randr licked his lips, his eyes filled with screaming men and burning sea.
‘I did not know what it would do…’
‘Now you do,’ interrupted Ljot, sneering. ‘And if you do not want the same fate for yourself, it would be better if we did what we came to do. For my brother will tie you to a pole and hurl Roman Fire at you until you melt like ice in sunshine if we fail.’
There was a long and terrible pause, broken only by the sound of Onund breathing in bubbling snores through what was clearly a broken nose. I wondered who this Ljot was and who the brother – it was not Styrbjorn, that much I did know. Then Randr stood up.
‘I will send scouts out. We will find what we seek.’
The tension flowed out of the taut line that was Ljot and he forced a smile.
‘There will be time enough for all this,’ he said softly, waving a hand that took in the bound prisoners and the hung Onund. ‘The important thing is…’