by Robert Low
Hidhinbjorn stood, taut as a strung bow, for he clearly thought he would have to fight, but I was bone-weary and blood-sick. To my surprise, it was Finn who waved The Godi casually at him to go away.
‘Next time we meet, Hidhinbjorn,’ he growled, ‘it had better be in a friendlier setting, or I will tear off your head and piss down your neck.’
Hidhinbjorn acknowledged it with an unsmiling nod and put his back to us, which was brave and polite, rather than edge away. When he had vanished round the bend, I realised I had been holding my breath and let it out.
‘Aye,’ growled Finn, fishing out a rag to clean The Godi. ‘It has been an awkward day – and there is light left in it yet.’
Back at the cart, Kuritsa was sitting up and wheezing, his chest bared to show a livid bruise where the shield rim had struck. He breathed in rasps and winced, so that I thought something might be broken there and told him to get in the cart, that we would take him to Bjaelfi.
‘That was a good shot with the bow. We will have to promote you, from chicken to eagle,’ I added and Toki chuckled.
‘Well,’ growled Finn, ‘rooster at the very least.’
And we laughed, so shrill and brittle in the pewter day that little Toki was as deep-voiced as any of us, all bright with the relief of survival.
Yet the blood on Botolf’s breeks was wet and the stain grew as we ground up the track to join the other carts. When Ingrid saw it her hand flew to her mouth and she called out for Bjaelfi, then huckled her big husband off, while little flame-haired Helga stood, solemn eyed, thumb in her mouth.
The others crowded round, wanting to know what had happened and, for a moment, the faces swam as if under-water and I wanted badly to sit. Thorgunna saw it and chided me in out of the rain and I sat down, listening to it stutter off the canvas; it came to me then that they had not progressed far and had made camp while it was still light.
I told them what had happened while Aoife and Thordis tended to Kuritsa, who was looked at with new, grudging admiration – but it was the news of Styrbjorn’s defeat which occupied them most.
‘At least the wee bairn is safe,’ said a familiar voice and Onund Hnufa shuffled painfully forward. ‘I kept trying to warn you, but all that my mouth would make was “bairn”.’
I felt a flood of warmth, as if I had stepped in front of a hearthfire.
‘I see you, Onund,’ I told him. ‘It seems you are not so easily killed, then.’
He acknowledged it with a wry smile, but you could see that they had used him hard, for he was gaunt and his face was marked from the burns, still dark, raw-red under the grease the women had salved him with; the hump that gave him his by-name seemed sharper and higher than before on his shoulder.
‘They wanted to know of buried silver,’ he said. ‘As well you told no-one, for another lick of that hot iron and I would have told them all they needed.’
‘One who sees a friend on a spit tells all he knows,’ Red Njal agreed, ‘as my granny used to say.’
‘At least one of those who licked you with it felt the heat of it,’ growled Finn and told him of the man called Bjarki.
‘Small reward,’ Onund answered, ‘for the loss of Gizur and Hauk.’
I remembered them, then, as a trio, each a shadow to the other and felt Onund’s loss with a sudden keen pang.
‘Gizur would not leave the Elk,’ Hlenni Brimill threw in. ‘Since he had made it, he said.’
Onund grunted. ‘He made some of it, but no ship is worth a death.’
That, from such a shipwright, surprised me and he saw it in my face.
‘I built the Elk,’ he said. ‘There was more of me in that ship than any of the others. But I can build another.’
‘Heya,’ said Finn, grinning. ‘Once this is done with, I shall help.’
Onund, with a flash of his old self that made me smile, raised his eyebrows at the thought and made Finn laugh out loud.
‘The whole matter of this should be done with now, I am thinking,’ offered Klepp Spaki hopefully, but Vuokko, his ever-present shadow, gave a little high-pitched bark and told us all that he had asked the drum and it spoke of loss, keenly felt.
That clamped lips shut, sure as a hand on the mouth; I saw Thorgunna’s lips tighten and her face take on that blank look, which I knew meant that she dared not speak for fear of tears. The others, of course, tried not to look me in the eye; they all knew the blot I had promised Odin for their lives.
Then Abjorn stepped forward, wiping the drizzle of rain from his face; behind him, the others new-promised as Oathsworn gathered like pillars, their ring-coats dark with rain, streaked here and there with the blood of iron-rot.
‘If you have it right,’ he said, ‘then there are eight bearcoats only.’
‘And Randr Sterki and his men,’ Finn pointed out, hunching down to pitch some small sticks into the guttering fire.
‘Randr Sterki may be a fighter, but his men are nithings,’ I said.
‘Still,’ said Finn, wryly, ‘eight bearcoats is enough.’
Abjorn shrugged. ‘These bearcoats belong to Pallig Tokeson, who is jarl in Joms these days and this Ljot we have seen is his brother, so they are thrown into the enterprise on behalf of Styrbjorn. I am thinking they may not pursue it now. I am thinking that we should be pushing on. I am thinking that the queen is still in danger and that we will stay here and guard the path – me, Rovald, Rorik Stari, Kaelbjorn Rog, Myrkjartan and Uddolf.’
‘They must not have the babe,’ Jasna spat and I knew who had put them up to this. They looked at her, slab-faced men with braids and eyes grey as pewter and jingling at the brim with hopelessness, for they knew they were no match for eight bearcoats.
I said as much. I said also that we would all go on, together, for there was more chance with numbers.
‘We will not go on in much of a hurry,’ Thorgunna said at the end of all this and jerked her head at the covered cart, where Jasna and the silent hostage-girl sat beside a lump of coverlet that moaned.
‘How bad?’
Thorgunna shook her head, which was answer enough. So we were stuck here then, until the birth; I looked around at the place and found Finn doing the same. It was a fattened part of the trail, with a branch turning to the right, leading into an even more tortured scar in the mountains. There was a bridge not far along that part, raised by a mother to her sons, so said the stone by it, for once there had been fine tall pines at the top, which was the highest point overlooking the fjord.
Now there were only wind-stunted trees, twisted and useless and the trail had always ended there, dribbling out like drool from a drunk’s mouth. There was a way down the other side, but rough travelling even for a man on foot, so carts and bairns and women and fat thralls would never do it.
Finn and I looked at each other and knew what each thought – this was no great place for us to fight. I moved to him then as the gathering broke up into muttering twos and threes and he scrubbed his face furiously, a sure sign of his confusion.
‘Well?’ I asked.
‘Well what?’ he countered, scowling, his beard scrubbed into a mad fury of spikes.
‘Do you think we can win?’
He stopped then, for he knew I would not voice that out loud when there was more than just him to hear it.
‘Well,’ he growled. ‘I am no stranger to woman-killing, as you keep wanting to tell me, as if it was something to be shamed at. All the same, I have never killed a bairn that had no proper life and I am reluctant to begin.’
‘Kill one to save us all?’ I answered, with a wry smile, for this thought had been running like spate-water in me. He grinned, then spat.
‘It is not about numbers – one or a hundred bairns, it would still be a price worth paying for such a reward as the life of wee Helga and the boy Hroald, whom I have acknowledged as mine. It is about what is right and what is not. He may be a great king, this fledgling eagle. Who can say what wonders he may bring about?’
I laughed with the she
er, surprising delight of him and pointed out the other side of the coin; that he would most likely turn out to be another Harald Bluetooth.
‘If I thought that,’ he growled, ‘I would kill it before the head appeared between the mother’s thighs.’
We were smiling, then, when Botolf limped up, towing Ingrid and Bjaelfi in his wake. Behind them, I saw the Greek, Leo, allowing Koll to lead him by the hand towards us.
‘How is the leg?’ I demanded and Botolf waved an answer away, hauling Helga up high in the air, so that she shrieked with delight and bone-haired Cormac stood, wanting the same but older and so too proud to ask. When Botolf hoisted him up, he shrieked his delight all the same, but Botolf grunted with pain.
Bjaelfi gave me a look and I moved to him, so he could tell me, soft and low.
‘I cut too little from the bone,’ he said tersely. ‘I warned him not to go back to lifting carts with the pony in them, but Botolf is Botolf.’
I remembered it well, the hot, fetid boat heading into the hard-pull of the Middle Sea up to the Great City, Botolf delirious with wound-fever, rolling great fat drops of sweat. Bjaelfi, sheened like some mad black dwarf in a cave, kept cutting and sewing, so that there was skin to wrap round and stitch for a stump, with the blood washing in the scuppers.
‘I think the skin is splitting round the stump-bone,’ he added bleakly. ‘If it does, he will not be able to have such an end in the socket of a wooden leg, clever harness or no.’
I looked at Botolf, standing tall, Cormac held giggling and wriggling to the sky. The big man would not like being reduced to the crutch he had endured once before, while the stump healed. He would not like that at all.
Koll broke in just then, his high-pitched voice querulous and demanding.
‘Tell me if what this priest says is true, Jarl Orm, for you have been to the Great City. That people live in halls set one on top of the other.’
I looked at Leo and answered his bland smile, then nodded.
‘Just so,’ I replied. ‘And they have marvellous affairs built for no other reason than to throw water into the air, for the delight of it. And they eat lying down. Much more besides – I shall take you there when all this is done with.’
‘If we live,’ the boy answered, suddenly grim. ‘Leo says the bearcoats are better warriors.’
Leo spread his hands in apology. ‘A careless remark. I had heard such warriors were to be feared because they had no fear of their own.’
‘They will find some when they meet us,’ I answered and Toki, appearing sudden as a squall, declared that Kuritsa would shoot them all with his bow. The man himself, wheezing still, but grinning, agreed from a little way away and Finn chuckled.
‘By the time this is all done away with,’ he declared, ‘we will have to give Kuritsa a new name, I am thinking. And put Prince at the head of it.’
‘Hunter will be title enough,’ Kuritsa replied and I marvelled; already it was hard to tell this man from the droop-headed, silent thrall he once had been. ‘I can shoot an arrow for miles and still hit true. Even round a corner. Such a thing once saved my life.’
Koll and Toki, bright-eyed and struck silent, watched him. Finn, grinning, sat down and others gathered. Kuritsa, lean-faced, shave-headed, hirpled to the wagon and sat heavily by the wheel.
‘Before I was taken, in my own lands, I was set upon by the Yeks, a tribe who hated us. They were many and I was one and was, I admit it, hunting in their lands – so what do you think happened?’
‘You were killed, for sure,’ chuckled Botolf, leading Helga and Cormac to where they could listen, ‘for there are times when you work like a dead man.’
‘Not as dead as some, I am thinking,’ answered Kuritsa smartly. ‘I was lucky. I had my own bow with me, one I called Sure in my own tongue. Sometimes the power of that bow frightened me, for I lost many arrows and sometimes wondered whether one that vanished from my sight hit a friend in the next village, or a king in another country. It took me a time to get the grip of that bow, but after a while, I could hit a fat deer as far as I could see it – though I might have to turn half-round if it were a pair rutting, to be sure of hitting the deer and not the stag.’
Finn laughed out loud at that one, slapping his thigh with delight, then waved Kuritsa to go on, while the others, child and man both, listened open-mouthed.
‘Well,’ Kuritsa said, ‘I spotted an elk far off – so far off it was no bigger than a tiny beetle and I pointed at it, so that the skin-wearing trolls of Yeks stopped and looked while I nocked an arrow in Sure and took aim. I waited until the tail twitched out of sight over the hill, then I shot – allowing for the breeze and a touch of snow in the air.’
Botolf and Finn collapsed at this point, howling and wheezing. I could make out, between the grunts and snorts, the words ‘allowing for the breeze’ and ‘snow in the air’. Kuritsa, haughty as a jarl, ignored them.
‘I persuaded those Yeks to go over the hill, with me as prisoner, on the promise that if they had elk meat at the end of it, I could go free. They agreed, for it was on their way and it took the best part of the rest of that day to walk it – but there was the elk, my arrow in him and dead. They were delighted at having the horns and the meat and so let me go.’
‘A fine shot,’ Finn said eventually, spluttering to halt. Kuritsa shook his head sorrowfully.
‘It was that moment when I knew I was cursed – not long after, of course, the gods allowed me to be captured and taken into slavery. I have not shot such a long shot since.’
‘Why?’ demanded Botolf. ‘Did your gods order it?’
Kuritsa sighed. ‘No, my own failing eye and hand. I had aimed for the heart and there was that old bull elk, gut-shot in the worst way. I was ashamed.’
‘Yet you shot today,’ Toki pointed out into the chuckles following that and Kuritsa shrugged.
‘Not so long. At that range I can shoot the balls off a clegg.’
‘Do cleggs have balls, then?’ Koll demanded, frowning and Kuritsa, serious and unsmiling, shook his head.
‘No horsefly has any when I am around with a bow.’
It was good laughter, washing away the lurking horrors of eight bearcoats and lasted well into the rattle of skillet and cauldron, while the sun staggered out from behind clouds and showed me the rain, small-dropped and fine as baby hair.
It was a good evening and you would not think we were hunted folk at all, so I thanked Freyja for that moment of goddess-peace.
Of course, it did not last until morning.
SIX
I woke to screams and fire, scrabbling for a sword and cursing the sleep out of me; then a soft voice I knew well told me to put on a tunic and stop shouting.
Thorgunna squatted by a goat, working the teats relentlessly into a bowl. It was dark, but there were fires everywhere it seemed and the place bustled with movement and purpose; somewhere, a woman moaned and then yelled aloud.
‘Why are you milking a goat in the dark?’ I asked, still stupid with sleep and Thorgunna, grunting with the effort of bending, jerked her head in the direction of the yelps.
‘Her waters broke. I need the milk to bathe the bairn in.’
The mother-to-be appeared a second later, out from where she had been moved for more comfort, which had banished me and all the other men to find sleep and shelter where we could. She moved ponderously, splay-legged, held up by Aoife on one side and Thordis on the other.
‘She has no strength,’ Thordis hissed. ‘She needs a birthing stool.’
‘Aye, well,’ grunted Thorgunna, sharp as green apples, straightening with the bowl of milk held in the crook of one arm. ‘It was a thing I forgot in all the confusion of finding things for food and shelter in a hurry, with my husband’s enemies at my heels.’
I shrugged into my tunic, seeing the fires lit in a circle to keep the alfar at bay, for there is nothing those unseen, flickering creatures like better than stealing a newborn wean and leaving one of their own twisted wee horrors.
> Ingrid appeared, dripping blood from her hands and the other women fell back a little in deference. She came up to the moaning Sigrith and clasped her rune-cut, bloodied palms on the queen’s joints, to give her strength and ease. I knew Ingrid was Hestreng’s bjargrygr, the Helping Woman for all the steading’s births, which role had some seidr work in it, too; Thorgunna and her sister, I knew from old, had no seidr in them at all.
‘Jasna…’ moaned the queen.
‘We cannot support her and deliver the bairn,’ Thordis insisted. ‘Especially at the last.’
I knew this was when the mother got on her elbows and knees, the bairn delivered from behind. Ingrid moved busily, undoing knots and loosening straps and buckles where she saw them, another spell to ease the birth. The women’s hair was also unbound, tucked into their belts at the waist to keep it out of the way.
The queen moaned and sagged. ‘Jasna,’ she said.
‘I have a birthing stool,’ Ingrid said, then waved to the shadows and all heads turned as Botolf stumped into the middle of the fires, grinning. Thorgunna and Thordis looked at each other; no men were allowed at a birthing by tradition and usage.
‘Oh, I am half a bench,’ grunted Botolf, sitting himself on a sea-chest, ‘so half of me is not here at all. The other half will close my eyes if you like.’
He hauled the queen to him, holding her in powerful arms, her legs splayed over his knees, her head resting, intimate as a lover, on his great chest.
‘You’ll ruin those breeks,’ Thorgunna said wryly and Botolf chuckled.
‘I could take them off.’
There was a chorus at that and, suddenly, the queen, sheened face raised, muttered: ‘Not seemly. I will buy you a new pair, Birthing Stool.’