by Robert Low
‘I came to knowing of this thanks to the rot,’ Finn said calmly, ignoring the light and noise as he adjusted the knot. ‘I like this iron nail, for it has served me well from the day I picked it up. On Cyprus, as you will remember, Orm and Njal, when Orm fought the leader of some Danes in a holmgang. We used nails like this as tjosnur, to properly mark out the fighting boundary.’
The light flared again, flicking him in an instant, frozen image, as he draped the dangling nail through the bars, swung it backwards and forwards a few times, then lobbed it out, trailing the wool binding behind it. The nail whispered through the darkness and slammed on the table, hard enough to leap everything upwards; a wooden beaker fell over on its side and rolled.
The great, rolling rumble of thunder swallowed all sounds of it, seemed to tremble the backs of my teeth and come up through my feet from the floor. Red Njal looked up, just a pale blob of face in the darkness, blooded on one side by the brazier. The brightest thing in that face was the white of his eyes.
‘Thor is racing his chariot hard tonight,’ he muttered. ‘Plead all you please with the gods, but learn a good healing spell, as my granny used to say.’
Thor could race his goats until their hooves fell off, I was thinking, for it hid the noise of Finn’s nail-madness – he hauled it off the table onto the flags of the floor and what should have been a bell-loud clatter went unheard in the grinding of the Thunder-God. Finn pulled it back to him and might just as well have been dragging it over eiderdown.
‘Being iron,’ he said into the silence between thunders, ‘it needed careful attention, but I saw that it did not get the same rot as other things of iron. Swords, for example, and axe-heads.’
‘Different rot?’ muttered Red Njal, with the voice of a man who thought Finn addled. The light flared; Thor’s iron-wheeled chariot ground out another teeth-aching rumble.
Finn swung the nail back and forth and launched it again; one more crash on the table set the cup bouncing off with a clatter. Once more the nail hit the floor with a clang and was dragged back.
‘If your plan was to alarm the guards,’ Styrbjorn muttered, ‘it may yet succeed, despite Thor.’
‘The rot,’ Finn went on, as if Styrbjorn had not spoken at all, ‘on most swords and every axe-head I have seen, is the colour of old blood. Everyone knows that and even the best of swords gets it. It leaches from the metal like sap from a tree.’
Thor hurled his hammer in another blue-white flare. The nail trailed its wool tail through the air and slammed into the table-top again. My bone-handled seax fell off this time – together with the key to the cell lock.
‘Aha,’ said Crowbone. ‘Careful when you pull it off the table…’
He fell silent when Finn jerked the nail off the table and made no attempt to try and hook the key with it – which, I was thinking, would have been a clever trick if he could have managed it, for he would have to somehow get the nail through the ring of the key, if it was large enough even to take it…
‘So,’ Finn went on, winding his nail back to him, ‘I am watching my nail for signs of blood rot and seeing none. Instead, I am finding grit on my fingers, black as charcoal.’
A cold wind through one of the barred squares set the brazier glowing enough to send up some sparks, then trailed fingers through our beards, with the smell of rain and turned earth and escape. Finn bent low and slithered the nail out, underhand, towards the key. It overshot by a few finger-lengths. Again the thunder rumbled and the blue-white scarred our faces into the dark.
‘This, I thought, was also rot, so I scraped it all off first time I found it, then laid the nail down to fetch some fat to grease it with,’ Finn went on, tentatively tugging the nail this way and that with the wool. ‘Yet, when I came back to it, all the grit I had scraped off was back on the nail again.’
He looked up into our silent, gawping faces and grinned at the sight of them.
‘It was Ref who put me right on it,’ he said, giving a last tug, ‘for he knows iron as a farmer knows rye. The iron that leaches red rot is made from bloodstone, which is the most common iron, the stuff you fish out as a bloom on bog-grass. The iron that made my nail is rare, from a dug-out stone, where it is found in little black studs, like pips in an apple.’
He moved the nail a last nudge; the key slid towards it, stopped, slid again and then snugged up next to it. No-one could breathe for the wonder of it and even the thunder did not seem as loud.
‘Ref says,’ Finn went on, half to himself as he slowly dragged his nail, the key stuck to it as tight as a resin-trapped fly, ‘that this iron embraces all the other iron it sees.’
He scooped the nail and key up and grinned at us, dangling it, swinging it gently back and forth.
‘Be happy this key is not made of gold.’
The lightning seared the image of us staring at him, fixed by the sight of that key, sucked firmly to the side of the nail. The Thunder-God boomed out a laugh.
‘There is clever for you,’ muttered Red Njal, sullenly splintering the silence that followed. ‘Can I have my binding back? There is a cold wind blowing right up the sheuch of my arse.’
Thor-light flicked us when we wraithed through the door of the storeroom; an eyeblink of stark, white light showed us the long, gentle slope up to the surface, a ramp where once barrels of salted meat and ale had been rolled. That was before Kasperick had taken the place over for his own sick-slathered pleasures.
At the top should have been a pair of double-doors, shut and barred on the outside and only fixed with chains and a lock when something of true value was inside. And guards, always guards, at least one against the pilferers when it was a store, two, I was thinking, now that it was something else. Yet they were more to prevent folk coming across what Kasperick did in his pleasure room rather than keep his prisoners getting out.
But the rain snaked in hissing waves and the two guards Kasperick had left had opened the doors and crept inside a little way for shelter; the startling flash showed them, crouched, draped in iron and rightly afraid of attracting Perun’s eye, fixed as rabbits on the stoat of Thor-lights.
No-one had to speak; Finn and Red Njal moved up like a pair of boarhounds, almost in step with one another. Red Njal’s seax gleamed briefly and one guard went sagging against him, scarcely making more than a sigh as his throat was cut.
Finn made a mess of it. Though he had done this before, his Roman nail was no edged weapon and relied on his brute strength and placing skill to tear out the voice of the guard as well as rip through the heart-in-the-throat, where life pulsed.
The guard half-turned when he saw his oarmate go down to Red Njal, a movement that put Finn’s perfect thrust off by a hair; the Roman nail ripped in and blood spurted straight back in Finn’s eyes. Blinded and cursing, he let the nail and the man go to sweep the gore away.
The nail clattered to the stone flags and the guard, his mouth opening and closing like a dying fish, staggered out into the hissing downpour, his hands clamped to his throat and blood spraying through his fingers. He could not yell and the air hissed and bubbled from his torn throat as he tried, but he reeled in circles in the rain – and someone saw him.
The yell went through me like one of Thor’s ragged blue-white bolts. Finn scooped up his nail, still cursing and sprang forward; one thrust took the nail into the gasping guard’s eye, an in-out movement that sent him backwards like a felled oak.
Too late, I was thinking as someone started smacking the alarm-iron, far too late…
‘Row for it, lads!’ roared Finn.
Make for the main gate. I heard myself screaming it like a chant and sprinted into the rain, sword out. It was not proper night and the main gate would still be open, for folk came and went on all sorts of business in a fortress such as this.
The confusion helped us. The alarm was beating, but no-one knew why, or who they were looking for and we were most of the way across the yard before I heard someone bellowing out to close the gates. I spun in a half-ci
rcle, blinking rain out of my face and saw the others closing on me. A lancing fern of blue-white fretted the dark and, in the flicker of its life, showed us to each other; the great crash that followed was a mountain falling, drowning all other sound and leaving my mouth fizzing with each ragged breath.
‘Keep Crowbone in the middle,’ I yelled and did not have to add the why of it; he was too small and light in a fight. Finn came to my shieldless side, Styrbjorn on the other and we splattered through the muddy yard – so close now, I could hear the creak and groan of bad hinging and wood as men put shoulders to the gates.
We passed them, slashing left and right and they scattered, unarmed for the most part. Styrbjorn gave a yelp as someone snarled out at him with a fistful of steel, but he took the blow on his blade well enough and back-slashed, hardly pausing at all and not bothering to see if he had done damage. Shouts went up behind us. Arrows whicked by my head and one shunked into the back of a fleeing gateman, so that Crowbone had to hurdle him.
We were through the gate, skittering on the slick, uneven log walkway and the yells were different behind us, fewer and more commanding as the garrison sorted itself out; the stark, white, flash of Thor-light sent the luckless caged leering at us as we sprinted down their avenue.
We passed two side streets; folk scattered and screamed. At the third, I yelled for everyone to go right, but I was guessing. The dark rumbled and spat white fire, while a wind sprayed rain and flattened a dying, discarded torch flame; a lantern swung and rattled.
I could not be sure and spun in a half-circle, almost falling off the walkway and the others panted up to me.
‘Which way?’ Styrbjorn wanted to know, jerking this way and that, brimming on the edge of panic. I chose one, a left turn which sloped down. Down was good. Down led to water.
There were screams and the distant clanging of the alarm; Finn growled at a head which stuck out of a doorway and the owner jerked it back again. I stepped off the walkway by accident, a long drop that jarred my foot and pitched me on my face in the clotted mat of rot, split by a running stream. Spitting and coughing, I clawed my way up and back onto the walkway.
‘They are closing,’ spat Red Njal, which made us all turn to see the dark figures moving down through the buildings. Moving fast, too.
‘Fuck,’ said Finn, disgustedly. ‘I am running from Saxlanders.’
‘Good,’ snarled Styrbjorn, shoving past him and skidding on the slick logs, ‘keep running.’
Finn smile was twisted, his face flared by another flickering message from Thor.
‘Take the boy,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I am tired of running.’
‘Boy…’ began Crowbone, shrilling it in his anger; Red Njal grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him after the retreating Styrbjorn.
‘It is not seemly,’ he yelled as he pushed, ‘to interrupt a man when he is dying to save you. That is not my granny’s saying, but one of my own.’
The dark shapes bobbed and lumbered down the darkness towards us and Finn glanced sideways at me.
‘This walkway is narrow enough for one,’ he grunted. ‘And high enough.’
‘Just another bridge,’ I answered and his teeth were white in the shadow of his face.
‘Bone, blood and steel,’ he grunted.
The thunder grumbled and, in the next fern of white light, I saw the Saxlanders, uneasy in their ring-coats and spears with Himself banging around the sky, throwing anger about. They milled uncertainly when the light showed two men with bright blades waiting for them.
‘Get them,’ shrieked a familiar voice. ‘Take them alive.’
Kasperick. I hoped he would come within reach but if I knew that man he would lead from the back. I wiped rain from my face and squinted into the shadows of a day gone night. There were splashes.
‘They are off the walkway,’ I warned – then a dark shape was on me, panting out of the dark, slick with rain and fear. He was below me, in the mud and filth, glittering with old fishscales and stuck with feathers and hair. He sliced at my ankles with the spear, for he could not see me clearly and thought a scything blow would sweep me off my feet if it failed to cut me.
I hopped up awkwardly, landed badly and on my weak ankle, which shot fire through me. On one knee and cursing, I heard him suck in a triumphant breath and lurch forward; the spearhead, trailing droplets of water, slid past my eye and I slashed wildly, felt the edge hit and heard him scream and the splashing of him stumbling away.
‘If you have rested enough,’ Finn panted from above me, ‘I would be glad of some help.’
Two Saxlanders were at him, one on the logs and one off, slithering to keep his balance, ankle-deep in clinging mud.
Finn turned from the one on the walkway, took two steps, swung The Godi up as if for a great downward cut and then kicked the Saxlander spearman in the face as he followed the arc of it, his mouth slightly open. The man hurled backwards with a strangled choking sound; one boot was left stuck in the mud.
During this, I scrambled up and took on the other man, who crabbed and stabbed and huddled behind his shield, so that the best I could do was fend him off. Then he saw Finn was coming for him and backed off into the frustrated bellows of Kasperick, urging his men on.
They were wary, but circling, dropping off one walkway, slogging through the mud and on to another; the flash of white light showed them, dark as hunting wolves and almost behind us.
That same flash showed them stop, almost in mid-step. The darkness that followed was blacker still, but Finn had seen them and stood up straight, throwing out his arms, scattering water droplets like bright pearls.
‘I am Finn Bardisson, known as Horsehead, from Skane,’ he roared. ‘You want me? Here I come, you nithing, chicken-fucking, Saxlander whoresons.’
He hurled himself forward roaring, nail in one hand, The Godi in the other and I tried to snag him before he went, but failed. I half-stumbled on that cursed ankle, feeling the fireache of it and the sick, belly-dropping certainty that this was the moment Odin took his sacrifice and that I had doomed Finn with me.
The white light split the darkness again – and they fled.
The Saxlanders turned and ran, stumbling, away from the mad, wild-haired Finn and Kasperick stopped bellowing at them to get us and ran with them. I knelt, panting, bewildered, heard a noise and staggered up on one good foot, whirling round to face the dark shapes behind.
They loomed up, silent and grey-grim against the black. Then the lightning flashed again and I saw them, as the Saxlanders must have seen them, ring-coated and helmed, sharp with edges and grins, their faces streaked black with charcoal and sheep-fat.
Familiar faces – Alyosha, Finnlaith, Abjorn and the others.
‘That was a good trick of Finn’s,’ Styrbjorn said, pushing through to the front, ‘waiting until he saw us come up and then charging them. That set them running, for sure.’
Finn strolled back, The Godi over one shoulder, his nail in his teeth. He took it out and shoved it down one boot, then shouldered into the stone-grey ranks of men as we all backed off, heading for the river. I stood, trembling with reprieve.
‘You are a fool,’ I said to the grinning Styrbjorn, as Abjorn and Ospak helped me hirple away, ‘if you think Finn noticed any of you were there at all before he ran at them.’
SIXTEEN
The Odra roared and spat like a boiling cauldron, brimmed over into the woods and growled among the trees. It slashed the higher bank, so that sections of it slithered and sighed in slow splashes and turned the water black-brown. Trees came down, too, teetering slowly with a noise like ripping linen, clawed roots tangling so that they chained to the broken shore and made dams against which other drifts piled.
We watched it all warily, for the current in the river slithered like a coil of mating snakes, first one way, then the other, breaking round Short Serpent and fattening out into the floodplain so that we had no idea now where the old shore had been.
The rain fell, too. It had caused
all this on the slopes of the distant mountains, now unseen through the fine, misted water that lisped on us and filled the very air so that every breath came as if we held linen cloths over our mouths and noses.
‘This is no time to be sitting on this river, I am thinking,’ Onund observed mournfully, ‘for we can neither use oars nor sail in this and if we sit here, a floater will get us, for sure.’
It was no time to be moving, either, for though we all feared the current and the clutch of water, we feared the floaters most and had seen three or four already, looming out of the boil like whales with great thrashing root-limbs. Hovering for a moment in the current, they would sink from sight again and, like the bergs of the north, most of the dangerous part was unseen. One of those great earth-clogged claws would swipe in the planks of Short Serpent.
There was no possibility of stopping, all the same; we had to put distance between us and Kasperick, keeping to the east bank and trusting that the spate prevented him crossing. I was sure, all the same, that I had seen horsemen, faded as fetches through the rain-mist, splashing a miserable way up the west bank, appearing and disappearing as the swollen river widened and narrowed.
‘Time to haul away,’ Trollaskegg said cheerfully and the men groaned, for this was almost too much when added to the lack of food and ale and the soaked cloaks and blankets on a boat filmed with water.
Little Yan went up the mast with the rope and fastened it, then it was paid out and men leaped overboard, to the places where the water was shallow, or had not yet reached. Then they pulled, so that Short Serpent, balking like a stubborn goat on a tether, slowly moved forward; the linden-bast rope hummed and water spurted out of it, while the mast curved.
Everyone lent a hand, the strong ones pulling and staggering through the shallows or over the brush of the bank, the weaker ones using the oars as poles to fend off the drift. Even Dark Eye bailed and I did not care for that, though I told myself, and everyone else who saw my unease, that it was because it would not do for her to get sick or injured, for we might need her yet. I had already provided my good sealskin cloak for her as a makeshift shelter.