Oathsworn 03 - The Prow Beast

by Robert Low

  ‘Odin sounds very much like every king I have ever heard of,’ Onund Hnufa rumbled, ‘while his rat reminds me of every royal messenger I have ever seen.’

  The laughter was dutiful, but so weak it dribbled out like drool from a sleeping mouth and scarcely made Crowbone pause.

  ‘The rat was, as you say, a poor messenger,’ he went on. ‘He fell asleep, went here, went there – and, though he eventually remembered the message, forgot what it was exactly; so as he went about among the people he told them that Odin had said that, whenever anyone died, they should be set on an oak bier, surrounded by all their prize possessions and burned to ash. In half-a-day, they would be brought back to life.’

  Crowbone stopped and spread his hands wide.

  ‘Well – by the time Hugin woke up and remembered he had a message, it was too late. He flew around furiously yelling at people to stop setting fire to their dead and telling them of the message Odin had given him – but folk said they already had a message and it was all too late.’

  ‘And so,’ Crowbone said, ‘the Odin dead are always burned to this day; the god in a fury rescinded the secret of resurrection and went off to find the sort of wisdom that would stop him making any more mistakes like that.

  ‘Now no-one trusts a raven when it speaks – and the rat is hated for the false message he brought.’

  Folk shifted slightly as the tale came to an end; Rovald shook a mournful head.

  ‘Think of that,’ he said, nudging his neighbour, who happened to be Styrbjorn. ‘If the raven had not stopped to eat – folk would all still be alive.’

  ‘Blame the dead sheep for dying, then,’ snarled Styrbjorn.

  ‘Or having tasty eyes,’ added Ospak moodily.

  Koll stirred and moaned, came awake into his nightmare.

  ‘Moonlight,’ he said and a few folk looked up; like a pale silver coin, it seemed to drift across the sky between clouds.

  ‘Rain on the wind,’ muttered Thorbrand.

  ‘This place is famous for it,’ Ospak growled and that raised a weak chuckle or two.

  ‘The same moon,’ Koll whispered, ‘shines on my home.’

  It was a link, right enough and the tug of it brought every head up briefly. Styrbjorn wiped his mouth, gone dry with the thoughts that flitted nakedly over his face – home was there, under that silver coin in the sky and just as unreachable. He would die here. We would all die here.

  ‘Tell me of your home,’ the monk asked gently and Koll tried, in his shadow of a whisper, a thread of sound that stitched all our hearts. Of running barefoot on the strand’s edge. Hunting gull eggs. Playing with his dog. Fishing. A bairn’s things that, to these hard raiding men, were as far removed as that same moon – yet close enough to be remembered, to make them blink with the sudden rush of it. A man grunted almost in pain as Koll lisped about sliding on the frozen river on goat-bone skates. Then the boy’s voice faded – mercifully – to sleep.

  ‘What of your own home, monk?’ I harshed out, eager to be rid of the pangs of Koll’s memories, sure that tales of Miklagard would be more diverting, since most of the men here had never been to it more than once and that only briefly.

  ‘The city walls rise like cliffs,’ Leo said obligingly, ‘and the towers and domes blaze with gold. In the morning, a mist hangs over the roofs, there is smoke and ships…’

  He stopped and I was surprised to see his eyes bright. Murrough shifted his big frame and coughed, almost apologetically.

  ‘I have heard they have women of great beauty there,’ he grunted, ‘but veiled, like the Mussulmen women. I thought you were all Christ believers in Miklagard?’

  ‘Veiled, unveiled, beauteous and plain as a cow’s behind,’ Leo answered with a small smile. ‘All manner of women – but you are asking the wrong man, since they do not bother me. I am a priest of Christ, after all.’

  ‘I had heard this,’ Randr Sterki answered, frowning. ‘It is a great wonder to me that a man can give up women for his god.’

  ‘It is a great wonder to me that a god would ask it,’ added Onund and men laughed now. I relaxed; this was better. Even Randr Sterki seemed to have covered the sharp edge of himself.

  ‘Worse than that,’ Finn growled, ‘these Christ folk say you should not fight.’

  ‘Yet they do it, all the same,’ Myrkjartan pointed out. ‘For these Pols we are killing are Christ men, or so I have been told – and there is no greater army than the one of the Great City itself, yet they are all Christ followers.’

  Leo smiled indulgently.

  ‘They are told not to kill,’ Murrough corrected, ‘according to all the canting Christ priests of my land. Perhaps it is different in the Great City. I have heard they follow the same Christ, but in a different way.’

  ‘The rule,’ Leo said slowly, picking his words like a hen does seed, ‘is that you should not kill. A commandment, we call it.’

  ‘There you are, then,’ Finn muttered disgustedly. ‘The Christ priests command the army not to kill and the chiefs command the opposite. It is a marvel that anything is done.’

  Leo smiled his gentle smile. ‘Actually, the original gospel commanded us not to murder, which is a little different and not too far from what you northers believe.’

  There were nods and thinking-frowns over that one.

  ‘This is what happens when such matters are written,’ Ospak declared, shaking his head and everyone was silent, remembering Red Njal.

  ‘Then confusion will be king,’ Leo answered, ‘for the Mussulmen have some similar rules written down in their holy works.’

  ‘Are you Mussulman, then?’ asked Crowbone, knitting his brows together. Leo shook his head and his smile never wavered; another priest of Christ would have been outraged.

  ‘I wonder only,’ Crowbone said, ‘because I met a Mussulman once and he had sworn off women. He ate like you did, too, with one hand only.’

  He looked at me when he said it, but just then Finn leaned forward, sniffed the pot, lifted the ladle and tasted it. Then he fished out his little bone container of emperor salt and poured generous whiteness into it.

  ‘Salt,’ he declared, sitting back. ‘A man should eat as much salt as he can. It cleans the blood.’

  There was silence, while the fire crackled and the cauldron bubbled and men sat slathered and crusted with other men’s salt-cleaned blood and tried not think about it. Then Koll woke and managed to whisper out to Finn, asking him what he missed of his home.

  Finn was silent and stared once out at the dark ramparts where our guards huddled and watched; I thought his head was back in Hestreng, was full of thoughts of Thordis and Hroald, his son.

  I should have known. Thordis and he would never trade vows and Hroald was a boy ignored as much as acknowledged; Finn showed the truth of it all when he stretched out one long arm and pointed to where Onund’s elk carving perched on the gate tower, slanted slightly, but still upright and proud, a symbol that the Oathsworn were here and not leaving in any hurry.

  ‘I am home,’ he growled.

  NINETEEN

  We had left it too late; Czcibor had more men and bigger boats on the river; it cost us three dead to find that out and Styrbjorn came staggering back from the little river gate, clutching his bloody arm and ranting with the fear howling in him, for we were trapped.

  That was the day we started burning corpses in a mad, desperate fear-fever that sought to try and scour the Red Pest out before it killed us all.

  That was the day they brought up the ram and smashed in the gate.

  They had tried fire, but lacked oil for their arrows and we had water enough to soak the gates and timbers where they tried it. Then we saw men hauling back a good tree, sweated out of the river further down, where it had lodged. It was, as Finn pointed out, as good an oak for a ram as any he had seen.

  We had to watch it being crafted, too, for there was no place to hide out on that plain and every hammer and axestroke that shaped it rattled us to the bone, for we had no way of s
topping such a beast. Their archers would keep our heads down – it was almost impossible to put your head above the timber-teeth of the rampart now, unless there were enemy climbing over it – and the ram would come up to the gate and splinter it to ruin.

  ‘Barrier the inside of the gate,’ I suggested and Alyosha nodded, then grinned.

  ‘Battle luck for you, Orm Bear Slayer, that you have skilled men here. Better than a barrier is our wolf-teeth.’

  Alyosha and the Rus were old hands, having fought in sieges on both sides of the ramparts and they knew what was needed.

  They had a house demolished for the great timbers of the roof-tree and lashed them together like a cradle. Then they gathered up spears and split the heads from them, or cut the shafts short, so that they were fixed to the cradle, all odd lengths and all deadly.

  After that, it was shifted to a point just beyond where the curved groove of dirt showed how far the gate opened inwards.

  ‘Wolf-teeth,’ Alyosha said, when his chosen men had sweated it into place; they beamed with satisfaction. Finn and others strolled round it, eyeing it with a professional air, for we were raiders, when all was said and done and avoided anything that looked like this bristling terror.

  ‘A place to hang their cloaks and hats when they come,’ Finn said eventually, which was admiration enough to make Alyosha beam.

  ‘Growl not at guests, nor drive them from the gate,’ Ospak added, ‘as Red Njal’s granny would say.’

  ‘No more on that,’ Finn growled. ‘Without it coming from his mouth, I would sooner see Red Njal’s granny laid to rest.’

  Ospak merely nodded and smiled, twisting his dirt and blood-crusted face into a hard knot.

  Not long after, hidden watchers peering through slits on the gate tower announced that the enemy were coming again.

  I stood behind the barrier with Finn at one shoulder and Ospak at the other, fetid with fear and old blood, rot-red with rust. My bowels curled like waves on the shore and the first great boom of the ram on the door almost loosened them entirely.

  On the ramparts, Finnlaith and Alyosha and others hunkered down and heaved the last of our stones as well as spike-studded timbers down on the heads of the ram party; we heard them clatter and bounce off the roof of shields, though there was an occasional scream to let us know they were not having it all their own way.

  We sweated and shivered behind the wolf fangs, while the gate rang like a bell and heaved in another little bit with each blow, the bar on it creaking and dancing in the locks. Great gouts of muddy slurry spurted up from the hinges.

  Crowbone slid up to the tower steps with a party bringing up more timbers, manhandling them up the ladder, with the gate bulging in right at their ears. Alyosha, his helmet flaps up and laced across the top of his head so that his ears were free and he could hear better, saw it and bellowed out something, lost in the mad din. Crowbone merely waved at him and Alyosha, scowling, half-stood to make his way to the steps and tell Crowbone to go away.

  The arrow took him in the neck, just under the ear; if he had had his helmet flaps down it might have saved him, but they were up like little birdwings and the arrow went in one side and out the other. He jerked and pawed at it, a puzzled look on his face, then reared up; blood came out of his mouth in a great, black gout and he fell sideways and clattered down the steps to Crowbone’s feet.

  The boy howled – but someone grabbed him just then, dragging him back and under the cradle of wolf fangs, just as the gate crashed open with a splintering rend of wood and hinge.

  The first man through was a mad-mouthed frother, black hair flying, lunging in with a spear up and a leather helmet askew on his forehead; he had time to see what he was running at, time to skid to a halt – then the ones behind crashed on him and he was shot forward, shrieking for his ma, to be impaled like a shrike’s breakfast.

  The first half-dozen ended up like that – there were longer blades with two and three bodies on them; some of the shafts snapped under the weight.

  Those behind realised something was up when they were brought up short and found they could go neither ahead, nor to the side, while those in the gate tower above were hurling slabs of spiked wood down on them.

  I hacked and stabbed and cut and slashed; the wooden cradle started to shift and slide back under the press, so men put their shoulders to it on our side and shoved, while others elbowed for room to fight. There was a fine haze of steam and stink and misted blood, a great bellowing shriek of fear and dying; the earth under the gate tower churned to a thick broth of muddy blood.

  I saw Finn take a jaw off with a wild stroke. I saw one of Randr Sterki’s men eat the point of a spear and go down, gargling. Arrows whirred and shunked and men from both sides screamed and died; the Pols were shooting through the open gateway, heedless of who they hit.

  Yan Alf went crazed then and leaped up on top of the wolffang cradle and its smother of hanging bodies, then hurled himself, screaming, into the middle of the pack; I never saw him alive again. Finnlaith, screaming ‘Ui Neill’ and spittle, followed him, leaping off the top of the watchtower and I saw him once after that, rising through a frothing sea of enemy like a breaching whale; then he disappeared.

  That broke them. One minute I was slashing and stabbing, my breathing high and shrill, my arm aching, seeing the blood curve off the end of the axe blade in fat, greasy spray – then I was slumped against the scarred, gouged cradle where bodies writhed and groaned. The Pols backed off through their own arrows and Finn yelled out a warning as the full weight of shafts fell on us.

  Shields up, we stood there until men brought up some thick timber doors torn off the houses and used them as shelter. In the end, the arrows stopped and men went out to heave corpses aside and shut the gates again, though they were so badly splintered that they could not be barred.

  I know I shouted instructions for some of this, for Finn told me. I know I helped carry Alyosha away and consoled a weeping Crowbone, while the crew of Short Serpent – what was left of them – stood, covered in gore and grim silence while Alyosha was shield-carried to a pyre. Ospak and Murrough, the last Irishers left, stood like dumb posts, unable to go out and find Finnlaith; in the end, Onund whacked their shoulders and gave them work to keep their minds off the loss.

  I know all this, but was aware of none of it. I only came back to life later, when Bjaelfi was binding up my ankle – the old injury, which burned like fire. I had gone over on it, according to folk who saw, and limped about for a long time until Bjaelfi and others managed to pin me down and tend my wounds.

  I had a scratch down one cheek, my ribs ached from a blow I did not even know I had come by and my nose thundered with pain and trickled new blood, so that Finn, unharmed and grinning through the stains on his face, shook his head.

  ‘That neb of yours will not last much longer if you persist in getting it dunted,’ he noted and Ospak, staggering past with an armful of timber to be spiked with spear and arrow points, stopped long enough to look and tilt his head almost onto his shoulder.

  ‘Every time I look at it,’ he said, ‘I have to stand at more of a list to steerboard than before, just to keep it straight on your face.’

  Then he laughed, a shrill, high sound. They all laughed, those that were left, hair stiff with clotted filth, armour red-rusted and weapons stained with gore. They moved as though their legs were wood – yet they moved, getting ready for the next attack.

  Finnlaith was dead, Yan Alf was dead. Thorbrand was dead. Hjalti Svalr had the Red Pest, had lost most of his right hand and was groaning and babbling of home. Others were stacked like winter wood, their weapons bound to cold hands. And those who were left mourned with laughter, like wolves.

  I had no belly left for laughing. As the shadows lengthened and weary fires sprang up, Bjaelfi came to me, his face scored with misery, carrying a limp little bundle which he laid at my feet like an offering. It was so small, that bundle, yet it broke us all like a falling tree and men groaned and bowed the
ir heads; some even wept, leaving wet white streaks through the filth of their cheeks.

  Koll. He was wrapped warmly and his face was so swollen his father would not have known him but for the bone-white of his hair. One hand rested on his chest under the warm wrap, but one had flopped free and the blue veins on it stood proudly out, so proud it was hard to believe that blood did not pump through them. The rest of the hand was pale, the shrinking flesh spatterered with white pustules.

  Bjaelfi looked at me, waiting to take the small body to the burning; men stopped and made Hammer signs for mourning and not just because Koll was dead. He was what we had struggled all this way to get, had fought for, had watched oarmates die for – and we had failed.

  I tied his little hands round the hilt of his father’s sword and gave him to the Odin-fire. It was like the death of hope itself, watching that small, wrapped body smoke up into the dark.

  That night, Dark Eye came to me, silent as a summer breeze, yet when I reached for her she was limp and slick-sheened with sweat, hot as embers in my arms. To the question in my eyes, she simply slithered from her shapeless tunic-dress and raised her arms; even in the dark, where her silver shape glowed, the red spots on her thighs and under her arms were clear, almost as big as the tender tips of her hard breasts.

  She shivered and sweated.

  ‘In the morning,’ she said, ‘I will go to them.’

  I argued. I swore. I ranted. I babbled. In the end she pressed hot, cracked lips on mine to silence me.

  ‘This is my wyrd,’ she said, her breath fetid on my cheek. ‘This is best. I am what they want – let them take me, for it will be their own doom. This is what the Sea-Finn’s drum saw.’

  I saw it, then, hot in her eyes, with a coldness deep in my bowels. It was her wyrd – at one stroke she saved us, saved her people and would spread the red, ruinous pest through Czcibor’s army.

  ‘It must be done in the morning,’ she said, ‘before I am too weak to pretend.’