by Robert Low
It was that night, thick with evening mist, floating with songs from the firepits around my own wadmal hov, that I kissed her on soft lips, at a lonely spot near the river, keening with insect songs.
It was that night that she panted and gasped and writhed against me, while at the same time warning that nothing must happen — then gripping me in a strong hand, like she was about to chop wood, she gave three or four deft strokes, for all the world as if she milked an annoyed goat, and there I was, gasping, squint-eyed and bucking like a mad rabbit, emptied.
It had been a time since, I consoled myself, while she chuckled and said that it was for the best — yet while she spoke to me like a polite matron, her lower body had not stopped twisting and grinding against me, so that when I put my hand down, she guided it to a spot and gave a gasp.
After that, she became a moaning snake woman, until, suddenly, she subsided, panting and smiling at me from flame-red cheeks, her eyes bright, her face sheened with sweat. Then she blew a strand of hair off her face with a sharp littlepfft' and heaved a sigh. 'Lovely,' she said brightly. 'That was good.'
It could be better,' I said, lost in those eyes, desperate for what they could give, for what they promised.
For love, which I felt once with the doomed Hild, for a moment as brief as the flick of a gnat's wing. My head drowned in a sea of dreams.
`So you think,' she said, 'but that's as good as it gets.'
After we are married, I shall expect more,' I answered, astounded at myself. I don't know what reaction I expected, but the one I got made me blink. She laughed.
`No,' she said. 'Do not think of it. It will not be approved.'
`Why? Am I not good enough?'
She stuck the tip of her tongue between her teeth and grinned at me. 'You are a jarl-hero, are you not?
That's good enough. But you may have to kill more than a white bear to get what you want.'
She mocked me and I was not so young as I had been when first I had boarded Einar's ship, that I would rise to it. Instead, I wondered why she made light of it, but nothing more was said, though it was plain that she was a treasure hoard as removed from me as any belonging to Attila.
Nothing more was said because she had recovered her breath and desire and was starting to guide my hand again. But for all that she was sticky as a rumman fruit, it would have taken Miklagard engineers to storm that citadel — and I was too easy to disarm.
Afterwards, as I lay listening to the squeal-clunk of the norias, feeling the night breeze drift her hair on my cheek, I counted that night one of the best times I ever had, for I did not dream at all, whereas afterwards, I did not spend one night where I slept without my head crowded with the dead.
I should have known then, of course, that Odin sleeps, as they say, with his one eye open, waiting for his chance to punish the smug. It was a harsh raven trick when it came — and heralded by the arrival of a banner with that black-omened bird on it.
Svala and I had parted with the first thin-milk smear of dawn and later, just as I was eating the day-meal by the firepit with the rest of the band, she walked up as if nothing had happened.
Radiant and smiling, she held out a swathe of folded white cloth, while I became conscious of the others looking at me looking at her. I saw Short Eldgrim nudge Sighvat and whisper something I was glad I couldn't hear.
I have heard tales of this brave band,' she said, cool and clean as new snow, 'but saw that you lacked one thing. So I have made one for you.' And she unfurled a strip of dagged white cloth embroidered with a thick black raven.
`Heya,' said Finn admiringly and the others rose up, wiping their greased fingers on beards and tunics, to admire the stitching.
I managed to stammer my thanks and she smiled, even more sweetly than before.
`You need a good long pole for it,' she said archly, looking straight at me. 'Do you know where to find one? If not, I do.'
I was dry-mouthed at the cheek of her and felt the blood rush to my face, for her words had inspired exactly what she sought. I sat quickly before it became obvious. There was the taste of rumman fruit in my mouth when I managed to stammer my thanks.
She left, swishing the hem of her dress over the grass, and I felt Sighvat come up behind me. He fingered the new banner and nodded.
`Fine work,' he offered, then looked at me. On his shoulder, a raven fluffed and preened. 'That one is a danger,' he went on, which made me blink and almost spit back angrily at him to mind his own business, save that I had good respect for Sighvat and what he knew. He saw the questions and the anger in my face and stroked the head of the raven.
`Neither of the ravens will sit near her,' he went on. 'Now one is gone, for I set it to watching the jarl's witch-mother and have never seen it since. There is something Other at work here, Trader.'
Coldness crept into my belly and crouched there. I knew the Other well enough and the sudden vision-flash of Hild, black against black, that snake-hair blowing with no wind, almost made me drop the new banner in the firepit.
Big Botolf scooped it up and put it back in my lap, grinning. 'A fine banner. Do you want me to find a pole for it? I was thinking of putting a new shaft on this heft-seax and if I made it a long one, there would be a weapon at the end of the banner-pole, which would be useful.'
There and then, to his delight, I made him banner-bearer and he was still grinning when Kvasir trundled up, saw the raven flag hanging in Botolf's griddle-iron fists and grunted his appreciation.
`Just in time, Trader,' he said, 'for another jarl has arrived — a score of good hafskipa are now in the harbour and a thousand people, no less.'
This was news right enough and the tale of it bounced from head to head. Jarl Brand of Hovgarden, a Svear chieftain who had backed out of the fighting there for a while, had gone west and south, down past the lands of al-Hakam of Cordoba, through the narrows of Norvasund, which the Romans call the Pillars of Hercules and into the Middle Sea, with twenty ships and a thousand people, at least six hundred of them warriors.
Suddenly, in the middle of a distant, Muspell-hot country of the Sarakenoi, there were more good Norse than I had ever seen in one place in my life.
We stood with the throng and watched him and his hard men come up the road from the port to the city of Antioch, he on a good horse, they striding out, despite the heat, in full helms and gilt-dagged mail and shields.
He was ice-headed, was the young Jarl Brand Olafsson, as white then as he would be later in life, when he had become one of the favoured men of Olof Skotkonung, King of the Svears and Geats both and called the Lap King, they say, because he sat in the lap of King Harald Bluetooth's son, Svein Forkbeard, and begged for a kingdom.
Brand's face was already sun-red, though he had wisely covered his arms and he wore a splendid helm worked with gold and silver. He was glittering, this silver jarl. Gold sparkled at his throat and wrists and seven bands of silver circled each arm of the bright red tunic he wore. I watched him and his men march up the road and over the bridge into the city, to be presented in all pomp to the Roman general who commanded everything here, which honour Skarpheddin had not been given.
I ate the dust of their passing and smiled wryly at how I was a jarl also, which was the old way, when anyone with their buttocks not hanging out their breeks and two men to call on could be a jarl. Now the jarls wanted to be like the Romans and make empires. There was, I was seeing, less and less place for the likes of the Oathsworn.
Then Finn gave a curse pungent enough to strip the gilding off Brand's fancy mail, staring into the swirl of yellow dust like a prow-man searching for shoals in a mist.
I followed where he looked and saw a man limping along in the wake of the Svear chieftain, eating even more dust than I was, leading a pack as lean and wolf-hungry as he seemed himself. I did not see what he wore, nor what battle-gear his men carried. I saw only the curve of the sabre at his side.
Starkad was here.
8
It was the final day of th
e Greeks' Paschal ceremonies, which had gone on for weeks, it seemed to us Norse, complete with banging bells and swinging gold ornaments reeking incense and priests wearing so much gold in their robes that we were tempted to storm them then and there.
There had been an image of the dead Christ in a wonderfully decorated coffin, taken in procession with chanting and the beating of a book, which Brother John -
with a hawk and a spit to them — said was the Greek idea of Gospels. It was only two years since I had known what a book was.
There had been singing and a scattering of bay leaves. There had been vigils and fasts and feasts. Of course, we had to join in, being good Christ-men, but I saw offerings of budded boughs being floated down the Orontes in honour of Ostara when it was thought no one could see. Not all of those who did it were our own Odinsmenn.
Brother John didn't care, for he regarded the Greeks as heretics and they, who considered most western Christ-men to be misguided, looked on him as worse. Come to that, every Christ-man seemed to look on the likes of Brother John as no true follower of the Dead God, which is why we all liked the little priest and had let him prime-sign us Christians. The shackles of that signing, never tight, were now falling away, I saw, for the reason we had done it had clearly failed: the Odin-oath was as binding as ever.
So we stood in the hot spring sunshine in our finery and watched the Greek priests, sweating in gold-dripping robes heavier than mail, wobble round Antioch's streets with their ikons and their Christ in a box.
Then, with Brother John, Finn, Radoslav and a couple of others as a fitting jarl-retinue, I went off to Skarpheddin's hov, for it would not have been polite to refuse to join in his feasting for Brand.
Also, we knew Starkad would be there. Since his coming, I had been as confused as a maelstrom about what to do. I needed to get the silkworm canister and Choniates' letter to the Basileus, for I couldn't trust anyone else. But the Great City was far away and Starkad was not.
The others, who still thought the leather case I had hidden on the Elk contained tiny pearls, were only concerned about Starkad being so close — Botolf especially. He wanted to kill Starkad for what he had done in enslaving him and the others, while Finn wanted to walk his entrails round a pole while waving the recovered runesword in his face.
It was a warming image, but Starkad was clearly part of the snow-headed Brand's retinue and that had been a clever move, for it made any attack on him a sure sentence of death. Yet again he was close enough to kill and too far removed to attack.
Finn fumed and bellowed and scowls were rife, but there was no walking round it and I was fretting as much as the rest. The Rune Serpent was here and we were here and yet it was as far away as ever.
Easy, lads,' counselled Brother John. 'There are ways and ways of lifting something from a man and, as you know, I am no stranger to such a thing — in a godly fashion, all the same. God will show us a way, never fear.'
So we smiled wryly at one to another and settled to wait.
There were lots of guests at Skarpheddin's tented hov that warm night. Outside, his people baked flatbread and spitted whole oxen for a feast. Apples in honey, fish stewed in goat's milk and onions, fat cauldron snake, pork and lentils: it was good Norse food served in the swelter of a Serkland night, in the fug of a tented hov thick with fat candles and which soon reeked of smoke, blood, piss and vomit. . the smell of home.
There was horseflesh, too, a neat trick by Jarl Brand. In later life, after Brand's lord, Eirik, whom they called Segersall — Victorious — became a king and made the Svears and Geats into Christ-men, Brand was baptised, but at this time he and his followers belonged to Odin and Thor. Since there were Christ-worshippers among Skarpheddin's people who would not eat horse, it being the mark of a pagan, it let Brand see easily enough which was which.
There was no ale, for no one had the means to make it here — this was Mussulman country and their god didn't drink. Right there, according to Finn, was why they were getting their arses kicked by the likes of the Roman-Greeks of Miklagard.
Instead, they were allowed nabidh, which the Christ monks of Antioch made and sold to the Jewish merchants, who sold it to the Mussulmen. It was made from raisins and dates fermented in water and, for the Mussulmen, the legal length was two days soaking in water only. Naturally, three- and four-day was a roaring trade among those Arabs who liked their drink — and both Finn and Radoslav discovered six-day was best, mixed with honey and wine, which made it taste almost like mead.
Skarpheddin was out to impress Brand, but he needed to invite the Jewish, Arab and Greek merchants he owed money to, as well as officers from the Strategos's army — but not the man himself, who had pressing business bringing more men from Tarsus.
`Which means that the army will be fighting soon,' Finn growled as we sweltered under the wadmal tent, raining with sweat now that so many were in it.
`Sooner we move off, the better,' I said, wishing now I had not worn the new cloak to show off the new pin. 'If we wait longer we will dissolve like butter on a griddle in this Odin-cursed forge of a country. Or end up standing in a Roman battle line.'
Which was so far from what we intended that we laughed. You should never do that while the gods are listening.
It was, then, a strange feasting, trying hard to be a hall in the north and yet somehow skewed, as if seen underwater.
The Jews and Mussulmen smiled politely and tried to make sure they had no pork on their eating knives and fashionable two-fined forks; the Christ-Norse sniffed meat warily to make sure it was not horse; and only the old gods' followers were careless and laughing, though a few of them tried the little two-fined eating things while drunk and ended up stabbing their own cheeks or tongues, which ruined their meal thereafter.
Skarpheddin, thin-shanked and butt-bellied, stepped forward, raised his hands and summoned his skald before sitting down on his gifthrone, for he was too important even to speak for himself. The skald, gold-browed but with dark patches showing under his nice green tunic, announced that the great jarl planned an offering to the good gods of the North.
The Jews and Mussulmen and Christ-followers all stirred uneasily and Finn, sweltering, muttered something about Odin's armpit. Then he stiffened and stared. `Starkad,' he said.
Leaning forward like a hunting dog on scent Starkad stared back. He wore the rune-serpented sabre -
everyone was armed tonight — and one hand hovered near it like a white spider, though it seldom touched the hilt. His eyes, white-blue as old ice, were fixed on mine, as if he was trying to make me burst into flames with his hate.
So there we were, each aching for what the other had, each fettered by the threat of what would be unleashed if we simply sprang at each other's throats. Legs trembling, the sweat working its way down into the sheuch of my arse, I stood and wondered how safe that little container was, tucked on board the Elk in my sea-chest. Skarpheddin's skald droned to a halt. The exhaled breath of relief from his audience threatened to blow out the fat candles.
Matters were not over yet and Brother John grunted as if he had been hit, then made the sign against the evil eye.
Not even Skarpheddin dared oppose his mother in this and so she shuffled out, swallowed by the catskin cloak, dangled about with all her wards and amulets. There was a noise like a flock of startled birds as the good Christ-followers made the sign of the cross and Jarl Brand's men signed wards against the evil eye.
But it was not Thorhalla that struck me a blow like Thor's hammer, even though she looked like Hel's ugliest daughter. It was the Skarpheddin fostri, the one Thorhalla was training to take her place and who now followed in her wake, majestic and seal-sleek.
She wore a dress the colour of a lowering sky, with glass beads lying on the front of it. A black lambskin hood lined with white catskin covered her blond hair and she had a staff in her hand with a brass knob, set above with a spray of raven's feathers. I heard Sighvat suck in his breath at the sight of them.
She had a b
elt of touch-wood, sewn with slivers of hazel, which is Freyja's tree, and on it was a large skin purse which I knew held her talismans. She had shaggy calfskin shoes and catskin gloves and not a slick of sweat anywhere on her. Even as she made a hulk of all my hope, I thought that Svala had never looked more beautiful.
`She has taken your raven,' I heard myself say to Sighvat and he grunted, the pain of it thick in his voice.
`Worse,' he said, laying a hand on my arm to draw me away. 'I am thinking she has taken your heart.'
There was a roaring now and my voice seemed distant to me, though I was rock-sure of what I said, sick with the certainty now that it was not my wyrd to find true love, only the seidr shadow of it.
It will not end up crowning her volva staff.'
Honeyed Six-Day is a vicious were-beast, by night filling you with all the power of the gods and, in the cold light of day, sprawling like a day-old corpse in the pit of your stomach, having shat in your mouth and started a fire in your skull.
I woke, though sleep is a sad word for what had eventually happened to me, into a stranger's body. My legs would not bear me upright and my fingers felt like fat rolls of felt. Brother John squatted beside me, grim as black rock, nodded into my squinting eyes and then swam away again before I could focus properly.
Then the world exploded into the sea, sucking the breath out of me, shattering the veil that kept me from seeing what I lay in or feeling the glare of the rising sun. I surfaced, shook my head, whimpered with what that did, then sat up, wiping water from my eyes and coughing.
The Goat Boy stood, pale and grinning, holding a wooden bucket upside down. Brother John held another, brought from the nearby river, and hefted it, but I held up a weak hand and managed to gasp at him to stop.