by Robert Low
‘No. They gave him a sword forged by the same smith who made Sigurd’s own. They called it the Scourge of God and while Atil had it, he could never lose a battle.’
‘Which made it hard for the Volsungs when they found Atil was a false friend,’ I offered and Illugi scowled.
‘Who is telling this?’
He was, of course and he hummed, mollified, when I said it.
‘Just so. The Volsungs knew they could not win; they were beaten time and again by Atil until they came upon another way. They sent him a new wife, Ildico, in peace. To tempt him to take her, she came with a great treasure of silver – Sigurd’s dragon hoard.’
‘Cursed,’ I pointed out and he nodded.
‘On her wedding night, this brave Ildico slew Atil as he slept and waited for the morning beside him, knowing she could not escape.’
We were both silent, brooding on this cunning plot, cold and coiled as a snake, and the sacrifice it had entailed: the Volsungs losing their wealth and Ildico her life, for she was chained to Atil’s death throne alive when he was howed up in a great mound of all the silver of the world, including the Volsungs’ gift. A mound long hidden, with all those who knew of it killed.
Such revenge we in the north knew well, yet even so, the warp and weft of this sucked the breath from you.
The rest of the winter dragged into spring without much event. Many of us got sick, me included, with streaming eyes and nose and coughing. Eventually, we all recovered – save for the Serkland woman, as Einar had predicted. She caught a fever, which went quickly, Illugi Godi said, through all the stages: tertian, quartan, daily and, finally, hectic.
At that point, with her breath rasping in her chest, she simply gave up, turned her head to the wall and died. Einar gave her body to the Christ priests in the town, but they refused to perform suitable rites over her, since they said she was ‘infidel’.
So Illugi Godi commended her to the true gods of the North and then tipped the body into the sea, from a rocky spit a little way out of town, as an offering to Ran, Aegir’s sister-wife, to ensure good sea journeys.
That was because the good merchant council of the town wouldn’t have a thrall howed up in their own yards – though they took Harald, whose cut foot had festered all through the winter, then turned black to the groin and stank, at which point he died.
Ulf-Agar, myself and a new Oathsworn, a fair-haired, bearded man called Hring, brought into the Oathsworn to replace Haarlaug, carried the Serkland woman out. I remember Hring because neither he nor I joined in Ulf-Agar’s cursing about having to carry a thrall to be buried. That and the fact that, because of the lice, he was the first of many to have his head shaved. Perhaps that, the mark of a thrall forced on him by circumstance, made him more aware of her.
As for me, I thought myself the only one who cared, though we had all humped her at one time or another and never had a name for her other than Dark One. But, almost with the splash of her in the black, cold water, I had forgotten; I stopped wondering what she had been in her own hot lands. By the time I was back in the hov, I was already looking for the huskiest of the girls still on her feet and trying to get her off them.
Not long after that all the girls were gone, sold off almost overnight. The winter was done and the Fjord Elk was bound for the whale road again.
No one remembers Birka now. Sigtuna, a little way to the north, now sits in its high seat, though people still speak of Gotland as being the queen of the trade places of the Baltic. But Gotland was no more than a seasonal trade fair beside Birka when it flourished.
At the time, I thought Birka was a marvel. Skirringsaal was big, even winter-empty, but Birka, when I first saw it, seemed to me an impossible place. How could so many live so close together? Now, of course, I know better – Birka was a place of rough-hewn logs that could be placed in a few streets of Miklagard, the Great City of the Romans, and not be noticed.
We came beating up to it in driving rain and a wind that wanted to tear the clothes from us. It thrummed the ropes and heaved out the soaking sail.
Because it was so wet, my father shrugged at the idea of hauling it in and the Fjord Elk ran with it, cutting like a blade through the black water, throwing up ice-white spray, snaking down the great heave of the sea so that you could feel it flex, like the muscled beast it was named after, rutting in some red autumn wood.
It was here that we lost Kalf to the waves. My father, when Pinleg bellowed out that the great fortress rock of Birka, the Borg, was in sight, knew that the sail and spar had to come down on to the rests and be lashed. If not, we would slice past it and on into the Helgo and the tangle of islands where the ice still gripped and calved off into dirty, blue-white bergs that would smash the speeding Elk to splinters.
So we all sprang to the walrus-hide ropes and began to pull, while the Elk groaned and bent and the water hissed and creamed away underneath her.
The sail fought us – and one corner of it tore loose, flapping, deceptive. Kalf leaned out to grab it. A mistake. It was wet; he missed; it slapped him like a forge hammer in the face and I just caught the sight of him out of the side of one eye, flying arse over tit, up and out and into the black water with scarcely a splash.
And he was gone, just like that.
Those who had seen it and weren’t hanging on to rope sprang to the side, but there was no sign. Even if he had surfaced, there was no hope; we were flying before the wind like a horse with the bit clenched. By the time we had got the sail stowed and the oars out and turned to row back, he’d have stiffened with the cold and sunk.
I saw my father mouth at Einar, the wind ripping the words away into the wet sail. Einar simply shook his head and pointed onward. Illugi Godi made a sign against the evil eye and Valgard roared incoherently at us, then moved in, banging shoulders and urging us to pull down the sail.
We smothered the great, wet, squelching mass of sail on to the spar and lashed the spar to the rests, panting and sweating with the effort. The rowing crew took their sea-chest benches and, slowly, the Fjord Elk, like a reined-in, snorting horse, stilled and was turned towards the great wet-black rock that marked Birka.
On it, I saw, was a fortress, a rampart of earth and stone that loomed over the settlement and, at a certain point, Einar had us take down the antlered prows, to show we came in peace and were not about to offend the gods of the land with our arrival.
We rowed on, practically level with the great rock, until the sound of a horn brayed out faintly on the water and Rurik, sharply, ordered oars to rest. We waited, the Elk rolling in the swell, water slapping spray over the side.
‘What are we doing?’ I demanded of Steinthor. ‘Going fishing?’
He chuckled and slapped my shoulder, causing a fine spray of water from the soaked cloth. ‘We wait for the tide,’ he answered. ‘The way into the harbours is dangerous with rocks and only Birka men know where they are. The only safe way in is to wait until the rocks show at low tide – or leave when the water runs really high, like in a storm, and trust to the gods.’
‘Harbours?’ I ventured.
‘They have three,’ he said, almost proudly. ‘The one to the west they actually made; the other two are natural.’
‘Four harbours,’ my father interrupted. ‘The fourth is the salvik, the Trade Place, further to the east. That’s for small ships and those with shallow draught, like us. We can berth there without having all those fat-bellied knarrer in our way, or paying fees for it.’
Steinthor grunted. ‘It is a harbour if you count dragging the ship up the shingle on rollers a harbour. And it’s a long walk to the town.’
The swell grew and the Fjord Elk moved with it, slow and ponderous, like some half-frozen water insect. We slid into the salvik and, with the others, I leaped out, paired myself with Hring on an oar and, using it and the others as rollers, the Fjord Elk was ground up over the shingle and the cracking ice pools.
Valgard fretted and tried to inspect the keel, ducking under the oars as we t
ook them from behind and dropped them in front. One cracked and splintered under the stress; Einar cursed, nodding to Valgard to add that to his tally stick of essential refurbishment.
There were other ships, none as big as the Elk, but many of them, it seemed to me, freshly arrived with the melting ice. But Geir and Steinthor grunted and shook their heads.
‘Fewer than last time and there were few then,’ muttered the former, rubbing his wobbling nose.
Steinthor shrugged. ‘All the more ale for us then.’
Down on the strand, under the flapping tent of a patched sail, a trader had spread out a series of tattered furs, on which were bolts of dyed cloth, wool and linen. Next to him, another had set up a simple trestle bench, with amber beads, bronze cloak ringpins, ornaments of jet and silver, eating knives in decorated sheaths and amulets, particularly Thor’s hammer made to look like a cross, so the wearer got the best of both Other Worlds.
They looked hungrily at the men swaggering off the ship; a few Oathsworn wandered over, but wandered back swiftly enough, glum. Pinleg, rolling even more because he hadn’t got his landlegs yet, scowled and shook his head as he came swaying up. ‘Not buying, selling,’ he growled. ‘Piss-poor prices for anything we want to get rid of. That means we’ll have to hang on to it until we get to Ladoga.’
Illugi Godi came up, carrying a live hare by the ears. It hung from his hands, trembling and quiet. He moved to a large, flat rock, which had clearly been used before, and set the hare flat, stroking it gently. It gathered itself into a huddle and shook.
He cut the throat expertly, holding it up so that it kicked and squealed and the blood poured over its front and flew everywhere with its flying, desperate attempts to leap in the air.
Illugi gave it to the sea god, Aegir, in the name of Kalf, who had died in the black water without a sword in his hand, in the hope that the Aesir would consider that a worthy enough death, and to Harald One-eye and Haarlaug. Men stopped, added their own prayers, then moved on, humping sea-chests on their shoulders.
It came to me then that the Oathsworn had done one journey, from south Norway, round between Wessex and the lands of the Norse in France, north to Man and Strathclyde, then back and on eastwards to Birka. A journey without trouble and a soft raid, according to the salt-stained men of the Oathsworn. And yet three men had died.
Illugi gutted the hare while it kicked feebly, examined the entrails and nodded sagely. He left the red ruin of it aside, started a small fire from shavings, fed it to life and caught me watching. ‘Get me dry wood, Orm Ruriksson.’
I did – with difficulty on that wet beach – and he built the fire up, then laid the remains of the hare on it. The smell of singed fur and burning flesh drifted blackly down to the traders, some of whom crossed themselves hurriedly.
When it was done, Illugi Godi left it on the rock, picked up his own meagre belongings and both of us stumbled up the shingle to the coarse grass and on towards the dark huddle of Birka. On the Traders’ Green, which sat opposite the tall, timbered stockade and the great double doors of the North Gate, was a sprawl of wattle-and-daub huts.
Two substantial buildings squatted there, too, made of age-blackened timbers caulked with clay. One was for the garrison that manned the Borg, the great fortress which towered over to our left, and the other was for those like us, visiting groups of armed men who had to be offered hospitality, without the good burghers of Birka having to invite them into their protected homes.
At the gates, two bored guards with round leather caps, shields and spears made sure no one entered the town with anything larger than an eating knife and, since no sensible man would simply leave his weapons with them and hope to get them back later, there was much cursing from those unused to the custom as they traipsed back to dwellings to secure them with people they knew.
Illugi Godi, busy pointing things out to me as we trudged towards the Guest Hall, stopped suddenly at the sight of one of the Oathsworn, walking up from the beach in a daze, as if frozen.
Puzzled at first, I suddenly saw his face as Illugi Godi took him by the shoulder and turned him to face us. Eyvind, his name was, a thin-faced, fey-eyed man from Hadaland in Norway. My father said he was touched, though he never said by what.
Something had touched him, for sure, and it made the hairs on my arms stand up; he was pale as a dead man, his dark hair making him look even more so and, above his beard, his eyes looked like the dark pits of a skull.
‘What happened to you?’ demanded Illugi as I looked around warily. The wind hissed, cold and fierce, the night came on with a rush and a last, despairing gasp of thin twilight and figures moved, almost shadows. At the gate and up at the fortress, lamps were lit, little glowing yellow eyes that made the dark more dark still. Nothing was out of the ordinary.
Illugi asked again and the man blinked, as if water had been thrown in his face.
‘Raven,’ he said eventually, in a voice half wondering, half something else. Dull. Resigned. ‘I saw a raven.’
‘A crow, perhaps,’ Illugi offered. ‘Or a trick of the twilight.’
Eyvind shook his head, then looked at Illugi as if seeing him clearly for the first time. He grabbed Illugi by the arms; his beard trembled. ‘A raven. On the beach, a rock with the remains of a hare sacrifice on it.’
I heard Illugi’s swift intake of breath – and so did Eyvind. He was wild-eyed with fear.
‘What was in your head?’ demanded Illugi Godi. Eyvind shook his own, muttering. I caught the words ‘raven’ and ‘doom’ as they were whipped away by the wind. I shivered, for the sight of one of the AllFather’s birds on a sacrifice offering was a sure sign that you would die.
Illugi seized the man in return and shook him. ‘What was in your head?’ he demanded in a fierce hiss.
Eyvind looked at him, his eyebrows closed into one, and he shook his head again, bewildered. ‘Head? What do you mean … ?’
‘Were you remembering, or just thinking?’
‘Thinking,’ he answered.
Illugi grunted. ‘What thought?’
Eyvind screwed up his face, then it smoothed and he looked at Illugi. ‘I was looking at the town and thinking how easily it would burn.’
Illugi patted him on the shoulder, then indicated the pile of dropped gear. ‘Get to the Guest Hall and don’t worry. It was Odin’s pet right enough – but not with a message for you. For me, Eyvind. For me.’
The eagerness in him was almost obscene to watch. ‘Really? You say true?’
Illugi Godi nodded and the man scrabbled to collect his things, then stumbled off towards the butter-glow of the Hall.
Illugi leaned on his staff a moment, looking round. I was annoyed; Eyvind thought he had seen one of Odin’s ravens, herald of death, and had then gone off, not the least bothered that the doom of it was claimed by another. I said as much and Illugi shrugged.
‘Who knows? It could have been Thought … That raven is as deep and cunning as Loki,’ he replied. Then he looked at me, his fringe of grizzled, red-gold beard catching the lamp glow. ‘On the other hand, it might have been Memory – Birka has burned before.’
‘You think it a warning, then? Since it came to your sacrifice for the dead?’ I asked, shivering slightly.
‘On yet the other hand,’ Illugi Godi said wryly. ‘Eyvind is Loki-touched. He loves fire, is mad for fire. Twice before people have stopped him lighting one on the Fjord Elk. Oh, he always had good reason – hot food for us all, dry boots and socks – but he was also the one who wanted to torch all the buildings at St Otmund’s chapel, after we knew the fyrd were roused.’
I remembered – so it had been him who had called for it.
‘So he was mistaken?’ I asked as Illugi hefted his belongings and, with no other word, led me to the Guest Hall.
I wanted to ask him what would happen when Eyvind told the others, but should have realised what Illugi already knew: that Eyvind would say nothing. He would now, as the fear and relief fell away, realise what a nithing h
e had become at that moment and would certainly tell no one how his bowels had turned to water.
The Guest Hall was spacious, clean and well equipped, with a good hearth pitfire and a lot of boxbeds – not enough for us all, so it was a chance to see who was who in the Oathsworn.
Of course, I ended up on the floor near the draughty door, but that was no surprise. My father got a good boxbed, as did Einar and Skapti and others I had expected. To my surprise, Pinleg got one, too and, after a moment of raised hackles and growling, Gunnar Raudi forced Steinthor out of his. Chuckling, Ulf-Agar watched the archer slouch off, scowling.
‘Watch your back, flame-head,’ he advised. ‘You may be picking arrowheads out of it.’
‘Watch your mouth, short-arse,’ Gunnar growled back, ‘or you will be picking my boot out of it.’
At which all those who heard it laughed, including Steinthor. Ulf-Agar bristled, thought better of it and subsided sullenly, for he had also heard of Gunnar Raudi.
I was surprised how many of these hard men had heard of Gunnar and the respect they held for him. I had always thought of Gunnar as someone who lived for free at Bjornshafen and never questioned the why of it.
Now, it seemed to me, Gunnar was known as a hard man himself, but was clearly not at ease with it. I wondered, then, why he didn’t just leave, for it was also clear that he and Einar were wary as big-ruffed wolves round each other.
I had expected Birka to be much the same as Skirringsaal, but it was different. We had women, sent by the merchants who ran the town, but these were no bought thralls, to be upended and tupped without thought. They were respectable wives and mothers, in embroidered aprons, with proper linen head-coverings and a beltful of keys and scissors and ear-cleaners. They had their own thralls – some of them pretty enough – but not for the likes of us to grab at.
They had no fear and sharp tongues and the cold-eyed men of the Oathsworn meekly submitted to having hair and beards trimmed and fingernails cut, as if they were children.
So we had meals and minded our manners, after a fashion – Illugi Godi had to cuff a few heads into shamefaced apologies now and then and so respected was he that he could.