The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 3

by Robert Low

  He paused, turned to Ketil Crow, whose languid stare never wavered. ‘If I fall,’ he added, ‘you take the Oathsworn back to where the Elk was burned. Starkad’s ship is there. It is my intent to cut them up badly here. He has one ship, will have left guards and has, I suspect, a hundred men here, perhaps fifteen or twenty guarding his drakkar. It may be possible to take it and that is what I intend.’

  Again he paused and gave a twisted smile. ‘None can escape their wyrd,’ he growled, ‘but there is no reason why the Norns should have an easy weave of it and I will postpone the final shearing of those three sisters yet.’

  We watched him stride off and no one spoke. It was the first time he had come close to admitting his doom and it was unnerving, so that you didn’t want to be close to it. We broke apart and went to our tasks.

  I was concerned about Hild. I could hardly leash her to me and so would have to stand with her to make sure she didn’t take it into her head to run off. That meant I couldn’t stand in the shieldwall and, apart from the fact that every blade was needed, it would have been the first shieldwall ever for me. Mailed, I would have been in the front rank, the place of honour – though those in it called themselves the Lost. Except, I thought moodily, I would miss it, guarding this girl.

  ‘You look like a sulky boy,’ she said brightly. ‘All you need is to scuff the ground with a toe.’

  Guiltily, I shot her a look, then chuckled at how right she was. Some front-rank warrior me. She sat, primly adjusting the ruins of my cloak. I saw she wore a pair of men’s breeks, too, last seen in Valknut’s pack. Saw, too, that she was calm, alert, completely unlike the rolling-eyed maniac of before.

  Almost too calm, in fact. As she turned and smiled a lavish smile, my heart turned and my stomach, too, because there was something unnatural about it.

  ‘When the time comes,’ she said, ‘we will run that way.’ And she pointed left, to where the ground dipped into brush.

  I had no time to query it, for the horn-blast was on us. Bagnose and Steinthor flitted out to the wings of the forming line and the shieldwall went up with a deep roar and slam as shields locked. The banner unfurled with a snap and, craning, I saw figures filtering out of the mist, forming into a line. A banner flew there, too, and the shock of seeing another Raven Banner was like cold water. When all was said and done, we were fighting our own.

  A figure came forward from them, hands raised to show they were empty. He wore a splendid gilded helmet and a flaming red cloak over his long mail hauberk. When he got closer, he peeled the helmet off, to reveal a shock of tawny hair and beard and bright, ice-blue eyes above a wide smile. Starkad.

  ‘Einar,’ he called. ‘Your ship is ash; your men are too few. All you need do is hand over the monk and what you found in this place and you can go where you will.’

  Einar nodded, as if considering the offer. ‘What you say is true enough. Yet you talk, which means you are not sure of winning, even with all your men. No doubt you have been told of the Oathsworn and you are right to be afraid. Is Brondolf Lambisson with you? Let him tell you of encountering the Oathsworn, as he did in his own hov. Better still, he could show you his keks and the shit on them.’

  There was grim laughter at this and a flurry from the ranks behind Starkad, which broke to let Brondolf Lambisson through. Dressed in mail and with a fine helmet and shield, his red-faced anger was plain, but his words didn’t carry far enough for the Oathsworn to hear, so they jeered at him, clashing sword and shield until he gave up.

  ‘It seems you are determined to visit your own doom on those around you,’ Starkad countered, which was cunning and would have flustered a lesser man. But Einar had courage and wit enough, even with the crows practically pecking out his eyeballs.

  ‘Ah … you have been speaking with Ulf-Agar, I am thinking,’ he said, craning as if to see round Starkad. ‘Is that nithing here?’

  Reluctantly, a figure stepped out, mailed and well armed, but limping slightly. He said nothing, but glared and pointed at Einar with his sword.

  Einar shook his head sorrowfully.

  ‘Cattle die and kinsmen die,

  Yourself will soon die,

  Only fair fame never fades …’

  His voice rang out the old lines and even I saw Ulf-Agar jerk with shame and anger. Einar, in a voice of ice, added, ‘Fair fame has eluded you, Ulf-Agar, for all you sought it. Fame – yes. Men will remember you as an oathbreaker and that you do not stand straight and tall next to the likes of Orm, the White-bear Slayer.’

  And it was my turn to jerk with shame, when the Oathsworn cheered and banged their swords on their shields, yelling my name.

  Starkad recovered well, though, and his pleasant smile never slipped. ‘Well, it seems a fight is certain on this bare hill,’ he called out, loud enough for all to hear. ‘But why waste good lives? Let’s you and I end it, Einar the Black. If I win, your men are free to go or join with me. If you win, likewise.’

  Einar shrugged, knowing he could not refuse it with honour. ‘When,’ he said, stressing the word, ‘I win, your men will just go. I want no part of Bluetooth’s hounds. Except for Ulf. I want him.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Starkad and I saw Ulf-Agar’s face pale and his mouth move, but he had no say in it, being a nithing even in the eyes of those at his back.

  So Starkad came up, though the lines held their places. He shed his cloak, hauled out a beautifully hilted sword, settled his fresh, clean shield, which was decorated with a swirling design, and then tapped the edge twice, lightly, with his sword.

  Einar, having dropped his cloak, hauled out his own weapon and unslung a pocked and scored shield. The pair of them circled in a wary half-crouch.

  There was a flurry, a tanging of metal and they parted. Einar whirlwinded steel, hacking lumps off that fine, new shield; Starkad backed up, dropped, swung at Einar’s legs and he only just leaped back in time.

  It went like that until both men were breathing heavily and it was clear that Starkad was stronger and better. His shield was almost wrecked though and I still had hopes – until, in a move all later agreed was as fine a trick as they’d seen, Starkad hooked the fat pommel of his sword inside Einar’s shield, wrenched it sideways and cut downwards, in one smooth movement.

  Einar was no fool and leaped back, but the blade slashed the shield loops and he had to throw the ruin away. Blood sprayed from his slashed hand as he did so. Starkad’s grin was wolf-yellow.

  He closed; Einar backed off, backed off further, then suddenly hurled forward, catching inside Starkad’s sword with his own and forcing it wide, launched himself on to Starkad’s shield. His helmeted head tipped back, came forward like a siege ram and would have splattered Starkad’s nose if it hadn’t been for the iron guard.

  Stunned, Starkad fell backwards. I remembered falling on the hard edge of the forge with the side of my head and knew how Starkad was feeling. Bright lights and sickness: he was doomed.

  But he rolled and Einar’s cut sliced his leg open from knee to boot top, so that he roared with the pain of it. Lashing with his legs, he tangled Einar, who fell. They flailed wildly at each other and missed.

  It was then that the ranks of his men split apart, shouting.

  At first we thought they had treacherously decided to run at us. Then we saw the figures, the hurled javelins. They wore no helmets, had no armour, but they had fistfuls of throwing spears and long knives and there were lots of them, spilling out from the thinning mist, right into the back of Starkad’s men. The villagers from Koksalmi had woken up.

  Einar and Starkad broke apart, panting, staring at each other. Starkad, cursing, limped sideways, away from him, pointing his sword. The blood squeezed out of his boot toes when he moved.

  ‘Later,’ he gasped.

  Einar saw what was happening, got to his feet, swirled up his cloak and issued swift orders. The Oathsworn started to melt backwards, away from the fight, leaving Starkad to deal with it and taking this chance. It occurred to me, as I took Hild by
the arm, that Einar was right – he still had some gods on his side and the Norns’ wyrd wasn’t so easily woven for him after all.

  ‘This way,’ Hild said, almost cheerfully, and I remembered, chilled, her earlier quiet statement.

  She was right, too – the villagers had sent men to the flank. They spilled out to my left and she led us to the right, into the brush. I stopped, though, as Skapti lumbered up, dragging Martin on his leash.

  Two villagers hurled javelins at the big man. I saw him hit. I couldn’t believe it, but he was hit. The javelin went into the back of his neck and came out of his mouth and he stopped and fumbled, then tried to feel round to grab it and haul it out, but couldn’t. Black blood gushed out and he looked at me with a stare of pure astonishment and crashed down like the end of the world.

  I wanted to dash to him, but Hild held me back and pulled and pulled. I saw Martin jerk the end of the leash from Skapti’s twitching hand. Our eyes met, a single locked, mutual glare, and then he scuttled off.

  I left, numbed, stumbling after Hild down the slope. Skapti. Gone.

  We came out on to the flat in a scrabble of scree and panic, panting and gasping. Hild stumbled too far and slipped over the bank of the river into the water with a sharp scream and a splash.

  Frantic, I hurled myself at the edge, saw her floundering in the shallows and more concerned with hanging on to that gods-cursed spear-shaft than getting out. I grabbed her hair and yanked, angry and afraid, and hauled her out.

  ‘You were always the one for humping,’ said a voice, vicious as a bite.

  Ulf-Agar stepped from the bushes. He had lost his helmet and his shield, but was still mailed and had a long and wicked sword. ‘Now it seems you have to drag a corpse out and fuck that,’ he added. He moved towards me, dragging his leg where it had been sword cut in the warehouse fight in Birka.

  I remembered him, sweat gleaming in the musty twilight, swinging that cooling red branding iron – the one that had left the wet, slow-healing weals all over his body – as Starkad’s men closed in.

  I remembered him guarding my back as I foolishly bounced off the door I could have opened easily if I had thought more about it. I heard him yelling at me to do it, blood spraying from his smashed mouth. Of all the injuries, that was the worst, especially for the likes of him – teeth were more precious than silver for, without them, you sucked gruel where real men chewed meat and bread. And that, too, was my fault, in Ulf’s head.

  That same mouth was twisted on a face triumphant with hate and I knew he could not be brought to the same memories of then, that reminding him of how I had freed him would simply fuel the fire that ate him. I cursed the gift Einar prized so much: by stepping back in my head I could see that Ulf wanted to be me and could not. So he would destroy me instead.

  Yet the hate made him stupid and blind. If he had been sensible he would have said nothing, simply struck. Having said something, he would have stayed beyond sword reach, knowing his limp slowed him. He would also have realised that I had learned something from the first time he had reckoned me no more than an untrained idiot boy who had, unaccountably, come into all Ulf-Agar’s luck in a Loki trick.

  But he did have a brain after all. And when I whirled and drew my sword and swung it in a scything arc, all in one swift, practised movement, I released it from the cage of his head.

  The edge took a chunk out of the right side of his skull, clean as taking a slice out of a boiled egg. He never even had time for a look of astonishment. And what came out of his opened head was a strange spray of grey pasty stuff, tinged with watery blood and yellow gleet.

  I left him still alive, it seemed, for his mouth was working and his limbs were twitching and I could have sworn he saw me drag the bedraggled Hild away, leaving him to the hunting packs of villagers. Even in death, I thought viciously, he’ll be shunned. His head’s too damaged even to warrant being stuck on a pole round that shrine. Truly, when the gods set their faces against you, you are fucked.

  I came across Pinleg, loping quietly ahead. I balked at joining him, not knowing his mood, but he was calm, even cheerful. I told him of Ulf-Agar and he spat.

  ‘Good. And you got the woman. Einar will be pleased. I know where he plans to gather, so let’s move.’

  We scuttled swiftly along, then stopped to get our bearings. I wiped the sweat from my face and looked at Pinleg. ‘I saw Skapti hit.’

  ‘I know,’ he growled, almost annoyed. ‘Silly big arse.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ I urged. ‘For sure.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Pinleg, lumbering off. ‘No one could have lived with a sharp stick poking out of his gob.’

  ‘But he’s dead,’ I wailed and he stopped, whirled and grabbed my tunic. I froze, waiting for the spittle and the steel. Instead, he stared at me nose to nose, his breath rank with fish.

  ‘I know,’ he said softly, then let me go and patted my arm. ‘I know.’

  We met Valknut and Ketil Crow and Einar. The Oathsworn drifted up in ones and threes, panting, sweated, wearing or carrying all they had – everything else had been left behind. There were too many missing – but I spotted, with a leap of the heart that surprised me, my father trotting up, grey-faced and with fresh blood soaking through the sleeve of his tunic.

  I went to him and he nodded and grinned at seeing me, but shook his head when I moved to check the bloodsoaked bindings.

  ‘I leak like a sprung tub,’ he admitted cheerfully, ‘but I am not sunk yet, boy.’

  Like the others, he met the news of Skapti’s death and the monk’s loss with cold silence, but Ulf-Agar’s death brought a satisfied grunt.

  ‘Well, boy,’ my father said admiringly. ‘You are surprising even me, who watched you grow for the first five years of your life and saw what a wolf-pup you were then.’

  This was new and I wanted to know more, but the others were growling their own appreciations and a few hands thumped my back. I half expected to hear that familiar, deep ‘hoom’ from somewhere, but it was gone for ever.

  ‘Now we run, hard,’ Einar said, once we had splashed across the river and into the trees. ‘We beat what’s left of Starkad’s men back to their own ship and take it. That’s the only way off this gods-cursed shore.’

  It was bitter, that journey, for the land seemed to want to scream out its beauty and the new life of spring while we grimmed our way through it, bleak with the loss of Skapti and the others, on towards an uncertain fate.

  We went through belts of woodland, great oaks and ash burgeoning with fresh bud, and across swathes of fresh green, studded with small blue and pale yellow flowers. Thorn trees drooped with early blossom and every breath of wind scattered sprays of white, while the birds blasted their throats out.

  And, black as a lowered brow, the Oathsworn moved swiftly, a pack of dark wolves that had no joy in any of it.

  So fast did we move that we were brought to the little sheltered bay by my father and his uncanny knack just as the sky velveted to dark and the first stars frosted.

  Einar halted the grey-faced, panting pack of us – the last few miles had seen more frequent halts, mainly because Hild was exhausted. But I had seen Pinleg grateful for it, while my father and Ogmund Wryneck and a few others sank down with relief, with hardly the strength to suck up their drool.

  Bagnose and Steinthor went wearily out at Einar’s command, while the rest of us hunched up in a hollow, hearing the wind hiss over the tufted grass that led to the beach and out to the sea. I tasted the salt of it on my lips. Strange how we had longed for the feel and smell of land when afloat and now longed for the touch of ship and spray now that we were ashore.

  No one spoke much, save for Einar, muttering with Ketil Crow and Illugi and my father. I couldn’t hear much of it, but I guessed some: my father would be there to tell Einar whether a ship could be worked out of the bay, whether wind and tide were favourable and, if not, when they would be.

  Ketil Crow would have counted heads and knew how many of the Oathsworn wer
e left – I reasoned about forty, no more, for we had left some on that forge mountain and whether dead or scattered didn’t matter. They were gone from us, like Skapti.

  After a while, as a moon slid up, scudded with cloud, Bagnose came back and had words with Einar, who then called us all round him in that shadowed hollow.

  ‘Steinthor is watching Starkad’s drakkar. It seems all his men are ashore, with a nice fire and ale. They have posted two sentries only.’ He grinned, yellow-fanged in the dark. ‘That’s the best of it. The rest is that there are about sixty of them and they are well armed. But they are out of mail and have no thought of danger. So we form up and move, now. Move fast and hard, break them and go for the drakkar. If we can scatter them and board, we can get away, for the wind and tide are right for it.’

  And, of course, I was given Hild as my task. I was becoming tired of it, to be truthful, for she unnerved me now with her quiet, knowing looks and calm, black-eyed smiles.

  So the Oathsworn scrambled wearily out of the hollow, formed into a loose line and loped off in a rough boar snout. I was in the middle, with Valknut and the Raven Banner unfurled and moving steadily beside me.

  We came up over the tufted grass and on towards where Steinthor hid and I saw the red flower of the fire and the great expanse of blackness that was the sea behind it. There was a faint lantern swinging there, almost certainly on the prow of the boat, which swung on the end of a stout rope and an iron anchor in the shallows.

  When Steinthor saw us, Einar waved for him to form up. He paused, stretched the bow and, as we came up, an arrow whirred into what seemed darkness to me. Moments later, though, I almost stumbled over the corpse of one of the sentries. Half-turned, I saw Pinleg stop, head bowed. He spotted my worried look and waved. ‘Go on, Rurik’s son. I will catch you up and race you to the beach.’

  And he grinned, so I did as he said. It was the last he ever spoke to me.

  When I joined the others, they were pausing, for no longer than a single breath, a mere shortening of stride, to let the line form. Then, at the moment the men by the fire all saw us, looming out of the darkness like a frowned eyebrow, Einar yelled, ‘Boar snout.’ He hurled himself at the apex of the rough triangle, but he was no Skapti and it came in far too fast and loose.