The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 3

by Robert Low

  In it, the whole relationship with Attila the Hun, tributes of treasure and more is an integral part of the story. Elements of that and other Icelandic eddas went on to become the basis for Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle and, later, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

  Birka and the other trading ports along the Baltic all suffered from the lack of eastern silver around this time, but Birka suffered most of all and, by 972AD was all but gone from history. Gotland, until then a seasonal fair, picked up the trade and now some of the richest archaeological finds of Dark Age silver come from that island.

  The rise of the Rus into a nation at this time is fascinating. The Norse, the Slavs, the strange Khazars and all the steppe tribes swirled in the huge cauldron of central Russia, slowly being moulded into an empire, first by Sviatoslav, then Vladimir and finally, Yaroslav, the Wise, who re-fashioned Kiev in the image of Byzantium, laid the foundations for a new Kremlin and built the famous Golden Gates, as well as the Saint Sophia cathedral.

  Finally, there are the varjazi, the Rus name for those bands of Norse warriors hiring themselves out for pay. They had carved out the kingdoms of the Norse, but now those kingdoms had no use for them – they were busy making themselves into nations and the sea raiders of the past were now interlopers to be fought off.

  Even their gods were under threat from the rise of Christianity and only the growing rift between the Greek church of Byzantium and the western worship of Rome seemed to slow the process. The final schism between those two churches came in the 11th century, but arrived too late to prevent the demise of the Aesir gods of the north. Stubbornly, the varjazi fought on until only their name was left – the Greek rendering of it was Varangii and the famed Varangian Guard of the Byzantine emperors was composed of 6000 originals sent by Vladimir to Byzantium only some 20 years after the events of this story.

  Less than a hundred years later the ranks of this elite Viking guard were almost all filled by Saxons from England, fleeing after Hastings, having been defeated, ironically, by the Normans – the Vikings who had settled in France.

  The so-called Dark Age was coming to an end. Those who imagine this meant civilisation coming out of a long, dark tunnel of barbarism, where beleaguered souls huddled round fires in skins, bemoaning the loss of a good Roman bath and waiting desperately for someone to reinvent underfloor heating, should consider that the Norse, at this time, traded, raided and settled from Iceland to Russia, from Orkney to Jerusalem. Byzantium, at this time, was a city of more than a million people when Paris was a collection of huts with a few thousand – and the Norse attacked both with equal arrogant confidence.

  Finally, this is a saga, to be read round a fire against the lurking dark. Any errors or omissions I claim as my own – but don’t let it spoil the tale.

  GLOSSARY OF NAMES

  ALDEIGJUBORG – Starya Ladoga, a town near the eventual site of St Petersburg and a trading port at the entrance to the first of the rivers leading south into Russia.

  BIRKA – Main trading port of the Baltic in the 9th and 10th centuries, it was also noted for being the site of the first Christian congregation in Sweden, founded by Angskar (see Hammaburg, below). After 972AD, Birka vanished from historical record - it is thought that a combination of silting harbours and a failure in the flow of silver from the east killed it off. Gotland, further east, rose in its stead.

  BJORNSHAFEN – Orm’s home – fictional, it is based on archaeological evidence in many farm sites, such as Ribblehead in Yorkshire.

  DYFFLIN – ‘Dubh Linn’ (Black Pool) was established in the 10th century and became a favoured trading place for the Norse.

  GARDARIKI – Norse name for early Russia, the kingdoms of Novgorod and Kiev. Usually translated as ‘kingdom of cities’.

  HAMMABURG – Early name for Hamburg, seat of Bishop Angskar, whose missionary zeal drove Christian priests out to convert the north. In reply, Vikings sacked the place in 845AD and the bishop barely escaped with his life.

  HEDEBY – One of the best-known centres for commerce and industry, situated at the bottom of the Danish peninsula of Jutland; the territory at that time was part of Denmark but it now belongs to Germany. This thriving ‘town on the heather’, was destroyed in 1066 and no longer exists.

  HOLMGARD – ‘Island town’, the Viking name for Novgorod, which was originally the chief town of Gardariki (see above) until the capture of Kiev, further south.

  ITIL – Capital of the Khazarian Empire - moved to this city in 750AD from Balanjar – Itil was also the Khazar name for the Volga River. Destroyed circa 965/66AD by Sviatoslav of Kiev.

  JORSALIR – Jerusalem – in the 10th century, it was the city of the People of the Book – Jews, Muslims and Christians – and, despite warfare outside it, maintained a religious peace inside. The baptised Norse, newest and most-travelled pilgrims, made a point of visiting it.

  JORVIK – The pre-eminent city of Norse Britain from 866AD, better known as York.

  KHAZAR KHANATE – The Khazar empire extended (8th–10th centuries) from the northern shores of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea to the Urals and as far westward as Kiev. In the 8th century this essentially Turkic people adopted Judaism.

  KONUGARD – Kiev – ‘city of the king’. Eventual capital of the Rus/Slav kingdoms which became modern Russia, the city was established by Turkic tribes and ‘liberated’ by Swedish Vikings Askold and Dir, traditionally in the year 860AD.

  LANGABARDALAND – Norse name for Italy, which was gradually transmuted into ‘Lombardy’.

  MIKLAGARD – Constantinople, also known as ‘the great city’. The place to be in the 9th and 10th centuries, the Big Apple of its age and capital of the Byzantine Empire.

  NORVASUND – The Straits of Gibraltar.

  SARKEL – Byzantine-engineered fortress of the Khazars on the Don river, which controlled the trade routes to the east so successfully that the Rus of Kiev eventually decided that it had to be captured.

  SERKLAND – Baghdad. Also the generic name for the Middle East (so called because, it seemed to the Norse, the people there only ever wore underwear - a ‘serk’ or white undershirt).

  SKIRRINGSAAL – Once a Norse Baltic seasonal trade fair, called ‘Kaupang’ by foreigners - a Viking joke, since that’s what they told them it was called when asked. Kaupang simply means ‘a market’.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Top of the list of people who made this book a reality are the Oathsworn – all the crew of Glasgow Vikings (www.glasgowvikings.co.uk) who, wittingly and unwittingly, have ended up sailing on the Fjord Elk through these pages. Thanks a lot Colin, Aeneus, Jill, Eric the Tight, Gail, Helen, Presto and others too numerous to mention – and a huge shout to Boj, Einar the Black himself and the best swordsmith around (www.armourclass.co.uk).

  There are even more Norse around than that and much of what has been uncovered, discovered and recovered in this book is down to The Vikings re-enactment group (www.vikingsonline.org.uk) who are unstinting in their efforts to bring the authentic flavour of Viking, Saxon, Norman and Celtic life back to the 21st century, including drinking entire communities dry.

  None of which would matter if James Gill, my agent at PFD, had not spotted the potential in this – full marks to him and to Susan Watt, my editor at HarperCollins, who took the unruly band of Oathsworn, trimmed their hair, blew their noses and pointed them in the right direction of a proper saga. She and the rest of the HarperCollins team are brilliant.

  A big thanks, too, to all those on the Khazaria Fiction group who gave of their time and expertise to make sure I got that part right, especially Kevin Brook, author of The Jews Of Khazaria. Also to Norm Finkelshteyn, whose own website on The Red Kaganate is a wealth of treasured info on the steppe tribe (www.geocities.com/kaganate).

  Lastly – thanks to Largs, my home town and the place where the Vikings were finally kicked out of the UK by the Scots in 1263. So surprised were the Largonians at this victory that they have been waiting for them to return ever since and are so apologeti
c they have created an entire tourist industry round them, just to say sorry. I know – for ten days every year, I am part of it, at the annual Viking Festival and that is what inspired my interest.

  The Wolf Sea

  ROBERT LOW

  MAP

  DEDICATION

  To Lewis and Harris, two islands in a sea of troubles. I hope, one day, they enjoy what their grandfather has made for them.

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  MAP

  DEDICATION

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Only the hunting hungry

  Set sail on the wolf sea

  Old Norse proverb

  ONE

  MIKLAGARD, the Great City, AD 965

  His eyes flicked to the bundle in my hand, then settled on my gape-mouthed face like flies on blood. They were clouded to the colour of flint, those eyes, and his snake moustaches writhed as he sneered at me, the blow I had given him having done nothing except annoy him.

  ‘Big mistake,’ he snarled in bad Greek and moved up the alley towards me, hauling a seax the length of my forearm out from under his cloak.

  I hefted the wrapped sabre, swung it and revealed how clumsy the weapon was in that single moment. He grinned; I backed up, slithering through black-rotted rubbish, wishing I had just gone my way and ignored him.

  He was quick, too, darting in fast and low, but I had been watching his feet not his eyes and swung the bundle so that it smacked him sideways into the wall. I followed it with a big overarm hack, but missed. The bundled sword cut through the wrappings and struck sparks from the wall.

  Showered with brick and plaster chips, he was alarmed, both at the near miss and the fact that there was now a sharp edge involved. I saw it in his eyes.

  ‘Didn’t expect this, did you?’ I taunted as we shifted and eyed each other. ‘Tell you what – you tell me why you are following me all over Miklagard and I will let you go.’

  He blinked astonishment, then chuckled like a wolf who has found a crippled chicken. ‘You’ll let me go? I don’t think you realise who you are facing, swina fretr. I am a Falstermann and not one to take such insults from a boy.’

  So I had been clever about him being a Dane, I thought. It was a pity I had not been so clever about taking him on. His feet shifted and I had been watching for that, so that when he swung I caught the seax on the shredded bundle, wincing at the blow. I turned my wrist to try and tangle his blade in cloth and almost managed to twist the seax free of his grasp. He was too old a hand for that, though, and I was too clumsy with the sword wrapped as it was.

  Worse than that – even now I sweat with the shame of it – his oarmate came up behind me, elbowed the breath out of me and slammed me to the clotted filth of the alley. Then he plucked the wool-coddled sword from my fluttering hands, easy as lifting an egg from a nest and, dimly, I realised that’s what they had wanted all along. I was gasping and boking too much to do anything about it.

  ‘Time to row hard for it,’ this unseen one growled and I heard his steps squelching through the alley filth.

  I was sure death had not been in the plan of this, but the man from Falster had blood in his eye and I had rain in mine, blurring the world. The cliff walls of the alley stretched up to frame a patch of indifferent grey sky and it came to me then that this would be the last sight I would see.

  I did not want to die in a filthy alley of the Great City with the rain in my eyes. Not that last, especially, for the vision of the first man – the boy – I had killed came back to me, lying on a heath with his bloodless face and his eyes open and startled under little pools of rainwater.

  The Falstermann loomed over me, breathing hard, the seax reversed for a downward thrust straight at my belt loop, rain pearling mistily on the pitted steel, sliding carelessly along the edge …

  The rain, says Sighvat, will tell you all about a place if you know how to read it. The rain in a Norway pine wood is good enough to wash your hair in but, if a city is really old, it drips from the eaves with the grue of ages, black as pitch, harsh as a curse.

  Miklagard, the Great City, was ancient and her pools and gutters spat and hissed like an evil snake. Even the sea here was corroded, heaving in slow, fat swells, black and slick and greasy as a wet hog’s back, glittering with scum and studded with flotsam.

  I did not even want to be in this city and the gawping wonder of it had long since palled. Stumbling from the ruined dream of Attila’s silver hoard, those of the Oathsworn who survived the Grass Sea of the steppe had washed up here, after a Greek captain had been persuaded to take us. Since then, my great plan had been to load and unload cargo on the docks, husband what little real money we had, waiting for the rest of the Oathsworn to join us from far-off Holmgard and make a crew worth hiring for something better.

  At the end of it all, distant as a pale horizon, was a new ship and a chance to go back for all that silver, a thought we hugged for warmth as winter closed in on Miklagard, drenching the Navel of the World in misery.

  That black rain should have been warning enough, but the day the runesword was stolen from me I was wet and arrogant and angry at being followed all along in the lee of Severus’s dripping walls by someone who was either bad at it, or did not care if he was seen. Either way, it was not a little insulting.

  On a clear day in Constantinople you could almost see Galata across the Horn. That day I could hardly see the man following me in the polished bronze tray I held up and pretended to study, as if I would buy it.

  A face twisted and writhed in the beaten, rain-leprous surface, a stranger with a long chin, a thin, straggled beard, a moustache still a shadow and long, brown-red-coloured hair that hung in braids round the brow, some of them tied back to keep the hair from the blue eyes. My face. Beyond it, trembling and distorted, was my shadower.

  ‘What do you see?’ demanded the surly Greek owner of the tray and all its cousins laid out on a worn strip of carpet under an awning, heavy with damp. ‘A lover, perhaps?’

  ‘Tell you what I don’t see,’ I said with as sweet a smile as I could muster, ‘you gleidr gaugbrojotr. I don’t see a sale.’

  He snorted and snatched the tray from me, his sallow face flushed where it wasn’t covered with perfumed beard. ‘In that case, fix your hair somewhere else, meyla,’ he snapped, which I had to admit was a good reply, since it let me know that he understood Norse and that I had called him a bowlegged grave-robber. He had called me little girl in return. From this sort of experience, I learned that the merchants of Miklagard were as sharp as their manners and beards were oiled.

  I smiled sweetly at him and strolled off. I had learned what I needed: the bronze tray had revealed, beyond my face and watching me, the same man I had seen three different times before, following me through the city.

  I wondered what to do, clutching the wrapped bundle of the runesword and chewing scripilita, the chickpea-flour bread, thin and crusty on top, glistening with oil on the bottom, wrapped in broadleaves and – wonder of wonders – thickly peppered. This treat, which was never seen further north than Novgorod, was so expensive beyond the Great City, thanks to the pepper, that it would have been cheaper to dust it with gold. The seductive taste of it and the cold was what made me blind and stupid, I swear.

  The street led to a little square where the windows were already comfort-yellow with light as the early winter dark closed in. I had, even in so short a time, lost the wonder that had once locked my feet to the street at the sight of houses put one on top of the other and had eyes only for my tracker. I paused at a knife-grin
der’s squeaking wheel, glanced back; the man was still there.

  He was from the North, for sure, for he was taller than any others and clean-shaven but for the long snake moustaches, a Svear fashion that was much fancied by dandies then. He had long hair, too, which he had failed to hide well under a leather cap, and wore a cloak, under which could lurk anything sharp.

  I moved on, past a stand where a woman sold chickpea flour and dried figs. Next to her, a man in a sleeveless fleece sold cheeses out of a single basket and, leaning against the wall and trying not to let their teeth chatter in the cold, a pair of girls tried to look alluring and show breasts that were red-blue.

  The Great City is a miserable place in winter. It has the Sea of Darkness at its back and behind that the Grass Sea of the Rus; and it is a place of gloom and penetrating damp. There may be a flicker of late summer and even pleasant days at the start of the year, but you cannot count on sun, only rain, between the last days of harvest and the first ones of the festival of Ostara, which the Miklagard priests call Paschal.

  ‘Come and warm me,’ one of the girls said. ‘I can teach you how to make a beast with two backs if you do.’

  I knew that trick and moved on, trying to keep the man in sight by turning and exchanging some good insults, then bumped into a carder of wool coming up the other way, demanding that people buy his mattress stuffings or risk freezing their babies by their carelessness.

  The street slithered wetly down to the docks, grew crowded, sprouted alleyways and spawned people: bakers, sellers of honey, vendors of tanned leather for making cords, those selling the skins of small animals. This was not the fashionable end of Miklagard, this collection of lumpen faces and beggar hands. They were the halt, the lame and the poxed, most of whom would die in the cold of this winter unless they got lucky.