by Robert Low
‘How do they get off the island when we have recovered this prize?’ I asked. ‘My own crew is about all the Volchok will take. It is a simple trading knarr and, even allowing that some will die, those left will be too many for that boat.’
‘Your problem,’ snarled Tagardis sullenly.
‘No, for I am thinking these Danes will see that clear enough when this is put to them,’ I answered. ‘It is not a gold-gift, this offer of yours.’
Balantes stirred slightly. ‘Their ship will be returned to them,’ he said and I blinked at that, for Tagardis had given me to understand that it had been sunk.
‘Foundered, I said,’ he corrected with a smirk. ‘Holed and driven ashore. We took her and repaired her, but have found no use for her yet.’
More likely the Greeks did not know how to sail it and they would not trust the Danes back on the deck of their own ship.
‘I will give them their ship and arms,’ Balantes said, ‘and the promise that they will be unmolested for two leagues beyond the harbour. After that, if I see that ship or the crew again, I will sink one and blind everything else.
‘You will go quickly to the place, get this container and return it to me unopened. I will seal it, then you will take it back to Choniates, into his hands and no other. Time is against us here, so move swiftly. I do not care about Farouk’s destruction, only what is in the container. Understand?’
I was hardly listening. A hafskip. Even allowing for the fact that Greeks did not know bollock from rowlock when it came to Norse ships, they could hardly have botched repairs so as to make her unseaworthy.
A hafskip was within my grasp and all I had to do was persuade fifty Danes not to kill their captors, to trust me, a barely shaved boy, and to take on an Arab and all his men. After that, I would have to think up some way of keeping the hafskip – and them if possible.
All of which made the Thing we held on board later that night a lively one.
Brother John thought we should find out how many were Christ-sworn and then convert those who were not, so that we all had that faith in common. Sighvat said it did not much matter what gods men believed in, only what men they believed in.
Finn said we should get them to swear the Oath, at which my heart sank. That Odin-oath never seemed to weaken – indeed, it grew stronger with every warrior who joined.
Kvasir, of course, slashed his way to the nub of it and, for a man with only one good eye, saw clearer than anyone, save me. I had already seen what had to happen, but just did not want to have to face it.
‘These Danes will already have a leader, whether the jarl they sailed with, or one they look to if he has gone,’ he said and looked at me. ‘Orm will have to fight him and defeat him, otherwise all of them will be patient enemies for us, not sword-brothers to trust at our backs.’
There was silence – even the incessant chirrup of the night insects had stopped – so that my sigh seemed like the curl of wave on a beach.
‘You almost have the right of it, Kvasir,’ I replied. ‘I will not have to defeat him, I am thinking – I will have to kill him stone dead.’ It was an effort to make it sound like I was asking for the mutton dish to be passed, but I carried it off.
‘Just so,’ agreed Kvasir sombrely, nodding.
‘What if he kills you?’ asked Amund.
I shrugged. ‘Then you will have to think that one out for yourselves.’
It was as offhand a hero-gesture as I could make it, but I was swallowing a thistle in my throat at the very idea of a fight and my bowels were melted.
Sighvat nodded and shifted so he could fart, a long sound, like a horn call in a fog, which broke the tension into fragments of chuckles.
‘Still,’ mused Brother John, ‘five years breaking stones will have dulled this leader’s fighting skills, surely.’
A fact I was grasping at while drowning in fear.
Kvasir grunted agreement, then said thoughtfully: ‘Just don’t choose to fight with hammers.’
The next day, with Kvasir, Brother John and Finn on either side, I stood in front of the sorry Danes, as husked-out a crew of worn specimens as any seen on a slave coffle in Dyfflin. They were honed by rough work and too little food into men made of braided hawsers, with muscles like knots.
Burned leather-dark, their hair made white by rock dust and sun-scorch, they stood and looked at us in the remains of their tunics and breeks, torn and bleached to a uniform drab pale, like the stuff they hewed. Stone men, with stone hearts.
Yet there was a flicker when I spoke to them and told them of what would happen, the chances for plunder on the way, which they could also keep – this last my own invention, for I knew my kind well.
‘How do we know these Greeks will honour such a promise?’ demanded one.
There he was. Taller than the rest, with bigger bones at elbow and knees to show that, if he’d had more food, the work would have slabbed real muscle on him. A glimmer of genuine red-gold showed in the quartz-sparkled stone dust shrouding his hair and beard and his eyes were so pale a blue that they seemed to have no colour at all.
‘Because I say so,’ I said. ‘I, Orm Ruriksson of the Oathsworn, give you my own word on it.’
He shifted, squinted at me, then spat pointedly. ‘A boy? You claim to be a jarl, but if you need us you are short on followers, ring-giver.’
‘You are?’
‘I am Thrain, who says you should go away, little boy. Come back when you are grown.’
‘You may say that,’ growled someone from the back, to a muttered chorus of agreement, ‘but I would like to listen more. Five years is a long time and I am sick of stone-carving.’
Thrain whirled, spraying dust from himself. ‘Fasten that bag, Halfred. We agreed that I lead here. I speak, not you.’
‘Did you speak when Hrolf took the steering oar when he was fog-brained with mead?’ came the counter. ‘Did you speak when Bardi ordered him to steer between two shoals, he who was seeing four at the time? No. I am remembering the only noise you made was the same one as we all did – the sound of a man drowning.’
I liked this Halfred. Thrain scowled, but I had the bridle of this horse now, since I had heard the dissent.
‘Here’s the way of it,’ I said. ‘You will be free, with arms and your ship, but only if I am your jarl and you take our Oath.’
We swear to be brothers to each other, bone, blood and steel. On Gungnir, Odin’s spear, we swear, may he curse us to the Nine Realms and beyond if we break this faith, one to another.
They blinked at the ferocity of it, as everyone did, for it was a hard oath and one made on Odin’s spear, the Shaking One, and so could not be broken. It lasted for life unless you found someone to take your place – or fought to the death to keep it against someone who wanted it, which had not happened while I had been with the Oathsworn. That, I suddenly realised, was because so many tended to die and there were always places.
For all that, these stone Danes sucked it in like a parched man falling in an ale vat. They wanted what was offered and I could see them tasting the salt on their lips and finding it spray rather than sweat.
‘Those who do not wish to become Oathsworn can remain and dig stones,’ I went on. ‘Of course, anyone can become leader here if the others want him enough and, since it is clear that there will be more of you than my own men, I am supposing you will want this Thrain to take over. So I will save him all the trouble of calling for a Thing and talking round it until our heads hurt, for it will all come out the same way.’
I looked at him. ‘We fight,’ I said, trying to sound as if I had just asked someone to pass the bread.
There was a brief silence, where even the sun seemed loud as it beat down.
‘Do you so challenge? Or are you afraid?’ I asked and Thrain scowled, for he had been stunned by the speed of all this.
‘I am not afraid of you,’ he managed to growl, adding a wolf-grin.
‘I can change that,’ I told him and the grin faded. He licked dry
lips and wondered about me now, this steel-smooth, cocksure boy. If he had known the effort it took to breathe normally, keep my voice from squeaking and my legs from shaking, he might have been less uneasy when he finally issued his challenge.
I had never fought a holmgang before, though I had seen it once, when two of the old Oathsworn, long gone to Valholl, had stepped into the marked-off square to fight. Hring had lasted no more than the time it took Pinleg to froth at the mouth and Hring to see that he had ended up in a fight with a berserker. There had been barely enough time for him to widen his eyes with the horror of it before Pinleg charged and hacked him to bloody shreds.
Pinleg, last seen surrounded by enemies on a beach far north in the Baltic, saving us even as we sailed away and left him.
We went to a sheltered, level spot, away from prying eyes, when the Danes were unshackled. The others, especially Finn, were full of good advice, for they knew I had never fought holmgang. Come to that, no one else had either – it was a rare thing, most fights being unofficial and settled without such formal fuss and seldom ending in death.
I remembered what my father, Gunnar Raudi, had told me: see what weapon your opponent has and if he has more than one, which is permitted. Make your own second one a good short seax, held in the shield-hand and, if you get a chance, drop the shield and surprise him with it – if you can let go of the shield and still hold the seax, which is a cunning trick.
Keep your feet moving always, don’t lead with the leg too far forward and attack legs and feet where possible, a sea-raiders’ battle trick, for a man with a leg wound is out of the fight and can be left.
But the best piece of advice I hugged to myself, turning it over and over and over in my mind like a prayer to Tyr, god of battles.
Finn and Short Eldgrim marked out the five ells, which was supposed to be a hide, secured at each corner by long nails called tjosnur, which we didn’t have. Finn managed to get four old Roman nails from the garrison stores, almost eight inches long and square-headed, which he then put in with the proper ritual. That meant making sure sky could be seen through his legs, holding the lobe of an ear and speaking the ritual words.
Brother John scowled at all this, though the nails interested him, for it was with such as these, he told us, that Christ Jesus had been nailed to the cross.
Each of us had two weapons and three shields and the challenged – I – struck the first blow. I had made sure to craft that part carefully enough.
If one foot went out – going on the heel, as we called it – the fight went on. If both feet went out, or blood fell, the whole thing was finished.
Thrain had not been in a holmgang either, had not been in a fight with weapons for five years, so he was nervous. He was grinning the same way a dog wags his tail – not because he is friendly, but because he is afraid. His top lip had dried and stuck to his teeth and he was trying to boost the fire in his belly by chaffering with his Danes about how this boy would not take long.
He had a shield and a sword and a leather helmet, same as me, but you could see the sword hilt was awkward in a hand that had held only a pick and hammer for five years and he knew it, was fighting the fear and needed to bolster himself as Kvasir shouted: ‘Fight.’
He half turned his head, to seek the reassurance of his men once more, before bracing for the first stroke – but I was fighting with Gunnar’s best advice ringing in my head.
Be fast. Be first.
I was already across the space between us, that perfect, water-flowing blade whirring like a bird startled into flight.
It was as near perfect a stroke as I have ever done: it took him right on the strap of the helm and cut the knot of it, sliced into the soft flesh under his chin and kept going, even after it hit the bones at the back of his neck.
I almost took his head in that one stroke, but not quite. He must have seen the flicker of the blade at the last, was trying to duck and draw back in panic, but far too slow, for the blade was through him and he dragged it out by staggering back.
Then his body fell forward and his head fell down his back, held by a scrap of skin. Blood fountained straight out of his neck, pulsing out of him in great gouts, turning the dust to bloody mud as he clattered to the ground, spattering my boots.
There was a stunned silence, followed by a brief: ‘Heya,’ from Finn.
One stroke. My crew cheered, but I felt nothing, heard nothing but the drumming of Thrain’s heels, the slush-slush of his life ebbing away and the thunder of my own breathing, made louder under the helm.
‘He should have talked less and looked more,’ Kvasir noted, then nudged me. ‘Now is the time to swear the Oath. A holmgang death – this is the best sacrifice Odin will get from us this year.’
So, as jarl and godi both, bloody blade still in my hand, I called on the Danes to swear the Oath and they did it, still stunned. Then I had Thrain taken and buried in a good boatgrave and, because he had been Thor’s man, they told me, spoke words over him to the Thunderer and put a decent silver armring in it – my last – which everyone noted. Brother John wisely kept tight-lipped.
‘It was well struck,’ Finn growled later, coming with food to where I sat apart from the others at the fire. He thrust the food at me, but it tasted of nothing in my mouth and I could not stop the shaking that rippled me, despite a cloak against the night chill.
‘The Danes are annoyed,’ Finn went on, ‘but only because Thrain lost so easily. They all agree you struck an excellent stroke.’
‘And?’
Finn shrugged. ‘And no one disputes that you are jarl, which is what was wanted. By the time we have defeated these goat-humpers, they will be one crew and not sitting on opposite sides of the fire.’
I came to the fire later, into the quiet talk about home and where the Danes had been and boasting of our own exploits. Though no one spoke of Thrain, I could feel him lying cold under his stones, weapons on his breast. Five years breaking stones, to end like this.
I could not get warm all that night.
FIVE
The rain spattered on the loop of cloak over my head, washing down from the mountains the Goat Boy said were called Troodos. We had climbed out of sight of the sea now, away from the olive and carob trees, into the limestone crags and their scatterings of pines, stunted oaks and fine trees Sighvat thought were cedars. It was cool and clean and wet here as we waited for the scouts to come back.
‘Monastery fall down,’ the Goat Boy had said, proud of the Norse he had put together, pointing ahead and shivering in his ragged tunic, even though Finn had given him a spare cloak which he had wrapped himself in until he was nearly lost. To us, though, the day was mild and Finn came stumping up to us booming: ‘Almost like home,’ and ruffling the Goat Boy’s mass of black curls.
He had presented the Goat Boy and his brother to us, twin prows from the same boat it appeared, both dark-haired, olive-skinned and black-eyed. One was older, he told us proudly, being nine while his brother was merely eight.
Their mother, a plump woman swathed in black and grinning behind a hand to hide her lack of teeth, had carried water and food to the Danes for five years and was now, with others in the town, taking in our clothing to be washed and repaired. The Danes went in ones and twos to the bathhouse and came back clean and combed. Then they had their hair and beards trimmed from five years of tangle – the most vain of all the Norse were the Danes.
Finn had taken a liking to the Goat Boys, white-toothed grinning little dogs who followed him around since they had come begging for washing work, their father being dead from fever some years now.
‘They have some Arab in them, then,’ I grunted to Brother John, when he told me they were rattling away in that tongue.
‘Their mother certainly had,’ chuckled Finn and curled his own moustaches, for he had an interest there, I was thinking, and her lack of teeth was a small matter to a man long at sea.
The hafskip was brought round under the stern eye of Balantes and duly turned over �
�� though I saw he had stationed two dromon ships, light galleys with catapults on them, out at the harbour mouth, just in case we did something stupid, like try to run.
Gizur went aboard, with a Dane called Hrolf who had some skill with ship-wood and the rest of the Danes gathered in a huddle on the beach, looking and breathing in the distant pine and tar scent of her.
One, called Svarvar, told me its name was Aifur, Ferocious, and I asked if the Danes would care if we called it the Fjord Elk, which was the name the Oathsworn gave every ship they sailed on – even though, it seemed to me, we did not tend to have them long.
Svarvar said he would talk to them and I said I would call a Thing for it and we could all decide. Svarvar I liked, for he had come round to the new way of things swiftly and laughed a lot, even at his own misfortunes and the delight people took in them.
He had worked for a moneyer in Jorvik when he was a lad, ten years or so ago, apprentice die-maker to one Frothric, who minted coins for the young King Eadwig.
‘But I never had the skill of it,’ he confessed to his delighted audience. ‘And then I made a good die, by my way of thinking, a skilled bit of work, with Eadwig Rex and the cross on one side and the name of Frothric on the other. But while the King’s name was perfect, Frothric’s side was upside down and able to be read only in a polished surface.’
Everyone chuckled at that and howled and slapped their legs when he added that Frothric had stamped the die on lead to test it, then thrown it out into the street in a fury – and Svarvar himself shortly after.
‘So I decided skilled work was not for me and went viking that summer. Never stopped,’ he added.
The new Fjord Elk was declared fit enough to take to sea, though its sail, having been flake-stowed on the yard for five years, needed considerable work and much of the tackle and lines needed replacing.
So I said that Radoslav, Kvasir, Gizur, Short Eldgrim and six of the Danes should stay behind, to guard and fix both ships, then showed the Goat Boys two silver pieces, minted in the Great City, one for each. One would come with us as guide and the other would stay. If there was trouble, he would bring news of it and Short Eldgrim would carve the runes of it on a stick, so that only Northmen could read it.