The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 3

by Robert Low

  I laid out the tale of Hild for this latest Amacyn – poor demented Hild, rescued by us, burdened with a secret and a centuries-old sin, burning for revenge on those who had used her and prepared to lead us all to Atil’s tomb in return for the death of Skartsmadr Mikill and all his men.

  We had done that and Hild had fulfilled her part of the bargain – at the cost of her mind. Had she been made mad by the goddess of the steppe, or the fetch of Ildico, or the guilt of knowing she betrayed the long line of those who had died and kept the secret?

  ‘Perhaps all of them,’ agreed Amacyn, uncoiling slowly to her feet. ‘It does not matter – the secret was revealed. She broke her oath.’

  And all who break such an oath end up dead. That I knew well enough.

  ‘After you quit this place,’ Amacyn continued, ‘those few of us who survived came here, but war was raging on the steppe and it took some time for us all to assemble, so we missed you.’

  I swallowed at that. If they had caught us then, staggering raggedly down to the Azov and the Sea of Darkness …

  ‘Afterwards,’ she went on, ‘the Khazar fist had gone, so the last of us came here in force. We had to dig through the roof to find out what had been done. There we saw a strange dead man on the throne and the Master of the World cast down and other strangers dead, including a woman. She had one of the Lord’s swords; we realized then that one of those who had survived had the other.’

  My cracked lips were glued, now. Hild was dead; Finn had been right all along. Then I realized what this woman wanted.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, though I had not spoken. Then she sighed and rubbed the sores on her hands; I realized, suddenly, that she was in as bad a state as I was – as we all were, out on that frozen waste.

  ‘We are the last of our kind,’ she went on, ‘It falls to me to be the Amacyn in whose time his tomb is no longer a secret. We knew you would be back and listened for word that northmen were moving on the Grass Sea. It cost us much to come out on the steppe and kill them – but we did not expect another band and certainly not a prince from Novgorod. Then we knew it was all finished for us.’

  She stopped, stiff as the yellow stalks of frozen-dead grass; her eyes burned.

  ‘We are few and growing fewer,’ she said, in a voice like a djinn of wind. ‘Man-Haters, you call us, but that is not true. We have fathers and brothers and some of those here have men and children that they value. Too many have already died. We have failed to keep the secret and this fight on the steppe has ended us. We are passing from the world. We will go home to men, stop binding the foreheads of our girl children and cutting their cheeks, so that they feel the endurance of wounds before the nourishment of milk. But there is one last service we can perform for the Master of the World.’

  The words beat on me like raven wings. Passing from the world. Perhaps all Oathsworn are passing from the world, I was thinking, even as I saw, too, that she had ridden out to find a way to resolve matters other than with blood. I understood that only too well.

  Once before, this way had saved the Oathsworn at Atil’s tomb and I did not think it would fail us now. I looked at the sabre, then at the woman who wanted it more than the world itself. I knew now how she knew my name and what she thought we would want, but I asked, for form’s sake.

  ‘What do you have to trade?’

  SEVENTEEN

  After I had asked my question, the warrior woman had put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, as if calling up a dog. Riders had come out, one of them leading a stumbling figure on a tether and, as they came closer, my belly flipped at the sight.

  Short Eldgrim. I had been right.

  He was thin – I had seen more meat on a skelf – and his grin showed that he had lost some teeth. But some of his old wits remained in the summer-blue cage of his head.

  ‘Ho, young Orm. What brings you here?’

  The woman called Amacyn looked at me.

  ‘Is this a good trade for you?’

  So we took Short Eldgrim into the middle of us and moved away, leaving the warrior women sitting their mounts and watching, their leader now with two swords. Finn came to me then, handed me a wood axe and a grin. ‘You will need this until we can find you another good blade, Jarl Orm.’

  I shivered, wondering what would happen to me now, for I was sure that rune serpented sword of mine had protecting powers – and now it was gone. Forever. As easily as handing it over, no more than an arm movement; yet this was the blade that had once driven us from the Great City to the forge-heat of Serkland, had goaded us to fight and kill men we had once called oarmates.

  I had lingered as the others moved off and had watched what happened, what the women did. When I came back to the Oathsworn, I ignored the questions in their eyes and, since I had given up my runesword for them, they bit their lips and did not ask them aloud.

  Later still, when we were far away, we heard cries, faint on the wind, the yip-yowl chorus of all those warrior women. Eyes gleamed with fear then, for they thought the Man Killers were riding after us, but when I did nothing, they calmed down.

  No vengeful women came; I knew what had happened and said nothing on it, stayed hunched into myself and against the wolfish bite of wind until we came off the rolling white of the Grass Sea down over a series of shallow cliffs thick with scrubby pine and white-barked birch, skeletal and shivering. The sun hung in the pewter sky like a drop of molten metal.

  Ahead, hidden in the ice glare of the marsh that fringed it here, was the mighty body of the river itself, the Tanais, which was once the Scyth name for the Don and came to be the legendary name for travelling the lands we called Gardariki, down among the Mussulmen traders, who gave the name to us that everyone now seemed to use – Rhus.

  To go down the Tanais was every youngling’s dream, an adventure without peer. The reality was always different and harsh and usually inscribed by grieving relatives on a memory stone back home.

  I looked to where Klepp Spaki moved, a dark figure trembling with cold; we would not even have a memory stone, for we had taken the greatest rune-carver with us and it was probable he would die here.

  I squinted, watery-eyed against the glare. If it affected me this badly, it was no wonder Kvasir’s remaining eye had given up on him; I cursed myself one more time for having been blind myself and missing the signs of it.

  To the south, just above where the Don’s black-watered sibling, the Donets, joined it, not far from where both split into a thousand muddy channels, was Biela Viehza, the Khazar Sarkel. Close enough for me to see the feathers of smoke from its fires and, black against their ochre threads, the dark and solitary rider moving steadily in our direction.

  ‘Seems alone,’ Finnlaith grunted. ‘Shall I shoot him when he gets in range?’

  ‘Get Fish to hook this one, too,’ added Onund and there were grim chuckles at that.

  ‘Well, there is no place to hide here,’ I said, ‘so it seems to me he has seen us as we have seen him. Does he look bothered to you?’

  ‘I can change that,’ Finn said, but he made no move. We stood for a moment and then Short Eldgrim said: ‘It is cold here.’

  ‘I know,’ answered Thordis softly. ‘We will be warm by and by.’

  I looked at him then, the slow-blinking, washed blue eyes in that white-scarred face, bundled up in cloak and tunics handed over by men eager to see him safe and warm, as if he was a talisman for us all. When we had him safe in the middle of us, Thordis had peeled off his ragged old tunic to give him a fresh and thicker one.

  She had stopped and suckled her breath in, then whirled him round, so his naked back was to me. I blenched; it was a mass of blackened, red-raw sores, the half-healed burns of little Christ-crosses, all making up one large one, down his spine and across the shoulderblades. Now I knew how Martin had unlocked the memories in Short Eldgrim’s half-addled head.

  ‘If ever we find that monk again,’ Thordis said stiffly, ‘I will want words with him.’

  Now she tried to wrap hi
s head in more wool and he growled at her.

  ‘Stop fussing woman,’ Short Eldgrim growled, shivering. ‘I am warm enough here.’

  He stamped his feet against the cold and looked at me.

  ‘I lost Cod-Biter on the way,’ he said. Then he stopped and looked puzzled. ‘Runes,’ he said.

  ‘I found Cod-Biter,’ I said and he smiled at that and nodded. Then he said: ‘Where are Einar and the others … no, wait. They are gone. Orm … sorry, I …’

  He stopped, frowning. ‘Lambisson. That fucking little monk … he hurt me, the little shit, him and his asking about runes and silver …’

  He stopped again and a sob wrenched from him, a child’s whimper. Thordis wrapped him inside her own cloak and I felt my heart lurch and cold anger settle in my belly.

  ‘What now?’ demanded Gizur. ‘Are we going back to the tomb? What about the silver?’

  We were never going back to the tomb and the silver was gone from us, but I did not say that, or how I knew. I felt as if I had forgotten something important, left it lying back there in the snow – but it was only the tug of that sword, so long a part of me and now gone. I felt the loss, like a missing limb, for a long time after, but never counted it a cost when weighed against the bland, blue smile of Eldgrim’s eyes.

  ‘Kvasir and Thorgunna,’ I said. Gizur shook his head sorrowfully.

  ‘No sooner do we free one than we lose two,’ he said – but the rest of it was in the grim set of his face; our oarmates were there and needing help. There was also silver ahead by the cartload and it belonged to the Oathsworn.

  The rider came closer and Finn said, suddenly: ‘Morut.’

  The Khazar tracker came up to us on his indestructible horse, leading another, a short, stiff-maned, patient little animal. He sat a little way off and waited until we came up to him, moving like wraiths over the windswept snow.

  ‘Heya, wee man,’ growled Finn and Morut nodded back, wary at his reception. Since he had ridden openly up to us, I was prepared to let him speak.

  ‘The little prince is in Sarkel,’ he announced. ‘Well, not in it exactly. The garrison will not let the prince of Novgorod inside the walls, so they are in the town, down by the river, organizing boats and unloading carts.’

  ‘Is the garrison likely to let Vladimir inside the walls?’ I asked. Morut shook his head and pursed chapped lips, rubbed shiny with fat to stop them splitting further.

  ‘Avraham has been sent to persuade them, but I am thinking he has exactly the other idea – there are men from Kiev two days march away, led by Sveinald and his son. They would be here already save that the river has frozen over again between him and Sarkel and they have had to abandon their boats and walk.’

  That was news worth the knowing – but I wondered how Morut had discovered it. The little tracker shrugged. ‘Tien was with them. They came with only two horses, down the river in those big heavy boats they have. Tien was sent on one horse to Sarkel to find out news and we met, not far beyond the Ditch Bridge.’

  Tien. I cursed him, for it was clear he had headed for Kiev to tell all he knew as soon as we had vanished into the Great White.

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Morut, ‘but Kiev already knew, for that monk Martin came out of the wilderness, as near death as made little difference. He told all in return for them saving his life – though he lost a foot from the cold.’

  Martin. Finn growled and shook his head. ‘I wish you had killed him that day in Birka, when you had the chance, Orm,’ he said.

  That day seemed so long ago as to be no more substantial than breath on polished steel.

  ‘What of Tien?’ asked Gyrth, which was clever and which I should have thought to ask. Morut looked blankly from Onund to me, and back again.

  ‘As you know,’ he answered slowly, ‘we were never friends and once he had told all I wanted to hear I paid him back for the insults. This horse was his.’

  No-one said anything to this, though everyone looked at the smooth-faced little tracker with new respect. I was too busy thinking that Sveinald and his son remained in ignorance of events and knew only that their tracker had not yet returned. They were on foot, too and would be slogging through the ice and cold – so we had time yet.

  ‘Avraham is hoping to command the Sarkel garrison to resist everyone,’ Morut went on moodily. ‘I think he is a great fool, for the garrison is as much Slav as Khazar these days and even they call it Biela Viezha now. Avraham is blinded by dreams of old greatness. In the end, he will tell the garrison of the silver in the carts and that will persuade them.’

  Dobrynya and Sigurd would suspect this, I knew. They would want away before either the garrison at Biela Viezha, or Sveinald’s Kiev druzhina discovered their haul of silver.

  ‘Why are you telling us all this, little man?’ Hauk Fast-Sailor wanted to know, a second before I opened my mouth to ask.

  Morut thought on the question and frowned.

  ‘Prince Vladimir did not tell me or Avraham that he planned to leave you to face the Oior Pata alone and steal your share of the silver,’ he answered. ‘It was not a princely matter and I said so to Avraham. He did not care, is of the opinion that you are all unbelieving pagans and deserve everything God inflicts on you.’

  ‘I shall let some of the puff out of that bladder,’ Finn promised.

  ‘You do not share this view?’ I asked and Morut shook his head.

  ‘It was no matter of mine,’ he answered, bold-eyed and truthful. ‘I thought that a quarrel over such a large hill of riches was a mountain of folly; there was surely enough for everyone.’

  ‘Just so,’ I replied. ‘And so you are here. Sent by Vladimir, or his uncle?’

  ‘Sent by no-one, save God. Or Allah, for I have not decided where I will go. The prince does not know I am gone, nor anyone else. I came to see if the Oior Pata had killed you – but it seems you have tamed the Man-Haters.’

  There was admiration in his voice – then he frowned again.

  ‘Truthfully, it was the blind man’s killing I did not like. Nor the way they handled his woman.’

  Thordis would not stop weeping, even when Finn put his arms awkwardly round her. Eldgrim patted her as if she was a dog or a child, muttering softly, though he had no clear idea why she was breaking her heart out on the cold steppe.

  No-one else had much to say; the crushing loss of Kvasir was a burden that made even speaking difficult, so that when Morut had finished the telling of it, there was such a silence that it shrieked.

  Kvasir had come up on them, just as the cavalcade of horses, carts and men had reached the bridge over the ditch at Biela Viezha. Here there was nothing more than a rough palisade fence, enough to keep maurauding wolves from the yurts and enclosures, for this was the winter camp of steppe people, who came with their goats and their hairy, two-humped camels from further east and their horses and dogs, sheltering in the lee of the scabbed, white walls of the fortress.

  Morut had seen Kvasir arrive, had watched him come up with empty hands held out to his sides and be escorted to just beyond blade reach of Vladimir and Dobrynya and Sigurd.

  ‘It seemed to me,’ Morut said, as we squatted in a huddled stand of birch, the wind rattling the stiff branches, ‘that he spoke of the boy, Jon, for that one was brought forward and I heard some raised voices between them.’

  ‘He went to bring Jon Asanes back,’ I said and Morut shrugged.

  ‘The boy was no prisoner. He came with us smartly enough, smiling with Crowbone and speaking of taking his share of the silver and going to the Great City.’

  I had suspected it, but the fullness of it felt like a cold knife in my bowels. Finn growled and shook his head, but I could not tell if it was disbelief at Morut’s tale or disgust at Jon’s behaviour.

  ‘After that,’ Morut said, ‘Kveldulf stepped forward and said something. There were words spoken and Dobrynya then told Kvasir to go away. This I heard, for I had moved closer. Jon Asanes also pleaded with Kvasir to go away, before it was worse for hi
m.

  ‘Then Kvasir said to Jon Asanes that he would break Orm’s heart in this matter and Kveldulf growled that it would be better if Kvasir stayed, permanently. Then Kvasir hit Kveldulf and a good blow it was, knocking that man clean off his feet, so that even I could hear the ringing in his ears. Then Kvasir told Kveldulf to be quiet, that men were speaking here.’

  ‘Heya,’ breathed Finn admiringly. I felt the sickening rise of what I knew would come next.

  ‘Kveldulf came up spitting,’ Morut went on, ‘and his sword came out and they set too, with Vladimir demanding that they stop and Dobrynya cursing and Sigurd calling for the druzhina to move in and stop the fight. But it was clear that Kvasir could not see hardly at all, so Kveldulf had almost no fight of it and felled him with a blow between neck and shoulder.’

  Finn gave a long groan at this and everyone else shifted and grunted as if they had taken such a blow themselves.

  The cold of his loss numbed us then and I could hardly get the words past my teeth. ‘What then?’

  Morut frowned. ‘Well, Kvasir was lying there, with the blood seeping from him and Dobrynya sighed and said that was that, while Sigurd shook his head with a face like a stone cliff and said it would be the worse for all now.’

  ‘He has the right of it there,’ Finn managed to squeeze out. His knuckles clenched and unclenched so tightly on the hilt of The Godi that the red sores split and blood welled.

  Morut looked uneasily round him, then and I saw he did not want to tell the rest of it. He caught my eye, saw my look and swallowed, nodding.

  ‘Kveldulf knelt down by Kvasir, who was not yet quite dead and said to him: “Stone am I?” which I did not understand. Then he took out his long knife …’

  The tracker stopped, looking at the stone of my face. There was no reprieve there for what he had to say.

  ‘He dug out the eyes.’

  Finn went still, which was not what I expected. Hauk sprang to his feet and cursed; Red Njal pounded the ice until his fist bled and he howled, while Short Eldgrim whimpered, even though it was clear he did not quite know why – but Finn went as cold and still as a snow-crowned stone. When I reached out a hand to his shoulder, I felt the underneath of him trembling like a horse before a fight.