by Robert Low
He was right and we were finished, but I would go down with a blade in my hand and not sinking under black river water, bound and helpless …
A hand snaked up and Crowbone looked down and saw it. A pale spider it was, white-gripped round a small pair of scissors that you used to trim hair, or the frayed cuff of a tunic – or the fingernails off your dead husband.
Thorgunna, with what strength she had left, brought it down, savage as a snarl, driving it deep into the foot that had kicked the new life out of her.
Kveldulf shrieked and tried to jerk away, but she had rammed it through boot and foot-bones and into the planks, so that he stumbled and had to let go of Crowbone. Thorgunna fell back weakly to the deck and Crowbone fell into a crouching huddle as Kveldulf, blind with rage and pain, wrenched himself free and brought Kvasir’s sword up in a whirling arc, to bring it down on Thorgunna’s sprawled and helpless body.
It came as a shock to the Night Wolf, then, when Crowbone popped back up, his face a shrieking, vengeful mask of hate, leaping salmon-high as he had done once before in the market square of Kiev.
‘For my mother,’ he said, just loud enough for those around him to hear.
It would have sounded like thunder to Kveldulf. Like Klerkon, he suddenly found his worst nightmare staring him in the face, a brief eyeblink of a moment in which the sharp of my adze-axe, plucked by Crowbone from where I had dropped it, must have seemed as big as the edge of the world. Then it split Kveldulf’s two faces, wolf and man both, straight across the forehead, side to side.
For a moment the Night Wolf hung there like a strange, one-horned beast, a look of astonishment freezing in the last moments of his eyes; the sword slipped from his fingers and clattered at my feet and the inside of his head leaked down his face in a wash of yellow-white gleet and black blood. He toppled backwards, hit the water with a splash and vanished.
After that was chaos; Kveldulf’s crew, close enough to leap aboard, saw their leader fall overboard, dead as old mutton. The Oathsworn surged to the freeboard planks, tipping the whole strug dangerously sideways, but bringing it down to a level where spears and edges could cut and stab across the freeboard. All of this quailed Kveldulf’s men; they scrambled for the oars and backed water.
Sigurd came up, his archers opened fire with a hiss like rain on the river and men died in that sleet. Some leaped overboard, tried to swim for the bank, but the arrow storm cut them down and, finally, none remained who could make a sound.
When the screams were done, Sigurd stood in the prow and saluted me with his sword, while his men closed with Kveldulf’s stolen boat and clambered aboard to recover it, killing any who still showed signs of life
‘No work of the prince, this,’ Sigurd growled. ‘He sticks to his oath and sent me to keep your sky from falling, as you did his.’
‘I see you, Sigurd Axebitten,’ I answered and he nodded, then hesitated.
‘Take care of my sister’s son. It took a deal of time to find him in the first place.’
‘Since I found him in the first place, I am unlikely to put him in harm’s way,’ I reminded him. I laid a hand on Crowbone’s shoulder, as he trembled in the aftermath of what he had done. Less than before, I noted; killing got easier each time you did it and I had no doubt that, one day, little Crowbone would not tremble at all after a day’s slaughter.
‘An adventure in a strange place, some sweet things to eat and then home,’ said another voice and I knew who it was before I saw him, remembered the same words, spoken by Short Eldgrim to soothe a boy wounded by an arrow on the shores of Cyprus and near death. Jon Asanes had the white scar of that on his ribs still, but now he was wrapped tight in a blue cloak, standing behind Sigurd.
‘Heya, Goat Boy,’ yelled Short Eldgrim, as Jon Asanes came up to stand alongside Sigurd. ‘You are on the wrong boat.’
‘Am I?’ asked Jon, but it was Thorgunna who answered, climbing unsteadily to her feet and held there by Thordis. She said nothing, simply spat in the water; Jon’s pale face bowed between them and his cry of anguish was sharp.
‘No mercy?’ asked Finn softly.
Thorgunna’s black eyes raked him. ‘Mercy is between him and his White Christ,’ she answered hoarsely. ‘My only obligation to Jon Asanes is to arrange the meeting.’ She handed me the hilt of Kvasir’s sword with a hard, black-eyed look.
That was bleak enough to stop all conversation and Finn was hurting in his ribs too much to argue, while my head pounded and sickness welled in me.
I stood watching, all the same, Kvasir’s sword dangling limp and accusing from one hand, the other on Crowbone’s shoulder as we rowed away from his uncle and Jon Asanes, while Thordis led Finn away to strip off his mail and look at his ribs.
Left to herself, below us, Thorgunna held on to the prow planking to keep upright and stared at the swirling black water where we had loosed Kvasir to Ran’s mercies.
‘At least he has the best of offerings,’ I said to her, ‘for the enemy who killed him is now at his feet.’
She looked up, smiling radiantly, but I knew she could not see me through so many tears.
‘There will always be a place for you at Hestreng,’ I added, thinking to comfort her and she knuckled her eyes clear with a swift gesture.
‘Ingrid has her feet so far under the high bench that I will never get my keys back, I suspect,’ she answered, with a flash of the old fire that made me smile.
‘We could be married. Then you would be mistress and no gainsay.’
I said it lightly, as a wry jest, but the words tumbled out of my heart and the rightness, the answer to what I would do now, fell in to replace them. I was so stunned by it that I was left blinking as stupidly as she.
Her mouth opened and closed, then she snorted. ‘You can say that, after carrying on with that Aoife like you did?’
‘That was then – besides, she is only a thrall.’
‘Ah, so you had to hold up her bottom with both hands?’
‘No – well, not entirely …’
My tongue stumbled to a dry halt and I was not as sure of matters as I had been a moment ago.
‘Rams rut quieter than you,’ she declared softly.
I stifled a groan. My stomach churned. ‘Such matters are expected of a jarl,’ I managed.
‘Such honour and duty from a raiding man, even one of account. Anyhow – my mother warned me. Never marry a raiding man, for his heart is in the wind.’
‘Was she a sister to Red Njal’s da’s ma, I am wondering? Besides – the one time she was right and you did not listen and married Kvasir anyway.’
‘So now you mire the good name of my mother? I should get Thordis and both of us will thrash you.’
‘Is that the same Thordis who let Kvasir sneak in and away again in the morning?’
She smiled at the memory; we both did. I felt better – then those sheep-dropping eyes hardened and her chin came up.
‘Do not you try and throw mud on my good name,’ she growled. ‘I never let him stay the night until we were proper wed. And I never will you, either.’
‘As I recall, your sister and Ingrid begged Kvasir and me both, on bended knee to take you off their hands.’
‘They did no such thing!’
‘Pickleface, they called you. Thor-fist, too.’
‘Lies. They would not dare slander me …’
‘Did you really trap Ingrid in the privy? And left a dead rat in Thordis’s bed-space once?’
‘I will kill them both …’
She stopped, caught my eye. The wind blew her hair away from her red-cheeked face, streaming it back and flattening the thick cloak against her prow-built shape. She saw me look her up and down and flushed.
‘Too soon,’ she said eventually, staring at the slow-shifting wake in the black water where Kvasir slowly turned and sank. ‘But I thank you for the offer.’
I smiled. She smiled. I pulled her to me and she grunted a little, for I was hard in my nervousness – but she did not shove
me away, all the same.
‘Was Odin’s gift worth it all, then?’ she asked. I had no answer to that.
We left the crow-black river for the Dark Sea and Odin’s gift became perfectly clear on the evening, weeks later, when we slid into an island bay to make camp for the night. Our minds were glass, where the breath of home misted clear thoughts and we all but missed the three ships arrowing out the dim. It was Onund, his great shoulder-hump made bigger where he hung from the prow, who yelled a warning.
They came sidling up, wary and circling like winter-thin wolves on a fat wether.
‘Heya,’ Hauk called out, while bows were unshipped and arrows nocked – we were well armed now. ‘Who are you there?’
‘Men from Thrond,’ came the reply, floated faintly across the water. ‘With three ships to your one and hard men packed in all of them.’
Thrond was far enough away in the north of Norway for me to realize that these were raiding for preference, though they would claim to be traders if challenged by stronger men. Now they thought they had a fat prize and I could not deny they were right. For all that, I sat with my chin in my hand and tried not to look concerned, which is hard when your knees are knocking.
‘We are the Oathsworn of Orm Bear Slayer,’ Hauk called out. ‘We want no trouble, but will give it if we get it.’
There was a long pause and one boat started backing water at once. On the other two, it was clear that arguments had broken out. Eventually, a voice called out – more polite in tone, this time, I was thinking – that they would come closer to see if what we said was true.
‘Come as close as you dare,’ bawled Finn, annoyed, ‘but Finn Horsehead warns you to keep beyond the length of my blade.’
They turned then, all three of them, and rowed furiously out of the bay, chased by our laughter. Later, I met one of those who had been on the main boat, a good man who came to Hestreng on a trade knarr selling leather and bone craft. He told me that they knew they had met their worst nightmare when they saw Orm Bear Slayer sitting, unconcerned by them and calm as a windless day, chin in hand and waiting patiently for the Oathsworn to serve supper.
I did not tell him I was sitting, stunned, for I had just realized Odin’s gift.
Fame.
The one he gave to himself, for our fame was AllFather’s fame. Men gave up their White Christ thoughts when they heard of us and what Odin had given us. As long as the Oathsworn stayed in memories, Odin could keep the White Christ at bay in one small part of the north, no matter that the blind-weaving Norns warped the line of Yngling kings to an end and brought in the new god of the Christ.
We were a weapon in One-Eye’s hand and had been, as Hild had been and Einar and all the others; the silver hoard was just the goad that had driven us to fame-greatness, the shine on Odin’s name.
Yet the glow of that hoard still smeared the eyes. Later, when we stopped for a brief rising-meal, the insidious glitter slid into men’s minds as they laughed about the latest escape they had had and the way the men of Thrond had scattered like starlings off stubble.
It was, I heard Gizur say as he chivvied men back to their benches, a sure sign that Odin’s hand was over us still and the treasure we had was nothing at all to do with Fafnir and surely could not be cursed.
‘On the other hand,’ Ospak said, ‘it could mean Odin means us still to have all the treasure remaining in Atil’s howe.’
There were groans from some at the thought of doing all this over again – yet nods of agreement from those still silver-hungry enough to consider going back. I thought it time that everyone knew, all the same, and stepped forward in such a way that made them all look round at me.
Then I told them what I had avoided saying out on the steppe, the day we had run, panting, from Atil’s tomb and the warrior women who ringed it.
I had stayed behind as the others hurried away, watching the slope-headed man-killers who guarded it and the woman who called herself Amacyn. With a runesword in each hand, she had walked to the hole in the tomb roof and straddled it, while all her oathsworn comrades sat their horses on the bank of that frozen lake and bowed their heads.
I had heard the chopping sounds. If her sabre was like mine, then it could cut an anvil and both together, working on that stone support beam, would slice through it long before her arms started to ache or the edge left those blades. I turned away, then, numb and cold and … relieved.
The others were a long way off when I thought I heard the tomb collapse, but it may just have been the blood rushing in my ears, for I hit a crippling pace to catch them up, especially for a man weakened by hunger and cold.
But we had all heard the cat-yowl wail from those female throats, a last salute to their last leader.
I could see it in my head, the collapse of that great yurt of stone and wood and earth. The ice cracking, the swirl and roil of those black meltwaters rushing in to cover silver, dirt, bones – and the falling woman, her last task done, her oath fulfilled, tumbling down to her wyrd at the feet of Attila.
Last of her line, with no daughter and no secret and no longer any need to pass that burden on. I shivered at the passing from the world of these oathsworn, like us and yet stranger than a hound with two heads. I did not like to think that I had, perhaps, seen my own future in the woman’s long, slow whirl of arms and legs.
The river flow would wash the silver into the silt, scatter it and everything else for miles down the river. For years people would pick riches out of those waters; some might even brave the fetch of the place and dig for it in those times when the drought came and the lake was emptied. Perhaps, one day, someone might find a rune-serpented sword, or even two and, perhaps, marvel at how they seemed unmarked by time or weather.
But not us. Odin had given the Oathsworn his last gift of silver, I told them.
They were silent after that and eventually Gizur nodded, straightened and scrubbed his hands over his face, as if scouring away sleep and the last of a bad dream.
‘Row, fuck your mothers,’ he growled. ‘It is a long way home.’
HISTORICAL NOTE
A lot of the joy in writing historical fiction comes from the bits that are stranger than fiction. For example – I needed Orm to get in big trouble with Prince Vladimir in the year 972 A.D. in the market square of Novgorod. Enter Crowbone, otherwise known as Olaf Tryggvasson, aged nine and burying his axe in the forehead of his hated captor, Klerkon. You could not make it up.
Unless you were a twelfth-century Benedictine monk called Oddr Snorrason, that is – the story of Olaf Tryggvasson is one of the best-known of the Norse sagas and, even allowing for twelfth-century ‘journalistic licence’ it sounds plausible. It also fitted in so exactly with what I needed that it raised hackles on my neck.
The saga-story of little Olaf is exactly as I tell it here. The only major change I made to the tale is that it was his Uncle Sigurd who found and rescued him and not Orm – and Klerkon, though a real character, was handed a fictional life.
A couple of other changes were cosmetic – Uncle Sigurd did not have a silver nose, nor did Crowbone have different-coloured eyes as far as I know. I handed out the former on whimsy and the latter because it was a sign of greatness and magic, which described Crowbone perfectly for me.
Nor did Crowbone have a fund of stories, but everything else about Olaf ‘Crowbone’ Tryggvasson is as the supposed history tells it, including his nickname and the fact that he divined the future through the actions of birds, right up until he converted to Christianity when he became king of Norway in 995 A.D.
To get the necessary cash for it, this viking’s Viking invaded Britain in 991 A.D., fought and won a legendary battle at Maldon – according to Saxon accounts – and extorted a deal of Danegeld, that fat payment made by desperate English kings to get Vikings to go away. He extorted even more in subsequent years and, suitably bankrolled, then went off and won the throne of Norway, though he did not hold it long.
All of that, of course, was much later a
nd after he had helped Prince Vladimir of Novgorod defeat his brothers and become sole ruler of the Kievan Rus. The peace between the three Rus princes lasted five years and it was, predictably, Lyut and Sveinald who broke it.
Like Vladimir and his Uncle Dobrynya, Sveinald and his abominable son, Lyut, are also historical characters and much as described – arrogant and domineering. If anyone deserved to be pitched in a fire by Finn, it was Lyut – in 977 A.D., Lyut made the mistake of hunting in Prince Oleg’s private domain and then telling the prince to sod off when challenged. The arrogant Lyut then found himself dead and his enraged father Sveinald persuaded Jaropolk to go to war.
Oleg was defeated and killed, Vladimir fled north to seek help from the Swedes and got it; eventually, he returned with an army of Vikings, defeated brother Jaropolk and was finally crowned sole ruler of the Rus in Kiev in 980 A.D. – and young Crowbone was at his elbow, by all accounts. That began the process of turning the loose confederation of Slav states into what would become mighty Mother Russia.
In his three-year exile in the north, Vladimir spent two of them with Olaf Tryggvasson raiding up and down the Baltic as a Viking. It should be no surprise to anyone that, in the tenth century, noble youths aged eighteen and fifteen respectively should be commanding boatloads of hairy-faced veteran warriors, who never questioned the rightness of it.
Finally, the real-life character of Uncle Dobrynya has since been translated into a Russian myth of Dobrynya Nikitich, the hero who fought a great Worm or dragon – which, of course, is Orm in Old Norse.
In other words, the historical facts – even allowing for medieval embellishment – are as good a set of bones to use to flesh out a tale. In order to weave that tale and create the legend of the Oathsworn, I needed legendary enemies who were all-too real. So enter the Man-Haters.
German archaeologist Renate Rolle found the first evidence of Amazons, at Certomylik in the Ukraine. Other finds, by Elena Fialko at Akimovka, support the idea of women warriors and the work of Jeaninne Davis-Kimball at Pokrovka, on the Russian–Kazhakstan border revealed many fascinating finds, including one girl of no more than fourteen, with bowed leg bones suggesting her short life was spent on horseback. She had dozens of arrowheads in a quiver made of leather and a great boar’s tusk at her feet.