The Whale Road o-1

by Robert Low

  A sword, though, was a magical thing, a rich thing and the mark of a warrior, so not to be trifled with—

  but I took dead Bjarni's sword out of spite, right off the hook in the hall, while Gudleif grunted and farted and slept. In the morning I was gone early, before he noticed it was missing.

  Bjarni would notice but I made my peace with him on my own and prayed to big, bluff Thor to intercede.

  Then I added a prayer to Odin, made wise by communing with the new-dead, who had hung nine nights on the World Tree for wisdom. And one to Jesus, the White Christ, who hung on a tree like Odin.

  `That was deep thinking, right enough,' my father said when I told him this. 'You can never have too much holy help, even if this Christ-following lot are a strange breed, who say they will not fight yet still seem able to field warriors and sharp steel. As for the sword—well, Bjarni won't need it and Gudleif won't mind. Ask Einar for it. He will let you keep it after what you did.'

  I stayed silent. How could I tell them what I had done? Pissed myself and run, leaving Freydis to die?

  The first sight of those great bear pugs in the snow, maybe two weeks after I had struggled through to her hov, had set Freydis to barring doors and hunkering down. The night it came we had eaten broth and bread by the glimmer of the pitfire embers, listening to the creak of the beams and the rustle of straw from the stalls.

  I lay down clutching Bjarni's sword. That, an old ash spear of her dead man's, the wood axe and Freydis's kitchen knives made the only weapons we had. I stared at the glowing embers, trying not to think of the bear, prowling, sniffing, circling.

  I knew whose bear it was and, it seemed to me, it had come seeking revenge after all these years.

  I woke to soft singing. Freydis sat, cross-legged and naked, the hearthfire glowing on her body, her face hidden by the long, unbound straggles of her streaked hair, one hand holding upright the ash spear. In front of her were . . . objects.

  I saw a small animal skull, the teeth blood-red in the light, the eye-sockets blacker than night. There were carved things and a pouch and, over them all, Freydis hummed, a long, almost continuous drone that raised the hair on my arms.

  I hung on to the sharkskin hilt of Bjarni's old sword while the dead crowded round, their eyes glittering in the dark holes of their heads, pale faces like mist.

  Whether she called them for help, or called the bear, or tried to weave a shield against it, I don't know.

  All I know is that when the bear struck the wall, the hall boomed like a bell and I jumped up, half-naked, sword in hand.

  I shook my head, scattering memories like water drops. A last, brief flash of the curving swipe of paw and her head, spinning, flailing blood to the rafters. Had there been a smile on it? An accusing look?

  My father rightly guessed the memories, wrongly assumed I was mourning for the lost Freydis and clapped my shoulder again, giving it a slight squeeze and a half-smile. Then he walked me slowly to the hall across the sun-sparkled snow. The eaves were dripping with melting spires of ice.

  Everything seemed the same, but the thralls avoided my eye, keeping their heads down. I saw Caomh down by the shore, standing by a pole with a ball on it—one of his strange White Christ totems, probably.

  Once a monk, always a monk, he used to say. Just because he had been ripped from his cloister didn't make him less of a holy man for the Christ. I raised a hand in greeting but he never moved, though I knew he saw me.

  Gudleif's hall was dim inside, misted with cold light from the smoke hole. The hearth-fire crackled, breath coiled in wisps and the figures hunched on benches at the foot of the high seat turned to us as we came in.

  I waited until my eyes had accustomed and then saw that someone else sat in Gudleif's high seat, someone with hair to his shoulders, dark as crow wings.

  Black-eyed, black-moustached, he wore blue-checked breeks like the Irish and a kirtle of finest blue silk, hemmed in red. One hand leaned on the fat-pommelled hilt of a sheathed sword, point at his feet. It was a fine sword, with a three-lobed heavy silver end to the hilt and lots of workings round the cross guard.

  The other hand clasped a furred cloak around his throat. Gudleif's furred cloak, I noticed. And Gudleif's high seat—but not his ship prows. I saw them stacked to one side and the ones that flanked the high seat now were the proud heads of an antlered beast with flaring nostrils.

  Hard men, my father's oarmates, who thought highly of him because he was their shipmaster and could read waves like other men did runes. Sixty of them had come to Bjornshafen because he had wished it, even though he did not lead this varjazi, this oathsworn band and their slim snakeship, the Fjord Elk.

  Einar the Black led them, who now sat on Gudleifs high seat as if it were his own.

  At his feet sat others, one of them Gunnar Raudi, hands on his knees, cloaked and very still, his faded red tangles fastened back from his face by a leather thong. He looked at me and said nothing, his eyes grey-blue and glassed as a summer sea.

  The others I did not know, though I half recognised Geir, the great sack of purple-veined nose that gave him his nickname wobbling in his face as he told the tale of finding me half-frozen and slathered in blood, the headless woman nearby. Steinthor, who had been with him, nodded his shaggy head in agreement.

  They were cheerful about it now but, at the time, had been afraid when they found the great white bear dead, a spear in its brain and Bjarni's sword rammed in its heart. As Steinthor happily admitted, to the grunts and chuckles of the others, he had shat himself.

  There were two other strangers, one of them the biggest man I had ever seen: fat-bearded, fat-bellied, fat-voiced—fat everything. He wore a blue coat of heavy wool and the biggest seaboots I had ever seen, into which were tucked the baggiest breeks, striped blue and silver, that I had ever seen. There were ells of silk in those breeks.

  He had a fur hat with a silver end, which chimed like a bell when he accidentally brushed it against the blade of the huge Dane axe that he held, rapping the haft on the hard-packed hall floor now and then and going `hoom' deep in his throat when Geir managed a better-than-usual kenning in his story.

  The other was languid and slim, leaning back against one of the roof poles, stroking his snake moustaches, which were all the fashion then. He looked at me as Gudleif looked at a new horse, weighing it up, seeing how it moved.

  But no Gudleif, just this crow-dark stranger in his chair.

  Ì am Einar the Black Welcome, Orm Ruriksson.'

  He said it as if the hall belonged to him, as if the high seat was his.

  Ì have to say,' he went on, leaning forward slightly and turning the sword slowly on its rounded point as he did so, 'that things turned out more interesting and profitable than when Rurik came to me with this request to sail here. I had other plans . . . but when your shipmaster speaks, a wise man listens.'

  Beside me, my father inclined his head slightly and grinned. Einar grinned in return and leaned back.

  `Where is Gudleif?' I asked. There was silence. Einar looked at my father. I saw it and turned to look at him, too.

  My father shrugged awkwardly. 'The tale I heard was that he had sent you into the mountain snows to die. And there was the matter of the bear, which had not been settled—'

  `Gudleif s dead, boy,' Einar interrupted. `His head is on a spear on the strand, so that his sons will see it when they finally arrive and know that bloodprice has been taken.'

  'For what?' growled the large man, turning his axe so that the blade flashed in the dim light. 'It was done when we thought Rurik's boy was killed.'

  'For the bear, Skapti Halftroll,' said Einar quietly. 'That was an expensive bear.'

  `Was it Gudleif who killed it, then?' asked the slim one, stroking his moustaches slowly and yawning. 'I am thinking I have just been listening to Geir Bagnose recount the saga of Orm Ruriksson, the White-bear Slayer.'

  `Was he then to weigh the cost when it came at him in the dark?' growled my father. 'I can see you count i
t up, Ketil Crow—but by the time you got your boots off to use your toes, it would have been your head split from your body, for sure.'

  Ketil Crow chuckled and acknowledged the point with the wave of one hand. 'Aye, just so. I cannot count, that is true enough. But I know how many beans make five, just the same.'

  Òf course,' said Einar, smoothly ignoring all this, 'there is the woman, Freydis, who was killed. No thrall, that one. Freeborn and there's a price to be paid for that, since her death came because Gudleif let the bear go in the first place. Anyway, the bear was mine and worth a lot.'

  My father said nothing about whose bear it was. I said nothing at all, since I had just realised that the pole with the ball Caomh had been standing near was a spear with Gudleifs head on it.

  Einar shifted again and drew the cloak tighter around him, his breath smoking in the cold hall as he declared, 'In the end, you can argue in circles about whose fault it was—from Rurik bringing the bear here, to Gudleif letting it escape. And then there is why he sent the boy late into the mountain snow to that lonely hall. Perhaps he and the bear were in this together.'

  It was half in jest, but Skapti and Ketil both warded off the evil with some swift signs and grasped the iron Thor's hammers hung round their necks. I realised, even then, that Einar knew his men well.

  I said nothing, rushed with a fluttering of memories, like bats spilling from a hole in the ground.

  After the bear had slammed into the wall, there was silence, though I swear I heard it huffing through the snow, paws crunching. Freydis droned. The two milk cows bellowed their fear and the bear answered, drove the animals mad and chilled me so much I found myself sitting on the floor, the lantern at my feet, my breath caught, my mouth glued with dryness.

  `So Gunnar Rognaldsson, will you tell all this freely to Gudleif's sons when they come? Or, perhaps, you would like to come with us? We need good men.'

  I shook back to the Now of it, but it took me a moment to realise that Einar was speaking to Gunnar Raudi. I had never heard his real name—he was always just Red Gunnar to us.

  And in a dangerous position, I realised. Gudleif's man and a vicious and deadly fighter, he had been left alive so far because he had been the one to send word to my father about me.

  Yet it was clear he and Einar knew each other—and that Einar didn't trust Gunnar and Gunnar knew it. I saw that Einar would not want Gunnar left to advise Gudleif's sons. Without him they would think twice about revenge.

  Gunnar shrugged and scrubbed his grey-streaked head, as if considering—but the truth was that he had no choice. 'I had thought to berth here for good at my age,' he growled ruefully, 'but the Norns weave and we can only wear what they make. I will come with you, Einar. Coldward and stormward, eh?'

  They grinned at each other, but it was the smile of wolves circling.

  Ànd you, Bear Slayer?' Einar said, turning to me. Will you join your father on the Fjord Elk? I strongly advise you to do so.'

  He didn't have to say more. Gudleifs sons would revenge themselves on me if I stayed, for sure, and there was nothing for me here.

  I nodded. He nodded. My father beamed. Skapti called for ale.

  And so it was done. I joined the Oath-sworn—but there was more to taking the blood-oath than a nod and a wink, though I only learned that later.

  I ate in Gudleif's hall for the last time that night. The partition hangings were ripped down (with some contempt, it seemed to me) to make room for all the Oathsworn to come in. It is the mark of a raiding jarl to have a whole hall and those who partitioned it were admitting they'd given up needing the men for raids and therefore the room for them. The Oathsworn held to the old ways and hated a hall with hangings.

  We ate round the pitfire, me huddled and listening to the thunder of the wind on the beams. The fire flattened and flared as stray blasts hissed down the smoke hole and through the hall, while these growlers who had taken over Bjornshafen, just like that, fished mutton from the pot, blowing on their fingers and talking about such strange things and places as I'd never heard of before.

  They drank, too, great amounts of ale, the foam spilling down their beards while they joked and made riddles. Steinthor, it was clear, fancied himself as a skald and made verses on the bear-slaying, while the others thumped benches or threw insults, depending on how good his kennings were.

  And they raised horns to me, Orm the Bear Slayer, with my father, new-found and grinning with pride as if he had won a fine horse, leading the praise-toasts. But I saw that Gunnar Raudi was hunched and quiet on his ale bench, watching.

  That night, as the men fell to talking quiet and lazy as smoke drifting from the hearth-fire, I fell asleep and dreamed of the white bear and how it had circled the walls and then fallen silent.

  I turned to say to Freydis that her walls were well built; I was sure that we had weathered it, that the bear was gone. I was smiling when the roof caved in. The turf roof. Two massive paws swiped and the earth and snow tumbled in and then, with a crash like Thor's thrown hammer, the bear followed: an avalanche of white; a great rumbling roar of triumph.

  Numbed, I pissed myself then and there. The bear landed in a heap, shook itself like a dog, scattering earth and snow and clods, and then got on all fours.

  It was a cliff of fur, a rank, wet-smelling shriek of a thing that swung a snake neck with a horror of a head this way and that, one eye red in the firelight, the other an old, black socket. On that same side, the lips had been straked off, leaving the yellow tusk teeth exposed in a grim grin. The drool of its hunger spilled, thick and viscous.

  It saw us; smelled the ponies, didn't know which to go for first. That was when I ran for it and so decided the skein of all our lives.

  The white bear whirled at my movement—the speed of it, and it so huge! It saw me at the door, scrabbling for the bar. I heard it—felt it—roar with the fetid breath of a dragon; I frantically tore the bar off and dragged the door open.

  I heard it crash, half-turned to look over my shoulder as I scrambled out. It had risen on hind legs and lumbered forward. Too tall for the roof, its great head had smacked a joist—cracked it—and tumbled it down into the fire.

  I swear I saw it glare its one eye at me as it shrieked; I also saw Freydis calmly stand, pick up the old spear and ram it at the beast's ravening mouth. Not good enough. Not nearly a good enough spell, after all.

  The spear smashed teeth on the already ruined side, snapped off and left the head and part of the haft inside.

  The bear lashed out, one casual swipe that sent Freydis flying backwards in a spray of blood and bone. I saw her head part company from her body.

  I ran stumbling through the snow. I ran like a nithing thrall. If there had been a baby in my way I would have tossed it over one shoulder, hoping to tempt the beast into a snack and giving me more time to get away . . .

  I woke in Gudleif s hall, to a sour-milk smear of a morning and the sick shame of remembering, but everyone was too busy to notice, for we were leaving Bjornshafen.

  Leaving my only home and never returning, I realised. Leaving with a shipload of complete strangers, hard men for the sailing and raiding and, worse yet, a father I hardly knew. A father who had, at the very least, watched his brother's head part company from the rest of him and not even shrugged over it.

  I could not breathe for the terror of it. Bjornshafen was where I had learned what every child learns: the wind, the wave and war. I had run the meadows and the hayfields, stolen gulls' eggs from the black cliffs, sailed the little faering and crewed the hafskip with Bjarni and Gunnar Raudi and others. I had even gone down to Skiringssal once, the year Bluetooth buried his father Old Gorm and became King of the Danes.

  I knew the place, from the skerry offshore where the surf creamed on black rocks, to the screaming laughter of the terns. I fell asleep at night rocked in the creaking beams as the wind shuddered the turf of the roof, and felt warm and safe as the fire danced the shadows of the looms like huge spiders' webs.

&nbs
p; Here Caomh had taught me to read Latin because no one knew runes well enough when I could be pinned down to follow his hen-scratching in the sand. Here was where I had learned of horses, since Gudleif made his name breeding fighting stallions.

  And all that was changed in an eyeblink.

  Einar took some barrels of meat and meal and ale, as part of thèbloodprice' for the bear, then left instructions to bury Freydis and drag the bear corpse in and flay the pelt from it. Gudleif s sons could keep that and the skull and teeth, all valuable trade items, worth more than the barrels taken.

  Whether it was worth their father was another matter, I thought, gathering what little I had: a purse, an eating knife, an iron cloak brooch, my clothes and a linen cloak. And Bjarni's sword. I had forgotten to ask about it, it had never been mentioned, so I just kept it.

  The sea was grey slate, capped white. Picking through the knots of dulse and rippled, snow-scattered sand, the Oathsworn humped their sea-chests down to the Fjord Elk, plunging into the icy sea with whoops, boots round their necks. White clouds in a clear blue sky and a sun like a brass orb; even the weather tried to hold me to the place.

  Behind me, Helga scraped sheepskins to soften them, watching, for life went on, it seemed, even though Gudleif was dead. Caomh, too, watched, waiting by Gudleif's head—until we were safely over the horizon, I was thinking, and he could give it a White Christ burial.

  I said as much to Gunnar Raudi as he passed me by and he grunted, `Gudleif won't thank him for it.

  Gudleif belonged to Odin, pate to heel, all his life.'

  He turned back to me then, bowed under the weight of his own sea-chest and looked at me from under his red brows. 'Watch Einar, boy. He believes you are touched by the gods. This white bear, he thinks, was sent by Odin.'

  It was something that I had thought myself and said so.

  Gunnar chuckled. Not for you, boy. For Einar. He believes it was all done to bring him here, bring him to you, that you have something to do with his saga.' He hefted the chest more comfortably on his shoulder.