The Prow Beast o-4

by Robert Low

  ‘No good will come of this,’ growled Red Njal from where he sat, seeing which way the wind blew. ‘Shameful deeds bring revenge, as my granny used to say.’

  Bjarki ignored him and hefted the iron, wincing when it burned his fingers; he searched round for something to wrap round it, deciding on the good fur off my high seat.

  ‘Your chance to speak will come,’ Bjarki said to Red Njal, moving like a wolf towards Onund. ‘Now,’ he added, with a gentle sigh, ‘let us hear you speak with a silver tongue, hump-back. No more screams, just a place name will do. Between us, as it were.’

  He had his back to me when I gripped the beam and swung down on it, my legs slamming into his shoulder-blades. He shot forward into the upright beam to Onund’s left, the crack of his forehead hitting it like the sound of a falling tree. Worse, for his part, was that he was brandishing the hot iron at the time and it was rammed between his face and the pillar.

  He scarcely made a sound all the same, for the blow had laid him out and he crumpled, a great red burn welt from left eyebrow to right jawbone, across his nose and one eye, which spat angry gleet. Blood trickled from a great cut on his head and the hot iron hissed and sizzled on his chest; his tunic smoked and flames licked.

  I got off my backside and kicked the iron off him into the fire, then had to rescue the wrapped fur. A good fur that, white wolf and not cheap — I said as much as I took up my sword and turned to cut Red Njal and Hlenni Brimill loose.

  ‘Remind me never to borrow a fur from you without asking,’ Hlenni said, rubbing his wrists and standing up stiffly. He kicked Bjarki so that his head rattled back and forth.

  ‘Little Bear,’ he sneered, which was what bjarki meant and was a name you gave a child, not a grown man. ‘A pity only that he was laid out before he felt the heat of that iron.’

  ‘Just so,’ panted Red Njal, struggling with Onund’s bonds. ‘Help me here instead of gloating or we will all feel the lick of that heat — pray to the gods if you must, but carry a keen blade, as my granny used to say.’

  I gave Red Njal the seax and hefted the familiar weight of my sword as I opened the door cautiously, expecting at least one guard outside. There was nothing — then a bulk moved, darker than the shadows; fear griped my belly and I had to fight not to run. I smelled him then, all sweat and leather and foul breath and I knew that stink well.

  Finn.

  ‘You took so long I came to find you,’ he rasped hoarsely, gleaming teeth and eyes in the dark. ‘I saw folk leaving and thought to chance matters. What did you find?’

  I said nothing, but heard him grunt when he saw Hlenni and Red Njal, Onund half-carried, half-dragged between them.

  ‘This way,’ he said, as if leading them to clean beds in a dry room and we shadowed into the night, from dark to dark like owls on a hunt, every muscle screaming at the expected bite of steel, every nerve waiting for the shout of discovery.

  Somewhere out on the pasture, where the hall was a dim-lit bulk in the distant dark, we stopped, while I put my boots back on. We headed towards the north valley, prowling and fox-silent.

  All the time, circling like wolves in my head, was what had passed between Randr Sterki and Ljot — and, when those wolves put their muzzles on weary paws, the old dead rose in their place, leering and mocking me.

  FOUR

  It rained, a fine mirr that blotted out the stars, so that we fumbled along, panting like dogs and stumbling. I led the way, hoping more than knowing, into the wet dark where trolls leered and alfar flickered at the edge of vision.

  A darker shape against the black; I froze. Finn stumbled into the back of me, almost knocking me over and rain dripped off our noses as we stuck them close to each other to hiss in whispers.

  ‘What is it?’ he hoarsed out and, even as he asked, I knew.

  ‘The stone. Our stone…’

  Slick and rain-gleamed, the great stone, half-carved with Klepp’s handiwork, half-painted by Vuokko the Sea-Finn, was as large as our relief and we hugged it close, delighting in the wet-rock smell of it, for it meant we were at the entrance to the valley.

  Nearby was a hut, once the home of the horse-herder thralls, now Klepp’s hov until it grew too cold to work stone. Dark as a cave, of course, because he would be gone, with Vuokko and Thorgunna and Thordis and all the others, heading further up the valley to the foothills of the mountains.

  ‘Ruts,’ said Finn suddenly, catching my sleeve and guiding my hand to the wet ground. The scar and the smell of new-turned soil gave truth to it; ruts, where a cart had passed, maybe more than one.

  ‘At least they are safe,’ I muttered and we moved after the struggling figures carrying Onund into the shelter of the dark hut.

  It was a rough affair, for use in the summer only and made of low split-log walls and roof-turfs and daub. Inside was the smell of leather and iron and oil, the cold-tomb smell of stone dust and the harsh throat-lick of paints.

  ‘How is Onund?’ I asked of the shadows grunting him down, panting with the effort.

  ‘Heavy,’ growled Hlenni Brimill sourly.

  ‘Babbling,’ added Red Njal and I moved closer to the wheezing bulk of Onund, wishing I had light to see how badly he was hurt.

  ‘Bairn,’ he bubbled through his broken nose. ‘Bairn.’

  ‘He’s been saying that since we cut him down,’ muttered Red Njal, wiping his own streaming face. Botolf stumbled over something and cursed.

  ‘Hist, man!’ Finn spat hoarsely. ‘Why don’t you bang on a shield, mouse-brain?’

  ‘I was looking for a horn lantern,’ came the sullen reply. ‘Some light would be good.’

  ‘Aye — set fire to the hut, why not?’ Finn cursed. ‘Why have our trackers fumbling in the cold and wet and dark when we can lead them right to us?’

  Botolf rubbed his shin sullenly. ‘Why is it always the real leg that gets hit?’ he demanded. ‘Why not the gods-cursed wooden one…?’

  I wanted quiet and hissed it out, for there were sounds outside I did not like; movement, someone blowing snot and rain off their nose, the suck of hooves lifting from muddy ground.

  Finn’s eyes gleamed and he slid away from me, out into the night; we crouched in the hut, waiting and listening.

  Three, I worked out. Maybe four. And a horse, though not ridden.

  ‘A hut,’ said a voice. ‘At least we can get dry.’

  ‘Perhaps a fire…butcher the horse and have a decent meal, at least,’ said another.

  ‘Oh aye — tell them all where we are, eh, Bergr?’ rumbled a third. ‘Before you go in that hut, Hamund, I would scout round and make sure we are alone.’

  ‘Of course we are alone,’ spat the one called Hamund. ‘By the Hammer, Bruse, you are an old woman. And if we are not to eat this spavined nag, why did we bring it, eh?’

  ‘We will eat it in good time,’ Bruse answered. They were all hunkered down in the lee of the hut, no more than an arm’s length and the width of a split-log wall between us.

  ‘I will be pleased when Randr Sterki is done with this,’ muttered Bergr. ‘All I want is my share, enough for a farm somewhere. With cows. I like the taste of fresh milk.’

  ‘Farm,’ snorted Hamund. ‘Why buy work? A good over-winter in a warm hall with a fat-arsed thrall girl and a new raid next year, that will do for me.’

  ‘I thought you were scouting?’ Bruse grunted and Hamund hawked in his throat.

  ‘For what? They are far from here. Everyone is far from here. Only the rain is here — and us. Who are these runaways anyway? A hump-back more dead than alive, I heard, and a couple of survivors from a battle we won, no more. Hiding and running, if they have any sense. The rest of them will be half-way over the mountains and gone by now. We should take what loot we can and leave.’

  ‘Go and scout — one of them is Finn Horsehead,’ Bruse answered, straightening with a grunt. There was a pause, then the sound of splashing and a satisfied sigh as he pissed against the log wall.

  ‘Finn Horsehead?’ muttered B
ergr. ‘Of the Oathsworn? They say he fears nothing at all.’

  ‘I can change that,’ sneered Hamund.

  ‘Pray to Odin you never meet him,’ Bruse said, adjusting his stance and spurting in little grunts, his voice rising and fading — talking over his shoulder, I was thinking. ‘I raided with him, so I know. I saw him rise up and walk — walk, mark you — towards a shieldwall on his own and before he got there it had split and run.’

  ‘I know,’ said the voice and I knew, as I knew my own hands, that it was right in Bruse’s ear, a knell of a voice, tomb-cold and deep as a pit.

  ‘The others said it was my ale-breath. What do you think, Bruse?’

  The splashing stopped. Everything stopped. Then Bergr whimpered and Hamund yelped and everything was movement.

  ‘The ice will not be cleaved from within,’ Red Njal grunted, ‘as my granny used to say.’

  So we rose up and hit the door at a fast run as the screams and chopping sounds began.

  By the time we got there, the work was done and Finn, flicking blood off the end of The Godi, stirred one of the three bodies with the toe of his muddy boot.

  ‘I do not recognise him,’ he said, frowning. He looked at me. ‘Do you know him?’

  The man — Bruse, I was thinking, because his breeks were at his knees — was bearded, the blood and rain streaking his face and running in his open, unseeing eyes. I did not know him and said so. Finn shrugged and shook his head.

  ‘He knew me, all the same,’ he grunted. ‘Seems a pity that he knew me so well and I did not know him from a whore’s armpit. Does not seem right to kill such a man on a wet night.’

  Botolf lumbered up, clutching a rope end attached to a halter and a horse fastened to that. It limped almost in step with him and Finn laughed at the sight. Botolf, mistaking it for delight at his find, beamed.

  ‘Well, all that talk of horse-eating made me hungry. Now that they are dead, we can have a fire and cook this beast.’

  I moved to the horse’s head and had it whuff at me, for it knew me well and I knew it — a young colt, a good stallion in the making, whose brothers still charged up and down the valley. I ran a hand down the offending leg, felt the heat and the lump on the pastern; not spavined at all, just ring-bone from a kick and not too badly injured at that. He was under-nourished — as they all were after the winter, rough-coated and stiff with mud — but not bound for a platter just yet. I said so and wondered why the night and Odin had brought this horse to me at all.

  Botolf scrubbed his head in a spray of rain and frustration.

  ‘He is done,’ he argued. ‘What — are we to wait until he drops dead?’

  ‘He will not drop dead. Some decent grass and a little attention and he will be fine,’ I told him, then looked Botolf in his big, flat, sullen face. ‘If he does die, all the same, it will be in this valley, when his time has come and for more reason than to provide a meal.’

  ‘Odin’s arse,’ Finn growled. ‘I am not usually agreeing with mouse-brain — but this is a horse. Do you think he cares much how he dies?’

  Odin cared and I said so.

  Botolf growled and yanked the halter harder than he needed, jerking the colt’s head after him as he plootered through the rain to the hut. Finn shrugged, looked at me, looked at the horse, then at the sprawl of dead bodies, which was eloquence enough.

  ‘Well,’ he growled, ‘at least we can load Onund on the beast — unless your darling pony is too poorly for that?’

  I ignored the dripping sarcasm and the matching rain. Onund would not help the colt, but it would not harm him badly if it was only for a little while.

  ‘What makes you think it will be a little while?’ Finn countered, looking up from looting the corpses. ‘We cannot stay here until light — more of these may come. If we move in the dark, we will travel in half circles, even if we are careful. It could take all night.’

  We would not travel in half circles and I told him so; we would easily find our way to Thorgunna and Thordis, bairns, wagons and all, in an hour or less.

  ‘Another Odin moment, Bear Slayer?’ he asked, grunting upright and wiping bloody hands on his breeks. ‘Have the Norns come to you in the dark and shown you what they weave?’

  ‘Look north,’ I told him, having done so already; he did and groaned. The faint red eye of a fire, certain as a guiding star, glowed baleful in the rain-misted dark.

  ‘What are they thinking?’ Finn growled.

  ‘I was thinking,’ Thorgunna said, ‘that bairns needed food and everyone else needed some dry and warm. I was thinking that thralls have run off in panic and, with nowhere to go, will be looking to find us again in the dark.’

  She looked up at me, blinking. ‘I was thinking,’ she added, trying to keep her voice from breaking, ‘that menfolk we thought dead might not be and would want to find a way home.’

  I held her to me and felt her clutch hard, using her grip instead of tears. Across from me, Ingrid held Botolf and he patted her arm and rumbled like a contented cat.

  ‘I said Thorgunna was a deep thinker,’ Finn lied cheerfully, while Thordis clutched his wet tunic so tightly it bunched and squeezed water through her knuckles. ‘Was I not saying that all the way here, eh, Orm?’

  They swept us up and swamped us with greetings and warmth and pushed food at us. Onund Hnufa was gathered up and wrapped and cooed over, while I laid out the tale of the fight to the flame-dyed faces, grim as cliffs, who gathered to listen.

  ‘Nes-Bjorn,’ muttered Abjorn, who led the six men left out of the crew Jarl Brand had lent me. ‘Someone is owed a blow for that.’

  ‘Gizur and Hauk,’ added Ref, shaking his head. ‘By the Hammer, a sad day this.’

  Finn went off to look at his sleeping son and Botolf went to his daughter, leaving Hlenni Brimill and Red Njal to expound the tale; the hooms and heyas and wails rose up like foul smoke as I moved from it into the lee of a wadmal lean-to, where Thorgunna bent over Onund. Bjaelfi sat with him.

  ‘Can he speak?’ I asked and Bjaelfi shook his head.

  ‘Asleep, which is best. He was hard used with hot irons.’

  Thorgunna saw me frown and asked why, so I told her that I thought Onund had something to say that would cast a light on all this.

  ‘I thought it simple enough,’ she replied tightly. ‘Randr Sterki is come to visit on us what once we visited on him.’

  I shot her a look, but she kept her head down from me, fussing pointlessly with a cowhide for Onund’s bedcovering. She had been there on Svartey when we raided Klerkon, but waiting with the ship while we hewed the place to rack and ruin. We were urged on by that cursed little Crowbone, I said and she lifted her head, eyes black as sheep-droppings.

  ‘Don’t blame it all on that boy,’ she spat. ‘I saw then what raiders were and never wish to see it again. It was not all that boy.’

  No, not all, she had the right of it there. There had been raiders too long caged, who sucked in a whiff of blood-scent started by Crowbone, and went Odin-frenzied with it. When all was said and done with it, it was a strandhogg, like many others — a little harsher than most, but blood and flame had been our lives for long enough and it was only, I was thinking, that we now were the victims that made the matter of it here in Hestreng so bitter.

  None of which answered the mystery of why Styrbjorn’s man was here alongside Randr Sterki, nor why bearcoats and Roman Fire had been given to the enterprise. I laid that out for Thorgunna, too, and watched her sit heavily, folding her hands in her lap as she turned it over in her head.

  ‘Styrbjorn wants what he has always wanted,’ she said eventually, rising to fetch spoon and platter, busying herself with the things she knew while her mind worked. She filled a bowl with milk-boiled beef and handed it to me absently, then fetched a skin of skyr — thick fermented cow’s milk thinned down with whey — for me to drink.

  ‘Have we brought away enough?’ I asked and she shrugged.

  ‘Anything that was ready to hand and easily lifte
d,’ she answered. ‘Food. Three wagons and the horses for them. Shelters and wood for fire. Goats for milk for the bairns. This and that.’

  I nodded and ate the beef, watching her rake through her only rescued kist, picking out items to show me. Two spare over-sarks, one in glowing blue, both patched and re-hemmed with braid more than once. A walrus-ivory comb, carved with gripping beasts. A whetsone. Some small stoppered pots with her ointments and face-paints. A walrus-skin bag with a roll of good cloth in it, snugged up in the dry because it had many little pockets sewn into it, all of them stuffed with carefully wrapped spices and herbs.

  I nodded and smiled and praised, knowing she mourned for what was left behind — fine bedlinen and cloaks and clothes and food stores. It would all be looted and the rest burned before things were done with; I did not mention her eiderdown pillows.

  ‘Where will we go?’ she asked suddenly, her voice tight with a fear she tried hard not to show.

  ‘Over the mountains,’ I said, making it light as I could. ‘Down to Arne Thorliefsson at Vitharsby. There is a seter of his, a summer place, just over the high point on the far side — it will not be occupied this early and will give us some shelter.’

  We would need it by then, for the way was thawed just enough to be a sore, hard climb at the best of times, never mind the frantic haste we would need to put distance between us and what pursued.

  Arne was a good tarman and had three sons, the two youngest needing their lives sorted, since only the eldest would inherit. The younglings were tired of the filthy, backbreaking work of rendering pine root resin into tar for fresh boat planks and Arne would help on the promise of them joining me, the raiding jarl, when the time came.

  ‘Hlenni Brimill went there last year,’ Thorgunna said suddenly, remembering, ‘when we bought the tar for the Elk.’

  The Elk, now burned and sunk with Gizur and Hauk and all the others floating down and down to the bottom of the black water fjord. I chewed slowly, the beef all ashes in my mouth. Raiding jarl my arse; no ship, no hall and no future if Randr and his bearcoats had their way.