The Prow Beast o-4

by Robert Low

  A head appeared, this one wearing a blue hat with a fringe of fur round it, probably what passed for the rank of riches in this place — everyone else I had seen was bareheaded. The iron-grey beard beneath that blue hat hid a mouth I knew would be a thin line.

  He was hard, this headman, a nub of a man worn by toil even if he had managed to work himself up to a blue hat with fur round it; even at a distance I saw the lines on his face, etched deep by wind and worry.

  ‘We come to trade,’ I yelled, hearing the stupidity of it in my own voice, for we had just killed a half-dozen of his people, a hard dunt of menfolk loss in a settlement this size. He was not slow to point this out and I was surprised to hear him say it in halting Norse.

  ‘It seems we will not need you today, Christ-rat,’ growled Styrbjorn nastily and gave Pall a kick so that he yelped.

  ‘Go away, slavers,’ Blue Hat added, his voice carrying clearly with the faint wind that drove from him to us. ‘Nothing easy is here for you today.’

  ‘I seek a monk,’ I yelled back. ‘A Greek one in black. He had a boy with him.’

  There was silence for a moment, while the damp warmth seeped and the insects annoyed us.

  ‘Escape you?’ came the reply. ‘Good.’

  I sighed; this was going to be a long, hard day.

  ‘We can trade,’ I began, trying to keep the weary desperation out of my voice…but Hlenni stepped forward suddenly and held up the yellow-haired boy, swung him up and into the air at the end of both of his hands so that he could be clearly seen. The boy chuckled and laughed, enjoying it.

  ‘See?’ he bellowed. ‘We mean no harm.’

  A woman screamed — probably the mother; I wondered how her man had explained how he had run off and left the lad.

  Hlenni moved forward and someone — Red Njal, when I thought on matters later — called his name uncertainly, but Hlenni strode forward with the boy in his arms and set him down almost under the gate.

  ‘Growl not at guests, nor drive them from the gate,’ Hlenni said, grinning back at Red Njal. ‘As your granny used to say.’

  The boy toddled a bit, lost his balance, fell forward, crawled a bit, then rose up, wobbling. Abandoned, uncertain, he began to bawl.

  ‘Cautious and silent let him enter a dwelling,’ Red Njal muttered. ‘To the heedful seldom comes harm.’

  There was an argument above and a woman’s voice sounded shrill, so it was not hard to work matters out.

  ‘Your granny,’ Hlenni said, turning to grin at Red Njal, ‘was…’

  Then someone hurled the rock at him from the ramparts.

  A big one it was, big as Hlenni’s stupid head and the crack of it hitting in the curve of his neck and shoulder was loud; louder yet was the roar of disbelief and rage that went up from us. Hlenni pitched forward on his face and Red Njal howled and leaped forward.

  Arrows came over with a hiss and shunk, some skittering through the wet grass. Finnlaith caught Red Njal as he hirpled past, caught and held him, though Njal raved and struggled and frothed and Ospak stepped in front of them both, shield up against the shafts.

  Eventually we dragged Red Njal away out of range, where he subsided, gnawing a knuckle and trembling, his eyes fixed on the fallen Hlenni.

  The gate opened and men darted out, grabbed the bairn and took Hlenni by the heels and dragged him in, which set all the men off again until Finn and I had to crack heads and draw blood.

  Sweating, we crouched like wolves after a failed hunt, panting with our mouths open, sick with loss.

  ‘Perhaps he is alive,’ Styrbjorn ventured, thoughtful as only a man who did not really care could be. ‘They may regret what they have done and bind his wound.’

  No-one spoke. I blinked the sting of sweat from my eyes and tried to think. In the end, though it wove itself around like a knot of mating snakes, matters came out the same way. I rose up and went back to the stockade to hail them.

  I had barely bellowed when something arced over the stockade wall, smacked into the wet earth with a crunch and then rolled almost to my feet. I did not have to look to know what it was; none of us did.

  Red Njal howled until the cords on his neck stood out and spittle flew, roared until he burst something in his throat and coughed blood. The rest of us did not speak for a long time and I only had to nod to send long-legged Koghe loping back to fetch the rest of the crew, for the sight of Hlenni’s bloody, battered head, the rough-hacked neck trailing tatters of skin, had sealed the wyrd of this place.

  Hlenni. Gone and gone. One of the original Oathsworn from long before my time, who had survived everything the gods could hurl, save a stone from some dirty-handed, skin-wearing troll of a farmer.

  ‘I do not think,’ Finn said bitterly to Styrbjorn, ‘that they have bound his wounds. Or regret what they have done.’

  Red Njal lifted his face then, a stream of misery and hate poured up at the stockade, his eyes cold as blue ice.

  ‘They will,’ he rasped.

  I found Blue Hat, eventually. He was in the Christ hall, for these folk were followers of the White Christ and had built his temple partly in stone, thinking it a refuge for times of trouble. But they had never come on trouble like the Oathsworn, wolf-woken to revenge.

  We took our time on it, too, cold as old vomit, while the rain drizzled. We took all but ten men from the boat and stood behind shields, beyond arrow range of the wooden walls, the rain dripping off the nasals of our helmets and seeping through the rings of iron to the tunics beneath.

  We were howe-silent, too, which unnerved the defenders and when I sent others to cut wood, that steady rhythm of sound must have seemed, in the end, like a death drum to those in the stockade, for they stopped their taunts.

  ‘Well,’ growled Finn as men came back lugging a solid trunk, trimmed and sharpened. ‘What is the plan, Jarl Orm?’

  Most of the others looked surprised, for it seemed clear to them — under cover of our shields we would knock the gates in with this ram then storm the place. Apart from deciding what insults to bellow, that was usually the way and surely the way the famed Oathsworn would do it.

  Finn knew me better than that and even Crowbone, stroking his beardless chin like some ancient jarl considering the problem, knew more than older heads.

  ‘You do not care for that way, fame or not,’ he said while men gathered to listen.

  I admitted it then and have done since. I am like other men and desire proper respect and esteem, when it is due. In the end, though, Odin taught me about fair fame — it was a tool, an edged one that can cut the user unless it is properly used. I said so and Abjorn grunted a little.

  ‘You do not agree?’ Finn challenged and Alyosha chuckled, one jarl-hound to another, it seemed to me.

  ‘It does not seem quite right,’ admitted Abjorn, but it was Styrbjorn, all fire and movement, like a colt new to the bridle, who hoiked it up for us all to look at.

  ‘A man’s reputation is everything,’ he spluttered. ‘Fair fame is all we have.’

  ‘Once I thought so,’ I answered. ‘Like the Oath we swear, it binds us. It weakens us, too, for it makes us act in ways we would not usually do.’

  ‘Like charging through the gates of that place like mad bulls,’ Crowbone added brightly. Styrbjorn subsided, muttering, but Abjorn nodded slowly as the idea rooted itself.

  In the end, it was simple enough. I had men run forward, shields up and shouting, so that heads popped up on the ramparts and a flurry of shafts came over. No-one was hurt and we collected some.

  ‘Hunting arrows,’ Finn said with satisfaction. It was what I had been thinking; Kuritsa and me had shot off what war arrows these people possessed. Hunting arrows we could protect ourselves from.

  The sky lowered itself like a gull on eggs, all grey and fat and ugly. Twenty men, led by Finn, went into the woods carrying bundles and axes and more chopping sounds came. This time, though, they were making ladders and the bundles held all the spare tunics folk had, which they put on under the
ir mail, up to four of them. Then they circled, unseen, to the far side of the stockade.

  I sent men with the ram against the gates, moving up under shields where there was only pant and grunt and fear. Rocks clattered on us, shafts whumped into shields, or struck and bounced, skittering like mad snakes through the wet grass.

  On the far side, while the gate thundered like a deep bell, Finn slapped ladders against the almost undefended rear wall and led the others up and over. There were only twenty of them, but they were skilled men, mailed, shielded and moving as fast as their bulk would let them, fast as a shuffling trot, hacking at anything that came near and heading for the bar on the gate.

  The folk in the settlement panicked when they saw such a group, iron men slicing through their meeting square, toppling the cross-pillar, scattering chickens, splintering carts, kicking buckets, some of them stuck with arrows which went through byrnie and one layer, perhaps two — but would not go through ring-coats and the padding of four tunics.

  Hedgepigs in steel, they were and that broke the will of the defenders, so that they ran, screaming and throwing away their hayforks and hunting spears.

  When the gate broke open, then, all I saw was a shrieking, milling crowd running this way and that and it was like mice to cats — the very act of them running in fear brought what they dreaded on them, launched the howling Oathsworn at them, flaming for vengeance over Hlenni Brimill.

  Arrows flicked at the edge of vision and I ducked, for I wore no helmet, thanks to the still healing scar across my forehead and my tender nose and I could hear my father, Gunnar, snort in my ear at that — if you have the choice of only one piece of armour, take a helm, he had dinned into me. Never go bareheaded in a fight.

  Well, it did Koghe no good, for the arrow that flew past me hit him and there was a wet, deep sound. I half-turned; tall Koghe staggered past with the force of his own rush, the arrow through his mouth, a fud-hair below the nasal of his helmet. Choking on his own blood and teeth, pawing the shaft, he was dead even as he gurgled and fell.

  I saw the bowman then, ran at him as another arrow was fitted to the nock, held my sword — Brand’s splendid blade — in front of my body until the last moment before I got to him, for I knew what the archer would have to do.

  He snapped the arrow into one hand and stabbed with it and I took it round in an arc down and right, smashed in with my shoulder and knocked him flying, arse over tip. He was still struggling like a beetle on his back when I chopped him between neck and shoulder.

  Shouts and screams soaked the air, almost drowning out the high, thin sound of a bell; I sensed a shadow and stepped back sharply. A body struck the ground, the wood axe meant for my head spilling from one hand and then Styrbjorn stepped up, grinning, the seax and the hand that held it thick with gore.

  ‘The Christ place,’ he said, nodding towards the building and I realised that someone was calling the last defenders to him there. Still grinning, he let me lead the way and I realised he had probably saved my life with his handy backstab.

  Blue Hat was the bellringer and he was dead by the time I got to him, through a madness that was as like Svartey as to have been its crazed brother. Men moved like grim shadows, killing. There was no plunder, no tupping women in the dust. Only killing.

  I walked through it as if in a dream; Uddolf ran across my path, chasing a fear-babbling youngster up to a wall, where he ran at him with his spear, so hard that it broke and the boy, pinned, screamed and writhed like a worm on a hook. Uddolf, shrieking, beat the boy’s face bloody with the broken haft.

  Ospak kicked away a young woman, begging on her knees with her hands clasped round his calves, then split the head from her mother with two strokes; yellow marrow oozed from the bone of her neck.

  The Christ place was dim and silent and I slumped against the painted wall, feeling the shadows and the quiet like a balm. Then my eyes grew used to the light.

  Under the cross with its Tortured God, Red Njal stood on splayed legs, head bowed, panting like a bull after mating. At his feet was Blue Hat and I would not have known the man had it not been for his headgear, for Red Njal had not been kind.

  ‘Hlenni…’

  I followed Red Njal’s glazed look and saw the body, strange with no head, but linen-wrapped neat enough. Nearby was a dead Shaven Priest in his brown robe, killed kneeling in prayer.

  They had bound Hlenni’s wounds after all, it seemed. Just a little late.

  It was all too late. Dull-eyed men staggered, too exhausted to kill now but it did not matter for everyone was dead. No, that was not right, I saw. Every thing was dead, even the dogs and the goats and the hens. Everything.

  I found myself in a long hall, a meeting place perhaps, for these folk did not do chieftain’s hovs. Yet it was like one as to bring a rush of memories and I ran to them with my arms out, to try and wrap myself from what went on outside.

  There was a pitfire, cold ash now, but the smell of it and the seasoned wood of the pillars flooded Hestreng back on me, a Hestreng unburned. This was the time of year when the sap shifted in everything and the sun came back, so that you could peg out furs and bedclothes and let the sun drive out the lice and fleas. Men would work half-naked, though it was this side of too cool to be comfortable; there was enough food, but most of the ale was finished, so fights were few.

  Summer was the lean time between harvests, so that the unlucky could starve to death eating grass while the sun poured down like honey.

  There were sheep and goats to be taken to upland pastures, but not the ones reserved for the horses; sheep and goats ate the grass down to the soil, leaving nothing — but they gave wool for wadmal, and milk for curd and cheese and this was the time when skyr was made. I remembered it, thickened whey, white as a virgin’s skin, lush off the wooden spoon.

  But Hestreng was black timber and ash. With luck, a new hall would be up and giving shelter, the wood reeking of newness and tar, but there would be no time for skyr and few furs or bedclothes to peg out.

  The outside noise yelled me back to a strange, cold, dead hall; someone burst in, saw me and backed out. I rose, feeling as if my legs had turned to wood, but having to move before the tale went round that Orm, White Bear Slayer, leader of the famed Oathsworn, slayer of were-dragons, tamer of the half-women, half-horse steppe creatures was sitting by himself staring at fire ash and near weeping.

  Outside, those with life left in their legs and arms had started to look for plunder, moving as if the air was thick as honey; I picked my way through the litter of corpses, feeling the suck of bloody mud on my boots.

  I stopped only once, in the act of stepping over a corpse, at first just one more among so many. It was smaller by far, though, with fat little limbs and yellow hair, though there was a lot of blood in it now and the little, budded, thumb-sucking mouth that had smiled at Hlenni Brimill was slack and already had a fly in it.

  FOURTEEN

  There were hills on either side of us, easy rolling and wooded with willow and elm and the flash of birch, thick with berry bushes and game, while the river hardly flowed against Short Serpent at all. But there was no singing from the oarsmen now and no joy in the stacked plunder, for all that they had snarled at the lack of it before.

  We had beaver and squirrel and marten skins, wadmal cloth baled with grease-rich fleeces against the rain — the work of winter looms — and carded wool waiting to be woven.

  Now there was mutton and lamb and beef, for we had slaughtered every breathing creature in that place. We had winter roots pickled in barrels and sweetness wax-sealed in pots. Ale, too, though old and a little bitter. There was even hard drink, like the green wine of far-away Holmgard, a clear spirit made from rye — but not enough of it to chase the sick taste of what we had done to that nameless place.

  We loaded it all, stuffing it into Short Serpent until it wobbled precariously, as if the more we took the better the excuse for what had been done. For some of us, the only excuse was the laying out of Hlenni on a cross
-stack of timbers ripped from the houses, with Koghe next to him and Blue Hat at both their feet.

  Then we scattered all the lamp oil we could find, sprayed that expensive stuff like water, for this was not a howing-up, dedicated to Frey — this was a blaze that sped Hlenni and Koghe straight up to Odin, as was proper. A beacon, one or two muttered uneasily, that could be seen for days.

  They had been our only deaths. The morose Gudmund had taken the prong of a hayfork in his belly and Yan Alf had taken the flat of a wooden spade on the side of his head — wielded by a woman, too, to add to his annoyance and shame — but he had only a rich, purple bruise to show for it.

  We had slaughtered one hundred and seventy-four of them, women and bairns among them. Now there was a sickness on us, like the aftermath of a jul feast that had gone on too long, one where folk told you what a time you had because you could not quite recall it for yourself. One where, for days after, everything tasted of ash and your mind was too dull to work.

  Worse than that, at least for me, was the feeling that there had been too much blood spilled, as if it poured into a deep, black hole in the earth, the Abyss that Brother John always warned me I was destined to descend. The same Abyss which had flowed out and into me the night I had ripped out the throat of a berserker.

  I felt like the prow beast, carved in an endless snarl, unable to change my expression, only capable of nodding approval at what was done. I looked at that beast now, back where it had been taken from and rearing proudly up; there seemed small point now in appeasing the spirits of this land. I would rather have them afraid of us.

  We came round the bend and into the sight and sound and smell of a big settlement, this one on the west bank of the river.

  It was, said Pall, the Wend borg of Szteteno. He was still leashed, tied to one or other of us, or the mast when all were busy, yet he had recovered a measure of his sleekit smoothness and grinned at the sight of the place, picking the beef from his gapped teeth with a sliver of bone.