by Robert Low
The thought worried me like a dog on a rat's neck, made me get up and go out into a night smelling of rain and sea, to where the horses were stabled. They stirred and stamped, unused to being so prisoned, swirling up the warmth and sweet smell of hay and bedding. In the dark, the air was thick and suddenly crowded, as if a host of unseen people were there, circling me.
I felt them, the hidden dead of the Oathsworn, wondering what they had given their lives for and my belly contracted. I thought someone laughed and the dark seemed odd, somehow glowing.
It came from outside, in the sky, where faint strokes of green and red light danced in the north. I had seen this before, so it held no real terrors, but the mystery of the fox fires always raised my hackles.
'Others', too. Thorkel stepped out of the darkness and stood beside me.
'Troll fires,' he said, wonderingly. 'Some hold that the red in those fires marks battle, where the warriors fight in Valholl.'
'I had heard it marks where dragons fight and bodes ill,' I replied. 'Pest and war omens.'
'All it means,' said a voice, a blade cutting through the hushed reverence of our voices, 'is that winter comes early and it will freeze the flames in a fire.'
Turning, we saw Finn come up, swathed in a thick green cloak against the cold, his breath smoking into ours as he joined us.
'The sea will be cold when we sail,' he added and left that dangling there, like the lights flaring in the sky.
Odin started to turn my world to his bidding not long after, on a day when I was woken by Aoife rolling away from me, out of the closed box space which was my right and off to see to Cormac. It was cold in the hall, where everyone slept as close to the fire embers as they could get or were allowed. It was colder still after Aoife had left my side.
Thorgunna and Ingrid were up, the one barrelling towards me, the other coaxing flames back into the fire and kicking thralls awake to fetch wood and water. I groaned. It was too early for Thorgunna.
She stopped, hands on hips and looked down at me, one eyebrow crooked. 'You look like a sack of dirt.'
'Lord.'
'What?'
'You look like a sack of dirt, Lord. I am the jarl here.'
She snorted. 'It is an hour past rismal by the sun, which is scorching eyes out. Lord. And it is because you are jarl that I am here to give you a clean tunic and make sure your hair is combed. Lord. Men are here; they came with Hoskuld Trader, looking for you and Thorkel. They say they know Thorkel.'
I groaned louder still, for I had an idea who they were and why they were here. Thorkel would have spread the word and here they came, the next ones wanting an oar on the finished Elk.
'Let Finn deal with it,' I attempted. 'I don't believe you about the sun, either.'
'Finn has already gone plank-hunting with Heg, as you ordered,' Thorgunna answered briskly, throwing a blue tunic at me. It smelled of summer flowers and clean salt air. 'But I will give you the part about the sun. It is there, though, somewhere in the rain clouds over the mountains.'
There was nothing else for it. I rolled out of bed, shivering and then had to splash water on myself before Thorgunna would let me into the clean tunic and warm breeks.
'If you had not rutted with that Aoife all night you would not stink so much,' she declared as I fastened my way into stiff shoes.
'Keep you awake, did we?' I growled back at her. 'I seem to remember you and Kvasir making so much noise when first you arrived in this hall that I thought to build you a place of your own, just so I could get to sleep.'
There was a hint of colour in her cheeks as she snorted her derision and turned me round to braid up my hair as though she was my mother, though I was younger only by a half-fist of years. When I turned back, she was smiling and it was not a smile you could resist.
I lost the grin stepping out into the muddy yard, where Thorkel and four men waited patiently, in the lee of the log store. They sat picking at a rismal — a rising meal — of bread and salt fish on a platter, fat wooden ale beakers in their hands. Thorgunna would not let them into a hall of sleepers, but had offered them fair hospitality, even so.
It was cold, a day when the last leaves whirled in russet eddies and the trees spitted a pearled sky. Thorkel nodded in friendly fashion, twisting his stained wool hat nervously in his hands, indicating the men.
'This is Finnlaith from Dyfflin, Ospak, Tjorvir and Throst Silfra. They are all wondering if you need good crewmen. As am I.'
I looked them over. Hard men, all of them. Finnlaith was clearly a half-Irisher, the other three were Svears and all had the rough-red knuckles you get from rubbing on the inside of a shield. I knew they had cuts on the backs of their other hands and calloused palms from sword and axe work, even though I could not see them. They had probably been fighting us only recently, but that was all over and a king over both Svears and Geats was being crowned in Uppsala this very year.
'Silfra,' I said to the one called Throst. 'Why do you need me, then?'
His by-name — Silver Owner — was a joke, he explained in his thick accent. He never owned any for long, for he enjoyed dice too much. He needed me, he added with a twisted smile, because he had heard from Thorkel and elsewhere that I had a mountain of it. Thorkel had the wit to shrug and look ashamed for a moment when I shot him a look.
'Find Kvasir inside,' I said. 'Thorkel will show you who he is. Do what Kvasir tells you and enjoy the hospitality of my hall. There is a ship being built which may need a crew and then again, it may not.'
Even as I said it I felt the heart of me sink like stone. The word was out, leaping from head to head like nits — Orm the White Bear Slayer, the Odin-favoured who held the secret of a mountain of silver, was preparing a ship. That attracted hard men, sword and axe men, from near and far, as Kvasir had pointed out.
That day was the beginning of it. Every day for the next few weeks they arrived, by land and sea, in ones and twos and little groups, all wanting a berth on the Elk. The hall filled with them and their noise and Thorgunna grew less inclined to smile and more inclined to bang kitchen stuff together and cuff thralls round the ears.
Then came the moment I had dreaded, when Gizur and Botolf came up, beaming, to announce that the carved prow-head had been placed and the Fjord Elk was finished.
I remembered the first of that name, the one I had been hauled up the side of at fifteen, plucked from a life at Bjornshafen into the maelstrom of sea-raiding, stripped from a life of field and sea into one of blade and shield. There was, it seemed to my sinking soul, no way back — and the hulk of all those steading dreams was wrecked beyond repair by my own heart-leap of joy at the sight of what Onund and Gizur had crafted. I had paid it scant attention before, not wanting to see it grow, not wanting to feel the power of the prow beast, dragging me from the land. Now the sight of it struck me like Thor's own hammer.
It was sleek and new, smelling of pine and tar and salt, rocking easily at the wharf we had built, while men flaked the new sail on the spar, a red and white striped expanse which had occupied two years of loom work. I had paid Hoskuld in silver and promises for that sail; this new Elk had sucked the last of what little fortune I had away.
There was carved scrollwork on the sides and on the steering board; the weathervane was silvered. The meginhufr, that extra thick plank fitted just beneath the waterline on both sides of the hull, was gilded and, even now, the thralls' hands were stained blue and yellow from the painting they had done. That also had cost me a fortune — lapis and copper for the blue, ochre and orpiment for the yellow and all mixed with expensive oil.
No wonder Hoskuld's grin was as wide as the one splitting Gizur's face — the trader could live idle for two seasons on what I had paid him for bits of this ship. The joy was on Gizur over what had been made, but it was rightly Onund's work, though the hunchback gave no more sign of contentment than the odd grunt, like a scratching bear.
Thorgunna admitted it was a fine-looking ship, even if she sniffed at what it cost and the uselessn
ess of it compared with a new knarr, or some decent fishing craft. And the hours it took good men to build, when they should have been mucking out stables, or spreading seaweed on fields.
But no-one listened to her, for this was the Fjord Elk, with its antlered prow-beast and wave-sleekness.
Gizur looked at me pointedly. My heart scudded with the wind on the wave. The moment was here and I knew what was needed — a blot ceremony, with a pair of fighting horses, the victor's sacrifice and an oath-swearing. The old Oath that bound some of us still.
We swear to be brothers to each other, bone, blood and steel, on Gungnir, Odin's spear we swear, may ,fie curse us to the Nine Realms and beyond if we break this faith, one to another.
A hard Oath, that. Once taken, it was for life, or until someone replaced you, which happened by agreement, or by challenge from a hopeful. I had not thought Odin done with us only that he dozed a little — but I should have known better; the One-Eyed All-Father never sleeps and when he does, one eye is always open.
So I sighed and said to them that it would be done, when I had decided — with Finn and Kvasir — just where we should raid.
In fact, I hoped the weather would change, from the watered-sun days which spat rain from a milk and iron sky to something harsher, with the wind lashing the pine forests like the breath of Thor and the sea rearing up, all froth and whipping mane. That would put a stop to the whole thing, at least for this season, I was hoping, for if Jarl Brand heard how men were raiding out of his lands — on top of neighbour-feuding — things would not go well with us in Hestreng.
I had forgotten that, while Thor hurls his Hammer from storm-clouds, Odin prefers his strike to come out of a calm sky.
We had one the day we took the Fjord Elk out to test it, a silver and pewter day, with the sea grey green and the gulls whirling. A good day to find out if it was a sweet sail, as Gizur pointed out, with more than enough wind to make oar-work almost an afterthought.
The men lugged their sea-chests up to bench them by a rowlock. The Irishers, only half Danes for the most part, were not shipmen of any note and craned their necks this way and that at the sight of shields and spears.
'Are we raiding, then?' demanded Ospak. Red Njal, lumbering past him to plooter into the shallows with his boots round his neck, gave a sharp bark of a laugh. Other old hands joined in, knowing no sensible man of our kind goes even as far as the privy without an edge on him somewhere.
'A smile blocks most cuts,' Red Njal shouted over his shoulder as he slung a shield up to the thwarts, 'but best to have a blade for those who scowl, as my granny used to say.'
The wind whipped my braids on either side of my face and the new, splendid sail bellied and strained above me. The prow beast went up a long wave and skidded down the other side and I heard Onund and Gizur cry out with the delight of it, while I stole a look at Finn, who was muttering and clutching his battered, broad-brimmed hat.
He caught me at it and scowled.
'There is a bag of winds in this hat, for sure,' he growled. 'I am thinking we should seek out old Ivar and have him tell the secret of it.'
Old Ivar, less his famous weather-hat and almost everything else he possessed, was fled to Gotland and unlikely to feel disposed to share any secrets with the likes of us, but I did not even have to voice that aloud to Finn. We stood for a while, he turning the hat this way and that and muttering runespells Klepp had taught him, me feeling the skin of my face stiffen and stretch with the salt in the air.
We ran with the wind until Gizur and Hauk decided they had found all the faults with beitass and rakki lines and all the other ship-stuff that bothered them, then we turned round into the wind, flaking the great striped sail back to the mast. Sighing, men took to their benches and started to pull back to the land.
Crew light as we were and running into an off-shore wind, the Fjord Elk danced on the water while men offered 'heyas' of admiration to Onund for making such a fine vessel. For his part, he hunched into his furs and watched the amount of water swilling down between the rowers' feet with a critical scowl.
I stood in the prow, glad not to be pulling on an oar. I stared out across the grey-green glass of stippled water to the dusted blue of the land, one foot on the thwart, one hand on a bracing line.
'It is the still and silent sea that drowns a man,' said a voice, like the doom of an unseen reef, right in my ear. I leaped, startled and stared into the apologetic face of Red Njal who had left his oar to piss.
'As my granny used to say,' he added, directing a hot stream over the side.
'Point that away, you thrallborn whelp,' roared Finnlaith from beneath him, 'for if you wet me it will be this silent sea that drowns you.'
'Thrallborn!' Red Njal spat back indignantly, half-turning towards Finnlaith as he spoke; men cursed him and he hastily pointed himself back to the sea, yelling his apologies and curses at Finnlaith for insulting him.
'Do not despise thralls,' Onund growled blackly at Red Njal. 'The best man I knew was a thrall, the reason I left Iceland.' The panting rowers lifted their heads like hounds on a spoor, for Onund rarely spoke of anything and never of why he had left Iceland. They kept their eyes on the man in front, all the same, to keep the rhythm of the rowing.
Onund went on, 'I was with Gisli, the one they call Soursop, from Geirthiofsfirth, in Thorsnes, who was declared outlaw there some years ago. He had a thrall called Thord Hareheart, for he was not a brave man, but a fast runner.'
There were chuckles between the pulling-grunts; a good byname was as fine as good verse. Finn moved down the ranks, offering water from a skin, feeding it to men who kept pulling as they sucked it greedily.
'Outlawed or not, Gisli was not about to quit Thorsnes,' Onund told us. 'So men hunted him. He took his spear, formed from a blade-magic sword called Graysteel, which he had stolen and not returned, though it worked out badly for him — but that's another story.'
Men grinned as they pulled, for the winter seemed to promise some good Iceland tales round the fire. Finn left off with his watering and came closer to listen.
Onund grunted and went on. 'He also took Thord and as they were heading towards the steading, in the dark and cautious, he suddenly handed Thord his favourite blue cloak. For friendship he said, against the cold. Then they were attacked by three men and Thord ran, as he always did — but the attackers saw the cloak and thought it was Gisli.
'They hurled their spears and one went through Thord's back and out the other side. Then Gisli, who had spotted the men lying in wait for him, came out of hiding and killed them all, now that they had only seaxes.'
'Seems like a fair fight to me,' Finn growled and Onund shrugged, which was a fearsome sight.
'So others say,' he replied, 'but I thought it a mean trick on a helpless and faithful nithing, and one which brought no honour to Gisli, who was already lacking in that richness for many other reasons, not least his easy Christ-signing. So I left his boat unfinished and came here.'
'Others have signed to the White Christ,' Finn argued and Onund, who knew well that Finn, among others of the Oathsworn, had done that once, nodded, considering.
'I know it. The Englisc and others west of Jutland are nearly all Christ-followers now and will not trade with those who are not,' he growled. Tor all that, it is no honourable thing to throw off your gods, even for a little time, just for silver.'
'To be without silver is better than to be without honour,' Red Njal agreed sombrely, tucking himself back into his breeks and moving back to his bench. Finn, mired in an argument he felt he was losing, glared at him.
'Before you mention her,' he snarled, 'let me just say that your old granny should have remembered the oldest saw of all — a tongue cut out seldom gossips.'
Red Njal pursed his lips with sorrow, shaking his head. 'There is only mingled friendship when a man can utter his whole mind to another,' he countered. 'You have my granny to thank for that and my forbearance.'
'Never trust the words of a woman,' Finn i
ntoned, 'for their hearts were shaped on a wheel.'
'With his ears let him listen, with his eyes let him look —so a wise man spies out the way,' Red Njal spat back.
'Shut up, the pair of you,' shouted Kvasir, which brought a brief spasm of throaty chuckles.
It was there, basking in that glow of being on a fine, new ship with the only true family I knew and aware that I was enjoying it, that I felt the breath of Odin, a sharp chill that shuddered me, made me turn to where the antlered prow beast snarled.
The grey-green sea was the same and the gloomed blue of the land — but now there was a dark stain on part of it and the evil wink of a single red eye.
I stared, trying to make sense of it, until Finn shoved his spray-dusted beard inches from my cheek and did it for me. 'Smoke and fire,' he said. 'Hestreng.'
I was still grasping at the swirling leaves of my thoughts when he turned back to where the men bent and pulled. 'Row, fuck your mothers!' he roared. 'Our hall is burning.'
We hauled hard, creaming the Fjord Elk up and over the waves, pounding her into the shore, while those not rowing fixed helmets, checked thonging and studied the edge of blades for sharpness.
The panic in me was a spur that kept me pacing like a caged dog from mastfish to prow beast and back, until Kvasir smacked the flat of his blade on my helmet, hard enough to ring some sense into me.
He did not have to speak at all, but I met him eye to eye and nodded my thanks. His grin was hard-eyed and I remembered, with a start, about his wife, Thorgunna, as well as Botolf, Ingrid and Aoife and all the others. Like a fret of swirling wind, the thoughts circled in me. Who? Who would dare?
There was no answer to it. We had more enemies than friends, like all sea-raiders and the curse of it was that I made us vulnerable by giving those enemies a place to attack, a sure place where they knew we could be found.
Gizur howled at the rowers, who grunted and sweated and hauled until the last moment, then clattered in the oars while the keel drove hard and grinding up the shingle and men spilled out.