The White Raven

by Robert Low

  'No,' said Finn. 'I am thinking he will keep her to bargain with if it goes badly for him. He wants the secret of Atil's treasure, so she is worth more to him alive.'

  It was more likely to go badly with us, for if we could have taken Klerkon surely, I would have done it at Gunnarsgard. Neither of us had had enough men for certain victory then —but, in his own place, Klerkon probably had more. I did not say this, for it was no help; we had not sailed all this way to gather shells on Klerkon's beach.

  There was a flurry of movement, some hissed commands and then, with a crunch and a lurch, the Elk slid an oak keel scar up the shingle beach of Svartey, the Black Island of Klerkon.

  The thralls and women stayed behind, for they were useless in a fight. Gizur and Onund stayed, too, for they were too valuable to the ship to be risked. The rest of us hauled out weapons, checked shield straps, slithered into mail if it was there to be worn.

  In the dim before dawn they were grim and glittering with hoar, bearded, tangle-haired under their helmets and grinning the savage grin of wolves on a kill. Hauk Fast Sailor had a bow, which he preferred. So did Finnlaith, who was a hunter of skill and I had marked that. The rest had good blades, axe or spear. Few swords. All the blades were dull with sheep grease against the sea-rot.

  They were hard men, wild men, rough-dressed and tattered, but their battle gear and blades were cared for as women care for bairns and no matter what they had done before, they had put the words in their own mouths and were bound to each other now, blade-brothers of the Oathsworn.

  I reminded them of this at the same time as telling them to leave off the loot and women until we were sure all the fighters were dead. They growled and grunted in the dark, teeth and eyes gleaming.

  Then Finn stepped up, a battle leader as was Kvasir. But Kvasir said little at these moments and had seemed even more preoccupied than usual. I took it to be because he had Thorgunna with him; a woman is always a worry.

  'It is as Jarl Orm says,' Finn growled. 'Obey him. Obey me and Kvasir Spittle here, too, for we are his right and left hands. You are no strangers to red war, so I will not give you the usual talk, of Hewers of Men and Feeders of Eagles.'

  He paused, hauled out his long Roman nail and grinned.

  'Just remember — this is Jarl Orm, who slew the White Bear. Jarl Orm, who has stood in the tomb of Atil, Lord of the Huns and has seen more silver in a glance than any of you will see in a thousand lifetimes. Jarl Orm, who has fought with the Romans against the Serklanders. Jarl Orm, who is called friend by the Emperor of the Great City.'

  I winced at all this, only some of which was true — but Finn's audience would have howled and set up a din of shield-clanging if we had not been looking for stealth.

  As we moved off, I saw Thorkel grin at me and raise his axe in salute and I realized that a lot of those things had been done by me right enough. I was now in my twenty-first year in the world, no longer the boy Thorkel had let into the Oathsworn on a shingle beach like this one, on a night much

  like this one, six years ago. I touched the dragon-ended silver torc round my neck, that great curve that snarled at itself and marked me as a man men followed.

  No-one challenged us as we watched and waited above Klerkon's holding, looking to count hard men and seeing none. The trees dripped. A bird fluttered in, was shocked and whirred out again, cackling. I did not like this and said so.

  'We had better move fast,' said Kvasir, his mouth fish-breath close to my face. 'Sooner or later we will give ourselves away and the lighter it gets . . .'

  The sky was all silver, dulling to lead beyond the huddle of wattle huts. I half-rose and hauled out my sword — not the sabre this time, but a good, solid weapon given to me by King Eirik himself, with little silver inserts hammered into the cross-guard and a fat silver oathing ring in the pommel. I had a shield, but it was mostly for show, since I only had two fingers and a thumb on that hand to grip it with and any sound blow would wrench it away.

  Grunting, red-faced, teeth grinding on his nail, Finn slid down through the trees, letting the rest of us follow. He had The Godi, his big sword, in one hand and carried no shield. The free hand was for that nail.

  Then, just as he was seen by. the two thralls squatting to shit, he ripped the nail from his mouth, threw back his head and let out a howl that raised the hairs on my arms.

  The Oathsworn wolfed down on the camp, skilled and savage and sliding together like ship planks. The first thralls, gawping in terror and surprise with their kjafal flapping round their knees, vanished in a red flurry of blows and it was clear, from the start, that there were no warriors here.

  Well, there was, but not much of one. He barrelled out of a doorway with only his breeks on, mouth red and wet and screaming in his mad-bearded face and a great shieldbreaker sword swinging.

  Finn and Kvasir, like two wolves on a kill, swung right and left and, while Mad Beard was turning his shaggy head, deciding which one to go for first, Finn darted in with his Roman nail and Kvasir snarled from the other side with his axe, though he missed by a foot with his first swing. It did not matter much, though, for there were two of them and only one defender.

  When they broke apart, panting, tongues lolling like dogs, I saw that the man they had been hacking to bloody pats of flesh was Amundi, who was called Brawl. We had all shared ale and laughed round the same fire three summers before.

  'So much for him, then,' growled Finn, giving the ruined thing a kick. He shot Kvasir a hard look and added accusingly, 'You need more practice with that axe.'

  I had done nothing much in the fight save snarl and wave a menacing blade at a couple of thralls armed with snatched-up wood axes, who thought better of it and dropped them, whimpering. Now I watched these hard men, the new Oathsworn, do what they did best, standing back and weighing them up, for this was a new crew to me for the most part. It was also an old crew, let loose like a pack of hunting dogs too-long kennelled.

  Hlenni Brimill and Red Njal and Hauk Fast-Sailor were old Oathsworn, yet they raved through that place, mad with the lust of it, so that the terror in faces only made them worse. Others, too, showed that they were no strangers to raiding and, for all that I had done this before, this time seemed too bloody and harsh, full of screaming women, dying bairns and revenge.

  I saw Klepp Spaki, bent over with hands on his thighs, retching up at the sight of Brawl's bloody mess. Now he knew the truth of the bold runes he carved for brave raiders who would never come home.

  I saw Thorkel and Finnlaith laughing and slithering in the mud trying to round up a couple of pigs, which was foolish. We wanted no livestock on this raid — we had provision enough for where we were going.

  It was the others who brought red war and ruin to that place. Women and thralls died there, right away or later, after they had been used. Weans died, too.

  In the dim, blue-smoked hall, men overturned benches, flung aside hangings, cursed and slapped thralls, looking for loot. When they saw me, they fell silent and went still. Ospak, Tjorvir and Throst Silfra, like three bairns caught in the larder with stolen apples, dropped their thieving when they saw me. It was a half-naked, weeping thrall woman they had stripped between them — but they only dropped her because I had told them to leave the women until we were sure all the fighting men were dead.

  Finn lost himself in it — him most of all. Like a drunk kept from ale, he dived headfirst into the barrel and tried to drown himself, losing his sense so much that I had to save him from the boy who was trying to avenge his mother. Since Finn had killed her before he flung her down on a dead ox in the yard and started humping her, it was futile, but I had to kill the boy anyway, for he had a seax at Finn's exposed back.

  A few kept their heads. Runolf Harelip spilled into the red light of the rann-sack in the hall, dragging a struggling thrall-boy with him, cuffing the child round the head, hard enough to throw him at my feet and almost into the hearthfire. I looked down as the boy looked up and a jolt went through me, as if I had been s
lapped.

  A sensible man crops the hair of a thrall — it keeps the nits down and reminds them of their place — but this boy had been shaved and badly, so that hair stuck in odd dirty-straw tufts between scabs. He wore an iron collar with a ring on it and I knew there would be runes that told how he was the property of Klerkon.

  None of the other thralls, I noted, had as much as a thong and bone slice, for Klerkon's steading was an island with no place for a thrall to run — but this one had tried. More than once, I suspected, for Klerkon to collar him; Harelip had noted that, too, and thought it strange enough to bring him to me rather than kill him.

  'Chained up outside the privy,' Harelip grunted, confirming my thoughts. Fastened like a mad dog, dumped near filth for more punishment.

  The boy continued to stare at me. Like a cat, that stare, out of the muck and bruises of his face. Unwavering and strange — then I saw, with a shock, that he had one eye blue-green and one yellow-brown and that was what was strangest in that gaze.

  'Klerkon is not here,' offered Ospak, stepping away from the weeping woman, though not without a brief look of regret. Light speared through the badly-daubed walls of the rough hall, dappling the stamped-earth of the floor.

  'That much I had worked out,' I answered, glad of the excuse to break away from the boy's eyes and angry at being made so twitched by him. I stepped towards what was Klerkon's private space in the hall, throwing back the curtain of it.

  Furs, purest white fox. A cloak with bright-green trim. The frame of a proper box-bed, planked over and thick with good pelts. No chest. No money. No Thordis.

  'I am a Northman,' the boy said. A West Norse tongue, stumbling through the Slav he had been forced to speak, stiff with the old misuse of defiant silences.

  I turned back into those eyes. He stood, chin up and challenging and, for a moment; reminded me of the Goat Boy as he had been when we found him on Cyprus. About the same age as the Goat Boy was then, I noted. Of course, we had stopped calling him the Goat Boy when he had grown into resenting it — Jon Asanes he was now, being schooled by a trader I knew in Holmgard, which the Slavs call Novgorod.

  'I am from Norway and a prince,' the boy added. Throst Silfra gave a loud laugh and those strange eyes swung on him, eagle fierce. I saw Throst quail in an eyeblink, then recover as quickly, also angered at having been so disconcerted by a thrall boy. He moved, lip curled.

  'Stay,' I warned and, for a moment, he glowered at me, then lowered his hand and stepped back.

  'I am a prince,' the boy insisted.

  'Aye, just so,' thundered Finn, ducking into the middle of all this. 'Wipe the muck off every thrall and they will swear they were pure gold in their own country.'

  'A prince of where?' I asked.

  The boy stirred uncomfortably. 'Somewhere,' he said, hesitantly. Then, more firmly: 'But my mother was a Princess. She died. So did my fostri. Klerkon killed them both.'

  'There isn't so much as a bead in this place,' Finn growled, ignoring the boy. 'Klerkon did not return here with his loot, so he must have sailed straight to Aldeigjuborg.'

  'The storerooms are full,' Kvasir added, coming in to the hall. 'Winter feed. Honey in pots, seal and deer hides, fox pelts, feathers for pillows, sacks of acorns . . .'

  'Feathers,' sneered Finn. 'Fucking acorns.'

  'Take it, load it,' I said and Kvasir nodded. 'When you have everything, burn this place to the ground. Leave the thralls —they take up too much room and they are not what we came for.'

  Kvasir ducked out of the hall, bawling for people to help him; Red Njal came in and glanced at me, then looked away. His knees and hands were clotted with gore where he had knelt to plunder a woman and the bairns he had killed; I had stepped in on him and being watched had shamed him away from the small bodies.

  'Is it wise to burn it?' Finn asked.

  'Wise?'

  'You know Klerkon,' Finn offered. 'Unless we finish him, he will have his revenge. He has already torched Gunnarsgard and half of it was mine — he may decide to kill all the thralls and Thordis with them, out of fury.'

  He was right and this was reason enough, as Finn often pointed out, for not owning anything you could not stuff into a sea chest. Yet, outside, I could hear what we had brought to this place, in the screams and the harsh laughter. Humping a dead woman on the flank of a dead ox in the yard was the least of it. I said that, too and we glared at each other.

  'Fear the reckoning of those you have wronged,' Red Njal said mournfully and I shot him a savage glance; he, above all, had much to fear, for I suspected the bairns whose blood he had been paddling about in were Klerkon's own.

  He saw my look and stiffened, then shrugged.

  'The shame you cannot lift you had better let lie, as my granny used to say,' he muttered darkly.

  'Happy woman who never saw you guddling in the blood of bairns for what you could steal,' I spat at him and he winced away from it. It was unfair, for others had done worse and none of us were snow-pure.

  'I know where Klerkon's gold is,' the boy said. 'I will tell you if you do not fire the steading.'

  'If I tickle you with a hot blade you will tell us anyway,' Throst Silfra growled, but the boy's double-coloured eyes never left mine.

  'I would have thought you would warm yourself at such a fire,' I said, flicking the iron collar. He flinched.

  'The thralls you leave will die without shelter,' he replied. 'It is enough that you take their food. They are not able to run, are not to blame and some are my friends here.'

  'Other princes?' chuckled Finn scornfully.

  The boy grinned. 'No. But some have been kinder than kings. The free folk here are another matter and I have my own thoughts on that.'

  Was he the age he looked? Nine, I had reckoned — but he spoke like someone ten times as old.

  'So it is agreed,' I said. 'Show us Klerkon's secret.'

  'Lend me your axe,' demanded the boy and Kvasir, after a moment's narrow-eyed pause, handed it over. The boy weighed it with little bounces of his thin arm, then stepped to the boxbed and swung it, hard. Chips flew.

  He swung it again and part of the frame cracked. A coin flew out and smacked on the beaten earth of the floor. Kvasir picked it up, turned it over, bit it. 'Gold, by Odin's arse,' he said. 'A Serkland dinar in gold, no less.'

  The boy swung again and more chips flew.

  'Here, give me that — you need more muscle,' said Runolf Harelip with a grin. The boy handed him the axe and stepped back. Harelip split the bed in two blows and Kvasir, Tjorvir, Throst and the others scrambled to gather the coins that spilled from the hollow frame.

  In the end, they filled a sack the size of a the thrall boy's head, all gold coins, most of them Serkland dinar with their squiggly markings, each worth, I reckoned it up in my head, about twenty silver dirham each. It was as great a loss for Klerkon as it was a gain for us.

  The boy stood, unsmiling and straight. I saw that the iron collar was rubbing his skin raw and looked at Kvasir, who had also seen it.

  'Ref Steinsson has tools,' he said, 'that can strike that off.'

  'Just so,' I said, then turned to the boy, feeling that heart-leap as our eyes met. 'Do you have a name, then, or will we simply call you Prince?'

  'Olaf,' said the boy with a frown. 'But Klerkon called me Craccoben.'

  There was silence. The name squatted in the hall like a raven in a tree. It was a name you gave to a full-cunning man, rich in Odin's rune magic and one who, like him, could sit at the feet of hanged men to hear the whispered secrets of the dead.

  Not a name you took or gave lightly and I wondered what had made Klerkon hand it out to this thrall boy.

  Crowbone.

  We came up the coast, running before a freezing wind until we had found the narrow mouth of the river we sought and had to drop sail or risk running aground.

  We all groaned, for we would have to row upriver now and crew light at that. It was a heavy, lumbering beast of a ship when there were not even enough men on b
enches for one oar shift, never mind two.

  I sweated with the others, which at least took my mind off the boy, who had been cooed over by Thorgunna the minute she had set eyes on him. Ref had deftly struck off the iron collar and Thorgunna had at once started to wash and salve the sores it had made on his neck — not to mention the ones on his head, which showed where he had been shaved by ungentle hands. Old, white scars showed that such a razoring had not been his first and she tutted and crooned at him.

  Finn, grinning and happy now that he was raiding and getting money out of it rather than feathers and acorns, gave Kvasir a nudge where he sat, in front of Finn and pulling hard to the stroke.

  'You have been hung up like old breeks, Spittle,' he chuckled, nodding to where Thorgunna was wrapping the boy in a warm cloak and patting him. I wondered if she would croon quite so softly when she found out the whole story of what he had done, what he had urged hard men to do back there in Svartey.

  The wind hissed, the skin of the river crinkled and the thrall women huddled, blowing into chapped, cupped hands, but none of that was as cold as the dead we rowed away from.

  'It seems,' Kvasir agreed, grunting the words out between pulls, 'that I brought back a treasure greater than my share of those dinar coins, which I plan to make into a necklace for her.'

  'She's broody as an old hen. You will have to bairn that one and soon,' agreed Finn, which left Kvasir silent and moody.

  There was a flash behind my eyes of the fat limbs and round little belly, fish-white and so small it made Thorkel's blood-smeared hand look massive. The bud-mouth and wide, outraged blue eyes crinkling in bawls in a red face while, somewhere off to the right and pinioned, the mother screamed.

  Crowbone had glared at her with savage triumph, then looked back to Thorkel and nodded; Thorkel hurled the bairn against a stone and the bawling ended in a wet slap and the mother's even louder screams. And I watched, doing nothing, saying less.

  What had she done to Crowbone? He would not say, save that she was one of Randr Sterki's women, so the bairn was his and hers. Most probably she had been less than kind to him — perhaps even the one who shaved him so cruelly. There was no point in trying to stop the shrieking, bloody mess he had fermented, so that the mother's death soon after was almost a mercy.