The White Raven

by Robert Low

  'True enough,' interrupted Finn with a grunt and everyone shushed him.

  'So Martin then told Finn it would be better to chop the tree down first, for if Finn sat there on the same branch he was cutting off he was going to fall down and be killed. But Finn told him to go and fuck goats.'

  Thorgunna gave a squeal of outrage, while Kvasir and Jon Asanes laughed out loud, for this was as like Finn as to have been his fetch, even down to the voice and that was a feat coming from the throat of little Olaf.

  'Martin shook his head at the stupidity of Finn and went away,' Olaf went on. 'Finn chopped and chopped, thinking about the stupidity of Martin, though still a little worried about whether the priest was off somewhere unseen, cursing him.

  'Suddenly, without warning, the branch broke off and Finn fell to the ground. He lay on the ground with the branch under his arse, and as he lay there he thought about what Martin had said and the more he thought on it, the more he was convinced that the priest had the second sight. "He said that the branch would break and I would fall and be killed," Finn reasoned. "The branch really did break, the way he said it would. He is a priest and so knew what he was talking about — so that must mean that I am dead." And so he lay there as if dead.'.

  Kvasir was beating his thighs and shaking his head with the joy of it. He and Jon Asanes were holding each other up, while Finn harrumphed in the dark and each grunt he gave only made it worse.

  'So, thinking he was dead, Finn did not try to get up at all, but just lay there without moving,' Olaf went on. 'After a while some of his friends — let's call them Kvasir Spittle and Jon — came along and found him. They shook him and talked to him and rubbed his head, but he did not move or speak, because he had decided he was dead. They picked him up and set him on his feet, but he fell down again, because whoever heard of a dead man standing up?'

  Even Finn was grinning in the dark now, for I saw a flash of his face as he turned into the milk-light from the grille they had closed on us.

  'So Kvasir and Jon Asanes also decided that he was dead and they picked him up to carry him back to the steading. "Do not leave my good axe," Finn said as they started off, so one went back and picked it up, all the while talking about the misfortune of their friend to end up dead in such a way.

  'When they came to a fork in the path they stopped. Kvasir Spittle said they should go along the river, while Jon thought they should go over the hill. They argued hotly about it, still holding their friend on their shoulders like a corpse. Finally, Finn sat up impatiently and pointed to the hill trail. "That's the best way. It's the way I came," he said. Then he lay down and closed his eyes. His friends stopped arguing and carried him over the hill trail, still lamenting the accident. They came over the hill and into the steading, just as Finn had said.

  'As they passed the forge, the smith came out to see what had happened and Kvasir and Jon put Finn on the ground to look at him. "We found him lying dead under an oak tree," Kvasir explained. "A branch fell on him and killed him."

  'Finn opened one eye and said: "That's not the way it happened. I was sitting on the branch and it broke." Then he closed his eye again.'

  By which time we were all laughing and the guards blotted out the light to peer down, clearly bewildered by a sound they had never heard from the depths of the prison pit before.

  'The smith shook his head sadly,' Olaf continued, 'and Kvasir and Jon picked Finn up again and carried him to his house — but when they arrived there was no-one at home. So they put him on the ground and began to argue about what they should do. Everything was very confused. While they argued a dog wandered in and licked Finn's face. "Take him away!" yelled Finn. "Is there no respect for the dead?"'

  At which point I thought Kvasir and Jon Asanes and Thorgunna would collapse and die on the spot, for they were wheezing and tear-blind now.

  'So they drove the dog out of the house and began to argue again,' Olaf continued, relentless and unsmiling. 'At last, since nothing seemed to be happening, Finn sat up and said angrily: "Send for my wife! She's probably gossiping outside." Then he lay down again and closed his eyes, while his friends sent for his wife.

  'In a little while she came running to the house, crying in grief, with the other women of the village behind her. Many villagers crowded into the house until it was full and Kvasir Spittle told once more how they had found him. "A branch from an oak tree fell on him and killed him," he said.

  'At which Finn roared with anger. "I was sitting on the branch and it broke!" he yelled. "How many times do I have to say this?"

  'At which his wife, more sensible a woman than he deserved, pointed out that, if he was dead, he could not speak. "Just so — but as you see, he is dead," the others replied. "For so he insists."

  'His sensible wife quietly pointed out that perhaps he was not dead after all. Finn sat up and said angrily: "Martin the monk said I would surely fall and be killed. I fell. He was right. He always speaks only the truth, he tells us. Therefore, I must be dead." His sensible wife pointed out that the priest had not seen Finn after he fell, only before. "Argue, argue, argue!" Finn said, getting up from the ground in disgust. "Will there be no end to it?"

  'And he picked up his axe and went out of the house. "Where are you going?" his wife asked. "To get some wood for the fire," says Finn, disappearing down the hill.

  'At which everyone marvelled at so good a man, thinking only of his wife's comfort and him dead like that.'

  Finn clapped a hand on Olaf's shoulder, while the hoots and howls and my own chuckles floated up to the bewildered guards.

  'By Odin's hairy arse, boy, you tell a good tale,' he said, 'though I wish you were as clever at working out when to use an axe.'

  Martin said nothing at all, sliding into the dark where he could hug his scowls to himself — but the laughter raised us out of the pit, for the guards reported that there were mad people making merry in the prison and that got Crowbone and myself hauled up and out and stuck in front of little Prince Vladimir.

  He was a boy, scarcely older than Olaf and ruler of this city since the age of four. When the veche, the council of the city, had decreed to Vladimir's father, Sviatoslav, Grand Prince of Kiev, that if he did not send them one of his sons to rule over them, they would pick their own, he had been sent there. But the veche had decreed that Prince Vladimir could not live inside Lord Novgorod the Great, only outside it, in the fortress on the hill, such was its power.

  Vladimir's two iron pillars were with him, his uncle Dobrynya on his right, and Sigurd, the head of young Vladimir's druzhina, on the prince's left.

  Of that pair, it had to be said that Sigurd was the one who made you blink, for he was called Axebitten for good reason and what the axe had bitten was his nose, legacy of a fight where he forgot to draw back all the way in good time. Now he wore a silver one in its place, strapped on with a silk ribbon that tied at the back of his head and was almost covered by his greying beard and hair, so that it seemed nothing at all held on that marvellous nose.

  Nor did you mention it if you valued keeping your own; losing a nose was punishment in most vik for thieving and so was a dread mark for a man who loved his dignity and valued his honour highly, as Sigurd did.

  But it was little Vladimir, in blue breeks and a simple white linen shirt belted at the waist, who was the one who mattered, for all he only had a dozen years on him. He was capless, his hair shaved from his head save for two plaited braids hanging from his temples in the Khazar style, like his father; Sviatoslay.

  'I am told we have met before,' he said in his light, high voice, frowning at me.

  We had, when Einar was jarl of the Oathsworn and Vladimir; all of six then, had stopped to watch us when we were part of his father's army bound for the Khazar city of Sarkel to siege it.

  I told him this and he nodded. 'I remember Einar. I have heard how he betrayed my brother Jaropolk and vanished into the steppe in search of some treasure. I hear he died there.'

  'True, great. prince,' I sai
d, feeling the slow slide of sweat down my back. 'The years have flowed like the Dnepr under all that.'

  'Rare is it to have laughter from my prisons,' he answered, after a short pause to make it seem as if he considered his words carefully. He played the prince well at twelve.

  'Rare it is,' I countered, sweating more and desperate, for I knew our lives rode on how gold-browed my words were now, 'to have a tale to laugh at.'

  'I told it,' interrupted Olaf and I cursed the little rat. 'Would you like to hear it?'

  I closed my eyes with the horror of it, while Vladmir, back-footed by this surprise stroke, wanted to turn and look to his Uncle Dobrynya, but had enough prince in him to resist it. That and boyish curiosity made him command Olaf to tell it.

  'There was once a good Slav from Lord Novgorod the Great,' Olaf began, while my belly flipped over and my mouth dried so much my tongue almost choked me.

  'We shall call him Vladimir.'

  And he told the whole tale, only it wasn't a priest, it was an uncle called Dobrynya and, at every new stanza of it, I felt the wolf-hot breath of the Valkyrie wash closer and closer.

  Then, at the end of it, while Vladimir hid his grins behind his hand, I saw Dobrynya smiling through his salted-black spade of a beard and felt a moment of light. A chance. There was a chance. Then I saw Sigurd, who was frowning above his silver nose and that was enough to drive my hopes deeper than the pit prison.

  'What name do you have, boy?' demanded Sigurd so harshly that both Vladimir and Dobrynya looked at him in surprise. 'Olaf, lord.'

  'And your father's name?'

  I closed my eyes, for Olaf would never reveal that. The silence stretched.

  'Was it Tryggve, by any chance?' growled Sigurd and I blinked as Olaf jerked.

  'And your mother was called Astrid,' he said, softer now and again Olaf jerked again like a speared whale. Then the truth of it smacked me like snow from a roof — Sigurd. Olafs lost uncle.

  'You know this boy, Sigurd Axebitten?' asked Dobrynya and the druzhina captain nodded, smiling at long last — not that it was a better sight than a frown with that silver nose.

  'I believe he is my nephew, who was being sent to me for safety after his father was slain. Some raiders kidnapped him and his mother and fostri — that was six years ago and I have heard nothing until now.'

  'We freed him,' I interrupted hurriedly. 'Klerkon it was —the man little Olaf here killed. He had been mistreated, chained up, beaten, his mother was cruelly . . .'

  I tailed off, realizing the whole story, the final tug of that ring, unearthing the whole glorious sword of it.

  Olaf, son of Tryggve. I knew of a Tryggve whose son would be a prince, whose mother was a princess called Astrid, daughter of Eirik Bjodaskalle from Obrestad in Rogaland.

  King Tryggve Olafsson, of Viken and Vmgulmark, grandson of Harald Fairhair of Norway. Not a king really, but enough of a mighty jarl — a rig-jarl — to call himself so in the north of Norway, until he had fallen under the blades of the sons of Eirik Bloodaxe, driven on by their mother Gunnhild.

  Aye, there was a woman. Gunnhild, the fearsome witch who could nurse night-wolves with the bile that she held in her breast. Who could chew grindstones to powder when she gnashed her teeth on a matter. She had searched out what she called 'the brat' all over Norway, determined to end the line and make her sons safe. Everyone thought she had done so since the boy and his mother and foster-father Lousebeard — properly known as Thorolf, I now remembered — had simply gone from every view and, in the end, from every lip and mind.

  Now here was the truth of it, standing in this pine-smelling hall, frowning uncertainly up at the man with a silver nose who claimed to be his uncle.

  I looked at the boy, pulled up as tall as he could, his chin jutting. A knife slipped between his ribs at any point would have been worth more than his own weight in gold to Gunnhild. Half the men who crewed the Elk would have done it in an eyeblink — the other half would have hoisted him on their shoulders and gone off to claim him king.

  'Then we cannot kill him, surely,' Vladimir said in a shocked voice. 'Not a prince of the Norways, a nephew of Sigurd Axebitten.'

  Dobrynya said nothing, though he looked at Sigurd, then at us, then at Olaf. I almost hoiked my guts up there and then, for you could see it written on his face, like a birch-bark account.

  No, they couldn't stick a stake up little Olafs arse — but the veche would want their blood price for the killing of Klerkon.

  So Vladimir started with one of the thrall women, to see if the veche would be satisfied with that.

  They took us all out to witness their sharp judgement on the thrall woman, Danica.

  While his skilled men worked with their stake, I looked up to where little Prince Vladimir stood. Today he was a fine-looking prince, in brocaded breeks and silk shirt, his dark-blue coat hemmed in red and with gold at the cuffs, wearing an over-robe of the same colour decorated with gold and fastened with a ruby clasp. Topping all this was a sable cap crowned with silver and the great crushing weight of an eagle-headed gold torc screaming on his chest. His two pillars were with him. And nestling under the embrace of Sigurd's comforting hand on his shoulder was Olaf, who had found his lost uncle.

  At the end of it, both Dobrynya and Sigurd inclined their heads to the beards of the veche, the horsehair plume on Dobrynya's helmet stirring in the snow-thick wind. This one slave woman was clearly not enough: the veche shook their heads to a man. They wanted us all in a neat line, turning the snow to red slush.

  Martin waved his hand in front of his chest in that Christ-sign they use to ward off evil and even Finn and Kvasir looked stone grim when the guards prodded us back to the pit. The other thrall woman was dissolving into snot and tears and had to be carried by Thordis and Thorgunna.

  Finn gave a bitter laugh, the only laugh left of the ones which had floated us out of the pit prison to this moment. 'Little turd,' he muttered, glancing bitterly back at Crowbone, safe beside his new uncle.

  In the dark of the pit I still heard laughter and knew who it was, though I did not know what he had to laugh at. It had seemed to me as if Odin was steering me, like a wind-driven knarr, back to Atil's mountain of silver - yet making sure we would never reach it. Even for him, this was a twisted knot of planning.

  'I will not die a nithing death on a stake like that,' Finn growled and Kvasir agreed. In the fetid dark they started on a plan to break .free and fight until they were killed, with decent weapons in their fists. The women said nothing and Martin muttered prayers.

  'Are you with us, Jon Asanes?' asked Kvasir and I heard the trembling answer.

  'Yes—but I am not much of a fighter.'

  'Orm?' growled Finn. I said nothing and wished he would stop yapping; there was something strange, a sound . . . 'Odin's bones, boy, you are our jarl. Will you lead us?'

  It was laughter, pealing and rolling like distant chimes.

  Odin . . .

  'Perhaps his bowels have turned to water,' growled Finn and Kvasir snarled at him to watch his tongue, but he was uncertain and added that it might be that my thought-cage had warped a little.

  'Bells,' I said, recognizing the sound. 'Bells.'

  It was. Chimes, rich and deep, tumbling like water down a cliff face.

  I could not see their faces in the dark, but I could feel them look one to the other and back to me. Bells in Novgorod meant something momentous and there was a stirring in me, a hackle-raise that let me know Odin had passed close by.

  As the dawn emptied thick silver light down the shaft of the pit — our last dawn in this world, I was thinking — Finn shouted up to the guards, asking what had happened.

  'The great Prince is dead,' answered the guard, his voice stunned and hushed by the tragedy of it.

  'Vladimir?' demanded Kvasir.

  Finn hugged himself and shook his head with awe. 'I asked Odin for it,' he said, an awed voice in the dark. 'I called on him in the dark and he has answered me.'

  'Ha!' snor
ted Martin with disgust.

  'What did you call for?' demanded Kvasir angrily. 'Revenge? And what did you offer?'

  Finn said nothing and yet spoke loudly.

  I knew differently, all the same - there were too many bells for Vladimir to be dead and I felt the Odin-moment of it. Sviatoslav, his father, was the one who was dead - I learned later how he had been ambushed by his own Pechenegs, bribed by the Great City he had challenged and failed to beat. The ruler of all the Rus, gone at the hands of a hairy-arsed steppe warrior with a bow and an arrow you get by the dozen for a copper coin. His skull would end up set in silver as a drinking cup for a Pecheneg chief.

  But in the pit, knowing only that Vladimir's father was dead, I felt the power of Odin and bowed my head to him.

  With Sviatoslav gone, Vladimir was in trouble. He was the youngest of the three brothers and the one least considered, being born of a woman most thought little more than a thrall. Of the other two, Oleg was stupid and strong while the eldest, Jaropolk, was shrewd, cowardly and vicious.

  They would fight, these brothers, sooner rather than later and the bells for Sviatoslav could be a knell for the least of his sons — unless that son had some clout in his fists.

  Like a hoard of silver.

  Now I had no way of avoiding a return to Atil's howe; Odin had strapped me to the prow beast of his ship and blew a wind that would not be avoided.

  Finn and Kvasir were bewildered by the laughter that spilled out of the pit. It even sounded crazed to my own ear and me it was doing it.

  When the starling fell from the roof beams, stone dead with cold, Olaf Crowbone stirred it with his toe and said it was the last one we would see this year, for they had all gone into hiding save for this one, who was clearly killed of stupidity.

  'Hiding?' demanded Thorgunna, swathed in wool and fur so that only her eyes showed. 'Hiding from what?'

  'The white raven,' Crowbone answered, his cheeks rosed in his pale face. A few of those within earshot looked uneasily at the boy and Thordis made a warding sign. Sunken-eyed, she was, from all she had suffered and Finn, standing close to her, moved closer still.