The White Raven

by Robert Low

  'Now there's the lie of it, right there,' grunted Kvasir. Tor I cannot remember Orm ever having fetched wood. Or water. Or . . .'

  'I am the jarl, you dog turd,' I gave back, looking for a bit of flyting to put an end to this Olaf-saga — but Crowbone's tales were like the magic salt-mill that tainted the seas; once started, there was no stopping.

  'Orm went out,' Crowbone continued. 'The trees seemed to reach for him like claws, so he resolved to gather what fallen wood he could, as swiftly as he could and return to the cave, which was now a welcome glow above and behind him.

  'Then he heard a noise. A grinding-grim sort of a noise. When he turned, there was a rock troll, tall as a house, made up of stones in the shape of a man, like a well-made dyke. When it spoke, it had a voice like a turning quern and demanded to know what Orm was doing in this place and why he had annoyed his old grandfather.

  'Orm, puzzled, decided it would be a bad idea to speak of treasure, so he answered that he was collecting sticks for a fire and surely there was no harm in that and how could gathering a few sticks annoy this large troll's grandfather?

  'The large stone troll raised his large stone fists and it was clear he was going to smash Orm into the ground. Orm, unable to get away and facing his doom, demanded again to know how gathering sticks for a fire should have annoyed the troll's old grandfather.

  'There was screaming and the light of the fire went out above Orm's head, then the screaming of his friends was cut off. The big stone fists were raised to smash Orm to pulp and the big stone head smiled like a cleft in a cliff.

  "You should not have lit your fire in his mouth," answered the troll.'

  There was silence and those with the great dark rock behind them hunched down a little, as if feeling breath on the back of their necks. Everyone was now remembering how much like the top of a head it had looked, sticking up through the glistening marsh, thin-furred with trees like the nap on a thrall's skull.

  Avraham chuckled at Gesilo's stricken face. 'I said you would not like it.'

  Gesilo — and the rest of them — liked it even less the next morning, when the light crept up and turned the trees into shadowed hands. It slid, honey slow, like the milk mist that tendriled the scarred slopes of that dark place, looping in chilled coils round our knees. No-one was happy.

  The rock was no higher than a few hundred paces, but in that flat, white nothing, seemed big as a mountain, cut and slashed as if one of Crowbone's trolls had taken a frenzied flint axe to it. It made us all move quiet and speak soft.

  Crowbone stood, wrapped in his white cloak as usual, head cocked to one side as if listening, while men moved around like wraiths, upset if a horse stamped too loudly or snorted. Naturally, someone had to ask him.

  'What do you hear?'

  Crowbone turned his coloured eyes on the speaker, a vast. bearded giant called Rulav, who was standing at the head of his big horse.

  'Nothing,' he said. 'Not a sound.'

  Which was only the truth, but the way he said it made us all suddenly discover the utter silence of the place. No wind sighed, no bird fluttered or sang. Men made warding signs and muttered.

  'White-livered bunch,' growled Sigurd blackly, though he saved some dark looks to shoot at his nephew. Morut laughed and slithered on to his shaggy steppe pony. He moved out into the mists, faded, then vanished and the shaggy-bearded giants in their long, leather-backed ring-coats watched him go and wished for his courage.

  I laid a hand on Crowbone's shoulder as we sorted ourselves out.

  'Time you learned the value of such a silence as you have found here,' I said to him and he nodded, now as pale and afraid as any nine-year-old.

  The druzhina were more unhappy than ever, once they discovered that they had to leave their horses behind and go on foot towards this dark rock. Finn and I and Kvasir, on the other hand, were pleased and, when we shrugged into our light ring-mail coats, caught the envious stare of the big Slavs, encumbered with their own weighty garments, split to the crotch for riding and dangling heavily down to their ankles.

  We waited; Morut ghosted back to us, wiping the pearls of mirr from his dripping face where the freezing mist had melted.

  'There is a pool, the ice fresh cracked, not far ahead and just where the steep slopes begin,' he said. 'It is where they get water, for sure — recently, too. A trail leads up into the rocks.'

  'Any green-haired beauties there?' demanded Finn scornfully. 'Combing their tresses, perhaps?'

  Morut chuckled while the big Slavs sucked in the reference to slope and rocks. Not the words the great, trudging, drip-bearded warriors wanted to hear, but Sigurd adjusted his silver nose and whistled scorn down it at them. They shipped shields on their backs, took the peace-strings off their swords and stumbled on, those mailed coats flapping at their feet. Those left to guard the horses were no happier, a few men on their own and looking right and left.

  The pool was just as Morut had described — opaque, stippled ice with black in the middle where it had been chopped to the water. If there was a trail away from it, all the same, I could not see it — but it was hardly necessary. A boy raced away from it, bounding like a hare, leather bucket flapping in one hand, pointing the way up the slope as clearly as a blazed sign.

  With a whoop and a roar the druzhina lumbered after him,. despite Sigurd's furious bellows and Finn stopped, blew drops off the straggle of his moustache and shook his head.

  'Can bulls catch a hare like that? My bet is on the boy.'

  He won, but only just. The boy half-turned on the run to look at the roarers who waddled after him — and went straight into a tree, flying backwards on to his arse, the bucket bouncing back down the slope. One of the Slavs gave it a kick in passing and a triumphant bellow.

  The boy was caught, for sure — he was up and reeling, but the breath had been driven out of him and you could see his little chest heave. Dark, wild hair, I saw and skins over ragged wool and scraps of fur. Barefoot. Doomed.

  The first one to him was Gesilo, reaching out one hand to grab him, the other heavy with a big, straight blade.

  'Take him alive,' roared Sigurd, but who knows what Gesilo might have done. Not that he had a chance; his horny, broken fingernails barely brushed the boy's skin-covered shoulders and something broke from the snow-splattered rocks nearby with a throaty roar and a spear that drove straight into the Slav's face.

  He howled and went over backwards with his jaw flapping loose and blood flying. A hand grabbed the boy and shoved him further up the slope. I say a hand, but it was more of a claw. What stood in front of the boy, spread-legged and spear-armed and snarling protectively, brought all the roaring Slavs to a skittering stop. Everybody gawped.

  It was the shape of a man, but the face was warped, as if the bones had been squeezed and the skin tightened, so that it looked like a wide-mouthed frog. The eyes bulged, hair patched in a parody of a beard and straggled in wisps across the skull and it was naked, save for a skin wrapped round the loins.

  And scaled. Every visible inch of it. Scaled as a chicken leg, just as we had been told, from thick-nailed feet to that wisp-haired skull. The hands that gripped the spear — a well-made weapon, I saw — were yellow-horned with nails long as talons.

  There was silence, save for the scrabble of the boy vanishing up the trail into the rocks of the slope and the harsh panting of the Scaled Troll standing guard as he did so. Then Finn gave a rheum-thick growl, hefted The Godi and charged, howling out Odin's name and elbowing aside the startled, rooted Slavs.

  Cursing that valknut-sign he wore, I went after him and, a step behind me on my shieldless side, was Kvasir.

  As Finn came up, the Scaled Troll braced, stepped back, reversed the spear and dropped low, scything it in a tripping arc. A lesser man would have been ankle-felled, but Finn leaped up and over it and the Scaled Troll was open for a downward cut — except that Finn's foot slipped on the iced rocks and he fell flat on his face.

  With a howl, the Scaled Troll stepped
back, spun the spear back to the point and stabbed. I got my shield there a second before; the spear thunked into it, wrenched it out of my grip and spun it down the slope like a wheel.

  Kvasir, an eyeblink later, brought his wave-sword glittering down on the Troll's neck where it joined his left shoulder, carving deep so that blood and collarbone flew up. He — it —died with a howl and a series of skin-crawling mews, slushing blood in streams down the rocks while Finn and I hauled each other up, wrist to wrist.

  'Good stroke,' Finn grunted, blowing blood from where his nose had battered the stones. Then half his face twisted in a grin at Kvasir. 'Outlaws,' he added. 'My arse.'

  Kvasir did not grin. He stood and stared at what he had killed, while the scaled heels drummed and an arm twitched once or twice. The druzhina Slavs came up, cautious as cats and touching amulets and little magic bags.

  Later, when we had recovered our courage, we examined the Scaled Troll more closely and discovered that it was a man after all, though barely old enough to be called one. The scales were like callouses all over the creature, flowed together, thick as fingernails, though here and there, the creases seemed cracked and red-raw.

  'A disease, perhaps,' Sigurd said, using his sword to unravel the skin loincloth. 'Look — he has a prick like a man and that isn't scaled.'

  'Yet,' growled Finn, unimpressed. 'It is a youngling.'

  Sigurd, whistling through his silver nose, plunged his sword into the snow to wipe it clean and even then stared at it as if wondering whether to keep it or not.

  There were other parts of the dead boy that were free of scale — a hip, a patch behind one, knee, most of a buttock —and the skin here was as normal as any slain man's, turning blue-white with death and cold.

  'The other boy was not like this one,' Morut pointed out, looking up the slope to where the wild-haired little boy had run.

  'That you could see,' Kvasir pointed out.

  'This one protected him, died for him,' Avraham pointed out. 'Hardly the act of a monster.'

  Finn spat. 'Wolves will fight for the pack,' he answered. 'Does that make them men?'

  It made these creatures monsters to the Slavs, were-wyrms, or scaled trolls or worse. That and the threat of some strange disease made them grumble and mutter among themselves and, in the end, Sigurd came across to me and admitted, furious with the shame of it, that they believed these scaled creatures to be offspring of Chernobog, black god of death. It would be difficult, he thought, to get his men to go on.

  'How difficult?' I demanded, angry myself and not anxious to unhook him from his shame easily. He glared back at me, the skin white round his silver nose, which was answer enough.

  'Then we will go on without you,' I said, hoping it sounded bold enough for a Norseman and wishing I was Slav right then. Finn added a 'heya' of approval; his bad foot-luck had annoyed him and he was anxious to prove, to himself and Odin, that these scaled Grendels were no match for him and The Godi.

  'I will go, if you will have me,' said Morut and I nodded at once, for his tracking skills would be good to have.

  'And I,' added Avraham, 'for I have never seen the like of this before on my steppe and would know more of it.'

  'Your steppe . . .' scoffed Morut.

  'As much mine as yours,' Avraham snarled back defiantly. They fell into the familiar chaffer of it, as comforting to them as a pitfire and thick-walled hov is to a man from the north.

  Crowbone wanted to go too, which was brave of him, but Sigurd told him — more abruptly than he had done in previous times — to stow his tongue in the chest of his head and stay where he was. Crowbone, cowed for once, obeyed without comment.

  We left them milling round the drinking pool, gathering sticks to make a fire and not at all eager to even be there. They would not go near the stiffening body of the creature, though they hauled Gesilo off to where they could bury him.

  'I said he would not care for Crowbone's tale and I was right,' Avraham noted with grim amusement, though the smile died on his face when he saw the scowls of the rest of the druzhina. He hurried to catch up with Morut, tracking ahead.

  An hour later, the sun was up over the edge of the world, but not this rock. In the lee of it, the mist clung, cold as the white raven's eye, threading between the gnarled trees and patched thick as eiderdown here and there.

  It was from one of these duck-feather mists that we were attacked. Morut led the way, following signs only he could read, from fresh-turned stone to barely visible broken twig. At a bend between rocks, he knelt to study the ground and a spear hissed over his shoulder, skittering across the frozen earth and almost across my toes.

  'Form!' I yelled out of habit and, out of habit, Kvasir and Finn slid to me, shields up. From the rocks bounded three figures, much as before, though one carried a shield and another wore clothing and had a skin cap and no sign of scale.

  Morut, caught on the knee, rolled sideways and scrabbled away. Avraham, with a yelp, sprang forward and took a blow meant for the little tracker — from a shovel. The shaft smacking Avraham's armoured forearm hard enough to make him grunt; he struck back and the scaled creature shrieked, carved under the ribs.

  The one with the fur cap came louping at me, a great curved pick held above his head and relying on speed and power to crash through my shield. His mouth was red and open in a russet-bearded face and his eyes were wild.

  Just at the moment he reached me, was about to bring his pick down, I stepped sideways, away from Kvasir and the man ploughed between us; it was moot which of our blades killed him, but both carved steaks off him and he fell, skidding on his face along the rocks.

  The last, more powerful than the others, had hurled his spear and had no other weapons. He bounded forward and hurled himself, shrieking and snarling, at Finn, who took this rush on his shield and went over backwards, the creature clawing and biting the edge of it, his scaled, eye-bulged frog-face foaming with spittle and inches from Finn's own.

  They fell backwards, in a clatter like someone beating iron on an anvil, broke and rolled. The creature came up, cat fast and spitting, while Finn was slower in his mail. Two powerful blows smacked him, one on the shield and the other under his ribs, so that he grunted. I saw mail rings flying and started in to help — but Kvasir laid a hand across my chest, as if to say that it was Finn's fight. A valknut fight.

  It was then that a shape flew from the top of a head-height rock and crashed into Kvasir, so that he went over with a sharp yelp and a crash. I whirled and struck, fast as an adder's tongue and, in that same instant, tried to stop the blade.

  It would not be halted, ripped through the ragged wool and the thin flesh and the small, knobbed backbone of the wild-haired boy, whose screeches of hate and fear turned to a great wailing whimper and then to nothing as he hit the ground, cut almost in half.

  The scaled creature fighting Finn saw the boy dying in a scream of blood and drumming heels and wailed, high and anguished. Finn, grunting and winded, hurled his shield and the troll batted it away — but Finn was across the distance between them and The Godi swung, changed direction and hissed right into the path the creature took to avoid the feint.

  The blade cut half-way through the thing's body, just above the hip and it fell away with a screech and writhed, scrabbling like a crab. Finn finished it with two more blows and then leaned on the hilt of his sword, holding one side and panting.

  We straightened ourselves out and took stock. Finn's mail was torn — torn, by the gods, and only with the taloned claws of the creature, which was now twitching in a congealing pool of black blood. His aketon padding leaked wisps of cotton and the linen tunic beneath was shredded almost to the skin, which was marked with a solid red thump, though unbroken. The edge of his shield was shredded and three deep scores ran down the triangles of the valknut symbol.

  We looked at what he had killed; powerful, muscled, hair like tree-moss on an old branch and a faded yellow — but human, for all that. He was big and clearly the leader —perhaps fa
ther, from his attitude to the dead boy — and might have been a fine, tall man save that he was scaled, frog-faced and wet-lipped as a slug; like the others, the creases of him were raw.

  The scaled man Avraham had killed was already stiff, the one Kvasir and I had chopped was cold and looked normal, a dark young Slav with no visible sign of scales. No-one wanted to touch him, so we did not find out what lurked beneath his clothing.

  Then there was the wild-haired boy, a fine black-haired boy no older than Crowbone, his face dirty and scraped raw where he had fallen on rocks, his teeth bloody and smashed. Not that he would have felt any of that pain after my stroke had all but ripped his backbone out; he lay, shapeless as an empty wineskin.

  I felt the bile in my throat and spat it out; these were, apart from the one Finn had killed, no warriors. Clearly not invisible. For certain-sure they could not cross a marsh, a palisade, evade guards and all the rest without magic and if they had any, they would have used it here. I said as much, the words spilling bitterly off my lips.

  'Aye,' agreed Kvasir, rubbing the breath-ice off his beard. 'Something smells like bad cod here.'

  Morut took the offered wrist and was heaved back to his feet by Avraham. They exchanged silent glances that said everything about what had just happened and grinned at each other.

  'Mizpah,' Morut said, which I learned later was a prayer about their God watching out for each of them when they were absent from one another.

  'While we are at it,' replied Avraham, wiping the blood off his sabre, 'I thank you, Lord of Israel, for not making me a slave, a Gentile, a woman — or one of these creatures. Hakadosh baruch hu.'

  Grinning still, Morut moved cautiously forward and we followed, stepping as though the ground could open. We had gone no more than a few hundred yards before Morut said: 'There is a hov.'

  It was a good hov in a little curve of clearing in the rocks, well built and much like what the Finns call a gamma, though they make them of turf. This one, thirty foot long and bowed at the ends like a boat from the weight of its own roof, was dry-stane, the spaces caulked with mosses and mud and the whole of it to the roof came up only to my shoulders. There was one way in, a low doorway, the wooden door stout and barred.