The White Raven

by Robert Low

  Finn smacked it with the hilt of The Godi. Someone — something — wailed.

  'Well, they are home,' he grinned, wolvish as a pack on a hunt. 'Though they are mean with their hospitality.'

  He leaned on the door with one shoulder, bounced against it to test, then drew back, took a breath and crashed forward. The door splintered. He kicked it with one foot and it burst inward. There were louder wails and whimpers.

  He made to duck inside, but I laid my blade across the entrance, stopping him, though it took all I had in me to do it.

  'This is why I do not fetch wood,' I said and he grinned and offered me a go-before-me bow.

  Inside, it had been dug out down to the rock and there was headroom to spare. I ducked through the dark door, blade up, shield up. The floor was stone rather than the hard-packed earth of a hov in the vik, the light dim and woodsmoked and I was blinking, ready for anything.

  Anything but the soft, gentle, pleading voice that said: 'Spare us.'

  I made out four of them, all women. One was old, roughened by hard work and use, hands twisting in her ragged clothing. A younger woman was propped up in a box bed alcove, her quiet weeping drifting through the mirk. Another young one was still blonde and pretty under the filth, then I saw she had bold eyes and forearms as muscled as my own. These arms she was holding protectively round her stomach.

  The fourth was a young girl crouched by the near-dead embers of the pitfire, naked. She was frog-faced, bulbous-eyed, scaled and afraid. 'Spare us,' she said in thick east Norse.

  The older woman started to weep and the blonde came forward, hands outstretched and it came to me that these ones were, perhaps, some of those supposedly taken from the village. I had a moment of panic, remembering the tales of rusalka —but these were not the exquisite, green-haired temptresses with magic combs that Crowbone had described.

  'Are you from the village?' I asked and the one coming towards me stopped, more at the tone of my voice than my speech. I didn't speak her Polianian tongue.

  'Malkyiv,' I said, recalling the name. The woman nodded her corn-coloured head and her head drooped a little. She sighed.

  'Spare us,' said the scaled girl, still crouching by the dead pitfire. One tiny robin-egg breast, I noticed was half-white and ruby-tipped. It was clearly all the Norse she knew and I wondered how she even knew that.

  The others crowded in; the women wailed. I had Avraham and Morut take the two older ones out, while the scaled girl scuttled into a corner. The one in the boxbed, obviously younger, did not move, only cried as if her heart would break.

  'Come,' I said, as gentle as I would to a nervous foal and holding out one hand.

  'My baby,' she said — I did not understand the words, but the gesture and the pain in her was enough There was a crib next to her and something moved and mewed, a cat sound, strange and disturbing. I peered in.

  It was a new-born changeling horror. Sickly pale, the face was tightened and stretched into the same frog shape as the others, but the eyes in its head bulged out, blind, red and wet as raw liver. The lips were fat, slug-wet strips of weeping sores and the skin seemed like hard plates, with every crease a stripe of vicious redness, so that the little pale body was a mosaic of pain. It mewed.

  I fell back from it and the woman — the mother, I realized — wailed and thrashed her head in despair, for she wanted to pick it up and comfort it but it was clear that her very touch was agony to this mite.

  Finn and Kvasir saw it and backed away, swallowing.

  'Take the woman,' I said to Kvasir, my voice harsh and echoing under my helm. He hesitated, then bundled her out of the bed, carried her, thrashing weakly and shrieking about her baby, out of the hov. The others scuttled after, all save the scaled girl, who tried to make herself smaller in a corner.

  I looked at Finn and he at me.

  'Spare us,' said the scaled girl.

  We never spoke of it after, Finn and I, neither to each other nor to any of those who later demanded the saga-tale of how Orm and his two companions had taken on a nest of were-dragons and cut those beasts down.

  All the long way back to the druzhina, with the smoke from the burning hov curling like a wolf tail over the dark rock, while the questions rang and the women wept and wailed, we said nothing other than that the task was done.

  Sigurd rubbed his silver nose and tugged his beard with frustration. Crowbone stared at the rescued women with interest, but, like everyone else, did not see why they wailed, since they had been freed from monsters. I knew. I saw the anguish at the loss of their menfolk and a newborn babe and the scaled girl who begged for mercy.

  In the end, Sigurd and the others gave up asking and the only sound the rest of that way back to the village was our ragged breathing and the women weeping and the ring of hooves on the ice of the marsh.

  I did not know what they were, those creatures, or what had made them — but snakes will protect their young, I reasoned, so it is better to kill them when you see them, rather than wait for them to bite you.

  Yet they had fought as a family, those afflicted and those not, and had done it brave as Baldurs; the bile rose in me every time I thought of the wild-haired boy and the red-eyed babe — and especially the girl who pleaded.

  We came back to the village and were swept into the joy of the people there, now freed from fear of the creatures. The rescued women, no tears left and silent as tombs, sat like stones in this stream of triumph and said nothing.

  I also said nothing to Kovach, just stared into his pale eyes and held out my hand so that he could see what I had discovered. To anyone else, it would be a stone, no more. But he knew and took it from me and, as I walked away, I felt his eyes on my back like arrows.

  Shovels and picks and a spoil heap, that's what I had found. Behind the hov, a narrow cleft, dug out and shored up and, nearby, a neat, hidden heap of good iron ore which these . . . creatures . . . had traded to the sword-forgers of Malkyiv.

  In the end, the price, perhaps, became too high — from good livestock, to spare women to keep the little marsh clan going, despite whatever god had inflicted fish-skin on them.

  Then there was the grand-daughter, with forearms muscled from forge work. In the north, we did not have women at the forge, but we were no strangers to it and some fine blades were crafted by women.

  Once Kovach had to part with his skilled grand-daughter to get the all-important iron-ore, that was the end of it for the miners in the marsh. Kovach had, indeed, sent men — but it was to wipe out the marsh-miners and take over. Nor did it surprise me that the marsh and the miners had done for them all.

  Well, we had done for the little marsh clan and brought Kovach's grand-daughter back, blonde and weeping; the cunning old man wept his thanks to the gods, then told the villagers to bring out the hidden supplies and declared a celebratory feast.

  Now they had what they needed, Kovach and his village; they would get the rescued women to guide them back through the marsh and work the ore for themselves, which they had gained at no loss.

  I wished them well of it, though I thought they would never be free of what they had done — nor would I. I would have it in my dreams forever, while Kovach's own doom lay under that blonde head he caressed; once, she caught my eye and the misery in it was plain, as was the plea. I had seen her, protecting her belly with those muscled forearms as I came stumbling into the hov, all metal and edge.

  I did not know what she would give birth to — and neither did she — but I suspected Kovach would not be caressing her this time next year, blade-working skill or no.

  I told some of it to Vladimir and Dobrynya, quietly, while Sigurd and Crowbone listened and it was clear they were there to make sure I told it true. I left out what we had burned and what might still appear with the spring.

  In the end, little Vladimir nodded, smiling and generous as a prince should be. 'Good work, Orm Bear Slayer. Skalds will sing of this for a long time and the saga of it will be told round fires for ages yet to come. Eh, Ola
f?'

  'I will tell it myself,' agreed Crowbone, 'especially since I am in it.'

  They smiled, bright little suns to each other. Vladimir and Olaf were the coming men and showing all the signs of being rulers you did not want to be anywhere near when they grew into the full of their lives.

  I left them, avoiding the mad joy gracing the village. The night was washed with moonglow so that the land glittered blue-white; I tried to get enough clean, cold air in me to wash away the sickness I felt. I watched from the shadows as Crowbone went off, whistling vainly for Bleikr.

  Cooking smells drifted, meat rich and mouth watering. Somewhere, Thorgunna would be seasoning what was in our pot, the others clashing cups and ale horns, grease-faced and grinning and making verses on the bravery of Orm Bear Slayer, Finn Horsehead and Kvasir Spittle. The number of creatures would grow in the telling, the hero-work swell and all of it, like the bear that had given me my name, was a lie.

  I knew, though, that Finn and Kvasir would be quiet in a corner, saying nothing, thinking — like me — of the well-built hov, now ashes and smoulder and what we had burned in it and at the cold-hearted people who had engineered it.

  A dog barked, then howled, a sound I did not like much. Someone called my name and I trudged down to where I thought it came from, near the frozen river, thinking one of my men had spotted wolf and wanting to be sure the pack was not lured by desperate hunger into going after our horses. I wanted to lose my thoughts in simple tasks. In the distance behind me, music suddenly squealed out, a tendril lure that made me half turn.

  I stumbled and went down on one knee, came up cursing and wet. The obstacle was almost invisible against the drifted snow, but it was a dog. A white elkhound. And my hands and knees were too wet just for snow.

  Just as I saw the blood, I saw the shapes and started to turn. The blow was a hard dunt, a star-whirler that knocked me flat but not out. For all that, I could only see the raging fire of the pain and the sickness that rose up, so that someone cursed as I bokked it up on his shoes.

  I thought of Short Eldgrim and panicked at the idea of waking with my mind smoothed out like a sea after a storm, empty and blue and featureless.

  'Struggle and you will get another one,' snarled a voice I did not know.

  'Enough,' snapped another. 'Sack him up and bring him with the boy. Fast now . . .'

  That voice I knew, even as my head flared and roared and darkness fell with the grain sack they bundled over my face to keep me from shouting.

  Martin.

  'Someone took the sack off when the day came up and they thought themselves far enough away. I blinked into the glare until my watering eyes made out the shape of Olaf, sitting next to me in one of the sledge-carts, bundled in his white fur cloak. There was blood on it.

  The air was full of shimmering ice particles despite a blue sky. The snow squeaked, the horses' breath froze and we slid, in a panic of haste, across a sea that surged and swelled in pearl-white waves.

  'Are you well, Jarl Orm?' he asked, peering at me this way and that from under his fur hat, his face pinched and pale with cold. 'You took a hard dunt.'

  I felt it. Anyone who boasts of being knocked spinning by a crack to the head, then springs up the next minute to take his enemy by surprise is a toad-puffed liar. I did not want to move my head at all for the first hour after I had woken, for it made my belly heave. The lurch and sway of the sledge-wagon was barely tolerable.

  The light hurt and I shut my eyes, but I heard everything; voices I did not know, Geats or Svears from their accents. Martin, that cursed monk, with his rasping Saxlander bite urging them to move. And a Slav accent that sounded familiar, though I could not put a face to it.

  Eventually, I managed to open my eyes again — the tears had frozen them shut and for a brief moment of panic I thought I had been blinded. Wrapped to the eyebrows in his fur-trimmed cloak and goat-wool hat, Olaf huddled in the lee of horse-fodder and food bundles, watching me. There were little icicles on the strands of his hat and one from his nose that he did not want to remove, I knew, because he would have to unwrap himself.

  I leaned over and wiped it away and he smiled, shivering.

  'I thought you would die,' he said and, at the moment, he was a nine-year-old boy. I managed a grin, though it felt as if my face was a mask and cracked when I did it. I felt clumps frozen in my beard and moustache.

  'I look better than you — is that your blood?'

  He shook his head. 'Bleikr,' he said miserably.

  The cold bit, but I was sweating by the time I had managed to sit up and look out of the sledge-cart to find we were slithering and fish-tailing through chest-high pale yellow grass, with the exhausted ponies stumbling in the snow. Up ahead, a man bulked by clothing was leading the little horses which pulled the cart. Turning carefully, I saw other figures, counting them without thinking. Seven in all.

  'Ha — now you are up, you can get out and walk,' yelled a voice and I turned to see a black-bearded face, rimed with ice, glaring at me. He was bundled in a cloak and another was swaddled round his head, but he was red-faced and sweating with the effort of staggering after the cart. That was bad for him, I saw with some satisfaction.

  'Leave him where he is,' rasped the familiar voice of Martin, stepping forward from behind him. 'Safer where we can see him, Tyrfing.'

  Then he moved away before I could find words to curse him.

  I remembered the black-bearded one now; the German Tyrfing who had been one of Klerkon's men. I saw a couple of others I recognized from that crew — then blinked as two faces I knew well lumbered up to put shoulders to the back of the sledge-cart and help the stumbling horses. They kept their heads down, to avoid looking me in the eye.

  Drumba and Heg, my own thralls — wearing warm furs and cloaks that were clearly stolen and with axes and knives in their belts. Drumba's had been the Slav voice I had failed to recognize.

  Slavs — I cursed myself for a fool. I had only gone and brought these thralls back to their homeland without even considering that they would bolt for it first chance they got. Odin's arse, they could even be a fart-length away from the home they had not seen in a decade or more. But who ever considers what thralls think?

  'Vladimir will track you down,' I said to the tops of their wool-hatted heads. 'You should have thought this out to the end.'

  Heg looked up, chin thrust out defiantly. 'Better this than dying on some mad chase for a hoard of silver,' he growled. 'What would we get from that?'

  Nothing at all, being thralls. What had they been promised for this, I wondered? So I asked and Drumba gave the sledge-cart a final heave and stood, flapping his cracked, worn hands against the cold.

  'Enough,' he said to the gap opening between us. 'A stake for the future and a chance to be free.'

  'You will never be free,' I shouted to the gap between us, sounding more sure than I felt, 'and the only stake you will get will be rammed up your arse.'

  The pony ahead wheeled round at that and came alongside at a shambling half-trot, scattering snow fine as flour. The rider peeled back the cloak that covered his face, all but the eyes, which had been circled with great dark rings of charcoal, a steppe tribe trick against the glare from the Great White.

  'Yell away, young Orm,' he said with a chuckle. 'No-one can hear you who cares much.'

  Thorkel. He grinned at me and I almost hurled myself at him from the cart — but even the surge of anger in me made my head hurt and I swallowed it back.

  'This is the worst luck you have had,' I said to him. 'Which is a feat, considering your life to this point. The Norns hate you, Thorkel, for sure; they are unpicking the threads of your life.'

  He scowled a little at that, then shrugged. 'No. I am thinking this is where my luck changes. We will sell you and the boy to Jaropolk, which is surer money and safer, too, than chasing down this hoard across a frozen steppe.'

  So that was it. Martin's idea, clearly — though what did the monk gain?

  Thorkel shr
ugged when I asked. 'Away with his holy stick and no part of your quest,' he said, looking over to where Martin trudged, two bundles wrapped and slung on his back, wild hair flying. He had to be freezing in his tattered robes and big leather shoes, but gave no sign of it other than the hand that grasped his staff, which was blue-white.

  'You believe this? After all you know of that monk?'

  Thorkel frowned, then brightened. 'We will know soon enough, when we reach Kiev.'

  'You will never reach Kiev.'

  He chuckled then and reined the weary pony round. 'Well, it will be a hard run, right enough,' he admitted, 'for Vladimir will want you back, since you know the way to Atil's hoard, while Sigurd Axebitten cares what happens to Crowbone. But we will beat them and what will they do when Sveinald has you?'

  I wanted to spit a clever answer back at him, viper-venomed and fast, but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth at what he had said.

  It was true enough. They had a head start and even if little Vladimir, all bright-eyed with silver greed, flogged horses to death he would not get to us in time. Olaf saw all that flicker across my face and hunched deeper into his cloak as the wind hissed and rattled the frozen grass.

  The Oathsworn would keep coming, though, relentless and grim and driven. I pointed that out to Thorkel while reminding him that he had broken his oath. He frowned, for he remembered the words of it now and I twisted the knife of that in him.

  'May he curse us to the Nine Realms and beyond if we break this faith, one to another.'

  He winced and looked over to where Martin trudged and I knew the monk had persuaded him that embracing the White Christ would save him from Odin. It came to him that Christ would need to have considerable powers to save him from the wrath of the Oathsworn.