The White Raven

by Robert Low

  And there were sharpened stakes, each with a head screaming frozen pain at us from rimed faces.

  'Anyone you know?' asked Dobrynya, moving his horse to my side. There was no-one we recognized, though Gyrth hefted the sword and said: 'This is a good north-made weapon, Jarl Orm.'

  'Lambisson's men,' Finn said, squinting at the signs of it. 'This one has braids like Botolf — see. That's the way the Svears and Slavs do them. It was said Lambisson had many Baltic Slavs with him.'

  'Horsemen took them by surprise, scattered them,' added Avraham, pointing out the signs of it. 'Probably they were in the rear of the column. Hard to say when this happened or where the rest of them went — the ground is too frozen. They were not after plunder, else that sword would not have been left.'

  'A day ago,' Morut said, hunching himself into his furs. 'Two, perhaps. The wolves have already been at these heads and the wounds are still raw, so were done when the flesh was unfrozen, which would be only a matter of hours, but there is no snow in the eye-sockets. There are three hoof-prints showing the attackers went south. I could track them.'

  'Do so,' ordered Dobrynya, then turned to Sigurd and me, while Avraham scowled at Morut for his cleverness.

  'Whoever attacked them may still be close,' Dobrynya said. 'We will close up and keep watch.'

  The Man-Hater women, I wanted to say, but decided not to. I did not worry as much as he over it — those steppe ponies were proof that the women warriors were in as bad a condition as ourselves and, besides, Short Eldgrim and Cod-Biter were so close now I could touch them if I shut my eyes and reached.

  I shared this, quietly, with the rest of the Oathsworn, adding that the warrior-women might all be dead. I was thinking it would bring some cheer to the flames of the night's fire as we kicked snow off the earth to let it breathe a little smoke and ash.

  'After all,' I declared brightly, 'if the buran didn't kill them, then the trek to here would. They would have had less fodder for those ponies and I am thinking most of them are on foot, if they live at all.'

  'And a woman on foot,' Gyrth Steinnbrodir beamed, ignoring the scowls from Thorgunna and her sister, 'is an opportunity.'

  Finn laughed, but you should never tempt the Norns. The next day, we stumbled over all our enemies at once.

  'We came upon a balka, one of those dried-out riverbeds that scar the steppe, but our eyes were fixed on the smoke. Wisps of it, scarring a milk-blue sky, marking a settlement and that meant warmth, shelter and food you did not have to carry under your armpit to be able to chew.

  Avraham was out in front, on foot since he had woken to find his horse dead of cold and too frozen to be of use. He cursed the animal; if it had died during the day, when it could be seen, things would have been different.

  Those nearest watched for such a moment, when all four legs buckled. Sometimes they would not even wait for a horse to die properly before they were on it, hacking out the warm meat and drinking the blood, flaying the hide off it before it froze. Even if the rider was one of the armoured druzhina he scrambled out of the way and quick, for people with knives — especially the likes of Thorgunna and Thordis — did not always see or care what they cut in their haste.

  Morut was off tracking the Man-Haters and our only scout was now on foot, which is why we did not get enough warning. Not that it would have made much difference to us, with our minds dulled and what spark remained fixed on the smoke. The riders whooped up and over the lip of the balka and whirred down on us like a flock of birds. I saw Skirla take an arrow and go down, shrieking, while the stunned druzhina guards were still trying to gather up reins and sort out weapons. Avraham knew better than to try to run and hunkered under his shield as they galloped past him and on to us.

  They were women on horseback. They were the Man-Haters and that paralysed everyone as much as the cold and the surprise.

  Howling, a strange wolf-yipping series of yowls, they cut daringly through the middle of us on their bony, half-staggering little steppe ponies. I hauled out my sword, cursed the fact that I had long ago packed my shield in a cart as being too much burden; a man without a sword is still a warrior, but one with no shield is just a target.

  A druzhina warrior went backwards off his horse, which panicked and bolted, though it was too weak to run far. The arrow that skewered him through the middle of his face came from a shrieking Valkyrie, braids flying, tattoos writhing in the snarl of her long-skulled face as she kicked and turned her shaggy pony towards me, fishing another shaft out.

  She was, I was sure, one who could nick the eye out of a gnat at four hundred paces from the back of a full galloping horse and I was a dead man.

  Gyrth swept past me, his swathe of cloaks and wadmal wrappings flapping like some huge bird as he lumbered. He paused, swept up the fallen man's big shield and took the woman's arrow in it — the one aimed at me. The shunk of it hitting was a clap of thunder.

  Then he ran at the horse. Straight at it, shield up and roaring, the boss smacking the animal on the left shoulder, the rim clattering it in the teeth as he bellowed and shoved. The horse went over in a screaming flail of limbs and the woman, fast and agile, leaped free, rolled and came up, spitting and snarling like a cat. She whipped round to face Gyrth, who was rolling about like a loose barrel and trying to avoid the animal's wildly flying hooves.

  She went for him, but Finn was already there. She screamed and hacked and he brought the big heavy sword up, so that her little curved sabre spanged off it with a shower of sparks.

  As Gyrth clambered heavily to his feet and the horse kicked itself back upright, snorting and rolling-eyed, Finn cut down, a chopping stroke that she met with the edge of her blade. It rang like a bell, even as it turned his stroke, but the shock of it ran back up her arm to her numbed fingers, tearing the sword from her grasp.

  She howled then, all slaver and frustrated anger and even as I closed in on her I saw no fear in her at all. Then another shape loomed, sliding through the confusion and spraying snow, a dazzle to the eyes.

  It was a golden horse. Not yellow. Metallic and sheened as if moulded from a single block of polished brass, it pranced between the warrior woman and us, made more splendid by the shaggy steppe ponies it moved through.

  I gawped; the woman hurled herself up and back on to her own plunging steppe pony, while the big, gold-gleaming horse danced majestically between us, blowing twin streams out of its scarlet-edged nose. The rider was a silhouette above me, hair black and flying like snakes. I gawped. Something shone in an upraised hand and came down like a scythe of light; Finn yelled a warning.

  I put up the big sword, felt the kick of it as it took the blow, heard the high ting of it shattering. The gold horse, high-stepping and snorting, swung sideways and its huge rump slammed into me, into the hand I put up feebly to stop it.

  I went over backwards, arse over shoulders, a whirl of sky and snow with my only thought being that it had been warm. The gold horse had been warm and damp to the touch.

  When I had sorted myself out, the golden horse was gone.

  The women were gone. Only the moans and shouts they had caused were left.

  'Odin's arse, Orm,' Finn yelled, scrambling to my side. 'I thought you were dead then, for sure.'

  I got up, slowly. Finn looked at the splintered remains of my sword. He whistled admiringly.

  'Some blow to have broken that good blade,' he muttered and I looked at it, the hilt in my hand. It did not seem to belong to me, neither the jagged stump of sword nor even the hand.

  'You are bleeding,' Gyrth said, coming up on my left and I looked, bewildered, at the watery smear of blood soaking my mittened palm.

  'Not mine,' I remembered, as it rushed in like a mad tide on the turn. 'The horse. The gold horse . . .'

  'Aye,' gasped Jon Asanes, dashing up. 'Did you see that beast? Gleaming as a gold dirham, right enough. Like an amulet on a thong.'

  'He saw it, right enough,' replied Gyrth, heaving for breath and chuckling with the exultation that
always comes when you find yourself alive at the end of a fight. 'He almost had his head up its arse.'

  We laughed, whooping and gasping, skeins of drool freezing the edges of our mouths. I stopped before they did, for I had remembered the rider, with her black hair like snakes writhing. And the sword, that scything sabre of light. My belly churned and I asked Finn if he had seen her.

  He nodded, then held up one finger. 'Do not say it, young Orm. Do not. It was just a woman on a fancy horse, no more. Hild is dead. Long dead. Do not bring her back to life. Not now.'

  'So this was just a woman?' I demanded, my fear swelling the anger in me. 'With a rune-sword like my own, that can shatter good northern steel?'

  'Fuck you, Orm,' Finn said, furiously rubbing his face and beard with one hand, a sign that he was truly confused and angry. 'Fuck your mother, too. It is not Hild. Hild is dead, Bear Slayer. Years since. You saw her die in Atil's tomb.'

  I said nothing, sick with a confusion of fear and possibility, my thoughts of gulls that shrieked and swooped and would not stay still to be looked at.

  'That was a horse,' Avraham declared, appearing into the middle of this, all unknowing and uncaring. 'A heavenly horse, no less. I never thought to see one.'

  'A what?' demanded Ospak. Behind him, keening started as Hekja found the body of Skirla. They had been thralled together almost as babes, that pair and had been with Thorgunna and Thordis for as long.

  'A heavenly horse, from far to the east,'Avraham said, jerking me away from the wailing women. 'They are sheened like metal when they sweat, yellow as brass and are so highly prized they are worth their weight in gold. Those steppe heathens say they sometimes sweat blood, too, which is the mark of what passes for their heaven.'

  'Sweat blood,' repeated Jon Asanes wonderingly. I looked at the blood-soaked palm of my mittened hand, where it had smacked off that huge brass rump. Finn stumped off, making soft growls at Thordis and Thorgunna, as close as he came to a soothing noise, for the loss of Skirla.

  'Just so,' agreed Avraham, then turned to me.

  'Dobrynya wants you. It seems we have another problem today.'

  The other problem stood on the village earthwork and grinned cheerily down at us from under the tangle of his yellow hair. One hand rested quietly on the frost-glittering points of the rampart timbers and the other twirled a great long axe on its butt, so that the head flashed in the weak red sun of the dying day as he spoke out of a twisted smile.

  'He hath need of fire, who now is come,

  Numbed with cold to the knee;

  Food and clothing the wanderer craves

  Who has fared o'er the rimy fell.'

  Which let me know, from his accent, that he was more Slav than Norse and more learned than most — though one of the wise Sayings of the High One was scarcely gold-browed verse-making.

  'No,' he added to Vladimir as I came up with Finn and the others, 'I do not think I am inclined to let you in, for all that you have done me the service of chasing off those madwomen. There is room enough only for me and my men.'

  'Then there must be more than a few with you,' Dobrynya answered smoothly. 'Perhaps if you told us how many were in there, we could count out a suitable number that would not steal the food or shelter from you.'

  'It is of no consequence how strong we are here, Uncle Dobrynya,' chuckled the man, thumbing his cold-reddened nose, 'since we are not letting any of you in. You should know that we are strong enough, all the same.'

  'Do you know who I am?' demanded Vladimir indignantly and the man chuckled again.

  'You are the young prince Vladimir. Your father is dead and you are now so far from Lord Novgorod the Great that you are in more danger here than I am and from your own brothers, too. You should have listened to your Uncle Dobrynya, boy, for I am sure he has advised you to go home.'

  Vladimir flushed and fumed, for that was a solid hit to the mark. Dobrynya, seeing the boy fighting his horse, made anxious by nervous jerking, reached out a hand and touched his shoulder.

  'We should talk this out later,' he said.

  Vladimir rounded like a snake. 'Do not touch me. Ever.'

  Dobrynya paused, then inclined his head in a bow. The man on the ramparts laughed out loud and everyone, myself included, was annoyed that the prince had behaved like a charcoal-eating nithing. Dobrynya stayed smooth and cool as a still pond.

  'As you say, my prince,' he said to Vladimir, 'but this great fool has made it clear that he prefers to be staked rather than deal with us pleasantly. Let us not disappoint him.'

  Still furious, Vladimir half-reined his horse round, then paused and stared up at the man.

  'You know me,' he piped, fury making his voice all the more shrill. 'Tell me your name also, that I might have it marked on the stake I have driven up your arse for this.'

  'Farolf,' the man said, not smiling now 'I know you — but I know the one with you better. Orm Bear Slayer, I am thinking.'

  I jerked at the sound of my name and the by-name that went with it, the one that men used like a sneer, just before they challenged you. He grinned down at me and inclined his head in a mocking bow.

  'I have heard much of you from Lambisson,' Farolf said. 'I heard more from that little scar-faced man he has, the one with his wits addled.'

  'Then you know more than you did before,' I replied. 'Do you also know where Brondolf Lambisson is?'

  'Gone from here,' replied Farolf cheerfully. 'Him and his little empty-head. Dead, probably — those ball-cutting women have gone after him and left some here to see if we would be stupid enough to walk out and ask them to slaughter us.'

  'Now those Man-Haters are gone,' I answered carefully, 'and we are here instead. It would be wise to lower a knee to the prince and the bar from the gate. We are not women and we will not wait for you to come out.'

  'No,' he replied seriously. 'I was thinking that. You and the prince seek the same thing Lambisson seeks. You are a power, even though you look a little . . . diminished. For all that, I cannot see you getting in this gate.'

  'You have left Lambisson,' I said, seeing it clearly. He nodded and smiled and it was his smiling that made me uneasy, for he was sure of himself, polished as a well-used handle. The others listened, swinging eyes from me to him and back, as if it was holmgang fight.

  'Did you betray him, or he you? Not that it matters — you now go your own way,' I went on, half musing to myself, working the weft of it in my head as I spoke. 'Yet you will not join us, which means you have plans of your own. If you seek the silver, then you seek Atil's howe . . .'

  It came to me then, in a rush and sick lurch of my belly. He knew where he had to go, or thought he did. The only way he could know for sure was if someone had told him. Short Eldgrim had gone with Lambisson, which left . . .

  He saw my face and laughed, then made a signal. Men, all leather and snarls, brought Thorstein Cod-Biter forward and he hung in their grip like a sack, raising his face at the last. Face was what it had been once. Now it was a bruise with eyes in it.

  'Heya, Orm,' he said through puffed and bloody lips. 'What kept you?'

  Before I could say anything, Farolf jerked his chin at his men and they dragged Thorstein away and non-too gently at that — I heard the thumps of him being clattered down the rampart steps.

  'Now go away,' Farolf said, 'or else I will hang him upside down from the ramparts and cut his throat.'

  I said nothing, conscious of Vladimir's tense, white face, his uncle, Sigurd and all the rest. Farolf had no doubt thought it a good ploy and if it had just been the Oathsworn it might have been a problem, but Cod-Biter meant nothing to anyone else, alive or dead and little Vladimir would not offer the smell from his shit for his safe return. He wanted revenge and stakes and if he had not been mounted he would have stamped his little booted foot and screamed.

  Farolf, of course, wanted us to assume he had forced Thorstein to tell all he knew and so could carry out his threat to kill his hostage — but Cod-Biter had nothing true to tell hi
m; he did not know the way to the howe, though a man will babble any lie under blade, blow or hot iron.

  I turned away, for there was nothing left to say. Or so I thought — but Finn had something and he stepped forward, just as Farolf turned to leave.

  The unwise man thinks all to know,

  While he sits in a sheltered nook;

  But he knows but one thing,

  What he shall answer,

  If men put him to proof.'

  It was another verse from the same place Farolf had found his, so apt an answer and so astounding coming from Finn that I could not say anything. Nor was I alone in this; the gold-browed cleverness of it settled on us slow and gentle and warming as broth in the belly, so that the fire of it took time to seep in. When it did, men hoomed and cheered and rattled weapons on shields.

  But all we had done was made Farolf scowl. To do more, as Dobrynya and Sigurd pointed out, would take the Oathsworn.

  'My lads fight from horseback,' Sigurd declared, as we hunched round a miserable fire that failed to prevent the ice forming on our moustaches. 'I can get them on foot, but they will not be good at it and their ring-coats are too long.'

  'They have bows,' said Dobrynya. 'They can keep heads down while others get over the walls, but it is as Sigurd says — they are horsed fighters.'

  Not even much of that, I was thinking moodily, remembering them reacting to the Man-Hater's attack. What the Oathsworn had to do would not be easy; the village defences had been built to keep out the marauding Khazars and Pechenegs and consisted of an earthwork topped with a palisade of rough-hewn timbers. It was taller than two men, so we would need ladders to get over it and that would take wood we did not have. The only trees for a good walk in any direction were some scrawny birches huddled in a copse.

  'We could break up a cart,' offered Sigurd and Vladimir, only a red nose in a heap of fur-trimmed cloak squeaked out in his annoyed little voice, 'No more carts. How will we haul away the treasure if we break them all up?'