The White Raven

by Robert Low

  'A waste,' mourned Avraham and those coming staggering and shuffling up in time to hear his words, nodded and grunted agreement — except that the Khazar was not talking of the dead men, but of the golden horse.

  Morut merely grunted scornfully, which gained him a withering look from Avraham. Curious, little Vladimir asked the tracker what he meant by it.

  The tracker indicated the once-splendid horse and then looked as his own rag-maned, shaggy mount. 'They are the same,' he said with a grin. 'Turkmen horses. But the Blood-Sweating Horse is too fine for this place, while my little one is trained for it.'

  'Can you train a horse for this?' asked Thorgunna, who was eyeing the rimed litter with a look I knew well. She and Thordis could teach wolves about scavenging.

  Morut nodded as men moved among the bodies, though they gave up trying to plunder them when it became clear they were were frozen to the steppe, or each other.

  'It will kill two out of five who undergo it,' he admitted and, horsebreeder that I was, I reckoned at once this was only possible with the possession of an unlimited number of animals costing next to nothing to keep.

  'Pick out a likely one, rising seven or eight,' Morut said, feeding another handful of fat and chopped straw to his mount. 'Before that age no horse should be selected for such training, which is for war and raiding, after all.

  'You load a saddle with a sack of earth or sand, at first only the weight of a rider but gradually increased for eight days, until the horse carries the weight of two steppe riders — about one of you big northers with your mail and all your weapons to hand. As the weight grows, the horse's ration of food and water is lessened. He is trotted and walked six or seven miles daily.

  'After the first eight days you gradually make him lighter over another eight days — still, however, decreasing the food. When the load has gone completely, you give him two or three days of absolutely nothing at all, simply tightening the girth at intervals.'

  'By which time,' growled Avraham, poking a foot under a corpse and trying to wrench it from the ice, 'you have killed him.'

  'One like that Heavenly Horse, yes,' agreed Morut. 'And those you rode for the great Bek's army. But not this one.'

  'What do you call your marvellous horse?' asked Crowbone in a thin piping query from the crowd — then held up one hand and waved the answers away before the scorn crashed on him. You did not give a name to something you might have to eat.

  'I should be grateful, then,' he muttered, 'that I have a name.'

  Morut, still grinning, went on talking while we moved among the litter of gear and wreckage and dead, his voice like soothing balm on that bruise of horror.

  'About the twentieth day you work him until he sweats, unsaddle him and pour buckets of ice-cold water all over him, from head to tail. Stake him, all wet, to a peg on the open steppe, allow him to graze, giving him, every day, a little more rope for seven or eight days, after which you turn him loose to run with the herd as usual.

  'A horse that has undergone this discipline is a valuable animal and a fortune to a man, being able to travel almost continuously for four or five days together, with only a handful of fodder once in every half-day and a drink of water once in a long day.'

  He stroked the whiskered muzzle of the unassuming beast. I vowed then to have Morut and his horse-skills back in Hestreng.

  'Perhaps these men should have undergone something of the same,' growled Hlenni Brimill, jutting his chin at the dead as he stamped his feet against the cold.

  'No dead Man-Haters here,' noted Ref. 'Either they suffered no loss, or carried their dead away.'

  'No plunder taken, either,' growled Gyrth and we all stared at the men, still in their helms and their mail, all white with ice.

  'Perhaps these amazonia did not have the stomach for it, being only women,' Jon Asanes noted and Kveldulf's hawk and spit answer to that made the boy flush with anger. No-one spoke up for him, all the same, for Kveldulf had the right of it; it wasn't stomach the women lacked, but strength to waste. For the same reason, we left those dead untouched and unburied, but not because we were squeamish about breaking limbs to straighten, them for burial — what was that to the dead?

  It was the strength we grudged. As Onund pointed out to Jon as we shuffled away, a man can make himself a shelter and sleep out a three-day blizzard provided he has not exhausted himself beforehand. It is exhaustion that turns such a snow-wrapped, snug sleep into death. What would be the point of struggling to gain plunder we could not carry, or waste energy digging a shallow grave that the wolves would scratch out an hour after we had vanished over the milk-white horizon?

  So we kept our strength to stumble down the frozen scree of a slope to the great bowl in the earth which held a frozen lake and an island in the middle. An island so shaped that it looked like the back of a whale breaching a sea. An island with a huddle of six carts and a hole on it.

  It took me a while to work it out, as we staggered down to where the survivors of Lambisson's party had chipped out the lip of the iced lake's bank down to a level where they could struggle carts over it to the island.

  Here was where Finn and Short Eldgrim had hauled me out of the brown, roiling water the first time. Down there, locked somewhere in the ice, lay the bones of Wryneck, Long Eldgrim, Sighvat and the others. This was the place, right enough — we had just come up on it from another direction, in another season, and seven years difference. It came to me then that I had no need of the runed sabre.

  The weight of that was crushing; we had slid and staggered across half Serkland in pursuit of this sabre. Men had died and gone mad to hunt down this weapon and the only reason for it was the secret I had marked on it. Yet, now, it seemed, I could have spun myself in a circle nine times nine out on the Great White and still walked to this place with my eyes closed, dragged by Odin, or the fetch of Hild. Or both.

  I looked at Finn and he looked back at me, grinning from his cold-split lips. If he thought of the uselessness of the sabre on my back, he did not show or say it, merely wiped the blood from his cracked mouth and said:

  'Here we are again, then, young Orm.'

  I shuffled across the stippled, snow-drifted ice, the others following me, then stepped on to iron-iced land, up to where the hole lay.

  For, of course, this was no island.

  It was the roof of Attila's tomb.

  We found Hrolf Ericsson, called Fiskr lying in one of the carts and the last of Lambisson's men left alive on the island. He was called Fiskr — Fish — because he had once swum ashore in a storm with a line in his teeth and fastened his ship to the land, so saving everyone in the crew. Many of us knew him well and were happy enough to find him alive, even if he was on the wrong side.

  'I should have stayed on the land,' he moaned to Bjaelfi, as the healer rooted among the salves and balms he had secreted all about him. 'Getting back on a boat only took me to Birka and trouble.'

  'You should have kept off the land,' Bjaelfi offered grimly, 'that way, you would not be looking at losing most of your toes and a bit of your nose from the cold rot.'

  'At least you have a rich bed,' Sigurd noted. 'And a nose is nothing much to mourn over.'

  Hrolf Fiskr laughed, for he lay wrapped in ragged wool cloaks and furs on a huddle of silver, looted from the tomb. Three carts were loaded with the stuff and the men whooped and scrabbled, plucking age-blackened ewers and bashed bowls and litters of coins until Sigurd and Dobrynya had to roar and bellow at them to leave it alone.

  Lambisson, said Hrolf Fiskr, was down in the tomb and had been, perhaps for days — it was hard to know for sure, since Fiskr admitted he had been sleeping for a time, until the fever he had broke. There had been others with Lambisson down in the howe, loading silver in a bucket and hauling it up through the hole, but that had stopped three days ago and nothing had been heard since. Everyone had come up but Lambisson.

  'What of Short Eldgrim?' I asked, as Bjaelfi waited, sharpening his little knife. Hrolf eyed it nervously and
licked his chapped lips.

  'The little man? Aye, he was one of yours, right enough.'

  He paused, shook his head and tried to work up spit, but his mouth was too dry. 'That Christ monk did him harm, trying to get his mind to work. Burned him bad to make him remember.'

  He broke off and looked at me steadily. 'I did not like that, nor thought it right'

  'Did nothing, all the same,' I told him and took pleasure in watching him squirm. 'Where is the little man now?'

  'Gone,' came the answer. 'He was here when I closed my eyes and gone when I opened them again.'

  'Not below, then?'

  He waggled one hand. 'Maybes yes, maybes no. Brondolf Lambisson is still below, so said the men who came up and left him,' he growled, then found enough spit to use it.

  'Then they ran off, the nithings,' he added. 'Said Lambisson had lost his wits and that it was the little man's curse on him for what had happened. Left me because I could not walk. A dozen of them, big Slavs and none prepared to carry me, the turds. They were too afraid of those mad women, who kept coming back and shooting arrows . . . look, I am after telling you all I know. There is no need for a knife.'

  'This is to help you, oaf,' snarled Bjaelfi. 'Of course, I could leave the black rot alone and let it eat your face and feet . . . '

  I knelt by the hole, which was a wide, rough circle, dug down through a layer of earth — but not silt, I noticed. It was clear that, even flooded, the water in the lake did not cover the roof of Atil's tomb and someone had known that. Large slabs of roof-stone had been removed, a finger-joint thick and hefty and I saw they were laid over a cunning trellis made of great split logs. In a treeless place like this, that was riches as much as the silver it covered and these had been brought a long way. Even five centuries had not rotted them — but there was no sign of the ones removed. Burned, probably.

  Now there was a black hole and, a foot down from it was part of one of the great stone arches, a hand-span thick and three wide, which curved into the centre and supported the entire yurt-shaped howe of Attila.

  There were two thick ropes tied round it — a knotted one for climbing down, the other attached to a leather bucket which was empty when Onund hauled it up. The cold seemed to drift out of that dark hole like smoke.

  'No tools,' growled Dobrynya, coming up to peer down into it. Behind me, Hrolf yelped as Bjaelfi cut too deep into his nose and drew blood. 'A fortune in silver, some bits and pieces of gear, a little flour and dried meat, but no tools.'

  No tools in the carts, which meant that Lambisson had not made this hole. I did not like to think who had.

  'We lost our tools,' admitted Fish when I went back to him. Thorgunna dabbed the blood from his fresh-carved nose, but Fish felt little pain, since the black parts were dead flesh. He was happy we had arrived, enemies or not, since his friends had left him to die here, crippled and alone.

  'We counted it great good luck to find this hole,' he went on, 'but now I think these madwomen did it, like a baited hook to catch a fish.' He beamed at the clever play on his own name.

  I glanced at the hole. Short Eldgrim could be down there and, if so, he was either dead or wandering like a madman, wondering where he was. Only a few of the Oathsworn cared for that above what else could be down there. Even Finn, I saw, when he swayed up, tossing something in his hand and grinning. He turned it over in his fingers and then held it up.

  'Familiar, Bear Slayer?' he asked.

  It was a coin and I had the twin of it round my neck under my serk, punched through and looped with a leather thong. It had once been around the neck of Hild, the woman who had somehow known the secret of how to find this place, with neither chart nor rune scratches on the hilt of a sword; now I knew how that had been managed.

  I looked at the baleful wink of that coin, Volsung silver, part of the hoard of the dragon Fafnir, the one Sigurd had killed and the cursed gift Odin had promised us. I felt Hild's presence then, as if cold, invisible fingers stretched out of that hole, seeking me, the sword, the coins . . .

  I did not much care for the memory; she was down that hole, I could feel her and remembered her, black against the dark, stalking us with that light-curve of sword, the twin of my own. It was no surprise to me that Lambisson had not been heard of for some time and I would happily have left him there — but for Eldgrim.

  No, not even him, if the truth of it was being laid out. I liked the little man well enough, but it was not him alone that would take me back into the black maw of Atil's hov. It was bone, blood and steel, a fear greater than the one I had for finding mad Hild waiting at the bottom, all white-eyed and armed with the twin of my sabre.

  It was fear of breaking the Oath and what One Eye inflicted on all those who did.

  'Put that back.'

  The sandpiper voice snapped me round, to where a furious Vladimir glowered at Finn, little fists on his hips. 'No-one is to loot my silver. No-one.'

  Finn's grin faded. He looked at me, then back to the pinch-faced little prince and saw which quarter the wind blew from. He shrugged and flicked his thumb, never taking his scowl off the prince's face, and the coin arced back into the cart it had come from.

  Vladimir, his scowl merely turned to a boyish, petulant pout, glared pointedly at me — then Dobrynya moved in, smooth as oil, suggesting we all manhandle the silver-laden carts across the ice and off the island. He followed his prince at a respectful two paces.

  'We should kill them all now,' Finn growled at their disappearing backs and my look answered him — there were too few of us for that and we could not count on any but ourselves.

  'Besides,' I finished, 'even the gods of Asgard would be hard put to help us if we cut down a prince of Novgorod, a son of Sviatoslay. Those two brothers of his might be rivals — but they will not embrace us for such a killing.'

  Finn thought, then shrugged and went off without another word, picking his teeth with a filthy, horny fingernail; the swagger of him told me he had seen the sense of what I said, yet it was of no account. When the time came . . .

  Silver smoothed matters. The Slavs and my Oathsworn fell to moving it cheerfully enough — it was their loot, they had all decided — while Thorgunna and Thordis made sure a camp was made in the lee of all the carts. As fires flowered and the day sank into leaden cold night, I saw that Avraham and Morut were gone.

  We had meat and bread, a measure of warmth and shelter — so, of course, the proper divisions slid back to us. The druzhina sat apart from the Oathsworn, rowdy round their own blaze, while the prince and his two pillars sat apart from us all, heads together — but Crowbone sat with us, almost buried in a once-white fur cloak and that warmed me a little.

  But the fret of Short Eldgrim was on me and drove out all else — I wanted to be down that hole and yet, to my shame, used the excuse Finn brought up, about food and warmth first, to avoid sliding down into the tomb.

  I looked at Finn while Thorgunna and Thordis stirred and served and the Oathsworn horn-spooned horsemeat into the spaces in their beards, chaffering and grinning and growling like pleasured cats. We were in a waste that still froze the nose off your face, with only wadmal for shelter and stringy horse and water to eat, yet compared to before, we were all grunting-content with life.

  Well, not all.

  'Those cowholes are being sleekit,' Finn growled, none too quietly. Jon Asanes glanced across at the prince's fire, then frowned back at Finn.

  'He is a prince,' he said. 'An eagle among sparrows. You do him injustice calling him sleekit.'

  Finn worked grease into his beard and cheeks, good proofing against the cold and looked Jon up and down, shaking his head.

  'You learned a lot in Holmgard, right enough,' he declared. 'How to yabber in a dozen tongues and count in most of them. But you missed much, young Goat Boy. Like how eagles are not above stealing another bird's kill, for a start.'

  Jon flared, bright as the fire with temper. He rose and I thought, for a heart-stopping moment, that he would fling himsel
f at Finn, an act so beyond belief that being struck by Thor's hammer seemed more likely.

  Instead he quivered on the cusp of it, red and raging.

  'The eagle is a noble bird. That is why you will never be a prince, Finn Horsehead,' he said in a trembling high voice. 'You do not have enough eagle in you.'

  He stormed off and Finn watched him, then shook his head and pulled a bone needle from behind his remaining ear. 'I preferred him when he bounced like a goat and wanted to know everything,' he growled, picking his teeth. 'Now he knows it all and tears around like a high wind through trees.'

  'Whim rules the child as weather the field, as my granny once remarked,' Red Njal growled.

  'She knew the Goat Boy well,' Finn muttered sourly.

  'Heys — what do you know?' Red Njal answered, chuckling. 'You do not have enough eagle in you.'

  The needle broke and Finn sighed into the laughter and shook his head sadly.

  'True enough — but I am beginning to think our little Greek has had some Rus eagle in him,' he leered moodily and pitched the broken needle away.

  There was silence at that, while everyone turned over in their head what they believed they knew about the unnatural passions of Greeks. I was blinking with the stun of it when Thorgunna whirlwinded in, harsh and anger-bright as embers.

  'That is unworthy, of you, of Jon Asanes and of the young prince. If I were a man, Finn Horsehead, I would smack you to the floor and make it so that you could only eat meat someone else had chewed, for lack of teeth of your own.'

  Finn, knowing he had sailed too far on this course even to back water, simply hunched into Thorgunna's rage and stayed shamefacedly silent, scratching the red cold sores on his knuckles until they bled. Everyone else, however, sat and chewed horse-gristle and tried not to think too deeply on Jon, his love of verse, his closeness with Pai and how it was well-known that Greeks were boy-lovers and Slavs lascivious.

  Thordis plucked Finn's empty bowl from his knees and handed him one of her own bone needles. 'Here,' she said flatly. 'Pick your teeth. Not only will it make what you say sweeter, it will keep you from speaking at all for some time.'