The White Raven

by Robert Low

  Yet he had a steel handful that gleamed sharp in the twilight between us and could still summon up a laugh, like moth wings, as he shifted his eyes away from the glare of Finn's light.

  'I do not remember your face and we scarcely met,' he sighed out to me. 'I remember Einar, but not you. Yet the Norns wove us together more fixed than brothers. Is that not strange, Orm Bear Slayer? I know you better than any woman I ever had.'

  The laugh fluttered out again and was lost in the dark. Finn moved sideways and I squatted.

  'Not so strange,' I answered. 'The Norns weave and we can only wear what they make.'

  'This is a poisoned serk, right enough,' he whispered back — then flung some iron into his voice. 'It would be better, I am thinking, if your companion stayed still.'

  Finn stopped at once, waved an acknowledging hand and squatted, as if by a friendly fire.

  'I am Finn Bardisson from Skane,' he said easily. 'I can kill you if I want to, Brondolf Lambisson, whether you have blade or not. It is better you know this from the start.'

  'I want Short Eldgrim,' I added. 'There need be no killing here. Frey witness it, there has been enough of that. All I want is Eldgrim.'

  He stirred and I saw the head droop, but the steel-holding hand was steady enough.

  'You speak as a friend,' he hissed. 'We can never be that.'

  'No, but we need not be enemies.'

  There was silence for a heart-beat or two, then he said: 'Do you like my new fortress, Bear Slayer? Fine, is it not. Rich.'

  The chuckle that came with it was the hiss of a corpse's last breath. 'Rich enough to save Birka, I had thought — but that place is dead.'

  'Keep it,' I replied flatly. 'I want Eldgrim. Then you can fill your boots and go away with no fighting at all.'

  He leaned forward, that ice-sore face even bloodier in the light of my torch, patched by the black of cold rot eating his cheeks. He shook his head, his eyes glittering like rime; blood oozed from the cracked remains of his blackened lips.

  'I did not think so,' I sighed. 'Well, here is my last offer. Finn and I will go back to the hole in the roof and climb out. You send out Short Eldgrim. Then you can stay or go, as you please.'

  'And you will walk away, leaving all this?'

  'All what?' I countered. 'You can eat none of it, Brondolf, nor suck warmth from it. You are cold, sick and starving to death down here. I do not . . .'

  He moved, so fast that I only realized how tricked I had been when he flowed like darkness itself across the space between us, his blade already hissing. Not as sick as he had made it seem.

  I had a flash, like a moment seen in lightning, of Ketil-Crow, stumbling over heaps of tinkling silver with the blue coil of his entrails tangling his ankles, with the same flowing darkness after him. Only then it had been Hild and her rune sword.

  That memory almost did for me, for I hesitated with the vision of it. He had strength enough for this one mad rush my own rune blade, laid handily across my knees, reared up — and blocked the cut.

  It sounded like a hammer on an anvil. I heard a cracked-bell sound, knew it to be his sword breaking on mine and then he hit me, raving and slavering, following the ruin of his sword, half-turning as he smashed into me like a mad bull with just a hilt and a jagged nub end in his hand.

  We went over in a rush of panting breath and crushing bone and whirling stars. There was a grunt and a scream and a moment of mad thrashing, which ended with a wet smack of sound.

  A hand grabbed my forearm and I came up into Finn's embrace, wet with Brondolfs blood and brains. He lay face down, a diamond-shaped hole in the back of his head and blood spreading thickly under him.

  'All we wanted was Short Eldgrim,' panted Finn, as The Godi dripped gleet and blood. 'He did not have to take the hard way to it.'

  He did, all the same, for he had no Short Eldgrim to trade. We skulked and slithered around and over the gleam and the dark of that place and found no trace of him. Then we came back to where Lambisson lay and turned him over into the grue of his own blood, for it was said the truth lay fixed in a dead man's eyes.

  His raw sore of a face was sucked in with hunger and collapsed and already blue-white, his dead eyes glittering with deflected ice, sharp and bright as silver. So the truth was there, right enough. Just not what we needed.

  Finn looked round, at the great piles of silver and the shimmering walls, then peeled off the valknut amulet and looped it round the stiffening, dead fingers. I was astonished; the amulet was mine, for a start and I would not give the skin off my shit for Lambisson. I said as much and Finn nodded as if he understood.

  'It is not for him,' he rasped. 'This is the end of it, Orm, and that cursed little monk had it right — all the struggle to get to it and for what? We would have to live here to make sure of keeping it all and fight everyone and his mother every day. I would give twice the amount to have Pinleg and Harelip and Skapti and all the others waiting at the top of that rope. Aye, even Einar, though you would not agree, I am sure.'

  He shook his head and climbed to his feet, while his words crashed on me like a fall of snow. He had the right of it, for sure — we could fill our boots and carts and make sacks out of our tunics and cloaks and still would hardly dent the treasure heap of this place. After us would come a ravening horde of others, friends of Morut and Avraham and friends of their friends and brothers and the relations of every man in the druzhina and Oathsworn, all ripping the heart out of Atil's last resting place. There was no secret now.

  Odin's gift. It had not been worth it, as I suspected all along and I said so. Finn agreed with a nod and then made a gesture so surprising I almost dropped my sword. He laid a hand on my forearm and said, straight into my face and serious as a fall of rock: 'You had the right of it, not wanting to return here. We should have listened to you.'

  Then I felt the hot wash of shame. Oh, aye, I had railed against it, scorned it, dug in my feet like the point man in a heaving boar snout — but who was it had scratched those runes on the hilt of the sword, knowing full well he would need them, sooner or later, knowing he could not resist coming back?

  We were climbing stiffly to our feet when the voice drifted like cold mist down through the dark heaps and round the rat passages. A high, thin, voice. Female. Calling my name, so that it wrapped chill round my heart.

  Hild.

  I looked at Finn and he at me and, for once, I saw no scorning scowl, only the flick of his tongue on dry lips.

  'O-o-orm.'

  'By Odin's eye, boy,' said Finn in a hoarse whisper.

  'F-i-nnn.'

  'Did you hear that?' I asked and had back a suitable curl of lip.

  'Even with my one ear, I can hear that,' he growled, then hefted The Godi in one hand and the torch in the other and rolled his neck muscles. 'Well, if it is that dead bitch, I am coming for her.'

  Finn was noted for being afraid of nothing at all, but the fear was an unseen force that I had to push against, step by step round one gully of age-dark riches, half-way round another, to where a torch flickered and the pale light spilled from the hole in the roof. No more than a score of steps, it was the longest walk I ever took.

  A figure stood there, dark and menacing, holding the torch high and peering like some hound from Hel.

  'Here I am, bitch!' yelled Finn and even if his voice cracked a little at the end, I admired him, for my throat had so much dry spear rammed in it I could make no sound at all.

  'Is that you there, Finn Bardisson? Step to where I can see you — and, if it is you, stop calling me names.'

  We blinked, looked at each other and then Finn grunted as if he had been slapped. 'Thordis. It is Thordis, by Odin's hairy arse.'

  If she wondered about us charging out and all but raining kisses on the upturned petal of her sweet face, she was too agitated and fearing to comment on it.

  'Get off! Get off me,' she panted, cuffing us like dogs.

  'Aye, but you are a sight, right enough,' chuckled Finn, trying to grab he
r again. The Godi whirled round her ears and she winced back, so that he fell to apologizing and trying to grab her and sheath it at the same time.

  'Why are you here?' I asked, feeling a coiled tendril of new chill unfold in my bowels.

  'Right enough,' huffed Thordis, tugging her linen kerchief back over her hair, one braid unfastened and dropped almost to her belt. She blew a stray wisp off her chapped cheeks and wriggled herself together. 'I would have said before, but for this . . . This . . .'

  'Tell it now.'

  She told it and set us frantic, scrabbling to the knotted rope and calling up for help.

  Vladimir and his company had taken the silver and gone. Our men had grumbled about it, but I had told Kvasir not to do anything rash, so he kept them from the druzhina's throats and the Oathsworn let themselves be herded on to the island and disarmed under the bows of the big Slav warriors. Their weapons were left a little way off and, as soon as the treacherous little rat prince was beyond bowshot range, the Oathsworn lumbered out and got them back.

  Then Kvasir went after them, on foot, for we had no horses. Gizur was left in charge and — I cursed him to the nine worlds and back for it — Thorgunna had stayed behind when everyone trekked back to the tomb with their weapons. Then she had set off after Kvasir. Once back at Atil's tomb, Gizur sent Thordis down to find us — and the fact that he had sent a woman into that place should have told me all that was needful, but I was too red-raged to see it.

  'What possessed Kvasir?' roared Finn, levering himself out of the hole.

  Below, Thordis yelled back: 'Jon Asanes is missing — Kvasir went after the boy.'

  'And Thorgunna?' I demanded, putting both hands on her backside and shoving her up the rope.

  'She went after Kvasir,' she answered, panting with the effort of climbing. 'And watch your hands, Jarl Orm, otherwise we will have to wed me for the liberties.'

  'Sorry,' I muttered and followed her up.

  At the top, Gizur waited and we were ringed with backs as all the Oathsworn formed a shielded circle round the hole, facing outwards. Nearby sat Fish, with Hauk Fast-Sailor's bow and his last six arrows.

  'What made her go after Kvasir?' I wanted to know, raging, half-turning to Gizur. 'And why did you fall in with her plan, you gowk?'

  'He is her man,' Thordis answered. 'The sight is going in his remaining eye and he can barely see at all and soon will be blind entire — for all that, he has clearer vision than yourself, Jarl Orm, for that has been staring you in the face for months.'

  I gawped; Finn scrubbed his beard with embarrassment and it was clear he had known. Gizur, too. Everyone, I suddenly realized, but me. Yet the truth of it was there now and I saw it, in every axe stroke Kvasir had missed, in that bird-cock of his head to focus better, the ragged linen strip against the light.

  The despair stripped away the anger — briefly. Gizur cleared his throat and I sprang on him, fresh prey for my abuse.

  'You should have stopped her,' I yelled. 'Stopped him, too, you cow hole. Have you sent men after them?'

  He staggered under the wind of it a little, righted himself and came about, grim and quiet.

  'Kvasir commanded, so what he said I did,' he replied evenly. 'Allowing Thorgunna to go after him was the best I could do under the circumstances, Jarl Orm.'

  'What fucking circumstances?' I bawled, red-lit with anger now.

  He pointed, out beyond the shoulders of the Oathsworn —all of them weaponed and mailed and with their shields up — at the snow-whirled steppe.

  The anger hissed from me like the last breath of a dead man. In a ring, on both sides of the steep-banked frozen lake, the woman warriors sat on their little steppe ponies, silent as trees. Hundreds of them — three hundred, at least I saw, with that part of my mind that still worked — waiting like wolves in a circle round the tiny wall of shields on the island of Atil's tomb.

  There were twenty of us, no more than that, the last Oathsworn in the world, each one worn as a whetstone, a dark snarl of beard where ice glistened like tears, cheeks sunk, eyes rimmed red, noses dripping. The men who called me jarl hunched under rust-spotted helmets, knees no more than lumps of bone above ragged garters or shredded boots, feet two lumps of frozen flesh and knuckles purpled with sores that itched and bled.

  Yet they had shields up and spears greased and blades that gleamed with edge, reflecting in the eyes that watched the ring of horsed women. They parted those frozen beards and grinned the same old fanged grin, of men with cliffs before them and wolves behind and not one of them with the thought to run or throw down their weapons — not even Fish, who was not oathed.

  I loved them then, none more so than Finn, who put out a voice for them all, blowing out his cheeks and grinning until his lips bled.

  'Odin luck for us, then,' he beamed, 'that we got our weapons back in time. Now we have these Man-Haters where we want them — they will not get away from us this time.'

  The others roared at that and banged on their shields. The riders stirred and then threw back their heads and started up a shrilling, that yipping-dog sound that so chilled us every time we heard it; from three hundred throats it swamped our bellows.

  Fish, hirpling painfully on the wrapped ruins of his feet, forced his way to where he could shoot, drew back and let fly. Whether he meant it or not, the shaft zipped true and the arrow he had picked had a making-flaw in the head, a small hole that fluted the wind. It shrieked, loud and shrill, all the way into the trembling throat of one rider, cutting her dead in mid-yip and tumbling her backwards off her pony.

  As if he had shot them all in the throat, they stopped. There was such a silence after it that we could hear the stricken rider choking, drowning in her own blood while her horse snorted at the iron-stink of it.

  'Fuck,' said Hauk Fast-Sailor admiringly. 'I never got a shot like that out of that old bow.'

  'First time I saw a Fish hook a catch,' added Gyrth and there were chuckles. Men banged on their shields again and grinned at one another, as if they had won a battle.

  'I think,' groaned Klepp Spaki, 'you have annoyed them just a little.'

  They were nocking arrows and my mouth went dry at that. We had barely enough men to form a tight circle as it was and none to spare for a rank to make a roof of shields; three hundred arcing arrows, from every direction, would nail us all to the frozen ground.

  I saw riders moving, heard angry shouts. Finn thumbed snot from his nose and squinted at them.

  'Women,' he sneered. 'Argue about everything, even the way to kill us.'

  The whack on his helmet was loud and some heads turned. Thordis, flat of the blade she held up and ready for another attack on Finn's dented helm, scowled blackly and men chuckled. Finn, though, grinned admiringly at her.

  'Here they come,' bawled Fish and stepped back to allow the two mailed shoulders on either side of him to clash together like a wall.

  It was just one rider, edging out on to the ice, her pony stepping uneasily, sliding and slithering. I had a salmon-leap of hope, then, that they would be madwomen to the end and try and charge us across the lake ice. In the chaos of that we had, perhaps, the sliver of a chance.

  She came on, black cloak billowing, hair snaking in dark braids around her sloped brow. I swallowed; she held up an arm and in it was a scythe of light — the rune sword. Hild's sword.

  The voice floated across, slathering my bowels with ice. 'Orm, who is called Bear Slayer.'

  It was in good Greek, but even those who did not know the tongue could recognize the name — even Finn, who knew just enough Greek to get his face slapped — and he looked at me as I stood, stricken. He knew what I was thinking . . . Hild.

  'Your girl wants you,' he said into the air around us, tense as creaking bowstrings, but the chuckles were forced.

  'Let him speak soft words and offer wealth, who longs for a woman's love,' Red Njal intoned as I shouldered to the front, my legs trembling. I could not feel my feet, but tested the sharp of my tongue on him.

&n
bsp; 'One day, Red Njal, you must tell me how this marvellous annoying relative of yours lived so long in the close company of other folk,' I snarled.

  He grinned at me with chapped lips. 'True, my da's ma was given a place of her own and rarely visited — but there was wisdom in her, all the same.'

  Then he nodded out to the ring of horse.

  'Do not keep her fretting there, Bear Slayer,' he said wryly.

  I saw the woman nudge her pony on and all the bows dropped a little, though the arrows stayed nocked. I moved forward; she moved forward, off the ice and on to the lip of the island, where the pony had more purchase. She swung a leg over its neck — no small feat in her lamellar coat and thigh-greaves — and dropped lightly, the cloak floating down like hair.

  It was not Hild. I thought she wore a Serkland veil until I stepped closer and saw it was a whirl of skin-marks covering her chin, nose and cheeks, a blue-black knot of some steppe magic marred by the deep scores of old scars, three on each cheek. Her head sloped backwards, too, in that long, eldrich way — but I did not care what she looked like, for it was not Hild.

  She lifted the sabre, the twin of the one I held, wary and watching — then she slammed it into the earth and moved to one side, an arm's length from the hilt and squatted.

  Dry-mouthed, I moved forward, careful to stay beyond sword reach of her, out of politeness. Then I did the same as she had done and took a knee, Norse-style.

  We faced each other, the width of a man apart, no more, and studied each other in silence, while the wind sighed, lifting little djinn of snow over the stippled ice of the lake.

  She was nail-thin and wasted, but had all her finery on, from golden beads in her braids to necklets of silver animals and fine bangles. Her armour was polished bone leaves pared from the hooves of horses and she wore baggy breeks worked with gold threads. But what glittered most brightly on her were her polished jet eyes.

  The silence stretched until I could stand it no longer, so I nodded politely at her and said: 'Skjaldmeyjar: