by Robert Low
It was as strange as a fish on a horse, that boat stuck on a hill, but we ran for it, stumbling and sliding over the iced snow; beyond were the snow-frozen stacks of rolling logs for ship-hauling between Volga and Don in the summer and, beyond that, the fortress, that brooding ghost shifting noisily awake with light and clanging alarms.
The men swarmed aboard, careless of the creaks and the tremble of the over-straining ropes.
'Thorgunna?' I yelled and a chorus of voices answered me. I leaped up and scrambled aboard the strug and Gizur led me to where she lay, wrapped and pale. Her eyes were open and she managed a smile, though one pearled tear fluttered on her eyelash, bright silver in the moonglow. Thordis fell on her knees beside her and both of them shook with grief and happiness in equal measure, it seemed to me.
'We brought him with us,' I said awkwardly into the storm of tears, even as men struggled aboard with the stiff, blood-marked bundle that had been Kvasir. 'We are going home.'
'What about the silver?' demanded Gizur and his stiff beard quivered, so that he looked like a man caught halfway eating a hedgepig.
'We must go back for it, surely, after all this,' thundered Hauk.
'Back for it,' echoed Short Eldgrim, then shook his head. 'Back for what? Who are we fighting now?'
Beyond the humped dead and the fire there were shouts; lights flared and there was the unmistakeable sound of chains and creaking hinges as a heavy gate opened in the fortress wall.
'There is no silver, nor tomb,' I said. 'Only a vengeful boy-prince and a frightened garrison. With luck they will fight each other and let us escape with our lives.'
'We will never manhandle this boat to the river in time,' muttered Gizur, as men sprang to the frozen ropes.
'Time I was gone,' Morut called from below and I sprang off the boat to stand beside him.
'Come with us,' I said, for I liked the little man and his knowledge of horses. He shook his head, grinning. 'What? Spend my life hauling ships across the steppe from river to river? Besides, that great fool Avraham may decide to come up with these folk from the keep and I do not want to have to fight him. If you have to, try not to kill him.'
'Anyway — how can I leave that marvellous horse of mine behind?' he added, 'I must get back to where I tethered him before some Khazar ben shel elef zona finds him. You know what these people are like.'
I smiled, then fished out the armring I had taken from Kvasir before we had wrapped him.
'As I promised,' I said, 'in case that son of a thousand whores has indeed stolen your scrubby little pony. I will find a richer mark of favour to bury with Kvasir.'
Morut caught it deftly and touched it briefly to his heart before making it vanish inside his tunic.
'Good journey,' I said and he waved once, then was gone into the shadows. He had barely vanished when the horsemen came on us out of the dark of the fortress.
'Cut the ropes!' yelled Finn and the men trying to knock out iced tether-pegs stopped and then fumbled out blades. 'Cut them, fuck your mothers!'
They hacked and swore; and one of them — I could not see who it was — turned with a shrieking gurgle as an arrow took him in the throat.
At the same moment a horseman surged forward out of the dark, kicking his unwilling mount. Hauk, flailing furiously at the tether with a too-blunt sword, spun round, dipping as he did so, taking the horse in the forelegs, which snapped like twigs. It fell, kicking a blizzard of snow and screaming, the rider's own cries of pain lost in that skin-crawling horse-squeal. Trapped, the rider struggled, wide-eyed, until Hauk's blunt sword crashed on his face and ruined it.
The strug lurched and, panicking, men flung themselves aboard with the job only half done. There was a crashing sound as Gyrth dropped over the side and ran at us; Hauk turned as another horseman roared out of the dark and I saw they were all round us now.
'Get aboard,' I yelled at Hauk and brandished the axe to show what I intended. He hesitated only briefly, then leaped up for the side of the strug and caught it with his one free hand as others pulled him over.
Gyrth looked at me, his yellow teeth bared; he must have known when he flung himself back over the side, that he would never get back aboard — it had taken four men to haul him up the first time. He turned in a whirl of flailing fur and roared himself to the darkness, head back and arms out, the great axe in one fist.
'Orm!' Finn bellowed, but I hacked at the rope and it parted in two strokes; the strug lurched again and shifted slightly sideways, swinging on the tether of one remaining rope; I saw the linden bast of it tremble, spitting out little shards of ice.
An arrow hissed like a snake over my boots, skittering through the snow; another plunked at my feet, I felt the wind of a third on my cheek and turned to start hacking at the last rope.
A horse stumbled out of the dark and the noise, wild eyes white, nostrils wide. The rider on him gave a high shriek of triumph and slashed down with a curved sword, but I had already flung myself flat and sideways and hacked out with the axe.
With a dagger scream the horse spun on its hocks, one front leg shattered; the rider spilled from the saddle and landed in a great whoof of driven air and spattering snow. I drove at him, the axe up and coming down, so that it took all I had to twist my wrist at the last, burying the blade so close to the fear-white familiar face that one brow braid was sheared.
'For Morut,' I growled into the cod-mouthed stare of Avraham, then tore the axe blade free, showering him with diamond chips of ice to remind him of how close he had come. Then I whacked him between the eyes with the butt end.
'Orm!'
The bull-bellow from Finn was almost too late; the horsemen were crashing on us and I turned into Gyrth's big, lopsided grin.
'Heya!' he yelled, swung up the long-axe and smashed it down on the rope, which parted in a shower of little ice shards. I was half up on one knee when the strug groaned, shifted and started to move, a great bulked beast on its cradle of wooden runners; ice spat and cracked as its own weight started to tear it loose down the slope.
Gyrth's face was suddenly close to mine, close enough to have the rank breath of him on me and the great wild of his eyes staring into mine.
'Jump,' he said and then was gone, rolling forward into the mass of horsemen; an arrow shunked into him, with no more seeming effect than a skelf in his finger. I saw him grab the bridle of one horse, hauling it almost to his knees then, one-handed, slash the axe head into the face of the rider. The horse struggled, trying to tear free and Gyrth slammed his own helmeted head on the blaze of the beast, so that it gave a grunt and sank to its knees, eyes rolling white into its head.
Then more horsemen surged out of the dark, milling around and I heard him bear-roaring his name at them. Steinnbrodir. Steinnbrodir is here.
'Orm, you arse — the rope!'
Finn's roar shook me into the Now of it; the world sped up, the trailing rope whipped away from me and I grabbed it with my left hand. It slithered, iced and slippery, through the few fingers I had, so I dropped the axe and hurled myself at it with the other.
The wrench tore shrieks from my arms, but I held on with both hands, in a whirl of stars and snow, dragged bouncing down the slope as the strug bucked and kicked, galloping down the ice, leaping into the air on its wooden runners.
A man, one of Vladimir's long-coated druzhina who had run forward to attack us too, was hit as the strug lurched forward, gathering speed; he was flung aside with a crunch of bone and a shriek, while the runners were given extra slick with the smear of him.
There was a great bang and objects whirred darkly around me; I clung on, lost in a world of pain and ice, a small, clear part of me seeing the remains of the wooden cradle of runners spinning away behind me in shards. Vladimir's men scattered from the path of that plunging stallion of a boat, their faces white stabs of fear whirling away from me into the dark.
The strug lurched and slid, hit the last of the shore, hissing a bow-wave of snow from under it — then ploughed into the b
lack river and the shadows, spouting up a great grue of ice under it as it took us to the slow, cold slide of the crow dark river.
I lost the rope as it whipped me up and there was a marvellous moment of flying, the great wheel of clear stars tilting in a pitch sky — then there was the whooping shock of the water, so cold it burned. I went down and round and spinning into freezing darkness, surfaced once to see the strug forging away from me, while men shouted and howled and tried to get it to stop — then I sank again, the world a muffled roar in my ears.
It was Hlenni Brimill and Onund who saved me, the one spotting me, the other leaping in like a bull walrus to grab me and tow me back to the surface.
When I blinked back to the world, it was on the deck, shivering and soaked, bruised and with fingers scorched with rope burns. Hlenni was rubbing me so furiously I shook, but his hands burned feeling back to my limbs. Nearby, Red Njal did the same for Onund, who shivered under a cloak, but managed to grin and wave. I trembled out a nod, acknowledgement of what I owed him.
'Pull, fuck your mothers!' Gizur roared, as the arrows whicked and plunked — but screams and shouts told where Vladimir's men now fought the garrison of Sarkel in the confusion of darkness.
They pulled, fuck their mothers, hard and grunting and too busy hauling oars to think about what had been lost and gained, only that the arrows were fired blindly and we were leaving them all behind.
Later, when the rowers groaned and drooped and tried to stop their lungs burning, Klepp Spaki tallied the loss — Katli Bjornsson and his brother Vigo, both of them gone in that fight, leaving, I knew, a mother to weep alone.
And Gyrth. Finn, stone-faced, told how the Boulder had rolled into the horsemen, then vanished from sight. In my head he roared still; Steinnbrodir is here.
'Where is Odin's gift in all this?' Klepp asked bitterly, while I shivered and ached and did not want to tell him how it was a gift, of how One-Eye had held his hand over us. If he had not, we would all be dead.
Thordis found the rest of One-Eye's double-edged gift, when she and Bjaelfi went to attend to Thorgunna. They found her lying, as Fish had been found, on a haphazard tumble of furs — covering roughly-bagged silver coins, armrings, bent plates and twisted jewellery, all the small stuff that had been in at least one of the carts. A fortune, hidden with Thorgunna in a good place and gleaming at me, accusing as a curse; little Vladimir would be furious.
I was still gawping at this, wondering if Vladimir would cut his losses, or stamp his little foot and come after us, when Fish dragged the rest of our wyrd out into the moonlight, while the fit men bent and dug and pulled down the middle of the river.
'Does this belong to anyone?' he asked, limping out from where he had been scouring the boat for food and warmer clothing. A white-swathed shape hung by the scruff of the neck in one hand.
Hearts stopped; men glanced up and blanched and I groaned. The silver was bad enough, but this would have men rowing in our wake until they threw up, for sure.
'I did not like to leave Thorgunna alone,' Crowbone said, blinking up at me from a tear-stained face. 'She was good to me.'
It took a while for the unease to settle on what was left of the Oathsworn, a haar that dusted everyone with droplets like morning dew. We had silver after all and there was cheering at that — yet we also had Crowbone and that would bring men after us. There was muttering about Fafnir's curse.
Those crew left — nineteen by my count, including the hirpling Fish — had to keep rowing down the fat, sluggish Don to the Maeotian Lake, which the Serkland Turks call the Azov Sea; that hard task did not help matters.
It was a boat made for fifteen oars a side, so we were crew light, as usual. It was made from one tree, an oak the length of nine good men and extended by willow planking, though we had lost some of those in the mad slide. It was two men wide and straked with planks nailed to make the freeboard as high as a standing warrior and fitted to take the oars.
Great bundles of large reeds, each one thick as a barrel, had been laid along the length of those freeboard planks, bound with bands made of lime or cherry. This made the whole thing virtually unsinkable even if swamped — which was useful, for it had no deck to speak of and we had few men to spare for bailing.
It had an ill-worked sail, which proved that it was capable of going into deeper water, probably along the coast of the Azov and the Sea of Darkness, which suited us all fine. But, as Gizur pointed out, you only wanted the mast and sail up in fair weather; if a blow got up, it was best to row for it.
Finally, the shipwrights had fitted heavy ribs and crosspieces, slathered pitch where necessary — and sometimes where not — and put a steering oar at each end, since the entire clumsy affair was too long and too heavy to turn on a river, so you simply reversed your rowing and went the other way.
And right there was the problem. It was a light boat made for dragging from river to river with a full crew but, crewed by too few of us and laden with Odin's cursed silver, it was as limber as a quernstone. It would not sink, sure enough, but it would scarcely move either under the oar-muscle we had — and twice we held our breath as the bottom of it tugged and scraped on unseen banks, or balked at crushing a path through the sluggish, half-formed ice.
There would come a time, too, when rowers would have to sit the opposite way from each other and haul until their temples burst to get the beast round the narrower bends.
I remembered, from the last time I had come this way — a lifetime since — that the river split as it reached the Azov. The south fork of it was straight and true and short, while the north twisted and turned and was longer — but that one forked again along its length and so was one more way to lose pursuit. Both were fretted with rills and rivulets, reed and swamp.
The south route was the one I knew and Hauk, Finn, Hlenni Brimill and Red Njal, who had been with me at the time, agreed that way was best, provided we did not find men up our arse before we hit the first fork. Even Short Eldgrim had a moment of clarity and recalled that he had been this way before.
'This is all that remains,' Red Njal said suddenly, looking round from one to the other as we talked, resting our oars and grabbing some tough bread from the stores we had found on board.
No-one spoke, for he was right and it was a hard matter to consider. Seven were all that was left of the original Oathsworn, those who had been with Einar the Black when I joined the crew. Eyes strayed to the wrapped bundles — Kvasir and the Bjornsson brothers, brought aboard and bound for where we could decently bury them. Finn sighed and Thordis, passing on her way to attend to Thorgunna, brushed his tangled hair with one hand.
The mist trailed along the black water of the river and ice nudged the strug as we sat, rich as kings and feasting on dry bread and cold river water, each thinking of his share of the silver — and his share of the curse.
Yet we would not dump Odin's gift without a fight.
'We need to haul in and light a fire,' Bjaelfi declared, coming up to attend to a deep cut on Ref Steinsson's arm.
'No,' I said, 'unless you are fancying a fight with those big Slavs Vladimir has.'
'Thorgunna needs to be properly attended to,' added Thordis. 'Which needs hot water and a little time.'
It was a heft of a swell, but I rode it, right through to her black scowl.
'We cannot stop. Let Bjaelfi do what he can.'
'I have done,' the little healer declared sourly, scrabbling in one of the dangling pouches he had. 'But Thordis has the right of it, all the same.'
He broke off, unstoppered a small flask and poured some of the contents into the cut on Refs arm; the smith went white and bit his lip until blood flowed, while Bjaelfi bound it in a rag marked in charcoal with healing runes.
'The juice of crushed ants,' Bjaelfi said, clapping Ref cheerfully on the shoulder. 'That and runes made by Klepp, who never makes a mistake, will stop the rot.'
Ref managed a moody grunt, for he had lost his sea-chest and all his tools, some of them made by hims
elf. The possible loss of his arm was almost nothing by comparison.
'She will die,' Thordis declared firmly, glaring at me until her eyes seared through the common-sense and found the heart in me. Finally, I nodded.
'There was once a man,' said a piping little voice and, before it made another sound, there was a sharp whack of sound and Crowbone shot backwards, arse over tip and landed in a knot of rowers, who shoved him off, protesting loudly.
Rubbing his ear, Crowbone scrambled dazedly to his feet, pulling his dignity and his white cloak round him. His eyes filled with tears — more of rage than pain, I was thinking —and Thordis moved to him, glaring seax-sharp looks at Finn.
'Not now, boy,' growled Finn, blowing on his freshly-burst knuckles. Hauk Fast-Sailor chuckled and shook his head at Finn's audacity.
'Hel slap it into you,' noted Onund mildly, 'which is all you deserve if that notable man-boy takes it into his head to work curse-magic on you for that blow. Anyway — I like his stories.'
'Fuck him,' growled Finn. 'I am just after recalling how we got to this place, thanks to him and his little axe. And his stories are always like eating those limon fruit from Serkland, which look so sweet and clappit your jaws. Besides — how much more cursed can I be?'
Those who heard this last, despite their admiration for a man who had tasted limon from Serkland, groaned and shook their heads, with much clutching of amulets and talisman pouches.
Even I had to shake my head with mock sorrow, though there was less mock in it than I would like. That was not the sort of matter you aired when you suspected any gods were listening — sure enough, we would have an answer to it.
Red Njal's da's ma, as ever, had something to say.
'When you hear the gods whisper,' he offered, savage as a wet cat in a bag, 'hurl your spear into their breath.'
Not long after, we saw smoke as we slid down and round the black, ice-fringed river that had started to wander like a drunk down a street. We steered for those fuzzed grey curls, round one bend which almost had us pulling in opposite directions to turn the strug, and came across a swathe of sand and pebble beach with a clot of yurt beyond.