The White Raven (41 page)

17 After I had asked my question, the warrior woman had put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, as if calling up a dog. Riders had come out, one of them leading a stumbling figure on a tether and, as they came closer, my belly flipped at the sight.

Short Eldgrim. I had been right.

He was thin — I had seen more meat on a skelf — and his grin showed that he had lost some teeth. But some of his old wits remained in the summer-blue cage of his head.

'Ho, young Orm. What brings you here?'

The woman called Amacyn looked at me.

'Is this a good trade for you?'

So we took Short Eldgrim into the middle of us and moved away, leaving the warrior women sitting their mounts and watching, their leader now with two swords. Finn came to me then, handed me a wood axe and a grin. 'You will need this until we can find you another good blade, Jarl Orm.'

I shivered, wondering what would happen to me now, for I was sure that rune serpented sword of mine had protecting powers — and now it was gone. Forever. As easily as handing it over, no more than an arm movement; yet this was the blade that had once driven us from the Great City to the forge-heat of Serkland, had goaded us to fight and kill men we had once called oarmates.

I had lingered as the others moved off and had watched what happened, what the women did. When I came back to the Oathsworn, I ignored the questions in their eyes and, since I had given up my runesword for them, they bit their lips and did not ask them aloud.

Later still, when we were far away, we heard cries, faint on the wind, the yip-yowl chorus of all those warrior women. Eyes gleamed with fear then, for they thought the Man Killers were riding after us, but when I did nothing, they calmed down.

No vengeful women came; I knew what had happened and said nothing on it, stayed hunched into myself and against the wolfish bite of wind until we came off the rolling white of the Grass Sea down over a series of shallow cliffs thick with scrubby pine and white-barked birch, skeletal and shivering. The sun hung in the pewter sky like a drop of molten metal.

Ahead, hidden in the ice glare of the marsh that fringed it here, was the mighty body of the river itself, the Tanais, which was once the Scyth name for the Don and came to be the legendary name for travelling the lands we called Gardariki, down among the Mussulmen traders, who gave the name to us that everyone now seemed to use —
Rhus.

To go down the Tanais was every youngling's dream, an adventure without peer. The reality was always different and harsh and usually inscribed by grieving relatives on a memory stone back home.

I looked to where Klepp Spaki moved, a dark figure trembling with cold; we would not even have a memory stone, for we had taken the greatest rune-carver with us and it was probable he would die here.

I squinted, watery-eyed against the glare. If it affected me this badly, it was no wonder Kvasir's remaining eye had given up on him; I cursed myself one more time for having been blind myself and missing the signs of it.

To the south, just above where the Don's black-watered sibling, the Donets, joined it, not far from where both split into a thousand muddy channels, was Biela Viehza, the Khazar Sarkel. Close enough for me to see the feathers of smoke from its fires and, black against their ochre threads, the dark and solitary rider moving steadily in our direction.

'Seems alone,' Finnlaith grunted. 'Shall I shoot him when he gets in range?'

'Get Fish to hook this one, too,' added Onund and there were grim chuckles at that.

'Well, there is no place to hide here,' I said, 'so it seems to me he has seen us as we have seen him. Does he look bothered to you?'

'I can change that,' Finn said, but he made no move. We stood for a moment and then Short Eldgrim said:

'It is cold here.'

'I know,' answered Thordis softly. 'We will be warm by and by.'

I looked at him then, the slow-blinking, washed blue eyes in that white-scarred face, bundled up in cloak and tunics handed over by men eager to see him safe and warm, as if he was a talisman for us all. When we had him safe in the middle of us, Thordis had peeled off his ragged old tunic to give him a fresh and thicker one.

She had stopped and suckled her breath in, then whirled him round, so his naked back was to me. I blenched; it was a mass of blackened, red-raw sores, the half-healed burns of little Christ-crosses, all making up one large one, down his spine and across the shoulderblades. Now I knew how Martin had unlocked the memories in Short Eldgrim's half-addled head.

'If ever we find that monk again,' Thordis said stiffly, 'I will want words with him.'

Now she tried to wrap his head in more wool and he growled at her. 'Stop fussing woman, I am warm enough here.'

He stamped his feet against the cold and looked at me.

'I lost Cod-Biter on the way,' he said. Then he stopped and looked puzzled. 'Runes,' he said.

'I found Cod-Biter,' I said and he smiled at that and nodded. Then he said: 'Where are Einar and the others . . . no, wait. They are gone. Orm . . . sorry, I . . .'

He stopped, frowning. 'Lambisson. That fucking little monk . . . he hurt me, the little shit, him and his asking about runes and silver . . .'

He stopped again and a sob wrenched from him, a child's whimper. Thordis wrapped him inside her own cloak and I felt my heart lurch and cold anger settle in my belly.

'What now?' demanded Gizur. 'Are we going back to the tomb? What about the silver?'

We were never going back to the tomb and the silver was gone from us, but I did not say that, or how I knew. I felt as if I had forgotten something important, left it lying back there in the snow — but it was only the tug of that sword, so long a part of me and now gone. I felt the loss, like a missing limb, for a long time after, but never counted it a cost when weighed against the bland, blue smile of Eldgrim's eyes.

'Kvasir and Thorgunna,' I said. Gizur shook his head sorrowfully.

'No sooner do we free one than we lose two,' he said —but the rest of it was in the grim set of his face; our oarmates were there and needing help. There was also silver ahead by the cartload and it belonged to the Oathsworn.

The rider came closer and Finn said, suddenly: 'Morut.'

The Khazar tracker came up to us on his indestructible horse, leading another, a short, stiff-maned, patient little animal. He sat a little way off and waited until we came up to him, moving like wraiths over the windswept snow.

'Heya, wee man,' growled Finn and Morut nodded back, wary at his reception. Since he had ridden openly up to us, I was prepared to let him speak.

'The little prince is in Sarkel,' he announced. 'Well, not
in
it exactly. The garrison will not let the prince of Novgorod inside the walls, so they are in the town, down by the river, organizing boats and unloading carts.'

'Is the garrison likely to let Vladimir inside the walls?' I asked. Morut shook his head and pursed chapped lips, rubbed shiny with fat to stop them splitting further.

'Avraham has been sent to persuade them, but I am thinking he has exactly the other idea — there are men from Kiev two days march away, led by Sveinald and his son. They would be here already save that the river has frozen over again between him and Sarkel and they have had to abandon their boats and walk.'

That was news worth the knowing — but I wondered how Morut had discovered it. The little tracker shrugged. 'Tien was with them. They came with only two horses, down the river in those big heavy boats they have. Tien was sent on one horse to Sarkel to find out news and we met, not far beyond the Ditch Bridge.'

Tien. I cursed him, for it was clear he had headed for Kiev to tell all he knew as soon as we had vanished into the Great White.

'Yes,' confirmed Morut, 'but Kiev already knew, for that monk Martin came out of the wilderness, as near death as made little difference. He told all in return for them saving his life — though he lost a foot from the cold.'

Martin. Finn growled and shook his head. 'I wish you had killed him that day in Birka, when you had the chance, Orm,' he said.

That day seemed so long ago as to be no more substantial than breath on polished steel.

'What of Tien?' asked Gyrth, which was clever and which I should have thought to ask. Morut looked blankly from Onund to me, and back again.

'As you know,' he answered slowly, 'we were never friends and once he had told all I wanted to hear I paid him back for the insults. This horse was his.'

No-one said anything to this, though everyone looked at the smooth-faced little tracker with new respect.

I was too busy thinking that Sveinald and his son remained in ignorance of events and knew only that their tracker had not yet returned. They were on foot, too and would be slogging through the ice and cold — so we had time yet.

'Avraham is hoping to command the Sarkel garrison to resist everyone,' Morut went on moodily. 'I think he is a great fool, for the garrison is as much Slav as Khazar these days and even they call it Biela Viezha now. Avraham is blinded by dreams of old greatness. In the end, he will tell the garrison of the silver in the carts and that will persuade them.'

Dobrynya and Sigurd would suspect this, I knew. They would want away before either the garrison at Biela Viezha, or Sveinald's Kiev
druzhina
discovered their haul of silver.

'Why are you telling us all this, little man?' Hauk Fast-Sailor wanted to know, a second before I opened my mouth to ask.

Morut thought on the question and frowned.

'Prince Vladimir did not tell me or Avraham that he planned to leave you to face the
Oior Pata
alone and steal your share of the silver,' he answered. 'It was not a princely matter and I said so to Avraham. He did not care, is of the opinion that you are all unbelieving pagans and deserve everything God inflicts on you.'

'I shall let some of the puff out of that bladder,' Finn promised.

'You do not share this view?' I asked and Morut shook his head.

'It was no matter of mine,' he answered, bold-eyed and truthful. 'I thought that a quarrel over such a large hill of riches was a mountain of folly; there was surely enough for everyone.'

'Just so,' I replied. 'And so you are here. Sent by Vladimir, or his uncle?'

'Sent by no-one, save God. Or Allah, for I have not decided where I will go. The prince does not know I am gone, nor anyone else. I came to see if the
Oior Pata
had killed you —but it seems you have tamed the Man-Haters.'

There was admiration in his voice — then he frowned again. 'Truthfully, it was the blind man's killing I did not like. Nor the way they handled his woman.'

18 Thordis would not stop weeping, even when Finn put his arms awkwardly round her. Eldgrim patted her as if she was a dog or a child, muttering softly, though he had no clear idea why she was breaking her heart out on the cold steppe.

No-one else had much to say; the crushing loss of Kvasir was a burden that made even speaking difficult, so that when Morut had finished the telling of it, there was such a silence that it shrieked.

Kvasir had come up on them, just as the cavalcade of horses, carts and men had reached the bridge over the ditch at Biela Viezha. Here there was nothing more than a rough palisade fence, enough to keep marauding wolves from the yurts and enclosures, for this was the winter camp of steppe people, who came with their goats and their hairy, two-humped camels from further east and their horses and dogs, sheltering in the lee of the scabbed, white walls of the fortress.