The White Raven (8 page)

Well, Finn had the right of that, at least, though I did not know it myself at the time — or even when I was in the joy of it.

But when it happened, Finn came and stood with me in the prow, while the wind lashed our cheeks with our own braids and sluiced us with manes of foam.

The spray fanned up as the
Elk
planed and sliced down the great heave of wave, moving and groaning beneath us like the great beast of the forest itself. Those waves we swept over would not be stopped save by the skerries and the cliffs we had left behind. Only the whales and us dared to match skill and strength with those waves — but only the whales had no fear.

I was filled with the cold and storm, threw back my head, face pebbled with the salt dash of the waves and roared out the sheer delight of being in that moment. When I turned, Finn was roaring and grinning with me, while Thorgunna and the thralls watched us, sour and disapproving, hunched with misery and the deerhounds under a dripping awning that flapped like a mad bird's wing.

'You look a sight,' Finn said, blowing rain off his nose. Which was hard to take from a man wearing a hat whose broad brim had melted down his head in the rain and was kept on his head by a length of tablet-woven braid fastened under his chin.

I said so and he peeled the sodden thing off looking at the ruin of it.

'Ivar's weather hat,' he declared, ruefully. 'There must be a cunning trick to it, for I cannot get it to work.'

'Keep trying,' urged Klepp Spaki, peering miserably out from under his cloak, 'for if you can get the sea to stop heaving my innards up and down, I would be grateful.'

Others nearby chuckled and I wondered, once again, about the wisdom of bringing Klepp along at all. He had turned up at the hall with the rest of some hopefuls and I had taken him for just another looking for an oar on the
Elk,
though he did not look like the usual cut of hard men. When he had announced he was Klepp Spaki, I groaned, for I had forgotten I had put the word out for a rune-carver and now I had no time — nor silver — for his service.

However, he had looked delighted at the news we were off on a raid and said he would do the stone for free if he could take the oath and come with us, for he had never done such a thing and did not feel himself a true man of the vik.

Now he sat under his drenched cloak, hoiking up his guts into the bilges, feeling exactly like a true man of the vik and no doubt wishing he was back in the best place by the fire, which was his due as a runemaster of note. It was a joke on his name, this journey — Spaki meant Wise.

Later, I woke suddenly, jerking out of some dream that spumed away from me as my eyes opened. The deck was wet, but no water washed over the planks and the air was thick with chill, grey and misted with haar that jewelled everyone's beards and hair. Breath smoked.

Thorgunna squatted on the bucket, only her hem-sodden skirts providing some privacy and I saw the thrall women passing out dried fish and wet bread to those on the oars, who were steaming as they pulled, eyes fixed to the lead oar for the timing. No thumping drums here, like they did on Roman ships; we were raiders and never wanted to let folk know we were coming up on them.

Gizur rolled up, blinking pearls from his eyelashes and grinning, the squat mis-shape of Onund hunched in behind him like some tame dancing bear.

'Rain, wind, sleet, haar, flat calm — we have had every season in a few hours,' he said. 'But the
Elk
is sound. No more than cupful has shipped through the planks.'

'More than can be said for my breeks,' grumbled Hauk, picking his way down the deck. Gizur laughed, clapping Onund on his good shoulder so that the water spurted up from the wool. Onund grunted and lumbered, swaying alarmingly, to examine the bilges and ballast stones.

Gizur glanced over at the water. He could read it like a good hunter does a trail and I watched him pitch a wood chip over the side. and study it, judging speed as it slid away down the side of the boat. Two hours later, the haar-mist smoked off the black water and Lambi Ketilsson, whom we called Pai for his peacock ways, stood up in the prow, yelling and pointing.

Black peaks like dog's teeth. Gizur beamed; everyone cheered. 'Now comes the hard part,' Finn reminded everyone loudly and that stuck a sharp blade in the laughter.

Not long after, it started to snow.

The dawn was silver milk over Svartey, the Black Island. We were huddled in a stand of wet-claw trees above Klerkon's camp, where the smoke wisped freshly and figures moved, sluggish as grazing sheep and just woken.

I watched two thralls stumble to the fringe of trees and squat; another fetched wood. The camp stretched and farted itself into a new day and we had been there an hour at least and had seen no-one who could fairly be called a man, only women and thralls. I had seen that Klerkon had built himself a wattle hall, while other ramshackle buildings clustered round it, all easily abandoned come Spring.

I looked across at Finn, who grinned over the great Roman nail he had clenched sideways in his teeth to stop himself howling out like a wolf, which is what he did when he was going to fight. Slaver dripped and his eyes were wild.

We had talked this through while the
Fjord Elk
slid through grey, snow-drifting mist on black water slick and sluggish as gruel.

'It wants to be ice, that water,' grunted Onund and Gizur shushed him, for he was leaning out, head cocked and listening for the sound of shoals, of water breaking on skerries. Now and then he would screech out a short, shrill whistle and listen for it echoing back off stone cliffs. The oars dipped, slow and wary.

'We should talk to Klerkon,' I argued with Finn. 'If we can get Thordis back with no blood shed, all the better.'

Finn grunted. 'We should hit them hard and fast, for he will have more men than us and we must come on them like Mjollnir. If we talk, we give up that and they will laugh in our faces and carve us up.'

'Klerkon may just kill Thordis even if we do strike like Thor's Hammer,' Kvasir pointed out and I waved a hand to quiet his voice for, though we sat with our heads touching, it was not a large boat and Thorgunna was not far away.

'No,' said Finn. 'I am thinking he will keep her to bargain with if it goes badly for him. He wants the secret of Atil's treasure, so she is worth more to him alive.'

It was more likely to go badly with us, for if we could have taken Klerkon surely, I would have done it at Gunnarsgard. Neither of us had had enough men for certain victory then —but, in his own place, Klerkon probably had more. I did not say this, for it was no help; we had not sailed all this way to gather shells on Klerkon's beach.

There was a flurry of movement, some hissed commands and then, with a crunch and a lurch, the
Elk
slid an oak keel scar up the shingle beach of Svartey, the Black Island of Klerkon.

The thralls and women stayed behind, for they were useless in a fight. Gizur and Onund stayed, too, for they were too valuable to the ship to be risked. The rest of us hauled out weapons, checked shield straps, slithered into mail if it was there to be worn.

In the dim before dawn they were grim and glittering with hoar, bearded, tangle-haired under their helmets and grinning the savage grin of wolves on a kill. Hauk Fast Sailor had a bow, which he preferred.

So did Finnlaith, who was a hunter of skill and I had marked that. The rest had good blades, axe or spear.

Few swords. All the blades were dull with sheep grease against the sea-rot.

They were hard men, wild men, rough-dressed and tattered, but their battle gear and blades were cared for as women care for bairns and no matter what they had done before, they had put the words in their own mouths and were bound to each other now, blade-brothers of the Oathsworn.

I reminded them of this at the same time as telling them to leave off the loot and women until we were sure all the fighters were dead. They growled and grunted in the dark, teeth and eyes gleaming.

Then Finn stepped up, a battle leader as was Kvasir. But Kvasir said little at these moments and had seemed even more preoccupied than usual. I took it to be because he had Thorgunna with him; a woman is always a worry.

'It is as Jarl Orm says,' Finn growled. 'Obey him. Obey me and Kvasir Spittle here, too, for we are his right and left hands. You are no strangers to red war, so I will not give you the usual talk, of Hewers of Men and Feeders of Eagles.'

He paused, hauled out his long Roman nail and grinned.

'Just remember — this is Jarl Orm, who slew the White Bear. Jarl Orm, who has stood in the tomb of Atil, Lord of the Huns and has seen more silver in a glance than any of you will see in a thousand lifetimes. Jarl Orm, who has fought with the Romans against the Serklanders. Jarl Orm, who is called friend by the Emperor of the Great City.'

I winced at all this, only some of which was true — but Finn's audience would have howled and set up a din of shield-clanging if we had not been looking for stealth.

As we moved off, I saw Thorkel grin at me and raise his axe in salute and I realized that a lot of those things had been done by me right enough. I was now in my twenty-first year in the world, no longer the boy Thorkel had let into the Oathsworn on a shingle beach like this one, on a night much like this one, six years ago. I touched the dragon-ended silver torc round my neck, that great curve that snarled at itself and marked me as a man men followed.

No-one challenged us as we watched and waited above Klerkon's holding, looking to count hard men and seeing none. The trees dripped. A bird fluttered in, was shocked and whirred out again, cackling. I did not like this and said so.

'We had better move fast,' said Kvasir, his mouth fish-breath close to my face. 'Sooner or later we will give ourselves away and the lighter it gets . . .'

The sky was all silver, dulling to lead beyond the huddle of wattle huts. I half-rose and hauled out my sword — not the sabre this time, but a good, solid weapon given to me by King Eirik himself, with little silver inserts hammered into the cross-guard and a fat silver oathing ring in the pommel. I had a shield, but it was mostly for show, since I only had two fingers and a thumb on that hand to grip it with and any sound blow would wrench it away.

Grunting, red-faced, teeth grinding on his nail, Finn slid down through the trees, letting the rest of us follow. He had The Godi, his big sword, in one hand and carried no shield. The free hand was for that nail.

Then, just as he was seen by. the two thralls squatting to shit, he ripped the nail from his mouth, threw back his head and let out a howl that raised the hairs on my arms.

The Oathsworn wolfed down on the camp, skilled and savage and sliding together like ship planks. The first thralls, gawping in terror and surprise with their
kjafal
flapping round their knees, vanished in a red flurry of blows and it was clear, from the start, that there were no warriors here.

Well, there was, but not much of one. He barrelled out of a doorway with only his breeks on, mouth red and wet and screaming in his mad-bearded face and a great shieldbreaker sword swinging.

Finn and Kvasir, like two wolves on a kill, swung right and left and, while Mad Beard was turning his shaggy head, deciding which one to go for first, Finn darted in with his Roman nail and Kvasir snarled from the other side with his axe, though he missed by a foot with his first swing. It did not matter much, though, for there were two of them and only one defender.

When they broke apart, panting, tongues lolling like dogs, I saw that the man they had been hacking to bloody pats of flesh was Amundi, who was called Brawl. We had all shared ale and laughed round the same fire three summers before.

'So much for him, then,' growled Finn, giving the ruined thing a kick. He shot Kvasir a hard look and added accusingly, 'You need more practice with that axe.'

I had done nothing much in the fight save snarl and wave a menacing blade at a couple of thralls armed with snatched-up wood axes, who thought better of it and dropped them, whimpering. Now I watched these hard men, the new Oathsworn, do what they did best, standing back and weighing them up, for this was a new crew to me for the most part. It was also an old crew, let loose like a pack of hunting dogs too-long kennelled.

Hlenni Brimill and Red Njal and Hauk Fast-Sailor were old Oathsworn, yet they raved through that place, mad with the lust of it, so that the terror in faces only made them worse. Others, too, showed that they were no strangers to raiding and, for all that I had done this before, this time seemed too bloody and harsh, full of screaming women, dying bairns and revenge.

I saw Klepp Spaki, bent over with hands on his thighs, retching up at the sight of Brawl's bloody mess.

Now he knew the truth of the bold runes he carved for brave raiders who would never come home.

I saw Thorkel and Finnlaith laughing and slithering in the mud trying to round up a couple of pigs, which was foolish. We wanted no livestock on this raid — we had provision enough for where we were going.

It was the others who brought red war and ruin to that place. Women and thralls died there, right away or later, after they had been used. Weans died, too.

In the dim, blue-smoked hall, men overturned benches, flung aside hangings, cursed and slapped thralls, looking for loot. When they saw me, they fell silent and went still. Ospak, Tjorvir and Throst Silfra, like three bairns caught in the larder with stolen apples, dropped their thieving when they saw me. It was a half-naked, weeping thrall woman they had stripped between them — but they only dropped her because I had told them to leave the women until we were sure all the fighting men were dead.

Finn lost himself in it — him most of all. Like a drunk kept from ale, he dived headfirst into the barrel and tried to drown himself, losing his sense so much that I had to save him from the boy who was trying to avenge his mother. Since Finn had killed her before he flung her down on a dead ox in the yard and started humping her, it was futile, but I had to kill the boy anyway, for he had a seax at Finn's exposed back.