Robert Low - The Whale Road

The monk spluttered, wiped his nose, coughed out an answer. 'A spear. Once. Thrust. Into the side of our Lord by the Romans.'

Àh,' mused Einar.

Illugi Godi nodded sagely. 'Touched by the blood of a god, it would be a powerful thing.'

`Forged now into a sword,' someone said. The whole crew, I realised, was spellbound, for the monk's answers had been screamed out for all to hear.

A sword. Made from god-touched metal. It was saga stuff, mother's milk to the likes of us. There were great things in the world: silver hoards, fine horses, beautiful women. But no prize was better than a runespelled sword.

Ànd the woman? What is she to this?'

Martin spat and heaved in breath. He looked like a rat fresh from a cesspit. 'She is of the blood of the smiths who made the sword. She . . . knows where it is.'

No one blinked at that, though some shot anxious glances back towards the woman, for a witch was bad luck on a ship. Bad luck anywhere, I was thinking.

`Does Vigfus know this?' Einar demanded and Martin, rocking back and forward, ruined hand cradled in his good one, shook his head and whimpered.

`He knows of the god stone, though,' Ketil Crow offered. 'He will seek it, not knowing it will do him no good—nor us, for it will bring him in the same direction as we travel now.'

À runesword,' growled Einar, ignoring him. 'A man with that would be a hero king indeed.' He looked around and grinned. 'A man with that, a mountain of silver and a crew like the Oathsworn need fear no kings.'

They whooped and cheered and pounded on each other, the deck, anything. As it died away and they went back to duties, or to huddle against the mirr, Einar turned, his grin fading as he saw my face, which I foolishly failed to disguise. Its black, scowling ugliness made him recoil a little.

`That's a face to sour milk,' he noted, annoyed. 'When everyone else laughs.'

Èxcept Eyvind,' I pointed out, 'who is not here.'

Then he knew, as did Illugi Godi who was close enough to hear and put a hand on my arm.

Èyvind broke oath with us,' Einar growled. 'He put us all in danger with his Loki curse for firing everything.'

Àn oath is an oath. The one I swore did not say that foolishness or a curse made it worthless and got you killed.'

Illugi Godi nodded, which Einar caught. His scowl deepened. 'I think you are smarting because you had to lose your breeks in the street,' he said slowly. 'It seems to me that your gift is in need of maturing before it is of use to me. It seems to me that you would be better staying with the woman.'

He stared at me and I knew I had been mortally insulted and was entitled to be angry. But this was Einar and I was so new I squeaked still. I quailed under that glass-black gaze.

Ì will call if I need you,' he added and jerked his head in dismissal.

I stumbled away on watery legs and slumped down next to the woman. I heard Einar bark something angrily at Illugi and then there was silence, save for the creak-thump of the mast and stays and the hiss of the keelwater.

My father and Einar then huddled briefly and Martin was dragged over to join them. It was clear that a course was planned.

The sail came down, the shields and oars came in—you could not heel the boat over on a tack otherwise—then the men bent to it and hauled the Elk's head round on to the new course, where the whole ship was re-rigged once more and sprang into its mad gallop.

I did not have to ask my father where we headed, for it was obvious: to the forge where the woman was taken. She was going home.

The rain fell, the woman muttered and rolled her eyes up into her head and the Elk sped on, out along the whale road—and nothing was the same again.

Four days later the woman was burning with fever and babbling and Hring was casting hooks on lines behind, baited with coloured strips of cloth in a forlorn attempt to catch fish.

But, as Bagnose observed gloomily, they would have to be flying fish to catch up with the Fjord Elk.

Meanwhile, the water in the stoppered leather bottles was being filtered through two layers of fine linen to get rid of the floaters.

Then an oar snapped with a high, sharp sound as a blade finally caught sideways on to the waves. The shards flew, the butt end leaped up and the shield slammed back across the thwarts. A man howled as it cracked his forearm.

And Pinleg, in the prow as lookout, called out, 'Land!'

My father turned expectantly to Einar, who glowered and said nothing. So my father gave a short curse, then yelled out, `Shield oars inboard. Sail down. Move!'

For a moment, I thought Einar would leap to his feet, and braced myself to spring at him. But he only shifted, as if cocking a buttock to fart, then settled again, stroking his beard and staring blackly at the deck.

The speed came off the Elk like ice melting under salt. It felt like we were wallowing suddenly.

`To oars.'

Stiff, wet, we climbed up and took position on our sea-chest benches. I hauled with the rest of them; the head of the Elk came round, slowly, slowly, and she started to inch her way across the swell, rolling like a drowned pig now, all grace gone.

We slithered into the shelter of a bay, with a low, grey headland where tufts of harsh grass, tawny as wheat, waved softly and patches of green showed through the russets and yellow. Seaweed and lichens crusted the stones studding a beach of coarse, wet sand, meadow-grass was already sprouting shoots beyond that and there was a flush of green shoots on the birch and willow clumps. Two small rivers trickled together to empty into a shallow tidal estuary.

We splashed ashore, dragging the Elk a little way up the sand, as far as we could on shaky legs and on that tide. Birds sang and the resin-tang of life was everywhere. When the sun came out, everyone was cheered; Bagnose began more verses and the Oath-sworn swung back into the rhythm of things.

But nothing was the same.

Shelters were built, short-term affairs of springy branches roofed with wadmal cloth, the stuff we used to repair tears in the sail.

Some men took off on a hunt, having spotted deer slots, Steinthor and Bagnose among them, quartering ahead like hounds. Hring and two others dug trenches in the sand shallows to catch tidal-trapped fish, while I scuffed along the wide curve of the beach, gathering dulse and mussels until my back ached.

By nightfall, fires were lit and everyone had eaten well. The hunters had come back with some small game and a wild duck, shot in mid-flight by Steinthor, who claimed it was a lucky strike, though others disagreed. Bagnose, on the other hand, had missed and was still grumbling about having lost the arrow.

People began to dry out clothing and I had managed to wrap the woman in something warm, in a dry but where a fire was lit just for her, since Einar knew her value. He had also paired Martin and me to make sure she lived and if ever anything spoke of his anger with me, that was it.

I was less angry than I thought I would be. Caring for the woman was a lot better than the back-breaking task I would surely have been given: four hours of bailing out the Elk for Valgard.

And there was something about the woman. I had stripped her with the monk's help, although he was less than helpful since he insisted on doing it with his eyes averted, - which was awkward, to say the least.

In the dim, gloomy light of the horn lantern, guttering because the whale oil in it was thick and old, she was fish-belly white, so that the bruises and welts stood out on her skin.

Illugi Godi, when he arrived with a wooden bucket of cold seawater for compresses, sucked his teeth and glared at Martin when he saw it.

`Vigfus; sighed the monk mournfully, hugging his ruined hand under one armpit. 'He misused her, I am afraid.'

She lay, feverish, open-eyed and staring, but seeing nothing. I cleaned a lot of the filth from her, saw the flare of cheekbones and the full, ripe lips and realised she was a beauty.

À princess, perhaps,' Martin agreed, wringing out the cloth. From outside came the mutter and growl and bursts of raucous laughter that marked contented men relaxing. I wanted to be there. My father was there and I saw, with a sharp pang, that I didn't fit with him, or them. That perhaps I never would.

Ì'm hungry,' I said. 'I will watch her if you fetch food.'

Martin scrambled to his feet, wincing. I could almost feel the throb of that wounded finger, which he should have had cauterised, lest it fester and the rot spread so that his hand or even arm might need to come off. I told him so and he paled, whether at the idea of losing the limbs or having it seared with a hot iron, I did not know. Both, probably.

The woman stirred on the pallet of soft rushes and cloth, spoke again in that infuriating speech, so near to something I could understand, yet still foolishness. Her eyes opened; she saw me, stared, said nothing.

`How do you feel?' I asked.

Nothing.

Ì am Orm,' I said slowly and patiently, as to a child. Òrm,' I added, patting my chest. `You?' And I indicated her.

Her mouth moved, but nothing came. After all that babble, I thought wryly, now there is no sound at all.

Martin reappeared with two bowls of what smelled like meat stew. There was bread, fire-dried and with most of the mould cut off, and his arms were full of leather cups and a matching bottle.

The woman saw him and thrashed wildly, backing away. I held her, made soothing noises, but her wild eyes were fixed on him and she bucked and kicked until, exhausted, she couldn't move.

`Leave the food and go,' I said, 'otherwise she will be like this and no help to herself. Or Einar.'

He blanched at that name. 'I did nothing to her,' he bleated. But he left my bowl and cup and went.

I fed her small portions of the meat stew, which she sucked greedily, but seemed too weak to make much of. But when I looked, a fair bit of it had gone down her neck.

'Hild,' she said, suddenly, as I wiped gravy as gently as I could from lips whose fullness, I realised, had a lot to do with being swollen and split.

'Hild,' I repeated and grinned, pleased at this progress. She almost smiled, but her lips cracked open and oozed blood and she winced. Then, abruptly, she stiffened.

`Dark,' she said, staring at me, though I realised she couldn't see me at all. 'Dark. Alone. Dark. In the dark . . .'

Her eyes rolled up to the whites and she was gone, back into the babble. But I had understood her, saw now that she spoke some broad dialect of which I could understand one word in four. It was some form of Finn, which I had known because of Sigurd, Gudleif's other fostri, who had come from that land.

A tear squeezed, fat and quivering, from under one eyelid and rolled down her neck. When Illugi Godi came with salves he had made for the bruises and welts, I told him what had happened and he sat back on his heels and considered, pursing his lips. A louse moved in his beard and he plucked it absently and crushed it, still thinking.

`Well, at least Einar will have some more of this puzzle, but whether it solves anything is harder to tell,'

he mused. 'At least he may be more pleased with you, boy.'

`Not I with him,' I responded and he nodded sadly.

Àye, he is in the wrong. Eyvind deserved better and to break an oath is a bad thing. I think he knows it, too.'

`Perhaps the message from Odin's raven was meant for him then,' I offered and Illugi looked at me cautiously.

`You have too many years for one so young,' he muttered tersely and left, leaving the salves behind.

That night I dreamed of a white bear I couldn't seem to avoid, one with black eyes who chased me round a wind-lashed room full of spars and sails and finally landed on my chest, a great weight, bearing down . . .

I woke with something warm and heavy on my body, the but lit only by the remaining embers of the fire.

I tried to sit up but a hand shot out, long and white and strong enough to shove hard on my breastbone and force me back on to the bed.

Her hair was hanging down in mad tangles, her cheekbones flaring in the red light, her eyes clear and black—black as Einar's own, I noted. There were shadows under them and harsh lines carving the sides of that slapped-red mouth. The strong hand which fastened me to the bed had stark blue veins, proud on the pale skin.

Mesmerised, I watched her sway above me, lean down, stare into my eyes.

Òrm,' she said and I could not move. 'I know what you seek. I know where the forge is. I went there, but was too big to get in, too afraid. The other . . . the Christ priest's hound caught me. But I must go back. Take me back. I have to find a way to the dark . . . to the dark place where she is.'

And she was gone, fallen forward on to me, with no more weight than a husk and for all that it was a thump, it drove no breath out of me—just the opposite. I found myself holding her, caging her as her head lay on my chest, with the Thor hammer/cross biting into her cheek.

And I fell asleep like that, holding her—though, in the morning, she lay asleep in her own pallet and I wondered if I had dreamed it, but she woke and smiled at me and I saw that she was scarce older than I was.

And then she talked.

After I had fetched her gruel and water, I went to Einar and found him cross-legged under an awning, fixing the boss of his shield back on. Men were busy with tasks; I saw Hring, out in the faering, trying for fish at the mouth of the estuary.

I sat down opposite Einar and waited, Eventually, he deigned to look up at me, taking some rivet nails from his lips under the black waterfall of his hair.

`The woman is called Hild,' I told him. `She is a Finn and her village is two days up the coast from here.

Her father was called Regin and his father before him and so on back into the dim. Every smith was called Regin and the village name is Koksalmi.'

The black eyes fixed mine. 'How can you talk to her?'

Òne of Gudleif's other fostris was a Finn. I learned enough from him.'

Einar stroked his moustaches and looked towards the hut. 'What makes this Finn woman so special?'

`She is revered because she has the blood of the old smiths,' I went on. 'There is no smith there now and has not been for many years. The last one made the sword for Atil, she says, and no one but her knows the way into the forge now. All those with the blood seem to know it, but of this part I am unclear. She, too, I think. It does not seem to be a secret passed on, just something that . . . is.'

`Why is the forge important? Why is she?'

I nodded, having anticipated that. 'The monk found out that this magic Christ spear he sought had been taken there long ago and sent Vigfus to see if it was still hidden there and, if so, get it. When Vigfus failed, he tried to seize Hild, seeing she was so esteemed by the villagers and hoping they would hand it over in return for her life. She fled, to the forge, I am thinking . . . I stopped, for here her tale had splintered into fragments.