Robert Low - The Whale Road

Ànd?'

I shrugged. 'Something happened there. Something that drove her into the clutch of Vigfus—but something that haunts her dreams still.'

À fetch?' demanded Einar.

I nodded. The restless spirit of the dead, the fetch, sometimes invaded other bodies, or walked around in their old shape until some strange design of their own had been accomplished. Everyone knew it.

`She says she must get back to the forge. I don't know why, but it seems if she does, she will know where the Atil sword now lies. And the hoard with it.'

Einar stroked his moustaches. He had, I noticed, shaved his cheeks and his hair was washed and nit-combed clean. I felt my own filth more as a result.

Ìnteresting,' he mused. `Vigfus is far behind and heading in the wrong direction, towards the god stone that is no use to him. Starkad knows only this village by name and seeks a Christ ikon that no longer exists in the same shape.'

`So, if we can get to this forge and the woman really does then know where the hoard is . . .' I added.

`We can leave them all behind,' finished Einar. He tapped in a rivet and nodded sombrely at me. 'You have done well. Let us forget the unpleasantness between us. You have, as Illugi Godi is pleased to remind me, an old head on young shoulders.' He squinted at me. 'Shoulders which, I am noticing, have filled since last autumn.'

He rose, moved to his sea-chest and rummaged in it, coming out with a long hauberk of mail. It was, I recalled, the one stripped from the dead fyrd leader after the fight at St Otmund's chapel.

I caught it when he threw it at me and, when I slipped it on over my raised arms, the weight made me stagger a little, but it fitted well round the shoulders and was suitably loose round the waist that a cinched belt would take the rest of the weight off.

He nodded. 'Take it. You have earned it.'

I bowed to him, as I had seen others do with Gudleif, and that pleased him. I fastened on my swordbelt and swaggered back to the fires, one hand on the hilt, salt-stained seaboots stumping.

There were good-natured catcalls and jeers and backslaps when the rest of them saw it—and not a few envious stares from older hands, who would have loved such a gift and thought a beardless youth didn't deserve it.

My father was prouder than I was of it and offered advice on its care. 'Roll it in a barrel of fine sand for a day,' he advised and everyone hooted tears at that—fine sand for a day. On this gods-cursed shore.

But all the time I was thinking to myself that I would not trust Einar, oath or not.

And, across the fire, I saw the fierce, yellow-eyed stare of naked hatred that came from Ulf-Agar, for all that he was still weak and bruised.

Life, I thought, bending and wriggling the mail off, to the thigh-slapping roars of laughter at this first attempt, was simpler when I climbed sheer cliffs for gull eggs.

6 The way the tales tell it, raiders from the sea always arrive out of the mist. Even our own sagas have followed this in recent times, with high-prowed shapes, black against the sea mist, sprinting for the unsuspecting shore to spew out armed warriors like strewn dragon teeth.

This, I know now, is because the only ones who can write about it at all were usually not there and heard it from those who hadn't sailed anywhere. Monks, the curse of truth.

And the truth is always less than the tale. We arrived at a place called Kjartansfjord out of a mist thick as gruel, gliding on black water and moving so slowly an old man swimming could have overtaken us.

Out in front, in a leaking coracle of withy and sealskin, was Pinleg, a torch in hand and more oil-soaked wrappings at his feet to keep it fed. I was on the oar and a long line ran back to the prow of the Elk, so that it looked as if we were towing her.

In fact, we were making sure there was nothing that would splinter her, while not getting lost in the mist ourselves.

In the prow of the Elk I could see my father, peering at the water. Beside him, swathed in my long, hooded cloak, was Hild and it was her we had to thank for being able to find this fishing village and fjord at all, which lay at the mouth of an estuary, further east and north than we cared to be, right up in the Karelian lands of the Finn.

Some twenty miles up the river lay her home—and the forge—so she knew the landmarks and that was just as well, for even my father's skill would never have found this place in the fog.

We crept in, like fearful sheep. Those not at the Elk's oars were armed and grim, for no one could be sure what waited for us here.

`Ship,' called Pinleg and waved the torch side to side, a signal for the Elk to back water.

Ìt's a knarr,' he added a moment later and looked at me, licking lips that were as dry as my own, despite the slick mist-wet that soaked us. We waited, slipping so slowly through water so flat and still it could have been ice; we made scarcely a ripple on it.

`Not Vigfus,' Pinleg said a moment later, the relief clear in his voice, 'but I don't know whose ship it is.

Besides it, there are only fishing boats.'

The knarr turned out to belong to Slovarkan, a trader from Aldeigjuborg. A number of the Oathsworn, being Rus from Novgorod and Kiev, had wives and family in that place, which stood at the mouth of the Tanais, and which had featured in my dreams ever since I'd heard someone say of my father that he was 'off down the Tanais'.

In my daydreams, the Tanais was a silvered serpent of a river, gliding through a land of fables, rich with treasure and adventure.

It doesn't exist at all, though, being a single name for the Volkhov, the Syas, the Mologa and all the rivers, portages, rapids and cataracts that lead from Aldeigjuborg in the north to Kiev and, eventually, the Black Sea. Along the Tanais came glass from Serkland, silk from the far Cathay lands, narrow-necked bottles from east of the Caspian, embroidered pouches from the lands of the steppe tribes—and, once, silver from beyond the steppe, from places with names like Tashkent.

But, as Slovarkan bemoaned moodily, when he realised we were less of a threat than he'd first thought, there was no silver. Sviatoslav, the great Prince of the Rus, was thrashing about against the Bulgars and the Khazars and had stopped the flow. Some, Slovarkan added darkly, were saying it was even worse, that the mines of Serkland and Tashkent were played out, which probably meant the end of the world.

We listened politely and sorted out our gear, made shelters on the shingle and, when the sun burned off the mist, went up the beach to the huddle of houses that marked the small village to try to tempt the fled people back.

Small was too big a word for it. Its name—Kjartansfjord—was bigger than it was. It was a fishing port, loud with screaming gulls and whitened with their shit. Its one big feature was a stone-built jetty where the terns dipped and wheeled. The shingle beach was webbed with strung nets.

Einar, I knew, would rather not have stopped here at all, would rather have used the mist to sneak past into the river and on up it without trace. But we needed food and water and ale. We needed time to dry out, repair, replace—but the best we could find in Kjartansfjord was some coarse, hard bread, some new rope, ships' nails and all the fish we could store away once the people realised we hadn't come to rob them.

In the end, they robbed us, which was what always happened when the Oathsworn tried trading.

Slovarkan had a cargo of hoes, axes, saws and spades, practical stuff likely to be in bigger demand than exotic bottles from east of the Caspian—but he also had three dozen bolts of good wool cloth in various colours. Since Einar had a bucket of silver, both parties were delighted to trade and a morning was spent weighing, clipping and sorting hacksilver while the ragged Oath-sworn went off with cloth to try to replace the worst of their clothing.

Einar, at first, was all for sailing on upriver the next day, as Slovarkan's knarr slipped out on the tide, southbound. He was convinced that either the trader would meet Starkad, or Starkad's drakkar would arrive at any moment.

Of course, Valgard and Rurik then pointed out that the Elk needed attention and that, if Einar sailed it upriver, he was as good as penned like a sacrificial ram. Better, they said, if the Elk hauled off down the coast a way with a minimum crew. Repairs could be done—nails had worked loose, the mast stays were frayed—while the rest went on to the forge.

That day, under wool-cloth shelters—no one wanted to stay in the stinking fish huts of the locals, even if it pissed down—two things happened that made Einar decide to send the Elk away.

The first seemed innocent enough. Pinleg was Odin's man—I found out why this day—and very devout, almost as deeply as Valknut. Whenever we made landfall, he would make a cairn of stones and decorate it with raven feathers, much frayed with use, that he kept for the purpose.

There were also Christ-followers—Martin the monk was now to be found sitting with them—and it had never been a problem. But that weasel of a monk knew what he was about and it was this day that made Einar realise what a danger he was and made me wish I had kept my blade edge-on to his tonsured head.

I was sitting, boiling leather strips to soften them and wrapping them round the metal rim of my shield before they hardened. Then I would tap them home with some rivet nails I had managed to get.

I had wanted to do this since the fight at St Otmund's chapel, when the boy's sword had bounced off the rim in a shower of sparks. The wild bounce of it had almost laid my cheek open, so I had decided then to give an enemy edge something to bite on rather than leap off.

Not that it had done that boy any good. I remembered the rain pooling in his open eyes and shivered, at which Hild placed her hand quietly on my shoulder. She was sitting behind me, braiding my hair, which had grown long and was falling in my eyes as I tried to work on the shield.

I felt the touch and tried not to let my face flame. The winks and nudges of the others, the first time she had done something like this—repairing rents in my cloak had made me wish she'd go away. Since then, I found myself enjoying her company. I was almost happy.

In fact, we exchanged smiles, her lips still chapped and swollen. She liked to be busy—it kept her from thinking too much. But nothing kept her from those moments of . . . absence . . . when her eyes rolled up and she was gone elsewhere. Into the dark.

Valknut said this sort of failing sounded to him like the falling sickness, for someone in the farm next to the one he was born on had it: a girl, he recalled. He said it was a disease that came from some Roman king, the one who was so great all the subsequent Roman kings took his name for their glory.

`She used to fall like a cut tree,' he remembered. 'Then she jerked and thrashed and foamed at the mouth, much like a man I once saw hit with an axe that laid his head open so that the inside fell out. But she was whole. Her family were used to it and all of them carried strips of leather to shove in her mouth, otherwise she would have bitten through her own tongue.'

But I did not think this was the same thing at all—or, if it was, it was a lesser version. Hild did not foam at the mouth or thrash. She just hugged herself and wailed and went away somewhere else.

I was enjoying the feeling of her at my hair as I tapped away at the shield and was aware, on the edge of my vision, that Pinleg was at his little cairn, reciting from memory the forty-eight names of Odin.

And Hring walked up to him, stood for a moment, then said, 'We think you should pull that down, for it is a heathen affront to good Christ-men.'

All those who heard it were so astonished they couldn't speak. I saw that all the Oathsworn's Christ-sworn, about a dozen of them, were standing apart, with Martin the monk lurking at their back. I saw, too, that he and Einar were looking at each other across the shingle, a battle of eyes as harsh as two rutting deer locking horns.

Pinleg stopped his reciting and slowly turned to face Hring, leaning slightly to one side as he favoured his good leg. 'Touch that cairn,' he said quietly, 'and I will take off your head and piss down your neck.'

`You are an arch-pagan,' Hring persisted, but he stumbled over the word, so that all those who heard knew it was not his own, Pinleg included. Einar caught Illugi Godi's eye, jerked his head slightly and Illugi moved to intercept the quarrel before it went too far. But he arrived too late.

Àrch-pagan,' repeated Pinleg and curled his lip. 'You can't even say it, you arse. I hear the words, but the voice belongs to that dung-faced little fuck hiding behind you all.'

Hring flushed at that, for it was true and he was aware that he had delivered his challenge badly.

Embarrassment and frustration made him stupid. 'He has two good legs, though,' he said.

There was the briefest of pauses; the world held its breath. It was unspoken, but a rule, that no one made a joke of Pinleg's crippled limb. Even Hring knew he had gone too far. Perhaps, like me, he had reasoned that runty Pinleg was no danger.

When the focus of the quarrel then landed up in his balls, swung with considerable force, driving the air out of him with a savage whoof and the pain into him with a leap of blinding tears, he should have seen sense.

Instead, writhing, his hands clutched between his legs, he screamed out through the snot and tears and pain: 'Holmgang!'

Once out, it couldn't be put back. The news that Pinleg and Hring were to fight spread and even those away on a hunt hurried back.

Illugi Godi, after consulting with a grim-faced Einar, had the proper area paced out and roped off with strips of cloth and as much true ceremony as could be mustered under the circumstances. Then Pinleg and Hring appeared, stripped to the waist, bareheaded and armed with sword and a shield.

The holmgang was simple enough. You fought in an enclosed area with no armour and the same weapons. If you put one foot outside—going on the heel, as it was called—you lost. If your blood was spilled, you lost. If you ran, you lost—and were counted a nithing, with no honour. The only other way out was to win. There's a lot more ceremony and a few more rules, but that's the weft of it and all anyone standing in the square of it needs to know.

Pinleg looked ridiculous, a white body with ribs showing, scrawny as an old chicken. Another of the Oathsworn, who had never seen him fight, actually jeered. Hring was much more powerfully built and stepped up, swinging his sword to loosen his arm.

But I saw Pinleg was muttering to himself, that his head was shaking and I felt the hairs all over my body prickle.

They stepped into the roped area and Illugi Godi began the ritual, cleansing the combat, making sure no bloodprice penalty lasted with the winner from his friends or family.