Robert Low - The Whale Road

`You have nothing at all, monk,' Einar said in a voice thick and slow as a moving glacier. 'You have your life only by my leave.'

Hild shook her head, as if scattering water from her. 'I know where the sword of Attila is. I can take you there, far to the east, along the Khazars' river.'

`Where in the name of Odin's arse is that?' demanded Einar.

Ì know,' said Pinleg like an eager boy. No one laughed now, not after what they had seen him do. 'It's down the Don,' he announced triumphantly.

`The Don?' repeated Einar.

`That's Khazar territory,' insisted Pinleg. Ìf it is the same Khazars who spit little arrows at you and worship the god of the Jewish men.'

`The same,' Hild said and there was silence, loud as a clanging hammer. The shock of it all was still chilling us when one of the door guards came in out of the dark tunnel, blinking into the light.

`Rurik says to come quick,' he told Einar, `for something has happened.'

`Rurik? What is he doing here?'

We charged out, back along the passages and into the daylight, where the weak sun seemed searing and blinding. Blinking, we saw Rurik and Valgard Trimmer and four others. My father, grim-faced, stepped forward and I saw he had a bloody, unbound cut along the length of his forearm, seeping thickly through the rent in his tunic.

Òne of Starkad's ships came,' he said, `with Starkad and Ulf-Agar. There was a fight; eight of us were killed.'

`How did you get the Elk away with so few?' demanded Einar.

My father paused, scrubbed his face and the sickening realisation was dawning on us all before he even told us.

`We didn't. We came overland, with Starkad hot on our heels. We left the Elk burning to the waterline.'

8 It was at that moment that most saw how Einar's doom was on him and most blamed it on the fact he had broken his oath. Einar, too, knew it, but he needed the crew still—more than ever at that moment—and I saw him meet his wyrd standing straight and with Loki cunning.

`Well,' he said with a whetstone smile, looking round the stunned, angry faces to men who knew they were stranded on a hostile shore. 'Now we need the Oathsworn.'

And he turned, moving away from the forge mountain as the sun started dying on the edge of the world, heading uphill.

There was a flurry of mutters, argument traded for argument. One or two, either those who had worked it out, or those who would follow Einar into Helheim, shouldered their gear one more time and loped after him, long shadows bobbing. One was my father. Eventually, the others followed, grumbling about everything and especially why they were going uphill yet again.

`Hold, I'll bind that,' I called and my father turned, grinning at the black sight of me.

`You need to wash behind your ears, boy,' he growled and I laughed with him and tore up my last clean underkirtle from my bundle to use on his forearm. It was a long, wicked cut, oozing blood.

`Seax,' he grunted.

`You should have kept out of the way, old man,' I said with a smile. His eyes, when they met mine, were brimming. He had lost the Elk. I felt it for him, but could do nothing more than concentrate on my knots and finish the binding.

`What now?' I asked him as he turned away and, to be fair, he knew what I meant at once.

Ìn the end, everyone will see the same thing,' he said quietly. 'Einar broke oath and the gods are taking his luck. So now every man will be wondering what it will cost him to do the same.'

Èinar broke oath with Eyvind, so I can break oath with Einar,' I replied angrily. 'So can you. So can anyone. The gods can find no fault with that, surely.'

My father patted my arm gently, as if I was still a child. 'You are new to this, boy. Use that gift Einar prizes you for and I an proud of you for.'

Bewildered, I could only stare. The others, grumbling and still arguing, were hefting their stuff and following on up the hill, into the twilight.

My father smiled and said, 'Can you break your oath to Einar, yet keep it with me?'

I saw, with a shock of clarity, what Einar had meant. We had sworn an oath to each other, not just to him, and that would keep us bound, for the more his luck went bad, the more he stood as a monument to what happens when you break the oath.

Yet the worse his luck got, the more we suffered. It went round and round, like the dragon coiled round the World Tree, tail in mouth.

My father nodded, seeing all of that chase across my face. 'An oath,' he said, 'is a powerful thing.'

I brooded on it all the way back to where we camped, halfway up the forge mountain, where Einar sat alone, arms wrapped round his knees, his face hidden by the crow wings of his hair. There were no fires, little talk and, when it was too dark to check blades and straps, men lay down and, if they had them, wrapped themselves in cloaks and tried to sleep.

I wondered if, like me, they felt the doom of it all: a band, oathbound to an oath-breaker, followed a madwoman on a quest after treasure that was more fable than real. A. skald would not dare make it into a saga tale for fear of the laughter.

More than likely, I realised later, they were brooding and miserable because their sea-chests had all gone up in flames, with everything they had left in them.

Skapti and Ketil Crow made sure men kept watch, though I was excused after my labours of earlier. I sat and worried at the problem like a hound with a well-chewed bone, so lost in it that it took me a long while to realise that Hild had come up, silent and stately, hugging the spear-shaft to her like a baby.

She said nothing, just sat down, not quite beside me, not far away. Although I couldn't see him in the darkness, I was aware of Martin, watching, waiting. I was glad he was still leashed to Skapti.

Dawn was another milky-gruel affair, with a creeping ground mist that disturbed everyone, but they generally agreed that Einar, doomed or not, was still a deep thinker for battle. He had taken us above the mist and anyone creeping up would, sooner or later, have to step out on to that bare, cragged skull of a hill and meet us fairly.

Some, of course, were all for getting away, but Ketil Crow, Skapti and the others put them straight: it was far too late for that. Starkad had sent men to follow Rurik and the survivors from the Elk. He was coming and there would be a fight.

And all this time Einar said nothing, though he was found already on his feet dressed for battle and wearing a dark blue cloak, fastened with an impressive ringpin of silver, worked with red stones. He spent the morning staring down the hill at the mists, stroking his moustache, while men sorted out their gear and checked and rechecked straps and shields.

Then, like an eerie wind, there came the sound of a lowing horn, distant and mournful.

`That's not clever,' muttered Valknut. `He'll have those villagers out.'

The horn sounded again, closer. Einar whirled, his cloak billowing, and pointed silently to Ketil Crow, Skapti, Valknut—and me. He looked at us all from eyes deep-sunk as mine shafts, then spoke as if his teeth were nailed to each other. `Skapti, make sure the monk stays fastened to you. He is what Starkad wants most.

Orm, keep the woman with you also. Brondolf Lambisson will have told him much, but he knows little of the woman and nothing of how valuable she is to us. Valknut, break out the banner and guard it.'

He paused, turned to Ketil Crow, whose languid stare never wavered. 'If I fall,' he added, 'you take the Oathsworn back to where the Elk was burned. Starkad's ship is there. It is my intent to cut them up badly here. He has one ship, will have left guards and has, I suspect, a hundred men here, perhaps fifteen or twenty guarding his drakkar. It may be possible to take it and that is what I intend.'

Again he paused and gave a twisted smile. `None can escape their wyrd,' he growled, `but there is no reason why the Norns should have an easy weave of it and I will postpone the final shearing of those three sisters yet.'

We watched him stride off and no one spoke. It was the first time he had come close to admitting his doom and it was unnerving, so that you didn't want to be close to it. We broke apart and went to our tasks.

I was concerned about Hild. I could hardly leash her to me and so would have to stand with her to make sure she didn't take it into her head to run off. That meant I couldn't stand in the shieldwall and, apart from the fact that every blade was needed, it would have been the first shieldwall ever for me. Mailed, I would have been in the front rank, the place of honour—though those in it called themselves the Lost. Except, I thought moodily, I would miss it, guarding this girl.

`You look like a sulky boy,' she said brightly. 'All you need is to scuff the ground with a toe.'

Guiltily, I shot her a look, then chuckled at how right she was. Some front-rank warrior me. She sat, primly adjusting the ruins of my cloak. I saw she wore a pair of men's breeks, too, last seen in Valknut's pack. Saw, too, that she was calm, alert, completely unlike the rolling-eyed maniac of before.

Almost too calm, in fact. As she turned and smiled a lavish smile, my heart turned and my stomach, too, because there was something unnatural about it.

`When the time comes,' she said, 'we will run that way.' And she pointed left, to where the ground dipped into brush.

I had no time to query it, for the horn-blast was on us. Bagnose and Steinthor flitted out to the wings of the forming line and the shieldwall went up with a deep roar and slam as shields locked. The banner unfurled with a snap and, craning, I saw figures filtering out of the mist, forming into a line. A banner flew there, too, and the shock of seeing another Raven Banner was like cold water. When all was said and done, we were fighting our own.

A figure came forward from them, hands raised to show they were empty. He wore a splendid gilded helmet and a flaming red cloak over his long mail hauberk. When he got closer, he peeled the helmet off, to reveal a shock of tawny hair and beard and bright, ice-blue eyes above a wide smile. Starkad.

Èinar,' he called. 'Your ship is ash; your men are too few. All you need do is hand over the monk and what you found in this place and you can go where you will.'

Einar nodded, as if considering the offer. `What you say is true enough. Yet you talk, which means you are not sure of winning, even with all your men. No doubt you have been told of the Oathsworn and you are right to be afraid. Is Brondolf Lambisson with you? Let him tell you of encountering the Oathsworn, as he did in his own hov. Better still, he could show you his keks and the shit on them.'

There was grim laughter at this and a flurry from the ranks behind Starkad, which broke to let Brondolf Lambisson through. Dressed in mail and with a fine helmet and shield, his red-faced anger was plain, but his words didn't carry far enough for the Oathsworn to hear, so they jeered at him, clashing sword and shield until he gave up.

Ìt seems you are determined to visit your own doom on those around you,' Starkad countered, which was cunning and would have flustered a lesser man. But Einar had courage and wit enough, even with the crows practically pecking out his eyeballs.

Àh . . . you have been speaking with Ulf-Agar, I am thinking,' he said, craning as if to see round Starkad.

'Is that nithing here?'

Reluctantly, a figure stepped out, mailed and well armed, but limping slightly. He said nothing, but glared and pointed at Einar with his sword.

Einar shook his head sorrowfully.

`Cattle die and kinsmen die,

Yourself will soon die,

Only fair fame never fades . . .'

His voice rang out the old lines and even I saw Ulf-Agar jerk with shame and anger. Einar, in a voice of ice, added, 'Fair fame has eluded you, Ulf-Agar, for all you sought it. Fame—yes. Men will remember you as an oath-breaker and that you do not stand straight and tall next to the likes of Orm, the White-bear Slayer.'

And it was my turn to jerk with shame, when the Oathsworn cheered and banged their swords on their shields, yelling my name.

Starkad recovered well, though, and his pleasant smile never slipped. 'Well, it seems a fight is certain on this bare hill,' he called out, loud enough for all to hear. 'But why waste good lives? Let's you and I end it, Einar the Black. If I win, your men are free to go or join with me. If you win, likewise.'

Einar shrugged, knowing he could not refuse it with honour. 'When,' he said, stressing the word, 'I win, your men will just go. I want no part of Bluetooth's hounds. Except for Ulf. I want him.'

Àgreed,' said Starkad and I saw Ulf-Agar's face pale and his mouth move, but he had no say in it, being a nithing even in the eyes of those at his back.

So Starkad came up, though the lines held their places. He shed his cloak, hauled out a beautifully hilted sword, settled his fresh, clean shield, which was decorated with a swirling design, and then tapped the edge twice, lightly, with his sword.

Einar, having dropped his cloak, hauled out his own weapon and unslung a pocked and scored shield.

The pair of them circled in a wary half-crouch.

There was a flurry, a tanging of metal and they parted. Einar whirlwinded steel, hacking lumps off that fine, new shield; Starkad backed up, dropped, swung at Einar's legs and he only just leaped back in time.

It went like that until both men were breathing heavily and it was clear that Starkad was stronger and better. His shield was almost wrecked though and I still had hopes—until, in a move all later agreed was as fine a trick as they'd seen, Starkad hooked the fat pommel of his sword inside Einar's shield, wrenched it sideways and cut downwards, in one smooth movement.

Einar was no fool and leaped back, but the blade slashed the shield loops and he had to throw the ruin away. Blood sprayed from his slashed hand as he did so. Starkad's grin was wolf-yellow.

He closed; Einar backed off, backed off further, then suddenly hurled forward, catching inside Starkad's sword with his own and forcing it wide, launched himself on to Starkad's shield. His helmeted head tipped back, came forward like a siege ram and would have splattered Starkad's nose if it hadn't been for the iron guard.

Stunned, Starkad fell backwards. I remembered falling on the hard edge of the forge with the side of my head and knew how Starkad was feeling. Bright lights and sickness: he was doomed.

But he rolled and Einar's cut sliced his leg open from knee to boot top, so that he roared with the pain of it. Lashing with his legs, he tangled Einar, who fell. They flailed wildly at each other and missed.

It was then that the ranks of his men split apart, shouting.

At first we thought they had treacherously decided to run at us. Then we saw the figures, the hurled javelins. They wore no helmets, had no armour, but they had fistfuls of throwing spears and long knives and there were lots of them, spilling out from the thinning mist, right into the back of Starkad's men. The villagers from Koksalmi had woken up.