Robert Low - The Whale Road

Einar wasted no time; he hoofed in the door with a crash and rushed in, seax out.

Martin yelled and fell off a high stool; the youth with him—only one, I saw—went white with fear and scrabbled for the sword he had laid too far away. Valknut swept it up by the baldric and dangled it tantalisingly in front of him, grinning.

`Martin,' said Einar, as if greeting a long-lost friend. The monk rose from the floor, using the time to recover his composure. He smoothed his brown robe—new, I saw—and lifted the stool up. Then he smiled.

Èinar. And young Orm. Yes, lots of old familiar faces here.'

The boy's head came up and a flush brought colour to those chalk-white cheeks at the sound of my name.

My father spotted it, too. 'Which one of my nephews are you, then?' he demanded.

The boy licked dry lips. `Steinkel.'

`Where's your brother? Bjorn, isn't it?' I asked and he shrugged. Valknut, at a look from Einar, slid back into the darkness to make sure we weren't being ambushed.

Martin climbed back on to his stool and recommenced his work, grinding stuff in a bowl. He caught me looking and smiled. Òak galls in vinegar, thickened with gum from Serkland and some salts of iron,' he said.

Èncaustum, from the Latin caustere, to bite. But you know that, young Orm, for you can read Latin. But you cannot write in any language.'

Now I knew the reason for the yellow-black scorch marks on his fingertips—which was one of the few familiar signs about him now. He had both grown and withered since I had seen him last. He had a beard now and his bald patch—a tonsure, I had learned—was freshly shaven. Yet he was thinner and something had chiselled away at his face, sinking his eyes deeper, while they blazed with a strange, yellow fervour.

He waved at the litter on the table in front of him, while Steinkel trembled and everyone else waited to hear what Valknut found outside. So we listened to Martin.

`These are what will make you and your kind fade to nothing and the word of God triumph,' he went on, grinding slowly and smiling at Einar.

`What is my kind?' Einar countered and Martin's mouth went thin.

`Doomed,' he said.

The silence was something you could taste.

`These are rolls, for tribute and taxes,' Martin went on, to the chink-chink of his grinding. 'These poor heathens used to make marks on tally sticks and even strips of birch bark. But you can't run a kingdom like that. Oleg values me, for I can tell him who owes what and when. In time, his sons and his sons' sons will know. The mixture bites into the vellum and leaves a mark. As my words will bite into the future and leave a mark.'

Àye, you are a clever man, right enough,' Einar answered, unfazed. 'Once before you showed me your cleverness.' And he drew out his little knife and nonchalantly trimmed a thread from the weave on one cuff.

Martin winced at the memory and I saw him pause in his grinding to touch the scabbed stump of his finger. Then he recovered his smile. 'If you had not come to me, I would have come to you, Einar,' he said easily.

`Just so,' Einar replied. 'It was lucky for us both then that you showed these bold lads and their friends where to find me and mine. Such polite messengers.'

Martin shrugged. 'These boys came to me because I am a priest and they are baptised Christians. When they told me who they were, I knew whom they sought. That was God's work.'

`Just so,' my father said. 'Your god must be pleased at the helping hand you gave him to point these young lads and their killers in our direction. Some guidance from a Christ priest. Are you not supposed to tell them not to kill?'

`You killed my father . . .' Steinkel declared sullenly.

Ì did indeed, nephew,' my father said and I looked at him, shocked. I had always thought it had been Einar. 'He killed my bear,' my father went on. 'And he tried to kill Orm here—'

Ènough,' Einar interrupted and glared darkly at Martin. 'Why would you have come to me?'

Martin put down the pestle carefully as Valknut came back in, looked at Einar and shook his head.

Martin said, 'Take the boy outside.'

Steinkel's head whipped from one to the other, bemused, angry. When Valknut grabbed an arm, he pulled back. 'What are you up to, monk?' he yelled, his voice high and shrill. Valknut wrenched him into an embrace, whirled him round and took the collar of his tunic at the back of the neck, twisting it tight so that it choked him. He hauled the boy up so that his toes danced furiously for a grip on the floor, then the pair of them staggered through the door and into the night.

Einar cocked his head expectantly at Martin, who sighed and put off sharpening his writing quill. 'I have told Oleg nothing,' he declared. 'In return for this continued silence, I want the return of my Holy Lance.'

`Your what?' demanded my father.

`Hild's spear-shaft,' I told him, 'which she won't like to give up.'

My father looked from one to the other. `Why does he . . . What use is that? It has no point.'

If he meant it as a joke, no one laughed. I looked at Martin and knew. 'He has promised Oleg,' I said. 'In return, Oleg has promised . . . what? A Christ church in Kiev, or here in Holmgard?'

Martin's smile was blade-sharp and twisted. 'Kiev. And when he succeeds his father, he will make me bishop there, with the blessing of the Pope. This country seeks a new and Christian religion.'

Ànd it won't be the Greek one from the Great City,' I finished for him. He inclined his head generously in my direction.

`There are two more of Sviatoslav's sons,' my father growled, 'who may not fall in with this great scheme.'

Martin shrugged. I saw he was confident of switching allegiances to whichever brother triumphed—if he had a great Christ charm to promise.

Einar was silent for a moment. Martin and he exchanged sword-cut glances across the room, each knowing what the other was thinking. What was to stop Einar killing Martin now and thus shutting his mouth?

The fact that he was Oleg's man and that would mean trouble. Steinkel would know who had done it, so he would have to die. His brother would suspect, so they would have to find and kill him, too . . . there was too much blood, even for Einar.

`How do I know you will keep your word, monk?' demanded Einar flatly.

`You will surely kill me if I don't,' he replied easily, 'and I will swear it on the Christ cross, an oath if you will. You like oaths, Einar.'

There was a moment of deadly stillness. I saw visions of blood everywhere and then Einar shook his head and I breathed again.

`Swear on your Christ-god if you will,' he said quietly. 'Swear also to Odin.'

Martin hesitated, then nodded. A pagan oath was easily broken in Martin's mind, but one to his own god might hold. Of course, Einar would try to kill him anyway, as quietly and secretly as possible and everyone saw that—including Martin. It would be a harder task to find him after all this, I was thinking.

As we drifted into the night, I was less easy about taking the spear-shaft away from Hild and said as much. No one had a thought on it as we made our way back to the Elk.

In the end, it was surprisingly easy. She held on tight to it, white-knuckled, until Ketil Crow—none too gently, it seemed to me—prised her loose from it. I expected rants, rages, even those rolling-eyed fits.

Instead, she sank down on the deck with a weary sigh, slumped like a sack.

Ketil Crow and Illugi Godi went off into the night to deliver it and witness Martin's oath. As they left, with my warning to watch out for my cousins, doubly mad now, I would wager, she looked blackly at Einar.

`There is a price to pay for this,' she said and the blank chill of it made me shiver. Even Einar, sunk in morose contemplation of the subject, was jerked back by the simple vehemence of it.

`Can you still find the howe of Attila?' he demanded, alarmed, and she nodded, her eyes startling pits of pitch in the yellow lantern light.

`Nothing will now keep me from that burial place,' she declared. 'But I will need something from you.'

We moved to Kiev not long afterwards, in a mad, shouting, frantic chaos of boats and men, leaving Valgard and a dozen Oath-sworn with the Elk.

Novgorod was as far as foreign ships went. All the traders were forced to the Rus boats: the strugi and the larger nasady, which were expensive, but could withstand Baltic storms and the grind of dragging them over portages. It was as sound a way as any of making sure the Prince of Kiev controlled the river trade.

But the traders stayed in the crowded anchorage this time, fuming and cursing, because every boat had been taken by Sviatoslav to move men and gear swiftly down to Kiev the Golden. From there, we'd move across to the Don and down it to face the Khazars.

I remember the journey as one of the laziest I have ever had. The only lazier one was the sail down the Don afterwards.

As part of Yaropolk's druzhina we had nothing to do. Local rivermen poled the boats and all we did was clean our gear, admire each other in our new cloaks—the colour of old blood and the mark of our druzhina status—and speculate on whether the women in Kiev would be better than those in Novgorod.

They were. Everything about Kiev was better and it roared with life, swollen by people from everywhere.

Entire tribes had arrived: Merians, Polianians, Severians, Derevlians, Radimichians, Dulebians, and Tivercians and names even seasoned traders had barely heard of.

They came with horses and dogs and women and children, bringing an incredible babble and swirling life to the place, and we strode through them all, brighter threads in this rich tapestry, a head taller than all of them, rich in dress and ornament and swagger.

The city heaved with life and colour, from the cherries drying on the rooftops of the khaty, their timber and clay houses, to the pears and quinces that glistened in the sun on bowing branches.

Down the Zalozny road came caravans from Serkland with spice, gems, satins, Damascus steel and fine horses. Up the Kursk road still came a vital trickle of silver, which the Volga Bulgars traded from mines even further east. From Novgorod, though, which should have been sending wool, linens, tinted glass, herring, beer, salt and even fine bone needles, came nothing but us, gawping and spitting and roaring.

Kiev was starting to swelter in the heat of a summer sun and Illugi Godi grew increasingly morose, even as the Oathsworn hurled themselves delightedly into the whirling welter of it, hunting out drink and women.

Ènjoy it while you can, boy,' he declared, leaning on his staff as I leaped down on to the jetty, joining a dozen others heading into the teeming streets. 'There will be disease and worse if we stay here for long.'

I waved to him, but I didn't care. The spectre of Hild was like a silent, accusing finger these days. She spent most of her time huddled close to Einar, sharing the gods knew what—not love, certainly.

And then there was my father. I had tried to bring up the subject of Gudleif, of the first five years of my life, of my mother, but he had dismissed it all with a wave, as something of no consequence. Yet it was his brother and I wanted to know . . . even today I don't know what I wanted to know.

That it bothered him. That I could help. That we were blood kin right enough.

Instead, it was as if we had shifted three or four oars down from each other. If it kept up this way, we would be on different boats, he and I.

I wanted drink and women that day in Kiev.

I got them, too. Even now, I can remember little of it and even that is probably what I was told by others.

There was a party of Greeks, engineers sent by the Miklagard Emperor. They had been in Kiev for months cutting timber and building huge siege engines in jointed sections for easy transport and they knew the best places to go.

There were women and I remember humping on a table and was told I had taken a wager I could hump the fattest, ugliest one in the place and won, despite Ketil Crow being convinced I could never get aroused enough with the one chosen. But, as Valknut pointed out, the difference between a reasty crone and Thor's golden-haired wife, Sif, is about eight horns of mead.

I had that and more. I had never drunk so much and remembered only being hauled lip out of a pool of my own mead vomit, my hair sticky with it. There was water that left me dripping, but I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel my lips, or my legs. The memory left me.

Later, I learned that I had been carried back to our Rus riverboat almost in triumph—dropped a few times by the unsteady bearers—and flung on my own fur-lined sleep-bag.

What I do remember—I still jerk awake sometimes in the night remembering—is being kicked and the sound of screams. I saw figures and flames and someone yelled—in my ear, almost, so that my head burst in bright colours of pain: 'Arm yourself, you fuck, we're boarded.'

That staggered me half-upright. I found my sword and fumbled for my shield in the half-light of dawn, bleary-eyed, trying to work out where I was. Keep them next to you, we had been told. Always next to you . .

.

I was on the deck of the Rus boat, which was shadowed with figures who screamed and slashed. Booted feet thundered; blades clashed; shields thumped. I saw Ketil Crow hurl himself like a growling terrier into a pack of men, slashing wildly, then retreat before they recovered enough to hit him back. His mail gleamed redly in the wild torchlight.

I lurched towards him, the half-formed idea of standing on his shieldless side in my head. As I got to him, three men moved forward, half-crouched, wary, but determined. I didn't know any of them, but I knew the threat of a bloody great Dane axe when I saw one.

The blow came and slammed into my shield with a sound like a falling tree and I staggered under it.

Ketil Crow, grunting and panting, was struggling with the other two, being awkward for them because he was left-handed—but the man with the big two-handed axe was mine alone.

Another blow staggered me backwards, then he swiftly reversed and aimed a whack with the butt on my sword-arm, but my own wild flailings bounced it up and it hit the edge of the shield, then the side of my head.

The flare of light and pain was a whole world; nothing else existed. I couldn't see and I heard only a vague screaming. Something monstrous smashed against my shield-arm—then the world hoiked itself back into the Now, where it was me howling, the Dane axe was whirling round again and I was on one knee.

He was good, the axeman. He gave up trying to splinter the shield and thumped the axehead against it, trying to knock it down, then swiftly reversed to try to butt me in the face. Staggering, the drunk fumes burned away in a fire of fear, I managed to fend that off and get to my feet.

As I did, he hooked the blade behind the shield, wrenching it forward to try to break the straps. The butt end stabbed out once more when this, too, failed. It caught me slightly on the chest and even that made me grunt with pain.