Robert Low - The Whale Road

Einar shouldered past Gunnar Raudi and I swear I saw the hair on them rise, like the hackles on wolves, as they brushed against each other. My throat ached and I knew that there would be the mark of five livid bruises on it.

Our Hild. She was no more 'our Hild' than I could fart gold, but Einar clearly thought she was one of the Oathsworn, whether she had sworn or no. He did not, for an eyeblink, imagine that Hild could be playing him false and Vigfus was on the correct track, which was my thought on the matter at the time. Wrong, of course.

Illugi Godi looked once at Gunnar Raudi, then at me and shook his head. 'You are fools, the one for his loose gob, the other for getting into a pissing contest with the likes of Einar.'

Ìf you don't want to get your toes wet,' answered Gunnar Raudi with a chuckle, levering himself off the doorpost, 'then keep your shoes away from my pisser.'

Illugi raised a defiant chin and his staff, the mark of his rank, but Gunnar merely grinned at him and swaggered off.

Àsgard seems a little deaf to you these days, Odin priest,' he threw back over his shoulder as he went—

and I saw Illugi flinch, his head drooping for the first time that day.

There was no hint of any of that now as Einar took a knee, sweat-gleamed and grinning, to face the lolling-tongued dog-men he had led into the Grass Sea.

`We must be close,' he called out, glancing at the sun as it started to die, slow and glorious on the edge of the world. 'Tomorrow we'll be on them and get our Hild back.'

The men growled appreciative responses, muted and weary in the heat.

Einar climbed slowly to his feet and hefted his shield and gear to more comfortable spots. 'For now,' he grinned, 'we move.'

Òur Hild,' I muttered morosely as I got up and Illugi, passing, heard it and cocked his head quizzically.

Òur Hild,' I repeated. 'She has suffered nothing but hard knocks from us. He even took away the one thing she had, that bloody spear-shaft. And yet he imagines she is "our Hild".'

`She suffered worse under Vigfus and Lambisson,' Illugi reminded me sternly, leaning on his staff, 'from which we rescued her.'

I grudgingly admitted that and he eyed me carefully as I limped forward.

`Make no mistake with Einar, though,' he went on, for my ears only. 'He calls her "our Hild" because that is what she is. Not Vigfus's, or Lambisson's, or the property of Martin the thrice-cursed monk. Ours, Orm.

As the Elk is ours. As the silver hoard is ours. I would watch my sullen face and loud tongue round Einar these days. You have become . . . unlucky . . . for him. Next time he may rip the throat out of you.'

I looked straight back at him and saw the harsh lines etched in his face, lines of worry and strain, and Gunnar Raudi's words came back to me. I saw the gods were crushing our priest with their apathy these days and he could find no way to speak to them that would get them to listen.

Ì know it,' I replied and slapped my leg. `Let's hope my limp gets no worse and he has, with all sadness, to leave me behind, eh?'

`He would do it,' Illugi said.

Ì have always known that, I am thinking,' I said flatly. 'The difference here, today, is that now so would you, Illugi Godi. A good offering to appease whatever gods Einar has annoyed, eh, godi? Better than a fighting horse, you think?'

I left him, savage with the triumph of the moment, turning away and limping after the others, out of the twilight forest and on to the baking steppe. Later, I was ashamed of myself for having said it, for Illugi had been patient and good with me. But too much had happened by then.

We reached another huddle of trees as the darkness grew and the stars came out. We had no fires and the night was cold, so that those who had decided not to burden themselves with cloaks found themselves shivering, doubly cold after the baking heat of the day. We shared, then, huddled in twos and threes, silvered by a great wheel of stars and moonlight in a perfect, clear night.

In the washed silver of early dawn we were up and assembled, coughing, farting, sniffing, chewing. Men shivered, took a final piss and sorted out their gear, knowing Bagnose had come in during the night with news.

The tomb was found and Vigfus with it, led by the nose to it, it seemed to me, following on after Hild.

Steinthor was watching the entrance even now.

Einar listened and nodded and clapped Bagnose on the shoulder, then looked over the wolf-eager faces round him, their breath steaming in the dawn chill, and nodded, smiling. 'This is the edge of a big stretch of forest,' he said. 'It is cut up by lots of gulleys and some of them are quite steep and choked with brush, so watch your feet. Our enemy is no more than an hour's walk away, at what seems to be a set of stairs leading to an entrance high in the side of a ravine. With luck, we will trap them all inside and smoke them out.'

He looked at me and his smile widened, so that the feral-sharp teeth at the side of his mouth were exposed, yellow and gleaming. 'Like a bear hunt, eh, Orm?'

The others chuckled. Einar had them bound to the enterprise with the promise of an easy victory and the luck of the Bear Slayer at their command. You had to admire him.

Bagnose hadn't been wrong about the gulleys and the brush. I had been congratulating myself on keeping up, despite the ankle, but this last section ended at the entrance to a sheer-sided gulley, with a river splashing down the middle of it. When Bagnose silently signalled a halt, I sank down gratefully, feeling the pain, as if someone was shoving a hot brand straight through my ankle-bones.

I wanted to look at it, but dared not take the boot off, or remove the bindings, for I knew it would swell like a dead sheep's belly and that would be that. Instead, I stood in the stream and felt the cool water soak into my boot and wash round the throb of my foot.

A bird whirred and insects hummed as we followed the stream, straight towards what appeared to be a vertical wall of exposed rock. The stream curved round and disappeared and I heard the distant splash of water from a fall. The heat was crippling and there was no air at all, for all we were near water, just a strange stillness. Even the plagues of insects had vanished.

Steinthor and Bagnose appeared as we came up, so nonchalant that we all relaxed, for they swaggered out openly, as if there was no danger.

`They went in about two hours ago,' Steinthor said, wiping his streaming face with a cuff. 'They camped at the foot of those steps last night and spent most of the morning cutting what tall trees they could find to make a bridge at the top. Then they went up.'

We all saw the steps, rough-cut in a half-spiral up one side of the gulley. I started for it and something smacked wetly on my bare forearm. I rubbed it absently, then noticed it was water, but gritty.

I looked up at a strange, brass-coloured sky and wished my father with us, for he knew weather better than anyone and this was nothing I had seen before. I have experienced it twice since, trading down the Black Sea and again in Serkland.

Einar left a dozen men at his back and led the rest of us up the steps. At the top, with room for only one or two, we found it was an outcrop, round which the stream bent. Below, spilling from the far wall, was where the stream began, in a waterfall, whose spray was wonderfully cooling.

Spanning the gap between the outcrop and a wide ledge was a rickety bridge of warped timbers, the wood Vigfus and his men had been cutting. On the ledge beyond lay a scatter of bones around what appeared to be three or four sapling stumps, emerging out of the rock.

Steinthor grinned at our confusion, for he had crept up this far and worked it out. `Grave robbers from before,' he said, pointing. 'Look—those were spears, weighted to shoot upwards when that area was stepped on. Right up the crease.'

`Traps,' Einar said and the word was passed down the line on the stairs, from head to head like a leaping spark. 'And traps,' he added loudly, to take the sting out of it, 'mean treasure.'

He strode out on to the timber walkway, took three swift steps and was on the ledge, moving cautiously to where the spear-stumps remained. Ketil Crow followed and the next man, the ever-jesting Skarti, paused nervously, eyeing the chasm under the rickety timbers and the unknown dangers of the ledge beyond. The sweat trickled down between the old pox lumps of his face.

We all waited patiently. Since Vigfus's men had all made it, it seemed to me there was little danger left, but there was also no harm in letting someone else go first. When Skarti reached safety, turning with a grin of relief, we all cheered him.

On the ledge, which was broader and wider than it looked from the level of the stream, about another dozen of us congregated; the rest remained on the steps. A wind breathed and sighed up the gulley, rustling the tinder-dry brush, bringing a welcome coolness.

There was an entrance, blocked once by masonry, which now lay in thick chunks. Illugi Godi picked one up, turning it in his hands. It had symbols on it, or the remains of them. There were more symbols, age-worn, on either side and, with surprise, I saw they were truncated Latin—I knew the words Dis Manibus, recognised ala and started to work out the others.

`That big turd with the Dane axe,' Steinthor said, indicating the masonry chunks. 'He can use the blunt end, too.'

I remembered the yellow beard, the grin, the axe, and shivered.

`They call him Boleslav,' Steinthor went on. 'Saxon, I think. Tough, though. Carved his way through this

. . . stuff.'

`Roman,' Illugi Godi said. 'I have heard of this. They make a gruel and plaster it on like daub, but it sets hard as stone.'

`What are the markings?' demanded Einar and winced as a sudden flurry of wind blew dust at us.

Illugi shrugged. 'Warning? Curse? A request to knock? I can hardly even try to work out what is in pieces.'

`Latin,' I offered, running my fingers over the sigils. 'They say this is the tomb of Spurius Dengicus, khan of the Kutriguri. Carried here to be buried under the eye of Rome by his brother, Rome's friend, Ernak.'

`Spurius Dengicus? That's Roman, not Hun,' said Eyjolf, whom everyone called Finnbogi, since he was from those lands.

Illugi, who knew a few things himself, answered: 'They gave him a proper name for his tomb, doing honour as befits his status. But no respectable Roman family would want their name associated with a steppe lord, so the Roman chiefs found a family that had died out, only the name remaining.

`So it is that all adopted Romans are called Spurius,' he finished.

And so it was. Nowadays, of course, anyone who is considered a shifty lot, not quite what he claims to be, is called Spurius in the Great City.

Ànything else we should know?' demanded Einar, with a pointed look at Illugi. Ànything that will actually help us, that is?'

I frowned and traced the worn letters. `There's something about not disturbing his rest,' I offered.

With perfect timing, there came a distant wail from inside the dark opening, a wolf of a sound that set everyone's hackles up. Men backed away; even the ones on the step heard it.

Òdin's arse,' snarled Bagnose suddenly, `what is happening to the sky?'

Most of it seemed to have gone, eaten by a towering wall of darkness. Even as we looked at it, yellow lightning flickered and the wind rushed at us, like the fetid breath of a dragon, lashing us with a stinging rain filled with grit.

`Thor's goats' arses, more like,' shouted Steinthor above the sudden roar of wind. Men yelled and huddled. Those on the lower steps started to go down, those higher up pushed those behind.

`There's no shelter there!' bellowed Einar above the sudden howling swirl of the wind. Ùp here, into the rock.'

They staggered up and Gunnar Raudi, with Ketil Crow, bent to hold the timber frame, frantic—as were we all—that it would topple, or be swept away and leave us stranded up here. Thunder cracked; the yellow heavens roiled and Illugi Godi stood upright, staff in one hand, both arms upraised.

Àll-Father hear us!'

`Move your fucking fat arses!' screamed Ketil Crow as men stumbled up the steps and across the ledge and into the dark opening like a line of frenzied ants.

Àll-Father, hear us. Send your winged ones to bind the wounds of the sky. Ask Thor why he rides his goat chariot over us. Lift us from this field of battle . . .'

A man, caught off-balance by the wind, shrieked his way into the chasm, disappearing beneath the waterfall.

Àll-Father . . .'

`Save it, godi, no one is listening to you,' snarled Einar and spat into the dust and mud-brown sluice of rain. 'Run, if you value your life.'

And I ran, limping, heedless of the pain, into the dark opening of the tomb.

Inside, someone had sparked up a torch, but the band huddled as close together as possible in the half-light of a stone passage, shivering, wet, cold in the sudden chill of stone. There was a taste of old dust and bones in my mouth.

`Well done for the torch,' Einar panted, coming up with Ketil Crow and Gunnar Raudi, the latter hauling the rickety timber bridge after him. We paused, all sweat and gleaming eyes in the dark, as another of those low, mournful moans drifted up from the light at the other end of the passage.

Light from a torch none of us had lit.

The storm grumbled. Einar pushed his way through the packed mass of us in the narrow passage and peered to where the yellow glow was.

`Well,' he said. 'Such a light in a dark place always means there is gold there, as anyone knows.' He turned, his grin startling in the dark. 'At least it means someone is home. Perhaps they will offer us hospitality on a stormy night. Ale and meat and women.'

The laughs were forced, though, and he moved on, stepping boldly while we cringed and waited for the springing spear or worse.

Nothing happened. We followed, cautiously, out of the passage into a wider area, part natural cavern, part construct. An arch, made from Illugi Godi's liquid Roman stone, led through to where the torch burned brightest and I thought to point it out to the priest—then saw his face, anguished, dead-eyed. He had called his gods and heard nothing but anger.

Shields up—those who hadn't lost them in the panic outside—and blades ready, we crept forward.

Beyond the arch, we all stopped. There was an even wider area, flagged with great squares of stone. The middle squares were bisected lengthways by small ridges, only just raised above the surface, and where one large square of stone should have been was an opening, from which came a faint torch glow.

More light, guttering in the wind hissing from outside, spilled from the red torch held by Hild, who was hunkered next to the opening, head cocked like a curious bird.

As we came in, there was that echoing groan from below and she turned and looked at us, a beautiful, beatific smile set in a face milk-pale, below eyes as black and dead as a corpse. Everyone saw it and came to a sudden halt.

'Hild . . . ?' I asked. She turned those eyes on me, without losing the smile, then looked down into the darkness, holding the torch high.