Robert Low - The Whale Road

As our boat was manhandled into the shore, one of the horsemen broke away and trotted over to us, peeling off his helmet to reveal a beaming, sweating face with a huge curl of moustache. 'Welcome, sword-brothers,' he chuckled and swept his hand towards the huge edifice squatting on the plain. 'I hope you enjoyed the rest and the apples. Now it is time to play your part.'

We looked at each other, then to those yellow-white walls on which we had to hurl ourselves and no one was smiling when he trotted off, his bellowing laugh drifting back to us, echoed by his companions.

He had to wait to see us suffer, though.

The first days were spent tumbling out everything that had been brought, while horsemen raced off everywhere and dust hazed the world. At night, the cookfires were a field of flickering red blossom.

In two weeks, Sarkel had been cut off and the engineers were doing things with the timbers they'd brought. Spearmen—not the druzhina like us, but the great mass of unarmoured levy, sucked in from every tribe for hundreds of miles—stacked their weapons and dug level pits and raised platforms.

We all watched, fascinated, the first time three of these great efforts lobbed sheep-sized boulders across the steppe at the walls to get the range. They hit with a booming crash and a great puff of dust—but nothing happened; nothing collapsed. Disappointed, we went back to the sweaty, stinking job of scraping and boiling cowhides for glue to help fix the assault towers we would use.

That night, hunkered round our own collection of cookfires, we chewed flatbread, sucked down a good meat-gruel, endured the insects and traded our thoughts back and forth.

`There's no place left to shit,' Bersi complained.

`Sit here,' offered my father.

`Shit,' Bersi clarified. 'No place to shit. I'm fed up with stepping in it, everywhere you go.'

It was true enough. I'd heard the army was anything from sixty thousand to a million men and either could be true, though such a number was impossible to get inside your head.

All I knew was that there were a lot of them and even more animals and women and children. Even for people like us, who'd grown up with shit, things were getting out of hand.

Illugi Godi said there would be trouble over it. People would start to get sick. Einar said that, tomorrow, he would have a place marked out and a pit dug. Everyone would shit there and nowhere else.

`Don't try it drunk,' advised Wryneck, who claimed to have had done this sort of thing before, 'or you'll fall in and stink for a week. If you even get out again, that is.'

But it was Ketil Crow who said what we all wanted to say. 'When are we leaving this?' he growled at Einar. 'Before we get slaughtered on those walls, or die of shit-sickness here, I am hoping to hear you say.'

Einar stroked his moustaches. 'We need to plan it well.'

`Plan what?' demanded Valknut, who was burned dark as a Fir Gorm, the black-men thralls from the very south of the world, so that only his eyes and teeth were seen clearly in the twilight. 'We know where to go—what else is there?'

Òf course,' said that quiet voice from the dark behind Einar. 'That's all you really need, after all.'

She was like a cold wind through an open door. Everyone fell silent under the weight of her renewed presence, but Ketil Crow just half glanced at her, irritated, then spat in the fire. `Do we know where to go?'

he demanded. 'I am wondering why I am following some hag-ridden Finn woman.'

`You think I do not know the way?' Hild challenged, squatting so that her knees came up almost round her ears, the dress pooled in her lap. Her feet, I saw, were neat and bare.

No one spoke, or looked at her long, but Ketil Crow looked from her to where Einar sat, his back to Hild, staring at the fire from under the wings of his hair and saying nothing.

`The others may be afraid of you,' Ketil Crow growled, 'but I am not. If you prove false in this I will rip you from cunt to jawline.'

Hild did not flinch, though a few of us did. Instead, she smiled that fey smile. 'It is good you are not afraid, Ketil Crow,' she said in a voice like the whisper of bat's wings. 'You will need that courage, I am thinking.'

Einar stirred then, half turning to where Hild crouched like some black spider. He shook his head and stroked his moustaches again. 'There's more than just finding it,' he said.

`So you say,' growled Wryneck, 'but I am with Ketil Crow in this matter. It seems to me that a witless girl is about to lead us into the sea of grass. I never trusted women and that has always stood me in good stead.'

`You won't become old and rich,' declared Hild suddenly, in a growl so unlike her own voice that everyone froze. The wind hissed, flattening the fire. Wryneck hawked and spat, deliberately loudly, a sneer of sound.

`You bicker like women,' Illugi declared scornfully. 'What has Einar to say on this?'

It seemed to me that if Einar had had anything to say he would have hoiked it out before now. I wondered if Hild had laid some seidr on him that kept his lips fastened on the matter—but he stirred like a man coming out of a sleep.

`We will get there,' he said, so softly that those at the back had to have it repeated to them. 'Then what?'

He looked around us, challengingly. 'We get there and do what? Knock on the door and ask politely if we can have the hospitality of this dead hov? Some ale and meat and, oh, by the way, all the silver we can hold?

What if there is no door, no way in—how do we make one?'

He wiped his mouth, reached for a skin and filled his horn, which was held between his knees, for the ground was too baked hard to stand it upright.

`More to the point,' he added, slashing us all with that black stare, 'how do you carry it away? In our shirts? Stuff it down our boots, or in our hats?'

`True enough,' Bagnose said cheerfully. `There's a mountain of silver. We'll need a few big boots for that.'

They chuckled and Einar explained, 'We need rope and hoes and mattocks and carts to carry all of that—

and to take the silver away in. And ponies to haul the carts. Not oxen, for they are too slow.'

There was silence while we all chewed on that and how to go about it. In the end, of course, Bersi put it to Einar.

`We wait,' he said. No one liked that answer.

'For what?' demanded Ketil Crow. 'We can take all those things—'

Ànd get how far—a mile? Two?' growled Illugi, shaking his head. 'Those horsemen move fast and charge hard.'

`Shouldn't have thrown so many apple cores at them,' offered Skarti, his lumpy face a nightmare in the red fireglow. No one laughed much at that, remembering the horsemen, their armour and lances and bows.

`Wait for what then?' demanded Valknut sullenly, pitching a dung chip into the fire. Ì'm sick of gods-cursed cowhides and glue.'

`Better that than a ladder up those walls,' said a voice from further in, a deep growl I recognised as a Novgorod Slav called Eindridi. There were a few growls of assent at that.

`We wait until we get hungrier than this,' Einar declared quietly. 'Until the animals are being slaughtered and salted because there isn't enough good grass for them around here. Until the saddles of those grain-fed horses go in a notch or two.'

Everyone stared blankly, bewildered. But I knew what he was making them think. Gods, he was clever and cold as the edge of winter, right enough.

`Forage parties,' said Illugi triumphantly. `Good reasons for being away from here with carts and horses and gear.'

`Right enough,' agreed Bersi and chuckled. 'Now there's deep-minded.'

I kept my counsel, for I had already seen forage parties going out, a collection of carts and horses, with thralls and women for the labouring and lance-armed cavalry for the muscle. Never foot warriors of the druzhina, though.

There was only one way, I realised, for varjazi like us to be away from all others, on the steppe with carts and horses and no questions asked, out of deference to our own rituals.

And some of us would have to die first.

`Forage parties. Deep thinking, right enough,' agreed Steinthor and tipped his ale horn empty. 'Now give us a riddle, Bag-nose, and brighten up the evening.'

And, as Bagnose screwed up his face and worked one out in his head, Einar met my stare across the fire, knew what I was thinking, dared me to speak it.

Ì am a strange creature, for I satisfy women, grow very tall and erect in bed, am hairy underneath and, now and then, a brave daughter of some fellow dares to hold me, grips my reddish skin, robs me of my head and puts me in her pantry. She remembers the meeting, her eyes moisten—' Bagnose intoned.

Àn onion,' roared someone from the back. 'Heard that one when I was still crawling . . .'

Eventually, Einar dropped his eyes, but I ached with too much tension to claim a triumph.

13 Up close, the dazzling walls of the White Castle were a disappointing tan and yellow, pocked with the scabs of hurled rocks and scored with lashes of black where fireballs had gored.

Merlons had crumbled, giving it the gap-toothed grin of a crone at whose feet was a litter of smashed tiles: Turk pictures of horses and men that looked like runes to us. Tamgas, they called them, and our battering stones had ripped them away.

The plain before the city seethed like an anthill. Horsemen thundered, lance-tips glittering through the huge pall of dust that hazed everything to a golden fog.

I sweated and longed for a drink. My eyes stung from the dust and it gritted in every crease under the armour and my helmet, even in the corners of my mouth, turning to mud with my spittle.

To my left was Bersi, shield lying against his knees, tying a leather thong round the fourth of his red braids, trembling from fever fits. To my right, Wryneck stuck the finger of one gnarled hand up his nose and dug out a plug of dust and snot, which he wiped absently on his breeks.

I saw the glassy white of old scars on the back of his hand, the mark of seasoned warriors everywhere—

the marks that were still raw and new on my own—since hands were almost always cut in fights, even friendly ones.

Behind us came the screeching groan of a giant with bellyache. It went on and on and ended with a clunk.

Then there was a sudden blast of heat and I shrank my head down into my neck, seeing that others were doing the same.

A pause. A huge blast of hot air and a deep booming thump: the great engine heaved a fireball over our heads, a streak of orange-red, trailing oily black smoke through the golden haze. I never saw or heard where it landed.

I saw a woman and child moving through the Oathsworn ranks, carrying yokes of clay water pitchers into which the men dipped, then drank gratefully. The woman smiled at Bersi, who grinned back through the fat, rolling globules of sweat on his face and said something in her ear that earned him a thump on the shoulder. But as she moved on, she was still smiling. , A horseman, bare-armed and wearing a leather helmet, trotted up to where Einar stood, a silhouette in the dust-gloom.

`Shit,' muttered Wryneck and I tensed, sensing his unease.

The horseman and Einar exchanged words, then the man galloped off and Einar said something to Valknut.

The Raven Banner went up so that everyone could see it. Then it dipped twice, three times in quick succession, the signal to move forward.

There was a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, a coldness that reached to my groin and shrank it to the kernel of a nut. I was in the front rank: the Lost. Behind was another mailed rank and behind that two ranks of unarmoured men with long spears. A fifth rank contained Bagnose, Steinthor and every other man who knew which end of a bow was which.

Twenty men wide, five ranks deep, the Oathsworn tramped through the haze to war.

I had no idea who was to our left or right—or if anyone was. I knew our job was to protect this engine, now thrust close to the walls, which loomed now and then through the swirl of dust and smoke.

Àre we attacking?' I asked Wryneck and he grunted, hefting his shield to a more comfortable position.

'Nah, they are coming at us, I am thinking,' he replied, blinking sweat from his eyes.

The Raven Banner swung side to side. I had forgotten what that meant, but no one moved so I stayed where I was, too. Then I saw bowmen and realised Einar had called them out to skirmish in front of us.

Engines thumped and whooshed, men shrieked and cried in the unseen haze, horses galloped back and forth. Horns blared somewhere. A block of spear-armed men jogged diagonally across our front, heading to our rear. Ours? Khazar? Attacking? Running? I was licking cracked lips and looking wildly left and right when Wryneck nudged me.

`Don't try to eat it, Orm Bear Slayer,' he growled. 'If they come up our arse, there is nothing you can do now to prevent it. If it happens, we will deal with it, but there's no sense in chewing on it. That way, you not only end up with men up your arse, but you have ruined all this perfectly quiet time.'

Perfectly quiet? Horns blasted again.

Horsemen cantered up and past us. I saw one . . . then another . . . and another turn in the saddle, nock arrows and let fly behind them.

`Get ready,' said Bersi, hunching his shoulders.

`Shield!' roared Einar. A pause. 'Wall!'

The shields came up with a single great clash of overlap. My right hand slammed the crosspiece of my sword hard against the join with my neighbour and we were now locked. Einar and Valknut turned and moved to one end, rather than force a way through us.

Arrows hissed out of the murk, skittering along the raw, tramped earth, slapping weakly off a shield here and there. Bersi was shaking, the sweat rolling off him and mixing with the dust to turn his back and underarms to mud.

Our bowmen scampered back, trying to make for the ends of our line. Those who couldn't pitched their bows over our heads and dived for our feet, wriggling like eels between our boots.

The ground trembled. More horsemen appeared, swirling like sparrows when they saw us. They looked no different to our own: men on horses with bows, fur-clad helmets, tan cloaks, white tunics. They shrieked from black-bearded faces, loosed a straggle of arrows and wheeled away, back into their own dust.

We stood. Wryneck reached over his locked shield, swept his sword down and sheared off the shaft of an arrow I had not even seen or heard. I swallowed the hot lump in my throat, but it stuck and choked me.

The ground shook and thunder rolled somewhere.

`Spears,' Einar called and they came hissing past my ear, sticking beyond us, a hedge of points.

'F-fucker,' stammered Bersi, his teeth clattering. 'Nearly had m-m-my f-f-fucking ear then.'

The ground danced; the thunder resolved to a rolling drum of noise. The dust seethed, figures loomed and the Khazar horse crashed out of the gloom.