Robert Low - The Whale Road

He hacked a backstroke and, before I knew it, I had done what Gudleif and Gunnar Raudi had taken pains to teach me . . . I slammed the blunt point of my sword at the bottom of his shield, the force of the blow tilting it forward and exposing the whole shoulder and side of his neck.

Then I carved a stroke downward before he could recover. The blade going in felt no different to chopping wood, since it smashed into the shoulder and collar bone, half carving his arm from the socket.

He gave a shriek and fell away, dropping his sword, clutching at the wound as if to fasten the gaping sides together. I stood there, scarcely believing what I had done, my mouth gawping like a dead cod.

`Finish him,' growled Valknut and I looked at him, then back to the wounded man. No, not man. Boy.

He fell, lay on his back, chest heaving, no longer even groaning. The blood flowed thickly out of him; by the time I was peering at him, the rain was pooling in the hollows of his unseeing eyes. No older than me . . .

I felt a smack on the back and whirled, sword up.

Steinthor held up a placating hand, chuckling. 'Easy, Bear Killer. That was well done, as neat as any I have seen—but don't gawp at it or you'll end up lying beside him.'

But the fight was over. The fyrdmen—those not groaning or lying like little sacks on the sodden ground—were running, not even waiting to take their horses. The leader was down, carved up under the combined efforts of Einar and Skapti. Panting men knelt or stood, gasping, legs apart, heads down. One or two, I saw, were retching.

Steinthor expertly patted the corpse beside me, gave a grunt of satisfaction and came up with two small slivers of hacksilver and an amulet in the shape of a cross. He tossed the amulet to me and stuffed the silver down his boot. 'Keepsake,' he chuckled and moved on to the next.

Einar was cleaning his sword. Skapti Halftroll was moving among the bodies, making sure the fyrdmen were all dead.

Illugi fed something from a flask to one of our own, who lay shivering in the rain, hands clutching his stomach. Blood leaked between his fingers.

`Tally?' demanded Einar.

Skapti thumbed one side of his nose and snotted. 'Eight of them dead, more who will feel how bad their wounds are when the fear that keeps them running wears off.'

Ùs?'

À few wounds. Harald One-eye's serious; someone carved half his foot off, so we'll have to carry him.

And Haarlaug has a belly wound,' answered Illugi.

`Bad?' asked Einar. Illugi paused, moved to the groaning man, knelt, sniffed and then came back to Einar.

`Soup wound, I think, though it will take an hour to be sure. We'll have to carry him and that will kill him, for sure.'

Einar stroked his wet chin and then shrugged. He drew out his short seax and moved to Haarlaug.

Around him the other men collected themselves, stripping what they could find from the dead. The soft, silent, smirring rain dripped.

`Haarlaug; said Einar. 'You have a belly wound. Illugi Godi fed you some of his soup and he can smell it even so soon after.'

He let the words hang there. The man grunted, as if hit afresh. His face, already pale, went to milk and he licked dry lips. Then he nodded. He knew what it meant to smell Illugi Godi's soup from your opened belly.

`Make sure Thurid, my wife, gets what's mine,' he said. 'And tell her I died well.'

Einar nodded. Someone thrust a seax at him and he took it, then wrapped Haarlaug's hand tight round the hilt.

`Give my regards to all those who have gone before,' he said. 'Say to them, "Not yet, but soon," from me.'

Those nearest muttered their own prayers and nodded at Haarlaug, commending him to Valholl. Now that the moment was on him, though, his eyes rolled in panic and his mouth started working.

Einar was swift, lest Haarlaug lose hold and let his fear ruin his dignity. The short seax flashed across the white throat, leaving a red line and he thrashed and kicked for a few minutes, eyes bulging and Einar holding him, one hand on his mouth, the blood soaking his sleeve.

Then he stopped and Einar placed one hand over his face, closing Haarlaug's wild eyes, leaving it there for a moment, kneeling. Illugi Godi chanted softly, almost under his breath. The blood pooled under Haarlaug's lolled head.

Then Einar rose up. 'Strip him quickly, then we go. Ottar, Vig, get the mail and weapons off that leader and whatever valuables he has—there's a torc round his neck that looks like silver. Finn Horsehead, fetch one of those horses and load Harald on to it. Move.'

In seconds, it seemed, before I had even plodded back to the top of the hill, Haarlaug was a pale, sad shape in the red hillside, laid neatly on his back, hands clasped on the deer-horn hilt of the knife on his chest, the only thing they left. The rest struggled wearily up the hill, clutching a shirt, breeks, boots—even his woollen socks. Ottar and Vig panted to the top, one draped with a mail shirt, the other clutching a sword and an extra shield. Ottar looked back, hawked and spat. 'No way to leave one of our own,' he said. 'He should have been decently howed up.'

I saw the other huddled, still shapes. I couldn't even tell, now, which was the one I had killed.

`Move,' growled Einar and, as he passed, slapped me lightly on the shoulder. 'Good fight, boy. You'll do.'

And that was it. Twenty minutes later we were panting and gasping down through the trees and out on to the wet-black shingle, stumbling up to where the Fjord Elk swung.

I remember that I was more afraid trying to board her than I was in the fight, since she was so far out we had to wade to our chests and, if it hadn't been for them throwing out the boarding plank, none of us would have got on board at all.

As it was, between rain and sea, I landed on the deck, miserable, wet, chafed, shivering and more tired than I had ever been in my life. I couldn't believe that anyone had any strength left, but the same ones who had just fought dumped their weapons, slithered out of mail, took oars and worked the Elk out into the wind, where the sail was hauled up and we were off.

And all the time, I saw the boy's eyes, the rain filling them like tears, felt Einar's hand slap my shoulder and heard him say, again and again: 'Good fight, boy. You'll do.'

3 We wintered at Skirringsaal, on the southern tip of Norway, because it was too late in the year to get back to Birka, which was further east along the Baltic and frozen in now. Skirringsaal was handy and had all that the Oathsworn needed: drink, food and women, though it was only a summer trade fair, a bjorkey, which fell quiet in winter.

Einar grumbled; he'd much rather have foisted himself on some minor jarl who, faced with sixty warriors sailing into his fjord, would have been all hospitality and smiles for the winter.

Instead, he was forced to dole out hacksilver and have the men split up throughout the town, paying for roof and ale with locals, who were used to foreign travellers.

Einar himself, thanks to the foresight of the local merchants, got himself a hov in a small boatshed and was able to sit in a makeshift high seat, his prows on either side, and lord it like a jarl, with more than a few of the Oathsworn with him. All of the others dropped in daily to take advantage of the free ale and whatever was in the pot.

Almost everyone bought a slave girl at once—to the relief of those traders who thought themselves stuck with them all winter—and the hov was thus fairly crowded, with nothing to do but repairs to gear, or dice, or play endless games of hnefatafl and get into fights about who won.

That and drink and fucking seemed to make up winter, as far as the Oathsworn were concerned.

Because my father was the valued shipmaster, he and I were in Einar's hov, which was less well built than a turfed hall like Bjornshafen. With so many of us, space by the central hearthfire was at a premium and privacy was a joke. At any one time, one of the band was humping away at a girl and, after a while, it didn't even excite attention, never mind the senses.

Once, I saw the Trimmer, busy with a game, drop one of the 'tafl counters. It rolled practically under the arse of one of the weary slave girls, which was bouncing on the filthy rush floor under Skapti's grunting slams. Without even looking, Trimmer shoved her buttocks to one side, retrieved the counter and went back to the game.

Once over the reluctance at doing all this in front of others, humping slave girls was what I did whenever possible.

Several times I was dragged off one so that she could help prepare the food and, once, was slapped by Skapti when I shouted in anger. His casual blow knocked me into three or four more men, scattering whatever they were doing and, as I lay with my eyes whirling, Einar had to come in and lay about them as if they were a pack of snarling dogs.

He, of course, had his own section, hurdled off at the back. Here, he and Illugi, my father and Valgard Skafhogg would sit and scheme. Sometimes Skapti and Ketil Crow would join in.

In the end, because everyone agreed I would fuck myself to an early grave, I was reluctantly dragged, most days, away from the women. No one but Ulf-Agar minded that a beardless boy was at the high seat of things.

As the year ground through the skeins of snow, interest in everything waned. Simply getting through to the thaw became the focus of everyone's intent; endless, freezing rain and snow, the grey-yellow ice that formed everywhere, the coughs, rheumy eyes, loose bowels, all became a test of endurance.

Except for Einar, who tried to ignore his own phlegm and fluxes, scheming on regardless, like a man pushing a plough through a stony field.

The riddle of the saint's box had eluded him, it seemed. No one knew for sure, since he never let anyone look at the contents. Instead, he dragged in every trader who was trapped, like him, and had intense conversations with them behind the hurdle.

Then, one day, as the ice dripped from the eaves and men actually started to stagger out of the stinking hov—and it would have reeked to any Greek, used to baths and oiled massages, even before the winter—

Illugi, Valgard, my father and Einar were huddled in his little private chamber, as usual.

And me. Youth had made me healthier than the rest and I was still almost permanently aroused. Since everyone else had more or less lost interest in the girls, I could pick and choose and had my eye on one, a dark beauty, almost as dark as the bluemen from the far south who were so prized in Ireland.

I was craning for a look at her as Einar was speaking, which was why I missed most of it and only came in at the end, to hear him say: `. . . before that little shit Martin gets his hands on it. But no one reads Latin here, not even those who think this place is called Kaupang.'

There were dutiful chuckles at that. Foreigners called Skirringsaal kaupang because they'd once asked what it was called and someone—probably deliberately—had told them 'a market'. So they had continued to call the town that, thinking that was its name.

Einar sighed and shook his head. 'I hate relying on that Latin-reading Christ priest. It would be nice to know what it is he seeks in this.' He slapped the ornate chest.

`Latin is a pain in the arse,' I said, yawning. 'If they have three words where one good one would do, they use them.'

There was silence and it took me a while to realise everyone was staring at me. Einar's eyes were black, ferocious. 'How do you know that, boy?'

Conscious of his tone, I considered cautiously, then answered: `Caomh taught me to read it, back in Bjornshafen—'

I never got the rest of it out. There was an explosion of roars; everyone was talking at once. Einar was trying to hit me, scrambling to get up and out of his furs, Illugi trying to restrain him and my father and Valgard arguing with each other, all at once.

Eventually, when it fell silent again, I raised my head. Einar was glowering at me and breathing as if he'd run up a hill. Illugi was watching him, holding his staff across his knees and between me and him. My father and the Trimmer sat staring at me, one astonished, the other stone-faced.

`Can you read this?' Einar demanded, thrusting a few rustling leaves at me, similar to the ones I'd seen torn from that book-chest in Otmund's temple.

Ì've never read from this before,' I told him. `Caomh drew the letters in the sand, or in the dirt.'

It was clearer than that, of course. Easy.

' "The people here were lost to God's mercy," ' I read, squinting at the faded, brown letters. ' "They wallowed in their idol worship, until God Himself brought His word to them, though His humble servant, bound in duty to . . ." ' I stopped, scanning the lines ahead. 'It goes on and on—do you want to hear all this?'

Einar leaned forward, dangerous-eyed, his voice frosted. 'Read it all,' he snarled.

So I did. Otmund, it seemed, was full of the joy of coming to the lost people of the Karelians and returning them to the fold like so many strayed sheep. He listed, in considerable detail, his unstinting efforts to do that.

His greatest triumph came, it seemed, when he managed to gain some followers among those skin-wearing trolls.

In the end, as the chief declared for the White Christ, the last believers in the old ways stole their god's stone, on which lay the secrets of the tomb, and spirited it away south and across the sea, into the lands of the Krivichi at Kiev and to a chief named Muzum.

`Read that again,' demanded Einar. Sighing, seeing my chance with the dark girl recede by the minute, I worked my way back, took a breath and laboriously read the passage again. My head hurt with the effort.

`Secrets of the tomb?' Einar asked Illugi, when I had finished. Illugi Godi shrugged.

`Might be Atil's treasure,' he grunted. `Might be a poor kenning on the nature of gods. And Muzum? I know the Krivichi tribes—we passed through their lands going down to Kiev, some time back. There's no chief called Muzum.'

`They always do that, the Latin writers,' I offered moodily. 'That's what I mean about them. They seem determined to write something and make it as long-winded and hard to understand as possible. Usually, if you take the "um" off the end you have a better chance of working out what they really mean with names.'

`Hmm,' mused Illugi. `Muz? Might be muzhi, but that just means Great Chief. Every ferret-face with two horses and a dog calls himself a great chief along the river banks around Kiev.'

`Then we'll just have to find one with a bloody great stone from a god,' Einar grunted, then looked at me and rubbed his chin. 'Next time, tell me what you can and can't do. I wasted valuable time talking to traders—at least half a dozen over the course of this Loki-cursed winter. Now they will be carrying the news of it far and wide.'

Ì didn't know that you needed anything read,' I snapped back, annoyance at missing out on the dark one combining with the unfairness of it to make me daring. 'If you had actually unpicked your lips on this, I'd have known.'