The Whale Road

to me, then undid my tunic belt, hiked it up and undid the strings of my breeks.

I clutched them to me, but he indicated, grinning, for me to drop them. Loud hoots of laughter greeted this. Then he started to show me how to strap the foot-long seax to the inside of one thigh, high up under my balls. Red-faced, I stopped him, fumbling the thing on myself, aware of my prick shrinking under the stares.

`You'll impress the women when you sit,' rumbled Skapti.

`But not when erect,' growled Kvasir Spittle from the crowd and everyone laughed, the high, savage laughter of men about to stare Thor in his red-bearded face.

I hauled my breeks back up and Einar nodded, looked around the company and raised one hand. There was a short, deep-throated `hoom' and then only the noise of men moving, gear clattering, feet shuffling. In seconds, it seemed, the hov was empty, with not so much as a discarded strap-end to show anyone had been there.

Hring and Skapti came up, carrying the spear and cloak bed I thought made for Ulf-Agar. Eyvind was there, and Ketil Crow, Gunnar Raudi and Einar, who looked at me and said, 'Lie down and be dead, Orm.

But give me that amulet from your neck first.'

Bewildered, I lay on the contraption and was bundled up in two cloaks, swathed head to foot, along with four long, naked swords.

Einar grinned down and, just before he covered my face, said, 'Remember: be still and dead, Orm Ruriksson. There's more than one way to kill the bear.'

I felt him place something on my chest, then rocked violently as I was lifted. I heard the wind hiss and thump round the houses of Birka, but felt nothing through the swathe of cloaks. I smelled sweat and piss and blood, though, felt the weight of the wool, heard sounds dull almost into stillness and the night transform into a hotter, dryer blackness, clutching me like an eager woman.

I was not happy with it, the lurch and sway and the press of the wool and the feel of trying to suck air through it, thick as gruel. My eyes were blinking sweat; the edge of one blade, I swore, was slicing into my thigh with every stumble they made. I felt my lungs contract and my heart was banging against my ribs like a door in the wind.

We stopped. Someone said something, too indistinct in the wind. Then Einar, gloomy and sombre, announced: 'One of ours is dead . . . a Christ-follower, as you can see. We need your little monk to speak properly over him and do what rites the Christ-men do.'

The answer was gruff, almost offhand and I heard Einar spit. 'It happened no more than an hour ago—in the town you are supposed to guard. Where were you, then, when the men from the drakkar had their swords and axes out, running riot in the streets?'

The guard grunted, shamed to silence. Another voice sounded, much closer. `Stabbed, was he?'

`Stuck through like a pig,' agreed Skapti sorrowfully.

I felt the cloth twitch back and the guard grunted. I lay, muscles frozen, willing my closed eyelids not to quiver. The cloth twitched back and Gunnar's growl came low and fierce: 'Have a care and respect, little man.'

`No offence,' I heard the guard say hastily. I remember the boy from earlier. A shame. Pass through—

though I think it unlikely you will get much from that monk, who somewhat lacks the proper hospitality all Christ-followers are supposed to have.'

Our thanks,' Einar replied and the corpse bed lurched on.

`Tell the guard at the door that Sten passed you,' the guard called after and again Einar called his thanks.

Beyond earshot, he turned and hissed anxiously to the others, 'Where's Eyvind?'

No one knew. Muttering curses under his breath, he led us up the steps, to where another guard stood at the hall door. Einar recited the same story, used Sten's name and suddenly, there was a flash of blinding light as the cloaks were peeled back. I almost lost a finger in their rush to get the swords out in that empty antechamber.

Einar held up one hand. 'Quiet, as you would tickle trout from a stream, or your woman's fancy. We grab the monk, give him a dunt—no more, mind—that will lay him out as dead, then put him in the corpse bed and trust the guards don't see, in the dark, that we are one more walking out than walking in.'

It was a good and daring plan, as everyone agreed afterwards. But, as Gunnar Raudi pointed out, plans are like summer snow on a dyke and rarely last more than a few minutes.

Which is what happened when we sneaked into the room where Einar, Illugi and I had dined. It seemed an age ago, but the dishes were still there.

And so were the soft-slippered servants, clearing them away.

`Fuck—'

It was all anyone had time to say. There were four of them, all O-mouthed and frozen. There were six of us and they were still scrabbling on the polished floor when our nailed boots scarred a way to them and steel flashed in their faces.

Three died in a welter of sprayed blood and muffled shrieks. The fourth found Skapti sitting on him, driving the air from his body, slamming his head casually and rhythmically into the floorboards. I hadn't even moved, found I had stopped breathing and started again with a savage, hoarse intake.

`The monk?' demanded Einar, leaning down to the dazed, battered thrall. His shaved head was bleeding, his eyes rolling. He had shat himself and Skapti, sniffing suspiciously, stopped sitting on him in a hurry, which had the added effect of allowing the man to breathe and talk.

`There . . .'

Gunnar Raudi and Ketil Crow sprang forward. Skapti whacked the flat of his sword on to the thrall's head, which slammed it back into the floorboards. Blood seeped from the thrall's ears, I noticed.

Skapti moved on and probably thought he had been merciful in only knocking the man unconscious. I reckoned, from the rasping breath and leaking blood, that the man would almost certainly die. Even if he didn't, he'd probably be witless, like old Oktar, who had been suspected of releasing the white bear at Bjornshafen.

The following summer he had been kicked in the head by a stallion and blood had come out of his ears.

He had survived, with a big dent and no mind enough to keep him from drooling, so Gudleif had had him sacrificed, in the old way, his blood sprinkled on the fields, as a mercy. Another wyrd death to lay at the den of that bear—and, of course, at the feet of my father.

A series of shouts and a scuffle snatched me from these thoughts. Ketil Crow arrived, more or less behind Martin the monk, who smiled smoothly at Einar—much to all our bewilderment. 'Excellent,' he declared. `How did you plan to get me out?'

`How do you know we planned to get you out and not just lay you out?' scowled Ketil Crow. Einar indicated the corpse bed Hring was dragging in and Martin's smile grew broader still.

`Clever,' he said, then, briskly: 'There is a woman next door. She will be the one for that bed, well covered. I will, if I may, borrow a cloak and helm—from Orm, who is my size '

`Wait, wait,' growled Einar, scrubbing his stubbled chin. 'What's all this? What woman?'

Martin was already pulling the cloak from my unyielding shoulders, trying to prise my leather helmet off.

I slapped his hands away.

`Lambisson does not esteem me. He will be back soon, having realised that the woman I had brought here is more valuable than anything else he seeks.'

`Valuable?' demanded Einar.

`She knows the way to a great treasure,' Martin responded, tugging, then rounded angrily on me. 'Let it go, you idiot boy.'

At which point, angered beyond anything I had experienced in my life, I swung my sword in a half-arc. It was wild—a bad swing entirely, as Skapti said later. It hit the monk high on the head, but with the flat, not the edge. He went down like a sacrificed horse, gone from a twisted-faced little weasel of a man to a heap of rags on the floor.

Einar bent, studied him for a moment, then stroked his beard again and nodded admiringly at me. 'Good stroke. Hring, bring the little rat round. Let's find this woman . . .'

We moved to the door, opened it as cautiously as possible and Ketil Crow moved in, followed by Gunnar Raudi, then me. Einar and Skapti stayed outside.

It was dark, lit only by a horn lantern, guttering low, and fetid, a strange, high smell which I came to recognise later as fear and shit in equal measure. Ketil Crow knew it well, for it put him into a half-crouch, blade