The Whale Road

`The other drakkar took his body back, wrapped in wadmal and salt, for Bluetooth to see,' Ketil Crow went on.

`How long have you known this?' I asked.

'Not long,' Einar replied absently. 'If it is true.'

Ketil Crow's thin-lipped silence was better than words. He clearly believed it. Wanted to believe it. If Starkad was dead and the other drakkar gone back to Denmark, then we were one enemy less. A big enemy, too.

If so, where did Martin come from?' demanded Illugi Godi.

`Vigfus?' I ventured and Einar's brief, lowered-brow gaze told me he had considered that. There was something more there, too, but I could not quite grasp it.

`Well,' he said, eventually, forcing a smile, `there is a horse-fight to be enjoyed and an oath-swearing after. If you are not fit to stay, Bear Slayer, I will hand Hild to two others and you can return to the ship.'

I will go with him,' said Hild quickly. Einar looked from her to me and had the grace to keep his thoughts from his face. He bowed acknowledgement, but I said I was fine to stay.

`Stay sober and don't take part in the wrestling,' Illugi Godi said with a smile. `Later, I will bind it with salves. Best to leave the mail off.'

When he had gone into the crowd, I pointedly looked at the mail, then at Gunnar. He grinned his understanding, picked it up and helped me into it.

Hild frowned, clutching her spear-shaft talisman. Illugi just said not to do that.'

Illugi is not the one armed men are after,' I pointed out.

Gunnar bent to me, under the pretence of adjusting the hang of the mail on my shoulders. 'Thing is,' he whispered, 'I recognised one of those men. Herjolf, the one they called Hare-foot, from the next valley to Bjornshafen. Remember him?'

I did, vaguely, a lanky man who came over with sheep to sell now and then, memorable only because of the long-boned feet that gave him his nickname.

`The further you go,' I mused, 'the more people you meet that you know.'

Gunnar hawked and spat. 'I don't believe in such wyrd,' he growled, while a bemused Hild looked on, one to the other. 'He was here after you. I am thinking that, if we find out where the other men are from, you could probably spit from one of their hovs to the other and all from the Vik.'

`What are you saying?' I demanded.

`Gudleifs sons are here,' he replied and wandered off to get his horn refilled.

That crashed on me like an anvil and left me stunned. I shook my head with disbelief.

Half a year ago—less—I had no enemies at all and now they were lining up to swing a sword at me.

Gudleif's sons. How had Martin got in with them? At the fishing village, perhaps. He could have reached that and met a ship with Gudleif's vengeful sons on board. Or perhaps he was with the surviving drakkar and Starkad's body when they met another ship with Gudleif's sons.

No matter. The wyrd of it was that Bjorn and Steinkel, no older than me and whom I had never seen, were out for bloodprice for the slaying of their father. And not just from me, I remembered.

`Who is Gudleif?' asked Hild.

A fetch who won't lie peacefully,' I answered and her head came up sharply at that, the knuckles whitening on her talisman spear-shaft.

I made my way through the milling, cheering crowds as the horses fought, seeking out my father. I found him as the grey foundered, reeling backwards on his hind legs, the black's teeth in his neck. Screaming, the black bore him to the ground and pounded him to a red ruin as the crowd roared.

Orm, Orm, you were right and we have won a fortune,' my father roared, beaming and red-faced. 'How did you know, eh?'

`No matter,' I began, but he had the others round him, wanted to bask in the reflected glory of his clever son and insisted.

`White socks,' I said, speaking quickly. `The grey had white socks on the rear hocks. The hair grows white round old wounds or bad bone . . . His hocks gave out, because they were weak. A fighting horse that can't stand on his hind legs won't last long.'

My father beamed; the others nodded, impressed. I caught his arm and dragged him aside. He came, realising now that something was up.

`There was a fight,' I said and his eyes widened, examining me, seeing the missing rings on my mail shirt.

I am unhurt. Gunnar Raudi cut his head giving one an Oathsworn kiss.'

`Shits! How many? Where are they? Einar must know . . . He won't want anything to mar this day.'

'Too late,' I said. Then I told him of my and Gunnar's suspicions.

He sagged a little, the joy of the day withered away. 'Odin's balls,' he said, shaking his head wearily.

`Vigfus, Starkad, now my nephews . . . I am getting too old for all this, Orm.'

And me,' I replied with feeling, which made him laugh a little. He straightened and nodded.

`Right. You have the right of it. Fuck Gudleif and fuck his sons, too. If Einar has his way today, none of them will be able to touch us.'

That made me blink a bit and my father laid one finger along his nose and winked.

At which point, a hush fell on the crowd as Illugi Godi stepped up, rapped his staff and began the words of consecration.

It went well. The winning horse, streaming sweat and exhausted, was expertly dispatched, the blood from its cut throat drenching the altar stone, the head removed and stuck on a pole alongside, while the carcass was hauled off to be butchered and eaten. The heart would be left on the altar and Illugi would watch to see what bird came to it first.

Then, one by one, the Oathsworn, new and old, stepped forward and recited their oath of blood and steel and promise, in the eye of Odin.

When it was my turn, it seemed to me that, on the other side of the altar, where the smoke from the cookfires shrouded the river, Skapti and Pinleg and other faces stood and watched silently, pale figures with glittering eyes, envious of the living.

In front of them all, like an accusing finger, was Eyvind.

Einar was last to swear and his voice was strong and clear. Just as he had finished, at the moment when Illugi would close the ceremony with a prayer to Odin, there was a stir and heads turned to look at a party of horsemen, riding on to the Thingvallir.

There were six of them, led by a seventh. They were all mounted on splendid, powerful horses, bigger than our little fighting ponies. They were all mailed and helmeted, with shields slung on their backs, long spears balanced in stirrup cups and curved swords in their belts.

You could not see any of their faces because they had veils of mail drawn across them and the leader wore a splendid helmet with a full-face gilded mask on it, a bland sculpture of a beautiful youth. A huge horsetail hung from the point of it and blew silver-grey in the wind.

Amazed, everyone watched as they cantered up and swung into a line. The man with the masked helmet leaped off, light on his feet for someone in mail and leather. Only his legs, with baggy red silk trousers tucked into knee-high leather boots, had no armour and the mail hauberk hung low, so that they were protected when he rode.

He wore two curved sabres in his belt—the mark of a chieftain, so I had been told—and a magnificent, fur- collared cloak of midnight blue fastened with a silver clasp that was probably worth a couple of farms back in the Vik.

When he unclipped the face-plate and pulled off his helmet, it was a disappointment, for there was no gilded youth, only a boy with pimples. But there were a few intakes of breath and the name leaped from head to head like a drumbeat.

Yaropolk.

The Prince, son of Sviatoslav, was young, round-faced and wisp-bearded. Round his neck was a ring of fat, egg-sized glowing lumps of amber, the tears of the sun. His whole head was shaved, save for a hank of black hair, braided and bound with silver bands, hanging over one ear. I learned later that his father was similarly shaved and