his wooden foot back from the fire, for it was charring.
'You do not agree, Finn Horsehead?' Botolf said mildly, though he was annoyed, both at his own foot- carelessness and Finn's casual dismissal of his plan.
Finn, wiping gravy from his beard, chewed and shook his head.
'You have all gone soft and forgotten about what we truly are,' he said, harsh as crow-song, his face blooded by the fire. 'What would we do in Klerkon's sea boots?'
There was silence. Botolf looked at Kvasir, who looked at me, cocking his head like a bird, the way he had taken to doing recently. The certainty of it struck us all, so that we almost leaped up at the same time. Thralls squeaked; Thorgunna, alarmed, demanded to know what was happening, grabbing up the long roasting fork.
'It has already happened,' Finn declared as we headed for the door. 'I went outside to see for myself.'
'And said nothing?' I roared, sick with the surety that, even knowing, I could have done nothing. Kvasir ducked out the door and Thorgunna shushed the squealing thralls and demanded to know what was happening. Cormac bawled, red-faced.
Kvasir came back in, the rain-scented night swirling in with him, rank with woodsmoke. He nodded to me.
'What is happening?' demanded Thorgunna with a roar. 'Are we attacked?'
We were not, nor would we be. Klerkon had done what any sensible sea-raider would do, given that his enterprise had not woven itself as tight as he would have liked. He had made the best of matters.
As Kvasir explained it, soothing and soft and patting to Thorgunna, I opened the door and stepped out to where the wind soughed, driving a mist of cloud over the moon, heavy with smell of wet earth and rain. But that could not hide the sharp tang of smoke and the horizon glowed where Tor's steading burned.
In the smeared-silver dawn, I rode over with Kvasir, Finn and Thorgunna to where the raven feathers of smoke stained the sky, but there was nothing left of Gunnarsgard other than charred timbers. Flann's body was where it had been and crows flapped heavily off it as we came up, but they had taken Stoor, body and head both. There was only one other corpse and that was a shrivelled horror perched on a bench in the black ruin of the hov.
Thorgunna slithered off the back of her pony, her dress caught up between her legs and looped over her belt in front for riding, so that it looked as if she wore fat breeks. Her strong calves flexed as she stumped to where the hall smoked damply and stood, legs slightly apart, rocking backwards and forwards for a long moment, staring at the grisly mess.
'Tor,' she said eventually and I nodded. It made sense — Klerkon dealt in profit and had killed the useless, hamstrung Tor, then taken his thralls and his woman and everything he could, down to the very chickens.
Thorgunna bent, picked something up, turned and walked back, looking up at where I sat on the pony.
She placed one hand on my knee and I felt it tremble like a nested bird. In her dirt-calloused palm was a snapped thong and a bone slice threaded on it.
He had taken what profit he could and gone off to brood and chew his nails on what to do next to prise the secret of treasure from me and it was clear he did not yet know Thordis could be used for it. If he found out. .
'We will go after my sister,' Thorgunna said. I looked at Kvasir, who peered at me sideways and nodded. I looked at Thorgunna; it was clear this was not a question.
So I nodded.
'Heya,' said Finn and I could have sworn there was joy in his voice.
4
The sea was the colour of wet slate, the spray coming off the tops of the chop like the manes of white horses. Somewhere, at that almost invisible point where the grey-black of sky and sea smeared, lay the land of the Vods and Ests.
Two days. Three days. Who knows? A day's sail from a shipmaster is how far a good ship takes to travel some thirty ship-miles — but it could take you two sunrises to do it. Gizur kept saying we were three days from the Vod coast, looking for a range of mountain peaks like the teeth of a dog, but we never seemed to get closer.
Everyone was boat-clenched, which is what happens when the weather closes in. You sink deeper inside, like a bear in winter, sucking into the cave of yourself where you hunch up and endure.
The sail was racked midway down on the mast, we were driving east and a little south with a good wind and the oars were stowed inboard, so most of us had nothing to do but huddle in our sealskin sleeping bags. Everyone was busy, in silence, trying to keep dry and warm, while the lines hummed and the rain slashed in.
Thorgunna and the thrall women and the deerhounds huddled beside me under the little awning which was my right as jarl. Not that it gave much more than the illusion of shelter, but there was the warmth of shared bodies and the added, strange enjoyment of them being women.
I had done Botolf little favour appointing him steward in my absence — though Ingrid took the store keys from Thorgunna with a triumphant smile, which made Kvasir's wife scowl. It was bad enough what Thorgunna was leaving behind — her chest of heavy oak with its massive iron lock, filled with fine-wrought wool and bedlinen stitched by her grandmother's hands — without handing over her status in my hall to another woman who was not my first-wife. Not even my wife.
I then had to promise to get those keys back for her when we returned.
'Stay quiet, do nothing,' I advised Botolf, who was unhappy at being left behind and thought it more to do with his missing leg than anything else. I needed a level head and a brave heart, for Tor had friends in the region and there was no telling who they would blame or what they might do. Ingrid would supply the first and Botolf the second.
'I plan to deal with Klerkon, get Thorgunna's sister back, then go to Gardariki lands and find Short Eldgrim and Cod-Biter,' I explained. He nodded as if he understood, but the truth was there was as much clever in Botolf as in a bull's behind. Now and then, though, he surprised me.
'Jul Brand will have much to say on this and none of it good,' he declared. 'You should find a way of telling him how matters stand, before he takes it into his head to make you outlaw.'
Then he grinned at my astonishment.
'You should sell Hestreng to me for an acorn, or a chicken,' he added. 'Then I can sell it back when you return. That way. .'
'If you want Hestreng and the love of Jarl Brand,' he grunted, 'then you will have to put a rare weight in the pan to counter what he is thinking — that you lied to him about Atil's treasure and are running about frightening decent farming folk with your sea-raider ways.'
His eyes went flat, like a sea where the wind has died to nothing.
'It comes to me that you will need to travel all the way to Atil's tomb and take all the silver you can,' he added, his voice bitter-bleak because he knew he would not be part of that. Then he forced a smile and stuck out his hand.
'I expect my share, all the same,' he ended and, mazed at all this, I clasped him, wrist to wrist, more sure now that I had left matters in Hestreng in good hands. Then I stole the smile from him.
I told him we would be taking Drumba and Heg and three thrall women as well, because we had Thorgunna with us. This was a hard dunt for Botolf; two thralls had died in the winter before and losing five more was bad enough without also waving goodbye to Thorgunna, who was a pillar of Hestreng. I did not want her with us, but Kvasir did and Thorgunna was determined to chase after her sister, so there it was. I pointed this out patiently to a scowling Botolf.
'We are oar-short on the
There were twenty fighting men, bench-light for a
