The White Raven

Fjord Elk, which properly needed two watches of thirty oarsmen apiece — we barely had enough to sail her, as Gizur pointed out at the oath-swearing.

Hrafn provided the blood for it, as expensive and sad a blot offering as Odin would ever have. We found him, flanks heaving for breath, streaming blood and sweat, lying in the meadow shot full of arrows, as Botolf had said. Now his head reared accusingly on a shame-pole of carved runes, streaming out bad cess at Klerkon's steading on Svartey, the Black Island, hidden miles beyond the grey mist and sea. Unlike us, Klerkon had no hall, but this was a winter-place he used and it was likely he was heading there.

'We will pick up more men,' I told Gizur and the new Oathsworn, more firmly than I believed. It was more than likely we would — but not from the land of the Livs and Vods and Ests. We would get no decent ship men until we reached Aldeigjuburg, which the Slavs call Staraja Ladoga and so would be raiding the steading of Klerkon with about half the men he had.

Finn pointed this out, too, when everyone was huddled in the hall out of the sleet, fishing chunks of Hrafn out of the pot, blowing on their fingers and trying to forget the hard oath they had just sworn.

'Well,' I said to him, uneasy and angry because he was right, 'you were the one who wanted to go raiding. You were the one never still-tongued about Aril's silver hoard, so that men would come to Hestreng and force me back to the tomb. Pity you did not think that the likes of Klerkon would hear you, too.'

Which was unfair, for he had saved my life in Tor's hov, but all of this had smashed whatever shackles bound me to the land and the thought that Finn had had a hand in it nagged me. There was more cunning in it than he had ever shown before, so I could not be sure — but I was watching men eat my prize stallion and so was in no mood for him at that moment. He saw it and had the sense to go away.

Kvasir came to me while men shouted and fought good-naturedly in the ale-feast that followed the oath- swearing. He hunkered down at my knee as I sat, glowering and spider-black over the fun raging up and down the hall, and took his time about speaking, as if he had to pay for the words in hacksilver and was thin in the purse.

'You were hard with Finn, I hear,' he said eventually, not looking at me.

'Is he aggrieved of it?' I asked moodily.

'No,' answered Kvasir cheerfully, 'for he knows you have other things to think on. Like me, he believes the sea air will clear your head.'

Well, Finn had the right of that, at least, though I did not know it myself at the time — or even when I was in the joy of it.

But when it happened, Finn came and stood with me in the prow, while the wind lashed our cheeks with our own braids and sluiced us with manes of foam.

The spray fanned up as the Elk planed and sliced down the great heave of wave, moving and groaning beneath us like the great beast of the forest itself. Those waves we swept over would not be stopped save by the skerries and the cliffs we had left behind. Only the whales and us dared to match skill and strength with those waves — but only the whales had no fear.

I was filled with the cold and storm, threw back my head, face pebbled with the salt dash of the waves and roared out the sheer delight of being in that moment. When I turned, Finn was roaring and grinning with me, while Thorgunna and the thralls watched us, sour and disapproving, hunched with misery and the deerhounds under a dripping awning that flapped like a mad bird's wing.

'You look a sight,' Finn said, blowing rain off his nose. Which was hard to take from a man wearing a hat whose broad brim had melted down his head in the rain and was kept on his head by a length of tablet-woven braid fastened under his chin.

I said so and he peeled the sodden thing off looking at the ruin of it.

'Ivar's weather hat,' he declared, ruefully. 'There must be a cunning trick to it, for I cannot get it to work.'

'Keep trying,' urged Klepp Spaki, peering miserably out from under his cloak, 'for if you can get the sea to stop heaving my innards up and down, I would be grateful.'

Others nearby chuckled and I wondered, once again, about the wisdom of bringing Klepp along at all. He had turned up at the hall with the rest of some hopefuls and I had taken him for just another looking for an oar on the Elk, though he did not look like the usual cut of hard men. When he had announced he was Klepp Spaki, I groaned, for I had forgotten I had put the word out for a rune-carver and now I had no time — nor silver — for his service.

However, he had looked delighted at the news we were off on a raid and said he would do the stone for free if he could take the oath and come with us, for he had never done such a thing and did not feel himself a true man of the vik.

Now he sat under his drenched cloak, hoiking up his guts into the bilges, feeling exactly like a true man of the vik and no doubt wishing he was back in the best place by the fire, which was his due as a runemaster of note. It was a joke on his name, this journey — Spaki meant Wise.

Later, I woke suddenly, jerking out of some dream that spumed away from me as my eyes opened. The deck was wet, but no water washed over the planks and the air was thick with chill, grey and misted with haar that jewelled everyone's beards and hair. Breath smoked.

Thorgunna squatted on the bucket, only her hem-sodden skirts providing some privacy and I saw the thrall women passing out dried fish and wet bread to those on the oars, who were steaming as they pulled, eyes fixed to the lead oar for the timing. No thumping drums here, like they did on Roman ships; we were raiders and never wanted to let folk know we were coming up on them.

Gizur rolled up, blinking pearls from his eyelashes and grinning, the squat mis-shape of Onund hunched in behind him like some tame dancing bear.

'Rain, wind, sleet, haar, flat calm — we have had every season in a few hours,' he said. 'But the Elk is sound. No more than cupful has shipped through the planks.'

'More than can be said for my breeks,' grumbled Hauk, picking his way down the deck. Gizur laughed, clapping Onund on his good shoulder so that the water spurted up from the wool. Onund grunted and lumbered, swaying alarmingly, to examine the bilges and ballast stones.

Gizur glanced over at the water. He could read it like a good hunter does a trail and I watched him pitch a wood chip over the side. and study it, judging speed as it slid away down the side of the boat. Two hours later, the haar-mist smoked off the black water and Lambi Ketilsson, whom we called Pai for his peacock ways, stood up in the prow, yelling and pointing.

Black peaks like dog's teeth. Gizur beamed; everyone cheered. 'Now comes the hard part,' Finn reminded everyone loudly and that stuck a sharp blade in the laughter.

Not long after, it started to snow.

The dawn was silver milk over Svartey, the Black Island. We were huddled in a stand of wet-claw trees above Klerkon's camp, where the smoke wisped freshly and figures moved, sluggish as grazing sheep and just woken.

I watched two thralls stumble to the fringe of trees and squat; another fetched wood. The camp stretched and farted itself into a new day and we had been there an hour at least and had seen no-one who could fairly be called a man, only women and thralls. I had seen that Klerkon had built himself a wattle hall, while other ramshackle buildings clustered round it, all easily abandoned come Spring.

I looked across at Finn, who grinned over the great Roman nail he had clenched sideways in his teeth to stop himself howling out like a wolf, which is what he did when he was going to fight. Slaver dripped and his eyes were wild.

We had talked this through while the Fjord Elk slid through grey, snow-drifting mist on black water slick and sluggish as gruel.

'It wants to be ice, that water,' grunted Onund and Gizur shushed him, for he was leaning out, head cocked and listening for the sound of shoals, of water breaking on skerries. Now and then he would screech out a short, shrill whistle and listen for it echoing back off stone cliffs. The oars dipped, slow and wary.

'We should talk to Klerkon,' I argued with Finn. 'If we can get Thordis back with no blood shed, all the better.'

Finn grunted. 'We should hit them hard and fast, for he will have more men than us and we must come on