The White Raven

them like Mjollnir. If we talk, we give up that and they will laugh in our faces and carve us up.'

'Klerkon may just kill Thordis even if we do strike like Thor's Hammer,' Kvasir pointed out and I waved a hand to quiet his voice for, though we sat with our heads touching, it was not a large boat and Thorgunna was not far away.

'No,' said Finn. 'I am thinking he will keep her to bargain with if it goes badly for him. He wants the secret of Atil's treasure, so she is worth more to him alive.'

It was more likely to go badly with us, for if we could have taken Klerkon surely, I would have done it at Gunnarsgard. Neither of us had had enough men for certain victory then — but, in his own place, Klerkon probably had more. I did not say this, for it was no help; we had not sailed all this way to gather shells on Klerkon's beach.

There was a flurry of movement, some hissed commands and then, with a crunch and a lurch, the Elk slid an oak keel scar up the shingle beach of Svartey, the Black Island of Klerkon.

The thralls and women stayed behind, for they were useless in a fight. Gizur and Onund stayed, too, for they were too valuable to the ship to be risked. The rest of us hauled out weapons, checked shield straps, slithered into mail if it was there to be worn.

In the dim before dawn they were grim and glittering with hoar, bearded, tangle-haired under their helmets and grinning the savage grin of wolves on a kill. Hauk Fast Sailor had a bow, which he preferred. So did Finnlaith, who was a hunter of skill and I had marked that. The rest had good blades, axe or spear. Few swords. All the blades were dull with sheep grease against the sea-rot.

They were hard men, wild men, rough-dressed and tattered, but their battle gear and blades were cared for as women care for bairns and no matter what they had done before, they had put the words in their own mouths and were bound to each other now, blade-brothers of the Oathsworn.

I reminded them of this at the same time as telling them to leave off the loot and women until we were sure all the fighters were dead. They growled and grunted in the dark, teeth and eyes gleaming.

Then Finn stepped up, a battle leader as was Kvasir. But Kvasir said little at these moments and had seemed even more preoccupied than usual. I took it to be because he had Thorgunna with him; a woman is always a worry.

'It is as Jarl Orm says,' Finn growled. 'Obey him. Obey me and Kvasir Spittle here, too, for we are his right and left hands. You are no strangers to red war, so I will not give you the usual talk, of Hewers of Men and Feeders of Eagles.'

He paused, hauled out his long Roman nail and grinned.

'Just remember — this is Jarl Orm, who slew the White Bear. Jarl Orm, who has stood in the tomb of Atil, Lord of the Huns and has seen more silver in a glance than any of you will see in a thousand lifetimes. Jarl Orm, who has fought with the Romans against the Serklanders. Jarl Orm, who is called friend by the Emperor of the Great City.'

I winced at all this, only some of which was true — but Finn's audience would have howled and set up a din of shield-clanging if we had not been looking for stealth.

As we moved off, I saw Thorkel grin at me and raise his axe in salute and I realized that a lot of those things had been done by me right enough. I was now in my twenty-first year in the world, no longer the boy Thorkel had let into the Oathsworn on a shingle beach like this one, on a night much

like this one, six years ago. I touched the dragon-ended silver torc round my neck, that great curve that snarled at itself and marked me as a man men followed.

No-one challenged us as we watched and waited above Klerkon's holding, looking to count hard men and seeing none. The trees dripped. A bird fluttered in, was shocked and whirred out again, cackling. I did not like this and said so.

'We had better move fast,' said Kvasir, his mouth fish-breath close to my face. 'Sooner or later we will give ourselves away and the lighter it gets. .'

The sky was all silver, dulling to lead beyond the huddle of wattle huts. I half-rose and hauled out my sword — not the sabre this time, but a good, solid weapon given to me by King Eirik himself, with little silver inserts hammered into the cross-guard and a fat silver oathing ring in the pommel. I had a shield, but it was mostly for show, since I only had two fingers and a thumb on that hand to grip it with and any sound blow would wrench it away.

Grunting, red-faced, teeth grinding on his nail, Finn slid down through the trees, letting the rest of us follow. He had The Godi, his big sword, in one hand and carried no shield. The free hand was for that nail.

Then, just as he was seen by. the two thralls squatting to shit, he ripped the nail from his mouth, threw back his head and let out a howl that raised the hairs on my arms.

The Oathsworn wolfed down on the camp, skilled and savage and sliding together like ship planks. The first thralls, gawping in terror and surprise with their kjafal flapping round their knees, vanished in a red flurry of blows and it was clear, from the start, that there were no warriors here.

Well, there was, but not much of one. He barrelled out of a doorway with only his breeks on, mouth red and wet and screaming in his mad-bearded face and a great shieldbreaker sword swinging.

Finn and Kvasir, like two wolves on a kill, swung right and left and, while Mad Beard was turning his shaggy head, deciding which one to go for first, Finn darted in with his Roman nail and Kvasir snarled from the other side with his axe, though he missed by a foot with his first swing. It did not matter much, though, for there were two of them and only one defender.

When they broke apart, panting, tongues lolling like dogs, I saw that the man they had been hacking to bloody pats of flesh was Amundi, who was called Brawl. We had all shared ale and laughed round the same fire three summers before.

'So much for him, then,' growled Finn, giving the ruined thing a kick. He shot Kvasir a hard look and added accusingly, 'You need more practice with that axe.'

I had done nothing much in the fight save snarl and wave a menacing blade at a couple of thralls armed with snatched-up wood axes, who thought better of it and dropped them, whimpering. Now I watched these hard men, the new Oathsworn, do what they did best, standing back and weighing them up, for this was a new crew to me for the most part. It was also an old crew, let loose like a pack of hunting dogs too-long kennelled.

Hlenni Brimill and Red Njal and Hauk Fast-Sailor were old Oathsworn, yet they raved through that place, mad with the lust of it, so that the terror in faces only made them worse. Others, too, showed that they were no strangers to raiding and, for all that I had done this before, this time seemed too bloody and harsh, full of screaming women, dying bairns and revenge.

I saw Klepp Spaki, bent over with hands on his thighs, retching up at the sight of Brawl's bloody mess. Now he knew the truth of the bold runes he carved for brave raiders who would never come home.

I saw Thorkel and Finnlaith laughing and slithering in the mud trying to round up a couple of pigs, which was foolish. We wanted no livestock on this raid — we had provision enough for where we were going.

It was the others who brought red war and ruin to that place. Women and thralls died there, right away or later, after they had been used. Weans died, too.

In the dim, blue-smoked hall, men overturned benches, flung aside hangings, cursed and slapped thralls, looking for loot. When they saw me, they fell silent and went still. Ospak, Tjorvir and Throst Silfra, like three bairns caught in the larder with stolen apples, dropped their thieving when they saw me. It was a half-naked, weeping thrall woman they had stripped between them — but they only dropped her because I had told them to leave the women until we were sure all the fighting men were dead.

Finn lost himself in it — him most of all. Like a drunk kept from ale, he dived headfirst into the barrel and tried to drown himself, losing his sense so much that I had to save him from the boy who was trying to avenge his mother. Since Finn had killed her before he flung her down on a dead ox in the yard and started humping her, it was futile, but I had to kill the boy anyway, for he had a seax at Finn's exposed back.

A few kept their heads. Runolf Harelip spilled into the red light of the rann-sack in the hall, dragging a struggling thrall-boy with him, cuffing the child round the head, hard enough to throw him at my feet and almost into the hearthfire. I looked down as the boy looked up and a jolt went through me, as if I had been slapped.

A sensible man crops the hair of a thrall — it keeps the nits down and reminds them of their place — but this boy had been shaved and badly, so that hair stuck in odd dirty-straw tufts between scabs. He wore an iron collar