The White Raven

herself under my arm and I felt her tremble under my grip though her dirt-smeared face, so like her sister's, had no tear-streaks. She looked up into my eyes and nodded, just the once.

Then, from across the square, I heard Thorgunna shout: 'Thordis!' The sisters met, embracing, while Kvasir came up to stand near Finn. The two dull-eyed thrall women stood, heads down, like waiting cattle. Klerkon looked from the embracing sisters to me and back again, the truth settling on him slowly, like sifting snow.

He gathered himself well, though the white lines puckered round his cat's-arse mouth for a moment.

'Ah well,' he said, with a forced smile. 'I missed the prize, it seems and so there is a touching scene to end the day. Almost worth the cost, eh, Orm?'

He parried well, did Klerkon. No rant or rave about losing the chance to force me to reveal what I knew, just a swift coming about on a new tack. I knew what it was, too — Martin the priest. Klerkon was looking over my shoulder to keep him in sight.

Finn, of course, could not resist the moment.

'No cost to Orm, you arse,' he savaged out. Klerkon turned, a lopsided, sardonic smile on his Pan face. Finn grinned back.

'You need a new bed,' he said and Klerkon stiffened, jerked his head back to me, then back to Finn. The smile transformed to a feral snarl when he realized what had happened; Takoub shrank back — from experience, I was thinking.

I was also cursing Finn, for I knew where Klerkon would go, what he would do. I was only hoping that we could get back to the Elk and away back to Botolf before Klerkon managed to rout out his crew, sort out his half-dismantled ship and sail home. Then he would go to Hestreng for revenge.

Finn saw it, too, almost as soon as the words were out, and knew where his solution lay.

'Finn — no!'

To his credit, the blade was half out of the sheath and he still managed to slam it back, even when Klerkon sneered at him and turned contemptuously away. I was so rushed with relief, so blinded by it, that I did not see the little shape move across the square.

He took four quick steps, a skip and a hop. He gave a sharp little shout on the hop, just loud enough for Klerkon to turn and see what was about to happen to him — there was hatred and fear in equal measure on his face as Olaf Crowbone, the little monster, came at him, free of chains, free of the Black Island, dressed in new finery and armed with a brand-new little axe.

Like a salmon, Crowbone popped up into Klerkon's astounded gaze and buried his brand-new axe, with as good a stroke as I have ever seen, in the front of his hated captor's skull.

7

''Little turd,' grunted Finn as we were led to the pit.

'He had started speaking against Olaf almost as soon as we had been dragged to the pit prison from the yelling chaos of Novgorod's marketplace where the body of Klerkon lay in a spreading pool of blood like some long- nosed beast. People screamed.

''This is what comes of giving thralls a weapon,' Finn had growled, a scowl twisting his face into worse shadows in the faint light from the hole far above.

'I am not a thrall,' Olaf piped back. 'Jarl Orm said so. And I am a prince, besides.'

'The generosity of Jarl Orm is great, I am thinking,' countered Finn, 'but not as great as his bad judgement in that matter.'

'Leave the boy,' said Thorgunna from the dark, at which Finn hawked meaningfully and spat, careless of where it landed in the dark.

'I will speak as I please,' he growled.

'You are a fool, Finn Horsehead,' rasped the voice of Martin. It was the first thing the monk had said that was not a whining protest about how he had nothing at all to do with us. For once he spoke the truth and the fact that he was caught with us, despite his innocence let Finn gloat so much he did not even mind being called a fool.

'Your Christ-god seems to have got himself entangled with the Norns' weave,' chuckled Finn and Martin turned, his eyes the only thing that showed in the dark.

'The Lord will not be mocked,' he said in that file-rasp voice of his. Finn's laugh was just as harsh.

'He mocks you, priest. Every time you get near that holy stick of yours, he snatches it away again.'

Martin's mouth flecked foam at the corners and he waved furious hands, as if to bat Finn's words away.

'You do not yet see the advantage in taking Christ,' he mushed. 'What can your goat-chariot god do for you now? Or your one-eyed All-Father, patron of devils? They give you nothing and you will die unblessed. I, meanwhile, need only repent and confess my sins and Christ will give me life eternal. No-one lives the way you want to live these days, as I am sure Orm has told you.'

I did not want this monk standing beside me as if I was his horn-partner at a feast and said so. I also added that I did not think it much of a bargain which says you have to die first to be saved.

'Better than what your gods offer,' Martin spat back. 'They save you from death only to go to this feasting hall — for what? So you can fight for them at the end of the world and die a second time?'

'Every man comes to die,' piped up that little voice from the dark. 'That is the price of life and what the Norns weave — all that remains is to meet it well.'

It was so well spoken that even scowling Finn could not bring himself to sneer at Olaf.

Martin snorted. 'That shows how weak the old way is — if there is no choice, a man is a worthless slave of fate, which you pagans call the Norns. Christ has freed us from that.'

'You have no claim on freedom,' Olaf said, quick as the dart of a bird's tongue. 'You Christ-followers are forever telling everyone how they should behave.'

'That is not such a bad thing in your case,' Finn growled. 'It might have stayed your hand from hitting Klerkon with that axe. Little turd — who do you think you are? Egil Skallagrimsson?'

Kvasir chuckled at that, for the tale of the six-year-old Egil smacking an older boy with an axe in a fight had been the talk of Iceland at the time and was so well known to us now that Egil was a fame-rich man.

The words tinkled from Olaf like ice into the darkness.

'My mouth strains

To move the tongue,

To weigh and wing,

The choicer word;

Not easy to breathe

Odin's inspiration

In my heart's hinterland.

Little hope there.'

This left us stunned, for most of us knew this was a verse of Egil Skallagrimsson's lament to his dead son. Kvasir muttered a sibilant 'heya' and even Finn offered a grudging growl of approval.

I remembered Kvasir's fish-breath whisper in my ear. That boy is not nine years old.

'At least that stopped your mouth for a while, Horsehead,' Martin rasped into the quiet dim. The faint light from the hole above resolved his darker shape against the charcoal.

'Orm should have killed you when he had the chance,' answered Finn bitterly, hugging himself against the damp chill of the rough carved walls. 'I may yet step in and claim the right of it,' he added viciously.

'There was once a good Norseman from the viks,' said Olaf, high and sharp as a flighted arrow into the middle of this, 'who went out to chop wood.'

Kvasir laughed aloud and Thorgunna, sensing a story might calm things, urged Olaf to go on.

'This Norseman,' the boy went on, 'we shall call. . Finn.' You could almost hear Finn's scowl squeak as it wrenched his face.