The White Raven

Sigurd, his silver nose gleaming, moved a little closer to his charges, the young prince and his now-constant companion, little Crowbone. On that one's face I saw no fear, only a studied interest, as if he had found a new kind of bird.

Finn turned, his face streaked with Lyut's blood, the seax held in one hand. He glared round them all and the roaring subsided.

'I am Finn Bardisson from Skanii called Horsehead,' he said softly. 'Is there anyone else wants their foot kissing?'

Silence.

'SPEAK UP, YOU DOGS!'

Behind him, Lyut whimpered and men were carrying him away, to where the women would balm his toasted face with goose fat.

'Sit down Finn Bardisson from Skani, called Horsearse,' Gyrth Steinnbrodir called out into the silence. 'You have taught the boy how to dance on one foot and not to sit so close to the fire and now I want to get back to my drinking.'

There was a chuckle or two, then the hall noise washed back in like a tide on the turn and Finn shunked Lyut's seax into the ale bench and took his horn back, raising it in toast to Gyrth. I raised my own to him and he acknowledged it, while I felt Sveinald staring, could hear him ask through clenched teeth who this Finn Bardisson was and who this Jarl Orm.

I was swelled with the pride of it, that my name was on lips all over the hall and aware also, with a sick, sinking feeling, that we had done neither ourselves nor little Vladimir any favours.

Then, in the cold light of morning as everyone sorted themselves out for the day, the bird fell from the rafters and little Crowbone, his face whalebone-pale, cheeks flushed from the cold, started in to speaking about white ravens.

He was wearing a fine tunic the colour of a robin's egg, wool breeks, fur-trimmed Slav boots and a white wool cloak trimmed with a swathe of sable fur that came up round his ears and met the rough curls of a fine goat-wool cap.

He peered at the dead starling, while the great elkhound with him sniffed it and warily watched our own deerhounds. That huge white-grey beast, as like a wolf as a brother, only added to the unease surrounding Crowbone, for it had eyes of different colours, exactly like his.

When he had first appeared with it, the warding signs made a flutter like bird wings and Klepp Spaki had been busy since, carving protection runes on bits of bone. Only Thorgunna, on whom seidr magic was wasted, was unafraid.

'My, you look like a little prince now, right enough,' she said, beaming — then broke off to cuff the Scots thrall woman for dropping her pin case and spilling the bone needles out of it.

All Olafs finery — even the white, wolf-ruffed elkhound — was gifted from Prince Vladimir. It was, as Kvasir had already pointed out quietly, just as well I hadn't decided to sell Crowbone as a thrall, since it seemed the little turd had charmed the ruler of Novgorod and had gone from slave to prince in one hare-leap. Things, he added, could be much worse.

'How much worse can it already be?' grunted Finn, red-eyed from the night before and just as sullen in the chill daylight. 'The world is lining up to rob us.'

'If you would rather have a stake up your arse,' I snapped back at him, stung by his scowling, 'I can probably arrange it.'

One of the deerhounds laid its great bony head on my knee and sighed mournfully into the mood of the hall. The other snarled at the too-close elkhound, whose ruff stiffened.

'Bleikr,' chided Olaf. 'Stop that.'

Bleikr — White Fair, it meant to us, though most tongues could translate it no better than Pale. Whatever his name, the dog paid Olaf no heed, but was wise enough not to take on both deerhounds. None of the dogs wanted a fight, but the elkhound's ruff stuck out like hedgehog spines and the rough brindle hair on the deerhounds' back was clenched and dark. We watched warily, not eager to get between them.

Then Thorgunna gave a little grunt of annoyance at our holding back and moved in fearlessly, cuffing right and left. The dogs scattered, yelping.

'Bleikr,' she said, tucking a stray wisp of hair back under her braids, while warriors did not dare look at each other for the shame of it. 'There is nice. Now you have a new dog — and kin, too, I hear. Your mother's father in Bjodaskalle and her sisters, too. Not forgetting your Uncle Sigurd here.'

Crowbone nodded, though it was clear that Bleikr was deeper in his heart than these folk, who were only names to him. Even Sigurd. It came to me then that little Crowbone was a boy alone and, after all that had happened to him, might well be for all his life.

Finn looked at the white dog and grunted cynically. Olaf frowned.

'You do not like the name?' he asked. Then he pointed to the deerhound who had slunk back to Finn's knee.

'What is this one called, then?' he challenged.

'Dog,' Finn said flatly. Olaf, thinking he was being made fun of, scowled and pointed to the other deerhound.

'And this?'

'The other dog,' Finn answered, then cocked himself to the side and farted.

Kvasir chuckled as Olaf started to get his own hackles up.

'There is a wise rule we use,' he said, clapping the boy on one shoulder, 'and it is this — never give a name to something you might have to eat.'

Olaf was taken aback at that and looked down at his new pride and joy, now trying to lick its own balls. 'Eat Bleikr?'

'Well — not that one's tongue, perhaps,' Kvasir said and folk laughed.

'Aye,' growled Gyrth, surfacing from under a pile of cloaks and pelts, where he had been trying to keep warm and sleep. 'If we go to find that cursed hoard in this weather, we will end up eating worse than that before we are done. Helmet straps will taste good, mark me.'

'Do you no harm,' Finn answered and Gyrth patted his belly and smiled.

I was aware of the winter steppe, the Great White, brooded on it all the rest of that long day while the men in the hall surfaced, stretching and farting and shivering into the breath-smoking chill, dousing their heads and breaking ice in the bowls and buckets to do it, roaring and blowing.

Thorgunna and Thordis, who had wisely avoided the affair and the risk of being up-ended and tupped by drunks — and the obvious reactions of Kvasir and everyone else to that — were the freshest faces in that hall and made sure their healthy cheerfulness set everyone else's teeth grinding. They and the thralls bustled in, stirring the hearthfire to life, hanging pots, rattling skillets.

Eventually, chewing feast left-overs and picking their molars, most of the men all wandered off to sort out their lives — Sveinald's men were heading home and I heard that Lyut was having to be litter-carried. That he was alive at all was good luck, I was thinking.

My own crew were staying, of course, and getting as ready as they could for a trip into the open steppe in winter. Most of them were unworried by what I had done — they still thought they would get a share as they had been promised, and few looked beyond that. Some counted the involvement of. Vladimir as jarl-cleverness by me, since it would mean more protection and better supplies for such a dangerous trip.

Outside the keep, in the crushed snow of the kreml, there was now noise and purpose and carts with sledge-runners, the wheels slung on the sides like shields on a drakkar, just in case they were needed. There were strong little horses for pulling and others for riding and supplies being loaded and men sorting out gear and weapons.

Vladimir had expected me to point to his carefully-drawn vellum chart and mark it with the location of Atil's cursed tomb, but when it came to it, there was just a dot — that read 'Biela Viezha', which was the Slav name for Sarkel, and acres of grey-white skin. Nor was I daft enough in the head to lay out the X of it, for him then not to need me at all.

No-one but me knew exactly where the tomb lay and the path of it was scratched on the hilt of my rune- bladed sabre. Short Eldgrim had a rough idea of it, for he had helped me with the runes I made, but even he did not