The White Raven

He was old, lean and tall, with a pale, worn-out face, a long greyish moustache and eyes sorrowed as a whipped dog. Deep furrows scarred his cheeks and forehead, his rough hands and the wrinkled back of his neck. The skin on his fingers and palms was cracked and creased as if burned by fire. There were thralls who looked better than he did.

Kovach he called himself and Malkyiv he called the place — Little Fortress, I worked it out as, though I could have been wrong — and he had a right to look sorrowful, for a Prince had arrived with too many men and even more animals and that was worse than steppe raiders. Those he could have fought, at least, before they burst in to demand the winter stores.

Our men were quartered under every roof, elbowing for floor space, shoving aside livestock and considering themselves lucky to be in such warmth. The Oathsworn had two storehouses — conspicuously empty — and piled in, dumping gear and setting fires while the stolid-faced locals came and offered what service they could.

As they did so, I stumped across to the headman's own hut, where the prince had naturally taken himself and as many of his retinue as could be crammed in.

'Four days from Kiev,' Dobrynya said softly, pointing to the chart as he and Vladimir and Sigurd and myself huddled together at one end of the but to plan what to do next. Which, as Vladimir would have it, was simple enough and he laid it out for us, pointing at the chart with his little bone-handled dagger — we go on, swiftly.

'We should stay here,' Sigurd argued, which was sense. Getting this far had taken three times as long as it would have in summer, floating downriver to Kiev. But, of course, we could not go to Kiev; even four days east was too close to Vladimir's smart brother, Jaropolk and the two men I least wanted to meet — Sveinald and his face- ruined son.

'We will gather what fodder and supplies we can take from here,' the little prince said in his piping voice, 'and head to the Don. Tomorrow, or the day after, but no later than that.'

'What of the villagers, my prince?' Dobrynya said and Vladimir frowned, knowing that to take what they had would condemn them.

'Pay them,' said Olaf and he and Vladimir looked at each other and nodded. Vladimir then turned and stared straight back into his uncle's eyes until Dobrynya lowered his and nodded. Everyone knew full well what he had ordered; the villagers could hardly eat hacksilver.

The headman, Kovach, knew it, too. He came into the presence of the little prince, greasy fur cap in hand and head lowered as was proper. For all his deference, he was like the willow, bending in the wind yet rooted and immovable. There was food and it was hidden and he would not tell where it was, nor would searching do much good, for there were too many floors to be dug up, too many roof-spaces.

'Do you know who this is, old one?' demanded Dobrynya sternly, pointing to the whey-faced, tight-lipped Vladimir, but Kovach had endured shrieking winter and broiling summer and red war, so the likes of Dobrynya and a pouting boy was not going to cow him. Even Sigurd's silver nose only made him blink his rheumy pale-blue eyes.

'I thought it was my prince,' he answered levelly, 'the young Jaropolk, come in answer to my pleas, but I see this boy is too young.'

'This is his brother, Vladimir, prince of Novgorod,' Sigurd growled. The headman nodded and the ploughed furrows on his forehead grew deeper.

'Is that the right of it? Well, well. . but if you did not come in answer to my pleas, it puzzles me why you are on the steppe at this time of year.'

'No matter of yours,' Dobrynya snapped. 'All you need to know is that we are here and you must tell us what we want to know.'

'Ah well,' answered Kovach, 'as to that, I am thinking that the prince of Novgorod, fine boy though he may be, is asking for what belongs to his brother. I am wondering if his brother knows.'

I chuckled, for there was a fox look in those pale eyes, which then flicked to me, interested. Little Vladimir flushed and his lips tightened.

'It is not your place to think,' he snapped, though his voice broke on it, robbing it of much of its sting.

This was pointless. Kovach was not about to break, even if I strung him, his daughter and all his relatives up by the heels and carved away the lies from them with the Truth Knife nestled in the small of my back. This was a stone of a man, like all his sort and there was much to be admired in how he could endure.

Beside — these were not Vladimir's lands and he could not do as he liked without raising the ire of his brother, Prince Jaropolk.

'What pleas?' I asked and heads turned. Kovach raised his eyebrows as he looked at me questioningly, mild as milk. Oh, he would have been a terror in Miklagard's marbled halls of intrigue, that old bondi.

'Orm,' I told him, as pleasantly as I could, for it does no harm to start politely, offering names and smiles.

'A Norse,' said Kovach, rasping a gnarled hand across his stubble. 'I know some of that tongue. Your name is. . serpent?'

'Wyrm,' I said lightly, then leaned forward. 'It would be better to speak, old one. We are hungry as serpents and you know what hungry serpents are like.'

He blinked and nodded, then smiled, more gap than grin.

'My pleas,' he said and, remembering I had asked, I nodded. Dobrynya cleared his throat pointedly, but we ignored him.

Wodoniye,' he said and there was a hiss of breath from Dobrynya and Sigurd. Little Vladimir went pale. I had no idea what he meant and said so.

'Creatures,' muttered Dobrynya. 'They feast on the souls of the drowned.'

'Child's tales,' added Sigurd, but he did not sound convinced.

'They live in the high ground in the middle of the swamp,' Kovach went on, his voice flat and level and bitter as wormwood. 'There are forty-eight families in this village and all of them have suffered.'

'Suffered how?' demanded Dobrynya.

'They come, these vodoniye, to steal our women and make them into rusalka. For years, once, perhaps twice every year. They came in the autumn this year and took another. My grand-daughter.'

He fell silent and I felt a chill in this warm, stove-heated but that had nothing to do with winter draughts.

'Yet you have done nothing,' piped Vladimir and Kovach cocked one spider-legged eyebrow in his direction.

'We sent men into the swamp at first,' he said. 'Six died the first time and we did it again and lost four and they were all good forgemen. We did not send any more, for we need men to make blades and work fields and can fight most things, but not this. So we built up our defences instead and each year we send to Kiev for help and each year it never comes.'

'Your defences are not good, old man, if they keep stealing from you,' I said.

'Magic, one supposes,' Kovach said matter-of-factly, though his eyes were cunning slits. 'They come at night and from the marshes. I saw one, once — scaled like a serpent, running through the streets in the moonlight, making no sound. Now you have come. Perhaps Perun has sent us a warrior called Wyrm to bring an end to these Scaled Ones, who are clearly hatched from a serpent's egg. The god has, after all, sent this cold, which has frozen the impassable marsh; I cannot remember the marsh ever having frozen.'

From the looks on the faces of those who knew him, I guessed it was the most that old Kovach had said in one place at any time and the silence after it was longer and more still as a result. It was broken only by the sudden pop of a log bursting in the fire; sparks flared and flames dyed everyone red.

'So — if we end this menace, you will share your hidden food, is that it, cunning old man?' growled Sigurd. He greeted the nod of reply with a sharp snort of disapproval.

'Hung from your stringy thumbs,' he added, 'you will tell us soon enough.'

'Hung from thumbs,' Dobrynya said into the silence that followed, 'any one of your charges would tell us. Do you want us to do that? I can bring, say, the mother of your granddaughter.'

Kovach blinked and his head went down; when all was said and done, he was a poor man, with no say in the storms that lashed him — but there had been so many storms in his life they had honed him; he had less fear than