The White Raven

fretted and white.

'I. . have done. . nothing,' he managed and Finn shook his head.

'The gods need no reason to inflict what they do,' he growled, bitterly.

'No. I mean. . I have. . not lived. . enough. I wanted. . to be known. My name. .'

He stopped, exhausted and I heard Finn grunt as if hit, the muscle in his jaw shifting his beard. Olaf stepped into the space between us and Pai managed a faint grin while his chest heaved.

'Story,' he said. 'A funny. . one. Keep. . it. . short, mind. I have. . places to go.'

Olaf, his jaw so clenched I wondered if he could speak at all, nodded. They had been friends of a sort, I remembered — Pai admiring Olaf for his abilities, envying him for his status and Olaf, always amused by the glorious clothes that gave the youth his nickname, Pai, the Peacock. And, strangely, Olaf envied Pai, wanted to be that age himself, just that bit older than now and a young hawk in the wind.

'There was an outlaw who had outstayed the time allotted for him to safely quit the land,' Olaf began in a voice so low only those close to him could hear it. 'We shall call him. . Pai. He drank too much in a feasting hov and fell asleep, then dreamed a dream that the other guests had decided to kill him, since he was now fair game. Four came at him from every side. One held a spear, to stab his eyes from his head. One had an axe to smash his fingers to pulp and chop his legs. One had a sword of considerable size, planning to ram it down his throat and the last had a knife, to cut off his tozzle and stick it in his ear.'

Pai gasped out a laugh, started to cough and could not stop for a long time. As he grew quieter, Olaf cleared his throat.

Pai woke with a scream to find that he had, indeed, been snoring in a feasting hall, but not a friendly one — he was surrounded by enemies. One had a spear and the grin of an eye-remover. One had an axe that had clearly smashed fingers before. One had a sword of considerable size — but there was no fourth man with a knife.

'Pai looked everywhere, but there was definitely no fourth man. 'Thank you, Odin,' he gasped, settling back on his bench as the men closed in, 'it was only a terrible dream.''

Pai chuckled and coughed and jerked and his chest heaved for a few moments longer, then stopped. Thorgunna, after a pause, wet her cheek and placed it close to his mouth, then shook her head and closed his eyes. Jon Asanes bent his head and wailed.

Finn let out his breath in a long sigh. 'Fair fame,' he grunted, to no-one it seemed to me. 'That was what he wanted. In the end, that is all there is.'

'A good tale,' I said to Olaf. 'You gave him what he wanted and not every man can do that for a dying friend. You have a gift.'

Crowbone, his different-coloured eyes glittering bright, shook his head, made so white in the light that he looked like a little old man.

'Sometimes,' he whispered, 'it is an affliction.'

There was talk of treating our dead in the old way, for we were all sure the people of the village would dig up the bodies and strip them of their finery. Vladimir refused, since that would have involved demolishing a building for the timbers to burn him.

'You have stripped them of winter feed, so that they will have to slaughter what livestock they have left,' growled Sigurd, annoyed that his men might not lie peacefully under the snow for long. 'They will be eating their belts and lacing thongs by Spring — what does one building mean now?'

Vladimir folded his arms and glared back at his druzhina captain. 'They are still my brother's people — but I will rule them one day. I want them to fear me — but not hate me.'

Sigurd could not see the sense of it, that was clear — I was having trouble working out this princely way of ruling myself — but Jon Asanes made Vladimir smile and nod.

'The Prince is a shepherd to his people,' he observed. 'A shepherd fleeces his flock. He does not butcher them.'

I left them weaving words round it, feeling like a man walking on greased ice. I knew what Jon and Vladimir and little Olaf did was the future of the world, the way jarls and princes and kings did things these days and in the ones to come. I also knew I did not have one clear idea of how to do it myself and that Jon Asanes was more fitting to be a jarl of this new age than I was.

But not a jarl of the Oathsworn. Not them, stamping their feet against the cold as they stood in sullen clumps round the dark scars of new-mounded graves, hacked out with sweat and axes from a reluctant earth. These were men of the old ways.

I took the chance to braid them back to one with a few choice words on breaking oaths and what it had cost. No-one needed much telling; all those who had run off with Martin and Thorkel had died and Finn made it glaringly clear that anyone else who tried the same would not live to feel Odin's wrath.

We spent the morning sorting gear and finding new ways to wrap against the cold. Then we untied the tether ropes, bashing the stakes out of the frozen ground, chipped ice out of the horse's hooves with a seax and lurched off south, into the steppe.

I twisted in the saddle once, to stare back at the settlement. On the earthwork walls I saw a figure and, though I could not clearly make it out, I knew it was Tien and felt his eyes on me long after he had vanished from sight.

The steppe spread out like a sea, like frozen waves. The sky was so big, the clouds in it rushing, whipped into strange shapes and sliding fast, like driven woodsmoke.

'Only the wind saves us,' Gyrth noted gloomily which, since it made life colder still, brought grunts and growls of disagreement.

'Snow has a plan,' Gyrth went on between gasps, his breath smoking and freezing his beard to spines. 'It wants to cloak the world in white, purest white, like a bleached linen sheet — but the wind says no. We will have some more here than there, says the wind. Get it off that roof and on that tree, says the wind. The snow hates the wind but cannot stop it from blowing. Which is why, when it is a windless day in winter, you can hear the snow sigh, for it knows the wind will come and make a mess of all its work.'

Which was nearly good enough to laugh some warm into us, but not quite. Our fingers and toes ached and we bound them in wadmal and layered grass between, the fuzzed tops of the yellow steppe grass, which was the best barrier against the cold. It kept toes from turning black, but made our feet so fat they would not fit in the stirrups.

One day merged into the next, shadows of life. Horses died, one after the other and the men on them now staggered and stumbled on foot. One or two of the druzhina threw their armour away because the long skirts and the weight of it made walking twice as hard. The Oathsworn, used to walking, jeered at them — then Sigurd killed one of the druzhina as a warning and that ended all laughter and armour-throwing.

So we listened to the snow sigh.

Sixteen more men died in as many days, mostly the druzhina, though two of the Oathsworn had to be left, too stiff even to be laid out flat, arms broken so as to fold them on their breasts. Klepp Spaki, blowing on his fingers, tapped out the runes of their names on small squares of bone — Halli was one and the other was

Throst Silfra. Both just lay down, patiently waiting for the sweet relief from the hunger and cold, the gentle frozen sleep as the white raven folded them in huge wings.

Throst's closest oarmates, Tjorvir, Finnlaith and Ospak, threw some hacksilver into the shallow grave, then Finnlaith came to me, his wide face reddened with cold and buried in a tangled mass of cold-stiffened beard. His eyes were iced blue.

'It seems to us three that Throst also knew of Thorkel's treachery,' he said, which was flat-out bold enough to make me blink. These were words for an Althing, where convention kept the speaker from being killed.

'It is no surprise to us, then, that Odin took his luck,' he went on levelly. 'If more of those who came with Thorkel die, we want you to know, Jarl Orm, that it will be the wish of another god and not Odin's curse on an oath-breaker.'

Then he nodded and stumped off, leaving it clear to me that, if I could trust no others, I could depend on those three at my back.