The White Raven

He clipped the rest off, realizing what he was about to say and buried his face right into the furs to hide his shame.

As soon as we attacked, Cod-Biter would die. It was possible, if Farolf saw all was up for him. If we were quick, all the same. .

I got up, stiff with cold, and dragged the ice burrs off my beard, then walked away, conscious of their eyes on me. The darkness beyond the fire took me in even colder arms and hurried me towards the one the Oathsworn had lit, in the lee of a wagon and under a wadmal canopy. Behind, I heard the level rumble of Dobrynya, no doubt gently chiding his prince and telling him how much he needed Orm and the Oathsworn

Fuck them, I thought, sullen as a storm sky, for I could see no way out of this mess and wondered — not for the first time — what game Odin played now.

'So?' challenged Finn. 'What does the princeling want us to do?'

I told them and Kvasir grunted. Thorgunna said what I had been thinking, that we should just go away and I expected a sharp growl from Finn, was surprised when he stared into the flames and said nothing.

'Can we do that?' demanded Ospak. 'Surely we would be ridden down by those big Slav turds of the druzhina if we just took off?'

'A good long-handled axe will see that lot off,' muttered Gyrth, who had just such a weapon.

'A sword drenched in blood easily finds its mark,' agreed Red Njal, 'as my granny used to say.'

'The hacked-off foot cannot scurry fat;' Hlenni Brimill countered, grinning and. Red Njal frowned, considering the matter.

'The lame man runs when he has to,' he said eventually. Men groaned, but Tjorvir spat in the fire and scowled at them both.

'I came for silver. Bad enough we have to split it so many ways without running away empty-handed after all we have been through. As my own granny would say if she was here.'

Voices grunted assent, unseen in the dark.

'Are we so to split this great treasure?' Thorgunna's voice was light enough as she stepped into the firelight, but the eyes she laid on me were firm and black.

'Why else are we here, then?' demanded Ospak.

'To keep the stake from certain people's. arses,' Hauk Fast-Sailor grunted. 'Namely our own.'

'Aye, but,' Ospak began and Gizur cut him off.

'But no buts,' he said. 'It is Vladimir's treasure now, sold to save us from what that little axe murderer Olaf Crowbone got us into, make no mistake on it.'

'Odin's arse it is,' spat Gyrth. 'It is our treasure.'

'Our treasure,' mimicked Finn suddenly. 'Our treasure? You are come late to that feast, Steinbrodir.'

'Aye, well,' Gyrth said uneasily. Then, more indignantly, he added: 'I am Oathsworn now, just as you. My arse is freezing here, just as yours is.'

'Did it burn in Serkland?' grunted Hauk Fast-Sailor. 'Did you fight under the walls of Sarkel the first time we came here in search of this hoard?'

'I am here now,' returned Gyrth steadily. 'And others like me. Without us, you would still be clucking at hens in Oestergotland, Hauk Fast-Sailor.'

'We should not quarrel over this,' Red Njal said and Hauk rounded on him.

'What? No granny-wisdom about arguing over all the riches of the world, Njal?'

Red Njal shrugged and favoured Hauk with a face as dour as a gathering storm. 'Brawl with a pig and you come away with its stink,' he said.

There were some chuckles and grunts of agreement at this, while others started in to arguing one way or the other and Hauk, blinking furiously at Red Njal, was clearly working up to serious anger. I silenced them all, surprised that I was the only one, it seemed, who could see the truth of it.

'It is not our treasure. Or Vladimir's. Or even Atil's. It is Odin's — and he gifts it to those he thinks most fitting.'

I stared at them all, one by one while their eyes slithered icily away.

'Bone, blood and steel,' I added pointedly. 'Cod-Biter is in there. We will not run off and leave our own to die.'

There was silence at that, sullen and dark, for the truth of it bit as deep as the cold. Eventually, Finn stirred, blinked and poked sluggish embers out of the fire.

'Aye, well, first we have to get to over those walls. One step, then the other, as my old granny used to say.'

'You never had an old granny,' accused Red Njal.

'I did,' answered Finn. 'And a cunning woman she was. Knew about when folk would die by watching birds and that if you dreamed a dream three times in a row it would come true.'

'Sounds like Olaf Crowbone,' muttered Kvasir. 'Perhaps you are also his uncle. If you are, you have my sympathies.'

'Did this full-cunning mother's mother of yours have a way of leaping walls or walking through doors?' I demanded, which clamped their jaws shut as if they had been stitched.

'Well?' I demanded, feeling the eyes resting on me, dragging the weight of the jarl tort until I swore it dug into the flesh of my neck. 'We need to get over those walls or through the gate, so if anyone has some clever in him, now is the time to hoik it out for us all to share.'

They ran through the ram and ladders and I explained why that would not do. Jon Asanes came up with the idea of an upturned cart with men under it, running at the gate as a ram, which was not bad at all. We gave that one up because we could not be sure the cart would be strong enough, or the men to carry it, for that matter.

Eventually, Kvasir stretched and yawned. 'If we cannot go over the walls and through the gate, then we will have to go over the gate.'

There was a pause; those who had not heard it properly asked their neighbours what Kvasir had said. When they were told, they were no wiser than any the rest of us, so he laid it out and it became clear that, while we had been talking, he had been thinking.

When he was finished, we all chewed on it, looking for flaws in it until we realized that Kvasir had seen more with his one eye than all of us with our two.

'Can you do that?' Dobrynya asked, when I walked back to his fire to tell him what the Oathsworn would do when morning came.

'We will do it,' I answered, 'for we are the Oathsworn.'

I was glad they could not see my clenched belly and curled-up balls and discover how firmly I believed this.

Dobrynya glanced at Sigurd, then over at the sleeping Vladimir, little Olaf huddled beside him, and nodded wearily. I hunkered down beside him and we stared at the fire for a while, while the pair of them raked around for the delicate words to find out what the prince's pillars needed to know — if I had been so offended by this boy prince that I would leave or, worse, seek revenge.

I had no reason to do it, but saved them the trouble of speaking.

'In return for the lives he held in his hand,' I said to the fire, 'I agreed to hold up the prince's breaking sky. True, no oath was spoken on it — as you know, we oath only to each other, in the eye of Odin — but I am still shouldering the burden.'

There was silence while the fire found ice in its food and spat irritably. Then Dobrynya cleared his throat.

'He is young, but growing well,' he said. 'There will come a time when you will welcome the friendship of such a prince. The death of his father has flung him into this too early and unprepared.'

I nodded. The friendship of a prince would be welcome if I survived the winter — or if he did. I said as much and Sigurd grinned, which pinched the flesh white around his silver nose.

'The one thing I have learned,' he growled, 'is that some are born to greatness. He is one. Little Olaf there is another. They will survive.'

Even if everyone else has to die, I was thinking, while his little Olaf smiled and showed teeth bloody with firelight, as though he had just lifted his head from a fresh kill. Yet, for all his cub