already blurring in his big fists.
'Get the gate, Orm!'
I got up, half-turned — a body hurled down, fell over cursing and rolled upright. Tjorvir. A second landed nearby, was getting up and an arrow took him in the foot. Howling, pinned to the frozen ground by it, Snorri Littli had to reach down and try to tug it free. Tjorvir cursed his way to the right-hand tower ladder, hurling one axe upwards and snarling at the men above as he forged up to them.
I turned all the way to the gate — and stopped. The bar was there, right enough but there was a man on it. His right hand was nailed to the bar and his left was nailed to the gate on the other side. Thorstein Cod-Biter hung between the double doors, dripping blood and looking at me from the bruised ruin of his face. Farolfs last vicious joke and the hammering I had heard earlier.
'Get the gate!' screamed Finn as Runolf Harelip, crashing over the palisade, scrambled to his side to fight off the knots of defenders, armed with spears and shields and axes. Someone else cursed and slavered on top of the gate timbers and did not jump but I was only vaguely aware of him.
Cod-Biter's eyes met mine, blue and glittering as a summer sea. He grinned from a bloody mouth and I thought he winked, but one eye was already lost in blood and bruises, so I might have been mistaken.
All of that seemed to last a week but, looking back on it now, was no longer than the time it took me to draw breath, hold it and swing one axe at his right hand. It severed it at the wrist, slantwise and too high, so that half the forearm went with it, for I was a bad axeman and it was my left hand, with only a three-fingered grip.
My right-hand axe hooked under the bar and I found myself roaring into the effort of lifting it. I thought it was easy at the time; it came up and out of the sockets as if greased and the gates swung wide and inwards, dragging Cod-Biter, still nailed to the right-hand timbers, the remains of his forearm and hand nailed to the other side. Thor gave me his strength and the muscles on my arm ached for weeks afterwards — even Finn was admiring, for the beam took two men to lift.
I felt nothing at the time. I was busy trying to gently prise Cod-Biter off the timbers of the gate, while supporting his weight to stop the nail tearing through his remaining palm.
I was vaguely aware of men piling through the opened gate, shrieking and howling, cutting, stabbing and cursing but I took no part in it and killed no-one. Even when the man fell from the top of the gate with a crack and a thump I hardly looked up until he started to writhe and scream, high and shrill like a hurt horse. By then I had worked the nail out and Cod-Biter was bleeding so badly that I concentrated on tying cords round his arms and forgot the screamer.
'I will take him now, Jarl Orm,' said a familiar voice and made me look up from the pool of bloody slush I knelt in, blinking at the opaque orb of a face. Slowly, it became Thorgunna, who smiled a sad, blue-pinched smile and knelt. The fighting was over.
'I will take him,' she said and I nodded and stumbled up, feeling Cod-Biter's blood start to congeal and freeze on my knees.
'A rare fight,' said a voice and I looked round to where Dobrynya sat on his thin and weary horse. He lifted his sabre and saluted me. The little prince, of course, was already trotting triumphantly round the village square, demanding that Farolf be brought to him.
Farolf was already dead and Gyrth's long-axe was so buried in his chest that both Finnlaith and Glum Skulasson were hard put to get it out. Finn was nearby, kneeling by the side of Harelip, who had taken two arrows in the back from the tower before the archers could be felled.
'Farolf? Dead is he?' shrilled Vladimir, irritated. 'Well, he shall be staked anyway.'
Gyrth grunted, a coughing sound like a poked bear.
'He is mine. I killed him. He will lie at the feet of Runolf Harelip here.'
Finn, as if coming out of sleep, stirred and blinked, then nodded at Gyrth and extended his wrist for the Boulder Brother to haul him to his feet. They both stared, cold-faced, at the little prince.
Vladimir frowned angrily, then he saw Finn's look and was clever enough to see the mood — for which all the gods had to be thanked, I thought. Still, he was a prince and had been since four, so he was not so easily cowed.
'You fought well,' he agreed, then added imperiously. 'I shall consent.'
'Now there's good of him,' muttered Gyrth. Finn sagged a little then, suddenly seeming old and stiff. He dusted the snow off his knees and turned to me, eyes glassed with misery, one loose-held axe rimed with freezing blood.
'Harelip,' he said to me, almost pleading. 'Harelip, Orm. I sailed everywhere with Runolf Harelip.'
I had no answer for him. There were fewer original Oathsworn left than could crew a decent faering these days. Seven seasons ago, when a boy I no longer recognized scrambled up the strakes of Einar the Black's
'Aye,' grunted Onund Hnufa, shoving Vladimir's horse aside with the lack of ceremony a man from Iceland always showed to men and kings both. 'It is a hard life at sea, right enough. Now — where is that dog?'
13
'They had not known what we were, these Slavs of the Novgorod druzhina. A Norse band of sometime outlaws, ragged-arsed brigands at best and not to be compared to fighting men, who spent all their time training for war.
They had swallowed the tales of the were-wyrms of Malkyiv, but they had never actually seen us fight. Now they had. The village had been taken in less time than it took to eat the dog in a stew and those defenders left alive were shaking with it yet, for they really were no more than hired knife-wavers.
The villagers liked us, too, for we had not run mad as they had feared, killing and raping and looting and they were grateful for that and thought us decent. The gods would need to help them if other northers ever arrived at their door, who were not so cold that a short fight stole their strength and who could be turned from skirt-lifting by the first piece of chewable bread.
Little Vladimir was stunned enough by what we had done to become polite. Sigurd, the only one who had suspected what we were capable of, was lip to ear with Dobrynya for days afterwards, while Vladimir's uncle had a calculating look when he glanced over at me.
The rest of the company, Slavs and thralls and those of Klerkon's men who remained alive, walked soft round the Oathsworn and the fear rose from them like stink on a hot day. There were mutterings of 'Jomsvikings' — which was close to the truth, for those Wends of Wolin have stolen half our tales, puffed like pigeon chests by the saga- poets.
However, the heroes of Joms had, the tales revealed, strange rules on women which Finn was quick to refute for the Oathsworn. The Oathsworn did not ban women from their hall, for any man who did not hump was a limp- dicked Christ-priest and a not a fighting man at all.
Folk laughed, though uneasily, for fame is like that, even when you know it to be mostly a lie. Skalds will tell you the sea is a desert if they think it will get them a free meal, but the trick is to make it sing with poetry; that will get you a good armring as well. Such matters taught me that fame is the fault of rulers with fat rings to spare and who know the worth of a skald's praises spread far and wide. Rulers such as Vladimir.
'We did not properly discuss your share in this mountain of silver,' the little prince piped up, after summoning me to his royal presence in the best of the mean huts available. Beside him, as ever, was Olaf and, looming at his back, was Dobrynya, stroking his iron grey beard. Sigurd was in the shadows beyond the light, where only his nose was visible as a faint gleam.
'I do not think you should risk your life so readily, Orm Bear Slayer,' added Dobrynya with a warm smile that never quite crept to his eyes. 'After all, you are the one who knows the way to the hoard.'
I looked back at the boy prince, his face made paler still by the violet rings round his eyes and the red chafe of his nose. We had not discussed any such thing as my share because, at the time, there was nothing to discuss — I had traded knowledge for life and nothing more. I wondered if he suspected the hilt-runes on that sabre were useless until we reached Sarkel. I hoped he did not suspect, as I did, that even then they might not be enough for me to find my way to Atil's howe.
