The White Raven

on Botolfs big arm.

'He thinks we are living in a dream and going soft,' Kvasir said, wiping bread round his platter and tossing it into the snapping maw of a deerhound. He looked softly at his wife. 'Being chided for how we speak and needing our hair cut. He thinks we should be off on a hunt for silver.'

Botolf, who knew what he meant, grunted thoughtfully. Thorgunna, who simply thought it was warriors being restless, snorted.

'Go raiding then — though it is no pastime for honest men if you ask me. At least you will be putting in some effort for the food in your bowl. Seems to 'me Jarl Orm is overly tolerant of every lazy one of you.'

She scooped up bowls with meaningful noise and shot me one of her looks as she went. No-one spoke for a moment or two, for it is a well-known saying that there are only two ways of arguing with a woman and neither work.

There was moody silence after this.

'Play music instead,' I said to Botolf, 'in the event you find yourself attracted to the story of Otter again.'

Botolf, grinning ruefully, fetched his hand-drum and Hauk fished out his pipes and they tootled and banged away while the children danced and sang and even the thrall women joined in, sheathed in drab grey wadmal cloth, linen kerchiefs tied around brows and braids. For a while they stopped being chattels worn threadbare to the elbows — the power of drum and piping whistle has never ceased to amaze me.

A heathen thing that scene these days, thanks to the White Christ priests. The hand-drum is banned for being pagan and fine children all stained with bastardy, where no such mark was when Odin smiled on us and every child was as good as the next.

That day, while the wind wrecked itself against the hall and the rain battered in from the sea, it was as warming a heartscene as any sailor could dream of on a rolling, wet deck — but somewhere, I was sure of it, Odin had persuaded the Norns to weave in blood scarlet for us.

The thought worried me like a dog on a rat's neck, made me get up and go out into a night smelling of rain and sea, to where the horses were stabled. They stirred and stamped, unused to being so prisoned, swirling up the warmth and sweet smell of hay and bedding. In the dark, the air was thick and suddenly crowded, as if a host of unseen people were there, circling me.

I felt them, the hidden dead of the Oathsworn, wondering what they had given their lives for and my belly contracted. I thought someone laughed and the dark seemed odd, somehow glowing.

It came from outside, in the sky, where faint strokes of green and red light danced in the north. I had seen this before, so it held no real terrors, but the mystery of the fox fires always raised my hackles.

'Others', too. Thorkel stepped out of the darkness and stood beside me.

'Troll fires,' he said, wonderingly. 'Some hold that the red in those fires marks battle, where the warriors fight in Valholl.'

'I had heard it marks where dragons fight and bodes ill,' I replied. 'Pest and war omens.'

'All it means,' said a voice, a blade cutting through the hushed reverence of our voices, 'is that winter comes early and it will freeze the flames in a fire.'

Turning, we saw Finn come up, swathed in a thick green cloak against the cold, his breath smoking into ours as he joined us.

'The sea will be cold when we sail,' he added and left that dangling there, like the lights flaring in the sky.

2

Odin started to turn my world to his bidding not long after, on a day when I was woken by Aoife rolling away from me, out of the closed box space which was my right and off to see to Cormac. It was cold in the hall, where everyone slept as close to the fire embers as they could get or were allowed. It was colder still after Aoife had left my side.

Thorgunna and Ingrid were up, the one barrelling towards me, the other coaxing flames back into the fire and kicking thralls awake to fetch wood and water. I groaned. It was too early for Thorgunna.

She stopped, hands on hips and looked down at me, one eyebrow crooked. 'You look like a sack of dirt.'

'Lord.'

'What?'

'You look like a sack of dirt, Lord. I am the jarl here.'

She snorted. 'It is an hour past rismal by the sun, which is scorching eyes out. Lord. And it is because you are jarl that I am here to give you a clean tunic and make sure your hair is combed. Lord. Men are here; they came with Hoskuld Trader, looking for you and Thorkel. They say they know Thorkel.'

I groaned louder still, for I had an idea who they were and why they were here. Thorkel would have spread the word and here they came, the next ones wanting an oar on the finished Elk.

'Let Finn deal with it,' I attempted. 'I don't believe you about the sun, either.'

'Finn has already gone plank-hunting with Heg, as you ordered,' Thorgunna answered briskly, throwing a blue tunic at me. It smelled of summer flowers and clean salt air. 'But I will give you the part about the sun. It is there, though, somewhere in the rain clouds over the mountains.'

There was nothing else for it. I rolled out of bed, shivering and then had to splash water on myself before Thorgunna would let me into the clean tunic and warm breeks.

'If you had not rutted with that Aoife all night you would not stink so much,' she declared as I fastened my way into stiff shoes.

'Keep you awake, did we?' I growled back at her. 'I seem to remember you and Kvasir making so much noise when first you arrived in this hall that I thought to build you a place of your own, just so I could get to sleep.'

There was a hint of colour in her cheeks as she snorted her derision and turned me round to braid up my hair as though she was my mother, though I was younger only by a half-fist of years. When I turned back, she was smiling and it was not a smile you could resist.

I lost the grin stepping out into the muddy yard, where Thorkel and four men waited patiently, in the lee of the log store. They sat picking at a rismal — a rising meal — of bread and salt fish on a platter, fat wooden ale beakers in their hands. Thorgunna would not let them into a hall of sleepers, but had offered them fair hospitality, even so.

It was cold, a day when the last leaves whirled in russet eddies and the trees spitted a pearled sky. Thorkel nodded in friendly fashion, twisting his stained wool hat nervously in his hands, indicating the men.

'This is Finnlaith from Dyfflin, Ospak, Tjorvir and Throst Silfra. They are all wondering if you need good crewmen. As am I.'

I looked them over. Hard men, all of them. Finnlaith was clearly a half-Irisher, the other three were Svears and all had the rough-red knuckles you get from rubbing on the inside of a shield. I knew they had cuts on the backs of their other hands and calloused palms from sword and axe work, even though I could not see them. They had probably been fighting us only recently, but that was all over and a king over both Svears and Geats was being crowned in Uppsala this very year.

'Silfra,' I said to the one called Throst. 'Why do you need me, then?'

His by-name — Silver Owner — was a joke, he explained in his thick accent. He never owned any for long, for he enjoyed dice too much. He needed me, he added with a twisted smile, because he had heard from Thorkel and elsewhere that I had a mountain of it. Thorkel had the wit to shrug and look ashamed for a moment when I shot him a look.

'Find Kvasir inside,' I said. 'Thorkel will show you who he is. Do what Kvasir tells you and enjoy the hospitality of my hall. There is a ship being built which may need a crew and then again, it may not.'

Even as I said it I felt the heart of me sink like stone. The word was out, leaping from head to head like nits — Orm the White Bear Slayer, the Odin-favoured who held the secret of a mountain of silver, was preparing a ship. That attracted hard men, sword and axe men, from near and far, as Kvasir had pointed out.