had died and gone mad to hunt down this weapon and the only reason for it was the secret I had marked on it. Yet, now, it seemed, I could have spun myself in a circle nine times nine out on the Great White and still walked to this place with my eyes closed, dragged by Odin, or the fetch of Hild. Or both.
I looked at Finn and he looked back at me, grinning from his cold-split lips. If he thought of the uselessness of the sabre on my back, he did not show or say it, merely wiped the blood from his cracked mouth and said:
'Here we are again, then, young Orm.'
I shuffled across the stippled, snow-drifted ice, the others following me, then stepped on to iron-iced land, up to where the hole lay.
For, of course, this was no island.
It was the roof of Attila's tomb.
We found Hrolf Ericsson, called Fiskr lying in one of the carts and the last of Lambisson's men left alive on the island. He was called Fiskr — Fish — because he had once swum ashore in a storm with a line in his teeth and fastened his ship to the land, so saving everyone in the crew. Many of us knew him well and were happy enough to find him alive, even if he was on the wrong side.
'I should have stayed on the land,' he moaned to Bjaelfi, as the healer rooted among the salves and balms he had secreted all about him. 'Getting back on a boat only took me to Birka and trouble.'
'You should have kept off the land,' Bjaelfi offered grimly, 'that way, you would not be looking at losing most of your toes and a bit of your nose from the cold rot.'
'At least you have a rich bed,' Sigurd noted. 'And a nose is nothing much to mourn over.'
Hrolf Fiskr laughed, for he lay wrapped in ragged wool cloaks and furs on a huddle of silver, looted from the tomb. Three carts were loaded with the stuff and the men whooped and scrabbled, plucking age-blackened ewers and bashed bowls and litters of coins until Sigurd and Dobrynya had to roar and bellow at them to leave it alone.
Lambisson, said Hrolf Fiskr, was down in the tomb and had been, perhaps for days — it was hard to know for sure, since Fiskr admitted he had been sleeping for a time, until the fever he had broke. There had been others with Lambisson down in the howe, loading silver in a bucket and hauling it up through the hole, but that had stopped three days ago and nothing had been heard since. Everyone had come up but Lambisson.
'What of Short Eldgrim?' I asked, as Bjaelfi waited, sharpening his little knife. Hrolf eyed it nervously and licked his chapped lips.
'The little man? Aye, he was one of yours, right enough.'
He paused, shook his head and tried to work up spit, but his mouth was too dry. 'That Christ monk did him harm, trying to get his mind to work. Burned him bad to make him remember.'
He broke off and looked at me steadily. 'I did not like that, nor thought it right'
'Did nothing, all the same,' I told him and took pleasure in watching him squirm. 'Where is the little man now?'
'Gone,' came the answer. 'He was here when I closed my eyes and gone when I opened them again.'
'Not below, then?'
He waggled one hand. 'Maybes yes, maybes no. Brondolf Lambisson is still below, so said the men who came up and left him,' he growled, then found enough spit to use it.
'Then they ran off, the nithings,' he added. 'Said Lambisson had lost his wits and that it was the little man's curse on him for what had happened. Left me because I could not walk. A dozen of them, big Slavs and none prepared to carry me, the turds. They were too afraid of those mad women, who kept coming back and shooting arrows. . look, I am after telling you all I know. There is no need for a knife.'
'This is to help you, oaf,' snarled Bjaelfi. 'Of course, I could leave the black rot alone and let it eat your face and feet. . '
I knelt by the hole, which was a wide, rough circle, dug down through a layer of earth — but not silt, I noticed. It was clear that, even flooded, the water in the lake did not cover the roof of Atil's tomb and someone had known that. Large slabs of roof-stone had been removed, a finger-joint thick and hefty and I saw they were laid over a cunning trellis made of great split logs. In a treeless place like this, that was riches as much as the silver it covered and these had been brought a long way. Even five centuries had not rotted them — but there was no sign of the ones removed. Burned, probably.
Now there was a black hole and, a foot down from it was part of one of the great stone arches, a hand-span thick and three wide, which curved into the centre and supported the entire yurt-shaped howe of Attila.
There were two thick ropes tied round it — a knotted one for climbing down, the other attached to a leather bucket which was empty when Onund hauled it up. The cold seemed to drift out of that dark hole like smoke.
'No tools,' growled Dobrynya, coming up to peer down into it. Behind me, Hrolf yelped as Bjaelfi cut too deep into his nose and drew blood. 'A fortune in silver, some bits and pieces of gear, a little flour and dried meat, but no tools.'
No tools in the carts, which meant that Lambisson had not made this hole. I did not like to think who had.
'We lost our tools,' admitted Fish when I went back to him. Thorgunna dabbed the blood from his fresh- carved nose, but Fish felt little pain, since the black parts were dead flesh. He was happy we had arrived, enemies or not, since his friends had left him to die here, crippled and alone.
'We counted it great good luck to find this hole,' he went on, 'but now I think these madwomen did it, like a baited hook to catch a fish.' He beamed at the clever play on his own name.
I glanced at the hole. Short Eldgrim could be down there and, if so, he was either dead or wandering like a madman, wondering where he was. Only a few of the Oathsworn cared for that above what else could be down there. Even Finn, I saw, when he swayed up, tossing something in his hand and grinning. He turned it over in his fingers and then held it up.
'Familiar, Bear Slayer?' he asked.
It was a coin and I had the twin of it round my neck under my serk, punched through and looped with a leather thong. It had once been around the neck of Hild, the woman who had somehow known the secret of how to find this place, with neither chart nor rune scratches on the hilt of a sword; now I knew how that had been managed.
I looked at the baleful wink of that coin, Volsung silver, part of the hoard of the dragon Fafnir, the one Sigurd had killed and the cursed gift Odin had promised us. I felt Hild's presence then, as if cold, invisible fingers stretched out of that hole, seeking me, the sword, the coins. .
I did not much care for the memory; she was down that hole, I could feel her and remembered her, black against the dark, stalking us with that light-curve of sword, the twin of my own. It was no surprise to me that Lambisson had not been heard of for some time and I would happily have left him there — but for Eldgrim.
No, not even him, if the truth of it was being laid out. I liked the little man well enough, but it was not him alone that would take me back into the black maw of Atil's hov. It was bone, blood and steel, a fear greater than the one I had for finding mad Hild waiting at the bottom, all white-eyed and armed with the twin of my sabre.
It was fear of breaking the Oath and what One Eye inflicted on all those who did.
The sandpiper voice snapped me round, to where a furious Vladimir glowered at Finn, little fists on his hips. 'No-one is to loot my silver.
Finn's grin faded. He looked at me, then back to the pinch-faced little prince and saw which quarter the wind blew from. He shrugged and flicked his thumb, never taking his scowl off the prince's face, and the coin arced back into the cart it had come from.
Vladimir, his scowl merely turned to a boyish, petulant pout, glared pointedly at me — then Dobrynya moved in, smooth as oil, suggesting we all manhandle the silver-laden carts across the ice and off the island. He followed his prince at a respectful two paces.
'We should kill them all now,' Finn growled at their disappearing backs and my look answered him — there were too few of us for that and we could not count on any but ourselves.
'Besides,' I finished, 'even the gods of Asgard would be hard put to help us if we cut down a prince of Novgorod, a son of Sviatoslay. Those two brothers of his might be rivals — but they will not embrace us for such a killing.'
