The White Raven

That day was the beginning of it. Every day for the next few weeks they arrived, by land and sea, in ones and twos and little groups, all wanting a berth on the Elk. The hall filled with them and their noise and Thorgunna grew less inclined to smile and more inclined to bang kitchen stuff together and cuff thralls round the ears.

Then came the moment I had dreaded, when Gizur and Botolf came up, beaming, to announce that the carved prow-head had been placed and the Fjord Elk was finished.

I remembered the first of that name, the one I had been hauled up the side of at fifteen, plucked from a life at Bjornshafen into the maelstrom of sea-raiding, stripped from a life of field and sea into one of blade and shield. There was, it seemed to my sinking soul, no way back — and the hulk of all those steading dreams was wrecked beyond repair by my own heart-leap of joy at the sight of what Onund and Gizur had crafted. I had paid it scant attention before, not wanting to see it grow, not wanting to feel the power of the prow beast, dragging me from the land. Now the sight of it struck me like Thor's own hammer.

It was sleek and new, smelling of pine and tar and salt, rocking easily at the wharf we had built, while men flaked the new sail on the spar, a red and white striped expanse which had occupied two years of loom work. I had paid Hoskuld in silver and promises for that sail; this new Elk had sucked the last of what little fortune I had away.

There was carved scrollwork on the sides and on the steering board; the weathervane was silvered. The meginhufr, that extra thick plank fitted just beneath the waterline on both sides of the hull, was gilded and, even now, the thralls' hands were stained blue and yellow from the painting they had done. That also had cost me a fortune — lapis and copper for the blue, ochre and orpiment for the yellow and all mixed with expensive oil.

No wonder Hoskuld's grin was as wide as the one splitting Gizur's face — the trader could live idle for two seasons on what I had paid him for bits of this ship. The joy was on Gizur over what had been made, but it was rightly Onund's work, though the hunchback gave no more sign of contentment than the odd grunt, like a scratching bear.

Thorgunna admitted it was a fine-looking ship, even if she sniffed at what it cost and the uselessness of it compared with a new knarr, or some decent fishing craft. And the hours it took good men to build, when they should have been mucking out stables, or spreading seaweed on fields.

But no-one listened to her, for this was the Fjord Elk, with its antlered prow-beast and wave-sleekness.

Gizur looked at me pointedly. My heart scudded with the wind on the wave. The moment was here and I knew what was needed — a blot ceremony, with a pair of fighting horses, the victor's sacrifice and an oath-swearing. The old Oath that bound some of us still.

We swear to be brothers to each other, bone, blood and steel, on Gungnir, Odin's spear we swear, may,fie curse us to the Nine Realms and beyond if we break this faith, one to another.

A hard Oath, that. Once taken, it was for life, or until someone replaced you, which happened by agreement, or by challenge from a hopeful. I had not thought Odin done with us only that he dozed a little — but I should have known better; the One-Eyed All-Father never sleeps and when he does, one eye is always open.

So I sighed and said to them that it would be done, when I had decided — with Finn and Kvasir — just where we should raid.

In fact, I hoped the weather would change, from the watered-sun days which spat rain from a milk and iron sky to something harsher, with the wind lashing the pine forests like the breath of Thor and the sea rearing up, all froth and whipping mane. That would put a stop to the whole thing, at least for this season, I was hoping, for if Jarl Brand heard how men were raiding out of his lands — on top of neighbour-feuding — things would not go well with us in Hestreng.

I had forgotten that, while Thor hurls his Hammer from storm-clouds, Odin prefers his strike to come out of a calm sky.

We had one the day we took the Fjord Elk out to test it, a silver and pewter day, with the sea grey green and the gulls whirling. A good day to find out if it was a sweet sail, as Gizur pointed out, with more than enough wind to make oar-work almost an afterthought.

The men lugged their sea-chests up to bench them by a rowlock. The Irishers, only half Danes for the most part, were not shipmen of any note and craned their necks this way and that at the sight of shields and spears.

'Are we raiding, then?' demanded Ospak. Red Njal, lumbering past him to plooter into the shallows with his boots round his neck, gave a sharp bark of a laugh. Other old hands joined in, knowing no sensible man of our kind goes even as far as the privy without an edge on him somewhere.

'A smile blocks most cuts,' Red Njal shouted over his shoulder as he slung a shield up to the thwarts, 'but best to have a blade for those who scowl, as my granny used to say.'

The wind whipped my braids on either side of my face and the new, splendid sail bellied and strained above me. The prow beast went up a long wave and skidded down the other side and I heard Onund and Gizur cry out with the delight of it, while I stole a look at Finn, who was muttering and clutching his battered, broad-brimmed hat.

He caught me at it and scowled.

'There is a bag of winds in this hat, for sure,' he growled. 'I am thinking we should seek out old Ivar and have him tell the secret of it.'

Old Ivar, less his famous weather-hat and almost everything else he possessed, was fled to Gotland and unlikely to feel disposed to share any secrets with the likes of us, but I did not even have to voice that aloud to Finn. We stood for a while, he turning the hat this way and that and muttering runespells Klepp had taught him, me feeling the skin of my face stiffen and stretch with the salt in the air.

We ran with the wind until Gizur and Hauk decided they had found all the faults with beitass and rakki lines and all the other ship-stuff that bothered them, then we turned round into the wind, flaking the great striped sail back to the mast. Sighing, men took to their benches and started to pull back to the land.

Crew light as we were and running into an off-shore wind, the Fjord Elk danced on the water while men offered 'heyas' of admiration to Onund for making such a fine vessel. For his part, he hunched into his furs and watched the amount of water swilling down between the rowers' feet with a critical scowl.

I stood in the prow, glad not to be pulling on an oar. I stared out across the grey-green glass of stippled water to the dusted blue of the land, one foot on the thwart, one hand on a bracing line.

'It is the still and silent sea that drowns a man,' said a voice, like the doom of an unseen reef, right in my ear. I leaped, startled and stared into the apologetic face of Red Njal who had left his oar to piss.

'As my granny used to say,' he added, directing a hot stream over the side.

'Point that away, you thrallborn whelp,' roared Finnlaith from beneath him, 'for if you wet me it will be this silent sea that drowns you.'

'Thrallborn!' Red Njal spat back indignantly, half-turning towards Finnlaith as he spoke; men cursed him and he hastily pointed himself back to the sea, yelling his apologies and curses at Finnlaith for insulting him.

'Do not despise thralls,' Onund growled blackly at Red Njal. 'The best man I knew was a thrall, the reason I left Iceland.' The panting rowers lifted their heads like hounds on a spoor, for Onund rarely spoke of anything and never of why he had left Iceland. They kept their eyes on the man in front, all the same, to keep the rhythm of the rowing.

Onund went on, 'I was with Gisli, the one they call Soursop, from Geirthiofsfirth, in Thorsnes, who was declared outlaw there some years ago. He had a thrall called Thord Hareheart, for he was not a brave man, but a fast runner.'

There were chuckles between the pulling-grunts; a good byname was as fine as good verse. Finn moved down the ranks, offering water from a skin, feeding it to men who kept pulling as they sucked it greedily.

'Outlawed or not, Gisli was not about to quit Thorsnes,' Onund told us. 'So men hunted him. He took his spear, formed from a blade-magic sword called Graysteel, which he had stolen and not returned, though it worked out badly for him — but that's another story.'

Men grinned as they pulled, for the winter seemed to promise some good Iceland tales round the fire. Finn