The White Raven

She stopped, stiff as the yellow stalks of frozen-dead grass; her eyes burned.

'We are few and growing fewer,' she said, in a voice like a djinn of wind. 'Man- Haters, you call us, but that is not true. We have fathers and brothers and some of those here have men and children that they value. Too many have already died. We have failed to keep the secret and this fight on the steppe has ended us. We are passing from the world. We will go home to men, stop binding the foreheads of our girl children and cutting their cheeks, so that they feel the endurance of wounds before the nourishment of milk. But there is one last service we can perform for the Master of the World.'

The words beat on me like raven wings. Passing from the world. Perhaps all Oathsworn are passing from the world, I was thinking, even as I saw, too, that she had ridden out to find a way to resolve matters other than with blood. I understood that only too well.

Once before, this way had saved the Oathsworn at Atil's tomb and I did not think it would fail us now I looked at the sabre, then at the woman who wanted it more than the world itself. I knew now how she knew my name and what she thought we would want, but I asked, for form's sake.

'What do you have to trade?'

17

After I had asked my question, the warrior woman had put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, as if calling up a dog. Riders had come out, one of them leading a stumbling figure on a tether and, as they came closer, my belly flipped at the sight.

Short Eldgrim. I had been right.

He was thin — I had seen more meat on a skelf — and his grin showed that he had lost some teeth. But some of his old wits remained in the summer-blue cage of his head.

'Ho, young Orm. What brings you here?'

The woman called Amacyn looked at me.

'Is this a good trade for you?'

So we took Short Eldgrim into the middle of us and moved away, leaving the warrior women sitting their mounts and watching, their leader now with two swords. Finn came to me then, handed me a wood axe and a grin. 'You will need this until we can find you another good blade, Jarl Orm.'

I shivered, wondering what would happen to me now, for I was sure that rune serpented sword of mine had protecting powers — and now it was gone. Forever. As easily as handing it over, no more than an arm movement; yet this was the blade that had once driven us from the Great City to the forge-heat of Serkland, had goaded us to fight and kill men we had once called oarmates.

I had lingered as the others moved off and had watched what happened, what the women did. When I came back to the Oathsworn, I ignored the questions in their eyes and, since I had given up my runesword for them, they bit their lips and did not ask them aloud.

Later still, when we were far away, we heard cries, faint on the wind, the yip-yowl chorus of all those warrior women. Eyes gleamed with fear then, for they thought the Man Killers were riding after us, but when I did nothing, they calmed down.

No vengeful women came; I knew what had happened and said nothing on it, stayed hunched into myself and against the wolfish bite of wind until we came off the rolling white of the Grass Sea down over a series of shallow cliffs thick with scrubby pine and white-barked birch, skeletal and shivering. The sun hung in the pewter sky like a drop of molten metal.

Ahead, hidden in the ice glare of the marsh that fringed it here, was the mighty body of the river itself, the Tanais, which was once the Scyth name for the Don and came to be the legendary name for travelling the lands we called Gardariki, down among the Mussulmen traders, who gave the name to us that everyone now seemed to use — Rhus.

To go down the Tanais was every youngling's dream, an adventure without peer. The reality was always different and harsh and usually inscribed by grieving relatives on a memory stone back home.

I looked to where Klepp Spaki moved, a dark figure trembling with cold; we would not even have a memory stone, for we had taken the greatest rune-carver with us and it was probable he would die here.

I squinted, watery-eyed against the glare. If it affected me this badly, it was no wonder Kvasir's remaining eye had given up on him; I cursed myself one more time for having been blind myself and missing the signs of it.

To the south, just above where the Don's black-watered sibling, the Donets, joined it, not far from where both split into a thousand muddy channels, was Biela Viehza, the Khazar Sarkel. Close enough for me to see the feathers of smoke from its fires and, black against their ochre threads, the dark and solitary rider moving steadily in our direction.

'Seems alone,' Finnlaith grunted. 'Shall I shoot him when he gets in range?'

'Get Fish to hook this one, too,' added Onund and there were grim chuckles at that.

'Well, there is no place to hide here,' I said, 'so it seems to me he has seen us as we have seen him. Does he look bothered to you?'

'I can change that,' Finn said, but he made no move. We stood for a moment and then Short Eldgrim said: 'It is cold here.'

'I know,' answered Thordis softly. 'We will be warm by and by.'

I looked at him then, the slow-blinking, washed blue eyes in that white-scarred face, bundled up in cloak and tunics handed over by men eager to see him safe and warm, as if he was a talisman for us all. When we had him safe in the middle of us, Thordis had peeled off his ragged old tunic to give him a fresh and thicker one.

She had stopped and suckled her breath in, then whirled him round, so his naked back was to me. I blenched; it was a mass of blackened, red-raw sores, the half-healed burns of little Christ-crosses, all making up one large one, down his spine and across the shoulderblades. Now I knew how Martin had unlocked the memories in Short Eldgrim's half-addled head.

'If ever we find that monk again,' Thordis said stiffly, 'I will want words with him.'

Now she tried to wrap his head in more wool and he growled at her. 'Stop fussing woman, I am warm enough here.'

He stamped his feet against the cold and looked at me.

'I lost Cod-Biter on the way,' he said. Then he stopped and looked puzzled. 'Runes,' he said.

'I found Cod-Biter,' I said and he smiled at that and nodded. Then he said: 'Where are Einar and the others. . no, wait. They are gone. Orm. . sorry, I. .'

He stopped, frowning. 'Lambisson. That fucking little monk. . he hurt me, the little shit, him and his asking about runes and silver. .'

He stopped again and a sob wrenched from him, a child's whimper. Thordis wrapped him inside her own cloak and I felt my heart lurch and cold anger settle in my belly.

'What now?' demanded Gizur. 'Are we going back to the tomb? What about the silver?'

We were never going back to the tomb and the silver was gone from us, but I did not say that, or how I knew. I felt as if I had forgotten something important, left it lying back there in the snow — but it was only the tug of that sword, so long a part of me and now gone. I felt the loss, like a missing limb, for a long time after, but never counted it a cost when weighed against the bland, blue smile of Eldgrim's eyes.

'Kvasir and Thorgunna,' I said. Gizur shook his head sorrowfully.

'No sooner do we free one than we lose two,' he said — but the rest of it was in the grim set of his face; our oarmates were there and needing help. There was also silver ahead by the cartload and it belonged to the Oathsworn.

The rider came closer and Finn said, suddenly: 'Morut.'

The Khazar tracker came up to us on his indestructible horse, leading another, a short, stiff-maned, patient little animal. He sat a little way off and waited until we came up to him, moving like wraiths over the windswept snow.

'Heya, wee man,' growled Finn and Morut nodded back, wary at his reception. Since he had ridden openly up