The White Raven

flailing fur and roared himself to the darkness, head back and arms out, the great axe in one fist.

'Orm!' Finn bellowed, but I hacked at the rope and it parted in two strokes; the strug lurched again and shifted slightly sideways, swinging on the tether of one remaining rope; I saw the linden bast of it tremble, spitting out little shards of ice.

An arrow hissed like a snake over my boots, skittering through the snow; another plunked at my feet, I felt the wind of a third on my cheek and turned to start hacking at the last rope.

A horse stumbled out of the dark and the noise, wild eyes white, nostrils wide. The rider on him gave a high shriek of triumph and slashed down with a curved sword, but I had already flung myself flat and sideways and hacked out with the axe.

With a dagger scream the horse spun on its hocks, one front leg shattered; the rider spilled from the saddle and landed in a great whoof of driven air and spattering snow. I drove at him, the axe up and coming down, so that it took all I had to twist my wrist at the last, burying the blade so close to the fear-white familiar face that one brow braid was sheared.

'For Morut,' I growled into the cod-mouthed stare of Avraham, then tore the axe blade free, showering him with diamond chips of ice to remind him of how close he had come. Then I whacked him between the eyes with the butt end.

'Orm!'

The bull-bellow from Finn was almost too late; the horsemen were crashing on us and I turned into Gyrth's big, lopsided grin.

'Heya!' he yelled, swung up the long-axe and smashed it down on the rope, which parted in a shower of little ice shards. I was half up on one knee when the strug groaned, shifted and started to move, a great bulked beast on its cradle of wooden runners; ice spat and cracked as its own weight started to tear it loose down the slope.

Gyrth's face was suddenly close to mine, close enough to have the rank breath of him on me and the great wild of his eyes staring into mine.

'Jump,' he said and then was gone, rolling forward into the mass of horsemen; an arrow shunked into him, with no more seeming effect than a skelf in his finger. I saw him grab the bridle of one horse, hauling it almost to his knees then, one-handed, slash the axe head into the face of the rider. The horse struggled, trying to tear free and Gyrth slammed his own helmeted head on the blaze of the beast, so that it gave a grunt and sank to its knees, eyes rolling white into its head.

Then more horsemen surged out of the dark, milling around and I heard him bear-roaring his name at them. Steinnbrodir. Steinnbrodir is here.

'Orm, you arse — the rope!'

Finn's roar shook me into the Now of it; the world sped up, the trailing rope whipped away from me and I grabbed it with my left hand. It slithered, iced and slippery, through the few fingers I had, so I dropped the axe and hurled myself at it with the other.

The wrench tore shrieks from my arms, but I held on with both hands, in a whirl of stars and snow, dragged bouncing down the slope as the strug bucked and kicked, galloping down the ice, leaping into the air on its wooden runners.

A man, one of Vladimir's long-coated druzhina who had run forward to attack us too, was hit as the strug lurched forward, gathering speed; he was flung aside with a crunch of bone and a shriek, while the runners were given extra slick with the smear of him.

There was a great bang and objects whirred darkly around me; I clung on, lost in a world of pain and ice, a small, clear part of me seeing the remains of the wooden cradle of runners spinning away behind me in shards. Vladimir's men scattered from the path of that plunging stallion of a boat, their faces white stabs of fear whirling away from me into the dark.

The strug lurched and slid, hit the last of the shore, hissing a bow-wave of snow from under it — then ploughed into the black river and the shadows, spouting up a great grue of ice under it as it took us to the slow, cold slide of the crow dark river.

I lost the rope as it whipped me up and there was a marvellous moment of flying, the great wheel of clear stars tilting in a pitch sky — then there was the whooping shock of the water, so cold it burned. I went down and round and spinning into freezing darkness, surfaced once to see the strug forging away from me, while men shouted and howled and tried to get it to stop — then I sank again, the world a muffled roar in my ears.

It was Hlenni Brimill and Onund who saved me, the one spotting me, the other leaping in like a bull walrus to grab me and tow me back to the surface.

When I blinked back to the world, it was on the deck, shivering and soaked, bruised and with fingers scorched with rope burns. Hlenni was rubbing me so furiously I shook, but his hands burned feeling back to my limbs. Nearby, Red Njal did the same for Onund, who shivered under a cloak, but managed to grin and wave. I trembled out a nod, acknowledgement of what I owed him.

'Pull, fuck your mothers!' Gizur roared, as the arrows whicked and plunked — but screams and shouts told where Vladimir's men now fought the garrison of Sarkel in the confusion of darkness.

They pulled, fuck their mothers, hard and grunting and too busy hauling oars to think about what had been lost and gained, only that the arrows were fired blindly and we were leaving them all behind.

Later, when the rowers groaned and drooped and tried to stop their lungs burning, Klepp Spaki tallied the loss — Katli Bjornsson and his brother Vigo, both of them gone in that fight, leaving, I knew, a mother to weep alone.

And Gyrth. Finn, stone-faced, told how the Boulder had rolled into the horsemen, then vanished from sight. In my head he roared still; Steinnbrodir is here.

'Where is Odin's gift in all this?' Klepp asked bitterly, while I shivered and ached and did not want to tell him how it was a gift, of how One-Eye had held his hand over us. If he had not, we would all be dead.

Thordis found the rest of One-Eye's double-edged gift, when she and Bjaelfi went to attend to Thorgunna. They found her lying, as Fish had been found, on a haphazard tumble of furs — covering roughly-bagged silver coins, armrings, bent plates and twisted jewellery, all the small stuff that had been in at least one of the carts. A fortune, hidden with Thorgunna in a good place and gleaming at me, accusing as a curse; little Vladimir would be furious.

I was still gawping at this, wondering if Vladimir would cut his losses, or stamp his little foot and come after us, when Fish dragged the rest of our wyrd out into the moonlight, while the fit men bent and dug and pulled down the middle of the river.

'Does this belong to anyone?' he asked, limping out from where he had been scouring the boat for food and warmer clothing. A white-swathed shape hung by the scruff of the neck in one hand.

Hearts stopped; men glanced up and blanched and I groaned. The silver was bad enough, but this would have men rowing in our wake until they threw up, for sure.

'I did not like to leave Thorgunna alone,' Crowbone said, blinking up at me from a tear-stained face. 'She was good to me.'

19

It took a while for the unease to settle on what was left of the Oathsworn, a haar that dusted everyone with droplets like morning dew. We had silver after all and there was cheering at that — yet we also had Crowbone and that would bring men after us. There was muttering about Fafnir's curse.

Those crew left — nineteen by my count, including the hirpling Fish — had to keep rowing down the fat, sluggish Don to the Maeotian Lake, which the Serkland Turks call the Azov Sea; that hard task did not help matters.

It was a boat made for fifteen oars a side, so we were crew light, as usual. It was made from one tree, an oak the length of nine good men and extended by willow planking, though we had lost some of those in the mad slide. It was two men wide and straked with planks nailed to make the freeboard as high as a standing warrior and