The White Raven

'Say you can help yourself and bind me fast,' demanded the Bear. And the Man did so.

'You need to drive an axe into that stump,' said the voice in the woods, 'to help steer it down the steep paths.'

''Pretend to drive your axe into me, do now,' pleaded the Bear.'

Even with the tension visible as mist, there were a few who chuckled at what they saw coming.

'Then the man took up his axe,' said Crowbone 'and at one blow split the helpless Bear's head and so the Man and the Fox headed home to Vladimir's farm, where Vladimir said he would bring the promised wether out to him.

'When he came back, he had a sack in which something moved and the Fox started drooling, for it had been a hard winter. 'Give me what I am owed,' said the Fox and Vladimir untied the sack and two red hounds rushed out.

'The Fox sprang off, too fleet to be caught like that, but his voice was bitter when he said: 'Well done is ill paid. The worst foes are those you trust to be honourable.''

The silence that followed crushed all sound save the quiet rill of water on wood.

'You did not behave like a prince,' Crowbone went on, breaking it like a slap. 'I am also a prince and my mother was a princess. She did not teach me such bad behaviour, Prince Vladimir. I counted you as a friend, as did Jarl Orm — is this how you repay friends for their help?'

'I remember your mother, boy,' bellowed Kveldulf and then Sigurd silenced him with a blow on his shoulder.

'I remember you also, Night Wolf,' answered Olaf. 'So does my mother.' His voice, scarcely a whisper, carried across the water, sibilant as the hiss of a snake and like to shave the hair off the nape of your neck.

'Surrender the boy,' Dobrynya persisted.

'Once,' I answered, 'you told me how one day I would be thankful for the friendship of princes.' The cold sweat pooled where my belt cinched my mail tight at the waist. 'There is another side to that coin — a prince may be grateful for the friendship of the Oathsworn.'

'I will stay with Jarl Orm,' piped Crowbone firmly. 'Until he brings me to Lord Novgorod the Great and reclaims his ship there. If any harm comes to him, I will not count it as a princely thing to do.'

He did not say what the consequences would be and, peculiarly, no-one thought to question what such a boy could do — they all had their own ideas on it and only one was not afraid as he bellowed out his anger.

'Fuck this,' roared Kveldulf and there were mutterings behind him; I saw then that some of the crew in his boat had been Lambisson's men, those who had fled and left Fish behind. That, I was thinking to myself, was a dangerous hiring.

'You will come to me in Novgorod?' demanded Vladimir.

'I will pledge myself to you there,' replied Crowbone. 'Soon, you will need men to fight for you, Prince Vladimir, if you wish to be Grand Prince of Kiev. Between us, we will scatter all our enemies. Here also, Jarl Orm is a better treasure than any silver and, if you fight him here, you lose his strength with you — and I would not be surprised if a careless blade cut my throat.'

It was so close to prophesy that I shivered and I was not alone, judging by the murmurs that leaped from head to head. Kveldulf was open-mouthed with disbelief, so stricken he could not speak at all and I was a little stunned myself; had this nine-year-old ancient just said I would kill him if we were attacked? Had he just pledged me to help Vladimir against his brothers?

There was a brief whispered exchange, then, Dobrynya's iron-grey voice rumbled over the water.

'The prince agrees,' he declared loudly. 'Go in peace and take what you have, Jarl Orm. Bring Prince Olaf to Novgorod by the end of summer next, unharmed. If you fail, the prince will hunt you down and have you and all your men staked along the Volkhov Bridge.'

'By Thor's arse, no!' bawled Kveldulf, turning white and red in turns. 'Did I split my knuckles rowing for this?'

'You were paid,' Dobrynya snapped back at him, 'and will mind your manners. A stake is as easy to find here as in Lord Novgorod the Great.'

I choked Finn's guffaws with an elbow in the gut that left him coughing, for humble silence was best here. Gizur put everyone on the oars and we strained away from the death we were sure had been our lot moments before, rowing hard and hardly able even to believe our luck.

Eventually, much later and reined in like bolted horses, sobbing for breath and lashed with sweat and drool, we all realized that it was real. We had escaped. We would live.

Finn, pewter-eyed and so tired he could not even close his mouth properly, turned to where a wet-eyed Thordis wrapped Crowbone in her cloak. He patted the boy as if he was a particularly clever pup.

'Odin's arse, young Olaf,' he growled admiringly. 'If ever I quarrel with your tales again, simply remind me of this day on the river and my mouth is clamped shut.'

Olaf said nothing, simply gazed back along the river, only his eyes and the top of his blond head visible in the swathe of Thordis's cloak. I whirled, suddenly fearful, but there was nothing; when I turned back, Crowbone forced his chin out from under the cloak folds and smiled thinly.

'The ducks still fly. They fear the wolf.'

By night we had grown dizzy swinging round the narrowing bends of the river, unable to see much on either side through the thick, skeletal white branches of the trees. We did find an ox-bow curve of shingle where we crunched through the thinning ice and unloaded ourselves.

Crowbone's wolf comments had reached all ears by then, but the Oathsworn were defiant now and lit good cooking fires, daring the Night Wolf to come and find us. All the same, as Finn stirred what herbs and spices he had left into the two upturned helmets filled with a savoury stew, I had Toke and Snorri take first watch.

It cheered us all when Thorgunna hirpled, leaning heavily on the arm of Thordis, into the firelight and, wincing, took a cloak-cushioned seat by the fire. She smiled wanly at the smiles around her and accepted a wooden bowl of stew and even managed a few mouthfuls from her own horn spoon.

After a while, as everyone ate and talked quietly, about everything and anything other than where we were, where we were headed and what we would do with all the wealth when we got there, Thorgunna laid down her bowl and turned to me.

'Thank you for bringing Kvasir,' she said. 'Tomorrow, I will surrender my man to the water, to Ran, who surely lives as much in rivers as in the sea. I do not trust those hereabouts to leave him in peace on land and now that I have his eyes back and he is whole for Valholl, I am content.'

When I looked in her dark eyes I saw the opposite of that — saw, too, that it was not for Kvasir but for the almost-bairn kicked out of her.

That night, I raked through the silver hoard while Finn held a torch up and finally found a hinged torc that even Finn whistled at. Twelve ounces if it was any weight at all, solid and carved in little S-curves connected by rosettes, which were fitted with red stones, most them still there. It ended in an intricate lock and Finnlaith swore that it was Irish and he might have had the right of it.

In the morning, with the mist still in tendrils, I placed the torc inside Kvasir's corpse-wrappings and had a fond smile from Thorgunna for it. She took his stiffened fingers and gently trimmed his nails with her little scissors, for it is, well-known that Naglfar, the boat captained by Loki and which carries the giants of Jotunheim against Asgard at the start of Ragnarok, is made from dead men's fingernails. It is right to delay the building of it.

Then she pulled out the bloody little pouch I knew contained his shrivelled eyes and tied it round one wrist, so they would not be lost. We weighted him with stones from the shingle beach and slid him over the side with scarcely a ripple and he sank quickly, while I commended him to the gods and tried not to choke on the loss.

Then, almost before we had shaken ourselves from the dark of it, like dogs losing water from a swim, Crowbone raised his head and pointed one arm.

'The Night Wolf is here.'

He came on loping swift, hoping to take us by surprise — but everyone, in honour of Kvasir, had been armed and mailed, so all I had to do was go to the prow nearest to the black ship that held Kveldulf and, as I had suspected, Lambisson's old crew.

Kveldulf was in the prow roaring them on, his wolf-pelt draped on him, a snarling mask on his head and shoulders while the oars dipped and sprayed. He had too few men to both row and fight and I knew that he would back water soon and let the forward motion of the riverboat carry him crashing into us while his men got their