The White Raven

'That was only sense,' she spat back, 'when such friends as yours come to call.'

'No friends of mine,' Finn answered grimly and turned a body with his toe. 'Yet, mind you, this one looks familiar.'

'Parted at birth, I am sure,' Ingrid muttered bitterly and, for all they seemed more angry than afraid, I saw the fluster and tremble in them.

'My sister,' Thorgunna said flatly and I blinked at that, having forgotten that Thordis was at Gunnarsgard, wife to Tor.

'Finn — choose some good men,' I said swiftly, seeing the path clearly for the first time since the smoke had stained my world. 'Botolf — guard the women here. Kvasir — stay with your wife and command the men I leave.'

'Guard the women,' muttered Botolf moodily. 'Guard the women. .'

'And your tongue,' Ingrid snapped and then, to her horror, burst into tears. Thorgunna gathered her up and turned away.

'They came looking for you,' she said to me suddenly. 'Yelled out your name, as if they knew you.' 'Shot arrows into Hrafn, all the same,' Botolf added grimly, 'when he came at them for stealing his mares. The beast is limping about like a hedgepig, if he is standing at all.'

Finn and I looked at each other and he looked down at the lolled body of the man he thought he knew. 'Old friends,' he grunted.

3

It was a shock seeing him at his ease beside Tor's hearthfire, feet up on a bench, picking the remains of one of my mares out of his teeth with a bone needle and grinning, for he knew he had caused me as much stir as if I had found a turd at the bottom of my soup bowl.

Klerkon. He had a good Svear name somewhere, but the dwarves guarded it as carefully as they protected the sound of cat's paws, the breath of a fish and all the other things the world had forgotten. Klerkon they called him, after his father, who had been a klerkr. In the Svear tongue, that simply meant someone who had learned Latin, though it was more often given to a Northman who had become a Christ priest.

'A surprise for you,' he said, chuckling out of his button-nosed, bright-eyed face, the curl of grey hair framing it like smoke.

He had a face like a statue I had seen once in the Great City, one long broken in pieces so that only the head remained. It had sly eyes, tiny horns and tight-curled hair and Brother. John, who was with me at the time, said it was a little Greek god called Pan. He had had goat legs and played pipes and fucked anything that moved, said Brother John.

That Pan could have fathered this Klerkon, who shoved a stool towards me and indicated I should sit, as if the hall was his own. In the shadows behind him, as I searched for Tor or Thordis, I saw shapes, the grinning faces fireglowed briefly and then gone, the gleam of metal. I knew the rasp of hard men's breathing well enough and the rich smell of my own livestock cooking reeked through the hall.

When I strode out for the smoke of Tor's steading, sick and furious, a dozen men followed. First we saw that only outbuildings burned — a byre and a bakehouse. Not long after, we found Flann, Tor's thrall and, guddling about for plunder in Flann's blood, a stranger with sea-rotted ringmail and tatters of wool and weave hung about him. He looked like something long dead risen from the grave and climbed slowly to his feet at the sight of us, wiping his palms down the front of his breeks.

'Are you Jarl Orm?' he asked in a voice thick with Finn accent.

'Who wants to know?' I countered and he shrugged.

'I am Stoor and serve someone who wishes you well,' he replied, sonorous as if he was a real herald. 'He bids you come to the hall ahead, in safety. I was left here to guide you.'

'Fuck you,' Finn growled and would have said more, about traps and stupidity had I not stilled him with one hand. I looked at him and he at me. Then I followed Stoor, alone.

It was a wolf den now, Tor's comfortable hov; the idea of it drove a dry spear into my throat and clenched my balls up into my belly.

'There is pleasure in renewing old friendships,' Klerkon went on easily. 'A pity about the misunderstanding earlier, but such things happen on a strandhogg. Men get excited chasing chickens, you know how it goes. No slight was intended and little harm done.'

His voice made it clear that what I had lost in the way of livestock was well offset by the death of six of his men. Then he called for ale, which Thordis brought. She did not look at me when she laid the wooden cup at my elbow, but her whole body was hugged tight to her and there was a straggled lock of dark hair escaped from one coiled braid, which she would never usually have allowed.

'Tor,' I said to her and she blinked once or twice. Klerkon gave a little laugh and men shifted out of the darkness, grating a bench into the light. Tor swayed on it, his face a bruise, his lips fat and raw as burst blood puddings. His feet, I saw, hung unnaturally sideways; hamstrung so that he would never walk again.

'I did not think you would object over-much to having an awkward neighbour put at a disadvantage,' Klerkon said. 'We needed some bread and cheese and the men needed to dip their beaks a little, so this place seemed good enough.'

'I am sorry for it,' I said to Tor and his single working eye flicked open.

'Your fault,' he managed to puff through his broken mouth. 'Your kind. Your friends. You brought them here.'

Men laughed at that. I stared at the bald patch on top of Tor's slumped head and felt sick. They were no friends to me, but he had it right — my fault, for sure. For bringing hard raiding men as neighbours to a peaceful bondi farmer. For thinking I could get away with it.

Not now, all the same, for Jarl Brand would see it, too. Once this mess was fixed, he would sigh and have to admit that he had no use for us now that the fighting was done. He would be sorrowful, but point out that he could not have swords such as us waving about on his lands, frightening decent folk, inviting bad cess on them.

Bad cess sat opposite, smiling his Pan-smile and sliding his platter across to me, the meat-grease cooling. I ignored it.

'Not hungry?' he asked and men chuckled. 'Pity — that was a tasty horse.'

'I hope you have silver left from other raids,' I managed to answer him. 'That meat you are enjoying will cost you. Jarl Brand will scour every wavelet for you after this. So will I. It will take a fat blood-price to still our hands.'

He leaned back and waved a languid hand.

'A risk worth taking,' he answered, narrow-eyed. 'I am betting-sure that you can afford a horse and more besides. I hear you have a mountain of silver to draw on.'

Well, there it was. The circling rumours that had brought hard men flocking to join me had whispered in his ear and brought him. I knew Klerkon of old, had sailed with him on many a strandhogg, a supply raid, when we had both fought for Jarl Brand. Even among hard and vicious men like us, Klerkon was shunned as something sick.

'Now you know more, so you know something,' I answered. 'I did not take you for a man who followed bairn's tales.'

'Just so,' said Klerkon, watching me like a cat with a mouse, daring it to move. 'I am not. But just as priests parted us on bad terms, one brings us together, as friends. As partners.'

My left knee was twitching and I could not stop it. The air was thick with rank breath, meat smells and the acrid stink of men sweating fear and he saw me struggle with the bewilderment and curiosity his words had forged. I had crossed him once, over a pair of Christ priests he had captured and I had grown tired of his bloody attempts to shake their faith by having them hold red-hot iron and the like. Klerkon was twisted when it came to Christ priests and some folk who claimed they knew said it was because one had been his father and abandoned him as a