The White Raven

boy.

'Priests?' I managed.

'Aye. You knew one, once, I understand. Tame Christ-dog of Brondolf Lambisson, who ruled Birka.'

'Birka is gone,' I harshed back at him. 'Lambisson and the priest with it.'

Klerkon nodded, still smiling the fixed smile that never reached those slitted, feral eyes.

'True, it was diminished the last time we paid a visit. Hardly anything worth taking and the borg had been burned. But we burned it again anyway.'

He slid his feet off the stool and sat forward.

'Lambisson is alive, if not entirely well. The priest also and he is even less good to look on.'

He sat back while the wave of this crashed on me and his smile was a twist of evil.

'I know this because Lambisson paid me to bring the priest to him,' he said. 'In Aldeigjuborg, last year it was. I plucked the priest — Martin, his name is — from Gotland, where he was easy to find, since he was asking after Jarl. Orm and the Oathsworn. Why is that, do you think?'

I knew, felt a rising sickness at what Klerkon might still have to reveal. Lambisson and the priest Martin had set us off on this cursed search for Atil's tomb years before, when I joined the Oathsworn under Einar the Black.

The priest had used Lambisson's resources to ferret out something for himself, the Holy Lance of the Christ- followers and used the Oathsworn to get it. Now I had it, snugged up in my sea-chest alongside the curved sabre it had made and Martin would walk across the flames of Muspell to seek me out and get that Christ stick back. What Lambisson wanted with Martin was less clear — revenge, perhaps.

Klerkon saw some of that chase its own tail across my face and his smile grew more twisted.

'Well,' he went on, his voice griming softly through my ears, 'perhaps this priest wanted his share of Atil's silver and so sought you out. The rumours say you found it, Bear Slayer.'

'If so, only I know how to reach it,' I said, feeling that pointing out that fact at this time might prevent him from growing white around his mouth and a red mist in his eyes.

This time there was no smile in the wrench that took his lips.

'Not the only one,' he said. 'Before the priest, Lambisson gave me another task — to fetch two from Hedeby. I knew they were Oathsworn. Only later did I find out that they knew the way to this treasure of Atil, but I had given them to Lambisson by then.'

Short Eldgrim and Cod-Biter. Their names thundered in my head and I was on my feet before I knew it; benches went over with a clatter.

Klerkon leaped to his feet, too, but held out his empty hands.

'Soft, soft — Lambisson wanted them hale and hearty,' he said. 'It was only recently that it came to me there might be more in this than wild tales for bairns or coal-eating fire-starers. It would seem I had the right of it — all the same, Brondolf Lambisson has a head start on us.'

'Us?' I managed to grim out, husky and crow-voiced.

'Together we can take him on,' Klerkon said, as if he soothed a snarling dog in a yard. 'He has gathered a wheen of men round him — too many for me, too many for you. Together. .'

'Together is not a word that sits between you and me,' I told him, sick with thought of what might have been done to Short Eldgrim and Cod-Biter. Neither of them knew enough — Eldgrim, perhaps, who had helped me cut the runes into the hilt of the sword, but the inside of his head was as jumbled as a woman's sewing box.

'This is an invitation you would be wise not to turn down,' Klerkon replied and I could see the effort it took to keep his smile in place.

'There are frothing dogs I would rather walk with,' I said, which was true, though this was hardly the time or place to be telling it. Steel rasped. Someone smeared out an ugly laugh. Klerkon snapped the eye contact with me, straightened a little and sighed.

'Perhaps a trade partnership was too much to expect,' he said softly and the smile was already a fading memory. 'If we cannot join, then I have it more in the way of you telling me all you know and me sparing those you hold in regard.'

'You are crew light for a task like that,' I told him, seeing it for the truth — otherwise he would not have offered any deal. 'I do not think I will tell you anything today.'

'By the time I am done with you,' Klerkon said, whitening round the eyes and mouth, 'you will beg to tell me every little secret you hold.'

I hauled out my blade and the sound of his own echoed it. The sucking whispers of other blades being drawn in the darkness was the soft hiss of a snake slithering in on a fear-stunned mouse.

Then the door hurled open with a crash and daylight flared in, catching us so that we froze, as if caught fondling each other.

'Your watchmen are shite,' growled a familiar voice and Finn bulked out the light. 'So I have done you a favour.'

Something flew through the air and smacked wetly on the table, hitting the edge of the platter, which sprayed horse meat and half-congealed grease everywhere. The object bounced up, rolled and dropped neatly into Klerkon's lap.

He jerked back from it, so that it crunched to the floor. The eyes were the only recognizable things in the smashed, bloody ruin of a face. Stoor. Watery blood leaked from the raw mess where his neck had been parted from the rest of him. Somewhere a woman shrieked; Thordis, of course, one hand to her mouth and her hair awry.

'Thordis,' I said and held out one hand. She looked at me, then at Tor and I knew, with a lurch of sick fear, that she would not leave him — and that we could not carry a hamstrung man.

There was a moment where I thought to take her round the waist and cart her off — but it was an eyeblink only. If we failed, Klerkon would know she was sister to Kvasir's wife and would use that to lever the secret he wanted out of me. Finn knew it, too, knew that she was safer if Klerkon stayed ignorant. He laid a free, gentling hand on my forearm; it left bloody smears.

'Time to be going, I am thinking, Jarl Orm,' he said and I moved to the door as the light from it slid down the bright, gleaming blade he called The Godi — Priest. He pointed it at Klerkon and the snarlers behind him, a warning as we backed out of the hall and ran for the waiting comfort of our own armed men.

Even as we sprinted out in a spray of mud and feverish elation, howling at each other with the sheer relief of having cheated our way to safety, there was the bitter taste of it all in the back of my throat, thick and metalled.

The wolf packs were gathering for the feast of Atil's tomb. Short Eldgrim and Cod-Biter were prisoners of one, Thordis was prisoner of another.

I set men to watch and we held an Althing of it round the hearthfire as Thorgunna doled out the night-meal. No-one felt much like eating, though and our weapons were within hand's reach.

Botolf was all for taking all the newly sworn crew in an attack in the dark to finish it all. Kvasir spoke up for blocking Klerkon from leaving and sending to Jarl Brand for help. Thorgunna wanted to know what we were going to do about her sister. Ingrid wept.

Finn stayed silent until everyone else had talked themselves exhausted. He went out once — to check on the guards, I thought, which was sensible. When he returned, he sat in the shadows and said nothing.

Then he came and hunkered by the fire, while I slumped in the carved chair and tried to think up a way out.

Attacking was no answer — it would be a sore battle and one of the first things they would do would be to kill their prisoners, who would be hand-bound only and able to run if not watched.

Running to Jarl Brand might help, but no matter how goldbrowed my words were to him, all the same, it came out as too many sea-raiders running around his lands, frightening folk with their swords and I did not think he would take kindly to me having kept the secret of Atil's tomb from him all these years. Worse, I had barefaced lied to him about the tale being true.

There was a deep sick feeling in me that I might, after all, have to trade with Klerkon.

'We should beware the night,' Botolf declared. 'Klerkon is a fox for cunning and he has that Kveldulf with him, too.'

Kveldulf — Night Wolf — was a man rumoured to be other than a man when the moon came up. Finn grunted and picked some choice morsels out of the pot and Botolf tilted his head questioningly, just as Ingrid told him to pull