The Prow Beast

in with the frost. Out, fire! In, frost!’

It was an old charm, used on children who had scorched or scalded themselves, but a little late for use on the ruin that had been Nes-Bjorn.

‘Came out of the sea like one of Aegir’s own draugr,’ Finn added. ‘Fire had seared his voice away and most of the breath in him. The gods alone know what kept him walking. I near shat myself. Then I gave him The Godi, for mercy.’

He raised the named sword in question and now I saw the raw-meat gape round the throat of the thing that had been Nes-Bjorn, while the wind hissed sand through the shroud of stiff grass, bringing the scent of salt and charred wood with it. Something shifted darkly and slid into a familiar shape that grinned at me and dragged me to sit upright with a powerful hand.

‘You swallowed half the fjord,’ rumbled Botolf cheerfully. ‘But you have bokked most of it up now, so you should be better.’

‘Better than the others,’ Finn added grimly, crouched and watchful and Botolf sighed and studied the thing next to him, while the sand pattered on it and stuck. It looked like driftwood.

‘Aye — poor Nes-Bjorn Klak will never run the oars again after this.’

I came back to the Now of it, realised we were somewhere in the dunes to the east of Hestreng. The charred wood smell came again, stronger on the changing wind and Finn saw my nose twitch.

‘Aye,’ he said, grim as weathered rock, ‘the Elk is burned and gone and good men with her. All of them, it seems to me, save us.’

‘I saw Hauk fall,’ I croaked and Botolf agreed that he had also seen Hauk die.

‘Gizur, too,’ Finn added mournfully. ‘He held on to the steerboard and told me he had made this ship and he would die with it. He did, for I saw at least two spears in him as I went over the side.’

‘Red Njal? Hlenni Brimill?’

Finn shrugged and shook his head. Botolf said, brightly: ‘Onund lives. I saw men drag him off up the beach.’

Finn grunted. ‘He will not be long delayed to a meeting with Hel herself then, for they will kill him for sure. That Roman Fire…it even spread to Dragon Wings and they had to beach it to throw sand on it. They tried water and that only made it worse.’

I struggled to sit up and to think, while the deaths of the Oathsworn were like turning stones, milling the sense and breath from me. Gizur and Hauk…ten years I had known them. And Hlenni Brimill and Red Njal, who had struggled through the Serkland deserts and the frozen steppe. All of them had sought out Atil’s treasure and thought they had won fair fame and fortune…truly, that hoard was cursed.

‘Roman Fire,’ I said hoarsely and Finn spat.

‘Fucking Greeks-Who-Call-Themselves-Romans,’ he said bitterly. ‘Who else would make a fire that burns even water?’

‘Bearcoats,’ I added and turned to where his eyes gleamed in the dark. My throat burned with sea water, making my voice raw.

‘When did Randr Sterki get them?’ I asked. ‘Bearcoats don’t roll up to the likes of him and announce they are his men until death — and not twelve of them. And you cannot buy pots of Roman Fire in some market, like honey, neither.’

‘What are you saying, Orm?’ Botolf demanded. ‘My head hurts and my friends are gone, so I am no good with riddles tonight.’

‘What he means is that there is more to this,’ Finn growled savagely. ‘More than Randr Sterki and his revenge.’

Botolf stirred, then shook his head.

‘Perhaps. I am thinking only that we have become what once we raided.’

No-one spoke, but the memories slithered to us, slimecold and unwelcome and Botolf, who had not been there but had heard some of it, let his massive shoulders slump. He looked at me, eyes white in the darkness.

‘I wish you had not spoken of the woman and the dead ox. Things were clearer to me out on the whale road, when we followed the prow beast and everything we owned was in a sea-chest.’

Finn’s head came up at the reference to the woman and the dead ox and he looked from me to Botolf and back. Then he grunted and hunched himself against the cold memories.

‘Well, we have fame, land, women and bairns,’ he spat angrily. ‘Odin’s gifts. Should we spurn them, then, because of what we are?’

Botolf shrugged. ‘What we were,’ he corrected sullenly. ‘Now we are the ones raided and our women are likely to be humped on a dead ox.’

‘Be dumb on that,’ Finn savaged. ‘What do you know? Look at you. You do not even possess the thought-cage of a mouse. Where would you be without Hestreng? Without Ingrid and little Helga Hiti, eh? That is your wyrd, for sure, and running back to the whale road after the prow beast will not change what we are now, nor what we once did. Aye — and may do again, for I know myself to be a vik-Norse, until they burn me up as a good Odinsmann.’

I was astounded; Finn, above all others, had been the one muttering and raging against the shackles of land, women and bairns. Botolf sulked at Finn’s rage, not knowing that it was because Finn was the humper in the story of the woman and the dead ox. Finn, for all his bluster, was aware that it was that, in part, which had brought Randr Sterki down on us — aware, also, of the threat to little Hroald, the son he did not know what to do with.

‘You should not say such things to me,’ Botolf muttered. ‘About not having the thought-cage of a mouse.’

‘Just so,’ agreed Finn poisonously. ‘I take it back. You do have the thought-cage of a mouse.’

‘Enough,’ I managed to say at last and then coughed and spat; pain lurked, dull and hot in my chest. ‘I am thinking we will not have thought-cages at all, if we do not act. I am thinking Randr Sterki will not be content with claiming a victory over the Oathsworn and stealing some chickens and pigs. Not a man who brings bearcoats and Roman Fire with him.’

‘Aye, right enough,’ agreed Botolf, mollified by what he saw as Finn giving in.

‘What do we do, then, Orm?’ Finn asked. ‘It will be a sore fight whatever you decide.’

I shot him a look, for he did not even try to hide the cheerful in his voice. I did not like what we had to do. We had to find out what was happening and to do that someone had to get close. Since there was no flaring fire, the great longhouse was not burned and that was because Randr and his men were using it — so someone had to sneak into the hall and find out what all this was truly about.

They looked at me in the dark, one whose idea of stealth was not to roar when he charged, the other who was half a bench; it was not hard to work out who had to be the fox.

Finn handed me his seax, as if to seal the bargain.

No starlight. A limping moon that stumbled from cloud to cloud, driven by the same wind that whipped the tops off waves and drifted sand through the grass. We moved, soft as roe deer towards the shadowed bulk of Hestreng hall and the lights scattered about.

For all his size and lack of leg, Botolf could move quietly enough and the sand muffled the thump of his timber foot, while Finn crept, shoulder-blades as hunched as a cat’s. We stopped, licking dry lips and sweating like fighting stallions.

The harsh stink of burned wood hit me and I saw the looming shadow, lolling like a dead whale, slapped with soothing waves — Dragon Wings, beached and blackened along half its length. Botolf made a bitter laugh grunt in the back of his throat at the sight and we moved into the lee of it, where the wet char stink was worst and the shadows darkest. Beyond, rocking at its tether near the slipway, was the second ship. I did not recognise it.

I sat down to pull off my sodden boots and handed them to Finn — then we froze at a sharp, high sound. I knew that sound well, that mating fox shriek of frantic fear; someone was being hard-used by pain.

I looked at Finn, then Botolf, then slid towards Hestreng hall, feeling the wet wool of my breeks chafe and tug, the sand sliding under my feet, sharp with shell and shingle. My ankle burned, as if it had one of Ref’s hot nails through it; an old injury, like the stumps of my missing fingers, which itched maddeningly; I knew what Botolf meant about his leg.