The Prow Beast

quiet and savage; I sat down again, chilled by the term, which was used for madmen in wolfskins.

‘Have we ever been beaten?’ Finn demanded.

Botolf considered it for a moment, then stood up, nodding and serious.

‘Then you are right. We are Oathsworn. We never run from a fight and this is our queen. I am with you, for sure. Now I am off to a warm bed, if I can squeeze in between bairns.’

Finn watched him stump off into the dark beyond the fire and shook his head wearily.

‘By the Hammer — there are stones with more clever than him.’

We both knew, all the same, that all Botolf had needed was an excuse to do what he already knew to be right, to have someone persuade him to it.

Then Finn turned to me, sliding The Godi back into the sheath.

‘Do you think we can beat them?’ he asked.

We had to. It was as simple as that. I said so and he nodded, rising and heading off for his own bed, leaving me with fire-shapes and weariness.

Thorgunna, when I went to her, was awake, sitting hunched up and wrapped in blankets and almost under the wagon in which the queen of all the Svears and Geats groaned and gasped. Nearby, Kuritsa huddled under a cloak — not his own, I fancied — under the canopy and out of the rain and his black eyes watched me arriving. He was a thrall and his name meant ‘chicken’ because, when I had bought him, he had a shock of hair like a cock’s comb before it was cut to stubble.

‘No-one sleeps tonight,’ I said, trying to be light with it. Thorgunna pulled me down beside her, tenting me under her cloak and blankets, giving me her warmth. Her head was heavy on my shoulder.

‘Kuritsa just arrived,’ she said. ‘The two who ran off with him are still missing and Kuritsa does not know where they are. But he killed a man, he says.’

That was news and I sat up. Kuritsa sat up, too, looking warily at me from out of the cave of his face.

‘You killed a man,’ I said to him and he nodded uneasily; I was not surprised at his wariness, since thralls found with weapons were almost always killed outright.

‘I took his little knife and killed him,’ he said, almost defiantly. ‘Then I took his bow and shot at his friend, but it was dark, I was hasty and I am out of the way of it. I missed.’

He produced the bow and three arrows, thrusting them towards me, his square, flat-nosed face proud. He grinned.

‘I was not always a thrall,’ he said. ‘I hunted, in my own land.’

I looked at him; he was thin, dark-eyed, dark-haired and far from his own lands, somewhere in the Finnmark — yet he had a tilt to his close-cropped chin that would have had him beaten if matters were different. I told him to keep the bow, that he would need it sooner or later.

Kuritsa blinked at that, then smiled and held the weapon to his chest as if it warmed him.

‘They hunt in fours,’ he offered suddenly. ‘One of the ham-ramr and three with him, tracking and offering him their shields. I had the favour of gods when I found two trackers and no ham-ramr.’

I looked at him; the word ham-ramr was an interesting one, for it was used on a man who changed his shape in a fit that also gave him great strength and power. Small wonder, then, that all the thralls had run off screaming — and more power to this one, who had not. Yet Thorgunna muttered under her breath, something about the direness of arming a thrall.

‘You should sleep,’ I told her and had back the familiar scorning snort.

‘I am too old to enjoy cold nights and wet ground,’ she replied. ‘Still — this will make your son into a raiding man, for sure, since it seems that is all his lot.’

I ignored her dripping venom and put my hand on her belly then, feeling the warmth, fancying I could feel the heat of what grew in it. I thought, too, about what it would feel like to lose what was snugged up in the harbour of that belly — and the belly, too. All hopes and fears buried in the earth, given to Freyja and, with them, a part of me in that cold, worm-filled ground.

What was left, I was thinking, would be a draugr, a walking dead man, with only one thought left — revenge. Like Randr Sterki. I knew he would never stop until he was killed.

‘Do you have a plan?’ Thorgunna demanded.

‘Stay alive, get to Vitharsby, then to Jarl Brand.’

‘Death holds no fears for me,’ she said suddenly. ‘Though I am afraid of dying.’

‘You will not die,’ I said and felt, then, the rightness of what had to be done. She looked at me, a little surprised by the strength and depth of my voice; I was myself, for I thought a little of Odin had entered into it, even as he placed the thought in me as to what to do next.

FIVE

Dawn was whey and pewter, sullen with the promise of rain, and we were packed and moving even before it had slithered over the mountains we had to cross.

Jasna levered herself out of the wagon the queen lay in alongside bairns and supplies, for we had little room for those who could not walk or keep up; looking at the fat thrall-woman I was not sure she would manage with all that weight on her splay feet, but, if she felt the pain of trudging, nothing showed on her broad scowl of a face. The Mazur girl swayed alongside her, a skald-verse of walking, as if to show the fat woman in even worse light.

‘Let us hope that Jasna can keep up,’ grunted Thordis venomously, a squalling Hroald sling-wrapped round her. ‘The horses will be grateful the longer we keep her out of a wagon.’

‘And the walking will melt her,’ added a smiling Ingrid, popping Helga into the wagon, where Cormac already sat, gurgling, Aoife looking after all of them and the soft-groaning queen. The cart lurched; the queen moaned.

‘She will not suffer that long,’ muttered Jasna to me in her harsh attempt at Norse. ‘This first birthing time is bad for her. My little Sigrith cannot eat anything but sweet things and I have been feeding her hot milk and honey all night.’

I wondered if it had been spoon and spoon about. Precious little chance of that from now on, I thought, turning away to where Finn and Botolf stood with the limp-footed stallion. Little Toki was there, holding the head of it, for he had a way with horses — and, to my surprise, so was Abjorn and the other five men of Jarl Brand, all ringmailed and well-armed. Abjorn had his helmet cradled in the crook of one arm and a stone-grim look on his face.

‘We will come with you,’ he said, then looked from one man to another and back. ‘There is something we must ask.’

I did not like it that they were all here and not with the struggling column, grinding a way up the mountain pass road — but what we were about to do would not take long.

There was little ceremony. We climbed a little way, to where a flat stone sprawled up above the road and into the realm of the alfar; whom some call Lokke; men hissed now and then when something flickered at the edge of their vision, or when the sun glimmered in a certain way on water, for they knew that it was Lokke, the Playing Man, the alfar no-one ever saw properly — or wanted to.

I kept my heart on my wish and my head up to the sky, away from the glitter of unnatural eyes in the moving shadows. My business was with Odin.

I drew the sword — a good blade, but not the nicked one rescued from the Elk. That was Kvasir’s old blade and I would not be parted from that willingly, yet this was still a good sword which we had taken from the men we had killed near our rune stone and so a rich gift for Odin. I heard the men breathe out heavily, for it was known that the alfar did not care for iron, as I plunged it in the soft, brackened turf in front of the stone. Toki brought the limping stallion up to me.

It snuffled in the palm of my hand hopefully, but found nothing and had little time for the disappointment of it; I plunged a sharpened seax into the great pulse in its neck and heard it squeal and jerk, the iron stink of blood adding to the fear. It kicked and reared and Toki and I hung on to it, our weight forcing it still until the pulse of blood grew weaker and the stone and the sword blade dripped and clotted with it.