Some foster-father me, and now I was thinking I would never find out if I might have improved on the task, for him or me, or both, would be dead soon.
Others came up and said their farewells, so that I was glad to leave in the end, away from the weight of their sadness. Their faces, pale blobs of concern in the whey-light of dawn, looked at me with that hard, miserable stare I had given others I knew I would never see again.
But it was only Thorgunna’s face, stricken and
It was a fine bridge — Finn said so. Narrow enough for two men to hold against many.
So Botolf looked at us, from one to the other, the babe crooked in his arm and one hand on the head of Toki.
‘Bone, blood and steel,’ Finn said and gave him the bag of arse-wrappings. Nothing more was said, just a nod and a clasp for each of us, wrist to wrist, then Botolf turned abruptly and hirpled over the bridge, Toki and the unwilling goat trotting behind him.
Botolf did not look back, yet I knew he was seeing us there and would see us for the rest of his life, standing on that bridge and not dead. Like Pinleg, long ago, dying under a shrieking pack of swords on a beach, allowing us to sail safely away — if we did not see his death happen, then perhaps he was fighting there still.
‘That is that, then,’ Finn said, when the big man and the boy and the goat had vanished. He peered over the side of the bridge, as if checking for trolls, then hauled out The Godi and inspected the edge.
‘Your doom is not on you,’ I said to him, though my bowels were water as I spoke it. ‘You should go with him.’
Finn cocked one eyebrow, looking at me from under the tangle of his hair, which he refused to tie back — it revealed that he only had one good ear, the other mangled in a fight.
‘Who knows what the Norns weave?’ he replied with a shrug. ‘This could be my day or not — but you cannot hold this bridge alone.’
He grinned.
‘Bone, blood…’ he began.
‘…and steel,’ I finished.
He took off his sheath and shed his cloak, for he did not want them tangling his legs in the fight. He checked the straps on his helmet and put it on, hunched his shoulders a few times to settle the rust-streaked ring-coat he wore, for it was not his own, then sat, leaning back against the stone of the bridge, while the water splashed and sang.
I envied him and hated him in equal measure; Finn, the man who feared nothing. How could he not tremble and find a great spear in his throat that made it impossible to swallow? Frothing madmen in skins would come after us and he had the wit to imagine what would happen. But all he did was open a lazy eye and wonder who Assur had been.
It was the inscription, weathered and lichen-streaked, on the grey stone by the bridge —
‘Helga, daughter of Thorgar, sister of Sygrida and Gauts and others, she had this bridge made and this stone raised after Assur, her husband. He was an oathsworn guard with Gauts. Let him practise
‘A good curse, that last — see, it is written as if in warning to anyone who desecrates the monument, but also that the monument itself will destroy. A good runesman, that.’
‘A well-thought-of man, this Assur,’ I noted, seeing the power of the runes there. Only his name survived, but this Assur would be remembered for as long as stone and we knew he had a loving wife and sisters, who thought enough of him to make runes for him.
‘A sworn man, like us,’ Finn noted and grinned. ‘Good place to die, then, under a monument to a sword- brother.’
I was not so sure — a silly stone bridge leading to nowhere. Fitting, all the same, for the life we had led. Finn scowled when I blurted this out.
‘Once it led to the best trees for miles around,’ he pointed out. ‘Good pine for ship planks and resin. No matter the place — we stand defending the back of a prince and what could be more fitting for the famed Oathsworn of Orm Bear Slayer than that? Besides, even now, it is a place of beauty.’
Once, I wanted to point out to him gloomily, it had been the famed Oathsworn of Einar the Black, save he was now dead — so where did it get him? But Finn had the right of it about the place and I raised my head to the sun and the joyous sea-swallow and the clouds like snow. Below, life bubbled in a stream, which started with the melting of snow in the mountains, flowing and merging out to the warm sea, where the sun sucked it up and dragged it back over the mountains to fall as snow again.
The Norns’ loom of life; I drank it in, sucked it in like a parched man with water.
Then Finn slid to his feet and said: ‘They are here.’
They came loping up the rough path to the bridge and stopped; two men, spear-armed and without armour or helmets, though they had shields and I saw knives at their belts. They stopped, wolf-wary at the sight of two ringmailed warriors, well-armed and shielded.
Randr’s trackers, I was thinking, and Finn agreed, with a derisive spit in their direction. I would have added one of my own if I had had any water in my mouth.
They crouched a little, the two men, and one looked over his shoulder. In a moment, three other men appeared and I felt Finn shift a little, settling himself behind his shield; the bearcoats were here. Three only — I wondered where the others were.
One was tawny-haired, with a massive beard plaited in at least four braids, heavy with fat iron rings. Over stained clothing that had once been fine, he had a stiff-furred cloak — a boar skin it looked like to me — and he carried a sword with a deal of silver on it, but a blade notched as a dog’s jaw.
A second wore the pelt of a wolf, the head and top jaw over his leather helmet, the paws tied on his chest, so that when he lowered his head and loped up, it raised the hairs on my arms, for he looked like a wolf on its hind legs — but the two swords he carried, one in either fist, were his true fangs.
The third wore ringmail and a bearcoat, had a dark beard cut short and his hair braided tight and coiled — a careful man, then, who did not want anything for an enemy to grab. He carried a long axe and I did not like the look of this one at all, knew him for their leader by the way the other two glanced at him, looking for instruction.
He stopped then and rested one hand casually on the top haft of the long axe, resting his chin lightly on the inch or so of wood above the bitt. It was as if he was meeting old friends.
‘Stenvast, they call me,’ he called out. ‘I see you.’
‘Ingimund,’ bellowed the tawny one, slapping his sword on his shield. ‘Son of Tosti, son of Ulfkel, son of Floki Hooknose of Oppland. I fear no man.’
Finn sighed, as if weary.
‘I am Finn Bardisson of Skane,’ he replied, just loud enough to carry the distance between them, ‘and I can change that.’
‘Randr had the right of it, then,’ Stenvast said. ‘Three men, a boy and a goat — milk for the bairn, was it?’
‘Aye,’ agreed Finn easily. ‘He is a sharp one, that Randr. He will cut himself one day — or someone will. He should have sent more of you, all the same. This is not a little insulting.’
‘Best if you stand aside,’ Stenvast said, ‘but I see you will not do that.’
‘I am Guthrum,’ the wolfskin said to me. ‘You are Orm, leader of the Oathsworn. I see you and have come to take your life.’
‘Three men guard my life,’ I answered, hoping my voice did not sound hoarse with fear, ‘Odin, Thor and Frey. None may harm me, unless he is greater than they.’
He made a sign against that old charm and I laughed at him, but my top lip stuck to my teeth and I hoped he had not seen that.
We stood and waited and that was part of what little plan we had; they were
