forearm.
‘You are a good man, Orm Bear Slayer,’ he said slowly, as if picking his words from a chest of coins and wanting all the whole ones. ‘You have silver-luck and fame-luck and men follow you for it, for all that your birthing was awkward. You have served me well these past years.’
He paused and I said nothing, though it smacked me like a blow, the fact that a king thought my birthing awkward; if he did, then others thought the same.
The fact of it is that, in the north, knowing who fathered a child to an unmarried woman was important enough to have its own law. According to it, the old Bogarthing Law, a woman was asked the father’s name at the point of labour and, if she stayed silent, the child was considered a thrall from birth. If she named a man, he became ‘half-father’ and had responsibilities to the child.
My mother, of course, had married Rurik while filled full with me and he had claimed fatherhood. The truth was that another, Gunnar Raudi, had been the seed of me and was thought dead. By the time he returned, I was born and my mother dead of the strain of it — so I had avoided thralldom by the merest whisper of Rurik’s breath. All of which made the awkward matter the king spoke of.
He looked at me and took a breath; I braced for more daggers to come.
‘I would not do you offence,’ he went on, ‘but for those reasons and some others you will never be more than a little jarl and, for all your women and weans and sheep and horses, never a landsman farmer.’
He stopped, studying me carefully to see my reaction and the air in the room became as still and thick as a curtain. I kept my face bland and my hands on the table where he could see them; the truth was that he had the right of it, for sure, and though the blood was in my face, I could not do anything other than admit it by a silence like the stillness of rock.
‘You follow the prow beast,’ Eirik went on, ‘taking the Aesir with you out onto the whale road. Here on the land…’
He paused again and waved his glass to encompass his kingdom, slopping wine on his knuckles. ‘Here on the land, matters are differently done. Like the Christ priests at my table.’
‘I saw them,’ I gritted out.
The king nodded, sucked wine from his hand and sighed.
‘They come from the Franks and Otto’s Saxlanders and snarl at each other,’ he said. ‘Do you know why, Jarl Orm?’
‘They like to argue about their Tortured God,’ I answered and he blinked and smiled gently.
‘Aye, just so — and not so. What think you of the Christ Jesus?’
I gave him the answer I gave all who asked me that — I have never met the man. Then I added that I would say nothing more, for it was not a good thing to malign the Tortured God in a place thick with his priests and Eirik shifted a little on his bench at that.
‘They come and snarl at each other and smile at me because there is more to this White Christ matter than worship,’ he said eventually, then leaned forward a little, as if imparting some great secret.
‘They are always the first men to come. What follows is a binding among kings. Alliances, wealth and power,’ he hissed. ‘There are Frank priests and Saxland priests and even ones from the Englisc, all looking to bring their White Christ to my lands rather than suffer someone else to bring the White Christ here. They offer much in return for a dip in water. That is kingship.’
‘They offer a white underkirtle,’ I answered flatly, ‘or so I had heard.’
Eirik’s smile was lopsided and wry. ‘Kings do a little better — though sometimes I am thinking the prizes glitter well, but are not worth all the kneeling and praying they say has to go with it.’
‘So much the better for kicking them all out and offering a sacrifice to Odin for having the clever to do it,’ I answered stubbornly, more sharply than I had intended, but Eirik simply squeezed my forearm and shook his head sorrowfully.
‘Out on the whale road that may seem clear,’ he answered and, in that moment I saw he envied the thought of that and realised the true burden of the crown he wore.
‘So — you have Christ priests looking to prise you away from the Aesir,’ I growled, irritated with the maudlin king, more so because he was right in what he said. ‘What has this to do with the matter of Styrbjorn?’
King Eirik blinked and drank some wine.
‘You are a clever man,’ he said. ‘You know it was this Leo who brought the silver that let Styrbjorn buy Pallig, Ljot and their bearcoats. You have yet to ask yourself the why of it.’
I blinked, for he had it right and I felt the blood flush to my cheeks at this, as sure a sign of being a little jarl as he had claimed. King Eirik nodded.
‘All the Christ priests here are from the West,’ he said. ‘No Greek ones, the ones who cross their chests the opposite way. Vladimir of Novgorod has no Greek ones at his court either, which makes us friends. His brothers do, which makes them my enemies.’
I saw it then, in a sudden churn of belly and mind. Vladimir of Novgorod, facing off against his brothers Oleg and Jaropolk, was for the old gods of the Slavs, though he tolerated Christ worshippers for his grandmother had been one. His brothers had priests of the Greek type swarming all over them, but Vladimir did not care for those monks much.
This was the Great City at work. Vladimir stood in the way of their turning all the Rus to the Greek Christ — and so to the will of Constantinople — so it would try to oust him using his brothers. King Eirik, of course, had sent warriors to help Vladimir, so the Great City would prefer it if that changed. Enter Styrbjorn.
He saw I had worked it out at last and sighed.
‘I am thinking Styrbjorn’s failure makes him useless to them now. They will try another way. I may even have to accept that monk Leo back at my court, offering me rich gifts to turn my eyes away from Vladimir. Or a secret death in my wine or food. What they cannot force they will try to buy or kill.’
I felt pity for him then, this man who would be king, who had to bend and twist himself into unnatural shapes to make his arse fit the seat of it. I drank to take the taste away, but that only made it worse.
‘Go to Pallig Tokeson, where the monk Leo has fled,’ Eirik said. ‘If Pallig sees there is no trade to be had other than my friendship for the boy’s return, he will give your
There was much said about Pallig Tokeson but excessive clever was not part of it. He controlled Joms, which the Saxlanders called Jumne and the Wends, Wolin. There were other names for it, but the skalds — gold-fed by Pallig, no doubt — sang silly tales of the warriors of Joms, who never took a step back in battle and who all lived in a great fortress, where no women were allowed. For all that his men were no Northmen at all, but Wends, he had enough of them to be a dangerous man — and still had some bearcoats, which I mentioned.
‘Styrbjorn himself will help,’ King Eirik declared, ‘for he will want me to know how sorry he is for all that has been done and so will put himself at some risk to make Pallig see sense.’
The fact that I was putting myself at risk, of course, was neither here nor there, it seemed. I still did not think Brand would be so amiable about matters and was surer still after Finn and I went to see him, later in the night.
Brand had taken an arrow in the face, to the right of his nose and just below the eye. It had been a hunting arrow, which was wound-luck for him, for the shaft sprang free and left the head, which was not barbed. Normally, a hunter would cut the valuable arrowhead out of the animal and use it again — but now it was driven six inches deep through the cheek and into the back of Jarl Brand’s skull.
Ofegh, they called Jarl Brand. It was a good by-name for him and meant ‘one whose doom is not upon him’, though a man with four eyes would be hard put to see that in the face that turned to Finn and me. His main wife, Koll’s mother, was dead and his own life was down to a single strand of Norn-weave, it seemed to me.
In the light of a fat, guttering tallow his bone-white hair was lank and stuck to his yellowed face by sweat, but his eyes were still hot and fierce and his wrist-clasp strong. He had what seemed to be a tree growing from his face, though it turned out to be thin, stripped withies of elder, dried and stitched into silk marked with suitable runes, though they were not our own sort.
This was to widen the wound down to where the arrowhead was and, once the healer — a Khazar Jew — was certain it was deep enough, he would insert some narrow-point smithing tongs and take the thing out. Until then, there was only the great, raw-wet lipless mouth of the widened wound and endless agony, which had carved itself on Brand’s face, shaved clean for the first time I had known him.
