The Prow Beast

world.’

‘I will be long dead by then,’ grumbled Onund and that raised a louder laugh; Crowbone’s mouth was working like a dying fish, but I was spared mentioning it by the arrivals from the fortress, moving along the shingle in an ungainly half-trot.

They were ring-coated, helmed and armed with shield and spear, about a dozen led by Ljot, who wore only coloured clothing and a green, fur-trimmed cloak, so I relaxed a little, for this arrival had been the awkward moment and it seemed to have passed off well enough.

‘Olaf, son of Tryggve,’ he said politely, bowing to Crowbone, for he had fixed his eyes on the boy and the rest of us were just well-armed retainers, he thought. ‘Welcome to Jomsburg.’

‘Olaf Tryggvasson thanks you,’ I said, before Crowbone could get his mouth working. ‘Jarl Orm of Hestreng is come to the Joms borg.’

Ljot finally saw me and jerked his head to me and back to Crowbone, confused; he had seen and recognised the ship and made assumptions from that. I nodded and grinned a wolf grin at him. Finn slung his shield on his mailed back and gave a bark of laughter.

‘Aye — here is your worst nightmare, Ljot,’ he snarled. ‘Crowbone is now one of the Oathsworn of Jarl Orm of Hestreng. We have come for our property.’

Ljot gaped and stuttered a bit, then looked at me with narrowed eyes.

‘If you plan trouble here,’ he began and I waved a silencing hand. Finn chuckled.

‘No trouble,’ I answered, ‘but this is for Pallig’s ears, not all these.’

Ljot glanced round at the ringmailed and gawping growlers he had at his back, Wends mostly, with a scattering of those tribal trolls who always gather round trade places. He nodded and led the way up to the borg proper, off the beach and tussocked grass and on to the raised half-log walkways.

I called Finnlaith over, just before I fell in behind them all.

‘Keep these thievers off the ship,’ I told him. ‘And keep the girl hidden.’

He nodded, then scowled. ‘Why we have her is not clear to me, sure,’ he grunted. ‘She is a strange one and no mistake.’

I had no quarrel with him on that and said so, which made him grin. Then he called up his Irishers, Ospak among them and I heard them chaffer and bang shields together, as if they had won a good fight, as we went off after Ljot.

I was glad of Finnlaith and Ospak, old Oathsworn who had arrived at Hestreng while Finn and I were with Jarl Brand. They had come ‘for the raiding’ and heard in Hedeby that there was trouble at Hestreng.

They had left Dyfflin some time ago and arrived on a trading knarr owned by someone who knew me and trusted that the half-a-dozen mad Irishers with their bearded axes and strange gabble were unlikely to cause harm to him or his cargo.

‘A timely arrival,’ Finnlaith had said, once beams and wrist-grips had been exchanged, ‘for sure. It is a sad thing, so it is, to see Hestreng reduced to ashes.’

Then he had brightened a little and said that now that the Ui Neill had arrived, the war against those who had done it could commence and made out that he had come all the way from Dyfflin just for that.

The truth, of course, was that the Irisher lands were in flame — again — and the Ui Neill were not getting the best of it. Meanwhile, the Norse in Dyfflin laughed at the Irishers quarrelling over who was king of the dungheap, when they controlled the trade and so the wealth.

‘But sure,’ Finnlaith had added, when he had finished bewildering me with all their names, ‘we will go back presently and sort this Brian Boru lad out.’

Meanwhile, he was back with his old oarmates, enjoying the craic at the entrance to the Odra and thinking it a good day, even with the rain sifting down on him, because he had friends, a bearded axe slung on one shoulder, a handful of silver in a pouch under his armpit and the prow beast telling him where to go.

I envied him as we clattered over the slick walkways through the town, all smells and curious people, to where the buildings thinned until there were only a few scattered round the meadow. Mounded above it, the Joms borg itself squatted like a troll moody over his lost bridge.

Finn nudged me as we went, pointing out the forge and the mill — and the Christ church, where a priest, his brown robe caught up between his legs to make short, baggy breeks, worked a patch of vegetables, looking up only once at us. Most of the folk we saw, including the leather-clad guards on the gates, were Wends.

Pallig waited at the threshold of the hall, surrounded by three women; the youngest — barely a woman at all — he presented as his wife and a thumb-sucking boy he proudly announced was Toke, his son.

‘No women allowed at all,’ Finn whispered scornfully to me and then laughed at the lies of skalds.

I had expected a different look to Pallig, for his brother was of a good height with no belly on him and reasonable in his looks, making the most of them with his neatness. All of which made his name — Ugly — a joke. Pallig, on the other hand, was sow-snouted, bald save for a straggling fringe of dirty flax and had a paunch that trembled like a new-shelled egg yolk.

Ale was brought and bread and cheese. Crowbone sat apart, chatting animatedly to Pallig’s wife and, after a scowl or two, Pallig decided that he was too young to bother with. We sat on benches and Pallig, beaming and jovial, hooked one knee over the arm of a high seat and spread his hands expansively. No-one was fooled; he and the cat-wary Ljot were ruffled by the arrival of the Oathsworn and, for all his bluster, Pallig was not sure he could handle such trouble if it came to a fight.

Still, he played a tafl game of being unconcerned.

‘Welcome to my hall, Orm of Hestreng,’ he announced. ‘The Oathsworn fame has travelled far and wide and is almost as great as my own. It is an honour to have you here.’

Then, unable to resist it, he peered at me and gave a little laugh. ‘You look a little battered — was it a rough crossing?’

I said nothing, for the high seat he was on, like a perilously perched pig, had the familiar carving on the back, of Thor arrogantly fishing for the World Serpent. He saw me look and smiled, for it had all been planned that way.

‘You admire my high seat? It is very fine.’

‘I know it well,’ I answered. ‘It belonged to Ivar Weatherhat until recently. Then my arse was on it until Ljot came to Hestreng.’

Pallig feigned surprise.

‘Then you must have it back,’ he declared expansively.

I shook my head and his smile wavered a little, for refusal had not been in his design. But I knew how the game was played and had shoved words around the board with better men than him.

‘Keep it,’ I countered. ‘For Ivar had it and was burned out of all he had and I had it and enjoyed the same luck. The Norns, as they say, weave in threes. I can always get another seat.’

‘Once you get another hall,’ Ljot offered, with a dangerous sneer that made Pallig shoot him a hard look. I felt Finn shift a little beside me, to ease his hilt nearer his hand.

‘Oh, that is being built,’ I said lightly. ‘It will be finished by the time we return to Jarl Brand with his fostri, the boy Koll whom your man Leo took.’

The brothers exchanged looks then, no doubt remembering — as I had intended — the Oathsworn tales of unlimited silver. Then Pallig, in an attempt to counter this unexpected move, slathered a vicious smile on his face and waved one hand. Men came forward — two of the bearcoats I had last seen sidling away to burn Hestreng, I noticed — and Styrbjorn between them. He was pale, but smiling and wore good coloured clothing and his hands were unbound, though he had no more than an eating knife on him.

‘Orm Bear Slayer,’ he acknowledged with a nod. Pallig watched my face and, finally, I turned into his pouched gaze.

‘King Eirik would like Styrbjorn returned to him,’ I said. ‘He is confident you will not oppose him in this.’

Styrbjorn laughed, showing too many white teeth.

‘I am sure my uncle would like me to walk into his mouth and be eaten,’ he replied, ‘but, as you see, I am among friends.’

Pallig said nothing and even Styrbjorn was not convinced by what he said so confidently.