The Prow Beast

I agreed and smiled, which was hard work on the cheek muscles since I was working against a lot of scowl. There was the arrogance of these brothers, the problem of Styrbjorn and how to free him and, worst of all, the thought of what the Polanians — the ones the brothers scornfully called ‘Pols’ — would do if they found the Mazur girl they thought safely hostaged in a foreign land with the daughter of their king.

Not for the first time, I wondered what Vuokko had seen in his drum later on that feast night for the return of Eirik’s bairn. The Sea Finn had appeared out of the shadows like some nightmare, just as Finn and I were picking our way in the salt-tanged dark to see Jarl Brand.

‘I have called it and the drum has spoken,’ he told us in his rheum-thick accent. ‘It says to take the Mazur girl.’

With three runes to speak with it might have said more, but I had gone to Sigrith in the night, half-ashamed at doing it just because of the Sea Finn’s drum, and asked her to let me have Blackbird, whose real name was Dark Eye. She, even knowing the worth of the girl to her father and where I was headed, did so, as she said, ‘for the loss of her Birthing Stool’.

Now Blackbird was stowed like baggage on Short Serpent and as nagging as a broken nail in my mind as we clumped back down to the ship, where Finnlaith and Alyosha were growling at men to get them loading supplies.

They crowded round, wanting to hear what had been said and by whom, so I laid it out for them.

‘Take these Joms bladders now,’ growled a big Swede called Asfast when I finished.

‘Burn them,’ snarled Abjorn, ‘as Ljot burned Hestreng.’

‘Ljot did not burn Hestreng,’ Rorik Stari pointed out. ‘It was Randr Sterki who did that.’

There were rumbles for and against charging up and cutting them down, calls for blood and fire. There were also growls about going upriver at all, for there was little in it that raiding men could see.

So I put them on the straight course of that simply enough.

‘There are two matters that must be done,’ I told them. ‘One is to free Styrbjorn, for King Eirik’s sake.’

Finn grunted, but said nothing, for only he and I knew that it was also to kill him, for Jarl Brand’s sake, though neither he nor I had worked out a way to make a square out of that circle.

‘I am also going after my fostri,’ I added, ‘for it is my honour and good name here. You may follow if you choose, but will break your Oath if you do not. The only other way is for one of you to become jarl.’

That silenced them, so much so that I was sure they could all hear the bird-fluttering beating of my heart at the idea of one of them challenging me for the dragon-torc of jarl. Fame, that double-edged sword, held them at arm’s length, for this was Orm, single-handed slayer of white bears, killer of scaled trolls, who had once won a holmgang with a single stroke and only recently had fought and killed berserkers, two at a time.

Yet they were sullen about it and a broad-faced growler called Gudmund could not let the bone of it loose.

‘Pallig does not want us to go upriver,’ he offered moodily.

‘So?’ spat Red Njal, fanning the flames of it. ‘Who is Pallig Tokeson to tell the Oathsworn of Orm Bear Slayer where they can go or not?’

‘He is kin to Harald Bluetooth,’ Crowbone offered brightly. ‘The wife he took pains to introduce us to is Bluetooth’s daughter and the sister of the Svein who was at King Eirik’s feast.’

He stared into the astonished faces, then innocently up into mine and I knew now what he had been doing, while seeming to play the eyebrow-batting boy with the womenfolk.

Bluetooth was not a name you ignored lightly, as Gudmund persisted. Finn spat and pointed out that we had been ignoring Bluetooth for years, had stolen his ships and killed his men and were none the worse for it, which cheered everyone, for they knew we were going upriver, no matter what.

Then Onund cleared his throat, which he always did before he said something important and we all stopped, thinking it would be ship talk and being as wrong as a two-headed cow.

‘If it is such a bad thing to be going upriver, for the trouble it will cause the brothers of Joms,’ he rumbled thoughtfully, ‘I am wondering why they let Randr Sterki and his dogs go up?’

TEN

Having hurled the axe of that into the middle of us, the hunchback laid out the saga of how he had found out about Randr. While we spoke with Pallig, he had gone off to find decent wood to fix the steerboard and quickly found an entire steerboard, in good condition, which he thought was ship-luck.

A few traders further on, as he looked for just the right cut of ash wood to make an elk prow for the ship — Crowbone shifted and scowled at that part of his tale — he had found good nails and ready-cut ship planks, far better quality than he would have expected in a place such as Joms. Then a trader said it would be better to have a whole prow rather than go the trouble of carving one and showed Onund one he had.

‘So I asked him where he had it from,’ Onund told us. ‘I had to be firm with him, too, for he was reluctant. I picked him up by the heel and hung him for a while until he spoke and we concluded the business. I was pleased to have done it with no violence.’

That got him chuckles and I wished there was no feasting that night, for I wanted to be away as fast as supplies could be loaded, if for no other reason than to avoid the results of Onund’s firmness with a trader.

In the end, Onund was shown the source of the snarling dragon prow he knew well — we all knew well. On the far side from the settlement, wallowing half-in, half-out of the weak Baltic tideline, stripped to the ribs and the keel and the charred strakes no-one wanted, was what was left of Dragon Wings.

‘We should go to Pallig and his brother,’ Finn growled after this news was out, ‘and use your little truth knife on them.’

Those who knew of the truth knife, which whittled off body parts until the victim stopped lying, agreed with relish and I felt the little, worn-handled blade burn where it nested in the small of my back. It had belonged to Einar the Black once and had served me as well as it had him, but there was no need for it now.

‘Randr Sterki had ship-luck to make it this far,’ I pointed out. ‘He would be coming to have it out with Ljot for leaving him and I bet he had more men bailing than rowing by the time he ran Dragon Wings ashore here.’

They nodded and growled assent to that.

‘What of the hoard they had from you?’ demanded Finn of Onund and the hunchback shrugged, a frightening affair.

‘If he did not take it with him, then it is scattered through the settlement,’ he answered. ‘And so lost to you, Orm — these rann-sack pigs took every last rivet from the wreck.’

There would be no hoard found, I was bitter-sure, for Randr would have used some of it to buy supplies and one of those tree-carved riverboats. The rest would be either with him or buried secretly and I had no doubt a deal of it went to Pallig, for no balm soothes like silver.

‘Why is he going upriver at all?’ Finn had asked. That one was easier still; to get Koll and the monk. The monk, in Randr Sterki’s hate-splintered eye, either owed money or blood or both and the boy was my fostri. He would want the boy alive, would know I was coming after him with Crowbone. All his enemies, sailing straight towards the revenge he was not yet done with.

‘He did not take the lesson from your last story,’ I said to Crowbone and he shrugged.

‘I will tell him a harder one, then,’ he growled back and everyone laughed at his new, deep voice, so that his cheeks flushed. He looked at me, those odd eyes glittering like agate.

‘I have a thought on how to get Styrbjorn away,’ he said, then inclined his head in a gracious little bow.

‘If my lord is pleased to hear it,’ he added and folk chuckled. I heard Finn mutter, though, and did not need to hear it clearly to know what he was saying: that boy is older than stones.

‘A prince’s wisdom is always welcome,’ I said and he grinned his sharp-toothed mouse grin and then laid it out. It was a good plan, put him at the centre of matters and at no little risk — which was what the fame-hungry little wolf cub wanted — and gave the skill and strength of it to Finn. I looked at Finn after Crowbone had