The Prow Beast

I admitted it then and have done since. I am like other men and desire proper respect and esteem, when it is due. In the end, though, Odin taught me about fair fame — it was a tool, an edged one that can cut the user unless it is properly used. I said so and Abjorn grunted a little.

‘You do not agree?’ Finn challenged and Alyosha chuckled, one jarl-hound to another, it seemed to me.

‘It does not seem quite right,’ admitted Abjorn, but it was Styrbjorn, all fire and movement, like a colt new to the bridle, who hoiked it up for us all to look at.

‘A man’s reputation is everything,’ he spluttered. ‘Fair fame is all we have.’

‘Once I thought so,’ I answered. ‘Like the Oath we swear, it binds us. It weakens us, too, for it makes us act in ways we would not usually do.’

‘Like charging through the gates of that place like mad bulls,’ Crowbone added brightly. Styrbjorn subsided, muttering, but Abjorn nodded slowly as the idea rooted itself.

In the end, it was simple enough. I had men run forward, shields up and shouting, so that heads popped up on the ramparts and a flurry of shafts came over. No-one was hurt and we collected some.

‘Hunting arrows,’ Finn said with satisfaction. It was what I had been thinking; Kuritsa and me had shot off what war arrows these people possessed. Hunting arrows we could protect ourselves from.

The sky lowered itself like a gull on eggs, all grey and fat and ugly. Twenty men, led by Finn, went into the woods carrying bundles and axes and more chopping sounds came. This time, though, they were making ladders and the bundles held all the spare tunics folk had, which they put on under their mail, up to four of them. Then they circled, unseen, to the far side of the stockade.

I sent men with the ram against the gates, moving up under shields where there was only pant and grunt and fear. Rocks clattered on us, shafts whumped into shields, or struck and bounced, skittering like mad snakes through the wet grass.

On the far side, while the gate thundered like a deep bell, Finn slapped ladders against the almost undefended rear wall and led the others up and over. There were only twenty of them, but they were skilled men, mailed, shielded and moving as fast as their bulk would let them, fast as a shuffling trot, hacking at anything that came near and heading for the bar on the gate.

The folk in the settlement panicked when they saw such a group, iron men slicing through their meeting square, toppling the cross-pillar, scattering chickens, splintering carts, kicking buckets, some of them stuck with arrows which went through byrnie and one layer, perhaps two — but would not go through ring-coats and the padding of four tunics.

Hedgepigs in steel, they were and that broke the will of the defenders, so that they ran, screaming and throwing away their hayforks and hunting spears.

When the gate broke open, then, all I saw was a shrieking, milling crowd running this way and that and it was like mice to cats — the very act of them running in fear brought what they dreaded on them, launched the howling Oathsworn at them, flaming for vengeance over Hlenni Brimill.

Arrows flicked at the edge of vision and I ducked, for I wore no helmet, thanks to the still healing scar across my forehead and my tender nose and I could hear my father, Gunnar, snort in my ear at that — if you have the choice of only one piece of armour, take a helm, he had dinned into me. Never go bareheaded in a fight.

Well, it did Koghe no good, for the arrow that flew past me hit him and there was a wet, deep sound. I half- turned; tall Koghe staggered past with the force of his own rush, the arrow through his mouth, a fud-hair below the nasal of his helmet. Choking on his own blood and teeth, pawing the shaft, he was dead even as he gurgled and fell.

I saw the bowman then, ran at him as another arrow was fitted to the nock, held my sword — Brand’s splendid blade — in front of my body until the last moment before I got to him, for I knew what the archer would have to do.

He snapped the arrow into one hand and stabbed with it and I took it round in an arc down and right, smashed in with my shoulder and knocked him flying, arse over tip. He was still struggling like a beetle on his back when I chopped him between neck and shoulder.

Shouts and screams soaked the air, almost drowning out the high, thin sound of a bell; I sensed a shadow and stepped back sharply. A body struck the ground, the wood axe meant for my head spilling from one hand and then Styrbjorn stepped up, grinning, the seax and the hand that held it thick with gore.

‘The Christ place,’ he said, nodding towards the building and I realised that someone was calling the last defenders to him there. Still grinning, he let me lead the way and I realised he had probably saved my life with his handy backstab.

Blue Hat was the bellringer and he was dead by the time I got to him, through a madness that was as like Svartey as to have been its crazed brother. Men moved like grim shadows, killing. There was no plunder, no tupping women in the dust. Only killing.

I walked through it as if in a dream; Uddolf ran across my path, chasing a fear-babbling youngster up to a wall, where he ran at him with his spear, so hard that it broke and the boy, pinned, screamed and writhed like a worm on a hook. Uddolf, shrieking, beat the boy’s face bloody with the broken haft.

Ospak kicked away a young woman, begging on her knees with her hands clasped round his calves, then split the head from her mother with two strokes; yellow marrow oozed from the bone of her neck.

The Christ place was dim and silent and I slumped against the painted wall, feeling the shadows and the quiet like a balm. Then my eyes grew used to the light.

Under the cross with its Tortured God, Red Njal stood on splayed legs, head bowed, panting like a bull after mating. At his feet was Blue Hat and I would not have known the man had it not been for his headgear, for Red Njal had not been kind.

‘Hlenni…’

I followed Red Njal’s glazed look and saw the body, strange with no head, but linen-wrapped neat enough. Nearby was a dead Shaven Priest in his brown robe, killed kneeling in prayer.

They had bound Hlenni’s wounds after all, it seemed. Just a little late.

It was all too late. Dull-eyed men staggered, too exhausted to kill now but it did not matter for everyone was dead. No, that was not right, I saw. Every thing was dead, even the dogs and the goats and the hens. Everything.

I found myself in a long hall, a meeting place perhaps, for these folk did not do chieftain’s hovs. Yet it was like one as to bring a rush of memories and I ran to them with my arms out, to try and wrap myself from what went on outside.

There was a pitfire, cold ash now, but the smell of it and the seasoned wood of the pillars flooded Hestreng back on me, a Hestreng unburned. This was the time of year when the sap shifted in everything and the sun came back, so that you could peg out furs and bedclothes and let the sun drive out the lice and fleas. Men would work half-naked, though it was this side of too cool to be comfortable; there was enough food, but most of the ale was finished, so fights were few.

Summer was the lean time between harvests, so that the unlucky could starve to death eating grass while the sun poured down like honey.

There were sheep and goats to be taken to upland pastures, but not the ones reserved for the horses; sheep and goats ate the grass down to the soil, leaving nothing — but they gave wool for wadmal, and milk for curd and cheese and this was the time when skyr was made. I remembered it, thickened whey, white as a virgin’s skin, lush off the wooden spoon.

But Hestreng was black timber and ash. With luck, a new hall would be up and giving shelter, the wood reeking of newness and tar, but there would be no time for skyr and few furs or bedclothes to peg out.

The outside noise yelled me back to a strange, cold, dead hall; someone burst in, saw me and backed out. I rose, feeling as if my legs had turned to wood, but having to move before the tale went round that Orm, White Bear Slayer, leader of the famed Oathsworn, slayer of were-dragons, tamer of the half-women, half-horse steppe creatures was sitting by himself staring at fire ash and near weeping.

Outside, those with life left in their legs and arms had started to look for plunder, moving as if the air was thick as honey; I picked my way through the litter of corpses, feeling the suck of bloody mud on my boots.