The Prow Beast

I stopped only once, in the act of stepping over a corpse, at first just one more among so many. It was smaller by far, though, with fat little limbs and yellow hair, though there was a lot of blood in it now and the little, budded, thumb-sucking mouth that had smiled at Hlenni Brimill was slack and already had a fly in it.

FOURTEEN

There were hills on either side of us, easy rolling and wooded with willow and elm and the flash of birch, thick with berry bushes and game, while the river hardly flowed against Short Serpent at all. But there was no singing from the oarsmen now and no joy in the stacked plunder, for all that they had snarled at the lack of it before.

We had beaver and squirrel and marten skins, wadmal cloth baled with grease-rich fleeces against the rain — the work of winter looms — and carded wool waiting to be woven.

Now there was mutton and lamb and beef, for we had slaughtered every breathing creature in that place. We had winter roots pickled in barrels and sweetness wax-sealed in pots. Ale, too, though old and a little bitter. There was even hard drink, like the green wine of far-away Holmgard, a clear spirit made from rye — but not enough of it to chase the sick taste of what we had done to that nameless place.

We loaded it all, stuffing it into Short Serpent until it wobbled precariously, as if the more we took the better the excuse for what had been done. For some of us, the only excuse was the laying out of Hlenni on a cross-stack of timbers ripped from the houses, with Koghe next to him and Blue Hat at both their feet.

Then we scattered all the lamp oil we could find, sprayed that expensive stuff like water, for this was not a howing-up, dedicated to Frey — this was a blaze that sped Hlenni and Koghe straight up to Odin, as was proper. A beacon, one or two muttered uneasily, that could be seen for days.

They had been our only deaths. The morose Gudmund had taken the prong of a hayfork in his belly and Yan Alf had taken the flat of a wooden spade on the side of his head — wielded by a woman, too, to add to his annoyance and shame — but he had only a rich, purple bruise to show for it.

We had slaughtered one hundred and seventy-four of them, women and bairns among them. Now there was a sickness on us, like the aftermath of a jul feast that had gone on too long, one where folk told you what a time you had because you could not quite recall it for yourself. One where, for days after, everything tasted of ash and your mind was too dull to work.

Worse than that, at least for me, was the feeling that there had been too much blood spilled, as if it poured into a deep, black hole in the earth, the Abyss that Brother John always warned me I was destined to descend. The same Abyss which had flowed out and into me the night I had ripped out the throat of a berserker.

I felt like the prow beast, carved in an endless snarl, unable to change my expression, only capable of nodding approval at what was done. I looked at that beast now, back where it had been taken from and rearing proudly up; there seemed small point now in appeasing the spirits of this land. I would rather have them afraid of us.

We came round the bend and into the sight and sound and smell of a big settlement, this one on the west bank of the river.

It was, said Pall, the Wend borg of Szteteno. He was still leashed, tied to one or other of us, or the mast when all were busy, yet he had recovered a measure of his sleekit smoothness and grinned at the sight of the place, picking the beef from his gapped teeth with a sliver of bone.

‘They have no love for those on the east side of the river,’ he told us. ‘They will, perhaps, thank us warmly for burning those trolls out.’

‘Do you believe this ferret?’ sneered Styrbjorn and I looked from one to the other.

‘I have a little knife that finds out the truth,’ I answered, which made Pall glance at his bound hand, scowling. Styrbjorn laughed and I turned and handed him a long bundle wrapped in a square of sun-faded silk which had once been blue. He looked at it, bewildered, then took it, feeling the weight and knowing what it was. Yet he whistled through pursed lips at the silk.

‘They say worms make this,’ he grinned. ‘I have seen worms and all they make is dung and good bait for fishing. It is something when a man hands me my sword and the wrapping on it is half the worth of the sheath.’

‘The silk is something to trade, the blade will help you keep what you get. Take both, use them to go home,’ I said with a growl and more gruffly than I had intended. ‘Take Pall with you, for he is no more use to me than a hole in a bucket. I am thinking that what you do with him and how much you trust him is your affair.’

It was reward enough for his seax-skill at the settlement and we both knew it. When the ship slid with a gentle kissing dunt against one of the spray of wooden piers, he sprang over the side with a laugh and a wave. Pall, less skilled and more eager, scrambled after and darted away, throwing the leash off him with a last curse.

‘Is that jarl-cleverness I am seeing, then?’ asked Finn, appearing at my elbow as the oars were clattered down and men milled, sorting themselves out and tying Short Serpent to the wharf. ‘Is there a plan to it? Am I follow and finish it?’

There had been enough blood over all of this to slake even Odin’s thirst and I said as much. He shrugged.

‘Well, there is always the Loki-luck that will see them throat-cut before they reach King Eirik again. By then, of course, you will have come up with some gold-browed words to appease Jarl Brand.’

Returning his son would be enough, I was thinking. I watched until the figure of Styrbjorn had vanished in the throng on the wooden walkways. Tall and lithe and still raw with youth, he had the look of greatness, yet something was lacking in him — I was thinking that he knew it, too, and it scorched him sullen. Still, I did not think it was his wyrd to be throat-cut.

The men spilled out of the boat and had no trouble stepping easily onto the planks of the wharf, which I noted; usually we had to scramble up half the height of a man to a planked pier such as this, but the river had risen.

‘Aye,’ grunted Trollaskegg, seeing me look at the rain-sodden sky. ‘I can smell storm, me. Over behind the mist are those mountains and I am betting sure Thor is stamping up and down and throwing Mjollnir for all he is worth.’

‘No matter,’ Crowbone broke in, bright with excitement, ‘for we will be snug and safe here, at least for one night.’

Those nearest agreed with hooms and heyas, looking forward to a chance to dry out cloaks and tunics and boots by a real fire, with milk-cooked food and ale enough to chase away the blood-cloud which had settled on all of us like a cloak of black flies.

I was more fretting than I showed; Pall’s oarmates had escaped and he had told us they were coming upriver to alert the Saxlanders.

I had been thinking that, if we proved empty-handed with weapons and full-fisted with silver, the Saxlanders would not care overly much — yet we were alone on that wharf, the men turning this way and that, wary as kitchen dogs hunting scraps, hunched under the stares of dark doorways and the sightless eyes of shuttered windholes. Beyond that, I saw big men in leather armour and spears, with a man in front holding a staff.

‘Should we prepare war gear, Orm?’ Alyosha asked and I shook my head; no-one had approached us at all, neither trader nor soldier and I had the notion matters were held, like an insect in amber.

I told them to unload and stack the furs and wadmal, so that the sight of such a mundane task — and the profit it promised — might allay some fears. For all that, the sweat was greasy on my face and slid a cold finger down between my shoulders.

For a little while we sat and shivered in the rain of that place, the men growing more and more restive, hunched and miserable and leashed by me, for I wanted some acknowledgement that we were welcome before I let these growlers loose to scatter through the settlement.

It did not help that they could smell the roasting ribs and boiling cauldron snakes and hear the fishermen inviting customers to choose an eel and have it sliced and cooked there and then. The gulls wheeled and screeched — better fed, muttered Bjaelfi, than the Oathsworn.