The Prow Beast

A man started down the walkway, not looking up until he saw us and realised he was alone, having crossed some invisible line which held everyone back; he was so startled that he took a step off the walkway into the muck and lost his shoe jerking his foot back. Cursing, he fished it out and half-hopped away.

A child ran out, laughing, hands out and mouth open; his mother raced after him, snatched him up and glared at us as if it was our fault. Even the dogs slunk, tails curled and growling.

We waited, driven mad by the smells of what we had not had in a long time, so thick we could taste them; cooking fish and hot ovens and brewing beer — and shite pits and middens. One or two grumbles went up and Murrough, in a loud voice, proclaimed that if he didn’t get some fish and bread and ale soon he would eat the next dog that presented itself, skin and all.

Then the man with the staff suddenly appeared, striding down to us; men burst out laughing, nudging Murrough and telling him his meal had arrived. The man, a grey-beard dressed in embroidered red, half-shrouded in a blue cloak fastened on one shoulder with a large pin, was bewildered and bristling, so that he paused and glared.

‘Welcome,’ he said eventually. Up close, I saw the staff was impressively carved and had a large yellow stone set in the bulbous end.

‘There will be no berthing fees for you,’ he added, chewing the Norse like a dog does a wasp.

‘Fees? What fees?’ demanded Trollaskegg, chin bristling.

‘Berthing fees,’ I told him and he spat, only just missing the staff, while the messenger stared down his long nose.

‘I do not pay berthing fees,’ Trollaskegg declared, folding his arms.

‘That is what he said,’ I answered wearily and Trollaskegg, uncertain now whether he had won something or not, grunted and nodded, deciding he had the victory.

The messenger inclined his head in a curt bow and swaggered off, almost knocked over in the rush of traders who arrived in a sudden, unleashed mob, hucksters all of them, crowding round and spreading their wares out on linen or felt, dark coloured for the gem and trinket sellers.

They had combs and pins and brooches of bone and ivory, some pieces of Serkland silver set with amber and flashing stones; the Oathsworn gathered round and fished out barter-stuff and even hacksilver, for these hard, tangle-haired growlers were magpies for glitter.

The traders were good, too, I noted, even if all their gems were glass, for they had stories for all the pieces and, if they forgot which story went with which from customer to customer, it did not matter much. If all the stories were true, though, each had some potent magic from somewhere which would create sure sons in the most barren womb and make men hard as keel-trees if their women wore it when they wore nothing else.

Men believe what they wish to believe, a weakness that can be used, like any other. The gods know this; Odin especially knows this.

The men milled and slowly scattered, looking for food and ale and women. I spent some time haggling a price for the wadmal and furs and knew I was robbed; it was too early to be this far upriver. Since we had raided all the goods, though, it hardly mattered and was all profit — anyway, I was glad to be quit of the bundles and what they made me remember.

I had just finished handseling a deal with a spit and slap when Abjorn forced his way through the throng, chewing meat on a wooden skewer. He jerked his head backwards as he spoke.

‘There is someone wants a word,’ he said, spraying food and I looked behind him; the grey-beard with the staff had returned. The trader I had been talking to took a sideways sidle to avoid him and clamped his lips on what he had been telling me. I had asked this trader, as I had asked others, about a Greek priest and a north boy and had nothing worth noting — they had been here, for sure, yet folk seemed reluctant to admit it.

‘The merchant Kasperick wishes words with you,’ the greybeard intoned.

‘Who is this Kasperick?’ I asked and the messenger raised one irritated eyebrow.

‘He is the one who wishes to see you,’ he replied smartly and Finn growled like a warning dog.

‘Then I must make myself worthy of visiting such an eminence,’ I replied, before Finn decided to pitch the messenger into the river. I turned to Trollaskegg.

‘Fetch my blue cloak from my sea-chest and the pin that goes with it,’ I told him loudly and watched the scowl thunder onto his brow as he did it, slow and stiff with annoyance. He thrust them truculently at me and, before he could also tell me to fuck off and die and that he was no thrall to me, I drew him closer.

‘Get everyone on board and stay there,’ I hissed. ‘Loosen off the lines. I will take Finn, Crowbone and Red Njal with me and if all is well, I will send Crowbone back. If not, Red Njal. If you see Red Njal, pole off to the river and row for it — upriver. Make sure the girl is safe and kept on board.’

Trollaskegg blinked a bit, then nodded. The water was up and it would be hard pull against the narrowed spate.

‘Can I go ashore?’ asked a voice and we all turned to where Dark Eye stood. She wore a tunic, one of Yan’s for he was smallest, yet it suited her for a dress down to her calves.

I shook my head. ‘Later perhaps,’ I added and she drowned me with those seal eyes, making me ashamed of even that friendly lie.

‘We should go armed,’ growled Finn and again I shook my head, never taking my eyes off her. No sense in inviting trouble. A sword, as was proper, but no byrnie or helms or shields or great bearded axes. Finn grunted, unconvinced.

‘I see no trouble,’ Onund argued, looking around, while the messenger waited, tapping his staff impatiently.

We had come upriver on a raiding boat with the prows up, smoke from a burning staining the sky behind us and the warning whispers of enemies in every ear. Even allowing for the folk on the west bank not liking those on the east, traders in geegaws, along with everyone else, would have vanished like snow off a sun-warmed dyke at the sight of us. Yet here they were, lying and haggling, not in the least afraid — but it had taken them two hours and more to be so friendly.

Onund thought about it, frowning, but it was Dark Eye who dunted him gently to the centre of it.

‘They have been told not to be afraid, to make us welcome,’ she said, soft as the lisp of rain. ‘They have been told that either we are no danger — or will be made to be no danger.’

‘Heya,’ Finn said, grasping it. ‘It is a trap then.’

‘And you walk into it like a bairn?’ Bjaelfi accused, but Finn clapped him on the shoulder, grinning.

‘It is only a trap if there is no escape from it,’ he said.

‘There is only escape if others come for us,’ Crowbone added. ‘What are Onund and Trollaskegg and Abjorn and the others to do?’

I looked at him and them and shrugged.

‘I am thinking you may have to hold a Thing on that for yourselves,’ I said, ‘once the girl and the ship both are safe.’

‘Quickly,’ added Finn meaningfully to Trollaskegg. ‘So you reach that part where you come to rescue us.’

The place was more than thorp, less than town, a fetid cluster of little log houses with steep roofs that came almost to the ground, with a shop or a workplace in an open part and sleeping benches in an attached, closed space.

Tight-herded about split-pine walkways, the houses teemed with life and smells — but the messenger who led us seemed well-known and folk moved out of our path, even those who struggled with heavy loads of fish, or barrels. In any trade town further north, the haughty messenger, stick or no, would have been kicked into the side muck, as Finn pointed out.

I was only vaguely aware of it. As we left, she had whispered, ‘Come back alive,’ and my arm and my cheek burned — the one where her hand had laid, the other where her lips had touched. Finn had growled like a guard hound and shaken his head. I was still swimming up from the depths of her seal eyes as we traipsed after the messenger.

The houses straggled out, became more withy and less wood, until they stopped entirely. Then there was the fortress, the approach to it lined with cages on poles and, in most of them, a dessicated, rot-blackened affair that had once been human. A few of them, I saw, were fresher dead than that.

It was a good, solid affair, ditched and stockaded, with a solid half-timber, half-stone keep on a mound —