The Prow Beast

ingwaz warding rune as the gold frogs danced. No man cared for seidr magic, for it was a woman’s thing and to see a man do it set flesh creeping.

Vuokko peered for a long time, then raised his horror of a face to Crowbone. ‘You will be king,’ he said simply and there was a hiss as men let out their breath all at once together, for that had not been the enterprise I had meant.

Crowbone merely smiled the smile of a man who had had the answer he expected and fished in his purse, drawing out his pilfered coin. He flicked it casually in the air towards Vuokko, who never took his eyes from Crowbone’s face, ignoring the silver whirl of it.

I was astounded by the boy’s arrogance and his disregard — you did not treat the likes of Vuokko like some fawning street-seer, nor did you break the safety of his square within a square while he was in the Sitting-Out, half in and half out of the Other, surrounded by a swirl of dangerous strangeness.

Crowbone had half-turned away in his proud, unthinking fashion when the scorned miliaresion bounced on the drum, the tinkle of its final landing lost in the thunder it made. He turned, surprised.

‘What was that sound, Sea-Finn?’ he demanded and Vuokko smiled like a wolf closing in.

‘That was the sound of your enterprise, lord,’ he replied after a study of the frogs, ‘falling from your hand.’

After that, the feasting was a sullen affair coloured by Crowbone’s morose puzzlement, for now he did not know what the Sea-Finn had promised. Most of his followers only recalled the bit about him becoming king in Norway, so they were cheered.

I stood with Crowbone on the sand and dulse two days later, while his men hefted their sea-chests back on the splendid Short Serpent and got ready to sail off.

He was wrapped in his familiar white fur and a matching stare, waiting to see if terns or crows came in ones or twos, or went left or right. Only he knew what it meant.

‘All the same,’ he said finally, clasping my wrist and staring up into my gaze with his odd eyes, ‘you would do well to join me. Randr Sterki will come for you. I hear he is sworn to Styrbjorn.’

That was no surprise; Styrbjorn was the brawling nephew of my king, Eirik Segersall. Now just come into manhood, he had designs on the high seat himself when Eirik was dead and sulked when it became clear no-one else liked the idea.

Foolishly, King Eirik had given him ships and men to go off and make a life for himself and Styrbjorn now prowled up and down off Wendland on the far Baltic shore, snarling and making his intentions known regarding what he considered his birthright. Someday soon, I was thinking, he would need a good slap, but he was only a boy. I almost said so to Crowbone, then clenched my teeth on it and smiled instead.

I saw Alyosha hovering, a mailed and helmeted wet-nurse anxious to see his charge safely back on the boat. I widened my smile indulgently at Crowbone; I was arrogant then, believing Oathsworn fame and Odin’s favour shield enough against such as Randr Sterki and having no worries about Styrbjorn, a youth with barely seventeen summers on him. I should have known better; I should have remembered myself at his age.

‘Have you a tale on all this?’ I asked lightly, reminding Crowbone of the biting stories he had told us, a boy holding grown freemen in thrall out on the cold empty.

‘I have tales left,’ he answered seriously. ‘But the one I have is for later. I know birds, all the same, and they know much.’

He saw the confusion in my face and turned away, trotting towards the ship.

‘An eagle told me of troubles to come,’ he flung back over his shoulder. ‘A threat to its young, on the flight’s edge.’

The chill of that stayed with me as I watched Short Serpent slither off down the fjord and even the closeness of Thorgunna under my arm could not warm it, for I was aware of what she carried in her belly and of what her sister cradled in her arms.

Young eagles on the flight’s edge.

TWO

The sun clawed itself higher every day; snow melted patch by patch, streams gurgled and I started to talk earnestly about joint efforts to harvest the sea, of ploughing and seeding cropland and how Finn could borrow my brace of oxen if he liked.

He looked at me as if I was a talking calf, then went back to drinking and hunting with Red Njal, while Onund Hnufa and Gizur went to make the Fjord Elk ready for sea and Hlenni Brimill and others fetched wood for new shields and pestered Ref to leave off tinsmithing nails against rust to put a new edge on worn blades.

After the feasting night for Crowbone, Finn had come to me and asked if the Oathsworn were going raiding after Randr Sterki, though he knew the answer before I spoke. When I confirmed it, he nodded, long, slow and thoughtful.

‘I am thinking,’ he said softly, as if the words were being dragged from him by oxen, ‘that I might have to visit Ospak and Finnlaith in Dyfflin, or perhaps go to find Fiskr in Hedeby.’

The idea of not having Finn there made me swallow and he saw my stricken face. His own was a hammer that nailed his next words into me, even though he said them with a lopsided grin.

‘It is either that or challenge for the jarl’s seat.’

Well, there it was, the fracture cracked open and visible. I bowed my head to it; the curse of Odin’s silver right enough.

‘I will stay for one more season and, if the raiding is good, it may change my mind. If not, I am thinking it best to leave, Orm.’

This would be the third season and, I was thinking, a remarkable feat of patience for the likes of Finn. Yet I was no more certain that this raiding season, which involved a long, uncomfortable voyage up and down the Baltic and sometimes into the mouths of a few rivers, pretending to trade and looking for something to steal, would be any better than the last two. There was seldom anything worthwhile for the Oathsworn, who were choking on all they already had. Yet they trained daily, making shieldwalls and breaking them, fighting in ones and threes, showing off and honing their battle skills. The lure of the prow beast, as the skalds had it, still dragged us all back to the dark water.

Now Finn wanted more jarl-work from me and threatened either to leave or take over. I could only nod, for words were ash in my mouth. After that, the promise of summer sunshine was ominous.

The women bustled the grime and stink out of Hestreng’s buildings and took clear joy in drying washing in the open air; Cormac and Helga Hiti tumbled about on sturdy legs, shouting and playing.

Into this, just after the blot offerings for the Feast of Vali, a ship slid up the fjord to us. I knew about it two hours before it arrived, which pleased me — I had set two thralls to watch in shifts and suffered Thorgunna’s waspishness over it.

‘A waste of work,’ she declared, while she and Ingrid and two female thralls hurled sleeping pallets out. ‘They could be beating the vermin out of these.’

‘I would rather know who is coming to me,’ I answered, ‘than have dust-free sleeping skins.’

‘Tell me that when next your backside is chewed by a flea,’ she spat back, blowing a wisp of hair which had fought free of her head-cloth down onto her nose. ‘And if I am doing this, I am not making butter — you will feel differently when you have to choke on dry bread.’

From this, I knew she was happy that winter was over and that she had life in her — life I would rather see grow than be burned out if Randr Sterki arrived and we did not know of it. I said as much and had her snort back at me but when word came of this ship, I saw her stiffen and turn and start chivvying thralls and Ingrid to fetch the children, gathering them to her like a hen with chicks.

I let her for a while, though I knew it was no threat; the sail was large and plainly marked with Jarl Brand’s sign and unless someone had taken Black Eagle from him intact — as unlikely as wings on a fish — then it was himself coming up the fjord.