The Prow Beast

‘The smell, I am thinking,’ he answered wistfully. ‘It reminds me of the feast we had at Vladimir’s hall, the one just before we all went out on to the Grass Sea to hunt down Atil’s treasure.’

‘Is that the one where you threw someone in the pitfire?’ Red Njal demanded, though he grinned when he said it and I was pleased to see that; the death of Hlenni had been sitting heavy on him.

‘Not someone — the son of the advisor to Prince Yaropolk, Vladimir’s brother,’ Crowbone pointed out and both he and Finn laughed.

‘One side of his face now looks like Finn’s left bollock,’ Crowbone added, ‘wrinkled and ugly.’

‘You never saw my bollocks, boy,’ Finn countered, ‘for you are not struck blind and dumb with amazement and admiration — besides, it was not for quarrels that I remember that feast night. It was for the blood sausage. I ate one as long as my arm.’

‘You were as sick as a mangy dog,’ Red Njal reminded him and Finn waved a dismissive hand.

‘That was a swallow or two of bad ale,’ he corrected. ‘Anyway — I ate another arm-length after, to make up for what had been lost.’

That feast had seen great cakes of bread and fried turnips and stewed meat, fished out of pots on the end of long spits, I remembered, for Vladimir held to the old ways of his great-grandfather. But the smell of a man’s face and hair burning in the fire had soured much of it for me and left us with a lasting enemy — another one, as if we did not have enough of them.

Boiled blood and spew, that’s what this place reminded me of and I said as much.

Finn shrugged.

‘I recall it now only because we were all in prison there, too,’ he added. ‘You, me and Crowbone at least. And we got out of that.’

True enough. We had been flung in Vladimir’s pit-prison when Crowbone put his little axe in Klerkon’s forehead, which was not a bad thing in our eyes. However, he did it in the main square of Holmgard, Vladimir’s Novgorod, which had not been clever. That time, we faced a stake up our arses; now we faced a hanging-cage until we starved or were stoned to death.

‘Any tales that might help?’ I asked Crowbone and he frowned; it was one of his better stories that had made us all laugh and got us hauled out of the pit-prison, since laughter was not usually the sound that came from such a place.

‘It would be better if I stopped telling such tales,’ he answered moodily. ‘They are child’s matters and I am a man now.’

‘Your voice has snapped,’ Finn pointed out, ‘which is not the same thing. Let me know when your own bollocks drop like wrinkled walnuts and then I may consider calling you a man.

‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘I like your tales.’

Which was an astounding lie from the man who had once rattled Crowbone into the thwarts of a boat at the announcement ‘Once there was a man…’. Crowbone merely looked at Finn with his odd eyes narrowed.

‘So we die here,’ Red Njal grunted, in the same voice he would have used deciding on where to curl up and sleep for a while. ‘Well, not the place I would have chosen, but we wear what the Norns weave for us. Better ask for too little than offer too much, as my granny used to say.’

I was thinking we would not die, for this Kasperick wanted the Mazur girl and the profit that could be had selling her to the Pols — or her own folk, whichever paid most — but he had to lay hands on her first. He would use us to trade with the crew of Short Serpent.

‘He is a belly-crawler,’ Finn pointed out when I mused on this. ‘He will not hold to such a trade and will kill us anyway.’

Then Bjarki came in, sliding round the storeroom door like rancid seal oil, his grin stretched to a leer by the ruined side of his mouth.

‘Kill me now,’ Finn growled when he saw him, ‘rather than have to suffer the gloat of a little turd like this.’

Bjarki, who was alone, came and sat carefully out of reach beyond the bars.

‘No easy death for you, Finn Horsehead,’ he slurred through his twisted mouth. ‘Nor, especially, for you, Orm Bear Slayer. I owe you an eye and a scar.’

‘When you meet Onund,’ I warned him, ‘be ready to pay more than that.’

‘Expecting a rescue, Bear Slayer?’ Bjarki jeered.

‘You should be afraid,’ answered Crowbone, ‘for the Oathsworn are coming.’

Bjarki curled his lip.

‘You are a little diminished,’ he pointed out. ‘A king with no crown, a prince with no hird. A shadow of what you were, boy. Soon even that will be gone.’

‘A shadow is still a powerful thing,’ Crowbone said. ‘Once there existed somewhere in the world — do not ask me when, do not ask me where — a place where the Sami learned to be workers of powerful seidr magic. Wherever this place was, it was somewhere below ground, eternally dark and changeless. There was no teacher either, but everything was learned from fiery runes, which could be read quite easily in the dark. Never were the pupils allowed to go out into the open air or see the daylight during the whole time they stayed there, which was from five to seven years. By then they had gained all they needed of the Sami art.’

‘Ha,’ scowled Bjarki. ‘What a poor tale. How did they eat in all this time, then?’

‘A shaggy grey hand came through the wall every day with meals,’ answered Crowbone without as much as a breath of hesitation. ‘When they had finished eating and drinking the same hand took back the horns and platters.

‘They saw no-one but each other and that only in the dim light of the fiery runes,’ he went on and Bjarki, scowling, was fixed by it. ‘Those same runes told them the only rule of the place, which was that the Master should keep for himself the student who was last to leave the school every year. Considering that most folk who knew of the place thought Loki himself was the Master, you may fancy what a scramble there was at each year’s end, everybody doing his best to avoid being last to leave.

‘It happened once that three Icelanders went to this school, by the name of S?mundur the Learned, Kalfur Arnason, and one called, simply, Orm; and as they all arrived at the same time, they were all supposed to leave at the same time. Seven years later, when it came to taking the bit of it in their teeth, Orm declared himself willing to be the last of them, at which the others were much lightened in mind. So he threw over himself a large cloak, leaving the pin loose.

‘A staircase led to the upper world, and when Orm was about to mount this Loki grasped at him and said, “You are mine!” But Orm ducked his head, slipped free and made off with all speed, leaving Loki the empty cloak. However, just as he reached the heavy iron yett beyond the door, it slammed shut. “Did you imagine that the Father of Tricksters would be fooled by that?” said a dark voice from the blackness.

‘A great hand reached out to drag Orm back just as he saw the sun for the first time in seven years, a great blaze of light which fell on him, throwing his shadow onto the wall behind him. Orm said: “I am not the last. Do you not see who follows me?”

‘So Loki, mistaking the shadow for a man, raised the yett and grabbed at the shadow, allowing Orm to escape — but from that hour Orm was always shadowless, for whatever Loki took, he never gave back again.’

There was silence and then Bjarki gave an uneasy laugh, while Finn beamed like a happy uncle and clapped Crowbone on the back.

‘As I said — I like your tales. They seldom miss the mark.’

‘A boy’s tale,’ Bjarki scowled back. ‘There will be no shadow-escape for you and the Oathsworn are unlikely to be storming this fortress.’

He broke off and smeared a grin on his face, ugly as a hunchbacked rat.

‘Well — here is one of your saviours coming now, fresh from this hero-saga,’ he added as sounds clattered at the door. It swung open and two huge Saxlanders dragged in a slumped, dangle-headed figure. Two more men scowled their way in after them.

Bjarki moved to the prisoner and lifted his head by the hair; it was Styrbjorn and the surprise of it must have showed in all our faces, for Bjarki frowned; he had not been expecting that. His face twisted even more when one of the Saxlander guards slapped his hand free with a short, phlegm-thick curse. The other fetched the key, opened the door and slung Styrbjorn in, so that he crashed to the floor and bounced.