The Prow Beast

cheese, pungent with its own sweat; men chewed and grunted and, slowly, began to chaffer and argue, so that I knew they were recovered.

Then Yan Alf called out that there was a boat snagged in the barrier.

This time, I went with Finn and Onund and others, stepping cautiously out onto the slick, wet tree, treacherous with stubs and broken ends, draped with crushed willow. The boat was half-swamped, cracked like an egg and ragged with splintered wood, but clearly a strug, the solid riverboats Slavs made. It would not have been important at all — there were lots of them and it was hardly a surprise to find one as part of the wreck of this swollen river — save for the crew it still held.

He was snagged by his own belt, hair drifting like weed, pale face fat with water and curdled as old cheese. For all that, it was a face I knew and I remembered him, stumbling back from where he had dug up my silver, showing handfuls of it to the rest of his oarmates, that bloated face bright with the wonder of it. Hallgeir, I remembered suddenly. His name was Hallgeir.

Finn nodded and growled when I told him this, peering up the river; he pinched one side of his nose and blew snot down into the wreck.

‘So, Randr Sterki has met with some trouble,’ he growled. ‘Which can only be a good weaving for us, thank the Norns.’

I did not answer; I was too busy searching the water for signs of a small corpse, my belly sick with the thought of Koll, turning in a slow, stately dance like the sheep dead in the mucky water.

The oak finally behind us, days melted, one into the other and went unnoticed. No-one saw much else other than the red-brown water and the sucking mud as they stumbled, heads down and rope over one shoulder, through the shallowest parts they could find. The boat, that great shackle they were fastened to, fretted this way and that, the prow beast snarling and jerking.

The land changed, started to roll into short hills rising out of the flood, some of them flat-topped, others already undercut by the merciless waters. Half-drowned trees shouted out all their green buds even as they died; others huddled like herded cattle on the hills above the water.

The rain sighed itself out and the sun broke through, so that the ground steamed up a crawling mist and the insects came, bloated and fat on carrion, yet still wanting more from the living.

Gudmund died, raving and bursting sweat off him, despite Bjaelfi’s best prayer-runes binding the black-rotted holes where the hayfork had gone in, so we rolled him into the water and consigned him to Ran and Aegir, which was as much as we could do in that place.

Freed from that, Bjaelfi now went to treat the ones shivering and sweating and leaking their insides down their legs from some sickness or other — probably in the water, Bjaelfi thought, or perhaps poison from the insects.

‘Not good, Orm,’ he told me, as if I needed him to inform me of that. He slapped angrily and cursed the stinging insects.

‘Perhaps it will rain again,’ Crowbone offered cheerfully, ‘and drive the insects away.’

‘Not as if you suffer,’ Yan Alf countered gloomily. ‘I want that charm you have.’

Those on board — bailing, poling, or too weak and sick to pull — laughed, but uneasily, for the way the biting hordes avoided Crowbone was too close to magic for comfort and most remembered the reputation of the odd-eyed boy.

‘They do not bite him,’ Finn declared, bellowing from where he leaned on the sweep, fighting to keep the prow beast snarling into the current, ‘because he has no man-juice in him.’

‘They do not bite you, either,’ observed Dark Eye suddenly, her clear voice made stranger by the silence that had gone before from her. Finn squinted calculatingly, then grinned.

‘They do, but if you look closely, you will see them falling dead at my feet,’ he growled, ‘since there is too much man-juice in me for those little bodies to handle. One taste is all it takes.’ And he winked lewdly at her, so that I found myself bristling like an old hound and had to turn away with the shock of it, hoping no-one could see.

The next day, hungry and wet and tired as always, men looked sideways at Crowbone and at me, him for bringing the rain back, or so it seemed and me for…everything else. They were muttering more openly now, about forging on after this boy when there was little else in it for anyone. Yet they were fairly trapped, for they could not go downriver now, into the clutches of the waiting Kasperick. Ahead was not any more attractive.

Ahead, growling and spitting white lances and ferns, another storm fretted; the river, fresh fed, surged again the next day and the men started to stumble and fall and it was all I could do to keep them moving. We were close to the Vrankeforde now and I knew Randr Sterki would be there, what men he had as worn out as ourselves; if we were fast enough, he would not have time to find others, for when he thought he had enough, we would not have to chase him — he would come for us.

Then, so close I could almost taste the woodsmoke fires of Vrankeforde, there was a day that began under a vaulted sky of milk-silver, where the air clung to the skin and the men hauling and falling up the river, mouths open and panting, had almost lost the strength to put one soaked foot in front of another.

I saw Gunnliefr, best spearman we had, sink to his knees and weep, all his strength gone. I watched Osnikin, from Sodermannland, fall with a great splash and have to be hauled up by Murrough, or else he would have lain there and drowned.

‘Orm,’ Trollaskegg began and I did not need him to tell me what was best, so that my look was harsher than a slap and made him click his teeth on his next words.

‘Pull, fuck your mothers,’ roared Finn, seeing my face. ‘Haul away, you dirty swords.’

She moved beside me and I felt a hand on my forearm, but when I turned, she was that little wooden carving, staring out over the river, saying nothing, looking at the distant rolling black of cloud, dragging all our eyes to it. As if, some said later, she had magicked it up.

The air tightened, twisting like the iron rods of a smith starting on a new sword. The wind rose, knotting with force, hissed stipples on the river and the dark swooped like a cloak of crows.

The storm broke on us, a great laughter of Thor howling out of the sudden new dark, his Hammer sparking blue-white with a banging that seemed to split the air and fist our ears. The men leaned and the linden bast threw up skeins of water and trembled, while the mast bowed and sang like a harp string.

‘It will break,’ shrieked Trollaskegg, but the wind grabbed his words and whirled them away down the river, which was a mercy for Yan Alf, since he was clinging to the top of that whipping pole, searching the river ahead while the rain drowned his eyes.

It was the end and it came swift as a secret knife. Through the sheeting veils of rain, I watched a tree blaze and heard the sky crack, looked up and half-expected to see the wheelrim of Redbeard’s goat chariot breaking through the dome of the world.

Instead, there was Yan Alf, clinging to the rakki as the mast swung and sawed, his face a pale blob in the dark, shouting something the wind snatched away. He pointed out beyond the prow beast where, looming up like some snake-head goddess, the great tree crashed down on us, a huge ram with horns of clotted roots.

The prow beast rose up, dragging the men on the bank backwards, tearing the rope and the skin from their hands. I had time to turn, to think that all our struggle, all the days of effort to this place, hung on a thin, stretching line and the skidding crew who held it — when the linden bast spurted water, snapped and whipped back. Ospak yelped with the lash of it, spun half-round and went over the side.

The drakkar, locked in what seemed a raging battle, spun round; timber shrieked, planks splintered and men were mouthing bellows no-one could hear. The ship seemed to rear up like a stallion in a horse fight, right up until the stern went under and it tilted. I saw oars and chests slide away — saw Dark Eye slide away and milled my arms to try and grab her.

Water slapped me, snagged me, dragged me down and round and round, so that the silver trail of bubbles from my mouth circled me like a flock of birds.

I saw them, like pearls, like the last thought trailing from my mind — Odin would have to fight Aegir for his sacrifice offering.

Then there was only darkness.