The Prow Beast

walkway splinter into my knees.

Then there was cursing and grunts and a hand hauled me away; when I could see, Red Njal was standing over me, his own axe up and dripping.

‘You will get yourself killed with such tricks,’ he chided, then hurled himself forward, now that I was climbing to my feet.

Between us we pitched the struggling men back over the ramparts; no sooner had the heels of the last one vanished than two arrows whunked into the wood and we dived behind the timbers, panting and sweating, to listen to the drumming of others, flocking in like crows on offal. Crazily, I was reminded of rain on the canvas awning on the deck of the Fjord Elk, though I could not remember which Fjord Elk that had been.

‘Five days,’ Red Njal said and spat, though there was little wet in his mouth, I saw. I was thinking the same thing — these would be five long days.

The rest of it is a dull, splintered memory, like a tapestry shredded by a madman. I am certain sure that it was on the day we tied up Tub’s mouth that we suffered a moon-howling loss that drove us a little mad.

It was the same as any other attack, though the ramparts by now were scarred, the timber points black and soaked with old gore, the walkway both sticky and slick. They came piling up over their own dead, threw up the ladders and did what they had been doing for what seemed years.

And we stood, we three, last of the band of old brothers, struggling and slipping and sweating and cursing, while Uddolf and Kaelbjorn Rog and others fought their own battles a little way away, for we were veil-thin on the rampart now.

Red Njal set himself behind his shield, took a deep, weary breath and shook himself, like a dog coming out of water.

‘Fear the reckoning of those you have wronged,’ he muttered, moving forward. ‘My granny said it, so it must…’

The spear came out of nowhere, a vicious stab from the first man up a ladder we had not seen. It caught Red Njal under the arm, right in the armpit, so that he grunted with the shock of it and jerked back. It had hooked and stuck and, even as we watched, the man who owned it fell backwards, ladder and all, as Finn smashed The Godi into his chest. Fixed to the spear, like a fish on a gaff, Red Njal was hauled over the rampart, a silent slither of ragged mail and leather.

I was stunned; it was the roof collapsing, the earth vanishing beneath my feet. I could not move for the sick horror of it — but Finn screamed, skeins of mad drool spilling down his beard and launched himself at the pack on the walkway, hacking and slashing.

I roused myself, moving as if I was in the Other, walking in a mist and slowed. Twice, I know, I held his back, stopped the crash of a blade on him, but I only came into the Now of matters when he was pounding the head of the last man on the walkway, screaming at him.

‘What is it called?’ he shrieked. Slam. Slam. ‘This place? What is it called?’

The man, leaking blood from his eyes and ears and nose and mouth, spattered out a word, so that Finn was satisfied enough to haul him up under the armpits and heave him over the rampart.

We huddled in the lee of the black-stained points, sitting in the viscous stink and staring at each other, while the arrows wheeked and whirred and shunked into the wood. Eventually, Finn wiped one bloody hand across his bloody beard.

‘Needzee,’ he said slowly and my blank eyes were question enough.

‘Name of this place,’ he explained. ‘I was thinking we should know where we are dying.’

That night, he and Kaelbjorn Rog and Ospak flitted down the rampart on knotted ropes, but it was dark and they dared not show any lights, so they could not find Red Njal in the heap, some still groaning, at the foot of our stockade.

His death was a rune-mark on matters coming to an end.

The end came two days later, when eighteen of us were rolling with sweat and babbling and twenty more had died, three from the plague. Almost everyone else was wounded in some way.

Worst of all, Koll was sick. The red and white spots started under his armpit and down his thighs in the morning and then erupted on the pale circles of his cheeks. By nightfall he looked as if someone had thrown a handful of yellow corn that had stuck to his face, each one a pustule that festered and stank.

The monk sat with him, in between tending the others, while Bjaelfi, half-staggering with weariness, moved back and forth, Dark Eye with him like a shadow, answering a whimper here, a cry there.

In the fetid, blood-stinking dark, we gathered round the fire, streaked and stained and long since too weary to wash. My braids were gummed with old blood and other, even worse, spills from the dead and my clothing stained and ripped; no-one was any better.

We carried Koll to the fire; no-one minded, for there was no escape from the pest and if the Norns wove that red thread into your life, that was it. Only Styrbjorn scowled, thinking that distance meant more safety.

Behind us, torches burned at the raised wooden platform that marked the centre of the village — Needzee, Finn had called it, but Dark Eye had put him right on that. The luckless man had gasped out ‘nigdzie’ as Finn pounded his head to ruin, screaming to know what the name of this place was that we were all dying for, the place where Red Njal had gone to meet his granny.

Nowhere, the man had said in his own tongue and Finn had thrown back his head and bellowed with cracked laughter when Dark Eye told him that.

Now Dark Eye lit torches and knelt on the wooden platform, praying to her four-faced god, while the shadows flicked and men, too tired even to eat or talk, huddled in a sort of stupor, heads bowed, watching the smoke writhe. A pot steamed on an iron tripod and the men lay in a litter of helms and weapons, slumped with shields as backrests, crusted ringmail puddled like old snakeskins at their feet.

When Dark Eye wraithed herself back to the fire, a few heads lifted and dull eyes took her in. Styrbjorn, always ready with his mouth, curled his lip.

‘Praying for rescue?’ he asked.

‘Only the fearful pray for rescue,’ she replied, pooling herself into a comfortable squat. Styrbjorn stirred uncomfortably, for everyone could see that promised stake up the arse occupied most of his waking hours.

‘The man who says he is not afraid in this matter is a liar,’ he responded.

‘Tell Finn that,’ Uddolf chuckled harshly. ‘He is well-known for having no fear.’

‘Perhaps he can tell you the secret of it, Styrbjorn,’ Onund added with his usual bear grunt. ‘Then we will be quit of your whine.’

‘As to that,’ Finn said softly. ‘Since we are all about to look our gods in the face, it may be that you want to know the secret of having no fear.’

Now men were stirring with interest, me among them.

‘When I was young,’ he began, ‘I did matters which were not agreeable to certain men in Skane and, when they caught me, there was no Thing on it, no outlawing. Justice was rougher in those days and none rougher than Halfidi. He was as white-haired as any kindly uncle and as black-bowelled as a draugr. Slatur, men called him.’

There were chuckles at such a fine by-name — Slatur was a dish made by stitching pungently strong black-blood sausage into a lamb’s white stomach.

‘They kicked and beat me,’ Finn went on, ‘and starved me for a week, which was to be expected. Each day Halfidi, or one of his sons, would dish out the meat of a whipping and take delight in telling me when I would hang. At the end of that week, they took me to the top of the cliff they used, where a rope was fastened to an iron ring. They put the other end round my neck and tied a cloth round my eyes. Then they spun me and pushed me to walking, so that I did not know where the cliff edge was.’

Men grunted with the cruel power that vision brought.

‘Three days they did this,’ Finn said, soft, lost in the dream of it. ‘On the second day the shite was running down my leg and I was babbling promises not even a god could keep if they would let me go. On the third day I did the same, only for them to let me see.’

He stopped. Men waited; the fire flared a little in a wet night wind, throwing up a whirl of sparks.