The Prow Beast

He looked at me and I stared blankly back at him; it took long seconds for me to recognise Ospak, by which time he had come close enough to give me his concern.

‘You should go back to the fire, Jarl Orm,’ he said flatly. I wanted to tell him to leave me alone, that I needed a shit — which was a lie, of course. What I needed was privacy to find out what I already knew in my heart.

All that I croaked out of me, all the same, was ‘shit’. He nodded slowly, and turned back to his guard duty. I struggled on, to where the dark ate the fireglow and beyond, to where only the half-veiled moon gave light.

I dropped my breeks, bent my head to look. I saw the red spots crawling out of my groin and on to my thighs like embers from a forge-fire. I touched the burn of them, knew the truth and either it or the fever swam my head, so that I half stumbled and nearly fell.

‘Steady, Bear Slayer,’ said a voice, cold as quenched iron. ‘I would not wish you hurt. That is my pleasure alone.’

Randr Sterki moved blackly out of the dark to stand in front of me, where I could see him if I could raise my head. I could do that only a little but the blade he held gleamed like an old fang in the moonglow. Naked from the waist, the white of his body seemed eaten by whorls of darkness, which I slowly realised were his Rus skin- markings.

The stupidity of him made me laugh and I saw myself as he saw me — swaying, head-bowed, breeks around my ankles. It only made matters funnier and the laughing choked me, so that I suddenly found myself with my arse on the wet grass.

‘Get up,’ he hissed angrily. ‘Or die on your knees.’

On my arse, I wanted to correct. I am on my arse here and dying of the Red Pest and whether you slit me here or wait for me to die makes no difference and will not bring any of the ones you loved back again. Odin takes his sacrifice-life — in the cruelest way, of course, that being the mark of One-Eye.

But all that came out was ‘arse’. Which, given the moment and the matter, was not gold-browed verse likely to sway him from his path.

He grunted, moved like a lowered brow, black and angry and the sword silvered through the shadows, seemed to leave a trail behind it as it moved, like the wake of a ship on a black sea. My sword, I noted dully; I could see the V-notch in it, as if the dark had taken a bite from the blade.

‘Hold, Randr Sterki,’ growled a voice and a figure scowled out of the shadows and grabbed Randr’s arm. ‘Do not kill him. We need him…’

Randr yelped with the shock of it and we both saw it was the monk, black-robed and tense as coiled wire, his hand gripping Randr’s sword-arm. Randr, with a savage howl, flung Leo away from him and cursed in pain as he did so.

‘Get away, you Christ-hagged little fuck,’ he snarled, rubbing his forearm and scowling. ‘Once I deal with this dog, you will be next.’

Leo rolled over and came up to his knees. Strangely, he was laughing through the blood on his mouth. Behind him, I saw Finn sprinting forward, The Godi in one fist, nail in the other.

‘You nithing fud,’ he shrieked, but it was desperation, for he knew he would never make it. I knew he would never make it, watched the slow, silver arc of my own sword curl on me like a great wave. I smelled crushed grass and new earth, heard Odin laugh — though it may have been Leo. This way was better, I was thinking. Quicker than the Pest, praise be to AllFather after all.

The laugh sounded softly again as the wave of that silvering sword cracked and broke; Randr’s hand faltered, seemed to lose the strength to grip and the blade fell from it, tumbling point over haft to land in the crushed grass. He stood, shook his head a little, looked like a bull which had just butted a rock.

‘I…’ he began and rubbed his forearm with his spare hand, the forearm where Leo had gripped him so tightly.

‘Itches,’ said Leo gently and spat a little blood from his mashed lip. ‘Those scratches are deep.’

I almost felt Randr Sterki nod. He stood like a blot ox waiting for the knife, one which had been fed enough mash to still it, so that it barely managed to hold the great mass of its own head up.

Finn arrived in a rush and skidded to a halt, panting, uncertain, as Leo held up one hand to stop him striking Randr.

‘Kill,’ said Randr, blinking and dull-voiced. ‘You. All.’

‘I do not think so, Randr Sterki,’ Leo said flatly.

Randr staggered two steps and then fell toward me, toppling like a great wind-blown oak; his head bounced at my feet.

There was silence for a moment — then shapes moved in the dark, sliding easily to the side of the stunned Finn, armed and ready and alerted by Ospak.

‘It would be better, I am thinking,’ said Crowbone, ‘if someone were to help me with Jarl Orm. You, Styrbjorn, since you brought all this on us.’

Styrbjorn licked his lips, looked from one to the other and back again and could have been on the edge of pointing out how it had been Crowbone’s bloody vengeance that had brought all this. He stayed silent and stared, finally, at the toppled giant that had been Randr Sterki, the fear of seidr magic washing off him like heat from a sweating stallion.

There was no magic here, as Crowbone pointed out.

‘Battle luck for you, Jarl Orm,’ he said, stepping past where the monk still sat, working the jaw Randr had hit, his left hand sitting quiet as a white spider on one knee. Crowbone picked up my sword, handed it to a bemused Finn and looked at me with chiding sorrow.

‘You should have paid more heed when I told you how the monk ate his food,’ he added.

I blinked like a light-blind hare; then it came to me. Leo ate with his right hand — like a Mussulman, Crowbone had said. In fact, he did everything with his right hand. I had never seen Leo use his left hand at all, save to strike with. We had all wasted our time looking for a cunningly hidden needle.

The monk shrugged and held up the white spider, where long nails on thumb and forefinger, both splintered from use, gleamed balefully in the light.

‘I have no idea how much is left,’ he said, ‘after so long without renewing.’

Enough to kill Randr Sterki dead as a flayed horse, I thought but could manage no more words. I watched Leo smile his bland smile, his face wavering as if he sat under water, while Bjaelfi and others pounded up, shouting.

‘You are strong,’ he said to me, though he seemed to be receding, growing pale as mist. ‘With God’s help and some simple skills, we will all get safe to Constantinople.’

‘Aye,’ said Finn, flexing his fingers on both sword hilts and glancing at the poison-dead Randr Sterki. ‘You have saved our jarl for sure, monk — but forgive me if I do not grasp your wrist in thanks over it.’

Hestreng , high summer

The rock was old and stained from use. Just a stone on a hill, flat here and hollowed there, small enough for a tiny body. It was here, then, that Odin had claimed the life I had offered him and there was nothing left to show for it after so long, for the birds and the foxes had picked it clean and scattered the remains.

A long, hard birth, Aoife told me, weeping with the memories of it. The bairn — a boy — had arrived with a head too big and a leg too short and the little chest heaving for breath, so that Aoife knew, as they all knew, that it was broken inside as well as out.

It was the last of Thorgunna’s womb, too, and she must have known that wee crippled mite was all the bairn she would ever have, all the son she would ever give, for a man she did not even know would come safe home.

Yet it lived, so Thorgunna did what all good wives did when a bairn was born who would never be whole. She stumbled with it up to this place, offered blot to the gods to wrap it safe and warm in their hall and left it there, naked on the rock.

She had never been back to it, Thordis told me, even after she had been brought from the brink of death herself. Not, she added with bitter accusation, in all the time I had been away.

Yet the bairn on the rock lived in front of Thorgunna’s eyes every day, so that she could see nothing else and sat, staring. She left her own life on that rock, all that she was, all that she would ever be and Thordis took a long,