was their life’s work and their hands were as callused as a dog’s paws.
For everyone else it was more than muscles and joints could stand. Something tore in Richard’s back, forcing him to row one-handed. Hero jerked upright at Vallon’s shout to find that he’d been rowing while asleep. They hobbled ashore that night with their hands crooked into claws and their backs as rigid as boards. Each boat’s company cooked separately. An occasional snatch of conversation or laughter carried from the Vikings’ hearth, but everyone else was silent. Wayland and Syth were keeping watch on the river. Hero and Vallon drooped by their fire.
Drogo barged out of the dark dragging Caitlin’s maid, Asa. ‘Show him.’
The girl held out her hands to Hero, whimpering with pain. He saw why when he unwrapped the bandages. The skin on her palms was peeling off like a glove. He held her wrists. ‘Are your mistress’s hands that bad?’
Asa nodded tearfully.
Vallon hadn’t even looked up. He continued shoving food into his mouth. ‘I warned her it wouldn’t be a bed of roses.’
‘There’s no need to push us so hard,’ said Drogo. ‘They won’t chase us, not with Gleb dead. They haven’t even got boats.’
Vallon cocked a fire-reddened eye. ‘They can find boats in Smolensk. We have three days’ lead at most, and we’re at least twelve days from Kiev.’
‘I know that if you drive us at the same pace, by this time tomorrow you’ll be left with nothing but cripples.’
Hero intervened. ‘I’ll treat your hands with salve,’ he told Asa.
The girl couldn’t have been older than twelve. He dressed her palms with an ointment of lanolin and seaweed. When she’d left, he looked at Vallon. ‘Drogo’s right. Richard can’t sleep for pain.’ He showed his own raw palms. ‘I can hardly hold a cup, let alone an oar.’
Vallon stirred the fire. ‘You think I’m not suffering?’
‘That makes it worse. Your wound could open.’
‘We have to press on. My nightmare is that the Russians will slip past us during the night. Imagine coming round a bend to find them waiting.’
‘They won’t. Not with Wayland watching the river. I’m serious, sir. Another day like today and we’ll be fit for nothing.’
When Vallon didn’t answer, Hero rose and stretched, bunching his fists into the small of his back. He hiked up his shoulders against the chill and set off into the dark.
‘Will you treat Caitlin’s hands?’ Vallon said.
‘I’m on my way now.’
‘Thank you. You’ll make a good physician if you live.’
Fog was streaming off the hills when they gathered at the river next morning. The light diffused through the forest, casting no shadows, softening all outlines. The water had a leaden sheen. A fish eagle’s wild scream hung on the silence.
Most of the company were eyeing their boats with dull loathing when the Vikings jumped laughing and joshing into their own craft.
‘Wulfstan,’ Vallon called. ‘Today we’ll travel in two boats. Divide your men between them.’
Wulfstan eyed his men and gave an order. The Vikings trooped reluctantly from their boat and took up their berths.
They pushed off. Vallon told Richard to put down his oar and rest. He raised his eyebrows at Hero. ‘Happier?’
Hero grinned. ‘Much.’
The river ran slow, its current no faster than a geriatric walk. Even so, the boats must have covered fifty miles between dawn and dark. Their course led due south and after four days the river began to widen, in places stretching for two miles between shores, the surface like sheet metal under the great arc of sky. Hero drifted in a relaxed daze, only plying his oar to correct their course.
They meandered through a labyrinth of islands and sandbars and began to encounter fishermen and loggers poling rafts of timber. They paused in passing only long enough to find out how far they had to go before they reached Kiev. Villages began to appear every few miles. Sometimes they passed them in the dark, the only clues to their presence a bell tolling from a church, a rushlight shining through a door, a mother’s voice calling her children to supper. The voyagers always camped in the woods, choosing islands for preference.
Now that he had more leisure, Wayland began manning the falcons. Each day he fed them on his fist, and since the task was time-consuming, he enlisted Syth’s help, showing her how to balance the falcon with the jesses and food held between thumb and forefinger. Only Wayland handled the white haggard. His other favourite was a blocky tiercel with plumage that gleamed pewter and silver and steel all at once. Though tame, this bird wasn’t as well-mannered as the haggard. She ate with the poise of a queen, always one eye on Wayland, her stare as quick and wild as the day he’d caught her.
Every second morning, weather permitting, he blocked them out by the river so that they could bathe. They rarely did, but spent the time bating against their jesses. The white haggard seemed to know she couldn’t break her tethers and yet she yearned for freedom and would crouch, fanning half-furled wings before springing up into thwarted flight in a way that made Wayland wince.
He and Syth spent part of each day hunting game from the skiff and rarely returned empty-handed. At every bend and inlet waterfowl spluttered across the water or sprang quacking into flight. He made Syth a light bow from a bough of seasoned yew he’d bought in Novgorod, planing the wood with a spokeshave that had belonged to Raul. When finished, the bow was D-shaped in cross-section, pale sapwood at the front for tension, golden heartwood at the back to resist compression. Shaping it made him think of Raul — his cunning hand at work while he told improbable war stories and outlined even less plausible plans for the future. And Raul’s death made him think of the dog and his gaze would wander over the forest as though its ghost still ran through these woods. Not even Syth knew how deeply he grieved for it. When she’d wept at the news of its death, he’d assumed an offhand manner. Only a dog he’d told her, until she drummed her fists against his chest and ran away to bawl her eyes out in private.
Only a dog. Its loss made him feel like a part of him had been torn out. Sometimes he spoke to it before realising with a clutch of his heart that it was gone. Once, a distant barking made him jump up in the delusion that somehow the dog had survived and had tracked hundreds of miles through the forest to find him.
One night a doleful howling woke him from sleep and he rose and followed the sound until he saw the silhouette of a wolf standing on a knoll above the river. It was howling at a full moon fretted with clouds. There were no clouds elsewhere in the sky and when he looked again he saw that the pattern was formed by wisps of geese crossing the moon like a mesh of black lace. He began to weep and he couldn’t say for whom he shed his tears. For the dog and for Raul, but also for the solitary wolf and for the geese on their pilgrimage south and for some pain too deep to fathom.
In the morning he nocked the ends of the bow with horn and strung it with gut. He measured Syth’s arm and shortened some of his arrows to fit her draw. He cut a target from cloth, pinned it to a tree and led Syth thirty yards away. He showed her how to stand with her weight balanced on both feet. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Don’t grip the bow with your fingers. Use hand pressure and keep your arm straight. You’re too tense. Push with your whole arm as if you were reaching for the target. Cock your elbow sideways otherwise the bowstring will hit it. Grip the string with the first joint of your fingers. Draw and aim at the same time. See the target in your mind’s eye rather than concentrating on it. Relax your arm and shoulder muscles. Let your back muscles do most of the work.’
Syth stamped her foot. ‘I can’t remember all that. Let me do it my own way.’
Wayland stepped back. ‘We’ll break it down later.’
Syth brought the bow up, drew and loosed. The arrow struck a foot above the target. She grinned at Wayland. Beginner’s luck, he thought. ‘You’ve got a sweet action,’ he said, and handed her another arrow. This time she hit below the target, but not by much. Frowning, he passed her a third arrow. It lodged quivering almost in the middle of the target.
‘You’ve used a bow before.’
‘My brothers made me a little one and showed me how to draw it. Where are you going?’
