‘Aye. He does that. There’s a bucket under there.’ Erlan pointed forwards.
He held the boat while Adalrik sluiced away Aska’s piss. This done, Erlan was about to jump in the boat when he cast a final glance towards the hall. He noticed a small shadow crouched twenty yards up the bank. ‘Someone’s watching us.’
A small pair of eyes was twinkling in the gloom. ‘The little brat,’ Adalrik growled in disbelief.
‘Who is it?’
‘Our baby sister.’
‘Your sister! What in Odin’s arse is this? Some family migration?’
‘Tikki!’ hissed Adalrik. ‘Come ’ere!’ The shadow rose to its full height – which wasn’t much – and trotted down to the water.
‘Did you tell her what we were doing?’ Adalrik asked his brother accusingly.
‘Mebbe I did. She woke up. She knew something was up and said she’d start yelling if I didn’t tell.’
‘Idiot.’
‘I want to come with you,’ said the girl.
‘You must be mad!’ laughed Leikr.
‘Get rid of her,’ snarled Erlan.
‘So where are we going?’ she asked, already wading out to the boat.
‘I said get rid of her. Else you can all of you piss off and I’ll sail west.’
Adalrik went to the bows and rummaged around in his gear. He soon returned and crouched down so his face was level with hers.
‘We’re off to find the king of kings, little sister. But it’s too dangerous for the likes of you. Stay here and we’ll tell you all about it when we come home.’
‘Papa will come after you.’
‘Not if you don’t tell him where we went. Here.’ He produced a knife in its sheath. The haft was an elegant blend of ashwood and antler. ‘Take it.’
‘Your knife?’ Her eyes were wide as platters.
‘Yours now,’ Adalrik grinned. He tossed it to his baby sister. She caught it and gazed down at it, her mouth gaping with admiration.
‘Not a word to Father, mind. At least not until we’re long gone.’
‘Two days at least,’ said Erlan.
‘Aye. Two days.’
Tikki nodded, her eyes still on the knife.
‘Right,’ said Erlan. ‘Say your farewells.’
This they did, then told her to run off home, the knife apparently having bought her obedience. Erlan had his doubts she would keep her mouth shut for long.
‘Let’s get on with it.’ He shoved off and took his seat by the tiller while Adalrik and Leikr began their long pull on the oars. Aska perched on a thwart in the bows, his long nose sniffing at the coming dawn.
‘I can’t believe you gave her your favourite knife,’ muttered Leikr, swinging his body with the sweep of the oar.
‘I didn’t,’ Adalrik chuckled. ‘It was yours.’
The days turned into weeks and the rowing made them strong. Erlan took his turn at the oar as much as the others, levering the little knarr deeper and deeper into a fathomless land of sombre browns and greys. In the main, the river coursed south-east, although it twisted north and south like a writhing serpent.
The labour was brutal, hardening their backs into knotted muscle, shredding their hands, soaking their tunics with sweat every day. The twilight fire was needed as much to dry them out as keep them warm or cook their supper. Further inland, it turned colder despite that spring must be close. Leikr took this badly, reckoning it unjust and a sure sign the gods had taken against the whole damned business. Maybe they had.
On a bad day, Leikr could croak as hard as any of the marsh frogs that kept them awake at night, but Adalrik wasn’t much better. He griped about his hands, which had been sanded away to a mess of bloody skin and weeping pus.
Despite the physical hardship, they ate well. Leikr’s hook and the abundance of bream and trout in the Dagava, and even the odd carp in the smaller tributary streams, kept their bellies full. They drank water straight from the river and suffered nothing for it. And in time, Adalrik’s hands became hard as old leather, Leikr’s back grew strong as a yew-bow, the cold eased, the stream weakened, and the snowy floodplains melted away into sparse woodland. Then, at last, came the first buds of spring.
The folk they came across were few in number and grew ever fewer. For each, they had only one question: did they know the Dnipar? The answer was always the same: a wave of the hand upstream. ‘Further, further.’
Always further.
One night they camped at the confluence of the Dagava with a large tributary whose name they didn’t know. In the morning a swineherd approached them. Once he had overcome his amazement at the brothers’ towering height, he answered with great enthusiasm that, yes, he knew the Dnipar. But instead of further up the Dagava, he pointed up the tributary.
Whatever was the name of this smaller river, they never found it out. It grew narrower and more winding, ever more clogged with weeds and sandbars until it came to an abrupt end about four days later at the head of a broad, crooked lake fed by rock-streams with no navigable way on.
‘This is where we get out and pull, boys,’ Erlan said. ‘I hope you’re feeling strong.’
‘As an ox,’ grinned Leikr.
‘Ugly as an ox, you mean,’ Adalrik sniggered.
‘Then that makes two of us, cock-breath.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Erlan. ‘Everything on the bank.’
Willing they may have been, strong as oxen they were not. Even with the three of them, it was soon clear the knarr was going nowhere without more help. So, leaving Adalrik and Aska to guard the boat, Erlan took Leikr and headed inland. They soon saw a smoke skein curling into the sky and under it they found a small village – a miserable cluster of shacks and ox-hide tents. At first the headman was suspicious but this soon gave way to curiosity.
They led him and some of his men back to the river. He was a sharp-nosed old buzzard, grasping their predicament quickly enough – and his opportunity to make some silver –
