taken the bread or the meat left there, but no animal took the pots of honey, the beer, the blankets and the boots that the people laid at the cave mouth. Something did, though.
Helgi seemed called to the spot. He would sit on the mud of the collapse at the mouth of the tunnel watching the pupil-dark entrance. Of course, he had gone inside to look. The entrance was very small and he’d had to force his shoulders through into the tunnel beyond. He found nothing. The passages were too tight, too winding — his way was blocked by a collapse here, a flood there. Now the soil of the barrow excavation was overgrown with grass, but still sometimes he went to the tunnel mouth to sit and think.
Looking into the fire, his mind felt raw and vulnerable. He went outside. The fog that had engulfed the town for a week was still thick, only the guards’ fires glowing like little cocoons of light giving any idea of direction.
‘A ship! A ship!’ The voice was coming from the loading tower.
Impossible. The river had been solid for a week, totally impassable to boats. And even if it wasn’t, the fog made travel almost out of the question. You couldn’t set out from one side of Lake Ladoga confident you would ever see the other.
He went to the tower, thinking it was just a fog spectre and that he would tell the guard to stop being stupid. He climbed up the ladders inside and went to the loading bay.
‘What?’
‘A ship, khagan, I swear it. It was there a moment ago.’
Helgi peered into the fog but saw nothing at all. From his vantage point, though, the fog was thinner. His guards weren’t idiots, so he waited a while. And then, as the fog swirled away for a second, he saw it — a mast and the top of a sail, both heavy with ice, the ship listing to one side.
‘Well let’s see what the gods have served us up here.’ In front of his men he still played the carefree and fearless monarch, the man of action. It was all they understood, and to share his gnawing fears would have been to lose his authority. The guard went to follow him down the ladder but Helgi told him to stay where he was. ‘You’ll need to guide me towards it,’ he said.
‘I won’t see you, lord.’
‘You will see me.’
Helgi ran to the hall to his great chest and pulled out his skates, stout leather shoes bottomed with a folded copper blade. Then he ran for the town gates, took a wall torch and went out to the river, his warriors streaming behind him through the fog. At the river he passed the torch to a druzhina and strapped his skates on. Then he took it back and set off across the ice, the torch a glow-worm in the white darkness.
He could scarcely see four paces and called up to the man on the tower, ‘Can you see my light?’
‘I can, khagan.’ The voice was flat through the stillness of the fog.
‘Then guide me to it.’
He skated forward slowly and the guard shouted for him to turn left. Already he had lost his bearings. On he went, falling twice but regaining the torch.
‘Keep going, lord. Straight ahead.’
He went forward again until the fog seemed to lift slightly and he could see further. There on its side with its oars trapped in the ice like an insect stuck in pine gum lay the longship. The ship was entirely white, like an apparition thrown up by the cold, its sail torn by the weight of crystals, its rigging sagging with jagged icicles.
Helgi went round to the low side of the ship and started back. At each oar was a man, his hands still on the shaft, but frozen where he sat as if enchanted.
One of his druzhina had followed him, and Helgi steeled himself to play the bluff warrior, the jaunty, fearless king, although dread was bound fast to him like the ice was bound fast to the ship.
‘A curious one, lord.’
‘When the gods deliver us booty, let’s not bother ourselves asking how it got here,’ said Helgi. ‘When we drink the wine we don’t ask to see the feet of the man who pressed the grapes.’
The man laughed. ‘Shall I go aboard?’
‘Let us both.’
The man began to clamber up but stopped. On the longship something had moved. Both drew their swords.
‘Who is there?’ said Helgi. ‘This is a trading town, and honest men have nothing to fear from me. I am Helgi, lord of the Eastern Lake, and you are under my protection.’
From the back of the ship a strange figure moved towards them. It was dressed in bulky furs and carried a sword at its waist, but was clearly either injured or bitten by the wolf of the cold. It staggered down the length of the skewed longship, leaning on oars and dead men for support. Five paces from them it bent to catch its breath.
‘Say who you are, stranger,’ said the druzhina. More men came skating in. ‘Say who you are!’ The guard repeated his command.
The figure breathed in and stumbled against the side of the boat.
‘Who are you? I ask again,’ Helgi said.
The figure looked up, gasping and shivering, and stammered, ‘I am Lady Aelis, sister of Eudes of Paris. You are Helgi, prince of the Rus, and you are my salvation. I am travelling with an invalid monk who needs your help.’
Helgi could see that the cold had her in its grip. Panic rose up in him as he pointed the way back to the town and shouted, ‘Get her to my hall! Get her there! This lady must not die! She must not die!’
67
The Danes were intent on going home, not east for the convenience of Leshii, Hugin and Ofaeti. Still, the idea of a port appealed to Leshii — a place where there might be rest, good food, a bed, girls and, who knew, even a living. He had enough money now in the five looted swords he’d been able to take with him on the mule to set up wherever he liked, if he could buy permission from the lord of the town and other merchants. And if he could keep them from the prying eyes of the Vikings on the ship. He’d wrapped them in one of the Frankish cloaks he’d taken and tied cut staves into the bundle to make it look like a camping roll. He knew the disguise wouldn’t stand much scrutiny but, so far, the sailors had kept their manners.
Leshii had intended to jump ship at Kaupanangan, but the Danes were heading back to Haithabu. All well and good. A hundred years before, the king there had kidnapped merchants from the east. His successor was bound to welcome one offering his services to the throne.
The Raven and Ofaeti had made the best of it. Winter was coming and they’d have a better chance of getting a boat at Haithabu than waiting on a freezing shore, they told the merchant, even if it meant going the wrong way for a while. Hugin hadn’t liked it but he had no choice. He was no sailor and even going via Haithabu would get him to Ladoga quicker than walking.
They were five days into their journey, the going slow as they kept having to stop at coves or inlets to repair the steering oar. Ofaeti worked well with the little crafting axe Skakki had on his ship. Eventually he secured enough good wood — by dismantling a hut on a beach — to make the repair stick.
Ofaeti watched Skakki eyeing him and felt his sword hand flex. The slaver had taken no one he knew well but some he knew enough. Kinsmen. When he chopped at the wood with the axe, he imagined it was Skakki’s head. Skakki, however, was not a stupid man. He knew there were few Danes who matched his description and saw the iron in Ofaeti’s eyes, no matter how much he tried to hide it.
‘We are a day from Haithabu,’ said Skakki as he sat beside Leshii. Ofaeti was tending to the sail, cajoling the men to better effort, for a moment consumed by the task of sailing. The Raven was tending an injured man, cleaning his wounds of pus.
‘It will be good to wash the salt from my clothes,’ said Leshii.
‘And to be in a trading town.’
‘I have nothing to trade, but if I can be of service to you, mention it and the task is done,’ said Leshii. He
