something behind him. The wolf had dug an enormous hole, scattering snow everywhere and leaving the grass exposed. Unseen and unheard, the mule had approached and was now munching on the grass.
‘Come on,’ said Ofaeti. ‘Team up with me and I promise you adventure. The east, no snow, grass as high as your ears.’
The mule just looked at him. Ofaeti walked over and took its halter. He mounted.
‘Part of the bargain is that you have to carry a heavier burden than before, but you look after me and I’ll look after you. What do you say? I have a tale to tell to honour a great warrior and I’ll practise on you. Here goes. The gods in their schemes…’
He turned the animal east, past the barrows and towards the woods.
78
The winter moon hung low in the still evening, its light catching the spear tips of the army, turning them to little candles shining from the dark.
They were camped in fields three days’ march from Miklagard. The boy they called Snake in the Eye for the odd dark shape that seemed to surround the pupil of his left eye was excited and had even learned to speak some of the language of the Rus. The camp was enormous, six thousand men plus women and children in tow, and Snake in the Eye, who had a facility for languages, had become the conduit between his family and the rest of the grand prince’s force. They were all of northern stock, which is why Snake in the Eye and his kin had been greeted warmly, but the manners and dress of the Rus were alien to the boy. They fascinated him, though, these men of Kiev — tall, blond but dressed like easterners, their wide trousers bound at the ankle, their war gear decorated with silver and gold.
Snake in the Eye huddled into the fire. He loved the smell of the camp at night — all smoke and cooking — and the cold that nipped you if you left the fire but that made the heat when you returned all the more delicious.
He looked down at the pendant he wore at his neck. He had pestered his father for it for long enough and the old man had eventually given in. It was only a pebble — strange to make a pendant of a thing like that — but it held a fascination for him. There was a design scratched on it, a wolf’s head in the northern style. The way it was held by the thong was curious too — a little harness made of three knots. His father had told him it was a luck charm and that the leather would eventually rot. So he had showed Snake in the Eye the knots until he could tie them with ease. That was part of the magic, or so his father said.
The men were in good spirits because they were finally going to be paid. Prince Vladimir was a stingy ruler and his bravest and strongest warriors — those descended from the northern lords — had threatened to quit unless paid better and more promptly. His solution was to send them to Miklagard — Byzantium, the world city — to help the emperor defend against the rebel Phokas. So, despite the cold by the rocky river, the men were happy. Those who went by boat were three days from the city, the walkers a little further. But everyone would arrive together, that was the plan. They wanted to put on a display, to show the emperor he would have value for his gold.
The whole family was huddled around the fire when the stranger approached. He was tall and pale with a shock of red hair. Over his shoulder he had a big black wolfskin but was otherwise lightly dressed — only pantaloons in the eastern style and a raw-silk shirt. He dropped the wolfskin onto the ground in front of Snake in the Eye and said, ‘What am I bid?’
Snake in the Eye looked at the man not knowing what to say.
‘The boy has nothing to offer,’ said his father. ‘Let me see it and I will tell you what it’s worth.’
The man bent and picked up the skin. He passed it to the boy’s father — a tall fat man with hair the colour of straw.
‘It’s still bloody, man. No great coin can be paid for that.’ Snake in the Eye’s father was careful to use formal language, to show the trader he was a man of substance.
‘I do not ask for coin,’ said the man; ‘just to rest my traveller’s bones by your fire and to hear a tale or two.’
‘You should look to trade the skin for a cloak,’ said Snake in the Eye’s father. ‘You will freeze those traveller’s bones if you stay dressed like that.’
‘The fire of poetry warms me,’ said the man. ‘Let me have a story and I will need no fur to drape me.’
Snake in the Eye’s father shrugged. ‘Very well. I will begin by telling of a man who was called Sigi. It was said he was the son of Odin. Now there is this to be told-’
The traveller held up his hand. ‘I have heard this tale many times. I require a new one. Let the boy tell me a story.’
‘Do you want the story of a child?’
‘The story of a child or a child’s story — either will suit my appetites.’
Snake in the Eye felt embarrassed, put on the spot. ‘I know no stories.’
‘Did your grandfather tell you none?’
The boy thought for a little and then said, ‘It was years ago, before even the time of the great king Ingvar, who took the name of his mentor Helgi, called the Prophet, and, using it, conquered mightily so his renown echoed down the ages. In those days, as now, a mute slave was the most prized of possessions to those of royal blood, for all secrets do they keep. Just such a slave was in our lands, to the north. The slave had lived a long time, longer than her masters, but she grew neither old nor grey and was greatly valued for her diligence and honesty.
‘One year she travelled east with a princess to care for her and comb her hair as she went to marry a Wendish prince. The slave was well prized because, on account of a burn she bore on her face, no man would look at her so she was unlikely to fall pregnant and put herself at risk of death. The journey was smooth and the sea as glass, but on arriving at a certain market port the princess encountered a rich traveller who coveted the mute slave and wanted her for his own.
‘He offered the princess a great fortune for her — bars of gold and green emeralds — but the princess scorned him and told him she would rather die than part with such a treasured possession. The woman was blessed by the gods — or cursed — to never age so was an heirloom that would be passed to her sons and beyond.
‘Then the princess set off down a certain river to the land of the Wendish king and a fever set in on her ship. One by one her crewmen died until only the princess and the slave were left alive. Then the princess herself began to boil and bake and eventually died. The slave sat on the boat wondering what to do but then noticed the rich traveller sitting next to her on the deck.
‘“Who are you?” she said, because in this man’s presence she found her voice.
‘“I am a fever,” he replied, “and I have lived inside your companions. Now I ask you — as you have no master to refer to — will you have me?”
‘And the slave said she would. So she lay with the man on the boat of the dead and he reminded her that he had loved her many generations before and she had borne him two sons. She said she remembered but that her sons were dead.
‘The traveller said they had died because he, their father, was an enemy of the king of gods, Odin, who had wrapped them in his schemes. The dead lord drew them on to fight him here on Middle Earth, to act out the battle on the gods’ final day when the wolf will kill the All Father and then be killed himself. So the boys had grown and become men and then one became a wolf who ate the other, killed the All Father in his earthly guise as a witch and scattered the magic runes. Some fell near and some fell far, but all fell to be reborn in human flesh. So the boys were born once more.
‘While they were apart they were safe, but when they came together their destiny pulled them down to face Odin, in the flesh here on earth, enacting a ritual that embraced death and rejected it in the same breath. She did not know what he meant. She knew only that she loved him and was afraid of him.
‘So the mother fell pregnant again and put the children far apart. She raised another boy in the ways of magic, a wolfman, to try to fool the god, to let him be ensnared in the god’s death ritual and let her own son go free. But the plan went wrong because Loki, who loved her and loved her sons too, knew that death in one lifetime
