Robert Low - The Prow Beast

That was because they turned more land than harnessing fifteen thralls to a plough — and now they were greasing the chins of hard raiding men. I tried not to think of it, or of the times I had done it to others, or the dying ox in a yard on Svartey. Instead, I squinted down into the fetid dim of the hall.

I saw a huddle of men and had a heart-leap at the sight of them; two were Red Njal and Hlenni, not dead, but sitting with their arms clasped under their raised knees, wrists bound. Another was Onund, naked and strung up by the thumbs, gleaming with sweat and streaked with darker, thicker fluids. A fourth lay smiling two smiles and seeping blood through cloth wrappings; Brand’s luckless steward, Skulli, whose throat had been cut in his sickbed.

There was litter scattered, what was left after men had plundered the place, and I felt a cutting pang at the sight of eider feathers sprayed like snow; Thorgunna’s favourite pillows, which she would mourn.

There was a man I did not know sitting on a bench with an axe and a sword nearby. He chewed bread, which he tore idly from a chunk, and he was smeared with black — wet charwood, I was thinking, from where he had fought a fire earlier. There was the red line of a helmet rim on his forehead and brown marks on his nose from the noseguard iron-rot.

There were two more. One was a Svear by his accent, with a striking black beard, streaked with white so that he seemed to have a badger on his face. His hair was also black and iron-grey, with a single thick brow-braid on the right side, banded in silver. He was naked from the waist and his right arm, from wrist to shoulder all round, was blue-black with skin-mark shapes and figures — a tree, I saw, and gripping beasts among others.

I knew him from the old days and he had been less salted then. Even if I had not, the skin-marks revealed him as Randr Sterki, for it was well-known that he had adopted this shieldbiter perversion, which was said to be magic, for strength or protection or both. If I had been in doubt of who it was, there was the leather thong round his neck and, swinging on the end of it across the matted hair of his sweat-gleaming chest, was Sigurd’s silver nose.

He strode to the pitfire and shoved a cooled length of iron back in it, then turned to the second man, who watched him with his hands on his hips and a sneer on a clean-chinned face with a neat snake moustache. His yellow hair was caught up in a thong and a braided one round his brow kept any stray wisps off his face. With his blue tunic and green breeks and silver armrings, it was clear he liked himself, this one, while the inlaid hilt of the sword at his waist told me he was probably master of the second ship. I did not know him at all, but he spoke with a Dane lilt.

‘This will not serve,’ he told Randr Sterki. ‘We are wasting time here.’

‘My time to waste,’ Randr Sterki answered, sullen as raincloud, working the length of iron deeper into the coals of the pitfire.

‘No,’ said the other impatiently. ‘It is not. It belongs to Styrbjorn, who has charged us both with a task.’

‘You did not get your men killed and your ship all but burned to the waterline, Ljot Tokeson,’ Randr Sterki bellowed, whirling on the man. ‘I beat the Oathsworn in battle, not you…and somewhere around here is Orm Bear Slayer’s silver to be dug up, his women to be taken and himself…’

He paused and snatched up the sword from the table; the bread-eater shied away as the careless edge whicked past his ear.

‘I have his sword,’ Randr hissed. ‘I want the hand that wielded it.’

I did not know this Ljot Tokeson, but he was clearly one of Styrbjorn’s men and one with steel in him, for few men gave Randr Sterki a hard time of it, especially when Randr had a blade in his hand — my blade, I realised, rescued from the Elk.

Ljot slapped his hand on the bench, with a sound like a wet drum.

‘Not all your men fought and died, Randr Sterki,’ he harshed out. ‘Three bearcoats died. Three. My brother had those twelve with him for four fighting seasons without loss and you have lost three in a day.’

The wind seemed to suck out of Randr then and he slumped down on a bench and took up a pitcher, scorning a cup to drink; ale spilled down his chest and he wiped his beard with one slow hand.

‘They fought hard, the Oathsworn,’ he admitted. ‘That Roman Fire did not help.’

‘Then you should not have lost your head and thrown it,’ Ljot growled. ‘You lost more of your own men to it than the Oathsworn did. It was given as an expensive gift, to make sure you succeeded in what Styrbjorn sent you to do.’

Randr licked his lips, his eyes filled with screaming men and burning sea.

‘I did not know what it would do…’

‘Now you do,’ interrupted Ljot, sneering. ‘And if you do not want the same fate for yourself, it would be better if we did what we came to do. For my brother will tie you to a pole and hurl Roman Fire at you until you melt like ice in sunshine if we fail.’

There was a long and terrible pause, broken only by the sound of Onund breathing in bubbling snores through what was clearly a broken nose. I wondered who this Ljot was and who the brother — it was not Styrbjorn, that much I did know. Then Randr stood up.

‘I will send scouts out. We will find what we seek.’

The tension flowed out of the taut line that was Ljot and he forced a smile.

‘There will be time enough for all this,’ he said softly, waving a hand that took in the bound prisoners and the hung Onund. ‘The important thing is…’

‘Fuck yourself, Ljot Tokeson,’ Randr spat back. ‘When you have lost all you hold dear, come and speak to me of the important thing.’

He slammed out of the door in a blast of rainwind that swirled the blue reek of the hall, stinging my eyes. In the blur I saw the back of the boy’s head shattering in a spray of blood and bone while his mother drowned in her own blood on the arse of a dying ox. All he held dear…

The man at the table looked up sourly from where he was idly rolling bread into little pills.

‘His thought-cage is twisted, that one,’ he growled at Ljot. ‘Still — has Randr Sterki the right of it? About this buried silver?’

‘They say the Oathsworn robbed a tomb of all the silver in the world,’ Ljot growled back scornfully, ‘which is clearly a lie, since I myself wear silver armrings.’

‘All the same,’ the other said and Ljot shook his head wearily.

‘Just watch them, Bjarki,’ he spat. ‘Fall asleep and I will gut you.’

I saw what Ljot did not as he turned to leave — the narroweyed hate at his back. Even before the hall door clattered shut, this guard Bjarki was on his feet and moving to the pitfire and the iron in it.

‘No good will come of this,’ growled Red Njal from where he sat, seeing which way the wind blew. ‘Shameful deeds bring revenge, as my granny used to say.’

Bjarki ignored him and hefted the iron, wincing when it burned his fingers; he searched round for something to wrap round it, deciding on the good fur off my high seat.

‘Your chance to speak will come,’ Bjarki said to Red Njal, moving like a wolf towards Onund. ‘Now,’ he added, with a gentle sigh, ‘let us hear you speak with a silver tongue, hump-back. No more screams, just a place name will do. Between us, as it were.’

He had his back to me when I gripped the beam and swung down on it, my legs slamming into his shoulder-blades. He shot forward into the upright beam to Onund’s left, the crack of his forehead hitting it like the sound of a falling tree. Worse, for his part, was that he was brandishing the hot iron at the time and it was rammed between his face and the pillar.

He scarcely made a sound all the same, for the blow had laid him out and he crumpled, a great red burn welt from left eyebrow to right jawbone, across his nose and one eye, which spat angry gleet. Blood trickled from a great cut on his head and the hot iron hissed and sizzled on his chest; his tunic smoked and flames licked.