Robert Low - The Prow Beast

I got off my backside and kicked the iron off him into the fire, then had to rescue the wrapped fur. A good fur that, white wolf and not cheap — I said as much as I took up my sword and turned to cut Red Njal and Hlenni Brimill loose.

‘Remind me never to borrow a fur from you without asking,’ Hlenni said, rubbing his wrists and standing up stiffly. He kicked Bjarki so that his head rattled back and forth.

‘Little Bear,’ he sneered, which was what bjarki meant and was a name you gave a child, not a grown man. ‘A pity only that he was laid out before he felt the heat of that iron.’

‘Just so,’ panted Red Njal, struggling with Onund’s bonds. ‘Help me here instead of gloating or we will all feel the lick of that heat — pray to the gods if you must, but carry a keen blade, as my granny used to say.’

I gave Red Njal the seax and hefted the familiar weight of my sword as I opened the door cautiously, expecting at least one guard outside. There was nothing — then a bulk moved, darker than the shadows; fear griped my belly and I had to fight not to run. I smelled him then, all sweat and leather and foul breath and I knew that stink well.

Finn.

‘You took so long I came to find you,’ he rasped hoarsely, gleaming teeth and eyes in the dark. ‘I saw folk leaving and thought to chance matters. What did you find?’

I said nothing, but heard him grunt when he saw Hlenni and Red Njal, Onund half-carried, half-dragged between them.

‘This way,’ he said, as if leading them to clean beds in a dry room and we shadowed into the night, from dark to dark like owls on a hunt, every muscle screaming at the expected bite of steel, every nerve waiting for the shout of discovery.

Somewhere out on the pasture, where the hall was a dim-lit bulk in the distant dark, we stopped, while I put my boots back on. We headed towards the north valley, prowling and fox-silent.

All the time, circling like wolves in my head, was what had passed between Randr Sterki and Ljot — and, when those wolves put their muzzles on weary paws, the old dead rose in their place, leering and mocking me.

It rained, a fine mirr that blotted out the stars, so that we fumbled along, panting like dogs and stumbling. I led the way, hoping more than knowing, into the wet dark where trolls leered and alfar flickered at the edge of vision.

A darker shape against the black; I froze. Finn stumbled into the back of me, almost knocking me over and rain dripped off our noses as we stuck them close to each other to hiss in whispers.

‘What is it?’ he hoarsed out and, even as he asked, I knew.

‘The stone. Our stone…’

Slick and rain-gleamed, the great stone, half-carved with Klepp’s handiwork, half-painted by Vuokko the Sea-Finn, was as large as our relief and we hugged it close, delighting in the wet-rock smell of it, for it meant we were at the entrance to the valley.

Nearby was a hut, once the home of the horse-herder thralls, now Klepp’s hov until it grew too cold to work stone. Dark as a cave, of course, because he would be gone, with Vuokko and Thorgunna and Thordis and all the others, heading further up the valley to the foothills of the mountains.

‘Ruts,’ said Finn suddenly, catching my sleeve and guiding my hand to the wet ground. The scar and the smell of new-turned soil gave truth to it; ruts, where a cart had passed, maybe more than one.

‘At least they are safe,’ I muttered and we moved after the struggling figures carrying Onund into the shelter of the dark hut.

It was a rough affair, for use in the summer only and made of low split-log walls and roof-turfs and daub. Inside was the smell of leather and iron and oil, the cold-tomb smell of stone dust and the harsh throat-lick of paints.

‘How is Onund?’ I asked of the shadows grunting him down, panting with the effort.

‘Heavy,’ growled Hlenni Brimill sourly.

‘Babbling,’ added Red Njal and I moved closer to the wheezing bulk of Onund, wishing I had light to see how badly he was hurt.

‘Bairn,’ he bubbled through his broken nose. ‘Bairn.’

‘He’s been saying that since we cut him down,’ muttered Red Njal, wiping his own streaming face. Botolf stumbled over something and cursed.

‘Hist, man!’ Finn spat hoarsely. ‘Why don’t you bang on a shield, mouse-brain?’

‘I was looking for a horn lantern,’ came the sullen reply. ‘Some light would be good.’

‘Aye — set fire to the hut, why not?’ Finn cursed. ‘Why have our trackers fumbling in the cold and wet and dark when we can lead them right to us?’

Botolf rubbed his shin sullenly. ‘Why is it always the real leg that gets hit?’ he demanded. ‘Why not the gods-cursed wooden one…?’

I wanted quiet and hissed it out, for there were sounds outside I did not like; movement, someone blowing snot and rain off their nose, the suck of hooves lifting from muddy ground.

Finn’s eyes gleamed and he slid away from me, out into the night; we crouched in the hut, waiting and listening.

Three, I worked out. Maybe four. And a horse, though not ridden.

‘A hut,’ said a voice. ‘At least we can get dry.’

‘Perhaps a fire…butcher the horse and have a decent meal, at least,’ said another.

‘Oh aye — tell them all where we are, eh, Bergr?’ rumbled a third. ‘Before you go in that hut, Hamund, I would scout round and make sure we are alone.’

‘Of course we are alone,’ spat the one called Hamund. ‘By the Hammer, Bruse, you are an old woman. And if we are not to eat this spavined nag, why did we bring it, eh?’

‘We will eat it in good time,’ Bruse answered. They were all hunkered down in the lee of the hut, no more than an arm’s length and the width of a split-log wall between us.

‘I will be pleased when Randr Sterki is done with this,’ muttered Bergr. ‘All I want is my share, enough for a farm somewhere. With cows. I like the taste of fresh milk.’

‘Farm,’ snorted Hamund. ‘Why buy work? A good over-winter in a warm hall with a fat-arsed thrall girl and a new raid next year, that will do for me.’

‘I thought you were scouting?’ Bruse grunted and Hamund hawked in his throat.

‘For what? They are far from here. Everyone is far from here. Only the rain is here — and us. Who are these runaways anyway? A hump-back more dead than alive, I heard, and a couple of survivors from a battle we won, no more. Hiding and running, if they have any sense. The rest of them will be half-way over the mountains and gone by now. We should take what loot we can and leave.’

‘Go and scout — one of them is Finn Horsehead,’ Bruse answered, straightening with a grunt. There was a pause, then the sound of splashing and a satisfied sigh as he pissed against the log wall.

‘Finn Horsehead?’ muttered Bergr. ‘Of the Oathsworn? They say he fears nothing at all.’

‘I can change that,’ sneered Hamund.

‘Pray to Odin you never meet him,’ Bruse said, adjusting his stance and spurting in little grunts, his voice rising and fading — talking over his shoulder, I was thinking. ‘I raided with him, so I know. I saw him rise up and walk — walk, mark you — towards a shieldwall on his own and before he got there it had split and run.’

‘I know,’ said the voice and I knew, as I knew my own hands, that it was right in Bruse’s ear, a knell of a voice, tomb-cold and deep as a pit.

‘The others said it was my ale-breath. What do you think, Bruse?’

The splashing stopped. Everything stopped. Then Bergr whimpered and Hamund yelped and everything was movement.

‘The ice will not be cleaved from within,’ Red Njal grunted, ‘as my granny used to say.’