Robert Low - The Prow Beast

The others crowded round, wanting to know what had happened and, for a moment, the faces swam as if under-water and I wanted badly to sit. Thorgunna saw it and chided me in out of the rain and I sat down, listening to it stutter off the canvas; it came to me then that they had not progressed far and had made camp while it was still light.

I told them what had happened while Aoife and Thordis tended to Kuritsa, who was looked at with new, grudging admiration — but it was the news of Styrbjorn’s defeat which occupied them most.

‘At least the wee bairn is safe,’ said a familiar voice and Onund Hnufa shuffled painfully forward. ‘I kept trying to warn you, but all that my mouth would make was “bairn”.’

I felt a flood of warmth, as if I had stepped in front of a hearthfire.

‘I see you, Onund,’ I told him. ‘It seems you are not so easily killed, then.’

He acknowledged it with a wry smile, but you could see that they had used him hard, for he was gaunt and his face was marked from the burns, still dark, raw-red under the grease the women had salved him with; the hump that gave him his by-name seemed sharper and higher than before on his shoulder.

‘They wanted to know of buried silver,’ he said. ‘As well you told no-one, for another lick of that hot iron and I would have told them all they needed.’

‘One who sees a friend on a spit tells all he knows,’ Red Njal agreed, ‘as my granny used to say.’

‘At least one of those who licked you with it felt the heat of it,’ growled Finn and told him of the man called Bjarki.

‘Small reward,’ Onund answered, ‘for the loss of Gizur and Hauk.’

I remembered them, then, as a trio, each a shadow to the other and felt Onund’s loss with a sudden keen pang.

‘Gizur would not leave the Elk ,’ Hlenni Brimill threw in. ‘Since he had made it, he said.’

Onund grunted. ‘He made some of it, but no ship is worth a death.’

That, from such a shipwright, surprised me and he saw it in my face.

‘I built the Elk ,’ he said. ‘There was more of me in that ship than any of the others. But I can build another.’

‘Heya,’ said Finn, grinning. ‘Once this is done with, I shall help.’

Onund, with a flash of his old self that made me smile, raised his eyebrows at the thought and made Finn laugh out loud.

‘The whole matter of this should be done with now, I am thinking,’ offered Klepp Spaki hopefully, but Vuokko, his ever-present shadow, gave a little high-pitched bark and told us all that he had asked the drum and it spoke of loss, keenly felt.

That clamped lips shut, sure as a hand on the mouth; I saw Thorgunna’s lips tighten and her face take on that blank look, which I knew meant that she dared not speak for fear of tears. The others, of course, tried not to look me in the eye; they all knew the blot I had promised Odin for their lives.

Then Abjorn stepped forward, wiping the drizzle of rain from his face; behind him, the others new-promised as Oathsworn gathered like pillars, their ring-coats dark with rain, streaked here and there with the blood of iron-rot.

‘If you have it right,’ he said, ‘then there are eight bearcoats only.’

‘And Randr Sterki and his men,’ Finn pointed out, hunching down to pitch some small sticks into the guttering fire.

‘Randr Sterki may be a fighter, but his men are nithings,’ I said.

‘Still,’ said Finn, wryly, ‘eight bearcoats is enough.’

Abjorn shrugged. ‘These bearcoats belong to Pallig Tokeson, who is jarl in Joms these days and this Ljot we have seen is his brother, so they are thrown into the enterprise on behalf of Styrbjorn. I am thinking they may not pursue it now. I am thinking that we should be pushing on. I am thinking that the queen is still in danger and that we will stay here and guard the path — me, Rovald, Rorik Stari, Kaelbjorn Rog, Myrkjartan and Uddolf.’

‘They must not have the babe,’ Jasna spat and I knew who had put them up to this. They looked at her, slab-faced men with braids and eyes grey as pewter and jingling at the brim with hopelessness, for they knew they were no match for eight bearcoats.

I said as much. I said also that we would all go on, together, for there was more chance with numbers.

‘We will not go on in much of a hurry,’ Thorgunna said at the end of all this and jerked her head at the covered cart, where Jasna and the silent hostage-girl sat beside a lump of coverlet that moaned.

‘How bad?’

Thorgunna shook her head, which was answer enough. So we were stuck here then, until the birth; I looked around at the place and found Finn doing the same. It was a fattened part of the trail, with a branch turning to the right, leading into an even more tortured scar in the mountains. There was a bridge not far along that part, raised by a mother to her sons, so said the stone by it, for once there had been fine tall pines at the top, which was the highest point overlooking the fjord.

Now there were only wind-stunted trees, twisted and useless and the trail had always ended there, dribbling out like drool from a drunk’s mouth. There was a way down the other side, but rough travelling even for a man on foot, so carts and bairns and women and fat thralls would never do it.

Finn and I looked at each other and knew what each thought — this was no great place for us to fight. I moved to him then as the gathering broke up into muttering twos and threes and he scrubbed his face furiously, a sure sign of his confusion.

‘Well?’ I asked.

‘Well what?’ he countered, scowling, his beard scrubbed into a mad fury of spikes.

‘Do you think we can win?’

He stopped then, for he knew I would not voice that out loud when there was more than just him to hear it.

‘Well,’ he growled. ‘I am no stranger to woman-killing, as you keep wanting to tell me, as if it was something to be shamed at. All the same, I have never killed a bairn that had no proper life and I am reluctant to begin.’

‘Kill one to save us all?’ I answered, with a wry smile, for this thought had been running like spate-water in me. He grinned, then spat.

‘It is not about numbers — one or a hundred bairns, it would still be a price worth paying for such a reward as the life of wee Helga and the boy Hroald, whom I have acknowledged as mine. It is about what is right and what is not. He may be a great king, this fledgling eagle. Who can say what wonders he may bring about?’

I laughed with the sheer, surprising delight of him and pointed out the other side of the coin; that he would most likely turn out to be another Harald Bluetooth.

‘If I thought that,’ he growled, ‘I would kill it before the head appeared between the mother’s thighs.’

We were smiling, then, when Botolf limped up, towing Ingrid and Bjaelfi in his wake. Behind them, I saw the Greek, Leo, allowing Koll to lead him by the hand towards us.

‘How is the leg?’ I demanded and Botolf waved an answer away, hauling Helga up high in the air, so that she shrieked with delight and bone-haired Cormac stood, wanting the same but older and so too proud to ask. When Botolf hoisted him up, he shrieked his delight all the same, but Botolf grunted with pain.

Bjaelfi gave me a look and I moved to him, so he could tell me, soft and low.

‘I cut too little from the bone,’ he said tersely. ‘I warned him not to go back to lifting carts with the pony in them, but Botolf is Botolf.’

I remembered it well, the hot, fetid boat heading into the hard-pull of the Middle Sea up to the Great City, Botolf delirious with wound-fever, rolling great fat drops of sweat. Bjaelfi, sheened like some mad black dwarf in a cave, kept cutting and sewing, so that there was skin to wrap round and stitch for a stump, with the blood washing in the scuppers.