Robert Low - The Prow Beast

All the rest of that day we worked to improve our lot, comforted by the distant sound of axe-work in hidden trees; the Pols were making scaling ladders and would not attack before that was done.

Just as the dusk smoked in and we lit fires and torches, Finn came back from where he had been checking the watchers on the river wall; there were skin-boats on the river, crude and hastily made, carrying one man to row and one man to shoot.

‘The ground between the river and the wall is sodden, knee-deep at least,’ he added. ‘It will take four, perhaps five days for the water to seep away back to the river and even then a man will be hard put to walk through it without sinking to the cods.’

We ate together, waving off clouds of insects under the awning of the sail, for no-one wanted to be inside one of the houses, as if the air was thicker with rot there than elsewhere. I made a Thing of it, once they were licking their horn spoons clean.

To get away we would have to cross the bog down to the river, go in quietly, so as not to annoy the watchers in boats, then drift downstream a way to safety. Those who could not swim should fill bladders with air to stay afloat — there were sheep and goats enough for it — and we could try this when the bog had dried out, in five days.

By then we would be ankle-deep in blood, which I did not mention, and there would have to be men on the ramparts to let the others escape, which I did.

‘I will be one,’ I said, hoping my voice would not crack like my courage at the thought. ‘It would be helpful to have a few more, but I do not demand this.’

‘I will stay,’ said Crowbone at once and Koll piped up bravely on his heels. I saw Alyosha stiffen at that, so I shook my head.

‘Not this time, little Olaf,’ I said to Crowbone. ‘I need you to make sure Koll Brandsson gets back to his father.’

‘I will stay,’ Koll shrilled.

‘You will obey your foster-father,’ growled Finn, ‘whose duty it is to keep you safe.’

The white head drooped. Crowbone paused a moment, then nodded at me; from the corner of my eye, I caught Alyosha’s relief.

‘I will be at your shieldless side,’ Finn declared and I acknowledged it; one by one, men stood up and were counted, each louder than the last and each into cheers louder than the one before. At the edge of them, Randr Sterki glowered in silence, offering nothing.

In the end, I had to turn men down, keeping ten only — Abjorn, Ospak, Finnlaith, Murrough, Finn, Rovald, Rorik Stari, Kaelbjorn Rog, Myrkjartan and Uddolf. We broke out a barrel of the fiery spirit that passed for drink in this part of the world and men fell to flyting each other with boasts of what they would do in the morning.

Later, as the fire collapsed to showers of sparks and glowing embers, Finn and I walked the guardposts, pausing in the tower over the gate to stare out at the field of red, flickering blooms which marked the camp of our enemy.

Beyond it, the night was silver and grey, soaked with the scent of a rain-wind, fresh-cut wood and torn earth; the moon, blurred and pale, darted from cloud to cloud, as if trying to hide from the all-devouring wolf which chased her.

‘Will you tell them about the girl?’ Finn growled and I felt neither alarm nor surprise; Finn was no fool.

‘They would hand her over,’ I answered flatly and he nodded.

‘Aye — was this not what the Sea-Finn’s drum meant? Can you stand against it? Defy that wyrd?’

I must and hoped he would not ask me the why of it, for I had no answer. Every time I thought of it, all I saw were her great, seal eyes.

He nodded again when I howked all this out.

‘Is she so worth it then, that everyone here has to die? Even if both you and she get away, I am thinking Thorgunna will not be happy to see a second wife come into her home. I am thinking also that the Mazur girl is not the sort to be settled with being a second wife. If anyone makes it out of here at all — you are under the eye of Odin, after all.’

I had churned this to rancid butter night after night, after every furtive, frantic coupling we had stolen and had no answer for him.

‘Tell Red Njal to get her away to safety when the time comes,’ was all I could manage. ‘Tell him to take her back to Hestreng. I charge him with that and taking Koll home.’

Finn nodded, a twist of a smile on his face. ‘Aye — I wondered why you did not include Njal in your hopeless hird ,’ he answered. ‘So did he — this will go some way to calming him for it.’

There was a noise and a figure that turned us; she came up the ladder to the tower, wrapped in her too-large cloak and it was clear she had heard us talk. Her eyes had vanished in the dark so that her face, pale and seemingly pitted with two large holes, looked like a savage mask.

‘You will not take me home, then, Jarl Orm?’

I shook my head. It was too far and I would not be there to do it myself, for my wyrd was on me. The best I could offer was safety at Hestreng.

‘In time,’ I added, limping the words out, ‘it may be that you could be taken back to your people. Word can certainly be sent to your father that you are no longer held by his enemies.’

She nodded and paused, head raised as if sniffing the wind.

‘My father is called, in our tongue, Hard-Mouth,’ she said. ‘He is well-named and has a hand to match. I have two brothers and he whipped them every day from when they were old enough to walk. Every morning, before they ate, so they would know what pain was before pleasure and that such was our lot in life as Mazurs.’

She paused; a dog fox screamed somewhere far away.

‘But he called me his little white flower and it was the hardest thing he did, handing me over to the Pols. He had no choice and wept. I had never seen my father shed a tear.’

Again she paused and no-one offered words to fill the silence.

‘When he finds I am no longer held by the enemy,’ she went on, stirring suddenly, ‘he will raise up his warriors and fall on the Pols. They will slaughter him, for they are much stronger now. It will take them time, for my father is skilful and folk will follow him. They will run and fight and run again — but, in the end, they will submit, when all the young men are dead. Bairns and women and old heads will die, too. The Mazur will be rubbed out, vanished like ripples on water.’

It was as bleak as an ice-field, that vision and I felt Finn shiver next to me. Then she turned and smiled whitely in the dark of her face.

‘I have prepared a hut for us,’ she said brightly. ‘It does not matter to me whether the red sickness crawled in it. Does it bother you?’

I could only shake my head and she wraithed down the ladder and was gone. Finn looked at me.

‘Do not ask what that meant,’ I told him, ‘for up here I am as much in the dark as you.’

Later still, weary as I was, I went to find Koll and knew just where he would be. The door of the hut was open, spilling out yellow light and letting in cool air, for here Bjaelfi moved among the sick, murmuring softly.

The monk was there, wiping the neck and chest of a man, while Koll sat some way back from him, his father’s sword across his knees. Yan Alf crouched like a patient hound nearby and gave me a despairing look and a shrug when I came in, as if to say ‘what can I do?’

Koll leaped up when he saw me and Leo turned his head, a twist of a smile on his face.

‘I obey,’ Koll said and thrust out the sheathed sword as far as he could before the weight dragged it to the beaten-earth floor with a clunk. ‘I am at arm’s length.’

‘So you are,’ I said. ‘I came to make sure you had a sensible place to sleep.’

‘This is sensible,’ he answered uncertainly and Leo chuckled as I jerked my head at Yan Alf, who rose and propelled the boy outside.