Robert Low - The Prow Beast

‘Do you believe I mean him harm?’ the monk asked. I did not know for sure, but I knew he meant him no good and that, if he was a counter in the game, then he was my counter. Leo shrugged when I told him this.

‘It is, then, a matter of bargaining,’ he said and smiled. ‘You are, after all, a trader as well as a slayer of white bears and a finder of treasure.’

‘You are short of items to trade,’ I answered.

‘I have the boy,’ he replied and I cocked my head and told him it was the other way round.

‘You seem to wish to die here,’ he said, as lightly as if passing judgement on the cut of my cloak, or the state of my shoes. ‘What will happen to your men? To the boy?’

I had not thought beyond them drifting to safety and saw the mistake. Leo wiped the man’s fat neck with one hand, the other resting comfortably at his side. The sick man’s belly trembled as he breathed, low and rasping.

‘The quickest way to safety is through the Bulgar lands,’ Leo said. ‘I am more of the Emperor’s envoy there. In the Great City, I can provide help and aid for those who survive.’

He turned his face, less moon and more gaunt these days; life had melted some of the sleek off him.

‘I can ensure the boy is returned to his father from the Great City.’

‘For a price,’ I spat back bitterly. Leo waved his free hand, then settled it, like a small moth, lightly back on his leg.

‘What do you care — you are dead?’ he replied, crow-harsh in the dim; I heard Bjaelfi grunt at that.

‘I will return the boy, unharmed to this father,’ he went on. ‘I will make sure Jarl Brand knows that this is because of what you have done, so that you fulfil whatever vow you made. I know how you people value such vows. If there are other agreements made — what of it? The boy is still safe and your fame is safer still.’

This last was sneered out, as if it held no value at all — which, him being steeped in the Great City’s way of doing things, was accurate enough. Yet there was merit in this and he saw me pause, knew he had gaffed me with it.

‘What is the price?’ I demanded and he waved his free hand again.

‘Little enough — freedom of movement. When the time comes, let your men know you trust me to guide them, so they will take pains to help both me and the boy.’

I pondered it.

‘Of course,’ he went on smoothly, ‘it also means you cannot carry out your plan to kill me when the enemy breaks down the gate.’

He turned his bland smile on me. ‘That was your plan, was it not?’

It was not, exactly. I had planned to leave him tethered for the Pols to find and stake him for the red murder of Jasna and the threat to Queen Sigrith. I had the satisfaction of seeing him blink; I could feel his hole pucker from where I stood and laughed.

‘How was that killing done?’ I asked. He recovered and shifted wearily, then paused in his endless wiping of the man’s head and neck.

‘One day,’ he replied slowly, ‘you may profit from the knowing.’

Then he smiled his bland smile. ‘Of course,’ he went on smoothly, putting aside the cloth and lifting the man’s limp, slicked arm up high, ‘all this is moot. This one is called Tub, I believe. He is leaking a little and he is the first, I think. It may be that no-one goes home without God’s mercy.’

I stared at the accusing Red Plague pus-spots crawling down the arms and up the neck of Tub and heard Bjaelfi curse as I left.

In the morning, all our enemies were at the gates.

There was no skilled planning; Czcibor used his foot soldiers like a club and they came piling across the narrow causeway, fanning out under the looming cliff of earthwork and timber ramparts, throwing up makeshift ladders.

We had one good bow — Kuritsa’s — and a few more hunting ones we had found, but the horsemen had been dismounted and launched great skeins of shafts to keep our heads down, so we could do little but lob heavy stones from cover.

When the Pol foot soldiers, in their stained oatmeal tunics, finally got to the lip of the timbers, their archers had to stop firing; then we rose up and the slaughter started.

That first morning, I plunged into the maw of it, sick and screaming with fear, sure that this was where Odin swept me up and trying to make it quick.

I kicked the head of the first man who appeared, open-mouthed and gasping, so that he shrieked and went backwards. I cut down at the ladder, hooked the splintering top rung with the beard of my axe and then ran, elbowing my own men out of the way and hauling the ladder sideways; men spilled off it, flailing as they fell.

Some others had made the top rampart anyway and I plunged towards them, took a slice on the shaft of the axe, where metal strips had been fitted to reinforce the wood. In the same move, I cut up and under, splintering his ribs, popping his lungs out so that he gasped and reeled away.

Another came at me, waving a spear two-handed, so I reversed the axe and batted him off with the shaft, my left hand close up under the head — then gripped the spear with my free hand, pushed it to one side and sliced the axe across his throat like a knife.

The blood sprang out, black and reeking of hot iron, and he fell, half-dragging me as he did so, so that I staggered. Something spanged off my helmet; a great white light burst in my head and I felt the rough wood of the walkway splinter into my knees.

Then there was cursing and grunts and a hand hauled me away; when I could see, Red Njal was standing over me, his own axe up and dripping.

‘You will get yourself killed with such tricks,’ he chided, then hurled himself forward, now that I was climbing to my feet.

Between us we pitched the struggling men back over the ramparts; no sooner had the heels of the last one vanished than two arrows whunked into the wood and we dived behind the timbers, panting and sweating, to listen to the drumming of others, flocking in like crows on offal. Crazily, I was reminded of rain on the canvas awning on the deck of the Fjord Elk , though I could not remember which Fjord Elk that had been.

‘Five days,’ Red Njal said and spat, though there was little wet in his mouth, I saw. I was thinking the same thing — these would be five long days.

The rest of it is a dull, splintered memory, like a tapestry shredded by a madman. I am certain sure that it was on the day we tied up Tub’s mouth that we suffered a moon-howling loss that drove us a little mad.

It was the same as any other attack, though the ramparts by now were scarred, the timber points black and soaked with old gore, the walkway both sticky and slick. They came piling up over their own dead, threw up the ladders and did what they had been doing for what seemed years.

And we stood, we three, last of the band of old brothers, struggling and slipping and sweating and cursing, while Uddolf and Kaelbjorn Rog and others fought their own battles a little way away, for we were veil-thin on the rampart now.

Red Njal set himself behind his shield, took a deep, weary breath and shook himself, like a dog coming out of water.

‘Fear the reckoning of those you have wronged,’ he muttered, moving forward. ‘My granny said it, so it must…’

The spear came out of nowhere, a vicious stab from the first man up a ladder we had not seen. It caught Red Njal under the arm, right in the armpit, so that he grunted with the shock of it and jerked back. It had hooked and stuck and, even as we watched, the man who owned it fell backwards, ladder and all, as Finn smashed The Godi into his chest. Fixed to the spear, like a fish on a gaff, Red Njal was hauled over the rampart, a silent slither of ragged mail and leather.

I was stunned; it was the roof collapsing, the earth vanishing beneath my feet. I could not move for the sick horror of it — but Finn screamed, skeins of mad drool spilling down his beard and launched himself at the pack on the walkway, hacking and slashing.