Robert Low - The Wolf Sea

`Will you tell them what you know — or let them find out?'

And when my silence was the answer, he lowered it again.

`Now you know the price of a rune serpent,' he whispered and the light caught the blade of that turning sword, flash on flash on flash, blinding me. .

The sun was up, shining in my eyes and Finn was standing over me, kicking my tattered boots to wake me. Stiff from sleeping in a coat of iron rings, I stumbled upright into the day and we waited, watching the sun arrive through the hole in the back wall.

When the first warmth of it touched my face, spearing into the room and spilling us all with gold, I turned to see the last of the Oathsworn, waiting and silent, faces hard as grindstones.

Then I knew, felt the Other-rush of it, the surety of it, and I told them that we had been tested and that those who stood here, in this room, were those Odin had deemed fit to have his Oath in their hearts and on their lips. We were Odinsmenn and the way home was one last battle. Einar's curse was lifted. Kvasir gave a hoom in the back of his throat and I waited, half hoping one of them would have enough clever to work out the part I had not told them. For a moment I thought Kvasir had, but then he shrugged. Finn's grin was tight and harsh and he spoke through his teeth when he turned to the rest of them.

`Hewers of Men, Feeders of Eagles: pray to Odin and take up your shield and weapons, for we are once more brothers of the blade and this will be a hard dunt of a day, I am thinking.'

Then Botolf, looking round, asked: 'Where is the Goat Boy?'

And al-Misti sounded his horns and attacked up the ramp.

We were supposed to hold them for twenty minutes, no more. We fought them alone for twice that and, in the end, were in a shrinking ring of shields and dog-panting terror and bloody weapons, where those who had bare feet were better balanced than those sliding on the bloody slush in what was left of their boots.

There was a saga tale for a good skald in it, but like so many it went unsung. I have since tried to tell it, without success.

I can remember only splinters of it, like images in the shards from a broken mirror-glass — Kleggi, stumbling in circles, complaining that he had lost his shield, the blood arcing from the stump of his arm. The Arab falling back from me, his teeth flying from his mouth like the little tiles of a shattered mosaic.

And Finn, hacking and slashing and slamming shields until, suddenly, he stopped, gaping at the man he was about to kill, who snarled back at him and swung.

Finn lost a hank of hair and his ear because of his astonished hesitation, shrieked with the pain of that and the horror of the truth he had just discovered and hacked lumps off the man's shield until, finally, one carved through bone and ringmail and a second stroke took his enemy in the hedgehog of his face.

Haf Hroaldsson, whom we called Ordigskeggi, Bristle Beard, was dead. One of the Oathsworn we had come to rescue.

By the time the Masmoudi piled up over the lip of the ramp, scattering the brigands and hunting them down, we were on our knees in the bloody slush, drooling, bleeding, every breath a sob. It was as if I walked underwater then; I could see the pearl-string of bubbles stream from my mouth and feel my lungs burn with bad air. The ground and the sky lurched, changed places. .

In the whole vault of the sky, only two crows moved, rich, black crosses on a translucent blue that was heavy with wavering heat, so that it seemed I lay on the bed of the ocean, looking up at the surface of the water.

Widdershins, the crows circled lazily. All crows are left-handed, according to Sighvat. Unless they were ravens. I thought they might be ravens, a sign from Odin.

I was on my back. . how did that happen?

`Trader?'

The sky blotted out, a shape loomed, a silhouette with black streamers of hair in a wind that hissed over the plateau. For a moment, just a heart-ending moment, I thought of Hild crawling over me in the dark, hissing her warnings. But she was long gone, buried in Atil's howe.

`Trader, are you hurt? Have some water.'

The shape shrank, wavered, then rematerialised in front of me. A waterskin was shoved at me and I saw it was Kvasir who held it, grinning. He had lost his patch and the dead-white of his eye was like a pearl in the smeared blood of his face. Raw skin flapped loose on his bloody forehead and the iron stink of death was everywhere. Flies growled in search of it.

`You dropped like a felled tree, Trader, too much heat,' Kvasir said. 'But the fight is out of them now and we have water at last. Here, drink.'

It was warm and brackish, but the rush of it in my mouth was mead. I struggled up. There were bodies nearby, already thick with flies, and I saw Hlenni Brimill happily fumbling corpses for the purses they carried.

Eighteen of ours dead, Trader,' Kvasir said, sucking water from the wineskin. 'But those outlaw bastards are cut to pieces and fled. There.'

He pointed across the sere brown and ochre plain, past the rubbled buildings, into the water-waving heat that made Herod's hanging palace shiver. Figures, trembling and eldritch long in the haze, moved purposefully back and forth.

Of course. The last refuge, three huge steps of buildings down the prow of Masada, this fetch-haunted, Muspell-hot, gods-cursed mountain in the middle of a burning waste.

I struggled to my feet and leaned on Kvasir. Under the cotton robes we had put on, his ringmail seared my palm and I knew my own was just as hot. My legs shook.

`The Goat Boy?'

He shook his head. 'No sign, Trader. They must all be in that fancy hov.'

I shook my head to try to clear it, which simply made the pain ring it like a bell. I staggered a little and Kvasir steadied me, thrusting the waterskin into my hands.

`Drink some more. Not too much, though.'

I drank, felt better, grinned at him. 'No blood in it, I hope.' He gave a lopsided, wry grin. 'Only Christ-followers care,' he answered, remembering Radoslav's story.

Blood in the water. Odin's cunning plan to get us to this place.

The way to the truth of it all was red-dyed in the blood of those we had come to save, most of them killed by a weeping, slashing Finn. The others in the band were not much better; all of them knew now what I had known before — our oath-brothers were the leaders of the brigands, the gelded eaters of the dead.

I came across Geirmund Solmundarson, who had helped me back to have my ankle seen to after I had done it in chasing Vigfus Quite the Dandy across Novgorod roofs for Einar. I found him bleeding from half-a-dozen wounds and too dying even to speak.

Then there was Thrain, whom we'd called Fjorsvafnir, Life Taker, after he had won a contest for killing more lice than anyone else, running a brand down the seams of his clothes and popping them in the flame.

Now the bubbles of his life broke pink and frothing on his lips.

And Sigurd Heppni, which was a bad joke on him, for he was not Sigurd Lucky at all. From his sprawled corpse I took a familiar stick: Martin's holy spear.

Them and others, all dead, all the ones we had come to rescue.

The last stood in the ruins of Herod's topmost tier, backed up to the balcony, the rune-serpent sword a savage grin in one fist, the Goat Boy struggling in the other. Finn, snarling and bleeding, the Godi dripping blood in fat splats of sound, faced him on one side; Botolf, the great byrnie-biter in his massive fist, glared at him on the other.

Not again. There was a flash of another time, another place, the bird-heart tic of the Goat Boy's throat under a blade, reddened in the torchlight and gripped in Svala's hand.

Like her, Valgard Skafhogg was not ready to give up. Skafhogg, the chippie. The closest Greeks could get to it was pelekanos, of course. And he was black-hearted now, for sure.