Robert Low - The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 5

The other hand clasped a furred cloak around his throat. Gudleif’s furred cloak, I noticed. And Gudleif’s high seat – but not his ship prows. I saw them stacked to one side and the ones that flanked the high seat now were the proud heads of an antlered beast with flaring nostrils.

Hard men, my father’s oarmates, who thought highly of him because he was their shipmaster and could read waves like other men did runes. Sixty of them had come to Bjornshafen because he had wished it, even though he did not lead this varjazi , this oathsworn band and their slim snakeship, the Fjord Elk.

Einar the Black led them, who now sat on Gudleif’s high seat as if it were his own.

At his feet sat others, one of them Gunnar Raudi, hands on his knees, cloaked and very still, his faded red tangles fastened back from his face by a leather thong. He looked at me and said nothing, his eyes grey-blue and glassed as a summer sea.

The others I did not know, though I half recognised Geir, the great sack of purple-veined nose that gave him his nickname wobbling in his face as he told the tale of finding me half-frozen and slathered in blood, the headless woman nearby. Steinthor, who had been with him, nodded his shaggy head in agreement.

They were cheerful about it now but, at the time, had been afraid when they found the great white bear dead, a spear in its brain and Bjarni’s sword rammed in its heart. As Steinthor happily admitted, to the grunts and chuckles of the others, he had shat himself.

There were two other strangers, one of them the biggest man I had ever seen: fat-bearded, fat-bellied, fat-voiced – fat everything. He wore a blue coat of heavy wool and the biggest seaboots I had ever seen, into which were tucked the baggiest breeks, striped blue and silver, that I had ever seen. There were ells of silk in those breeks.

He had a fur hat with a silver end, which chimed like a bell when he accidentally brushed it against the blade of the huge Dane axe that he held, rapping the haft on the hard-packed hall floor now and then and going ‘hoom’ deep in his throat when Geir managed a better-than-usual kenning in his story.

The other was languid and slim, leaning back against one of the roof poles, stroking his snake moustaches, which were all the fashion then. He looked at me as Gudleif looked at a new horse, weighing it up, seeing how it moved.

But no Gudleif, just this crow-dark stranger in his chair.

‘I am Einar the Black. Welcome, Orm Ruriksson.’

He said it as if the hall belonged to him, as if the high seat was his.

‘I have to say,’ he went on, leaning forward slightly and turning the sword slowly on its rounded point as he did so, ‘that things turned out more interesting and profitable than when Rurik came to me with this request to sail here. I had other plans … but when your shipmaster speaks, a wise man listens.’

Beside me, my father inclined his head slightly and grinned. Einar grinned in return and leaned back.

‘Where is Gudleif?’ I asked. There was silence. Einar looked at my father. I saw it and turned to look at him, too.

My father shrugged awkwardly. ‘The tale I heard was that he had sent you into the mountain snows to die. And there was the matter of the bear, which had not been settled—’

‘Gudleif’s dead, boy,’ Einar interrupted. ‘His head is on a spear on the strand, so that his sons will see it when they finally arrive and know that bloodprice has been taken.’

‘For what?’ growled the large man, turning his axe so that the blade flashed in the dim light. ‘It was done when we thought Rurik’s boy was killed.’

‘For the bear, Skapti Halftroll,’ said Einar quietly. ‘That was an expensive bear.’

‘Was it Gudleif who killed it, then?’ asked the slim one, stroking his moustaches slowly and yawning. ‘I am thinking I have just been listening to Geir Bagnose recount the saga of Orm Ruriksson, the White-bear Slayer.’

‘Was he then to weigh the cost when it came at him in the dark?’ growled my father. ‘I can see you count it up, Ketil Crow – but by the time you got your boots off to use your toes, it would have been your head split from your body, for sure.’

Ketil Crow chuckled and acknowledged the point with the wave of one hand. ‘Aye, just so. I cannot count, that is true enough. But I know how many beans make five, just the same.’

‘Of course,’ said Einar, smoothly ignoring all this, ‘there is the woman, Freydis, who was killed. No thrall, that one. Freeborn and there’s a price to be paid for that, since her death came because Gudleif let the bear go in the first place. Anyway, the bear was mine and worth a lot.’

My father said nothing about whose bear it was. I said nothing at all, since I had just realised that the pole with the ball Caomh had been standing near was a spear with Gudleif’s head on it.

Einar shifted again and drew the cloak tighter around him, his breath smoking in the cold hall as he declared, ‘In the end, you can argue in circles about whose fault it was – from Rurik bringing the bear here, to Gudleif letting it escape. And then there is why he sent the boy late into the mountain snow to that lonely hall. Perhaps he and the bear were in this together.’

It was half in jest, but Skapti and Ketil both warded off the evil with some swift signs and grasped the iron Thor’s hammers hung round their necks. I realised, even then, that Einar knew his men well.

I said nothing, rushed with a fluttering of memories, like bats spilling from a hole in the ground.

After the bear had slammed into the wall, there was silence, though I swear I heard it huffing through the snow, paws crunching. Freydis droned. The two milk cows bellowed their fear and the bear answered, drove the animals mad and chilled me so much I found myself sitting on the floor, the lantern at my feet, my breath caught, my mouth glued with dryness.

‘So Gunnar Rognaldsson, will you tell all this freely to Gudleif’s sons when they come? Or, perhaps, you would like to come with us? We need good men.’

I shook back to the Now of it, but it took me a moment to realise that Einar was speaking to Gunnar Raudi. I had never heard his real name – he was always just Red Gunnar to us.

And in a dangerous position, I realised. Gudleif’s man and a vicious and deadly fighter, he had been left alive so far because he had been the one to send word to my father about me.

Yet it was clear he and Einar knew each other – and that Einar didn’t trust Gunnar and Gunnar knew it. I saw that Einar would not want Gunnar left to advise Gudleif’s sons. Without him they would think twice about revenge.

Gunnar shrugged and scrubbed his grey-streaked head, as if considering – but the truth was that he had no choice. ‘I had thought to berth here for good at my age,’ he growled ruefully, ‘but the Norns weave and we can only wear what they make. I will come with you, Einar. Coldward and stormward, eh?’

They grinned at each other, but it was the smile of wolves circling.

‘And you, Bear Slayer?’ Einar said, turning to me. ‘Will you join your father on the Fjord Elk ? I strongly advise you to do so.’

He didn’t have to say more. Gudleif’s sons would revenge themselves on me if I stayed, for sure, and there was nothing for me here.

I nodded. He nodded. My father beamed. Skapti called for ale.

And so it was done. I joined the Oathsworn – but there was more to taking the blood-oath than a nod and a wink, though I only learned that later.

I ate in Gudleif’s hall for the last time that night. The partition hangings were ripped down (with some contempt, it seemed to me) to make room for all the Oathsworn to come in. It is the mark of a raiding jarl to have a whole hall and those who partitioned it were admitting they’d given up needing the men for raids and therefore the room for them. The Oathsworn held to the old ways and hated a hall with hangings.