Robert Low - The Whale Road

I was craning for a look at her as Einar was speaking, which was why I missed most of it and only came in at the end, to hear him say: `. . . before that little shit Martin gets his hands on it. But no one reads Latin here, not even those who think this place is called Kaupang.'

There were dutiful chuckles at that. Foreigners called Skirringsaal kaupang because they'd once asked what it was called and someone—probably deliberately—had told them 'a market'. So they had continued to call the town that, thinking that was its name.

Einar sighed and shook his head. 'I hate relying on that Latin-reading Christ priest. It would be nice to know what it is he seeks in this.' He slapped the ornate chest.

`Latin is a pain in the arse,' I said, yawning. 'If they have three words where one good one would do, they use them.'

There was silence and it took me a while to realise everyone was staring at me. Einar's eyes were black, ferocious. 'How do you know that, boy?'

Conscious of his tone, I considered cautiously, then answered: `Caomh taught me to read it, back in Bjornshafen—'

I never got the rest of it out. There was an explosion of roars; everyone was talking at once. Einar was trying to hit me, scrambling to get up and out of his furs, Illugi trying to restrain him and my father and Valgard arguing with each other, all at once.

Eventually, when it fell silent again, I raised my head. Einar was glowering at me and breathing as if he'd run up a hill. Illugi was watching him, holding his staff across his knees and between me and him. My father and the Trimmer sat staring at me, one astonished, the other stone-faced.

`Can you read this?' Einar demanded, thrusting a few rustling leaves at me, similar to the ones I'd seen torn from that book-chest in Otmund's temple.

Ì've never read from this before,' I told him. `Caomh drew the letters in the sand, or in the dirt.'

It was clearer than that, of course. Easy.

' "The people here were lost to God's mercy," ' I read, squinting at the faded, brown letters. ' "They wallowed in their idol worship, until God Himself brought His word to them, though His humble servant, bound in duty to . . ." ' I stopped, scanning the lines ahead. 'It goes on and on—do you want to hear all this?'

Einar leaned forward, dangerous-eyed, his voice frosted. 'Read it all,' he snarled.

So I did. Otmund, it seemed, was full of the joy of coming to the lost people of the Karelians and returning them to the fold like so many strayed sheep. He listed, in considerable detail, his unstinting efforts to do that.

His greatest triumph came, it seemed, when he managed to gain some followers among those skin-wearing trolls.

In the end, as the chief declared for the White Christ, the last believers in the old ways stole their god's stone, on which lay the secrets of the tomb, and spirited it away south and across the sea, into the lands of the Krivichi at Kiev and to a chief named Muzum.

`Read that again,' demanded Einar. Sighing, seeing my chance with the dark girl recede by the minute, I worked my way back, took a breath and laboriously read the passage again. My head hurt with the effort.

`Secrets of the tomb?' Einar asked Illugi, when I had finished. Illugi Godi shrugged.

`Might be Atil's treasure,' he grunted. `Might be a poor kenning on the nature of gods. And Muzum? I know the Krivichi tribes—we passed through their lands going down to Kiev, some time back. There's no chief called Muzum.'

`They always do that, the Latin writers,' I offered moodily. 'That's what I mean about them. They seem determined to write something and make it as long-winded and hard to understand as possible. Usually, if you take the "um" off the end you have a better chance of working out what they really mean with names.'

`Hmm,' mused Illugi. `Muz? Might be muzhi, but that just means Great Chief. Every ferret-face with two horses and a dog calls himself a great chief along the river banks around Kiev.'

`Then we'll just have to find one with a bloody great stone from a god,' Einar grunted, then looked at me and rubbed his chin. 'Next time, tell me what you can and can't do. I wasted valuable time talking to traders—at least half a dozen over the course of this Loki-cursed winter. Now they will be carrying the news of it far and wide.'

Ì didn't know that you needed anything read,' I snapped back, annoyance at missing out on the dark one combining with the unfairness of it to make me daring. 'If you had actually unpicked your lips on this, I'd have known.'

Einar considered for a moment—a long year under that obsidian stare—then chuckled. 'Faults on both sides, then. The main thing is I now have someone who can read stuff before Martin the Christ priest does.'

Ì can read it if it is kept simple,' I warned him, wishing now I had spent more time with Caomh and his dirt-scratchings. But who knew then that such a thing would be of more use to me than the best way to get gull eggs from a high cliff?

Einar nodded, considering.

`What now?' my father asked. 'Down to Kiev and the Black Sea again?'

Èventually,' Einar said, 'but we call in at Birka and fulfil our hire. That way we get paid and I find out if Martin and Lambisson say true, since they will not know that I have all the saint's chest has to offer. Orm, not a word to anyone else that you can read the Latin. Mind that.'

I nodded and he grinned and clapped my shoulder. 'Truly, Rurik, you birthed a rare one and I am glad now that you bribed Thorkel to let him take his place.'

My father chuckled and I gawped and everyone laughed at the pair of us.

`Now go and fuck that Serkland woman before your head swivels off its stalk. Not that she'll thank you much—she has the coughs and fever all of those women get coming from the warm lands and I am thinking she will not last the winter.'

Still chuckling we moved into the main hov and, as we broke apart, my father caught my sleeve.

Ì did not know that he knew about Thorkel,' he said quietly. 'I forgot that Einar is a deep thinker and a cunning man. We'd both do well to remember that.'

Funnily enough, I remembered those words, even as my loins took over the thinking for me. Partly, I think, because Einar was right and the Serkland woman was already too sick to be a good bedmate, but mainly because of what Illugi had said about Atil's treasure.

`You sew your lips on that one, young Orm,' my father said when I mentioned it, looking right and left to make sure no one could hear us. 'That's something we are not supposed to know about.'

`We don't, I am thinking,' I answered.

He rubbed his head and acknowledged that with a rueful grin.

`But this is the same Atil as the tales?' I persisted. `Volsungs? All of that?'

Àll of that,' agreed my father and then shrugged and scowled when he saw my look. 'Learned men believe it,' he argued. Tambisson's tame Christ priest, we found out, seems to be seeking it to solve Birka's silver problems.'

I said nothing, but the thoughts whirled and sparked like embers in the wind. If even a tenth of what was said about the treasure hoard of Attila the Hun was true, then it was a mountain of silver you could mine for years.

Sigurd's treasure, culled from a dragon hoard and cursed, if I remembered the saga tale of it, then handed to the Huns by the Volsungs before they fell out.

`Just so,' Illugi Godi said, when I came to him with questions—though his eyes narrowed at the mention of it. 'You should put your tongue between your teeth over this matter, young Ruriksson,' he added.

`No secret here, it seems to me,' I replied and he hummed and shrugged.

`Well, so it would appear. No simple saga tale, either,' he went on. 'The Volsungs are lost to us, vanished like smoke, taking Sigurd Fafnirs-bane and Brynnhild and all the rest, so that the former is now a dragon-slaying hero and the latter is one of Odin's Valkyrie. Remembered for that only and not that once they were people, like you or me.'