Robert Low - The Whale Road

`The others may be afraid of you,' Ketil Crow growled, 'but I am not. If you prove false in this I will rip you from cunt to jawline.'

Hild did not flinch, though a few of us did. Instead, she smiled that fey smile. 'It is good you are not afraid, Ketil Crow,' she said in a voice like the whisper of bat's wings. 'You will need that courage, I am thinking.'

Einar stirred then, half turning to where Hild crouched like some black spider. He shook his head and stroked his moustaches again. 'There's more than just finding it,' he said.

`So you say,' growled Wryneck, 'but I am with Ketil Crow in this matter. It seems to me that a witless girl is about to lead us into the sea of grass. I never trusted women and that has always stood me in good stead.'

`You won't become old and rich,' declared Hild suddenly, in a growl so unlike her own voice that everyone froze. The wind hissed, flattening the fire. Wryneck hawked and spat, deliberately loudly, a sneer of sound.

`You bicker like women,' Illugi declared scornfully. 'What has Einar to say on this?'

It seemed to me that if Einar had had anything to say he would have hoiked it out before now. I wondered if Hild had laid some seidr on him that kept his lips fastened on the matter—but he stirred like a man coming out of a sleep.

`We will get there,' he said, so softly that those at the back had to have it repeated to them. 'Then what?'

He looked around us, challengingly. 'We get there and do what? Knock on the door and ask politely if we can have the hospitality of this dead hov? Some ale and meat and, oh, by the way, all the silver we can hold?

What if there is no door, no way in—how do we make one?'

He wiped his mouth, reached for a skin and filled his horn, which was held between his knees, for the ground was too baked hard to stand it upright.

`More to the point,' he added, slashing us all with that black stare, 'how do you carry it away? In our shirts? Stuff it down our boots, or in our hats?'

`True enough,' Bagnose said cheerfully. `There's a mountain of silver. We'll need a few big boots for that.'

They chuckled and Einar explained, 'We need rope and hoes and mattocks and carts to carry all of that—

and to take the silver away in. And ponies to haul the carts. Not oxen, for they are too slow.'

There was silence while we all chewed on that and how to go about it. In the end, of course, Bersi put it to Einar.

`We wait,' he said. No one liked that answer.

'For what?' demanded Ketil Crow. 'We can take all those things—'

Ànd get how far—a mile? Two?' growled Illugi, shaking his head. 'Those horsemen move fast and charge hard.'

`Shouldn't have thrown so many apple cores at them,' offered Skarti, his lumpy face a nightmare in the red fireglow. No one laughed much at that, remembering the horsemen, their armour and lances and bows.

`Wait for what then?' demanded Valknut sullenly, pitching a dung chip into the fire. Ì'm sick of gods-cursed cowhides and glue.'

`Better that than a ladder up those walls,' said a voice from further in, a deep growl I recognised as a Novgorod Slav called Eindridi. There were a few growls of assent at that.

`We wait until we get hungrier than this,' Einar declared quietly. 'Until the animals are being slaughtered and salted because there isn't enough good grass for them around here. Until the saddles of those grain-fed horses go in a notch or two.'

Everyone stared blankly, bewildered. But I knew what he was making them think. Gods, he was clever and cold as the edge of winter, right enough.

`Forage parties,' said Illugi triumphantly. `Good reasons for being away from here with carts and horses and gear.'

`Right enough,' agreed Bersi and chuckled. 'Now there's deep-minded.'

I kept my counsel, for I had already seen forage parties going out, a collection of carts and horses, with thralls and women for the labouring and lance-armed cavalry for the muscle. Never foot warriors of the druzhina, though.

There was only one way, I realised, for varjazi like us to be away from all others, on the steppe with carts and horses and no questions asked, out of deference to our own rituals.

And some of us would have to die first.

`Forage parties. Deep thinking, right enough,' agreed Steinthor and tipped his ale horn empty. 'Now give us a riddle, Bag-nose, and brighten up the evening.'

And, as Bagnose screwed up his face and worked one out in his head, Einar met my stare across the fire, knew what I was thinking, dared me to speak it.

Ì am a strange creature, for I satisfy women, grow very tall and erect in bed, am hairy underneath and, now and then, a brave daughter of some fellow dares to hold me, grips my reddish skin, robs me of my head and puts me in her pantry. She remembers the meeting, her eyes moisten—' Bagnose intoned.

Àn onion,' roared someone from the back. 'Heard that one when I was still crawling . . .'

Eventually, Einar dropped his eyes, but I ached with too much tension to claim a triumph.

13 Up close, the dazzling walls of the White Castle were a disappointing tan and yellow, pocked with the scabs of hurled rocks and scored with lashes of black where fireballs had gored.

Merlons had crumbled, giving it the gap-toothed grin of a crone at whose feet was a litter of smashed tiles: Turk pictures of horses and men that looked like runes to us. Tamgas, they called them, and our battering stones had ripped them away.

The plain before the city seethed like an anthill. Horsemen thundered, lance-tips glittering through the huge pall of dust that hazed everything to a golden fog.

I sweated and longed for a drink. My eyes stung from the dust and it gritted in every crease under the armour and my helmet, even in the corners of my mouth, turning to mud with my spittle.

To my left was Bersi, shield lying against his knees, tying a leather thong round the fourth of his red braids, trembling from fever fits. To my right, Wryneck stuck the finger of one gnarled hand up his nose and dug out a plug of dust and snot, which he wiped absently on his breeks.

I saw the glassy white of old scars on the back of his hand, the mark of seasoned warriors everywhere—

the marks that were still raw and new on my own—since hands were almost always cut in fights, even friendly ones.

Behind us came the screeching groan of a giant with bellyache. It went on and on and ended with a clunk.

Then there was a sudden blast of heat and I shrank my head down into my neck, seeing that others were doing the same.

A pause. A huge blast of hot air and a deep booming thump: the great engine heaved a fireball over our heads, a streak of orange-red, trailing oily black smoke through the golden haze. I never saw or heard where it landed.

I saw a woman and child moving through the Oathsworn ranks, carrying yokes of clay water pitchers into which the men dipped, then drank gratefully. The woman smiled at Bersi, who grinned back through the fat, rolling globules of sweat on his face and said something in her ear that earned him a thump on the shoulder. But as she moved on, she was still smiling. , A horseman, bare-armed and wearing a leather helmet, trotted up to where Einar stood, a silhouette in the dust-gloom.

`Shit,' muttered Wryneck and I tensed, sensing his unease.

The horseman and Einar exchanged words, then the man galloped off and Einar said something to Valknut.

The Raven Banner went up so that everyone could see it. Then it dipped twice, three times in quick succession, the signal to move forward.