The White Raven (30 page)

Worse than them were the Chosen, of whom I was one. We had taken off byrnies and layers of clothing, down to almost no more than a tunic, a helmet, breeks and boots. The cold no longer seeped, it chewed on us as we stamped and shivered — if it had not been for the battle-fire burning in us, we would already be blue and dying.

Dobrynya rode forward with little Vladimir, now in his silvered mail and plumed helmet, every inch a half-sized warrior. Sigurd led sixty horsemen — the last war horses still capable of being ridden by armoured men — in a long sweep to the far gate, a move designed to drag defenders away from this one.

Olaf was with him and gave a cheerful wave.

The rest of the
druzhina,
on foot and with bows uncased, were lined up and waiting behind the Oathsworn, beyond bowshot range of the defenders. From behind the gate came the sound of hammering; the defenders at work. I worried, then, that they were nailing the bar to the gate, which would make things hard for us.

'A good morning to die,' declared Vladimir sternly, which was something his father had no doubt been fond of saying. I said nothing, for such a statement was far short of a battle speech designed to get our ice-limbed men moving. Beside, unclenching my jaw only made my teeth chatter.

'Time to begin,' declared Dobrynya.

'Just so,' said Vladimir and hefted his little spear. Then the two of them set their shields, kicked their horses and ran straight at the gate.

Say what you like about Vladimir — and many did as he grew into his power — but he had courage. The idea was Dobrynya's, to test how many archers the defenders had and, I learned later, he had wanted to do it alone. A swift gallop, the throw of a spear into the gate — the traditional way to announce the start of a siege with no quarter — then another swift gallop back to safety.

Vladimir added himself to the plan and showed his deep-thinking even then, for the men were as impressed by this display as they had been depressed by his loss of face in front of Farolf the day before.

He thundered his way up to the walls, hurled his little spear over and then yelled, his voice cracked with youth and excitement: 'Idu na vy!'

The
druzhina
bawled out their approval.
Idu na vy —
I am coming against you, his father's war-cry to his enemies. Vladimir's followers were so roaring with what had been done that it leaped to the Oathsworn and the blood surged up in them, too, so that they beat on their shields and howled like wolves. Steam rose.

Only a few desultory arrows flew at the pair of riders as they galloped back and slithered to a stop, the horses panting already, unfit and malnourished.

'Well,' said Dobrynya, his eyes glittering with excitement. and amusement. 'We have done our part, Jarl Orm.'

I turned, the belly-clenching fear of what had to come next filling me. The Oathsworn were ready and I fought for something clever to say — then Odin, as ever, stepped in and made the dog bark inside the village.

All our heads turned. A dog, alive and uneaten. That meant they had food to spare and,. even if it was stinking fare, that dog was good eating and belonged to us. I said so and it was enough. Heads went back and howls went up, so that the hackles on everyone else's neck went stiff — the Oathsworn had scented blood.

We trotted forward, shields up. The
druzhina
bowmen moved forward and fired in staggered volleys; shafts whirred, thunked into timbers. I looked to my left, to where Finn snarled, then to my right, where Ospak loped. Six men raced ahead, three of them with shields.

The gate was a double-door affair set in a frame of timber ramparts. There was no earthwork here, obviously, so two timber squares had been erected on the earthwork on either side of the gate — but the actual palisade was made from the same length of timbers as all the rest. Which meant it was feet shorter with no earthwork to stand on and there was no rampart above the gate, only a solid balk of timber; a man on horseback would have to duck to get through the opened doors.

Six men crashed into the timbers of the gate. The tower defenders bobbed up to shoot them and ducked hastily back down as arrows drummed into the wood near their heads. The three pairs unshipped a shield, grasped it between them and looked back at us.

'Bone, blood and steel,' Finn growled, grinning and savage as a mad dog and Ospak howled up at the sky, his neck cording. Our axes clashed, three as one, our breath smoked together and I found I was sweating-warm, though I could not feel my feet. Then we sprinted, a bearded axe in either hand, running, it seemed to me, on the stumps of our ankles.

We were the lightest — well, save for Finn and I wanted at least one mad fighting man for what we did.

Ospak was small and I was no beefy oarsman, so we leaped on the shields and were hurled upwards with ease by those picked for the ox-hump rowing muscle across their shoulders.

I flopped over the top of the palisade, scrabbling on the age-smoothed points of the timbers, then swung my legs and dropped. Ospak, even lighter than me, practically vaulted over; Finn hooked one bearded axe in the top timbers and hauled himself up and over. Already, three more steam-smoked Chosen were hurling themselves at the shieldmen.

I landed with a crash and on my bad ankle. Ospak sprawled beside me and was up in a moment, snarling and roaring. He hurled one axe up and to his right, felling an archer. Then he waited for the rush of armed men.

Finn landed like a cat and did not wait for anything. Roaring, he hurled himself at the nearest men, both axes already blurring in his big fists.

'Get the gate, Orm!'

I got up, half-turned –– a body hurled down, fell over cursing and rolled upright. Tjorvir. A second landed nearby, was getting up and an arrow took him in the foot. Howling, pinned to the frozen ground by it, Snorri Littli had to reach down and try to tug it free. Tjorvir cursed his way to the right-hand tower ladder, hurling one axe upwards and snarling at the men above as he forged up to them.

I turned all the way to the gate — and stopped. The bar was there, right enough but there was a man on it.

His right hand was nailed to the bar and his left was nailed to the gate on the other side. Thorstein Cod-Biter hung between the double doors, dripping blood and looking at me from the bruised ruin of his face. Farolf's last vicious joke and the hammering I had heard earlier.

'Get the gate!' screamed Finn as Runolf Harelip, crashing over the palisade, scrambled to his side to fight off the knots of defenders, armed with spears and shields and axes. Someone else cursed and slavered on top of the gate timbers and did not jump but I was only vaguely aware of him.

Cod-Biter's eyes met mine, blue and glittering as a summer sea. He grinned from a bloody mouth and I thought he winked, but one eye was already lost in blood and bruises, so I might have been mistaken.

All of that seemed to last a week but, looking back on it now, was no longer than the time it took me to draw breath, hold it and swing one axe at his right hand. It severed it at the wrist, slantwise and too high, so that half the forearm went with it, for I was a bad axeman and it was my left hand, with only a three-fingered grip.

My right-hand axe hooked under the bar and I found myself roaring into the effort of lifting it. I thought it was easy at the time; it came up and out of the sockets as if greased and the gates swung wide and inwards, dragging Cod-Biter, still nailed to the right-hand timbers, the remains of his forearm and hand nailed to the other side. Thor gave me his strength and the muscles on my arm ached for weeks afterwards — even Finn was admiring, for the beam took two men to lift.

I felt nothing at the time. I was busy trying to gently prise Cod-Biter off the timbers of the gate, while supporting his weight to stop the nail tearing through his remaining palm.

I was vaguely aware of men piling through the opened gate, shrieking and howling, cutting, stabbing and cursing but I took no part in it and killed no-one. Even when the man fell from the top of the gate with a crack and a thump I hardly looked up until he started to writhe and scream, high and shrill like a hurt horse.

By then I had worked the nail out and Cod-Biter was bleeding so badly that I concentrated on tying cords round his arms and forgot the screamer.

'I will take him now, Jarl Orm,' said a familiar voice and made me look up from the pool of bloody slush I knelt in, blinking at the opaque orb of a face. Slowly, it became Thorgunna, who smiled a sad, blue-pinched smile and knelt. The fighting was over.

'I will take him,' she said and I nodded and stumbled up, feeling Cod-Biter's blood start to congeal and freeze on my knees.

'A rare fight,' said a voice and I looked round to where Dobrynya sat on his thin and weary horse. He lifted his sabre and saluted me. The little prince, of course, was already trotting triumphantly round the village square, demanding that Farolf be brought to him.

Farolf was already dead and Gyrth's long-axe was so buried in his chest that both Finnlaith and Glum Skulasson were hard put to get it out. Finn was nearby, kneeling by the side of Harelip, who had taken two arrows in the back from the tower before the archers could be felled.

'Farolf? Dead is he?' shrilled Vladimir, irritated. 'Well, he shall be staked anyway.'

Gyrth grunted, a coughing sound like a poked bear.

'He is mine. I killed him. He will lie at the feet of Runolf Harelip here.'

Finn, as if coming out of sleep, stirred and blinked, then nodded at Gyrth and extended his wrist for the Boulder Brother to haul him to his feet. They both stared, cold-faced, at the little prince.

Vladimir frowned angrily, then he saw Finn's look and was clever enough to see the mood — for which all the gods had to be thanked, I thought. Still, he was a prince and had been since four, so he was not so easily cowed.

'You fought well,' he agreed, then added imperiously. 'I shall consent.'

'Now there's good of him,' muttered Gyrth. Finn sagged a little then, suddenly seeming old and stiff. He dusted the snow off his knees and turned to me, eyes glassed with misery, one loose-held axe rimed with freezing blood.

'Harelip,' he said to me, almost pleading. 'Harelip, Orm. I sailed everywhere with Runolf Harelip.'

I had no answer for him. There were fewer original Oathsworn left than could crew a decent faering these days. Seven seasons ago, when a boy I no longer recognized scrambled up the strakes of Einar the Black's
Fjord Elk,
there had been a full crew, sixty or more.

'Aye,' grunted Onund Hnufa, shoving Vladimir's horse aside with the lack of ceremony a man from Iceland always showed to men and kings both. 'It is a hard life at sea, right enough. Now — where is that dog?'

13 They had not known what we were, these Slavs of the Novgorod
druzhina.
A Norse band of sometime outlaws, ragged-arsed brigands at best and not to be compared to fighting men, who spent all their time training for war.

They had swallowed the tales of the were-wyrms of Malkyiv, but they had never actually seen us fight. Now they had. The village had been taken in less time than it took to eat the dog in a stew and those defenders left alive were shaking with it yet, for they really were no more than hired knife-wavers.

The villagers liked us, too, for we had not run mad as they had feared, killing and raping and looting and they were grateful for that and thought us decent. The gods would need to help them if other northers ever arrived at their door, who were not so cold that a short fight stole their strength and who could be turned from skirt-lifting by the first piece of chewable bread.

Little Vladimir was stunned enough by what we had done to become polite. Sigurd, the only one who had suspected what we were capable of, was lip to ear with Dobrynya for days afterwards, while Vladimir's uncle had a calculating look when he glanced over at me.

The rest of the company, Slavs and thralls and those of Klerkon's men who remained alive, walked soft round the Oathsworn and the fear rose from them like stink on a hot day. There were mutterings of

"Jomsvikings" — which was close to the truth, for those Wends of Wolin have stolen half our tales, puffed like pigeon chests by the saga-poets.