The White Raven (5 page)

'Are we raiding, then?' demanded Ospak. Red Njal, lumbering past him to plooter into the shallows with his boots round his neck, gave a sharp bark of a laugh. Other old hands joined in, knowing no sensible man of our kind goes even as far as the privy without an edge on him somewhere.

'A smile blocks most cuts,' Red Njal shouted over his shoulder as he slung a shield up to the thwarts, 'but best to have a blade for those who scowl, as my granny used to say.'

The wind whipped my braids on either side of my face and the new, splendid sail bellied and strained above me. The prow beast went up a long wave and skidded down the other side and I heard Onund and Gizur cry out with the delight of it, while I stole a look at Finn, who was muttering and clutching his battered, broad-brimmed hat.

He caught me at it and scowled.

'There is a bag of winds in this hat, for sure,' he growled. 'I am thinking we should seek out old Ivar and have him tell the secret of it.'

Old Ivar, less his famous weather-hat and almost everything else he possessed, was fled to Gotland and unlikely to feel disposed to share any secrets with the likes of us, but I did not even have to voice that aloud to Finn. We stood for a while, he turning the hat this way and that and muttering runespells Klepp had taught him, me feeling the skin of my face stiffen and stretch with the salt in the air.

We ran with the wind until Gizur and Hauk decided they had found all the faults with
beitass
and
rakki
lines and all the other ship-stuff that bothered them, then we turned round into the wind, flaking the great striped sail back to the mast. Sighing, men took to their benches and started to pull back to the land.

Crew light as we were and running into an off-shore wind, the
Fjord Elk
danced on the water while men offered 'heyas' of admiration to Onund for making such a fine vessel. For his part, he hunched into his furs and watched the amount of water swilling down between the rowers' feet with a critical scowl.

I stood in the prow, glad not to be pulling on an oar. I stared out across the grey-green glass of stippled water to the dusted blue of the land, one foot on the thwart, one hand on a bracing line.

'It is the still and silent sea that drowns a man,' said a voice, like the doom of an unseen reef, right in my ear. I leaped, startled and stared into the apologetic face of Red Njal who had left his oar to piss.

'As my granny used to say,' he added, directing a hot stream over the side.

'Point that away, you thrallborn whelp,' roared Finnlaith from beneath him, 'for if you wet me it will be this silent sea that drowns you.'

'Thrallborn!' Red Njal spat back indignantly, half-turning towards Finnlaith as he spoke; men cursed him and he hastily pointed himself back to the sea, yelling his apologies and curses at Finnlaith for insulting him.

'Do not despise thralls,' Onund growled blackly at Red Njal. 'The best man I knew was a thrall, the reason I left Iceland.' The panting rowers lifted their heads like hounds on a spoor, for Onund rarely spoke of anything and never of why he had left Iceland. They kept their eyes on the man in front, all the same, to keep the rhythm of the rowing.

Onund went on, 'I was with Gisli, the one they call Soursop, from Geirthiofsfirth, in Thorsnes, who was declared outlaw there some years ago. He had a thrall called Thord Hareheart, for he was not a brave man, but a fast runner.'

There were chuckles between the pulling-grunts; a good byname was as fine as good verse. Finn moved down the ranks, offering water from a skin, feeding it to men who kept pulling as they sucked it greedily.

'Outlawed or not, Gisli was not about to quit Thorsnes,' Onund told us. 'So men hunted him. He took his spear, formed from a blade-magic sword called Graysteel, which he had stolen and not returned, though it worked out badly for him — but that's another story.'

Men grinned as they pulled, for the winter seemed to promise some good Iceland tales round the fire.

Finn left off with his watering and came closer to listen.

Onund grunted and went on. 'He also took Thord and as they were heading towards the steading, in the dark and cautious, he suddenly handed Thord his favourite blue cloak. For friendship he said, against the cold. Then they were attacked by three men and Thord ran, as he always did — but the attackers saw the cloak and thought it was Gisli.

'They hurled their spears and one went through Thord's back and out the other side. Then Gisli, who had spotted the men lying in wait for him, came out of hiding and killed them all, now that they had only seaxes.'

'Seems like a fair fight to me,' Finn growled and Onund shrugged, which was a fearsome sight.

'So others say,' he replied, 'but I thought it a mean trick on a helpless and faithful nithing, and one which brought no honour to Gisli, who was already lacking in that richness for many other reasons, not least his easy Christ-signing. So I left his boat unfinished and came here.'

'Others have signed to the White Christ,' Finn argued and Onund, who knew well that Finn, among others of the Oathsworn, had done that once, nodded, considering.

'I know it. The Englisc and others west of Jutland are nearly all Christ-followers now and will not trade with those who are not,' he growled. Tor all that, it is no honourable thing to throw off your gods, even for a little time, just for silver.'

'To be without silver is better than to be without honour,' Red Njal agreed sombrely, tucking himself back into his breeks and moving back to his bench. Finn, mired in an argument he felt he was losing, glared at him.

'Before you mention her,' he snarled, 'let me just say that your old granny should have remembered the oldest saw of all — a tongue cut out seldom gossips.'

Red Njal pursed his lips with sorrow, shaking his head. 'There is only mingled friendship when a man can utter his whole mind to another,' he countered. 'You have my granny to thank for that and my forbearance.'

'Never trust the words of a woman,' Finn intoned, 'for their hearts were shaped on a wheel.'

'With his ears let him listen, with his eyes let him look —so a wise man spies out the way,' Red Njal spat back.

'Shut up, the pair of you,' shouted Kvasir, which brought a brief spasm of throaty chuckles.

It was there, basking in that glow of being on a fine, new ship with the only true family I knew and aware that I was enjoying it, that I felt the breath of Odin, a sharp chill that shuddered me, made me turn to where the antlered prow beast snarled.

The grey-green sea was the same and the gloomed blue of the land — but now there was a dark stain on part of it and the evil wink of a single red eye.

I stared, trying to make sense of it, until Finn shoved his spray-dusted beard inches from my cheek and did it for me. 'Smoke and fire,' he said. 'Hestreng.'

I was still grasping at the swirling leaves of my thoughts when he turned back to where the men bent and pulled. 'Row, fuck your mothers!' he roared. 'Our hall is burning.'

We hauled hard, creaming the
Fjord Elk
up and over the waves, pounding her into the shore, while those not rowing fixed helmets, checked thonging and studied the edge of blades for sharpness.

The panic in me was a spur that kept me pacing like a caged dog from mastfish to prow beast and back, until Kvasir smacked the flat of his blade on my helmet, hard enough to ring some sense into me.

He did not have to speak at all, but I met him eye to eye and nodded my thanks. His grin was hard-eyed and I remembered, with a start, about his wife, Thorgunna, as well as Botolf, Ingrid and Aoife and all the others. Like a fret of swirling wind, the thoughts circled in me. Who? Who would dare?

There was no answer to it. We had more enemies than friends, like all sea-raiders and the curse of it was that I made us vulnerable by giving those enemies a place to attack, a sure place where they knew we could be found.

Gizur howled at the rowers, who grunted and sweated and hauled until the last moment, then clattered in the oars while the keel drove hard and grinding up the shingle and men spilled out.

I scrambled to the thwarts and hurled on to the shells and pebbles, stumbled a few steps and saw men ahead, fired by fear of what they might have lost, churning up the stones and coarse sand towards Hestreng.

'Finn . . .' I yelled and he saw it and bellowed like a bull in heat, bringing most of them to a stop.

'Wait, you dirty swords,' Kvasir added at the top of his voice, as men swilled like foam. 'We go together.

The Oathsworn. As a crew.'

They roared and clattered blades on shields at that, but the truth was that most of them had sworn no oath yet; even as they trotted after me, panting like hounds, I had to hope they would fight, if only to protect their own wee bits and pieces littering my hall.

It was clear, when we came up over the rise that sheltered Hestreng from the sea, that it was not my hall that burned, or any part of it — I felt a dizzying wave of relief, followed at once by an equal wash of guilt at those who had been unlucky.

'Gunnarsgard; Kvasir said, squinting to the feathered smoke and the red stain beneath it. 'Tor's steading has gone up.'

No real friend to us, but a neighbour for all that and I was on the point of stepping out towards the place when Kvasir bulled off towards Hestreng's hall, dragging Finnlaith and others in his wake. Heading, of course, for his wife; shamed, I followed on.

I heard the clatter of iron on wood and the high, thin bell of steel on steel. By the time I had caught up with Kvasir and the knot of Oathsworn grunting their way round the privy to the yard beyond, I could hear individual panting and roars.

When I spilled into the yard, Finnlaith and Ospak were already screaming 'Ui Neill' and charging at a knot of men held at bay by the great, sweat-soaked figure of Botolf, timber foot firmly rooted in the lower slope of the dung heap and a great long axe circling and scything in his hands. Kvasir, ignoring all of them, charged on towards the hall.

A man, all dirty fleece and snarl, heaved a spear at me, which took me by surprise so that I barely got my shield in the way and had it torn from my finger-short grasp by the smack of it.

There was nothing in me but stoked anger, blood-red and driving. I did not even have my own blade out of the sheath, but placed one booted foot on the shield and wrenched the spear from the linden. Then I came at the man, who had a seax and the red-mawed look of a man who knew how to use it.

I remember using the butt of the spear in a half circle, catching the short blade of his seax and whirling it sideways, bringing the blade of the spear down in a cut that made him jerk his face away. It tore down his fleece and he gave a yelp, but it was all too late for him.

I drove the point into his belly, just below the breastbone and kept moving, so that he jerked like a gaffed fish and shrieked, his legs milling uselessly as I shoved him back and back and back until he hit the side of the brewhouse, where I impaled him on the sagging wattle wall.

Finn dragged me away from him, eventually. Later he told me I had crushed the man into the wall and looked to be bringing the whole brewhouse down, screaming for him to tell me who he was, who had dared attack the Oathsworn.

The rest of the crew came panting up and those arrived too late kicked the dead in their disappointment —

and all the men were dead, I saw. Six of them.

Botolf, panting and red-faced, stumped towards me, grinning.

'Nithing whoresons,' he said and spat on the nearest. 'A
strandhogg,
I was thinking, come to steal chickens and horses. Thorgunna saw them in the meadow, rounding up mares with no great skill and knew them for what they were at once.'

Thorgunna . . . my head came up, ashamed and guilty at having forgotten her, but Botolf broadened his grin.

'A woman, that,' he said admiringly and, just then, Kvasir appeared, Thorgunna with him, Ingrid behind her. Following on came Aoife, with Cormac on her hip and the thralls, Drumba and Heg.

'They had barred the hall door,' Kvasir said.

'That was sound,' Finn offered, beaming and Thorgunna huffed and folded her arms under her ample breasts.

'That was only sense,' she spat back, 'when such friends as
yours
come to call.'

'No friends of mine,' Finn answered grimly and turned a body with his toe. 'Yet, mind you, this one looks familiar.'

'Parted at birth, I am sure,' Ingrid muttered bitterly and, for all they seemed more angry than afraid, I saw the fluster and tremble in them.

'My sister,' Thorgunna said flatly and I blinked at that, having forgotten that Thordis was at Gunnarsgard, wife to Tor.

'Finn — choose some good men,' I said swiftly, seeing the path clearly for the first time since the smoke had stained my world. 'Botolf — guard the women here. Kvasir — stay with your wife and command the men I leave.'

'Guard the women,' muttered Botolf moodily. 'Guard the women . . .'

'And your tongue,' Ingrid snapped and then, to her horror, burst into tears. Thorgunna gathered her up and turned away.

'They came looking for
you
,' she said to me suddenly. 'Yelled out your name, as if they knew you.'

'Shot arrows into Hrafn, all the same,' Botolf added grimly, 'when he came at them for stealing his mares.

The beast is limping about like a hedgepig, if he is standing at all.'

Finn and I looked at each other and he looked down at the lolled body of the man he thought he knew.

'Old friends,' he grunted.