Oathsworn 1 - The Whale Road (36 page)

`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.

There was a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, a coldness that reached to my groin and shrank it to the kernel of a nut. I was in the front rank: the Lost. Behind was another mailed rank and behind that two ranks of unarmoured men with long spears. A fifth rank contained Bagnose, Steinthor and every other man who knew which end of a bow was which.

Twenty men wide, five ranks deep, the Oathsworn tramped through the haze to war.

I had no idea who was to our left or right—or if anyone was. I knew our job was to protect this engine, now thrust close to the walls, which loomed now and then through the swirl of dust and smoke.

Àre we attacking?' I asked Wryneck and he grunted, hefting his shield to a more comfortable position.

'Nah,
they
are coming at
us
, I am thinking,' he replied, blinking sweat from his eyes.

The Raven Banner swung side to side. I had forgotten what that meant, but no one moved so I stayed where I was, too. Then I saw bowmen and realised Einar had called them out to skirmish in front of us.

Engines thumped and whooshed, men shrieked and cried in the unseen haze, horses galloped back and forth. Horns blared somewhere. A block of spear-armed men jogged diagonally across our front, heading to our rear. Ours? Khazar? Attacking? Running? I was licking cracked lips and looking wildly left and right when Wryneck nudged me.

`Don't try to eat it, Orm Bear Slayer,' he growled. 'If they come up our arse, there is nothing you can do now to prevent it. If it happens, we will deal with it, but there's no sense in chewing on it. That way, you not only end up with men up your arse, but you have ruined all this perfectly quiet time.'

Perfectly quiet? Horns blasted again.

Horsemen cantered up and past us. I saw one . . . then another . . . and another turn in the saddle, nock arrows and let fly behind them.

`Get ready,' said Bersi, hunching his shoulders.

`Shield!' roared Einar. A pause. 'Wall!'

The shields came up with a single great clash of overlap. My right hand slammed the crosspiece of my sword hard against the join with my neighbour and we were now locked. Einar and Valknut turned and moved to one end, rather than force a way through us.

Arrows hissed out of the murk, skittering along the raw, tramped earth, slapping weakly off a shield here and there. Bersi was shaking, the sweat rolling off him and mixing with the dust to turn his back and underarms to mud.

Our bowmen scampered back, trying to make for the ends of our line. Those who couldn't pitched their bows over our heads and dived for our feet, wriggling like eels between our boots.

The ground trembled. More horsemen appeared, swirling like sparrows when they saw us. They looked no different to our own: men on horses with bows, fur-clad helmets, tan cloaks, white tunics. They shrieked from black-bearded faces, loosed a straggle of arrows and wheeled away, back into their own dust.

We stood. Wryneck reached over his locked shield, swept his sword down and sheared off the shaft of an arrow I had not even seen or heard. I swallowed the hot lump in my throat, but it stuck and choked me.

The ground shook and thunder rolled somewhere.

`Spears,' Einar called and they came hissing past my ear, sticking beyond us, a hedge of points.

'F-fucker,' stammered Bersi, his teeth clattering. 'Nearly had m-m-my f-f-fucking ear then.'

The ground danced; the thunder resolved to a rolling drum of noise. The dust seethed, figures loomed and the Khazar horse crashed out of the gloom.

They were unsure where we were, moving too slowly and too late to speed up when they spotted us.

They were a sally force to wreck the siege engines and were out to hit hard and run, but the sight of a hundred-odd men, mailed, with the obvious red cloaks of a
druzhina
and the grim faces of seasoned warriors, made them haul on reins.

The spear-points did the rest. That hedge wasn't for them. They came to a halt, rank upon rank crashing into each other, ruining their formation.

Our archers sailed arrows at them from flanks and over our heads, which clattered on them but did little harm. Then they lumbered round, cursing and shrieking, and moved off like some giant, frustrated beast, back into the mirk.

Someone cheered and we all took it up, pounding sword on shield and offering deep `booms' of taunt to them until the dust choked us.

We stayed there for another hour, eating the dry steppe until we were spitting mud, sweltering and baking, locked in the shield-wall, until someone remembered and sent word to stand down.

Weary, we tramped back to our scraps of cloth awnings and tents near the river—anything that gave shade—and dropped, gulping water the women and children brought, too choked and hot and tired to think of food. The whining insect clouds plunged on us at once.

`That was well done,' beamed Skarti, clattering helmet and shield down. 'We saw them off and no one got a scratch. A good day for the Oathsworn of Einar.'

A few agreed with grunts; most were too tired to say anything. We swatted flies when we had the energy and Skarti lost his good humour, maddened by them. 'What did they eat before we came?' he demanded, slapping furiously. Like all of us, he was covered in the red weals of their bites.

À pity Skapti never made it this far,' growled Kvasir from the dark of a makeshift lean-to. 'They could have eaten him all day and left us alone.'

Women slithered between us as the sun died, lighting pitfires and hooking cauldrons on their chains and tripods over them. The smell of woodsmoke made my heart ache for remembered fires and the eye-sting of it was a small price to pay for the disappearance of the insects.

Gradually, as the heat seeped out of the ground, the Oathsworn moved closer to the fires, found fresh energy and started to weave themselves back together. I knew they were recovered when Finn Horsehead hunkered down beside me and shoved a coin into my face. 'What's this, young Orm? You know coins like ostlers know horses.'