The Prow Beast (14 page)

That’s what I told them and they nodded, millstone-grim and silent. I did not tell them of the vicious gnawing in my heart and belly at what I had done to Koll. Too taken up with everything else, I had been happy to have him cared for by the women – and grateful for the soft, consoling words that the priest seemed to be offering him. My words, they should have been – but I was too busy with the work of protecting him to notice how he had strayed into danger.

Some foster-father me, and now I was thinking I would never find out if I might have improved on the task, for him or me, or both, would be dead soon.

Others came up and said their farewells, so that I was glad to leave in the end, away from the weight of their sadness. Their faces, pale blobs of concern in the whey-light of dawn, looked at me with that hard, miserable stare I had given others I knew I would never see again.

But it was only Thorgunna’s face, stricken and
skyr
-pale, that stayed with me all the way to the bridge.

It was a fine bridge – Finn said so. Narrow enough for two men to hold against many.

So Botolf looked at us, from one to the other, the babe crooked in his arm and one hand on the head of Toki.

‘Bone, blood and steel,’ Finn said and gave him the bag of arse-wrappings. Nothing more was said, just a nod and a clasp for each of us, wrist to wrist, then Botolf turned abruptly and hirpled over the bridge, Toki and the unwilling goat trotting behind him.

Botolf did not look back, yet I knew he was seeing us there and would see us for the rest of his life, standing on that bridge and not dead. Like Pinleg, long ago, dying under a shrieking pack of swords on a beach, allowing us to sail safely away – if we did not see his death happen, then perhaps he was fighting there still.

‘That is that, then,’ Finn said, when the big man and the boy and the goat had vanished. He peered over the side of the bridge, as if checking for trolls, then hauled out The Godi and inspected the edge.

‘Your doom is not on you,’ I said to him, though my bowels were water as I spoke it. ‘You should go with him.’

Finn cocked one eyebrow, looking at me from under the tangle of his hair, which he refused to tie back – it revealed that he only had one good ear, the other mangled in a fight.

‘Who knows what the Norns weave?’ he replied with a shrug. ‘This could be my day or not – but you cannot hold this bridge alone.’

He grinned.

‘Bone, blood…’ he began.

‘…and steel,’ I finished.

He took off his sheath and shed his cloak, for he did not want them tangling his legs in the fight. He checked the straps on his helmet and put it on, hunched his shoulders a few times to settle the rust-streaked ring-coat he wore, for it was not his own, then sat, leaning back against the stone of the bridge, while the water splashed and sang.

I envied him and hated him in equal measure; Finn, the man who feared nothing. How could he not tremble and find a great spear in his throat that made it impossible to swallow? Frothing madmen in skins would come after us and he had the wit to imagine what would happen. But all he did was open a lazy eye and wonder who Assur had been.

It was the inscription, weathered and lichen-streaked, on the grey stone by the bridge –
Helga, ThorgæiRs dottir, systir SygrøðaR auk þæiRa Gauts, hun let giæra bro þæssa auk ræisa stæin þænna æftir Assur bonda sinn. SaR waR wikinga warðr mæð Gæiti. Siþi sa manr is þusi kubl ub biruti.

‘Helga, daughter of Thorgar, sister of Sygrida and Gauts and others, she had this bridge made and this stone raised after Assur, her husband. He was an oathsworn guard with Gauts. Let him practise
seidr
, the man who this monument destroys.’

‘A good curse, that last – see, it is written as if in warning to anyone who desecrates the monument, but also that the monument itself will destroy. A good runesman, that.’

‘A well-thought-of man, this Assur,’ I noted, seeing the power of the runes there. Only his name survived, but this Assur would be remembered for as long as stone and we knew he had a loving wife and sisters, who thought enough of him to make runes for him.

‘A sworn man, like us,’ Finn noted and grinned. ‘Good place to die, then, under a monument to a sword-brother.’

I was not so sure – a silly stone bridge leading to nowhere. Fitting, all the same, for the life we had led. Finn scowled when I blurted this out.

‘Once it led to the best trees for miles around,’ he pointed out. ‘Good pine for ship planks and resin. No matter the place – we stand defending the back of a prince and what could be more fitting for the famed Oathsworn of Orm Bear Slayer than that? Besides, even now, it is a place of beauty.’

Once, I wanted to point out to him gloomily, it had been the famed Oathsworn of Einar the Black, save he was now dead – so where did it get him? But Finn had the right of it about the place and I raised my head to the sun and the joyous sea-swallow and the clouds like snow. Below, life bubbled in a stream, which started with the melting of snow in the mountains, flowing and merging out to the warm sea, where the sun sucked it up and dragged it back over the mountains to fall as snow again.

The Norns’ loom of life; I drank it in, sucked it in like a parched man with water.

Then Finn slid to his feet and said: ‘They are here.’

They came loping up the rough path to the bridge and stopped; two men, spear-armed and without armour or helmets, though they had shields and I saw knives at their belts. They stopped, wolf-wary at the sight of two ringmailed warriors, well-armed and shielded.

Randr’s trackers, I was thinking, and Finn agreed, with a derisive spit in their direction. I would have added one of my own if I had had any water in my mouth.

They crouched a little, the two men, and one looked over his shoulder. In a moment, three other men appeared and I felt Finn shift a little, settling himself behind his shield; the bearcoats were here. Three only – I wondered where the others were.

One was tawny-haired, with a massive beard plaited in at least four braids, heavy with fat iron rings. Over stained clothing that had once been fine, he had a stiff-furred cloak – a boar skin it looked like to me – and he carried a sword with a deal of silver on it, but a blade notched as a dog’s jaw.

A second wore the pelt of a wolf, the head and top jaw over his leather helmet, the paws tied on his chest, so that when he lowered his head and loped up, it raised the hairs on my arms, for he looked like a wolf on its hind legs – but the two swords he carried, one in either fist, were his true fangs.

The third wore ringmail and a bearcoat, had a dark beard cut short and his hair braided tight and coiled – a careful man, then, who did not want anything for an enemy to grab. He carried a long axe and I did not like the look of this one at all, knew him for their leader by the way the other two glanced at him, looking for instruction.

He stopped then and rested one hand casually on the top haft of the long axe, resting his chin lightly on the inch or so of wood above the bitt. It was as if he was meeting old friends.

‘Stenvast, they call me,’ he called out. ‘I see you.’

‘Ingimund,’ bellowed the tawny one, slapping his sword on his shield. ‘Son of Tosti, son of Ulfkel, son of Floki Hooknose of Oppland. I fear no man.’

Finn sighed, as if weary.

‘I am Finn Bardisson of Skane,’ he replied, just loud enough to carry the distance between them, ‘and I can change that.’

‘Randr had the right of it, then,’ Stenvast said. ‘Three men, a boy and a goat – milk for the bairn, was it?’

‘Aye,’ agreed Finn easily. ‘He is a sharp one, that Randr. He will cut himself one day – or someone will. He should have sent more of you, all the same. This is not a little insulting.’

‘Best if you stand aside,’ Stenvast said, ‘but I see you will not do that.’

‘I am Guthrum,’ the wolfskin said to me. ‘You are Orm, leader of the Oathsworn. I see you and have come to take your life.’

‘Three men guard my life,’ I answered, hoping my voice did not sound hoarse with fear, ‘Odin, Thor and Frey. None may harm me, unless he is greater than they.’

He made a sign against that old charm and I laughed at him, but my top lip stuck to my teeth and I hoped he had not seen that.

We stood and waited and that was part of what little plan we had; they were
beserker
and so a strange breed, having a power that made folk afraid, which fear fed the power. Some, like Pinleg, could summon it in an eyeblink and others needed time, needed to pace like trapped animals and growl and work up to it, believing they were sucking up the strength and speed of the skins they wore. It was said that others licked the strange slime off the backs of toads, or drank bog myrtle brews, but I had not seen any of that myself.

Let them do what they will, we had agreed, for every minute we held them at the bridge was a stride or two more for Botolf and Toki.

‘I say the boar will get to it first,’ Finn growled at me, without looking away from his man. ‘An ounce of silver says he will go piggy-eyed and charge before any of the others.’

I should have taken his bet, for it was the wolf-skin who reached his power first, throwing back his head and howling it out – then he came at me, all blinding hand-speed and fast shuffle, so that I fell back a little and heard the blades score down my shield and shriek off the boss. All I could manage in return was a half-hearted wave of my blade, then he was bounding back, crouching and boring in again.

Like a wolf, I thought. He attacks, low and fast, trying for the soft spots, trying to disable and bring me down like a bull elk…but you needed a pack for that. One was not enough and I cut him badly on his third attack and he bounced back, looked at his forearm and shook his head, grinning with foam-smoked lips. There was no blood and no pain – and no focus in his mad eyes when he came at me again.

There were clangs and grunts and yells from my left but I dared not look – but a flicker on my right made me half-turn my head; Stenvast slid past me and, for a moment, I thought he was going to take me from behind and felt a shriek of terror at the thought of two of them. Then Guthrum slithered in again, blades whirling and I had to block and cut and dance with him.

‘Finn…’

It was a stupid, desperate call and might have been the death of Finn if he had been a lesser fighter – but he did not turn his head, simply cursed and yelled back that he was a little busy at the moment. Stenvast vanished over the bridge and up the trail.

Guthrum howled and leaped and bounced and I cut back at him when I could, but knew the best I could do was hang on and not let him kill me. My breath rasped and wheezed loud in my ears under the helmet; a blade scored the ringmail sleeve of my sword-arm, another spanged off the hilt of my sword.

He bored in again, a high cut that I barely blocked with the shield; it sliced slivers off the edge and scored along under the rim of my helmet above one eye, so that I saw, for a glimmering moment, the pits in the blade-metal and the change in colour where core met cutting edge. I stumbled back, felt the coping stones of the parapet on the backs of my thighs and twisted desperately to one side, not wanting to go over.

There was a great, soft roaring in my ears and the world went black, then red. I felt a blow on my belly, thought to myself, well, there is the soup-wound, no pain yet but here it comes, the death and the offering to Odin, make it quick, One-Eye…

Light flashed, red-smeared. A great, filthy finger poked me in the eye and Finn’s face loomed, streaked with sweated rust from under his helmet. The hand came again, with a rag in it, and he wiped my face.

‘Nasty wee cut, Bear Slayer. Lots of blood, but no real damage. Good scar, though, which will make women swoon and men back off.’

I struggled upright. Finn handed me the blood-soaked rag and sank down on one knee; one sleeve was bloody at the forearm and three men were dead behind him.

‘What?’ I said, shaking the red mist from my eyes and the inside of my head.

‘Aye, all dead,’ Finn answered cheerfully. ‘That wolf man included, unless he can survive a long drop and a dookin in the river below us. Neat trick that, Bear Slayer – I thought he had you until you turned him off the bridge.’

I blinked and got up on shaky legs, looking round.

‘I did not turn him,’ I said. ‘At least, I did not mean to. At least, I do not think I meant to.’

‘Do not fash,’ Finn replied, getting off his knee and wincing as he did so, holding his ribs.

‘He got you one then,’ I noted and Finn snorted.

‘Not that bladder Ingimund – I killed him in a heartbeat, but then had to knock his legs out from under him, which is the way of these mouth-frothers. No, it was those goat-fucking spearmen who caused me trouble.’

I did not doubt it; two spearmen who knew the work, acting together on a single enemy, was the worst thing a warrior could face – other than an archer in a place too high to reach.

‘Aye,’ Finn agreed, scowling. ‘I took a poke which would have burst me if it had not been for that ringmail. Battle-luck that I was the same size as Red Njal – but, look you, I will have to pay him for it now.’

He stuck fingers in the shredded hole and waggled them; we grinned and then laughed and clasped each other.

Alive. Enemies dead and us alive – Odin had not claimed me yet. I had forgotten that he liked to play with his prey, like a cat does. I felt my legs shake then and had to sit; I did not know how Finn felt no fear and said so.

‘I was too afraid even to run,’ I added, half-ashamed, half-defiant, but Finn grinned and clapped me on the shoulder.

‘There,’ he grunted. ‘Now you have the secret of it.’

Too afraid even to run. I looked at him, wondering if it was true, or just Finn being Finn. Then the memory of what had happened on the bridge flooded in, leaping me to my feet.

‘Stenvast,’ I said and Finn scowled.

‘Aye.’

We hirpled off up the trail, leaving the bridge and the dead and the gathering crows. The cut started to bleed again, running with the sweat into my eye and stinging it, so that I had to shake it away in fat, scarlet drops.