The Prow Beast (15 page)

It started to rain.

Toki told us what had happened, half-awed by it, half-shaking. We found him right at the top of the headland, where the trail ended on a scarp of rock, like the scalp of a bald man. Once, there had been trees here, but overcutting had taken them and the rain, without the bind of root, had washed away the top soil; what trees were left clung here like stray hairs, gnarled and stunted by the wind.

Beyond, the trail to safety led down into the last stands of thick pine on a slope too steep to cut trees, but it was clear that Botolf and Toki had just started down it when Stenvast came up on them. The way Toki told it, in his wide-eyed child’s way, this giant had appeared, waving a big axe and bellowed at Botolf to stop.

Botolf had handed the bairn to Toki, telling the boy to be fast on his way down. The giant, said Toki, made to cut him off, but Botolf moved to block it.

‘He only had a seax,’ Toki said, then half-sobbed. ‘It was not fair.’

‘What happened then?’ asked Finn, looking round; I knew he searched for bodies, but there were none, which was a puzzle. The rain fell, shroud-soft and silent and the slate-blue fjord was white-capped in the background. The bairn squalled in Toki’s arms and I took it from him.

‘I wanted to go,’ Toki said with a sniff. ‘But I could not move and the goat would not move and the wean was greetin’ fit to burst…’

‘What happened with Botolf and the giant?’ I asked gently, settling down beside him. I pulled the hood of his
kjartan
up against the rain and the goat nuzzled, trying to get under his armpit, so that he took it and stroked its muzzle, absently.

‘The giant told Botolf to stand aside and that his name was Stenvast and that he had come for the bairn. Botolf said his name was Botolf and he would not get the bairn and then the giant looked at Botolf a little, sideways, the way Thorgunna looks at Finn sometimes when he has done something unexpected, like fetch the milk unasked. Then he asked if this was the same Botolf, the cripple who had broken the back of Thorbrand Hrafnsson and Botolf said he had snapped the spine of a man, but that Stenvast must be mistaken, for he was no cripple and then the giant…’

He stopped, hiccuped and shivered and I patted him while Finn prowled, scrubbing his beard furiously, which he did when things did not tally up for him.

‘What then?’

Toki scrubbed his red eyes.

‘The Giant Stenvast said to Botolf that he was a man who had come up leg short and blade short against a better one and that he had the brain of a beetle if he had the idea he was going to win this fight. But Botolf grinned and wagged one finger and said that was your first mistake, I have the thought-cage of a mouse, not a beetle, for a good friend said so.’

Toki stopped and looked at me, brow furrowed, face streaked with tears and snot.

‘I did not understand this,’ he went on and I told him it did not matter. He hiccuped.

‘The giant did not understand it either,’ he went on. ‘He whirled his axe and cut and Botolf stopped it with his seax, but he could not leap out of the way and the giant cut the other way and it hit Botolf in the leg, his wooden one, so that it snapped and he pitched on the ground. The giant said now you are a cripple and Botolf got on one good leg and he turned and winked at me.’

My heart froze, for I knew that wink. Toki blinked and tears spilled.

‘He said I was to watch out for wee Helga and when she was older, tell her he was sorry her da was not there, but a prince got in the way. Then he said to the giant, you have the bettering of me right enough, for you have a longer blade and a stronger leg, but there is something I am betting sure I can still do that you cannot.’

Toki stopped then and the tears spilled to the brim of his wide, bright little eyes.

‘What was it that Botolf could do, then?’ demanded Finn, still scouring everywhere with his eyes, looking for blood or bodies and finding none.

‘Fly,’ said Toki and I felt the world fall away from me in a dizzying rush, as if I had been carried up on wings myself. I heard a groan, which was me, found myself blinking at the ground.

‘He leaped off his good leg,’ Toki said, ‘and took the giant in the belly with his head and they both went over the edge. I saw Botolf spread his arms. He had wings. Black ones.’

Toki stopped and bowed his head and the tears fell, soft as rain.

‘I was sure he had wings.’

My belly had dropped away, leaving a black void filled with loss – I remembered Vuokko saying it: ‘a loss, keenly felt’. I had thought, in my arrogance, that it would be me.

Finn, his eyes desperate, looked from me to Toki and then out over the headland to the fjord. He made a half move, no more than a step, towards it, as if to hurl himself over.

‘Arse,’ he said, in a voice thick with grief. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid great arse.’

‘He will come back,’ Toki said, but his voice was uncertain. ‘He dreamed sometimes he had big black wings, like a raven he said and I saw them. I am sure I saw them.’

Finn peered out over the headland, as if to find Botolf hanging grimly by a fingernail a few feet down, which is how the skalds would have it. Instead, he shaded his eyes with a hand and then half-turned to me.

‘A ship is leaving the fjord,’ he called and I moved to his side; it was Ljot and his crew, rowing hard for the open water. That meant only Randr Sterki was left.

‘Why is he leaving, I wonder?’ Finn asked. I did not care, it was what he had on board that worried me – one Greek monk and my
fostri.

‘He will fly back,’ said Toki, dragging us back to why we stood at the edge of the cliff in the first place, so that the loss crashed in like a huge wave. I handed him the squalling bairn and gathered the pair of them to me as the sun burst out like a wash of honey, turning the fine rain to a mist of gold.

We all saw it, then, the great arch of Bifrost, the rainbow bridge which only appears when a hero is crossing to Valholl.

So we knew Botolf was not flying back.

EIGHT

The way of it, as Randr Sterki told everyone, was like this: you throw your weapons in the dirt and Orm Bear Slayer does not get hurt. Of course, what he did not add were the words ‘for the moment’, but everyone knew that – knew, also, that throwing down their weapons would not be the end of the matter, only the beginning.

So, rightly, Red Njal and Hlenni shook their heads and shot glances of misery at me, tied up and held by a savage snarler whose face was a great stone cliff set against me.

‘The wolf and the dog,’ Red Njal shouted hoarsely, ‘do not play together, as my granny used to say.’

True though it was, I had been hoping his granny had something useful on my predicament. Finn and Toki and me had surfaced from our grief on the bald mountain and it was clear to both Finn and me what had to be done next, so it it did not take much talk. He and Toki, goat and precious-as-gold bairn went one way, to safety. I turned back, for I could not leave the women and weans to bear the brunt of Randr Sterki and the remaining bearcoats alone – anyway, I had made my promise to Odin.

Perhaps it was he, then, who walked me past the fly-buzzing heaps on the bridge, back up the water-runnelled trail a way, round a bend, round another – and into the scores of heads, turning in amazement.

Like a nithing into the middle of Randr’s men, where I was grabbed and trussed like a stupid sheep.

Beyond stood a line of ringmail pillars, shields up and ready – Rovald, Rorik Stari, Kaelbjorn Rog, Myrkjartan and Uddolf, with Abjorn in their middle, while Red Njal and Hlenni, with only shield and helmet, hovered behind them. Two bodies lay at their feet and a third a little way off, an arrow in one eye showing that Kuritsa had not boasted about his prowess idly.

‘Heya,’ I called out. ‘The child is safe – Finn is with him and Toki. The bearcoats they sent are dead…’

The blow whirled stars into me and I half-fell; someone yelped out a scream and I found the legs of the man who had hit me, followed them upwards to the face, a braided twist of hate.

‘Another peep, Bear Slayer,’ the man growled, ‘and I will fill your mouth with your own teeth.’

‘Where is Botolf?’

I heard the half-scream and knew, without looking, that it was Ingrid. I never took my eyes from that face of hate.

‘Crossing Bifrost,’ I bellowed and he hit me. Even ready for it, I managed only to deflect the blow a little and felt my nose crunch, the pain shrieking in so that I found myself, blind with tears and snot and blood, open-mouthed and gasping for air on my hands and knees. The wailing that went up from the women at the news of Botolf was more painful still.

‘Leave that, Tov,’ snarled a voice. ‘I want him undamaged.’

Gradually, I blinked back into the blurred world and the noise of keening women. Now all that remained was to stand like a decent sacrifice and die well, so I hauled myself into the pain, spitting out the blood that flowed down the back of my tortured nose. The cut on my forehead had opened, too, and I had to flick the blood out of my eyes, which caused my nose to throb.

‘The Giant Ymir is gone, then? One less,’ bellowed Randr Sterki, at his own men as much as mine, I realised.

‘The cost was high,’ growled a voice – one of the remaining
ulfhednar
, I realised. ‘Stenvast now is dead.’

It came to me then that half his crew were too new for this, had not been on Svartey and were not driven by the revenge of the others. Half was half a chance…

‘Still many of us left,’ I called out hoarsely, the force of the words inside my head making my nose scream with new pain. Randr whirled and thrust a sword – my sword – under it.

‘You have the right of it, for sure,’ he said and viciously tapped upwards so that my head burst with the red light of pain and new tears sprang to blind me.

‘Tell them to throw down their weapons.’

‘So you can slaughter them?’ I managed to cough out and shook my head, which was a painful mistake. ‘No bargain for them there.’

‘No bargain anywhere,’ howled Tov, trying to fist the side of my head and missing. ‘You took my woman and my wealth, you hole – I will rip off your balls…’

There was a slap of sound and Tov yelped; Randr lowered the sword, scowling.

‘Think yourself lucky I used the flat,’ he spat. ‘I told you to leave off with all that.’

Tov glowered back, barely held by the last shreds of a leash of fear; soon, I thought, it will part and he will spring at Randr like a ship down a slipway. All it took was that last push…

‘There is a bargain, all the same,’ I yelled out, trying to ignore the stabs of pain each word lanced in my head. ‘Moonlit-buried silver, blood-price enough to end this feud.’

That brought heads up; everyone there knew the Oathsworn tales, particularly the one about finding all the silver of the world. Even allowing for the lies of skalds, that left silver enough for any man’s dreams.

‘There is not enough silver to end this,’ Randr bellowed back, then heard the mutterings that ran through the wolf pack behind him and whirled to face it. In an eyeblink, he saw them fracture, into those who thought there was enough silver and those who wanted blood only.

‘Stenvast is dead,’ growled the same bearcoat who had spoken before. ‘There is little left for us here and some of the Oathsworn’s famed silver seems a fair price.’

‘I will tell you where you can find it,’ I offered, driving the wedges deeper. ‘If you agree that it is finished and we each go our ways.’

‘You bitch-licking turd!’

The shriek came from Tov and he launched himself at me, all screaming and clawed fingers, seeing his revenge tremble on the brink of failure.

It was reflex from Randr, no more than that, the savage, sudden burst of anger from a jarl with too many problems all at once and disobeyed once too often; my sword whicked past my own ear and cut Tov’s throat out of him in a vomit of blood that splashed me as he thumped on the road.

There was a frozen moment of stillness, broken only by the sound of Tov’s blood trickling to a whisper and sliding in tendrils through the rain-water.

Then uproar and yells and argument. Fights started and Randr bellowed and laid about him with the sword. I saw Abjorn and the others look at each other, sizing up the chance of taking the fight to the enemy while they were so fractured and, for a moment, was frantic they would do it.

In the end, the bearcoats, bristling and growling in a group tight as a fist, brought order where Randr failed – and faster than the Oathsworn could make their minds up; I heaved a sigh of relief.

There was a brief, muttered argument, then Randr stalked angrily at me, badger-beard trembling. Two men were with him, one of them a wild-bearded giant of a bearcoat who announced himself as Skeggi Ogmundsson.

‘Tell where the hoard is,’ Randr said, jerking his head at the men. ‘They will go to it. If it is not there, you will die when the news is brought back.’

‘If it is?’ I countered, my voice thick with blood and pain, sounding strange and faraway in my ears.

He looked into my tear- and blood-streaked face and sneered.

‘We will take it and sail away. You and your whelps may have your lives for now.’

The ‘for now’ did not escape me. I knew he would not agree to forever, so I nodded and told what I knew.

Standing there for the time it took the men to go all the way to it and back was a long, long day. No-one spoke much, nor gave up their positions, nor rested their arms save in shifts. Randr’s men lit a couple of fires, but they had precious little fuel and they soon went out while, from the direction of the carts, I smelled smoke and soup, heard the grumbles from Randr’s hungry men and would have smiled, save that the muscles would not work for the trembling in them.

Then it rained again and the shadows slid and darkened. Men broke out what cloaks they had, or pulled their clothing tighter round them as the cold gnawed them. My nose throbbed and I had to stand open-mouthed as a coal-eater, because I could not breathe through it.

Then, suddenly, one of the men was back, lurching up the trail. Men stood; excitement drove out hunger and cold and they waited.