The White Raven (12 page)

'Either you flew,' Jon said, looping a leg over a bench as if it were a horse and pouring ale, 'or my message to you is still sailing.'

'What message?' grunted Kvasir, then was nudged by Thorgunna into making introductions. Jon Asanes had been told of Kvasir's marriage, but this was his first meeting with Thorgunna and everyone could see she was dazzled by him. It was hard not to be for, with a youth's summers on him, The Goat Boy now had a breadth of chest and a slender waist and a bright and even smile that was always echoed in his dark eyes.

Then Olaf stepped up, having to look up to Jon Asanes, who now had some height on him, too. Jon was, I realized as I watched him and Olaf study each other, about the same age now as I was when we had met on Cyprus and called him Goat Boy. Yet, with less than a handful of years between us, I felt old enough to be the Goat Boy's grandfather.

'You smell nice,' said Olaf. 'Not like a man, though. Like a flower.'

Jon Asanes astounded me and showed how much he had learned about dealing with traders, for he didn't bristle at this, as I expected from someone of his age. Instead, he grinned.

'You smell like fish dung,' he countered. 'And your eyes cannot make up their minds on colour.'

They stared for a moment longer, then Olaf laughed with genuine delight and you could see the pair of them were friends already.

'The message?' I asked and Jon Asanes smiled a last smile at little Olaf and turned to me, a storm gathering on his brow.

'I sent it awhiles since, by a Gotland trader,' he said and looked sideways at me. 'An old friend is arrived,'

he added. 'He is staying with Christ-followers in the German quarter. I say friend, but I doubt if it is true.'

He paused and looked at me, then the others.

'I did not tell Tvorimir,' he added, 'since it was a matter best kept between few, I was thinking.'

I felt the chill then and it was nothing to do with draughts from the door. Magpie caught my eye and slapped a grin on his red face.

'I will go if you like,' he said, but I shook my head; I trusted Tvorimir — well, as much as I trusted any trader — and, besides, we had few friends in this part of the world. Instead, I turned to Jon Asanes and asked, though I already knew the answer.

'Who?'

'Martin, the monk, with news for you, he says.'

'Odin's eye,' growled Finn. 'That name again, like a strange turd in your privy. I thought he had died.'

Not yet,' Jon answered with a grin, 'though he looks much like a corpse.'

'I had thought to have seen the last of him in Serkland,' Kvasir admitted. Thorgunna, who had heard some of this, kept quiet and Magpie, who was bemused by all of it, looked from one to the other, demanding explanations.

'What does he want?' I asked and, again, I already knew the answer — his holy spear, which I had in my sea chest, wrapped in sealskin. Jon Asanes confirmed it.

'In exchange,' he went on, 'he says he will give you news worth the value of it to you.'

'I doubt that,' muttered Finn, 'for he was ever as slippery as a fresh-caught herring.'

They tossed the tale of it between them for Magpie's benefit — how Martin, the German monk, had stumbled on the secret of Attila's treasure and been forced to reveal it by Einar, so putting all the Oathsworn on the hard road to that cursed hoard.

Martin, though, had only ever wanted one thing — the holy spear he swore was the one the Old Romans had thrust into the side of his Christ and whose iron point had been used in forging two sabres for Attila.

They had been buried with him — and I had brought one of them out of the tomb.

I sat and listened to them chewing on it, though I already knew Martin and I would have to meet. I had no use for his Christ icon and had simply picked it up from the body of the man who had stolen it — but never throw away anything that might be of use, my old foster-mother Halldis had dinned into me.

'You know where Martin is?' I asked into the middle of their conversation, killing it. Jon Asanes nodded.

'Where is best to meet?' I asked. It would be better in a public place, this first one, for Martin was a man easy to dislike and somehow sparked me to anger like no other. I had almost killed him once and there were times since I wished I had.

Jon nodded, knowing all this. 'The Perun likeness,' he said. 'Everyone uses it as a landmark and it is in the marketplace.'

I knew it well — you could not miss the great oak pillar on its mound of concentric circles, the top carved in the shape of a powerful warrior carrying an axe and with a head of silver and moustaches of gold.

Perun, the Slav god of storms, who was as like Thor as to be his brother. I nodded.

We laid out the tale of what had happened to us thus far and Jon sucked it in as if it was no more than air, nodding and silent. At the end of it, he blew out his cheeks, stuffed bread in his mouth and rose from the bench.

'We will start with Martin, then,' he said simply and slammed out, dragging a warm cloak in his wake.

'Bloody boy goes everywhere at a run,' complained Magpie.

'He will learn when he gets to our age,' grunted Kvasir, 'the truth of the old bull.'

We chuckled, while Thorgunna scowled. Magpie was too Slav to have heard this tale, so Finn took great delight in telling him, because it outraged Thorgunna that he did.

'Let us not run down and hump one of the heifers,' Finn finished, in his role of the old bull advising his eager son. 'Let us walk gently down and hump them all.'

So we laughed and argued the rest of that morning, in the warm of Magpie's
izba,
until Jon Asanes returned and said, simply: Nones'.

I told them it was Latin for the way Christ-priests from the west judge the day — late afternoon, by which time it would growing dark.

'We will keep a sharper eye open then,' Finn said cheerfully, 'in case he has found people stupid enough to try and take what he wants.'

I thought it unlikely, for he knew I wouldn't bring the holy spear with me. Better for Finn to go with Kvasir and Thorgunna, who were taking Olaf to buy him new clothes.

'You might need someone to help you string Martin up,' Finn growled moodily, 'while you use the Truth Knife on him to get what he knows. He is no stranger to it, after all.'

I shook my head, while the flash of memory, like lightning on a darkened sea, flared up the scene —

Martin, swinging like a trussed goose from the mast of Einar's
Elk,
spraying blood and green snot as Einar hacked off the monk's little finger and threw it over the side. Einar's magic Truth Knife, which, he told victims, knew when someone lied and would cut off a piece every time they did. It was now sheathed in the small of my back and I had used it once or twice myself. Most did not keep their secrets beyond two fingers.

Shrugging at my folly, Finn strode off after Thorgunna, Kvasir and Olaf, leaving me with Jon Asanes, who rolled his eyes towards the sky.

'I have not seen Finn for some years,' he said. 'He seems even wilder than he was before.'

'As you say,' I countered, 'you have not seen him for some years. You have just forgotten how he is.'

Even though I knew it was a lie.

We were silent, pushing through the throng on the wooden walkways of the city while the sky pewtered and the rain spat itself to sleet.

'You seem . . . older,' Jon Asanes said eventually, as we stopped to watch an army of carters manhandle a huge brass bell, almost as big as a small house, destined for the
kreml
over the Volkhov Bridge. They love their bells, do the Slavs of Novgorod and Kiev and ring them on every ceremonial they can think of.

I said nothing. We crossed behind the sweating, shouting men, to where the great statue of Perun, offerings littering his feet, towered over the marketplace.

'I know what it is,' Jon said suddenly, stopping me to look into my face.

'What?'

'Why you seem older,' he said and grinned. 'You do not smile now,' he added.

I gave him one to make him a liar; but he shook his head and forked two fingers at his eyes.

'You can do it with your mouth,' he said, 'but not here.'

He was right and I scowled at him for being so, while being proud of him at the same time. I never had a chance to say anything more on it, for I saw a figure who made my belly curl.

He walked with a staff, wore a ragged brown robe which ended at his knees, yet trailed strips in the mud and flapped uneven dags wetly round his shins. Under it, he wore heavy woollen breeks, which might have been blue once. He had shoes, new and heavy — a gift, probably, from his German Christ worshippers —

and leg-bindings filthy enough to have come from a corpse-winding.

It was his eyes that told me who it was and they were all that could be seen in the thicket of his face. His beard was long and matted into his hair, which hung below his shoulders — but his eyes, on either side of a nose like a curved dagger, were still the dark ones I remembered, though the calculating look had gone from them, burned away by his obsession. Now they looked like the eyes of a pole-sitter, one of those crazed hermits who go out into the wilderness and perch in high places.

Martin.

When I had first seen the little monk, in Birka years before, he wore a similar brown robe, but clean and neat and tied with a pale rope. He slippered over polished floors in soft shoes, though he wore sensible heavy wool socks against the cold. His face then was sharp, smooth, clean-shaven enough to reflect lantern-light, his brown hair cut the same length all round, shaved carefully in the middle.

His God was not treating him lightly.

'Orm,' he rasped, the all too familiar voice making my insides turn over. He leaned on his staff, both hands clasping it. I saw his nails were short, broken and black-rimmed, saw the maimed stump of his little finger. When he tried a smile, I wished he had not, for all it revealed was the mess of his mouth, smashed somewhere on his journey and the teeth left to blacken and rot.

'Martin,' I answered.

'You have grown and prospered,' he said.

'You have not.'

'I am rich in God.'

'If that is all you have to exchange for your holy stick, we can end this now.'

He leaned further forward, so tense his beard seemed to curl. Everything quivered, even his voice. 'You have it?'

'I have it. I took it from Sigurd Heppni in Serkland. He no longer had need of it, since Finn had cut his life away. A bad joke on Sigurd, to be called Heppni.'

He did not smile, though I knew he had enough Norse to understand that
'heppni'
meant 'lucky'.

'I must have it,' was all he said, those dark eyes glittering.

Jon shifted slightly, anxious to join in with a few choice insults, but aware that I would be annoyed if he did. Around us, the marketplace of Novgorod heaved with life, buying and selling, shifting with furs and green clay pots and amber and offerings laid at the feet of Perun — yet it seemed that there was a circle round us three and, inside it, we were unseen, unapproached.

When I did not answer, Martin blinked like a lizard and grinned his rotting grin. 'I see you have a heathen sign on you, as always. Odin's sign. Swear on it that you will give me what I seek when I tell you what I know.'

'No great bargain for me there. I have no wish to know how to feed a multitude with a loaf and a herring, even if I believed you knew the trick of it. Mind you, if you know the way to turn water into wine . . .'

That harsh voice interrupted me. 'Judge for yourself. My secret concerns an old enemy and a tomb packed with silver.' And then he said simply, 'Brondolf Lambisson is the old enemy.'

When the dig of that did not make me flinch as he had hoped he narrowed his eyes.

'Brondolf went back to Birka,' I said, as casually as I could, as if the man meant nothing to me now Martin saw it and nodded.

'Ja, Birka. Where else would he go? He sat there, watching the place die round him and desperate for something to save it. He failed; Birka is a town of empty doorways and crumbling timbers. Brondolf went to Hedeby, following the trade. When he found two Oathsworn he knew there, he must have thought the hand of God was in it — if he hadn't been a Hell-damned pagan.'

'So? What did he hope to gain?' I snarled, knowing full well.

'The secret of Atil's tomb, of course.'

'Cod-Biter couldn't find his arse with both hands and Short Eldgrim is . . .'

'Eldgrim,' repeated Martin, as if tasting the name. 'The little one with the scars on his face, ja?' He had become more German these days.

'He is addled,' I said and Martin agreed with a nod.

'Which is why Lambisson came to me,' he answered. 'He thought I owed him a debt, thought that I might know a way into Eldgrim's head. He had some of it from Cod-Biter, enough to let him know that this Eldgrim knew more.'

Now the gaff of it took me under the chin and made me jerk and Martin saw it. Aye, Eldgrim knew some of it. Me, who could speak Latin and Greek, had no better knowledge of runes than a bairn. Who else could I have asked to help carve the secret on that sword hilt but the man who, of all the Oathsworn left on the steppe then, made the least mistakes with runes?

A sore dunt in a fight in Serkland had left him addled. I wished I was sure his mind was washed clean of the secret, but his thought-cage was a strange place now, where he could sometimes recall old events as if they had happened the day before and yet forget everything that happened an hour ago.

'You could not help Lambisson,' I said flatly to the monk, more hopeful than sure.

Martin grinned his rotted grin. 'He persuaded me to do my best. He smashed all the teeth in my mouth and gave me healthy bowls of tough meat, which I could only suck. Until I managed to free something from Eldgrim's mouth, nothing would pass my own that I could eat.'

There was clever and vicious in it, but it was only another little Truth Knife when all said and done. I said as much and he glanced at the stump of his finger, remembering. It was a nasty lash from me, born of fear for Eldgrim and Cod-Biter and should not have been done, for he had an answer to it and more.