Robert Low - The Whale Road

`Four harbours,' my father interrupted. `The fourth is the salvik, the Trade Place, further to the east.

That's for small ships and those with shallow draught, like us. We can berth there without having all those fat-bellied knarrer in our way, or paying fees for it.'

Steinthor grunted. 'It is a harbour if you count dragging the ship up the shingle on rollers a harbour. And it's a long walk to the town.'

The swell grew and the Fjord Elk moved with it, slow and ponderous, like some half-frozen water insect.

We slid into the salvik and, with the others, I leaped out, paired myself with Hring on an oar and, using it and the others as rollers, the Fjord Elk was ground up over the shingle and the cracking ice pools.

Valgard fretted and tried to inspect the keel, ducking under the oars as we took them from behind and dropped them in front. One cracked and splintered under the stress; Einar cursed, nodding to Valgard to add that to his tally stick of essential refurbishment.

There were other ships, none as big as the Elk, but many of them, it seemed to me, freshly arrived with the melting ice. But Geir and Steinthor grunted and shook their heads.

`Fewer than last time and there were few then,' muttered the former, rubbing his wobbling nose.

Steinthor shrugged. 'All the more ale for us then.'

Down on the strand, under the flapping tent of a patched sail, a trader had spread out a series of tattered furs, on which were bolts of dyed cloth, wool and linen. Next to him, another had set up a simple trestle bench, with amber beads, bronze cloak ring-pins, ornaments of jet and silver, eating knives in decorated sheaths and amulets, particularly Thor's hammer made to look like a cross, so the wearer got the best of both Other Worlds.

They looked hungrily at the men swaggering off the ship; a few Oathsworn wandered over, but wandered back swiftly enough, glum. Pinleg, rolling even more because he hadn't got his landlegs yet, scowled and shook his head as he came swaying up. 'Not buying, selling,' he growled. 'Piss-poor prices for anything we want to get rid of. That means we'll have to hang on to it until we get to Ladoga.'

Illugi Godi came up, carrying a live hare by the ears. It hung from his hands, trembling and quiet. He moved to a large, flat rock, which had clearly been used before, and set the hare flat, stroking it gently. It gathered itself into a huddle and shook.

He cut the throat expertly, holding it up so that it kicked and squealed and the blood poured over its front and flew everywhere with its flying, desperate attempts to leap in the air.

Illugi gave it to the sea god, Aegir, in the name of Kalf, who had died in the black Water without a sword in his hand, in the hope that the Aesir would consider that a worthy enough death, and to Harald One-eye and Haarlaug. Men stopped, added their own prayers, then moved on, humping sea-chests on their shoulders.

It came to me then that the Oathsworn had done one journey, from south Norway, round between Wessex and the lands of the Norse in France, north to Man and Strathclyde, then back and on eastwards to Birka. A journey without trouble and a soft raid, according to the salt-stained men of the Oathsworn. And yet three men had died.

Illugi gutted the hare while it kicked feebly, examined the entrails and nodded sagely. He left the red ruin of it aside, started a small fire from shavings, fed it to life and caught me watching. 'Get me dry wood, Orm Ruriksson.'

I did—with difficulty on that wet beach—and he built the fire up, then laid the remains of the hare on it.

The smell of singed fur and burning flesh drifted blackly down to the traders, some of whom crossed themselves hurriedly.

When it was done, Illugi Godi left it on the rock, picked up his own meagre belongings and both of us stumbled up the shingle to the coarse grass and on towards the dark huddle of Birka. On the Traders' Green, which sat opposite the tall, timbered stockade and the great double doors of the North Gate, was a sprawl of wattle-and-daub huts.

Two substantial buildings squatted there, too, made of age-blackened timbers caulked with clay. One was for the garrison that manned the Borg, the great fortress which towered over to our left, and the other was for those like us, visiting groups of armed men who had to be offered hospitality, without the good burghers of Birka having to invite them into their protected homes.

At the gates, two bored guards with round leather caps, shields and spears made sure no one entered the town with anything larger than an eating knife and, since no sensible man would simply leave his weapons with them and hope to get them back later, there was much cursing from those unused to the custom as they traipsed back to dwellings to secure them with people they knew.

Illugi Godi, busy pointing things out to me as we trudged towards the Guest Hall, stopped suddenly at the sight of one of the Oathsworn, walking up from the beach in a daze, as if frozen.

Puzzled at first, I suddenly saw his face as Illugi Godi took him by the shoulder and turned him to face us. Eyvind, his name was, a thin-faced, fey-eyed man from Hadaland in Norway. My father said he was touched, though he never said by what.

Something had touched him, for sure, and it made the hairs on my arms stand up; he was pale as a dead man, his dark hair making him look even more so and, above his beard, his eyes looked like the dark pits of a skull.

`What happened to you?' demanded Illugi as I looked around warily. The wind hissed, cold and fierce, the night came on with a rush and a last, despairing gasp of thin twilight and figures moved, almost shadows.

At the gate and up at the fortress, lamps were lit, little glowing yellow eyes that made the dark more dark still. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

Illugi asked again and the man blinked, as if water had been thrown in his face.

`Raven,' he said eventually, in a voice half wondering, half something else. Dull. Resigned. 'I saw a raven.'

À crow, perhaps,' Illugi offered. 'Or a trick of the twilight.'

Eyvind shook his head, then looked at Illugi as if seeing him clearly for the first time. He grabbed Illugi by the arms; his beard trembled. 'A raven. On the beach, a rock with the remains of a hare sacrifice on it.'

I heard Illugi's swift intake of breath and so did Eyvind. He was wild-eyed with fear.

`What was in your head?' demanded Illugi Godi. Eyvind shook his own, muttering. I caught the words

'raven' and 'doom' as they were whipped away by the wind. I shivered, for the sight of one of the All-Father's birds on a sacrifice offering was a sure sign that you would die.

Illugi seized the man in return and shook him. 'What was in your head?' he demanded in a fierce hiss.

Eyvind looked at him, his eyebrows closed into one, and he shook his head again, bewildered. 'Head?

What do you mean . . . ?'

`Were you remembering, or just thinking?'

`Thinking,' he answered.

Illugi grunted. 'What thought?'

Eyvind screwed up his face, then it smoothed and he looked at Illugi. 'I was looking at the town and thinking how easily it would burn.'

Illugi patted him on the shoulder, then indicated the pile of dropped gear. 'Get to the Guest Hall and don't worry. It was Odin's pet right enough—but not with a message for you. For me, Eyvind. For me.'

The eagerness in him was almost obscene to watch. 'Really? You say true?'

Illugi Godi nodded and the man scrabbled to collect his things, then stumbled off towards the butter-glow of the Hall.

Illugi leaned on his staff a moment, looking round. I was annoyed; Eyvind thought he had seen one of Odin's ravens, herald of death, and had then gone off, not the least bothered that the doom of it was claimed by another. I said as much and Illugi shrugged.

`Who knows? It could have been Thought . . . That raven is as deep and cunning as Loki,' he replied.

Then he looked at me, his fringe of grizzled, red-gold beard catching the lamp glow. 'On the other hand, it might have been Memory—Birka has burned before.'

`You think it a warning, then? Since it came to your sacrifice for the dead?' I asked, shivering slightly.

Òn yet the other hand,' Illugi Godi said wryly. Èyvind is Loki-touched. He loves fire, is mad for fire.

Twice before people have stopped him lighting one on the Fjord Elk. Oh, he always had good reason—hot food for us all, dry boots and socks—but he was also the one who wanted to torch all the buildings at St Otmund's chapel, after we knew the fyrd were roused.'

I remembered—so it had been him who had called for it.

`So he was mistaken?' I asked as Illugi hefted his belongings and, with no other word, led me to the Guest Hall.

I wanted to ask him what would happen when Eyvind told the others, but should have realised what Illugi already knew: that Eyvind would say nothing. He would now, as the fear and relief fell away, realise what a nithing he had become at that moment and would certainly tell no one how his bowels had turned to water.

The Guest Hall was spacious, clean and well equipped, with a good hearth pitfire and a lot of boxbeds—

not enough for us all, so it was a chance to see who was who in the Oathsworn.

Of course, I ended up on the floor near the draughty door, but that was no surprise. My father got a good boxbed, as did Einar and Skapti and others I had expected. To my surprise, Pinleg got one, too and, after a moment of raised hackles and growling, Gunnar Raudi forced Steinthor out of his. Chuckling, Ulf-Agar watched the archer slouch off, scowling.

`Watch your back, flame-head,' he advised. `You may be picking arrowheads out of it.'

`Watch your mouth, short-arse,' Gunnar growled back, 'or you will be picking my boot out of it.'

At which all those who heard it laughed, including Steinthor. Ulf-Agar bristled, thought better of it and subsided sullenly, for he had also heard of Gunnar Raudi.

I was surprised how many of these hard men had heard of Gunnar and the respect they held for him. I had always thought of Gunnar as someone who lived for free at Bjornshafen and never questioned the why of it.

Now, it seemed to me, Gunnar was known as a hard man himself, but was clearly not at ease with it. I wondered, then, why he didn't just leave, for it was also clear that he and Einar were wary as big-ruffed wolves round each other.

I had expected Birka to be much the same as Skirringsaal, but it was different. We had women, sent by the merchants who ran the town, but these were no bought thralls, to be up-ended and tupped without thought. They were respectable wives and mothers, in embroidered aprons, with proper linen head-coverings and a beltful of keys and scissors and ear-cleaners. They had their own thralls—some of them pretty enough—but not for the likes of us to grab at.

They had no fear and sharp tongues and the cold-eyed men of the Oathsworn meekly submitted to having hair and beards trimmed and fingernails cut, as if they were children.

So we had meals and minded our manners, after a fashion—Illugi Godi had to cuff a few heads into shamefaced apologies now and then and so respected was he that he could.

I wondered about Illugi. He was a godi, a priest, of course, but most priests were jarls, too. But in the Oathsworn, Einar clearly ruled. It was bewildering for me, this new life—and for others, too, forced to go into the town to get drunk at one of the ale houses set up for foreign travellers and try out the whores there, though they grumbled at having to spend silver on humping that they could never get back.

But even if someone could be persuaded to part with a girl, taking her back to the Guest Hall was a waste of time, since the disapproving eyes of the goodwives, who came and went as they chose, tended to have a shrinking effect. Things, it was generally agreed, were not changing for the better.