Robert Low - The Whale Road

Then, like an eerie wind, there came the sound of a lowing horn, distant and mournful.

`That's not clever,' muttered Valknut. `He'll have those villagers out.'

The horn sounded again, closer. Einar whirled, his cloak billowing, and pointed silently to Ketil Crow, Skapti, Valknut—and me. He looked at us all from eyes deep-sunk as mine shafts, then spoke as if his teeth were nailed to each other. `Skapti, make sure the monk stays fastened to you. He is what Starkad wants most.

Orm, keep the woman with you also. Brondolf Lambisson will have told him much, but he knows little of the woman and nothing of how valuable she is to us. Valknut, break out the banner and guard it.'

He paused, turned to Ketil Crow, whose languid stare never wavered. 'If I fall,' he added, 'you take the Oathsworn back to where the Elk was burned. Starkad's ship is there. It is my intent to cut them up badly here. He has one ship, will have left guards and has, I suspect, a hundred men here, perhaps fifteen or twenty guarding his drakkar. It may be possible to take it and that is what I intend.'

Again he paused and gave a twisted smile. `None can escape their wyrd,' he growled, `but there is no reason why the Norns should have an easy weave of it and I will postpone the final shearing of those three sisters yet.'

We watched him stride off and no one spoke. It was the first time he had come close to admitting his doom and it was unnerving, so that you didn't want to be close to it. We broke apart and went to our tasks.

I was concerned about Hild. I could hardly leash her to me and so would have to stand with her to make sure she didn't take it into her head to run off. That meant I couldn't stand in the shieldwall and, apart from the fact that every blade was needed, it would have been the first shieldwall ever for me. Mailed, I would have been in the front rank, the place of honour—though those in it called themselves the Lost. Except, I thought moodily, I would miss it, guarding this girl.

`You look like a sulky boy,' she said brightly. 'All you need is to scuff the ground with a toe.'

Guiltily, I shot her a look, then chuckled at how right she was. Some front-rank warrior me. She sat, primly adjusting the ruins of my cloak. I saw she wore a pair of men's breeks, too, last seen in Valknut's pack. Saw, too, that she was calm, alert, completely unlike the rolling-eyed maniac of before.

Almost too calm, in fact. As she turned and smiled a lavish smile, my heart turned and my stomach, too, because there was something unnatural about it.

`When the time comes,' she said, 'we will run that way.' And she pointed left, to where the ground dipped into brush.

I had no time to query it, for the horn-blast was on us. Bagnose and Steinthor flitted out to the wings of the forming line and the shieldwall went up with a deep roar and slam as shields locked. The banner unfurled with a snap and, craning, I saw figures filtering out of the mist, forming into a line. A banner flew there, too, and the shock of seeing another Raven Banner was like cold water. When all was said and done, we were fighting our own.

A figure came forward from them, hands raised to show they were empty. He wore a splendid gilded helmet and a flaming red cloak over his long mail hauberk. When he got closer, he peeled the helmet off, to reveal a shock of tawny hair and beard and bright, ice-blue eyes above a wide smile. Starkad.

Èinar,' he called. 'Your ship is ash; your men are too few. All you need do is hand over the monk and what you found in this place and you can go where you will.'

Einar nodded, as if considering the offer. `What you say is true enough. Yet you talk, which means you are not sure of winning, even with all your men. No doubt you have been told of the Oathsworn and you are right to be afraid. Is Brondolf Lambisson with you? Let him tell you of encountering the Oathsworn, as he did in his own hov. Better still, he could show you his keks and the shit on them.'

There was grim laughter at this and a flurry from the ranks behind Starkad, which broke to let Brondolf Lambisson through. Dressed in mail and with a fine helmet and shield, his red-faced anger was plain, but his words didn't carry far enough for the Oathsworn to hear, so they jeered at him, clashing sword and shield until he gave up.

Ìt seems you are determined to visit your own doom on those around you,' Starkad countered, which was cunning and would have flustered a lesser man. But Einar had courage and wit enough, even with the crows practically pecking out his eyeballs.

Àh . . . you have been speaking with Ulf-Agar, I am thinking,' he said, craning as if to see round Starkad.

'Is that nithing here?'

Reluctantly, a figure stepped out, mailed and well armed, but limping slightly. He said nothing, but glared and pointed at Einar with his sword.

Einar shook his head sorrowfully.

`Cattle die and kinsmen die,

Yourself will soon die,

Only fair fame never fades . . .'

His voice rang out the old lines and even I saw Ulf-Agar jerk with shame and anger. Einar, in a voice of ice, added, 'Fair fame has eluded you, Ulf-Agar, for all you sought it. Fame—yes. Men will remember you as an oath-breaker and that you do not stand straight and tall next to the likes of Orm, the White-bear Slayer.'

And it was my turn to jerk with shame, when the Oathsworn cheered and banged their swords on their shields, yelling my name.

Starkad recovered well, though, and his pleasant smile never slipped. 'Well, it seems a fight is certain on this bare hill,' he called out, loud enough for all to hear. 'But why waste good lives? Let's you and I end it, Einar the Black. If I win, your men are free to go or join with me. If you win, likewise.'

Einar shrugged, knowing he could not refuse it with honour. 'When,' he said, stressing the word, 'I win, your men will just go. I want no part of Bluetooth's hounds. Except for Ulf. I want him .'

Àgreed,' said Starkad and I saw Ulf-Agar's face pale and his mouth move, but he had no say in it, being a nithing even in the eyes of those at his back.

So Starkad came up, though the lines held their places. He shed his cloak, hauled out a beautifully hilted sword, settled his fresh, clean shield, which was decorated with a swirling design, and then tapped the edge twice, lightly, with his sword.

Einar, having dropped his cloak, hauled out his own weapon and unslung a pocked and scored shield.

The pair of them circled in a wary half-crouch.

There was a flurry, a tanging of metal and they parted. Einar whirlwinded steel, hacking lumps off that fine, new shield; Starkad backed up, dropped, swung at Einar's legs and he only just leaped back in time.

It went like that until both men were breathing heavily and it was clear that Starkad was stronger and better. His shield was almost wrecked though and I still had hopes—until, in a move all later agreed was as fine a trick as they'd seen, Starkad hooked the fat pommel of his sword inside Einar's shield, wrenched it sideways and cut downwards, in one smooth movement.

Einar was no fool and leaped back, but the blade slashed the shield loops and he had to throw the ruin away. Blood sprayed from his slashed hand as he did so. Starkad's grin was wolf-yellow.

He closed; Einar backed off, backed off further, then suddenly hurled forward, catching inside Starkad's sword with his own and forcing it wide, launched himself on to Starkad's shield. His helmeted head tipped back, came forward like a siege ram and would have splattered Starkad's nose if it hadn't been for the iron guard.

Stunned, Starkad fell backwards. I remembered falling on the hard edge of the forge with the side of my head and knew how Starkad was feeling. Bright lights and sickness: he was doomed.

But he rolled and Einar's cut sliced his leg open from knee to boot top, so that he roared with the pain of it. Lashing with his legs, he tangled Einar, who fell. They flailed wildly at each other and missed.

It was then that the ranks of his men split apart, shouting.

At first we thought they had treacherously decided to run at us. Then we saw the figures, the hurled javelins. They wore no helmets, had no armour, but they had fistfuls of throwing spears and long knives and there were lots of them, spilling out from the thinning mist, right into the back of Starkad's men. The villagers from Koksalmi had woken up.

Einar and Starkad broke apart, panting, staring at each other. Starkad, cursing, limped sideways, away from him, pointing his sword. The blood squeezed out of his boot toes when he moved.

`Later,' he gasped.

Einar saw what was happening, got to his feet, swirled up his cloak and issued swift orders. The Oathsworn started to melt backwards, away from the fight, leaving Starkad to deal with it and taking this chance. It occurred to me, as I took Hild by the arm, that Einar was right—he still had some gods on his side and the Norns' wyrd wasn't so easily woven for him after all.

`This way,' Hild said, almost cheerfully, and I remembered, chilled, her earlier quiet statement.

She was right, too—the villagers had sent men to the flank. They spilled out to my left and she led us to the right, into the brush. I stopped, though, as Skapti lumbered up, dragging Martin on his leash.

Two villagers hurled javelins at the big man. I saw him hit. I couldn't believe it, but he was hit. The javelin went into the back of his neck and came out of his mouth and he stopped and fumbled, then tried to feel round to grab it and haul it out, but couldn't. Black blood gushed out and he looked at me with a stare of pure astonishment and crashed down like the end of the world.

I wanted to dash to him, but Hild held me back and pulled and pulled. I saw Martin jerk the end of the leash from Skapti's twitching hand. Our eyes met, a single locked, mutual glare, and then he scuttled off.

I left, numbed, stumbling after Hild down the slope.

Skapti. Gone.

We came out on to the flat in a scrabble of scree and panic, panting and gasping. Hild stumbled too far and slipped over the bank of the river into the water with a sharp scream and a splash.

Frantic, I hurled myself at the edge, saw her floundering in the shallows and more concerned with hanging on to that gods-cursed spear-shaft than getting out. I grabbed her hair and yanked, angry and afraid, and hauled her out.

`You were always the one for humping,' said a voice, vicious as a bite.

Ulf-Agar stepped from the bushes. He had lost his helmet and his shield, but was still mailed and had a long and wicked sword. `Now it seems you have to drag a corpse out and fuck that,' he added. He moved towards me, dragging his leg where it had been sword cut in the warehouse fight in Birka.

I remembered him, sweat gleaming in the musty twilight, swinging that cooling red branding iron—the one that had left the wet, slow-healing weals all over his body as Starkad's men closed in.

I remembered him guarding my back as I foolishly bounced off the door I could have opened easily if I had thought more about it. I heard him yelling at me to do it, blood spraying from his smashed mouth. Of all the injuries, that was the worst, especially for the likes of him—teeth were more precious than silver for, without them, you sucked gruel where real men chewed meat and bread. And that, too, was my fault, in Ulf s head.

That same mouth was twisted on a face triumphant with hate and I knew he could not be brought to the same memories of then, that reminding him of how I had freed him would simply fuel the fire that ate him. I cursed the gift Einar prized so much: by stepping back in my head I could see that Ulf wanted to be me and could not. So he would destroy me instead.