Robert Low - The Whale Road

Kiev was starting to swelter in the heat of a summer sun and Illugi Godi grew increasingly morose, even as the Oathsworn hurled themselves delightedly into the whirling welter of it, hunting out drink and women.

Ènjoy it while you can, boy,' he declared, leaning on his staff as I leaped down on to the jetty, joining a dozen others heading into the teeming streets. 'There will be disease and worse if we stay here for long.'

I waved to him, but I didn't care. The spectre of Hild was like a silent, accusing finger these days. She spent most of her time huddled close to Einar, sharing the gods knew what—not love, certainly.

And then there was my father. I had tried to bring up the subject of Gudleif, of the first five years of my life, of my mother, but he had dismissed it all with a wave, as something of no consequence. Yet it was his brother and I wanted to know . . . even today I don't know what I wanted to know.

That it bothered him. That I could help. That we were blood kin right enough.

Instead, it was as if we had shifted three or four oars down from each other. If it kept up this way, we would be on different boats, he and I.

I wanted drink and women that day in Kiev.

I got them, too. Even now, I can remember little of it and even that is probably what I was told by others.

There was a party of Greeks, engineers sent by the Miklagard Emperor. They had been in Kiev for months cutting timber and building huge siege engines in jointed sections for easy transport and they knew the best places to go.

There were women and I remember humping on a table and was told I had taken a wager I could hump the fattest, ugliest one in the place and won, despite Ketil Crow being convinced I could never get aroused enough with the one chosen. But, as Valknut pointed out, the difference between a reasty crone and Thor's golden-haired wife, Sif, is about eight horns of mead.

I had that and more. I had never drunk so much and remembered only being hauled lip out of a pool of my own mead vomit, my hair sticky with it. There was water that left me dripping, but I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel my lips, or my legs. The memory left me.

Later, I learned that I had been carried back to our Rus riverboat almost in triumph—dropped a few times by the unsteady bearers—and flung on my own fur-lined sleep-bag.

What I do remember—I still jerk awake sometimes in the night remembering—is being kicked and the sound of screams. I saw figures and flames and someone yelled—in my ear, almost, so that my head burst in bright colours of pain: 'Arm yourself, you fuck, we're boarded.'

That staggered me half-upright. I found my sword and fumbled for my shield in the half-light of dawn, bleary-eyed, trying to work out where I was. Keep them next to you, we had been told. Always next to you . .

.

I was on the deck of the Rus boat, which was shadowed with figures who screamed and slashed. Booted feet thundered; blades clashed; shields thumped. I saw Ketil Crow hurl himself like a growling terrier into a pack of men, slashing wildly, then retreat before they recovered enough to hit him back. His mail gleamed redly in the wild torchlight.

I lurched towards him, the half-formed idea of standing on his shieldless side in my head. As I got to him, three men moved forward, half-crouched, wary, but determined. I didn't know any of them, but I knew the threat of a bloody great Dane axe when I saw one.

The blow came and slammed into my shield with a sound like a falling tree and I staggered under it.

Ketil Crow, grunting and panting, was struggling with the other two, being awkward for them because he was left-handed—but the man with the big two-handed axe was mine alone.

Another blow staggered me backwards, then he swiftly reversed and aimed a whack with the butt on my sword-arm, but my own wild flailings bounced it up and it hit the edge of the shield, then the side of my head.

The flare of light and pain was a whole world; nothing else existed. I couldn't see and I heard only a vague screaming. Something monstrous smashed against my shield-arm—then the world hoiked itself back into the Now, where it was me howling, the Dane axe was whirling round again and I was on one knee.

He was good, the axeman. He gave up trying to splinter the shield and thumped the axehead against it, trying to knock it down, then swiftly reversed to try to butt me in the face. Staggering, the drunk fumes burned away in a fire of fear, I managed to fend that off and get to my feet.

As I did, he hooked the blade behind the shield, wrenching it forward to try to break the straps. The butt end stabbed out once more when this, too, failed. It caught me slightly on the chest and even that made me grunt with pain.

He backed off a little, then came in again, snarling and scything the axe low, trying to cut the feet from me. I scampered backwards, collided with someone and battered behind me with the shield, not caring who it was.

He saw an opening, roared the axe back in a half-arc, mouth open in a tow-coloured beard, hair a mass of wild straggles. It slammed into someone to his right and caught. He raged and tore it free and it came whistling round with a flap of cloth attached from someone's cloak—but I avoided it, then struck my first blow, which just missed his forearm.

He leaped back and we paused, heaving for breath. Around us was madness and struggle, but the arc of the Dane axe had cleared a circle round the pair of us, as if by some spell.

'Not bad, Bear Slayer,' he taunted. 'For a boy.'

I sucked air in past the raging brand in my throat. I knew I was dead, that he was better than me. I realised, too, that he knew who I was; he had sought me out. My fame would be the death of me.

He hefted the axe, twirled it deftly in both hands like the fire-dancers do with their flaming poles. It was meant to fix my gaze, like a rabbit to a stoat, but I had seen Skapti do this trick and watched his feet instead.

He took a step, closing for the flurry of blows he knew would end it.

I braced myself, a whimper tearing from between clenched teeth. A horn blew. He paused. It blew again.

He grinned, yellow teeth in that yellow beard, and pointed the axe at me with one hand.

`Not now, but soon, Bear Slayer.'

Then he lumbered heavily to the side of the Rus boat and hurled himself over. I heard him crash to the jetty even as I was on my knees being sick.

The tally was eight wounded: none dead and none so serious they couldn't grumble over it. They had lost one dead, sunk in the river in full mail, and had carried off their wounded.

And one captured. Who turned out to be one of us.

I recognised him: Hogni, who had spoken up proudly to Einar about his skills. 'I can row and ski and shoot and use both spear and sword,' I'd heard him say.

Now he was lashed upside down from the raised mast spar, where he twisted slowly, blood running down his face and off his dangling hair to the deck, while men, still panting and binding wounds, snarled at him, even those who had been his oarmates. Especially those who had been his oarmates.

Einar paced, his mail making soft shinking sounds. He was a controlled, deadly calm, like the black sea on a rising wind. Hild was gone and that had been the purpose of the raid, which Hogni, on his watch, had allowed. One of the raiders had been careless, I heard people tell each other, and the alarm was raised, which was Odin luck for us.

Ì don't need to know who did this,' Einar growled at the man swinging in front of him. 'I know who did this—and Vigfus will pay for it.' He leaned forward, his little knife out. 'I need to know where he is, though, and you will help me.'

There was a flick of his wrist and a scream from Hogni as his finger joint whicked off into the darkness.

`This is a magic knife,' Einar began and I lurched off, away from what was to follow, my guts churning and my head full of Thor hammers. And in the midst of all that, the flare-bright fear of that Dane axe.

I was as doomed as Einar. The bear had been a lie. The first man I had killed had been more inept than me, the second was a lucky strike with a small knife. Then there was Ulf-Agar who had almost killed himself with foolishness. I had never fought a serious fight and knew now that I would die if I did, because I simply wasn't that good at it. Worse, the Bear Slayer was a prize death for anyone to boast of; they would be springing out of holes in the ground after me.

I was retching on nothing when my father came and hunkered down beside me, grunting with the weight and awkwardness of mail. He handed me a leather cup and I drank, then blinked with surprise.

`Watered wine,' he said. 'Best cure for what ails you. If it doesn't work, use less water.'

I drank more, paused to retch it up, drank more.

He nodded appreciatively and scrubbed his stubble. 'I saw you with the axeman—you did well.' I looked sourly at him and he shrugged. 'Well, you are alive, anyway. He looked like he knew the work.'

`He would have killed me.'

My father punched my shoulder and scowled. 'None of that. You're not a whining boy any more. You should take a look at yourself first chance you get. A young Baldur, no less, vulnerable only to mistletoe.'

I drained the cup and never felt less like Baldur.

My father tossed the empty cup in one hand, then started to lever himself up, grunting with the effort.

'Come on. Einar wants us. Hogni has been singing on his perch.'

`Mail,' I said, suddenly realising. 'That's mail . . . that's my hauberk.'

My father grimaced and wriggled in it. `Bit tight round the shoulders, but not much. Another season of rowing, youngling, and you'll find this too small.'

`Why,' I asked pointedly, 'are you wearing it?'

My father's eyes widened at the implied challenge. 'Einar had all those not out on a drunk armed and mailed. He is as nervous as a cat with its arse on fire. With good reason, as it turned out.'

I remembered now. Ketil Crow in mail, Einar, too, and a dozen others. My father mistook my silence and dropped the cup, then bent over at the waist and, hands over his head, shook himself like a furious, wet dog until the iron-ringed shirt slithered off at my feet.

Ì am done with it,' he growled and stalked away. I wanted to call him back, but it was too late and something was nagging me. But my head thundered and wouldn't let me think straight.

Hogni wasn't thinking at all; the last thing to have gone through his head was Wryneck's axe. When I came up to the silent band collected round Einar, Hogni was being wrapped in his own cloak and weighted with a couple of stones.

They lowered him over the side with scarcely a splash, the ripples rolling golden in the rising sun, and I was pleased to see that there were a few green-grey faces in the hard-eyed huddle.

Those whose heads had been clearer to start with—all in mail, I saw—were grim and angry. Not only had a prize been stolen from them—even if some of them did not quite know why she was a prize—but it had been done by a pack they considered dogs rather than wolves.

Worse yet, one of their own had been an enemy and that made neighbour uneasy about neighbour, oath or no.

`Let her go, I say,' muttered Wryneck, scratching the fleas out of his grey beard. This made a few heads turn, for old Wry-neck, along with Ketil Crow, Skapti and Pinleg, had been one of the originals of Einar's band.

`She holds the secret of treasure, old eye,' Valknut said, in a tone that reminded me of old Helga talking to the wit-ruined Otkar.

`Watch your mouth round me, you runehagged fuck,' Wryneck replied, amiably enough but with steel in it. 'I know what she is said to hold. I have not seen any of it yet save for a single coin with a hole through it and I am thinking she is too much trouble for such a poor price. We should let her lead Quite the Dandy around by the nose for a time, while we go and raid something with money in it.'