Robert Low - The Whale Road

He darted in again. I half dropped, slashed, felt my sword bite and recoil from that armour. His point flicked out again; I blocked and hacked again to no purpose other than chipping metal leaves off him.

Something whirled next to me; the man shrieked and dropped. Wryneck popped up like some mad puppet, rammed his sword straight through the open front of the screaming man's helmet and yelled, 'Too many to go dancing with them, young Orm. Cut the feet from the fucks.'

I remembered, then, Gunnar Raudi's lessons back in Bjornshafen: any way you can. Teeth, fists, elbows—aim for the feet and ankles. My father, teaching me how to survive . . .

There were too many. I had three on me, one with a spear, two flanking him with shields as guards. My breath was ragged; my whole arm throbbed from blows on the shield. The spearman waded in chopping in a cross-pattern, which was lucky for me. It let me know these men had no idea how to fight on foot.

I slapped the iron blade point away with a sweep of the sword, stepped, spun up inside it, rammed the shield against his armoured carapace and slammed the fat pommel of Bjarni's old sword into his face.

I knew where they all were, as if I could see it. I spun out of that, weightless it seemed to me, went into a crouch and scythed round, taking a second one just above the ankles, feeling the blade bite, hearing him howl.

The spearman was on his back now, so I leaped up, landed both feet and drove the air from him as I hurled myself at the third man, who was snarling and swinging his sabre furiously.

The blow hooked up under my shield and slammed into my ribs so hard I felt them bend. Then I hit him hard, felt the searing agony of pain in my shield-arm as we collided, falling together like two steel trees.

I rolled right, over the sword-arm, came up in a half-crouch, shield up. My left arm was pure fire now, but I hacked viciously with the sword as he struggled like a trapped beetle in his heavy armour. It swept up under the nasal of his helmet, took his nose off in a flick of blood, ripped the helmet half off his head and left him yowling and scrabbling away from me.

I sliced again, seeing the spearman wallowing back to his feet, felt the blade shear down into muscle and bone, through Noseless's neck.

The spearman was up, dragging out his sabre and I had no shield-arm, just a mass of fiery pain with a dead weight dragging it. I lunged forward as Black Beard's sabre cleared the sheath, hacked forward, backstroked and he squealed, the sabre flying away, hand still attached.

I was on one knee, sucking air. One was dead, one was rolling around with blood seeping from his boot, one was howling with the stump of a right hand.

And Einar was coming at me, dust spurting under his boots.

He had lost his shield and helmet and his hair was flying like a black net. He had also lost his sword and gained one of their cavalry sabres, the great lazy S-curve of it pointing at me as he roared forward.

I couldn't get my left arm to move. He came hurtling at me and all I could think to do was snarl back at him and slash.

The blow took him hard in the side. I saw rings explode, the straw of his padded jerkin puffed out, then blood sprayed and he shrieked, the sabre curving over my shoulder.

Taking the cavalryman coming up behind me straight in the face.

He hit, we fell together in a grunting heap of dust and blood, spilled apart, lay there. My shield straps broke—mercifully—and I rolled free of it and got up, left arm dangling.

Einar struggled up, grinned at me with bloody teeth, collected his sabre from the face of the man who had been about to kill me and hirpled off, half-bent.

I stared as the dust swirled. Men groaned, yelled. Valknut moved wearily over, finished off the one whose leg I had all but severed—the other one was gone—then walked a few paces forward and raised both arms. Àny more? Have you any more, you pox-eaten holes?'

I hoped they hadn't, but there were some ragged cheers. With my breath thundering in my ears I looked at the cavalryman with the punched-in face. Had Einar saved me? Had he tried to kill me there and was his luck so bad he had actually stopped me from being killed?

I didn't know; I couldn't be sure. But I had hurt him. Ketil Crow was with him, helping him off with his mail. Others, Illugi among them, were moving among the bodies, looking for dead and wounded.

Wryneck lay up against a wagon wheel, pinned to the ground like a hunted boar, thick blood welling round the point where the lance had sliced into the rings and mail and through him to the steppe.

I couldn't speak as I knelt by him. He felt it, opened his eyes with difficulty and grinned, spilling blood all over his white beard. 'She said I'd never get old and rich,' he said and died.

Àre you hurt bad?' I heard and turned to see Valknut looking at me. I stood up, weaving, and he steadied me, looking me over.

`This needs sewing,' he said with a chuckle, flicking the dangling rings round rents in the mail. My ribs, I knew, were bruised, but not cut. The pain in my hand was beginning to subside, too, and I realised I had got off lightly.

So did Valknut, who slapped me on one shoulder and looked at the dead men nearby. 'Not bad,' he said.

'Three in one—but that fourth would have had you if it hadn't been for Einar.'

And he strode off, sword round both shoulders, as if coming off a practice field. Over by the fire, Einar was naked to the waist, grim-faced and white as milk, while Illugi picked rings out of his flesh and heated up a knife.

I saw him force Einar to drink and, an hour later, I could already smell the garlic from his severed gut from where I stood, but Einar gave a little shake of his head when Illugi came to him and put his tunic back on.

Hild crouched nearby, watching like a buzzard waiting for prey to die.

Eight were dead, almost all the others wounded and two of those had soup wounds, which Ketil Crow dealt with. Sixteen enemy corpses were left where they lay, though they were stripped naked. The horsemen had disappeared.

An hour after the battle, half of those still fit started to shore up the tunnel and recommenced digging, those too hurt to dig tended the wounded and prepared food. At noon, I handed Einar a bowl of meat and bread and our eyes met.

He was so pale the veins on his hands were blue ropes, but his eyes locked with mine and were still black and steady and I was first to look away, still unsure whether he had been trying to kill me or save me.

When I collected the bowl again, it was still full, the food congealed. Einar looked asleep, head on his chest, face hidden by the matted wings of his hair, but his hands looked so white I thought, for a second, that I could see through them.

All that day I wondered about him, while the heat grew brassy and the corpses swelled and began to blacken and stink.

`We shall have to get out of here soon,' muttered Kvasir. 'If not, we will get sick and die.'

They called him Spittle as a joke, after the wise man made from the saliva of the gods, because there were stones with more sense than Kvasir. But it is possible that he had made his first-ever joke, since most of us were sick or dying already. Kvasir himself had an infection in one eye that leaked pus: if a cure wasn't found, he would go blind in it.

I wasn't even sure of my own state. The bindings round my lost fingers were filthy and stained, my ankle ached and, once I had peeled the tattered mail and padding off, my ribs were looking anything but healthy under the tunic.

`Looks like Bifrost,' said Finn Horsehead. It was a measure of how bad things were, for he never said much at the best of times. Ìt will have more colours than the rainbow bridge by morning, I am thinking.

Does that hurt?'

It did and I slapped his hand away and told him to leave off prodding it. I could feel it grate when I moved and worried that I had broken a rib or more.

`We are so cursed that we will soon come to envy the dead,' answered Short Eldgrim morosely.

We still called him Short Eldgrim, even though the reason for it—another Eldgrim, nicknamed Long—

was under the mound of earth nearby. Short Eldgrim, slashed badly about the face and hands, didn't look like he would be long in lying next to him.

`You old woman,' answered a man called Arnod, though he made a sign against the evil eye with the one arm that was still good. The other was strapped to his side with two wooden spars on either side, badly smashed by one of the cavalrymen's maces.

Ì would like to see my old woman,' Finn muttered and everyone glanced at him, stunned by this display of affection. He saw it and scowled. 'She owes me money.'

I sat by the fire, whose flames twisted and flattened in the rising wind and listened to them talk, as if they had no injuries worth speaking of, about what they might find inside that gods-cursed howe.

They had everything in there, from Odin's magic ring, Draupnir, to the Mead of Poetry, brewed from blood and honey.

Then Short Eldgrim, hunched and grumbling and in pain from the carvings on his face and hands, moodily pointed out that, if we were descending into the realm of saga tales, there was every chance we'd find Hati, the wolf who chases and tries to devour the moon, or even Nidhogg, the corpse-devouring dragon.

In the distance came a rumbling on the rising wind. As the twilight grew and the wind moaned down the balka, Valknut came up to where we all huddled round the fire, watching the blue-white flashes light up the sky in the distance, listening to the rumbling wheels of Thor's goat-pulled chariot.

He held up a guttering torch, whose flames were nearly flat in the wind. 'We have broken into the howe of Attila,' he said, 'and Hild has gone inside.'

There was a mad scramble from the fire then, a scrabble of eager men heading for the tunnel until they were brought up short by the grim figure of Ketil Crow, standing light on the balls of his feet, his sword, saw-edged with nicks, swinging in one hand.

`Best if only a few go in,' Einar said, moving slowly, half-hunched to one side. His face seemed to have shrunk and had a greenish tinge, the eyes sunk so deep that his face already looked like a corpse. There was a huge seep of blood from his bandaged side. 'The tunnel isn't all that wide, or safe. Ketil Crow, me, Illugi, Sig—Orm, you are fit, I am thinking, so you will go. The rest remain.'

`Prepare the carts, lads,' Ketil Crow added with a grin. 'We will be hauling out a fortune soon.'

That mollified them but it didn't take much—while the lure of plundering a huge hoard of silver was strong, the fear of Nidhogg or worse was stronger. Best, I could see them all reason, to let someone else find out the dangers. There was plenty of opportunity for plunder later.

The dawn horizon flashed and roared behind me as I ducked into the tunnel. I was the last man, almost on all fours, wincing at my various pains and carrying only my sword. Ahead, Einar's arse was barely visible and I could hear him grunt and pant. Up front, Ketil Crow, Valknut and Illugi Godi struggled to keep torch flames from their faces and still avoid elbowing all the shaky timber uprights.

Earth trickled down my neck—a run of it, like thick water, spilled over the back of my hand as I brushed the roof. Something dug into my knee: metal. I dug it out, made out a dull gleam, held it close, saw the wink of silver.

Now that I looked, I could see other lumps of dull, age-black metal. We had dug straight through a wall of silver objects and earth.

I crawled on, feeling my other hand slap into something sticky and, when I brought it close to my face, smelled the iron tang of fresh blood. Einar, leaking like a sprung bucket, slithered along the tunnel and, suddenly, stood upright.