Oathsworn 1 - The Whale Road (31 page)

`Vigfus; he said and I nodded. He glanced back, to where Einar was well hidden from any eyes that might know him, and inclined his chin. Presumably he got an answer for he took a deep breath, adjusted his belt and walked unhurriedly up the street towards the four men on the wooden steps of the tannery.

I followed, slightly behind him, and knew the others were following me. I saw Bag-nose turn, too, moving up behind the sweating butcher and his grisly load, using it as cover to get closer.

There was a blur of movement, blasting into the pain in my head, into the glare that had slitted my eyes.

Stunned, I could only watch as a spear arced out of an alley to our left, whicking across the street towards Gunnar Raudi. They had left a cunning watcher and we had all missed him.

The gods know how Gunnar saw it—even he did not know much beyond a flicker at the edge of his vision. He dropped a shoulder, spun in a half-crouch and the spear missed him, the shaft scoring across his shoulder, plunging on into the dimness of a booth, where a screech announced its arrival.

The street was in uproar. Gunnar crashed into two men carrying a bale of cloth; I stood and gawped, until something smacked ringing lights and exploding pain in my head.

`Move, you rat fart!' roared Bagnose, surging forward.

I stumbled, collided with a screaming woman, fell to one knee and raised my head, blinking dust and confusion. I saw Gunnar Raudi vanish down the alley after the spear-thrower, roaring his anger and fear in that direction.

Bagnose had skidded to a halt, since White Gunnbjorn and the two others were whipping out lengths of sharp steel and coming in his direction, slowed only by the skittering, yelling crowd getting in their way.

And Vigfus was bolting into the tanners' building.

I sprang up then and I will never know why—stung by Bagnose's slap, or even my own fear, perhaps. I ran, swerving round White Gunnbjorn, hearing Einar and the others roaring their way up the street behind me, blades out.

For a moment, the transition from dazzling light to the dim twilight of the tannery blinded me and I skidded to a halt, blinking. Then I caught the brief gleam of silver from Vigfus's belt as he skittered up a set of wooden stairs. I was after him, knife out, taking the stairs three at a time.

He bolted down a narrow work hall and shot round a corner into a room bright with daylight from opened shutters. I followed, cursing the worn-smooth soles of my leather boots on the wooden floors. I slid as if on bone skates, straight into a table, scattering shocked tallymen and their sticks and birch-bark notes.

Amid the shouts and the clatter and the pain of a bruised shin, I saw Vigfus reach the end of the room and thought I had him. There was no way out.

Save the open-shuttered window, which he took with a long-legged leap.

Cursing, I scrambled to my feet, fisted a red-faced, shrieking tallyman in the chest out of the way and sprang to the same window.

Beyond was the slanted short roof of the eaves, looking out over the sprawling yard of the tannery and its huddle of buildings. Between was crammed with vats, wooden frames, strung lines and milling, near-naked, sweating men hooking stinking hides on to long poles or feeding fires under boiling vats. The heat and acrid stink sucked the air away, as if I was breathing through wet linen.

Vigfus was skittering along the wooden shingles. He fell over a rope slung up for washing and rugs, rolled and, for one glorious moment, I thought he was over the edge and done for.

But he stopped himself, sprang up to all fours and looked back at me, for that moment like some strange spider. I thought he was set to come at me, so I slid to a halt and brought the blade up. He twisted his mouth into a scornful grin, sprang upright and raced along the short roof, stopped, looked both ways, then leaped outwards, his arms at full stretch, seax in his teeth.

I gawped. He had to be lying in the tannery yard, hopefully head first in a vat of piss. I ran to the spot—

but there was nothing. Then I saw the rope, slung slantwise between buildings, backed up, took a deep breath and did a truly foolish thing, brought on by youth and the sudden grim obsession not to let the fart get away.

I stuck the seax in my teeth and dived out at the slender arc of rope.

I hit it, grasped, swung—as he must have done—and crashed towards a square opening, the shutters half closed.

I splattered the flimsy framework to shreds, felt splinters rip into my arm and plunged into the room beyond in a welter of flying wood, reed flooring and straw from a bed pallet that exploded under me.

I fell and rolled and came up tearing the seax from my mouth and slashing wildly, but the room was empty and all I managed to do was cut my tongue and the side of my mouth.

I saw the doorway, blocked by a simple curtain. I ripped it apart and found myself in another open hallway, filled with shrouded door openings. Stairs led down into the gloom and the smell of pine and tanners' piss was heavy. I felt blood and sweat trickle and spat more on to the floor. The side of my mouth stung with the sharpest pain of them all. I was panting and soaked and desperate at the thought I had lost him.

I ran to the first room and frantically tore aside the hangings on the door openings: boxes, bales, dead rats, live rats. The next one was a room with another square opening blazing with light on the splintered debris of fresh wood; the one after that was a room with a straw bed and nothing . . .

A room with a smashed opening and shards of wood littering the floor. Where he had come in. And gone out again.

I sprang to the window, stuck the seax in my tunic and snaked out of it. I hauled myself upwards this time, on to the sloping wooden shingles, baking in the heat and so dry they cracked like ice. I slithered, cursing, on the ones that came loose.

I saw him then, his red tunic torn and fluttering, one purple leg-binding trailing and the fancy ribbons on one fork of his beard ripped loose. He glared wildly at me and scuttled down the tiles and over the far side.

Odin's arse, would he never stop running? I skated after him, saw the short drystone wall he had dropped on to—astride it, I noted savagely—and was clambering up on, limping painfully and clutching his cods.

People were yelling at us from the tannery yard and on the other side of the wall was the street. I dropped heavily on to the wall, managed not to slam it into my groin, swayed alarmingly for a moment, then caught my balance as Vigfus walked along the uneven, crumbling, narrow wall-top, hands out for balance.

Then I saw Einar and Gunnar Raudi and others, spilling into the tannery yard—but the wall was too high for them to reach him. He saw them at the same time as I did, reasoned at the same time as they did and avoided the weapons they were preparing to hurl at him by leaping down the other side of the wall, with a curse, to the street below.

`Go round, go round!' I shrieked and they all turned and headed the long way round the buildings, elbowing people out of the way.

They'd never make it in time before he vanished, so I leaped after him, trying to cushion my fall by landing in a trestle of stacked fruits. I came up scattering more people and sticky with juices. Angry shouts followed me as I got up, limping. It had been a bad landing anyway and I was flagging now.

Vigfus wasn't in much better shape, but he was starting into a run when I hurled forward in a flying dive and caught the last, trailing edge of his fancy purple bindings.

He gave a sharp yelp as he went over, clattering in to the dusty ruts full on his face. He scrambled away, kicking at me, his face a mask of fury and bloody mud.

Then I saw, with a sick horror, the bone-white head of Gunnbjorn, trotting through the yelling, milling people, hurling them aside to get to his jarl. Vigfus scrambled up and White Gunnbjorn grinned and made for me, a blade in his hand. His eyes, I saw were strange, colourless—even his lashes were white.

`Leave him,' Vigfus gasped. 'Help me—get out of here. Einar is coming.'

Gunnbjorn snarled at me, then hooked a shoulder under his master's armpit and hauled him up. They were four steps further on when, nearly sobbing with the sheer anger and frustration of watching them get away, I hurled the seax.

It whirled through the gap between us and smacked Gunnbjorn in the back. There was a crack and he shrieked and collapsed in a heap, knocking Vigfus over in front of him.

Gunnbjorn was flailing, trying to reach his back, gasping for help. Vigfus, cursing, saw his state, scrambled up and hopped off, vanishing into the milling throng. I tried to follow, but the pain in my ankle made me shriek as loud as Gunnbjorn, so I fell and Einar and the rest found me, sprawled in the street, pounding it with my fists, face streaked with blood and snot and sweat.

Gunnar Raudi rolled me over, had two men haul me up. Einar hunkered down by Gunnbjorn, who was moaning and still trying to reach his back.

`Take it out,' I heard him groan. 'I can't feel my legs. Take it out.'

There was nothing to take out. The seax was no throwing knife; the haft had hit him on the spine and broken something vital.

Einar rolled him over surprisingly gently and spoke quickly, for we didn't have much time left before someone hefty and armed came to find out what the trouble was.

`Gunnbjorn; he said, 'you are done for.'

Ìt would seem so,' the man answered painfully, through clenched teeth. His face was as white as the bone hair plastered limply to his skull, even through the patina of dust. His eyebrows and lashes were white; his eyes were not colourless, I saw, but a faint shade of violet.

Ì can let you die as a man,' said Einar, `with a good blade in your hand and a bench in Valholl.'

You could see the nod in Gunnbjorn's eyes, even if his neck could no longer make it.

Òr I can leave you here,' he said, 'in this street, where you will probably live long enough to be carried to a bed and cared for a little, until you die a nithing.' He paused and shrugged. 'Perhaps you may even live.

I have seen such. A man I saw once in Miklagard had a marvellous seat with an awning and was carried about by thralls after having his legs crushed under a ship he was careening.'

Having made the point, he leaned closer, dangling Gunnbjorn's own knife by the blade, haft tantalising inches from the man's Palm. 'Tell me where Vigfus is going with the girl,' he said.

Gunnbjorn moaned.

`He left you to die here,' Einar pointed out.

Gunnbjorn's voice was scarcely above a whisper now. 'I have a mother, Hrefna Ulfsdottir. In Solmundsteading in the Vestfold . . .'

Ì will send word that you died well. And the purse under your left armpit.'

He closed his eyes then, already seeing the ravens. 'The Sea Storm. The howe of the Sea Storm, looking for Atil's hoard. The girl knows. To the north-west, one, maybe two days, she says.'

Einar dropped the knife-haft into Gunnbjorn's palm at the same moment he slit his throat. Then we left, while the blood pooled into a scarlet mud-puddle beneath his head and the street emptied, for no one wanted to answer questions about a dead man.

It was like being on the sea in a swell. We crossed the seared steppe under a sun like a fist, kicking up puffs of black soil as we moved over the rolling yellow grass, heading for the next green line on the horizon.

Eventually, the line would thicken, grow larger, haze out of the heat into stands of pine and alder and birch. The slow, undulating steppe was studded with them, each huddled like a herd of living creatures round a gulley, where water trickled sluggishly to the Dnepr. Under the trees was heady with resin, thick with needles and mulch, and an even more oppressive heat. But it offered shelter from what we feared most: Pecheneg horsemen.

It was, as Valknut never seemed too tired to point out, a truly bad idea, heading out on to the steppe on foot, with no more than two days' hard flatbread, rank cheese and some of the dried meat strips the Rus horsemen used.

They stuck it under their saddles and cloths, where the horse sweat softened it and juiced it up—mare sweat tasted better, they swore—but we had no such luxury and, at the third forest of the day, I stopped trying to chew it and swore it would be better kept to repair my boot soles with.

`Give it here,' shouted one of the band, a pox-faced half-Slav called Skarti. 'I'll stick it down my breeks for you. Same idea, different sweat.'

They laughed, this dripping, evil-smelling bunch. They panted like dogs and filled leather bottles with river water, softened bread and meat in the stream before trying to eat it, gasped on their needle couches With the weight of the heat—and joked.

Einar had to turn eager men down when he told them of his plan and that he needed sixty good men from the company to get Hild back. He had sent word to Sviatoslav and his three sons that men of Prince Vladimir's
druzhina
had broken oath and run into the steppe, taking with them a slave from Einar, and that he had gone to bring all of them back. That, he hoped, would excuse his own absence.

Einar's assured calm had gone, replaced by a morose nervous energy, where he stroked his moustaches feverishly and gave every sign that his luck had deserted him.

Then the chosen sixty had struck off north and west, following the signs Bagnose and Steinthor, those two tracker hounds, were leaving as they followed the spoor of Vigfus and his crew to the mysterious howe of the Sea Storm.

And I had gone with them, despite Einar and Illugi and everyone else's misgivings over my strapped-up ankle and the limp I'd had before we'd even started.

But I was determined and Einar didn't put up too much resistance to it. I caught Gunnar Raudi's eye as we started out across the steppe and remembered his words to me, his warnings. Einar, I thought, would be pleased to have me founder on the plains outside Kiev, where he could find a good, sensible excuse to leave me for dead.

The prospect was another good argument for staying behind, but I was more afraid of looking afraid than anything else. That fair-fame trap was closing like steel teeth—I was the Bear Slayer, after all, the young Baldur. I had to go to the howe of the Sea Storm.