Oathsworn 1 - The Whale Road (43 page)

There were rings and armrings, which we still call ringmoney. Plates, shields, helmets, brooches, bowls, ewers, bracelets, necklaces, earrings and coins, thousands of coins. There were knuckledusters of gold and daggers of silver with jewelled hilts.

They were everywhere, piled high, forced together until cups flattened and thrones bent, a fortune, all in silver, wrenched from the world by Attila and his armies, a fitting panoply for the greatest of great steppe kings.

It was the scream that wrenched me out of it, my tunic stuffed, my boots full, my arms laden with a bowl the size of a bath.

`Burning ice, biting flame,' Illugi said. `That is how life began, in the south, in Muspell, where it seethes and shines and no man can look on it.'

In the flickering torchlight, I suppose, all that cold silver, bouncing with flame, could have reminded him of Muspell, the land of molten ice and shining flame where life was first created. At the time I thought his mind had gone. I am still not sure what was right.

The scream came again, then Ketil Crow slid down a hill, stumbling in an avalanche of coin, cursing and shrieking. He had lost his sword and there was blood on his mouth. He hit the flagstones and fell, scrambled up, fell again and tried to crawl to the exit.

Valknut went to him, but he was already sliding out of this world, bleeding in slowing gouts and spilling blue-pink coils from the rip in his stomach that went from groin to throat. Cunt to jawline.

His eyes chilled us. They were livid with fear and he was so gibbering with it that he couldn't speak, his mouth moving like a fish until it stopped and he died.

I stood up and moved, shedding rings and cups and a fork with two tines. I let the huge bowl clatter and Valknut whirled, searching the darkness.

Èinar . . . ?' I asked, but there was silence. I moved to where he sat, like the jarl he had always striven to be, surrounded by all the wealth of the world, on the throne of a ring-giver. He looked like spume on a wave, as if a breath would blow him away.

`Was it worth it?' I demanded of him and the sunken eyes flicked open, the pale face rose a little. One strand of black hair stuck to his cold-sweated cheek like a scar and his grin was as pale as the torc he wore, that mark of his status.

He grinned and touched it, that thick, braided ring of silver, shredded and lopsided where gift-sections had been hacked off.

`You . . . may have . . . to learn . . . for yourself,' he said, with that wolf-snarl of his. 'The weight of a jarl torc like this.'

It was the smile that finished it. I had seen it before, just as he'd reached the back of Gunnar Raudi in Dengizik's tomb.

`Before you die,' I said. 'I have a message.'

His head wobbled as he raised it to look at me. I took Bjarni's sword and rammed it hard in him, so that he folded round it and gasped.

`From Gunnar,' I said to the fade in his black eyes. 'My father.'

Valknut wiped his mouth with the back of one hand, glanced wildly at me, then at Illugi. Then he heaved in a great suck of air and stepped forward, sword up, staring into the darkness. 'I am here. Come ahead, if you think you are hard enough to fight me. I am Odin's chosen. Let him deal with me as he pleases, for I am not afraid to die.'

There was a black chuckle, a rustling, insect-wing of a thing and something shaded detached itself from the dark and came down the silver mountain in a clatter of riches.

'Freyja'
; said Illugi, his mouth open in awe. Truth to tell, it certainly wasn't Hild and could easily have been Freyja the sister of Yngvi, foremost of the Vanir, the old gods. Freyja, the Queen of Witches, shapechanger, teacher of the dark seidr magic.

`Hild . . .' I managed and she turned at that, hair draped half over her face in black tangles, the delicate S-curve of the sabre in both hands, her dark dress shredded. A wind blew up the tunnel and into the howe, then, snaking her hair back from a mask of a face.

`Not . . . Hild,' she said, in that lost voice. `We Volsung say it as Ildico.'

Ildico, the bride sent to Attila, who had died on his wedding night to her, rumour said by her hand, in vengeance for Attila's betrayal of the Volsung. They had chained her to his throne for all eternity, naked and alive.

I believed then that her fetch called to the bloodline to come and free her, made powerful by that double-damned runesword and what it was made from. Whatever the right of it, the girl I had known as Hild was gone. What she was now was something to run from, screaming, as Ketil Crow had done.

Valknut gave a howl. Witch or no witch, Valknut knew how to die and he hurled himself at her, swinging, frothing, screaming on Odin for help.

Behind me, Illugi was also calling to the All-Father and the wind hissed round the howe as if in answer, guttering torches, flaring shadows everywhere, bringing the clean, cold smell of rain.

Valknut would have kippered her if things had been normal, but they weren't normal. He swung, she parried, did it again and again until he backed off to get his breath.

`Help me,' he grated. I blinked away from Einar's dead stare and hauled my sword out of him. It came with a slight suck and a groan of air, as if he was alive, and that made me step back a pace. But he was gone across Bifrost, for sure.

So I stepped to Valknut's side, still uneasy. It was Hild, after all. Illugi Godi came up on Valknut's right.

It wasn't Hild. Those eyes were just all blackness now and the smell of rot was on her. We all tasted it, saw what we saw—and I was so scared that I felt the piss wash hot down my leg.

Illugi rapped his staff and uttered some commanding phrase, looked down at the splash it made, then up, while she blocked Valknut's rush and moved sideways as if she floated, sinking the sword-point straight in Illugi's slow-spreading smile.

He fell away, choking. I lashed at her and she turned the blade slightly to meet it. There was a high
ting
of sound and my sword halved just above the hilt, the main part spinning into the darkness. Now, it seemed, I had the gods' answer for my having stolen it in the first place.

Valknut hacked down, reversed, hacked back. Each time it was met with a delicate parry. I stood there and gawped at the ruin of Bjarni's blade and the only thing that I could think was that he was going to be really annoyed about that.

Then I staggered away, fell over Ketil Crow and sprawled backwards at the foot of the throne, scrabbling in the heavy silk, dragon-embroidered robes that had draped Attila's corpse. Bones crunched and scattered and I dropped the useless sword, which was so perfectly broken it barely had a jagged edge.

Valknut, panting and gasping, backed away, unable to sustain his attacks. Illugi was writhing and choking to death in his own blood as it splashed on the floor. I wondered why he had smiled . . .

Splashing. I was wet through and not because I had pissed myself. The floor was wet. The floor was
wet
.

. . ?

Valknut started to launch himself again, but she swung, he deflected and his sword shattered into three and the pieces flew off, clattering into the dark. Before he could even curse, she whicked the sabre left and right and left and blood flew, an arm circled lazily and then Valknut folded from the waist, his bottom half falling backwards and gore spraying everywhere.

Wet. The floor was wet because water was sliding greasily up the tunnel, thick with slurry and mud. And I remembered us arriving here, and Einar's marvelling voice: `To hide the entrance, they turned a river across it. This was once . . . a lake, a great pool, with water flowing in there and running out there to the Don.'

Illugi had smiled because he'd had an answer from the gods and, as usual, it was a Loki joke. Not once a lake.
Always
a lake when it rained—as it had done far to the north all night.

She came to me then, scarcely making splash or a ripple as she stepped, her hair wild, her eyes as black as I realised her heart now was. She had known this would happen all along, I remembered, had pleaded with me to stay away.

'Hild . . .' I said. I begged, if truth is being told here. I remembered, with a bright flash, how she had looked just like a fine princess, once, with a fine prince by her side. We ate meat on wooden skewers, drank honey mead on a perfect day.

This was not her, though. Not this avenging Valkyrie, sword up, moving with sickening speed, fluid as shadow. She laughed, high and fierce with triumph and . . . what? Revenge, for all that had been done to her, to her mother and all her kin before? Or, if she was truly fetch-hagged, for being Ildico, chained and left to a slow death?

She only had to whirl that rune blade and I was done, with nothing under my hand . . . but something hard.

A hilt it felt like, but not Bjarni's ruined sword. This was round and perfect and slid into my palm.

I flicked it out, a reflex more than anything. It was a hilt and on it a blade, as curved and true as the one she wielded and they rang like bells.

She howled like a wounded wolf, tried again and again and each time my blade held. The water was round my ankles now and I scrabbled back; she flailed wildly, slashed, shrieked and each time I parried, until the hall rang like a Christ temple on a feast day.

Two swords. Each bell-clear tang of sound as they struck drove the surety of it into me. Two swords. I saw them lying across Dengizik's dead lap. His father had had them, too—all great steppe lords had them: the mark of their lordship.

The Volsung smiths had made two swords, not one, as gifts for Attila: she had one and I had the other.

Ridill and Hrotti the saga tales called them, part of Sigurd's cursed Fafnir treasure. I did not stop to wonder which one was clenched in my fist.

I darted for the tunnel and she was too late to prevent it. I backed up it, feeling the water surge round my boots; she followed, still swinging and stabbing. Two roof supports shattered under her blows. She wailed and hurled forward as the earth poured in.

I last saw her as nothing but a snarl in a pale face, her mouth like a red wound, the sword thrusting still as the earth piled up with a soft, sighing rush of sound.

I almost laughed with the sheer relief of it. Until the water in the tunnel, unable to go anywhere else, surged up and I was sucked in the muddy slush of it.

I wriggled and splashed. The tunnel was full now and I saw earth silting through it, knew it was filling the whole tunnel, knew I was almost as trapped as she.

I went mad then, a little. I fought, grunting, jabbing with the sword to get through. I was choking; there was nothing in that tunnel but slurry now—then a last, quicksand moment of resistance and I was out, neck deep, pulling in air in great maddened whoops.

The
balky
was a surging mass of tan slurry, pouring down, spilling out and round the mound to make the lake, filthy brown with mud and rolling with old corpses. Soon it would swallow the mound itself, drown it until the next drought.

Someone yelled as I struggled to the steep sides, where the crumbling earth calved like bergs off a mountain of ice. I should have floated, but didn't. I was drowning in greed.

Frantically, I hauled my belt off, let my tunic fly free and everything in it that was dragging me down.

Brooches, rings, coins: all vanished. I could not get my boots off, they were pulling me down . . . but still I held on to the sabre.

Òrm! Orm!'

The voice came from above. Short Eldgrim's face appeared, a length of rope slithered like a wet snake and I stuck the sabre in my mouth and grabbed it. Willing hands hauled me and I never even felt the pain in my ruined left hand until long afterwards.

I lay on the edge of the dawn-smeared steppe, which crumbled even as we stood there, so they dragged me away again. Eventually, gasping, I sat up. I couldn't believe I was alive and neither could they.

Èveryone else?' asked Kvasir.

I shook my head.

Èinar too?' said Sighvat.

I nodded. The muddy lake swirled and gurgled. I thought of them all under it, wondered if the tunnel was so blocked it would keep the chamber from filling . . . remembered her open mouth and the hate in her eyes.

Not that it mattered. No one was getting in now. The treasure was buried once more, safe under the lake, as had been intended by those who had brought Attila here.

And I laughed, then, thinking of a time when . . .
if
. . . others ever came back here, did what we had done and dug through to Attila's throne when drought bared it once more.

They'd find Einar on that throne, not Attila, think him the great lord, wonder at his riches and how he died.

That's if they had time, for I had the idea that Hild's fetch would haunt that hall a long time, thanks to her runespelled sword.

I never wanted to go back there.

The others looked at me laughing and I got up, winced, and stood for a moment.

`Well,' said Short Eldgrim, holding up the battered plate of silver, with its embossed rim of little fruits and bees and birds. 'Looks like this is the only hoard of silver we will see this day.'

Òr any day,' agreed Kvasir. He sounded almost relieved.

Short Eldgrim turned it over in his hands and then tossed it back in the waters, an offering to the tortured fetches of Einar and the others.

No one protested.

`Sigurd's cursed silver,' muttered Finn.

`Right enough,' agreed Short Eldgrim.

I hoped not—but no one suggested I throw the sabre back, so I stayed quiet. They had rescued three ponies and some supplies and a dozen men, those fit enough actually to run for it. All the rest had died, were rolling and tumbling in the maelstrom of muddy water.

There was no rain that day, so we made a fire and I watched what was left of them huddle round it, beyond my hearing, talking. I knew what they were doing and, with a black despair, what I would do when they came to me, their secret whisperings done. I did not care about that: I had my own secret.

It was done simply enough the next day. It had rained then, just when I thought we couldn't be more miserable and I was sitting in it, enduring, when Kvasir came to me and hunkered down where I sat tracing the runes along the sabre's shining, watered blade. Ridill or Hrotti, I wondered.