I was the only one not exulting in survival, not cheered by avoiding the cliff and the wolves, moving like a man already dead and waiting, waiting, waiting, for Odin to strike. I was a scowl on the face of their cheerfulness and men avoided me, all save Finn and Crowbone – and the monk, strangely, who strode out alongside me now and then, the uneven dagged ends of his black wool robe flapping round his calves.
Eventually, because I knew he was waiting for me to do it and would never break the silence first, I asked him what he wanted.
‘To knit you back, like the broken bone you are,’ he said, easy enough with the words and looking ahead at the trail. Crowbone loped past us, an old bow in his hand and three arrows in the other.
‘I am going hunting,’ he declared and I knew it was to take his thoughts off the dead Alyosha, so I fought for words to rein him in and yet not make it seem so, for his nursemaid was gone.
Kuritsa appeared and slapped Crowbone manfully on the shoulder.
‘Nothing with legs is edible when you kill it,’ he declared. ‘You gutshoot it and the meat is bitter when it runs. I will go with you and teach you how to hunt.’
He shot me a look over one shoulder, a reassuring grin with it, then the pair of them moved off ahead of the trail, with men chaffering them, pleased that there might be more than old bread and oats that night.
‘I do not need your Christ for my salvation,’ I told the monk and he nodded.
‘Then I do not offer him. But you need something.’
I was wondering why he cared and said so.
‘I need you to get me back to the Great City,’ he said, which was truthful enough, if not exactly the warm spirit of caring I had imagined. I laughed, the sound echoing as if my head was in a bucket and he smiled.
‘See? Now matters are better.’
‘What happens when we do get to the Great City, monk?’ I demanded. ‘It comes to me that taking such a dangerous man as yourself back to the place where he is powerful and we are not is foolish. Perhaps we should kill you here; it is no more than you deserve.’
Leo walked in frowning silence for a while, then smiled suddenly, bright and wide.
‘You will just have to trust me,’ he said. ‘I will be more use alive in the Great City than dead in a heap out here.’
‘So I will not have to offer some jewelled cross for our lives, then?’ I offered wryly. ‘Now that your bargaining counter is burned to smoke?’
‘Jesus died on a wooden one,’ he answered and I had no answer to that and felt suddenly washed with weariness, so that we walked in silence through the wood, which seemed never to end – so much so that I remember saying so and asking how far we had to walk into it.
‘Only half-way,’ Finn answered, peering at me, ‘then we are walking out of it, as any sensible man will tell you. You look like eight ells of bad cloth, Trader. Perhaps you should rest.’
The day had slithered into grey twilight, where the
alfar
flickered and I was only vaguely aware of Finn calling a halt for it seemed that the grey light smoked round me, so that I saw and heard them as if in a mist.
There was a steading. Once, it had been a substantial
hov
, a shieling of some note, built low to the ground, but it had fallen to ruin, so that the moss had reclaimed it to a mound of green; grass hung, dried and withered off what was left of the roof, drooping like the bodies of the dead on the ramparts we had so recently left.
I woke to find myself under the shelter of the only roof-space left, sharing it with groaners with sweating, plaguey faces, or wounded from the fight, or moaning with belly-rot and boils. Fires were lit, the rest of the men huddled outside, under the stars and what cloaks they had, sharing them with those who had none.
Kuritsa and Crowbone had returned, the big archer with a buck over his shoulders and it was jumped on, gralloched, cut up and spit-roasted; the smell of meat sang round the house like a memory of better times.
They brought me slivers of succulent deer, bread softened and savouried in the blood-juices of it, but I had no hunger, which I found strange and even the bit I forced down tasted like ash. Bjaelfi came and peered at me and it was then I realised, with a shock, that I was sick.
For a time, I lay and listened to the men mutter softly and start in to weaving themselves together; straps were repaired, weapons cleaned, men tried to sponge the worst stains from clothing and cloaks.
They dragged out combs – all of them had them, good bone ones and, even if some of those implements grinned like gappy old men, they still dragged them through clotted, raggled hair. Bjaelfi produced shears and some of the worst matting was cut off; beards and hair were trimmed and Leo shook his head with wonder, for he had not realised that norther warriors are more vain than women.
In the end, I drifted off in my jarl-bed under the roof with the murmuring sick, listening to the gentle shift of Bjaelfi and the monk, moving like soft, clucking hens.
I moved into a dream of smoke and water, where familiar people and places shredded mistily away when I looked at them, living only at the edge of my dream-sight, like
alfar.
When I surfaced from this, it was like breaching from the ocean, whooping in air and shivering, blurred and blinking. Sweat rolled off me and I shook; I knew what ate me.
I got up and the place heaved gently as if I stood on a deck in a swell; my feet seemed too far below me and did not even seem to be mine as I moved, slowly, like an old, blind man, out past the soft glow of the fire, the snorers and farters, out to where a man stood on watch in ringmail and helm.
He looked at me and I stared blankly back at him; it took long seconds for me to recognise Ospak, by which time he had come close enough to give me his concern.
‘You should go back to the fire, Jarl Orm,’ he said flatly. I wanted to tell him to leave me alone, that I needed a shit – which was a lie, of course. What I needed was privacy to find out what I already knew in my heart.
All that I croaked out of me, all the same, was ‘shit’. He nodded slowly, and turned back to his guard duty. I struggled on, to where the dark ate the fireglow and beyond, to where only the half-veiled moon gave light.
I dropped my breeks, bent my head to look. I saw the red spots crawling out of my groin and on to my thighs like embers from a forge-fire. I touched the burn of them, knew the truth and either it or the fever swam my head, so that I half stumbled and nearly fell.
‘Steady, Bear Slayer,’ said a voice, cold as quenched iron. ‘I would not wish you hurt. That is my pleasure alone.’
Randr Sterki moved blackly out of the dark to stand in front of me, where I could see him if I could raise my head. I could do that only a little but the blade he held gleamed like an old fang in the moonglow. Naked from the waist, the white of his body seemed eaten by whorls of darkness, which I slowly realised were his Rus skin-markings.
The stupidity of him made me laugh and I saw myself as he saw me – swaying, head-bowed, breeks around my ankles. It only made matters funnier and the laughing choked me, so that I suddenly found myself with my arse on the wet grass.
‘Get up,’ he hissed angrily. ‘Or die on your knees.’
On my arse, I wanted to correct. I am on my arse here and dying of the Red Pest and whether you slit me here or wait for me to die makes no difference and will not bring any of the ones you loved back again. Odin takes his sacrifice-life – in the cruelest way, of course, that being the mark of One-Eye.
But all that came out was ‘arse’. Which, given the moment and the matter, was not gold-browed verse likely to sway him from his path.
He grunted, moved like a lowered brow, black and angry and the sword silvered through the shadows, seemed to leave a trail behind it as it moved, like the wake of a ship on a black sea. My sword, I noted dully; I could see the V-notch in it, as if the dark had taken a bite from the blade.
‘Hold, Randr Sterki,’ growled a voice and a figure scowled out of the shadows and grabbed Randr’s arm. ‘Do not kill him. We need him…’
Randr yelped with the shock of it and we both saw it was the monk, black-robed and tense as coiled wire, his hand gripping Randr’s sword-arm. Randr, with a savage howl, flung Leo away from him and cursed in pain as he did so.
‘Get away, you Christ-hagged little fuck,’ he snarled, rubbing his forearm and scowling. ‘Once I deal with this dog, you will be next.’
Leo rolled over and came up to his knees. Strangely, he was laughing through the blood on his mouth. Behind him, I saw Finn sprinting forward, The Godi in one fist, nail in the other.
‘You
nithing fud
,’ he shrieked, but it was desperation, for he knew he would never make it. I knew he would never make it, watched the slow, silver arc of my own sword curl on me like a great wave. I smelled crushed grass and new earth, heard Odin laugh – though it may have been Leo. This way was better, I was thinking. Quicker than the Pest, praise be to AllFather after all.
The laugh sounded softly again as the wave of that silvering sword cracked and broke; Randr’s hand faltered, seemed to lose the strength to grip and the blade fell from it, tumbling point over haft to land in the crushed grass. He stood, shook his head a little, looked like a bull which had just butted a rock.
‘I…’ he began and rubbed his forearm with his spare hand, the forearm where Leo had gripped him so tightly.
‘Itches,’ said Leo gently and spat a little blood from his mashed lip. ‘Those scratches are deep.’
I almost felt Randr Sterki nod. He stood like a
blot
ox waiting for the knife, one which had been fed enough mash to still it, so that it barely managed to hold the great mass of its own head up.
Finn arrived in a rush and skidded to a halt, panting, uncertain, as Leo held up one hand to stop him striking Randr.
‘Kill,’ said Randr, blinking and dull-voiced. ‘You. All.’
‘I do not think so, Randr Sterki,’ Leo said flatly.
Randr staggered two steps and then fell toward me, toppling like a great wind-blown oak; his head bounced at my feet.
There was silence for a moment – then shapes moved in the dark, sliding easily to the side of the stunned Finn, armed and ready and alerted by Ospak.
‘It would be better, I am thinking,’ said Crowbone, ‘if someone were to help me with Jarl Orm. You, Styrbjorn, since you brought all this on us.’
Styrbjorn licked his lips, looked from one to the other and back again and could have been on the edge of pointing out how it had been Crowbone’s bloody vengeance that had brought all this. He stayed silent and stared, finally, at the toppled giant that had been Randr Sterki, the fear of
seidr
magic washing off him like heat from a sweating stallion.
There was no magic here, as Crowbone pointed out.
‘Battle luck for you, Jarl Orm,’ he said, stepping past where the monk still sat, working the jaw Randr had hit, his left hand sitting quiet as a white spider on one knee. Crowbone picked up my sword, handed it to a bemused Finn and looked at me with chiding sorrow.
‘You should have paid more heed when I told you how the monk ate his food,’ he added.
I blinked like a light-blind hare; then it came to me. Leo ate with his right hand – like a Mussulman, Crowbone had said. In fact, he did everything with his right hand. I had never seen Leo use his left hand at all, save to strike with. We had all wasted our time looking for a cunningly hidden needle.
The monk shrugged and held up the white spider, where long nails on thumb and forefinger, both splintered from use, gleamed balefully in the light.
‘I have no idea how much is left,’ he said, ‘after so long without renewing.’
Enough to kill Randr Sterki dead as a flayed horse, I thought but could manage no more words. I watched Leo smile his bland smile, his face wavering as if he sat under water, while Bjaelfi and others pounded up, shouting.
‘You are strong,’ he said to me, though he seemed to be receding, growing pale as mist. ‘With God’s help and some simple skills, we will all get safe to Constantinople.’
‘Aye,’ said Finn, flexing his fingers on both sword hilts and glancing at the poison-dead Randr Sterki. ‘You have saved our jarl for sure, monk – but forgive me if I do not grasp your wrist in thanks over it.’
The rock was old and stained from use. Just a stone on a hill, flat here and hollowed there, small enough for a tiny body. It was here, then, that Odin had claimed the life I had offered him and there was nothing left to show for it after so long, for the birds and the foxes had picked it clean and scattered the remains.
A long, hard birth, Aoife told me, weeping with the memories of it. The bairn – a boy – had arrived with a head too big and a leg too short and the little chest heaving for breath, so that Aoife knew, as they all knew, that it was broken inside as well as out.
It was the last of Thorgunna’s womb, too, and she must have known that wee crippled mite was all the bairn she would ever have, all the son she would ever give, for a man she did not even know would come safe home.
Yet it lived, so Thorgunna did what all good wives did when a bairn was born who would never be whole. She stumbled with it up to this place, offered
blot
to the gods to wrap it safe and warm in their hall and left it there, naked on the rock.
She had never been back to it, Thordis told me, even after she had been brought from the brink of death herself. Not, she added with bitter accusation, in all the time I had been away.
Yet the bairn on the rock lived in front of Thorgunna’s eyes every day, so that she could see nothing else and sat, staring. She left her own life on that rock, all that she was, all that she would ever be and Thordis took a long, hard time telling me how she had gone off with a Christ priest and others who followed him. West, Thordis said, to Jutland, perhaps even to Saxland or beyond, for the god of the White Christ, it seemed, did not condemn twisted bairns to the wind and rain and cold.
A hand on my shoulder; I knew it was Finn, his eyes doglike and round. The others were there, too, standing awkwardly as you do when you see someone you care for so stricken and not able to offer anything other than mumbles of sympathy.