Desperate eyes raked the girl, who felt them and struggled until Hlenni jerked her hard and she shrieked. An answer came from the dark, from where the fires blazed and I had had enough of it all.
‘Let her go, Hlenni,’ I said and he reluctantly opened his fist; the girl sank to the ground, then stood, with a visible effort. She squared her shoulders and looked at me, chin out, eyes dark and liquid as a seal. I felt a lurch in my stomach, for I had seen such looks before on women and all of them had been rich in seidr and had done me no good with it.
‘Drozdov,’ I said. ‘Is that your name?’
‘What they call me,’ she answered, her Norse of the eastern type and further bent out of shape by her accent; those eyes were fixed on mine, swimming at the brim but not spilling over.
‘Chernoglazov,’ I remembered and she nodded, then said, ‘Yes, lord,’ before Red Njal had lifted his hand to correct her.
‘Did you kill her, then?’ I said, waving one hand at the dark, dead bulk in the wagon.
‘No…lord. Someone came in the night. I heard her make little noise and then silent. I stay hidden.’
‘Someone came?’ demanded Finn, the scorn and suspicion reeking in his voice.
She turned those dark, seal eyes on him. ‘A man, I think. Silent.’
‘What did he do, this silent man?’ I asked and she frowned and shook her head.
‘Something,’ she answered, then the frown disappeared and her face turned to mine like a petal to the sun. ‘Lord.’
‘I knew it was not good,’ she added. ‘So I hid.’
Yes, she would be good at hiding by now, good at staying out of the line of sight and the strong light. Finn looked at me, then at Bjaelfi and shook his head.
‘Was she armed?’ I asked Hlenni and he shook his own shaggy head, reluctantly.
‘You looked?’
He nodded, then added sullenly: ‘No blade is needed with seidr, Jarl Orm.’
A scream split the night and made us all start.
‘Odin’s hairy balls,’ Finn swore, then swallowed another, for it was not good to malign the gods while the Norns were so close, weaving a new life out of the Other.
‘Shave the hairs from your arm,’ muttered Klepp Spaki fearfully.
I looked at the girl again, all wet eyes and defiance in the tight-strung little body. I told Hlenni to watch her the rest of the night, in turns with Red Njal. In the morning, I promised, Bjaelfi, Finn and I would look at the body and find out what had happened and that I was no stranger to seidr and worse.
They had heard the Oathsworn tales — some of them had been there when they were made — so they went off, muttering, to huddle in the damp dark and listen to Sigrith pant and shriek a new bairn into the world.
It took a long while; I dozed until wakened with a shake on my toe, came up with a seax in my fist — which was why Thorgunna, clever woman, had shaken only my toe and stayed clear of a swinging blade. She knew all the men were tight-wound and likely to be armed and leaping from sleep.
‘Done,’ she said wearily and I blinked in the light of her flickering torch; beyond it, the dawn was a thin smear.
‘A boy,’ she added. ‘Healthy and loud. The mother is alive, too, which is good.’
It was good; too many first mothers died giving birth and, in the clearing round the dying fires, I saw the weary, gore-handed women and the blanket-wrapped bundle that was Sigrith. Botolf, a little way away, stretched stiffly and gave me a smile and a wave as I came up, the rest of the men behind me save for those on watch.
‘That was a bloody affair,’ he growled, moving slowly and shaking his head. ‘Odin’s arse, lads, I have stood in shieldwalls that had less hard work in them and less blood and shit and fewer screams.’
‘Take off those breeks,’ Ingrid said to Botolf, bustling forward with a fur bundle which had a squashed red face nestled in it. Underneath, I knew, each limb would be linen-wrapped to keep it straight and fine, having been washed in hot milk and salt. His little mouth was a sticky bud, for the women had rubbed honey in his gums, to promote appetite.
‘First,’ said a waft-soft voice and we stopped, staring at Sigrith, ‘since you did most to bring him into the world, Birthing Stool, you can name him. His father says he is to be Olaf.’
Botolf stopped and scrubbed his beard with confusion, pleased and embarrassed in equal measure. Ingrid handed him the bundle and he played the father, raising it to us over his head, standing proud and tall in his slathered breeks as he called us all to attend.
‘Heya,’ he bellowed. ‘This is the son of King Eirik the Victorious. This is Olaf, Prince of the Svears and Geats.’
We stamped and cheered and there was more than duty in it, for that bairn had come to be the focus of all our lives and we watched as Ingrid handed it to Sigrith — watched, too, as she took it back moments later, when the exhausted slip of a girl fell asleep.
I was remembering that surviving the birthing was only the first step and that making it through the days that followed it were fraught for mothers. Too many of them died and I felt a stab deep in me when Thorgunna came up to stand beside me, all bright with the promise of our own child.
‘It went hard with her,’ she said quietly to me, as people murmured themselves into a new day. ‘She needs quiet and rest and a wet-nurse, for she cannot feed the wee soul properly herself.’
‘Will he die then?’ I asked, alarmed, seeing the whole of our efforts crumbling. She shook her head and gave me one of her black-eyed, pitying looks.
‘Of course not — the idea. We can feed him, as we do kids and calves with no mothers.’
That I knew well enough, for I had done it myself with a foal I favoured, using a sheep’s bladder as a teat and a little drinking horn full of milk. It was an awkward, messy business and I said so.
‘That is children all over,’ she answered and clasped her belly as she leaned into me. I nestled her there for a moment or two, patting her absently while my mind raced on how there was unlikely to be a fast remove from here and my eyes scanned the lightening day for signs of bearcoats. I could feel them, like hot breath on the back of my neck.
She felt it in me and leaned away from me then, was about to speak when Toki bounded up in his breathless way, saying Bjaelfi wanted me.
I knew where he would be and there were others gathered round that wagon. Hlenni had laced the hands of the seal-eyed Mazur girl with a thong and tied it to his own wrist. Red Njal, Klepp, Vuokko and others gathered, while Bjaelfi knelt beside the corpse in the wagon bed.
‘Well?’ I asked, hauling myself in. Bjaelfi said nothing, simply drew back the wool cloak that covered her and pointed.
There was nothing but the blue-white dead flesh, the grey-streaked hair…and the trickle, thin as a slug trail and dried so that it seemed black in the new light of a day. It had run almost to her jawline and tracked back, curling a little, to where a drop had dried and crusted on one lobe.
‘The only mark on her,’ Bjaelfi said, loud enough for all to hear. ‘A flea-nip on an earlobe.’
The word leaped from head to head. Seidr. No Norse killing that. Gunnhild, Mother of Kings, was said to have been able to arrange such deaths, secret and stealthy in the night, shapeshifting to further the cause of her ambitious sons all over Norway.
I sat back on my heels, turning the coin of it over and over in my mind’s fingers, testing the worth of what I worked out. A deadly fleabite? Even Gunnhild, noted shapechanger that she was, had never slipped into the body of anything so small. Or that killed so easily.
This was no seidr. This smacked too much of a place where poison needles settled more quarrels than blades — the Great City. I jerked up then, cursing, shouting orders that were far too late. In a moment, it was confirmed — Leo the priest had gone.
‘And his sharp little needle with him,’ growled Finn, when I told him what I had been thinking. He smacked an open hand on the side of the wagon, making it rock. ‘Turd.’