The ship, powered by all the oars, slid along so that the water creamed under the prow beast’s neck and the crew had an easy pull of it. Trollaskegg would not put up the sail, for the wind was twitchy and we did not have enough sea room for mistakes; the sky veered from a faded blue to a mottled grey, where harsh clouds piled up and looked like the face of a great, grim cliff.
The men, serene as swans on this water, sang their rowing songs, where each line was repeated by the opposite side, a pulling chant that helped keep time out on the open sea, where we did not need stealth. Here, the thinking was, everyone knew we were on the river and being loud would make folk realise we meant no harm.
What do we care, how white the minch is?
Who here bothers about wind and weather?
Pull the harder lads, for every inch is,
Taking us on to gold and fame.
This last was always boomed out, rolling over the water like the wind, which whined now, a hound too long tied up. It came in strange gusts, leaping and whirling round like an eager pup, then vanishing, so that I wondered where it went. Did it bowl on and on across the long floodplain, endlessly blowing?
‘Perhaps it is another type of djinn,’ Red Njal put in when I voiced this aloud. ‘Like the circling sand ones we saw in Serkland.’
‘Or the snow ones we had out on the Great White,’ added Crowbone, ‘the ones which always came before those buran storms.’
The Svears, who had sailed up and down the Baltic a few times and thought themselves far-farers, looked at the old Oathsworn differently after that, realising now just where we had been and nudged into remembering the tales of what we had done. That a boy of twelve had seen and done more than them, with their tangle of beard and growling, was to be considered; like all who knew Crowbone for a length, they were coming to realise that he was not the stripling he appeared.
The thought of all these clever far-farers as oarmates cheered them, all the same, so that they sang until their throats burned.
Skanish women have no combs.
Pull, swords, pull,
They fix their hair with herring bones.
Pull, swords, pull away.
The song floated out across the water, rippling past the tree-fringed shore, out across the meadowland of the floodplain, to where deer heard it, or, I thought aloud, perhaps a herdsman who hid himself and watched, unseen by us.
‘Deer,’ snorted Kuritsa when he heard this. ‘Not enough brush for deer.’
So far the hunters had shot five ducks, three geese and, once, a half-a-dozen fat wood pigeons, but nothing else. Further along, Kuritsa said, if the woods thicken like the girl said, we would find deer and maybe elk, too.
‘We need a strandhogg,’ Finn grunted. ‘Fuck your deer — let us find a place with flour and smoked meat and ale that we can raid. Aye, and women, too, else we will be fucking your deer.’
The Varmland men have no sleds.
Pull, swords, pull.
They slide downhill on old cod heads.
Pull swords, pull away.
The singing stopped late on in that day, when the wind came skittering down on the prow beast again and stole our breath away with the effort of rowing against it. The sky grew too dark for it to be night and then, across the front of us like a herd of black bulls, stormclouds rolled, spitting white stabs at the earth; rain lanced the river.
We took the sail over and used some awning canvas as well, but it was a miserable wet night, despite hot coals on the ballast stones near the mastfish which gave us grilled fish and soggy bread. We drank the last of the ale and hunched into ourselves listening to the rain hiss and the night bang; the blue-white flashes left us blinking and the air was thick and heavy with a strange, blood tang.
Red Njal said that it was a pity Finn had not worked out the use of his hat and Finn told the tale of it, of how he had taken Ivar Weatherhat’s famed headgear in a raid. Those who had laughed at the crumpled, stained object with the wide, notched brim now looked at it with more respect.
‘Keep away from your ring-coats and helms, lads,’ warned Alyosha, ‘for when the night smells of a hot forge, Perun is hurling his axe at any byrnied warrior he can see.’
‘Is that true?’ demanded Bjaelfi and men hummed and hemmed about it.
‘It is true, bonesmith,’ Alyosha declared, ‘for I have seen it and Perun is as like your Thor as to be a parted birth-brother. Once I saw a druzhina horseman in an autumn storm such as this near Lord Novgorod the Great. A proud man and brave, too, all splendid in brass and iron and he rode with his tall spear sticking into the rain and wind as if he did not care. Then there was a flash and Perun’s axe smacked him.
‘There was nothing much left but twisted metal and a black affair that might have been him. The horse had been turned inside out and we found one of its shoes in the summer, when we went to the wood a good walk away. It was stuck in a birch, half-way up the tree.’
Another flash and bang showed the white-eyed stares of the listeners and everyone hunkered deeper into their own shoulders, shifted a little away from stowed weapons.
The storm wore itself to weary grumbles eventually and I drifted to sleep, listening to the water hiss and gurgle and comforted by the faint glow of the dying coals. Men were curled and twisted into odd shapes, round sea-chests and oars, squeezed in corners and all of them sleeping as if the places they touched leached rest into them. They snored and whistled and wheezed and that was as comforting to me as the glow of coals.
I saw Finnlaith, on watch, shift slightly, a vague silhouette against the faint blood-glow of the coals; as I watched, I saw him settle and tip, like a bag of grain not set down square and I knew he was asleep. That made me annoyed, for I had just got myself comfortable and was enjoying the fire and the men snoring and the river talking quietly to itself about the storm that had blown out. Now I was going to have to lever myself up and kick his Irisher arse awake.
Somewhere a wolf ached, sharp and sorrowful, threading its cry through the night like a bone needle and I struggled and grunted out of my space, feeling the chill as the cloak spilled warmth out — then I froze, astonished.
At first I thought it was a mangy bear, waddling slow and quiet towards the boat, for they do sometimes on the travelled routes of Gardariki, seeking meat or a lick of sweetness after their winter sleep. Then I saw it was a man, working slowly, easily, down towards the ship; a shift of brief moonlight slid along the blade he held.
I almost let out a yell, then, for all the while I had been thinking it one of the crew deciding to try his luck with Dark Eye while her guard slept — but this man was coming from the shore, from further down. Besides, the naked blade told the truth of it.
Moving slowly, rolling each foot along from heel to toe as old Bagnose had taught me, placing each one carefully between sleepers and stacked oars, I crept towards Finnlaith. Beyond him, the shadowed figure with the long knife paused, then came on again.
I snapped Finnlaith’s axe from his hand and flung it, even as the Irisher sprang awake with a yell. The long, heavy bearded axe spun through the air and I heard the crack and the grunt as it hit the creeping man; I leaped, hoping he was stunned at least and scrabbled for the place he had fallen, hearing Finnlaith bellowing behind me.
I landed on the man’s back, driving more air out of him, sprang a forearm under his neck and gripped his other shoulder, levering his chin up until I heard the neck bones creak. He swung wildly behind him and I saw he still had the knife, flickering like a wolf fang in the watered moonlit dark.