Kasperick. I hoped he would come within reach but if I knew that man he would lead from the back. I wiped rain from my face and squinted into the shadows of a day gone night. There were splashes.
‘They are off the walkway,’ I warned — then a dark shape was on me, panting out of the dark, slick with rain and fear. He was below me, in the mud and filth, glittering with old fishscales and stuck with feathers and hair. He sliced at my ankles with the spear, for he could not see me clearly and thought a scything blow would sweep me off my feet if it failed to cut me.
I hopped up awkwardly, landed badly and on my weak ankle, which shot fire through me. On one knee and cursing, I heard him suck in a triumphant breath and lurch forward; the spearhead, trailing droplets of water, slid past my eye and I slashed wildly, felt the edge hit and heard him scream and the splashing of him stumbling away.
‘If you have rested enough,’ Finn panted from above me, ‘I would be glad of some help.’
Two Saxlanders were at him, one on the logs and one off, slithering to keep his balance, ankle-deep in clinging mud.
Finn turned from the one on the walkway, took two steps, swung The Godi up as if for a great downward cut and then kicked the Saxlander spearman in the face as he followed the arc of it, his mouth slightly open. The man hurled backwards with a strangled choking sound; one boot was left stuck in the mud.
During this, I scrambled up and took on the other man, who crabbed and stabbed and huddled behind his shield, so that the best I could do was fend him off. Then he saw Finn was coming for him and backed off into the frustrated bellows of Kasperick, urging his men on.
They were wary, but circling, dropping off one walkway, slogging through the mud and on to another; the flash of white light showed them, dark as hunting wolves and almost behind us.
That same flash showed them stop, almost in mid-step. The darkness that followed was blacker still, but Finn had seen them and stood up straight, throwing out his arms, scattering water droplets like bright pearls.
‘I am Finn Bardisson, known as Horsehead, from Skane,’ he roared. ‘You want me? Here I come, you nithing, chicken-fucking, Saxlander whoresons.’
He hurled himself forward roaring, nail in one hand, The Godi in the other and I tried to snag him before he went, but failed. I half-stumbled on that cursed ankle, feeling the fireache of it and the sick, belly-dropping certainty that this was the moment Odin took his sacrifice and that I had doomed Finn with me.
The white light split the darkness again — and they fled.
The Saxlanders turned and ran, stumbling, away from the mad, wild-haired Finn and Kasperick stopped bellowing at them to get us and ran with them. I knelt, panting, bewildered, heard a noise and staggered up on one good foot, whirling round to face the dark shapes behind.
They loomed up, silent and grey-grim against the black. Then the lightning flashed again and I saw them, as the Saxlanders must have seen them, ring-coated and helmed, sharp with edges and grins, their faces streaked black with charcoal and sheep-fat.
Familiar faces — Alyosha, Finnlaith, Abjorn and the others.
‘That was a good trick of Finn’s,’ Styrbjorn said, pushing through to the front, ‘waiting until he saw us come up and then charging them. That set them running, for sure.’
Finn strolled back, The Godi over one shoulder, his nail in his teeth. He took it out and shoved it down one boot, then shouldered into the stone-grey ranks of men as we all backed off, heading for the river. I stood, trembling with reprieve.
‘You are a fool,’ I said to the grinning Styrbjorn, as Abjorn and Ospak helped me hirple away, ‘if you think Finn noticed any of you were there at all before he ran at them.’
SIXTEEN
The Odra roared and spat like a boiling cauldron, brimmed over into the woods and growled among the trees. It slashed the higher bank, so that sections of it slithered and sighed in slow splashes and turned the water black-brown. Trees came down, too, teetering slowly with a noise like ripping linen, clawed roots tangling so that they chained to the broken shore and made dams against which other drifts piled.
We watched it all warily, for the current in the river slithered like a coil of mating snakes, first one way, then the other, breaking round Short Serpent and fattening out into the floodplain so that we had no idea now where the old shore had been.
The rain fell, too. It had caused all this on the slopes of the distant mountains, now unseen through the fine, misted water that lisped on us and filled the very air so that every breath came as if we held linen cloths over our mouths and noses.
‘This is no time to be sitting on this river, I am thinking,’ Onund observed mournfully, ‘for we can neither use oars nor sail in this and if we sit here, a floater will get us, for sure.’
It was no time to be moving, either, for though we all feared the current and the clutch of water, we feared the floaters most and had seen three or four already, looming out of the boil like whales with great thrashing root-limbs. Hovering for a moment in the current, they would sink from sight again and, like the bergs of the north, most of the dangerous part was unseen. One of those great earth-clogged claws would swipe in the planks of Short Serpent.
There was no possibility of stopping, all the same; we had to put distance between us and Kasperick, keeping to the east bank and trusting that the spate prevented him crossing. I was sure, all the same, that I had seen horsemen, faded as fetches through the rain-mist, splashing a miserable way up the west bank, appearing and disappearing as the swollen river widened and narrowed.
‘Time to haul away,’ Trollaskegg said cheerfully and the men groaned, for this was almost too much when added to the lack of food and ale and the soaked cloaks and blankets on a boat filmed with water.
Little Yan went up the mast with the rope and fastened it, then it was paid out and men leaped overboard, to the places where the water was shallow, or had not yet reached. Then they pulled, so that Short Serpent, balking like a stubborn goat on a tether, slowly moved forward; the linden-bast rope hummed and water spurted out of it, while the mast curved.
Everyone lent a hand, the strong ones pulling and staggering through the shallows or over the brush of the bank, the weaker ones using the oars as poles to fend off the drift. Even Dark Eye bailed and I did not care for that, though I told myself, and everyone else who saw my unease, that it was because it would not do for her to get sick or injured, for we might need her yet. I had already provided my good sealskin cloak for her as a makeshift shelter.
Finn, squeezing the water from his beard so that it squirted through his knuckles, had squinted from under the drooped, sodden brim of his weather-hat and smiled, a quizzical, knowing smile I tried to ignore, all the while feeling it nag me as badly as the ache in my ankle.
She had clasped me tight when we lumbered, sodden and uneasy, spilling hurriedly onto Short Serpent and sliding off into the dark, rain-hissing river. In the storm’s searing white light, her face was raised to mine, eyes bright, streaming with rain so that she looked as if she wept. I almost kissed her then, but the corner of my eye caught Finn’s scowl in that eyeblink of light and I patted her like a wet dog instead.
In the dark, we had hauled a little way upriver, all that could be managed, before settling on the east bank to wait for daylight and the storm to growl out. By then the river was mud-coloured, frothing like a mad dog in the sullen light of morning and it stayed that way for the next few days, with no sign of stopping, so there was nothing to be done but pull.
‘Bank is not made for towing,’ Onund growled at me, coming up with an oar to fend off something that rolled and turned, shapeless in the water.