The place was empty, just as we had hoped. Wooden walkways led to a central raised platform of wood, with a tall pole on it, carved with four faces — their meeting place, with their god presiding over it. No Christ worshippers these. At first there were no bodies either, yet the smell of death was thick as linen as we prowled, turning in half-circles, hackles up and wary as cats. A goat skipped out of an alley and almost died under Abjorn’s frantic axe; a cow bawled plaintively from an unseen byre.
Uddolf poked a door open and then leapt back with a yelp; two dogs sidled out, whimpering, tails wagging furiously, tongues lolling from want of water — but they were full-bellied and the smell made my hair rise, made me breathe short and quick, not wanting to get the air anywhere deep in me.
I peered in, squinting through the gloom at the three bodies, black, bloated and chewed by the dogs. A man, his clothes tight against puffed flesh. A woman. A youngster, who could have been girl or boy.
After that we found others, one by one, two by two; a woman slumped against a wall, part-eaten, part-pecked. A boy whose face seemed to be peppered with scabs. A man with a bloated face that looked like oatmeal had been thrown at it and stuck. I grew afraid, then.
‘Sickness,’ Kaelbjorn Rog declared and he was right, I was sure, so I sent him back to fetch up Bjaelfi, who knew about such matters. We prowled on uneasily.
There were two handfuls of long timber houses, where kettles and cauldrons, horn spoons and looms sat, waiting for hands. There were storerooms and barns, hay in the barns and barrels of salted meat in the storehouses, while the bawling cow had teats swollen and sore, being so overdue for milking. The strange stillness became even more hackle-raising.
‘The livestock has been turned loose,’ Finn said, nodding to a brace of chewing goats. ‘So someone was alive to do that.’
Not now. We found them when we came up to a larger building, clearly a meeting hut. Here the truth unravelled itself from this sad Norn-weave.
‘Look here,’ Abjorn called and we went. A man and a woman lay at the door of the meeting hut, part-eaten but not as long-dead as the others. The woman had a wound in her chest, the man a knife in his throat and we circled, calling the tale of it as we read the signs.
‘The last ones left alive. He stabbed the woman,’ Finn declared.
‘Thrust the knife in his own throat,’ added Uddolf, pointing. ‘Missed, but bled. Did it again by putting it against his throat and falling on it, so he could not fail.’
We wore that little tragedy like a cloak as we filtered through into the meeting hut, almost having to push again the smell. Here they were, on pallets or slumped against the walls, dead, swollen, scabbed, eaten by scavengers, brought here to be more easily cared for, though there was no care that kept them from dying.
Bjaelfi came up, the fear slathered on his face. He had seen the other corpses, but he took one look at the stabbed woman’s body and turned it with his foot so that the flies rose up with the stink. One arm flopped and he pointed at the untouched, mottled flesh down her arm, where small red and white dots stared accusingly back.
‘Red Plague,’ he said and it hit us like a stone, so that we scrambled from the place. Fast as we were, the news of it was faster and, by the time we were hawking the bad air out of us, everyone knew.
Red Plague. We moved away as fast as we could, but I knew we would not outrun the red-spotted killer, that we probably carried it with us. I had expected to die for Odin, but the thought of thrashing out my life in a straw death, the sweat rolling off me in fat drops, my face pustuled and no-one wanting to be near me, was almost enough to buckle my knees.
We made camp at the top of a hill, in the shelter of some trees, where two fires were lit, smoking up from wet wood. Beyond a little way, bees muttered and bumbled, stupid with cold and spilled from their storm-cracked nest; men moved, laughing softly when one was stung, fishing out the combs of honey and pleased with this small gesture from Frey.
Warmth and sweetness went a long way to scattering the thought of Red Plague, as did Finn’s cauldron of meat and broth, eaten with bread and fine, crumbling cheese. Their bellies no longer grumbled, but it would not be long, as I said to Finn when our heads were closer together, when their mouths did it instead.
That night one of the sick died, a man called Arnkel, who had bright eyes and a snub nose and told tales almost as good as the ones Crowbone had once given us. Bjaelfi inspected him for signs of plague, but it was only the squits he had died of and he had been struggling for some time.
‘Ah, well, there’s an end to truth entire, then,’ Red Njal mourned when Bjaelfi brought the news of it to the fire in the dull damp of morning. ‘No more tales from him.’
‘Truth?’ demanded Kaelbjorn Rog, his broad face twisted with puzzlement. ‘In bairns’ tales?’
‘Aye,’ Red Njal scowled. ‘Told by those old enough to remember. Wisdom comes from withered lips, as my old granny told me.’
‘Was this just before she told you one of her tales?’ Kaelbjorn Rog persisted. ‘Made up completely, for sure.’
‘Only those written down,’ persisted Red Njal and men craned to listen, for this was almost as good entertainment as one of Arnkel’s tales.
‘You mean,’ Abjorn offered, weighing the words slowly and chewing them first to make sure the flavour was right, ‘that stories are only true if they are not written?’
Red Njal scowled. ‘If you are laughing at me, Abjorn, I will not take it kindly. Let no man glory in the greatness of his mind, but, rather, keep a watch on his wits and tongue, as my granny said.’
Abjorn held up his palms and waggled his head in denial. Finn chuckled.
‘Ask Crowbone. He is the boy for stories, after all.’
Crowbone, staring at the flames of the fire, stirred when he became aware of the eyes on him and raised his chin from where it was sunk in his white, fur-trimmed cloak.
‘When you hear something told, you can see the teller of it and pass judgement. But if you read it, you cannot tell who wrote it, and so cannot say whether it is true or not.’
Red Njal agreed with a vehement growl and Finn chuckled again, shaking his head in mock sorrow.
‘There you have it,’ he declared, ‘straight from an ill-matched brace of oxen, who cannot read anything written, not even runes — so how would they know?’
‘You do not understand,’ Red Njal huffed. ‘There is magic in such tales and if you needed the measure of it, remember Crowbone when he told them.’
Which clamped Finn’s lip shut, for he did remember, especially the one which had once snatched us from the wrath of armed men. He acknowledged it now with a bow to Crowbone and, seeing the boy only half notice it, added: ‘Perhaps the prince of storytellers will grace us with the one he is dreaming of now?’
Crowbone blinked his odd eyes back from the fire and into the faces round it.
‘It was not a tale. I was remembering the whale we found once.’
Short Serpent’s old crew stirred a little, remembering with him and, bit by bit, it was laid out…on a desolate stretch of shingle beach, pulling in for the night, they had come upon a small whale, beached and only just alive. No matter that it was another man’s land, they flensed it, cutting great cubes of fat, thick as peats, thick as turf sod. They ate like kings, bloody and greasy.
It was the dream of home, of north water and shingle and it fixed us all with its brightness. For a reason only Odin could unravel, I kept thinking of the patch of kail and cabbage at the back of Hestreng hov. Thorgunna had grown a lush crop there, using the stinking water from the boilings of bairns’ under-cloths and it had survived everything, untrampled and unburned, when Hestreng was reduced to char and smoulder.
Uddolf crashed into the shining of this, asking for men to come and howe Arnkel up. His closest oarmates went and, in the end, we all stood by the mound; as godi, I placed one of my last three armrings in it, to honour him, which went some way against the grey grief of his loss.