‘Odin sounds very much like every king I have ever heard of,’ Onund Hnufa rumbled, ‘while his rat reminds me of every royal messenger I have ever seen.’
The laughter was dutiful, but so weak it dribbled out like drool from a sleeping mouth and scarcely made Crowbone pause.
‘The rat was, as you say, a poor messenger,’ he went on. ‘He fell asleep, went here, went there — and, though he eventually remembered the message, forgot what it was exactly; so as he went about among the people he told them that Odin had said that, whenever anyone died, they should be set on an oak bier, surrounded by all their prize possessions and burned to ash. In half-a-day, they would be brought back to life.’
Crowbone stopped and spread his hands wide.
‘Well — by the time Hugin woke up and remembered he had a message, it was too late. He flew around furiously yelling at people to stop setting fire to their dead and telling them of the message Odin had given him — but folk said they already had a message and it was all too late.’
‘And so,’ Crowbone said, ‘the Odin dead are always burned to this day; the god in a fury rescinded the secret of resurrection and went off to find the sort of wisdom that would stop him making any more mistakes like that.
‘Now no-one trusts a raven when it speaks — and the rat is hated for the false message he brought.’
Folk shifted slightly as the tale came to an end; Rovald shook a mournful head.
‘Think of that,’ he said, nudging his neighbour, who happened to be Styrbjorn. ‘If the raven had not stopped to eat — folk would all still be alive.’
‘Blame the dead sheep for dying, then,’ snarled Styrbjorn.
‘Or having tasty eyes,’ added Ospak moodily.
Koll stirred and moaned, came awake into his nightmare.
‘Moonlight,’ he said and a few folk looked up; like a pale silver coin, it seemed to drift across the sky between clouds.
‘Rain on the wind,’ muttered Thorbrand.
‘This place is famous for it,’ Ospak growled and that raised a weak chuckle or two.
‘The same moon,’ Koll whispered, ‘shines on my home.’
It was a link, right enough and the tug of it brought every head up briefly. Styrbjorn wiped his mouth, gone dry with the thoughts that flitted nakedly over his face — home was there, under that silver coin in the sky and just as unreachable. He would die here. We would all die here.
‘Tell me of your home,’ the monk asked gently and Koll tried, in his shadow of a whisper, a thread of sound that stitched all our hearts. Of running barefoot on the strand’s edge. Hunting gull eggs. Playing with his dog. Fishing. A bairn’s things that, to these hard raiding men, were as far removed as that same moon — yet close enough to be remembered, to make them blink with the sudden rush of it. A man grunted almost in pain as Koll lisped about sliding on the frozen river on goat-bone skates. Then the boy’s voice faded — mercifully — to sleep.
‘What of your own home, monk?’ I harshed out, eager to be rid of the pangs of Koll’s memories, sure that tales of Miklagard would be more diverting, since most of the men here had never been to it more than once and that only briefly.
‘The city walls rise like cliffs,’ Leo said obligingly, ‘and the towers and domes blaze with gold. In the morning, a mist hangs over the roofs, there is smoke and ships…’
He stopped and I was surprised to see his eyes bright. Murrough shifted his big frame and coughed, almost apologetically.
‘I have heard they have women of great beauty there,’ he grunted, ‘but veiled, like the Mussulmen women. I thought you were all Christ believers in Miklagard?’
‘Veiled, unveiled, beauteous and plain as a cow’s behind,’ Leo answered with a small smile. ‘All manner of women — but you are asking the wrong man, since they do not bother me. I am a priest of Christ, after all.’
‘I had heard this,’ Randr Sterki answered, frowning. ‘It is a great wonder to me that a man can give up women for his god.’
‘It is a great wonder to me that a god would ask it,’ added Onund and men laughed now. I relaxed; this was better. Even Randr Sterki seemed to have covered the sharp edge of himself.
‘Worse than that,’ Finn growled, ‘these Christ folk say you should not fight.’
‘Yet they do it, all the same,’ Myrkjartan pointed out. ‘For these Pols we are killing are Christ men, or so I have been told — and there is no greater army than the one of the Great City itself, yet they are all Christ followers.’
Leo smiled indulgently.
‘They are told not to kill,’ Murrough corrected, ‘according to all the canting Christ priests of my land. Perhaps it is different in the Great City. I have heard they follow the same Christ, but in a different way.’
‘The rule,’ Leo said slowly, picking his words like a hen does seed, ‘is that you should not kill. A commandment, we call it.’
‘There you are, then,’ Finn muttered disgustedly. ‘The Christ priests command the army not to kill and the chiefs command the opposite. It is a marvel that anything is done.’
Leo smiled his gentle smile. ‘Actually, the original gospel commanded us not to murder, which is a little different and not too far from what you northers believe.’
There were nods and thinking-frowns over that one.
‘This is what happens when such matters are written,’ Ospak declared, shaking his head and everyone was silent, remembering Red Njal.
‘Then confusion will be king,’ Leo answered, ‘for the Mussulmen have some similar rules written down in their holy works.’
‘Are you Mussulman, then?’ asked Crowbone, knitting his brows together. Leo shook his head and his smile never wavered; another priest of Christ would have been outraged.
‘I wonder only,’ Crowbone said, ‘because I met a Mussulman once and he had sworn off women. He ate like you did, too, with one hand only.’
He looked at me when he said it, but just then Finn leaned forward, sniffed the pot, lifted the ladle and tasted it. Then he fished out his little bone container of emperor salt and poured generous whiteness into it.
‘Salt,’ he declared, sitting back. ‘A man should eat as much salt as he can. It cleans the blood.’
There was silence, while the fire crackled and the cauldron bubbled and men sat slathered and crusted with other men’s salt-cleaned blood and tried not think about it. Then Koll woke and managed to whisper out to Finn, asking him what he missed of his home.
Finn was silent and stared once out at the dark ramparts where our guards huddled and watched; I thought his head was back in Hestreng, was full of thoughts of Thordis and Hroald, his son.
I should have known. Thordis and he would never trade vows and Hroald was a boy ignored as much as acknowledged; Finn showed the truth of it all when he stretched out one long arm and pointed to where Onund’s elk carving perched on the gate tower, slanted slightly, but still upright and proud, a symbol that the Oathsworn were here and not leaving in any hurry.
‘I am home,’ he growled.
NINETEEN
We had left it too late; Czcibor had more men and bigger boats on the river; it cost us three dead to find that out and Styrbjorn came staggering back from the little river gate, clutching his bloody arm and ranting with the fear howling in him, for we were trapped.
That was the day we started burning corpses in a mad, desperate fear-fever that sought to try and scour the Red Pest out before it killed us all.
That was the day they brought up the ram and smashed in the gate.
They had tried fire, but lacked oil for their arrows and we had water enough to soak the gates and timbers where they tried it. Then we saw men hauling back a good tree, sweated out of the river further down, where it had lodged. It was, as Finn pointed out, as good an oak for a ram as any he had seen.