Finnlaith was dead, Yan Alf was dead. Thorbrand was dead. Hjalti Svalr had the Red Pest, had lost most of his right hand and was groaning and babbling of home. Others were stacked like winter wood, their weapons bound to cold hands. And those who were left mourned with laughter, like wolves.
I had no belly left for laughing. As the shadows lengthened and weary fires sprang up, Bjaelfi came to me, his face scored with misery, carrying a limp little bundle which he laid at my feet like an offering. It was so small, that bundle, yet it broke us all like a falling tree and men groaned and bowed their heads; some even wept, leaving wet white streaks through the filth of their cheeks.
Koll. He was wrapped warmly and his face was so swollen his father would not have known him but for the bone-white of his hair. One hand rested on his chest under the warm wrap, but one had flopped free and the blue veins on it stood proudly out, so proud it was hard to believe that blood did not pump through them. The rest of the hand was pale, the shrinking flesh spatterered with white pustules.
Bjaelfi looked at me, waiting to take the small body to the burning; men stopped and made Hammer signs for mourning and not just because Koll was dead. He was what we had struggled all this way to get, had fought for, had watched oarmates die for — and we had failed.
I tied his little hands round the hilt of his father’s sword and gave him to the Odin-fire. It was like the death of hope itself, watching that small, wrapped body smoke up into the dark.
That night, Dark Eye came to me, silent as a summer breeze, yet when I reached for her she was limp and slick-sheened with sweat, hot as embers in my arms. To the question in my eyes, she simply slithered from her shapeless tunic-dress and raised her arms; even in the dark, where her silver shape glowed, the red spots on her thighs and under her arms were clear, almost as big as the tender tips of her hard breasts.
She shivered and sweated.
‘In the morning,’ she said, ‘I will go to them.’
I argued. I swore. I ranted. I babbled. In the end she pressed hot, cracked lips on mine to silence me.
‘This is my wyrd,’ she said, her breath fetid on my cheek. ‘This is best. I am what they want — let them take me, for it will be their own doom. This is what the Sea-Finn’s drum saw.’
I saw it, then, hot in her eyes, with a coldness deep in my bowels. It was her wyrd — at one stroke she saved us, saved her people and would spread the red, ruinous pest through Czcibor’s army.
‘It must be done in the morning,’ she said, ‘before I am too weak to pretend.’
I nodded then, still frantic with the loss of her, with the sight of those great, liquid seal eyes already filming blue-white with sickness. I held her most of that night, leaving her only long enough to take a stained, unbleached linen scrap and wrap it round a shield.
There was not enough dark in all the world that would keep back the creeping dawn.
When it spilled up, staining the rampart, making it like the jaw of some snarling prow beast, men stood, shaking and weary, beards and hair stiff with filth, eyes bright with the knowledge that today they would stand before their gods — and were amazed to see me walk Dark Eye to the gate.
I handed my axe to Finn and left Dark Eye with him while I shoved through the splintered ruin, stepping over the bodies and through the bloody crust of mud. I held the linen-wrapped shield high, hoping it was white enough to be noticed as a truce-sign. I paused only once to look Randr Sterki in his red-rimmed eyes. His grin was a curve of snarl.
Picking my way through the festering dead, I stumbled out to where Czcibor sat on his horse; he looked more gaunt now, I was thinking and I wondered if the Red Pest had already reached his army.
‘Be quick,’ he said harsh and haughty, so I was.
‘Is she trade enough for our lives?’ I asked and he looked over my shoulder to the small figure in the broken gateway, having to look across the heaped bundles of his own dead men, having to see the spears and blades still defending the rampart, the cradle of wolf-teeth gleaming just inside the gate.
When he looked back at me, his eyes were hard and cold and bleak, which did not bother me much — I knew he would agree, for he could not stay here longer. He ached to stake us out, but the cost was high and he was too much of a good commander to let his hate ruin his army and his ambition.
What stabbed me to the bone was the rest of his look, the bit just behind his eyes which curled a sneer at me for giving up this slip of a woman to save our lives.
Perhaps it choked him, perhaps he was too tired to do more — but he nodded, which was enough.
I walked back to the gate and took my axe back from Finn. Dark Eye, impassive as a carving, wrapped the tattered cloak round her and walked out, the way she had always walked, as if she had gold between her legs, into the maw of the Pols. She did not look back.
I came back into the faces of those who knew the business was finished and that they would not die today. Yet there remained, hovering like a waiting hawk, the knowledge that it had been the girl the Pols had wanted all along — but no-one who saw my face wanted to bare their teeth on that, all the same.
Save one, of course. There is always one.
‘You fuck,’ yelled Styrbjorn, trembling with the nearness of that fearful stake. ‘It was the girl. All this time. We died so you could have a hump while the…’
I hit him with the haft of the axe, a wet smack in his face that sent him crashing to the ground, where he lay and snored out bubbling blood and teeth. Uddolf moved to him, turning him over so that he would not choke.
I was cold with it all, cold and sick. A little shape was burning on a pyre, another was staggering away to die among enemies and both had held skeins of my wyrd in their hands; with their loss, I could not see one more step in front of me. I was almost on my knees, begging Odin to take his sacrifice and I half-turned to where Randr Sterki stood, silent and watchful, almost willing him to make his move.
‘Good blow,’ said Bjaelfi after a swift look at Styrbjorn. ‘Though I am thinking it would have been better to have used the edge. A head hacked off cannot conspire, as Red Njal’s granny would say.’
Finn shifted slightly and cleared the rheum from his throat.
‘Make that the last of Red Njal’s granny,’ he growled, so that everyone could hear, ‘and be content that our Orm used the shaft and not the edge. He was always the one for leaving folk alive who should be dead, yet is known for a man who can fall in a bucket of shite and come up with a handful of silver. Perhaps there is worth in Styrbjorn yet.’
He frowned down at the groaning Styrbjorn, then hefted The Godi and clawed everyone with his gaze.
‘This needs cleaning. Then we can quit this Nowhere place.’
There were twenty of us quitting, no more; the rest were dead, and those who were not, we killed for mercy’s sake and then burned them, with all their gear and even their sea-chests, the black feathers trailing accusingly into a sullen sky behind us as we moved across fresh green and birdsong.
For most of that first day we moved grim and fearful, a scar on the land, always looking over one shoulder, for no-one trusted the Pols and we were on their side of the Odra now, heading for a tributary river called Notec, which we would have to cross. After a while, when it seemed as if we had, truly, escaped, men began to look round at the green tips and buds, to turn to where a raven harshed, or a small bird peeped.
They took deeper breaths of spring air and started to grin at each other — except the sick, who staggered or were carried, babbling. The Red Pest stayed with us, tagging along like a dog that could not be sent home and still they grinned at each other, as if they had thrown particularly good dice.
I was the only one not exulting in survival, not cheered by avoiding the cliff and the wolves, moving like a man already dead and waiting, waiting, waiting, for Odin to strike. I was a scowl on the face of their cheerfulness and men avoided me, all save Finn and Crowbone — and the monk, strangely, who strode out alongside me now and then, the uneven dagged ends of his black wool robe flapping round his calves.