Stunned, Starkad fell backwards. I remembered falling on the hard edge of the forge with the side of my head and knew how Starkad was feeling. Bright lights and sickness: he was doomed.
But he rolled and Einar's cut sliced his leg open from knee to boot top, so that he roared with the pain of it. Lashing with his legs, he tangled Einar, who fell. They flailed wildly at each other and missed.
It was then that the ranks of his men split apart, shouting.
At first we thought they had treacherously decided to run at us. Then we saw the figures, the hurled javelins. They wore no helmets, had no armour, but they had fistfuls of throwing spears and long knives and there were lots of them, spilling out from the thinning mist, right into the back of Starkad's men. The villagers from Koksalmi had woken up.
Einar and Starkad broke apart, panting, staring at each other. Starkad, cursing, limped sideways, away from him, pointing his sword. The blood squeezed out of his boot toes when he moved.
`Later,' he gasped.
Einar saw what was happening, got to his feet, swirled up his cloak and issued swift orders. The Oathsworn started to melt backwards, away from the fight, leaving Starkad to deal with it and taking this chance. It occurred to me, as I took Hild by the arm, that Einar was right—he still had some gods on his side and the Norns' wyrd wasn't so easily woven for him after all.
`This way,' Hild said, almost cheerfully, and I remembered, chilled, her earlier quiet statement.
She was right, too—the villagers had sent men to the flank. They spilled out to my left and she led us to the right, into the brush. I stopped, though, as Skapti lumbered up, dragging Martin on his leash.
Two villagers hurled javelins at the big man. I saw him hit. I couldn't believe it, but he was hit. The javelin went into the back of his neck and came out of his mouth and he stopped and fumbled, then tried to feel round to grab it and haul it out, but couldn't. Black blood gushed out and he looked at me with a stare of pure astonishment and crashed down like the end of the world.
I wanted to dash to him, but Hild held me back and pulled and pulled. I saw Martin jerk the end of the leash from Skapti's twitching hand. Our eyes met, a single locked, mutual glare, and then he scuttled off.
I left, numbed, stumbling after Hild down the slope.
Skapti. Gone.
We came out on to the flat in a scrabble of scree and panic, panting and gasping. Hild stumbled too far and slipped over the bank of the river into the water with a sharp scream and a splash.
Frantic, I hurled myself at the edge, saw her floundering in the shallows and more concerned with hanging on to that gods-cursed spear-shaft than getting out. I grabbed her hair and yanked, angry and afraid, and hauled her out.
`You were always the one for humping,' said a voice, vicious as a bite.
Ulf-Agar stepped from the bushes. He had lost his helmet and his shield, but was still mailed and had a long and wicked sword. `Now it seems you have to drag a corpse out and fuck that,' he added. He moved towards me, dragging his leg where it had been sword cut in the warehouse fight in Birka.
I remembered him, sweat gleaming in the musty twilight, swinging that cooling red branding iron—the one that had left the wet, slow-healing weals all over his body as Starkad's men closed in.
I remembered him guarding my back as I foolishly bounced off the door I could have opened easily if I had thought more about it. I heard him yelling at me to do it, blood spraying from his smashed mouth. Of all the injuries, that was the worst, especially for the likes of him—teeth were more precious than silver for, without them, you sucked gruel where real men chewed meat and bread. And that, too, was my fault, in Ulf s head.
That same mouth was twisted on a face triumphant with hate and I knew he could not be brought to the same memories of then, that reminding him of how I had freed him would simply fuel the fire that ate him. I cursed the gift Einar prized so much: by stepping back in my head I could see that Ulf wanted to be me and could not. So he would destroy me instead.
Yet the hate made him stupid and blind. If he had been sensible he would have said nothing, simply struck. Having said something, he would have stayed beyond sword reach, knowing his limp slowed him.
He would also have realised that I had learned something from the first time he had reckoned me no more than an untrained idiot boy who had, unaccountably, come into all Ulf-Agar's luck in a Loki trick.
But he did have a brain after all. And when I whirled and drew my sword and swung it in a scything arc, all in one swift, practised movement, I released it from the cage of his head.
The edge took a chunk out of the right side of his skull, clean as taking a slice out of a boiled egg. He never even had time for a look of astonishment. And what came out of his opened head was a strange spray of grey pasty stuff, tinged with watery blood and yellow gleet.
I left him still alive, it seemed, for his mouth was working and his limbs were twitching and I could have sworn he saw me drag the bedraggled Hild away, leaving him to the hunting packs of villagers. Even in death, I thought viciously, he'll be shunned. His head's too damaged even to warrant being stuck on a pole round that shrine. Truly, when the gods set their faces against you, you are fucked.
I came across Pinleg, loping quietly ahead. I balked at joining him, not knowing his mood, but he was calm, even cheerful. I told him of Ulf-Agar and he spat.
`Good. And you got the woman. Einar will be pleased. I know where he plans to gather, so let's move.'
We scuttled swiftly along, then stopped to get our bearings. I wiped the sweat from my face and looked at Pinleg. 'I saw Skapti hit.'
Ì know,' he growled, almost annoyed. `Silly big arse.'
`He's dead,' I urged. 'For sure.'
Òf course,' said Pinleg, lumbering off. `No one could have lived with a sharp stick poking out of his gob.'
`But he's dead,' I wailed and he stopped, whirled and grabbed my tunic. I froze, waiting for the spittle and the steel. Instead, he stared at me nose to nose, his breath rank with fish.
Ì know,' he said softly, then let me go and patted my arm. 'I know.'
We met Valknut and Ketil Crow and Einar. The Oathsworn drifted up in ones and threes, panting, sweated, wearing or carrying all they had—everything else had been left behind. There were too many missing but I spotted, with a leap of the heart that surprised me, my father trotting up, grey-faced and with fresh blood soaking through the sleeve of his tunic.
I went to him and he nodded and grinned at seeing me, but shook his head when I moved to check the blood-soaked bindings.
Ì leak like a sprung tub,' he admitted cheerfully, 'but I am not sunk yet, boy.'
Like the others, he met the news of Skapti's death and the monk's loss with cold silence, but Ulf-Agar's death brought a satisfied grunt.
`Well, boy,' my father said admiringly. 'You are surprising even me, who watched you grow for the first five years of your life and saw what a wolf-pup you were then.'
This was new and I wanted to know more, but the others were growling their own appreciations and a few hands thumped my back. I half expected to hear that familiar, deep 'hoom' from somewhere, but it was gone for ever.
`Now we run, hard,' Einar said, once we had splashed across the river and into the trees. 'We beat what's left of Starkad's men back to their own ship and take it. That's the only way off this gods-cursed shore.'
It was bitter, that journey, for the land seemed to want to scream out its beauty and the new life of spring while we grimmed our way through it, bleak with the loss of Skapti and the others, on towards an uncertain fate.
We went through belts of woodland, great oaks and ash burgeoning with fresh bud, and across swathes of fresh green, studded with small blue and pale yellow flowers. Thorn trees drooped with early blossom and every breath of wind scattered sprays of white, while the birds blasted their throats out.