I even stopped, to see if it carried me backwards and, when it seemed to do just that, as everyone kept on moving, I cried out with fear and dropped to my knees. It was Wryneck, coming up behind me, who grabbed me by the back of my mail and hauled me upright. As my feet stumbled forward I snapped out of it and turned to gasp my thanks.
The flicker of movement silenced everyone, making all heads turn. Hild, in one strange, fluid movement, stood, the red cloak falling from her. She leaped from the cart and strode forward in her bruise-blue dress, long dark hair whipping in that endless, soughing wind.
We all stared. She strode forward for another dozen paces, then stopped. One arm rose slowly and pointed. 'There,' she said. And we looked. And saw only the endless steppe.
À magic, invisible mountain, is it?' growled Flosi. No one else spoke, but we moved forward to where Hild stood—giving her a wide berth, I noticed, as if she smelled bad.
And we gaped, the shock of realisation coming to us as the steppe fell away into another balka, a big one, dust-dry and spilling out in a steep-sided canyon. Not a mountain. A pit. They had dug a pit into the steppe, a vast thing, big as a city, then mounded the middle of it back up in the shape of a great steppe lord's tent, but still below the original ground level.
`They diverted the stream,' Einar marvelled after we had moved down further. `To hide the entrance, they turned a river across it. This was once . . . a lake, a great pool, with water flowing in there'—he pointed—'and running out there to the Don.'
Everyone marvelled, save Illugi. The godi had not said much of anything other than muttered chants.
Once, in the night, I had seen him by the fire casting his rune bones and muttering to himself and thought then that he was growing as dark as Hild in some ways.
Àtil's howe,' breathed Valknut.
Ìf this one is to be believed,' growled Ketil Crow, moving past him to where Hild squatted. She smiled beautifully up at him and he scowled. 'Cunt to jawline,' he reminded her and moved on.
Einar took us in a scramble down the balka, where it led like a road straight to a cleft in the brooding mound.
Hild, silent and hugged to herself, raised one pale hand and pointed at the stones on either side of it, fat stones as tall as a man, ones you would not be ashamed to rune and set up on a hill in memory. But these, though pocked and scarred, were unmarked; however, Illugi looked at them suspiciously.
`The door,' declared Einar with his wolf-grin, his crow-hair flapping in the breeze. `We can set up camp here and start digging at first light.'
Men found fresh energy, unloaded gear and supplies and rubbed their hands with glee. Round the fire that night there was banter and talk of what they would do with all that silver. There was no doubting it now, for we had all seen the marvel of it.
Ketil Crow and Einar said nothing at all, but sat with their own dreams whirling in their heads. I doubted if they shared the same ones, though.
Atil's howe. A mountain of treasure. She had known after all, it seemed, and the realisation of that made me shiver—for how could she have led us so unerringly to this unmarked, unknown place? How could anyone have done that and still be like the rest of us?
I watched her sitting upright in front of those two stones and that cleft, which was like the dark invite of a woman's body. Her hair floated in the wind, a dark snake-crown, and, even with her back to us all, she exuded something that made the fear rise in you like old mead fumes. She sat there all night, was still there in the morning, she had not moved.
Did not move, until the horsemen swept on us.
Einar had split us, sensibly enough. There were those to guard and we wore all our gear, while those digging had stripped to the waist and were hacking away at the earth. A cart was being broken up, so that the wood could be used as shoring, for we had no clear idea of how much we'd have to dig to break in.
The drumming of hooves brought all heads up. The diggers ran for the cover of the carts; those on guard hefted their weapons. Of the twenty, about half knew how to use a bow and were nocking arrows.
But they also had mail and fat padded arms, all of which made drawing and loosing accurately a nightmare.
The horsemen swept down the balka in a cloud of dust, without any shouts or cries. They skidded at full tilt down the slopes we had taken ages to traverse, shooting arrows as they came.
I heard them thud into the earth around me. One hissed over my head. Another smacked my shield boss with a clang and dropped to the ground.
They were true steppe warriors, these, all sheepskins and wool hats and active as cats on those horses.
They didn't so much ride them as climb all over them, shooting their little arrows until they got close, then whipping out their light swords, darting them like snake-tongues at us from the other side of the horse, and swooping away before we could strike.
They swirled and whooped and vanished and appeared again in the dust until we were dizzy with it, whirling our heavy swords and axes at nothing.
A figure stepped out of our ranks into the dust.
`Hold!' yelled Einar. 'Don't let them drag you out into their killing ground.'
But it was Bagnose and he was past caring. He nocked, took aim, shot and a man pitched off. Walking forward, he nocked, took aim, shot and another horseman shrieked.
They saw him then and the arrows hissed. He took two full in the chest, staggering him. But he walked forward, nocked, took aim . . .
He had no mail, no padding, for he was an archer who took pride in it and never missed, wanted nothing to tangle his flights or string.
But Bagnose was already dead, though his legs and heart didn't know it and he was still roaring something when he fell.
We ignored Einar and went after him, of course—it was Bagnose, after all—charging into the dust, screaming. But by then the horsemen had thundered off and all we could do was drag back the corpse, studded with arrows.
`Like a hedgepig,' said Flosi mournfully. Out on the slope of the balka, though, six corpses lay, each killed with a single shot.
`What was he shouting?' asked Valknut, who had been one of the diggers.
`He wasn't shouting,' answered Einar softly. 'He was making verses. On his own death. A good song, but only he knows it.'
Òdin's balls,' Valknut growled, shaking his head. 'The cost of seeing them off was high.'
À test?' Ketil Crow hazarded, wiping his streaming face. `To see how good we are?'
`Now they know,' spat Wryneck with a brief twitch. 'Six for one.'
`Let's hope the price is too high for them,' I offered.
Of course, it wasn't. But they waited until the next day to try to wipe us out.
We dug feverishly, well into the night, taking it in turns to stand guard or swing a pick, so that no one got any real rest. Valknut and Illugi Godi did their own digging, another boat-grave for the animals to dig up, while Hild sat and watched us, perched on a wagon-trace with her knees at her chin. She reminded everyone of a carrion crow.
It was Valknut who speared the first of the treasure, with the very last hack of a mattock, dragging earth back out of the hole we had made between the stones.
He held up what he had found, scraping the dirt off and, in the red glow of a torch, something gleamed.
He spat, polished it and the flash of silver shone. We all gawped.
Einar took it from him, turning it this way and that. 'A bowl,' he hazarded. 'Or a plate, flattened and bent.
Good workmanship, though.'