'We will go after my sister,' Thorgunna said. I looked at Kvasir, who peered at me sideways and nodded. I looked at Thorgunna; it was clear this was not a question.
So I nodded.
'Heya,' said Finn and I could have sworn there was joy in his voice.
4
The sea was the colour of wet slate, the spray coming off the tops of the chop like the manes of white horses. Somewhere, at that almost invisible point where the grey-black of sky and sea smeared, lay the land of the Vods and Ests.
Two days. Three days. Who knows? A day's sail from a shipmaster is how far a good ship takes to travel some thirty ship-miles — but it could take you two sunrises to do it. Gizur kept saying we were three days from the Vod coast, looking for a range of mountain peaks like the teeth of a dog, but we never seemed to get closer.
Everyone was boat-clenched, which is what happens when the weather closes in. You sink deeper inside, like a bear in winter, sucking into the cave of yourself where you hunch up and endure.
The sail was racked midway down on the mast, we were driving east and a little south with a good wind and the oars were stowed inboard, so most of us had nothing to do but huddle in our sealskin sleeping bags. Everyone was busy, in silence, trying to keep dry and warm, while the lines hummed and the rain slashed in.
Thorgunna and the thrall women and the deerhounds huddled beside me under the little awning which was my right as jarl. Not that it gave much more than the illusion of shelter, but there was the warmth of shared bodies and the added, strange enjoyment of them being women.
I had done Botolf little favour appointing him steward in my absence — though Ingrid took the store keys from Thorgunna with a triumphant smile, which made Kvasir's wife scowl. It was bad enough what Thorgunna was leaving behind — her chest of heavy oak with its massive iron lock, filled with fine-wrought wool and bedlinen stitched by her grandmother's hands — without handing over her status in my hall to another woman who was not my first-wife. Not even my wife.
I then had to promise to get those keys back for her when we returned.
'Stay quiet, do nothing,' I advised Botolf, who was unhappy at being left behind and thought it more to do with his missing leg than anything else. I needed a level head and a brave heart, for Tor had friends in the region and there was no telling who they would blame or what they might do. Ingrid would supply the first and Botolf the second.
'I plan to deal with Klerkon, get Thorgunna's sister back, then go to Gardariki lands and find Short Eldgrim and Cod-Biter,' I explained. He nodded as if he understood, but the truth was there was as much clever in Botolf as in a bull's behind. Now and then, though, he surprised me.
'Jul Brand will have much to say on this and none of it good,' he declared. 'You should find a way of telling him how matters stand, before he takes it into his head to make you outlaw.'
Then he grinned at my astonishment.
'You should sell Hestreng to me for an acorn, or a chicken,' he added. 'Then I can sell it back when you return. That way. .'
'That way,' I finished for him, 'Jarl Brand would spit blood at me selling that which I only hold from his hand.' He stared for a moment, then astonished me further.
'If you want Hestreng and the love of Jarl Brand,' he grunted, 'then you will have to put a rare weight in the pan to counter what he is thinking — that you lied to him about Atil's treasure and are running about frightening decent farming folk with your sea-raider ways.'
His eyes went flat, like a sea where the wind has died to nothing.
'It comes to me that you will need to travel all the way to Atil's tomb and take all the silver you can,' he added, his voice bitter-bleak because he knew he would not be part of that. Then he forced a smile and stuck out his hand.
'I expect my share, all the same,' he ended and, mazed at all this, I clasped him, wrist to wrist, more sure now that I had left matters in Hestreng in good hands. Then I stole the smile from him.
I told him we would be taking Drumba and Heg and three thrall women as well, because we had Thorgunna with us. This was a hard dunt for Botolf; two thralls had died in the winter before and losing five more was bad enough without also waving goodbye to Thorgunna, who was a pillar of Hestreng. I did not want her with us, but Kvasir did and Thorgunna was determined to chase after her sister, so there it was. I pointed this out patiently to a scowling Botolf.
'We are oar-short on the Elk,' I added, 'but at least all those hard men with big bellies will be going with me, so you won't have the expense of feeding them.'
There were twenty fighting men, bench-light for a drakkar like the Fjord Elk, which properly needed two watches of thirty oarsmen apiece — we barely had enough to sail her, as Gizur pointed out at the oath-swearing.
Hrafn provided the blood for it, as expensive and sad a blot offering as Odin would ever have. We found him, flanks heaving for breath, streaming blood and sweat, lying in the meadow shot full of arrows, as Botolf had said. Now his head reared accusingly on a shame-pole of carved runes, streaming out bad cess at Klerkon's steading on Svartey, the Black Island, hidden miles beyond the grey mist and sea. Unlike us, Klerkon had no hall, but this was a winter-place he used and it was likely he was heading there.
'We will pick up more men,' I told Gizur and the new Oathsworn, more firmly than I believed. It was more than likely we would — but not from the land of the Livs and Vods and Ests. We would get no decent ship men until we reached Aldeigjuburg, which the Slavs call Staraja Ladoga and so would be raiding the steading of Klerkon with about half the men he had.
Finn pointed this out, too, when everyone was huddled in the hall out of the sleet, fishing chunks of Hrafn out of the pot, blowing on their fingers and trying to forget the hard oath they had just sworn.
'Well,' I said to him, uneasy and angry because he was right, 'you were the one who wanted to go raiding. You were the one never still-tongued about Aril's silver hoard, so that men would come to Hestreng and force me back to the tomb. Pity you did not think that the likes of Klerkon would hear you, too.'
Which was unfair, for he had saved my life in Tor's hov, but all of this had smashed whatever shackles bound me to the land and the thought that Finn had had a hand in it nagged me. There was more cunning in it than he had ever shown before, so I could not be sure — but I was watching men eat my prize stallion and so was in no mood for him at that moment. He saw it and had the sense to go away.
Kvasir came to me while men shouted and fought good-naturedly in the ale-feast that followed the oath-swearing. He hunkered down at my knee as I sat, glowering and spider-black over the fun raging up and down the hall, and took his time about speaking, as if he had to pay for the words in hacksilver and was thin in the purse.
'You were hard with Finn, I hear,' he said eventually, not looking at me.
'Is he aggrieved of it?' I asked moodily.
'No,' answered Kvasir cheerfully, 'for he knows you have other things to think on. Like me, he believes the sea air will clear your head.'
Well, Finn had the right of that, at least, though I did not know it myself at the time — or even when I was in the joy of it.
But when it happened, Finn came and stood with me in the prow, while the wind lashed our cheeks with our own braids and sluiced us with manes of foam.
The spray fanned up as the Elk planed and sliced down the great heave of wave, moving and groaning beneath us like the great beast of the forest itself. Those waves we swept over would not be stopped save by the skerries and the cliffs we had left behind. Only the whales and us dared to match skill and strength with those waves — but only the whales had no fear.