Finn held up placatory hands and admitted that having such a rock fall on him would be a fearful experience, right enough. Then he clasped Gyrth by the wrist.
'So Steinnbrodir it will be then — welcome aboard.'
And Gyrth, grinning lopsidely at his new by-name — Boulder Brother — lumbered into our midst like an amiable bear, one Finn was never done baiting, as now
'An ignorant outlander,' Finn repeated. 'Whose marvellously-travelled ma was too occupied to tell him such tales.'
'I saw a white crow once,' Gyrth admitted, frowning. 'All its black brothers stabbed it with their beaks and chased it off.'
'None is found so good that some fault attends him, or so ill that he is not of use for something, as my granny used to say,' Red Njal offered him.
'Never heard of a white raven,' Gyrth persisted stubbornly.
'But the green wine is icing,' Jon pointed out, shaking me back from where I still hunkered with Sighvat on the steppe, into the wither of Finn's frown. The iced wine was a sign you could not ignore.
Made from young wheat, the brew was filtered through seven layers of charcoal and seven of clean, fine river sand and the resulting liquid was as clear as tears and casked in oak, which was Perun's wood. It was then left outside most houses all winter and people passing tried to guess when such a casking would grow the first ice crystals.
They were removed at once, for ice is water and the more you removed, the more powerful — and green — the drink that was left. The colder the weather, the more ice formed on the green wine, the more you removed and the stronger it got.
It had to be cold for ice to start forming on the green wine at all and that was a bad sign this early, as was the snow and the clear, cold air that promised more of the same. This year would produce some of the strongest green wine and only those who had drunk too much of it would head out on to the steppe now.
I had pointed this out to young Vladimir after we had been hauled out of the pit the morning Sviatoslav's death was announced in Novgorod and after I had told him of the hoard and how the Oathsworn were a benefit to him.
'If what you say is true,' he answered in his strong, high voice, 'then this man Lambisson from Birka is already out on the steppe and every day we leave him, the closer he comes to my silver hoard.'
And he looked at me with his clear blue eyes on either side of a frown.
His silver hoard. Dobrynya saw the sick look on my face and offered only a throaty grunt of a laugh from the other side of the table, where I had spent an hour explaining why we should not be staked like Danica, the thrall woman.
'By the time we have done with the rites for your father, the meetings with your brother's representatives and preparing for such an expedition,' Dobrynya then said gently to his young prince, 'it may well be so late in the year as to be better waiting for the thaw.'
Vladimir shook his head angrily. 'Uncle, my brothers may not wait.'
He had the right of it there, sure enough and all that Dobrynya had spoken of was simply time wasted for Vladimir, so that he was fretted like a dog's jaw with impatience.
It took two days of tough talking with the veche and a deal of promises here and there to get them to accept the thrall woman as their only victim. It was finally managed with some cunning from Dobrynya, who told the veche that young Vladimir would not sully the memory of his father with the blood of common criminals. That one they bowed to.
So we were released, but kept in the fortress, supposedly for our own protection, for the next five days. On the sixth day, as Vladimir and all Novgorod prepared to enter into the rituals to mourn the loss of Sviatoslav, Jaropolk's hounds appeared at the gates.
Sveinald and his son Lyut they knew them as here, the father a grizzled old Dane who had served Sviatoslav as a general and who had brought back the remnants of the army after his master's death. Now he advised Vladimir's elder brother Jaropolk, as Dobrynya advised Vladimir.
Jaropolk, though eldest of the three Rus princes, was barely into his teens and easily swayed. Sveinald and Lyut had always been an arrogant pair and now that they held their young prince in thrall they acted as if they ruled Kiev and not he.
They had arrived as Jaropolk's representatives, to honour the funeral rites for Sviatoslav — at least, on the front of it. In reality, they were here to find out what Vladimir would do and had brought at least a hundred men, seasoned druzhina warriors with their armour and big red shields marked with a yellow algiz rune, which had been the symbol of Rurik when he had founded Kiev. Shield, it meant, and alertness, too — but now the Kiev Slavs called it 'a golden trident' from the shape, which was like one of those three-tined forks.
It took four days to send Sviatoslav to the halls of his gods, four days of wailing and bowing and kneeling and bloody sacrifice round Perun's pole, where horse heads were stuck on stakes and young Vladimir exhausted himself, the gore dripping off his elbows. But everyone agreed he had done well for a boy of twelve.
At night he had no rest, having to preside over the feasts in the kreml hall, where his men and the druzhina of old Sveinald snarled at each other, barely leashed. Here, the high table was a tafl game of words as Sveinald tried to find out if Vladimir was going to acknowledge Jaropolk as Prince of all the Rus or resist him and young Vladimir and his uncle tried not to say one thing or the other. Oleg, the third brother, I noted, was not considered at all.
The rest of the Oathsworn had turned up by this time, summoned south from Aldeigjuborg and having brought the Elk with them. Gizur insisted on this despite the sweat and labour on a river already porridge thick during the day and iced over every night, for he did not want it left almost untended near Dragon Wings.
'Klerkon's crew is divided,' he reported. 'Dragon Wings is too laid up for winter to sail and the way out to the Baltic is frozen solid anyway. Half of them are swearing revenge on us, led by Randr Sterki. The other half is leaving, in twos and threes. Most of those are hoping to take service with Vladimir, so they are coming here. They wanted to sail down with us, for they knew we were crew light, but I thought it best to let them find their own way.'
I had all this to chew over — and Finn, scowling-angry because, he said, I had handed away the secret of Atil's tomb, without even a guarantee that we would get anything out of it. We had our lives, I pointed out to him and he grudgingly admitted that to be true, though it did nothing for his mood and it was a foolish man who crossed Finn at times like this.
There is always a fool when you don't need one. Lyut had been elbowing and snarling among his own druzhina on the last feast night. You could see that they were used to it, deferring to him because he was Sveinald's boy and had power over them as a result.
So, flushed and strutting, he made a mistake when Finn slid on to an ale bench to talk to someone he knew slightly.
'You are in my place,' he snarled and Finn looked up in surprise.
'Perhaps, though I do not see your name on it. I will not be here long — look, there is a place here and another over there.'
'Move,' Lyut answered, 'when your betters order it.'
Finn turned. There was silence now from those closest, a silence that spread slowly out, like the ripples from a dipped oar.
'Betters?' he said, raising an eyebrow.
'In fact,' Lyut said, sneering, 'so much better you should kiss my foot and acknowledge it.'
He put his foot up on the same bench Finn sat on. No-one spoke. Sveinald, grinning over his ale horn, looked at Dobrynya, then at Vladimir. It was a challenge, pure and simple and all the ruffs were up now. I did not dare speak; no-one did. The silence began to hurt.