Then Finn grinned, a loose, wicked grin. He inclined his head, as if in acceptance and Lyut smirked. Finn handed his ale horn to his neighbour, then placed both his hands on Lyut's ankle and raised the foot to his lips.
I was stunned. Most of us were. I saw Kvasir half rise in outrage — then there was a yelp from Lyut, for Finn had kept on going, straightening with Lyut's foot in his hands, forcing the man to hop like a mad bird to keep his balance.
With a final, dismissive gesture, Finn threw the foot in the air and Lyut went over with a yell and a crash.
'Kiss my arse, boy,' Finn said, dusting his hands. The hall erupted with hoots and bellows and catcalls and it was clear that half of Sveinald's men were drunk enough to be pleased to see Lyut sprawled in the sick and spilled drink.
Finn was no fool. A man with no clever in him at all would have turned back to his ale horn and the backslaps and appreciative howls of laughter and Lyut, coming off the floor in a scrabbling rush, whipping the seax from his boot, would have had him in the liver and lights.
Instead, Lyut found his knife hand slapping into the iron grip of Finn's left. When he swung a wild fist with the other, he found it shackled in Finn's right. Then Finn grinned his wolf grin and butted Lyut, so that the snarling boy's handsome beak of a nose splayed and blood flew.
Lyut fell backwards, over an ale bench and into the hearth-fire. It took no more than an eyeblink or two to realize he was not getting up on his own, but his hair was on fire by then. Those nearest dragged him out and beat out the flames.
Now Sveinald's men were roaring and growling with anger, for this was another matter entirely. Sveinald himself kept his seat, his knuckles white on the fancy gilt-rimmed horn.
Sigurd, his silver nose gleaming, moved a little closer to his charges, the young prince and his now-constant companion, little Crowbone. On that one's face I saw no fear, only a studied interest, as if he had found a new kind of bird.
Finn turned, his face streaked with Lyut's blood, the seax held in one hand. He glared round them all and the roaring subsided.
'I am Finn Bardisson from Skanii called Horsehead,' he said softly. 'Is there anyone else wants their foot kissing?'
Silence.
'SPEAK UP, YOU DOGS!'
Behind him, Lyut whimpered and men were carrying him away, to where the women would balm his toasted face with goose fat.
'Sit down Finn Bardisson from Skani, called Horsearse,' Gyrth Steinnbrodir called out into the silence. 'You have taught the boy how to dance on one foot and not to sit so close to the fire and now I want to get back to my drinking.'
There was a chuckle or two, then the hall noise washed back in like a tide on the turn and Finn shunked Lyut's seax into the ale bench and took his horn back, raising it in toast to Gyrth. I raised my own to him and he acknowledged it, while I felt Sveinald staring, could hear him ask through clenched teeth who this Finn Bardisson was and who this Jarl Orm.
I was swelled with the pride of it, that my name was on lips all over the hall and aware also, with a sick, sinking feeling, that we had done neither ourselves nor little Vladimir any favours.
Then, in the cold light of morning as everyone sorted themselves out for the day, the bird fell from the rafters and little Crowbone, his face whalebone-pale, cheeks flushed from the cold, started in to speaking about white ravens.
He was wearing a fine tunic the colour of a robin's egg, wool breeks, fur-trimmed Slav boots and a white wool cloak trimmed with a swathe of sable fur that came up round his ears and met the rough curls of a fine goat-wool cap.
He peered at the dead starling, while the great elkhound with him sniffed it and warily watched our own deerhounds. That huge white-grey beast, as like a wolf as a brother, only added to the unease surrounding Crowbone, for it had eyes of different colours, exactly like his.
When he had first appeared with it, the warding signs made a flutter like bird wings and Klepp Spaki had been busy since, carving protection runes on bits of bone. Only Thorgunna, on whom seidr magic was wasted, was unafraid.
'My, you look like a little prince now, right enough,' she said, beaming — then broke off to cuff the Scots thrall woman for dropping her pin case and spilling the bone needles out of it.
All Olafs finery — even the white, wolf-ruffed elkhound — was gifted from Prince Vladimir. It was, as Kvasir had already pointed out quietly, just as well I hadn't decided to sell Crowbone as a thrall, since it seemed the little turd had charmed the ruler of Novgorod and had gone from slave to prince in one hare-leap. Things, he added, could be much worse.
'How much worse can it already be?' grunted Finn, red-eyed from the night before and just as sullen in the chill daylight. 'The world is lining up to rob us.'
'If you would rather have a stake up your arse,' I snapped back at him, stung by his scowling, 'I can probably arrange it.'
One of the deerhounds laid its great bony head on my knee and sighed mournfully into the mood of the hall. The other snarled at the too-close elkhound, whose ruff stiffened.
'Bleikr,' chided Olaf. 'Stop that.'
Bleikr — White Fair, it meant to us, though most tongues could translate it no better than Pale. Whatever his name, the dog paid Olaf no heed, but was wise enough not to take on both deerhounds. None of the dogs wanted a fight, but the elkhound's ruff stuck out like hedgehog spines and the rough brindle hair on the deerhounds' back was clenched and dark. We watched warily, not eager to get between them.
Then Thorgunna gave a little grunt of annoyance at our holding back and moved in fearlessly, cuffing right and left. The dogs scattered, yelping.
'Bleikr,' she said, tucking a stray wisp of hair back under her braids, while warriors did not dare look at each other for the shame of it. 'There is nice. Now you have a new dog — and kin, too, I hear. Your mother's father in Bjodaskalle and her sisters, too. Not forgetting your Uncle Sigurd here.'
Crowbone nodded, though it was clear that Bleikr was deeper in his heart than these folk, who were only names to him. Even Sigurd. It came to me then that little Crowbone was a boy alone and, after all that had happened to him, might well be for all his life.
Finn looked at the white dog and grunted cynically. Olaf frowned.
'You do not like the name?' he asked. Then he pointed to the deerhound who had slunk back to Finn's knee.
'What is this one called, then?' he challenged.
'Dog,' Finn said flatly. Olaf, thinking he was being made fun of, scowled and pointed to the other deerhound.
'And this?'
'The other dog,' Finn answered, then cocked himself to the side and farted.
Kvasir chuckled as Olaf started to get his own hackles up.
'There is a wise rule we use,' he said, clapping the boy on one shoulder, 'and it is this — never give a name to something you might have to eat.'
Olaf was taken aback at that and looked down at his new pride and joy, now trying to lick its own balls. 'Eat Bleikr?'
'Well — not that one's tongue, perhaps,' Kvasir said and folk laughed.
'Aye,' growled Gyrth, surfacing from under a pile of cloaks and pelts, where he had been trying to keep warm and sleep. 'If we go to find that cursed hoard in this weather, we will end up eating worse than that before we are done. Helmet straps will taste good, mark me.'
'Do you no harm,' Finn answered and Gyrth patted his belly and smiled.
I was aware of the winter steppe, the Great White, brooded on it all the rest of that long day while the men in the hall surfaced, stretching and farting and shivering into the breath-smoking chill, dousing their heads and breaking ice in the bowls and buckets to do it, roaring and blowing.