Cursing that valknut-sign he wore, I went after him and, a step behind me on my shieldless side, was Kvasir.
As Finn came up, the Scaled Troll braced, stepped back, reversed the spear and dropped low, scything it in a tripping arc. A lesser man would have been ankle-felled, but Finn leaped up and over it and the Scaled Troll was open for a downward cut — except that Finn's foot slipped on the iced rocks and he fell flat on his face.
With a howl, the Scaled Troll stepped back, spun the spear back to the point and stabbed. I got my shield there a second before; the spear thunked into it, wrenched it out of my grip and spun it down the slope like a wheel.
Kvasir, an eyeblink later, brought his wave-sword glittering down on the Troll's neck where it joined his left shoulder, carving deep so that blood and collarbone flew up. He — it — died with a howl and a series of skin-crawling mews, slushing blood in streams down the rocks while Finn and I hauled each other up, wrist to wrist.
'Good stroke,' Finn grunted, blowing blood from where his nose had battered the stones. Then half his face twisted in a grin at Kvasir. 'Outlaws,' he added. 'My arse.'
Kvasir did not grin. He stood and stared at what he had killed, while the scaled heels drummed and an arm twitched once or twice. The druzhina Slavs came up, cautious as cats and touching amulets and little magic bags.
Later, when we had recovered our courage, we examined the Scaled Troll more closely and discovered that it was a man after all, though barely old enough to be called one. The scales were like callouses all over the creature, flowed together, thick as fingernails, though here and there, the creases seemed cracked and red-raw.
'A disease, perhaps,' Sigurd said, using his sword to unravel the skin loincloth. 'Look — he has a prick like a man and that isn't scaled.'
'Yet,' growled Finn, unimpressed. 'It is a youngling.'
Sigurd, whistling through his silver nose, plunged his sword into the snow to wipe it clean and even then stared at it as if wondering whether to keep it or not.
There were other parts of the dead boy that were free of scale — a hip, a patch behind one, knee, most of a buttock — and the skin here was as normal as any slain man's, turning blue-white with death and cold.
'The other boy was not like this one,' Morut pointed out, looking up the slope to where the wild-haired little boy had run.
'That you could see,' Kvasir pointed out.
'This one protected him, died for him,' Avraham pointed out. 'Hardly the act of a monster.'
Finn spat. 'Wolves will fight for the pack,' he answered. 'Does that make them men?'
It made these creatures monsters to the Slavs, were-wyrms, or scaled trolls or worse. That and the threat of some strange disease made them grumble and mutter among themselves and, in the end, Sigurd came across to me and admitted, furious with the shame of it, that they believed these scaled creatures to be offspring of Chernobog, black god of death. It would be difficult, he thought, to get his men to go on.
'How difficult?' I demanded, angry myself and not anxious to unhook him from his shame easily. He glared back at me, the skin white round his silver nose, which was answer enough.
'Then we will go on without you,' I said, hoping it sounded bold enough for a Norseman and wishing I was Slav right then. Finn added a 'heya' of approval; his bad foot-luck had annoyed him and he was anxious to prove, to himself and Odin, that these scaled Grendels were no match for him and The Godi.
'I will go, if you will have me,' said Morut and I nodded at once, for his tracking skills would be good to have.
'And I,' added Avraham, 'for I have never seen the like of this before on my steppe and would know more of it.'
'Your steppe. .' scoffed Morut.
'As much mine as yours,' Avraham snarled back defiantly. They fell into the familiar chaffer of it, as comforting to them as a pitfire and thick-walled hov is to a man from the north.
Crowbone wanted to go too, which was brave of him, but Sigurd told him — more abruptly than he had done in previous times — to stow his tongue in the chest of his head and stay where he was. Crowbone, cowed for once, obeyed without comment.
We left them milling round the drinking pool, gathering sticks to make a fire and not at all eager to even be there. They would not go near the stiffening body of the creature, though they hauled Gesilo off to where they could bury him.
'I said he would not care for Crowbone's tale and I was right,' Avraham noted with grim amusement, though the smile died on his face when he saw the scowls of the rest of the druzhina. He hurried to catch up with Morut, tracking ahead.
An hour later, the sun was up over the edge of the world, but not this rock. In the lee of it, the mist clung, cold as the white raven's eye, threading between the gnarled trees and patched thick as eiderdown here and there.
It was from one of these duck-feather mists that we were attacked. Morut led the way, following signs only he could read, from fresh-turned stone to barely visible broken twig. At a bend between rocks, he knelt to study the ground and a spear hissed over his shoulder, skittering across the frozen earth and almost across my toes.
'Form!' I yelled out of habit and, out of habit, Kvasir and Finn slid to me, shields up. From the rocks bounded three figures, much as before, though one carried a shield and another wore clothing and had a skin cap and no sign of scale.
Morut, caught on the knee, rolled sideways and scrabbled away. Avraham, with a yelp, sprang forward and took a blow meant for the little tracker — from a shovel. The shaft smacking Avraham's armoured forearm hard enough to make him grunt; he struck back and the scaled creature shrieked, carved under the ribs.
The one with the fur cap came louping at me, a great curved pick held above his head and relying on speed and power to crash through my shield. His mouth was red and open in a russet-bearded face and his eyes were wild.
Just at the moment he reached me, was about to bring his pick down, I stepped sideways, away from Kvasir and the man ploughed between us; it was moot which of our blades killed him, but both carved steaks off him and he fell, skidding on his face along the rocks.
The last, more powerful than the others, had hurled his spear and had no other weapons. He bounded forward and hurled himself, shrieking and snarling, at Finn, who took this rush on his shield and went over backwards, the creature clawing and biting the edge of it, his scaled, eye-bulged frog-face foaming with spittle and inches from Finn's own.
They fell backwards, in a clatter like someone beating iron on an anvil, broke and rolled. The creature came up, cat fast and spitting, while Finn was slower in his mail. Two powerful blows smacked him, one on the shield and the other under his ribs, so that he grunted. I saw mail rings flying and started in to help — but Kvasir laid a hand across my chest, as if to say that it was Finn's fight. A valknut fight.
It was then that a shape flew from the top of a head-height rock and crashed into Kvasir, so that he went over with a sharp yelp and a crash. I whirled and struck, fast as an adder's tongue and, in that same instant, tried to stop the blade.
It would not be halted, ripped through the ragged wool and the thin flesh and the small, knobbed backbone of the wild-haired boy, whose screeches of hate and fear turned to a great wailing whimper and then to nothing as he hit the ground, cut almost in half.
The scaled creature fighting Finn saw the boy dying in a scream of blood and drumming heels and wailed, high and anguished. Finn, grunting and winded, hurled his shield and the troll batted it away — but Finn was across the distance between them and The Godi swung, changed direction and hissed right into the path the creature took to avoid the feint.