Dobrynya looked up through the grizzle of his eyebrows and grunted.
'So Tien believes. He says the ancestors of these women were favourites of this Atil when he was a great chief of all the steppe tribes. Chosen, Tien says, because they amused him with their fierceness. In turn, they were his most loyal warriors, because it lifted them out of their womanly place.'
'How did you not know of this?' Sigurd demanded of me. 'Did they not try to prevent you the first time you reached this tomb?'
They had not and that was because they did not dare ride while the Khazars ruled. After all, these warrior women were the smallest part of one tribe of the Yass and the Khazars were a mighty empire at the time.
I mentioned this — but kept other thoughts to myself. Like how they knew where the howe was. Later, Tien said he thought it likely that such knowledge was passed on to a chosen few. I said nothing and had my own thought on who had led them to the place; the last sight of Hild, black-eyed with hate as she hacked at me inside Atil's tomb, rose up from the grue of my memories, like a corpse from silt.
'We have broken the steppe apart and now that Sviatoslav is also dead, there is no strong hand to stop these madwomen,' Dobrynya said.
Sigurd carefully adjusted the press of his silver nose against the flesh of his face, for scowling made it hurt and he was doing a lot of that.
'So we have a few women on horses who want to fight us as well as this Lambisson person ahead of us,' he growled. 'My lads are a match for all of them.'
'Tien will go no further without a sword in his back,' Dobrynya pointed out and Sigurd whistled down his silver nose, which was what passed for a snort of derision from him.
'We should stake the little turd for that — but what of it? We have other guides.'
It was Tien's fear that mattered and I said so as Dobrynya nodded agreement. These Man-Haters may have been no more than a handful of good steppe light horse, but it was their strangeness, the sheer Other of having women shrieking down on you with bow and sword, that counted. Especially ones with stretched heads and blue marks all across their faces.
The skjaldmeyjar — shield-maidens — were no strangers to us, but they were from the Old Time, when Thor and Odin walked the earth. Visma was one and Vebjorg another and there were more, who had led a considerable number of heroes during old King Bjarni's day if the fire-tales were true, and so must have been hard women.
But that was then and this was now. While we admired a good woman who could take up weapons to defend what was hers, no man nowadays liked the idea of a woman who gave up hearth and homefire to stand in a shieldwall.
So the rumours would spread; Tien's fear would spread. Men's bowels would turn to water by degrees and the magic of these women would grow at every conversation round a mean fire in the cold night.
'We cannot turn back because of. . women!' Sigurd exploded and Dobrynya hushed him to silence, his eyes moving from him to me, grim and sharp as a nail to the palm.
The Prince would not agree to that, certainly,' he said bitterly, glancing at me. 'You knew the power of this hoard, eh, Jarl Orm. You have seen it at work before on the hearts of men.'
I nodded, which was all that was required. The sickness of it was plain to see, slathering little Vladimir like an invisible slick of poison, feeding him dreams of salvation and greatness.
'Then we go on,' growled Dobrynya. Tor we have no choice and none of the gods seem to be listening to my pleas.'
We all knew that, had seen the charred remains of his quiet sacrifices to Perun Thunderer, Svarog Heaven-Walker, Stribog of the winds and even Yarilo, the Shining One, who was not much more than a great prick on legs. None of those Slav fakers were a match for All-Father Odin, who gave the whispered mystery of magic to the world and none answered Dobrynya's begging to have little Vladimir come to his senses.
'Ah well,' muttered Sigurd, 'a sandpiper isn't big, but it is still a bird, as they say in Lord Novgorod the Great.'
'Have you an old granny, by some chance?' I demanded. 'If so, it may be that Red Njal is another long-lost relation.'
The boys heard this and stopped talking to look back at us briefly, before bursting into laughter at the scowl on Sigurd.
It was scowl-dark, too, in the storehouse the Oathsworn were using as a hov. It was thick with fug and heat from a newly-dug pitfire but the faces round it, glowing in the red-dim light, were drawn and long. They made an effort to be pleased to see me — Onund Hnufa even smiled — but Pai was sick and the weight of a dying lay on them and smothered all joy.
Pai was in a shadowed corner, the wheezing rasp of his breathing ripping through the bellies of all those in the storehouse we now called our hall. Bjaelfi hovered nearby, while Jon Asanes sat at the boy's head, pressing cooling cloths to his brow.
Naked and gleaming, slick with sweat, every breath from Pai was a sucking wheeze. Thordis kept trying to wrap him, for it was chilled this far from the fire, but Pai would throw the covers off, thrashing droplets of sweat everywhere. I looked at Thordis, whose stare was blank and yet said everything. Bjaelfi moved away, back to the fire where a pot bubbled.
'How is the boy?' demanded Gizur and Bjaelfi hunkered down to stir the pot.
'Not good,' he admitted.
'He is choleric,' declared Jon firmly. 'I read it in one of the monk's books in Kiev. Fevers mean you are choleric.'
'Just so,' muttered Bjaelfi. 'I am sure you know best, Jon Asanes.'
Stung, Jon scowled back at him. 'What cures are you giving him? We would all like to know.'
Bjaelfi spooned some of the liquid from the pot into a wooden bowl and straightened with a grunt. He gave his beard a smooth and Jon a level stare.
'Sharing such wisdom would be like pouring mead into a full horn with you, boy,' he said finally. 'Much of it would be wasted.'
Men chuckled and Jon flushed. Wearily, Bjaelfi turned to move back to where Pai lay and almost collided with me.
'Jarl Orm. .'
Tjaelfi. How bad is he?'
The little healer shook his towsled head mournfully. 'He will die. The cold has taken his lungs. I have seen it before and have used what I know — honey, lime flowers and birch juice, plus a good Frey prayer I know. Some recover — I thought he might, being young. But he is weak in the chest. Always coughing is Pai.'
I watched the little man move back to Pai's side, then found Kvasir at my elbow, his face strange in the darkness because his patch and the charcoal he smeared round the other eye against the day's white glare melded into one and made him look like a blind man, eyes bound in a rag.
'Two of the druzhina will die this night also,' he told me quietly. 'One with the same thing as this, the other bleeding from the backside. He spent too long squatting to have a shit and it froze in him, they say. He burst something inside straining, which is no way for a warrior to die.'
Thorgunna appeared, holding a bowl of something savoury and a hunk of dark bread. She smiled and nodded. 'Hard times, Trader,' she said. 'I wish I was back at Hestreng, for sure. I have a feather-filled blanket there I am missing now. That Ingrid will be cosied under it with Botolf.'
She said it wistfully, with no hint of bitterness, using the sometime-name, Trader, that folk called me in happier times.
I touched her arm in sympathy, Knowing how she felt, sick with the knowledge of what we would have to face before she got back to her feather-filled blankets. She went back, chivvying the two Scots thrall women, Hekja and Skirla, into some work.
Later, when Bjaelfi indicated that it was time, I moved to where Pai lay, panting and rolling with sweat, his hair plastered to a face as white as the snow outside. Finn was there, with Thorgunna and Thordis busy with cloths and soothing on one side, more to keep them from weeping than any help for Pai.