Lambisson, said Hrolf Fiskr, was down in the tomb and had been, perhaps for days — it was hard to know for sure, since Fiskr admitted he had been sleeping for a time, until the fever he had broke. There had been others with Lambisson down in the howe, loading silver in a bucket and hauling it up through the hole, but that had stopped three days ago and nothing had been heard since. Everyone had come up but Lambisson.
'What of Short Eldgrim?' I asked, as Bjaelfi waited, sharpening his little knife. Hrolf eyed it nervously and licked his chapped lips.
'The little man? Aye, he was one of yours, right enough.'
He paused, shook his head and tried to work up spit, but his mouth was too dry. 'That Christ monk did him harm, trying to get his mind to work. Burned him bad to make him remember.'
He broke off and looked at me steadily. 'I did not like that, nor thought it right'
'Did nothing, all the same,' I told him and took pleasure in watching him squirm. 'Where is the little man now?'
'Gone,' came the answer. 'He was here when I closed my eyes and gone when I opened them again.'
'Not below, then?'
He waggled one hand. 'Maybes yes, maybes no. Brondolf Lambisson is still below, so said the men who came up and left him,' he growled, then found enough spit to use it.
'Then they ran off, the nithings,' he added. 'Said Lambisson had lost his wits and that it was the little man's curse on him for what had happened. Left me because I could not walk. A dozen of them, big Slavs and none prepared to carry me, the turds. They were too afraid of those mad women, who kept coming back and shooting arrows. . look, I am after telling you all I know. There is no need for a knife.'
'This is to help you, oaf,' snarled Bjaelfi. 'Of course, I could leave the black rot alone and let it eat your face and feet. . '
I knelt by the hole, which was a wide, rough circle, dug down through a layer of earth — but not silt, I noticed. It was clear that, even flooded, the water in the lake did not cover the roof of Atil's tomb and someone had known that. Large slabs of roof-stone had been removed, a finger-joint thick and hefty and I saw they were laid over a cunning trellis made of great split logs. In a treeless place like this, that was riches as much as the silver it covered and these had been brought a long way. Even five centuries had not rotted them — but there was no sign of the ones removed. Burned, probably.
Now there was a black hole and, a foot down from it was part of one of the great stone arches, a hand-span thick and three wide, which curved into the centre and supported the entire yurt-shaped howe of Attila.
There were two thick ropes tied round it — a knotted one for climbing down, the other attached to a leather bucket which was empty when Onund hauled it up. The cold seemed to drift out of that dark hole like smoke.
'No tools,' growled Dobrynya, coming up to peer down into it. Behind me, Hrolf yelped as Bjaelfi cut too deep into his nose and drew blood. 'A fortune in silver, some bits and pieces of gear, a little flour and dried meat, but no tools.'
No tools in the carts, which meant that Lambisson had not made this hole. I did not like to think who had.
'We lost our tools,' admitted Fish when I went back to him. Thorgunna dabbed the blood from his fresh-carved nose, but Fish felt little pain, since the black parts were dead flesh. He was happy we had arrived, enemies or not, since his friends had left him to die here, crippled and alone.
'We counted it great good luck to find this hole,' he went on, 'but now I think these madwomen did it, like a baited hook to catch a fish.' He beamed at the clever play on his own name.
I glanced at the hole. Short Eldgrim could be down there and, if so, he was either dead or wandering like a madman, wondering where he was. Only a few of the Oathsworn cared for that above what else could be down there. Even Finn, I saw, when he swayed up, tossing something in his hand and grinning. He turned it over in his fingers and then held it up.
'Familiar, Bear Slayer?' he asked.
It was a coin and I had the twin of it round my neck under my serk, punched through and looped with a leather thong. It had once been around the neck of Hild, the woman who had somehow known the secret of how to find this place, with neither chart nor rune scratches on the hilt of a sword; now I knew how that had been managed.
I looked at the baleful wink of that coin, Volsung silver, part of the hoard of the dragon Fafnir, the one Sigurd had killed and the cursed gift Odin had promised us. I felt Hild's presence then, as if cold, invisible fingers stretched out of that hole, seeking me, the sword, the coins. .
I did not much care for the memory; she was down that hole, I could feel her and remembered her, black against the dark, stalking us with that light-curve of sword, the twin of my own. It was no surprise to me that Lambisson had not been heard of for some time and I would happily have left him there — but for Eldgrim.
No, not even him, if the truth of it was being laid out. I liked the little man well enough, but it was not him alone that would take me back into the black maw of Atil's hov. It was bone, blood and steel, a fear greater than the one I had for finding mad Hild waiting at the bottom, all white-eyed and armed with the twin of my sabre.
It was fear of breaking the Oath and what One Eye inflicted on all those who did.
'Put that back.'
The sandpiper voice snapped me round, to where a furious Vladimir glowered at Finn, little fists on his hips. 'No-one is to loot my silver. No-one.'
Finn's grin faded. He looked at me, then back to the pinch-faced little prince and saw which quarter the wind blew from. He shrugged and flicked his thumb, never taking his scowl off the prince's face, and the coin arced back into the cart it had come from.
Vladimir, his scowl merely turned to a boyish, petulant pout, glared pointedly at me — then Dobrynya moved in, smooth as oil, suggesting we all manhandle the silver-laden carts across the ice and off the island. He followed his prince at a respectful two paces.
'We should kill them all now,' Finn growled at their disappearing backs and my look answered him — there were too few of us for that and we could not count on any but ourselves.
'Besides,' I finished, 'even the gods of Asgard would be hard put to help us if we cut down a prince of Novgorod, a son of Sviatoslay. Those two brothers of his might be rivals — but they will not embrace us for such a killing.'
Finn thought, then shrugged and went off without another word, picking his teeth with a filthy, horny fingernail; the swagger of him told me he had seen the sense of what I said, yet it was of no account. When the time came. .
Silver smoothed matters. The Slavs and my Oathsworn fell to moving it cheerfully enough — it was their loot, they had all decided — while Thorgunna and Thordis made sure a camp was made in the lee of all the carts. As fires flowered and the day sank into leaden cold night, I saw that Avraham and Morut were gone.
We had meat and bread, a measure of warmth and shelter — so, of course, the proper divisions slid back to us. The druzhina sat apart from the Oathsworn, rowdy round their own blaze, while the prince and his two pillars sat apart from us all, heads together — but Crowbone sat with us, almost buried in a once-white fur cloak and that warmed me a little.
But the fret of Short Eldgrim was on me and drove out all else — I wanted to be down that hole and yet, to my shame, used the excuse Finn brought up, about food and warmth first, to avoid sliding down into the tomb.
I looked at Finn while Thorgunna and Thordis stirred and served and the Oathsworn horn-spooned horsemeat into the spaces in their beards, chaffering and grinning and growling like pleasured cats. We were in a waste that still froze the nose off your face, with only wadmal for shelter and stringy horse and water to eat, yet compared to before, we were all grunting-content with life.