'I did not think so,' I sighed. 'Well, here is my last offer. Finn and I will go back to the hole in the roof and climb out. You send out Short Eldgrim. Then you can stay or go, as you please.'
'And you will walk away, leaving all this?'
'All what?' I countered. 'You can eat none of it, Brondolf, nor suck warmth from it. You are cold, sick and starving to death down here. I do not. .'
He moved, so fast that I only realized how tricked I had been when he flowed like darkness itself across the space between us, his blade already hissing. Not as sick as he had made it seem.
I had a flash, like a moment seen in lightning, of Ketil-Crow, stumbling over heaps of tinkling silver with the blue coil of his entrails tangling his ankles, with the same flowing darkness after him. Only then it had been Hild and her rune sword.
That memory almost did for me, for I hesitated with the vision of it. He had strength enough for this one mad rush my own rune blade, laid handily across my knees, reared up — and blocked the cut.
It sounded like a hammer on an anvil. I heard a cracked-bell sound, knew it to be his sword breaking on mine and then he hit me, raving and slavering, following the ruin of his sword, half-turning as he smashed into me like a mad bull with just a hilt and a jagged nub end in his hand.
We went over in a rush of panting breath and crushing bone and whirling stars. There was a grunt and a scream and a moment of mad thrashing, which ended with a wet smack of sound.
A hand grabbed my forearm and I came up into Finn's embrace, wet with Brondolfs blood and brains. He lay face down, a diamond-shaped hole in the back of his head and blood spreading thickly under him.
'All we wanted was Short Eldgrim,' panted Finn, as The Godi dripped gleet and blood. 'He did not have to take the hard way to it.'
He did, all the same, for he had no Short Eldgrim to trade. We skulked and slithered around and over the gleam and the dark of that place and found no trace of him. Then we came back to where Lambisson lay and turned him over into the grue of his own blood, for it was said the truth lay fixed in a dead man's eyes.
His raw sore of a face was sucked in with hunger and collapsed and already blue-white, his dead eyes glittering with deflected ice, sharp and bright as silver. So the truth was there, right enough. Just not what we needed.
Finn looked round, at the great piles of silver and the shimmering walls, then peeled off the valknut amulet and looped it round the stiffening, dead fingers. I was astonished; the amulet was mine, for a start and I would not give the skin off my shit for Lambisson. I said as much and Finn nodded as if he understood.
'It is not for him,' he rasped. 'This is the end of it, Orm, and that cursed little monk had it right — all the struggle to get to it and for what? We would have to live here to make sure of keeping it all and fight everyone and his mother every day. I would give twice the amount to have Pinleg and Harelip and Skapti and all the others waiting at the top of that rope. Aye, even Einar, though you would not agree, I am sure.'
He shook his head and climbed to his feet, while his words crashed on me like a fall of snow. He had the right of it, for sure — we could fill our boots and carts and make sacks out of our tunics and cloaks and still would hardly dent the treasure heap of this place. After us would come a ravening horde of others, friends of Morut and Avraham and friends of their friends and brothers and the relations of every man in the druzhina and Oathsworn, all ripping the heart out of Atil's last resting place. There was no secret now.
Odin's gift. It had not been worth it, as I suspected all along and I said so. Finn agreed with a nod and then made a gesture so surprising I almost dropped my sword. He laid a hand on my forearm and said, straight into my face and serious as a fall of rock: 'You had the right of it, not wanting to return here. We should have listened to you.'
Then I felt the hot wash of shame. Oh, aye, I had railed against it, scorned it, dug in my feet like the point man in a heaving boar snout — but who was it had scratched those runes on the hilt of the sword, knowing full well he would need them, sooner or later, knowing he could not resist coming back?
We were climbing stiffly to our feet when the voice drifted like cold mist down through the dark heaps and round the rat passages. A high, thin, voice. Female. Calling my name, so that it wrapped chill round my heart.
Hild.
I looked at Finn and he at me and, for once, I saw no scorning scowl, only the flick of his tongue on dry lips.
'O-o-orm.'
'By Odin's eye, boy,' said Finn in a hoarse whisper.
'F-i-nnn.'
'Did you hear that?' I asked and had back a suitable curl of lip.
'Even with my one ear, I can hear that,' he growled, then hefted The Godi in one hand and the torch in the other and rolled his neck muscles. 'Well, if it is that dead bitch, I am coming for her.'
Finn was noted for being afraid of nothing at all, but the fear was an unseen force that I had to push against, step by step round one gully of age-dark riches, half-way round another, to where a torch flickered and the pale light spilled from the hole in the roof. No more than a score of steps, it was the longest walk I ever took.
A figure stood there, dark and menacing, holding the torch high and peering like some hound from Hel.
'Here I am, bitch!' yelled Finn and even if his voice cracked a little at the end, I admired him, for my throat had so much dry spear rammed in it I could make no sound at all.
'Is that you there, Finn Bardisson? Step to where I can see you — and, if it is you, stop calling me names.'
We blinked, looked at each other and then Finn grunted as if he had been slapped. 'Thordis. It is Thordis, by Odin's hairy arse.'
If she wondered about us charging out and all but raining kisses on the upturned petal of her sweet face, she was too agitated and fearing to comment on it.
'Get off! Get off me,' she panted, cuffing us like dogs.
'Aye, but you are a sight, right enough,' chuckled Finn, trying to grab her again. The Godi whirled round her ears and she winced back, so that he fell to apologizing and trying to grab her and sheath it at the same time.
'Why are you here?' I asked, feeling a coiled tendril of new chill unfold in my bowels.
'Right enough,' huffed Thordis, tugging her linen kerchief back over her hair, one braid unfastened and dropped almost to her belt. She blew a stray wisp off her chapped cheeks and wriggled herself together. 'I would have said before, but for this. . This. .'
'Tell it now.'
She told it and set us frantic, scrabbling to the knotted rope and calling up for help.
Vladimir and his company had taken the silver and gone. Our men had grumbled about it, but I had told Kvasir not to do anything rash, so he kept them from the druzhina's throats and the Oathsworn let themselves be herded on to the island and disarmed under the bows of the big Slav warriors. Their weapons were left a little way off and, as soon as the treacherous little rat prince was beyond bowshot range, the Oathsworn lumbered out and got them back.
Then Kvasir went after them, on foot, for we had no horses. Gizur was left in charge and — I cursed him to the nine worlds and back for it — Thorgunna had stayed behind when everyone trekked back to the tomb with their weapons. Then she had set off after Kvasir. Once back at Atil's tomb, Gizur sent Thordis down to find us — and the fact that he had sent a woman into that place should have told me all that was needful, but I was too red-raged to see it.
'What possessed Kvasir?' roared Finn, levering himself out of the hole.