I laid out the tale of Hild for this latest Amacyn — poor demented Hild, rescued by us, burdened with a secret and a centuries-old sin, burning for revenge on those who had used her and prepared to lead us all to Atil's tomb in return for the death of Skartsmadr Mikill and all his men.
We had done that and Hild had fulfilled her part of the bargain — . at the cost of her mind. Had she been made mad by the goddess of the steppe, or the fetch of Ildico, or the guilt of knowing she betrayed the long line of those who had died and kept the secret?
'Perhaps all of them,' agreed Amacyn, uncoiling slowly to her feet. 'It does not matter — the secret was revealed. She broke her oath.'
And all who break such an oath end up dead. That I knew well enough.
'After you quit this place,' Amacyn continued, 'those few of us who survived came here, but war was raging on the steppe and it took some time for us all to assemble, so we missed you.'
I swallowed at that. If they had caught us then, staggering raggedly down to the Azov and the Sea of Darkness. .
'Afterwards,' she went on, 'the Khazar fist had gone, so the last of us came here in force. We had to dig through the roof to find out what had been done. There we saw a strange dead man on the throne and the Master of the World cast down and other strangers dead, including a woman. She had one of the Lord's swords; we realized then that one of those who had survived had the other.'
My cracked lips were glued, now Hild was dead; Finn had been right all along. Then I realized what this woman wanted.
'Yes,' she said, though I had not spoken. Then she sighed and rubbed the sores on her hands; I realized, suddenly, that she was in as bad a state as I was — as we all were, out on that frozen waste.
'We are the last of our kind,' she went on, 'It falls to me to be the Amacyn in whose time his tomb is no longer a secret. We knew you would be back and listened for word that northmen were moving on the Grass Sea. It cost us much to come out on the steppe and kill them — but we did not expect another band and certainly not a prince from Novgorod. Then we knew it was all finished for us.'
She stopped, stiff as the yellow stalks of frozen-dead grass; her eyes burned.
'We are few and growing fewer,' she said, in a voice like a djinn of wind. 'Man-Haters, you call us, but that is not true. We have fathers and brothers and some of those here have men and children that they value. Too many have already died. We have failed to keep the secret and this fight on the steppe has ended us. We are passing from the world. We will go home to men, stop binding the foreheads of our girl children and cutting their cheeks, so that they feel the endurance of wounds before the nourishment of milk. But there is one last service we can perform for the Master of the World.'
The words beat on me like raven wings. Passing from the world. Perhaps all Oathsworn are passing from the world, I was thinking, even as I saw, too, that she had ridden out to find a way to resolve matters other than with blood. I understood that only too well.
Once before, this way had saved the Oathsworn at Atil's tomb and I did not think it would fail us now I looked at the sabre, then at the woman who wanted it more than the world itself. I knew now how she knew my name and what she thought we would want, but I asked, for form's sake.
'What do you have to trade?'
17
After I had asked my question, the warrior woman had put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, as if calling up a dog. Riders had come out, one of them leading a stumbling figure on a tether and, as they came closer, my belly flipped at the sight.
Short Eldgrim. I had been right.
He was thin — I had seen more meat on a skelf — and his grin showed that he had lost some teeth. But some of his old wits remained in the summer-blue cage of his head.
'Ho, young Orm. What brings you here?'
The woman called Amacyn looked at me.
'Is this a good trade for you?'
So we took Short Eldgrim into the middle of us and moved away, leaving the warrior women sitting their mounts and watching, their leader now with two swords. Finn came to me then, handed me a wood axe and a grin. 'You will need this until we can find you another good blade, Jarl Orm.'
I shivered, wondering what would happen to me now, for I was sure that rune serpented sword of mine had protecting powers — and now it was gone. Forever. As easily as handing it over, no more than an arm movement; yet this was the blade that had once driven us from the Great City to the forge-heat of Serkland, had goaded us to fight and kill men we had once called oarmates.
I had lingered as the others moved off and had watched what happened, what the women did. When I came back to the Oathsworn, I ignored the questions in their eyes and, since I had given up my runesword for them, they bit their lips and did not ask them aloud.
Later still, when we were far away, we heard cries, faint on the wind, the yip-yowl chorus of all those warrior women. Eyes gleamed with fear then, for they thought the Man Killers were riding after us, but when I did nothing, they calmed down.
No vengeful women came; I knew what had happened and said nothing on it, stayed hunched into myself and against the wolfish bite of wind until we came off the rolling white of the Grass Sea down over a series of shallow cliffs thick with scrubby pine and white-barked birch, skeletal and shivering. The sun hung in the pewter sky like a drop of molten metal.
Ahead, hidden in the ice glare of the marsh that fringed it here, was the mighty body of the river itself, the Tanais, which was once the Scyth name for the Don and came to be the legendary name for travelling the lands we called Gardariki, down among the Mussulmen traders, who gave the name to us that everyone now seemed to use — Rhus.
To go down the Tanais was every youngling's dream, an adventure without peer. The reality was always different and harsh and usually inscribed by grieving relatives on a memory stone back home.
I looked to where Klepp Spaki moved, a dark figure trembling with cold; we would not even have a memory stone, for we had taken the greatest rune-carver with us and it was probable he would die here.
I squinted, watery-eyed against the glare. If it affected me this badly, it was no wonder Kvasir's remaining eye had given up on him; I cursed myself one more time for having been blind myself and missing the signs of it.
To the south, just above where the Don's black-watered sibling, the Donets, joined it, not far from where both split into a thousand muddy channels, was Biela Viehza, the Khazar Sarkel. Close enough for me to see the feathers of smoke from its fires and, black against their ochre threads, the dark and solitary rider moving steadily in our direction.
'Seems alone,' Finnlaith grunted. 'Shall I shoot him when he gets in range?'
'Get Fish to hook this one, too,' added Onund and there were grim chuckles at that.
'Well, there is no place to hide here,' I said, 'so it seems to me he has seen us as we have seen him. Does he look bothered to you?'
'I can change that,' Finn said, but he made no move. We stood for a moment and then Short Eldgrim said: 'It is cold here.'
'I know,' answered Thordis softly. 'We will be warm by and by.'
I looked at him then, the slow-blinking, washed blue eyes in that white-scarred face, bundled up in cloak and tunics handed over by men eager to see him safe and warm, as if he was a talisman for us all. When we had him safe in the middle of us, Thordis had peeled off his ragged old tunic to give him a fresh and thicker one.
She had stopped and suckled her breath in, then whirled him round, so his naked back was to me. I blenched; it was a mass of blackened, red-raw sores, the half-healed burns of little Christ-crosses, all making up one large one, down his spine and across the shoulderblades. Now I knew how Martin had unlocked the memories in Short Eldgrim's half-addled head.