The Prow Beast. Robert Low

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      Her blonde braids flailed as her head thrashed back and forth and two of the men tried to hold her, while the third fought down his breeches and struggled to get between her legs. She spat crimson at him and he howled back at her and smacked her in the mouth, so that her head bounced off the twitching flank of the ox, which tried to bawl and only hissed out more blood.

      They panted and struggled, like men trying to fit a new wheel on a heavy cart, calling advice, insults, curses when the ox shat itself, working steadily towards the inevitable…then the one between her legs, the one I knew well, lost his patience, unable to hold her and rid himself of the knee she kept wedging in his way.

      He hauled a seax from his boot and slit her throat, so that she gug-gug-gugged on her own blood and started to flop like a fish. The knee dropped; the man stuck the seax in the ox and his prick in the woman and started pumping while the others laughed.

      The boy came from nowhere, from the dark where he had seen it all, from where he had watched his mother, Randr Sterki’s wife, die. He came like a hare and snatched up the seax, while the man pumped and pumped, gone frantic and unseeing and the woman gurgled and died beneath him.

      My blade took the back of the boy’s skull clean off, an instant before he brought the seax down. I watched the back of his head fly in the air, the hair on it like spider legs, the gleet and brain and blood arcing out to splash the dying woman’s last lover, who jerked himself away and out of her, gawping, his prick hanging like a dead chicken’s neck.

      ‘Odin’s arse…well struck, Orm. That little hole would have had me, liver and lights, for sure.’

      Grinning, Finn hauled his breeks up and grabbed his seax from the boy’s gripping hand, so that, for a moment, it looked as if the lad was raising himself up. But he was dead, slumped across his mother and Finn spat on him before stumping off into the dark…

      ‘Why are you standing out there?’

      The voice raked me back to the night and the forge. All the heads had turned towards me and Botolf chuckled. Toki, half-turned, was bloodied by the forgelight and, for a moment, I saw the face of the boy I had killed. Toki was the same age. Too young to die. Yet Randr’s boy would have killed Finn – had once laughed as he helped his mother scrape Crowbone’s head raw, then chain him to the privy as punishment for running away. What the Norns weave is always intricate, but it can be as dark and ugly as it is beautiful.

      ‘Listeners at the eaves hear no good of themselves,’ Botolf intoned. Toki dropped from his perch, breaking the spell.

      ‘Sleep comes hard,’ Ref grunted, ‘too many farters and snorers in the hall.’

      We all knew that was not the reason I was here, but I went along with the conspiracy, grunting agreement.

      Ref, seeing the flames change colour, lifted his head. ‘Back to the bellows, boy,’ he called, but Toki kept staring – he pointed behind me, away into the dark land where I had set watchers and fire.

      ‘What is that light?’ he asked.

      I did not need to turn, felt the sick, frantic heat of that warning beacon though it was miles away. When I spoke I stared straight at Botolf, so he would know, would remember what he had been told of Klerkon’s steading on Svartey.

      ‘That light is men who kill bairns and fuck their mother on a dead ox,’ I said, harsh as a crow laugh.

      ‘Men like us.’

      Men like us, following their prow beast up the fjord in a ship called Dragon Wings, grim with revenge, hugging a secret to them with savage glee, for they did not want a fair fight, only slaughter.

      You can only wear what the Norns weave, so we sent everyone else off into the mountains and worked the Elk out to meet Randr Sterki. Men struggled and died screaming battle cries and bloodlust there on the raven-black, slow-shifting fjord; the prow beasts bobbed and snarled at each other as men struggled and died in the last light of a hard day – and both sides found the secret of the Roman Fire that burns even water.

       THREE

       HESTRENG, after the battle

      The vault of his head was charred to black ruin and stank, a jarring on the nose and throat but one which had helped bring me back to coughing life. My throat burned, my chest felt tight and my ears roared with the gurgle of water. It was night, with a fitful, shrouded moon.

      I blinked; his hands were gone, melted like old tallow down to the bone and his scalp had slipped like some rakish, ratfur cap, the one remaining eye a blistered orb that bulged beneath the fused eyelids, the face a melted-tallow mass of sloughed brow and crackled-black.

      ‘Nes-Bjorn,’ said a voice and I turned to it. Finn tilted his chin at the mess; the claw of one hand still reached up as if looking for help.

      ‘Three ladies, over the fields they crossed,’ he intoned. ‘One brought fire, two brought frost. Out with the fire, in with the frost. Out, fire! In, frost!’

      It was an old charm, used on children who had scorched or scalded themselves, but a little late for use on the ruin that had been Nes-Bjorn.

      ‘Came out of the sea like one of Aegir’s own draugr,’ Finn added. ‘Fire had seared his voice away and most of the breath in him. The gods alone know what kept him walking. I near shat myself. Then I gave him The Godi, for mercy.’

      He raised the named sword in question and now I saw the raw-meat gape round the throat of the thing that had been Nes-Bjorn, while the wind hissed sand through the shroud of stiff grass, bringing the scent of salt and charred wood with it. Something shifted darkly and slid into a familiar shape that grinned at me and dragged me to sit upright with a powerful hand.

      ‘You swallowed half the fjord,’ rumbled Botolf cheerfully. ‘But you have bokked most of it up now, so you should be better.’

      ‘Better than the others,’ Finn added grimly, crouched and watchful and Botolf sighed and studied the thing next to him, while the sand pattered on it and stuck. It looked like driftwood.

      ‘Aye – poor Nes-Bjorn Klak will never run the oars again after this.’

      I came back to the Now of it, realised we were somewhere in the dunes to the east of Hestreng. The charred wood smell came again, stronger on the changing wind and Finn saw my nose twitch.

      ‘Aye,’ he said, grim as weathered rock, ‘the Elk is burned and gone and good men with her. All of them, it seems to me, save us.’

      ‘I saw Hauk fall,’ I croaked and Botolf agreed that he had also seen Hauk die.

      ‘Gizur, too,’ Finn added mournfully. ‘He held on to the steerboard and told me he had made this ship and he would die with it. He did, for I saw at least two spears in him as I went over the side.’

      ‘Red Njal? Hlenni Brimill?’

      Finn shrugged and shook his head. Botolf said, brightly: ‘Onund lives. I saw men drag him off up the beach.’

      Finn grunted. ‘He will not be long СКАЧАТЬ