The Prow Beast. Robert Low

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СКАЧАТЬ me. ‘Someone is owed a blow for that.’

      ‘Gizur and Hauk,’ added Ref, shaking his head. ‘By the Hammer, a sad day this.’

      Finn went off to look at his sleeping son and Botolf went to his daughter, leaving Hlenni Brimill and Red Njal to expound the tale; the hooms and heyas and wails rose up like foul smoke as I moved from it into the lee of a wadmal lean-to, where Thorgunna bent over Onund. Bjaelfi sat with him.

      ‘Can he speak?’ I asked and Bjaelfi shook his head.

      ‘Asleep, which is best. He was hard used with hot irons.’

      Thorgunna saw me frown and asked why, so I told her that I thought Onund had something to say that would cast a light on all this.

      ‘I thought it simple enough,’ she replied tightly. ‘Randr Sterki is come to visit on us what once we visited on him.’

      I shot her a look, but she kept her head down from me, fussing pointlessly with a cowhide for Onund’s bedcovering. She had been there on Svartey when we raided Klerkon, but waiting with the ship while we hewed the place to rack and ruin. We were urged on by that cursed little Crowbone, I said and she lifted her head, eyes black as sheep-droppings.

      ‘Don’t blame it all on that boy,’ she spat. ‘I saw then what raiders were and never wish to see it again. It was not all that boy.’

      No, not all, she had the right of it there. There had been raiders too long caged, who sucked in a whiff of blood-scent started by Crowbone, and went Odin-frenzied with it. When all was said and done with it, it was a strandhogg, like many others – a little harsher than most, but blood and flame had been our lives for long enough and it was only, I was thinking, that we now were the victims that made the matter of it here in Hestreng so bitter.

      None of which answered the mystery of why Styrbjorn’s man was here alongside Randr Sterki, nor why bearcoats and Roman Fire had been given to the enterprise. I laid that out for Thorgunna, too, and watched her sit heavily, folding her hands in her lap as she turned it over in her head.

      ‘Styrbjorn wants what he has always wanted,’ she said eventually, rising to fetch spoon and platter, busying herself with the things she knew while her mind worked. She filled a bowl with milk-boiled beef and handed it to me absently, then fetched a skin of skyr – thick fermented cow’s milk thinned down with whey – for me to drink.

      ‘Have we brought away enough?’ I asked and she shrugged.

      ‘Anything that was ready to hand and easily lifted,’ she answered. ‘Food. Three wagons and the horses for them. Shelters and wood for fire. Goats for milk for the bairns. This and that.’

      I nodded and ate the beef, watching her rake through her only rescued kist, picking out items to show me. Two spare over-sarks, one in glowing blue, both patched and re-hemmed with braid more than once. A walrus-ivory comb, carved with gripping beasts. A whetsone. Some small stoppered pots with her ointments and face-paints. A walrus-skin bag with a roll of good cloth in it, snugged up in the dry because it had many little pockets sewn into it, all of them stuffed with carefully wrapped spices and herbs.

      I nodded and smiled and praised, knowing she mourned for what was left behind – fine bedlinen and cloaks and clothes and food stores. It would all be looted and the rest burned before things were done with; I did not mention her eiderdown pillows.

      ‘Where will we go?’ she asked suddenly, her voice tight with a fear she tried hard not to show.

      ‘Over the mountains,’ I said, making it light as I could. ‘Down to Arne Thorliefsson at Vitharsby. There is a seter of his, a summer place, just over the high point on the far side - it will not be occupied this early and will give us some shelter.’

      We would need it by then, for the way was thawed just enough to be a sore, hard climb at the best of times, never mind the frantic haste we would need to put distance between us and what pursued.

      Arne was a good tarman and had three sons, the two youngest needing their lives sorted, since only the eldest would inherit. The younglings were tired of the filthy, backbreaking work of rendering pine root resin into tar for fresh boat planks and Arne would help on the promise of them joining me, the raiding jarl, when the time came.

      ‘Hlenni Brimill went there last year,’ Thorgunna said suddenly, remembering, ‘when we bought the tar for the Elk.’

      The Elk, now burned and sunk with Gizur and Hauk and all the others floating down and down to the bottom of the black water fjord. I chewed slowly, the beef all ashes in my mouth. Raiding jarl my arse; no ship, no hall and no future if Randr and his bearcoats had their way.

      Thorgunna brought me flatbread and sat while I tore chunks off and stuffed it in, trying to look as if I relished eating, but glad of the skyr to wash down the great tasteless lumps, my throat too filled with the fear of those bearcoats. Somewhere in the questing dark they prowled, waiting for the scouts to bring them news. Then they would be unleashed on us.

      ‘Will they stop then, when we reach the other side of the mountains?’ she asked, as if reading my thoughts.

      I did not know. I did not think so. I was thinking only death would stop Randr Sterki – but Styrbjorn’s man, this Ljot, wanted something else and I did not know what it was and that part I mentioned to her.

      Thorgunna hauled a cloak round her shoulders as the rain-chilled air smoked her breath into the night.

      ‘Styrbjorn is King Eirik’s nephew and so his heir,’ she answered, slowly working it through her head. ‘He was so until he became such a ranter and raver that he was thrown out for his pains. But he still is heir and will be king if Eirik dies.’

      ‘Aye, maybe,’ I said, forcing a final swallow. ‘Though more than few will not like the idea much. Anyway, he is young yet, though it seems he does not want to wait to be king.’

      ‘He will not be at all,’ Thorgunna answered meaningfully, ‘if Eirik has a son.’

      There it was, like a cunning picture of little tiles seen too close up; step back from it and it swam into view; Queen Sigrith. Styrbjorn wanted Sigrith – well, he wanted the child she carried and he wanted it dead.

      Thorgunna watched my mouth drop like a coal-eater and then she rose, taking me by the hand. I followed her through the bodies huddled round the fire or close together under shelters, dank with misery. In one of the wagons lay a bulky, moaning figure and, squatted next to her like a bull seal, was Jasna, stroking and crooning soothing balm into the groans of the other.

      ‘How is she?’ asked Thorgunna and Jasna raised her pudding face, jowls trembling, and patted the sweat-greased cheeks of Queen Sigrith.

      ‘Not good. No easy birth. Soon, little bird, soon. All the pain will be over and then a beautiful son, eh…’

      I looked wildly at Thorgunna, who said nothing, but led me a little way away.

      ‘The queen will birth, in a day, perhaps less.’

      It was as good as an axe to the hull of all our hopes, that simple phrase; there would be no swift moving from here, banging her about in the back of a cart and, soon, we would have to stop entirely until the bairn was birthed. I thought I heard the bearcoats roar their triumph to the wet-shrouded moon.

      Botolf СКАЧАТЬ