The Prow Beast. Robert Low

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СКАЧАТЬ dry breeks and tunic and serk, made me strip and change there and then, taking my sea-sodden boots to be rubbed with fat.

      I sat next to Finn, sticking my bare feet closer to the flames as he cleaned the clotted blood from The Godi. The rain spat on the wadmal canopy and hissed in the fire just beyond it. Ref came up, carrying my sword; I had not even realised I had let it go, probably when Thorgunna hugged me.

      ‘Not too bad,’ he said cheerfully. ‘There’s a great notch out of it and I cannot grind it out, for it is all of the edge metal from that part.’

      Then his face changed, like a sudden squall on a mirror fjord.

      ‘Cannot grind it out properly anyway,’ he added with a sigh. ‘My forge is gone and all the tools with it.’

      He handed it to me and I looked at the v-notch he pointed to. The sliver was in the mast of the Elk, for sure and I told him so. We all went quiet then, thinking of the black fjord and the sunken Elk and our oarmates, rolling in the slow, cold dark with their hair like sea-wrack.

      ‘We should make blot for them,’ Finn said and Abjorn came up at that moment, with little Koll at his heels.

      ‘I have set watchers,’ he told me from the grim cliff of his face, then jerked a thumb at the boy behind him. ‘Like me, young Koll wishes news of his father.’

      ‘I have none,’ I answered, feeling guilty that, of all the fledglings who had occupied my thoughts, the one I had been charged with fostering had not been one of them. I signalled him closer and he stepped into the light and out of the rain, the firelight on his face showing up the white of him and the grit of his jaw, making a fierce light in his pale eyes.

      ‘You are safe here,’ I said, hoping it was true. ‘Your father, once he has dealt with Styrbjorn, will come and help us defeat these nithings. Until then, we will get a little damp and have an adventure in the mountains.’

      ‘My mother…’ he said and I felt a stab, felt foolish. Of course…he had heard at the beach how Styrbjorn had dealt with all his family. Ingrid swept in then, gathering the boy into her apron and making soothing noises about honey and milk and sleep, for it was late.

      I looked round the fire then, at all the expectant faces – Klepp Spaki, the blank, strange mask of Vuokko, the droop-mouthed Ref, bemoaning the loss of his forge and tools, Red Njal and Hlenni and Bjaelfi, staring at me across the flames, faces bloody with light and hoping for wisdom.

      And there, in the shadows, no more than a pale blob of face, was Leo the monk.

      ‘Roman Fire,’ I called to him and he stepped forward, all the faces turning from me to him.

      ‘So I heard,’ he answered, arms folded into the sleeves of his clothing. ‘Though we call it Persian Fire. Sometimes Sea Fire.’

      ‘No matter what you call it,’ I spat back into his plump smile, ‘it is never let far from the Great City. Nor into the hands of such as Styrbjorn. I had heard it was a great crime to do so.’

      ‘Indeed,’ he replied sombrely. ‘The ingredients of what you call Roman Fire were disclosed by an angel to the first great Constantine. It was he who ordained that there should be a curse, in writing and on the Holy Altar of the Church of God, on any who dare give the secret to another nation.’

      He paused and frowned.

      ‘Whether this is giving the secret is a matter for debate – the likes of Styrbjorn could not learn how to make it from what he has been given. However, such an event is cause for concern among many departments of the Imperium, where such weapons are strictly regulated.’

      Concern? Burned ships and dead men were more than concern and I bellowed that at him. The rage gagged in my throat, both at his diffidence and the implication that the northers were barbarians too stupid to find out the secret of Roman Fire from weapons handed out like toys to bairns. It did not cool me any to know he was right in it, too.

      He nodded, smooth as a polished mirror and seemingly unconcerned by my glaring.

      ‘Indeed. I would not be surprised if certain of those departments took steps to find out what has happened to their missing amounts.’

      ‘Such as sending someone to find out?’

      He inclined his head, face blank as an egg.

      ‘I would not be in the least surprised.’

      I watched him for a moment longer, but nothing flickered on it, no firm sign that he was the one sent to find out. He was young – not in the way we counted it, but certainly in the way the Great City did – but I suspected he had been sent and that made him a man to be watched. In the end, I broke the locked antlers of our eyes, turning to tell everyone that Styrbjorn had sent warriors here to end the life of Sigrith and the child she carried in her belly, so that he would remain sole heir to the high seat of the Svears and Geats.

      The women grunted, while the men stayed silent. I did not say anything about why Randr Sterki had – I was sure – begged Styrbjorn to be the one to take on the task; those who remembered what we had done on Svartey did not need reminding of it. I told them all we would move north, across the mountains, as soon as it was light enough to see, trying to keep my voice easy, as if I was telling them when we would sow rye and in what field that year.

      Afterwards, when others had rolled into skins and cloaks, I sat with Finn listening to Botolf snore – alone by the fire, for he had given his space beside Ingrid to Helga and Aoife and the other bairns, for better warmth. In the dark, I heard Aoife cooing softly to Cormac to soothe him – beautiful boy, she said. Where’s my lovely boy, white as an egg, then?

      ‘If it comes to it,’ Finn said eventually, ‘I will fight Randr Sterki.’

      ‘Why you?’ I countered and he shrugged and looked at me, half-ashamed, half-defiant. The memory of him humping away at the dying wife of Randr Sterki slunk sourly between us.

      ‘I killed his boy,’ I said sourly. ‘So it should be me. Red Njal, I am remembering, killed others of his family. Perhaps we should take it in turns.’

      Botolf woke himself with a particularly large snore and sat up, groaning and wiping sleep from his eyes.

      ‘Odin’s arse…my shoulder and back hurt. I hate sleeping on the ground in winter.’

      ‘A hard raiding man like you?’ snorted Finn. ‘Surely not.’

      ‘Shut your hole, Finn,’ Botolf countered amiably, sitting up and wincing. ‘The worse thing is the itch in my wooden leg.’

      There was silence for a moment; a last log collapsed and whirled sparks up.

      ‘What are we going to do?’ demanded Botolf suddenly.

      ‘About what? Your itching log-leg?’ I asked and he waved his arms wildly in all directions.

      ‘All this. The queen and weans.’

      ‘We take them to Vitharsby and then east to Jarl Brand,’ I told him.

      ‘Just like that?’ Botolf snapped. He rubbed his beard with frustration. ‘Hunted by toad-licking wearers of bear and wolf skins? And at least a ship’s crew of hard raiders? СКАЧАТЬ