shatter.
I lay next to the softly muttering woman, feeling the heat of her, watching the weathervane swoop and soar with the rise and fall of the swell in long circles, listening to the endlessly-repeated sound that went with it, from the creak of the mast stays, the thump as it shifted in its socket, the snake-hiss of the water under the keel, the deep-throat hum of the wind in the ropes, like a struck harp.
Towards midday, I reckoned, a watery-eyed sun came up and everyone cheered; it was the first sun we had seen in a long time. Martin the monk watched Illugi Godi give thanks for it, his face dark as the black water under the keel. Einar watched Martin, stroking his beard.
Gunnar handed out sour milk and gruel and wet-mush bread later, together with a half-cup of water. The woman’s dull-eyed muttering only stopped when she ate, but even that was half-hearted. She felt hot and I palmed her forehead, which was clammy.
‘How is she?’ demanded Illugi, suddenly appearing at my side. I told him and he checked, grunted, moved to Einar and spoke with him. He nodded, looked at the sky, then called Rurik and talked to him. My father rubbed a hand across his wild, thin hair – a sign I now knew spoke of his unease – and moved to the side.
He studied the water for a long time, on both sides of the boat, looked at the sky, squinted at the weak sun, which was losing itself in a milky haze. He said something to Einar, who nodded and hauled Gudleif’s already tattered fur tighter round him.
Water dripped from my nose and we ran on towards night, heedless of land, of skerries, of shoals, of anything. We were on the whale road.
As the light thinned, Einar waved me to him and murmured to Ketil Crow, who fetched the monk. With Illugi Godi, we huddled under the little upturned faering which stood as the nearest thing to a shelter on the boat and which, of course, Einar claimed as his due.
‘Well, we are escaped, monk, and at no small cost. Now tell us why you should not go over the side as a sacrifice to Thor,’ he growled at Martin.
I refrained from saying anything, because the taste of it was bitter in my mouth. The cost was Eyvind’s and he had paid it in full, betrayed by the man who had made much of oath-swearing. That and the fact that the time to have thrown the monk overboard was at the height of the storm, when Thor and Aegir needed an offering.
Martin, wet and miserable and cold, with a great black bruise down one side of his face, sniffed snot into the back of his throat. Gone was the smooth, urbane scholar who had invited us to dine, but the drowned rat that remained still, he thought, had some teeth.
‘You would do well to treat me better, Einar the Black,’ the monk answered bitterly. ‘I hold the secret of what you want, after all.’
‘The god stone holds that secret,’ answered Einar coldly. ‘Between Illugi, who can ken the runes, and Orm, who reads Latin, I think we can prise out the secret. Give me another reason to keep your feet dry.’
Martin glanced sourly at me and nodded, slowly. ‘I wondered how you had known of the stone. I had not thought a boy would have such learning, though.’
He had marked me, that was clear, and the knowledge of it made me shiver. He seemed, to me, far too calm and cool about it all. To Einar, also, I saw.
‘Indeed,’ said Einar and nodded to Ketil Crow and another burly man, Snorri, who had a god mark on his face almost the same shape and in the same place as the monk’s bruise. They grabbed Martin; he shrieked and struggled, but they wound a good rope round his ankles and hauled him up the mast a little way, where he waved wildly and swung.
Einar stood, stretched, yawned and farted. Then he drew out a little knife I had not seen before, too small for a fighting seax and not his eating knife. He grabbed the little monk’s left hand and sawed off a finger at the first joint. Blood sprayed; the monk howled and jerked. Einar examined the digit, then tossed it casually over the side.
‘This is a magic knife,’ he said, bending close to the monk. ‘It can tell lie from truth and every time it finds a lie it will remove a finger until all are gone. Then it will start on toes, until all are gone. Then it will start on your prick and your balls …’
‘Until all are gone,’ chorused those in the know, with roars and huge, knee-slapping laughs.
‘Just so,’ said Einar, without the hint of a smile.
‘Let me down, let me down …’
He babbled well, did Martin. He wet himself – we knew because it steamed pungently – and prayed for oblivion, but his White Christ didn’t hand him that, for it was well known that a man upside down, with the blood in his head, can’t faint. He pleaded, offered everything in this world and, by virtue of his knowing his god personally, the next.
And he revealed everything. That Atil’s treasure existed. That the god stone didn’t matter, but the woman did. Vigfus, it seemed, had been sent to where the god stone originally stood, after Martin had found that the Christ ikon he sought had been taken there to be forged into part of Atil’s treasure: a sword, it seemed.
This was part of the gifts given to Atil by the Volsungs when they knew the only way to defeat that almond-eyed snake of a steppe lord was by sacrifice and cunning – a final great gift, of swords and silver and a bride, one of their own, a seidr witch called Ildico. Who killed him on their wedding night.
Martin, seeking clues, had sent Vigfus to find the forge, or any reference to swords or spears. Vigfus, who couldn’t find his arse if someone shone a light on it, failed to find anything, had seized the woman who now shivered and raved beside me because the local heathens seemed to hold her in high esteem, in an attempt to force the knowledge from them.
They had attacked Vigfus, killed more than a few of his men, and forced him to flee back to Birka with only the woman.
Martin, however, had seen the amulet she wore for what it was, had then remembered St Otmund and his mission, thought perhaps there might be a clue in his writings about the forge and sent us to Strathclyde. But there had only been reference to a god stone.
‘So,’ Einar demanded, while the monk’s blood dripped fatly on the deck and the snot ran into his eyes, ‘why are you now fearful of Lambisson, whose purse you have plundered for all this? If you are on the track of the Great Hoard, surely he would be pleased?’
The monk hesitated for the first time. ‘I … he … we simply disagreed. On a point of principle … Let me down. I will be sick.’
‘A point of principle?’ Einar growled, narrowing his eyes. He reached for the mutilated hand and the monk howled.
‘No, no … wait, wait … the ikon. It was the ikon …’
‘That’s what Bluetooth wants,’ I said, suddenly realising. ‘This Christ charm. To convert the Danes with. For that bishop who wore the red-hot glove.’
And Martin was sick, spilling it into his nose and his hair, choking on the slime-green of it until Einar, seeing he might well die upside down, nodded to Snorri, who lowered him to the deck. Seawater was thrown over him until, shivering and wretched, he could breathe again.
‘Has Orm the right of it?’ demanded Einar.
Martin, unable to do anything else, nodded and retched.
‘So,’ Einar continued, ‘Bluetooth knows nothing about Atil’s treasure, only that there is a god charm the Christ-followers revere. You did not tell Lambisson of it, but spent his money finding it for yourself …’ He was stroking his moustaches, thinking, thinking. ‘What is this Christ charm everyone wants?’ he asked, giving Martin a kick.
The monk spluttered, wiped his nose, coughed out an answer. ‘A spear. Once. Thrust. Into the side of our Lord by the Romans.’
‘Ah,’ mused Einar.
Illugi Godi nodded sagely. ‘Touched by the blood of a god, it would be a powerful thing.’
‘Forged now into a sword,’ someone said. The whole crew, I