sword. Made from god-touched metal. It was saga stuff, mother’s milk to the likes of us. There were great things in the world: silver hoards, fine horses, beautiful women. But no prize was better than a rune-spelled sword.
‘And the woman? What is she to this?’
Martin spat and heaved in breath. He looked like a rat fresh from a cesspit. ‘She is of the blood of the smiths who made the sword. She … knows where it is.’
No one blinked at that, though some shot anxious glances back towards the woman, for a witch was bad luck on a ship. Bad luck anywhere, I was thinking.
‘Does Vigfus know this?’ Einar demanded and Martin, rocking back and forward, ruined hand cradled in his good one, shook his head and whimpered.
‘He knows of the god stone, though,’ Ketil Crow offered. ‘He will seek it, not knowing it will do him no good – nor us, for it will bring him in the same direction as we travel now.’
‘A runesword,’ growled Einar, ignoring him. ‘A man with that would be a hero king indeed.’ He looked around and grinned. ‘A man with that, a mountain of silver and a crew like the Oathsworn need fear no kings.’
They whooped and cheered and pounded on each other, the deck, anything. As it died away and they went back to duties, or to huddle against the mirr, Einar turned, his grin fading as he saw my face, which I foolishly failed to disguise. Its black, scowling ugliness made him recoil a little.
‘That’s a face to sour milk,’ he noted, annoyed. ‘When everyone else laughs.’
‘Except Eyvind,’ I pointed out, ‘who is not here.’
Then he knew, as did Illugi Godi who was close enough to hear and put a hand on my arm.
‘Eyvind broke oath with us,’ Einar growled. ‘He put us all in danger with his Loki curse for firing everything.’
‘An oath is an oath. The one I swore did not say that foolishness or a curse made it worthless and got you killed.’
Illugi Godi nodded, which Einar caught. His scowl deepened. ‘I think you are smarting because you had to lose your breeks in the street,’ he said slowly. ‘It seems to me that your gift is in need of maturing before it is of use to me. It seems to me that you would be better staying with the woman.’
He stared at me and I knew I had been mortally insulted and was entitled to be angry. But this was Einar and I was so new I squeaked still. I quailed under that glass-black gaze.
‘I will call if I need you,’ he added and jerked his head in dismissal.
I stumbled away on watery legs and slumped down next to the woman. I heard Einar bark something angrily at Illugi and then there was silence, save for the creak-thump of the mast and stays and the hiss of the keelwater.
My father and Einar then huddled briefly and Martin was dragged over to join them. It was clear that a course was planned.
The sail came down, the shields and oars came in – you could not heel the boat over on a tack otherwise – then the men bent to it and hauled the Elk’s head round on to the new course, where the whole ship was rerigged once more and sprang into its mad gallop.
I did not have to ask my father where we headed, for it was obvious: to the forge where the woman was taken. She was going home.
The rain fell, the woman muttered and rolled her eyes up into her head and the Elk sped on, out along the whale road – and nothing was the same again.
Four days later the woman was burning with fever and babbling and Hring was casting hooks on lines behind, baited with coloured strips of cloth in a forlorn attempt to catch fish.
But, as Bagnose observed gloomily, they would have to be flying fish to catch up with the Fjord Elk. Meanwhile, the water in the stoppered leather bottles was being filtered through two layers of fine linen to get rid of the floaters.
Then an oar snapped with a high, sharp sound as a blade finally caught sideways on to the waves. The shards flew, the butt end leaped up and the shield slammed back across the thwarts. A man howled as it cracked his forearm.
And Pinleg, in the prow as lookout, called out, ‘Land!’
My father turned expectantly to Einar, who glowered and said nothing. So my father gave a short curse, then yelled out, ‘Shield oars inboard. Sail down. Move!’
For a moment, I thought Einar would leap to his feet, and braced myself to spring at him. But he only shifted, as if cocking a buttock to fart, then settled again, stroking his beard and staring blackly at the deck.
The speed came off the Elk like ice melting under salt. It felt like we were wallowing suddenly.
‘To oars.’
Stiff, wet, we climbed up and took position on our sea-chest benches. I hauled with the rest of them; the head of the Elk came round, slowly, slowly, and she started to inch her way across the swell, rolling like a drowned pig now, all grace gone.
We slithered into the shelter of a bay, with a low, grey headland where tufts of harsh grass, tawny as wheat, waved softly and patches of green showed through the russets and yellow. Seaweed and lichens crusted the stones studding a beach of coarse, wet sand, meadow-grass was already sprouting shoots beyond that and there was a flush of green shoots on the birch and willow clumps. Two small rivers trickled together to empty into a shallow tidal estuary.
We splashed ashore, dragging the Elk a little way up the sand, as far as we could on shaky legs and on that tide. Birds sang and the resin-tang of life was everywhere. When the sun came out, everyone was cheered; Bagnose began more verses and the Oathsworn swung back into the rhythm of things.
But nothing was the same.
Shelters were built, short-term affairs of springy branches roofed with wadmal cloth, the stuff we used to repair tears in the sail.
Some men took off on a hunt, having spotted deer slots, Steinthor and Bagnose among them, quartering ahead like hounds. Hring and two others dug trenches in the sand shallows to catch tidal-trapped fish, while I scuffed along the wide curve of the beach, gathering dulse and mussels until my back ached.
By nightfall, fires were lit and everyone had eaten well. The hunters had come back with some small game and a wild duck, shot in mid-flight by Steinthor, who claimed it was a lucky strike, though others disagreed. Bagnose, on the other hand, had missed and was still grumbling about having lost the arrow.
People began to dry out clothing and I had managed to wrap the woman in something warm, in a dry hut where a fire was lit just for her, since Einar knew her value. He had also paired Martin and me to make sure she lived and if ever anything spoke of his anger with me, that was it.
I was less angry than I thought I would be. Caring for the woman was a lot better than the back-breaking task I would surely have been given: four hours of bailing out the Elk for Valgard.
And there was something about the woman. I had stripped her with the monk’s help, although he was less than helpful since he insisted on doing it with his eyes averted, which was awkward, to say the least.
In the dim, gloomy light of the horn lantern, guttering because the whale oil in it was thick and old, she was fish-belly white, so that the bruises and welts stood out on her skin.
Illugi Godi, when he arrived with a wooden bucket of cold seawater for compresses, sucked his teeth and glared at Martin when he saw it.
‘Vigfus,’ sighed the monk mournfully, hugging his ruined hand under one armpit. ‘He misused her, I am afraid.’
She lay, feverish, open-eyed and staring, but seeing nothing. I cleaned a lot of the filth from her, saw the flare of cheekbones and the full, ripe lips and realised she was a beauty.
‘A princess, perhaps,’ Martin agreed, wringing out the cloth. From outside came the mutter and growl and bursts of raucous laughter that marked contented