a soft suck of sound and a gobbet of red. The one in his thigh wouldn’t come out at all, so I had to saw the shaft short, an awkward job with my bound hand.
All the while I could feel the eyes on me from the cart, the dead eyes of the man I had known as my father, and the storm in me rolled and swelled, for I was angry at him for having kept the secret so long, so that I did not even have my real father. Sad as a wolf-howl for him, too, that he had borne it all this long.
Skarti’s pox-ravaged head lolled sideways as I closed his eyes, hearing his voice say: ‘But you never see a cat on a battlefield,’ and we placed him on the cart, too.
We also laid out Eindridi – well, we were reasonably sure it was him, from the shield and weapons he bore, but even his own mother would not have known the blackened, peeling thing that had been his face.
We found Hrut, who knew more riddles than Bagnose, and Kol Otryggsson, who could carve out delicate, swirling patterns in leather with an awl, and Isleif from Aldeigjuborg and Rorik, the half-Slav from Kiev, who had come up to Holmgard for the season and joined us there, had hardly been with us long enough for anything to be known about him.
Then there was Ranvaik Sleekstone-eye, one of the old Oathsworn, his odd-coloured eyes closed for ever, the centre of his face punched bloody by one of those lead pebbles.
And more, each ragdoll body a new keening for the women, another stone in the heart of us all.
Einar and Valknut looked at Ranvaik’s corpse, blank-faced and wordless. Ketil Crow, almost tenderly, wiped the crusted mess from the dead face. There were, I knew, no more than a handful of the original Oathsworn left, the ones who had once sailed from where the bergs calved off in floating mountains to the lands where sand was drifted by the wind into a parody of the ocean.
Flosi came back for the cart eventually, eyeing with distaste the smear of fluids streaking it, for our bread and meat had to be piled there. Grumbling, he headed down to the river to clean it out, muttering that he wished he had known all this before he had taken that binding oath.
And, on the way, he flung back carelessly at Einar: ‘A new lot have arrived from up north, well-mailed and – armed Danes. Maybe you can tempt fresh men from them. Their leader is talking to Sviatoslav. Walks with a bad limp, calls himself Starkad.’
A wind snaked out of the north and drove a thin spray of grit and dust against me, whipping my cloak so hard I stumbled sideways. It was driving against our shield side and a few had decided to walk with the things up as shelter.
My arm was too sore for that, the pain throbbing out from the missing fingers all the way up to my elbow, so I had hauled up the cloak round my head and hunched into it, wondering whether my ankle hurt more than my hand, or if I had miasmic rot in the stumps of my fingers. I remembered the bee-keeper from Uppsala and his arm, blackening as he raved into the long night.
Up ahead strode Einar, alongside the jolting cart where Hild sat, cross-legged, swathed and veiled in his fine red cloak.
When he had heard Flosi’s news, Einar had stopped in his tracks and the matted yellow dust on his face had not hidden how he had paled. Ketil Crow had hawked and spat and said, ‘Loki’s hairy arse.’ Illugi had just looked sick with weariness.
Then Einar shook himself – physically, like a dog, so that the dust came off him like water – and growled, ‘Time for us to go, then, I am thinking.’
‘Do we have enough dead yet?’ I snarled back at him and he whirled, taking a step towards me. I think he expected me to back from him, remembering the steel of his fingers round my neck, but I was savage for it, wanted it more than my life, even though the thought flashed through me that I was dead.
‘Enough for what?’ asked a bemused Wryneck, with his tic-twitch.
Einar stopped, forced a grin and shrugged. ‘Our Bear Slayer has lost his father,’ he declared, for all to hear, ‘and it is not surprising a little of his mind has gone with him.’ He turned to Wryneck. ‘Look after him, old one, while I arrange for the proper rites for our fallen.’
Then he looked round the rest of us, raising his voice so all could hear. ‘Wash. Dress in your finest, for these are your oath-brothers and deserve it.’
So we all straggled out, searching for our scattered belongings from where the horsemen had dragged them, then went down to the river and cleaned ourselves and our clothes, as much as we could in that pink-tinged, mud-tainted flow.
But the Don was wide here and swallowed all our filth. By the time Ketil Crow and Einar came back, with thralls leading a dozen carts, each with two solid wheels and a stringy pony, we were, if not shining, more fitting than we had been before.
But I did it only for Rurik. I wanted to spit in Einar’s eye.
We took the bodies north into the steppe as the twilight grew, far out from where the city smouldered, until the fires of our own camp were distant enough for some to be uneasy about getting back. Of course, I knew we weren’t going back.
In the half-dark, thralls dug out a great boat-shaped pit in the black earth and placed the bodies in it, for there wasn’t enough wood left for a pyre after all the great burnings we’d already had.
It was a dark and silent affair, of hissing wind and the grunts of the thralls as they dug the earth with chopping sounds. Nearby, like a great storm crow, Hild squatted in her dark dress, knees up at her ears, hands clasped in her lap, presiding over it like some idol.
I folded Rurik’s hands on his chest over the hilt of his sword and silently asked the All-Father to guide him. Then the thralls filled the pit in with furious, nervous energy, as the dark came down and they grew ever more fearful.
They were right to be afraid. Maybe one or two suspected, but most were scared of the wrong people for, after they had unloaded the head-sized white stones we had begged or stolen from the Greek engineers and placed them as a border round the grave, Ketil Crow had them all seized.
Illugi Godi led the chanting prayers as, one by one, their throats were slit and they were laid out in a circle, head towards the mound, feet away. Hild stirred then, as the iron stink of blood swirled on the steppe wind and unfolded herself.
‘Are we done here?’ she rasped and heads turned angrily to her, only to be silenced by the cold stare they had in return.
It was a hasty excuse, half-ashamed in the dark, for a proper burial in the old way, with fire and dignity, but I made my own peace with Rurik then, for I thought it unlikely I would be back here – or that the scavengers would leave much. But all were safely across Bifrost, the rainbow bridge.
Afterwards, Einar told them what he planned: to strike out north and east, round the city, then back to the river beyond it and on down to the greatest wealth of silver they had ever seen.
Thirty agreed at once and eight thereafter, reluctant and muttering about every hand being against them.
‘Did you think such a prize was to be had lightly?’ Einar demanded, as much to all of us as to them.
‘No,’ answered one of those who still refused – baptised Christ-followers to a man, I noted. ‘I did not think to have to pay my soul as the price.’
‘Your soul?’ snarled Ketil Crow. ‘What is this? The afterlife in Christ-Valholl? If so, it seems a poor place, full of poor people and gods who scorn a hard arm.’
The man, a Dane from Hedeby called Aslaf, was not fazed by Ketil Crow and merely shrugged, since he had no gold-browed argument and Christ hung on him like a new tunic, still creased and scratchy here and there.
For all that, he and his three oarmates would not give in and stood their ground, shuffling their feet and keeping a wary eye and a hand on a hilt.
‘You swore an oath,’ Illugi reminded them and Aslaf glanced at him, uneasy now