The Whale Road - Robert Low

In one clever 'tafl move, Einar had forestalled all his enemies and, in the feasting and drinking that followed, it was generally agreed—even by those who should know better—that Einar's luck was holding.

It was left to Hild to sober us all up as we gathered round the dying embers of the fire, somnolent with food and beer and mulling on the events. Nearby, a couple were humping with noisy enthusiasm and I was, at one and the same time, annoyed by the presence of Hild, which kept me from doing the same, and acutely aware of her and the fact that other women had lost their savour because of her.

She, if she heard anything at all, or thought anything on the matter, gave no sign. She sat, blank-faced as a benign little statue—and then she spoke. 'I have heard,' she said, `that the druzhina of the Princes of Kiev are powerful forces.'

And everyone nodded and agreed that this was so.

`Horsemen, for all the nobles of Kiev are horsemen,' she went on. 'They fight with the bow and the spear and the sword, from horseback, on the open steppe. The Khazars they war against fight the same way.'

And everyone agreed that this was so.

`So . . . why does he need Norsemen, who fight on foot?'

We all looked at each other, for it was a very good question. Around then, some of us began to wonder.

As the couple reached a gasping end, Hild stood, calmly smoothed her dress, cradled the spear-shaft and drifted into the twilight and back to the ship. And I, of course, climbed wearily and painfully to my feet and followed, hearing the chuckles, aware that 'Bear Slayer' was giving way tòHild's Hound'.

The next night, resting by the cookfires, we did not have to worry the bone she had dropped on us. It was announced that the army of Kiev was gathering in that place, to march all the way south, almost to the Black Sea, down the Don river to the Khazars' city there. Sviatoslav would lay siege to it and finally remove this block to the eastern trade routes. And you can't, as Einar airily pointed out, take a walled city with horsemen.

`So you will get us all killed before we can reach the hoard,' grumbled Valknut, but Hild shook her head, her eyes fixed on Einar, who tried to avoid hers. She was quiet, coiled like a snake.

`The city is Sarkel,' she said. 'It lies on the Don. The place we seek is nearby.'

`So you say,' I offered moodily, half to myself, and was surprised at the growls that supported this.

Òrm has the right of it,' Finn Horsehead grunted, jerking his shaggy chin towards Hild. 'It seems to me that we put much of our trust in this woman, who does not inspire me, for one.'

`Nor me,' agreed Kvasir Spittle. 'If she knows so much of it, have her make a chart we can follow.'

Einar looked from one to the other, then back to me and his eyes tightened at the edges as others muttered assent to all this. I swallowed a dry spear in my throat under that gaze.

Einar shrugged and turned to Hild. 'Well, then—will you draw this chart?'

`No.' It was a handslap on a wet stone, a flat refusal that made us all blink.

Finn regarded her with one eye closed. Then he looked at Einar. 'You have a magic knife that would change her mind.'

`Would you trust a chart made that way?' More growls and mutters, as they realised that she could lead them anywhere.

Kvasir scrubbed his head vigorously. 'I just don't like the idea of trailing after a . . . a . . .' He stopped, stumbling on the rocks of it.

À witch,' Hild answered for him, her gaze as black as Einar's. She laughed, a low, throaty sound that raised hackles on everyone. She was trembling.

`You will, I am thinking, have to trust me on this, lads,' Einar said easily, laying one hand gently on Hild's shoulder, so that she stiffened and was still. 'Have you ever seen a chart that made sense anyway? Eh, Rurik? Who uses a chart?'

My father stirred uneasily and said nothing. He looked at me, a gaze as heavy and dark as a slab of slate.

`With or without a chart,' Einar said softly, `the road still leads to Sarkel. If, at the end of it all, young Orm is unhappy, then he can come to me and say so.'

No one spoke. Einar turned away, propelling Hild in front of him. The talk and arguing only started to grow when they had vanished from sight, Ketil Crow and Valknut trailing after like dogs.

`That was . . . ill-advised,' my father growled, sliding up to me and shooting hard looks at Finn and Kvasir. They avoided his gaze and shuffled their feet.

Ì said nothing but what was on my mind,' I protested and my father grunted with annoyance.

`Best if you rein that in from now on, Orm,' he said, his gaze flinty. 'For if you anger him, neither I nor Illugi—nor these here,' he added scornfully, glaring at Finn and Kvasir, 'will be able to prevent what happens next.'

There was a soft chuckle in the twilight and we all whirled nervously to face it.

Gunnar Raudi swaggered into the firelight, picking his teeth with a bone needle and looked us all over, grinning and shaking his head. 'You look like boys caught pulling off behind the privy,' he mocked, then spat on the fire and spoke into the sizzle. Èinar's doom is on him. One day you will all have to face your fear of him.'

Ànd you are not afraid of Einar?' snarled my father, a little more savagely than I thought necessary.

Gunnar shrugged. `Wyrd is wyrd. It is not mine, I am thinking, to go down under the edge of Einar's fame. I will consider fear when I see the edge of his blade.'

`When you go down under the edge of Einar's blade,' countered my father bitterly.

Gunnar Raudi's teeth were bloody with firelight when he grinned.

10 The fur market of Novgorod dripped under a fine mirr of rain that had been falling since dawn and, no matter how hard they tried, the pelt-sellers couldn't keep their wares dry under awnings and ended up dragging waterproofed wool over them, destroying any attempt at display.

The richer traders, those with solid edifices, huddled under the eaves, hardly bothering to rouse themselves since custom was so slight.

`This is a dangerous business,' my father growled, dragging his cloak further up over his head. Einar thumbed snot off his nose and said nothing.

`You are just wet,' I told him and Valknut chuckled. But the truth was that I thought he was probably right. The rain had soaked My perfectly good cloak and the mud had splashed up my fine fat breeks even on the walkway.

The hollow-socket stare of dead animals followed me from under every sheltered eave and from every trestle: long-snouted wolves, fox, highly prized sable, scabby rabbit and mottled hare. There were deer hides and antler-bone for the carvers and, slung from a hook in the middle of one room, a huge bear pelt with the head still on. The stink of hides from the tanners and leather-workers slunk to my nose now and then, brought by the wind and scarcely dampened by the rain.

I tried to be cheerful and failed and I knew the reason. I no longer had Hild to consider. Illugi Godi was with her all the time now, whether by Einar's order or her demand I could not be sure. But she ignored me as completely as she could and I should have been happy with that, but wasn't.

Everyone else knew why, of course—or thought they did. They nudged each other and grinned at my new, permanent scowl and at every pointed Hild slight.

I touched the seax strapped in the small of my back, under the cloak, and felt the rain trickle down my neck. For days we had been hunting for Martin, or Bjorn, or Steinkel. You wouldn't think it so hard in a town, but I discovered that a town is worse than a forest. You can hide everywhere and anywhere.

But Einar wanted him and I knew why. Martin knew of the Great Hoard and that we had Hild, who knew how to get to it. The gods knew how he had collided with Gudleif's sons, but what none of us wanted was to have him flapping his lip to the likes of Vigfus, or anyone else, in pursuit of his own dreams.

I took on this task with enthusiasm. We were stuck in Novgorod until the spate ended; the rivers were too fast-running to travel until at least May, perhaps June. Down at Kiev, eighteen days at least by boat, the river rose around fifteen feet and spread from about half a mile wide to five or even six miles wide.

Eventually, we heard that someone had seen a monk that might be ours and we listened to that one, because they said this monk wasn't of the Roman church, but Western. Since most of the monks and Christ priests in Novgorod were Greeks from Miklagard, we thought this monk likely to be the right one.

And so here we were, looking for Skudi the Finn in the Shelonskaya district, across the bridge from the Podol, the riverside quarter. Skudi was a man who had promised, for a price, to deliver this monk up to us.

So Einar, me, my father and Valknut went to him, trying hard to look like Gotland traders.

Einar, of course, smelled trap, but decided that more men might be too easily spotted and scare off the prize. In the rain of the market, though, I wished we had brought those men and more. I kept seeing thugs in every lumbering, bearded shape, every untrusting face smeared with fat to keep it dry.

Valknut found the Finn, who did not seem to warrant a shop at all, since he huddled on a bench in a cloak with a rat-chewed fur collar, sparse hair splayed on his skull and a calculating look in his watery blue eyes.

`This is Skudi,' Valknut said and the man nodded, hearing his name. I didn't speak so much Finn, so tried East Norse, while my father offered up West and Valknut, to my surprise, added Greek.

In that complex maze of tongues, we managed to haggle out a suitable price and, at the same time, warn the Finn that Einar would slit him from balls to chin if he proved false. Einar fished out a purse from under his armpit and sorted out full silver coins from the collection of sliced and whole and slivers in the bag. The Finn looked at them, shook his head and went off on a long rant in three languages.

`Tell him that's all he is getting,' Einar warned, narrowing his eyes. But that wasn't the problem and I sighed. This was getting complicated.

`He won't take srebreniks,' I said. 'Says there's not enough silver in them.'

The srebrenik was a new Rus coin, minted in Kiev from the same design as the favoured Serkland dirham, but the silver flow was now a trickle and the Rus ones had less in them than the Arab coins.

`His own lord mints them,' growled Einar, ànd that's what he pays us in.'

`Doesn't matter to him. He wants old Rus kunas, or Serkland dirham. Or milaresia from Byzantium if you have any.'

`Fuck him,' answered Valknut and his slit-eyed gesture with a thumb across the throat was eloquent in any language.

But Skudi was a trader and I had to admire him; he was used to hard haggling and never even broke into a sweat. Instead, he pointed to the silver torc round Einar's neck, given by Yaropolk as befits a lord to his commanders.

`That's worth more,' spat Einar. 'He's a cunning little swine, I will give him that.'

I made swift calculations and shook my head. 'No, it isn't. It's a Rus grivna of silver, worth twenty five.

The kuna is the same as a dirham here. He is losing slightly, but he can sell the torc for more since it is pure silver.’

Einar blinked. He had another couple of such rings, as befits a jarl, so could afford to miss this one. My father scrubbed his head furiously and Valknut just glared. Then Einar shrugged, bent the torc off his neck and tossed it to the Finn, who bit it with black teeth and nodded, grinning.

‘How you keep track of all this kunas and dirham and srebrooniks . . .’ muttered my father. ‘My head hurts with it.’

‘ Srebreniks,’ I corrected and marvelled at them. I had already learned a valuable lesson: the Oathsworn and all the other bands like them were good at getting loot, bad at keeping it. A good trader would have the purse from under their armpit without having to beat them into the ground first, providing he could keep in his head the worth of all the different coins swirling around trade centres such as Kiev and Novgorod.

‘Just make sure he doesn’t play us false. I liked that neck ring,’ growled Einar moodily.

The little Finn made the silver circle vanish inside his shirt, then swept his ratty cloak over his head and scuttled out into the rain, us following, looking right and left and expecting trouble.

We left the furrier quarter and the tanner stink behind, splashed and slithered down the walkways until, suddenly, Einar stopped and said, 'That's Oleg's hov.'

We all stopped and Valknut caught the Finn before he could go any further. Oleg, third of the sons of Sviatoslay. Vladimir and our own new lord, Yaropolk, were the other two, though Vladimir was born of a thrall. All of them circled each other like wary young dogs, kept from each other's throats only by their father, the mighty Prince of the Rus.

The wooden structure was impressive, but strange, with wooden pillars holding up a portion of the eaves, under which two fully armed guards looked at us with barely disguised amusement and caution.

The Finn gabbled furiously and, between us, we managed to work out that the monk was part of Oleg's retinue and lived and worked in a place round the back.

Einar stroked his dripping moustaches and then hissed to Valknut to take a casual stroll round. 'Try to see him but not be seen,' he growled. 'There's nothing we can do here and now, but we will come back When there is less chance of being seen.'

We moved, hauling the reluctant Finn with us, to the shelter of another building, away from the eyes of the guards, and waited, trying to look innocent. We all smelled like wet dogs.

Valknut was back swiftly, shaking himself free of rain. 'It's him, right enough. Two young boys with him, about your age, Orm. He is scribbling away in the dry, with a brazier of hot coals, the turd.'

`Those boys will be Gudleif's sons,' I said and my father agreed. Einar released the Finn, who vanished into the mirr without a backward glance.

`We will come back at night,' Einar said levelly. 'And put this monk to the question.'

I didn't bother reminding him that the monk was protected, as part of Oleg's retinue, as we were in Yaropolk's. He knew that already, but what was making him chew his nails was whether Martin had told Oleg anything of our business.

So we were back under the same building hours later, when the rain had stopped, in the pitch black of a moon-shrouded night. There was a lantern spreading butter-yellow where the guards had been, but they were gone and the great timber doors closed. I knew that the hov was where Oleg sat during the day, dispensing justice, interviewing, all the things such princes do.

We slid round the side of the building and spotted the glow of another light, spilling from an unshuttered window. Valknut nodded at Einar and we all moved to the place, a mean timber outbuilding to the splendid hov.