The Whale Road - Robert Low

Still, I was thinking, this could not be the end of it and said so.

`No,' agreed my father, 'it was not. Stammkel hated Gunnar Raudi before this and, after that, tore his beard out over it and made it known he would have his farm, one way or the other. He hired two known hard men, Ospak and Styrmir, who claimed to be berserkers. Then he sent them round with two thralls to deal with me.'

He stirred a log back into the fire with his foot and watched the embers swirl like red flies in the dark.

`Why did Stammkel hate Gunnar Raudi so much?' I asked and he shot me a sideways glance.

`No matter,' he answered. 'So these men came to the hov this night, as they had announced they would, all four of them and well armed and me with only myself to face them.'

Wide-eyed, I waited and, when nothing came, I demanded, 'What happened?'

Ì died, of course,' he said and grinned as I blinked, then realised he had led me into the oldest and worst joke in saga-telling, which is just what a father does to his child at some point. I grinned back at him, my heart leaping with the warmth of it.

Ìn fact,' he went on, 'I would have done just that, save that Gunnar Raudi swaggers up, as was his way, and winks at me as he passes me. "Hello, lads," he says to these four. "No need for this, for Rurik here has decided to quit this place."

`Which was news to me and must have sounded strange to them, looking at me standing there with a seax in one hand and a wood axe in the other and the look of a man not about to quit anything.'

He shook his head and chuckled. 'A deep thinker was Gunnar. "Listen, lads," he says. "We'll drink on it and part friends and you can tell Stammkel to turn up the day after tomorrow, for then this place will be empty." And he winks at me again and walks all four of them into the hall of my hov and sits them down, calling for ale and food.'

`What did you do?' I demanded and he shrugged.

`What else? I followed them in and sat down with them and we drank until it ran down our noses. After a long while, Gunnar Raudi gets up and announces he is off for a piss and goes outside. After a bit longer, we all remember he went and laugh at him, thinking he had probably fallen in the privy.

'But I had seen him wink on the way out, so I say to Ospak to go find him and he is drunk enough to do just that. After a while longer, of course, Ospak never comes back either and I mention this and put my head on my arms and pretend to sleep.

`So Styrmir gets up and goes out and the two thralls carry on drinking and laughing at me snoring, so that when Gunnar Raudi steps in, his blade all red and dripping, they piss themselves all over my floor.

Ànd that was that,' my father said. 'Gunnar tells the two thralls to carry the bodies of Ospak and Styrmir back to Stammkel and tell him to give up any claims on the farm. "The heads," he says, "I will keep and stick on poles, to watch out for more of Stammkel's foolishness." Which he did.'

He stopped and squeezed his eyes shut, then rubbed them, for he had been staring into the embers too long. 'By the time all this had been done you were toddling around and causing trouble and, though I was left alone after that, I had no stomach for it, so I sold the place and went over to Gudleif with you.'

He looked at me, eyes watering from the staring so that they made my heart thunder, for the moistness was as like tears as not. 'I always meant to return,' he said. 'But I knew you would be safe with Gunnar.

More so with him than me.'

I wanted to ask more, but he clapped a hand on my shoulder and levered himself to his feet, then patted me gently a couple of times, as you would a horse or a dog, and moved off into the dark, leaving me with the fire and my thoughts whirling like the sparks.

At some point, I fell asleep and dreamed, though. Or thought I did. Or stepped into the fetch world, that half-lit Other.

I was in Dengizik's tomb again, alone, in a blue dark, like a night with a shrouded moon. The lines of soldiers, dead but still with eyes that followed me, were sitting patiently and Hild sat at the foot of the throne, chained to it by the neck.

I took a step to her and the soldiers shifted. I took another and they rose, with a hissing rustle like insect wings.

Then I ran and they surged on me, a blinding mass like bats, like a blizzard of dust and fury with no more substance than memory.

And, suddenly, I was there, looking into the great white-rimmed pools of Hild's eyes, while she smiled up at me. My arm rose and fell, the sword in it chopping the withered hand from Dengizik, which held Hild's neck chain.

It fell, slowly, slowly, tumbling, shredding scraps of flayed skin, dusty bone.

Then I was awake, by the fire, staring into the limpid eyes of Hild, who sat astride me, her face inches from mine. Her mouth worked, twisting this way and that; sounds tore from her in a rippling, wheezing hiss:

`Don't . . . go . . . with us. Live . .

Limpid eyes, dewed with . . . tears? I watched them expand, to where the black ate all the white, saw the hands which cupped my face claw like talons, felt her quiver and then, with a sickening liquid surge, rise up over me and step away, into the darkness.

I breathed. I know I did, because I heard it, ragged and thundering in my ears. There was no other sound for a moment, then all the noise of the world crashed back and I blinked at the camp murmur, the hiss of dung-chips on the fire, my father's groan and stir, Skarti's fluttering fart.

I sat up, looked wildly around, but everything was as it should be—and yet nothing was. Had it happened? Had I dozed and woken in my dream? Did I dream still?

All the rest of that night I wondered, staring into the glowing embers until my eyeballs seared.

There were horns and drums sounding, like ships lost in a golden fog. Under our feet the steppe had crumbled, crusted over and was kicked to dust again, hanging in the air, gritting our eyeballs, scorching tongue and nose and throat.

The acrid stink of horses hung in that dust as they sluiced nervous piss and moved to our flanks, ghosts in the murk, to make sure the assault wasn't smacked by a counter-foray from the once-white city.

This time there were just sixty-two of us, half with their teeth clamped tight because otherwise they'd chip or crack them with the fever's jaw-quaking chatter. Twenty more lay under awnings back at a new camp, amid the hundreds of other sick gathered in one place so that what aid there was could be more easily given. Not that there was much . . . they lay and shook and died in pools of their own loosened bowels.

But we stood and waited, while fire and death occupied the space between us and the ravaged city. In the yellow shroud of dust, five dark towers moved, like the fingers of a hand, while archers rushed forward in pairs, one holding a pavise of reeds, the other shooting, then ducking under to reload.

There were hoots and screeches and shrieks and, through it all, the high, thin scream of horses dying, a sound which, to me, seemed worst of all.

I leaned on my shield, on one knee, watching, almost detached from it. Skarti, shivering, was glass-eyed and shit dribbled down one leg, but he didn't seem to notice. The smell of that and dust and oil on steel—

that was battle and any component part of it reaching my nostrils later in my life would bring my head sharply up, like a chariot horse of the Blues when it hears the roar of the crowd.

A block of sweating men heaved and strained, some in front and some behind, moving the tower foot by slow foot towards the walls, from which rained death, unseen in the murk.

Unseen but felt. Like some giant snail, the block of men round the tower left a slick, viscous trail of blood and sprawled bodies behind, felled by arrows, fist-sized stones fired from small engines and large spears fired from bigger engines.

There was a bird, amazingly. It flitted out of the dust and perched briefly on the shaft of one of the hedgehog maze of arrows sticking from the assault tower, then whirred off again, gone in an eyeblink.

Then a flock of small boys appeared, darting out of the saffron haze with bunches of arrows: they got silver for every twenty they recovered. A dog was with them, limp-running on three legs, then four, then three again. The boys plunged on, laughing, panting, sneezing, carefree dancers on the edge of the abyss.

I laughed, too, at the sheer incongruity of it. Skarti heard it and his lumpy head came up, tight-mouthed.

He shook it, saw what made me chuckle and managed a savage grin. He was holding himself to prevent the shakes—even his hair looked clenched yet he leaned forward and spoke.

`S-s-see many s-s-strange things in b-bbattle,' he managed. 'B-b-birds, b-b-beasts, w-w-women, d-dogs.

S-s-saw a s-s-stag once, r-run between two armies.' Then he shut one eye, which fluttered as he did so, and placed a quivering finger alongside his nose in a grotesque parody of the knowing look. `B-but you n-n-never see a c-c-cat on a battlefield,' he finished portentously and, drained, sank back to lean on his shield.

Mounted couriers galloped to and fro. A man on foot spilled out of the shimmer, looked wildly around and spotted the Raven Banner.

He stumbled towards Einar, his tunic streaked with dark sweat patches and worse, spoke quickly, pointed, waved his hands furiously and then, done, slumped down, his legs buckling. Einar began to pace, slowly, up and down.

I realised, eventually, that he was counting. On five hundred of my count, he stopped, signalled to Valknut and the Raven Banner went up, then bobbed three times.

The Oathsworn lurched upright and moved at a walk, then broke into a jog. Skarti weaved and staggered with me and I slowed to let him keep up as he clattered into me and almost fell, caught my shoulder, muttered an apology.

In a loose bunch, shields up, we headed into that sulphurous maw, shrinking ourselves as small as possible and wishing we were anywhere else. I caught sight of others, equally thick with dust, trotting forward in small groups, their own banners up. My father appeared from the crowd, raised his sword briefly in salute, then was gone again. I loped on and the arrows arrived.

The sagas will tell you of arrows like rain, like sleet. Not so. They come in flurries, in flocks, like birds.

You see a brief flicker in the air and then they hit with a drum-roll smack.

I had three in my shield almost at the same time, the shushu-shunk of them making me stagger. Another whicked past my head; Skarti went down, gurgling, drowning in his own blood. Another hit his thigh as he rolled.

I half stopped, wanting to turn to help him, but dared not expose my back. Another bird-flicker through the dust and a man to my right yelled, hirpled a few steps, then started hopping, his injured leg held up, the shaft through the calf from one side to the other.

Àh, fuck,' he yelled, then fell over. `Fuckfuckfuck.'

A dark shape loomed: our assault tower, now hard against the scabbed wall. Close up, that white wall was a yellowed fang, rough and pitted, the base littered with ragbag corpses in dust-tanned white, stained ominously black and clumped on the shards of picture tiles torn from the walls.

Fireflies sparkled in the dust and I stared at them until they whunked into the earth and the tower. One sizzled past me; someone behind screamed and Eindridi staggered out of the pack of men squeezing up the lower entrance, waving his arms wildly, a shaft sticking from his neck and his hair on fire.

`Help me. Tyr help me . . .' But he reeled off into the dust before anyone, man or god, could lay a hand on him.

Fire-arrows smacked the tower. It smouldered already and the haulers were trying to keep the cowhides wet with frantic licks of water from wooden buckets, but the heat was drying them out almost as fast. Inside, men struggled up ladders in a dripping rain of mud, sliding and cursing and sweating.

I waited, shuffling forward with the rest, breathing ragged and still hunched, though the tower offered shelter from the arrows. Almost. The man in front of me—not one of the Oathsworn—half turned to say something to the man next to him and his head jerked with a sudden high clang. He dropped, twitching and I saw there was a huge dent in his helmet and the blood was pouring from his nose.

I pushed past him. Something slammed into the timber nearest me and, unable to go further in the queue, I ended up staring at the round, pebble-sized lead shot embedded there. I swallowed and looked back at the felled man, who was thrashing now, his back arched off the ground and blood coming out of his ears and nose and even streaking down his cheeks from his eyes, like tears.

There was a flurry of movement ahead. I was almost on the ladder when the whole tower shook and, just as I was putting my foot on the first rung, a body plunged to the ground with a clatter of iron and breaking bones.

The tower lurched again, then embers and chunks of burning timber rained down through the muddy drips. Another body crashed down, then several more and people above me were scrambling back down the ladder. I took the full weight of a man on me, scrambling, kicking.

He stepped on me and another one would have done the same if I hadn't lashed out and sent him spinning, which let me scramble back out, away from the tower, which had suddenly gone crazy. The ladder had tilted.

No, not the ladder. The whole tower. As I scrambled away on all fours, losing my shield in the process, the assault tower toppled like a falling tree. The top half was on fire; it had then been hooked with grapples from the wall and hauled over sideways.

It fell with a great bell of a crash and a blast of choking air, thick with dust and smoke. Flaming debris spun and whirled in it, like the end of the world.

I found my shield, got up and stumbled backwards over half-seen figures on the ground, caught my boot and fell over one on to another and lay on it, panting for breath. I levered up, felt stickiness under my hand and heard the clang of steel.

It made no sense—had they sallied? I got up on one knee, looked at the body and blinked. Steinkel. My cousin, last seen being dragged out of Martin's company, scowling and sullen.

Now he lay on his back with dust in his glazed eyes and entrails oozing from between the shattered rings of his fine mail. And something dark and gibbering rose in me. Gudleif s sons.

Fresh clangs, a grunt, a series of triumphant shrieks and, for the first time, I saw the figures nearby, hazed silhouettes in the gold. One crumpled as I watched, the other hacking with frantic blows, each one heralded by a grunt.

I rose and moved, half blurred in my head, and saw the horror of it; saw the fear that had been rising in me, shapeless and screaming, given truth.

Bjorn turned from hacking my father to bloody ruin, his mouth slack, his eyes wild. He saw me and snarled, but his voice came out too high-pitched. 'You. Now it is complete.'

My father. I wanted to brush him aside, not to be bothered by his idiot raving and his quarrel, to get to the side of that bloody, leaking thing that had been my father.

But Bjorn was there and his sword was up, thick, fat blood runnels sliding down the blade. My father's blood.