‘Someone came?’ demanded Finn, the scorn and suspicion reeking in his voice.
She turned those dark, seal eyes on him. ‘A man, I think. Silent.’
‘What did he do, this silent man?’ I asked and she frowned and shook her head.
‘Something,’ she answered, then the frown disappeared and her face turned to mine like a petal to the sun. ‘Lord.’
‘I knew it was not good,’ she added. ‘So I hid.’
Yes, she would be good at hiding by now, good at staying out of the line of sight and the strong light. Finn looked at me, then at Bjaelfi and shook his head.
‘Was she armed?’ I asked Hlenni and he shook his own shaggy head, reluctantly.
‘You looked?’
He nodded, then added sullenly: ‘No blade is needed with
seidr
, Jarl Orm.’
A scream split the night and made us all start.
‘Odin’s hairy balls,’ Finn swore, then swallowed another, for it was not good to malign the gods while the Norns were so close, weaving a new life out of the Other.
‘Shave the hairs from your arm,’ muttered Klepp Spaki fearfully.
I looked at the girl again, all wet eyes and defiance in the tight-strung little body. I told Hlenni to watch her the rest of the night, in turns with Red Njal. In the morning, I promised, Bjaelfi, Finn and I would look at the body and find out what had happened and that I was no stranger to
seidr
and worse.
They had heard the Oathsworn tales – some of them had been there when they were made – so they went off, muttering, to huddle in the damp dark and listen to Sigrith pant and shriek a new bairn into the world.
It took a long while; I dozed until wakened with a shake on my toe, came up with a seax in my fist – which was why Thorgunna, clever woman, had shaken only my toe and stayed clear of a swinging blade. She knew all the men were tight-wound and likely to be armed and leaping from sleep.
‘Done,’ she said wearily and I blinked in the light of her flickering torch; beyond it, the dawn was a thin smear.
‘A boy,’ she added. ‘Healthy and loud. The mother is alive, too, which is good.’
It was good; too many first mothers died giving birth and, in the clearing round the dying fires, I saw the weary, gore-handed women and the blanket-wrapped bundle that was Sigrith. Botolf, a little way away, stretched stiffly and gave me a smile and a wave as I came up, the rest of the men behind me save for those on watch.
‘That was a bloody affair,’ he growled, moving slowly and shaking his head. ‘Odin’s arse, lads, I have stood in shieldwalls that had less hard work in them and less blood and shit and fewer screams.’
‘Take off those breeks,’ Ingrid said to Botolf, bustling forward with a fur bundle which had a squashed red face nestled in it. Underneath, I knew, each limb would be linen-wrapped to keep it straight and fine, having been washed in hot milk and salt. His little mouth was a sticky bud, for the women had rubbed honey in his gums, to promote appetite.
‘First,’ said a waft-soft voice and we stopped, staring at Sigrith, ‘since you did most to bring him into the world, Birthing Stool, you can name him. His father says he is to be Olaf.’
Botolf stopped and scrubbed his beard with confusion, pleased and embarrassed in equal measure. Ingrid handed him the bundle and he played the father, raising it to us over his head, standing proud and tall in his slathered breeks as he called us all to attend.
‘Heya,’ he bellowed. ‘This is the son of King Eirik the Victorious. This is Olaf, Prince of the Svears and Geats.’
We stamped and cheered and there was more than duty in it, for that bairn had come to be the focus of all our lives and we watched as Ingrid handed it to Sigrith – watched, too, as she took it back moments later, when the exhausted slip of a girl fell asleep.
I was remembering that surviving the birthing was only the first step and that making it through the days that followed it were fraught for mothers. Too many of them died and I felt a stab deep in me when Thorgunna came up to stand beside me, all bright with the promise of our own child.
‘It went hard with her,’ she said quietly to me, as people murmured themselves into a new day. ‘She needs quiet and rest and a wet-nurse, for she cannot feed the wee soul properly herself.’
‘Will he die then?’ I asked, alarmed, seeing the whole of our efforts crumbling. She shook her head and gave me one of her black-eyed, pitying looks.
‘Of course not – the idea. We can feed him, as we do kids and calves with no mothers.’
That I knew well enough, for I had done it myself with a foal I favoured, using a sheep’s bladder as a teat and a little drinking horn full of milk. It was an awkward, messy business and I said so.
‘That is children all over,’ she answered and clasped her belly as she leaned into me. I nestled her there for a moment or two, patting her absently while my mind raced on how there was unlikely to be a fast remove from here and my eyes scanned the lightening day for signs of bearcoats. I could feel them, like hot breath on the back of my neck.
She felt it in me and leaned away from me then, was about to speak when Toki bounded up in his breathless way, saying Bjaelfi wanted me.
I knew where he would be and there were others gathered round that wagon. Hlenni had laced the hands of the seal-eyed Mazur girl with a thong and tied it to his own wrist. Red Njal, Klepp, Vuokko and others gathered, while Bjaelfi knelt beside the corpse in the wagon bed.
‘Well?’ I asked, hauling myself in. Bjaelfi said nothing, simply drew back the wool cloak that covered her and pointed.
There was nothing but the blue-white dead flesh, the grey-streaked hair…and the trickle, thin as a slug trail and dried so that it seemed black in the new light of a day. It had run almost to her jawline and tracked back, curling a little, to where a drop had dried and crusted on one lobe.
‘The only mark on her,’ Bjaelfi said, loud enough for all to hear. ‘A flea-nip on an earlobe.’
The word leaped from head to head.
Seidr.
No Norse killing that. Gunnhild, Mother of Kings, was said to have been able to arrange such deaths, secret and stealthy in the night, shapeshifting to further the cause of her ambitious sons all over Norway.
I sat back on my heels, turning the coin of it over and over in my mind’s fingers, testing the worth of what I worked out. A deadly fleabite? Even Gunnhild, noted shapechanger that she was, had never slipped into the body of anything so small. Or that killed so easily.
This was no
seidr.
This smacked too much of a place where poison needles settled more quarrels than blades – the Great City. I jerked up then, cursing, shouting orders that were far too late. In a moment, it was confirmed – Leo the priest had gone.
‘And his sharp little needle with him,’ growled Finn, when I told him what I had been thinking. He smacked an open hand on the side of the wagon, making it rock. ‘Turd.’
‘I am having trouble thinking this one out,’ confessed Hlenni, looking from the Mazur girl to me and back again. Finn leaned over, his little eating knife flashed and cut the thongs; the girl rubbed her wrists and Hlenni scowled.
‘He killed Jasna thinking it was Sigrith,’ I said, working it out in my own head as I spoke. Thorgunna had moved the queen, but the little Greek had not known that and, in the dark, had felt softly along the bulked shape of what he believed to be a pregnant woman and stuck his needle in her ear, quick and sharp and away into the night, so that she scarcely made a yelp. A grunt, a scratch at another of many little bites – and then the long sleep of death. Poor Jasna, dead of her own fat belly.
‘I might as well still be in the dark,’ growled Bjaelfi, confused, ‘since now I know how it was done and by whom, but not why a monk from the Great City would want Queen Sigrith dead.’
Because the Great City had backed Styrbjorn and the monk had been sent, not to find out who had supplied Roman Fire, but bringing it to make sure the enterprise went off, then slithering himself to the side of the target, just in case. I had no idea why the Great City wanted Styrbjorn as king of the Svears and Geats, but that was the way they worked and I knew it well.
Once, I had been at the sacking of the Khazar city of Sarkel by Sviatoslav, Prince of Kiev, and he had been given engineers by the Great City. He needed them to help him knock that fortress down because it had been built for the Khazars by engineers of the Great City. They were a snake-knot of plots, were the Greeks who called themselves Romans in Constantinople.
Now Styrbjorn had failed, so the whole enterprise seemed doomed and the leader of it fled – but not to ruin if he was still the only heir to the high-seat. His uncle would think twice about having him killed in that case and where bearcoats seemed to be stumbling, a silent, grim little Greek with poison thought he could do better. Thankfully, he had not.
‘Aye, well, you would know, for sure, Orm,’ Onund Hnufa said, lumbering out of the sour-milk dawn to hear me lay out the length of this for folk to measure. ‘I have seen and heard you dealing with the Great City and it is a marvellous thing how you can fathom the way their minds work, right enough.’
Everyone agreed with it, with nods and hooms.
‘So perhaps you can be after telling me this, then,’ Onund added. ‘Why has this Greek taken little Koll with him?’
It was a fine bridge, as long as two tall men, wide enough for a wagon to pass over and made of good stone. Beneath it, the river that had cut the gorge burbled and sang to itself, while the green-mossed stones of the mountain flashed with quartz and trickled with silver water. Jewels of the Mountain King, Finn said, in a skald moment.
We were like that, standing there waiting, for I was thinking that this was where the Norns’ weave came to an end for me. I had offered a life to Odin and I knew One-Eye would take his sacrifice. Provided he kept to his part of the bargain, I told myself, it was worth it.
Still, life was sweet and seemed sweeter still, standing there, waiting for the bearcoats to come, with the clouds piled up like snow and a sea-swallow, ragged by the wind and yet swooping for the sheer joy of it, grating a shriek that scoured a sky as blue as a newborn’s eye.
That, too, made my heart leap painfully into my throat; I would never live to see the son Thorgunna carried. Yet, if Odin held to his part, another babe would find a life, the bairn Botolf carried in the crook of his arm, stumping his unseen way up to the headland overlooking the fjord.
A scramble down the other side and he was safe. A hard scramble for a man with two good legs, as Finn pointed out when we made this plan, never mind one who was half a bench, with the thought-cage of a mouse and a wean under one arm. He said this where Botolf could not hear it, all the same.
‘And a boy with him, too, dragging a goat,’ I added, trying to make light of it. Toki, hearing the word ‘goat’, looked up, beaming, and gave his charge a pat between the thick horns.
Finn grunted his answer to that, then Botolf himself came up, his broad face braided in a smile, the babe wrapped up so warm it looked no more than a bundled old cloak held against his chest.
‘Here,’ said Thordis, shoving a bag at Finn. It was a good waterproofed walrus-hide bag and he peered in it, thinking to find food and warm clothing. Instead, he found linen squares and moss.
‘Am I expected to eat this, woman?’ he grumbled and she slapped him smartly on the arm.
‘No,’ she answered, but less tartly than she might have, since she was afraid for him. ‘You are expected to use it on the bairn’s arse, to keep it clean. From the state of your own breeks, it is a lesson you should learn for yourself, too, before we are wed.’
Finn grunted as if hit at this last and those closest laughed, the too-hearty laughs of those straining to find humour. Botolf slung a similar bag over one shoulder, with all that was needed to feed the sleeping prince, then turned and grinned at Toki and his goat.
‘Ready, wee man?’ he demanded and Toki, trembling with the excitement of it all, nodded furiously, then scowled as Aoife, winking on the brink of tears, dragged him into an embrace.
‘Look after my little hero,’ she demanded of Botolf and he patted her shoulder. Then he turned to the wagon and the figure in it, propped up on pillows and pale as winter wolfskin.
‘Take care of my son, Birthing Stool,’ said the queen in a voice with no more in it than wind.
‘He will be safely delivered,’ Botolf promised and Finn, hearing the firm resolve in his voice, shook his head at the memory of the man who had so recently wanted to leave queen and wean both and run for the hills.
It had seemed a fair plan in the cold light of dawn; take the bairn, leave the queen, confuse the enemy and split them. It was the queen’s bairn they wanted, so the rest of the women and weans might be left alone, considering there were men willing to fight and nothing to be gained taking them on. Well – only for those who wanted bloody revenge and I was hoping the bearcoats would not think fit to join in with that. Meanwhile, we could take the little prince to safety, getting a headstart and travelling fast and light.
‘With a goat?’ demanded Finn.
‘What milk will you find to feed a bairn?’ countered Thorgunna. ‘And Toki is to goats what Botolf seems to be to that wee prince.’
At which the big man grinned, for it was a strange sort of almost-
seidr
he had and he was not ashamed of it at all. The newborn prince wailed, no matter who cooed or shushed or rocked him – even his too-weak mother – until he was placed in the fat-biceped crook of Botolf’s arm, where he closed his eyes and went silently to sleep.
Red Njal and Hlenni Brimill came up and we clasped, wrist to wrist. I had already made them swear to do all in their power to recover little Koll from wherever he had gone and told them I suspected the one called Ljot Tokeson would get him, for he was Styrbjorn’s man.
The only reason for the Greek to have taken Jarl Brand’s son was to use him as a hostage against Brand and so against King Eirik.
Randr Sterki would not give the snap of his fingers for Koll, or the new little prince of the Svears and Geats; it was vengeance he wanted and he would keep after Thorgunna and the others with what was left of his men – but the bearcoats would not, or so I hoped. The bearcoats would come after us and the bairn, in the hope of rescuing the whole endeavour at the last.