The White Raven (16 page)

Vladimir shook his head angrily. 'Uncle, my brothers may not wait.'

He had the right of it there, sure enough and all that Dobrynya had spoken of was simply time wasted for Vladimir, so that he was fretted like a dog's jaw with impatience.

It took two days of tough talking with the
veche
and a deal of promises here and there to get them to accept the thrall woman as their only victim. It was finally managed with some cunning from Dobrynya, who told the
veche
that young Vladimir would not sully the memory of his father with the blood of common criminals. That one they bowed to.

So we were released, but kept in the fortress, supposedly for our own protection, for the next five days.

On the sixth day, as Vladimir and all Novgorod prepared to enter into the rituals to mourn the loss of Sviatoslav, Jaropolk's hounds appeared at the gates.

Sveinald and his son Lyut they knew them as here, the father a grizzled old Dane who had served Sviatoslav as a general and who had brought back the remnants of the army after his master's death. Now he advised Vladimir's elder brother Jaropolk, as Dobrynya advised Vladimir.

Jaropolk, though eldest of the three Rus princes, was barely into his teens and easily swayed. Sveinald and Lyut had always been an arrogant pair and now that they held their young prince in thrall they acted as if they ruled Kiev and not he.

They had arrived as Jaropolk's representatives, to honour the funeral rites for Sviatoslav — at least, on the front of it. In reality, they were here to find out what Vladimir would do and had brought at least a hundred men, seasoned
druzhina
warriors with their armour and big red shields marked with a yellow
algiz
rune, which had been the symbol of Rurik when he had founded Kiev. Shield, it meant, and alertness, too

—but now the Kiev Slavs called it 'a golden trident' from the shape, which was like one of those three-tined forks.

It took four days to send Sviatoslav to the halls of his gods, four days of wailing and bowing and kneeling and bloody sacrifice round Perun's pole, where horse heads were stuck on stakes and young Vladimir exhausted himself, the gore dripping off his elbows. But everyone agreed he had done well for a boy of twelve.

At night he had no rest, having to preside over the feasts in the
kreml
hall, where his men and the
druzhina
of old Sveinald snarled at each other, barely leashed. Here, the high table was a tafl game of words as Sveinald tried to find out if Vladimir was going to acknowledge Jaropolk as Prince of all the Rus or resist him and young Vladimir and his uncle tried not to say one thing or the other. Oleg, the third brother, I noted, was not considered at all.

The rest of the Oathsworn had turned up by this time, summoned south from Aldeigjuborg and having brought the
Elk
with them. Gizur insisted on this despite the sweat and labour on a river already porridge thick during the day and iced over every night, for he did not want it left almost untended near
Dragon
Wings.

'Klerkon's crew is divided,' he reported.
'Dragon Wings is
too laid up for winter to sail and the way out to the Baltic is frozen solid anyway. Half of them are swearing revenge on us, led by Randr Sterki. The other half is leaving, in twos and threes. Most of those are hoping to take service with Vladimir, so they are coming here. They wanted to sail down with us, for they knew we were crew light, but I thought it best to let them find their own way.'

I had all this to chew over — and Finn, scowling-angry because, he said, I had handed away the secret of Atil's tomb, without even a guarantee that we would get anything out of it. We had our lives, I pointed out to him and he grudgingly admitted that to be true, though it did nothing for his mood and it was a foolish man who crossed Finn at times like this.

There is always a fool when you don't need one. Lyut had been elbowing and snarling among his own
druzhina
on the last feast night. You could see that they were used to it, deferring to him because he was Sveinald's boy and had power over them as a result.

So, flushed and strutting, he made a mistake when Finn slid on to an ale bench to talk to someone he knew slightly.

'You are in my place,' he snarled and Finn looked up in surprise.

'Perhaps, though I do not see your name on it. I will not be here long — look, there is a place here and another over there.'

'Move,' Lyut answered, 'when your betters order it.'

Finn turned. There was silence now from those closest, a silence that spread slowly out, like the ripples from a dipped oar.

'Betters?' he said, raising an eyebrow.

'In fact,' Lyut said, sneering, 'so much better you should kiss my foot and acknowledge it.'

He put his foot up on the same bench Finn sat on. No-one spoke. Sveinald, grinning over his ale horn, looked at Dobrynya, then at Vladimir. It was a challenge, pure and simple and all the ruffs were up now. I did not dare speak; no-one did. The silence began to hurt.

Then Finn grinned, a loose, wicked grin. He inclined his head, as if in acceptance and Lyut smirked. Finn handed his ale horn to his neighbour, then placed both his hands on Lyut's ankle and raised the foot to his lips.

I was stunned. Most of us were. I saw Kvasir half rise in outrage — then there was a yelp from Lyut, for Finn had kept on going, straightening with Lyut's foot in his hands, forcing the man to hop like a mad bird to keep his balance.

With a final, dismissive gesture, Finn threw the foot in the air and Lyut went over with a yell and a crash.

'Kiss my
arse
, boy,' Finn said, dusting his hands. The hall erupted with hoots and bellows and catcalls and it was clear that half of Sveinald's men were drunk enough to be pleased to see Lyut sprawled in the sick and spilled drink.

Finn was no fool. A man with no clever in him at all would have turned back to his ale horn and the backslaps and appreciative howls of laughter and Lyut, coming off the floor in a scrabbling rush, whipping the seax from his boot, would have had him in the liver and lights.

Instead, Lyut found his knife hand slapping into the iron grip of Finn's left. When he swung a wild fist with the other, he found it shackled in Finn's right. Then Finn grinned his wolf grin and butted Lyut, so that the snarling boy's handsome beak of a nose splayed and blood flew.

Lyut fell backwards, over an ale bench and into the hearth-fire. It took no more than an eyeblink or two to realize he was not getting up on his own, but his hair was on fire by then. Those nearest dragged him out and beat out the flames.

Now Sveinald's men were roaring and growling with anger, for this was another matter entirely. Sveinald himself kept his seat, his knuckles white on the fancy gilt-rimmed horn.

Sigurd, his silver nose gleaming, moved a little closer to his charges, the young prince and his now-constant companion, little Crowbone. On that one's face I saw no fear, only a studied interest, as if he had found a new kind of bird.

Finn turned, his face streaked with Lyut's blood, the seax held in one hand. He glared round them all and the roaring subsided.

'I am Finn Bardisson from Skanii called Horsehead,' he said softly. 'Is there anyone else wants their foot kissing?'

Silence.

'SPEAK UP, YOU DOGS!'

Behind him, Lyut whimpered and men were carrying him away, to where the women would balm his toasted face with goose fat.

'Sit down Finn Bardisson from Skani, called Horsearse,' Gyrth Steinnbrodir called out into the silence.

'You have taught the boy how to dance on one foot and not to sit so close to the fire and now I want to get back to my drinking.'

There was a chuckle or two, then the hall noise washed back in like a tide on the turn and Finn shunked Lyut's seax into the ale bench and took his horn back, raising it in toast to Gyrth. I raised my own to him and he acknowledged it, while I felt Sveinald staring, could hear him ask through clenched teeth who this Finn Bardisson was and who this Jarl Orm.

I was swelled with the pride of it, that my name was on lips all over the hall and aware also, with a sick, sinking feeling, that we had done neither ourselves nor little Vladimir any favours.

Then, in the cold light of morning as everyone sorted themselves out for the day, the bird fell from the rafters and little Crowbone, his face whalebone-pale, cheeks flushed from the cold, started in to speaking about white ravens.

He was wearing a fine tunic the colour of a robin's egg, wool breeks, fur-trimmed Slav boots and a white wool cloak trimmed with a swathe of sable fur that came up round his ears and met the rough curls of a fine goat-wool cap.

He peered at the dead starling, while the great elkhound with him sniffed it and warily watched our own deerhounds. That huge white-grey beast, as like a wolf as a brother, only added to the unease surrounding Crowbone, for it had eyes of different colours, exactly like his.

When he had first appeared with it, the warding signs made a flutter like bird wings and Klepp Spaki had been busy since, carving protection runes on bits of bone. Only Thorgunna, on whom
seidr
magic was wasted, was unafraid.

'My, you look like a little prince now, right enough,' she said, beaming — then broke off to cuff the Scots thrall woman for dropping her pin case and spilling the bone needles out of it.

All Olaf's finery — even the white, wolf-ruffed elkhound —was gifted from Prince Vladimir. It was, as Kvasir had already pointed out quietly, just as well I hadn't decided to sell Crowbone as a thrall, since it seemed the little turd had charmed the ruler of Novgorod and had gone from slave to prince in one hare-leap.

Things, he added, could be much worse.

'How much worse can it already be?' grunted Finn, red-eyed from the night before and just as sullen in the chill daylight. 'The world is lining up to rob us.'

'If you would rather have a stake up your arse,' I snapped back at him, stung by his scowling, 'I can probably arrange it.'

One of the deerhounds laid its great bony head on my knee and sighed mournfully into the mood of the hall. The other snarled at the too-close elkhound, whose ruff stiffened.

'Bleikr,' chided Olaf. 'Stop that.'

Bleikr — White Fair, it meant to us, though most tongues could translate it no better than Pale. Whatever his name, the dog paid Olaf no heed, but was wise enough not to take on both deerhounds. None of the dogs wanted a fight, but the elkhound's ruff stuck out like hedgehog spines and the rough brindle hair on the deerhounds' back was clenched and dark. We watched warily, not eager to get between them.

Then Thorgunna gave a little grunt of annoyance at our holding back and moved in fearlessly, cuffing right and left. The dogs scattered, yelping.

'Bleikr,' she said, tucking a stray wisp of hair back under her braids, while warriors did not dare look at each other for the shame of it. 'There is nice. Now you have a new dog —and kin, too, I hear. Your mother's father in Bjodaskalle and her sisters, too. Not forgetting your Uncle Sigurd here.'

Crowbone nodded, though it was clear that Bleikr was deeper in his heart than these folk, who were only names to him. Even Sigurd. It came to me then that little Crowbone was a boy alone and, after all that had happened to him, might well be for all his life.

Finn looked at the white dog and grunted cynically. Olaf frowned.

'You do not like the name?' he asked. Then he pointed to the deerhound who had slunk back to Finn's knee.

'What is this one called, then?' he challenged.

'Dog,' Finn said flatly. Olaf, thinking he was being made fun of, scowled and pointed to the other deerhound.

'And this?'

'The other dog,' Finn answered, then cocked himself to the side and farted.

Kvasir chuckled as Olaf started to get his own hackles up.

'There is a wise rule we use,' he said, clapping the boy on one shoulder, 'and it is this — never give a name to something you might have to eat.'

Olaf was taken aback at that and looked down at his new pride and joy, now trying to lick its own balls.

'Eat Bleikr?'

'Well — not that one's tongue, perhaps,' Kvasir said and folk laughed.

'Aye,' growled Gyrth, surfacing from under a pile of cloaks and pelts, where he had been trying to keep warm and sleep. 'If we go to find that cursed hoard in this weather, we will end up eating worse than that before we are done. Helmet straps will taste good, mark me.'

'Do you no harm,' Finn answered and Gyrth patted his belly and smiled.

I was aware of the winter steppe, the Great White, brooded on it all the rest of that long day while the men in the hall surfaced, stretching and farting and shivering into the breath-smoking chill, dousing their heads and breaking ice in the bowls and buckets to do it, roaring and blowing.

Thorgunna and Thordis, who had wisely avoided the affair and the risk of being up-ended and tupped by drunks — and the obvious reactions of Kvasir and everyone else to that —were the freshest faces in that hall and made sure their healthy cheerfulness set everyone else's teeth grinding. They and the thralls bustled in, stirring the hearthfire to life, hanging pots, rattling skillets.

Eventually, chewing feast left-overs and picking their molars, most of the men all wandered off to sort out their lives — Sveinald's men were heading home and I heard that Lyut was having to be litter-carried.

That he was alive at all was good luck, I was thinking.

My own crew were staying, of course, and getting as ready as they could for a trip into the open steppe in winter. Most of them were unworried by what I had done — they still thought they would get a share as they had been promised, and few looked beyond that. Some counted the involvement of. Vladimir as jarl-cleverness by me, since it would mean more protection and better supplies for such a dangerous trip.

Outside the keep, in the crushed snow of the
kreml,
there was now noise and purpose and carts with sledge-runners, the wheels slung on the sides like shields on a
drakkar,
just in case they were needed. There were strong little horses for pulling and others for riding and supplies being loaded and men sorting out gear and weapons.