The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 3. Robert Low
off. ‘No one could have lived with a sharp stick poking out of his gob.’
‘But he’s dead,’ I wailed and he stopped, whirled and grabbed my tunic. I froze, waiting for the spittle and the steel. Instead, he stared at me nose to nose, his breath rank with fish.
‘I know,’ he said softly, then let me go and patted my arm. ‘I know.’
We met Valknut and Ketil Crow and Einar. The Oathsworn drifted up in ones and threes, panting, sweated, wearing or carrying all they had – everything else had been left behind. There were too many missing – but I spotted, with a leap of the heart that surprised me, my father trotting up, grey-faced and with fresh blood soaking through the sleeve of his tunic.
I went to him and he nodded and grinned at seeing me, but shook his head when I moved to check the blood-soaked bindings.
‘I leak like a sprung tub,’ he admitted cheerfully, ‘but I am not sunk yet, boy.’
Like the others, he met the news of Skapti’s death and the monk’s loss with cold silence, but Ulf-Agar’s death brought a satisfied grunt.
‘Well, boy,’ my father said admiringly. ‘You are surprising even me, who watched you grow for the first five years of your life and saw what a wolf-pup you were then.’
This was new and I wanted to know more, but the others were growling their own appreciations and a few hands thumped my back. I half expected to hear that familiar, deep ‘hoom’ from somewhere, but it was gone for ever.
‘Now we run, hard,’ Einar said, once we had splashed across the river and into the trees. ‘We beat what’s left of Starkad’s men back to their own ship and take it. That’s the only way off this gods-cursed shore.’
It was bitter, that journey, for the land seemed to want to scream out its beauty and the new life of spring while we grimmed our way through it, bleak with the loss of Skapti and the others, on towards an uncertain fate.
We went through belts of woodland, great oaks and ash burgeoning with fresh bud, and across swathes of fresh green, studded with small blue and pale yellow flowers. Thorn trees drooped with early blossom and every breath of wind scattered sprays of white, while the birds blasted their throats out.
And, black as a lowered brow, the Oathsworn moved swiftly, a pack of dark wolves that had no joy in any of it.
So fast did we move that we were brought to the little sheltered bay by my father and his uncanny knack just as the sky velveted to dark and the first stars frosted.
Einar halted the grey-faced, panting pack of us – the last few miles had seen more frequent halts, mainly because Hild was exhausted. But I had seen Pinleg grateful for it, while my father and Ogmund Wryneck and a few others sank down with relief, with hardly the strength to suck up their drool.
Bagnose and Steinthor went wearily out at Einar’s command, while the rest of us hunched up in a hollow, hearing the wind hiss over the tufted grass that led to the beach and out to the sea. I tasted the salt of it on my lips. Strange how we had longed for the feel and smell of land when afloat and now longed for the touch of ship and spray now that we were ashore.
No one spoke much, save for Einar, muttering with Ketil Crow and Illugi and my father. I couldn’t hear much of it, but I guessed some: my father would be there to tell Einar whether a ship could be worked out of the bay, whether wind and tide were favourable and, if not, when they would be.
Ketil Crow would have counted heads and knew how many of the Oathsworn were left – I reasoned about forty, no more, for we had left some on that forge mountain and whether dead or scattered didn’t matter. They were gone from us, like Skapti.
After a while, as a moon slid up, scudded with cloud, Bagnose came back and had words with Einar, who then called us all round him in that shadowed hollow.
‘Steinthor is watching Starkad’s drakkar. It seems all his men are ashore, with a nice fire and ale. They have posted two sentries only.’ He grinned, yellow-fanged in the dark. ‘That’s the best of it. The rest is that there are about sixty of them and they are well armed. But they are out of mail and have no thought of danger. So we form up and move, now. Move fast and hard, break them and go for the drakkar. If we can scatter them and board, we can get away, for the wind and tide are right for it.’
And, of course, I was given Hild as my task. I was becoming tired of it, to be truthful, for she unnerved me now with her quiet, knowing looks and calm, black-eyed smiles.
So the Oathsworn scrambled wearily out of the hollow, formed into a loose line and loped off in a rough boar snout. I was in the middle, with Valknut and the Raven Banner unfurled and moving steadily beside me.
We came up over the tufted grass and on towards where Steinthor hid and I saw the red flower of the fire and the great expanse of blackness that was the sea behind it. There was a faint lantern swinging there, almost certainly on the prow of the boat, which swung on the end of a stout rope and an iron anchor in the shallows.
When Steinthor saw us, Einar waved for him to form up. He paused, stretched the bow and, as we came up, an arrow whirred into what seemed darkness to me. Moments later, though, I almost stumbled over the corpse of one of the sentries. Half-turned, I saw Pinleg stop, head bowed. He spotted my worried look and waved. ‘Go on, Rurik’s son. I will catch you up and race you to the beach.’
And he grinned, so I did as he said. It was the last he ever spoke to me.
When I joined the others, they were pausing, for no longer than a single breath, a mere shortening of stride, to let the line form. Then, at the moment the men by the fire all saw us, looming out of the darkness like a frowned eyebrow, Einar yelled, ‘Boar snout.’ He hurled himself at the apex of the rough triangle, but he was no Skapti and it came in far too fast and loose.
There was no firm shieldwall to hit, though. We ploughed, roaring, through men who were already scattering in all directions, jogged past the fire, hacking sideways at anything that came too close and, when we hit the water, splintered apart and kept going for the ship. I saw Gunnar Raudi grab a man and heave him up, then leap, miss and splash back down into the water.
I was knee-deep and thrashing through it, blinded by spray, hauling Hild along, trying to keep both of us upright while that damned spear-shaft she would not let go of took both her hands and left me to support us both. Men sprang for the sides and the anchor rope, swarmed up … we were going to do it.
I gained the side and hauled up and over, then reached down for Hild, while others were wildly dragging themselves, panting and dripping, over the side of the massive ship. My father was screaming at men to get to the oars, for others to get the sail-spar hauled up off the rests.
And I saw the men on the shore forming, swiftly, expertly. They had no armour, only some had helmets, but all had a shield and a sword or an axe or a spear. They were veterans, were Starkad’s men and not about to be shamed by the loss of their ship without a fight for it.
The shieldwall formed with a slap and a roar and then they were jogging forward and I knew, with a sick lurch that made me so frantic I almost tore Hild’s arm out of her socket getting her aboard, that they would be on us before we gained enough distance.
Then, suddenly, something broke from the shadowed shallows to our right. There was a blood-chilling shriek, a burst of spray and a blur of movement. Like a troll on wheels.
Pinleg came in a shambling run of screaming, whirling death. They didn’t know who it was, but they knew what it was and the shieldwall almost fractured there and then. When Pinleg hurled on it, slashing, biting, screeching, it did, like a still pool hit by a stone.
‘Haul away, fuck your mothers!’ roared my father and the oarsmen, panting, soaked, white with fatigue and riven with panicked frenzy, dug and pulled, dug and pulled.
The sail clattered up, the wind filled it and the great serpent drakkar slid away into the night, away from where the ends of the shieldwall closed, from where swords rose and fell and the bundle of men, like a pack of snarling