In seconds, it seemed, before I had even plodded back to the top of the hill, Haarlaug was a pale, sad shape in the red hillside, laid neatly on his back, hands clasped on the deer-horn hilt of the knife on his chest, the only thing they left. The rest struggled wearily up the hill, clutching a shirt, breeks, boots – even his woollen socks. Ottar and Vig panted to the top, one draped with a mail shirt, the other clutching a sword and an extra shield. Ottar looked back, hawked and spat. ‘No way to leave one of our own,’ he said. ‘He should have been decently howed up.’
I saw the other huddled, still shapes. I couldn’t even tell, now, which was the one I had killed.
‘Move,’ growled Einar and, as he passed, slapped me lightly on the shoulder. ‘Good fight, boy. You’ll do.’
And that was it. Twenty minutes later we were panting and gasping down through the trees and out on to the wet-black shingle, stumbling up to where the Fjord Elk swung.
I remember that I was more afraid trying to board her than I was in the fight, since she was so far out we had to wade to our chests and, if it hadn’t been for them throwing out the boarding plank, none of us would have got on board at all.
As it was, between rain and sea, I landed on the deck, miserable, wet, chafed, shivering and more tired than I had ever been in my life. I couldn’t believe that anyone had any strength left, but the same ones who had just fought dumped their weapons, slithered out of mail, took oars and worked the Elk out into the wind, where the sail was hauled up and we were off.
And all the time, I saw the boy’s eyes, the rain filling them like tears, felt Einar’s hand slap my shoulder and heard him say, again and again: ‘Good fight, boy. You’ll do.’
We wintered at Skirringsaal, on the southern tip of Norway, because it was too late in the year to get back to Birka, which was further east along the Baltic and frozen in now. Skirringsaal was handy and had all that the Oathsworn needed: drink, food and women, though it was only a summer trade fair, a bjorkey, which fell quiet in winter.
Einar grumbled; he’d much rather have foisted himself on some minor jarl who, faced with sixty warriors sailing into his fjord, would have been all hospitality and smiles for the winter. Instead, he was forced to dole out hacksilver and have the men split up throughout the town, paying for roof and ale with locals, who were used to foreign travellers.
Einar himself, thanks to the foresight of the local merchants, got himself a hov in a small boatshed and was able to sit in a makeshift high seat, his prows on either side, and lord it like a jarl, with more than a few of the Oathsworn with him. All of the others dropped in daily to take advantage of the free ale and whatever was in the pot.
Almost everyone bought a slave girl at once – to the relief of those traders who thought themselves stuck with them all winter – and the hov was thus fairly crowded, with nothing to do but repairs to gear, or dice, or play endless games of hnefatafl and get into fights about who won.
That and drink and fucking seemed to make up winter, as far as the Oathsworn were concerned.
Because my father was the valued shipmaster, he and I were in Einar’s hov, which was less well built than a turfed hall like Bjornshafen. With so many of us, space by the central hearthfire was at a premium and privacy was a joke. At any one time, one of the band was humping away at a girl and, after a while, it didn’t even excite attention, never mind the senses.
Once, I saw the Trimmer, busy with a game, drop one of the ‘tafl counters. It rolled practically under the arse of one of the weary slave girls, which was bouncing on the filthy rush floor under Skapti’s grunting slams. Without even looking, Trimmer shoved her buttocks to one side, retrieved the counter and went back to the game.
Once over the reluctance at doing all this in front of others, humping slave girls was what I did whenever possible.
Several times I was dragged off one so that she could help prepare the food and, once, was slapped by Skapti when I shouted in anger. His casual blow knocked me into three or four more men, scattering whatever they were doing and, as I lay with my eyes whirling, Einar had to come in and lay about them as if they were a pack of snarling dogs.
He, of course, had his own section, hurdled off at the back. Here, he and Illugi, my father and Valgard Skafhogg would sit and scheme. Sometimes Skapti and Ketil Crow would join in.
In the end, because everyone agreed I would fuck myself to an early grave, I was reluctantly dragged, most days, away from the women. No one but Ulf-Agar minded that a beardless boy was at the high seat of things.
As the year ground through the skeins of snow, interest in everything waned. Simply getting through to the thaw became the focus of everyone’s intent; endless, freezing rain and snow, the grey-yellow ice that formed everywhere, the coughs, rheumy eyes, loose bowels, all became a test of endurance.
Except for Einar, who tried to ignore his own phlegm and fluxes, scheming on regardless, like a man pushing a plough through a stony field.
The riddle of the saint’s box had eluded him, it seemed. No one knew for sure, since he never let anyone look at the contents. Instead, he dragged in every trader who was trapped, like him, and had intense conversations with them behind the hurdle.
Then, one day, as the ice dripped from the eaves and men actually started to stagger out of the stinking hov – and it would have reeked to any Greek, used to baths and oiled massages, even before the winter – Illugi, Valgard, my father and Einar were huddled in his little private chamber, as usual.
And me. Youth had made me healthier than the rest and I was still almost permanently aroused. Since everyone else had more or less lost interest in the girls, I could pick and choose and had my eye on one, a dark beauty, almost as dark as the bluemen from the far south who were so prized in Ireland.
I was craning for a look at her as Einar was speaking, which was why I missed most of it and only came in at the end, to hear him say: ‘… before that little shit Martin gets his hands on it. But no one reads Latin here, not even those who think this place is called Kaupang.’
There were dutiful chuckles at that. Foreigners called Skirringsaal kaupang because they’d once asked what it was called and someone – probably deliberately – had told them ‘a market’. So they had continued to call the town that, thinking that was its name.
Einar sighed and shook his head. ‘I hate relying on that Latin-reading Christ priest. It would be nice to know what it is he seeks in this.’ He slapped the ornate chest.
‘Latin is a pain in the arse,’ I said, yawning. ‘If they have three words where one good one would do, they use them.’
There was silence and it took me a while to realise everyone was staring at me. Einar’s eyes were black, ferocious. ‘How do you know that, boy?’
Conscious of his tone, I considered cautiously, then answered: ‘Caomh taught me to read it, back in Bjornshafen—’
I never got the rest of it out. There was an explosion of roars; everyone was talking at once. Einar was trying to hit me, scrambling to get up and out of his furs, Illugi trying to restrain him and my father and Valgard arguing with each other, all at once.
Eventually, when it fell silent again, I raised my head. Einar was glowering at me and breathing as if he’d run up a hill. Illugi was watching him, holding his staff across his knees and between me and him. My father and the Trimmer sat staring at me, one astonished, the other stone-faced.
‘Can you read this?’ Einar demanded, thrusting a few rustling leaves at me, similar to the ones I’d seen torn from that book-chest in Otmund’s temple.
‘I’ve never read from this before,’ I told him. ‘Caomh drew the letters in the sand, or in the dirt.’
It was clearer