Laughter and nudgings of Pinleg, who grinned and said, ‘I have heard tales of treasure, Einar. Dragon hoards, no less. I would not like to think I am pissing about in the rain chasing some child’s firepit story when I could be getting in and out of a woman.’
There was a sudden silence and I wondered why Pinleg had voiced that where others, clearly, had kept their teeth together. Later, of course, I found out why Pinleg could say what he chose.
Einar swept his black eyes over them once more. ‘There is such a thing being spoken of …’ He held up a hand as Pinleg cleared his throat to spit. ‘Rest your oar a moment,’ he said and Pinleg swallowed. Einar stroked his moustaches, looking round before he spoke.
‘This Martin, the monk, is a deep-thinker, who can dive into the world’s sea of learning and fish out choice morsels. Lambisson thinks highly of him and keeps him close – and Brondolf is no cash-scatterer, as we know.’
Grim chuckles greeted this and Einar scrubbed his chin. ‘I have … uncovered some things that make me believe there is more to these Birka matters than is carved on the surface. There’s a snake-knot tangle to it, though, so when I know more, you will know more.’
Pinleg grunted and that seemed to be assent. The others milled and muttered to each other.
Einar held up both hands and there was silence. ‘Now, we are Oathsworn and have two here – Gunnar Rognaldsson, known as Raudi, and Orm Ruriksson, known as the Bear Killer. You know our oath … is there anyone who will stand the challenge?’
Challenge? What challenge? I turned to my father, but he nudged me silent and winked.
Slowly, a man stood, uncomfortably it seemed to me. A second stood with him and my father let out his breath with relief.
Einar nodded at them. ‘Gauk, I know you have waited for this moment since your foot went bad on you and you lost the toes last year.’
Gauk stepped into the firelight, his face made more gaunt with the shadows playing on it, and nodded. ‘Aye. Without those toes, my balance is gone. Sometimes, unless I am careful, I fall over like a child. One day I will do it in a fight.’
Everyone nodded sympathetically. If he stumbled in a shieldwall, everyone was put at risk.
‘So you will step aside, with no fight and no shame?’ asked Einar.
‘I will,’ said Gauk.
‘For whom?’
‘Gunnar Raudi.’
And that was that. Gauk would be free to leave here the next day with whatever he could carry away and Gunnar Raudi would take his place. My mouth was dry. I realised that the way into a full crew of the Oathsworn was to challenge and kill someone already in it, then take the binding oath. Unless, of course, that someone volunteered to go quietly.
Gauk and Gunnar were already clasping forearms and Gunnar was (as polite custom demanded, I learned) offering to buy what Gauk couldn’t carry away on his back. Sweating and chilled, I glanced at the other man as Einar turned to him.
‘Thorkel? Are you going with no fight and no shame?’
‘I am, for Orm Ruriksson.’
There was murmuring at that. Thorkel was a seasoned fighter, a good axeman and I was, as Ulf-Agar yelped out, only a stripling.
‘A stripling who killed a white bear,’ my father snarled back at him. ‘I don’t recall any tales of your doings, Ulf-Agar.’
The little man’s dark face went darker still and I knew then what Ulf-Agar’s curse was – that of legend. He wanted one to live after him; he was jealous of those who had what he sought and could not steal.
He was welcome to it, I said to myself, since it was a lie and shame made me hide it from everyone’s sight, though it sickened me.
Einar stroked his chin, pondering. ‘It’s hard to give up a good man for an untried one. That’s why we fight. How do we know what we get if we don’t see newcomers fight?’
Thorkel shrugged. ‘No matter what he is like, he will fight better than me, for I do not want to fight at all. Not against the Christ-followers, for my woman in Gotland is one and I promised her – swore an Odin-oath – that I would not raid their holy places. So best if I leave, for if that is the way Birka’s thoughts are going, I cannot go with them.’
Einar scowled at that. ‘You swore an oath to us all, Thorkel. Is that to be overturned by a promise to a woman? Is your oath to us less than that to a woman?’
‘You have never met my wife, Einar,’ said Pinleg gloomily, his wiry body swathed in a huge cloak. ‘Breaking an oath to her is not done lightly.’
Everyone who knew Pinleg’s woman laughed knowingly. Before Einar could answer, Illugi Godi rapped his staff on a stone and there was silence.
‘It is not a promise to his wife,’ he said sternly. ‘It was an oath to Odin. However stupid that may have been, it is still an oath to Odin.’
‘Our oath is made to Odin,’ Einar argued and Illugi frowned.
‘Our oath is made to each other, in the sight of Odin. Thorkel’s own Odin-oath may be truer, but I am thinking he must live with the consequence of swearing too many oaths. Anyway, he does not break his oath to the rest of us if one stands in his place.’
There was nodding agreement to that and Einar shrugged and turned to me. ‘Well, you take the place of a good man, Orm Ruriksson. Make sure it was worth the trade.’
I stepped forward as bid and clasped Thorkel’s forearm. He nodded at me, then moved off.
And that was it. I was now part of the Oathsworn of Einar the Black.
Later, I saw Thorkel and my father head to head in conversation and something niggled at me and worried and gnawed until I had to voice it.
‘You arranged it,’ I accused and, to my astonishment, my father grinned and nodded, putting a finger to his lips.
‘Aye. Thorkel wanted to go, has done for a time. He has an Irish woman in Dyfflin, which is just across the water from here, but made no Odin-oaths over her. By Loki’s arse, what sane man would do that, eh?’
‘Why does he want to leave?’
My father frowned at that and self-consciously scrubbed his chin. ‘Tales of Atil’s treasure,’ he answered gruffly. ‘Thorkel believes it foolishness, thinks Einar’s thought-cage is warped.’
‘Why didn’t he say that, then?’ I answered, with all the stupidity of youth.
My father batted my shoulder – none too gently, I thought – and answered, ‘You don’t say such things to the likes of Einar, unless you have a head start and fast feet, or are prepared to fight. No, Thorkel wanted out when he got here and didn’t want to fight for it and didn’t want to lose all his stuff.
‘This way, he gets to leave safely with a bag of hacksilver – and you get a good sea-chest, a spare set of clothes and a decent shield.’
‘I have nothing—’ I began and he clasped my forearm, his eyes gleaming in the darkness.
‘I did little enough for long enough,’ he said. ‘I need take big strides to catch up and I will not make old bones on a farm now, I am thinking. So I will spend my shares how I choose.’ He paused then and added, ‘Keep your lips fastened round Einar. He is a dangerous man when his brows come together.’
So, in the star-glimmered dark before dawn, I found myself assembled with the others, sword in hand, clutching Thorkel’s shield with its swirling design of rune snakes, shivering and sick to the pit of my stomach.
We helped shove the Fjord Elk back off the shingle before the tide went out and stranded it there for hours. My father, of course, was staying behind since he was shipmaster and Pinleg would need