The Prow Beast. Robert Low

the head of Nicepheros on them, which made them recent – and one-quarter light.

      I said this as I spun it back to him and he grinned, suitably admiring my skill. He had skills of his own when it came to coinage, all the same – backed by the ships and men of Vladimir, Prince of the Rus in Novgorod, he had ravaged up and down the Baltic to further the cause of his friend against Vladimir’s brothers, Jaropolk and Oleg. They were not quite at open war, those three Kievan brothers, but it was a matter of time only and the trade routes in their lands were ravaged and broken as a result.

      That and the lack of silver from the east that made Crowbone’s coin rare – and light – also made any trade trip there worthless unless you went all the way down the rivers and cataracts to the Great City. I said as much while Thorgunna and the thrall women served platters and ale and Crowbone grinned cheerfully, uncaring little wolf cub that he was.

      A shadow appeared at his elbow and I turned to the mailed and helmeted figure who owned it; he stared back at me from under his Rus horse-plume and face-mail, iron-grim and stiff as old rock.

      ‘Alyosha Buslaev,’ declared little Crowbone with a grin. ‘My prow man.’

      Vladimir’s man more like, I was thinking, as this Alyosha closed in on Crowbone like a protecting hound, sent by the fifteen-year-old Prince of Novgorod to both guard and watch his little brother-in-arms. They were snarling little cubs, the Princes Vladimir and Olaf Crowbone, and thinking on them only made me feel old.

      The hall was crowded that night as we feasted young Crowbone and his crew with roast horse, pork, ale and calls to the Aesir, for Hestreng was still free of the Christ and mine was still the un-partitioned hall of a raiding jarl – despite my best efforts to change that. Still, as I told Crowbone, the White Christ was everywhere, so that the horse trade was dying – those made Christian did not fight horses in the old way, nor eat the meat.

      ‘Go raiding,’ he replied, with the air of someone who thought I was daft for not having considered it. Then he grinned. ‘I forgot – you do not need to follow the prow beast, with all the silver you have buried away under moonlight.’

      I did not answer that; young Crowbone had developed a hunger for silver, ever since he had worked out that that was where ships and men came from. He needed ships and men to make himself king in Norway and I did not want him snuffling after any moonlit burials of mine – he had had his share of Atil’s silver. That hoard had been hard come by and I was still not sure that it was not cursed.

      I offered horn-toasts to the memory of dead Sigurd, Crowbone’s silver-nosed uncle, who had been the nearest to a father the boy had had and who had been Vladimir’s druzhina commander. Crowbone joined in, perched on the high-backed guest bench beside me, his legs too short to rest his feet like a grown man on the tall hearthstones that kept drunk and child from tumbling in the pitfire.

      His men, too, appreciated the Sigurd toasts and roared it out. They were horse-eating men of Thor and Frey, big men, calloused and muscled like bull walruses from sword work and rowing, with big beards and loud voices, spilling ale down their chests and boasting. I saw Finn’s nostrils flare, drinking in the salt-sea reek of them, the taste of war and wave that flowed from them like heat.

      Some of them wore silk tunics and baggier breeks than others, carried curved swords rather than straight, but that was just Gardariki fashion and, apart from Alyosha, they were not the half-breed Slavs who call themselves Rus – rowers. These were all true Swedes, young oar-wolves who had crewed with Crowbone up and down the Baltic and would follow the boy into Hel’s hall itself if he went – and Alyosha was at his side to make the sensible decisions.

      Crowbone saw me look them over and was pleased at what he saw in my face.

      ‘Aye, they are hard men, right enough,’ he chuckled and I shrugged as diffidently as I could, waiting for him to tell me why he and his hard men were here. All that had gone before – politeness and feasting and smiles – had been leading to this place.

      ‘It is good of you to remember my uncle,’ he said after a time of working at his boots. The hall rang with noise and the smoke-sweat fug was thicker than the bench planks. Small bones flew; roars and laughter went up when one hit a target.

      He paused for effect and stroked his ringed braids, wanting moustaches so badly I almost laughed.

      ‘He is the reason I am here,’ he said, raising his voice to be heard. It piped, still, like a boy’s, but I did not smile; I had long since learned that Crowbone was not the boy he seemed.

      When I said nothing, he waved an impatient little hand.

      ‘Randr Sterki sailed this way.’

      I sat back at that news and the memories came welling up like reek in a blocked privy. Randr the Strong had been the right-hand of Klerkon and had taken over most of that one’s crew after Klerkon died; he had sailed their ship, Dragon Wings, to an island off Aldeijuborg.

      Klerkon. There was a harsh memory right enough. He had raided us and lived only long enough to be sorry for it, for we had wolfed down on his winter-camp on Svartey, the Black Island, finding only his thralls and the wives and weans of his crew – and Crowbone, chained to the privy.

      Well, things were done on Svartey that were usual enough for red-war raids, but men too long leashed and then let loose, goaded on by a vengeful Crowbone, had guddled in blood and thrown bairns at walls. Later, Crowbone found and killed Klerkon – but that is another tale, for nights with a good fire against the saga chill of it.

      Randr Sterki had a free raiding hand while matters were resolved with Prince Vladimir over the Klerkon killing, but when all that was done, Vladimir sent Sigurd Axebitten, Crowbone’s no-nose uncle and commander of his druzhina, to give Randr a hard dunt for his pains.

      Except Sigurd had made a mess of it, or so I heard, and Crowbone had grimly followed after to find Randr Sterki and his men gone and his uncle nailed to an oak tree as a sacrifice to Perun. His famous silver nose was missing; folk said Randr wore it on a leather thong round his neck. Crowbone had been wolf-sniffing after his uncle’s killer since, with no success.

      ‘What trail did he leave, that brings you this way?’ I asked, for I knew the burn for revenge was fierce in him. I knew that fire well, for the same one scorched Randr Sterki for what we had done to his kin in Klerkon’s hall at Svartey; even for a time of red war, what we had done there made me uneasy.

      Crowbone finished with his boots and put them on.

      ‘Birds told me,’ he answered finally and I did not doubt it; little Olaf Tryggvasson was known as Crowbone because he read the Norns’ weave through the actions of birds.

      ‘He will come here for three reasons,’ he went on, growing more shrill as he raised his voice over the noise in the hall. ‘You are known for your wealth and you are known for your fame.’

      ‘And the third?’

      He merely looked at me and it was enough; the memory of Klerkon’s steading on Svartey, of fire and blood and madness, floated up in me like sick in a bucket.

      There it was, the cursed memory, hung out like a flayed skin. Fame will always come back and hag-ride you to the grave; my own by-name, Bear Slayer, was proof of that, since I had not slain the white bear myself, though no-one alive knew that but me. Still, the saga of it – and all the others that boasted of what the Oathsworn were supposed to have done – constantly brought men looking to join us or challenge us.

      Now came Randr Sterki, for his own special reasons. The Oathsworn’s fame made me easy to find and, with only a few fighting men, I was a better mark to take on than a boatload of hard Rus under the protection of the Prince of Novgorod.

      ‘Randr Sterki is not a name that brings warriors,’ Crowbone went on. ‘But yours is and any man who deals you a death blow steals your wealth, your women and your fame in that stroke.’

      It was said in his loud and shrill boy’s voice – almost a shriek – and it was strange, looking back on it, that the hall noise should have ebbed away just