The White Raven

'We are the people of exile,' he commented bitterly. 'The world lines up to scatter us every time we gain a country of our own, paying scat to no man. They envy us for being the Chosen of God.'

'More likely they wanted to be rid of paying scat of their own,' I offered him back. 'The Romans, for one, will help one people one day and another against you the next.'

'They are Christian,' Avraham noted with a scowl, shooting a glance at Jon. 'They hate us.'

'What does he mean?' Finn wanted to know and Jon shrugged.

'The Jews killed Jesus,' he answered. 'Everyone knows that.'

'Truly?' enthused Finn, turning to Avraham. 'You killed this White Christ? You are the torturers of the Tortured God?'

'No,' replied Avraham, defiantly sullen. 'The Romans did, but now they follow the Christ ways and blame us for it.' Finn sat back, his delight at what he had learned tempered.

He shook his head, sorrowful and bemused.

'Even dead this white-livered Christ certainly knows how to cause trouble in an empty room,' he declared and Jon shot him an angry look.

'Still — it was no Christ-follower who warred on the Khazar and Bulgar,' I offered and there was silence at that as folk remembered Sviatoslav, great Prince of Kiev.

'Idu na vy,' said Tien sadly and everyone fell silent. Idu na vy — I am coming against you — was what Sviatoslav had sent as his last message to those he planned to conquer. Now he, too, was gone and the steppe was unleashed. Avraham scowled at the memory.

'Will they fight each other?' Jon asked softly and I shrugged. Tien said nothing for a moment, while we all watched with interest — it was nothing to us if they snarled at each other like dungheap dogs.

'We will see how cold it gets,' the little Bulgar said at last in his halting, thick-accented Norse. 'I can read the signs. If we stay this far north in the Great White you will see the green wine turn to syrup.'

'Well,' grunted Gyrth, looking like a mangy bear woken too early from winter-sleep, 'we had better drink it all then before such a tragedy happens.'

Finn toasted him, then thrust his drinking horn at Thordis, who looked at him steadily, then accepted it and drank. 'Move closer,' Finn ordered her, 'and find warmth.'

'That's an old trick,' Thordis replied flatly.

'No trick,' said Finn. 'You are cold. I am cold. I owe you heat, at least, as weregild.'

Her eyes widened, for it was the first time that such had been mentioned, though the fact of it had hung between us all like a blade — her husband had died because raiders came looking for the Oathsworn, after all, yet the same Oathsworn had risked their lives to rescue her from slavery. It would take a lot of waggling grey beards to law-speak that one out at a Ting.

Thorgunna nudged her sister pointedly and she moved up the fire a way and into the lee of Finn's body. He grunted, satisfied.

'Well,' declared Kvasir, beaming round, 'here we all are, warm and fed and heading for riches. Life could be worse.'

'As the swallow said,' answered a familiar, lilting voice from the darkness. Olaf stepped in, the elkhound padding after him to the fire, while all the eyes watched him and only Thorgunna's were warm.

'What swallow?' demanded Jon and Crowbone, so pale his lips and cheeks were blood-red, gathered the great swathe of fur-trimmed white wool round him and sat down at Thorgunna's feet, while she dreamily took off his white wool cap and began to comb his lengthening yellow hair.

'There was a swallow who ignored winter,' Olaf said and everyone grunted and shifted to be more comfortable, for though he unnerved them, they liked his stories.

'Let's call it Kvasir,' he added and people chuckled. Kvasir raised his wooden cup across the fire to the little prince.

'So Kvasir-Swallow dipped and swooped and enjoyed himself all summer and well into the russet days, when all his friends and brothers and sisters told him they were leaving to be warm elsewhere, before the snows came.

'But Kvasir-Swallow was having too much fun and ignored them, so they left without him. And he continued to swoop and dip, though it grew colder and he caught less to eat with his swooping.

'Then, one day, it was so cold he knew he had made a mistake. "I must fly hard and fast and catch up with my brothers and sisters and friends," he said to himself. So he did, but it was too late. Blizzards came and howled down on him, flinging him this way and that and far, far off course. .'

'Sounds like every journey in the Elk,' growled Klepp Spaki, who had discovered he hated the sea. People shushed him and Olaf went on.

'Half freezing, he flew on and on, then the snowstorms blew harder than ever until his wings froze entire and he tumbled, beak over tail, down from the sky.'

He paused, for he had a feel for such things — he was never nine, that boy.

'What happened?' demanded an impatient Jon, leaning forward.

'He died, of course,' growled Finn, which brought some belly laughs, for that was an old tale-telling trick.

Olaf, grinning, said: 'He would have — but he fell into the biggest, fattest, freshest heap of dung just shat by a grain-fed milk cow in the farm that lay under his flight. The heat of it thawed him. In fact, it made him realize what a narrow escape he had just had, so he fluttered about and sang loudly about how lucky he was — at which point the farm dog heard it, came out, sniffed and ate him in one gulp.'

There was silence and into it, looking round the stunned faces, Olaf smiled.

'So it is clear,' he said slowly. 'If you end up in the shite and are warm, happy and safe — keep your beak shut and stay quiet, for worse will happen.'

We laughed long at that one, for it was a fine tale, well told and made us forget the keen edge of winter for those moments. Though, as Kvasir said when he had stopped laughing, it was no good omen to hear your name spoken in such a way. Olaf merely smiled, as if he knew more he was not saying and moved quietly to me when we were alone.

'There are men to be watched,' he said, unblinking serious. 'Klerkon's old crew — especially the one called Kveldulf.'

I knew Crowbone had some reason for hating this Kveldulf but, even so, his warnings made sense — the men from the Dragon Wings kept to their own fires and, more often than not, Martin sat with them. This had suited me, since his company was not one I cared for, but now Crowbone's warning made me uneasy.

Yet, I was thinking, what could they do? Out in this cold, we lived or died by what we did together; no-one would survive long alone.

This was proved the next morning, when we found two good horses dead from that cold, solid as stones, their eyes open and frosted and their hides too hard even to flay off them for the leather.

We trudged on, slithering and sliding across frozen grass, the snow blown into drifts and frozen-crusted on top, cloud soft beneath. One day followed the next and more horses died, all the ones too fine for the steppe and mostly ridden by the druzhina warriors. Then it was the turn of people to suffer.

Four of the hunter-scouts Vladimir had hired — all Klerkon's men — came to Bjaelfi Healer after being out on the steppe on their own, showing him their blackened toes and one the tip of his nose.

Onund Hnufa knew what it was at once and told them. 'The cold rots the flesh. When it turns black it is dead and such will spread. The only cure is to have it lopped off and quick.'

The least hurt was the big, strong, dangerous Kveldulf, who submitted to having the ends of three toes nipped. Two of the others, however, died of the cure the next day, for Bjaelfi had to take a foot from one of them and most of all the toes from another. Before he died, the toeless one revealed that he had seen the smoke of fires, no more than a day's journey to the west — for a man with two good legs, he added mournfully.