The Amber Road (29 page)

They drew apart, just beyond sword reach, panting and watching each other. Behind Maximus, someone was shouting. Ballista was still fighting. Wada, also, beyond him.

Maximus stamped his right boot, feigned to lunge. The warrior with the arm rings brought his arms up to block. In the brief time he had won, Maximus glanced over his shoulder. Tarchon was yelling something incomprehensible from the stern of the
Warig
. Further away, Castricius was beckoning from under her prow-idol.

To his left the warrior matched with Ballista pressed home an attack, swinging furiously. Steel flashed in the sunlight. The Bronding reeled back and across the one facing Maximus.

‘Jump!’ Ballista shouted.

With no hesitation, Maximus spun around and, one boot on the gunwale of the big ship, vaulted down into the
Warig
. The deck was unsteady under him. He staggered a few steps. Someone landed heavily behind him, crashed to the deck. Maximus ran into Rikiar.

‘Row!’ Ballista was roaring from down on the deck. ‘Row for your fucking lives!’

Maximus felt the ship stir as the oars fought the resistance of the water.

‘My brother!’ Wada the Short had dropped the steering oar. He moved to the side.

Tarchon grabbed the Harii, held him fast. Ballista was scrabbling along the woodwork towards the abandoned helm.

Wada the Tall was trapped on the prow of the Bronding, ringed by warriors. His sword was weaving intricate patterns.

‘My brother!’ Wada the Short fought to get free of Tarchon’s embrace. Rikiar leapt to help restrain him.

‘All bad with him. Too late,’ Tarchon said.

A tortured scraping of wood against wood, and the
Warig
pulled free from the longship.

Wada the Tall was surrounded. He staggered. His blade was still moving. A Bronding tottered back, clutching an arm that looked nearly severed. The others closed in. Wada took a blow, then another. Wada fell. Swords arced down over the space where he had stood.

‘He die brave,’ Tarchon said. ‘Much honour.’

Wada the Short stared out over the widening gap of water. He said nothing.

‘To your places.’ Ballista had the steering oar. ‘Get down, let me see the prow. Maximus, Tarchon, get the dead over the side.’

There were six Brondings – four dead, and two who needed finishing off – and three dead Roman crewmen. There was no time to search them. Friend or foe, Maximus and Tarchon just cut the wallets from their belts, removed any still-sheathed blades and threw them all in a pile. Gripping the dead by the feet and under the armpits, they hauled them over. As the last splashed in, Maximus noticed the mailcoat of the previous Bronding shining through the disturbed silt. He was only about four feet down.

The channel ran straight for half a mile or more. The Brondings were slower getting back to their benches. But, all too soon, Maximus saw the oars lift and dip. They had no intention of giving up.

No one spoke. There was nothing to say. A wounded Olbian who was whimpering was told to shut the fuck up and be a man.

Wada the Short had not moved. Motionless, he looked back at the Brondings.

The
Warig
had a slender lead, no more than a hundred paces. She was well within bowshot. No sooner had the thought occurred than the first shafts sliced down. Maximus snatched up a discarded shield and crouched over Ballista, covering them both.

The Brondings’ aim was wild. They were not shooting in volleys, but men on benches can neither jump aside nor shield themselves. Inevitably, an arrow found its mark. An Olbian screamed. He fell back off his bench. He was not dead. The shaft in his chest quivered obscenely with his breathing. No one went to help him.

Another scream. Another man down, a Roman this time. The oarsmen anxiously watched the sky. It was affecting their timing. With each stroke, one or more missed the surface or caught the bed of the creek, their wake streamed grey with silt.

Maximus peeped around the shield. The scowling Bronding figurehead was only a heavy javelin throw behind; twenty-five paces at most. An arrow came straight at Maximus. He ducked back. It whickered past.

The
Warig
shivered the length of her hull. The speed dropped off her. There was a slithering, sucking sound. Her keel was grounding.

‘Pull! Pull, like never before!’

Maximus jumped to the nearest bench, added his weight to the next stroke. As they brought the oars back, the
Warig
was almost stationary, almost held by the mud. The oars fought to keep her momentum. For a moment the opposed forces seemed in balance. Then, with a surge, like wine out of an upended amphora, the
Warig
was free, rushing ahead.

‘Get back in time.’

Maximus was not listening to Ballista’s orders; none of them were. They were all gazing with wonder over the Angle commander’s shoulders. The Bronding ship had come to a shuddering stop. Her mast swayed – once, twice, a third time – then, ropes cracking, went by the board. Warriors threw themselves clear, splashing into the shallow, muddy water. Not all made it in time; screams came from the inboard.

A ragged, exhausted cheer. The crew of the
Warig
held their arms aloft in relief. Oars skewed this way and that.

‘Keep rowing. Bend those oars, you lazy bastards. That longship will be here a time, but there are other Brondings out there.’ Despite trying to sound fierce, Ballista was grinning in almost disbelieving delight. They had won free. The Suebian Sea lay before them: the way north was open.

XX

The Island of Varinsey

Oslac looked out over the northern sea. His mind was troubled. He loved his wife, but knew she did not love him. She loved both their children, and so did he. It was a bond. They got on well enough. Oddly, they had got on better since her son Starkad, his stepson, had been taken hostage in Gaul. But Oslac knew she did not love him. When she was young, Kadlin had loved his half-brother, and now Dernhelm was coming home.

Desperate events demanded desperate responses. Yet Oslac was not sure he was doing the right thing. Would Pius Aeneas have done the like? After duty, family had been everything to the Trojan. He had braved the horrors of the underworld to talk with the shade of his father. Surely, if her ghost had not appeared to him of its own volition, Aeneas would have ventured the same for his wife. Oslac steeled himself. The Himlings were descended from Woden, but Aeneas was also in their ancestry.

It was time. Oslac turned away from the sea and walked back to where two of his hearth-companions waited with the horses. They had not wanted to come with him. He did not blame their reluctance; only a desperate concern had urged him to make the journey. In the winter it was the practice of the
wicce
to travel from one hall to another. She would have come to him. Yet it was better it was springtime, better he had been constrained to go to her. In the hall everyone would have heard what she said, not that he could have asked the questions he needed to ask, not in front of an audience, not with Kadlin there.

The previous evening had gone well enough. It had been a long day’s ride from Gudme to this desolate place on the northern coast of Varinsey. They had brought the things the aged
wicce
always wanted: the hearts of various animals, freshly slaughtered. Oslac had watched her cook and eat them with a gruel made from goat’s milk. She used a brass spoon, and a knife with a walrus-tusk handle bound with two rings of copper; the blade had a broken point. She had told him to return the next day at sunset. Not wanting to spend the night near her dwelling and the pond with its guardian, Oslac had decided they would ride to the shore and camp there. He had had a vague idea that the clean wind off the sea would dispel any taint.

One of his hearth-companions, the tall one, held his bridle, the other gave him a leg-up. They did not speak. He waited while they swung up on to their own mounts. His horse tossed its head and sidled. Calming the animal made him feel better. He knew he was a good horseman. The creak of leather and the jingle of the bit were part of his world. He was a warrior, an
atheling
of the Himling dynasty. He would not let this ritual unman him.

They set off at a walk. The day was overcast. Oslac could not have kept this journey quiet. The cook had butchered the animals. Why else would she have thought that he had wanted the hearts? She was a good-natured woman, but talkative; the news would have spread from his hall to the others: soon all Gudme would have known what he was about. This in mind, Oslac had announced he was going to consult the
wicce
about Unferth. It might have seemed unusual, but not out of all expectation. The situation was grave, the future uncertain. Already since the thaw, longships full of Brondings, Wylfings and Geats had harried the lands of Himling vassals on Latris. Worse, there had been warriors from the Dauciones among the raiders. The rumours had proved true: they, too, had cast off their allegiance to the Angles. Things were so bad his father had even talked of opening the tomb of Himling and bringing out the great terrible-forged sword Bile-Himling. It was said that in the direst times Bile-Himling would save the Himlings from certain defeat. Perhaps, Oslac thought, his brother, Morcar, was right. What the Himlings needed now was strong leadership, not supernatural aid. Their father was old. Perhaps it was time Isangrim stepped aside.

They came to the pond. It was fringed with black poplars. The hut of the
wicce
stood in their shade. They dismounted. The sun was not yet touching the horizon. They waited.

Oslac felt badly about himself. Aeneas had loved the Carthaginian Dido, but he had deserted her for the destiny of his people. Much as he groaned and felt shaken at heart by the great force of love’s power, nonetheless Aeneas followed the gods’ commands. Oslac was not as pious or as dutiful. Long before, he had taken the opposite, less worthy course. When Dernhelm had gone to be a hostage, Oslac had sent his young wife back to her people, the Wylfings; all in the hope of marrying Kadlin. His father had been furious. Kadlin had been married off instead to Holen of Wrosns, to secure the allegiance of the islands of Latris. Only when Holen was killed, and she was a widow, had Isangrim relented, and let Oslac wed Kadlin. All these years later, Oslac again could not help but put love over duty. It was not about Unferth and the fate of the Woden-born Himlings he was here to ask.

As the sun began to go down, the
wicce
emerged, very old and crooked, leaning on a brass-bound staff. She beckoned Oslac. Before he followed, he told his men to retire out of earshot. They looked both relieved and suspicious as they led the horses away.

Inside was warm and surprisingly well-lit, with a brazier and two gleaming lamps of Roman manufacture. Despite the warmth, the
wicce
was dressed as he had seen her before: in a blue mantle adorned with stones to the hem. Her face was half hidden by a black lambskin hood lined with the fur of white cats. On her feet were hairy calfskin shoes, and more white cats had been killed to make her gloves.

She seated herself on a low stool, not the high seat of prophecy he would have provided in his hall. Oslac remained standing.

‘War-father picked for her rings and circlets:

He had back wise tidings and wands of prophecy;

She saw widely and widely beyond, over every world
.
’

Oslac acknowledged her words by passing over a brooch unfastened from his cloak. She turned it over in her gloved hands. The garnets were like blood in the lamplight.

‘My half-brother, Dernhelm, the one the Romans call Ballista, returns home. I would know his fate.’ Oslac stopped. It was hard to force the rest out. ‘Will my wife leave me for him? Will she betray me?’ There, it was said.

The old woman snorted, as if once again confronted with damning evidence of the vain pride of men. She took some powder from the purse at her belt, sprinkled it on to the brazier. Leaning over, she shut her eyes and inhaled deeply. While she crooned softly, her gloved hands fondled the staff obscenely.

It was close in the room. Oslac wished he was somewhere else.

When the crone opened her eyes, they were bleared. ‘The guardian of the pool is present. Many things stand revealed to me which before were hidden both from me and from others.’

Her voice trailed off, her eyelids drooped. Her body twitched.

Oslac wanted to leave, but did not dare. He had to hear the prophecy. He dreaded what might be revealed.

She wrenched open her jaws and yawned deeply.

‘She saw there wading through heavy currents,

Men false-sworn and murderous men,

And those who gull another’s faithfullest girl;

There spite-striker sucks the bodies of the dead

– a wolf tore men – do you know yet, or what?’

She stopped, head lolling.

Oslac stood; rooted, sweating.

Her mouth gaped wide, her breathing harsh as torn sailcloth.

‘Brothers will struggle and slaughter each other,

And sisters’ sons spoil kinship’s bonds.

It’s hard on earth: great whoredom;

Axe-age, blade-age, shields are split;

Wind-age, wolf-age, before the world crumbles:

No one shall spare another.’

The
wicce
shivered, and came back. The lamps guttered. Now all Oslac could hear was his own breathing.

‘Do you want him cursed?’ Her voice was near normal.

Oslac was sweating. Dernhelm was his half-brother. He did not love him, but he did not hate him. It was not Dernhelm’s fault. Oslac could not curse his brother, but he could not lose Kadlin. Fleeing from Troy, Aeneas had failed to look back. He had lost his wife. Aeneas had left Carthage, and Dido had killed herself. Oslac would not lose his wife.