The monk spluttered, wiped his nose, coughed out an answer. 'A spear. Once. Thrust. Into the side of our Lord by the Romans.'
Àh,' mused Einar.
Illugi Godi nodded sagely. 'Touched by the blood of a god, it would be a powerful thing.'
`Forged now into a sword,' someone said. The whole crew, I realised, was spellbound, for the monk's answers had been screamed out for all to hear.
A sword. Made from god-touched metal. It was saga stuff, mother's milk to the likes of us. There were great things in the world: silver hoards, fine horses, beautiful women. But no prize was better than a runespelled sword.
Ànd the woman? What is she to this?'
Martin spat and heaved in breath. He looked like a rat fresh from a cesspit. 'She is of the blood of the smiths who made the sword. She . . . knows where it is.'
No one blinked at that, though some shot anxious glances back towards the woman, for a witch was bad luck on a ship. Bad luck anywhere, I was thinking.
`Does Vigfus know this?' Einar demanded and Martin, rocking back and forward, ruined hand cradled in his good one, shook his head and whimpered.
`He knows of the god stone, though,' Ketil Crow offered. 'He will seek it, not knowing it will do him no good—nor us, for it will bring him in the same direction as we travel now.'
À runesword,' growled Einar, ignoring him. 'A man with that would be a hero king indeed.' He looked around and grinned. 'A man with that, a mountain of silver and a crew like the Oathsworn need fear no kings.'
They whooped and cheered and pounded on each other, the deck, anything. As it died away and they went back to duties, or to huddle against the mirr, Einar turned, his grin fading as he saw my face, which I foolishly failed to disguise. Its black, scowling ugliness made him recoil a little.
`That's a face to sour milk,' he noted, annoyed. 'When everyone else laughs.'
Èxcept Eyvind,' I pointed out, 'who is not here.'
Then he knew, as did Illugi Godi who was close enough to hear and put a hand on my arm.
Èyvind broke oath with us,' Einar growled. 'He put us all in danger with his Loki curse for firing everything.'
Àn oath is an oath. The one I swore did not say that foolishness or a curse made it worthless and got you killed.'
Illugi Godi nodded, which Einar caught. His scowl deepened. 'I think you are smarting because you had to lose your breeks in the street,' he said slowly. 'It seems to me that your gift is in need of maturing before it is of use to me. It seems to me that you would be better staying with the woman.'
He stared at me and I knew I had been mortally insulted and was entitled to be angry. But this was Einar and I was so new I squeaked still. I quailed under that glass-black gaze.
Ì will call if I need you,' he added and jerked his head in dismissal.
I stumbled away on watery legs and slumped down next to the woman. I heard Einar bark something angrily at Illugi and then there was silence, save for the creak-thump of the mast and stays and the hiss of the keelwater.
My father and Einar then huddled briefly and Martin was dragged over to join them. It was clear that a course was planned.
The sail came down, the shields and oars came in—you could not heel the boat over on a tack otherwise—then the men bent to it and hauled the Elk's head round on to the new course, where the whole ship was re-rigged once more and sprang into its mad gallop.
I did not have to ask my father where we headed, for it was obvious: to the forge where the woman was taken. She was going home.
The rain fell, the woman muttered and rolled her eyes up into her head and the Elk sped on, out along the whale road—and nothing was the same again.
Four days later the woman was burning with fever and babbling and Hring was casting hooks on lines behind, baited with coloured strips of cloth in a forlorn attempt to catch fish.
But, as Bagnose observed gloomily, they would have to be flying fish to catch up with the Fjord Elk.
Meanwhile, the water in the stoppered leather bottles was being filtered through two layers of fine linen to get rid of the floaters.
Then an oar snapped with a high, sharp sound as a blade finally caught sideways on to the waves. The shards flew, the butt end leaped up and the shield slammed back across the thwarts. A man howled as it cracked his forearm.
And Pinleg, in the prow as lookout, called out, 'Land!'
My father turned expectantly to Einar, who glowered and said nothing. So my father gave a short curse, then yelled out, `Shield oars inboard. Sail down. Move!'
For a moment, I thought Einar would leap to his feet, and braced myself to spring at him. But he only shifted, as if cocking a buttock to fart, then settled again, stroking his beard and staring blackly at the deck.
The speed came off the Elk like ice melting under salt. It felt like we were wallowing suddenly.
`To oars.'
Stiff, wet, we climbed up and took position on our sea-chest benches. I hauled with the rest of them; the head of the Elk came round, slowly, slowly, and she started to inch her way across the swell, rolling like a drowned pig now, all grace gone.
We slithered into the shelter of a bay, with a low, grey headland where tufts of harsh grass, tawny as wheat, waved softly and patches of green showed through the russets and yellow. Seaweed and lichens crusted the stones studding a beach of coarse, wet sand, meadow-grass was already sprouting shoots beyond that and there was a flush of green shoots on the birch and willow clumps. Two small rivers trickled together to empty into a shallow tidal estuary.
We splashed ashore, dragging the Elk a little way up the sand, as far as we could on shaky legs and on that tide. Birds sang and the resin-tang of life was everywhere. When the sun came out, everyone was cheered; Bagnose began more verses and the Oath-sworn swung back into the rhythm of things.
But nothing was the same.
Shelters were built, short-term affairs of springy branches roofed with wadmal cloth, the stuff we used to repair tears in the sail.
Some men took off on a hunt, having spotted deer slots, Steinthor and Bagnose among them, quartering ahead like hounds. Hring and two others dug trenches in the sand shallows to catch tidal-trapped fish, while I scuffed along the wide curve of the beach, gathering dulse and mussels until my back ached.
By nightfall, fires were lit and everyone had eaten well. The hunters had come back with some small game and a wild duck, shot in mid-flight by Steinthor, who claimed it was a lucky strike, though others disagreed. Bagnose, on the other hand, had missed and was still grumbling about having lost the arrow.
People began to dry out clothing and I had managed to wrap the woman in something warm, in a dry but where a fire was lit just for her, since Einar knew her value. He had also paired Martin and me to make sure she lived and if ever anything spoke of his anger with me, that was it.
I was less angry than I thought I would be. Caring for the woman was a lot better than the back-breaking task I would surely have been given: four hours of bailing out the Elk for Valgard.
And there was something about the woman. I had stripped her with the monk's help, although he was less than helpful since he insisted on doing it with his eyes averted, - which was awkward, to say the least.
In the dim, gloomy light of the horn lantern, guttering because the whale oil in it was thick and old, she was fish-belly white, so that the bruises and welts stood out on her skin.
Illugi Godi, when he arrived with a wooden bucket of cold seawater for compresses, sucked his teeth and glared at Martin when he saw it.
`Vigfus; sighed the monk mournfully, hugging his ruined hand under one armpit. 'He misused her, I am afraid.'
She lay, feverish, open-eyed and staring, but seeing nothing. I cleaned a lot of the filth from her, saw the flare of cheekbones and the full, ripe lips and realised she was a beauty.
À princess, perhaps,' Martin agreed, wringing out the cloth. From outside came the mutter and growl and bursts of raucous laughter that marked contented men relaxing. I wanted to be there. My father was there and I saw, with a sharp pang, that I didn't fit with him, or them. That perhaps I never would.
Ì'm hungry,' I said. 'I will watch her if you fetch food.'
Martin scrambled to his feet, wincing. I could almost feel the throb of that wounded finger, which he should have had cauterised, lest it fester and the rot spread so that his hand or even arm might need to come off. I told him so and he paled, whether at the idea of losing the limbs or having it seared with a hot iron, I did not know. Both, probably.
The woman stirred on the pallet of soft rushes and cloth, spoke again in that infuriating speech, so near to something I could understand, yet still foolishness. Her eyes opened; she saw me, stared, said nothing.
`How do you feel?' I asked.
Nothing.
Ì am Orm,' I said slowly and patiently, as to a child. Òrm,' I added, patting my chest. `You?' And I indicated her.
Her mouth moved, but nothing came. After all that babble, I thought wryly, now there is no sound at all.
Martin reappeared with two bowls of what smelled like meat stew. There was bread, fire-dried and with most of the mould cut off, and his arms were full of leather cups and a matching bottle.
The woman saw him and thrashed wildly, backing away. I held her, made soothing noises, but her wild eyes were fixed on him and she bucked and kicked until, exhausted, she couldn't move.
`Leave the food and go,' I said, 'otherwise she will be like this and no help to herself. Or Einar.'
He blanched at that name. 'I did nothing to her,' he bleated. But he left my bowl and cup and went.
I fed her small portions of the meat stew, which she sucked greedily, but seemed too weak to make much of. But when I looked, a fair bit of it had gone down her neck.
'Hild,' she said, suddenly, as I wiped gravy as gently as I could from lips whose fullness, I realised, had a lot to do with being swollen and split.
'Hild,' I repeated and grinned, pleased at this progress. She almost smiled, but her lips cracked open and oozed blood and she winced. Then, abruptly, she stiffened.
`Dark,' she said, staring at me, though I realised she couldn't see me at all. 'Dark. Alone. Dark. In the dark . . .'
Her eyes rolled up to the whites and she was gone, back into the babble. But I had understood her, saw now that she spoke some broad dialect of which I could understand one word in four. It was some form of Finn, which I had known because of Sigurd, Gudleif's other fostri, who had come from that land.
A tear squeezed, fat and quivering, from under one eyelid and rolled down her neck. When Illugi Godi came with salves he had made for the bruises and welts, I told him what had happened and he sat back on his heels and considered, pursing his lips. A louse moved in his beard and he plucked it absently and crushed it, still thinking.
`Well, at least Einar will have some more of this puzzle, but whether it solves anything is harder to tell,'
he mused. 'At least he may be more pleased with you, boy.'
`Not I with him,' I responded and he nodded sadly.
Àye, he is in the wrong. Eyvind deserved better and to break an oath is a bad thing. I think he knows it, too.'
`Perhaps the message from Odin's raven was meant for him then,' I offered and Illugi looked at me cautiously.
`You have too many years for one so young,' he muttered tersely and left, leaving the salves behind.
That night I dreamed of a white bear I couldn't seem to avoid, one with black eyes who chased me round a wind-lashed room full of spars and sails and finally landed on my chest, a great weight, bearing down . . .
I woke with something warm and heavy on my body, the but lit only by the remaining embers of the fire.
I tried to sit up but a hand shot out, long and white and strong enough to shove hard on my breastbone and force me back on to the bed.
Her hair was hanging down in mad tangles, her cheekbones flaring in the red light, her eyes clear and black—black as Einar's own, I noted. There were shadows under them and harsh lines carving the sides of that slapped-red mouth. The strong hand which fastened me to the bed had stark blue veins, proud on the pale skin.
Mesmerised, I watched her sway above me, lean down, stare into my eyes.
Òrm,' she said and I could not move. 'I know what you seek. I know where the forge is. I went there, but was too big to get in, too afraid. The other . . . the Christ priest's hound caught me. But I must go back. Take me back. I have to find a way to the dark . . . to the dark place where she is.'
And she was gone, fallen forward on to me, with no more weight than a husk and for all that it was a thump, it drove no breath out of me—just the opposite. I found myself holding her, caging her as her head lay on my chest, with the Thor hammer/cross biting into her cheek.
And I fell asleep like that, holding her—though, in the morning, she lay asleep in her own pallet and I wondered if I had dreamed it, but she woke and smiled at me and I saw that she was scarce older than I was.
And then she talked.
After I had fetched her gruel and water, I went to Einar and found him cross-legged under an awning, fixing the boss of his shield back on. Men were busy with tasks; I saw Hring, out in the faering, trying for fish at the mouth of the estuary.
I sat down opposite Einar and waited, Eventually, he deigned to look up at me, taking some rivet nails from his lips under the black waterfall of his hair.
`The woman is called Hild,' I told him. `She is a Finn and her village is two days up the coast from here.
Her father was called Regin and his father before him and so on back into the dim. Every smith was called Regin and the village name is Koksalmi.'
The black eyes fixed mine. 'How can you talk to her?'
Òne of Gudleif's other fostris was a Finn. I learned enough from him.'
Einar stroked his moustaches and looked towards the hut. 'What makes this Finn woman so special?'
`She is revered because she has the blood of the old smiths,' I went on. 'There is no smith there now and has not been for many years. The last one made the sword for Atil, she says, and no one but her knows the way into the forge now. All those with the blood seem to know it, but of this part I am unclear. She, too, I think. It does not seem to be a secret passed on, just something that . . . is.'
`Why is the forge important? Why is she?'
I nodded, having anticipated that. 'The monk found out that this magic Christ spear he sought had been taken there long ago and sent Vigfus to see if it was still hidden there and, if so, get it. When Vigfus failed, he tried to seize Hild, seeing she was so esteemed by the villagers and hoping they would hand it over in return for her life. She fled, to the forge, I am thinking . . . I stopped, for here her tale had splintered into fragments.
Ànd?'
I shrugged. 'Something happened there. Something that drove her into the clutch of Vigfus—but something that haunts her dreams still.'
À fetch?' demanded Einar.
I nodded. The restless spirit of the dead, the fetch, sometimes invaded other bodies, or walked around in their old shape until some strange design of their own had been accomplished. Everyone knew it.
`She says she must get back to the forge. I don't know why, but it seems if she does, she will know where the Atil sword now lies. And the hoard with it.'
Einar stroked his moustaches. He had, I noticed, shaved his cheeks and his hair was washed and nit-combed clean. I felt my own filth more as a result.
Ìnteresting,' he mused. `Vigfus is far behind and heading in the wrong direction, towards the god stone that is no use to him. Starkad knows only this village by name and seeks a Christ ikon that no longer exists in the same shape.'
`So, if we can get to this forge and the woman really does then know where the hoard is . . .' I added.
`We can leave them all behind,' finished Einar. He tapped in a rivet and nodded sombrely at me. 'You have done well. Let us forget the unpleasantness between us. You have, as Illugi Godi is pleased to remind me, an old head on young shoulders.' He squinted at me. 'Shoulders which, I am noticing, have filled since last autumn.'
He rose, moved to his sea-chest and rummaged in it, coming out with a long hauberk of mail. It was, I recalled, the one stripped from the dead fyrd leader after the fight at St Otmund's chapel.
I caught it when he threw it at me and, when I slipped it on over my raised arms, the weight made me stagger a little, but it fitted well round the shoulders and was suitably loose round the waist that a cinched belt would take the rest of the weight off.
He nodded. 'Take it. You have earned it.'
I bowed to him, as I had seen others do with Gudleif, and that pleased him. I fastened on my swordbelt and swaggered back to the fires, one hand on the hilt, salt-stained seaboots stumping.
There were good-natured catcalls and jeers and backslaps when the rest of them saw it—and not a few envious stares from older hands, who would have loved such a gift and thought a beardless youth didn't deserve it.
My father was prouder than I was of it and offered advice on its care. 'Roll it in a barrel of fine sand for a day,' he advised and everyone hooted tears at that—fine sand for a day. On this gods-cursed shore.
But all the time I was thinking to myself that I would not trust Einar, oath or not.
And, across the fire, I saw the fierce, yellow-eyed stare of naked hatred that came from Ulf-Agar, for all that he was still weak and bruised.
Life, I thought, bending and wriggling the mail off, to the thigh-slapping roars of laughter at this first attempt, was simpler when I climbed sheer cliffs for gull eggs.
6 The way the tales tell it, raiders from the sea always arrive out of the mist. Even our own sagas have followed this in recent times, with high-prowed shapes, black against the sea mist, sprinting for the unsuspecting shore to spew out armed warriors like strewn dragon teeth.
This, I know now, is because the only ones who can write about it at all were usually not there and heard it from those who hadn't sailed anywhere. Monks, the curse of truth.
And the truth is always less than the tale. We arrived at a place called Kjartansfjord out of a mist thick as gruel, gliding on black water and moving so slowly an old man swimming could have overtaken us.
Out in front, in a leaking coracle of withy and sealskin, was Pinleg, a torch in hand and more oil-soaked wrappings at his feet to keep it fed. I was on the oar and a long line ran back to the prow of the Elk, so that it looked as if we were towing her.
In fact, we were making sure there was nothing that would splinter her, while not getting lost in the mist ourselves.
In the prow of the Elk I could see my father, peering at the water. Beside him, swathed in my long, hooded cloak, was Hild and it was her we had to thank for being able to find this fishing village and fjord at all, which lay at the mouth of an estuary, further east and north than we cared to be, right up in the Karelian lands of the Finn.
Some twenty miles up the river lay her home—and the forge—so she knew the landmarks and that was just as well, for even my father's skill would never have found this place in the fog.
We crept in, like fearful sheep. Those not at the Elk's oars were armed and grim, for no one could be sure what waited for us here.
`Ship,' called Pinleg and waved the torch side to side, a signal for the Elk to back water.
Ìt's a knarr,' he added a moment later and looked at me, licking lips that were as dry as my own, despite the slick mist-wet that soaked us. We waited, slipping so slowly through water so flat and still it could have been ice; we made scarcely a ripple on it.
`Not Vigfus,' Pinleg said a moment later, the relief clear in his voice, 'but I don't know whose ship it is.
Besides it, there are only fishing boats.'
The knarr turned out to belong to Slovarkan, a trader from Aldeigjuborg. A number of the Oathsworn, being Rus from Novgorod and Kiev, had wives and family in that place, which stood at the mouth of the Tanais, and which had featured in my dreams ever since I'd heard someone say of my father that he was 'off down the Tanais'.
In my daydreams, the Tanais was a silvered serpent of a river, gliding through a land of fables, rich with treasure and adventure.
It doesn't exist at all, though, being a single name for the Volkhov, the Syas, the Mologa and all the rivers, portages, rapids and cataracts that lead from Aldeigjuborg in the north to Kiev and, eventually, the Black Sea. Along the Tanais came glass from Serkland, silk from the far Cathay lands, narrow-necked bottles from east of the Caspian, embroidered pouches from the lands of the steppe tribes—and, once, silver from beyond the steppe, from places with names like Tashkent.
But, as Slovarkan bemoaned moodily, when he realised we were less of a threat than he'd first thought, there was no silver. Sviatoslav, the great Prince of the Rus, was thrashing about against the Bulgars and the Khazars and had stopped the flow. Some, Slovarkan added darkly, were saying it was even worse, that the mines of Serkland and Tashkent were played out, which probably meant the end of the world.
We listened politely and sorted out our gear, made shelters on the shingle and, when the sun burned off the mist, went up the beach to the huddle of houses that marked the small village to try to tempt the fled people back.
Small was too big a word for it. Its name—Kjartansfjord—was bigger than it was. It was a fishing port, loud with screaming gulls and whitened with their shit. Its one big feature was a stone-built jetty where the terns dipped and wheeled. The shingle beach was webbed with strung nets.
Einar, I knew, would rather not have stopped here at all, would rather have used the mist to sneak past into the river and on up it without trace. But we needed food and water and ale. We needed time to dry out, repair, replace—but the best we could find in Kjartansfjord was some coarse, hard bread, some new rope, ships' nails and all the fish we could store away once the people realised we hadn't come to rob them.
In the end, they robbed us, which was what always happened when the Oathsworn tried trading.
Slovarkan had a cargo of hoes, axes, saws and spades, practical stuff likely to be in bigger demand than exotic bottles from east of the Caspian—but he also had three dozen bolts of good wool cloth in various colours. Since Einar had a bucket of silver, both parties were delighted to trade and a morning was spent weighing, clipping and sorting hacksilver while the ragged Oath-sworn went off with cloth to try to replace the worst of their clothing.
Einar, at first, was all for sailing on upriver the next day, as Slovarkan's knarr slipped out on the tide, southbound. He was convinced that either the trader would meet Starkad, or Starkad's drakkar would arrive at any moment.
Of course, Valgard and Rurik then pointed out that the Elk needed attention and that, if Einar sailed it upriver, he was as good as penned like a sacrificial ram. Better, they said, if the Elk hauled off down the coast a way with a minimum crew. Repairs could be done—nails had worked loose, the mast stays were frayed—while the rest went on to the forge.
That day, under wool-cloth shelters—no one wanted to stay in the stinking fish huts of the locals, even if it pissed down—two things happened that made Einar decide to send the Elk away.
The first seemed innocent enough. Pinleg was Odin's man—I found out why this day—and very devout, almost as deeply as Valknut. Whenever we made landfall, he would make a cairn of stones and decorate it with raven feathers, much frayed with use, that he kept for the purpose.
There were also Christ-followers—Martin the monk was now to be found sitting with them—and it had never been a problem. But that weasel of a monk knew what he was about and it was this day that made Einar realise what a danger he was and made me wish I had kept my blade edge-on to his tonsured head.
I was sitting, boiling leather strips to soften them and wrapping them round the metal rim of my shield before they hardened. Then I would tap them home with some rivet nails I had managed to get.
I had wanted to do this since the fight at St Otmund's chapel, when the boy's sword had bounced off the rim in a shower of sparks. The wild bounce of it had almost laid my cheek open, so I had decided then to give an enemy edge something to bite on rather than leap off.
Not that it had done that boy any good. I remembered the rain pooling in his open eyes and shivered, at which Hild placed her hand quietly on my shoulder. She was sitting behind me, braiding my hair, which had grown long and was falling in my eyes as I tried to work on the shield.
I felt the touch and tried not to let my face flame. The winks and nudges of the others, the first time she had done something like this—repairing rents in my cloak had made me wish she'd go away. Since then, I found myself enjoying her company. I was almost happy.
In fact, we exchanged smiles, her lips still chapped and swollen. She liked to be busy—it kept her from thinking too much. But nothing kept her from those moments of . . . absence . . . when her eyes rolled up and she was gone elsewhere. Into the dark.
Valknut said this sort of failing sounded to him like the falling sickness, for someone in the farm next to the one he was born on had it: a girl, he recalled. He said it was a disease that came from some Roman king, the one who was so great all the subsequent Roman kings took his name for their glory.
`She used to fall like a cut tree,' he remembered. 'Then she jerked and thrashed and foamed at the mouth, much like a man I once saw hit with an axe that laid his head open so that the inside fell out. But she was whole. Her family were used to it and all of them carried strips of leather to shove in her mouth, otherwise she would have bitten through her own tongue.'
But I did not think this was the same thing at all—or, if it was, it was a lesser version. Hild did not foam at the mouth or thrash. She just hugged herself and wailed and went away somewhere else.
I was enjoying the feeling of her at my hair as I tapped away at the shield and was aware, on the edge of my vision, that Pinleg was at his little cairn, reciting from memory the forty-eight names of Odin.
And Hring walked up to him, stood for a moment, then said, 'We think you should pull that down, for it is a heathen affront to good Christ-men.'
All those who heard it were so astonished they couldn't speak. I saw that all the Oathsworn's Christ-sworn, about a dozen of them, were standing apart, with Martin the monk lurking at their back. I saw, too, that he and Einar were looking at each other across the shingle, a battle of eyes as harsh as two rutting deer locking horns.
Pinleg stopped his reciting and slowly turned to face Hring, leaning slightly to one side as he favoured his good leg. 'Touch that cairn,' he said quietly, 'and I will take off your head and piss down your neck.'
`You are an arch-pagan,' Hring persisted, but he stumbled over the word, so that all those who heard knew it was not his own, Pinleg included. Einar caught Illugi Godi's eye, jerked his head slightly and Illugi moved to intercept the quarrel before it went too far. But he arrived too late.
Àrch-pagan,' repeated Pinleg and curled his lip. 'You can't even say it, you arse. I hear the words, but the voice belongs to that dung-faced little fuck hiding behind you all.'
Hring flushed at that, for it was true and he was aware that he had delivered his challenge badly.
Embarrassment and frustration made him stupid. 'He has two good legs, though,' he said.
There was the briefest of pauses; the world held its breath. It was unspoken, but a rule, that no one made a joke of Pinleg's crippled limb. Even Hring knew he had gone too far. Perhaps, like me, he had reasoned that runty Pinleg was no danger.
When the focus of the quarrel then landed up in his balls, swung with considerable force, driving the air out of him with a savage whoof and the pain into him with a leap of blinding tears, he should have seen sense.
Instead, writhing, his hands clutched between his legs, he screamed out through the snot and tears and pain: 'Holmgang!'
Once out, it couldn't be put back. The news that Pinleg and Hring were to fight spread and even those away on a hunt hurried back.
Illugi Godi, after consulting with a grim-faced Einar, had the proper area paced out and roped off with strips of cloth and as much true ceremony as could be mustered under the circumstances. Then Pinleg and Hring appeared, stripped to the waist, bareheaded and armed with sword and a shield.
The holmgang was simple enough. You fought in an enclosed area with no armour and the same weapons. If you put one foot outside—going on the heel, as it was called—you lost. If your blood was spilled, you lost. If you ran, you lost—and were counted a nithing, with no honour. The only other way out was to win. There's a lot more ceremony and a few more rules, but that's the weft of it and all anyone standing in the square of it needs to know.
Pinleg looked ridiculous, a white body with ribs showing, scrawny as an old chicken. Another of the Oathsworn, who had never seen him fight, actually jeered. Hring was much more powerfully built and stepped up, swinging his sword to loosen his arm.
But I saw Pinleg was muttering to himself, that his head was shaking and I felt the hairs all over my body prickle.
They stepped into the roped area and Illugi Godi began the ritual, cleansing the combat, making sure no bloodprice penalty lasted with the winner from his friends or family.