We all knew that, had seen the charred remains of his quiet sacrifices to Perun Thunderer, Svarog Heaven-Walker, Stribog of the winds and even Yarilo, the Shining One, who was not much more than a great prick on legs. None of those Slav fakers were a match for All-Father Odin, who gave the whispered mystery of magic to the world and none answered Dobrynya's begging to have little Vladimir come to his senses.
'Ah well,' muttered Sigurd, 'a sandpiper isn't big, but it is still a bird, as they say in Lord Novgorod the Great.'
'Have you an old granny, by some chance?' I demanded. 'If so, it may be that Red Njal is another long-lost relation.'
The boys heard this and stopped talking to look back at us briefly, before bursting into laughter at the scowl on Sigurd.
It was scowl-dark, too, in the storehouse the Oathsworn were using as a hov. It was thick with fug and heat from a newly-dug pitfire but the faces round it, glowing in the red-dim light, were drawn and long. They made an effort to be pleased to see me Onund Hnufa even smiled but Pai was sick and the weight of a dying lay on them and smothered all joy.
Pai was in a shadowed corner, the wheezing rasp of his breathing ripping through the bellies of all those in the storehouse we now called our hall. Bjaelfi hovered nearby, while Jon Asanes sat at the boy's head, pressing cooling cloths to his brow.
Naked and gleaming, slick with sweat, every breath from Pai was a sucking wheeze. Thordis kept trying to wrap him, for it was chilled this far from the fire, but Pai would throw the covers off, thrashing droplets of sweat everywhere. I looked at Thordis, whose stare was blank and yet said everything. Bjaelfi moved away, back to the fire where a pot bubbled.
'How is the boy?' demanded Gizur and Bjaelfi hunkered down to stir the pot.
'Not good,' he admitted.
'He is choleric,' declared Jon firmly. 'I read it in one of the monk's books in Kiev. Fevers mean you are choleric.'
'Just so,' muttered Bjaelfi. 'I am sure you know best, Jon Asanes.'
Stung, Jon scowled back at him. 'What cures are you giving him? We would all like to know.'
Bjaelfi spooned some of the liquid from the pot into a wooden bowl and straightened with a grunt. He gave his beard a smooth and Jon a level stare.
'Sharing such wisdom would be like pouring mead into a full horn with you, boy,' he said finally. 'Much of it would be wasted.'
Men chuckled and Jon flushed. Wearily, Bjaelfi turned to move back to where Pai lay and almost collided with me.
'Jarl Orm. .'
Tjaelfi. How bad is he?'
The little healer shook his towsled head mournfully. 'He will die. The cold has taken his lungs. I have seen it before and have used what I know honey, lime flowers and birch juice, plus a good Frey prayer I know. Some recover I thought he might, being young. But he is weak in the chest. Always coughing is Pai.'
'Jarl Orm. .'
Tjaelfi. How bad is he?'
The little healer shook his towsled head mournfully. 'He will die. The cold has taken his lungs. I have seen it before and have used what I know honey, lime flowers and birch juice, plus a good Frey prayer I know. Some recover I thought he might, being young. But he is weak in the chest. Always coughing is Pai.'
I watched the little man move back to Pai's side, then found Kvasir at my elbow, his face strange in the darkness because his patch and the charcoal he smeared round the other eye against the day's white glare melded into one and made him look like a blind man, eyes bound in a rag.
'Two of the druzhina will die this night also,' he told me quietly. 'One with the same thing as this, the other bleeding from the backside. He spent too long squatting to have a shit and it froze in him, they say. He burst something inside straining, which is no way for a warrior to die.'
Thorgunna appeared, holding a bowl of something savoury and a hunk of dark bread. She smiled and nodded. 'Hard times, Trader,' she said. 'I wish I was back at Hestreng, for sure. I have a feather-filled blanket there I am missing now. That Ingrid will be cosied under it with Botolf.'
She said it wistfully, with no hint of bitterness, using the sometime-name, Trader, that folk called me in happier times.
I touched her arm in sympathy, Knowing how she felt, sick with the knowledge of what we would have to face before she got back to her feather-filled blankets. She went back, chivvying the two Scots thrall women, Hekja and Skirla, into some work.
Later, when Bjaelfi indicated that it was time, I moved to where Pai lay, panting and rolling with sweat, his hair plastered to a face as white as the snow outside. Finn was there, with Thorgunna and Thordis busy with cloths and soothing on one side, more to keep them from weeping than any help for Pai.
Jon Asanes, pale and red-eyed, was on the other, his hand soft on Pai's wrist. I remembered that they had been of an age and had been friends from the moment they had met in Kiev, had laughed and drunk together, as youths will. I remembered because I was not so much older and yet it seemed there were stones younger than me; I could never be part of their joy, envied them as they tested their strength and walked, arms draped round each other's necks.
'Heya,' I said softly to Pai. 'Here you are, then, lolling about with women dancing round you. I might have known.'
He managed a smile, struggling so much to breathe that he could not speak. His eyes were wild, though, fretted and white.
'I. . have done. . nothing,' he managed and Finn shook his head.
'The gods need no reason to inflict what they do,' he growled, bitterly.
'No. I mean. . I have. . not lived. . enough. I wanted. . to be known. My name. .'
He stopped, exhausted and I heard Finn grunt as if hit, the muscle in his jaw shifting his beard. Olaf stepped into the space between us and Pai managed a faint grin while his chest heaved.
'Story,' he said. 'A funny. . one. Keep. . it. . short, mind. I have. . places to go.'
Olaf, his jaw so clenched I wondered if he could speak at all, nodded. They had been friends of a sort, I remembered Pai admiring Olaf for his abilities, envying him for his status and Olaf, always amused by the glorious clothes that gave the youth his nickname, Pai, the Peacock. And, strangely, Olaf envied Pai, wanted to be that age himself, just that bit older than now and a young hawk in the wind.
'There was an outlaw who had outstayed the time allotted for him to safely quit the land,' Olaf began in a voice so low only those close to him could hear it. 'We shall call him. . Pai. He drank too much in a feasting hov and fell asleep, then dreamed a dream that the other guests had decided to kill him, since he was now fair game. Four came at him from every side. One held a spear, to stab his eyes from his head. One had an axe to smash his fingers to pulp and chop his legs. One had a sword of considerable size, planning to ram it down his throat and the last had a knife, to cut off his tozzle and stick it in his ear.'
Pai gasped out a laugh, started to cough and could not stop for a long time. As he grew quieter, Olaf cleared his throat.
Pai woke with a scream to find that he had, indeed, been snoring in a feasting hall, but not a friendly one he was surrounded by enemies. One had a spear and the grin of an eye-remover. One had an axe that had clearly smashed fingers before. One had a sword of considerable size but there was no fourth man with a knife.
'Pai looked everywhere, but there was definitely no fourth man. "Thank you, Odin," he gasped, settling back on his bench as the men closed in, "it was only a terrible dream."'
Pai chuckled and coughed and jerked and his chest heaved for a few moments longer, then stopped. Thorgunna, after a pause, wet her cheek and placed it close to his mouth, then shook her head and closed his eyes. Jon Asanes bent his head and wailed.
Finn let out his breath in a long sigh. 'Fair fame,' he grunted, to no-one it seemed to me. 'That was what he wanted. In the end, that is all there is.'
'A good tale,' I said to Olaf. 'You gave him what he wanted and not every man can do that for a dying friend. You have a gift.'
Crowbone, his different-coloured eyes glittering bright, shook his head, made so white in the light that he looked like a little old man.
'Sometimes,' he whispered, 'it is an affliction.'
There was talk of treating our dead in the old way, for we were all sure the people of the village would dig up the bodies and strip them of their finery. Vladimir refused, since that would have involved demolishing a building for the timbers to burn him.
'You have stripped them of winter feed, so that they will have to slaughter what livestock they have left,' growled Sigurd, annoyed that his men might not lie peacefully under the snow for long. 'They will be eating their belts and lacing thongs by Spring what does one building mean now?'
Vladimir folded his arms and glared back at his druzhina captain. 'They are still my brother's people but I will rule them one day. I want them to fear me but not hate me.'
Sigurd could not see the sense of it, that was clear I was having trouble working out this princely way of ruling myself but Jon Asanes made Vladimir smile and nod.
'The Prince is a shepherd to his people,' he observed. 'A shepherd fleeces his flock. He does not butcher them.'
I left them weaving words round it, feeling like a man walking on greased ice. I knew what Jon and Vladimir and little Olaf did was the future of the world, the way jarls and princes and kings did things these days and in the ones to come. I also knew I did not have one clear idea of how to do it myself and that Jon Asanes was more fitting to be a jarl of this new age than I was.
But not a jarl of the Oathsworn. Not them, stamping their feet against the cold as they stood in sullen clumps round the dark scars of new-mounded graves, hacked out with sweat and axes from a reluctant earth. These were men of the old ways.
I took the chance to braid them back to one with a few choice words on breaking oaths and what it had cost. No-one needed much telling; all those who had run off with Martin and Thorkel had died and Finn made it glaringly clear that anyone else who tried the same would not live to feel Odin's wrath.