The White Raven Read Free

One-Eyed God.
    There was a fine sword and several good arm rings of silver, too. And the great braided rope of a silver torc, the rune-serpent mark of a jarl, the dragon-headed ends snarling at each other on the chest of a coloured tunic.
    I knew well enough what I looked like, what that made Kalk think and took it as my due when he dropped his eyes and swallowed his spit and came up grinning and bobbing and eager to please.
    Jarl Brand's return, complete with mailed men with hard eyes, had sent more than a few scurrying off his lands and the farms they left behind made fat prizes for chosen men like me. For the likes of Kalk and his son, the change made little difference — thralls were chattels, whoever sat in the high seat of the steading.
    He told us it was time to bring the horses down from the high pasture, that one had a split hoof and of how Tor Ironhand was still turning his own mares loose in the valley, which he considered his own.
    We said we would be back the next day and then rode back to the hall, towing the limping colt behind us.
    'Is this Tor's valley, do you think?' Kvasir asked eventually.
    I shrugged. 'I hope not. Thorgunna says it belongs to her, as her share of the steading. I use it because I am your jarl and the pair of you live under my roof — but both you and she can tell me to get out of it if you choose. Why do you ask?'
    Kvasir hawked and spat and shook his head. 'Seems as if you would know a thing like that. Owning a whole valley, like a pair of boots, or a seax.'
    'What? Should the land roll over and ask you to tickle its grass belly when you ride over it? Offer you a grin of rocks and congratulate you for being its owner?'
    Kvasir grunted moodily and we rode in silence again, slowly so that the lamed grey could limp comfortably. We did not speak again that day, though I felt the brooding of him on me like an itch I could not scratch.
    The next day he moved to my side, squatting by the high seat as I watched Aoife's Cormac put his fat little arms round the neck of one of the deerhounds, which licked his face until he laughed. He was so pale-headed he might have been bairned on Aoife by the white-haired Jarl Brand himself, which we suspected, since he had been given that comfort as an honoured guest. No-one knew, least of all Aoife for, as she said,
    'It was dark and he had mead.'

    Which did not narrow the search much, as we all admitted when we tried to work out who the father was.
    'What will you do about Thorkel?' Kvasir asked eventually and I shrugged, mainly because I didn't know.
    Thorkel was another problem I hoped would just go away.
    He had arrived on Hoskuld's trading knarr, which carried bolts of cloth and fine threads and needles that set all the women to yowling with delight. Stepping off the boat, pushing through the women, he had stared at me with his sea-grey eyes and grinned a rueful grin.
    I had last seen his grin on a beach in that bit of Bretland the Scots called the Kingdom of Strathclyde.
    That was where he had stepped aside and let me into the Oathsworn without having to fight, having arranged it all beforehand. I had been fifteen and raw as a saddle-sore, but Einar the Black, who led us then, had gone along with the deception with good grace and jarl cunning.
    Thorkel had gone to be with a woman in Dyfflin. Now he sat in my hall drinking ale and telling everyone how he had failed at farming, how the woman had died and how he had failed at selling leather and a few other things besides.
    He sat in my hall, having heard that the story of the hoard of Atil silver was true, the tale he had scoffed at and the reason he had wanted to leave the Oathsworn in the first place.
    'We should call you Lucky,' Finn grunted, hearing all this. Thorkel laughed, too hearty and trying to be polite, for what he wanted was back into the Oathsworn and a chance at the mound of treasure he had so easily dismissed.
    'Ever since he came back,' Kvasir mused pitching straw chips into the pitfire,