The White Raven Read Free Page A

'all our men have been leaning to the left a little more.'
    I did not understand him and said so.
    'As if they had axes or swords weighing their belts,' he answered flatly. He shifted sideways to allow a deerhound to put its chin on my knee and gaze mournfully up at me.
    'Eventually, a man has to choose,' he went on. 'We came up the Rus rivers of Gardariki with Jarl Brand almost five years ago, Orm. Five.'
    'We agreed to serve him every year,' I pointed out, feeling — as I always did when I fought this battle —
    that the earth was shifting under my feet. 'I am remembering that you, like the rest, enjoyed the pay from it.'
    'Aye,' Kvasir admitted. 'The first year and the next were good for us, though we lost as much as we gained, for so it is with men such as we — it comes hard and goes easy. Those were the times we thought you had a plan to get us outfitted and so return to the Grass Sea to find Atil's silver tomb again. Then you took land from the jarl.'
    'We had no ship of our own until we built one,' I protested, feeling my cheeks and the back of my neck start to prickle and flame at the lie of it. 'We need a . . .' The word 'home' leaped up in me, but I could not say it to these, whose home was the shifting sea.
    'Anyway,' I ploughed on stubbornly, 'while there was red war we were welcome in any hov that esteemed Jarl Brand; when red war is done with, no-one cares for the likes of us. Why — there are probably not two halls along the whole coastline here glad to see a boatload of hard men like us sail into their happy lives.
    Would you prefer sleeping in the snow? Eating sheep shite?'
    'The third year of war was hard,' admitted Kvasir, 'and made a man think on it, so that we were glad, then, of a hall of our own.'
    That third year of red war against the enemies of Jarl Brand had spilled a lot of blood, right enough, but I had not known the likes of Kvasir had thoughts such as he admitted to now I gave him a sharp look, but he matched me, even with one eye less.
    'Last year made it clear you were finding reasons not to go where we all thought you should,' he declared.
    'And while we spent, you hoarded, which we all thought strange in a young jarl such as yourself.'
    'Because you spent I hoarded,' I replied hotly. 'A jarl gives and armrings are expensive.'
    'Aye, right enough,' replied Kvasir, 'and you are a byword for the giving out, for sure. But this year, when Erik became rig-jarl of all, you had to be made to start the Elk building and thought more of trade and horses.'
    'A ship like the Elk costs money,' I bridled back at him. 'Good crewmen need purse-money and keep —
    or had you planned to go silver-hunting with what remains of the Oathsworn only? There are a dozen left in all the world and two of them are in Hedeby, one caring for the addled other. Hardly enough to crew a knarr, never mind go raiding.'
    Kvasir rode out the storm of my scorn, then thumbed snot from his nose and shrugged. He took to looking at me with some sadness, I was thinking, which did not make my temper any cooler.

    'You have tried to make those left into herders of neet and horses, with a hayfield to plough and a scatter of hens scratching at the door,' he growled.
    'Shows what you know,' I snapped back, sulky as a child, digging the point of the sabre into the beaten earth at my feet and gouging out a hole. 'We coop our hens — had you not noticed?'
    He wiped his fingers on his breeks.
    'No. Nor want to, when it comes to it,' he replied levelly. 'I am thinking none of the others know much about hens, or hay, or horses either. They know ships, though — that's why all of them are cutting and hauling timber for Gizur every day, building the new Fjord Elk. That's why they stay — and I would not be concerned at gaining a crew, Orm; Thorkel, I am thinking, is only the first to arrive looking for a place at an oar. Even after five years the silver in that hoard is bright.'
    'You have a wife,' I pointed out, desperate now, for he was