In the light of the dancing lantern, guttering fish-oil smoke that was whipped away by the wind, only their eyes gleamed as they hunkered down out of the spray at one end of the ship.
I felt those eyes like brands but tried to ignore them, concentrating on the Greek captain and staring at him in turn, until he felt the burn of my eyes and whirled on his men, barking angry and pointless orders in his unease.
He had taken us aboard in two minds, that captain, caught between greed and fear. On the one hand, we had paid him well and stacked all our weapons – save mine – and that reassured him.
On the other, he knew what we were, suspected we were deserters from the Rus army at Sarkel and knew that, even armed with just eating knives and horn spoons, we might try to take his ship.
Finn suggested as much, hissing it in my ear, and they waited for my signal, huddled and miserable. I would not give it, for I was not about to risk my life for a filthy little coastal fish-trader like this.
Sarkel had fallen, the captain told us, trying to judge our reaction to that news. No one blinked much at it – what was Sarkel now to us? We had no ship and were crushed with loss. We could not set foot in the Rus lands now, so the only safe place was the Great City, where we had no prospects.
Well, that last was not quite true and Kvasir voiced it for all. He hunched himself up by my side, the wind whipping the greasy tangles of his hair. ‘You have the right of it, Trader,’ he growled, ducking as the spray lashed us. ‘This is not the ship for us.’
‘Just so,’ Finn echoed. ‘What we need is a solid knarr. Or one of those Greek dromon ships.’
‘A big-bellied one,’ agreed Short Eldgrim, picking a scab on his face. ‘That can carry a lot. There are many in Miklagard.’
‘And some more good men,’ offered Sighvat. ‘Good Norsemen or Slavs, not afraid of a hard oath.’
And they grinned like wolves, yellow-fanged in the dark, so that my stomach turned over.
I knew why they needed all this, and were looking to me to come up with a deep-minded plan to get it. I sat in the salt-slick wind, feeling the bite of it, the damp seeping through the stained wool of my tunic and the despair settling on me like morning haar in a fjord.
It was what they did – what they were. The fear they had felt just weeks before had eased, leaving only the lure of what was still out there to be found. You could not be a Northman, have the knowledge of a mountain of silver and simply leave it there.
They had not seen what I had seen and none of my horror tales of Hild’s fetch would keep them from going back.
We were still on the whale road and, in the wind that keened and thrummed the ropes, I swore I could hear Odin laugh.