Raven by Giles Kristian Page A

the Pillars of Hercules.
    ‘Who by Baldr’s hairy left ball is Hercules?’ Bothvar asked when I had spun Egfrith’s words into Norse.
    ‘He was a great hero, Bothvar, so the monk says anyway,’ I said. ‘He was the son of the Greeks’ chief god Zeus and was the strongest man in the world.’ Bothvar scratched his chin and pursed his lips. Yrsa Pig-nose nodded in appreciation.
    ‘Sounds like Thór,’ Olaf said suspiciously.
    ‘Or Beowulf,’ Sigurd suggested.
    Egfrith seemed to be enjoying the interest the Norsemen were showing in his story. He would lean forward, telling me in English, then lean back against Serpent ’s rib and study the men’s faces.
    ‘He was a great champion. A warrior of rare skill,’ I went on,addressing the next part to Sigurd, ‘but he was also cunning and full of tricks.’
    ‘Sounds like you, Sigurd!’ Uncle roared, slapping his jarl’s back and laughing.
    ‘I agree, Uncle,’ Sigurd said, a serious frown on his face. ‘It seems to me that this Hercules was the kind of man that if he pissed into the wind the wind would change direction.’ And then the jarl burst into laughter and so did we, perhaps over-wringing the cloth. For the men had been quiet since Tufi’s death. There had even been talk that we had not shaken off the bad luck that had seen us lose that Frankish hoard. Most of that talk came, as usual, from Asgot, and so I think we were all relieved that day to caulk the strakes with laughter. But that night, anchored in a steep-sided bay, the men were sullen again. Some of this, I think, was because we had run out of mead and not even Bram’s stash had survived. The trouble with not being drunk is that you think too much. Ideas fly into your head whether you want them to or not and the more you try to ignore them the louder they become.
    I was thinking about Halldor, whose face had swollen with pus and whose corpse had slowly blistered on a rain-soaked pyre. It seemed to me that there was still some nettle between Black Floki and Sigurd, because Sigurd had killed Halldor. That had hurt Black Floki’s pride, for Halldor had been his cousin and the way Floki saw it the burden of killing the man should have been his alone. There had been no hard words between Sigurd and Floki as far as I knew, but the sting was there all the same. And Halldor’s miserable death had gnawed at me ever since.
    ‘You’d be better off putting the girl out of your head, lad,’ Olaf said. Penda and I were fishing off the stern but I was hardly playing my line and Penda and I had said less than three words to each other while the low sun slipped behind the mountains to the west.
    ‘I’m not thinking about Cynethryth, Uncle,’ I said, whichwas true for once. Cynethryth was somewhere up near the bow, probably learning Norse from Asgot, which Egfrith had warned me about, though I had told him I did not know what I could do about it. ‘It’s Halldor that won’t leave me alone,’ I admitted.
    From the corner of my eye I saw Olaf roll his. We had three sacks of horsehair, which we had taken from the blaumen’s mounts, and Olaf was teasing apart the strands and then twisting them together to make new caulking.
    ‘You’d be best to put that from your mind, too,’ Olaf said. ‘No good can come of lingering on a thing like that.’
    ‘I’ve never seen a man die like that before. That’s all.’
    I looked at Olaf now and he frowned. ‘Halldor died a good death,’ he said. ‘By a good blade and holding one too.’
    I shook my head. ‘He was already dead,’ I said, remembering Halldor’s hideous, misshapen head. ‘I have never smelt anything so bad. The man was rotten. Týr knows how he bore the pain.’
    ‘I just had a bite,’ Penda said, tugging his line. Then he cursed, staring into the black water. ‘Bastard got away.’ We ignored him.
    ‘Sigurd did right by him,’ Olaf said. ‘He did what had to be done and Halldor would have thanked him for it too.’
    I shook my head.