The White Raven Read Online Free PDF Page A

came with Hoskuld Trader, looking for you and Thorkel. They say they know Thorkel.'
    I groaned louder still, for I had an idea who they were and why they were here. Thorkel would have spread the word and here they came, the next ones wanting an oar on the finished Elk.
    'Let Finn deal with it,' I attempted. 'I don't believe you about the sun, either.'
    'Finn has already gone plank-hunting with Heg, as you ordered,' Thorgunna answered briskly, throwing a blue tunic at me. It smelled of summer flowers and clean salt air. 'But I will give you the part about the sun.
    It is there, though, somewhere in the rain clouds over the mountains.'
    There was nothing else for it. I rolled out of bed, shivering and then had to splash water on myself before Thorgunna would let me into the clean tunic and warm breeks.
    'If you had not rutted with that Aoife all night you would not stink so much,' she declared as I fastened my way into stiff shoes.
    'Keep you awake, did we?' I growled back at her. 'I seem to remember you and Kvasir making so much noise when first you arrived in this hall that I thought to build you a place of your own, just so I could get to sleep.'
    There was a hint of colour in her cheeks as she snorted her derision and turned me round to braid up my hair as though she was my mother, though I was younger only by a half-fist of years. When I turned back, she was smiling and it was not a smile you could resist.
    I lost the grin stepping out into the muddy yard, where Thorkel and four men waited patiently, in the lee of the log store. They sat picking at a rismal — a rising meal — of bread and salt fish on a platter, fat wooden ale beakers in their hands. Thorgunna would not let them into a hall of sleepers, but had offered them fair hospitality, even so.
    It was cold, a day when the last leaves whirled in russet eddies and the trees spitted a pearled sky.
    Thorkel nodded in friendly fashion, twisting his stained wool hat nervously in his hands, indicating the men.
    'This is Finnlaith from Dyfflin, Ospak, Tjorvir and Throst Silfra. They are all wondering if you need good crewmen. As am I.'
    I looked them over. Hard men, all of them. Finnlaith was clearly a half-Irisher, the other three were Svears and all had the rough-red knuckles you get from rubbing on the inside of a shield. I knew they had cuts on the backs of their other hands and calloused palms from sword and axe work, even though I could not see them. They had probably been fighting us only recently, but that was all over and a king over both Svears and Geats was being crowned in Uppsala this very year.
    'Silfra,' I said to the one called Throst. 'Why do you need me, then?'
    His by-name — Silver Owner — was a joke, he explained in his thick accent. He never owned any for long, for he enjoyed dice too much. He needed me, he added with a twisted smile, because he had heard from Thorkel and elsewhere that I had a mountain of it. Thorkel had the wit to shrug and look ashamed for a moment when I shot him a look.

    'Find Kvasir inside,' I said. 'Thorkel will show you who he is. Do what Kvasir tells you and enjoy the hospitality of my hall. There is a ship being built which may need a crew and then again, it may not.'
    Even as I said it I felt the heart of me sink like stone. The word was out, leaping from head to head like nits — Orm the White Bear Slayer, the Odin-favoured who held the secret of a mountain of silver, was preparing a ship. That attracted hard men, sword and axe men, from near and far, as Kvasir had pointed out.
    That day was the beginning of it. Every day for the next few weeks they arrived, by land and sea, in ones and twos and little groups, all wanting a berth on the Elk. The hall filled with them and their noise and Thorgunna grew less inclined to smile and more inclined to bang kitchen stuff together and cuff thralls round the ears.
    Then came the moment I had dreaded, when Gizur and Botolf came up, beaming, to announce that the carved prow-head