The White Raven Read Online Free PDF

had been placed and the Fjord Elk was finished.
    I remembered the first of that name, the one I had been hauled up the side of at fifteen, plucked from a life at Bjornshafen into the maelstrom of sea-raiding, stripped from a life of field and sea into one of blade and shield. There was, it seemed to my sinking soul, no way back — and the hulk of all those steading dreams was wrecked beyond repair by my own heart-leap of joy at the sight of what Onund and Gizur had crafted. I had paid it scant attention before, not wanting to see it grow, not wanting to feel the power of the prow beast, dragging me from the land. Now the sight of it struck me like Thor's own hammer.
    It was sleek and new, smelling of pine and tar and salt, rocking easily at the wharf we had built, while men flaked the new sail on the spar, a red and white striped expanse which had occupied two years of loom work. I had paid Hoskuld in silver and promises for that sail; this new Elk had sucked the last of what little fortune I had away.
    There was carved scrollwork on the sides and on the steering board; the weathervane was silvered. The meginhufr, that extra thick plank fitted just beneath the waterline on both sides of the hull, was gilded and, even now, the thralls' hands were stained blue and yellow from the painting they had done. That also had cost me a fortune — lapis and copper for the blue, ochre and orpiment for the yellow and all mixed with expensive oil.
    No wonder Hoskuld's grin was as wide as the one splitting Gizur's face — the trader could live idle for two seasons on what I had paid him for bits of this ship. The joy was on Gizur over what had been made, but it was rightly Onund's work, though the hunchback gave no more sign of contentment than the odd grunt, like a scratching bear.
    Thorgunna admitted it was a fine-looking ship, even if she sniffed at what it cost and the uselessness of it compared with a new knarr, or some decent fishing craft. And the hours it took good men to build, when they should have been mucking out stables, or spreading seaweed on fields.
    But no-one listened to her, for this was the Fjord Elk, with its antlered prow-beast and wave-sleekness.
    Gizur looked at me pointedly. My heart scudded with the wind on the wave. The moment was here and I knew what was needed — a blot ceremony, with a pair of fighting horses, the victor's sacrifice and an oath-swearing. The old Oath that bound some of us still.
    We swear to be brothers to each other, bone, blood and steel, on Gungnir, Odin's spear we swear, may
    ,fie curse us to the Nine Realms and beyond if we break this faith, one to another.
    A hard Oath, that. Once taken, it was for life, or until someone replaced you, which happened by agreement, or by challenge from a hopeful. I had not thought Odin done with us only that he dozed a little —
    but I should have known better; the One-Eyed All-Father never sleeps and when he does, one eye is always open.
    So I sighed and said to them that it would be done, when I had decided — with Finn and Kvasir — just where we should raid.
    In fact, I hoped the weather would change, from the watered-sun days which spat rain from a milk and iron sky to something harsher, with the wind lashing the pine forests like the breath of Thor and the sea rearing up, all froth and whipping mane. That would put a stop to the whole thing, at least for this season, I was hoping, for if Jarl Brand heard how men were raiding out of his lands — on top of neighbour-feuding —
    things would not go well with us in Hestreng.
    I had forgotten that, while Thor hurls his Hammer from storm-clouds, Odin prefers his strike to come out of a calm sky.

    We had one the day we took the Fjord Elk out to test it, a silver and pewter day, with the sea grey green and the gulls whirling. A good day to find out if it was a sweet sail, as Gizur pointed out, with more than enough wind to make oar-work almost an afterthought.
    The men lugged their sea-chests up to