Read The White Raven for Free Online Page B

at once.'
    Thorgunna . . . my head came up, ashamed and guilty at having forgotten her, but Botolf broadened his grin.
    'A woman, that,' he said admiringly and, just then, Kvasir appeared, Thorgunna with him, Ingrid behind her. Following on came Aoife, with Cormac on her hip and the thralls, Drumba and Heg.
    'They had barred the hall door,' Kvasir said.
    'That was sound,' Finn offered, beaming and Thorgunna huffed and folded her arms under her ample breasts.
    'That was only sense,' she spat back, 'when such friends as yours come to call.'
    'No friends of mine,' Finn answered grimly and turned a body with his toe. 'Yet, mind you, this one looks familiar.'
    'Parted at birth, I am sure,' Ingrid muttered bitterly and, for all they seemed more angry than afraid, I saw the fluster and tremble in them.
    'My sister,' Thorgunna said flatly and I blinked at that, having forgotten that Thordis was at Gunnarsgard, wife to Tor.
    'Finn — choose some good men,' I said swiftly, seeing the path clearly for the first time since the smoke had stained my world. 'Botolf — guard the women here. Kvasir — stay with your wife and command the men I leave.'
    'Guard the women,' muttered Botolf moodily. 'Guard the women . . .'
    'And your tongue,' Ingrid snapped and then, to her horror, burst into tears. Thorgunna gathered her up and turned away.

    'They came looking for you ,' she said to me suddenly. 'Yelled out your name, as if they knew you.'
    'Shot arrows into Hrafn, all the same,' Botolf added grimly, 'when he came at them for stealing his mares.
    The beast is limping about like a hedgepig, if he is standing at all.'
    Finn and I looked at each other and he looked down at the lolled body of the man he thought he knew.
    'Old friends,' he grunted.

    It was a shock seeing him at his ease beside Tor's hearthfire, feet up on a bench, 3 picking the remains of one of my mares out of his teeth with a bone needle and grinning, for he knew he had caused me as much stir as if I had found a turd at the bottom of my soup bowl.
    Klerkon. He had a good Svear name somewhere, but the dwarves guarded it as carefully as they protected the sound of cat's paws, the breath of a fish and all the other things the world had forgotten. Klerkon they called him, after his father, who had been a klerkr. In the Svear tongue, that simply meant someone who had learned Latin, though it was more often given to a Northman who had become a Christ priest.
    'A surprise for you,' he said, chuckling out of his button-nosed, bright-eyed face, the curl of grey hair framing it like smoke.
    He had a face like a statue I had seen once in the Great City, one long broken in pieces so that only the head remained. It had sly eyes, tiny horns and tight-curled hair and Brother. John, who was with me at the time, said it was a little Greek god called Pan. He had had goat legs and played pipes and fucked anything that moved, said Brother John.
    That Pan could have fathered this Klerkon, who shoved a stool towards me and indicated I should sit, as if the hall was his own. In the shadows behind him, as I searched for Tor or Thordis, I saw shapes, the grinning faces fireglowed briefly and then gone, the gleam of metal. I knew the rasp of hard men's breathing well enough and the rich smell of my own livestock cooking reeked through the hall.
    When I strode out for the smoke of Tor's steading, sick and furious, a dozen men followed. First we saw that only outbuildings burned — a byre and a bakehouse. Not long after, we found Flann, Tor's thrall and, guddling about for plunder in Flann's blood, a stranger with sea-rotted ringmail and tatters of wool and weave hung about him. He looked like something long dead risen from the grave and climbed slowly to his feet at the sight of us, wiping his palms down the front of his breeks.
    'Are you Jarl Orm?' he asked in a voice thick with Finn accent.
    'Who wants to know?' I countered and he shrugged.
    'I am Stoor and serve someone who wishes you well,' he