Oathsworn 1 - The Whale Road by Qaz Read Free Book Online

learning and fish out choice morsels. Lambisson thinks highly of him and keeps him close—and Brondolf is no cash-scatterer, as we know.'
    Grim chuckles greeted this and Einar scrubbed his chin. 'I have . . . uncovered some things that make me believe there is more to these Birka matters than is carved on the surface. There's a snake-knot tangle to it, though, so when I know more, you will know more.'
    Pinleg grunted and that seemed to be assent. The others milled and muttered to each other.
    Einar held up both hands and there was silence. 'Now, we are Oathsworn and have two here—Gunnar Rognaldsson, known as Raudi, and Orm Ruriksson, known as the Bear Killer. You know our oath . . . is there anyone who will stand the challenge?'
    Challenge? What challenge? I turned to my father, but he nudged me silent and winked.
    Slowly, a man stood, uncomfortably it seemed to me. A second stood with him and my father let out his breath with relief.
    Einar nodded at them. `Gauk, I know you have waited for this moment since your foot went bad on you and you lost the toes last year.'
    Gauk stepped into the firelight, his face made more gaunt with the shadows playing on it, and nodded.
    'Aye. Without those toes, my balance is gone. Sometimes, unless I am careful, I fall over like a child. One day I will do it in a fight.'
    Everyone nodded sympathetically. If he stumbled in a shieldwall, everyone was put at risk.
    `So you will step aside, with no fight and no shame?' asked Einar.
    Ì will,' said Gauk.
    'For whom?'
    `Gunnar Raudi.'
    And that was that. Gauk would be free to leave here the next day with whatever he could carry away and Gunnar Raudi would take his place. My mouth was dry. I realised that the way into a full crew of the Oathsworn was to challenge and kill someone already in it, then take the binding oath. Unless, of course, that someone volunteered to go quietly.
    Gauk and Gunnar were already clasping forearms and Gunnar was (as polite custom demanded, I learned) offering to buy what Gauk couldn't carry away on his back. Sweating and chilled, I glanced at the other man as Einar turned to him.
    `Thorkel? Are you going with no fight and no shame?'
    Ì am, for Orm Ruriksson.'
    There was murmuring at that. Thorkel was a seasoned fighter, a good axeman and I was, as Ulf-Agar yelped out, only a stripling.
    À stripling who killed a white bear,' my father snarled back at him. 'I don't recall any tales of your doings, Ulf-Agar.'
    The little man's dark face went darker still and I knew then what Ulf-Agar's curse was—that of legend.
    He wanted one to live after him; he was jealous of those who had what he sought and could not steal.
    He was welcome to it, I said to myself, since it was a lie and shame made me hide it from everyone's sight, though it sickened me.
    Einar stroked his chin, pondering. 'It's hard to give up a good man for an untried one. That's why we fight. How do we know what we get if we don't see newcomers fight?'

    Thorkel shrugged. 'No matter what he is like, he will fight better than me, for I do not want to fight at all.
    Not against the Christ-followers, for my woman in Gotland is one and I promised her—swore an Odin-oath—that I would not raid their holy places. So best if I leave, for if that is the way Birka's thoughts are going, I cannot go with them.'
    Einar scowled at that. 'You swore an oath to us all, Thorkel. Is that to be overturned by a promise to a woman? Is your oath to us less than that to a woman?'
    `You have never met my wife, Einar,' said Pinleg gloomily, his wiry body swathed in a huge cloak.
    'Breaking an oath to her is not done lightly.'
    Everyone who knew Pinleg's woman laughed knowingly. Before Einar could answer, Illugi Godi rapped his staff on a stone and there was silence.
    Ìt is not a promise to his wife,' he said sternly. 'It was an oath to Odin. However stupid that may have been, it is still an oath to Odin.'
    Òur oath is made to Odin,' Einar argued and Illugi frowned.
    Òur oath is