The White Raven by Robert Low Read Free Book Online Page A

captured and I had grown tired of his bloody attempts to shake their faith by having them hold red-hot iron and the like. Klerkon was twisted when it came to Christ priests and some folk who claimed they knew said it was because one had been his father and abandoned him as a boy.
    'Priests?' I managed.
    'Aye. You knew one, once, I understand. Tame Christ-dog of Brondolf Lambisson, who ruled Birka.'
    'Birka is gone,' I harshed back at him. 'Lambisson and the priest with it.'
    Klerkon nodded, still smiling the fixed smile that never reached those slitted, feral eyes.
    'True, it was diminished the last time we paid a visit. Hardly anything worth taking and the borg had been burned. But we burned it again anyway.'
    He slid his feet off the stool and sat forward.
    'Lambisson is alive, if not entirely well. The priest also and he is even less good to look on.'
    He sat back while the wave of this crashed on me and his smile was a twist of evil.
    'I know this because Lambisson paid me to bring the priest to him,' he said. 'In Aldeigjuborg, last year it was. I plucked the priest — Martin, his name is — from Gotland, where he was easy to find, since he was asking after Jarl. Orm and the Oathsworn. Why is that, do you think?'
    I knew, felt a rising sickness at what Klerkon might still have to reveal. Lambisson and the priest Martin had set us off on this cursed search for Atil's tomb years before, when I joined the Oathsworn under Einar the Black.
    The priest had used Lambisson's resources to ferret out something for himself, the Holy Lance of the Christ-followers and used the Oathsworn to get it. Now I had it, snugged up in my sea-chest alongside the curved sabre it had made and Martin would walk across the flames of Muspell to seek me out and get that Christ stick back. What Lambisson wanted with Martin was less clear — revenge, perhaps.
    Klerkon saw some of that chase its own tail across my face and his smile grew more twisted.
    'Well,' he went on, his voice griming softly through my ears, 'perhaps this priest wanted his share of Atil's silver and so sought you out. The rumours say you found it, Bear Slayer.'
    'If so, only I know how to reach it,' I said, feeling that pointing out that fact at this time might prevent him from growing white around his mouth and a red mist in his eyes.
    This time there was no smile in the wrench that took his lips.

    'Not the only one,' he said. 'Before the priest, Lambisson gave me another task — to fetch two from Hedeby. I knew they were Oathsworn. Only later did I find out that they knew the way to this treasure of Atil, but I had given them to Lambisson by then.'
    Short Eldgrim and Cod-Biter. Their names thundered in my head and I was on my feet before I knew it; benches went over with a clatter.
    Klerkon leaped to his feet, too, but held out his empty hands.
    'Soft, soft — Lambisson wanted them hale and hearty,' he said. 'It was only recently that it came to me there might be more in this than wild tales for bairns or coal-eating fire-starers. It would seem I had the right of it — all the same, Brondolf Lambisson has a head start on us.'
    'Us?' I managed to grim out, husky and crow-voiced.
    'Together we can take him on,' Klerkon said, as if he soothed a snarling dog in a yard. 'He has gathered a wheen of men round him — too many for me, too many for you. Together . . .'
    'Together is not a word that sits between you and me,' I told him, sick with thought of what might have been done to Short Eldgrim and Cod-Biter. Neither of them knew enough — Eldgrim, perhaps, who had helped me cut the runes into the hilt of the sword, but the inside of his head was as jumbled as a woman's sewing box.
    'This is an invitation you would be wise not to turn down,' Klerkon replied and I could see the effort it took to keep his smile in place.
    'There are frothing dogs I would rather walk with,' I said, which was true, though this was hardly the time or place to be telling it. Steel rasped. Someone