Read Online The Prow Beast by Robert Low - Free Book Online

nearby. He chewed bread, which he tore idly from a chunk, and he was smeared with black – wet charwood, I was thinking, from where he had fought a fire earlier. There was the red line of a helmet rim on his forehead and brown marks on his nose from the noseguard iron-rot.
    There were two more. One was a Svear by his accent, with a striking black beard, streaked with white so that he seemed to have a badger on his face. His hair was also black and iron-grey, with a single thick brow-braid on the right side, banded in silver. He was naked from the waist and his right arm, from wrist to shoulder all round, was blue-black with skin-mark shapes and figures – a tree, I saw, and gripping beasts among others.
    I knew him from the old days and he had been less salted then. Even if I had not, the skin-marks revealed him as Randr Sterki, for it was well-known that he had adopted this shieldbiter perversion, which was said to be magic, for strength or protection or both. If I had been in doubt of who it was, there was the leather thong round his neck and, swinging on the end of it across the matted hair of his sweat-gleaming chest, was Sigurd’s silver nose.
    He strode to the pitfire and shoved a cooled length of iron back in it, then turned to the second man, who watched him with his hands on his hips and a sneer on a clean-chinned face with a neat snake moustache. His yellow hair was caught up in a thong and a braided one round his brow kept any stray wisps off his face. With his blue tunic and green breeks and silver armrings, it was clear he liked himself, this one, while the inlaid hilt of the sword at his waist told me he was probably master of the second ship. I did not know him at all, but he spoke with a Dane lilt.
    ‘This will not serve,’ he told Randr Sterki. ‘We are wasting time here.’
    ‘My time to waste,’ Randr Sterki answered, sullen as raincloud, working the length of iron deeper into the coals of the pitfire.
    ‘No,’ said the other impatiently. ‘It is not. It belongs to Styrbjorn, who has charged us both with a task.’
    ‘You did not get your men killed and your ship all but burned to the waterline, Ljot Tokeson,’ Randr Sterki bellowed, whirling on the man. ‘I beat the Oathsworn in battle, not you…and somewhere around here is Orm Bear Slayer’s silver to be dug up, his women to be taken and himself…’
    He paused and snatched up the sword from the table; the bread-eater shied away as the careless edge whicked past his ear.
    ‘I have his sword,’ Randr hissed. ‘I want the hand that wielded it.’
    I did not know this Ljot Tokeson, but he was clearly one of Styrbjorn’s men and one with steel in him, for few men gave Randr Sterki a hard time of it, especially when Randr had a blade in his hand – my blade, I realised, rescued from the Elk.
    Ljot slapped his hand on the bench, with a sound like a wet drum.
    ‘Not all your men fought and died, Randr Sterki,’ he harshed out. ‘Three bearcoats died. Three. My brother had those twelve with him for four fighting seasons without loss and you have lost three in a day.’
    The wind seemed to suck out of Randr then and he slumped down on a bench and took up a pitcher, scorning a cup to drink; ale spilled down his chest and he wiped his beard with one slow hand.
    ‘They fought hard, the Oathsworn,’ he admitted. ‘That Roman Fire did not help.’
    ‘Then you should not have lost your head and thrown it,’ Ljot growled. ‘You lost more of your own men to it than the Oathsworn did. It was given as an expensive gift, to make sure you succeeded in what Styrbjorn sent you to do.’
    Randr licked his lips, his eyes filled with screaming men and burning sea.
    ‘I did not know what it would do…’
    ‘Now you do,’ interrupted Ljot, sneering. ‘And if you do not want the same fate for yourself, it would be better if we did what we came to do. For my brother will tie you to a pole and hurl Roman Fire at you until you melt like ice in sunshine