The White Raven by Robert Low

running around his lands, frightening folk with their swords and I did not think he would take kindly to me having kept the secret of Atil's tomb from him all these years. Worse, I had barefaced lied to him about the tale being true.
    There was a deep sick feeling in me that I might, after all, have to trade with Klerkon.
    'We should beware the night,' Botolf declared. 'Klerkon is a fox for cunning and he has that Kveldulf with him, too.'
    Kveldulf — Night Wolf — was a man rumoured to be other than a man when the moon came up. Finn grunted and picked some choice morsels out of the pot and Botolf tilted his head questioningly, just as Ingrid told him to pull his wooden foot back from the fire, for it was charring.
    'You do not agree, Finn Horsehead?' Botolf said mildly, though he was annoyed, both at his own foot-carelessness and Finn's casual dismissal of his plan.
    Finn, wiping gravy from his beard, chewed and shook his head.
    'You have all gone soft and forgotten about what we truly are,' he said, harsh as crow-song, his face blooded by the fire. 'What would we do in Klerkon's sea boots?'
    There was silence. Botolf looked at Kvasir, who looked at me, cocking his head like a bird, the way he had taken to doing recently. The certainty of it struck us all, so that we almost leaped up at the same time.
    Thralls squeaked; Thorgunna, alarmed, demanded to know what was happening, grabbing up the long roasting fork.
    'It has already happened,' Finn declared as we headed for the door. 'I went outside to see for myself.'
    'And said nothing?' I roared, sick with the surety that, even knowing, I could have done nothing. Kvasir ducked out the door and Thorgunna shushed the squealing thralls and demanded to know what was happening. Cormac bawled, red-faced.
    Kvasir came back in, the rain-scented night swirling in with him, rank with woodsmoke. He nodded to me.
    'What is happening?' demanded Thorgunna with a roar. 'Are we attacked?'
    We were not, nor would we be. Klerkon had done what any sensible sea-raider would do, given that his enterprise had not woven itself as tight as he would have liked. He had made the best of matters.
    As Kvasir explained it, soothing and soft and patting to Thorgunna, I opened the door and stepped out to where the wind soughed, driving a mist of cloud over the moon, heavy with smell of wet earth and rain. But that could not hide the sharp tang of smoke and the horizon glowed where Tor's steading burned.
    In the smeared-silver dawn, I rode over with Kvasir, Finn and Thorgunna to where the raven feathers of smoke stained the sky, but there was nothing left of Gunnarsgard other than charred timbers. Flann's body was where it had been and crows flapped heavily off it as we came up, but they had taken Stoor, body and head both. There was only one other corpse and that was a shrivelled horror perched on a bench in the black ruin of the hov.
    Thorgunna slithered off the back of her pony, her dress caught up between her legs and looped over her belt in front for riding, so that it looked as if she wore fat breeks. Her strong calves flexed as she stumped to where the hall smoked damply and stood, legs slightly apart, rocking backwards and forwards for a long moment, staring at the grisly mess.
    'Tor,' she said eventually and I nodded. It made sense —Klerkon dealt in profit and had killed the useless, hamstrung Tor, then taken his thralls and his woman and everything he could, down to the very chickens.
    Thorgunna bent, picked something up, turned and walked back, looking up at where I sat on the pony.

    She placed one hand on my knee and I felt it tremble like a nested bird. In her dirt-calloused palm was a snapped thong and a bone slice threaded on it. Tor Owns Me , said the runes on it; one of the tokens Tor tied on the neck of his thralls in case any thought of running. Klerkon had herded them to Dragon Wings and a new market — and not just the thralls.
    He had taken what profit he could and gone off to brood