Solveig’s blood raged around her body. At one moment she sat up, not knowing where she was, and reached out, gabbling gibberish no one could understand. At another she lay back, soaked in her own sweat, gasping for breath. She screamed; then she lay so silent that her companions thought words had left her forever; she trembled and moaned.
Odindisa nursed Solveig all night. She laid her head across her lap, she said and sang spells over her and rubbed honey into her wounds; she pounded thyme and mint and other herbs and mixed them with a yolk and fed them to Solveig, fingertip by fingertip.
“As long as the bites don’t blacken,” she told everyone. “As long as her wounds still hurt her . . .”
At times, Solveig half heard voices around her.
“Wrong. We were wrong. We should never have brought her.”
“The Norns are against her.”
“Scarcely a day’s carving.”
“A fool’s errand! . . . No more chance than a frog flying to the moon.”
But although Solveig could hear snatches and knew they were talking about her, she was unable to reply.
In the middle of the night, Solveig had a waking dream. She was a tiny girl again, no more than two or three, and so terrified that her limbs locked and she was unable to move.
She could see her grandmother Amma standing over her and hear her frosty voice.
“I’ve told you before, Halfdan. Her eyes aren’t right, and she’s a weakling. You should have done it right away.”
Solveig’s father sat hunched over a bench, still as a stone.
“You should have left her out on the ice,” Amma went on. “Food for the wolves. We did that in the old days. It’s cruel, I know that, but the weakest in the litter can bring down the whole pack.”
“Enough!” Halfdan growled.
“Especially when there’s scarcely enough food to go around. A slip of a daughter. The last thing you need now that you’re on your own.”
Solveig’s father stood up, and in doing so he knocked over the bench. “I made my choice,” he said, “and I’d choose the same again.”
“She’s a death bringer,” Amma said bitterly. “She’s already killed her mother. Sun-strength! She’s a weakling and she . . .”
“No,” interrupted Halfdan. “Solveig is my blood and I’m hers. I did as I promised Siri, and she would curse you for what you’ve said.”
“I warned you, Halfdan,” Amma said, and she clenched her bony fist. “I warned you Sirith would die in childbirth. You mark my words, the day will come when Solveig’s weakness will harm others—maybe her own father.”
“Enough!” said Halfdan again. Then he scooped up his little daughter, and in her waking dream, Solveig could feel him holding her tight, very tight.
When Solveig opened her eyes, soon after dawn, this dream was still with her, bleak and painful. But she was still being held.
Then she saw Odindisa gazing down at her and realized she was lying in Odindisa’s lap.
“You’ve come back,” said Odindisa, smiling gently.
But Solveig couldn’t escape the night voices she had heard all around her. “What will he do with me?” she whispered.
“Who?”
“Red Ottar. He won’t sell me . . .”
“Never!” said Odindisa dismissively. “Over my dead body. I tell you, if you weren’t so strong, your bites would have done for you! You’d have died in the night.”
Strong? That was the last thing Solveig felt. She felt weak and frail.
“You’ve . . . mothered me,” she whispered.
“Now then. Did you talk to Oleg?”
Solveig sighed. She felt too tired to reply. She closed her eyes.
“I thought you would,” said Odindisa. “And you found the brooch.”
“It’s so beautiful,” Solveig whispered. “I told Oleg you’d come for it.”
Odindisa clicked her tongue. “Red Ottar’s changed his mind.”
Solveig opened her eyes again. They felt so heavy-lidded.
“I’ll buy it all the same, with Slothi’s hack-silver. I’ll buy it and tell Red Ottar later.”
“But . . .”
“He’s always changing his mind. Like a weather vane. To begin with he’ll be angry, but then he’ll be pleased . . .”
“How well you know him,” Solveig murmured.
Odindisa didn’t reply. She just narrowed her eyes and gave Solveig a sly look.
Then Solveig remembered the glass bead Oleg had given to her. Did I drop it on the quay? she wondered. Did Bruni or Vigot pick it up?
While Solveig was still wondering, Vigot appeared—as if by thinking of him she had somehow summoned him. He looked down at her, sharp-eyed.
“You again!” said Odindisa. “Vigot has been our regular night visitor.”
Solveig gazed up at him and gave him a smile as pale as the first aconite. “You saved me,” she said. “You saved my life.”
“What did you think I’d do? Stand and watch?”
“Shhh!” said Solveig gently, and her eyes filled with tears. “I’m thanking you.”
Vigot twisted his long fingers. Then he rubbed his right cheek where his wrestling opponent had gouged it.
“Still sore?” Solveig asked him.
“Not as sore as you.”
Solveig wondered whether to ask Vigot about the violet-gray bead, but she didn’t want him to think she was accusing him, so she decided to ask Bruni first.
Solveig’s next visitor was Red Ottar.
“If she weren’t so strong,” Odindisa told him, “the neck bite would have finished her.”
“Strong, is she?” said Red Ottar, staring at Solveig. “First your hand . . . Now this.”
Red Ottar could see Solveig was trembling, but that didn’t stop him.
“A treasure! That’s what Turpin called you. A bagful of bad luck—that’s what I say.”
Somewhere within her, Solveig rebelled. She refused to allow Red Ottar to wound her further.
“The gods are against you.”
“No!” she said huskily, and she screwed up her eyes. “If they were, I wouldn’t be here now.”
“I’m giving you one more chance,” the skipper told her. He shook his red head and then jammed his right thumb against the tip of her nose. “Anyhow, you’re needed on the quay. As soon as you can.”
“She’s not well enough today,” said Odindisa.
“Today’s the day to display our weapons,” Red Ottar told them. “Those fine scramasaxes! And that sword with the runes, the one Bruni made last winter.”
“I haven’t seen that yet,” Solveig said in a weak voice.
“You won’t forget it. It cuts itself into your skull.”
Solveig blinked. “I’ve got enough wounds already,” she said.
“And then tomorrow,” the skipper went on, “we’ll put out the carvings.” He glared at Solveig. “Such as they are. The weapons, the carvings, yes, and we’ve got to find a river pilot. Three men are coming aboard this afternoon.”
“Three?” said Odindisa.
“So we can choose the best. Everyone can have their say—for or against.”
Solveig hoisted herself onto her elbows. She was bright-eyed, flushed.
“Lie down, girl,” Red Ottar told her. “You’re feverish.”
Red Ottar soon dismissed the first pilot to come aboard. He sported a long, wispy fair mustache and had an annoying way of nodding the whole time while Red Ottar put questions to him—questions he slowly repeated before getting under way with his long-winded answers.
“Now you’re asking me how many days from Novgorod to Smolensk,” repeated the man. “Aren’t you asking me that?”
“I am!” barked the skipper. “I’m asking you, not the other way around. Have I got to wait until the Volkhov freezes over?”
“Until the Volkhov freezes over? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Get out!” Red Ottar said. “Torsten, ask him to ask you if he knows his way to the gangplank!”
The second pilot looked as mushy as a bag of slops. In fact, he even had some difficulty sitting down, and he sounded out of breath the whole time.
“Like your food, do you?” Red Ottar inquired.
“I do,” said the man with a squashy smile.
“So I see. You’ve piloted boats all the way to Kiev?”
“Mustn’t tell a lie,” the man replied. “That’s what my mother always said.”
“Well, have you or haven’t you?” demanded Red Ottar.
“Yes,” said the man, and he gave a high-pitched giggle. “Yes, I have! If I’d said no, I’d have been telling a lie.”
Bard brayed with laughter, and that made Brita laugh as well, but all the companions eyed each other and knitted their brows.
“Got you!” the fat man gurgled.
“Giggle, gaggle . . . gurgle!” Red Ottar exclaimed, waving his right hand. “Take him away.”
While the crew was waiting for the third pilot to come aboard, Solveig stood up and leaned against a gunwale. She still felt as unsteady as an old woman, and her neck was so swollen she couldn’t turn her head to left or right. But it was the last day of April, the air was soft, and she could hear the shorebirds calling.
Then she became aware that someone was standing beside her.
“Your neck,” said Brita. “It looks like boiled reindeer sausage.”
Solveig blinked.
Brita took Solveig’s arm and studied her neck very carefully. “Can I touch it?” she asked her.
But Solveig was saved from Brita’s scrutiny by Bard, who came hopping across the deck. “Hey!” he exclaimed, grabbing his sister’s hand. “Come and watch Torsten.”
The helmsman had a length of rope between his hands, and before long Solveig heard him saying, “What about a Turk’s head, then?”
“A Turk’s head?” Bard repeated. “A Turk’s head, is that what you said?”
“You’re as bad as that first pilot,” Torsten told him.
Brita bared her teeth. “What is it?” she asked, as if she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. “A Turk’s head.”
“A stopper knot at the end of a rope. I’ll show you.”
“What’s it for?” asked Bard. “Oh! I know. When you’ve threaded the rope through an eye.”
“A ring, you mean,” said Brita.
“A ring is an eye,” Bard told her.
“Why’s it called a Turk’s head?” asked Brita.
Twice the helmsman twisted the end of the rope back around itself. Then he tucked in the end and held it up, but Brita was still none the wiser.
“It looks like a Turk’s headdress,” Torsten told her. “You’ll see.”
“What is a Turk, anyhow?” Brita asked.
But then, from behind her, Solveig heard Slothi saying very loudly, “No! Certainly not. It’s too risky.”
“He’ll change his mind. He always does.”
“No, Odindisa.”
“You . . . mean-minded Christian!”
They’re talking about buying Oleg’s brooch, thought Solveig. They must be.
“Slothi!” Vigot called out. “Slothi! Come and have a look at this!”
“Gladly!” said Slothi. He stood up and walked over to the far gunwale, where Vigot had hauled in one of his lines.
“Yuck! What’s that?”
Such was the force of Slothi’s exclamation that almost everyone turned to see what was going on.
Dangling from one of Vigot’s new bronze hooks was the most enormous shellfish. Not a cockle or mussel, crab or giant clam, but a creature covered in mud with a hairy shell and malevolent eyes.
“Let me see!” demanded Bard.
“Me,” said Brita, pushing him aside.
“It’s disgusting!” Bard exclaimed in delight.
“It’s old as old, that’s for sure,” said Vigot, swinging the creature in front of the children. “Stuck in the mud for years and years, just waiting for you.”
“Throw it back,” Brita told him.
“What? So it can rise again when the world ends?”
Vigot lowered the sea creature onto the deck, and then he and Slothi and the children poked it and prodded it.
Solveig, meanwhile, was distracted by Bergdis and Edith.
“Three,” Bergdis announced, slapping her stomach. “Three I’ve lost. And I’m very healthy and wide-hipped. Two of them were boys.”
“If I have a son . . .” Edith began, but Bergdis interrupted her. “Then I lost my man Jorund. I lost him to Ran.”
“Another woman?”
Bergdis snorted. “Of a kind. Ran with her drowning net.”
“Oh! You mean the goddess,” Edith said.
“Now, Jorund—he was a real man,” Bergdis told her. And then more loudly: “Is there anyone aboard this boat red-blooded?”
“Enough, Bergdis!” Red Ottar snapped.
“Red-blooded!” said Bergdis very deliberately. “You, Bruni?”
“I’m warning you,” Red Ottar told her.
“Well, there is one,” Bergdis confided to Edith in a sly voice, and Solveig found herself leaning forward.
“He knows who he is,” Bergdis said. “But men . . . they’re seldom satisfied for long.”
Solveig heard someone running up the gangplank.
A little man hopped off the end of it, took a big step, and with a jump landed right beside Solveig.
“Mihran!” he announced.
Solveig couldn’t help smiling at the very sight of him. He was as little and lightly built as Oleg but much darker-skinned, and his eyes were twinkling, as if to say the best thing to do about life was to laugh at it.
“Everyones know Mihran,” the man told Solveig. “Everyones in Ladoga and Kiev.”
Red Ottar stood up to greet the third pilot. “Everyone may know you,” he said. “But what about you? Do you know the rivers, the rapids, the lakes?”
Torsten walked up to the skipper’s side, still holding the knotted rope, and Mihran immediately pointed at it. “Turk’s head!” he said, clasping his hands around his neck and laughing. “Me Armenian. We hate Turkeys!”
Red Ottar snorted, but then he narrowed his eyes. “So you’re not from Kiev, then?”
“Me?” exclaimed the pilot. “South. Far south. Sea Black.”
“The Black Sea,” Torsten corrected him.
“People in Kiev,” Mihran told them, “they are Rus. Very tall. Very pale. The king is Rus.”
“Indeed he is,” said Red Ottar. “King Yaroslav.”
Then Mihran sat down with all the crew around him, and by the time he had described the Eastern Way—the long days in gloomy forests, the splendor of Novgorod, the little quiet trading posts, the great lake of Ilmen and the rivers feeding it—and then estimated that the journey would take no fewer than thirty-one days, all this with gestures and laughs and amusing little slips of language, Red Ottar and Torsten and their companions were in no doubt about the pilot’s knowledge or his confidence.
When the skipper asked Mihran about the dangers, he immediately held up three fingers. “The portages,” he said. He braced his forearms and shouldered the empty air as if it were immovable, and then he splayed his fingers over his eyes. “And the wild beasts,” he growled. “The forests have many, many bears. Wild pigs—tusks.”
“And the third danger?”
“Ruffians,” replied Mihran. “Human wild beasts.”
“We’re prepared,” Red Ottar told him.
Mihran twisted his black mustache with his right thumb and forefinger and then looked around him. “With these women?”
“I can fight,” Bergdis said at once. “May the gods help the man who tangles with me.”
Mihran inspected Odindisa and Edith and gently shook his head. Then he considered Solveig.
“Maybe,” he said. “Tall. Strong.”
“One-handed and one-legged,” Red Ottar told him. “And stiff-necked.”
“What about me?” Bard demanded.
But Mihran dismissed him and Brita with the back of his hand. “Too smalls,” he said. “Too young.” Then he held his right hand to his heart. “The real danger is always here, no? Inside, not outside. The one who’s afraid. The one who falls ill . . . The one who’s a thief.”
“You’re right,” said Red Ottar. “As with the gods and the trickster Loki, so with us. One of our own number.”
“Which?” asked Mihran with a wary smile.
“Be on guard against your dark selves,” Red Ottar said very slowly, looking from one person to another. “If one of us fails, most likely we all fail.”
At first, Solveig thought Red Ottar was talking about her. But then she heard Bruni sucking his cheeks and caught him staring at Torsten; she saw Odindisa drawing Bard and Brita to her side and wrapping an arm around each of them; Edith laid her hands over her stomach; and while Red Ottar was still warning them, Slothi mouthed some silent prayer, stretching out his arms as if he were being crucified. Solveig realized that each of the crew thought that Red Ottar might very well be talking about them.
“Well,” Red Ottar asked his crew, “who has any questions? You, Torsten?”
“When the time comes,” the helmsman said, and he gave Mihran a friendly nod. “When the need arises.”
Then Bergdis asked the pilot about the frequency of the trading posts and what livestock and vegetables she would be able to buy; Vigot and Slothi both wanted to know what river fish they would catch; and Bruni inquired about the best place to buy silver.
“What about you?” Red Ottar asked Odindisa. “Don’t you want to know about the river ghosts?”
Odindisa shrugged.
“And . . . what are they called? Sendings?”
“They won’t stop you,” Odindisa said. “Nothing will.”
“How far is it,” asked Solveig, “from Kiev to Miklagard?”
Mihran threw back his head. “Miklagard! Ha!” He turned to Red Ottar, smiling. “But you—you go to Kiev.”
“That’s quite far enough,” the skipper replied. “For me—and my sea wife.”
“But I’m going to Miklagard,” Solveig explained. “To find my father.”
Mihran raised his eyebrows and gave Solveig a searching look. Then he pushed out his lower lip and slowly nodded.
“All right!” said Red Ottar, looking around the crew. “All agreed?” Then he, Torsten, and Mihran made their way to the stern, where they began to bargain over the payment for the pilot and discuss when to leave Ladoga.
Before the three of them had clasped hands, Solveig shuffled down the gangplank and padded along to the place where the hellhounds had attacked her.
The ground was scuffed, and when she stooped, Solveig could see globs of her own congealed blood with dog hairs stuck in them. Then she picked up the old paddle with which Vigot had brained the hound and dropped it into the water.
Some of the Bulgars were watching Solveig from their boat, and one of them called out to her and beckoned.
Solveig pretended she hadn’t noticed. My third eye, she thought. My maker’s eye. One-eyed Odin, in your wisdom, allow me to find it.