Free Oathsworn 1 - The Whale Road by Qaz Page B

said about the treasure hoard of Attila the Hun was true, then it was a mountain of silver you could mine for years.
    Sigurd's treasure, culled from a dragon hoard and cursed, if I remembered the saga tale of it, then handed to the Huns by the Volsungs before they fell out.
    `Just so,' Illugi Godi said, when I came to him with questions—though his eyes narrowed at the mention of it. 'You should put your tongue between your teeth over this matter, young Ruriksson,' he added.
    `No secret here, it seems to me,' I replied and he hummed and shrugged.
    `Well, so it would appear. No simple saga tale, either,' he went on. 'The Volsungs are lost to us, vanished like smoke, taking Sigurd Fafnirs-bane and Brynnhild and all the rest, so that the former is now a dragon-slaying hero and the latter is one of Odin's Valkyrie. Remembered for that only and not that once they were people, like you or me.'
    I sat, hunched, hands wrapped round my knees as I had once done in Bjornshafen, listening to Caomh tell stories of his Christ saints. For a moment, listening to the steady, firm voice of Illugi, I was back in the red-gleam twilight of Gudleif's hall, full-bellied and warm and safe.
    Àtil, too, was once real, a powerful jarlking of those tribes who live in the Grass Sea, far to the east. The Volsungs thought him great enough to be allies against the Old Romans, so they sent him a wife: Gudrun, who was once Sigurd's woman. With her came a marvellous sword as a dowry.'
    `Sigurd's sword?' I asked and he shook his head.
    `No. They gave him a sword forged by the same smith who made Sigurd's own. They called it the Scourge of God and while Atil had it, he could never lose a battle.'

    `Which made it hard for the Volsungs when they found Atil was a false friend,' I offered and Illugi scowled.
    `Who is telling this?'
    He was, of course and he hummed, mollified, when I said it.
    `Just so. The Volsungs knew they could not win; they were beaten time and again by Atil until they came upon another way. They sent him a new wife, Ildico, in peace. To tempt him to take her, she came with a great treasure of silver—Sigurd's dragon hoard.'
    `Cursed,' I pointed out and he nodded.
    Òn her wedding night, this brave Ildico slew Atil as he slept and waited for the morning beside him, knowing she could not escape.'
    We were both silent, brooding on this cunning plot, cold and coiled as a snake, and the sacrifice it had entailed: the Volsungs losing their wealth and Ildico her life, for she was chained to Atil's death throne alive when he was howed up in a great mound of all the silver of the world, including the Volsungs' gift. A mound long hidden, with all those who knew of it killed.
    Such revenge we in the north knew well, yet even so, the warp and weft of this sucked the breath from you.
    The rest of the winter dragged into spring without much event. Many of us got sick, me included, with streaming eyes and nose and coughing. Eventually, we all recovered—save for the Serkland woman, as Einar had predicted. She caught a fever, which went quickly, Illugi Godi said, through all the stages: tertian, quartan, daily and, finally, hectic.
    At that point, with her breath rasping in her chest, she simply gave up, turned her head to the wall and died. Einar gave her body to the Christ priests in the town, but they refused to perform suitable rites over her, since they said she was 'infidel'.
    So Illugi Godi commended her to the true gods of the North and then tipped the body into the sea, from a rocky spit a little way out of town, as an offering to Ran, Aegir's sister-wife, to ensure good sea journeys.
    That was because the good merchant council of the town wouldn't have a thrall howed up in their own yards—though they took Harald, whose cut foot had festered all through the winter, then turned black to the groin and stank, at which point he died.
    Ulf-Agar, myself and a new Oathsworn, a fair-haired, bearded man called Hring, brought into the Oathsworn to replace