“Friends!” Lord Zmicier Blackhorse’s voice carried rich and resounding across the hall, causing men deep in their cups to straighten up, stop their conversations and turn to watch. “We gather here under the generous roof of my beloved sister Alena to pay our respects to my sweet, sadly departed brother Leanid, who was cruelly taken from us by the Lord these months hence…”
Oh, deliver us, thought Sten. Another Christ-fetishist. They’re everywhere these days. Is there nowhere you can go to escape them?
“He was the best of us” - at this the crowd roared - “and an honourable man, from the top of his head to his friendly toes, a true friend the likes of which you see only once in a generation…”
“Do you think he ever met the guy?” asked Hrjota to Daryna.
“Probably, when drunk,” whispered Daryna. “Alena only asked him to do the opening speech so Kiryla wouldn’t get to. She hates his guts, apparently, or so all the villagers are saying.”
“Opening speech?!” said Hrjota. “There are more?”
“Yes, dimwit, they’ll be at it all evening. Settle in.”
Hrjota creased his brow. Up on the high table the cousins did appear to be settling in for the long haul, as did Heidir who was looking rapt at Lord Zmicier with an expression of fascination on his face, though Hrjota knew he didn’t speak a word of Rus and couldn’t understand what was being said one bit. But he did note with interest that Alena seemed to be missing.
Leanid’s eyes gleamed fiercely in the firelight. With one hand he held Alena, who was hardly recognisable in white lace holding an armful of golden flowers. With the other he stroked the mane of an enormous lion with a constipated look on its face.
Torsten stared at the tapestry and it stared back at him. It covered almost an entire wall of the long gallery that he’d been entrusted with guarding, and was richly embroidered with threads of deep azure, roaring gold and bloody crimson. Torsten hadn’t seen anything more grand in his life.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?”
Torsten swung around to find one of the young Blackhorse daughters in a sky-blue dress standing behind him. She laughed delightedly. “Oh, the Norsemen are scaredy-cats! How wonderful. What’s your name, scaredy-cat?”
“Torsten, milady,” mumbled Torsten. “Er… how come you speak Norse?”
“Oh, Papa’s father came south from Gotland, we’re as Norse as they come. Only Mama refused to learn the language when they married, but he had us learn it behind her back. Did you listen to his speech earlier? Wasn’t it dreadful?”
What was this Rus maiden doing attaching herself to him? Well, Heidir had told them all to watch closely, so Torsten decided to roll with it.
“My Rus isn’t good enough, sorry. What did he say?”
“Just loads of random nonsense and mixed metaphors. He could do with a stern talking-to from my poetry tutor. ‘Generous roof’ and ‘friendly toes…’”
She paced the gallery as she spoke and came to a halt by the lion. “Didn’t sound like Leanid at all. My uncle was a narcissist. As you may have guessed from…” She gestured vaguely.
“I assumed all the Rus had one of these in their houses,” said Torsten, curious to see if sarcasm could survive two generations.
She laughed. “I think I like you, Torsten the Barbarian. I just don’t get to meet sensible people these days. All Papa’s men are sycophants. I’m all alone with my problems.”
Oh dear, thought Torsten, here come the problems.
“Like my wedding, for instance. You’ll keep a secret, won’t you? I’m desperately in love with Viktar. I will marry him.”
“You’re desperately in love with your brother and you’ll marry him?” These Rus are crazy, thought Torsten.
“He’s not my brother! He’s my cousin! Keep up,” said Nastassia, or was it Julija. “Anyway, we’re both terribly afflicted. We’re both the second eldest.”
Torsten didn’t know how to react to this, so he grunted ambivalently. Fortunately that seemed to be the response Nastassia was expecting. “I know! I might as well have been born with an extra arm. I’ve got about as much of a chance of keeping a good house as I do of turning into a swan and flying away to Siberia.”
Goose, Torsten thought. “Whyever not? Don’t your parents approve?”
Nastassia looked at him like he had suggested she marry her sister instead. “Gold!”
“Pardon?”
“The Blackhorse fortune! Julija will inherit it.” (Ah, thank goodness! thought Torsten, that means this one’s definitely Nataliya.) “The only way for me to avoid having to go to Kyiv and find some first-born Count of Nowhere-in-particular to marry is if I charm my way into sweet Aunt Alena’s good favour and persuade her to leave me her gold when she kicks the bucket.”
“Ah, so all you need to do is demonstrate your pure, familial love?”
“What? No! I can’t stand the old bag, she doesn’t care about anyone other than her geese. But she can’t leave her gold to the geese, can she?”
It wouldn’t have surprised Torsten if that was exactly how Rus inheritance laws worked. The whole setup was very much at odds with how a Norseman would deal with the situation, and he said so:
“It all seems rather complicated. Where I’m from, we have much simpler ways of persuading people to give us their gold. Most of them involve axes.”
“You what?”
Torsten realised what he’d said. “Oh, bloody fire, I didn’t mean your aunt - ”
“Aw, my sweet barbarian,” said Nastassia. “I don’t think anyone could cut down that stubborn toad if you tried. But even if you could, what would be the point unless you know her secret?”
“What secret is that?”
“Have you seen a safe, or a vault? A strongbox anywhere in the house?” Torsten shook his head. “Nobody knows where she keeps her gold. Bandits have tried to rob her before, but they found only old nails and bolts before her geese drove them off. It’s said she keeps it buried somewhere in the garden, and that’s why she sent away all the farmers - so they wouldn’t find it as they worked. Without knowing the secret you might be digging for years.”
Outside in the garden, Birger, Lind and Smali crept about the edges of the vines and whispered to each other. Things like:
“No, I swear! There was someone there!”
“Yeah, and my underwear is made of mermaid skin. Give it a rest, Birger.”
“What if it’s one of these relatives come to steal Goose Lady’s gold?”
“You heard a fox or something. Please start acting like a man.”
They rounded a corner and saw the barn with the goose-pen before it. A figure was hunched over the goose-pen gate. Lind held out his torch. “Who goes there?”
But who should look furtively into the torchlight but Lady Alena. She was fiddling with the lock on the gate. “Oi! Don’t ye go scaring an old lady like that and in her own house, as well. Come on over here, help me let the geese out.”
Standing behind Lind, Birger paled.
“Go on, you hold this latch. They need their exercise, and it’s past time everybody should be in their beds, not out and making mischief.”
“Smali, I think I want to go swap with the indoors guard,” whispered Birger.
“What, afraid of a scary bird, Birger?” said Smali, who knew full well why Birger was afraid of a scary bird.
The geese were milling about in the pen croaking and snorting, eager to be let out. “Now, Piaro, don’t push. Mikhur, stop pecking at Holuba! I’m going to let you out now, but only if you’re well behaved. Stupni, so help me, you stupid bird! Right, are you ready to behave? I’m opening the gate. One at a time, now.”
With a practised, slow movement, the Lady Alena opened the gate and one by one the geese fled honking into the night. She held her stick at the ready and from time to time would poke it into the mass of feathers or hold it across the entryway to control their egress. Two of the unlucky animals, who must have committed some crime imperceptible to the watching Varangians, fell victim to a well-aimed kick from the Lady’s hobnailed boots. But soon they were all gone, except for one - a large beast with a grey head. The Lady Alena was careful to keep it in the pen with her stick and shut the gate before it could get out.
“Ge off with ye, Grandpa, you’re not going anywhere.” She slid the bolt home and dusted herself off.
“Why don’t you let them all out, Lady?” asked Smali, intrigued.
“Oh! That’s old Grandpa. He’s a fusty so-and-so all right. The rest of my geese I know will come back in the morning but Grandpa thinks he’s better than they are, refuses to do what I say. Can’t be trusted. Might end up eating a Norseman if he finds one wandering around on its own at night.” Her eyes twinkled in the torchlight and we weren’t sure if she was joking. “He has to stay behind.”
Lind watched the geese disappear into the night like white wraiths. Birger’s teeth were chattering very loudly.
Lord Zmicier sat and took a deep drink of his wine. Next to him Cousin Kiryla stood and cleared his throat. “Thank you, Uncle, for your words of tribute - ”
“Ugh, too many of them,” said Cousin Jan, too loudly, and belched. Then he looked around in surprise at how many had turned to stare at him. His cheeks were a jolly pink.
Cousin Viktar elbowed him. “Shh! Have some dignity! You’re at a funeral!”
“Actually, we’re not. The funeral was two months ago. You missed it. You were in Kyiv.”
“Yes, because some of us have business to do! Not all of us sit at home all day playing with our puppies!”
Kiryla weighed in. “Are you two quite done? Stick this wine in your face and maybe you’ll be quiet and I can get on with my speech.”
Cousin Artem, who was sitting in an unenviable position between Viktar and Kiryla, tried to say something but collapsed in a fit of sneezing. Cousin Julija sat with her chin in her palm and stared into the middle distance. Cousin Jan stood up and stared at Kiryla defiantly.
“Well, maybe in your speech you should’ve taken a moment to think about what Uncle Leanid would actually have wanted! None of this bland crap, that’s for sure.”
“You haven’t heard my speech yet,” said Kiryla, weakly. “You don’t know what was in it.”
“Yeah, well, I can guess. I don’t have to put up with this any more. You all deserve each other.” With that, Jan stormed out of the hall.
Heidir whispered to Orvendr, “Follow him.”
Outside, the night was quiet but for the wind blowing in the grass and the occasional cry of a goose. Lind heard the door to the Great Hall slam and elbowed Smali to abandon Birger to his shivering and come take a look. They saw Orvendr and Gufa following an unfamiliar figure who was striding erratically towards the pond, occasionally pausing with one hand on a wall like you do when you’re trying to get the world to stop spinning.
They also saw behind them another figure leave the hall and take another route towards the barn. This was Viktar, who had been sent out of the hall by his brother Kiryla to bring Jan back. But Lind and Smali did not know this, so didn’t know they should be surprised that Viktar instead hung around to the left, towards the barn and the goose-pen. However, they knew their craft enough to know to follow him.
Inside the barn it was very dark, the only light coming through the cracks in the wood-board walls. Viktar squinted into the gloom. “Who goes there?”
“Milord, we help?”
Viktar whipped around to face Smali and Lind, who noticed with great interest that he held a hunting knife. “Ugh, go away,” he said, gesturing at them with it. “You’re the last bloody thing I need right now.”
Smali looked from Viktar to the knife to Lind and back again, the very picture of incomprehension. (We have learned from many years in the trade that men behave differently around those they think are idiots. And also that men have a tendency to believe that not being able to speak the language makes one an idiot, which is a fascinating fallacy in that it is obviously wrong yet astonishingly prevalent.) He was about to say something like “would you like us to sharpen it?” when someone sneezed at the back of the barn.
Viktar cried, “Artem!” and threw his knife - a practised, precise throw.
Someone at the back of the barn yelled, “Motherfucker!” in Norse.
And Smali thrust his torch into the shadows to reveal -