Author's note
More info on the Dnipro rapids can be found in the info-post:
Over the sea and down the rivers - A few notes on the history
Please note that punter here isn't a gambler or a rugby player, it's a person who punts fleeting vessels with a setting pole.
There were more men on the boats now. Asgaut had picked up no less than 20 mercenaries in Konugard who would follow them past the rapids down to Khortytsia island that marked the end of this perilous stretch of the river. They were spread out evenly over the boats, and on their vessel they now had the uplanders Hrafn and Hroar, both as tall, both as fair, none of them older than Kildevi. The young mercenaries were brothers, but thankfully had no further likeness to the Gotlanders.
"We set out from Birka two years ago," Hrafn told them as they made their introductions. "One more winter in service of the princes in Kyiv, and I think we're ready for the gold coins in Miklagard."
"Are you aiming for the navy, the army or the guard?" Eskil asked with seemingly casual interest.
"I want the guard, Hroar wants the navy. He still wants to go home some day and we've heard the guard sometimes doesn't release you. I'm not ever going back to farming so that's not a problem for me, but if you have advice, we're happy to hear it."
And from there, Eskil had new best friends. It was some sort of brotherly love story playing out in front of Kildevi's eyes, and to her it all seemed to be about showing off, punching shoulders and taking their tunics off at every opportunity. Although nice to look at for a day, it soon started to get on her nerves, and she wasn't at all sure it was good for him to have two new little brothers blowing up his ego. As it turned out, she wasn't the only one prickled.
"Look at the golden trio," Thore said, bitterly. "Big, blonde and built, will look really heroic in their shiny mails."
He and Kildevi sat at the stern, him at the steering oar, her just keeping him company. She tilted her head and looked at him. He looked exactly like what he was - a man nearing 30 who would probably have been a stable husband and farmer, if only his wife had survived their first and the sea hadn't pulled on him.
"You still have got things going for you, Thore. And you seemed perfectly happy with yourself last week."
"When we get back I'll be well set in silver. But, you know… I'll never be
that."
She squinted towards the midship where Eskil and Hroar had thrown off their tunics in the summer sun, talking and laughing as they went through their daily weapon maintenance naked from the waist up. She made a face.
"I know what you mean. But if it's any consolation, I often wish that mine looked more like the rest of us. It stops being fun when you feel yourself fade into the background."
"Good thing you have that cat stole."
"Good thing you'll have that silver."
"Good thing the rapids don't give a shit who they swallow."
A few days downstream from Konugard, even Kildevi noticed how more and more barriers of rocky cliffs started to emerge, some of them clearly visible, others just as clearly avoided only because the most experienced men knew where to look for them. The boats sometimes zig-zagged more than they went downstream, but they kept good speed nonetheless, dragged along by an increasingly strong current on the unblocked stretches.
Then came the day they passed the mouth of the Samara river and Asgaut made camp early to prepare.
"We're almost at Sof-eigi, and we don't want to be stuck there by nightfall," he said as the tents had been raised and everyone gathered again. "It's called 'does not sleep' for a reason."
Kildevi gave Eskil a questioning glance.
"First rapid," he whispered. "Then comes the two Holmforses, then the Gellandi, but it's the Eyfor that…"
Eskil never had the chance to finish the sentence before Asgaut spoke again.
"Each boat will pick their two best suited punters, at least one of them should be familiar with the riverbed at each rapid. How many of you have been down here before? The waterways I mean, not by land," he added with a nod to Hrafn and Hroar.
Eskil, Thore and Audvard raised their hands, and Asgaut gave the three of them a critical look from head to toe.
"And have you all been
in the river, and where?"
"Just twice," Thore replied. "Had to take over at the second Holmfors last time, then another run at Barufors."
"I've done water all of m'runs", Audvard said. "Been down all the ones you can punt through."
"And I've been in Sof-eigi, half of Barufors, Hlajandi and Strukum."
Asgaut gave Eskil a stern look.
"That's a lot for a first run."
"We were five men down. Four shipmates fell to raiders at the Eyfor, lost our best punter to the Barufors. And I'm a good swimmer."
Asgaut nodded, face solemn.
"We aim for better luck, then. Audvard and Eskil take the Sof-eigi, the rest of you watch what they do as closely as you can. You'll all be punting at some point, except I don't want Thorven, myself or Kildevi near the streams. They're too slight and my right knee isn't what it used to be. If anyone knows that their swimming is weak, now is the time to say it."
No one spoke up, but Thorven looked a bit defeated. Asgaut looked at all of them.
"Good. Once we're past the Gellandi, our next obstacle is Eyfor and its seven falls. There is no going through there, we'll have to portage everything, boats and all, before we take on the last stretch."
He looked around.
"Any questions?"
"What do we do with Eskil's wife if we're ambushed?" Hrafn asked, looking around at the men. "The greater horde of Pecheneg has probably retreated since the big Rus convoy passed through, but there could still be raiding parties left, and she'd bring in a
very good price for them with all that yellow free-woman's hair left long. Do we leave a guard? Put her in a boat below a tarpaulin? What do we do?"
Kildevi looked sceptically at the well-bejawed young man. She had never before been coldly described as merchandise and liked it not one bit. She was just about to remind him she had a name and not just a husband, when Thogard's voice rumbled over her.
"Hide," he said. "A guard tells them we have something, and where. And we don't have the men for a guard anyway."
"Yes," Eskil agreed, "We'll find a hiding place and keep her out of sight. If they've been watching our descent they might have seen her, but not very closely, so a headscarf on Asgaut's irish-girl should do the trick. If they have seen and found a blonde in a headscarf, they'll have no reason to look for one more."
He turned to Kildevi, who stood next to him, still silently listening as the men discussed her fate right over her head.
"I want you to leave your buckles, your headband, beads, everything that might catch a sunbeam, in the luggage during the portage. And no bright whites or clear colours."
"I wouldn't put on my finest for a portage," she said testily, to protest the assumption that she was completely frivolous, but no one really seemed to listen.
"So, that's settled then", Asgaut concluded. "Go enjoy your last evening not aching, everyone."
Kildevi sat outside the tent untying her headscarf for the night, before pulling the pins out of the knot. Slowly and carefully she started to work the comb through the sweaty mess of her braid, undoing and untangling it one repeat at a time.
She was still a bit testy about that whole conversation earlier, not so much for what had been said, but how. And, she had to admit, she wasn't thrilled about Eskil going first into the rapids tomorrow with that left leg of his that he constantly and stubbornly refused to pay heed to.
Something
she stubbornly refused to pay heed to was that there were now two new men around their fire. She had vague memories of once having done all her hair care and dressing inside the tent, and then slowly moving it outside as the men around her became more and more friends with both herself and Eskil. Now they'd reached the point where a thin shift was enough, and she was not going back to sitting cramped up with the comb under the canvas of a dark tent just because they suddenly had two young men hanging around who probably had seen hair being combed before.
That said, Hrafn
was glancing. She thought he could feel free to glance as much as he wanted, but only after he
at least managed to call her by her name. Thus she pointedly met his gaze and he quickly looked away.
It was with that lingering annoyance and satisfaction in her mind she felt Eskil's arm wrap around her from behind as he leant in to place a kiss behind her ear.
"Are you coming inside?"
"Soon, I'll be done in a moment."
"Don't finish, we'll just mess it up again."
Her pulse had definitely warmed to the prospect, but her temper was still a bit testy.
"After all this work, you just want to undo it?"
"Well, if Asgaut is right and this is my last evening not aching…"
".,..why don't you just go and put my headscarf on that irish girl, see if there's a difference?"
Clearly amused, he gave her a sceptical side-eye.
"What made
you so cranky?"
"Can you please tell your new friend I have a name? You can even tell him what it is. If he keeps calling me Eskil's wife, I'll start calling him Eskil's friend, and then we'll see how he likes it when I shout it from the riverbank at the second Holmfors."
"I like the idea of you screaming my name. If I scream yours back, he might hear it two tents away."
"You're hopeless."
"Do you mean that in a good way or a bad?"
"When I come inside, why don't you kiss me and find out?"
They heard the Sof-eigi before it came in view, a low rumble filling the air as the water masses bellowed and roared down a gentle slope of rocks. Though the slope was gentle, there was nothing gentle about the riverbed, where uneven rows of sharp boulders cut the currents into white foam even in the low water of summer.
After punting the boats to the low eastern bank, most men began disembarking with all loose luggage and equipment, leaving their designated punters to push the still loaded boats back into the stream. Audvard and Eskil had stripped down to their trousers and wrapped their shins with leg-binders. Audvard had also wrapped his hands, and as they closed in on the riverbank, he threw a roll of rags to Eskil.
"Giv'em a try. Will make your grippin' easier."
Nodding, Eskil followed his example. Kildevi stared out over the rapid flows. The thought of him out there, torn by the currents, made her nauseous. When their time came to get on shore, it was hard to let go of him.
"Don't forget," he said in a low voice, "you're my ashen vǫlva, mother of my blood, eater of storms, reader of the fates of men. Hold that head high, and I'll see you on the other side."
Trying hard to follow his instructions, she stepped off the boat and watched Audvard punt them back onto the river.
The first time he jumped off to steer the boat between two rocks, finding footholds on the treacherous river bed with the full force of the currents ripping into him, she forced herself to look. When some 20 paces later he slipped, gripped by the waters, she hid her face in Thogard's shoulder until she heard Thorven's voice shout that he was up again.
Even though it sometimes felt painfully slow, the descent down Sof-eigi's four terraces was over faster than she expected. Before midday, the whole convoy was back on board to continue towards the Holmforses. Both Audvard and Eskil were soaked and bruised. Kildevi saw that Eskil had a bleeding scrape down his right side foot, back and elbow, but there was also something else behind the exhaustion, a lightness that went beyond the relief of completing the task. Eyes shining, face smiling, he collapsed on his back on an oar-bench, blissfully staring up at the sky. She couldn't remember when last he'd looked so… alive.
"What I don't understand," she said, only half in jest, as she crouched down next to the bench, "is how you can be so happy fighting for your life in a waterfall and still not dare to say you're sorry for four whole days."
He squinted up at her, still smiling.
"Because I like to defeat a clear adversary, but I don't want to see you as one?"
"That was actually a good answer."
That afternoon, Audvard was back in the water, leading the boat and Thogard through the upper Holmfors. The first of the Holmforses was a small one, so Audvard let Thogard do most of the work.
"Best get a feel for it here, so you don't have to do your first steer'n tug through a bad one."
After a night on the Holmfors island, the second, and larger, of the rapids was traversed by Thore and Hrafn, giving Audvard a breather before the Gellandi.
Things were going well. No man was lost, no crates, no thralls, until Audvard lost control over the boat in the Gellandi and ended up in the water.
"What are you doing?"
"What does it look like, I'm going in!"
"Without a boat, are you mad?!"
"Hroar has never done this before and Audvard is wounded, or he'd be back in the boat by now."
"It's at least 30 paces out!"
"So stop arguing with me!"
The riverbed wasn't flat anywhere. She watched him wade through the shallow waters, clasping every rock or boulder before pushing off to swim sideways against the currents where the river was too deep, sometimes torn off track but slowly drawing closer to where Audvard clung to the railing.
Hroar stood in the rapids beneath the prow, using his bulk to keep the boat from pushing through the narrow space of two low rocky cliffs. From a blurry distance, she finally saw a red-blonde figure climb over the railing, then take hold of Audvard to haul him up onto the deck again. Eskil got ahold of the setting pole and the boat moved forward, until a spot of weaker current allowed him and Hroar to switch places. Carefully, with Audvard sitting pale at the midship, they steered, pulled and punted through the last part of the howling rapids.
Eskil had been right about Audvard. His right knee could take only the lightest of weight and had already begun to swell up when they returned to shore, met by howls and cheering.
"I thought we wouldn't see you again, old friend," Thore said as he helped Audvard unwind the wet leg-binders and find a dry one for the injury.
"Neither did I there, for a moment," Audvard admitted. "Stuff like this makes a man work on'is death-poem."
Once his knee had been wound, he sat on the bench rubbing his legs back to life, nose pale.
"You didn't joke about your swimming arm," Thorven said with admiration in his voice, as their own crew and two more waiting for their boats gathered around Eskil to spread cheers and congratulations.
"That was the bravest and most foolhardy thing I've seen in a long while," smiled Asgaut, "well worth a song!"
When the small crowd of people had dispersed and they were back on the boat, Eskil tore himself from Hrafn and Hroar and came over to Kildevi, who sat at the prow, pale beneath the sunburn.
"You are the only one who hasn't said anything. Aren't you even a little bit proud of me?"
She looked up to give him a long look before she replied, voice small, her face grave.
"Do you remember when I climbed the prow at Ilmen?"
Eskil gave a low laugh.
"Yes. I don't think I'll ever forget that."
"Then you know I'll be proud and happy as soon as I stop shaking."
Smiling, he bent down and tried to scoop her up into his arms, but exhausted from his previous battle with the Gellandi, his left leg slowly folded under him, and they both fell down, him below, her above, in an undignified heap below the bench.
Kildevi had no idea who started laughing, just that someone did, and she laughed and laughed and laughed until she ran out of breath and he was still laughing but somehow none of them seemed able to stop.
"Where did that come from?" she asked, gasping between giggles.
"I thought… " he replied, also still laughing, "I remember I lifted you like that on Ilmen and… I… I thought I'd… heroically… carry you off the prow like… that time. It didn't work o-out like I planned. I'll be so sore tonight!"
"Get your rest tonight, my hero, your reward awaits on the third night, on the morrow." She tried her best to sound at least a bit seductive, but that was too hard a feat while still laughing.
"For once, that wait is welcome. Ow."
That evening, they disembarked and pulled their boats on shore. Wagons and horses were borrowed from the small Kyivan garrison guarding the Eyfor portage and the boats almost emptied, crates loaded onto the caravan. Rollers and hauling beams were found, carefully stacked and left by earlier travellers.
That night, they slept at the summit of the mighty Eyfor, accompanied by the hoarse calls of pelicans from the cliffs of the western shore. In the morning, they broke camp and started the slow, painful portage down the forested steppe of the eastern bank.
Last portage with the ships, they had gone across the river plain, and Kildevi had been out of herself with fever.
This time, the caravan trundled forward along a riverbank, on an uneven path through a woodland sloping down towards the river on one side, gently rising on the other. Where the ground was flat enough, each crew pushed and tugged the flat bottomed ships on rollers, young tree trunks hewn and cut to length. But where the path was filled with bumps and hollows, the men had to lift and carry the boats on their shoulders by beams pushed through each pair of oar holes.
The horses and wagons had no problem keeping up with the slow pace of the ships. The thralls deemed too weak for hauling marched in two chained lines next to the convoy. Kildevi walked along next to her own crew, dressed in nothing but her simplest unbleached shift with only a belt, shoes and a linen cap to make her feel less naked. Usually she would wear at least an apron dress over the shift, but they had been deemed too colourful, so here she went, looking like the thrall they feared she'd become. On the upside, it made walking in the summer sun a bit less sweaty.
Early in the first morning of their descent, she had sauntered up the convoy to keep Audvard company as he and his wounded knee were acting coachman on the closest wagon, but Eskil had made it very clear to her that wasn't approved by her governing powers.
"You
have to stay close," he had hissed at her when she returned. "This isn't a nice stroll through the forest, you can talk to Audvard if we reach the bottom unbloodied."
"How long have you been letting her run around doing whatever she wants?" she'd heard Hrafn ask in an amused voice, when Eskil returned to the hauling beam.
"She's a vǫlva, you can't expect her to behave like a common housewife," Eskil replied, but he didn't sound as annoyed by the question as she wanted him to be.
Half a day down the Eyfor rapids, something struck.
Kildevi didn't even have time to grasp what was happening before the crew let go of the ship and Eskil grabbed her, pushed her into a hollow between the path and the flat keel, and wheezed at her to stay there.
It felt like she lay still forever, barely seeing through the low shrubbery around their path. Somewhere to her right, she heard shrieks, footsteps, hooves, shouting, metal hitting wood, metal hitting metal, screams, neighs and rustle. She didn't recognize the sound of a skirmish, but it took no guesswork to understand that what she heard must be the sound of men fighting, some of them on horseback.
Mind blank, her heart was beating so fast it was almost impossible to stay still and she struggled to keep her panic under control. Without consciously making a decision, she took a chance and peeked out from her hiding place.
There was no one here. All the sounds came from downriver. Crawling through the undergrowth, she moved to the cover of the next ship, left just a few steps in front of the first. It seemed the attack was in the front of the convoy, and she saw a few men left sentry on the last boat, behind the one where she had first been in hiding.
Careful not to be seen, she kept moving forward, with no clear notion of where she was going or why, only that she needed to know what was happening, and to see how Eskil fared in the midst of what she assumed would be the chaos of battle.
From under the third ship, the sounds were suddenly close. The ship itself lent no space to hide, but the uneven ground beneath left just enough for her to squeeze in between a gnarled root and the ship hull above. Looking out she saw a sunburnt man run past with a spear, then a few more, then suddenly Thogard's voice from the other side, growling something, northern leather shoes ran past, and the feet of a fallen man struck ground in front of her eyes.
There were more shouts now, more feet ran past, some stood fighting within her line of sight as she tried not to breathe, eyes fixed on their footwork as they quickly moved out of her limited view.
Things seemed to calm. When she hadn't heard a sound for a long while, she counted to a hundred, then cautiously eeled forward to see if she could safely move again. She saw two fallen men, but no one standing, instead the sounds of melee came from down by the riverbank on the other side of the ship.
She needed to find a new hiding place. Quickly looking around, she was ready to move back to the cover of the second ship when someone landed on her and slapped a hand over her mouth.
"The fuck are you doing here, pussycat?" A hoarse voice breathed in her ear. "Your husband is looking for you, and he looked none too happy when I saw him. Maybe your hide would prefer the fucking pecheneg."
Aslaug laid flat on top of her, low enough for them to be completely covered from view by the ship behind them. The hand across her mouth smelled of dirt and blood, and Kildevi could feel her head move above, scanning the forest front to sides.
"I am going to take away my hand. You will be quiet like a gutted ship's cat, you hear?"
Kildevi nodded, and the hand let go of her face.
"We're gonna move to find him. You're gonna come along, nice and quiet. There's fighting on the riverbank, some pechenegs have gone upstream, maybe five, maybe more, but that's where we're heading. If they show up, you and I are fucked, and I won't die for you. Understood?"
Aslaug's husky voice had completely lost its drawl. Every word came out fast and precise, just a low but efficient listing of statements. Kildevi nodded again.
"Let's move."
Crouched down, they moved upstream in the cover of the convoy ships. She heard riders pass just a few paces from them on the other side, and tried to mimic Aslaug as the other woman moved softly and silently over the sunburnt soil of the path, hulls on one side, shrubbery and undergrowth on the other.
Finally, they reached the back of the convoy, where a small rear guard had gathered. Among them stood Eskil. His sword was in its scabbard, but she saw that the spear and his gloved hand was bloodied as he stood, shield on his back, face half covered by the helmet. Then Aslaug shoved her so she fell on her stomach in the undergrowth in front of him.
For a moment he just stood, staring down at her. Then he raised his free hand to point.
"You, get back under that ship."
She was prepared to be screamed at, or at least upsettedly hissed at. What she wasn't prepared for was a stone-faced nothing.
"But… what if they come back? Wouldn't it be better…"
"I said: get back under that ship. Don't leave until I dig you out. We have to be free to move."
She swallowed and nodded, trying to find some sort of emotion or recognition in his eyes, but there was nothing.
"Don't just lie there, get moving."
She lost track of time. The space was just about wide enough to turn, but not a thumbs width more. The sun had moved, and even though her cover shielded her from sunlight, her mouth ached with thirst, the shift wet with sweat and torn by crawling.
Finally, when the afternoon had started to turn towards evening, the sticks and leaves around her hiding place were moved aside and a blood-stained hand reached in to grab her arm and haul her out.
Kildevi staggered to her feet, and stared. Eskil's right side was so splattered with blood she had no way to tell where it came from, his left near clean. When he spoke, his voice was husky, almost raw.
"Don't bother looking for a wound, it's not mine."
"On only one side?"
He just grunted.
"What happens now?"
"We fortify and build camp. Tomorrow we bury the dead and send sentries ahead to clear the bottom of the rapid."
"Can't they gather and come back?"
"That's why we fortify."
"So… what can I do now?"
"You can raise our tent and set up camp in it. Then you and I are going to have a talk outside. After that talk, we'll see if I'm sleeping there or somewhere else."
"S-Somewhere else?"
Looking at him now, she realised his eyes were dim, distant as if he spoke through a mind fog. She had seen that look before, in the mottled blue eyes of his brother, a bone chilling blend of rage and excitement.
"Outside. I can't leave you, but I am not what you want in your bed right now."
Silently she did as told, raised their tent, put down her own sleepskins, left his skins still packed just outside the tent flap. By nightfall, when a small barricade had been raised from the beams and the rollers, he returned to her and sat down outside, face lit by the closest campfire.
She said nothing, staring away from the fire, into the shadows where the sentries stood guard.
"I know," he said slowly, "that we often like to pretend that I don't have authority over you. But in this realm, I
have. And when we move over territory where someone can lie in ambush that authority is not debatable. Do you understand?"
She didn't reply.
"Do. You. Understand."
Kildevi nodded, still not looking at him.
"Good. Because what happened today can't happen again. I can't squabble with you when things are happening. I can't wonder where you are in the midst of battle. I need to know that you will follow my instructions, in every detail, with no childish whims, when I tell you to."
She turned her head just enough to glance at his face where he sat at her side. Without knowing why - maybe it was nerves, or defiance, or shock - she heard her self say:
"Or?"
He stared at her. His jaw was so tense the scar shifted even though he was silent. When he spoke next he didn't raise his voice, just bit down on every word with chilling fury.
"Are you a child? Do you need
consequences to stop testing limits? Because I once promised to never strike you, but I have
never promised not to shackle and gag you for the rest of the portage, if I have to."
Over the last two years, he'd given her no cause to consider the fact that the only reason he didn't do whatever he wanted with her was because he chose not to. Now that old knowledge came rushing back. Suddenly, it was hard to breathe.
"Eskil, please stop. You're scaring me."
"Good. Then we're even. You scared the heart out of me."
He rose.
"Hopefully I'm not scaring you tomorrow. I'll see you in the morning. We will talk more then."
