I drank my first bowl at once, and then sipped the second slowly and looked around. There were men from many different tribes and races, most of them new to me: big, burly, fair-haired men dressed in pelts; short swarthy men with quick slender hands and hooded eyes above noses like hawk beaks; long-limbed, slender pale-skinned men in long, loose-fitting clothes and soft boots of dyed leather; and others whose appearance made me think of arid desert places. The only tribes I recognized were either men from our own ships, or other Danes. There were no Britons or Irish at all.

As the king and Thorkel drank, they let their feet take them where they would. The king's boldness and conspicuous good will drew other northmen to him, and he soon had assembled an amiable group of sailors and river traders. From these he began coaxing the information he sought. "You must be brave men indeed," the king observed, "if you have been in the south. For it is said that only the bravest boatmen dare face the rapids south of Kiev."

"Oh, they are not so bad," boasted one great shaggy Dane who smelled of beargrease. "I have twice been as far as the Black Sea this summer."

"Ah, Snorri!" chortled his companion. "Twice, to be sure, but once was on the back of a horse!"

"The other time was with a ship." The big man bristled. "And difficult it is to say which is the more dangerous."

"They say," continued Harald, directing more ale into the cups, "there are ten cataracts, each larger than the last, and each big enough to swallow ships whole."

"It is true," said Snorri solemnly.

"Nay," said the small man with him, "there are not so many as that-four perhaps."

"Seven at least," amended Snorri.

"Maybe five," put in someone else. "But only three are large enough to swamp a ship."

"What do you know of this, Gutrik?" big Snorri challenged. "You stayed all summer in Novgorod with toothache."

"I went there seven summers ago," Gutrik said. "There were but four cataracts then and I do not think the river has changed so much."

"If only your memory was as reliable as the river," taunted another man lightly. "I myself have seen six."

"Of course, six," sneered an increasingly belligerent Snorri, "if you count the little ones as well. I myself took no notice of them at all."

Thorkel, though still holding cups in both hands, drank from neither, but listened to each man intently, trying to patch a whole truth from the various scraps each man contributed. "I am beginning to think that none of them have been down the river at all," he whispered to Harald at last.

"Then that is what we must discover," replied the king. Turning to the men, who now numbered seven or so, he said, "You all speak like men of considerable experience. But, aside from Snorri, who has been down the river this very summer?"

Each one looked to the other and, when they found no answer, gazed into their cups. Then the man called Gutrik spoke up. "Njord has been downriver," he declared. "He has just returned with the ships this very day."

"Heya," they all agreed, "Njord is the very man for you."

"Find Njord," Gutrik assured us, "and you will learn all there is to know about the Dnieper. No man knows it better."

"A piece of silver for the first man to bring this Njord to me," said the king, withdrawing a small silver coin from his belt. "And another if that be soon."

Three of the men disappeared at once, and we settled back to wait. Thorkel and the king continued to talk to the rest, but I grew curious and looked around. It soon became apparent that the house had much more to offer than food and drink. From time to time, one of the women from the bench outside would enter, towing a seafarer behind her. Sometimes they would go up to the gallery to one of the sleeping stalls and lie down together; more often they would simply find a seat on one of the benches along the wall and copulate in full sight of anyone who cared to look.

This happened so casually, and occasioned so little notice from anyone that it might have been pigs or dogs in heat, rather than human beings. I saw a man enter the house and go directly to his friend who was engaged in such intercourse. The two exchanged greetings and spoke for a few moments, then the first man sat down on the bench beside the amorous couple while his friend continued the sexual act to its consummation, whereupon the two men then changed places and the second man took up where the first man had left off.

The iniquity of it was breathtaking. I could only shake my head in despair. But they were barbarians, after all. It did me good to remember this from time to time.

As it happened, Njord was similarly occupied in another house nearby. When he had finished his drink and his woman, he came along with Gutrik, who claimed his silver by presenting the pilot to King Harald saying, "The best helmsman from the White Sea to the Black stands before you. I give you Njord the Deep-Minded."

The man who stood before the king could not have been less impressive. A wizened stick demands greater consideration. Njord was a hump-shouldered, long-boned, jug-eared Dane with skin creased and tanned to leather from the wind and sea salt; like Thorkel, he was squint-eyed, and his long moustache all but covered his mouth. His hands were rough from the ropes and tiller, and his stance splay-footed from maintaining his balance on the slanted boards of a heaving hull. The hair on his head had been blasted to a mere grizzled wisp of sun-faded grey. He looked like a gristle-bone the dogs had gnawed clean and discarded.

"Greetings, friend," bawled the king. "We have been hearing of your skill and knowledge from your friends. They speak most highly of your shipwise abilities."

"If they do me honour, my thanks to them," replied the pilot with a small bow of his round, grizzled head. "If they do me insult, my curse on them. I am Njord, Jarl Harald, and my best greetings to you."

"Friend," said the king expansively, "it would cheer me to have you drink with me. Cup bearers, be about your work! More ol! Our bowls are empty and our throats are dry!" Turning to Njord, he said, "All this talk has made me hungry, too. Let us sit down and eat together, and you can tell me of your journeys."

"A man must be careful when sitting down with kings," observed Njord narrowly, "for it is a costly business paid out in life and limb."

I understood then why he was called Deep-Minded, for it soon became apparent that he believed himself a philosopher with a gift for expressing his insights in witty aphorisms.

The men around him stared, but the king threw back his head and laughed. "Too true, I fear," Harald conceded happily. "But let us hazard health and fortune, heya? Who can say but it may prove worth the risk."

Thorkel and I found a place for the king and his strange new friend. Gutrik, Snorri and the rest joined us, shoving aside others in order to remain near enough to reach the meat and ale that soon began appearing on the board. So we settled down for a meal that stretched all the way to dusk, and ended with the king and Njord exchanging solemn, if drunken, vows: the pilot to guide us past the treacherous cataracts, and the king to reward him handsomely out of the proceeds of his business venture. The precise nature of this venture, I noticed, Harald failed to articulate.

The small matter of Njord's obligation to lead his own jarl's ships on their homeward voyage was quickly overcome when Harald offered to repay the pilot's share of the summer's spoils as compensation for the loss of his services. The ship's master was summoned and quickly agreed; the bargain was struck on the spot.

Having obtained all he came for and more, the king was now eager to depart. Up he rose from the table, and hastened for the door, trailing a considerable body of serving men, each demanding payment and shouting at the top of his lungs to make himself heard above the others. The king's progress was halted at the door; he turned and reached into his belt and brought out a handful of silver. This he delivered to the foremost server, saying, "Share this out among yourselves as you deem best."