The Half-Slave

by Trevor Bloom

  14

  Winter, the coldest he had ever known. Water froze in the pitcher overnight and birds lay dead on the ground. Ascha said goodbye to his mother, told her where he was going and that if anyone were to ask for him she knew where he could be found. He kissed her and then he and Tchenguiz boarded the Cherusker warboat that would take them south.

  It took two days to travel to the lands of the Cheruskkii, and it was dark when they arrived. As the long ship grated over the gravel, the two of them vaulted over the side and waded through the icy shallows and up a ramp of coarse grey sand.

  They stood, stamping their feet and looked about them.

  Radhalla’s fortress was impressive. A stout wooden stockade ran along a wide turf rampart overlooking a ditch piled high with thorn bushes. Guards patrolled the walkways with smoky torches. The gates were open and a line of ragged slave-workers were shuffling in, heads low against the wind. They had been felling timber in the forest and seemed faint from hunger and exhaustion. Many were barefoot, and their beards were iced hard. Ascha watched them pass in silence. Sometimes, he thought, the only solace for being a half slave, was that he was not a slave. Behind the slaves came teams of oxen, drawing huge logs on sleds. The oxen loomed large in the darkness, the sled runners squeaking on the packed snow.

  He picked up his tool sack and went towards the gate.

  The fort was crammed with shabby cabins built end to end along narrow lanes that ran out from the middle of the fortress like the spokes of a giant wheel. A Cherusker led them down a dark alley, the light of his torch sending shadows leaping and cavorting across the snow.

  Somewhere a dog howled.

  They came to an area of levelled ground overlooked by a huge timber hall. A bonfire was burning off to one side and, by its thick light, Ascha saw oaken beams, a steeply shingled roof and thick plank walls. The gable ends, doorways and roof ridge of the hall were carved and freshly painted.

  ‘What is this place, brother?’ he said, tapping the Cherusker on the shoulder.

  ‘That is Radhalla’s hall, and this is the mara,’ the Cherusker grunted. It was here, he said, that Radhalla addressed his warriors and held religious ceremonies and oath-takings. Ascha looked around. Along one side of the mara stood a line of tall poles, each topped with a clean, crow-picked skull, capped with snow.

  ‘And those?’ he said.

  ‘War trophies from the tribes the Lord Radhalla has conquered,’ the Cherusker said with pride.

  Ascha peered up into the swirling whiteness. He could make out the skulls of ox, horse, badger and beaver. The last pole carried the skull of a boar. A recent kill, blackening flesh still sticking to the bone.

  Hroc’s boar, Ascha thought bitterly.

  The Cherusker took them to a cabin and left them. Ascha opened the door and stepped inside. The ceiling was not much higher than his head, the interior cast in shadow, broken by the thin light of a few scattered oil lamps. A raw table, bunks from floor to ceiling and a window the size of a child’s body. Men sat on their bunks or squatted on the floor. The air was dense with the stench of unwashed bodies and piss from the brimming bucket standing in the corner. Damp clothes and skins drying on a line added to the fug. The men looked up and stared at him with hard and suspicious eyes.

  ‘We be of one blood,’ he muttered.

  Someone yelled at him to shut the door. Didn’t he know a gale was blowing?

  A Cherusker with a scruffy beard and heavy jowls came over. He wore baggy britches and layers of woollen coarseweave and scratched at his belly with a grimy fingernail. The Cherusker studied him, chewing slowly.

  ‘I am Heafoc, hut-leader,’ he said. ‘And you?’

  ‘Ascha of the Theodi.’

  ‘What do you do, Theod?’

  ‘Woodcarver.’

  ‘Another timberer?’ Heafoc said in disgust. ‘And what’s that?’ he said gesturing to Tchenguiz.

  ‘My Hun slave.’

  ‘Ugly turd, ain’t he?’

  Ascha said nothing.

  ‘He’ll have to sleep with the other slave-workers.’

  ‘He stays with me.’

  Heafoc looked at him. He was about to say more and then thought better of it. He licked his lips and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Please yourself,’ he said. Pointing to a bunk in the corner, he threw Ascha a couple of thin blankets and a muddy pallet of straw. ‘You sleep over there. The Hun sleeps on the floor.’

  That night there was a storm. The wind howled through the rafters, the cabin shook as if punched and the fire went out. Ascha and Tchenguiz awoke to the harsh clangour of iron on iron. Snow lay thick as sheepskin, nudging into every nook and corner, smooth drifts piling up against the stockade wall.

  Ascha and Tchenguiz pulled on their cloaks and boots and fell out of the cabin. They scooped up handfuls of snow, stuffed them into their mouths and looked about them. Ascha recognized a group of craftsmen by their tools. He motioned with his jaw to Tchenguiz, and they wrapped their arms around their shoulders, buried their fists in their armpits and followed the craftsmen along an alley and into a broader lane, their breath clouding the air.

  They came out at the river and stopped in amazement. During the night, ice had formed at the water’s edge and the trees hung heavy with snow. All along the riverbank men and women swarmed dark against the snow’s whiteness. The air echoed to the zip of saws and the hollow tchock of axe and adze on timber.

  Along the shore a dozen ocean-going long-boats were drawn up on cradles. More were hauled up on the riverbank. The riverside was a jumble of sheds and awnings, crude workshops springing up everywhere, like fungus under a wet log. He saw ironsmiths and metalworkers, ropemakers, leathermakers and bone-workers. Shipwrights trimmed planks, cut ribs and shaped bows and sternposts. Carpenters made tubs and wooden nails. Cheruskkii women in black skirts and bright headscarves sat in long open-sided sheds weaving sailcloth while others greased sails in huge tubs of oil and animal fat. His nostrils flinched from the stink of hot pitch and the urine barrels of the leatherworkers.

  ‘Wah!’ Tchenguiz murmured. ‘Radhalla build many ships.’

  Ascha asked for the master of woodcarvers and was directed to a bearded man with a red face.

  The man looked him up and down. ‘What’s your trade, lad?’

  ‘Carver.’

  ‘Thought so!’ the master said. ‘Then stay close to me. Do as I do and you’ll be all right.’

  The master was a half-Dane called Eanmund. He was short and balding and had travelled south to join Radhalla, leaving a wife and six children in the Almost-Island. Eanmund told Ascha what his duties were and what he should expect. Every morning, the fighting men trained for war on the mara, the woodcarvers and shipbuilders headed for the riverside, and the slave gangs drove into the woods to fell and haul timber. The carvers shared the boats between them, vying with each other to produce the finest and most life-like carving of strake and prow. Open-jawed dragons, snarling sea gods, hell-fiends with curving necks and twisted collars.

  Eanmund took Ascha to meet the other timberers. They raised a hand and welcomed him with a warmth they showed only to those who shared their craft. Eanmund took Ascha to where the bone white ribs of a long boat rose like the crow-picked carcase of a long dead whale.

  ‘This is Swanneck,’ Eanmund said. ‘She’s a fine ship. See what you can do with her.’

  Ascha dropped his tool sack and began work.

  In the days that followed, Ascha fell into a well-worn routine. Every day, he walked along the riverbank with sleeves pulled down over his knuckles and teeth clenched against the cold. He counted the new keels laid down on the mud and he counted the ships that were half-built and those that were almost finished. He peered into the boatsheds, committing to memory everything he saw. He spoke to the other carvers and asked them about the vessels they were working on, the size of the boat and the number of oars each boat carried. He kept a tally of what he saw, cutting the numbers on a stick which he hid deep in the straw on his bu
nk.

  As the weeks passed and the notches grew, Ascha felt a growing rip tide of excitement. Radhalla’s fleet would darken the ocean from shore to shore. The biggest war fleet he had ever seen.

  Ascha and Tchenguiz were walking from the cabin to the riverbank when a shout rang out, ‘Ho! Mischling!’

  Ascha turned and his heart sank. Wulfhere leaned against a cabin wall, surrounded by a gang of swaggering toughs, all armed and glittering with belts and cloak brooches. Wulfhere dropped his head to the side, thrust out his tongue and made a choking sound, his eyes rolling, in a crude likeness of a hanging man.

  The others giggled and sniggered. Wulfhere smiled and said, ‘Does tha know who tha father is yet, mischling?’

  ‘My father was Aelfric, hetman of the Theodi,’ Ascha growled, ‘as tha well knows.’

  ‘If that’s what tha thinks, slave-born, tha can think again!’ Wulfhere said to more laughter.

  A choking anger welled inside Ascha. He bunched his fists and slammed Wulfhere against the wall in a hot and sudden fury. Wulfhere grinned and put up his chin, doing nothing to defend himself, while his friends smirked. Ascha was about to strike Wulfhere in the face when he felt a powerful hand close about his wrist.

  ‘Na,’ Tchenguiz hissed, his eyes flat. ‘Not here.’

  Something about the way Tchenguiz spoke cut through Ascha’s rage. He allowed the Hun to pull him away, and they left with Wulfhere’s mocking laughter echoing in his ears.

  ‘That Wulfhere is dangerous,’ Eanmund grunted later. ‘Stay out of his way or Radhalla will have your hide.’

  ‘What’s it to do with Radhalla?’ Ascha snarled.

  ‘Plenty,’ Eanmund said. ‘Radhalla will allow nothing to weaken the unity of the confederation and punishes anyone caught fighting within the fortress walls. Some time ago, a Chaussi picked a fight with a Jute over a woman. Radhalla had the man stripped and thrown into a cauldron of boiling water. When they pulled him out, he was bawling like a calf at the slaughter and his skin hung from his back like a torn sail.’

  Ascha caught Tchenguiz’ eye and nodded his thanks. That toad-spawn Wulfhere had provoked him, hoping he’d be put in Radhalla’s pot. He’d been lucky, very lucky.

  Although he had the occasional feeling that he was being watched, he saw no more of Wulfhere. He worked hard and the days went. To the other carpenters he was friendly, but he kept his distance. As time passed his anger went from fury to cold determination. Someday, he resolved, he would have his vengeance.

  More Theodi arrived. They were thin and downbeat, dressed in rags. Ascha asked them for news of his mother, of Saefaru and Budrum. The Theodi were reluctant to talk. Life in the village was hard, they said. The men had been taken away by the Cheruskkii and, with no-one working the land, the farms had suffered. The Cheruskkii were brutal and treated the village as their own. Women were abused, and the villagers lived in fear of their lives. Clanfolk who crossed the Cheruskkii disappeared and were found days later floating face down in the river.

  Ascha listened carefully. He hoped his mother and Budrum were well. Life could be hard for a slave-woman with no-one to protect her. He asked the villagers about Hanno. They said that Hanno ruled in name only. The real hetman was Sigisberht who took pleasure in finding new miseries to inflict upon the Theodi.

  ‘He came to our door and asked about you,’ one of the villagers said quietly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sigisberht, Radhalla’s nephew.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Wanted to know whether you could be trusted.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘That you were a half-slave. You were no threat to anyone.’

  He looked at them and nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said gravely. And then as an afterthought he added quietly, ‘Did anyone else come? A Frisian trader perhaps?’

  But they had seen no-one.

  One night Ascha was awakened by the thump of a booted foot against the end of the bunk. Two hulking shapes stood over him with a burning torch that sent grey shadows jumping across the cabin’s walls. One was the big Cherusker he had seen with Radhalla in his father’s yard. The other was shorter and had a broken nose and a face spattered with moles.

  ‘On your feet, Theod,’ mole-face said. ‘Radhalla wants you.’

  The night was bitter cold and the dark sky studded with stars. They took him down narrow alleys and across the mara to where a buttery light spilled from Radhalla’s hall.

  Inside, the hall looked like a wheat field after a thunderstorm. Bodies lay everywhere, limbs snarled in drunken sleep. Men slouched over tables cradling their heads on their forearms. One man was on the table, toes up, head back and mouth agape, like a corpse. The room was warm and smoky, rank with the stench of spilled beer, greasy food and ripe bodies. Radhalla’s gesith, his close companions, had feasted well.

  Radhalla was standing before the fire wearing a long black bearskin robe which he lifted to warm the backs of his legs. A few Cheruskers sat staring into the flames. A shaggy coated hound lay asleep on the floor. Radhalla looked up and gave him what could have passed for a smile.

  ‘Ah, the Theod,’ he said, never blinking. ‘Give him a beer!’

  A Cherusker got up, poured him a beaker of sour beer and handed it to him. Uncertain, Ascha took it. Radhalla waved him towards a bench while he sat in a high-backed chair. He stretched out his legs, wrapped his robe around him, cracked his knuckles and smiled. Ascha watched him, waiting. What in Tiw’s name did Radhalla want? He could sense the two Cheruskkii standing behind him where he couldn’t see them.

  ‘I don’t sleep well,’ Radhalla said, patting his belly. ‘I have gases and dreams. I am afraid to sleep.’

  Up close Radhalla had small dark eyes, like a pig, a neck that was thick and fleshy and jaws that looked as if they could shatter stones.

  Silence between them, broken only by the crackling of the fire and the snores of the sleeping men.

  Ascha bent and tasted the beer, never taking his eyes off Radhalla.

  ‘You were with the Franks a long time.’ Radhalla said.

  ‘Yes.’

  Radhalla belched an odour of garlic and onions. He jerked his head and one of the Cheruskkii walked over to the fire and turned the log with an iron. The fire flamed and spat, and Ascha felt the heat rise like a blow in the face. A gout of pale smoke rose and flattened under the rafters. The man dropped the iron with a ringing clatter and came back to stand behind Ascha.

  ‘And you are what age?’

  ‘Nineteen, maybe twenty.’

  ‘You are young,’ Radhalla said, pressing his lips together.

  ‘I’m old enough.’

  ‘And you are a carver?’

  ‘You know I am.’

  Radhalla smiled, eyes locked. ‘You hate me, don’t you, boy?’ Radhalla said.

  He made no answer. He scanned the room, as if casually. He should kill the beast now. Pull a knife from one of the sleeping men and slash the Cherusker’s throat before the two brutes behind him cut him to pieces. This was the closest he would ever get. He would die, of course, which made it all pointless. He wanted revenge but he also wanted to live and enjoy everything Clovis had promised him. Oh, he would kill Radhalla, of that he was certain, but he would do it in his own way and in his own time. He would do it when it was right.

  ‘Why would I hate you?’ he said evenly.

  ‘Because I killed that brother of yours,’ Radhalla said, smiling.

  ‘He was my half-brother,’ Ascha whispered.

  ‘He was a fool, whoever he was. But your father was a good man.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ascha said. ‘He was.’

  ‘You know we were friends once, Aelfric and I.’

  Ascha looked at him. ‘So I heard.’

  ‘Friends for many years, I loved that man.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We quarreled.’

  ‘What about?’

  Radhalla gave a hard little laugh. ‘I forget,’
he said and stretched, his fists tightly bunched.

  ‘Is that why you killed him?’ Ascha spat.

  Radhalla paused, arms outstretched.

  ‘I never killed your father,’ he said, surprised. ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Soon after he visited you, his horse was hit by a slingshot. He was thrown and died two weeks later.’

  Radhalla pushed back his chair and got to his feet. He walked round the table towards Ascha. ‘You think I did that, you little prick?’ he shouted in Ascha’s face. He jerked a scarred thumb at his chest. ‘You think I would do that to Aelfric?’

  When he spoke his whole body moved, as if his head had been hammered into his trunk.

  Ascha breathed heavily. He licked his lips, conscious of the Cheruskkii at his shoulders.

  ‘He had opposed you, and you knew he was afraid of horses.’

  ‘Tcha!’ Radhalla said and waved an angry hand. ‘Everybody knew Aelfric couldn’t sit a horse to save his life. He was stubborn and refused to join us, but I didn’t kill him.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Wronged him, maybe, but he was still my friend.’

  ‘Then who threw the slingshot?’

  Radhalla shrugged. ‘It could a been anybody. Probably Hroc. Or Hanno.

  Ascha swallowed. Hanno or Hroc? Sweet Tiw! Not his brothers. He shook his head. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Radhalla shrugged. ‘Then again, it might have been the Franks, but it wasn’t me.’

  Ascha’s lip curled. He looked up at Radhalla and said, ‘You’re lying, you dirty sack of shit.’

  A Cherusker hit him in the face with his fist.

  The room spun, and he found himself on the floor. Mole-face kicked him in the belly and the breath exploded from his lungs. He rolled in the straw, his nose filled with the stench of rotting food and stale grasses. The Cheruskkii picked him up and dropped him on the bench. He sat, hands cradling his belly, doubled up with pain. He wheezed for air and wiped his mouth with the back of hand, blinking.

  Radhalla gave him a grim smile.