by Robert Low
`Just so,' I offered, weak at the image he had made for me. If it had just been seeking out my comrades, I might have thought twice about it then — but, of course, I could not tell him I sought out the sabre and the secret of the path back to Atil's treasure.
`What you must do for me is hunt Starkad. Kill him. Bring me proof of it — his head, unless it stinks too much by then. His jarl torc otherwise. He has offended me and no man does that.'
`He is Harald Bluetooth's man,' I offered weakly, thinking it only fair to bring him visions of serious bloodprice, but he shrugged.
`Bluetooth knows when to cut his losses. Two drakkar and a couple of fistfuls of his chosen men and their battle-gear are enough, I am thinking, for I hear he has trouble with the Saxlanders of Otto now. He will not worry overly much about the loss of a chosen man two years missing.'
I left, swallowing my own sick fear, knowing that Jarl Brand was bound for greatness, for the gold rune serpent he wore round his neck hardly weighed on him at all. His men by-named him Ofegh and some of the Greeks had picked it up, thinking this was his proper name and were told it meant `long-lived'. But ofegh is more subtle than that; it means 'one who has no doom on him' and no one was better named than Jarl Brand Ofegh.
He sent his own dreng battle captain, Ljot, a man as dark as his jarl was white and he brought sixty men with him, which was too many when we tried to flit moth-silent up this riverbed.
At the end of this crack between cliffs sat the palace, which wasn't a palace at all but a tomb to some old king of a people called Sumerians, long dusted to eternity. Still, what they had left was worrying enough in the blue moonlight: lion-headed lumps of stone, worn and twisted by age and weather into something that so much resembled trolls that it made us all grunt and grip our slippery hilts the harder.
They flanked a set of steps, leading down to darkness, and Finn looked at me, licking his lips. Kvasir, squinting his one eye into the darkness, squatted on one knee, as if to begin a Thing on the matter, but Botolf, growling, pushed on to the head of the steps, Sighvat with him. The raven had returned to his shoulder and said, in his voice: 'Odin.'
A fine bird,' said Skarpheddin's skald, Harek, 'but I wish it was a tongueless breed.'
The skald's nickname was Gjallandi, so it was enough to raise a chuckle when a man called Boomer started wishing for silence. I was still wondering where his allegiance lay; though he had brought the message to us, as instructed by his lord, it seemed he was in no hurry to go back to Skarpheddin's side. Still, I had set Brother John to watch him.
Ljot pushed up, looked round us all, then at me. 'Well?'
I thought about it, frowning, then decided to sneak down with Short Eldgrim, Finn, Sighvat, Kvasir and big Botolf. I would take the skald and Brother John, too, to keep that verse-maker close. When we came to the need for blades, I would call on Ljot who should then, as I pointed out firmly to him, come at the run.
Which was a lot more calmly said than done, as I took the lead and moved down the steps into that maw of darkness. Perhaps it was the cold stone closing around me in a desert night chill, but I had to clamp my teeth hard to stop them chattering. When I turned to make sure I was not doing this alone, though, I saw Finn grinding froth round his Roman nail.
I fumbled down the steps, then froze at the sight of a faint yellow-red glow, enough for me to see that it was light bouncing off a wall. The steps led to a landing and a turn to the right led to more steps, where the light revealed two more lion-headed stones and a chamber.
The air was cold and smelled of old dust. The floor was littered with rubble and, as I came down the last steps, there was a slither of sound and shadows bounced on the walls as men took up arms round flickering torches.
Thorhalla stood with Skarpheddin and his men, while Svala held the Goat Boy, his face tight, his whole body clenched and trembling. The wink of light on the blade at his throat was blood-red.
Behind them, a great block rose from the floor and on it stood a statue of a powerful, haughty man. Once it had been painted with gold, and the empty eye-sockets perhaps held gems, but that was long ago. It was now just the shape of a man and even the ancient carvings on it were worn to nothing.
I said, I said,' Thorhalla cackled. 'I said he would. He comes, my son.'
`You did say,' Skarpheddin rumbled.
The others crept in, shields and weapons up. Skarpheddin's men stirred and the barrel-bellied jarl cleared his throat.
`Best if we lose the hard edges, I am thinking,' he said and jerked a head at the Goat Boy, sucked into Svala's embrace, the knife steady at a throat that wavered like a bird's heart. I caught her eye and she smiled, but only with her mouth.
`Drop them,' Skarpheddin said harshly.
I had seen Svala now; I knew where her heart lay. I signalled and the clatter of metal was loud and echoing. There was a sound like the desert wind — Skarpheddin's dreng letting out their held breath.
`Tell us,' Thorhalla said, shifting forward so that her face was half shrouded. It looked like something long dead and freshly dug up.
`Let the boy go,' I countered, knowing they would not.
`When you tell us where the hoard is that you found last year,' Skarpheddin answered, hitching thumbs in his straining belt.
`Tell,' cackled Thorhalla. 'Tell.'
I opened my mouth — and closed it again. I don't know why. I thought the Goat Boy a fair trade for a fortune in drowned, cursed silver and might have made up a lie easily enough. For a seidr moment, though, I saw that any answer would end the same way and the Goat Boy would die.
A voice curled into the silence, soft and reasonable and gentle as a liar's kiss. 'The boy is not precious enough for him,' said Radoslav, pushing from behind the dreng ranks. `He is just a boy. I told you that already. Good enough to get him here, not good enough for him to give up a king-gift for.'
Radoslay. Unfettered and smiling like a cornered rat. All was clear as new rainwater. Finn growled, a low sound that raised the hackles on my neck.
Radoslav merely grinned at my stricken face and spread his arms, his voice reasonable. 'I gave you every chance. I gave you a ship, my time, my patience and yet still you persisted in the silly story of needing that silly sword to go after the silver you found. I would have been your man if you had, young Orm, but it seems you are too afraid. I am not. I will go, as soon as you tell us where it lies. So what will make you -
who will make you, eh?'
I couldn't speak, the utter back-stabbing treachery of it robbing me of my tongue. I saw him pulling the dagger from the Dane's neck in the alley, ducking debris on the stairs under the amphitheatre. All that -
and now this?
Finn, though, had voice for all of us. 'Can you crawl there, you nithing?' he spat. 'I will rip off your legs and beat out that tattoo on your head with the wet ends, you pig fart.'
I was still in that alley in Miklagard, hearing Radoslav say, calm as a stone: 'I heard him call you pig fart.'
How could I have been so wrong about him? Had those seidr witches worked his mind over to them?
I had not, of course, been wrong, only blind. The silver-sickness was on him from the start and the likes of Thorhalla and Svala had not missed it. It was bright in his eyes now, thick in his voice as he looked Finn over. His smile was dazzling.
`Hmm. . perhaps you, Horsehead?' he said, then shook his head and laughed. 'I am thinking not. Orm might even thank us for getting rid of your mouth.'
He studied, then grinned. 'Him,' he said, pointing to Botolf. `We went to such trouble to get him, after all.
Orm will talk if he is facing death.'
Skarpheddin signalled and some of his men moved forward, to be met with growls. They stopped and both sides tensed like rival dog packs. They were armed and our weapons were on the ground, but I knew Finn and the others would fight sooner than see Botolf dragged off. So did Botolf.
`Fleya,' he rumbled cheerfully, stepping forward. He winked at me and moved into the lee of
Skarpheddin's men, then turned to face us — and knelt. I swallowed as Skarpheddin took the hint.
`Well,' he said admiringly, 'a man who spits at death.' His sword coming out was a snake-slither of sound.
`Just so,' declared Botolf and winked at me again. What was he doing? I was shaking so much I could hear my ring-rivets jingle.
I am thinking, though,' the giant rumbled on reasonably, `that you may have to neck me, just to prove the point to young Orm here, who is a deep thinker and stubborn.'
Are you so eager to die, then?' snarled Radoslav, bewildered by this He was not alone — I looked round at all the grim, puzzled faces. Finn scrubbed his head in an agony of confusion, the sweat rolling off him in fat beads.
Botolf shrugged his massive shoulders. 'You chose me, Radoslay. I am just showing you the weave of it.'
Skarpheddin stroked his forked beard and then shrugged and raised the sword. 'So be it,' he said.
I wanted to shriek, but Botolf winked for the third time and held up a hand.
`Wait, wait,' he said and turned to grin at Radoslay. 'If this is my wyrd — and it looks like it is, for sure
— then let me die as fair as I lived. I would hate to shear my hair off with my neck.'
Radoslav blinked, then laughed a nasty laugh, for he had seen — as we all had seen — how vain big Botolf was about his long red hair, now fixed in two massive braids.
`Do me the courtesy,' growled Botolf to Radoslay. 'Pull them free of my neck.'
Radoslav put his back to us as he moved to stand in front of Botolf, gripped a braid in each fist and pulled them forward, so that the massive neck was exposed. I sweated. Did Botolf believe he really was the frost giant Ymir? That his muscled flesh could bounce edged iron like a berserker?
The sword swung up, a red-gold arc in the torchlight.
`Wait. .' I started to say, then it hissed down, full force.
Botolf gave a bull bellow and his whole muscled torso heaved backwards. Radoslav shot forward, hands outstretched and shrieked with horror as Skarpheddin's blade sheared through his hands. One was severed completely at the wrist, the other lost all the fingers in a spray of flesh bits and blood.
Screaming, he reeled away, while Botolf rose like Ymir himself, the spider of Radoslav's left hand still gripping one braid, a grisly hair ornament that swung as he shoved fat-bellied Skarpheddin into Thorhalla, who cannoned into Svala and the Goat Boy.
Something black rasped: 'Odin,' and whirred across the room; men scrabbled for weapons; and Brother John roared: `Fram! Fram! Brandsmenn! Ljot!'
I scooped up my blade and started towards Svala, to free the Goat Boy. Botolf, roaring and beating with his fists, vanished into the middle of Skarpheddin's men and Short Eldgrim followed after, Kvasir on his heels. Finn lunged, snarling, towards Thorhalla, who shrieked and danced, her catskin cloak flying as she spat at Finn, shouting, 'Blunt, blunt.'
It was well-known that a seidr witch could take the edge off a weapon with such a look and chant, but Finn swung his sword anyway and cursed when the Godi bounced off her thick catskin cloak. Thorhalla cackled in triumph, but Finn, grim as a shoal in a storm, whipped up his Roman nail from between his boots and rammed it between her eyes. Later, he said it felt like pushing a knife into an old bird's nest.
A mailed figure loomed in front of me, bright light flashed on a blade and I struck at his shins as I ducked.
They cracked like twigs and he wailed and fell over, so that I moved past him to where Sighvat was collecting the Goat Boy from a shrieking Svala.
She was slumped and bloodied already, whimpering from the ruin of a face. A small puff of wet feathers lay at her feet, but Sighvat's raven had clawed and pecked her eyes and face before she had torn it to bloody pats, letting loose the Goat Boy to do it.
I hauled the Goat Boy away and he clung to me and looked up into my face, dry-eyed. 'I was not afraid, Trader,' he whispered, his voice winking on the brim of tears. 'I held your amulet and was not afraid.'
I dragged him to one side and hunkered down at the base of the great stern statue while the chamber filled with grunting, panting, howling men, hacking and slashing at each other in a fury of fear and frenzy.
They cursed and staggered and slipped in gore and lashed out at each other. Shadows danced madly in the guttering torches but Sighvat knelt nearby as if he was the only one in that place, gently gathering up the body of the raven, every last bloody shred and pinfeather, cupping it in his hands while Svala lay, face leaking blood between her fingers as she rocked and moaned.
The raven. Had it said 'Odin' because Sighvat had trained it to speak, as Kvasir had scoffed when we had first marvelled at it? Had he trained it also to kill, or was that the hand of One Eye? There was so much skin-crawling seidr in this hov, though, that even Sighvat's raven seemed the least of it.
The fight did not last long, though it seemed so. The last of Skarpheddin's dreng flung down their weapons when they saw Brand enter the chamber, magnificently mailed and chill as snow. Skarpheddin himself, beaten flat by Botolf, could not even rise or speak, for his ribs were smashed and his jaw broken.
Botolf sat, panting and scowling and running with blood from a dozen cuts as everyone sorted themselves out and realised that no one was hurt save for a few bruises and slices. We all crowded round, demanding to know where he was cut worst and Botolf sighed, holding out a hand, from which dangled one limp braid, sliced off in the fight.
Now I will have to get it all shorn,' he scowled.
We were laughing like girls from the sheer relief of it, echoing loud in that chamber. The Goat Boy danced and shrilled.
Then the whimpers and moans and blood sobered us.
`Help me, for the love of all the gods,' yelped Radoslav, his stump jammed under his armpit where it soaked his shirt. His other, fingerless hand he had stuffed between his thighs to try and stem the bleeding and he begged Finn to tie off his arms and save him.
It came to me again that he had not, after all, been immune to the women's seidr magic and that the thoughts in his head had not, perhaps, been all his own. I pitied him — but I was alone in this, as it turned out.
`You need a Greek chirurgeon,' Brother John pointed out and Radoslav whimpered agreement.
`You need a priest,' corrected Finn in a low, rasping snarl and raised his named sword.
Radoslav shrieked once as the blade — not blunt now, I saw — sliced him through the throat, then gurgled his way to meet his Slav gods.
Finn, grinning madly, leaned over and tore Radoslav's ruby earring out, then searched him for more spoil.
Once, Radoslav had been an oarmate, a sword-brother; now he was pillage and it came to me then that he had managed to avoid taking our Oath and that I had missed that sign, too. I thanked him for it now, all the same; the Oath had not been broken by his treachery and death.
`He thought you were lying about the runesword,' said Brother John softly, looking down at the ruin that had been Radoslay . Tibenter homines et id quod volunt credunt.'
What men wish, they like to believe. It did not seem much to mark the passing of a man who had once saved my life.
Jarl Brand, his hair and eyes picking up all the red torchlight, stepped over to the groaning Skarpheddin and his dead mother. His sword was one befitting a great jarl, for it took only two strokes — deep, wet sounds — and their heads were off. Then he turned to Svala.
`Take her and bind her. Cask those two up,' he said to Ljot, and place the heads on the thighs.'
Which was the correct way, of course, to lay any witch-fetch vengeance to rest, for they cannot walk abroad as undead if they cannot see. Svala would not be killed; no one sensible killed a witch and it was not good that Finn had killed Thorhalla, but I trusted to Odin to watch over him for that. I watched Brand's men haul Svala by the armpits and take her up the worn steps, her calfskin shoes bumping as they dragged her, blood dripping, fat and red.
Brand turned to me and smiled. 'A good service,' he declared. I shall keep
my word. Come to me in the daylight and we will see your men well fitted out.'
We left that old tomb, stinking with fresh blood and new fetches to haunt it down the ages, scampering away from it down the moonlit crack between high rocks and out to where the river flowed. There we stopped and splashed water and told Botolf what a saga tale he had made, though all he could think of was his lost hair.
It did make such a tale, too, for that skald Harek — who had stayed true enough to us — took the bones of it and fleshed it into a saga. Though when I heard it, years later, it was part of another tale entirely, about the jomsvikings from Wolin, and nearly all lies.
As we trooped back to the wadmal-camp, the Goat Boy striding beside me, fist clenched tight in the hem of my mail, all I could see were Svala's red cheeks, lips pursed to blow a strand of hair off her face with a littlepfft' of sound.
`Lovely,' she had said.
I could not get the stink of rumman fruit out of my nose all night — and the gods revealed the price to be paid for killing a witch when we stumbled back to our mean camp. The man I had set to watch Martin confessed he had ducked from the tent for a moment — a moment only — to take a piss, for the prisoner had been bound.
When he came back, the monk had gone.
11
The click of wooden goat bells and the bleat of camel calves snatched me from a dream which smoked away like prow-spray into the morning, where shadows already grew fat beyond the sheltered overhang of rock where we were camped.
Men yawned and unrolled from cloaks and stretched, farting. Two fires were already lit and Aliabu, our guide, was slapping wet dough backwards and forwards in his hands, expertly making it into thin bread for the hot stones. He grinned, all white teeth and eyes. Nearby, Finn ducked the smoke from his own fire, moving to the lee as he stirred oats and water in a pot, a good Norse day-meal.