by Robert Low
Short Eldgrim strolled up as I rolled out from my own cloak and finally found the gods-cursed stone that had stuck in my ribs for most of the night.
`You look like a camel's arse, Trader,' he grunted amiably, hunkering down awkwardly in his robes and mail. Finn threatened him with the wooden spoon as he craned to look in the pot.
`Fine talk from the likes of you,' I gave him back, 'with a face like a bad chart.'
The Goat Boy brought me some of the Arab flatbread and hot goat's milk, at which a few of the men chuckled. The Goat Boy, still pale and weak, had refused to be left behind with Gizur and the six we had sent to guard the Fjord Elk and the Oathsworn admired his bravery — and enjoyed poking fun at me for his doglike devotion. I had to spit out flies drinking his hot milk, though; even this early they swarmed on any food.
Most of the band were awake and had been since first light, slithering into leather and mail. After that, they shrouded it all in the flowing robes of the Bedu tribes, leaving helmets dangling like pots from the waists and wearing cloth wrapped round their heads in a strange way, which Aliabu and his brothers, Asil and Delim, had to do for the band every day.
That had been Aliabu's idea, that and the handful of goats and camels which carried our gear, since it made us look more like Sarakenoi in the country that we travelled through. Not that, so far, we had seen many others and those we did find sprinted for it. Ruined farms, shattered houses, broken lives — the armies of both sides were ravaging those who always suffer: the weak.
Now, eight days out from Antioch, we had gone beyond even the Miklagard army scout patrols and the two ravaged steadings we had come across had been destroyed by the Sarakenoi themselves, who were fighting each other now. I thanked the gods we were more battle-ready than we had ever been.
Jarl Brand had been a ring-giver of note to us, for sure. In front of the assembled ranks of his own men and us — and what was left of the sullen, wailing company of Skarpheddin — he had offered his aid to each and every one of the Oathsworn, who had then picked spears, axes, helmets shields and prized ring-coats from a heap gathered up from the battlefield.
There were a few swords, too, but he gave them to me to hand out, which was a fine jarl-gesture and not lost on all there, so that the women who wailed at the sight of familiar battle-gear being lifted by strangers were made easier. That, of course, and the fact that Jarl Brand had swept them into his own hov, which at least gave them a future and made it harder to protest.
He also provided a feast, with heaped platters of food and fat jugs of nabidh, consumed under the stars down by the Orontes, with clever jugglers and fire-eaters and all in honour of the Oathsworn and their leader, Orm Bear Slayer.
Harek, who had now become court-skald to Brand as he had been to Skarpheddin, composed as complicated a draupa as he could manage on the greatness of Orm Bear Slayer while half-drunk, but thehooms' and `heyas' that made my face flame simply made his tongue more wild.
Of course, as Brand confided to me, his face so close to mine that I could see the light sparkle on his silver lashes, it was what the Oathsworn deserved for having such Odin luck as to have attacked the main baggage camp of the enemy just as it looked as if the Sarakenoi might win.
Instead, they had panicked and tried to get back to defend it, at which point Red Boots and his horsemen fell on them, rescuing something from a bad day. Which was double luck for us: if the Sarakenoi had got back to their camp, we'd have been skewered and considered ourselves fortunate to die so quickly after what we had done there.
`General Red Boots now commends me,' Brand went on, `which is only right and proper. He has made me Curopalates in Skarpheddin's stead.'
I smiled and nodded, though I did not think he would have the enjoyment of it for long — Red Boots had not beaten the wily old Hamdanid ruler and, as long as he threatened from Aleppo, Antioch would have to be abandoned yet again. The army would be reduced once more, until next year, or the year after. As seemed usual, neither the Great City nor the Sarakenoi had gained anything for all the blood spilled.
Perhaps Skarpheddin chuckled at that from Helheim where he surely was, for he and his mother were both carefully casked in a Christ coffin lined with lead stripped from Antioch's outraged churches. This was so that they wouldn't leak until they were howed, with due solemn ceremony, four days after we were gone.
Of Svala there was no word at all.
`So you did me a good turn there, too, young Orm,' Brand was saying, stroking his grease-stiffened moustaches, so that they looked more like frozen eaves-water than before. 'Which is why I equip you well, as promised. I will also give you some good Arabs, the ones they call Bedu from hereabouts, three brothers and their women led by one Aliabu. . something. He will make you look more like his people and, if you travel with the camels I will give him, there is a better chance of avoiding that stake up the arse.'
It was a good plan and I simply nodded, thinking more about how I might just miss getting arrested by Red Boots, who was now galloping off back to Tarsus. I did not hold out much hope of it, all the same -
now that he had time to think on it, Red Boots would want that silly container and the lives of all connected with it.
There wasn't much else to do, I was thinking, except brood on it and watch Kleggi and Svarvar arm-wrestle while Hookeye and Arnfinn raced each other to swallow whole ox-horns at one go. Hookeye finished, dripping and triumphant, while Finn bellowed that he had won only if the bet had been to try and drown himself in nabidh instead of swallow it. Hedin Flayer interrupted to excuse Hookeye on the grounds that his squint made it hard for him to get horn to meet mouth first time out.
I remembered Hookeye, draped like a Miklagard priest and arse going like a washerwoman's elbow, while the Hamdanid chief's woman under him shrieked and squealed. She had not been a pretty Sarakenoi princess afterwards.
None of that, though, drove the certainty of what I had to do out of me. So, swallowing the spear in my throat, I did it: I told Brand what we had done on Cyprus, for he was the only one who could, I was thinking, protect us from Red Boots and get the secret to the Basileus of the Great City. I did not tell him we had lifted the prize to trade for the sword Starkad had, all the same. I just told him what we had lifted and what I thought it meant.
He sat and frowned on it for a long time, while the din of feasting roared and flowed like a river in spate round us. So long, in fact, that I grew more wary and began to consider a way out of that place. Then he stirred, stroking his icicle moustaches.
`Here's the way of it,' he said, bent close to speak in my ear. I could see Finn watching and it came to me that it did no harm for my reputation to be seen touching heads and planning at the high seat of a jarl such as Brand.
I am pledged for a season to the Basileus Nikephoras,' he went on. 'This, of course, also means his commander, John Red Boots.'
My eyes must have narrowed too much, for he waved a soothing hand.
It comes to me that the business of thrones in the Great City is nothing much to do with either you or me, young Orm,' he went on. 'After my season is up, why should I care what happens in their blood-feuds?
It comes to me also that keeping this a secret until I see the Basileus — a costly and long-drawn out affair of bribes, I might add — will be difficult. Red Boots, I understand, is already made aware of your name and will certainly want you dead.'
I was more afraid than ever and he saw that and chuckled. I can help you, but you must place your hands in mine over this. I shall take these twigs and eggs to Red Boots and say that you were my man when you did this offence and that you did it for gain and no more and thought it richer than it turned out to be. I will tell him you are a fool who does not understand what was lifted, only that it was not as golden a prize as you thought — which is no lie, after all. Nothing bad has come of it and he will have my pledge on your silence.
It is as well no Romans were killed in getting this prize,' he went on, taking a swig from his nabidh
, then passing it to me as if we were horn-paired at this feast, another thing that did not go unnoticed and gave me even more standing. I also saw that he had done it deliberately for that effect.
As it is, of course,' he went on, wiping his lips and talking as if he was discussing a winter cull of livestock, 'Red Boots will still try and have you killed in the dark, for it is the Great City's way of things and another reason to be off smartly. He would like to do the same to me, but he needs me. He cannot hold Antioch unless the whole army stays and that isn't something that can be afforded for long. He will march off and leave a garrison behind to be besieged by the camel-humpers. That garrison will be me and most of my men.'
I blinked at that and again Brand chuckled.
Of course, my ships will lay off around Cyprus, which is where you can find me, providing you are back by the end of the year. After that, I will be off up to Kiev and then home and if you want to be with me, as a chosen man, you had better make it in time. Then both of us will be beyond Red Boots and he can do what he likes.'
`What happens if you get besieged in Antioch?' I blurted and he smiled like a bear trap being set.
`No "if" about it. I will, of course. Red Boots knows it. I will also negotiate the surrender of Antioch to the Hamdanids — at a price and amicably. Red Boots knows that, too. The Hamdanids will prefer that to fighting several hundred well-armed men from the viks, having seen how we do it. Naturally, I will wait for the safe withdrawal of the Great City's armies to Tarsus, which is all Red Boots wants. Next year, or the year after, he will be back and the business will start again.'
There are those who say Brand got his jarldom by rolling on his back and having his belly tickled by his King, Eirik, and, after him, his son, Olof. They say Olof only got to be King of the Svears and Geats because he climbed into the lap of Svein Forkbeard like a little dog and that made Brand the lapdog of a lapdog.
That's not the right of it. They called Olof the Lap King — Skotkonung — because he took what his father Eirik had made of the Svears and Geats and made them pour a handful of dirt from their tofts into his lap, a ritual that admitted he owned the earth they walked on and would pay him in silver to keep those tofts.
Taxes, in other words.
Olof, like all the jarl-kings, made those easterners who couldn't even speak decent Norse into a kingdom called Greater Sweden — and Brand was at his shieldless side through all of it and his father's before that.
The rune-serpent torc sat round Brand's neck lighter than swansdown.
I knew what he offered was the perfect solution. It saved me from the Great City and offered protection from Sviatoslav and his hawk-fierce sons, allowing us to take the shorter route back to the North. It went a long way to lifting the weight of that jarl torc pressing on my shoulders, the ends of it forged with the runesword on one side and my thralled oathsworn oarmates on the other. The swaying balance-rod of it, hauling me this way, then the other, was crushing.
But all I could think of at that moment was her and I said her name aloud, a question.
`What of Svala?' I asked and Brand studied me.
`You don't even ask about this Alia bu,' he frowned. 'A jarl needs to think of such things.'
I saw my mistake and managed to grin and dance lightly on my tongue. 'I would say, if I had a gold-brow, that any choice of the jarl is sound,' I replied and he chuckled, acknowledging that.
`But I am also knowing you have taken this Aliabu's two children to care until he returns, always within reach, as it were,' I went on. 'What you offer is good and I will find Starkad on your behalf. It may be that I can put my hands in yours when we put a keel on good Baltic water. Then again, it may not.
I would also say,' I went on, the nabidh numbing my lips, `that my men watch you and I closely and it would be better for us both if some token changed hands here when this leather container is handed over, as if it held a treasure worth having. A bag that chimes softly, as they say, makes the loudest sound.'
Brand smiled and nodded, stroking his fine moustaches. 'It is no good-luck thing to kill a volva woman,'
he said after a while, surprising me by picking up on a subject I'd thought deliberately ignored. Somewhere, a bench went over and a knot of men roared and fought good-humouredly. Brand watched them, stroking his ice-moustaches, then continued speaking to me and looking at them. 'I am hoping your man Finn has the grace of the other gods, so that they can calm Frejya for the loss of Skarpheddin's mother. A spike of Roman iron — heya, she could not blunt that. I wish I could have known what went through her mind at that moment.'
A spike of Roman iron,' I answered wryly and he chuckled. In the next breath he was stone grim.
`This Svala, who is really a Sami witch with an outlandish name, I will keep until she is healed,' he said flatly. 'After that, I will thrall her to some Mussulman or Jew, who will not be affected by her seidr and once she has been broken into, the strength of her will be diminished.'
I was silent for a moment. It wasn't that a Mussulman or a Jew couldn't be affected by seidr just that it didn't much matter to us if they were driven mad by it. I was sure she could work her magic on a stone Christ saint, but I did not like the idea of her being 'broken into', like a locked temple. It spoke of pain and blood. In his way, Jarl Brand was being generous-handed and lenient with her — yet, still, there was that lingering scent of rumman fruit.
Will you sell her to me?' I asked, surprising both Brand and myself with those words.
Frowning, he thought about it. 'She is dangerous, I am thinking. Odin's arse, young Orm, she has a face like a chewed fig thanks to that raven and is a well of hatred for us all, yet still she weaves her seidr and makes you come to her rescue. What more warning do you need on this?'
'Will you sell her?'
He thought for a little longer and shook his head, so that my heart dipped.
It would be your doom, I am thinking,' he said. 'But it is also your wyrd and no one flaunts the Norns'
weave without price. I am reluctant to sell a Sami witch to a good man from the Vik, but here is what I will do. Return with proof that Starkad is dead. That, surely, will be a sign that you are gods-lucky and you will also have had time to consider whether you are favoured enough to take this woman.'
I knew this was as much as he would do on it, so I nodded. Brand nodded back and the bargain was struck. I expected a purse of hacksilver when I handed over the container there and then, but Brand was a jarl of different stock than that and surprised me. He stood and thumped on the bench until people fell silent, then peeled off the fine silver torc from around his neck and presented it to me.
He did not have to say anything, for the Norse knew what it meant and those Jews, Arabs and Greeks would have it explained to them later. The roar and bench-thumping went on a long time as I took the twelve ounces of braided silver from him and placed it round my own neck. For all the night was leprous with sweat, the silver was cold on my skin for a long time.
Now, in the desert heat of the early day, I fingered it, the snarling wyrm-head ends and the runes skeined on it and wondered if all the blood was off it, for it was only later that I realised it had belonged to Skarpheddin and preferred not to tell of that. There were those who would think it a bad move to be wearing the rune-serpent jarl torc of one who had been so luck-cursed.
Of course, I did feel a moment of guilt over the container and its secret, but that was not for more than a year, when I heard how Red Boots, Leo Balantes and others had crept into the palace bedroom of the Basileus of the Great City and stabbed him to shreds while he slept, Red Boots walking out and on to the throne. Red Boots, I heard, had even smashed the Basileus's teeth from his head with the butt end of his sword and kicked in his head, which was a sorry way for the most powerful man in the world to end up.
But blood-feuds in the Great City were no business of mine, as Brand had said, and, in this gods-abandoned waste of heat and dust, I considered the trade worth it at the time. The Oathsworn,
I was thinking as I sat there blowing flies off porridge, were under Odin's best smile, for many problems had been fixed and money and battle-gear gained.
Aliabu's woman, Nura, crossed to the camels with a milking bowl they called an ader and stood by one of the camels. Sixteen of the beasts, I had learned, were she-camels and five had calves, so that those who were not suckling were heavy with milk.
While Delim gathered in the four males from where they had been hobbled and turned them loose to graze the sparse shrub, Nura unfastened the covers on the udders of one she-camel and encouraged her with sucking sounds. Standing on one leg, the other balanced against her knee, she took the fat teats in her hand and started squirting expertly into the bowls.
I sat and watched while the morning grew to glory and started to sing and hum with strange life. She saw me and smiled with her eyes, which was all that could be seen.
She had a blue cloth wrapped round her in a single piece, which they called mehlafa, and it covered her from her silver-ringed feet to her braided hair, though, unlike other Saracen women, she did not seem to mind exposing her face.
She unloaded milk into a fat pottery pot and, from there, Alia bu's other woman, Rauda, poured it carefully into goatskins. Even with just her eyes visible, this Rauda was a rare beauty, it seemed, for her full name, Aliabu had told me proudly, meant the Pool that Gathers after the Rain.
Not a pool others drank from, even among his own. None of his brothers had women, but Aliabu had two and his brothers did not seem to mind this, nor ever demand their use. Neither, of course, did we, though a few thought of it.
But Aliabu had a long and wickedly curved knife hidden in his robes and had made it clear he would use it on any afrangi who caused him offence. We needed his skills and goodwill more than we needed a hump, as I told the Oathsworn.
Aliabu had told me his full name and those of this brothers, but the most any of us could remember of it was the first part and that 'Abu' meant 'father', which title you take in Serkland when you have sons.