by Robert Low
Hundreds. Our comrades, perhaps growing fewer by the day out there in the desert with these dead-eaters, who were growing madder than the full moon's ghost. I saw this Dark-hearted One, crouched like a wolf in a pack, gnawing on the gods knew what and the shiver lurched along my spine so that the priest saw it.
`Just so,' said Brother John, grimly. Then he asked me brightly what I was doing now. So I told him a lie
— buying boots — while thinking of the woman and if she was still in the alley.
I'll come with you then,' he said.
`No. Buying boots is a solitary thing, priest. Go and tell Finn and Kvasir what you know.'
He looked at me, shrugged and then moved off, seeming to glide now that he had robes that went all the way down to cover his feet. I watched him disappear round a corner, then moved slowly up the alley.
She was there, I could see, for the alley had a strong yellow lantern hung at the end of it and, if I had been thinking at all, that would have warned me, for there was nothing there save some steps up on to the first level of the tangled roofs and why would a whore want to hump in lantern light?
I had no experience of Mussulmen women, so moved cautiously, knowing only that to lower their veils was a sin, though the Bedu women did this with no shame, which was confusing. Then she shrugged her shoulders, slipped the dress off and I looked at the most beautiful breasts I had ever seen, it seemed to me.
They glowed in that yellow-lit alley, tipped with dark berries and trembling. Dry-mouthed, I took a step and heard another behind me.
`Ha!' shouted Brother John. 'Boots is it, then?' He darted in front of me and raised one hand to make the sign of the cross at the woman. He started to speak as, annoyed, I was moving to thrust him aside with a curse. 'Begone,' he growled at her. 'Apage Satanas.'
I was about to roar at him when the arrow struck, a dull thump of sound that pitched him forward, leaving me to gape at this strange feathered sapling which had suddenly sprouted between his shoulder blades. The woman screamed.
I knew I was next and sprang forward, smacking the lantern off its hook, so that it clattered and rolled and went one way, while I went another, into the now darkened lee of the stairs. A second arrow whirred and the woman screamed again, then I heard her fall.
Black silence and the stink of smoking fish oil from the lantern. The woman gave a gurgling moan, but Brother John was still and quiet and the surging of blood in my ears was almost as loud as my breathing.
Strain as I might I could not hear anything around me.
Then there was a scuff, from above, from the rooftop the stairs led up to.
I saw a flicker of shadow. I wanted to get back to Brother John, pictured him bleeding to death, or lung-shot and gasping like a landed fish, able to be saved if help was at hand. But the killer lurked yet and I did a desperate, foolish thing: I charged up the stairs.
It took him by surprise and the arrow he had nocked hissed so close to my face that the flights flicked my cheek. I hit him then and heard him whoof out air, heard the bow clatter to the ground and then I was over and rolling, confused, across the flat roof. My elbow banged pain through me.
A shadow sprang up and leaped up a little way to another roof and I scrambled up and after him, grateful to all the gods that, as I only saw now, he had been alone. To my shame, I left Brother John, all thought of last-minute doctoring blasted away in the heat of the chase.
A dark shape — no cloak, I noted — vaulting over the lip of mud-brick to another roof. A pot clattered and he cursed, though he mangled it, as East Norse often do. One of Starkad's Danes, then, left to kill me in the dark.
The dark shape plunged down three short steps, fell over and cursed again. Voices yelled and figures sprang up; people, sleeping on their roofs for the cool of it, scattered as he hurled through them, cursing. I saw steel glint and so did they and they pulled apart, jabbering and yowling.
I went through them as if they were reeds and he saw me coming, though I still could not make out who he was. He slashed at someone with the knife, then ran on, leaped a fair gap and landed, stumbling, on a new roof.
I went after, landing better for I had the advantage of seeing what he had done. There were lights now, yellow flares in the darkness, as he raced down tiered rooftops.
The smell of cooking hit me and I knew we were stumbling across the roofs above the Street of Poor Cooking.
He skidded to a halt, teetered for a moment, then went over the edge with a sharp cry. I got there a second later and saw him crash into the street, hit a vendor's charcoal brazier in a spill of coals and hot oil, then sprawl in the middle of the road with a gasp and a grunt.
The vendor and his neighbours went wild, flailing the air with their arms and shrill words. They redoubled this when I landed in the middle of them, went over on my old ankle injury and crashed down in a pool of hot oil. Flames licked dangerously as the oil sludged into the dusty street, washing over spilled embers. Other screamers anxiously sprinted to scatter dust, or beat them with wet cloths.
They dragged up Brother John's killer, then recoiled as he flashed his knife at them. One, slower than the others, staggered back, put one hand to his side and then looked at the blood on it, before screaming and staggering away, showing this horror to everyone else around. They backed away from him, too, as if he had leprosy.
Hands grabbed me, hauled me up. A black-bearded face screamed into mine, spittle lashing me. I wanted to get round him to the killer, had to find out who he was, but Black Beard belted me one in the ribs, which made me wince. I hit him back and, suddenly, they were all on me, kicking and slapping and trying to tear my clothes, so I went down and curled into a tight ball.
There was one, a fat man in a ragged robe smelling of onions, who bent over me, his legs slightly apart, trying to grab my hair and beat my head in the dust while I slapped his hands away as if they were flies.
Then a booted foot shot up between his parted legs and the man screamed and flew through the air, arse over tip.
There was no way he was getting up again; he was blind with the agony of it and probably maimed for life.
Another man went sideways and bounced off a wall with a puff of dust. The others split apart and Finn stood there, Kvasir beside him; Botolf, who had kicked Onions to moaning ruin, stood next to him and others were coming up fast.
I saw the killer, knife still in his hand, start to get up, but there was something wrong with his leg. 'Grab him,' I gasped, pointing. 'He shot Brother John. . the alley.'
The killer was hirpling away, but Botolf's meaty hand took him by the collar and Short Eldgrim snicked the knife out of his hand as if a baby were holding it.
`Heya, you arse, stop struggling or I'll throttle you,' Botolf said amiably, holding the killer up with one hand so that his toes scrabbled an inch above the ground.
I uncurled and got up slowly, testing bits to see if they still worked. Botolf turned and brought the struggling, snarling killer with him, so that light finally fell on his face. When it did, when he knew it was all up with him, he stopped writhing and hung there, grim and jaw-clenched.
I knew the woman had been hired to lure me into the light of a neatly placed lantern and that Brother John had taken the arrow meant for me. The killer had silenced the woman when it had gone wrong, a ruthless move all done in the blink of an eye.
I had recognised that as deep thinking even as I had chased him across the roofs. I had thought Starkad had left one of his best men behind to make this mischief.
But hanging like a caught shark in Botolf's fist was Hookeye.
14
The church of the tomb of Aaron was a huddle of white buildings on a high plateau reached by a winding path from barren tablelands and sparse vegetation. I stood and brooded over the land, as if I were adrift in a hostile sea where something dark and intent shark-slid under the surface.
The sun was heavy as Thor's hammer, fields were dusty plantings and ragged fences leaned drunkenly, broken teeth in
the raw red gums of the earth. The world was a pool of despair, collected among the scattered bricks of this place.
Finn and Kvasir appeared, flanking a robed figure, his hands stuck inside his sleeves, even in this heat.
He was a tonsured monk and what was left of his hair was the colour of a wolf pelt, but his eyes were keen and gentle and his name, he said, was Abbot Dudo.
`Well,' said Finn, 'that's Brother John delivered up then, Trader. I am sorry to see this day.'
`He was a stone in the shoe,' agreed Kvasir, nodding sorrowfully, 'but he was our stone in the shoe.'
I am sorrowed to hear of your loss,' Dudo said. 'Doubly so, since it was a brother in Christ and so cruelly slain.'
He spoke Norse with a strange lilting accent, for he was from Bayeux in Valland and had once gone with William Longsword's son when the boy had been sent to Bayeux from Rouen to learn the language of his ancestors, for even then the Norse of that place — they called it Normannsland these days — were growing less Norse and more Frank.
Still, in the thirty years since, Dudo had held on to the donsk tunga well and only stumbled a little with it, like a drunk leaving his bench for a piss.
`Slain by one of our own,' Finn growled. 'And in the back. And weaponless. Do you need extra candles lit to get him to his god's hall for having died such a straw death?'
Dudo smiled and shook his head. 'There are no straw deaths in the sight of the Lord,' he said and managed not to make it pious. 'After all, this is the church of Aaron, who was stripped of his priestly regalia by his own brother, Moses, on orders from God and died of shame and sorrow for it. Even so, he was gathered into the bosom of Christ.'
I didn't know whether the brother of Moses was really howed up here or not and it did not matter much.
We had come here for two reasons, the first being that Brother John would not rest easy in any Greek church of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem and, apart from mean little Nestorian and Jacobite places, there wasn't a decent Christ temple to howe him up in that city.
The second was Ibn al-Bakilani al-Dauda, governor of the city of Jersualem in the name of the Ikshid, Muhammad ibn Tugh, ruler of Egypt, Syria and Palestine — or so he claimed.
I knew enough of al-Dauda's position to know it was precarious, for he had not enough troops and his Ikshid was too busy fighting a losing war against the Fatimids of al-Muizz. Not to mention all the other little jarl-dreaming dynasties that were springing up like maggots on the sickening body of the Abbasid empire.
We had been ringed by guards in our hov in the Foreign Quarter, men with studded armour and spears and helmets with mail that covered all of their face but for their eyes. They were there as much to keep the rest of the street from tearing us to bits as arrest us.
They had swept up Hookeye and me, all the same, and kept us in separate stone rooms in one of the towers of the Jaffa Gate.
Towards dawn, as I shivered in the dank chill of that place, hearing the straw rustle with vermin, I was hauled out and, blinking in the light, stumbled up spiralling stairs to a similar room at the top of the tower, though this one had rugs on a polished wooden floor and rich wall hangings.
There was a man there, a figure in green and white clothes that flowed like water, with a jewel-hiked dagger thrust through the braided cord round his waist and a soft, folded cloth hat with a green stone in it which, if it really was an emerald, was the price of a farm in the Vik.
Abdul-Hassan ibn al-Bakilani al-Dauda, as he introduced himself in flawless Greek.
Orm Ruriksson,' I answered, but he waved one dismissing hand.
I know who you are. You are trouble.'
Not the best of openings, I was thinking, remembering Jarl Brand's remarks about ending up roasting with a stake up my arse. Sensibly, I kept my teeth touching and waited as he flipped open a small box on the table with his ringed hand and drew out my Thor hammer, one finger hooked distastefully in the sweat-dark leather of the thong.
`You are not, it seems, followers of Jesus,' he said, bringing the amulet up to eye level and studying it as it swung. 'Yet you travel with a Christian priest — and not a Roman one from Constantinople. One from the uttermost west. Such monks are rare in these parts in these times.'
`We are Christ-men,' I answered carefully, 'dipped in holy water, as is the custom. That is a Christ sign you hold.'
I often think,' he replied flatly, 'that we True Believers deny ourselves much grace and pleasure by not allowing artisans to form figures. This, for example, is a masterpiece of ambiguity. If this little mannikin is your god, then the Christian Jesus seems to have lost his cross and gained some sort of hammer.'
`Thor,' I answered, giving in. 'God of Thunder, son of Odin and guardian of men.'
As I thought. You are not People of the Book, though this little jinni seems more powerful than the Christian god,' replied al-Dauda, dropping the amulet distastefully into the palm of my hand. 'He spared you, whereas the infidel priest's god seems to have failed him.'
Strangely, I found that irritating, dangerously so.
And the woman? Did Allah fail her?' I prompted.
His face never flickered, but he cocked his head to one side with interest that I should know the name of his own god. `She was an Armenian, a whore and was as much an infidel as you or the Christians.
Obviously the defiling goddess she worshipped failed her, as all false deities will,' he answered crisply.
'What I am more interested in is why she and the priest died at the hands of one of your own followers.'
`When you know, please tell me.'
He sighed at that, lacing his ringed hands. His eyes were chips of jet. 'I have two dead infidels and several injured followers of the True Faith, not to mention property damaged. There was almost a riot. You have not been more than a few hours in the city and came across the desert, or down from Damascus. I ask again: why was the priest killed?'
Sweat trickled down my back, for his tone was steel-cold now I spread my hands and smiled. 'You must ask him. His name is Halfred and, until I saw his face after chasing him over the roofs and — unfortunately
— into the street traders, I did not even know it was him. Until then, I also thought him a friend.'
His gaze was dark, stooping like a hawk. 'He has been asked. At length. He does not deny culpability, but I can make no sense of his reasons for it. Something about a Greek, by name Balantes.'
Even though he made mush of the name, there was enough in it to bring my head up and he saw it.
`You know that name, then?'
I nodded. 'A Roman lord who doesn't like me. He has, I am thinking, used this Halfred for his own ends and the first arrow was meant for me. Brother John simply got in the way. The woman, I believe, was paid to lure me to where Halfred could shoot. He killed her to silence her tongue.'
He nodded, his bearded mouth pursed like a cat's arse. `More or less as he says it and I had deduced,' he replied evenly. 'Which makes you a victim rather than a suspect.'
Am I free to go?'
`Scarcely that,' he replied flatly, with no sign of amusement. I want no more trouble and so the sooner you leave the city the happier I will be for it. You will be returned to your men and then escorted from the city when it is dark. The body of the priest will be returned to you, so you may deal with it decently as you see fit. A useful gesture would be to contribute to the damage caused — I suggest the price of two of those camels you have.'
I bowed. Bloodprice I knew — the Norse were no strangers to it and we were lucky to have got off so lightly — but the sick loss of Brother John robbed me of any sense of triumph, lay coiled round my heart like Nidhogg in the roots of the World Tree.
I have, however, a commission for you.'
I could not have been more surprised if he had suddenly lifted his robes and danced a jig. At first I thought I had misheard him and simply opened and closed my mouth like a stranded fish, which cracked the first smile on him that I had seen. Having seen it, I did not wish f
or a repeat.
Out in the desert are a band of brigands,' he said. 'At first I thought you were part of them. But these have been described to me as Greeks and runaway slaves from one of the mines further north and you look neither like slaves, nor runaways, nor Greeks.'
`Just so,' I managed weakly.
I thought also that you were these Mamluks that the Abbasid unbelievers are so fond of, for they are no decent men but Turks and Slays and worse. But they have embraced Allah, albeit on the wrong path, which you clearly have not.'
`Good Odinsmenn, all of us,' I agreed, swallowing. 'In a Christly fashion, of course.'
`So,' he said. 'You are those rusiyyah I have heard of, swords for hire — is that not so?'
`Well,' I began, caught his look and drifted off into eloquent silence and a weak, ingratiating smile.
`So, I will give you provisions and letters, which will state you to be in my employ, as retainers. You will seek out and destroy these brigands for me. I need my soldiers in the city.' He paused and stroked his beard with the price of a good farm in rings on his fingers. 'When I have heard — and I will — that they are scattered or dead and their leader dealt with, you may return to me for reward. Should you decide otherwise, I will, reluctantly, be forced to deal with you as with them. Since this will cause me considerable trouble and expense, you need not look for mercy at the end of it.'
I thought about it. No fee had been mentioned and, when I looked at him, I realised none would be and if anything came by way of reward, I would take it and back out from his presence, my arse in the air and my life in his hands.
But that letter would be useful in the lands south of Jorsalir. He knew I had seen that, too, and nodded.
'Good. It is settled.'
And Halfred?'
He looked surprised that I had even asked. 'He is guilty of murder. We will hang him in a cage from the walls for all the People of the Book to stone him until he dies. So justice is seen to be done, by the will of Allah.'