The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 3

by Robert Low

  He looked us up and down and then said something that the Goat Boy hesitated over. I nudged him and he looked miserably up at me.

  ‘He says he has heard of the men from the northlands and that they are not followers of the Christ but are idol-worshipping sons of dogs,’ the Goat Boy blurted. ‘He says that—’ He stopped, licking his lips.

  I nudged him again, feeling cold fear creep into my belly and curl up there.

  ‘He says that you and your pig-eating friends can go somewhere else and fuck boys, but not to defile the lands of the great Emir, Protector of the Faithful … forgive me, Lord Orm, but that is what he says …’

  I squeezed his shoulder to shut him up, then looked into Faysal’s black eyes. Behind me, there were mutters and growls from the eavesdropping Danes, who had learned good Greek in five years of breaking rocks.

  ‘Tell him,’ I said, ‘that we are the Oathsworn, bringers of a sword age, an axe age, a fire age to his miserable life. Tell him that we will go to where we intend and if he stands in our way I will kill all his men and then make him walk round a pole fastened to his entrails until he winds himself to death.’

  The Goat Boy, his eyes wide, stammered his way through all that while I tried to stop my legs from shaking and offered a wry thanks to Starkad, who had brought that terror to my attention.

  The black eyes flashed and Faysal stiffened in the saddle. Then he rattled off a fierce stream at the Goat Boy, who turned to me. Before he could translate, I raised my hands and silenced him.

  ‘Tell this goat-humping dog rider to piss off. I have no more time to waste on him. Either he fights, or shows us how he squats like a woman. His choice.’

  I waited long enough for the Goat Boy to say all this, then spun him by the shoulder and walked back to the grim-faced shieldwall, where men growled their appreciation and banged weapons on their shields.

  ‘What happened? What did he say? What did you say?’ Finn was chewing his shield edge with frustration.

  Beside him, Sighvat chuckled and said: ‘You should have learned more Greek than how to get a hump and a drink.’

  I gave my orders, for I knew the dozen we had seen were not all of them. I was right. As we trotted back from the buildings and cut into the neat groves of stunted trees, the hillside sprouted more horsemen. And more.

  I cursed our Odin luck and the Greeks. A hundred or so, Balantes had said. What he had not said was that they had heavy horse, leaving me to imagine some bunch of robed rag-breeks with spears and shields and not much else.

  We formed up in the grove while the horsemen piled up and began shrilling out cries, which sounded like ‘illa-la-la-akba’.

  ‘Trader,’ Finn growled, ‘we are too open here and these trees are in neat lines they can gallop straight down. We should have stayed by the buildings. They might not charge then.’

  But I wanted them to charge. I wanted them angry and confident against a boy who had picked what seemed a bad position. I wanted Faysal to ride us down like the dogs we were, rather than be cautious and use bows.

  I said as much to Finn while sending men out with the heavy sacks they had carried and my instructions. He hissed through his teeth when it was all unveiled for him.

  ‘Heya. Deep Thinker. If we live through this, it will make you famous.’

  ‘I am famous,’ I said loudly enough for them all to hear. ‘I am the Bear Slayer.’

  This was the price of the jarl torc – boasts and standing in the middle of the front rank of the Lost. It had the effect, of course. The Oathsworn pounded their shields and hoomed deep in their throats, which even made the horsemen stop their la-las for a moment. Then they began again and there was a surge of movement, like a landslip down the hill.

  ‘Form!’ I yelled and ducked into the front rank. ‘Shieldwall. Form.’

  The shields came up, ragged but solid, a ripple of sound as they interlocked and weapons thumped. Behind me, the tip of a spear slid, winking in the dawn light, one on either side of my head. At the last moment, they would thrust forward, so that we in front sheltered under a hedge of points, protecting the unarmoured men with our ringmail bodies.

  The ground trembled. Little stones in front of us danced like peas on a drumskin and the shrill screams grew louder. I needed to piss and my legs trembled, but I hoped that was just the ground shaking.

  ‘Hold,’ roared Finn. ‘Stand hard as a dyke …’

  They hit the claw-like trees, filtering into the neat lanes between them. White mulberry trees, I learned later, for feeding the silkworms this farm had made for the nearby church-factory.

  They were thundering up the lanes now, no more than two or three abreast, holding their great lances two-handed over their heads, or low at the hip. I saw Faysal, helmeted now and in the lead, knew he was trying to single me out, but he was two lanes down and would have to crash through the stiff-branched trees and across his own charging men to do it.

  They were almost on us. I heard men behind me roaring defiance, felt them brace, saw the spears slide out … then the leading horsemen hit the raven claws, a deadly sowing.

  The whole formation cracked apart. Horses shrilled, broke stride, tripped and crashed to the ground, bringing others behind crashing over. An entire horse and rider ploughed forward, the animal flailing and screaming in a bow wave of stones and dirt, into the hedge of spears to my left, which stabbed viciously at the rider. He died in gurgles and had to be shaken off like lamb from a skewer.

  Mulberry trees splintered; men struggled and fought to free themselves from those piling into them from behind. The rear ranks – pitifully few now – managed to wheel round and turn back, where they circled in confusion.

  I led the front ranks of the Oathsworn forward in a steady walk, where they stabbed and hacked at the horsemen, shields up, leaving most of the killing to the ones behind. One of our men yelped, having stood on one of the three-pronged raven feet, which was a timely reminder to everyone else. I saw someone spear a man and then work the weapon free, a foot on the corpse’s chest.

  Hooves smacked my shield, knocking me sideways, and someone axed the fallen animal’s skull to stop it kicking. Another scrambled up, screaming, tripping on its blue-pink entrails and a man heaved from the pile, coughing blood. He had time to look up and see my watered blade steal his life with a stroke.

  Most were already dead, crushed in a great pile of men and horses so high we had to climb up it to get to the ones beyond.

  Arrows whicked now, for the survivors had sorted themselves out and had thought what to do, but there was no fight in them – half their number were dead or struggling in the heap. I had the front rank shield those behind while they slaughtered the ones left alive in that pile.

  Eventually, the Sarakenoi rode off, no longer shrilling their la-las. The crew gave a great cheer and beat on their shields and the Goat Boy was dancing up and down, pausing now and then to fit a stone in his sling and fling it at the retreating backs. If he hit one, it made no difference.

  Finn came up, wiping sweat and blood from his face, and clapped me on the back. ‘That showed the goat-humpers – and only two of ours dead and a few more scratched. Odin’s hairy balls, young Orm, you are a deep thinker for war right enough.’

  The rest of them agreed, after they had looted the dead. Horses still kicked and screeched, a high, thin sound that bothered us more than the moans of men. Those animals we killed, fast and hard, and the few which had surfaced from the carnage and stood, trembling and shaking, we gathered up and soothed, for we could use them.

  There were thirty-four dead cavalrymen and almost as many horses – I offered silent thanks to Tyr One Hand, the old god of war, for the idea of bringing those raven talons from Patmos.

  Brother John tended the wounded, none serious – and only two dead. One was a Dane whose name I did not know. The other was Arnor. One of those dying, sliding horsemen had held on to his lance and it had skewered Arnor through the bridge of his butchered nose, for he had hammered up the nasal
of his helmet to keep it from rubbing on the wound.

  ‘He never had any luck with that smeller,’ Sighvat said gloomily.

  They found Faysal for me, six down in a heap, the life flung from him and the shock of it left on his face in a snarl and a thin trail of blood from the corner of his mouth. His neck was snapped and his head was turned so that it seemed he looked over his own shoulder at what had been his life to that point. The Goat Boy spat on him and then gave him a kick.

  I let them loot for a while, but they were experienced raiders and knew the value of speed and that it was pointless trying to strip heavy armour and weapons to carry. While they searched for coin and ornaments, Brother John and I began stacking wood from the ruined buildings round the deepest heap of corpses until others noticed and were shamed into helping.

  Then we placed Arnor and the Dane on top of the pile, his harpoon clutched to his breast, and burned them all, which was the old way, the East Norse way and, some said, better than a boatgrave. I found a mulberry leaf in Arnor’s mouth when I sorted him out for burial and could not bear to throw it away. I have it still.

  We left the place shortly afterwards, putting the wounded who could not walk on three horses, the two remaining heavy sacks of raven feet slung on another. We moved faster now, almost trotting towards where the Goat Boy said the village of Kato Lefkara was, until only that greasy plume of pyre smoke marked where we had been.

  That and the treacherous, swooping Loki kites. I shivered, almost believing that Sighvat was right about them having arranged this feast.

  The Goat Boy sat and watched me the way a cat does, unblinking, so that you can feel the eyes on you even when you are not looking.

  We were all crouched in the lee of a slope, sheltered by a stand of pines. Water slid over stones in a quiet chuckle and everyone chewed cold mutton and flatbread and spoke in grunts if they spoke at all.

  ‘Brother John says you believe in strange gods,’ said the Goat Boy in his stream-clear voice. ‘Are you a heathen, then?’

  I looked at him and felt immeasurably old. Two years ago I had been much as he was now, knowing nothing and priding myself on the courage to cull bird eggs from sheer cliffs, or sit cross-legged on the rump of my foster-father Gudleif’s sparkiest fighting stallion in its stall.

  Now here I was, on a bare, damp hillside somewhere on an island somewhere in the Middle Sea, the jarl torc dragging at my neck, dead men’s faces filling my dreams, chasing a runed blade and the secret of a hoard of silver.

  ‘Are you?’ I countered.

  ‘No! I am a good Christian,’ he said indignantly. ‘I believe in God.’ Nearby, Brother John nodded appreciatively. Encouraged, the Goat Boy added: ‘But you believe in lots of false gods, Brother John says.’

  ‘Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt,’ I said and Brother John coughed and grinned, though the Goat Boy did not understand.

  ‘Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish,’ I translated. I did not know who had first said it, but he had a Norse head on his shoulders. The Goat Boy was none the wiser. ‘Anyway,’ I added, ‘once the Greeks had lots of gods, too.’

  ‘The monks in Larnaca said we lived in fear of them until we saw the light,’ the boy said sombrely.

  Brother John chuckled. ‘The truth is, young John, that those gods feared us, envied us, for they could not die. Without the threat of death, how can you feel the joy of life?’

  ‘Unlike our gods,’ I added, ‘who know they will all die one day, to make a greater life for all afterwards. That’s why AllFather Odin is so grim.’

  The Goat Boy looked from me to Brother John and back. ‘But isn’t that what the church teaches us about Christ, Brother John?’

  ‘Just so,’ Brother John agreed and the Goat Boy’s brow wrinkled with confusion, until Finn slid over in a scrabble of stones and shoved goat cheese and bread at him.

  ‘Give it up, biarki,’ he growled, scowling at the pair of us. ‘Talking about gods just makes your head hurt.’

  They sidled away together and Brother John laughed softly again. ‘I don’t think we enlightened that little bear,’ he offered, then looked at me sideways. ‘All the same, I thought you had found God, young Orm.’

  ‘I have heard many rumours,’ I replied flatly, ‘but I have never met the man.’

  Brother John pursed his lips. ‘You are growing darker,’ he said seriously. ‘And your dreams are blacker still. Careful you do not fall into the Abyss, Orm, for you will be lost there.’

  I was saved a reply by the return of Hedin Flayer and Halfred Hookeye, who had been scouting over the other side of the ridge, looking at the huddle of houses that was Kato Lefkara.

  ‘There are armed men there,’ Hedin reported, ‘maybe fifty, with shields and spears and blades, too, but no armour and only black turbans on their heads. But they have bows, Bear Slayer, and can pick us off as we cross the open ground.’

  ‘Horsemen?’

  Hookeye shook his head. ‘Nor any sign. The ones who fought us did not come here.’

  I did not think they would. They would have ridden straight to Farouk, to tell him what had happened and now he would be riding here, for some of those riders would have heard me say this was our destination. I looked at the darkening sky.

  ‘There are people there, too,’ Hedin said, sucking shreds of goat to try and soften it enough to chew.

  ‘Of course there are. It is a village,’ Finn growled, but Hedin shook his head.

  ‘Children and women, with cloths covering their faces. That’s not Greek, is it?’

  No, it was a Serkland thing. Of course this Farouk wasn’t a simple robber, he was one of the lords who had been told by the Miklagard Emperor to quit Cyprus and had decided to stay and fight, and had all his people with him. Now he had a town and a couple of villages and was a real threat.

  ‘We will hit them at last light,’ I said, ‘so that they will find it hard to use their bows. All we have to do is get to the church and find this thing Balantes wants. Then we get out and away.’

  ‘Are we stealing it then?’ Hookeye asked and even some of his own oarmates chuckled.

  ‘That’s what we do, you arse,’ answered Hedin Flayer, punching him on the arm.

  I left them to chew on it, for I had another problem – what to do with the badly wounded. One was already shaking with wound-fever and the other was hamstrung, would never walk properly again, though he could still sit a horse.

  The fevered one was an old oarmate called Ofeig, the one who had stepped on the raven claw, I realised. Such a simple little wound, a nithing cut that had come to this in half a day, no more. There was, then, some poison there and I made a mental note to warn the men who scattered them to take more care, then felt ashamed for reeling with future plans while a good man lay dying.

  Brother John sat with him, placing damp cloths on his forehead and muttering his healing chants, crossing himself and clasping his hands. ‘I pray to Earth and High Heaven, the sun and St Mary and Lord God himself, that he grant me medicinal hands and healing tongue to heal Ofeig of the shivering disease. From back and from breast, from body and from limb, from eyes and from ears, from wherever evil can enter him …’

  It wasn’t about to make a hacksilver of difference. Finn knelt on the other side and Ofeig opened his eyes and grinned weakly, while the sweat oozed from him like water from a ripe cheese.

  ‘I had expected a prettier Valkyrie,’ he said, knowing well what was coming.

  Finn nodded soberly. No Valkyries were pretty, we knew. They came riding wolves to heave the chosen dead away, savage and merciless – but there was a time for gentle lying.

  ‘There is one waiting,’ he said in a voice as soft as any new lamb. ‘She has hair the colour of red-gold, breasts like pillows, eyes only for you and wonders what is taking you so long.’

  His great, calloused hand closed over the brow of Ofeig, who stiffened – then a fresh spasm of shivering took him.

  ‘Fair journey, Ofeig
,’ said Finn and his other hand stroked the razor edge across Ofeig’s throat, then held him down, the blood spreading slowly over his chest, bubbling in spurts like a hot spring as he choked and died, congealing like thick gruel.

  After a while, Finn straightened, wiping first his hands, then the blade – the one I had given him, that he had called the Priest – on Ofeig’s breeks. He looked at me over the dead eyes. ‘Next time, you do it,’ he said and I was ashamed, remembering how Einar had done it when he lived. It was a jarl-task right enough.

  ‘You can piss off coming for me,’ growled Sumarlidi, the one with the cut hamstring, hauling himself to a sitting posture and jerking out his scramseax. ‘I have one good leg left and after that I can still crawl.’

  ‘Then crawl to your horse and get on it,’ I snapped at him, ‘and get ready to ride hard.’

  ‘Hop to it,’ added Finn and wheezed with laughter.

  We huddled just under the brow of the ridge, so that if I raised my head only a little, I could see the silhouette of buildings, the dominating dome of the church of the Archangel Michael and the yellow glow of lights and fires, which only made the chill of the night wind colder and the dark blacker than ever.

  When the leprous moon started to cast a shadow in between the shrouds of dark cloud, I gave a signal and the men rose up to a crouch and started to filter down the hill, scuttling like beetles. The scuff and clink of them made me wince, certain someone would hear it, but no alarm was sounded, and then we were crossing the first of the rickety fences, into the garden plots behind some houses.

  Finn turned to grin at me and I saw he had his Roman nail in his teeth, one of the metal spikes he had used to mark out the holmgang, which he gnawed like a dog with a bone. His teeth ground down on it, preventing him from bursting into full-throated roar until I gave the signal. Slaver dripped from it as I nodded.

  He spat the nail into his hand and threw back his head, howling like a mad wolf. The cry went up from all our throats, then we lurched forward into the houses.