The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 3

by Robert Low

  ‘What else can we do?’

  Brother John shrugged. ‘Pray he lives to reach Antioch and pray that the Greeks have not slaughtered all the Sarakenoi and pray that the ones they left alive include a doctor. The Sarakenoi have the best doctors, as any will tell you.’

  ‘That’s a lot of praying,’ I pointed out and he nodded and smiled wanly.

  ‘I have them to spare for him, all the same,’ he said.

  I went to the Goat Boy, who was barely awake, with a voice like the whisper of a distant wind.

  ‘You should have let me die,’ I heard him say.

  ‘Your mother would have killed me,’ I managed. ‘Anyway, Finn Horsehead needs a helper at the cookfire and you have been selected. When you have finished lolling here, that is.’

  He managed a smile, then a small tear, pearl-bright and fat, squeezed from the corner of one eye. His skin was so pale the blue-purple veins stood out like the scars on Short Eldgrim’s face. ‘Will I ever see my mother again?’ came the whisper.

  I nodded, unable to speak now, for his heimthra was choking me.

  Short Eldgrim saved the day, shoving his scarred face into the tremble between us, offering the Goat Boy what was supposed to be a friendly grin but looked like a bad carving left too long in the rain. ‘I’ll take you back after this little trip is over,’ he growled, ‘for I have left my washing. Don’t worry, little bear, enjoy a ship journey and an adventure in a strange place, some sweet things to eat and then home.’

  The Goat Boy smiled at that, then his eyelids closed and he slept, his breath a rattle in the tiny cage of his chest. I sat and brooded on it, alone in the prow, while men went to their sea-chest benches and hauled us away.

  Away from Balantes – and also away from Starkad and the sword we needed, though I knew he would follow and made the mistake of saying so when Radoslav pointed out that Starkad did not know where we had gone.

  I told them, feeling the sick taste of the jarl torc in my mouth, hearing Einar chuckle.

  ‘He knows,’ I said flatly, ‘because I told Arinbjorn.’

  Radoslav’s eyes widened slightly, then he nodded, quiet and thoughtful. I knew he had a new weight to add to his scales: Arinbjorn had been given command of the Volchok and I had told him my plans in case we were separated on the journey.

  Now Starkad would make Arinbjorn tell all he knew – and I was sure he would keep that knowledge to himself. Starkad had come from the east, so he must have ploughed all the way to Jaffa, the Serkland harbour most used by Christ pilgrims heading for Jorsalir, and found I had lied, for a Christ priest like Martin could not have arrived without comment there. Now he wanted me alive long enough to tell him what he still believed I knew: where Martin was.

  In the hiss and gurgle from the water creaming away from the bow, I heard Einar’s laughter and drove it out with sweat and grunting, taking my place at a bench and hard-rowing all the thoughts out of me. We pulled in shifts for half a day until the wind swung round to a useful quarter, by which time my arse and back and thighs ached.

  When a man took my place, I stood to the watch like everyone else, taking the prow and pulling on the new mail I had taken as my share from Patmos. It was snug. My old mail, which I had sold to help get us down the Dark Sea to Miklagard, would now have been too tight round the bunched muscle of my shoulders and it had been made for a grown man in Strathclyde. For a moment, quick as a flick of light, I saw the rain pooling in the dead eyes of the boy I had killed in that fight.

  A lifetime ago.

  Then, after a long ache of time, Sighvat called out a sighting of land ahead and, not long afterwards, a ship. By the time I reached him, he had changed that to ships, so that everyone, clenched and anxious, craned to see.

  ‘Greek ships,’ he said, pointing, and, sure enough, there were the great curled sterns you could not mistake. Three of them. Then four. Behind them, land bulked up and there was a smear of smoke, so that Gizur, frowning and shading his eyes with one hand, shook his head.

  ‘This is where we should be,’ he growled. ‘Seleucia, for sure.’

  ‘Well, we are in trouble now,’ Kvasir growled, thinking these were the Greeks who pursued us.

  I did not think so, for it could not be ships from Cyprus. I thought it more likely they were ships from Miklagard supporting the army – which meant the Greeks were still in Antioch.

  Short Eldgrim grinned and bet Finn an ounce in hacksilver that I had the right of it and Horsehead, who would lay money on anything, took it, spat on his hand and sealed the event. A minute later he scowled, having realised that if he won he would be hard put to get a dead man to pay up.

  Short Eldgrim was still grinning when the dromon washed up to us, backed water neatly and hailed us. He stuck out a hand, waggling the fingers delightedly until Finn, grumbling, started fishing his purse out from under his armpit.

  On the Greek ship, a man waved at us with a golden stick. He wore a simple white tunic, but had a splendid helmet with a great fountain of horsehair maned across it.

  ‘I am quaestor of the port,’ he yelled across the gap between us. ‘I did not know your Curopalates Nabites had any ships here. Where have you been?’

  That made me blink. My who? I told him we had come from the Great City and did not know any Nabites, at which the quaestor indicated he would come aboard. We slithered our ships together in a soft swell, Gizur wincing and roaring at each dunt on the fingerwidth-thick pine strakes, and the Greek clambered aboard, clutching his golden stick.

  It then turned out that Curopalates wasn’t a name but a title worth three pounds of gold to whoever had it, but the Nabites confused us all, for it seemed this quaestor spoke of a Norseman. It was not a name anyone knew, either in the decent tongue of the West Norse, or the crippled way they spoke to the east of Norway.

  But the quaestor said this Nabites was favoured by the Strategos John, commander of the Basileus’s armies here, and had some six hundred men, plus all his women and even his dogs, brought down from the north.

  ‘It’s a mystery right enough,’ said Brother John, coming from attending the Goat Boy, who lay bundled in warm cloaks, his hair like night against the pale skin. But he breathed, ragged and laboured though it was.

  The quaestor handed us a stamped bronze medallion which would give us passage to the harbour, and we chewed on the strange name of Nabites, scratching heads all the way into safe anchorage.

  That was in the curve of a bay, where the little white houses of the fair-sized town of Seleucia straggled up from a rough harbour and, confusingly, there seemed to be a forest right down at the water’s edge. It was a puzzle to us all – until we realised that the trees were ships’ masts.

  I had never seen so many ships in one place and neither had anyone else. We gawped until Gizur roared and banged a pine-tarred rope’s end on the deck to get all our attention fixed on not running into the massive fleet anchored there.

  We flitted in like a chip of driftwood, dwarfed by huge supply ships and even bigger warships, dodging the smaller galleys and fat-bellied little Greek merchant ships – for they would not miss a chance like this – which were as like our own knarrer as to be brothers misplaced at birth. Finn stood in the prow, waving the bronze medallion at any guard ships and cursing them in the few Greek words he knew when they came too close.

  Ours was the only hafskip, though, which made it easy to find a good spot near the village – none of the other ships could go as shallow. I wanted it run up on the beach, since I knew we’d be gone from her for a while, but Gizur baulked at putting five years of neglected timbers to that sort of test.

  The hafskip had one other effect, which happened as we took it as close to the breaking waves as Gizur cared to go, then splashed ashore to cable it to the land. I was halfway over the side when Short Eldgrim gripped my shoulder and, when I looked at him, he nodded towards a group moving down to us.

  There were men and women in it, children and dogs, all chattering excitedly – and all in a good
West Norse, so that my heart ached for the sound of it. They had seen a sight they had not seen for some time – a Norse ship, prows decently removed – and had come running.

  They stopped some distance off, which was both polite and sensible, then one stepped forward to hail us, a tall man in a fine linen tunic and breeks, with a good seax strapped round his waist. He had blond hair in two thick braids and a neatly trimmed beard, altogether the very way a fine Norse farmer should look. Which made it as strange a sight in this land as a calf with a head at each end.

  ‘I am Olvar Skartisson,’ he announced. ‘Who leads this welcome band to us?’

  I told him as the crew splashed ashore and began chattering and grinning with the girls and older women. In the end, everyone dropped into the water and came ashore, grinning and talking.

  ‘Have you come to join us, then?’ asked Olvar Skartisson and that set the whole saga tale of it out, as we pitched down on the rocks and sand and got more comfortable. Ale and bread came out and we started in to share our tales.

  It turned out that this Nabites was what the Greeks took from nabitr, which means corpse-biter in Norse and was a nickname given to Jarl Toki Skarpheddin, a name that means sharp-toothed – another north joke the Romans did not understand. I didn’t know this jarl, but Sighvat said he was a well-known and powerful man who fought for Harald Greycloak once, he who claimed to be a king in Norway.

  Olvar said he had the right of it, and that when the good Christ-follower Harald Greycloak went under the treacherous swords of that heathen Haakon of Hladir, who was Bluetooth’s man in Norway, Skarpheddin had to take his men and flee.

  Since they would scarcely leave their families behind, he had to take them, too, and all the ships they sailed in were now in Aldeigjuborg. They had left them there to come by riverboats down all the rivers of the Rus to Miklagard at the expense of little Prince Vladimir, where the Great City’s Basileus duly offered the jarl three pounds of gold annually to serve him in his wars.

  Which, I thought to myself as this was laid out, showed how young Vladimir, sent to rule Novgorod at four years old by his father, Sviatoslav, was blossoming into a deep-minded prince before his first decade was out, even allowing for his clever Uncle Dobrynya at his side.

  His dealing with Skarpheddin was as cheap a way of ridding yourself of a thousand unwanted mouths as you could find, as well as getting yourself a nice fleet of decent Norse ships. Now the landless, luckless Skarpheddin and his whole people were here, at the sharp edge of the Roman frontier, fighting the Sarakenoi, with no home to go back to.

  At least it made the light brighter on my own problems.

  I told him as many vague lies as I thought I would get away with when my men became loose-mouthed. At the end of it, he dabbed the ale from his moustaches, accepted a refill with a nod and a smile and said: ‘Well, perhaps Skarpheddin can help you and you him.’

  ‘And why would that be?’ I asked, then paused as someone tapped my shoulder. I looked up to see a girl with an ale flask, looking to refill my own. She was red-lipped and pale, with the skin flush and thick white-blonde plaits that spoke of someone who should never sit long in the heat.

  She offered up a smile like a new sun and eyes shaped like almonds and I gawped until the girl grew impatient and said: ‘If your mouth hangs open so much, you clearly cannot hold ale in it.’ And with that she was gone.

  Olvar frowned. ‘A fostri of the jarl is Svala, from foreign parts. She is young yet and too clever and favoured for her own good.’

  Nothing more was said, but now that I looked, other women were circulating, pouring ale, offering bread from huge baskets of them: Norse women, in fine embroidery and headsquares, hung about with keys and scissors. There were girls, too, like Svala, with their hair in braids.

  I saw the Oathsworn smile and blush and hang their heads at being chided for needing their hair and beards trimmed, or their clothes cleaned and mended. The same men, I remembered, who had tripped screaming, veiled women in the dust of Kato Lefkara and tupped them, drooling, only days before.

  Olvar then went on to say that Skarpheddin needed new men, for there had been losses in the fighting against the Arabs. He would broach it with his jarl and take us to him.

  I saw Brother John hovering. When he caught my eye, he came across and sat down.

  ‘We have injured,’ he said to Olvar. ‘Do you have someone who can help?’

  Olvar smiled and nodded. ‘Thorhalla’s charms are second to none,’ he declared, at which Brother John scowled and, realising suddenly that he was talking to a Christ priest, the good Christ-man Olvar blanched and backed water.

  ‘Of course, there are priests of the Romanoi,’ he added.

  ‘I was thinking more of someone who can fix wounds,’ said Brother John sternly.

  Olvar shrugged. ‘That we get from the Greeks, who have chirurgeons for it, though some of them are Mussulmen and, being decent Christians, most of us have nothing to do with them.’

  Brother John rose and left, shaking his head. Olvar was bewildered and frowning, then he brightened and offered to take me to see Skarpheddin. I had Finn and Brother John organise getting the Goat Boy to proper help, then asked Radoslav and Sighvat to come with me. The others, I thought, would be better staying with the boat.

  It had rained, but the day was already warm and growing warmer as we set off, a fair procession of women and girls and men carrying their big baskets, still brimming with round loaves. Olvar said they did this every day, which was their free ration for being part of the army.

  He also told us about the Serklanders, which was useful to know.

  ‘They worship the Prophet Mahomet,’ he said, ‘and every man in the land is allowed to have four wives if he has embraced that way.’

  ‘Four women should just about be enough for me,’ grunted Finn, ‘after the journey I have had.’

  ‘If you do become a Mahomet-follower,’ Olvar pointed out, ‘you can never drink wine or ale or mead again.’

  Kvasir laughed with his head thrown back and others joined in, for the struggle on Finn’s face over what was more important to him was fine entertainment for a long walk.

  Olvar, laughing also, added: ‘My own belief is that the old gods are weak in this land and the Serklanders and Christmen are stronger. The Serklanders only have one god and they call him Allah. The Christmen and the Jews also only have one God, which is confusing.’

  I felt I should point out – for him and all the others who could hear – that AllFather was a force no matter in what corner of the world his followers were and had the satisfaction of seeing Olvar flush.

  The land swayed and dipped, as it always did after days at sea and I stumbled, bracing for swells that never came, across rock and scrub heavy with the scent of watered dust. Already I missed the salt breeze on my face. At the crest of the hill above the village, I turned back, to find the Elk lost in that litter of ships.

  The heat grew, though the sun was just a glow, as if seen through brine, and we sweated in our leather boots and wool over the dusty green land, on a long walk along a road busy with donkeys and carts and oxen, robed men and soldiers in leather and iron.

  The sun had moved towards the other horizon by the time we crested the last slope and saw Antioch for the first time. It was less a city than a jewelled reliquary in the late sun, a confection like the ones sold on trays in Miklagard, made of spun sugar and made more dazzling against the black-humped hills behind and the green and gold of crops and grazing land it sat in.

  When we reached the bridge over the river at the main gate, though, the spun sugar vanished and the white walls showed black scorch marks I knew only too well. Ox-carts and donkey trains straggled in and out of the gate, while several mounds nearby showed where the massed dead – probably the enemy, since nothing marked it – had been buried.

  The Norse had started a camp near the river, where once there had been a Mussulman temple, which they called a mosque. The Strategos had handed this over to
Skarpheddin as his hov for the while, but Skarpheddin was no fool, I saw, for he had not entered it, but had pitched a great swathe of tents instead, made from the striped wadmal of his sails, to remind him of what he had lost.

  He knew that not all Mussulmen were enemy and did not want to outrage those still in Antioch by defiling one of their holy places, yet you would not have guessed all this cunning from the sight of this jarl, once ruler of Raknehaugen in Norway.

  I came on him in his tent-hov, where he sat on a good seat, with the snarling prows rescued from his best ship on either side. Once he had been a powerful man, but never tall. Now he was a thin-shanked ale barrel wearing fine cloth the colour of the sea on a clear day and his hair was streaked with more grey than red.

  Gold glinted on his chest and arms, though, and on the rings at wrist and ankle, for his feet were bare as he leaned forward for Olvar to whisper in his ear.

  Then he looked up, frowning slightly and stroking the considerable length of his frosted red-gold beard, which had been forked into many plaits and fastened with silver rings.

  ‘You are young,’ he declared, leaning an elbow on one knee and cupping his chin. ‘Younger than I thought, for I have heard of both you and the Oathsworn, though I thought Einar the Black led them still and had a young Baldur-hero join him, the slayer of a white bear. Now, it seems, young Baldur is the leader.’

  If he had heard all that, he had heard also tales of a hoard of silver and more and my heart lurched. I could smell the greed-sickness off him from here, but swallowed and inclined my head politely enough.

  ‘I am that bear slayer,’ I said ‘though my name is Orm. This is Sighvat Deep-Minded and Radoslav, who is called Schchuka.’

  From behind Skarpheddin, I heard a sibilant hiss and, for an unnerving moment, thought he had broken wind. Then I realised the sound came from a woman and Skarpheddin half turned as she came out of the twilight of the tent to where we all could see her.