by Robert Low
Someone would, this day or the next, if this slave trader kept lying at this level, Finn whispered out of the corner of his mouth. Orm agreed — but not before he had, hopefully, told where to find Takoub and his brother in this reeking trade town of the Khazars.
Tmutorokan was what was left to the Khazars after Sviatoslav’s Kievans broke them. Once, it had belonged to the Great City and probably would again, unless the Kievans got to it first, and it sat on the Dark Sea like a boil, pus-filled with crooked traders and hard men looking for work. It had buildings of brick with tiled roofs, more of wood — and, in the heat of summer, most of the Khazars sensibly took to living in tents, which sprouted like evil, coloured mushrooms on every spare piece of ground.
The place festered with everything else, too — bad drink, worse women and men prepared to do anything for money, even to telling the truth now and then. This time, it took only the sparkling spin of a whole silver coin to brighten the slave dealer’s day and point them in the right direction; they left, feeling the eyes of the Slav woman, hopeful as a hungry dog.
Takoub’s slave hold was a rough square of sharp-pointed timbers. The gate was merely a circle cut in timbers, which was woodworking skill in itself. In the arch at the top, in a semi-circle, was a spatter of sharpened staves pointing downward and, set across the entrance so that anyone had to step or stumble between them, was a second set of stumps, the ends dark with stains which might just have been old paint. The whole matter had been designed to look like a mouth, gaping open to swallow any who went in and the effect of it was such that it needed only a brace of bored guards, who lolled and leaned.
‘Let me guess,’ Finn said, strolling up to the guards, ‘you can get in on foot only, but not out at all. Am I right?’
They looked back at him with eyes unmoving as boulders, a pair of sweating men in leather with spears and long knives. If they had any humour it was in a locked chest in a deep cellar.
‘If you are selling or buying,’ one said, after a long pause filled with the reedy cries of hucksters, ‘you can come and go as you please. If you are bought and sold, you never leave through this gate, only enter.’
‘Which are you?’ the other asked, after looking Finn up and down. His voice was heavy with greasy dislike.
‘Tell Takoub that Orm Trader is here,’ he said. ‘Also known as Bear-Slayer. Tell him the Oathsworn are at his gates.’
The guards stared back blankly and one squinted, eyeing the pair up and down. They saw a jut-jawed northman with a black and salt beard plaited and ringed with silver, hard eyes and a worn-hilted blade in a scuffed sheath. They saw the man with him, younger by some years, with missing fingers, a scar across his forehead and lines at the corner of eyes that had stared at horrors few men ever looked at.
Seeing no overt sign of wealth the guard sneered.
‘You have heard of the Oathsworn?’ Finn demanded, his chin thrust out.
‘Aye,’ answered the guard. ‘Slayers of dragons and witches, or so I have heard children tell it.’
‘For men who found all the silver in the world,’ the other chirped, ‘you have clearly buried far too much of it and bought far too little.’
‘You should not scoff,’ Finn said to him, stepping closer and squinting sideways at him, ‘with a nose like that.’
The guard raised an eyebrow and touched his neb reassuringly, then scowled.
‘What is wrong with my nose?’ he demanded.
Finn’s right fist smashed it. Blood flew out, the guard flew back with a yelp and landed in the dust, throwing up a cloud of it and rolling over, groaning. The other one, taken by surprise, tried to grab his spear and back away at the same time, only succeeding in dropping the weapon. There was shouting and a deal of screaming from the man with the bloodied nose; Orm could sympathise, for he had had that done to him in the past and remembered the considerable pain.
The clamour had an effect; more men appeared led by a sword-waver, which showed that he had more rank than the others. Before matters could boil over, Orm told him who they were and the captain glanced at the disarmed gate guard, the one sitting dripping blood and then back to Orm.
‘Pick up your spear,’ he ordered the gate guard, with the sort of lip curl that promised the man a deal of pain later for such carelessness.
‘Wait,’ he said to Orm — though politely — and turned to go and find Takoub. Then he turned back, almost apologetically.
‘There would have been less trouble over this had you tried the gate on the far side. This is the Eater of Hope, where only slaves enter and through which no-one leaves.’
‘I said so,’ Finn declared to Orm, grinning. Orm shook his head in mock sorrow.
‘This place will make me remember to pay more attention to your wisdom,’ he replied wryly. ‘And save on noses.’
It was not, in the end, what they would most remember of the place. What they remembered most, when they came to the tale of it later, was the smell — the tented room was cloyed with it, a swirl of strong, spiced perfumes that hazed the still, hot air inside the canopy and, for all its muslin thickness, it had only managed to reduce the stink of rot to a faint thread.
Orm saw two men, one standing, the other swallowed by cushions and swathed in silk that had been drooped over his head and draped round his face, so that only the eyes showed, dark and shifting like rats in a hole.
The standing man stepped forward. He was big, had once been muscled but was running to fat, had once worn expensive silk but had stained and ragged it to near worthlessness. He had grimy hands and put one of them on a jewel-hilted dagger stuck carelessly in a sash-belt.
‘I say we kill them now,’ he growled and looked right and left into the shadows, to reassure himself that his hidden men were near. ‘We have removed their weapons and they will never be more in our power.’
‘You may have removed the weapons you can see,’ said the silk-wrapped man, ‘but this is the Oathsworn. That is Finn, who has at least one blade hidden about him. That is Orm, slayer of white bears and dragons and so favoured by his north god that he was led to all the silver of the world.’
It was rheum-thick, that voice, black with rot and Orm did not recognise it, or him, until the man leaned forward, his breath hissing painfully.
‘Is that boy still with you?’ he asked. ‘The one who axed Klerkon in the square in Novgorod?’
Takoub. It was Takoub the slave dealer and life had not been good to him.
‘Crowbone,’ Orm answered, recovering from his shock. ‘He stuck another axe into Klerkon’s right-hand man not long after. Same style — smack between the eyes. Then he did the same to Yaropolk, brother to Prince Vladimir of Kiev.’
‘He has grown a little,’ Finn added, grinning. ‘He does not have to jump up so far.’
There was a hiss and Takoub slumped limply on his cushions.
‘I dream of that boy,’ he said. ‘I dream he comes, sent by you for what happened to those of the Oathsworn I took as slaves and sold.’
This was blunt and clearly the other man thought so, too, for he growled and spun round to face Takoub.
‘Enough, brother — we can sweeten your dreams with their death, here and now.’
‘Barjik,’ said the whisper-thin voice. ‘Go and do something elsewhere.’
Barjik glared at his brother, then at Orm and Finn and finally rammed his scowl between them and went out, the wind of him trailing the rot and perfume over them like a lover’s fingers.
Takoub forced himself upright, a process of grunts and pain, then slowly unwrapped the silk from his head. Even Finn gasped.
It was worm-pale and eaten, that face. The nose was a collapsed ruin of wet blackness, the lips smeared with blotches, the cheeks looked as if rats had gnawed them and one eye was a shrieking agony of yellow pus. The rot was inside his throat too and made his voice a whispering rasp.
‘The Alexandrine disease,’ Takoub said. ‘There is no cure.’
‘Scale,’ Orm answered, then sa
id it in Greek — lepros.
‘I am punished,’ Takoub said, ‘whether by your god or someone else’s is of little matter. But my own god has brought you here to give me some relief.’
‘Aye,’ Finn said before Orm could speak. ‘I could find my hidden blade and give you relief, right enough.’
There was a sound like wings falling and it took Orm a moment to realise that it was laughter.
‘I cling to what is left of my life, pain and all,’ Takoub answered. ‘It would be less bitter if sleep was the balm it is supposed to be.’
‘You want me to help with your sleep?’ Orm asked, bemused by all this.
‘My dreams,’ he hissed. ‘We are traders. I will trade for a lack of dreams. I have what you seek.’
‘You want this as a blood-price,’ Orm said, realising the path this was on. ‘You want to be told that I will not send Crowbone to you, armed with a little axe for what you did to my men.’
There was a rustling, like roaches in straw, as Takoub shuddered and nodded. Strange, Orm was thinking, how sickness and the nearness of death took some people’s minds. Here was Takoub, rank and cunning as a hunting stoat in his day, fearful of the boy he had seen once in the square in Novgorod. So fearful he was seriously bargaining for forgiveness and peaceful sleep, now more precious to him than silver or jewels. He was not to know, he thought, that the Oathsworn he had sold had turned on their former oarmates and had been killed for it.
Fleetingly, Orm wondered where Crowbone was and if he had uncovered the weft of matters concerning Eirik’s Bloodaxe — by now he would have uncovered who Drostan really was and what he had written. If he had had the clever to ask, he would have known it as soon as he fell to questioning Hoskuld, who had not been keen to keep quiet until Crowbone put the right questions in his mouth.
‘Why keep the boy in darkness?’ he had asked and Orm told him — because he has been fed silver and men and ship like skyr off a silver spoon. If he wants to make his own name, let him use his own cleverness.
Privately, Orm thought the whole business with the axe was foolish — but Martin was in it and that made it dangerous. If the boy held true to his course and the Oath he would be in Mann and know everything. If he decided to scorn Hoskuld and go off on his own, then he would have a harder lesson, though Orm never doubted that the notable man-boy was alive.
Then he corrected himself; not man-boy any longer but full grown. It was foolish to hold the old memory of an odd-eyed youth not yet into the power of himself. Orm wondered if he was still holding to the Oath he had sworn.
They would all find out soon enough.
Takoub rheumed out a wheezing cough. Orm had no interest in pursuing the slave dealer, with or without Crowbone, but Takoub did not know that, so Orm made this worthless coin ring true and paid for the bargain with it.
Takoub sighed, rang a little bell and someone slithered in to the rancid cloy of the place, a wrapped bundle in his hands, which he handed to Orm. Orm twitched a corner of the wrapping back and saw the old veneer of it, the nub end of black iron; it was the holy spear Martin sought so desperately, the one he had lost in the steppe. Orm nodded; he had given up wondering how Takoub had come into possession of it, or if he believed it was what was claimed. All he cared about now was that Martin had written that he wanted it, in return for the Bloodaxe which he seemed confident of lifting; Orm did not doubt that Martin had set all the dogs at one another’s throats and thought to sneak off with the prize while they fought. Well, even if he did, he would come, at the end of it all, to trade with Orm Bear-Slayer.
‘It is done,’ Takoub said, ‘we part satisfied.’
For a shuddering moment, Orm thought he would spit on his rotting hand and offer it for the slap of a trader handshake. So did Finn, who chuckled.
‘Best not,’ he said. ‘Hard to find the bits that fall off in all those swaddlings.’
‘Sweet dreams,’ he added as they turned to leave. ‘You should know that it is not the living you should bother with. It is the ones who were balls-cut and died because you sold them to the Serklanders. Their fetch are coming for you, Takoub.’
Outside the walls of Dyfflin, not long after …
Crowbone’s Crew
You can always tell the beaten, Crowbone thought, for they take a deal of interest in the ground. Neither do they walk like men but shuffle like thralls.
He watched as they moved slowly, with their necks pulled in as far as they could get them, mud-spattered, bloody and, when they did look, it was with a fleeting gaze and eyes that were pools of shame.
‘Our own kind,’ Kaetilmund growled moodily, stirring the embers of the fire and watching the northmen prisoners on their way to be thralls of the Irish. Folk stirred and muttered; no-one liked to see northmen humbled, as Halfdan pointed out.
‘Unless it is by other northmen,’ Crowbone answered with a whip in his tone. ‘Anyway — these are men like us, hired to fight. Like us. The Oathsworn, who beat them hollow and reaped the rewards of it.’
No-one spoke, for the rewards of it were mixed. Three days after the battle, everyone had sorted out their plunder and Crowbone had been lavish, so that four swords had been given out as well as Raghnall’s brass-dagged ringmail, handed to Svenke Klak, who now strutted like a dunghill cock in it. True to his promise, Crowbone had Wolf-Ember’s mail, but it was too large even for Murrough.
On the other hand, they had howed up eight men, including Kaup. Sixteen more were wounded, but only one would not recover from it — Rovald lay coughing blood up and Gjallandi said that the giant’s spear throw, though it had not gone through the ringmail, had broken something in Rovald’s chest. It did not help, Crowbone thought moodily, that the men know it was my spear.
‘The Oathsworn.’
It was a dragon growl, thick with the bitter rheum of hate and Crowbone did not need to look round to know who it was.
‘The Oath is broken,’ Mar rasped, the scar on his face like a badly-done hem, for Gjallandi was poor with a needle. ‘Even by your own heathen rites, it is broken.’
‘The ones who broke it paid for it,’ Crowbone answered sharply. ‘And you gave your oath also to me, Mar. Twice oathed, twice cursed if you break it.’
It was not the time to give out such a warning, Onund thought, when he saw Mar’s eyes flare like the fire coals. Besides, there were too many oaths flying about here for the Icelander’s comfort and he saw that the gods of the White Christ and Asgard faced each other like two snarling shieldwalls. No good would come it, for men would have to choose where they stood in the end.
‘You should have let me stitch that,’ the girl said, stepping under their rough awning and into the firelight. She knelt by Mar and turned his cheek to see the scar better, but he shied his chin away from her. Her hand drooped like a willow branch, but only for a moment.
Then the head of her came up in a defiant tilt, the same way it had when she strolled down from her perch in the tree and smiled sweetly at Crowbone. The yellow bitch had loped from her side and sat, tongue lolling, close to Crowbone, looking at him, the tail moving a little.
‘You could have had my head off,’ Crowbone had growled and her smile grew more honeyed still at that. She went and plucked her arrow from the ground where Murrough had left it after his axe work.
‘Instead, it is Raghnall’s head which is off,’ Bergliot had answered and nothing more had been said between them from then until now.
Raghnall’s head had been severed and delivered to the High King, though Crowbone had heard nothing from it and that made him frown. He needed praise and the salt of gold to keep these muttering dogs at bay.
Murrough paused in cleaning the stubborn remains of Raghnall from his axe and looked up at the girl, smiling.
‘Come and sit by me, girl,’ he said amiably and the tension slid away slowly into the dark. Bergliot graciously accepted a seat beside Murrough and a bowl of whatever had been in the pot, while Crowbone tried not to scowl; he was not sure whether Murrough w
as being bland or clever in what was surely wooing, but he did not like it — liked the fact of that even less.
She looked too fine, Crowbone thought, her black hair like a river of pitch above the brat thrown round her shoulders and fastened with a fine pin. All plunder, he knew, given to her by various of those round the fire, who had thought of her in the middle of all that blood and guddling in bodies for loot. The thought of what they wanted in return made Crowbone burn deeper inside than any rage he had known.
Just then, another figure appeared, making heads turn. It was a tall man, with a cloak thrown over one shoulder and a spear he held like a staff; Crowbone had seen him before, standing behind Gilla Mo at Cnobha and filling his cup whenever it emptied.
‘The High King asks for you,’ the man said politely enough and with a little bow to it.
‘Aha,’ said Svenke, still basking in the glow of his ringmail, ‘more rewards for our brave efforts.’
‘Just so,’ Mar spat. ‘Perhaps he will give us some of those new thralls he has marched by us.’
‘You are just annoyed because you did not get an iron Irish sark like Svenke here,’ Murrough said as Crowbone levered himself to his feet, stiff after the battle and the sitting.
‘Come with me,’ he said to Murrough, who grinned with delight at the idea, ‘in case I need the Irish tongue.’
He broke off his walking after the messenger to look down at Mar, who kept his eyes fixed on the fire.
‘If the High King does offer me a thrall or two,’ he said, the promise of gold reward from Mael Sechnaill lending him new resolve, ‘I will ask for a black one for you, to replace the one you lost. Meanwhile, while I am gone, improve your mood, for your face is putting the fire out.’
It was a vicious slap, particularly about Kaup and he felt the twin embers of Mar’s hate burn his shoulderblades, but did not look back as they moved through the dark, where other fires glowed and men, blood-dyed with the light, looked up as he passed.