Byzantium

44

A thousand curses on his rotting corpse!" muttered Harald, bringing the pick down sharply on the stone. "May Odin strike his treacherous head from his worthless shoulders."

"And feed it to the hounds of hel," Hnefi added, and spat into the dust for emphasis. He raised his pick and swung it down as if he were smiting an enemy.

Harald swung the pick high and smashed it down once more. "As I am a king," he intoned ominously, "I will yet kill the traitor who has brought us to this slavery. Odin hear me: I, Harald Bull-Roar, make this vow."

He was talking about Nikos, of course; and the vow, though heartfelt and infinitely sincere, was not new. We had all of us heard the same promise, with slight variations, ten score times since coming to Amida where we had been sold in the Sarazen slave market. Danes were considered too wild and barbaric to be used in any way other than for the most brutish labour. Thus Harald, together with the sad remnant of his once-fearsome Sea Wolf host, had been purchased by the caliph's chief overseer and promptly put to work in the silver mines.

To be a slave was a humiliation intolerable to Harald, who would have preferred death a thousand times over-save for the fact that it would have placed him beyond revenge, and wreaking his vengeance on the one who had brought him to such ignominy had become the sole aim and purpose of his life. The Roaring Bull of Skania was now intent on keeping himself and his few men alive with the hope of returning to Trebizond, reclaiming his ships, and sailing to Constantinople to rend Nikos body from soul in the most brutally painful way possible.

It was Jarl Harald's belief that Nikos had betrayed us to the enemy-a conviction which the captive Danes supported with the undying zeal of true believers. Sure, I was no dissenter. I thought Nikos guilty, too, but could not work out why he should have done such a thing. Hundreds of people on both sides had died to further Nikos's dark design. But what was the gain? I kept asking myself. What hidden purpose did it accomplish?

Following the ill-fated battle, our captors had pursued a relentless pace through a wasteland of arid hills and rock-filled ravines. Settlements were rare, the land desolate and unfriendly. We rested little, and ate less; our captors gave us only enough sleep and food to keep us on our feet. Since so little of our time was taken up with resting or eating, we had ample leisure to speculate on our plight and the chances of making good an escape, and did so as we walked along. All our contemplation counted for nothing in the end, however; we neither escaped, nor learned the nature of the fate awaiting us.

Twelve or thirteen days after the ambush, we arrived footsore and hungry in Amida, with its low buildings of white-washed mud, and were marched to the open square of wind-blown dust they called a market. It was only when-along with another group of thirty Greek captives-we were herded into the ragged, thorn-infested hills north of Amida, that the nature of our fate penetrated our hunger-dazed minds: we were consigned to the caliph's silver mines.

These mines were no great distance from Amida, which, to my best reckoning, lay far to the south and east of Trebizond, well beyond the borders of the empire, and deep in Sarazen lands. Some of the Greeks with us knew of the caliph's mines; I heard several of them talking, and what they said did not make for glad rejoicing.

"It is death they have given us," said one slave, a slight young man with curly dark hair. "They work you until you drop."

"We could escape," suggested the captive beside him, an older man. "It has been known."

"No one ever escapes from the caliph's mines," replied a third, shaking his head slowly. "This is because anyone who tries is beheaded at once, and the guard who is responsible is disembowelled with his own sword. Believe me, they make certain no one escapes."

I relayed what the Greeks were saying to Harald, who merely grunted and said, "That may be. Either way, I do not intend to remain a slave very long."

The mines occupied the whole of a tight, many-folded valley at the foot of a range of high barren hills. A single road passed into the valley, overlooked by guard posts on either side along its length, with three or four Arab guards at each position. At the valley entrance a great stone wall had been erected with a huge timber gate through which all who would come or go must pass.

Once beyond the gate, we entered a veritable city of small white-washed dwellings built from packed mud where the guards and mine overseers lived, many with their families, judging from the clots of women and children we saw here and there in the cramped, winding streets. Harald saw this and laughed. "They are slaves like us!" he hooted, and called all his men to heed and remember this.

Yet, slaves we were, and we were housed in long low huts outside the entrances to the various pits, of which there were many-perhaps several score-scattered in among the folds of the valley floor, and up among the slopes and crevices of the hills themselves. The huts were nothing more than a roof and a rear wall with a few partitions; they remained open at the front, like pig sties; there were no doors to keep out the wind, and the men slept with their legs and feet outside. But as we were somewhat further south, the weather was milder, and it seldom rained.

The first day was taken with fitting shackles. All the slaves wore iron leg chains held in place with iron bands around the ankles. Some of the Sea Wolves were so big that the normal bands were too small, and larger ones had to be made. As an extra precaution, because of the size and ferocity of the Danes, the overseer decided to bind each Sea Wolf to another with a short length of chain so that they could not move so quickly or adroitly. This safeguard failed to impress Harald, who deftly manipulated the pairings so as to match those who fought best together with one another.

"You never know," he explained. "It might prove useful."

Because I was not a warrior, I was paired with Gunnar, who volunteered to look after me.

Shackled and chained, the next morning at dawn we were given our tools-short-handled picks for chipping and prying, and small hammers for breaking rock-and led into the shaft that we were to work, along with a dozen Greek slaves, mostly fishermen from an island called Ixos, whose boat had been driven off course by a storm. There were four guards-two for every group of fifteen or so slaves-and each shaft or pit had an overseer, which meant that we laboured under five keen-eyed Arabs. All the guards were armed: some with wooden staves, and others with short, curved swords, but all carried horse whips, which they applied with dexterity born of long practice.

The shaft was a tunnel driven directly into the hill which opened into a large cavernous room, from which several dozen smaller tunnels radiated in all directions. The work was arduous, but simple. Each slave pair was to take a finger shaft and, using our picks and hammers, pry the precious metal from the unyielding stone. So that we might see what we were doing, we were given small lamps. These were crudely fashioned of baked earth and held a horse-hair wick and measure of olive oil. The lamps were lit from a torch kept burning in the centre of the cavern, beside a tub of oil used to fill the lamps.

After twenty days, my hands toughened and my blisters no longer bled; after forty days, I no longer smashed my fingers against the rocks with the unwieldy pick. Sometimes, we were able to work near other Danes and we could talk to them. Mostly, however, we were kept apart, save for meals-which were little more than flat bread and a thin, watery cabbage soup-and at night when we were taken back to the huts to sleep.

We worked every day, with no rests-except during the more important Arab holy days, and then it was not for us, but for the guards, that we were allowed a day of peace. These days were infrequent, and always welcomed with profound, if pathetic, gratitude. And so the days passed.

The only solace-if solace it could be called-derived from the fact that the Sea Wolves actually enjoyed finding the silver. They would have gladly dug up all of Byzantium to get such wealth if they had but known where to dig. Thus, they approached the work with a sly enthusiasm that was exceeded only by the ingenuity with which they hid the silver they found.

Of course, they did not hide all of it; Jarl Harald made certain that they provided a fair account of their work to our Sarazen slave masters. It would not do, he said, to make the overseers suspicious. "Better to keep them happy," Harald counselled, "then they will leave us alone."

Thus, the chief overseer received a goodly portion of the silver the Danes mined, and seemed content with his new slaves-content, and oblivious to how much wealth they actually unearthed. I do not exaggerate when I say that the Sea Wolves obtained half again as much as they gave up. And all that they kept for themselves, they hid against the day when they would escape. In concealing their wealth, they showed a genius that rivalled their proficiency in finding it. Truly, the Danes are supreme masters at hiding treasure.

The same guards remained always with us, though the ones that watched us during the day were relieved from duty at night. Thus we came to know very well their habits and dispositions. It was during the changing of the guard, when the night watch arrived and were settling themselves, that Harald took the opportunity to pass along his thoughts for the day.

Usually, this communication took the form of whispers relayed one person to the next down the line, although sometimes-when the guards were very lax-Harald gathered us together to exhort us and praise our efforts personally. It was important to do well, he insisted, for that way we would win our freedom the sooner. Never forget, he insisted, that the king was working on a plan of escape.

We could speak this way to one another, because no one else understood Danespeak. Most of the guards knew some Greek, and a few could speak it fluently. As time went on, I began to learn a word or two of the Arab speech, but no one knew what the Sea Wolves said to one another, which Harald considered a good thing since it meant none of the Greek slaves or Arab guards could betray us. This, he maintained, would make our escape all the easier when the time came.

When we weren't plotting escape, we concocted ingenious tortures for Nikos. That traitor died a thousand times over, each death more hideously painful and protracted than the last. Thoughts of revenge kept many a man going through the endless days of mind-numbing, body-wracking labour.

Gradually, the season passed and the desert land blushed briefly-tiny spots of crimson and gold flowers flecked the bleak hillsides-and then the sun entered its summer house and the heat began to oppress us mercilessly. I could match neither the Sea Wolves' ardour nor their greed, and so the work went ill with me. As summer progressed the mine-shafts grew hot and stifling; the dust choked me, the darkness weakened my vision. I continually knocked elbows and knees, arms and legs against the rocks, and the oil lamps burned my hair. I found the dull gleam of silver meagre compensation for the loss of my freedom and slow starvation.

Gunnar bore the hardship more easily than I, maintaining an even temper, encouraging me when my spirits faltered. To take my mind from my misery, he made me talk to him about the Christ, which I did, at first grudgingly, though as time went on I found maintaining such virulent rancour tedious. Sure, I still felt a cold, hard place in my soul, and my resentment towards God was more, not less. But arguing over theology gave us something to occupy our minds, which is the better part of survival, I believe.

In our quiet periods, when the guards were close by, he would think about all I told him. Then, at meals, or when we reached the vein we were working-far from the guards' eyes and ears-he would ask me questions that had occurred to him. In this way we proceeded, and he began to learn some skill in close-reasoned argument. His was a practical mind, not quick or nimble, but solid and untroubled by much in the way of extraneous philosophy. Thus, most of what I told him came to him fresh, and the few superstitions that he held were easily swept away. In short, he revealed a genuine facility for the subject at hand.

Even though I no longer believed…no, I did still believe, but as one rejected by God-cast out from the hearth of faith, as it were-I found to my surprise that I could speak the words of faith, and explain them, without having them touch me. Strange perhaps, to be so angry at God and yet eagerly participate in reasoned discourse about him and the wonder of his ways, but that is the way of it. Curious, too, that Gunnar's interest in the faith should increase as my own waned.

As summer drew on, the vein of ore our group had been working dwindled. Eight of us were taken to another pit nearby and put to work with the fifty or more slaves who laboured there. This pit was larger than the one we had left, with more shafts and tunnels and corridors. There were Bulgars among the slaves, as well as Greeks, and several black Ethiopians, along with some others. Gunnar and I had never seen a black man before, but after getting used to them, we agreed that they were a handsome race in all. Perhaps slavery makes a man look at such things differently, but, save for the swart hue of their skin, they seemed more like us than not.

We seldom saw them, however, because the pit overseer was a harsh and cruel master who made them rise before dawn to begin work; thus, they were already toiling away by the time we arrived. Likewise, they were made to work past dark, so that we quit the mine before they did.

A few days after starting at the new pit, Gunnar found a particularly productive vein which lay at the end of a long tunnel that had not been worked recently. We crawled in on hands and knees, clutching our oil lamps and pushing our tools ahead of us.

When we came to the end of the shaft, Gunnar stood up. "Look here, Aeddan," he said, raising his lamp. "There is no roof."

Standing beside him, I looked up to see that indeed the shaft had opened out into a wide crevice whose top, if there was one, was somewhere far above us, lost in the darkness our feeble lights could not penetrate. "There is much silver here, I think," he observed. "We will get a-"

"Listen!" I hissed.

"What is the-"

"Shh! Be quiet!"

We listened for a moment, holding our lamps high in the silence.

"There is noth-" Gunnar began.

"There it is again!" I insisted. "Listen!"

The faint echo of the sound I had heard was already fading, and the sound did not come again. "Did you hear it?" I said.

"It was water dripping," Gunnar confirmed.

"Not water," I replied. "Singing-someone was singing. It sounded like Irish."

"You are hearing things," he answered, placing his lamp in a notch someone had carved. "It was water dripping. Come, let us find some silver or we will not get anything to eat today."

We worked through the day, and though I listened intently all the while, I never heard the sound again; nor did I hear it the next day when we returned to the shaft. Three days later, however, the pit overseer made us go to another shaft, near where some others were working. The veins here were so interwoven that there were many connecting rooms and corridors, and sound travelled easily, if confusingly, from one to another. We had just found a good place and had begun working, when I heard the singing again. Gunnar allowed that he had indeed heard something, but that it did not sound like singing at all. "More like crying or weeping," he said.

I became so agitated, that I upset the lamps and spilled out most of the oil. "Now we have to fill them again," I sighed, for it meant a long crawl back to the primary shaft.

"Then we must hurry," Gunnar reminded me, "or we will be scratching our way in the dark."

We left our tools and made our way back to the main gallery and the oil tub. Two other slaves were standing at the vat when we got there, so we waited our turn. As it happened, the pit overseer appeared just then, and began shouting angrily at us. I suppose the sight of four slaves standing idle offended him; perhaps he thought we were trying to avoid work, for he ran at us, uncoiling his whip.

The lash caught me around the throat before I could dodge away; I was yanked to the ground. The guard, under whose less suspicious eye we had been filling our lamps, ran forward and began striking the others with his wooden stave. His first blow struck Gunnar, who fell down beside me clutching his head. The other two slaves, in a clumsy attempt at protecting themselves, pushed the guard aside. Seeing they had overcome him so easily, they kicked him a few times for good measure.

This action made the overseer livid; he began cursing and shouting like a madman, and striking wildly with his whip. The other two slaves, seeing the furor they had caused, ran away, quickly melting into the shadows while Gunnar and I rolled on the ground, writhing under the lash. I heard people shouting, and saw that a number of nearby slaves had come to investigate. I pushed myself up on hands and knees, and, with Gunnar beside me, tried to scramble out of the way of the whip and its crazed wielder.

Unfortunately, this action was seen as trying to avoid further punishment. The overseer, in a spitting rage, renewed his frenzied attack. I felt the lash rip across my shoulders-once, twice, and again. Pain lit my vision with crimson fireballs. I rolled on the ground, tangling with Gunnar, to whom I was chained at the ankle. We could not move fast enough to avoid the whip.

Each stinging lash tore at my flesh. My eyes filled with tears and I could not see. I began shouting for the whipping to stop. I shouted in Greek, I know, and in Danespeak. I cried out in every tongue I knew and begged for mercy.

And miracle of miracles, my cries were answered!

For all at once I heard a shout that sounded like, "Cele De!" The whipping instantly ceased: abruptly and in mid-stroke, the whip went taut and the slave master's arm froze. There came an odd cracking sound and, in my somewhat confused vision, the furious Arab seemed to rise from the floor to hang in the air.

He hovered above me for a moment, his bewildered face growing round and red; he gasped for breath, but could not breathe. Suddenly, the slave master flew sideways through the air and I did not see him any more. The instant he disappeared, another face swung into view above me-a face which for all the world looked like someone I knew.

Still squirming in pain, I gaped, gulping air to keep from passing out. A name came to my lips. I spoke it out.

"Dugal?"