The Prow Beast

FOURTEEN

There were hills on either side of us, easy rolling and wooded with willow and elm and the flash of birch, thick with berry bushes and game, while the river hardly flowed against Short Serpent at all. But there was no singing from the oarsmen now and no joy in the stacked plunder, for all that they had snarled at the lack of it before.

We had beaver and squirrel and marten skins, wadmal cloth baled with grease-rich fleeces against the rain — the work of winter looms — and carded wool waiting to be woven.

Now there was mutton and lamb and beef, for we had slaughtered every breathing creature in that place. We had winter roots pickled in barrels and sweetness wax-sealed in pots. Ale, too, though old and a little bitter. There was even hard drink, like the green wine of far-away Holmgard, a clear spirit made from rye — but not enough of it to chase the sick taste of what we had done to that nameless place.

We loaded it all, stuffing it into Short Serpent until it wobbled precariously, as if the more we took the better the excuse for what had been done. For some of us, the only excuse was the laying out of Hlenni on a cross-stack of timbers ripped from the houses, with Koghe next to him and Blue Hat at both their feet.

Then we scattered all the lamp oil we could find, sprayed that expensive stuff like water, for this was not a howing-up, dedicated to Frey — this was a blaze that sped Hlenni and Koghe straight up to Odin, as was proper. A beacon, one or two muttered uneasily, that could be seen for days.

They had been our only deaths. The morose Gudmund had taken the prong of a hayfork in his belly and Yan Alf had taken the flat of a wooden spade on the side of his head — wielded by a woman, too, to add to his annoyance and shame — but he had only a rich, purple bruise to show for it.

We had slaughtered one hundred and seventy-four of them, women and bairns among them. Now there was a sickness on us, like the aftermath of a jul feast that had gone on too long, one where folk told you what a time you had because you could not quite recall it for yourself. One where, for days after, everything tasted of ash and your mind was too dull to work.

Worse than that, at least for me, was the feeling that there had been too much blood spilled, as if it poured into a deep, black hole in the earth, the Abyss that Brother John always warned me I was destined to descend. The same Abyss which had flowed out and into me the night I had ripped out the throat of a berserker.

I felt like the prow beast, carved in an endless snarl, unable to change my expression, only capable of nodding approval at what was done. I looked at that beast now, back where it had been taken from and rearing proudly up; there seemed small point now in appeasing the spirits of this land. I would rather have them afraid of us.

We came round the bend and into the sight and sound and smell of a big settlement, this one on the west bank of the river.

It was, said Pall, the Wend borg of Szteteno. He was still leashed, tied to one or other of us, or the mast when all were busy, yet he had recovered a measure of his sleekit smoothness and grinned at the sight of the place, picking the beef from his gapped teeth with a sliver of bone.

‘They have no love for those on the east side of the river,’ he told us. ‘They will, perhaps, thank us warmly for burning those trolls out.’

‘Do you believe this ferret?’ sneered Styrbjorn and I looked from one to the other.

‘I have a little knife that finds out the truth,’ I answered, which made Pall glance at his bound hand, scowling. Styrbjorn laughed and I turned and handed him a long bundle wrapped in a square of sun-faded silk which had once been blue. He looked at it, bewildered, then took it, feeling the weight and knowing what it was. Yet he whistled through pursed lips at the silk.

‘They say worms make this,’ he grinned. ‘I have seen worms and all they make is dung and good bait for fishing. It is something when a man hands me my sword and the wrapping on it is half the worth of the sheath.’

‘The silk is something to trade, the blade will help you keep what you get. Take both, use them to go home,’ I said with a growl and more gruffly than I had intended. ‘Take Pall with you, for he is no more use to me than a hole in a bucket. I am thinking that what you do with him and how much you trust him is your affair.’

It was reward enough for his seax-skill at the settlement and we both knew it. When the ship slid with a gentle kissing dunt against one of the spray of wooden piers, he sprang over the side with a laugh and a wave. Pall, less skilled and more eager, scrambled after and darted away, throwing the leash off him with a last curse.

‘Is that jarl-cleverness I am seeing, then?’ asked Finn, appearing at my elbow as the oars were clattered down and men milled, sorting themselves out and tying Short Serpent to the wharf. ‘Is there a plan to it? Am I follow and finish it?’

There had been enough blood over all of this to slake even Odin’s thirst and I said as much. He shrugged.

‘Well, there is always the Loki-luck that will see them throat-cut before they reach King Eirik again. By then, of course, you will have come up with some gold-browed words to appease Jarl Brand.’

Returning his son would be enough, I was thinking. I watched until the figure of Styrbjorn had vanished in the throng on the wooden walkways. Tall and lithe and still raw with youth, he had the look of greatness, yet something was lacking in him — I was thinking that he knew it, too, and it scorched him sullen. Still, I did not think it was his wyrd to be throat-cut.

The men spilled out of the boat and had no trouble stepping easily onto the planks of the wharf, which I noted; usually we had to scramble up half the height of a man to a planked pier such as this, but the river had risen.

‘Aye,’ grunted Trollaskegg, seeing me look at the rain-sodden sky. ‘I can smell storm, me. Over behind the mist are those mountains and I am betting sure Thor is stamping up and down and throwing Mjollnir for all he is worth.’

‘No matter,’ Crowbone broke in, bright with excitement, ‘for we will be snug and safe here, at least for one night.’

Those nearest agreed with hooms and heyas, looking forward to a chance to dry out cloaks and tunics and boots by a real fire, with milk-cooked food and ale enough to chase away the blood-cloud which had settled on all of us like a cloak of black flies.

I was more fretting than I showed; Pall’s oarmates had escaped and he had told us they were coming upriver to alert the Saxlanders.

I had been thinking that, if we proved empty-handed with weapons and full-fisted with silver, the Saxlanders would not care overly much — yet we were alone on that wharf, the men turning this way and that, wary as kitchen dogs hunting scraps, hunched under the stares of dark doorways and the sightless eyes of shuttered windholes. Beyond that, I saw big men in leather armour and spears, with a man in front holding a staff.

‘Should we prepare war gear, Orm?’ Alyosha asked and I shook my head; no-one had approached us at all, neither trader nor soldier and I had the notion matters were held, like an insect in amber.

I told them to unload and stack the furs and wadmal, so that the sight of such a mundane task — and the profit it promised — might allay some fears. For all that, the sweat was greasy on my face and slid a cold finger down between my shoulders.

For a little while we sat and shivered in the rain of that place, the men growing more and more restive, hunched and miserable and leashed by me, for I wanted some acknowledgement that we were welcome before I let these growlers loose to scatter through the settlement.

It did not help that they could smell the roasting ribs and boiling cauldron snakes and hear the fishermen inviting customers to choose an eel and have it sliced and cooked there and then. The gulls wheeled and screeched — better fed, muttered Bjaelfi, than the Oathsworn.

A man started down the walkway, not looking up until he saw us and realised he was alone, having crossed some invisible line which held everyone back; he was so startled that he took a step off the walkway into the muck and lost his shoe jerking his foot back. Cursing, he fished it out and half-hopped away.

A child ran out, laughing, hands out and mouth open; his mother raced after him, snatched him up and glared at us as if it was our fault. Even the dogs slunk, tails curled and growling.

We waited, driven mad by the smells of what we had not had in a long time, so thick we could taste them; cooking fish and hot ovens and brewing beer — and shite pits and middens. One or two grumbles went up and Murrough, in a loud voice, proclaimed that if he didn’t get some fish and bread and ale soon he would eat the next dog that presented itself, skin and all.

Then the man with the staff suddenly appeared, striding down to us; men burst out laughing, nudging Murrough and telling him his meal had arrived. The man, a grey-beard dressed in embroidered red, half-shrouded in a blue cloak fastened on one shoulder with a large pin, was bewildered and bristling, so that he paused and glared.

‘Welcome,’ he said eventually. Up close, I saw the staff was impressively carved and had a large yellow stone set in the bulbous end.

‘There will be no berthing fees for you,’ he added, chewing the Norse like a dog does a wasp.

‘Fees? What fees?’ demanded Trollaskegg, chin bristling.

‘Berthing fees,’ I told him and he spat, only just missing the staff, while the messenger stared down his long nose.

‘I do not pay berthing fees,’ Trollaskegg declared, folding his arms.

‘That is what he said,’ I answered wearily and Trollaskegg, uncertain now whether he had won something or not, grunted and nodded, deciding he had the victory.

The messenger inclined his head in a curt bow and swaggered off, almost knocked over in the rush of traders who arrived in a sudden, unleashed mob, hucksters all of them, crowding round and spreading their wares out on linen or felt, dark coloured for the gem and trinket sellers.

They had combs and pins and brooches of bone and ivory, some pieces of Serkland silver set with amber and flashing stones; the Oathsworn gathered round and fished out barter-stuff and even hacksilver, for these hard, tangle-haired growlers were magpies for glitter.

The traders were good, too, I noted, even if all their gems were glass, for they had stories for all the pieces and, if they forgot which story went with which from customer to customer, it did not matter much. If all the stories were true, though, each had some potent magic from somewhere which would create sure sons in the most barren womb and make men hard as keel-trees if their women wore it when they wore nothing else.

Men believe what they wish to believe, a weakness that can be used, like any other. The gods know this; Odin especially knows this.

The men milled and slowly scattered, looking for food and ale and women. I spent some time haggling a price for the wadmal and furs and knew I was robbed; it was too early to be this far upriver. Since we had raided all the goods, though, it hardly mattered and was all profit — anyway, I was glad to be quit of the bundles and what they made me remember.

I had just finished handseling a deal with a spit and slap when Abjorn forced his way through the throng, chewing meat on a wooden skewer. He jerked his head backwards as he spoke.

‘There is someone wants a word,’ he said, spraying food and I looked behind him; the grey-beard with the staff had returned. The trader I had been talking to took a sideways sidle to avoid him and clamped his lips on what he had been telling me. I had asked this trader, as I had asked others, about a Greek priest and a north boy and had nothing worth noting — they had been here, for sure, yet folk seemed reluctant to admit it.

‘The merchant Kasperick wishes words with you,’ the greybeard intoned.

‘Who is this Kasperick?’ I asked and the messenger raised one irritated eyebrow.

‘He is the one who wishes to see you,’ he replied smartly and Finn growled like a warning dog.

‘Then I must make myself worthy of visiting such an eminence,’ I replied, before Finn decided to pitch the messenger into the river. I turned to Trollaskegg.

‘Fetch my blue cloak from my sea-chest and the pin that goes with it,’ I told him loudly and watched the scowl thunder onto his brow as he did it, slow and stiff with annoyance. He thrust them truculently at me and, before he could also tell me to fuck off and die and that he was no thrall to me, I drew him closer.

‘Get everyone on board and stay there,’ I hissed. ‘Loosen off the lines. I will take Finn, Crowbone and Red Njal with me and if all is well, I will send Crowbone back. If not, Red Njal. If you see Red Njal, pole off to the river and row for it — upriver. Make sure the girl is safe and kept on board.’

Trollaskegg blinked a bit, then nodded. The water was up and it would be hard pull against the narrowed spate.

‘Can I go ashore?’ asked a voice and we all turned to where Dark Eye stood. She wore a tunic, one of Yan’s for he was smallest, yet it suited her for a dress down to her calves.

I shook my head. ‘Later perhaps,’ I added and she drowned me with those seal eyes, making me ashamed of even that friendly lie.

‘We should go armed,’ growled Finn and again I shook my head, never taking my eyes off her. No sense in inviting trouble. A sword, as was proper, but no byrnie or helms or shields or great bearded axes. Finn grunted, unconvinced.

‘I see no trouble,’ Onund argued, looking around, while the messenger waited, tapping his staff impatiently.

We had come upriver on a raiding boat with the prows up, smoke from a burning staining the sky behind us and the warning whispers of enemies in every ear. Even allowing for the folk on the west bank not liking those on the east, traders in geegaws, along with everyone else, would have vanished like snow off a sun-warmed dyke at the sight of us. Yet here they were, lying and haggling, not in the least afraid — but it had taken them two hours and more to be so friendly.

Onund thought about it, frowning, but it was Dark Eye who dunted him gently to the centre of it.

‘They have been told not to be afraid, to make us welcome,’ she said, soft as the lisp of rain. ‘They have been told that either we are no danger — or will be made to be no danger.’

‘Heya,’ Finn said, grasping it. ‘It is a trap then.’

‘And you walk into it like a bairn?’ Bjaelfi accused, but Finn clapped him on the shoulder, grinning.

‘It is only a trap if there is no escape from it,’ he said.

‘There is only escape if others come for us,’ Crowbone added. ‘What are Onund and Trollaskegg and Abjorn and the others to do?’

I looked at him and them and shrugged.

‘I am thinking you may have to hold a Thing on that for yourselves,’ I said, ‘once the girl and the ship both are safe.’

‘Quickly,’ added Finn meaningfully to Trollaskegg. ‘So you reach that part where you come to rescue us.’

The place was more than thorp, less than town, a fetid cluster of little log houses with steep roofs that came almost to the ground, with a shop or a workplace in an open part and sleeping benches in an attached, closed space.

Tight-herded about split-pine walkways, the houses teemed with life and smells — but the messenger who led us seemed well-known and folk moved out of our path, even those who struggled with heavy loads of fish, or barrels. In any trade town further north, the haughty messenger, stick or no, would have been kicked into the side muck, as Finn pointed out.

I was only vaguely aware of it. As we left, she had whispered, ‘Come back alive,’ and my arm and my cheek burned — the one where her hand had laid, the other where her lips had touched. Finn had growled like a guard hound and shaken his head. I was still swimming up from the depths of her seal eyes as we traipsed after the messenger.

The houses straggled out, became more withy and less wood, until they stopped entirely. Then there was the fortress, the approach to it lined with cages on poles and, in most of them, a dessicated, rot-blackened affair that had once been human. A few of them, I saw, were fresher dead than that.

It was a good, solid affair, ditched and stockaded, with a solid half-timber, half-stone keep on a mound — what the Rus-Slavs call kreml and detinets, though there were no Rus-Slavs here. No Wends, either, I saw and we all exchanged meaningful glances, for the leather-armoured spearholders at the gates were big, ox-shouldered Saxlanders, who stared straight ahead. The wind hissed through the cages, played teasingly with the lank straggles of remaining hair.

This Kasperick was also Saxlander, I was thinking, when we were eventually ushered into the hall, a place drifting with a mist of smoke, where people in the dim light seemed transparent as ghosts.

There was heat, but it came from a clay stove, which I had seen before in izbas in Novgorod. There was light, too, from sconces stuck on the pillars, metal-backed to keep the wood from scorching and most of them were clustered round a high seat, on which was this Kasperick.

He did not rise to greet us, which got a growl from Crowbone; his voice had broken completely now and our amusement with his testing of it had ebbed. The rest of us had been to the Great City and were used to these sorts of manners — but Kasperick was no Greek nor, I was thinking, was he Wend.

Saxlander then, I decided, watching his white hands flutter over documents. A ring caught the sconce light on a carved surface and played with it as I watched his square face, handsome once but running to jowl even under the red-gold beard, as neat-trimmed as his hair. I watched his eyes, too, which were watching us and not the documents he held.

I did not think he could read at all and, if he did, it was birchbark he read on and had probably brought out the parchment — and the seal-ring, the expensive, fur-trimmed robe he wore and the Christ cross round his neck — to impress us with his riches and power and learning. All of it, of course, a mummer’s play.

‘I am here, merchant,’ I said, like an iron bar dropped on a stone floor. He looked up languidly and I nodded at the document in his hands. Since parchment was too expensive to waste, both sides had been written on and the one I saw was in Latin and I could read it easily save that it was upside down. I took a chance that the side he was supposed to be reading was the same way.

‘You may find that more interesting if you turn it the right way up,’ I added and he fluttered his hands and scowled, a look as nasty as a black storm on the Baltic, when he realised he had given himself away. Then, in an instant, he was all smiles.

‘Of course,’ he said in smooth Norse, with only a slight accent. ‘Forgive me…I am so used to overawing these Wendish folk that I forget, sometimes, who I am dealing with.’

‘You are dealing with Orm Ruriksson,’ I said. ‘A Norse trader from Hestreng who can read runes and Latin, speaks Latin and Greek and some few other tongues and knows every sort of coin folk use in the world. Who am I dealing with?’

‘Kasperick,’ he answered, then chuckled, waving forward a thrall with a fat silver pitcher. ‘Sit, sit,’ he added, waving expansively at the benches, so we did so and the thrall poured — wine, I saw, rich and red and unwatered. Crowbone barely sipped his; Red Njal guzzled down half of his before he realised it was in a cup of expensive blue glass and fell to examining it. Finn never touched his at all and neither did I.

‘Trader?’ Kasperick went on, lacing his white fingers together and smiling. ‘You are, I suspect, no more a trader than I am a merchant.’

‘So — what are you?’

‘Slenzanie,’ he replied lightly. ‘Saxlander to you, but I am of the Slenzanie tribe and charged with holding this place as a concern by the Margrave Hodo. You may call me lord.’

‘Is that the same Hodo who got his arse kicked by the Pols at Cidini?’ Finn demanded scornfully, for he had listened carefully to the talk back in Joms. Kasperick pursed his mouth like a cat’s arse but, just then, Red Njal, engrossed in the lights within the blue glass cup, turned it up to look at the bottom; wine spashed on his knees and he looked up guiltily.

‘There was such a…setback,’ Kasperick replied stiffly. ‘We shall make the Pols pay for that and no-one should make the mistake of thinking we are weakened because of that battle. Especially you Ascomanni, who think yourselves lords of the rivers because your king, Bluemouth, is humping a Wendish princess.’

‘Well, now we are off to a fine beginning for two folk who are not merchants,’ I answered, ‘for we are trading insults well enough. It is not Bluemouth, but Bluetooth, though I am thinking you know this.’

His eyes flicked a little, but he kept his lips tight as a line of stitching.

‘You are right to call us Ascomanni — Ashmen — for we are northers with good ash spears,’ I went on into the stone of his face, ‘but we are not Bluetooth’s Danes. At least, not the ones you know of, from Joms, for they are mostly Wends of no account, but I am thinking you know this, too. We are mostly Svears and a few Slavs from further east and north, whom the Serkland Arabs call Rus, but I am not expecting you to know that. Perhaps a Dzhadoshanie or an Opolanie would have known that — even one of the Lupiglaa — but I make allowances for the wit-lack of the Slenzanie.’

I had been listening well at Joms, too. Two red spots appeared on Kasperick’s cheeks at this and there was a sucking in of breath from the ghosts who listened and watched in the dimness at the mention of the other, rival, tribes of the Silesians.

Kasperick controlled himself with an effort, though the smile started to tremble a little. He drank to cover himself and took a breath or two.

‘No matter who you are,’ he said after a moment or two and waved a dismissive hand, ‘you all appear the same to me, you Northmen. It is what you carry on your ship that matters.’

‘Ah, you still have your merchant hat on, I see,’ I replied and then spread my hands in apology. ‘I suspect some folk from downriver have tried to mire our good name, but they are mean-mouthed nithings. We have nothing much more than some wadmal and a few furs. Hardly worth your time. Besides — I have handseled a deal on that.’

‘You have the Mazur girl,’ he answered, his voice like a slap.

Finn growled and I took a breath. How had he known that? My thoughts whirled up like leaves in a djinn of wind.

‘Slaves?’ I managed to answer. ‘One slave? She is thin and you have, I am thinking, plumper girls closer to hand.’

‘I like Mazur ones,’ he replied, enjoying himself now he had set us back on our heels. Oiled smooth as a Greek beard he was now and Finn’s scowl revealed how he did not care for it much.

‘To a man used to Slenzanie women, I suppose she would be sweet,’ he grunted. ‘They all smell of fish, though they are never near the sea.’

The red spots reappeared and Kasperick leaned forward, his eyes narrowed and his fingers steepled.

‘You are the one called Finn,’ he said, ‘who fears nothing. We will see about that.’

Now how had he known that? A suspicion trailed fingers across my thoughts, but Finn was curling his lip in a sneer, which distracted me.

‘The Mazur girl,’ I said hastily, before Finn spat out a curse at him, ‘is not a slave and good Christmenn do not enslave the free, or so I had heard.’

I nodded at the cross peeping shyly out from above the neck of his tunic and he glanced down and frowned.

‘This? I took this from a Sorb, one of a band I had to deal with. You probably saw them on the way in, safely caged. I am a Christ follower but not one of these Greeks, who can all argue that God does not exist save in Constantinople.’

I stopped, chilled, as he brought it out and waved it scornfully — the Christ cross was a fat Greek one, plain dark wood with a cunning design of the Tortured God on it worked in little coloured tiles; I had seen it before, but not round Kasperick’s plump neck.

‘You are Christ-sworn yourself,’ he went on, smirking, ‘and I suspect this Mazur girl is not. So passing her to me is no sin.’

It was my turn to look down and frown. He had seen the little cross on a thong hanging on my breastbone.

‘This? I had this from the first man I ever killed,’ I told him, which was the truth — though it was truer to say the man had been a boy. I had been fifteen when I did it.

‘That other trinket that looks like a cross is a good Thor Hammer,’ I added. ‘There is another, the valknut, which is an Odin sign.’

Kasperick frowned. ‘I had heard you were baptised.’

I shook my head and smiled apologetically, more sure than ever about who had been whispering in Kasperick’s ear.

‘If your God is willing to prevent evil but not able then he is not all-wise and all-seeing, as gods are supposed to be,’ I told him. ‘If he is able but not willing, then he is more vicious than a rat in a barrel. If he is both able and willing, then from where comes all the evil your priests rave about? If he is neither able nor willing, then why call him a god?’

‘So,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘A follower of Thor? Odin? Some other dirty-handed little farmer god of the Wends, one with four faces? No matter — they will help you here no better than the Sorbs I caged outside, no matter how clever your words.’

‘I thought those Sorbs were good Christmenn,’ I answered, trying to think clearly as I spoke. ‘Like you.’

‘I took this cross from them, as they took it from a Greek priest they sold. They used the money to get drunk and once drunk they killed a man. So there is the Lord at work — even if it was only a Greek priest he worked through.’

I blinked with the thunderbolt of it, a strike as hard as Thor’s own Hammer. I had been right about the cross, then.

‘Did this Greek priest have a boy with him?’ I asked. ‘A Northerner — a Dane.’

Kasperick, bewildered at the way this conversation had suddenly darted off the path, waved an irritated hand.

‘They sold them both to another of your sort. He was going upriver.’

Upriver. A slave dealer going upriver and buying a Greek monk and a boy. The chill in me settled like winter haar.

‘The dealer,’ I asked. ‘Did he have marks on him, blue marks? A beard like a badger’s arse?’

The conversation was now a little dog which would not come to heel and Kasperick was scowling a leash at it.

‘There was such a man,’ he hissed, ‘but enough of this. Fetch the girl and be done with it, for you have no choice in the matter.’

Randr Sterki had Leo and Koll and one swift glance sideways let me know that Finn and Crowbone had realised it, too. So did Red Njal, who had been strange since Hlenni’s death and was now starting to tremble at the edges, the way wolf-coats do when the killing rage comes on.

‘Red Njal,’ I said sharply and he blinked and shook himself like a dog coming out of water. Kasperick, wary and angry as a wet cat, lifted a hand and men appeared, leather-armoured, carrying spears and bulking out the light. Finn, who hated Saxlanders, curled his lip at them.

‘Step out and go and fetch the Mazur girl,’ I told Red Njal and he looked at me, then at Kasperick and grinned, nodded and hirpled away on his bad leg. I settled on the bench, waiting and Crowbone cocked his head sideways, like a bird and stared curiously at Kasperick.

‘What?’ demanded Kasperick, suspicious and scowling, but Crowbone merely shrugged.

‘Once,’ he said, ‘a long time gone — don’t ask me when — up in Dovrefell in the north of Norway, there was a troll.’

‘This will pass the time until folk return with my Mazur girl,’ Kasperick announced pointedly and there was a dutiful murmur of laughter from the dim figures behind him. Crowbone waggled his head from side to side.

‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘perhaps not. This is not a long tale, for this troll was famous for two things — he was noted for his ugliness, even by other trolls and that fame was outstripped only by his stupidity. One day, he found a piece of bread in a cleft in the rock and was delighted, for food is scarce for trolls in Dovrefell. So he gripped it tight — then found he could not get his fist out unless he let the crust go. He thought about it a long time, but there was no way round it — he had to let go, or stay where he was and he could not make up his mind. For all I know, he is there yet, with a fistful of stale crumbs, but determined never to let go.’

‘Trolls are notorious fools,’ Kasperick agreed sourly.

‘A man should always know when to let go of something he cannot hang on to,’ Crowbone countered blankly.

In only minutes, it seemed, someone pounded breathlessly in and hurled himself to the ear of Kasperick, whispering furiously. The red spots flared and Kasperick leaped up.

‘Only a troll tries to hang on to what is beyond his grasp,’ Crowbone announced and Kasperick bellowed as the ox-shouldered guards dragged Red Njal back in and flung him to us; there was blood on his beard and on his teeth, but his grin let us know Short Serpent was safe away.

‘The bigger the bairn, the bigger the burden,’ he said, then spat blood at Kasperick.

‘As my granny used to say,’ he added.

Kasperick, his face a snarl, snapped an order and the oxen Saxlander guards lumbered towards us. From the dimness, one of the ghosts gained shape, sliding forward onto the bench opposite and grinning at me as hands ripped our weapons from us.

Now I knew how Kasperick had heard so much of us. That face, with no grin on it at all, I had last seen on the hard-packed floor of Hestreng, where the hot iron that had seared the ugly scar across it and blistered one eye to a puckered hole, had started a fire on his chest. I had put it out and left him.

‘Bjarki,’ I said into his weasel smile. ‘I should have let you burn.’