The Wolf Sea

16

It was, as Finn said, Hel's privy and a suitable place for a baby-killer like old Herod. His grasp of the Christ Gospel sagas was loose, but he had the right of it for all that.

A flat-topped camel-dropping, the mountain of Masada was a dung-coloured horror slashed with the white of Old Roman camps and the great spillway of the ramp they had made to get to the top was a waterfall of scree.

The ramparts were crumbling, but it was a sheer cliff, high enough to be seen from En Gedi, so they didn't have to be in good repair. Even climbing that old ramp would take half an hour and, in the merciless sun and under a hail of arrows and rocks, it would be a bloody killing ground.

`Then we will attack at night,' declared al-Misri. I wiped sweat from my face and looked at his troops: Bathili from Egypt, the blue-black Masmoudi, some local Bedu. Only the Masmoudi were footsoldiers, wearing robes and turbans, armed with shield, spear and bow, and they couldn't find their own pricks in daylight, never mind climb a mountain at night.

There was another way up, for I had asked that. It was called the Serpent Path — and there was Odin's hand, right there — round to the north and east of that great ship-prowed fortress-mountain. Bad enough in daylight, it was a narrow place where one good man could hold off hundreds. At night it would be easier to close with any guards, but treacherous to climb — worse still, the defenders had blocked off the last part of it, according to scouts al-Migi had sent out.

`The only way up is climbing a cliff the height of ten men,' they had reported.

Finn looked at me and I looked at Kvasir and my heart shrank as my bowels twisted.

`Piece of piss to a boy who hunted gull eggs in Bjornshafen,' Finn growled cheerfully, clapping me on the back.

If you see that child, let me know,' I answered bitterly. `Perhaps you may like to ask him if he has ever done such a thing in the dark, on a strange cliff in a foreign country.'

But I already knew it had to be done, had suspected my wyrd was on me from the moment the Goat Boy had come to the quiet fire beside me in En Gedi and, with one simple question, ripped the veil from the face of truth.

En Gedi, when we came to it, was a Dead Sea jewel in that land of wasted folds of tan and salt-white hills, a place of feathered palms and — wonder of wonder — waterfalls. We simply stood, faces raised like dying plants to have the mirr on our cheeks and dreams of ships and sea and wrack-strewn strand circling in our heads like gulls.

We were honoured guests of al-Kunis, but settled in cool tents outside the towers and fortress built to protect the balsam fields, whose plants soaked the air with scent. Our host was too wise a commander to allow the likes of us inside his walls.

We lit fires and soft-footed thralls brought food in bowls — such food. Mutton and lamb and young doves, cooked in saffron and limon and coriander, with rosewater and murri naqi. We ate with fingers, stuffed ourselves and belched through greasy beards.

For two days we lived like this, repairing gear and sharpening edges, braiding ourselves back together like a frayed ship's line.

We swam in the waterfall pool, while the black-shawled women who came with jars for water shrieked at our nakedness and scuttled away, hiding their faces in their hands — and peeping, giggling, through their fingers. There were even women we could touch, sent by al-Mi§ri, whom everyone agreed was as fine a jarl as any open-handed Northman. If any had worked out that it was because he needed us to kill ourselves on his behalf, no one spoke it aloud.

On the night before we were to march to Masada, while the insects whirred and flicked round the fire, I sat and listened, half lost and yet — Einar would have been proud — feeling out the Oathsworn's mood.

Someone was playing a pipe, going through the notes rather than playing a tune. Finn was trying to make scripilita out of the local flatbread, arguing with Botolf about when he was going to get the rest of his money for being right about Inger. Kvasir and Hlenni, whom they called Brimill — Seal — because he slicked back his hair with scented oil, were playing 'tafl and arguing because it was really too dark to see.

And Kleggi was sitting with the Goat Boy near the prone figure of Short Eldgrim, who had taken a sword hilt to his temple and was one of the six wounded we had and the worst of them, too.

At first it had seemed just a blow to the head and he had got up from it, staggering and rubbing the blood away, grinning. He had hoiked up his belly an hour later and an hour after that had folded up like an old tent and stayed that way, his breathing so hard I could hear the snore of it from where I sat.

I would leave him here, together with Red Njal and Thorstein Cod Biter, the one with his thigh laid open, the other missing two toes off his left foot. I hoped they would keep Short Eldgrim alive for us to find on the way back. If we came back. Then the Goat Boy loped over and plunked down beside me, greasy-grinned and chewing Finn's efforts. Goat Boy, as everyone agreed, was the perfect name for him, for he ate anything and everything and all the time.

`How is it?' I asked and he nodded, cheek bulging, frantically chewed and swallowed so he could speak.

`Good. Almost as good as the ones in Larnaca.'

Ah, wait until you taste it in Miklagard,' I said to him and he grinned brightly and chewed for a moment.

Then he said: 'Will Short Eldgrim die?'

I shrugged. 'Odin knows. By that snoring, though, he is sleeping only. He will be awake by the time we get back.'

More chewing. Then he said: 'If he does die, can we wash him? Not the women?'

I blinked at that and agreed we could. His smile was relieved. `Why?' I asked. 'I should think Short Eldgrim, even dead, would like to be washed by women.'

The Goat Boy wrinkled his nose. He knew what I spoke of, but girls were creatures who got in the way and women were worse, always wanting to comb his tangled hair.

`They laugh,' he said. 'I heard them when they washed the red-haired man.'

`Well,' I offered, only half listening, 'he was their enemy.' He had, I thought, probably sent them screaming and running and had maybe thrown at least one on her back.

The Goat Boy knew what I meant; he knew us well by now He shook his head, swallowed the last of his scripilita and looked at me with those dark, cat-stare eyes. 'They laughed because he had no. . no. .

nothing,' he said and grabbed his crotch. 'Does Short Eldgrim have a pisser, Trader?'

The night air was suddenly blade cold, enough to creep my flesh. 'What?'

He heard the change in my tone and grew uneasy at it, wary and silent.

`What about Inger?' I demanded, more fiercely than I had intended, and he blinked and shrank. I took a breath and smiled. Asked him again, gently.

`When they stripped him, he had no pisser. The women laughed and said he was no man. Had no balls, nor pizzle.'

I was dry-mouthed and silent, thoughts tumbling like water down the falls. No balls. No pisser. Cut.

And then the other thought that had nagged me crept in and grinned with wolf teeth, making a mockery of all, leaving me stunned and silent and lost.

I was still lost when we were standing under the dawn-smeared night at the top of the Serpent Path, rope coiled round me and the rest of the Oathsworn hunkered down, watching, pale and grim in the blue shadows.

Easy as shinning up a mast,' growled Finn, mistaking my silence for worry about the climb. He looked even more worried when I didn't tell him to go fuck his mother or something like it, but he clapped a hand on my shoulder after a moment and both of us looked up at the wall of it, which seemed to tower into the dawn.

It wasn't the climb that bothered me but what I would find at the top. What I could not — dare not — tell the others, though they would have to know soon.

The first four feet went well enough and the night wind hissed puffs of dust from under my handholds, which was a sign I did not miss. This was no black sea-rock, slick with spray and gull shit, where terns screamed at you and puffins whirred out of their secret holes into your face — that I knew well enough. This was dry and crumbling and treacherous with dust.

I went on, fumbling in the half-dark for small folds and fissures that didn't even deserve the name of handhold, feeling the weight of the rope drag at me, feeling the wind bite with the chill of night, yet the sweat on me was slick as oil.

Halfway and I rested, looked down, saw only a black fleece of shadows. Out on the horizon, the smear of light was larger, brighter, and I knew I had little time left.

Two feet further up and my foot slipped, pulling loose my left hand, the one with the fingers missing. I swung, held only by my right arm, dangling like a hanged man, feet flailing. I would have screamed if I hadn't bitten my lips until they bled; the sinews in my arm were doing all the shrieking for me anyway.

I heard my grunts, loud in my ear. My feet kicked rocks loose and, from below, I heard a faint hiss that might have been curse or query.

Panting, I curled at the waist, as far as the rope would let me, scrabbled, caught one foot, lost it, caught it again. Swung against the rock, slapped my ruined hand back on rock and clawed into a niche.

Sagging a little, I felt the sweat run in my eyes and tasted salt in my mouth. My arms and thighs and calves all creaked with pain, trembling against the rock.

I reached up, my hand fluttering like a lost moth, found another handhold, clamped fingers on it and brought a foot up, hearing the leather seaboots rasp, knowing they would be finally wrecked, shredded on these rocks. Strange what bothers you at the oddest times.

The top came as a surprise and I heaved myself over the last of it, panting and gasping. The Serpent Path was lost in darkness away to my left and there were no ramparts here. The bulk of Herod's tiered palace slouched to my right and the wind hissed and moaned over the plateau, studded with strange shadows and the red flowers of fires. Somewhere, goats bleated.

I moved up slowly, trying hard to listen and not scrabble like a mad chicken on the rock and loose scree.

There was a nub of stone, the last of a fat pillar that had once held up a shaded walkway. Now it took a loop of the rope and the rest of it slithered over the edge in a rustle of stones and dust.

I waited, crouched and watching, while the milk-smear on the horizon grew wider and more honey-stained and the wind mumbled through the ruins like a hot breath. Yet I shivered.

Kvasir was first up, panting and grunting, hand over hand. I helped him over and he collapsed, breathing like a fighting bull. 'Odin's. Arse. Tough.

Finn swarmed up as if he were climbing the rigging of a large mast. Barely out of breath, he handed me my shield and sword, which he had brought up with his own, and his grin was feral-yellow.

`Well done, Trader. You are the one for the climbing, right enough.'

They came up one by one, rasping with hard breathing, clinking and clanking in mail and shields and weapons. I winced at every noise, never considering the feat of it until afterwards. Even with a rope that had been a hard climb for men in mail — and Botolf brought my own up, wrapped neatly and slung over one shoulder.

Last up was the Goat Boy, struggling, with the slight strength of his knot-muscled arms almost gone, and my belly was in the back of my throat — until I saw him fastened to Botolf by tunic belts.

Botolf, grinning, got to the top, reached down and plucked the Goat Boy up as if he were picking an ear of wheat. I swallowed drily, for I had not wanted the Goat Boy on this one but that had got me sideways looks from everyone else, since he had been in every other hard place with us.

I measured the distance to the nearest building, which was a grand affair, once two storeys, now partially collapsed into ruins. It was a long run across the open plateau and I didn't like the look of it much. . The Arabs were set to attack when the sun was up, which meant we were here for too long a time, squatting like stupid ewes in fast-vanishing shadows.

`What do you reckon, Trader? Make a run for it?' breathed Finn in my ear.

Truth was, I didn't know. Either way seemed to mean discovery and even if most of the brigands were close round those fires, someone would go for a piss and the Serpent Path Gate was a hawk and spit away.

There was almost certainly a guard on that who could not fail to see us as the light grew and I could not rely on him being as blind as he clearly was deaf and stupid.

As if he heard me thinking, there was a query from the darkness, neither Greek nor Arab, but West Norse.

We froze. The query came again, harsher this time, and I heard the shink-chink sound, saw the spark of flint and steel as the guard tried to light a torch. Folk looked at each other, bewildered eyes white in the dark, and Finn growled. He peeled the slavered Roman nail from his mouth, so that I knew he was about to reply

— but then the Goat Boy bleated.

It was as perfect a bleat as any pathetic goat I had heard and he did it twice more. I stilled Finn with a hand on his arm, felt rather than saw his unease in the darkness. A Norseman on guard? Not friend, but foe.

.

There was a muttered curse of annoyance and the guard moved back. Silently, Botolf ruffled the Goat Boy's hair and his grin was white in the darkness.

I looked at the sky, trying to judge how much time we had, but could make no sense of it. The whole horizon was an ugly yellow and the wind had died to nothing.

Odin is the All-Father, the Great God. He is a shapechanger when he is seen at all, but if you want to feel the presence of One Eye, go into a lonely place and wait and listen. I have done it and felt the passing of him through a forest, in the thousands of mysterious sounds and breaths, in the soft sough of wind that blows through the leaves and branches, in the storm-wind that racks trees and shows where the All-Father passes on the Wild Hunt.

But most of all, you'll feel him in the strange and awful stillness that settles sometimes on sea and hill and wood.

It is easy to feel One Eye in a land of mirrored fjords, tumbling ice water, bare, granite cliffs and the hot, heavy pine forests of summer — but that night, on the bare waste of a flattened mountain in Serkland, we all felt One Eye descend in a silence that seemed to suck the air.

Eyes gleamed, looking one to the other, aware in the hackles and creeping of arm flesh that something was happening. Something smacked my bare arm and I jumped, touched it, felt wetness and grit.

Another time, another place. On a rock stairway outside a Hun chief's tomb near Kiev I had been splashed by gritty water from a sky yellow as a wolf's eye.

Dengizik,' I said in Finn's ear and saw his wide-eyed look, saw him remember the Hun chief's name and what had happened there, even as the wind rushed in, flattening the distant flower-fires to the ground.

`Run.'

We sprinted as the world turned to darkness.

The sandstorm had roared in under cover of night from the parched Nabatean hills bloated with heat from the wastes of Zin, flexing muscles all the way from Aqaba.

It seared everything in its path in the long Wadi Araba, shrieking with dancing dust jinn and blurted itself into the Valley of Salt. Then it crushed its massive shoulders between the rusted stones of the Moab and the folds of the Judean hills round the Dead Sea, so that it reared up like a screaming stallion and fell on Masada with hooves of wind and scouring dust.

It sucked the air from lungs, shoving us with huge blows this way and that and howled like Fenris released, while the sun was stillborn and dawn never came.

We staggered like drunks, clung to each other, were bowled over as the wind caught shields like sails.

Scrabbling on all fours like dogs, we clawed to the shelter of the ruined building, scurrying ratlike into the gaping holes in the back walls, hurling down behind anything that was shelter. Anything to get away from that sand-studded wind that drew blood like a lash.

There was light and heat — lanterns and a fire, throwing long, strange shadows on the men round it, who rose up as we crashed in, panting and gasping, stumbling over the rubble litter.

They gabbled in surprise and I heard Greek and Arabic, but all they heard were grunts and hissing steel and it was only when their worst nightmare snarled down on them that they realised these men who had staggered in were not friends.

It was a struggle as short and vicious as most of them were. In the end, eight men lay dead and no one cared how loudly they screamed, for no sound would be heard above the vengeful shrieking wind outside.

Only one had actually managed to get a hand on the hilt of a weapon and that was as he died.

Slack-jawed and heaving, the Oathsworn sank down, heads drooping. I looked round, kicking scattered embers back to the fire. We were in one large room with a huge square of stone in it — an altar, I recognised, to the Roman Christ.

There was one door in and out and it was still shut, though it fluttered and battered against its lintel as the wind hammered it. Sand filtered in from the ruined room we had just come from and the fire guttered, making huge shadows dance strangely on the walls.

`Thor's wind,' muttered Kvasir, then grinned. 'Our Orm weaves his own wyrd, it seems. Perhaps we have found favour with old One Eye at last and he called in a marker with the Thunderer for us.'

Men made warding signs and held amulets to their own gods for protection, for on this night, when it seemed the membrane between worlds was thinner than before, it was not wise to talk of such things.

It was widely known that a man's wyrd — his Norn-weaving — was not set, but could be unravelled.

Einar had believed it and, for a while, it seemed he had succeeded, but boasting of it tempted those three sisters to weave something worse — especially Skuld, mistress of That Which Might Be.

Anyway, I had my own thoughts on the matter. Odin, unless I had misjudged One Eye as a kindly old uncle, had made his purpose clear to me, if not everyone else. I knew what we yet had to face and could not bring myself to tell the others.

Now that we were squatted in this blood-reeked place, looking around at the shadows and the strangeness, men licked their lips and wondered at it.

`The Great City's men made the Christ altar, but before that this was where this Herod kept his thralls,'

Finn told them knowingly. 'He was King of the Jews.'

And he stayed here?' demanded Hlenni Brimill. 'Anyway, I thought the Christ was King of the Jews.'

Finn shrugged. 'Maybe this was another one. Anyway, nine hundred Jewish warriors were once besieged here by the Old Romans, who built that ramp to get to them.'

There was silence, for we had all seen and marvelled at the ramp. As Finn said, it was as if Bagnose had leaned his neb against the mountain, but there were few left who remembered old Geir Bagnose, so his joke fell flat.

Did they win?' asked Botolf.

`Who?'

`The Old Romans. Did they beat the Jewish warriors?'

Of course,' answered Finn, but Kvasir hawked and spat.

`No warriors died here,' he growled. 'That Syrian whore in En Gedi, the one with the wen, told me of this place when she learned that was where we were going. When the Old Romans attacked they discovered no one to fight. All the Jews had killed themselves: men, women and children.'

There was a deeper silence and men tried not to look over their shoulders at the fetches haunting this place.

I climbed into my mail and we waited, watching through the hole in the back wall as the storm thrashed and the dust whirled in and flared like embers in the fire.

It was as dark as I remembered it, gleaming still with those great, age-blackened piles of silver and the throne he sat on was massive. The shackles that had once held Ildico to it dangled from one arm, but of her bones — or Hild — there was no sign.

There was only Einar, sitting on Atil's throne as I had first seen him sitting in Gudleif's at Bjornshafen, bulked by a great fur-collared cloak, one hand resting on the hilt of a straight-bladed sword, turning it gently on its point, the other stroking his moustaches.

Framed by the crow wings of his hair, his face was how I remembered it last in this howe, milk-pale, with yellow-cream cheeks and eyes so sunk they had disappeared into black pits. I had shoved my sword through him at the last, a bloodprice blow for his murder of my father.

`Will you tell them what you know — or let them find out?'

And when my silence was the answer, he lowered it again.

`Now you know the price of a rune serpent,' he whispered and the light caught the blade of that turning sword, flash on flash on flash, blinding me. .

The sun was up, shining in my eyes and Finn was standing over me, kicking my tattered boots to wake me. Stiff from sleeping in a coat of iron rings, I stumbled upright into the day and we waited, watching the sun arrive through the hole in the back wall.

When the first warmth of it touched my face, spearing into the room and spilling us all with gold, I turned to see the last of the Oathsworn, waiting and silent, faces hard as grindstones.

Then I knew, felt the Other-rush of it, the surety of it, and I told them that we had been tested and that those who stood here, in this room, were those Odin had deemed fit to have his Oath in their hearts and on their lips. We were Odinsmenn and the way home was one last battle. Einar's curse was lifted. Kvasir gave a hoom in the back of his throat and I waited, half hoping one of them would have enough clever to work out the part I had not told them. For a moment I thought Kvasir had, but then he shrugged. Finn's grin was tight and harsh and he spoke through his teeth when he turned to the rest of them.

`Hewers of Men, Feeders of Eagles: pray to Odin and take up your shield and weapons, for we are once more brothers of the blade and this will be a hard dunt of a day, I am thinking.'

Then Botolf, looking round, asked: 'Where is the Goat Boy?'

And al-Misti sounded his horns and attacked up the ramp.

We were supposed to hold them for twenty minutes, no more. We fought them alone for twice that and, in the end, were in a shrinking ring of shields and dog-panting terror and bloody weapons, where those who had bare feet were better balanced than those sliding on the bloody slush in what was left of their boots.

There was a saga tale for a good skald in it, but like so many it went unsung. I have since tried to tell it, without success.

I can remember only splinters of it, like images in the shards from a broken mirror-glass — Kleggi, stumbling in circles, complaining that he had lost his shield, the blood arcing from the stump of his arm. The Arab falling back from me, his teeth flying from his mouth like the little tiles of a shattered mosaic.

And Finn, hacking and slashing and slamming shields until, suddenly, he stopped, gaping at the man he was about to kill, who snarled back at him and swung.

Finn lost a hank of hair and his ear because of his astonished hesitation, shrieked with the pain of that and the horror of the truth he had just discovered and hacked lumps off the man's shield until, finally, one carved through bone and ringmail and a second stroke took his enemy in the hedgehog of his face.

Haf Hroaldsson, whom we called Ordigskeggi, Bristle Beard, was dead. One of the Oathsworn we had come to rescue.

By the time the Masmoudi piled up over the lip of the ramp, scattering the brigands and hunting them down, we were on our knees in the bloody slush, drooling, bleeding, every breath a sob. It was as if I walked underwater then; I could see the pearl-string of bubbles stream from my mouth and feel my lungs burn with bad air. The ground and the sky lurched, changed places. .

In the whole vault of the sky, only two crows moved, rich, black crosses on a translucent blue that was heavy with wavering heat, so that it seemed I lay on the bed of the ocean, looking up at the surface of the water.

Widdershins, the crows circled lazily. All crows are left-handed, according to Sighvat. Unless they were ravens. I thought they might be ravens, a sign from Odin.

I was on my back. . how did that happen?

`Trader?'

The sky blotted out, a shape loomed, a silhouette with black streamers of hair in a wind that hissed over the plateau. For a moment, just a heart-ending moment, I thought of Hild crawling over me in the dark, hissing her warnings. But she was long gone, buried in Atil's howe.

`Trader, are you hurt? Have some water.'

The shape shrank, wavered, then rematerialised in front of me. A waterskin was shoved at me and I saw it was Kvasir who held it, grinning. He had lost his patch and the dead-white of his eye was like a pearl in the smeared blood of his face. Raw skin flapped loose on his bloody forehead and the iron stink of death was everywhere. Flies growled in search of it.

`You dropped like a felled tree, Trader, too much heat,' Kvasir said. 'But the fight is out of them now and we have water at last. Here, drink.'

It was warm and brackish, but the rush of it in my mouth was mead. I struggled up. There were bodies nearby, already thick with flies, and I saw Hlenni Brimill happily fumbling corpses for the purses they carried.

Eighteen of ours dead, Trader,' Kvasir said, sucking water from the wineskin. 'But those outlaw bastards are cut to pieces and fled. There.'

He pointed across the sere brown and ochre plain, past the rubbled buildings, into the water-waving heat that made Herod's hanging palace shiver. Figures, trembling and eldritch long in the haze, moved purposefully back and forth.

Of course. The last refuge, three huge steps of buildings down the prow of Masada, this fetch-haunted, Muspell-hot, gods-cursed mountain in the middle of a burning waste.

I struggled to my feet and leaned on Kvasir. Under the cotton robes we had put on, his ringmail seared my palm and I knew my own was just as hot. My legs shook.

`The Goat Boy?'

He shook his head. 'No sign, Trader. They must all be in that fancy hov.'

I shook my head to try to clear it, which simply made the pain ring it like a bell. I staggered a little and Kvasir steadied me, thrusting the waterskin into my hands.

`Drink some more. Not too much, though.'

I drank, felt better, grinned at him. 'No blood in it, I hope.' He gave a lopsided, wry grin. 'Only Christ-followers care,' he answered, remembering Radoslav's story.

Blood in the water. Odin's cunning plan to get us to this place.

The way to the truth of it all was red-dyed in the blood of those we had come to save, most of them killed by a weeping, slashing Finn. The others in the band were not much better; all of them knew now what I had known before — our oath-brothers were the leaders of the brigands, the gelded eaters of the dead.

I came across Geirmund Solmundarson, who had helped me back to have my ankle seen to after I had done it in chasing Vigfus Quite the Dandy across Novgorod roofs for Einar. I found him bleeding from half-a-dozen wounds and too dying even to speak.

Then there was Thrain, whom we'd called Fjorsvafnir, Life Taker, after he had won a contest for killing more lice than anyone else, running a brand down the seams of his clothes and popping them in the flame.

Now the bubbles of his life broke pink and frothing on his lips.

And Sigurd Heppni, which was a bad joke on him, for he was not Sigurd Lucky at all. From his sprawled corpse I took a familiar stick: Martin's holy spear.

Them and others, all dead, all the ones we had come to rescue.

The last stood in the ruins of Herod's topmost tier, backed up to the balcony, the rune-serpent sword a savage grin in one fist, the Goat Boy struggling in the other. Finn, snarling and bleeding, the Godi dripping blood in fat splats of sound, faced him on one side; Botolf, the great byrnie-biter in his massive fist, glared at him on the other.

Not again. There was a flash of another time, another place, the bird-heart tic of the Goat Boy's throat under a blade, reddened in the torchlight and gripped in Svala's hand.

Like her, Valgard Skafhogg was not ready to give up. Skafhogg, the chippie. The closest Greeks could get to it was pelekanos, of course. And he was black-hearted now, for sure.

`Give up the boy,' Finn was yelling, trembling on the edge of a mad rush, like mead in an overfull horn.

'Give it up, Valgard, you nithing. .'

I may be cut,' Valgard said, 'but I still have enough balls for this, Horsearse.'

`We came for you,' howled Finn, almost weeping now. 'We came all the way from Miklagard for you.

You were Oathsworn. .'

Oathsworn no more,' Valgard said with a shake of his head. 'The first cut ended us all as men, the second ended us as Odinsmenn. He abandoned us — Einar's doom, right enough. What we have done since to survive would not get us a straight look from the ruined half of Hel's face.'

His voice was quiet and calm and more chilling than if he had snarled and slavered like a rabid wolf. He was burned dark as a Masmoudi, wore robes and the remains of a turban, was leached of fat and moisture, honed down to bone and desperation. Even his reason was thin, I saw, just as he spotted me.

`Well, well, young Baldur is here.'

It was a voice shorn of everything save weariness, but his eyes blazed when he met mine and he twitched the sabre meaningfully; a shaft of light caught the sinuous runes snaking down the blade.

`Starkad said this blade was yours once, boy,' he said. 'A rune blade. He said you got it from Atil's tomb.'

Starkad had said a lot, I was thinking, as you do when someone is carving your ribs from your backbone and you are looking for a reason for him to stop. Valgard blinked when I said all this to him, so I knew it was so exactly what had happened that he was wondering if I had been there, seidr-hovering and invisible, to witness it.

I took it from him,' he replied, challenging, yet wary and uncertain, trying to convince himself that if I had any seidrmagic powers, the sword gave them to me — and now he had it. His fear-sodden hand worked fingers on the hilt, flexing and loosing; his sweat slid into the grooves that told where unimaginable riches lay.

`Now I will take it from you,' I told him mildly, aware of Botolf sidling further round, trying to work into Valgard's blind spot. The Goat Boy was still, his big round eyes fixed on me, his right hand clutching the Thor amulet round his neck. 'You have put your jarl to a deal of trouble and expense, Valgard Skafhogg, but I kept my Oath.'

`What?'

I came for you. I am jarl of the Oathsworn, after all.'

He smiled then, one as warped as a dry bucket. I jerked my chin at the Goat Boy. 'What now, Valgard?

Your men are fled and there is a Saracen jarl who wants to ram a stake up your arse.' I hoped I sounded smooth and easy, for the terror of the moment howled in me.

And you will save me?'

I am your jarl.'

His mouth twisted in a spasm of rawness and he could barely get the words out. 'No jarl. Of mine. You nithing boy.' His face was a bruise of madness and his eyes, sunk like wells of despair, now held only the faintest gleam, but his voice was harsh and edge-sharp. 'We have paid the price,' he went on. 'Us. The ones Einar left behind like a sacrifice.'

Everyone paid the price for Einar,' I countered. 'But that is over. Odin smiles.'

I heard a crow-rasp laugh, rheum-thick and bitter with loss. Odin smiles? Are you godi also? If so, you know One Eye smiles only when the stink of sacrifice hits his nose.'

I knew that, of course. I had known it and had not shared it with the others before we fought. All the ones who had broken their Oath so badly had to die — and he the last of them. Finn knew it now and looked frantically from me to him and back.

I shrugged as languidly as I could manage and rubbed my beard, a gesture I had picked up from Rurik, shipmaster of the Oathsworn before he had died at Sarkel. I know Skafhogg saw it, with a flicker of recognition. They had been friends, the shipmaster and the shipwright, but I saw that things had gone past all friendships.

Botolf shifted and Valgard moved the sabre edge closer to the Goat Boy's neck and said: 'One more move, Giant Ymir, and I will have the head off this boy. I want to hear blades hitting the stones.'

Finn slumped wearily and flung the Godi down with a clang of disgust. I saw him look at Valgard and remember that they had been oarmates long before I had joined the Elk. I saw, too, that Valgard did not have the regard for it that Finn had and that Finn knew it, was drained by it so, that he had to hunker down, all strength to stand gone.

Botolf's byrnie-biter clattered down and Valgard looked at me.

I dropped my sword and he eased a little, though stayed clenched as a curl on his little hostage. The Goat Boy's face was pale, but his eyes were steady and I cringed for him. To be like this once for our sake was bad enough, but twice. . I vowed then that, if Odin spared him, the boy would never be put at risk again.

It was a surprise when this little one ran in out of the storm,' Valgard said, caressing the Goat Boy's cheek with fingers from the hand that gripped him close. 'I knew then there were problems — and that he was an answer to them.'

`Give him up,' Finn managed to wrench out hoarsely.

Valgard said nothing and his eyes scoured Finn's face with scorn. He would not give up: not he who had done what he did to survive, who could chew on another man's warm liver, or order a blood-eagling on his hated enemy.

Botolf shifted. He caught my eye. And winked.

My mouth went dry and I forced my tongue from the roof of it. I knew I had to keep Valgard's fluttering madness focused on me.

`What will you do with the boy?' I asked, offering extravagant promises to Odin to keep my voice from trembling.

`Hold him close until promises are given and sherbet drunk,' he said and laughed. 'Oaths sworn, too, maybe.'

He knew what he was about, for sure. If he drank sherbet from Bilal al-Jamil, it meant he had been accepted as a guest and could not then be killed. If he got us to swear an Odin-oath for the same, he would actually Loki his way out of this.

But the Arab would offer no chilled cup in return for the life of a skinny Greek boy — Odin would make sure of that, for he wanted the life of Valgard the oath-breaker and not even the Norns would deny him. Not even Allah.

Botolf leaned and shifted slightly and I saw Valgard's head start to turn towards him, knew Botolf was poised for a desperate leap. Odin settled gold on my brow.

`You will never manage it, Skafhogg,' I said scornfully. 'You think this scrawny-arsed boy is a good exchange for letting you escape? Do what you will with him, Trimmer. But eat him quick, for it will be the last meal you have.'

The howl from Valgard had everything in it, from rage to shame and back. He flung back his head and wolfed it all out to the sky — and Botolf hurled himself forward.

I knew he would never make it. Valgard snarled and cut viciously. That snaking curve of blade should have snicked Botolf's great, stupid head clean off his shoulders; he knew it, too, and was roaring himself into Valholl.

It was then that the Goat Boy took his hand from his Thor amulet and elbowed Valgard in the groin.

Afterwards, he said he had felt it hit just where he had thought it would after having seen Inger's naked body being washed: on the length of reed that allowed Valgard to piss.

It drove up into the soft depth of him, into the bladder. Valgard doubled up and screamed and the cut took Botolf in the left leg, a handsbreadth below the knee. The limb flew off in a lazy curve, slathering blood everywhere, and, even as he toppled like a mast-pine, Botolf's right hand came up and took Valgard by the throat, shook him left, then right, like a dog with a rat. Then he fell, howling and pushing Valgard backwards.

There was a sharp scream as Valgard hit the balcony and it crumbled like old bread. He went over like a flipped louse, flailing his limbs and with a short bark of sound that could have been laugh or curse, drowned out in the sound of the rune-serpent blade scoring a shrill, grating screech all the way down the support pillar until he hit the cracked paving far below with a wet slap.

Finn hurled himself at Botolf as the giant sprawled, the pair of them almost spilling over the edge of the balcony. The Goat Boy hurled himself at me and I knelt and swept him up; the pair of us were trembling and I was closer to sobbing than he was.

I was not afraid this time either, Trader,' he said, shaking so hard he could hardly get the lie between his teeth for chatter.

I couldn't reply for holding him and watching Finn drag Botolf back from the edge and strap his tunic belt round the bloody ruin of his leg.

Eventually, slick with the slime of it, he looked up as the blood trickled to a close. He grinned through the red mask of his face as Botolf groaned and told him to get his shoe, just before his eyes rolled into his head and he passed out.

Finn chuckled, blood outlining his teeth. 'The big idiot will live — but he'll be shorter by a foot after this.'