The Wolf Sea

6

I held him and he felt like a bird, the racking sobs shaking him so that it seemed his thundering heart must burst out of his rib cage. I wanted to hold him tighter, but it was an awkward thing with others looking and I had no words for him; none of us had. So Brother John peeled the Goat Boy off me and took him to the swift-flowing stream to wash the snot and tears away.

The rest of us stood, cold and tired, uneasy in the dawn light, with the tendrils of haar like a witch-woman's hair slithering round the farm and the mulberry trees and the old corpses, still blackened and charred. Crows sat hunched and sour in those trees, rasping out a protest at a meal interrupted.

A fresh meal, on a small corpse. The smallest one in that field of death, dark curls clotted with old blood, the eyes already pecked into dark holes, which still managed to accuse us all. The wound that killed him was a back-to-breast skewer and Halfred tracked the tale of it.

The horsemen had ridden to the silk farm from the town of Lefkara, which meant I had judged Farouk right — he had come straight to the plumes of pyre smoke, found nothing and headed for the village after that. Now he was probably finding more dead and a burned church and we had a start on him, but not much of one. It was good Odin luck for us, since it meant we had missed each other in the dark — but for such luck One Eye takes a high price in sacrifice.

So he took little Vlasios into their path just as they saw what we had done to their friends. Like startled game, the Goat Boy's little brother had probably made a run for it, leaping on those wiry legs, twisting and turning, but no match for horsemen with lances.

They had spitted him, said Hookeye, pointing it out — quietly, so the Goat Boy could not hear — and carried him back to the charred remains of the pyre, stinking and wet from rain. Probably still on the spear-point, Hookeye thought.

And they would be laughing about it in a grim way, I thought to myself, as they tossed the corpse on to the ash, like an offering to their own dead. It came to me that we might well have done something similar, in another place, at another time, and the thought did nothing to help the sick feeling in my belly.

Then they had ridden off, leaving one more small, bewildered little fetch in a clearing, wondering why the world had grown cold and empty and shadowed.

We had found him after a couple of hard hours' travel, moving as swiftly as we could in the dark. My plan had been finely worked, everyone agreed, but the dead boy was a stone thrown in the pool of my deep thinking and not because the Goat Boy was melting to tears over it.

No, it was the little stick in Vlasios's belt, which the Sarakenoi had not even bothered with. The one that said, in badly cut runes: `Starkad. Go west. Dragon.'

It was from Kvasir and I knew what it meant. Starkad had arrived like a pinch of salt in clear water. Now Balantes and everyone else would know they had handed the prize to the wrong wolf and we would have all the Greeks on Cyprus after us, as well as the Sarakenoi and Starkad's men.

As Finn said, with a harsh chuckle, if you measured a jarl by the number of his enemies, then Orm Bear Slayer was mighty indeed. The others had joined in, the fierce laugh of men with steel to their front and fire at their back, showing a lot of teeth but little mirth.

At least Kvasir and the others had had warning, time enough to plan swiftly and send the Goat Boy's brother with the gist of it.

I knew what Dragon meant. On the way here, less than a day from Larnaca and perched bare-arsed over the lee side in friendly conversation while we emptied our bowels, Kvasir had pointed out the headland like a dragon-prow. We had argued whether it looked more like the fine antlered one on the old Fjord Elk, or the snarling serpent on Starkad's stolen drakkar, which had replaced it.

That was where Kvasir was heading, but I did not know if he had one ship or two — or if he would make it at all.

I laid it all out for them, while Brother John brought the scrubbed-faced Goat Boy back. Finn was all for hurtling back the way we had come, to take Starkad on and get the runesword back. No one else looked eager for that, however, and I was cold-sick in my insides at the way my crafted plans had unravelled so completely. I was no Einar.

`What do we do, Orm?' asked Kvasir and I felt a mad moment rise in me, a great storm sea that made me want to agree with Finn, to shriek out that we would take on Starkad and every Greek, get the runesword back, fight back to our ship and then away. .

Instead, I looked at them, one by one, battened down my pride and admitted the truth of it. Now we run, brothers. Now we run.'

We did, a jogging lope that burst the sweat on us, despite the chill. Across the bare slopes we went like startled game, from gully to rock, to stand of trees, heading hard west and south. Eventually, when I called a rest-halt, I could taste the brine on a breeze from the sea on parched lips and sucked it into fiery lungs. There was another village — ahead and west, if I remembered Radoslav's chart — whose name sounded like air being let out of a dead sheep's belly. Paphos, it was called, but I wanted no part of that and planned to come out to the sea short of it by some safe miles.

The men were on one knee, panting, mouths open, tossing a flopping waterskin from one to the other and I saw the Goat Boy sit with his knees at his chin, his dark eyes big and round and fixed on me. I had worried about him keeping up, but that had been foolish — this was the boy's country and he had young legs that had chased all over it since he could toddle.

I grinned and raised a hand to him and he raised one back, though he did not smile. After a moment, he snatched the waterskin deftly up before anyone could stop him and brought it to me. As I drank, he squatted beside me, silent and staring at nothing.

It was a hard thing, what happened to your brother,' I offered, handing him the skin. He stoppered it and sighed.

`My mother-' he began and then stopped. He wanted to be a man, but his lip betrayed him.

`You should go back to her,' I said, clasping one shoulder, but the look he turned on me was suddenly cat-fierce from a streaked face.

I want to be one of you. I will take the Oath. I will fight the infidels.'

Finn overheard and chuckled grimly. 'Join another army, biarki, for this one is leaving, never to return.'

He looked alarmed and I caught the flash of disbelief and then his shoulders collapsed.

Every hand is against us,' I pointed out, 'from the Kephale to the General as well as the Sarakenoi. We stole something valuable.'

`That's what we do,' added Hookeye, his voice thick with sarcasm. When I looked at him he looked challengingly back at me. At least, I thought he did, though it was hard to feel challenged when his left eye was seemingly staring over my right shoulder.

The boy was silent and someone called for the waterskin, so he got up and passed it. Brother John slid up to me and whispered: 'To leave the boy behind will be death for him. Balantes will not believe he does not know anything about this prize. Even if he does not, there is Starkad.'

The prize. I had forgotten it, still slung by its strap on my back. Now I took it and had a hard look at the outside. Interested, since this was what had caused all the trouble, the men crept closer and craned to look.

Plain leather, with a carefully fastened cap, which I opened. There was a musky smell and I tipped the contents cautiously into the palm of my hand.

Dried twigs and a leaf, browned at the edges though it had once been brilliant, glossy dark green. With it came some dark little specks, smaller than peas and hard as beads.

Is that it?' demanded Finn huffily. 'Does not scale up well to our runesword, I am thinking.'

`Not much to look at, Trader,' said a voice.

`What is it?' said another.

I knew, even though I had never seen any of it before. The whole thing of it unwrapped like a folded cloak to reveal the pattern. I shrugged to the men, poured the whole lot back in and fastened the leather top.

I had promised them treasure, brought them to a den of wolves where men had died and could not begin to explain what had been found. They wanted treasure, so I gave it to them.

`Pearls,' I said knowingly, ignoring the shame the word flooded me with. 'Special ones.'

That made them nod and smile. Pearls they understood. Pearls could be bartered for a sword with a rune serpent curled on it — Einar would have been proud of me.

But Brother John's eyes narrowed, for he knew I was lying.

I didn't want to tell anyone the truth of it, though — that the collection of leaves and little beads were mulberry leaves and shoots and the eggs, I was thinking, from silkworms. Silk was so precious you had to have permission to buy it. It had been stolen by two daring monks from the strange people who made it in a far-off land and now the church jealously controlled it.

If a high-placed Christ priest and a truculent general were handing what was a church monopoly to the likes of Choniates on the sly, there was more here than simple theft and moneymaking. There was the sharp stink of treachery, the sort where kings slip knives in the ribs of rivals of a dark night, and I had been in Miklagard long enough to know that Roman emperors sat on precarious gifthrones. Small wonder Choniates had handed over a runed sword to Starkad for a task such as this.

Stealing this had been a mistake and a bad one, such a bad one that my balls drew up, tight and scared.

Leo Balantes made no secret of being the man of General Red Boots and Balantes was the one who had whipped up the riots in the Great City last year. If Red Boots was also behind this then the Basileus himself was the target. This was no bargain counter for a runesword. It was a death sentence.

Blood-feuds I knew about, as every Norseman did, but the feuds of the great in Miklagard were another thing entirely. Balantes would snuff us out like pinching a candle if he thought we knew too much — and the only one who could help, the Basileus Autocrator himself, was so far away as to make the sun easier to reach.

Only two winters ago, I thought wearily, my only worry was how much worm was in the keel of our little faering in Bjornshafen. Now I was wrestling with whether the gods were laughing at me for having the pride to become jarl of the Oathsworn and that this, my first serious raid, would be my doom.

Worse than that, I was hiding the truth from the others. I could almost hear Einar laughing as we ran on into a dappled day with trees like sentries on the hills behind us, so that every time I turned to look back, my heart surged, thinking they were horsemen.

But this was bad country for horsemen. I knew that when one of the three we had foundered and we turned him loose, doubling the wounded up on another. The slopes, however, were smoothing down to the sea and, suddenly, Hookeye gave a loud shout and pointed.

There, rolling gently in the swell in a curve of golden beach, was the Fjord Elk and my heart gave a jolt in my ribs.

There was a brief moment of capering and back-slapping, quickly lost as we realised the Volchok wasn't anywhere in sight. That, as Finn gloomily pointed out, meant that the cargo was lost.

Ah,' said Hedin Flayer cheerfully, 'turn the coin over, Finn Horsehead. Perhaps the cargo has been rescued. Perhaps your knarr is sailing still, just out of sight.'

Perhaps. We trotted on, filled with fresh strength and eager to quit the land for the sea. We slithered out of the steep hills and on to a flat stretch leading to the tussocked grass and then the sand. Gulls wheeled, shrieking out their calls, sometimes like the laugh of some mad hag, other times like the cries of a lost child.

Many a gull was the fetch of those drowned and uneasy in the silt-kingdom of Ran, Mother of the Waves, according to Sighvat.

We stumbled across a stubbled field, saw the thread of smoke from a chimney and the shadow that straightened from work, spotted us and sprinted away. We stopped to rest, for even the horses were blowing.

A cock crowed and Sighvat grunted.

`That's bad,' he said.

Finn spat. 'Is there one of your animal signs that is ever a good omen?' he asked.

Sighvat considered it carefully before shrugging. 'Depends,' he said. 'They warn and seldom praise.

Roosters are Odin birds, for they crow to herald the sun, which Odin and his brothers, Vili and Ve, threw into the sky as embers from Muspell. Fjalar is the red cock, who will raise the giants to war at Ragnarok and Gullinkambi the golden one who will wake the gods for that fight. And let's not forget the One with No Name who crows to raise the dead in Helheim on that day.'

`Duly remembered,' muttered Finn. 'Now. .'

`When a cock crows at midnight a fetch is passing and if it crows three times between sunset and midnight it is a death omen,' Sighvat went on mildly. 'Crowing in the day, as now, is often a warning against misfortune. Can you see if it is perched on a gate? If it is, it means tomorrow will have rain.'

Odin's balls,' muttered Finn, rubbing the sweat from his face. 'Remind me only to keep hens.'

Ah, well,' said Sighvat, 'a hen that crows is unlucky, as is one with tail feathers like a rooster. You would do well to kill them at once. And a hen which roosts in the morning foretells a death-'

'Thor's hairy arse!' shouted Finn in annoyance. 'Enough cackle about hens, Sighvat, in the name of all the gods.'

`You'd do well to listen, though,' offered Gardi, pointing behind us. 'Look.'

This time there was no mistaking the shape of horsemen, high on the ridge, picking a careful way down the scrub and scree slope. Once they hit the flat. .

`Run,' said Finn, the sweat pearling his face. 'Run like the wolf son of Loki has its teeth in your breeks.'

We ran, stumbling and cursing. One of the wounded fell off the back of the horse and the other one checked, turned, saw the horsemen fanning out down the slope, riding hard and shrilling out those illa-la-la'

cries. He galloped for it and the fallen man cursed, got up on to his good leg and started hobbling.

No one helped him, for the hooves were drumming harder now There was a familiar bird's wing whirr and the hobbling man screamed and pitched forward in mid-run, an arrow in his lower back.

Finn cursed and whirled. 'Trader.

I knew what he wanted and screamed: 'Form!'

They slithered and skidded to a halt, swept together like a flock of sparrows while the arrows came in again with the sound of knives shearing linen. A man yelped as one whacked his thigh and he started to drag himself down to the beach.

We slammed shields and faced them, no sound but the sob and rasp of our breath. Arrows hissed and shunked into wood; another man cursed and writhed, the shaft through his ankle.

`Borg,' roared Finn and the men behind swept their shields up so that there was a higher wall, angled back. The men in front, me among them, half crouched. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hookeye splashing through the water to the side of the Elk. His eyes might be squint, but his feet were sure and fast.

`Back,' I said into the gasping, sweating mass. 'We have to move back.'

We were a roofed fort, but only from the front, so had to shuffle, painfully slowly, away from the horsemen, who were sitting nocking arrows and shooting. They seemed content to do that and I saw there were only twenty or thirty of them and none that looked like an Emir — so he had split his forces to look for us.

One staggering Dane, trying hard to reach us, took about six arrows, one after the other, sounding like wet meat thrown at a wall as they hit him. He went down, one hand still clawing sand and stiff grass to try and get to us.

We backed off, while the arrows spat and hissed and slammed into shields. I hoped whoever commanded was too wary to work out that, as long as we were moving, we were not safe behind the raven claws that had done for them last time. Without those claws, we'd be hard put to stand against lance-armed heavy horsemen and arrows at the same time.

Sand slithered beneath our feet, spattered with stiff-leaved grass. Then coarse sand alone and still we moved back, shedding another two bodies, passing two riderless horses.

One of the cavalry horses suddenly reared up and threw the rider and the rest wheeled round and galloped back, just as someone yelled: 'Water.'

It surged round my boots and I almost sobbed to hear it. Behind me, peeling off one by one, men slung their shields on their backs and splashed out towards the boats, while those on board, using the few short bows we had, plunked arrows enough to keep the horsemen cautious.

Something spanged off my helmet and my head rang like a bell. There was a hiss-shunk and an arrow whacked itself on my shield — on the inside. I snapped the shaft off with my sword and yelled at those in the Elk to watch their shooting, then turned and ran back into the surf, shield over my back.

I heaved myself over the rail of the Fjord Elk, hearing forlorn splashes as the last arrows missed. On the beach, the horsemen waved bows in triumph and screamed their la-la cries, as well as 'pig-eaters' in Greek.

Kvasir, beaming, dragged me upright and banged me heartily on one shoulder. 'Aye, a good steady defence right enough, Trader.'

`How many?' I managed to gasp as, around me, men groaned and sat, heads hanging and lips wet with drool.

`Four dead,' Finn answered, scooping water over his head. He spat towards the horsemen. 'Another six wounded, the boy among them.'

`Boy?' I asked, confused. Not the Goat Boy. .

It was. He had taken an arrow smack in the side and Brother John was kneeling beside the little figure, poking carefully round the wound. The shaft had been trimmed off down to the flesh and the Goat Boy was limp and lolling and pale as milk.

Brother John muttered a prayer and looked at me, his face hard and sweat-gleamed.

Gizur came up and said, 'We have a west wind, Trader. Do we run with it?'

I nodded, then turned back to Brother John, who was examining the wound again. The Goat Boy moaned.

Odin's arse, priest,' snarled Finn, 'do you know what you are about?'

I am about this close to smacking you in the mouth, Finn Horsehead. Fetch some water and shut your hole.'

Finn stamped off, roaring, and I felt the Fjord Elk heel over, heard Kvasir chivvying tired men into hauling the sail full up.

`Do you really know what you are about?' I asked and Brother John shot me such a look I thought he was about to snarl at me, too. Then he wiped dry lips and I saw the fear and uncertainty there.

It is in deep and barbed. I can't push it through, for I think it is near his vitals. If I try to get it out I will make more of the wound than his body can take, perhaps.'

If you leave it?'

'Coniecturalem artem esse medicinam.'

Medicine is the art of guessing. I looked at the figure, shrunken even now; I wanted no more little corpses and said so. Brother John, agitated and fretting, nodded and licked his lips, then started to pray even more.

I stood, feeling the wind in my face, turned to the prow and saw Radoslay.

`Timely message,' I said, then told him what had happened and that the boy they had sent it with was dead. Radoslav shook his silver-bound braids, then looked at the little figure on the deck, Brother John hunched over him like some ragged Crow.

`His mother will be cursing the day we sailed into the harbour, I am thinking,' Radoslav said, then spat.

'Not that we can go back. Your Starkad threw a fox in that hen coop right enough.'

He told it swiftly and simply. They'd seen the ship arrive and were puzzled, because it was a big Greek knarr, but coming in from the east and labouring against an offshore wind. Then, as it came round the headland, they saw it was full of Norse and Kvasir put it together fast enough for them to raise sail and catch the same wind out that made hard work for Starkad to get in.

Radoslav was still furious that the Volchok had been left, with Arinbjorn and Ogmund on board, who would have no chance. Worse, in his eyes, was that most of the cargo was on board, too.

I am sorry for that,' I said.

Radoslav shrugged. 'No matter. The treasure will pay for it when we get it.'

I said nothing, for I knew now that Radoslav was still convinced we were off to find the hoard — that, after all, was what this chase to get the runesword was about. Yet there was a storm in me, tossing my resolve like a leaky knarr. Driven by oath to get the sword, I had no wish to go back to Atil's howe.

Eventually, I would have to decide and matters would get uglier than Short Eldgrim.

`Where too, Trader?' demanded Gizur. I had long since worked this out and only the starting point was changed.

`North and then east, round the island and set a course to Seleucia,' I said. I had listened to all the gossip and knew that Antioch was in the hands of the Miklagard army. It wasn't the first time they had taken the city and, like all the other times, they'd probably have to give it up and fall back on Tarsus. I just hoped they still held it when we got to Seleucia, Antioch's port, which was a safer haven than some lonely beach in Serkland.

Short Eldgrim hefted my shield and fingered the stub of the arrow, visible on the inside, up near the grip.

He looked at me and lifted what remained of one of his eyebrows.

Aye, just so,' I offered wryly. 'An inch to the left and I'd be picking the back of my teeth with the point of it. Anyone would think you did not like me, wee man.'

Short Eldgrim fetched his tin-snips later and worried the point out of the wood, but there was no way of telling who had loosed it — for which Radoslav and Short Eldgrim and a couple of others were greatly relieved. I pitched it over the side and laughed.

We swept on, looking backwards for signs of Greeks and rubbed raw with the frustration of it, for Starkad was also there. I prayed that Balantes would not release his own ships to the north, that he would think we were scudding back to Miklagard with our prize, perhaps that we were even in the pay of the Basileus and about to expose him. I knew Starkad would not think so. I knew he would come our way alone and it was starting to irritate me that, every time we got close to him, our chances of making red war on him seemed to be furthest away.

Of course, I was heading straight into the arms of Red Boots, who commanded the Great City's army in the east, but I hoped to have slipped away from him before Balantes sent word to watch for Orm Bear Slayer.

If Odin held true to us, Starkad would follow and then we could trade — or fight; at the moment, either way was fine with me.

We turned east with no wind and crept like a water insect along the Anatolian coast, rowing until the snot and drool ran in our beards.

It was a good hafskip, this new Fjord Elk, and Gizur was well pleased, though the mast had checked in the heat of five untended summers and sprung cracks and some of the planks were a little less tight than was safe. As long as there wasn't a blow and we had men bailing, he thought we'd make Antioch.

Brother John had worried and teased the arrowhead out of the Goat Boy without sign of fat on the end, then fed him a broth of leeks and found no smell when he sniffed the wound, both of which were good signs.

I came on him while he was looking at Ivar, whom we called Gautr for his wit and Loki tricks. Ivar had taken an arrow through the cheek, which was a clean enough wound, but it had nicked his gum and a tooth as well, which bothered him.

`How is the boy?'

Alive,' Brother John said, clapping Ivar on one shoulder and straightening. 'I cannot be after saying how long that will last, all the same. I have cleaned it with vinegar and sewn it with fishing line and poulticed it with malva and wheat bran wrapped in a vellum strip of my best prayer.'

`What else can we do?'

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

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

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

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

`You should have let me die,' I heard him say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

`He knows,' I said flatly, 'because I told Arinbjorn.'

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

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

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

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

A lifetime ago.

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

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

`This is where we should be,' he growled. `Seleucia, for sure.'

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

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

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

Short Eldgrim was still grinning when the dromon washed up to us, backed water neatly and hailed us.

He stuck out a hand, waggling the fingers delightedly until Finn, grumbling, started fishing his purse out from under his armpit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We flitted in like a chip of driftwood, dwarfed by huge supply ships and even bigger warships, dodging the smaller galleys and fat-bellied little Greek merchant ships — for they would not miss a chance like this

— which were as like our own knarrer as to be brothers misplaced at birth. Finn stood in the prow, waving the bronze medallion at any guard ships and cursing them in the few Greek words he knew when they came too close.

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

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

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

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

Which made it as strange a sight in this land as a calf with a head at each end.

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

I told him as the crew splashed ashore and began chattering and grinning with the girls and older women.

In the end, everyone dropped into the water and came ashore, grinning and talking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I told him as many vague lies as I thought I would get away with when my men became loose-mouthed.

At the end of it, he dabbed the ale from his moustaches, accepted a refill with a nod and a smile and said:

'Well, perhaps Skarpheddin can help you and you him.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My skin crawled at once. She was old, but had her hair unbound, falling in iron-grey straggle-tails to her shoulders. She wore a dress the colour of blue twilight in the far north, fastened at the waist with a belt looped like a man's and hung about with all manner of things: a couple of drawstring purses; the skull of a small animal; the tail bones of a snake. Round her neck was a circle of amber beads big as gull eggs.

But it was the catskin cloak thrown round her shoulders that let me know what she was: that and the seidr flowing off her so that the hairs on my arms stood up, as if a storm was coming. I had made a sign against evil before I'd thought of it and she gave a short laugh, like a dog barking.

`Do you fear this volva, then, Orm Bear Slayer?'

I found my tongue locked to the roof of my mouth, but it was Sighvat who spared me with a calm answer, as if he were greeting her politely as an ordinary woman.

`There is nothing to fear as long as I am here,' he said levelly and Skarpheddin chuckled at the woman's frown, while both of them eyed the pair of ravens that Sighvat now took everywhere perched on his shoulders. Used to them, I suddenly saw it from the other side and how it marked Sighvat as a full-cunning man, one of seidr power himself, which was why the rest of the crew both respected and looked sideways at him; for a man to dabble in seidr was considered strange and unmanly.

`Well, Thorhalla,' said Skarpheddin, finally. 'It seems the Bear Slayer is well served' with his own seidr And that,' he added, pointing to Radoslav's tattoo, 'is a useful mark to have, I am thinking.'

Radoslav grinned. 'Your witch spells won't work on me,' he boasted. 'I am Perun's man and his hand is strong over me.'

Thorhalla hissed like the cats she wore and made a movement of her fingers.

Now, now, old one,' Skarpheddin chided with false bravado, `that's enough of that. These are guests.'

Then, as the woman slid back into the shadows, he spread his hands in apology. 'Forgive my mother. She clings to the old ways and too many of my people are considering Christ here.'

His mother. At once I felt pity for Skarpheddin doubled from before. Here he was, exiled and wasting away in a foreign land and, like bitter gall on the rotten meat of it, he had a — mother like that, a real spaekona. As Sighvat laid it out later: If it had been me, I'd have killed her long since as the cause of all his grief.'

After that came the hard talk and I knew Skarpheddin wanted us, not only for what he had heard of our skills, but for what he had heard of the hoard. I told him we were new-sworn Christ-men, heading for Jorsalir with our own Christ priest and he nodded, frowning. I could feel his own greed-plans ooze from him like sweat.

I am of the Aesir,' he added, with a mild smile, 'and though prime-signed for Christ I will offer my help, of course. If you were to place your hands in mine, naturally I would be oath-bound then to provide aid.'

I thanked him for that, but told him I did not want any more oaths than the one I had already taken to my sword-brothers, at which he frowned. I did not tell him it was an Odin-oath, but let him think it one made to the White Christ. I added that I would be pleased to accept his hospitality and, when our task was done, would return. If he were then to offer a fair price for our services for a season, as the Basileus in Miklagard had done with him, then that was another matter and closer to my heart.

He brightened at that: the idea of being like the Basileus in Miklagard appealed and so he did not quibble, which was a relief. This meant my men had the chance of free food and ale for the time it took to find out what was needed — where Starkad and our old oarmates were — and did not fasten us to this doomed jarl.

Skarpheddin then said my men could find warm beds and hospitality both in the tents of his own hov and those of others in his company. I saw that shoal and steered round it, saying my men preferred to stay with their own ship, which had been their hov for so long; I did not want the men split up and scattered in a strange camp. Einar would have been proud of me.

After that, we were horn-paired round two large firepits and feasted, while the abilities and far-sighted vision of Skarpheddin were hailed by a skald and his skill and bravery lauded by men with grease-glistening faces and hefty roast ribs in their hand. Red-faced and bellowing, they declared Jarl Skarpheddin the finest ring-giver who had stepped on the earth each time a glowing woman refilled the horns.

My horn partner was Torvald, one of Skarpheddin's chosen men, but he was dark and dour and I looked all night for the girl they called Svala, so we had little to say to each other.

Next day, bleary-eyed and hurting, I went down to the river with Radoslav and, shivering in the morning chill, we sloughed off the ale and grease. When I straightened, scattering water like a dog, she was standing there, a hip arched and a wry smile on her face. I was aware that I stood wearing nothing but drenched small-clothes.

Odin's arse,' roared Radoslav, surfacing and blowing like a bull seal. 'But that feels better. . Oh, I didn't see you there.'

Grinning, he sloshed naked out of the river and stood drying himself while Slava raised an eyebrow and managed not to turn a hair doing it. She was, I noted, older than I was by a year, perhaps two.

`You are smaller than you look,' she said tartly to Radoslay. `Perhaps you should get the Helm of Awe tattooed on something lower.'

Radoslav chuckled. 'It's only the cold, girl. It will grow bolder, like a chick rescued from snow, in the warmth of a loving hand.'

She snorted. 'Your own, I am sure.'

I liked her and she saw me grinning.

I came to tell you that your priest, Brother John, and the man with the face like a fresh-gelded horse are looking for you. They said to tell you the Goat Boy is in good hands. Is he the little one they carried to the Greek chirurgeons?'

I nodded, pulling on my breeks and wondering if she dared face Finn with her description of him. In the end, as she smiled sadly over the plight of the Goat Boy, I decided she probably would.

Is he badly hurt?' she asked.

I told her what had happened to us on the Cyprus shore — missing out what had brought us to it — and her eyes widened. I thought I saw something new there towards me, but I was probably wrong.

`Thank you for letting me know,' I said politely. 'Do you know where Olvar is? I would like him to come with us into the city, for I am thinking a guide would be a good thing there.'

She wrinkled her nose. 'You don't need Olvar. I will take you.'

`Perhaps your mother would not like that,' Radoslav offered, `seeing as how going off with two handsome men, dangerous in the loving as they are, would be seen as reckless.'

Svala eyed him up and down and smiled, a dimpled, impish smile. 'Sadly she is dead — but had she lived to see two such as you describe,' she returned, 'she would have been concerned. However, there is only a limp man with a stamp between his brows and a boy.'

While my hackles rose foolishly at that, Radoslav threw back his head and roared with laughter and, eventually, I saw the humour of it and we all three went off, laughing, to meet Brother John and Finn and go into the city.

That, even with the sheen of past remembering on it, was the last truly good time of my life.