The Wolf Sea

7

The Goat — Boy lay under clean linen in a cot in a shady room whose doors were framed with vines. It was at the end of a wide avenue so quiet that we were half afraid to speak and the whirr of a pigeon wing was enough to startle us.

It had been, one of the red-tunicked staff said, a place where Arab potion-makers — the staff man called them saydalani — mixed up their elixirs, and the place was ripe with the smells of spices. Some of them we knew; others, like musk, tamarind, cloves and a sharp tang Brother John said was aconite, were new to most of us.

Now it was a place where chirurgeons from the army treated their wounded and one of these blood-letters eyed us up and down before, reluctantly, letting us in to see the Goat Boy, on condition that we did not touch him, his wound or anything else.

Brother John asked him what he had done to it and the man, a grizzle-haired individual with skin like old leather, said he had put in a drain to rid the wound of accumulating fluid and that the boy's lung would heal itself if he was given time and rest.

`That's laudable pus,' exclaimed the priest, outraged. 'You will kill him if you take it away. It is meant to be there.'

The chirurgeon looked Brother John up and down, taking in the ragged breeks and tunic, the unkempt hair and beard. I have read Galen's Tegni and the aphorisms of Hippocrates,' he said. 'I have studied the Liber Febris of Isaac Judaeus. Have you?'

Brother John blinked and scowled. 'I cut the arrowhead out of him,' he answered.

The chirurgeon nodded, then smiled. 'The surgery was smart work but heathen prayers and chants are not suitable for healing. Next time, clean the blade, or heat it. If you want your boy to survive, let me do what I do best.'

Muttering, Brother John let the leash of his annoyance fall slack and we went into the shaded, quiet place, where a few recovering soldiers sat and chatted. They looked up when we came in and a couple offered up salutes and cheers to Svala, who merely grinned back at them.

The Goat Boy was asleep, but the rasp of his breathing had gone and, though his closed eyes looked like two bruises, there was, I thought, more colour to him than before.

We chatted to the soldiers for a while, hoping he would wake, but he slept on. Instead, we learned how the Great City's army had come up against a great mass of Arab horse and foot determined to defend Antioch and the battle had been a vicious affair, though short.

An Armenian archer called Zifus, perched with his leg in a sling, said that this was the second time he had been to take Antioch and that this was something like the tenth war between the Great City and the Arabs. The Hamdanids from Mosul and Aleppo always managed to take Antioch back.

`Red Boots means to have it all this time,' Zifus observed, `for he has heard that old Saif al-Dawla is failing in health and he is the leader of the Hamdanites and the man who has kept the Romans of the Great City at bay here for twenty years, fuck his mother.'

It was all news and I was glad to have it, but only took it in with half an ear, as they say, while Brother John translated for Finn. Those silkworm eggs made the footing treacherous here and I planned to be gone just as soon as the Goat Boy was well enough — sooner, if I found out what we needed to know, though I would leave silver enough for him to be cared for.

If I wanted to make use of that silkworm stuff and save us all, I had to either trade it with Starkad or kill him and then get it to the Basileus of the Great City, the only one I could be sure was not part of any plot.

Either way seemed like digging through a mountain with a horn spoon.

We sat and drank nabidh, which is made from dates and raisins soaked in water, and talked more, with Zifus adding `fuck his mother' to the end of every other sentence he spoke.

The gist of what he revealed was that, after the Serkland army fled, the city gave up and the marks we'd seen on the walls came from stray pots of Greek Fire, shot from the great throwers the engineers called onagers, which means 'wild asses'. I had seen these machines at Sarkel, watched them leap in the air and kick at every released shot, while those tending them ran for cover. They were well named.

`We will look after the boy for you, friends,' said Zifus when it came time for us to leave the still-sleeping Goat Boy. `He is a sorry soul now, but even so he shows courage. A curse on the one who shot him, fuck his mother.'

We left in silence and, outside, Finn smacked a fist into his other hand.

One day I will come face to face with this Starkad,' he vowed. 'Then!' I will pay him back for all he has done.'

`Fuck his mother,' we chorused and, laughing, strolled on into the city.

The five of us wandered wide, stone-paved streets lined with tall columns, which supported vines to make a roof that sheltered walkers from the sun. It was cloudy and damp and hot as we strolled along the length of this street, past a basilica and a building Svala said had been a palace, made from yellow and pink marble. There were others here from Skarpheddin's force, mostly the younger men from his own house guard, swaggering along with hands on their sword hilts.

They did not impress us much. In fact, Finn had lost patience with a pair of them he caught at swordplay outside Skarpheddin's hov, leaping and dancing and clashing steel on steel until no one could stand it any longer. Finn had hurled his shield between them, so that it skittered ankle-dangerous along the dust and they had whirled angrily, then spotted him.

He had said nothing, but they knew what he had meant — no warrior places edge against edge, since a sword is too valuable a weapon to ruin in that way. Sword on shield is the way and only if you must do you block with a good edge. A warrior knows this.

`They are farmers, whose palms are calloused from ploughs, not swords,' growled Finn with disgust.

'They think they are snugged up in the meadows of home and that this is all a dream. They raise their horns and shout: "Til ars ok fridar!" By Odin's hairy balls, what use is that to those out on the viking?'

Til ars ok fridar. To the year's crops and peace. There was a flash of Gudleif, my foster-father, flushed and grinning, almost shining in the dark reek of the Bjornshafen hov, horn held high, triumphant with what had been achieved: a good harvest, winter hunger kept at bay and no deaths among us or the thralls or livestock. Gudleif, whose head had been left on a pole by the dulse-strewn beach when the Oathsworn sailed away with me, stuck there by his own brother.

Maybe Skarpheddin's men saw that in us, or felt it, for they altered course far round us, wisely leaving us alone to enjoy the sights and swaggering only when they thought themselves beyond reach.

Antioch had countless tall buildings, domed Christ churches and some more mosques with their fat-topped towers. Then we came out into a great round place surrounded by what seemed a high stone wall and tiers of seats.

There were stalls everywhere, selling bread and vegetables and chickpeas and figs. Svala bought two red fruits with tufts at one end and tough skin, but she held it in both hands, gave a twist of her wrist and split it open to reveal hundreds of little seeds, glistening like the lalami, the rubies in Radoslav's earring.

He admired her skill and had her show him how to do it, while the rest of us marvelled at the tart sticky sweetness of the seeds in what she called a rumman fruit.

`What is this place?' asked Finn, wiping juice from his beard.

An amphitheatre,' answered Brother John, 'where the old Romans used to have gladiator shows.'

I have heard of them,' Radoslav said. 'They were fighting contests, sometimes men against wild beasts as well as other men.'

`That sounds like more fun than the chariot races in Miklagard,' Finn growled.

Brother John scowled at him. 'It was banned in the time of the Emperor Justinian. It is the death penalty for anyone staging such contests now.'

`They do it all the same,' Svala said and we all looked at her. 'There are contests held in secret and bets laid,' she told us. 'If you know someone, they will tell you where they are to be held that night and give you a ticket to get in.'

`Bets?' said Finn and then fell silent, thinking about it.

We strolled and gawped and finally I thought it was time we went back to the ship, which would take us all day. I had arranged for food and drink for the men there and knew they would have rigged the sail as a tent, but if I did not fix ways by which some could go to the city and some stay behind, they would all take it into their heads to abandon the Elk to the Norns and go humping and drinking.

So we sat in a shaded taberna near the amphitheatre for one last wine and my head swam from the night before, so that all I wanted was to close my eyes and listen to Radoslav flirt with Svala, while Brother John and Finn argued about who could spit olive seeds furthest.

I saw myself back on the Elk, rowing hard away from Cyprus and was not sure whether the harsh whistle of breathing was my own or the Goat Boy's. But someone, somewhere was beating time for the oarsmen and each blow was a question, over and over. . where was Starkad? Where were our oarmates? Where was Starkad? Where were our oarmates?

Adrift on a black sea, I stood at the prow of a dead ship, with the sails flapping, ragged and torn, though there was no wind at all. Ahead, bergs had calved off a glacier and moved like ponderous white bears. Ahead, a pale face surrounded by rags of hair, eyes so sunken and dark they looked like the accusing pits of little Vlasios. Ahead, a face I knew and, in that dark place, bright as a tear, sharp as a sliver of moonlight, the curved sword she raised. .

`Heya, Trader. . enough.'

The voice snapped me back to the taberna, where concerned faces loomed, pale as butter and swimming until I managed to focus.

`Bad head right enough,' said Radoslav and Brother John offered me watered wine, which I drank, suddenly parched.

`Who is Hild?' asked Svala archly and my stomach heaved, so that I couldn't speak. She waited for an answer and, when it was clear none was forthcoming, shrugged, pouted and walked off. Even long gone, the mad woman who had led us first to Atil's treasure still managed to poison my life.

`The sun has boiled your head,' Brother John offered helpfully. 'We'd better return to the Elk.'

And you can go and boil yours,' announced Finn cheerfully, striding back into the company, tossing something in his hand, 'for it would be a shame to leave now and miss seeing the fighting men.'

Then he showed us the carved wooden token he had been given and the information that, when a bell was sounded, all those with tokens would make for the main entrance to the amphitheatre.

A bell?' scoffed Brother John. 'What bell?'

Did you part with money for this, Finn Horsehead?' demanded Radoslav with a chuckle. 'I fancy the man that took it is now wearing out shoe leather heading for a drinking place on the other side of the city.'

`No, no,' said Svala. 'It will be the vespers bell he is speaking of.'

Radoslav had to be told that the vespers bell was the one calling the faithful to prayer. We had already heard the Mussulman wailings that called their faithful to prayer five times a day. That seemed excessive to us, who did not pray to our gods at all unless we needed to, an arrangement, I thought, that served both sides well.

`Surely they cannot mean to hold fights in the amphitheatre,' Brother John declared and Finn stroked his beard and pointed out that the market would probably close at night, leaving it empty.

It is death to hold such fights,' Brother John retorted scornfully. 'This arena is not a secret place, is it?

You can hardly avoid attracting the Watch soldiers with hundreds of cheering people and the clash of steel.'

Finn swore, for he saw Brother John had the right of it and it came to him then that he had been gulled.

This made him all the more determined to wait and, knowing him well enough, I sighed and said I would wait with him. Radoslav announced he was willing, at which point Brother John said he would take Svala back to her hov and return, hopefully before vespers.

Naturally she protested and had to be huckled off, furious at me, though it had not been my idea. So we settled down and stayed near the market in the shadow of the Iron Gate until the day sank slowly behind the citadel mound they called Silpius in a strange, cloud-wisped glory of red and gold.

Brother John came back, as planned, and we ate a couple of roast fowl with greasy flatbread and olives, while Finn searched all the faces in case he saw the man who had sold him the token. We watched the stalls pack up and the people in the market trail off one by one, listened to the muezzin calling the Arabs to their god, talked quietly of this and that and nothing at all.

Then the bell rang out for vespers, echoed by all the others in the city and, almost at once, we saw people move, quiet and flitting as moths.

Oh-ho,' said Finn, rubbing his hands with glee, 'perhaps I have not lost at all.'

We followed what looked like a good group, half a dozen Greeks who might have been off-duty soldiers or merchants, to the main entrance of the amphitheatre, where now two burly men stood, all scarred fists and neck-rolling, armed with clubs. In almost total darkness we stood in a line and shuffled to the arched gate, the excitement sneaking from one to another in that milling crowd.

The guards took the token and searched us for weapons, but we only had our eating knives thanks to Skarpheddin, for it was only polite to attend his feast without serious blades.

Under the arch, three more men, holding dim lanterns, directed us sideways to where a door was now open in the side wall of the arena. In there, where torches guttered, a short passage led to steps and then down, a spiral that spilled us into a huge underground chamber, dank and cold.

`Where are we?' Finn demanded and Brother John looked round.

Under the arena,' he declared. 'Here is perhaps where the animals were prepared. This would have been sectioned off. .'

I didn't think so, for I smelled old rot and damp and saw the huge, rust-streaked pipe and its wheel. When I pointed it out, Brother John gave a low whistle of amazement.

`You have it right, Orm. This was where they stored the water to turn the arena into a lake. If we looked around, we could probably find the old pumps.'

`Lake? What lake?' demanded Radoslay.

Brother John explained that sometimes the men fought sharks or whales, or from boats, and then the arena above could be flooded to make a lake, and drained away again afterwards. This left both Radoslav and Finn drop-jawed at the deep-minded cunning of the old Romans.

Then Finn spotted an odds-maker and I did not know how he did that, for the man looked like any scarred-armed, bent-nosed ugly I had ever seen. Finn spoke to him, hauled out some coins and handed them over, then took a new wooden token. It was then I saw the marked-off area and the buckets and brooms to wash away the blood.

The crowds were milling and had even gone up the stairs to what had been the gallery walkway where the pumps and inlet valves were worked. They sounded like bees in the echoing chamber. Then the humming grew louder and, as Finn strolled back, we could all hear the sound of dragging chains.

`Who did you bet on?' asked Radoslav, having to raise his voice over the sudden cheers of the crowd. A man stepped out and announced the first contest, a match between two swordsmen and. . the Mighty Blade himself.

The walls bounced with cheers, blood-thick with lust. The chains dragged again and I saw the two swordsmen, ankles fastened together by short lengths of chain, then chained one to the other by about four feet of links fastened to bracelets round their wrists. They wore loincloths, old-fashioned Greek-style helmets with horsehair plumes, short swords, round shields and the desperate eyes of the doomed.

A trainer wearing a short tunic and not much else, keeping to the old Greek look, hauled them in and someone yelled: `Fight well, you bastards. I have a bundle on you fixing the Blade tonight.'

`Not if the Norns are weaving this wyrd, I am thinking,' chuckled Finn, 'for I have the Blade down to win.

I fancy his chances, for the odds-maker said he was an axeman of some skill and was fighting two with short swords. A good axeman will always win that.'

Across the other side of the marked-off area, into the fug of reeking torches and sweat and stale breath, came the Mighty Blade, naked save for a loincloth, the chain round his ankles and a long-handled Dane axe.

His shoulders, draped in the great, uncut pelt of his own hair, were like living animals when he whirled the axe from hand to hand and his entire body writhed with the coiled snake muscle on him. It was as Kvasir had once noted: he had muscles on his eyelids.

It's Botolf,' growled Finn, staring at me in horror. 'Big Botolf.'

We stared and gawped, looking one to the other, then back again. It was him. Last seen on the deck of the last drakkar to bear the name the Fjord Elk, snugged up in the harbour in Novgorod two years since.

And if he was here. . I looked frantically around for the rest of the missing crew, the ones we had sent messages to and waited for in Miklagard.

`Perhaps the lanista will sell him to us,' Brother John offered in a wavering voice.

`What's a lanista?' asked Radoslav and Brother John pointed to the man hauling the chains of the two swordsmen.

Is it that Latin tongue, priest?' asked the ever-curious Radoslay. 'What's it mean?'

It means "trainer",' Brother John answered.

It means dead man,' grunted Finn. He rolled his neck once, twice, then headed straight towards the lanista and his charges.

`We only have eating knives,' I warned, seeing the way the sail was filling. Finn's grin belonged to Hati, the wolf who pursues the moon.

`They have steel,' he answered, nodding at the swordsmen and strolled towards the lanista, who saw the big man coming up and put out a warning hand.

`Stay back, friend.'

I am thinking your two pets look fine but I have laid good silver on them and would like to look at their teeth a while,' said Finn, all smiles, but the lanista never blinked.

`You might also want to make sure of winning,' he answered. `With a thumb of pepper in the eye, perhaps. Won't be the first time someone has tried to nobble one of my fighters, so piss off back into the crowd where you belong.'

`Good advice,' shouted someone from the crowd. 'You're getting in the way-'

Finn elbowed the shouter without even turning round and the man howled, falling away and holding his mashed nose. The lanista looked startled but then Finn booted him right up beyond the hem of his short kilt and the man folded with a strangled whoof of sound, dropping the chains.

The two swordsmen were bewildered at this, while Mashed Nose sprayed blood and curses and showed the damage to his friends, who shot looks at Finn that were uglier than giant Geirrod's grisly daughters.

Finn, however, leaned casually across and gripped the wrist of one of the swordsmen, then plucked the curved Saracen blade from his hand like a honeycomb from a child. He turned, laid the blade against the neck of the second one and Radoslav came up, grinning, and took his sword and the little shield, too.

A couple of the crowd nearest Mashed Nose took three steps forward, then Brother John stepped forward and slammed a fist into the nearest head, knocking the man sideways. The others shied away like flushed plovers but Mashed Nose whipped out a long dagger, blew out bloody snot like some mad, injured bull, then started forward, all hunched neck and scowls.

Brother John smiled at him and held up one hand, palm outward, which stopped Mashed Nose in his tracks. Then he made the cross sign in the air, which made the immediate crowd stare. Finally, he gripped Mashed Nose by the shoulders, as if in a friendly fashion, then drew back his head as if to look at the sky and pray, the way priests do. Everyone looked up.

Brother John raised himself on to his toes and brought his head forward with vicious force. There was a wet smacking sound and Mashed Nose collapsed in a heap, while Brother John rubbed the red mark on his brow and scooped up the dagger.

'Pax vobiscum,' he declared.

The shouts had brought heads round, a ripple from us outward until it finally reached the hard men who were supposed to keep order. It also reached Botolf and the man holding his chains, so that when Botolf looked up, he saw me heading across the open fighting area.

He blinked. I yelled at him. He blinked again and I cursed him for having the cunning of a tree stump.

The lanista holding his chains hauled out a leather-covered cudgel, for he saw I was unarmed, while two of the hard men came forward, spilling right and left round big Botolf in a way that let me know they had worked together before. It also let me know that I only had an eating knife.

But Botolf had worked it all out now. As Finn and Radoslav moved to take on the hard men and their knives, Botolf cuffed the lanista almost casually, a blow that spilled him his full length. Then, because he was still holding on to the chain, he hauled the groaning man back again as if he was a hooked fish, pulled him up and cuffed him back to the ground again, grinning. Then he did it again as I trotted up. The lanista finally worked matters out and let the chain go.

More hard men appeared; the crowd were shouting. Some were in fact cheering, because they thought this was a novel opening fight, but it would be minutes only before they worked it out and decided to join in.

Radoslav and Finn wasted no time against the hard men: it was short swords and shields against long knives and the not-so-hard men, after a couple of clangs and half-hearted swipes, backed off. I reached Botolf, who had reeled in the lanista yet again.

Orm. . you said you would come. Skafhogg said you were as useful as hen shit on an axe handle but he was wrong, eh?'

`No. .' whimpered the lanista, cowering under the shelter of his flapping hands as I reached for him. I took the keys while he sobbed and bled and bent to unshackle Botolf's ankles, hearing him growl as I did so.

Actually, I felt him growl, such was the force of it. A half-glance over my shoulder told me the two swordsmen had recovered and were howling across the open space towards me, released from their own chains.

It was such a mistake: I wish I had waited to see Botolf fight them before we'd started in to free him, for there were rocks with more clever in them than those two. It was only when they were within a few steps of him that they suddenly realised that they had no weapons at all and here they were, about to take on a giant armed with a Dane axe.

Botolf popped the butt end between the eyes of one of them, which slammed him to the ground, where he flopped like a sack of cats. Then he slapped the flat of the axe on the fancy helmet of the other one, proving the lack of worth in that battle-gear, because the blade caught the ornamental crest, snapped the chinstrap and screwed the whole thing sideways, so that the cheek-flap was now over the owner's nose.

Blinded and bloody, the man screamed and stumbled away into Finn, who had chased off his opponent and now stabbed this new one in the thigh.

`Stairs!' screamed Brother John, pointing, and we all sprinted for them, me bringing up the rear just as the howling crowd surged forward — which at least got them between us and the rest of the better-armed bruisers who were supposed to keep order.

`Keep going! The door,' I shouted, pointing upwards. A hand grabbed my tunic and I heard it tear, so I whirled and let him have Botolf's chains, ring-bracelets and all. He fell back, screaming and losing teeth, which made the rest of the crowd think twice about crowding up behind me.

Ahead, Botolf pitched someone off the gallery and his shriek only ended when he hit the floor below with a meaty smack. Finn hauled me up and past him, turning to threaten the crowds. Something whirled through the air and smashed: an empty wine flask. A coin tinkled on the iron railings and Radoslav grinned.

`We must be good — they're throwing money-' He ended in a yelp as another coin smacked his elbow with a vicious sound. `Turds — who did that?'

We were stuck on the stair, I saw, unable to go ahead until Botolf dealt with the armed hard men keeping us from the door. He was too dangerous, with that Dane axe, for them to rush in and tackle but there were too many for Botolf to take on if he left the narrow gallery for the open area round the exit, where they could surround him.

The crowd below threw curses, jeers and anything they could find. Coins and cheap pottery bowls rained on us and it stopped being funny when Brother John went down with his head bleeding. I helped him up, to the poor shelter under the jut of the inlet valve and took a swift glance at the flap of skin, while the blood poured over his face.

`Morituri to salutant,' he gasped, which was apt and let me know he still had humour in him. Finn and Radoslav backed up the stairs, their little shields up — though we'd have more chance keeping dry under a fern, for all the use they were.

Then I heard Radoslav start muttering the chant that would set his Helm of Awe to working and I knew things were desperate but the clash and clatter were a cloud on my thinking. When I had to duck a missile and clonked my skull on the rusted inlet valve I roared with frustration and pain.

The inlet valve.

`Botolf!' I shrieked and he risked a half-look over one shoulder and saw me frantically waving for him to come to me.

`Finn. . Radoslav. .'

They lumbered off to take his place. Something smashed into fragments and the crowd, seeing the swords disappear, were cautiously coming up the stairs. More coins whirred and rang to the catcalls from the crowd.

Botolf, a cut on one massive bicep, loomed over me and I pointed to the rusting valve.

`Hit it.'

Brother John scrambled frantically from under it as Botolf spat on his hands, gripped the Dane axe and whirled it up. A wine bowl bounced off his shoulder and I doubt if he noticed. The axe came down, the boom of it echoing round the brick walls. It smashed the rusting valve open, the axehead snapped off and was whirled away in the great gouting stream of water that spat out, catching Brother John on one arm. It would have torn him away if I hadn't grabbed the other and the roar of it drowned out everything else.

The crowd baulked when they saw it arc out, as if Thor himself had decided to take a piss. Then they realised what it meant and went mad with panic.

Of course, we were first to the door and beat the rush. I found myself shooting out into the empty, cool night air of the amphitheatre, spilling from the dark entrance out into the middle of the dusty circle.

Alongside me, one of the hard men, spat out in my wake and on his hands and knees, looked at me, thought better of it, scrambled to his feet and darted off.

Finn and Brother John came up, then Radoslav and then, ambling carelessly away, the splintered shaft of the Dane axe across both shoulders, came Botolf, grinning and leaking blood. Behind him, spewing from the doorway and shrieking, came the fans of gladiators.

`By Thor's arse, Orm,' Botolf declared, clapping me happily on the back, so that I was sure I had been driven into the ground, 'you are a jarl and no mistake. Even if Skafhogg never says it to you, I do, for sure.'

I doubted if Skafhogg, the old Oathsworn's grizzled shipwright, would ever count me jarl enough — but, for the moment, I had no care of it. Finn, on the other hand, had something to say.

`You can drown him in drink,' growled Finn, 'but somewhere else. You can drown us all in drink, for I lost money on you.'

I followed them out of the amphitheatre, limping on that old ankle wound, the sound of the chains I dropped behind me lost in the screams of those running from the arena.

`Does this mean I am not a slave?' I heard Boltolf ask and wished then I had held on to the chains, so I could hit him.

We came to Skarpheddin's camp and talked our way past the Watch and up to his great tented hall in the dark, which confused the door-thrall. We had some Odin luck, though, for he was an Irisher known to Brother John from the night before, so it was no trouble for us to pile into the hov with an extra giant and rummage for sleeping space amid the curses of Skarpheddin's disturbed household.

Most were snoring in the reek of smoke and meat and mead and sweat, but two were blearily shoving

'tafl pieces round the board and Skarpheddin's skald was muttering his way through some draupa verse. I looked for Skarpheddin but he was in his lok-rekkja, his curtained bed-space — as was his mother, for which we were all thankful.

We all sank down in a cleared space, whispering out of politeness and secrecy and all of us wanted to know the one thing right away: where Valgard and the others were.

Botolf, craning to examine the slash on his bicep, picked at loose flesh and shrugged. 'We were sitting in Holmgard, waiting for word that Einar and the rest of you were rich,' he told us. 'Then word came that the Rus had fought with the Khazars, who had been beaten, and Sarkel had fallen, so we wondered how you had fared, for no word came.'

`That is because we were not there for it,' Finn chuckled and Botolf scowled blackly at him.

`Just so — which was the cause of what happened next. Prince Yaropolk came back, with his father and brothers — and Starkad, who pointed us out as Einar's men. Since Einar had run off from Yaropolk's retinue and disgraced him, Starkad thought to get his drakkar back that way, but burned his fingers, for Yaropolk took us and the ship. Us he sold to Takoub, a slave-dealer I will one day meet and whose head I will tear off.'

`Did you not get our messages, then?' I asked and he nodded grimly.

`Starkad came to where we were shackled and told us, with some delight it seemed to me, that Einar and Ketil Crow and others had all died on the steppe — and that little Orm had been made jarl.' He paused then and glanced at me, a little shamed it seemed. 'This we thought a barefaced lie,' he added, `since the likes of Finn Horsehead and Kvasir were still alive. Valgard said it was unlikely that the likes of Orm would be preferred to Finn. No offence, young Orm.'

`What happened then?' I asked, ignoring this, though my face burned. Botolf shrugged his massive shoulders.

`Starkad said it was true, all the same, at which Valgard spat and said we could now expect no rescue from. . I mean no offence, here, young Orm. . a nithing boy.'

`Skafhogg needs a slap,' Finn growled and Botolf, teeth gleaming in the half-dark, nodded agreement. I signalled for him to go on and he pursed his lips and frowned, thinking.

`Starkad wanted to know where that Martin monk had gone, but Valgard told him to go away and that he could as well die, screaming in his own piss. After that, we were shipped south, all the way to Kherson, and sold to the goat-fucking Arabs. Takoub packed us, nose to feet, in a big ship and sailed us off to Serkland.'

He stopped and blinked, the closest Botolf came to fear, it seemed to me.

`We came off the boat together, which was itself considerable luck,' he rumbled, shaking his shaggy head at the memory. `That was a grim trip right enough — others died, but none of the Oathsworn.'

`How is it you went one way and they another?' I asked.

`Someone saw me, I am thinking, and thought I would be better fighting than any of the others. All I know is that I was unshackled from them and shackled to another lot and we were taken away — north, I think. The others went their own way, towards Damascus, I heard.'

`Together?' I asked and he nodded.

Even that little rat-faced Christ-man, Martin,' he said. The news rocked us all; I heard the rumble of One Eye laughing in my head.

`The monk?' gasped Finn and Botolf nodded, grinning.

Aye, he was rounded up with us — Starkad did not see him and Valgard thought it a good joke that what he sought so avidly was feet away from him all the time.'

`Heya,' breathed Kvasir, looking at me. 'Odin's hand, right enough, Trader. There you are telling Starkad what you believe to be lies and it was the truth all along.'

`What of the icon?' demanded Brother John, dabbing his cut head and Botolf frowned with puzzlement, then remembered and brightened.

`That spear thing? Oh, Takoub took it with him.'

`Where are the others now?' I asked, shooting annoyance at Brother John's interruption.

Botolf shrugged.

`So we have lost them, then,' growled Finn.

`Not lost,' answered Botolf cheerfully, finishing examining his cut. 'They went to Fatty Breeks. I heard men say so.'

`Who in the name of Odin's hairy arse is Fatty Breeks?' shouted Finn and then rounded on all those who woke and told him to keep quiet, folk were trying to sleep.

Easy, Horsehead,' I said, laying a calming hand on his arm. `Let's sleep on it and see if we can find someone who knows about it when it is full daylight.'

Grumbling, Finn curled up, scowling. Botolf shrugged, then grasped my wrist.

`You did well, Orm,' he said. `Valgard Skafhogg was sure it was our wyrd to die like nithings, for he did not think you had the balls for the task of saving us. It will be good to see his face when we shake his chains off.'

He lay down and started to snore almost at once. I envied him, for I still heard that thumping beat of my thoughts, a tern-whirl of confusion. Now we had our oarmates to consider, as well as the rune-serpent sword, and I dared not wonder what came next, for it is well known that the Norns weave in threes.

In the morning, after we had splashed water on our faces, we went around Skarpheddin's camp, asking about Fatty Breeks, which got us strange looks and a few scowls, which big Botolf deflected with a look of his own. We learned nothing.

The camp was a busy place, a village of wadmal cloth in fact, where folk carried on as if they were still in a toft set in hills soft and round as a breast, clothed with the tawny grass of spring and alive with gull and raven.

They worked the pole lathe, turned shoes, pumped bellows and forged, cooked solid fare against a Norway chill and tried to ignore the rising heat, a sky so pale blue it was near white, a sere roll of scrub-covered hills and the slaughtered-pig screech of the norias on the Orontes River, those huge water wheels that carried buckets up to the old arched aqueducts of the Romans and watered the fields around Antioch.

Into this bustle came the merchants, the spade-bearded Jewish Khazars whose brothers I had seen in Birka and fought at Sarkel, fat-bellied Arabs, plush Greeks and even a few Slays and Rus, smelling trade and bringing bargains.

Since Skarpheddin had parted with some of the silver he owed us, we took the chance to repair our gear and I sent Finn back to the Elk eventually, with instructions to have men on six-strong watches for two days at a time, the rest to come up and camp here as one body.

I was frantic to be gone from here, to be on some sort of trail, but no trail presented itself, neither of Starkad, nor of this mystery place, Fatty Breeks.

Radoslav, Brother John and I then haggled for good wadmal to make tents with and I managed to get a new set of striped Rus breeks and a cloak with a fine pin to go with it.

Brother John took the chance to examine my knees and eventually straightened, scratching his head and then looked at the palms of my hands, all of which was alarming.

`What?' I asked, making more light of it than I felt. 'How long do I have, then?'

He frowned and shook his head. 'Longer than anyone else,' he replied and grabbed Radoslav by the hand.

'Look here.'

Radoslav's hand was calloused and scarred, old white ones, new red ones and a couple that looked yellow with pus.

`So?' I answered. 'Everyone gets them. Ropes. Sword nicks.'

`Yours are all old,' Brother John said. 'Healed long since. Your knees, which you skinned on Patmos, will have scarcely a sign of scar.' He sighed. 'It is an ill-served world, right enough. Vitam regit fortuna non sapientia — chance, not wisdom, governs human life. There is you, whose youth repels all ills, it appears. Then there is Ivar Gautr, who is turning yellow and shrinking, even though the arrow wound in his cheek is healed.'

I felt the chill of it, for I had an idea what repelled all ills — would this fail, in time, now that Rune Serpent was far from my hand? Then Svala came up and drove all thoughts from me, for she seemed to glow.

Ignoring Radoslav and his broad smiles and winks, she cocked her head at me and said: 'The whole city is buzzing with talk of how the amphitheatre under-galleries were flooded last night, though no one can be found who saw it done.'

`You say so?' I replied flatly. 'To think we missed all this.'

She raised an eyebrow. 'The Roman soldiers are stamping up and down asking people questions and the engineers are fixing a huge leak in the arena's old underground cistern. There is talk of a giant and an axe.'

At which point Botolf came up, brandishing a new comb and trailing two or three giggling girls who were, it seems, intent on using it on his mane of red-gold hair. Spotting Svala, they found other business more pressing and looked almost afraid, which was strange. Svala smiled winsomely up at Botolf.

A giant,' she said, then looked at me. 'But no axe.'

It broke,' Botolf said with a grin, 'but if Orm gives me hacksilver, I have seen another at a fair price.'

I poured money from my limp purse, conscious of her eyes on me. Radoslav, chuckling, found something else to do and, suddenly, I was alone with her and my mouth worked like a fresh-caught cod.

`You are not as honey-mouthed as I had been told,' Svala said, then smiled and slipped an arm into mine.

'But that is no bad thing, for there is much about you that is strange and grand in one so young.'

`Just so,' I managed to croak, dazzled. Her face darkened. `Your dreams, for one thing.'

My body was a sea where my stomach and heart heaved on the swell. What did she know of my dreams?

She said nothing more, though, and we walked the camp in silence for a while, examining this and that. I saw Botolf again, stripped to the waist and showing off his skill and strength by spinning a Dane axe in one hand and a heft-seax in the other, which was a long, single-edged broad knife on a long pole. In the end, as the crowd applauded, the owner of the heft-seax had to allow he had won his bet and knocked down the price of both weapons.

Delighted, Botolf came and presented them to me for approval and I duly admired them. Behind, I saw the same giggling girls as before and, as he went off, they slid to his side. Svala snorted.

`That Thyra is always in rut, so she comes as no surprise — but Katla and Herdis have no right to be doing that,' she declared. 'Their mothers will be furious, to say nothing of their fathers. And Katla should know better, for she only has to look at a prick and her belly swells. She has two babes already and a stupid husband, though his brain is not so addled he'll assume another is his, too.'

It was the word 'prick' that did it. On her lips it would have made one of the Christ saints kick in the door of his own church. Dry-mouthed, I could only stare at her and she must have felt it, for she turned, saw my look. . and looked down to where my new breeks, fat and striped as they were, could not hide what I was thinking.

A slow smile spread on her face and she looked me straight in the eye, put her head to one side and then laughed. 'As well you got some extra ells of material in the fork of those new breeks,' she said archly. 'Let us go into the city, for the walk will cool you, I am thinking.'

So we did that day. And the next. And the one after. We saw gold from Africa, leather from Spain, trinkets from Miklagard, linens and grain from the Fatamid lands, carpets from Armenia, glass and fruit from Syria, perfumes from the Abbasids, pearls from the sea in the south, rubies and silver from even further east.

On the fourth day, Brother John came with us, for we still searched for the strange Fatty Breeks and, though we again discovered nothing of that, I learned of the lands of Cathay, from which poured shiny-glazed pottery, the feathers of peacocks, excellent saddles, a thick, heavy cloth called felt and richer stuff worked with fine gold and silver wires. There was also a strange, purple-coloured stick with leaves known as rhubarb which was worth its weight in gold — though I did not know why, for it clapped your jaws with its tartness and made your belly gripe.

There was also the achingly familiar: the amber, wax, honey, ivory, iron and good furs from my homeland. Most painful of all, though, was the sight of speckled stone, the fine whetstones of the north. I snuffled them like a pig in a trough, fancied I was drinking in the faint scent of a northern sea, a shingle strand, even snow on high mountain rocks.

It was that night, thick with evening mist, floating with songs from the firepits around my own wadmal hov, that I kissed her on soft lips, at a lonely spot near the river, keening with insect songs.

It was that night that she panted and gasped and writhed against me, while at the same time warning that nothing must happen — then gripping me in a strong hand, like she was about to chop wood, she gave three or four deft strokes, for all the world as if she milked an annoyed goat, and there I was, gasping, squint-eyed and bucking like a mad rabbit, emptied.

It had been a time since, I consoled myself, while she chuckled and said that it was for the best — yet while she spoke to me like a polite matron, her lower body had not stopped twisting and grinding against me, so that when I put my hand down, she guided it to a spot and gave a gasp.

After that, she became a moaning snake woman, until, suddenly, she subsided, panting and smiling at me from flame-red cheeks, her eyes bright, her face sheened with sweat. Then she blew a strand of hair off her face with a sharp littlepfft' and heaved a sigh. 'Lovely,' she said brightly. 'That was good.'

It could be better,' I said, lost in those eyes, desperate for what they could give, for what they promised.

For love, which I felt once with the doomed Hild, for a moment as brief as the flick of a gnat's wing. My head drowned in a sea of dreams.

`So you think,' she said, 'but that's as good as it gets.'

After we are married, I shall expect more,' I answered, astounded at myself. I don't know what reaction I expected, but the one I got made me blink. She laughed.

`No,' she said. 'Do not think of it. It will not be approved.'

`Why? Am I not good enough?'

She stuck the tip of her tongue between her teeth and grinned at me. 'You are a jarl-hero, are you not?

That's good enough. But you may have to kill more than a white bear to get what you want.'

She mocked me and I was not so young as I had been when first I had boarded Einar's ship, that I would rise to it. Instead, I wondered why she made light of it, but nothing more was said, though it was plain that she was a treasure hoard as removed from me as any belonging to Attila.

Nothing more was said because she had recovered her breath and desire and was starting to guide my hand again. But for all that she was sticky as a rumman fruit, it would have taken Miklagard engineers to storm that citadel — and I was too easy to disarm.

Afterwards, as I lay listening to the squeal-clunk of the norias, feeling the night breeze drift her hair on my cheek, I counted that night one of the best times I ever had, for I did not dream at all, whereas afterwards, I did not spend one night where I slept without my head crowded with the dead.

I should have known then, of course, that Odin sleeps, as they say, with his one eye open, waiting for his chance to punish the smug. It was a harsh raven trick when it came — and heralded by the arrival of a banner with that black-omened bird on it.

Svala and I had parted with the first thin-milk smear of dawn and later, just as I was eating the day-meal by the firepit with the rest of the band, she walked up as if nothing had happened.

Radiant and smiling, she held out a swathe of folded white cloth, while I became conscious of the others looking at me looking at her. I saw Short Eldgrim nudge Sighvat and whisper something I was glad I couldn't hear.

I have heard tales of this brave band,' she said, cool and clean as new snow, 'but saw that you lacked one thing. So I have made one for you.' And she unfurled a strip of dagged white cloth embroidered with a thick black raven.

`Heya,' said Finn admiringly and the others rose up, wiping their greased fingers on beards and tunics, to admire the stitching.

I managed to stammer my thanks and she smiled, even more sweetly than before.

`You need a good long pole for it,' she said archly, looking straight at me. 'Do you know where to find one? If not, I do.'

I was dry-mouthed at the cheek of her and felt the blood rush to my face, for her words had inspired exactly what she sought. I sat quickly before it became obvious. There was the taste of rumman fruit in my mouth when I managed to stammer my thanks.

She left, swishing the hem of her dress over the grass, and I felt Sighvat come up behind me. He fingered the new banner and nodded.

`Fine work,' he offered, then looked at me. On his shoulder, a raven fluffed and preened. 'That one is a danger,' he went on, which made me blink and almost spit back angrily at him to mind his own business, save that I had good respect for Sighvat and what he knew. He saw the questions and the anger in my face and stroked the head of the raven.

`Neither of the ravens will sit near her,' he went on. 'Now one is gone, for I set it to watching the jarl's witch-mother and have never seen it since. There is something Other at work here, Trader.'

Coldness crept into my belly and crouched there. I knew the Other well enough and the sudden vision-flash of Hild, black against black, that snake-hair blowing with no wind, almost made me drop the new banner in the firepit.

Big Botolf scooped it up and put it back in my lap, grinning. 'A fine banner. Do you want me to find a pole for it? I was thinking of putting a new shaft on this heft-seax and if I made it a long one, there would be a weapon at the end of the banner-pole, which would be useful.'

There and then, to his delight, I made him banner-bearer and he was still grinning when Kvasir trundled up, saw the raven flag hanging in Botolf's griddle-iron fists and grunted his appreciation.

`Just in time, Trader,' he said, 'for another jarl has arrived — a score of good hafskipa are now in the harbour and a thousand people, no less.'

This was news right enough and the tale of it bounced from head to head. Jarl Brand of Hovgarden, a Svear chieftain who had backed out of the fighting there for a while, had gone west and south, down past the lands of al-Hakam of Cordoba, through the narrows of Norvasund, which the Romans call the Pillars of Hercules and into the Middle Sea, with twenty ships and a thousand people, at least six hundred of them warriors.

Suddenly, in the middle of a distant, Muspell-hot country of the Sarakenoi, there were more good Norse than I had ever seen in one place in my life.

We stood with the throng and watched him and his hard men come up the road from the port to the city of Antioch, he on a good horse, they striding out, despite the heat, in full helms and gilt-dagged mail and shields.

He was ice-headed, was the young Jarl Brand Olafsson, as white then as he would be later in life, when he had become one of the favoured men of Olof Skotkonung, King of the Svears and Geats both and called the Lap King, they say, because he sat in the lap of King Harald Bluetooth's son, Svein Forkbeard, and begged for a kingdom.

Brand's face was already sun-red, though he had wisely covered his arms and he wore a splendid helm worked with gold and silver. He was glittering, this silver jarl. Gold sparkled at his throat and wrists and seven bands of silver circled each arm of the bright red tunic he wore. I watched him and his men march up the road and over the bridge into the city, to be presented in all pomp to the Roman general who commanded everything here, which honour Skarpheddin had not been given.

I ate the dust of their passing and smiled wryly at how I was a jarl also, which was the old way, when anyone with their buttocks not hanging out their breeks and two men to call on could be a jarl. Now the jarls wanted to be like the Romans and make empires. There was, I was seeing, less and less place for the likes of the Oathsworn.

Then Finn gave a curse pungent enough to strip the gilding off Brand's fancy mail, staring into the swirl of yellow dust like a prow-man searching for shoals in a mist.

I followed where he looked and saw a man limping along in the wake of the Svear chieftain, eating even more dust than I was, leading a pack as lean and wolf-hungry as he seemed himself. I did not see what he wore, nor what battle-gear his men carried. I saw only the curve of the sabre at his side.

Starkad was here.