The Wolf Sea

9

The heat of the day was leaching out of the dusty scrub, but the sky was dying in flame to the west where the hills rolled, grey-blue. Olive trees were pale purple in the twilight, their leaves black, while the air was arid with a dusty, woody smell, the ash-bite of fires springing up like a field of red blossoms.

Cloaked over it all was the great, crushing stink of an army, a throat-catcher made of leather, iron, horses, an acrid pinch of sweat and the thin, high smell of fear.

I had never seen anything like this, nor ever would again. I had thought Red Boots was bringing up a few more hundreds of men, no more, but this was Miklagard, the Great City, and the army around Antioch was a knarr on the ocean of men who came up from Tarsus.

We saw them first as a cloud to the north, rising up like a pale brown cloak over Antioch, and Brother John started to order us to lash down the wadmal tents, for he had seen such sweeping sandstorms further south, in the desert around the Sea of the Dead. But I had seen one, too, out on the steppe, and knew it was no sandstorm. It was the dust kicked up by the army of the Strategos John the Armenian, favourite of the Basileus and nicknamed Tzimisces — Red Boots.

As with Sarkel's siege, the scholars of the Great City sought me out later, when I was a trader of note.

One was Leo, who was close to my own age, but while I stood in the ranks at Antioch, he hunkered on his knees back in Constantinople learning the ways of the Christ religion. In later days, as he scratched out his saga tales — as monks do — they knew him as Leo the Deacon.

By then, all that we had done had been lost and John Tzimisces' battle at Aleppo was a hero-tale to the Romans of the Great City. Leo, sleekit as a fox though he was, once went with Basil the second of that name and the army when it was cut to pieces by the Bulgars years after these events and barely escaped with his life, so he knew a thing or two about armies.

He wanted me to tell what I knew of the fight at Aleppo, to add to the accounts he had from others, and I did so, as far as I was able. I liked Leo, so I did not tell him he had no understanding of us Norsemen at all

— he called us `Tauroskythians', as if we'd all come from the steppes north of the Dark Sea.

I told him what I knew, which was little enough and shrouded in a golden haze of dust, but he didn't want to hear that. In the end, he told me more than I gave him and we agreed it was the confusion betweeri the Miklagard Handshake and how Norsemen fight bear that had cost us the victory. The first wanted to clasp the enemy with one hand and stab them with the dagger they could not see, while the second wanted to rush in and kill the beast before being crushed in a deadly embrace.

Forty-seven thousand men marched from Antioch a week after Red Boots arrived — and there were more, sweeping through the land known as the Jezira, all the way across the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in the north, before turning south and then west again, to come up behind Aleppo. It was a great raid, to drag off the Hamdanids and their allies, so that Red Boots could crush Aleppo and take all that part of Serkland known as Syria.

When we eventually met the Sarakenoi our army was formed up 2,700 yards long and in two lines. The jarl-men were in the front line, which was all scutatoi, the Great City's foot-soldiers with their huge shields.

The Norse were on the right and on the right of the right the Oathsworn. The end of the line.

I did not tell Leo the Deacon that we had come there reluctantly, that we had been too fastened by the chance to kill and loot Starkad to get away before the storm of war swept us up.

Not so Starkad, who broke his oath to Jarl Brand and vanished into the dust haze. By the time we discovered this, it was too late for us to leave without drawing to ourselves attention of the worst sort. So we joined Red Boots's ranks for the battle we knew was planned and cursed both ourselves and Starkad for being so snared in a fight none of us wanted.

The Sarakenoi came with horsemen heavy with mail and banded leather, the ragged-arsed foot they called Dailami, desert horsemen called Bedu, who swooped like swallows in and out of the dust, and the Hamdanid horsemen, who still flew the black banners of the Abbasids even though they had rebelled against them. There were even Turks from Baghdad, where the generals permitted the Abbasids to rule in name only.

They overlapped our lines by a mile either side — which was why it all went wrong, of course. The Great City's army was used to this, had a second line to take care of it, but we didn't know that. All we saw were too many enemies.

Skarpheddin had already decided on our fighting plan, which was the one we usually used. We would bang loudly on our shields and pour scorn on the size of their balls, then we would run at them, howling like wolves. Not that Finn or I, or any of the Oathsworn, knew much of even this grand plan. The army marched, with all 47,000 soldiers, 15,000 mules, camels and oxen and 1,000 carts with the bits and pieces of the artillery engines, the two jarls and all their men — and the Oathsworn, scowling and angry about it, for this was no fight we wanted to be in.

The women and children stayed in their camps around Antioch, save those few who would not abandon their men, and Gizur and four of my men, the Goat Boy with them, went back to the Elk to watch it.

Radoslav had volunteered to stay, too, at which Finn had said nothing, though his look was an entire saga poem on its own. The big Slav, seeing the scorn, had shrugged and come with us, but if Surt, the Norn-sister of What May Be, had kindly drawn it all out for us in the sand, we would probably have agreed with Radoslav and all of us would have quit the army then and there and gone to Fatty Breeks.

Fateh Baariq. Which meant Shining Conqueror in the Saracen tongue. But Svala only told me that as we clattered out in the ranks of Skarpheddin's men, too late to slip away unnoticed. Her smile was malicious and I turned my back on it and tramped into the dust; it only came to me later that she had also told Starkad this earlier, which had made him start after Martin.

`Well,' argued Botolf, scowling, when, at the end of that first day's march, we told him what we had found. 'I don't speak their cat-yowl of a tongue. It sounded different to me. And I was being dragged in chains at the time.'

I had soothed him over it, for we knew now where our oarmates were: in the Fateh Baariq mine, east and north of Aleppo, in a place called Afrin. That left us with a new problem: how to get there. It was miles from the shield of the army, in country we did not know and seething like a maggoty corpse with Sarakenoi.

I felt the weight of the jarl torc, anvil-heavy. It was a long way and in the lands of the enemy.

It is a long way and in the lands of the enemy,' Radoslav then declared moodily, making me twitch and wonder if he could read minds, too. 'We would need our own army,' he added pointedly. 'If we had a hoard of silver we could afford one.'

Kvasir and Finn grunted and said nothing, so Radoslav, seeing he was gaining nothing, rose and went elsewhere.

`He is greed-sick, that one,' growled Finn.

`He has lost his boat,' Kvasir pointed out, but Finn hawked and spat into the fire. That night, Radoslav vanished from our ranks, which everyone thought was a nithing thing for him to do.

`He has all that a warrior needs. .' Kvasir growled wryly next day, 'except the balls.'

I wondered more on it, but was not sure what Radoslav was doing. Perhaps he was just ducking out of the fight, though I did not think much of that explanation. Perhaps he had gone back to steal the container from my sea-chest: Odin luck to him if he crept on board past the men I had left to guard it. Nor did it matter much if he succeeded; the contents were not pearls and, since Starkad would not trade, worthless now.

Worse than worthless, since they still marked us all for blinding and death by the conspirators.

Still, it nagged me. . and left me hollow, too, for I had liked the big, bluff Slav who had, after all, saved my life.

Sighvat came up into this and sat beside me, his raven as silent and brooding as my thoughts. 'I heard the girl came to you,' he said and I shot him a warning glance, for I wanted no one poking a finger in that wound.

He nodded, tickling the beak of the raven. 'She is Sami,' he added, 'from the Pite tribe in Halogaland. Her true name is Njavesheatne, which means Sun Daughter in their tongue.'

A Sami from the north of Norway. Kvasir made a warding sign, Finn spat in the fire and I felt my skin crawl. The Sami, the Reindeer People, were older than time, it was said, and full of stranger magic even than the seidr. They worshipped a troll goddess, Thorgerthr, who used seidr to call down thunder like Asa-Thor himself.

`How do you know this?' I asked.

Sighvat grinned. 'A bird told me,' he said. 'Or perhaps it was a bee.'

Finn rolled his eyes and snorted. 'A bee. Honeyed words, were they?'

Sighvat smiled quietly. 'Bees have many messages, Horsehead. If one flies into your hall it is a sign of great good luck, or of the arrival of a stranger; however, the luck will only hold if the bee is allowed to either stay or go of its own accord.

A bee landing on your hand means money, on the head means a rise to greatness. They will sting those who curse in front of them and those who are adulterers or unchaste — so, if you want a good wife, have her walk through a swarm and if she is stung, she'll be no virgin.'

I knew it was a mistake to ask,' mourned Finn, shaking his head.

`Did this singular bee tell you how we can rescue our oarmates?' I snarled, the Sami thing sick in my stomach. 'Or find Starkad and get the Rune Serpent back?'

A lie. She had been a lie. It was my curse — worse, a Loki joke — to end up snagged like a lip-caught fish by every seidr woman in the world. And Radoslav — I had thought more of him. .

Sighvat smiled, unoffended, leaving me ashamed of my anger. 'No, Trader, but I will ask.' He rose and left, the raven clinging to his shoulder and fluttering.

Kvasir shook his head. 'Sometimes our Sighvat scares me more than any Sami witch,' he said.

We marched a second day and then sat surrounded by the low, growling hum of the army, a sweating beast in the red-flowered darkness. The tail of it still curled wearily in, tramping on into the night, where Finn and Kvasir waited for me to come up with a full-cunning way to get out of this mess. I sat silent and wished they'd bugger off and give me peace, for I was an empty hold of ideas.

After a night of formless, brooding dream-shapes, I was still as empty, sitting by the smouldering firepit, pitching twigs and dung-chips into it as the dawn smeared up the sky. It took me some time to realise that men were moving and talking excitedly, flowing like ants from a broken nest.

Then I heard the blare of trumpets and Finn lumbered up to me, chewing. He tossed me a scrap of flatbread and nodded at the commotion and dust.

`Red Boots is awake then,' he said.

Nearby, Brother John crossed himself Won semper erit aestas,' he said and Finn looked from him to me, puzzled and scowling.

`Get ready for hard times,' I translated and he nodded, grim as old rock.

We were formed up the way the Great City's army was always formed up — so I learned later — with the foot in front, backed by archers, light horse on the wings and slightly pushed forward, so that the whole would look like a gently curving bay if you could fly above it like Sighvat's raven.

Behind that was a second line, all the prized heavy horsemen and the great metal slabs that were the pride of the Miklagard army.

We had seen them ride out of Antioch's St Paul Gate on horses draped with leather sewn with metal leaves. The archers had horses covered on the front, the others had their horses completely cloaked in these little metal leaves. Some carried lances and some had maces and swords only, for when these ones — so fearsomely costly even the Great City could afford only a thousand of them — formed up it was in a boar snout, with the bowmen in the middle, the lancers on the sides and the skull-crushers in front.

All you could see of them were their eyes. They even wore iron shoes and scorned shields for the most part. They were draped in linen to try and keep the sun from broiling them, but we all.pitied those splendid soldiers, the ones the Greeks called klibanophoroi — the Oven Wearers.

There were numeri, bandae, turmae and a score of other names for their units, some of them Latin, some Greek which was the way with these people, who could not make up their minds on who they were. Red Boots had come with two of the three Hetaireiai, the Guard companies. These were the Mese and the Mikre, the former being for non-Greeks who were Christ-worshippers, the latter for foreigners who scorned the Christ. This last was full of Pechenegs and Rus Slays, though the Mese had Saxlanders, whom the Greeks call Germans. Though the Great City accepted Germans as chosen men, they did not like the nation of Otto, who occupied Old Rome and called himself Emperor.

They were almost as big as us, these Saxlanders, and they swaggered and snarled at each other like prize hounds. As Finn growled, they needed a sharp kick under their tails to show them who was better.

Most impressive of all were the Great City's chiefs, whom they called comes, or tribunus, or dux or drungarios and who, even though they had never met any of the men they led before, could get them moving as one, to the beat of ox-hide drums, with only a few words.

Truly, they were a marvel, these Romans, and, for the first time, we realised how they had ruled the world. We felt like gawping bairns.

We met our own commander then: Stefanos, who called himself Taxiarchos. He rode up with a guard of armoured horsemen and spoke with Skarpheddin and Jarl Brand.

This Stefanos, young and moon-faced, had charge of, it seemed to me at the time, the whole right of the army, a great swathe of scutatoi and the Norse and hordes of light horse archers, for it was always the way of the Romans to have their own men in command.

In fact he only ordered the last nub end of it, which was all of the Norse and some of the Greek archers and light troops. It is possible he never had command of anything ever again, thanks to us.

`We should have that sort of marking,' growled Kvasir, nodding at the coloured helmet-tufts and shields while we knelt, blowing dust out of our nostrils and trying to make sense of it all. I agreed, for even Jarl Brand's own chosen men, his dreng, had red-and-black wool braids hanging from their sheaths and shields all of one design — Odin's three drinking horns — in the same colours.

In the end, the best I could do was tear strips off the dirty-white linen surcoat I wore to stop my byrnie from heating up and get the Oathsworn to fasten them round their upper arms.

We leaned on our shields and sweated and I tried to work out where we were and what we were supposed to be doing.

It seemed the Norsemen were formed in one body, Brand and Skarpheddin side by side and three ranks deep, for that's what Skarpheddin had told us to do on his right flank — politely, since I was, nominally, as much of a jarl as he, even though I led only forty-four men. We formed in three ranks, mailed men in front

— the ones we called the Lost — and spearmen in the second and third, save for a handful with some bows, and agreed to follow the signals given by Skarpheddin's banner.

Behind us, a few hundred paces, hazed in dust, were rank upon rank of the Great City's foot archers, sticking arrows in front of them like a sheaf of barley, for easy reach.

In front, the light troops flocked, raising most of the dust now as they trotted up, with their throwing spears cased in soft leather sheaths lined with beeswax. On our left, shouldering the last men in the left of our line, were the sweating Norse of Skarpheddin. Further out to our right were the light horsemen, archers and lancers, their horses foaming at the neck with sweat, the stink of their dung and piss choking us.

There was a flurry behind us, which made everyone crane to see until Finn cursed them back to facing front.

Sweating Greek thralls appeared, rolling a barrel on a two-wheeled cart and doling out water in cups, little sips and no more, but which men grabbed eagerly. There was a priest with them, swinging his little smoking brazier of perfume and chanting something long and sonorous, while he dipped a silver baton in the cups and scattered droplets on us.

Brother John, so dry he could scarcely spit his disgust, translated the Greek for us as we grabbed and swallowed. He did not drink, for all his thirst.

Behold that after drawing holy water from the immaculate and most sacred relics of the Passion of Christ our true God — from the precious wooden fragments of the True Cross and the undefiled lance, the precious titulus, the wonder-working reed, the life-giving blood which flowed from His precious rib, the most sacred tunic, the holy swaddling clothes, the God-bearing winding sheet and the other relics of His undefiled Passion — we have sent it to be sprinkled upon you, for you to be anointed by it and to garb yourself with the divine power from on high.

The Basileus's holy-water gift to the army against the infidel. Kvasir, gulping it down, made a face and said: 'After all that, you'd think it would taste like mead instead of freshly warm sheep piss.'

I hardly noticed, being too busy wondering what 'undefiled lance' they had used, for I was sure Martin had the true one — or by now, some slave-dealer called Takoub had it. Did that mean this holy water was only slightly holy? Not holy at all?

From far off came the rasping blare of trumpets and I heard the Greek chiefs from the light javelin men, the ones they called the Hares, yelling 'Foreskins', the command for these men to peel back the covers from their throwing spears, immaculate and trim-straight.

Drums thundered from further down our own lines and a huge cry went up, 'Tydeus! Tydeus!' and then, out of the dust, cantered a group of horsemen, all red cloaks and plumes and self-importance.

Two of them carried huge swords, far too big to fight with and clearly ikons of some sort, like the huge banner with a woman painted on it that Brother John said was Our Lady of Blachernae. Another carried a huge purple banner on which was sewn a white square called the Mandylion. It was, said Brother John, a shroud from the dead Christ and had his face imprinted on it.

Out in front was a huge horseman, carrying a flag as big as a bedsheet, which they called the Labarum and on it was the symbol of the Great City. Brother John told us it was a holy symbol, adopted by the Emperor Constantine, who had named the Great City after himself.

The symbol, it seemed, meant 'In This Sign Conquer', but it looked to us like the runes Wunjo and Gebo, which read as 'a gift of success' to us. Which was not the same thing, as Sighvat grimly pointed out, Gebo being an illusion rune that cannot be merkstave, or reversed, but may lie in opposition all the same and might mean success, but at heavy cost.

As a call to war it fell far short of Feeders of Eagles or Hewers of Men, but it had been blessed by the White Christ's best priests. As Kvasir said, we couldn't fail with all this holy help and the whole of the Pharos Chapel must have been emptied of Miklagard's relics.

Behind all this came a short, stocky man riding a huge white horse eaten by its own purple drapings. He waved a lot as men cheered and was the only one who wore bright red leather boots, Armenian-style, almost to his knees.

Is that the Miklagard General? Why are they calling him Tydeus? I thought his name was John?'

grunted Hedin Flayer, who was to my left.

Not much to look at, the little short-arse,' growled Finn from the other side.

The man commanding the most powerful army in the world stopped, exchanged a few words with our taxiarchos, then reined round and rode off into the golden swirl of the day, the shouts of 'Tydeus!' swelling and ebbing like a tide as he passed the ranks.

`Who the fuck is Tydeus?' demanded Kvasir from down the line and Brother John leaned forward, his eyes red-rimmed with dust.

An ancient Greek hero who killed fifty men in single combat, according to Homer.'

`Did this Homer say he was a short-arse, then?'

`That sort of loose mouth will lose you your other eye.'

At which point, Sighvat stepped forward a pace and held up his hand as the raven fluttered out of the great golden pearl we stood in and down on to his wrist. It smoothed a wing feather, opened its dark maw of a mouth and said, clear as a ringing bell: 'Look out.'

We gaped. It cocked a head and said it again. Then it added: Odin,' and flew up and away as Sighvat launched it back into the air.

`The enemy are on us,' Sighvat said and then saw all our gaping mouths and alarmed eyes. 'What? Didn't you know ravens speak?'

Its speaking had struck us all dumb, but we had no time to say anything anyway. Botolf, Brother John beside him in a too-large helmet, untied Svala's banner and it had barely started to flap in the lava breath that stirred the dust when, as Sighvat had promised, the enemy were upon us.

The horsemen to our right vanished in a huge billow of dust and after that we only saw shapes, shadows in the gloom that circled like a ring of wolves and I had no idea whether they belonged to us or the enemy.

`We'll know soon enough,' yelled Kvasir above the din, hawking dust from his throat. 'The enemy will be the ones who tear us a second bung hole without warning.'

We gripped shields and stood, sweat running from us, hilts and shafts slippery with it. We had been standing, that was all, yet we panted open-mouthed like dogs and I sent Brother John to get the waterskins we had stashed in the rear ranks. We sucked hot, brackish water as if it was nabidh.

Time passed and dust swirled. There was a constant low drone, broken by the shriek of the enemy horns and the thunder of drums from both sides. I was aware of Hedin Flayer's rank breath and the press of Finn's big shoulder. Behind us came the sound of a giant tearing his cloak in half: the archers, letting loose a volley on something we couldn't even see.

Out of the dust in front we saw the Hares skipping back like their namesakes, sprinting hard and clutching their empty spear-bags. Most broke round us, but some came dashing up, the dust spurting from their sandalled feet like water, skidding against our shields and hammering on them as if on a door.

When we wouldn't open up, they reeled frantically away, though a few hurled themselves down and wriggled between our feet, so we kicked them in the ribs for their pains.

Then, suddenly, there were robed men in the dust, a massive black banner, the glint of spears — and the Dailami foot came hurtling down on us.

They had crashed towards the centre, splattered by arrows and throwing spears from front and either flank, so that they moved like stumbling sleepwalkers now, a great black-robed beast trailing blood and slime and bodies, screaming: Illa-lala-akba.'

We braced; they hit the shieldwall, but they were almost done by the time they stumbled up to our swords.

A knot of five or six crashed in on us, thrusting spears and screaming. I slashed at a black-bearded face and felt the edge bite, heard him scream. I saw a spear-shaft stab past my cheek and the point went in under a turban, straight into the owner's ear, so that he shrilled and fell away, holding his head.

Then they were gone and, with a huge wolf-roar, the whole Norse shieldwall surged after them. I was shouldered to one side, watched Finn and Kvasir howling into the haze, saw Botolf lumbering past me, banner held high in one hand, red mane streaming.

Stefanos the taxiarchos flailed furiously, his angry screams lost in the bellows of the Norse, he and his little guard no more than a rickle of stones in a flood. Wearily, I trotted after them, stepping over the robed bodies that they had hacked down.

`Bring your men back,' Stefanos squealed at me, red-faced with fury. 'Now. At once!'

I didn't bother to answer him, but jog-trotted on, leaving him squeaking his fury until he disappeared into the swirling dust behind me.

No more than twenty paces later, sitting in the middle of a scatter of Sarakenoi, some still twitching and groaning, I came on Amund, the strip of white cloth that had marked him as one of the Oathsworn now tied round the stump of his wrist, one end gripped in his teeth as he strained to halt the black-red dribble from it.

Black-robed bodies were everywhere, a few still moaning or writhing.

I stacked shield and sword and knelt to help him, snapping off a discarded arrow shaft to use as a lever in his binding to squeeze harder. The iron stink of blood was thick in the dust, so it seemed I breathed through linen.

`See if you can find the hand,' he said, calm as you please. I had a ring I liked.'

Then his eyes rolled and he fell backwards, shivering and shaking. I put his sword in his good hand and stayed with him until his heels stopped kicking, while the screams and yells and drums and trumpets floated from the gold shroud of the battlefield. Then I found his severed hand, a white spider in the bloody slush nearby, and tucked it inside his tunic, so that we could bury him whole later.

I collected my shield and sword and moved on.

Four hundred paces later I came on the Oathsworn, where the air had cleared enough to show the great brassy glare of the sun in a sky pale and blue as Svala's eyes. I staggered over the stones and scrub bushes into a place of hummocks like burial mounds: black tents made from the hair of camel and goat, erected low to the ground to fool the heat.

There were shrieks and shouts and I saw someone I knew — Svarvar, the die-maker from Jorvik -

stumbling along with his tunic full of brass lanterns and blue-stone talismans.

`What do you call this?' I shouted at him, thinking they had all been sucked into some dreadful battle and angry that they were not. He grinned, hugging the great mass of plunder to his tunic.

`Fun,' he yelled and plunged on into the haze.

The Oathsworn had hit the Saracen baggage camp, as if they had plotted a straight course to it using Gizur's little ivory reckoner. The few troops left to guard it were dead or scattered and the Oathsworn were enjoying themselves.

There were horses and women, arms in stacks like corn-stooks, mail suits, ewers and vases of gold and brass — and leather bags of money, for the Saracen soldiers insisted on regular pay, something we had all already learned from stripping the dead.

I stood in the middle of this maelstrom, watching men stagger and stumble and howl like dogs, wrecking good pottery and gutting the dead to make sure they had swallowed nothing of value. They ripped rings from corpses; they threw screaming women on the ground, or bent them over cart shafts.

I saw Hookeye, a black turban askew over his squint, a richly brocaded robe over one shoulder and a richer cloak over the other, pumping furiously at the naked buttocks of a screeching woman and waving a jewelled dagger in the air. For a head-swimming moment, it seemed that the spade-bearded high priests from Miklagard's cathedrals were here, baying with lust, and not the Oathsworn men at all.

I roared, I threatened, I even pleaded, but it was like herding cats. A hand gripped my arm and I found Brother John at my elbow, face grim as a crucifixion. 'Best let this fever run its course,' he said. 'Anyway, we have found something.'

I followed him to a black tent and ducked into it, blinking at the move from light to dark, from the realm of stark Helheim to a place cool and coloured bright as Bifrost. The light of fat candles bounced off the dazzling rugs lining the floor and the gilded drinking vessels and carvings teetering on low wooden tables.

Botolf crouched, Dane axe butted in front of him and the raven banner laid out on the floor, grinning at the figure opposite.

Sitting on one of the many fat cushions, hawk-faced and dark-eyed, his skin a spiderweb stretched over his face, was Martin the monk. His eyes had a secret, secluded look, like a turf house seen between trees.

`He was caught by the Sarakenoi making for Jorsalir, which fact he let slip in the joy of his rescue by Botolf here,' Brother John said. 'Since he is an escaped slave, they were not planning to be lenient or merciful.'

Someone burst through the flap of the door and Botolf whirled and snarled at him like a dog. The figure yelped and backed out.

`Some of your hounds can still be leashed, it seems,' Martin said in that dry rasp.

`Be grateful for it,' I said. 'If Starkad comes, things will be different, I am thinking.'

Martin blinked a little and the harsh little lines round his mouth tightened so hard it looked like a cat's arse. 'So, is my life any happier in your hands, Orm Ruriksson?'

I sighed and picked up one of the drinking vessels, but it was empty. Botolf shoved an almost-flat waterskin at me and I drank the tepid stuff, straining the worst of what was in it through my teeth.

I have no quarrel with you this day, monk,' I said. 'The world is washed in blood and I command no one, as you see. Tell me of my men, the ones who were with you, while we wait until this pack have looted and humped themselves to sleep.'

`Your men?' answered Martin, adding a twist of a smile. He massaged the manacle sores on his wrists. 'I hardly think that, Orm Bear Slayer. Their leader is Valgard Skafhogg and all of them take their lead from him and believe their gods have betrayed them.'

Are they together still? Bound for the same place, this mine?'

Martin nodded. 'Yes. I escaped. Two men, good Christians, went with me. They were killed and I was taken.'

I did not wonder at this, for Martin had many talents, his best being the skill to wriggle like an eel out of any trouble. The other was convincing men that the White Christ could save them.

`What of the spear?' demanded Brother John and Martin, sensing the eagerness in his voice, twisted out a smile.

`That I still have to get. I will, do not fear. You have an interest?'

Brother John's hackles rose at the implication of greed. `Don't presume to judge me, priest. The Great City also has a Holy Lance. For all I know what you have is a lump of wood and iron, no more.'

`But if it is not that?'

Martin's question hung in the air, unanswered. In the end, Brother John uncurled from the floor and ducked out of the tent.

I looked at the monk, remembering the blow I had given him once, turning blade to the flat and sparing his life at the last, which I had come to regret. Here he was again and once more I would let him live, for I was sick to my stomach of death this day.

I raised a hand to bring Botolf over from where he had been standing at the entrance. Martin saw it, saw my missing fingers and chuckled, raising his own, the one lacking the little finger. That had been lopped off by Einar, while Martin hung upside down from the Elk's mast and told all he knew about everything, screaming and pissing himself. You could tell by the look in his eye that the memory was bright in him and would always be.

He looked at my own maimed hand, two fingers less than it should be, legacy of the fight with the man

— gods, the boy — who had killed Rurik, the man I'd thought my father.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a finger.

He stopped when he saw my face and he was right to do so, for I was trembling with the idea of killing him, remembering how he had put that boy and his brother on our trail, an event which had ended in the death of Rurik, his own two nephews and the loss of my fingers. The memory of how I had come by those lost fingers came back to Martin and he blanched and clamped his lips shut, feral as a wildcat.

`Watch him,' I said to Botolf. 'Keep him unharmed, but keep him.'

Martin smiled and inclined his head as if accepting some gracious donation. 'A gift for a gift,' he said.

'Hurry to the rescue of your men, Bear Slayer. I escaped when I did because I know what will happen when your men reach the mine and, though I have foresworn the pleasures of the flesh on God's behalf, I still prefer not to pass water down a straw.'

Then I was outside in the howl and horror, with fear rising like morning haar off a fjord and a flood of anger that he should have thrown that at me. I wanted to kill him, but needed him close; Starkad would come for him and we would be waiting.

For now, the men I was supposed to command, that rune-serpent torc round my neck, bayed and snarled like wolves. No one would hear that it was Hookeye who humped a Hamdanid princess to ruin, or that Kvasir cut the fingers from sixteen men and women for their rings, or that Finn poked bloody fingers in the bellies of the dead he had gutted open to find their swallowed wealth.

Instead, everyone would hear that these and all the other things done that day were done by the Oathsworn of Orm Bear Slayer, for my name was their name and theirs mine.

It was dawn before they could be rounded up, wincing in the molten light of day, a few of them sorry for what they had done, the rest sorry for what they felt and all of them so foundered by the event that they could only haul away the lightest part of the stuff they had plundered, stuffed down their boots and inside tunics. Furious and scowling, they could only watch others come up to steal what they had gained.

I marched them back to where the army had been, across a corpse-strewn field where the kites and crows rose in flocks and the flies in clouds. Entrails skeined a ground slippery with fluids, wounds gaped like lips and eyes, pecked sightless, implored us still for help. Though we looked for it, I could not find Amund's body. He was our only casualty and we could not even find him.

We had won, as it turned out — or so Red Boots claimed, though it was doubtful. The mad charge of the Norse had dragged most of the scutatoi with it, for all their boasted discipline. Once they had stopped hacking down the Dailami, were puking and gasping, open-mouthed and on their knees, the enemy's ghulam horsemen in their fish-scale armour and lopsided maces had splintered them apart and ridden down the screamers who fled.

It was only when the Oven Wearers were released that Red Boots saved the day and claimed a victory -

but he quit the field and took the army back to Antioch all the same and we straggled to the Orontes, where the air was thick with grief and funeral smoke and wailing women.

Jarl Brand's men were grim and licking wounds, but at least they had managed to bring back both their dead and wounded. Skarpheddin's men had fled and those who had made it back now had to return to that field of scavenging birds, cursed by the women who were hunting for their men. A battle drawn is worse than one lost, for it promises that it all has to be done again the next day.

We arrived at our own wadmal-tent camp dusty, bloody and sick at heart, the worst affected puking froth and snot down their beards by this time. Some of the Hares thought they had found a perfect billet, which almost came as a welcome release. Finn, blowing on his skinned knuckles and bellowing as they ran off, eventually threw himself down, too exhausted even to start a fire. Botolf flung down the monk who was leashed to him and sat in sullen, weary silence.

There, within an hour of us squatting, heads hanging and souls cut by the keening grief and the clouds of insects and the sick despair, came Gizur with Odin's latest twist to our beard.

`The Goat Boy is gone and Radoslav with him,' he said. `That skald of Skarpheddin, Harek, came to tell us. The seidr women have them at some place called the Sumerian palace, north of the city.'