The Wolf Sea

What nagged me more was where the second boatload was – and if the one we had seen had had Starkad in it. For days I wondered where either had gone and whether we had passed them.

As always, Odin showed the truth, with a finger-nail trace of smoke against the sky.

The smoking boat was a Greek knarr, listing and down at the stern. It had been on fire, but the waves had soaked out the flames, leaving a smouldering hulk. Two bodies rolled and bobbed among the ash and spars nearby, reluctant to leave even in death.

Up in our bow, Arnor used his harpoon to gaff one of the bodies and drag it closer. He was an Icelander and everyone had mocked at him for seeking out a whaling harpoon instead of a spear – but Arnor knew the weapon and it had certainly been of use now.

The bodies were gashed and torn, bled white so that the wounds were now pale, lipless mouths. They had been stripped of everything and made a sorry sight on the deck of the Volchok, leaking into the bilges.

‘Stabbed and cut,’ remarked Brother John, examining them. ‘That’s an arrow wound, for sure, but they recovered it. Barbed, too – look where it hooked out heart-meat when it was pulled.’

‘I know this one,’ said Finn suddenly.

‘Which one?’ I asked.

‘That one with the heart-wound and the squint. He was in the Dolphin guarding Starkad’s back. I remember thinking that he was an ugly troll and that if I had the chance I would knock his eyes straight for him.’

Anything can happen on the whale road…

I had that proved as the knarr gurgled and sank. Brother John fell to his knees and offered up prayers to his god and the Christ, which seemed a little harsh to me, for he was congratulating this Jesus on having led these men to this doom rather than us. I had not thought the Christ, white-livered godlet of peace, was so harsh – but I had much to learn; as Finn said, even as he followed me, the horn-moss was barely rubbed off me.

Of course, the rest of us joined in piously and those, like me, who thought no harm in getting all the help we could offered silent thanks to Odin, whose hand was in this for sure.

Now we knew.

We sat and worked out what had happened as the remains of the knarr hissed away to nothing, leaving only the stink of wet char. A ship, perhaps more than one, had come on it and there had been a fight, though Finn reckoned the attackers had sat back and shot arrows until the defenders had given in.

It seemed to him that the others had been taken, probably as slaves, because there were only two bodies, but the defenders had given in when the ship had been fired. This showed that the attackers were skilled, not just for having fire aboard for arrows, but because they would have to have worked swiftly to secure cargo and prisoners in little time before the ship burned and sank.

‘It is a blade path we are on and no mistake,’ Sighvat offered mournfully, which got him some hard looks; a blade path was what steersmen call a hard pull into a gale, where the only progress was by the oarblade.

It also meant the road walked by those who had died as oathbreakers, a trail studded with sharp edges, so that those who cared enough howed such wyrd-doomed up with thick-soled ox-hide shoes, to help them walk their way to Hel’s hall.

While they were shaking their heads and making warding signs, I considered matters. It seemed to me that these Arabs would not go far from home, though that was the arrogance of being Norse and believing that only we dared the far seas. I learned later that the Arabs are good seamen – but I had the right of here, for these Arabs were bandits with a boat, no more.

Radoslav fished out a square of fine sealskin from his purse and unfolded it to reveal another of walrus hide; we all peered curiously, mainly because it was clear he did not like revealing it. Gizur growled when he saw it, for it was a fair chart that he could have used.

‘Well, a sailor’s chart is a precious thing,’ Radoslav argued, scowling, ‘and not to be handed out lightly.’

Gizur hawked and spat meaningfully, then scowled at the lines and marks on the walrus hide. Like most of us, he only half trusted maps for how, as I had been told by better men, can you mark down with little scratches and pictures where the waves change with the mood of Ran? Experience had already taught me that maps were more fancy than fact – like all of the monk-made ones, this had Jorsalir at the centre and a guddle everywhere else – and a man at sea was better off using the knowledge of those who had sailed before, or trusting to the gods when he was on the whale road.

Still, using this one, we worked out that an island called Patmos was not so far from us, at which Brother John brightened considerably.

‘St John the Evangelist was there,’ he informed us. ‘He was one of the twelve disciples and was exiled to Patmos by the Romans for preaching the word of God.’

‘Those Romans are stupid,’ growled Finn. ‘They should have slit his throat. Instead, they stick him on an island with a bunch of goat-humping sea-raiders.’

Brother John hesitated, then decided against throwing light on Finn’s hazy grasp of the Christ sagas. Instead, he told us all about this saint and his revelations.

‘What revelations?’ demanded Short Eldgrim.

‘The Revelations,’ answered Brother John. ‘A holy gospel.’

We knew what a gospel was – a sort of saga tale for Christ-men – and someone asked the obvious question.

‘It concerns the end of the world,’ Brother John answered him.

‘Ah, Ragna Rok,’ Finn said dismissively, ‘but that’s no revelation to anyone.’

Brother John was set to argue the point, but I gripped his shoulder and stopped him. ‘Is there anything you know about this island that is of any use?’

He blinked. ‘There’s a town, Skala. A harbour. A church. The cave where the saint lived…’

‘A nice little pirate haven,’ Short Eldgrim said. ‘Ah well, no ship-luck for Starkad, then.’

‘I trust we are not going after them,’ demanded Radoslav.

That is exactly what I planned to do.

Radoslav shrugged and rubbed one hand across his shaved scalp. ‘I was thinking on it,’ he went on, ‘and it came to me that we do not know how many camel-eating Arabs there are, or that Starkad is there, or this wonderful sword.’

‘I don’t care to know how many goat-botherers there are,’ growled Finn. ‘I just need to know where they are – and, if Starkad is there, the rune-serpent sword is there.’

Gizur grunted and hemmed, a sure sign he did not agree. ‘There are a deal too many goat-humpers being talked of for my comfort.’

Sighvat nodded soberly, stroking the glossy head of one of his ravens and spoke, quiet and thoughtful and smack on the mark. ‘Well, what if Starkad is there? And our sword?’

Our sword, I noted. There was silence, save for Radoslav, who rubbed his head in a fury of frustration. ‘What is so special about this sword?’ he demanded. ‘Apart from cutting anvils. Why is it called Rune Serpent?’

‘What do we do with Starkad and his men if we free them?’ demanded Gizur, ignoring him. ‘The Volchok is too small for all of us.’

‘We could leave Starkad and his men on the island once the goat-humpers have been beaten,’ Brother John said firmly. ‘Alive.’

Finn grunted, which made Brother John frown, but none of us voiced what the rest of us knew; no one could be left alive to follow us once we had the runesword back.

Still, there were heads shaking over it, but I had seen another possibility.

‘What were Starkad’s men wearing when they stood at his back in the Dolphin, Horsehead?’ I asked and Finn frowned, thinking.

‘Well, I saw one had a good cloak and a silver pin that I liked. And there was a bulge under the other one’s armpit that spoke of a fat purse…’

I sighed, for Finn’s eyes saw only what he fancied. ‘A byrnie?’ I prompted and the frown lifted when the idea dawned on him. He nodded, creasing his face in a grin. They had come helmed and armoured.

‘Coats of rings. And no doubt good swords and helms and shields,’ I pointed out. ‘Even on a scabby Greek knarr Starkad’s men would go well equipped. And even if he is not there, that loot would be worth the risk.’

Brother John clasped his hands together and looked piously at the sky. ‘Et vanum stolidae proditionis opus,’ he intoned.

Vain is the work of senseless treachery – and Sighvat nodded as if he understood it and released the raven in the direction we knew Patmos lay. Screeching raucously, the bird wheeled off over the white-caps and Sighvat offered his own translation of Brother John’s Latin.

‘Shame to leave all that battle-gear to men who treat goats so badly,’ he said.

The raven did not come back.

THREE

From the brow of the ridge we could look down on the remains of Skala, a small town where lanterns bobbed in a night wind that sighed over the barren scrub and rocks. A huge fire burned in what appeared to be the central square, flattening now and then in the breeze, and I counted a good dozen round it, laughing, talking, eating from the one dish. All the good citizens of the town had long since fled to the wilderness, or been sold to slavery.

These raiders were not so much different from us, I saw. They’d had a good day, gained plunder and were enjoying the fact so much it never crossed their minds that anyone would be here. It was something I remembered after and always set men on watch.

I also remember wondering if this was how it had been with Einar, always noting little things, always having to deep-think until your head hurt, always having the others there, at one and the same time a comfort and a curse.

We had come up to it in a fever of constant watches, tacking, gybing and working the sail furiously against a hissing wind, mirr-sodden and fretful, which swung this way and that. We had to lower the sail for a while and rock there, licking dry lips and squinting at the faded horizon for the first sight of a sail that would be pirates, for sure.

Then the wind came right, smack on the starboard quarter, and we hauled up the sail again, which it was my turn to do. It is no easy task and was a mark of how strong I had become that Gizur left it to me and Short Eldgrim – me to haul, he to tail the line, making it fast round a pin.

I was so lost in the act I didn’t notice anything, for it was not a simple pulling, more of a falling to the deck with your whole bodyweight cranking the rakki – the yoke that held the sail – up the mast to where it should be.

The line slipped, as it always does, and made a fresh welt on my hand – all of the crew had cuts and welts, slow to heal in the constant damp, filled with pus and stinging. Except me. Mine healed quickly and left no scars, which had been a hackle-raising thing for me, convinced as I was that the rune-serpent sword was the cause.

Yet it had gone and that seemed to make no difference; I healed just as well. I was cheered by that and was starting to think that perhaps I should believe what Finn and Kvasir said, that I was just young, healthy and Odin-lucky.

I was examining the fresh welt when Kvasir yelled out: ‘Land ahead.’

We all craned to see. Sure enough, there it was, a sliver of dark against the damp pewter sky. Gizur looked at me questioningly and I looked at the sky in reply. We had, perhaps, four hours of good daylight and would be on the land in one. I signalled to him and we slipped the sail up a knot, so that the Volchok surged a little harder.

‘What do you think, Trader?’ asked Sighvat.

‘Your Odin pet was a strong flier,’ I told him, then turned to the rest of the crew who were off-watch and told them to break out weapons and shields. Sighvat crooned softly to one of the two birds he had left and stroked its glossy black head. It looked at me with a cold, hard eye, showing me the black cave of its mouth in an ugly hiss.

Men checked straps and edges, faces like stones. Twelve of us, all that was left of the Oathsworn here, which was just enough to crowd the knarr and not enough for a shieldwall. I wondered how many Arab sea-raiders there were and must have said it aloud.

‘Pirates,’ growled Radoslav and spat over the side. ‘Nikephoras Phokas drove the burnous-wearing shits out of Crete about five years ago, but the survivors took to the other islands and are now like ticks on an old bitch. Sooner or later, the Great City will have to do something, for attacks on merchants are becoming too frequent.’

‘They might scare Greeks,’ growled Finn, ‘but they haven’t met us yet. Now we are raiders of the sea, not just some goat-worriers in a boat.’

Radoslav nodded thoughtfully. ‘Those goat-worriers forced the Basileus to use hundreds of ships and Greek Fire to stamp them out of Crete. Took him a year.’

Finn grinned and wiped his mouth. ‘There’s too much Slav in you and not enough good Norse blood. Eh, Spittle?’

Kvasir growled something which no one heard clearly, but Finn beamed. ‘The Basileus should have used us,’ he boasted, slapping his chest. ‘Our steel and Orm’s thinking.’

My thinking was simple enough, arrived at after a Thing held on board as we reached the island, saw the lights and moved round to the other side of it, where we land-fastened the Volchok.

No one was left aboard, for we needed every man, but I had explained a plan to them that they thought cunning enough to agree on. Everyone was eager as hunting dogs for this, sure that we had Starkad cornered and that the secret of Atil’s silver howe would be back in our grasp before long.

Save me. I knew Starkad was not here. No pack of Arab dogs would have had such an easy time of it if he had been aboard the knarr. They were his men, right enough – but where he was remained a mystery, though I was sure he was heading in the right direction in another fat knarr. He could even be lurking somewhere close, out on the black, moonglittered sea.

Short Eldgrim and Arnor and two others circled round to the left, carrying the dead men we had fished out of that sea. Brother John had insisted on this, to give them a decent burial rather than leave them to Ran, wife of Aegir the sea god and mother to the drowned. I had agreed, but not because of his Christ sensibilities; I had thought of a better task for them.

The men came back, all save Arnor. Short Eldgrim was still chuckling.

‘All is ready,’ he grunted. ‘When we see the camel-humpers move, Trader, we should rush them.’

The low wailing started almost as soon as he had finished speaking. Heads came up; mouths stopped chewing.

It was a good howl, one of Arnor’s finest: he was noted for being the very man you needed in a northern fog up a Hordaland fjord, with a voice to bounce off cliffs. I settled my shield and hefted my axe, good weapons and cheap enough for us all to afford from my vanishing store of silver. I checked a strap and tried not to let the dry-spear in my throat choke me; no matter how often I did this, my guts turned to water, yet everything else dried up and shrank.

A man stood up, shouted and two more gathered up weapons – swords curved like a half-moon and short bows like those of the steppe tribes, only smaller – and moved off. I marked the shouter, with his black, flowing robes and curling locks, as the leader.

There was a pause. Another wolf-howl wail split the night.

‘Get ready,’ I said.

The men came running back, shouting and waving. I knew what they had found: the naked bodies of the two they had left far behind in the water, dead, were now at the edge of town, seemingly wailing. I learned later that Short Eldgrim had come upon two tethered donkeys and had added a touch of his own, by strapping the men to their backs using tunic belts. Now the donkeys were braying, not at all happy with their loads, and trailing the fleeing men down the street, hoping to be unloaded of the stinking, leaking burdens.

The effect was better than I could have hoped. I had thought only to create some unease and confusion, but the sight of dead men, seemingly charging them on horseback, set all the Arabs shouting and screaming.

At which point I rose up and broke into a dead run towards the fire, yelling.

‘Fram! Fram! Odinsmenn, Kristmenn!’ bawled Brother John, and the whole pack of us, lumbering like bulls, roaring into the face of our fear, hurtled in a stumbling run down the slope, through the huddle of ramshackle houses and into the confusion of those milling round the fire.

Radoslav, who had crashed his way into the lead, suddenly leaped in the air and it was only when my knees hit something that pitched me face-first to the ground that I realised he had hurdled a rickety fence I hadn’t spotted.

I sprawled, skidding along on the shield and wrenching that arm. Cursing, my knees burning, I scrambled up and saw Finn and Short Eldgrim, axe and spear together, stab and cut their way into the pack, with the others howling in behind.

Kol Fish-hook took a rushing Arab on his shield and casually shouldered him sideways into the spear-path of his oarmate, Bergthor, whose point caught the Arab under the breastbone. Kol then slammed another one into the fire and his robes caught, so that he stumbled around, shrieking and flailing, spraying flames and panic.

The Arabs broke and scattered, Black Robe shouting at them. A few heard him and followed, back across the square to the white-painted church, a solid, domed affair that glowed pink in the firelight.

About six of them got in and thundered the wooden double doors shut before anyone could stop them and I cursed, for everyone was too busy killing and looting the others to bother with that.

I limped into the firelight, saw that the knees of my breeks were tattered and bloodstained. Sighvat came up, saw me looking and peered closely.

‘Wounded, Trader?’ he asked and grinned as I scowled back. Some jarl, looking at his skinned knees like some bare-legged, snot-nosed toddler.

‘We have to get them out of there,’ I said, pointing to the church.

He considered it, seeing the stout timbers and the studded nail-heads, then said: ‘It will burn, I am thinking.’

‘It will also burn everything inside it, including what we want,’ I replied. ‘I will be pleased to find that all the battle-gear and plunder is somewhere else – but that’s where I would put it.’

‘Just so,’ mused Sighvat, peeling off his leather helm and scrubbing his head. Screams and groans came from the darkness beyond the fire.

‘You should know, Orm,’ said Brother John, panting up like an overworked sheepdog, ‘that we need not worry about what to do with Starkad’s men.’

He jerked his head at a building behind him, a place with solid walls and one door, which looked to have once been the hov of a leather-worker, judging by the litter around it.

Inside, all of Starkad’s men were naked and dead, eleven fish-belly white corpses buzzing with flies and dark with blood, which had soaked everywhere.

‘They brought them all this way just to kill them?’ muttered Sighvat, bewildered.

‘No, indeed,’ Brother John pointed out. ‘They gelded them to be sold as slaves, but they were not clever about it. Two died because the blood poured out and would not stop and, once the thing was done, the men were untied – I think to help themselves and the others with the wounds. The others, it seems, died of strangling and this one here has had his brains bashed out.’

He straightened, wiping his hands on his tunic. ‘If I was asked,’ he said grimly, ‘I would say the ones who survived gelding strangled each other with the thongs that had once bound them and the last one ran at the wall until his head broke.’

‘Is Starkad there?’ demanded Radoslav and the silence gave him as good an answer as he would get. We stared, the sick, iron smell of blood and the drone of flies filling the space as we considered the horror of it.

Doomed, they had chosen a death that did not lead to Valholl and, because they had no weapons in their hands, led straight to Helheim, especially for the last man, who had slain himself. No man who was not whole could cross Bifrost to be Einherjar in the hall of the gods, waiting for Ragnarok. That was something I knew to my cost, for I had already lost fingers off my own hand and it was my wyrd that they were lost for ever and that I would never see the rainbow bridge.

I made a warding sign against the possibility of a fetch lurking in the fetid dark here, for I had had experience of such a thing before, with Hild in Attila’s grave-mound. Then I added the sign of the cross, but Brother John was too busy offering prayers, kneeling without a thought in the gory slush of the floor.

I wondered if the dead men were followers of Christ or Odin, for it seemed the Christ-god had a more forgiving nature and would accept them into his hov whether they had balls or no. Or fingers. Then I shook the thought away; Valaskjalf, Odin’s own hall, was open to me and that was enough. There were many halls in Asgard who would welcome the hero-dead, whole or no.

Finn and the others arrived, speckled and slathered with blood, to be told of the tragedy. That sealed the fate of the ones in the church, for even if they had been enemies, Starkad’s men were good Northmen and should not have been handled so badly.

‘There is too much of this ball-cutting for my liking,’ muttered Kol. ‘Like that greasy thrall of the Greek merchant – what was his name?’

‘Niketas,’ growled Kvasir and spat.

‘He was a spadone,’ answered Brother John. ‘The kindest treated.’

‘Eh? What’s kind about gelding?’ demanded Finn. ‘Fine for horses, but men? We do it to shame them.’

‘It is done sometimes to men for the same reason it is done to horses,’ Sighvat pointed out, ‘but I did not know there were different names for it.’

‘Different types,’ corrected Brother John. ‘A spadone has been gelded – the testicles removed neatly with a sharp blade.’ He paused, gave a little gesture and a sschikk then grinned as Finn and others shifted uncomfortably, drawing their knees tighter together.

‘They do that even to some high-borns, when they are babes,’ he went on as we gawped with disbelief. ‘Only whole men may become the Basileus, and some of these princes get it done so they can then hold high office and yet be no threat.’

‘There are also thlassiae, ones whose testicles have simply been crushed between stones.’ He slapped his hands together so that men jumped and Finn groaned.

‘And the third kind?’ I asked, curious now.

Brother John shrugged and frowned, waving a hand at the clotted corpses. ‘You do not get these in Miklagard much these days but further east, where men are permitted many wives and concubines and the women are kept apart in a place of their own. They have slaves attend them and, if they are male, they have to be…made harmless.’

‘Ah…so they can’t hump the big bull’s heifers,’ chortled Finn with considerable insight.

‘How?’ I persisted.

‘They remove everything, leave you a straw to piss through,’ answered Brother John, to be greeted with a chorus of disbelief. ‘The Greek-Romans of Miklagard call them castrati.’

There was silence where gorged flies buzzed.

‘This is what happened here?’ I asked.

Brother John nodded sombrely. ‘Yes. It is a Mussulman thing.’

Men grunted, as if dug in the ribs, for Northmen were no strangers to cutting balls, though it was rare – so rare, I had not seen it myself. Along with cutting a man on the buttocks, it was a klammhog, a shame-stroke that told everyone how unmanned this enemy had been and was done when we considered the defeated warrior’s fighting had been cowardly.

There was silence while we chewed over this; then Finn spat on his hands and took up a brace of hand axes and led us all back to the door. Even as the chips flew like snow, it was clear it was too stout for even his strength and fierce anger.