Blood Feud (3 page)

‘It’s the herdboy. Didn’t you kill it, then?’

‘Seems not. But that’s a matter easy to set right.’

‘You killed my dog!’ I yelled again.

‘It gives tongue like a wolf-cub, too.’

The grip shifted, a giant of a man loomed up in front of me, and the point of a dagger was tickling my throat. ‘So now we kill you too, and that will make all neat and ship-shape,’ he said gravely. The rest crowded round, laughing. I had ceased to struggle, and stood still, knowing – but as though I were standing aside and knowing it of somebody else – that in a few more breaths I should be dead.

But another man, who seemed to be the chief, struck the dagger aside. ‘Leave that.’

The giant turned on him, showing his teeth a little, but lowering his dagger-hand nonetheless. ‘Why? Is he a long lost brother of yours?’

‘Do not you be a fool, Aslak; what use is he to us dead? We can’t eat him as we can the cattle –’

‘There’s not a good mouthful on his bones anyway,’ someone guffawed, ‘and wolf meat’s too strong for my stomach.’

‘And alive, he’ll fetch his price in the Dublin Slave Market. We haven’t done so well, this trip, that we can afford to toss aside a bit of easy profit that falls into our hands.’

There was a general growl of agreement; and the giant with the dagger shrugged, half laughing, and thrust the blade back into his belt.

‘Tie him up and dump him against the rocks yonder, out
of the way.’ The man who seemed to be their chief jerked his thumb towards the sheltering outcrop.

So they bound my ankles together, and lashed my wrists behind me, with cords that somebody brought from the boat; and hauled me over to the rocks and flung me down there like a calf for branding; and went back to their own affairs.

Everything had begun to go far off and hazy; and I knew very little more, until suddenly – it must have been a good while later – the meat was cooked, and somebody was jabbing a sizzling lump of it against my mouth on the point of a dagger, shouting, ‘Eat! If we do not kill you, eat!’

The chief nodded, grinning from ear to ear, with a lump of fat hanging half out of his mouth. ‘It is you – your people that give the meat; now it is fair that you feast with the rest of us.’

And a third man struck in: ‘A good host should always set his guests at their ease by eating with them himself.’

‘And since no other one of your people seems coming to join the feast . . .’

‘I am thinking it’s not often you fill your belly full of the good red beef you herd for them.’

And that was true enough; and the lump of meat was still jabbing against my teeth. And I opened my mouth and ate.

Not because I was afraid they would kill me if I did not, but for a mingling of reasons that went deeper than that. I thought what did I owe to my mother’s kind? And what did it matter? What did anything matter? Old Brindle was dead.

So I ate the meat, and knew, even as I did so, that now I could never go back to the world that was only just behind me. Even if I were not, in all likelihood, going to be killed, even if I were not going to be sold in the Dublin slave market, I could not go back. I had broken the Tabu, the unwritten Law of the Spirit, that binds all herdsmen, eaten the stolen flesh of the cattle I herded; I had done the Forbidden Thing.
I threw most of it up again soon after, but that was merely the blow on my head. I had done the Forbidden Thing, and there could be no going back.

I ate, and threw up, and slept. And when I woke, still with a splitting head, it was morning, and the seas had gentled, and the men were running their ship down into the surf.

They stowed the uneaten meat below the thwarts, and myself along with it. They had slackened off my ankle ropes and rebound my hands in front of me. (Every cattleman knows that the better the condition of his steers when they come to market, the better price they will fetch.)

So, they pushed out into the shallows; and lying among the cargo bales and the meat, I looked up past the swinging backs of the rowers, and saw against the drifting sky, and the cliff tops sinking astern, the dark figure of the Ship-Chief standing braced at the steering oar. I heard his rhythmic shout – ‘
Lift
her!
Lift
her!’ – and felt for the first time the liveness of a ship beneath me, lifting and twisting and dipping into the long swell of the Western seas.

The red haze of my rage had left me, and I felt cold and sick, and empty of all things. I could not even grieve for old Brindle any more. It all seemed so long ago.

DUBLIN IS A
fine town. And through its streets the Danes and Northmen ruffle up and down like fighting-cocks, rubbing shoulders and picking quarrels with Saracens from Spain and merchants of Venice and the Frankish lands. It was the first and finest of the Norse settlements in Ireland, so I have heard, though when I was there it still had to pay tribute to King Malachy in his high Hall at Tara. But for the first few days, all I saw of the town was the open sheds down by the ship-strand, where the slaves were housed and the merchants who were interested in such goods came to buy.

Sometimes a ship’s crew with a full cargo of thralls to sell would handle the business themselves, but with only one or two, it was simpler to sell to one of the dealers, though of course the price was lower that way. So I was passed over to a middleman, who had a thrall-ring riveted on to my neck, and kept me in the back of the slave-shed for a few days, until the cut on my head had near enough finished healing. After that he brought me out front, and tethered me with a few others of my kind, on show to the passers-by.

I was still in the same state of cold emptiness, and everything and everyone around me seemed not quite real; and only one of my fellows comes to my mind with any clearness. And that, maybe, was only because he was the one tethered next to me. A huge man with a simple face, who told me that he came from Bristow town, and that his folk were poor, so that his father had had to sell either him or the cow. He seemed quite resigned, and sat with his arms across his knees, staring out at the shipping along the keel strand, and the grey waters of the bay.

Soon after noon, a trader came along the slave-sheds, picking
out this one and that, to complete a cargo that he was shipping up to Orkney for the Jarl’s private purchase. We all knew that while he was yet afar off, for he had a loud voice, and there was always a stillness along the slave-sheds when a possible buyer came past. He picked out the Bristow man, and there was the usual haggling over the price.

‘He’s not much more than a mazelin. I could get a man with all his wits for that.’

‘Look at his shoulders! That man could pull a plough as well as any ox, and does an ox need wits, so long as he has a man behind him with a whip?’

But the amount was agreed at last, and the man led away by a rope slipped through his thrall-ring. He looked back once, but the merchant’s man jerked the rope, and they disappeared into the crowd.

I never knew his name, and I never saw him again.

My own turn came next day.

I had squatted there so long, while buyers came and went along the open space before the slave-sheds, that I had passed into a kind of dream of passing feet – nothing else, just the feet – and when another knot of them came by, mostly in some kind of deerskin boots or raw-hide shoes and leggings, I did not bother to look up. Not until they ambled to a halt, and the shadows of their owners, long in the evening sunlight, fell across me.

‘What about this one?’ said a voice.

I looked up then; and saw the reason for a certain jinking and chiming of metal that had come with them. The men who stood there glancing me over, were of the true Viking Kind that I had heard of in stories and been told to pray God I might never see in life. Men with grey ring-mail strengthening their leather byrnies, iron-bound war-caps, long straight swords. One had a silver arm-ring, one had studs of coral in the clasp of his belt, one wore a rough wolfskin cloak.

‘I still don’t see why we want a thrall, anyway,’ said the one with the arm-ring.

Another laughed. A man with a fierce narrow face and a sprig of late bell-heather thrust into the neck-buckle of his byrnie. ‘Because I am aweary of cleaning my own gear.’

‘And what do we do with him when the time comes for heading homeward in the spring?’

‘Sell him off again.’

The merchant had appeared from somewhere, and his man kicked me to my feet. ‘Up, you.’

I doubt if either of them had much hope of a sale; the Northmen had the look of men just passing an idle hour. But there was always the chance, and you don’t make a fortune by letting even the slimmest chances go whistling down the wind.

The man with the arm-ring shrugged. ‘How much do you want for him?’

‘Twelve gold pieces.’

‘You’re jesting, of course; we could buy a good pony for that.’

The dealer hunched his shoulders to his ears. ‘Then go you and buy a pony. I thought it was a thrall your honours wanted.’

‘Seven gold pieces,’ said another of the Northmen, leaning against the corner-post.

‘Now it is you who jest.’

‘Na na, no jest. But now that I look at the dunt in his head . . .’ He glanced round at the rest. ‘Let’s be getting on. It’s never worth while buying damaged goods.’

‘What!’ protested the dealer. ‘That little scathe he got when he was taken? Why, in a month, you’ll not be able to run your thumbnail along the scar.’

‘Tell that to the sea-mews.’

‘Eight gold pieces,’ said the man in the wolfskin, suddenly.

It was the first time he had spoken, and something in his voice, a level voice but very alive and with a hint of laughter, reached me through the daze in which I was still living, so that I looked round quickly, and saw him, real among all the rest who were only shadows. A man not more than two or three years older than myself, somewhat short for a Northman, with his head held on a strong neck above shoulders that were too broad for his height; eyes as grey as a sword blade, thick russet brows that almost met above his nose, a mouth that matched his voice – wide and straight, with laughter quirking at the corners.

I suppose it was not a particularly memorable face, but it was the first to seem real to me in a long while; and I have remembered it well enough for more than half a lifetime.

‘Don’t be a fool, Thormod,’ said he of the arm-ring. ‘We don’t need a thrall. If we want to waste all that gold, there are more interesting ways of doing it.’

Nobody paid any heed to him.

‘I want a thrall,’ said the man Thormod. Our eyes met and held.

‘Ten,’ said the dealer. ‘I shall lose by it, but it’s getting late in the season, and I’d not grieve to have him off my hands. Ten gold pieces, and that’s my last word.’

‘Nine,’ said Thormod.

The man leaning against the corner-post pushed off impatiently. ‘Leave it, Thormod, we’ve wasted enough time here.’

‘I have not,’ said Thormod.

‘Nine then, and may your soul rot!’ Somehow it had ceased to have to do with the rest of the band, and become a matter between the dealer and the man in the wolfskin cloak. Thormod had pulled a slim leather pouch from the breast of his byrnie, and was shaking it out into the palm of the dealer’s
hand. Watching, I saw a shower of silver and bronze, and the glint of gold. But not enough gold. Surely not nearly enough gold . . .

But Thormod laughed, and turned to the man with the flower in his neck-buckle. ‘Haki, how much have you in your pouch?’

‘Three gold pieces,’ said Haki. ‘I do not have to look; I know it all too well.’

‘Lend me two of them, and I’ll lend you my shield-thrall to clean your gear.’

‘See that you do, then.’ Haki felt inside his own byrnie, produced the two gold pieces, and tossed them across to Thormod, who caught them and tossed them up and caught them again.

‘You’re a shipmate worth the name! We’re still short – what about you, Eric? Tostig? No? Stinking fish, the lot of you!’

‘Three gold pieces short,’ agreed the dealer. ‘And I’ve not all evening to waste, my young Lordlings, if you have.’

I felt coldly sick. If the man in the wolfskin cloak left me here . . . I think I made some kind of panic movement, and again his eyes met mine.

‘Did I deny it? Wait, and you shall have the rest.’

One-handed, still holding the gold in the other, he freed the heavy silver brooch at the shoulder of his cloak, swung the heavy wolfskin free, and dropped it at the dealer’s feet. ‘There. It’s a good cloak, almost new, and the brooch alone must be worth upward of a gold piece.’ And he tossed the money down on top of it.

‘And what,’ demanded the man he had called Tostig, ‘will you do this winter, when the wind blows down off the mountains?’

‘Shiver,’ said Thormod cheerfully.

And so, as though half in jest, after a little more haggling
I was bought for six gold pieces and a wolfskin cloak; and became shield-thrall to Thormod Sitricson of the Dublin Garrison.

THE VIKING GARRISON
of Dublin in those days – and like enough it’s the same today – were a motley and ever-changing pack. Some were men who had settled; who had made their home there, with their women and children in the town. But others were adventurers; men who had made their own land too hot for comfort; younger sons following wherever their swords led them. Sometimes a whole ship’s crew, taking service for a few months or a few years, their ships waiting in the boat-sheds until the next spring, or the spring after, should wake the old Viking fever in them once again.

They had their living quarters in the huddle of turf bothies behind the old King’s Palace, they and their ponies and their hounds, the thralls and on-hangers and camp women that they had gathered to them. It was like a kind of rough and ready town-within-a-town, with here and there a woman spinning in a doorway, and here and there a hound scratching for fleas; a wolfskin hung up to dry on a stand of crossed spears; and pigs and gulls alike scavenging among the garbage heaps.

Thormod and Haki and Tostig and Eric, all members of the same ship’s crew, shared one of the turf-rooted sleeping bothies between them. And my sleeping-place – tethered like a hound for the first few nights – was on a rug across the door-hole. I was Thormod’s shield-thrall, but Thormod was generous with his property, and so I was at the beck and call of all the rest as well. I did not greatly care. For a slave, lacking freedom in any case, it makes little difference whether he cleans armour and fetches beer for one man or four. Yet the knowledge that of the four, it was Thormod I belonged to, had a certain meaning for me, nonetheless.