Fenrir (61 page)

‘Say who you are, stranger,’ said the
druzhina
. More men came skating in. ‘Say who you are!’ The guard repeated his command.

The figure breathed in and stumbled against the side of the boat.

‘Who are you? I ask again,’ Helgi said.

The figure looked up, gasping and shivering, and stammered, ‘I am Lady Aelis, sister of Eudes of Paris. You are Helgi, prince of the Rus, and you are my salvation. I am travelling with an invalid monk who needs your help.’

Helgi could see that the cold had her in its grip. Panic rose up in him as he pointed the way back to the town and shouted, ‘Get her to my hall! Get her there! This lady must not die! She must not die!’

The Danes were intent on going home, not east for the convenience of Leshii, Hugin and Ofaeti. Still, the idea of a port appealed to Leshii – a place where there might be rest, good food, a bed, girls and, who knew, even a living. He had enough money now in the five looted swords he’d been able to take with him on the mule to set up wherever he liked, if he could buy permission from the lord of the town and other merchants. And if he could keep them from the prying eyes of the Vikings on the ship. He’d wrapped them in one of the Frankish cloaks he’d taken and tied cut staves into the bundle to make it look like a camping roll. He knew the disguise wouldn’t stand much scrutiny but, so far, the sailors had kept their manners.

Leshii had intended to jump ship at Kaupanangan, but the Danes were heading back to Haithabu. All well and good. A hundred years before, the king there had kidnapped merchants from the east. His successor was bound to welcome one offering his services to the throne.

The Raven and Ofaeti had made the best of it. Winter was coming and they’d have a better chance of getting a boat at Haithabu than waiting on a freezing shore, they told the merchant, even if it meant going the wrong way for a while. Hugin hadn’t liked it but he had no choice. He was no sailor and even going via Haithabu would get him to Ladoga quicker than walking.

They were five days into their journey, the going slow as they kept having to stop at coves or inlets to repair the steering oar. Ofaeti worked well with the little crafting axe Skakki had on his ship. Eventually he secured enough good wood – by dismantling a hut on a beach – to make the repair stick.

Ofaeti watched Skakki eyeing him and felt his sword hand flex. The slaver had taken no one he knew well but some he knew enough. Kinsmen. When he chopped at the wood with the axe, he imagined it was Skakki’s head. Skakki, however, was not a stupid man. He knew there were few Danes who matched his description and saw the iron in Ofaeti’s eyes, no matter how much he tried to hide it.

‘We are a day from Haithabu,’ said Skakki as he sat beside Leshii. Ofaeti was tending to the sail, cajoling the men to better effort, for a moment consumed by the task of sailing. The Raven was tending an injured man, cleaning his wounds of pus.

‘It will be good to wash the salt from my clothes,’ said Leshii.

‘And to be in a trading town.’

‘I have nothing to trade, but if I can be of service to you, mention it and the task is done,’ said Leshii. He didn’t like this man, with the scar at the corner of his mouth that gave the impression of a lopsided smile.

‘Do you think you can get us a good price for the slaves?’

‘I was born a long time ago, chieftain, and I have traded since I was a boy. I can buy at half the price and sell at double compared to any merchant you have ever met.’

Skakki looked out to sea. ‘I heard you say you are no longer welcome in Aldeigjuborg.’

‘I’m only welcome if I can bring a gift I do not have.’

‘What gift?’

‘A woman.’

Skakki nodded. ‘My trade is slaves,’ he said, ‘though I am a fighter not a bargainer. I lose half I have won in battle in the marketplace.’

‘You are suggesting we work together? I am no fighting man.’

‘I see that,’ said Skakki, ‘but you can win out in a deal all right, I think. You have the look about you.’

‘That I can do.’

‘So I will test you,’ he said. ‘The men you travel with are not kin to you?’

‘I never saw them before the spring.’

‘Good. I intend to take them as slaves. The healer will sell for a great price and the Horda man will sell to the prince himself, I think. He is too unruly for a farmer to keep.’

‘It is late in the season,’ said Leshii. ‘You will not get a good price.’

‘I will get a better one with you on my side.’

‘The merchants there will not have me.’

‘On my word, they will accept you. I’ve brought them riches in slaves and plunder. They will accept you all right.’

Leshii continued his objections, as much to hear them himself as to convince the Viking. ‘And if there are Horda men in this port, what then? There will be a mighty fight if you bump into one of their ships. Those men are not slow to draw their swords.’

‘The Horda are all in Britannia,’ Skakki said, ‘and the king of the west does not welcome them to his shores. I am a reckless man but not that reckless.’

‘Then you have a deal. I warn you, neither is a weakling nor a coward. The fat one is a mighty warrior and the thin one mightier. They have killed many, many men and employed powerful sorceries.’

‘Good,’ said Skakki. ‘It will win me more renown to have them as my captives. But I counsel
you
, if you attempt to warn them I will cut your throat.’

Leshii blanched. ‘When do you intend to act?’

‘Tomorrow.’

Leshii breathed out. At least he had time to think about what he would do. He went over to the mule and threw some of its shit over the side. The animal was a good lesson to him, he thought. It took what life threw at it and never complained. It just sat chewing on the hay they had taken from a deserted farm on the shore, looked out to sea and shat. Leshii almost laughed. It was like a motto for him:. ‘Look out to sea and shit.’ A good maxim by which to live your life – look forward but don’t forget to take care of the practicalities. What was his choice here? Be a hero or a pragmatist?

‘Friend!’ Skakki had his arm around Ofaeti, or as far around him as he could get it.

‘I am not your friend,’ said Ofaeti, trying to control his temper. ‘We are companions. Many years must pass, and you must give proof of brave deeds before I call you friend. I have only three I call friend in this world. That man by the prow, who though he is quiet at the fire is loud in battle, has proved himself to me. That merchant there, who lives in fear but acts bravely, and so is braver than many who were born bold, who is willing to crawl into an enemy nest at night to secure me a boat, who shares his food without question and, though he is old, complains but little.’

‘And your third friend?’

‘The sword at my side,’ said Ofaeti and patted the sword.

As his hand went back to the tiller, Skakki had a fit of coughing and tapped his hand three times on the rail of the boat. Then he reached forward in a quick movement, drew Ofaeti’s sword from his belt and took a swift step backwards.

The coughing had been a signal. As Skakki grabbed the sword six men fell upon the Raven, but Hugin wasn’t so easily surprised. Though he too had his sword taken, he was quick, nimble and vigilant. He was on his feet and had thrown one man down before the others had realised he had moved. However, he was surrounded, the bulk of the men concentrating on him.

Skakki hadn’t trusted Leshii either. A young Viking with a wispy beard and no front teeth drew a knife on him and smiled, an expression that made him look more fierce than if he’d scowled.
Tomorrow
. Of course Skakki wasn’t going to risk Leshii telling Ofaeti and Hugin what he planned. In fact he had approached the merchant before he moved against them to put doubt into his mind, to remove him from the fight and to ensure he didn’t endanger himself on impulse.

Ofaeti stepped towards Skakki, his hands out wide.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I have lived long enough and I think you have too. Let us go to visit Ran, that lady of the waves, together. Let us see where she dwells on the ocean floor.’

‘You will fight for the Danish king as part of his warrior elite.’

‘Right now I am busy fighting for myself,’ said Ofaeti, ‘and I doubt the high lord of Haithabu is so soft as to want a man who has been so easily bested in battle by one as meek and girlish as you. Come, hit at me, or do you only face Horda women and children, keeping away as you do when their men are home from the sea?’

‘I have killed plenty of your kinsmen,’ said Skakki.

‘Then make it one more. You are many. Can you be so womanly as to give way to one unarmed man?’

‘We would rather not damage the goods,’ said Skakki.

‘My grandfather was a berserker, a man who raged his way across the world with spear and sword, never taking a backward step. My father was a milder man, yet still the wolves grew fat wherever his ship landed. I am Thiörek, son of Thetmar, son of Thetleif, and I will not yield to you. I have seen women bolder with sewing needles than you with your swords and spears.’ He took his knife from his belt and threw it to the floor.

‘Come, I have no weapon!’ He was screaming at his enemies, banging at his chest.

Leshii marvelled at the big berserker’s courage. These northerners had something inside them, values and ideals that shaped and ordered their lives and made them so much more than he was.
What would it be like to have a purpose beyond life, beyond pleasure, beyond having enough money for dancing girls and a fine house, to see further than an abacus, profit and loss?
Happiness was all very well but it passed in a moment. Always something came to take it away – bandit attack, a blight or famine in the east or, more mundanely, the little irritations of life: a bad stomach, an argument with a friend, a bad buy in a mule or a slave. He understood the Norsemen now. Their hunger for fame was not just a matter of pride; it was a spur to great things – to have lived magnificently and to be remembered for it. They wanted to do something that would endure. To them that was more important than happiness, than comfort, than anything at all.

Few people had ever really done anything for Leshii. This Norseman had protected him. The sorcerer too had helped him, offered to reward him out of all proportion to the service he required. Leshii knew that either would only need a moment’s distraction to gain the upper hand in a fight, so he reached inside his kaftan, took off the necklace, held it up and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Leave them be, or I will drop this over the side. It belonged to a princess of Serkland. It broke her heart when she lost it, and she died of sadness.’

Skakki turned.

‘I have rarely seen such a piece,’ he said, ‘but I think rather that you will give it than bargain for it.’

‘You will have to kill me first.’

‘Then I will. Such a necklace will beat the profit of ten years of trading. I can find another little merchant in that time, should I live so long.’

The merchant held the necklace over the side of the boat. ‘If you do not release us you will never have this.’

‘You can’t sit with your hand over the side all the way to Haithabu. Are you offering that for your lives?’

Leshii suddenly saw the hopelessness of the situation. The Raven had been forced to a sitting position, eight men around him, one choking him, two on each arm and three sitting on his legs. He was doomed and Ofaeti was unarmed. Leshii could try to cut a deal, bargain for his life, accept the loss of the necklace and start again at Haithabu. But what was the point? Better to die in a beautiful moment than the slow degradation of old age. His hip felt bad, his feet were weary. His time was up.

‘I’m saying that you will kill me anyway, for I will never give it to you. Ofaeti, give me one of your gods.’

‘Loki is their god,’ said the slave with the red hair.

‘Not him,’ said Ofaeti, ‘he is a god of strife.’

‘It seems to me you people love strife. And as for you, Skakki, I wish strife on you. For Loki then,’ said Leshii and threw the necklace over the side.

Skakki went white with rage and leaped towards Leshii to cut him down. Leshii dodged his sword and ran down the ship but he stumbled into the back of his standing mule. Leshii rolled underneath the mule and out the other side as Skakki charged. Then they were running around the creature like a childhood game, Skakki suddenly changing direction to try to catch Leshii out, screaming and shouting that he would kill the fool who could waste such a treasure.

The men around Ofaeti looked away from the big Viking for a heartbeat, who seized his chance, felling one with a tooth-powdering punch and grabbing his spear. A breath later a second warrior had been knocked over the side of the ship and another’s knee was shattered by the fat man’s stamp.

The merchant was good for twice around the mule, no more. He was old and Skakki was quick. The third time around, the slaver caught him and lifted his sword to strike, grabbing Leshii’s kaftan with his free hand. Leshii caught Skakki’s sword arm, but the Viking drove a headbutt into his face, making him release his grip. Skakki swung again, putting his hand on the mule’s rump for balance.