Oathsworn 2 - The Wolf Sea (14 page)

Ì killed you,' I said and then:

`You deserved it, though.'

Ì thought you were my doom,' he answered, 'and so it proved.'

`You killed my father,' I pointed out.

There was silence.

Ìs it true that Valholl is made from battle shields and the roof from spears?' I asked.

`How would I know? I cannot cross Bifrost — I broke an Odin-oath, made on Gungnir,' he
replied, and half turned, so that the shadow of his face was broken by the gleam of one eye. 'Until
that is braided up anew, I am lost,' he added, in a voice that trailed off to a whisper.

I said nothing, for I had the notion he meant for me to fix it and I had no idea how.

The clanging went on without pause and he raised one hand — firm and strong, I saw, as it had
once been. I even saw the scars on his knuckles, the marks all swordsmen get at play and practice.

`He did not make this for Starkad,' he said, pointing at the smith. In the dark, the serpent of
runes curled along the sabre's blade, red-dyed in the forge glow.

`For Atil,' I said, confused that he should not know this, he of all people who now sat on that
lord's throne.

`He is dead,' Einar replied. 'Your hand grips it now. You need to get it back.'

I felt him fade, the clanging of the hammer growing louder and louder.

`What is death like?' I wanted to know, almost desperately. `Long,' he replied and was gone.

The thunderous clanging tore me back to the ruined room and the embers of the fire. Men were spilling up and out of the building, to where Hookeye, last man on watch for the night, rang a spearhead on a rusted iron wheel-rim. Those with byrnies struggled them over their heads.

`What the fuck—?' demanded Finn, a question chorused by everyone, bleary-eyed but weapons up and ready. Hookeye merely pointed.

On the hillside beyond, almost like the grey-green scrub they stood against, a dozen horsemen sat and watched us.

`They just appeared,' Hookeye said. 'At first light.'

`Form,' I told them and they obediently moved into a solid block, mailed men to the front, shields up.

The horsemen moved down, fluid riders who took the wet scree slope with ease. In their lead, a black-turbaned man did it with his hands held out clear of his sides, to show he was unarmed and wanted to talk.

The horsemen were well mounted and a chill went through me at the sight of them as they came closer still, until Black Turban was no more than a few paces away.

The horse was large and powerful and he sat it easily. He had a cased bow, wickedly curved. A quiver was strapped to his left hip, angled backwards and cut deep to show the shafts of the arrows, which would, I saw, make it faster to get them out.

He had a sword on the other side – not a curved sabre, but one that was almost straight. From the saddle hung an axe and a mace with a strange animal head and, dangling from the strap, a conical helm with a mail aventail tucked neatly inside it.

He wore mail and had proper padding beneath it, but no protection other than fat trousers of some fine black linen on his legs – so slash at their knees, I noted. He had a shield, small and round and metal-fronted, and the horse was barded in leather made to look like leaves and covered in fat tassels of coloured wool and gilded medallions. A black cloak hung almost all the way over his back and the horse's rump.

And they were all like this, save that the others also had long lances.

We stood in silence, each weighing the other. He had the dark skin of the Blue Men from the southern deserts, a close-cropped, neatly trimmed black beard and eyes like chips of jet. I called out to the Goat Boy to translate this Arab's tongue to Greek, for Brother John confessed he actually knew only a few words of it –

which got him hard looks from me after all his boasting.

The Goat Boy stood, trembling like a whipped dog under my hand on his shoulder as the Arab spoke.

Ì am Faysal ibn Sadiq,' he announced. 'Who trespasses on the lands of the Emir Farouk?'

Ì am Orm Ruriksson,' I replied, hoping my voice was not pitched too high or trembled. 'I was told these lands belong to the Emperor in the Great City.'

The Goat Boy said it all and Faysal's eyes widened a little. `You are a beardless boy.'

I rubbed my chin, which had some fine hairs on it – but inclined my head in acknowledgement and smiled ingratiatingly. Does no harm . . .

Faysal made a dismissive gesture. 'We were masters here before the Greeklings,' he declared haughtily.

'And know no others above us. Why are you here?'

`We seek the temple of the Archangel Michael in Kato Lefkara,' I told him. 'To worship there and speak with the holy men.'

He looked us up and down and then said something that the Goat Boy hesitated over. I nudged him and he looked miserably up at me.

`He says he has heard of the men from the northlands and that they are not followers of the Christ but are idol-worshipping sons of dogs,' the Goat Boy blurted. 'He says that—' He stopped, licking his lips.

I nudged him again, feeling cold fear creep into my belly and curl up there.

`He says that you and your pig-eating friends can go somewhere else and fuck boys, but not to defile the lands of the great Emir, Protector of the Faithful . . . forgive me, Lord Orm, but that is what he says . .

I squeezed his shoulder to shut him up, then looked into Faysal's black eyes. Behind me, there were mutters and growls from the eavesdropping Danes, who had learned good Greek in five years of breaking rocks.

`Tell him,' I said, 'that we are the Oathsworn, bringers of a sword age, an axe age, a fire age to his miserable life. Tell him that we will go to where we intend and if he stands in our way I will kill all his men and then make him walk round a pole fastened to his entrails until he winds himself to death.'

The Goat Boy, his eyes wide, stammered his way through all that while I tried to stop my legs from shaking and offered a wry thanks to Starkad, who had brought that terror to my attention.

The black eyes flashed and Faysal stiffened in the saddle. Then he rattled off a fierce stream at the Goat Boy, who turned to me. Before he could translate, I raised my hands and silenced him.

`Tell this goat-humping dog rider to piss off. I have no more time to waste on him. Either he fights, or shows us how he squats like a woman. His choice.'

I waited long enough for the Goat Boy to say all this, then spun him by the shoulder and walked back to the grim-faced shieldwall, where men growled their appreciation and banged weapons on their shields.

`What happened? What did he say? What did you say?' Finn was chewing his shield edge with frustration.

Beside him, Sighvat chuckled and said: 'You should have learned more Greek than how to get a hump and a drink.'

I gave my orders, for I knew the dozen we had seen were not all of them. I was right. As we trotted back from the buildings and cut into the neat groves of stunted trees, the hillside sprouted more horsemen. And more.

I cursed our Odin luck and the Greeks. A hundred or so, Balantes had said. What he had not said was that they had heavy horse, leaving me to imagine some bunch of robed ragbreeks with spears and shields and not much else.

We formed up in the grove while the horsemen piled up and began shrilling out cries, which sounded like ìlla-la-laakba'.

`Trader,' Finn growled, 'we are too open here and these trees are in neat lines they can gallop straight down. We should have stayed by the buildings. They might not charge then.'

But I wanted them to charge. I wanted them angry and confident against a boy who had picked what seemed a bad position. I wanted Faysal to ride us down like the dogs we were, rather than be cautious and use bows.

I said as much to Finn while sending men out with the heavy sacks they had carried and my instructions.

He hissed through his teeth when it was all unveiled for him.

`Heya. Deep Thinker. If we live through this, it will make you famous.'

Ì
am
famous,' I said loudly enough for them all to hear. Ì am the Bear Slayer.'

This was the price of the jarl torc — boasts and standing in the middle of the front rank of the Lost. It had the effect, of course. The Oathsworn pounded their shields and hoomed deep in their throats, which even made the horsemen stop their la-las for a moment. Then they began again and there was a surge of movement, like a landslip down the hill.

`Form!' I yelled and ducked into the front rank. `Shieldwall. Form.'

The shields came up, ragged but solid, a ripple of sound as they interlocked and weapons thumped.

Behind me, the tip of a spear slid, winking in the dawn light, one on either side of my head. At the last moment, they would thrust forward, so that we in front sheltered under a hedge of points, protecting the unarmoured men with our ringmail bodies.

The ground trembled. Little stones in front of us danced like peas on a drumskin and the shrill screams grew louder. I needed to piss and my legs trembled, but I hoped that was just the ground shaking.

`Hold,' roared Finn. 'Stand hard as a dyke . . . '

They hit the claw-like trees, filtering into the neat lanes between them. White mulberry trees, I learned later, for feeding the silkworms this farm had made for the nearby church-factory.

They were thundering up the lanes now, no more than two or three abreast, holding their great lances two-handed over their heads, or low at the hip. I saw Faysal, helmeted now and in the lead, knew he was trying to single me out, but he was two lanes down and would have to crash through the stiff-branched trees and across his own charging men to do it.

They were almost on us. I heard men behind me roaring defiance, felt them brace, saw the spears slide out . . . then the leading horsemen hit the raven claws, a deadly sowing.

The whole formation cracked apart. Horses shrilled, broke stride, tripped and crashed to the ground, bringing others behind crashing over. An entire horse and rider ploughed forward, the animal flailing and screaming in a bow wave of stones and dirt, into the hedge of spears to my left, which stabbed viciously at the rider. He died in gurgles and had to be shaken off like lamb from a skewer.

Mulberry trees splintered; men struggled and fought to free themselves from those piling into them from behind. The rear ranks — pitifully few now — managed to wheel round and turn back, where they circled in confusion.

I led the front ranks of the Oathsworn forward in a steady walk, where they stabbed and hacked at the horsemen, shields up, leaving most of the killing to the ones behind. One of our men yelped, having stood on one of the three-pronged raven feet, which was a timely reminder to everyone else. I saw someone spear a man and then work the weapon free, a foot on the corpse's chest.

Hooves smacked my shield, knocking me sideways, and someone axed the fallen animal's skull to stop it kicking. Another scrambled up, screaming, tripping on its blue-pink entrails and a man heaved from the pile, coughing blood. He had time to look up and see my watered blade steal his life with a stroke.

Most were already dead, crushed in a great pile of men and horses so high we had to climb up it to get to the ones beyond.

Arrows whicked now, for the survivors had sorted themselves out and had thought what to do, but there was no fight in them — half their number were dead or struggling in the heap. I had the front rank shield those behind while they slaughtered the ones left alive in that pile.

Eventually, the
Sarakenoi
rode off, no longer shrilling their la-las. The crew gave a great cheer and beat on their shields and the Goat Boy was dancing up and down, pausing now and then to fit a stone in his sling and fling it at the retreating backs. If he hit one, it made no difference.

Finn came up, wiping sweat and blood from his face, and clapped me on the back. 'That showed the goat-humpers —and only two of ours dead and a few more scratched. Odin's hairy balls, young Orm, you are a deep thinker for war right enough.'

The rest of them agreed, after they had looted the dead. Horses still kicked and screeched, a high, thin sound that bothered us more than the moans of men. Those animals we killed, fast and hard, and the few which had surfaced from the carnage and stood, trembling and shaking, we gathered up and soothed, for we could use them.

There were thirty-four dead cavalrymen and almost as many horses I offered silent thanks to Tyr One

—

Hand, the old god of war, for the idea of bringing those raven talons from Patmos.

Brother John tended the wounded, none serious — and only two dead. One was a Dane whose name I did not know. The other was Arnor. One of those dying, sliding horsemen had held on to his lance and it had skewered Arnor through the bridge of his butchered nose, for he had hammered up the nasal of his helmet to keep it from rubbing on the wound.

`He never had any luck with that smeller,' Sighvat said gloomily.

They found Faysal for me, six down in a heap, the life flung from him and the shock of it left on his face in a snarl and a thin trail of blood from the corner of his mouth. His. neck was snapped and his head was turned so that it seemed he looked over his own shoulder at what had been his life to that point. The Goat Boy spat on him and then gave him a kick.

I let them loot for a while, but they were experienced raiders and knew the value of speed and that it was pointless trying to strip heavy armour and weapons to carry. While they searched for coin and ornaments, Brother John and I began stacking wood from the ruined buildings round the deepest heap of corpses until others noticed and were shamed into helping.

Then we placed Arnor and the Dane on top of the pile, his harpoon clutched to his breast, and burned them all, which was the old way, the East Norse way and, some said, better than a boat-grave. I found a mulberry leaf in Arnor's mouth when I sorted him out for burial and could not bear to throw it away. I have it still.

We left the place shortly afterwards, putting the wounded who could not walk on three horses, the two remaining heavy sacks of raven feet slung on another. We moved faster now, almost trotting towards where the Goat Boy said the village of Kato Lefkara was, until only that greasy plume of pyre smoke marked where we had been.