Oathsworn 2 - The Wolf Sea (18 page)

`His mother will be cursing the day we sailed into the harbour, I am thinking,' Radoslav said, then spat.

'Not that we can go back. Your Starkad threw a fox in that hen coop right enough.'

He told it swiftly and simply. They'd seen the ship arrive and were puzzled, because it was a big Greek
knarr,
but coming in from the east and labouring against an offshore wind. Then, as it came round the headland, they saw it was full of Norse and Kvasir put it together fast enough for them to raise sail and catch the same wind out that made hard work for Starkad to get in.

Radoslav was still furious that the
Volchok
had been left, with Arinbjorn and Ogmund on board, who would have no chance. Worse, in his eyes, was that most of the cargo was on board, too.

Ì am sorry for that,' I said.

Radoslav shrugged. 'No matter. The treasure will pay for it when we get it.'

I said nothing, for I knew now that Radoslav was still convinced we were off to find the hoard — that, after all, was what this chase to get the runesword was about. Yet there was a storm in me, tossing my resolve like a leaky
knarr.
Driven by oath to get the sword, I had no wish to go back to Atil's howe.

Eventually, I would have to decide and matters would get uglier than Short Eldgrim.

`Where too, Trader?' demanded Gizur. I had long since worked this out and only the starting point was changed.

`North and then east, round the island and set a course to Seleucia,' I said. I had listened to all the gossip and knew that Antioch was in the hands of the Miklagard army. It wasn't the first time they had taken the city and, like all the other times, they'd probably have to give it up and fall back on Tarsus. I just hoped they still held it when we got to Seleucia, Antioch's port, which was a safer haven than some lonely beach in Serkland.

Short Eldgrim hefted my shield and fingered the stub of the arrow, visible on the inside, up near the grip.

He looked at me and lifted what remained of one of his eyebrows.

Àye, just so,' I offered wryly. 'An inch to the left and I'd be picking the back of my teeth with the point of it. Anyone would think you did not like me, wee man.'

Short Eldgrim fetched his tin-snips later and worried the point out of the wood, but there was no way of telling who had loosed it — for which Radoslav and Short Eldgrim and a couple of others were greatly relieved. I pitched it over the side and laughed.

We swept on, looking backwards for signs of Greeks and rubbed raw with the frustration of it, for Starkad was also there. I prayed that Balantes would not release his own ships to the north, that he would think we were scudding back to Miklagard with our prize, perhaps that we were even in the pay of the Basileus and about to expose him. I knew Starkad would not think so. I knew he would come our way alone and it was starting to irritate me that, every time we got close to him, our chances of making red war on him seemed to be furthest away.

Of course, I was heading straight into the arms of Red Boots, who commanded the Great City's army in the east, but I hoped to have slipped away from him before Balantes sent word to watch for Orm Bear Slayer.

If Odin held true to us, Starkad would follow and then we could trade — or fight; at the moment, either way was fine with me.

We turned east with no wind and crept like a water insect along the Anatolian coast, rowing until the snot and drool ran in our beards.

It was a good
hafskip,
this new
Fjord Elk,
and Gizur was well pleased, though the mast had checked in the heat of five untended summers and sprung cracks and some of the planks were a little less tight than was safe. As long as there wasn't a blow and we had men bailing, he thought we'd make Antioch.

Brother John had worried and teased the arrowhead out of the Goat Boy without sign of fat on the end, then fed him a broth of leeks and found no smell when he sniffed the wound, both of which were good signs.

I came on him while he was looking at Ivar, whom we called Gautr for his wit and Loki tricks. Ivar had taken an arrow through the cheek, which was a clean enough wound, but it had nicked his gum and a tooth as well, which bothered him.

`How is the boy?'

Àlive,' Brother John said, clapping Ivar on one shoulder and straightening. 'I cannot be after saying how long that will last, all the same. I have cleaned it with vinegar and sewn it with fishing line and poulticed it with malva and wheat bran wrapped in a vellum strip of my best prayer.'

`What else can we do?'

Brother John shrugged. 'Pray he lives to reach Antioch and pray that the Greeks have not slaughtered all the
Sarakenoi
and pray that the ones they left alive include a doctor. The
Sarakenoi
have the best doctors, as any will tell you.'

`That's a lot of praying,' I pointed out and he nodded and smiled wanly.

Ì have them to spare for him, all the same,' he said.

I went to the Goat Boy, who was barely awake, with a voice like the whisper of a distant wind.

`You should have let me die,' I heard him say.

`Your mother would have killed me,' I managed. 'Anyway, Finn Horsehead needs a helper at the cookfire and you have been selected. When you have finished lolling here, that is.'

He managed a smile, then a small tear, pearl-bright and fat, squeezed from the corner of one eye. His skin was so pale the blue-purple veins stood out like the scars on Short Eldgrim's face. Will I ever see my mother again?' came the whisper.

I nodded, unable to speak now, for his
heimthra
was choking me.

Short Eldgrim saved the day, shoving his scarred face into the tremble between us, offering the Goat Boy what was supposed to be a friendly grin but looked like a bad carving left too long in the rain. 'I'll take you back after this little trip is over,' he growled, 'for I have left my washing. Don't worry, little bear, enjoy a ship journey and an adventure in a strange place, some sweet things to eat and then home.'

The Goat Boy smiled at that, then his eyelids closed and he slept, his breath a rattle in the tiny cage of his chest. I sat and brooded on it, alone in the prow, while men went to their sea-chest benches and hauled us away.

Away from Balantes — and also away from Starkad and the sword we needed, though I knew he would follow and made the mistake of saying so when Radoslav pointed out that Starkad did not know where we had gone.

I told them, feeling the sick taste of the jarl torc in my mouth, hearing Einar. chuckle.

`He knows,' I said flatly, 'because I told Arinbjorn.'

Radoslav's eyes widened slightly, then he nodded, quiet and thoughtful. I knew he had a new weight to add to his scales: Arinbjorn had been given command of the
Volchok
and I had told him my plans in case we were separated on the journey.

Now Starkad would make Arinbjorn tell all he knew —and I was sure he would keep that knowledge to himself. Starkad had come from the east, so he must have ploughed all the way to Jaffa, the Serkland harbour most used by Christ pilgrims heading for Jorsalir, and found I had lied, for a Christ priest like Martin could not have arrived without comment there. Now he wanted me alive long enough to tell him what he still believed I knew: where Martin was.

In the hiss and gurgle from the water creaming away from the bow, I heard Einar's laughter and drove it out with sweat and grunting, taking my place at a bench and hard-rowing all the thoughts out of me. We pulled in shifts for half a day until the wind swung round to a useful quarter, by which time my arse and back and thighs ached.

When a man took my place, I stood to the watch like everyone else, taking the prow and pulling on the new mail I had taken as my share from Patmos. It was snug. My old mail, which I had sold to help get us down the Dark Sea to Miklagard, would now have been too tight round the bunched muscle of my shoulders and it had been made for a grown man in Strathclyde. For a moment, quick as a flick of light, I saw the rain pooling in the dead eyes of the boy I had killed in that fight.

A lifetime ago.

Then, after a long ache of time, Sighvat called out a sighting of land ahead and, not long afterwards, a ship. By the time I reached him, he had changed that to ships, so that everyone, clenched and anxious, craned to see.

`Greek ships,' he said, pointing, and, sure enough, there were the great curled sterns you could not mistake. Three of them. Then four. Behind them, land bulked up and there was a smear of smoke, so that Gizur, frowning and shading his eyes with one hand, shook his head.

`This is where we should be,' he growled. `Seleucia, for sure.'

`Well, we are in trouble now,' Kvasir growled, thinking these were the Greeks who pursued us.

I did not think so, for it could not be ships from Cyprus. I thought it more likely they were ships from Miklagard supporting the army — which meant the Greeks were still in Antioch.

Short Eldgrim grinned and bet Finn an ounce in hacksilver that I had the right of it and Horsehead, who would lay money on anything, took it, spat on his hand and sealed the event. A minute later he scowled, having realised that if he won he would be hard put to get a dead man to pay up.

Short Eldgrim was still grinning when the
dromon
washed up to us, backed water neatly and hailed us.

He stuck out a hand, waggling the fingers delightedly until Finn, grumbling, started fishing his purse out from under his armpit.

On the Greek ship, a man waved at us with a golden stick. He wore a simple white tunic, but had a splendid helmet with a great fountain of horsehair maned across it.

'I am
quaestor
of the port,' he yelled across the gap between us. 'I did not know your Curopalates Nabites had any ships here. Where have you been?'

That made me blink. My who? I told him we had come from the Great City and did not know any Nabites, at which the
quaestor
indicated he would come aboard. We slithered our ships together in a soft swell, Gizur wincing and roaring at each dunt on the fingerwidth-thick pine strakes, and the Greek clambered aboard, clutching his golden stick.

It then turned out that Curopalates wasn't a name but a title worth three pounds of gold to whoever had it, but the Nabites confused us all, for it seemed this
quaestor
spoke of a Norseman. It was not a name anyone knew, either in the decent tongue of the West Norse, or the crippled way they spoke to the east of Norway.

But the
quaestor
said this Nabites was favoured by the Strategos John, commander of the Basileus's armies here, and had some six hundred men, plus ill his women and even his dogs, brought down from the north.

Ìt's a mystery right enough,' said Brother John, coming from attending the Goat Boy, who lay bundled in warm cloaks, his hair like night against the pale skin. But he breathed, ragged and laboured though it was.

The
quaestor
handed us a stamped bronze medallion which would give us passage to the harbour, and we chewed on the strange name of Nabites, scratching heads all the way into safe anchorage.

That was in the curve of a bay, where the little white houses of the fair-sized town of Seleucia straggled up from a rough harbour and, confusingly, there seemed to be a forest right down at the water's edge. It was a puzzle to us all — until we realised that the trees were ships' masts.

I had never seen so many ships in one place and neither had anyone else. We gawped until Gizur roared and banged a pine-tarred rope's end on the deck to get all our attention fixed on not running into the massive fleet anchored there.

We flitted in like a chip of driftwood, dwarfed by huge supply ships and even bigger warships, dodging the smaller galleys and fat-bellied little Greek merchant ships — for they would not miss a chance like this

— which were as like our own
knarrer
as to be brothers misplaced at birth. Finn stood in the prow, waving the bronze medallion at any guard ships and cursing them in the few Greek words he knew when they came too close.

Ours was the only
hafskip,
though, which made it easy to find a good spot near the village — none of the other ships could go as shallow. I wanted it run up on the beach, since I knew we'd be gone from her for a while, but Gizur baulked at putting five years of neglected timbers to that sort of test.

The
hafskip
had one other effect, which happened as we took it as close to the breaking waves as Gizur cared to go, then splashed ashore to cable it to the land. I was halfway over the side when Short Eldgrim gripped my shoulder and, when I looked at him, he nodded towards a group moving down to us.

There were men and women in it, children and dogs, all chattering excitedly — and all in a good West Norse, so that my heart ached for the sound of it. They had seen a sight they had not seen for some time — a Norse ship, prows decently removed — and had come running.

They stopped some distance off, which was both polite and sensible, then one stepped forward to hail us, a tall ,man in a fine linen tunic and breeks, with a good seax strapped round his waist. He had blond hair in two thick braids and a neatly trimmed beard, altogether the very way a fine Norse farmer should look.

Which made it as strange a sight in this land as a calf with a head at each end.

Ì am Olvar Skartisson,' he announced. 'Who leads this welcome band to us?'

I told him as the crew splashed ashore and began chattering and grinning with the girls and older women.

In the end, everyone dropped into the water and came ashore, grinning and talking.

`Have you come to join us, then?' asked Olvar Skartisson and that set the whole saga tale of it out, as we pitched down on the rocks and sand and got more comfortable. Ale and bread came out and we started in to share our tales.

It turned out that this Na bites was what the Greeks took from
nabitr,
which means corpse-biter in Norse and was a nickname given to Jar! Toki Skarpheddin, a name that means sharp-toothed — another north joke the Romans did not understand. I didn't know this jar!, but Sighvat said he was a well-known and powerful man who fought for Harald Greycloak once, he who claimed to be a king in Norway.