Oathsworn 2 - The Wolf Sea (30 page)

When he came back, the monk had gone.

11 The click of wooden goat bells and the bleat of camel calves snatched me from a dream which smoked away like prow-spray into the morning, where shadows already grew fat beyond the sheltered overhang of rock where we were camped.

Men yawned and unrolled from cloaks and stretched, farting. Two fires were already lit and Aliabu, our guide, was slapping wet dough backwards and forwards in his hands, expertly making it into thin bread for the hot stones. He grinned, all white teeth and eyes. Nearby, Finn ducked the smoke from his own fire, moving to the lee as he stirred oats and water in a pot, a good Norse day-meal.

Short Eldgrim strolled up as I rolled out from my own cloak and finally found the gods-cursed stone that had stuck in my ribs for most of the night.

`You look like a camel's arse, Trader,' he grunted amiably, hunkering down awkwardly in his robes and mail. Finn threatened him with the wooden spoon as he craned to look in the pot.

`Fine talk from the likes of you,' I gave him back, 'with a face like a bad chart.'

The Goat Boy brought me some of the Arab flatbread and hot goat's milk, at which a few of the men chuckled. The Goat Boy, still pale and weak, had refused to be left behind with Gizur and the six we had sent to guard the
Fjord Elk
and the Oathsworn admired his bravery — and enjoyed poking fun at me for his doglike devotion. I had to spit out flies drinking his hot milk, though; even this early they swarmed on any food.

Most of the band were awake and had been since first light, slithering into leather and mail. After that, they shrouded it all in the flowing robes of the Bedu tribes, leaving helmets dangling like pots from the waists and wearing cloth wrapped round their heads in a strange way, which Aliabu and his brothers, Asil and Delim, had to do for the band every day.

That had been Aliabu's idea, that and the handful of goats and camels which carried our gear, since it made us look more like
Sarakenoi
in the country that we travelled through. Not that, so far, we had seen many others and those we did find sprinted for it. Ruined farms, shattered houses, broken lives — the armies of both sides were ravaging those who always suffer: the weak.

Now, eight days out from Antioch, we had gone beyond even the Miklagard army scout patrols and the two ravaged steadings we had come across had been destroyed by the
Sarakenoi
themselves, who were fighting each other now. I thanked the gods we were more battle-ready than we had ever been.

Jarl Brand had been a ring-giver of note to us, for sure. In front of the assembled ranks of his own men and us — and what was left of the sullen, wailing company of Skarpheddin — he had offered his aid to each and every one of the Oathsworn, who had then picked spears, axes, helmets shields and prized ring-coats from a heap gathered up from the battlefield.

There were a few swords, too, but he gave them to me to hand out, which was a fine jarl-gesture and not lost on all there, so that the women who wailed at the sight of familiar battle-gear being lifted by strangers were made easier. That, of course, and the fact that Jarl Brand had swept them into his own hov, which at least gave them a future and made it harder to protest.

He also provided a feast, with heaped platters of food and fat jugs of
nabidh,
consumed under the stars down by the Orontes, with clever jugglers and fire-eaters and all in honour of the Oathsworn and their leader, Orm Bear Slayer.

Harek, who had now become court-skald to Brand as he had been to Skarpheddin, composed as complicated a
draupa
as he could manage on the greatness of Orm Bear Slayer while half-drunk, but thèhooms' and `heyas' that made my face flame simply made his tongue more wild.

Of course, as Brand confided to me, his face so close to mine that I could see the light sparkle on his silver lashes, it was what the Oathsworn deserved for having such Odin luck as to have attacked the main baggage camp of the enemy just as it looked as if the
Sarakenoi
might win.

Instead, they had panicked and tried to get back to defend it, at which point Red Boots and his horsemen fell on them, rescuing something from a bad day. Which was double luck for us: if the
Sarakenoi
had got back to their camp, we'd have been skewered and considered ourselves fortunate to die so quickly after what we had done there.

`General Red Boots now commends me,' Brand went on, `which is only right and proper. He has made me Curopalates in Skarpheddin's stead.'

I smiled and nodded, though I did not think he would have the enjoyment of it for long — Red Boots had not beaten the wily old Hamdanid ruler and, as long as he threatened from Aleppo, Antioch would have to be abandoned yet again. The army would be reduced once more, until next year, or the year after. As seemed usual, neither the Great City nor the
Sarakenoi
had gained anything for all the blood spilled.

Perhaps Skarpheddin chuckled at that from Helheim where he surely was, for he and his mother were both carefully casked in a Christ coffin lined with lead stripped from Antioch's outraged churches. This was so that they wouldn't leak until they were howed, with due solemn ceremony, four days after we were gone.

Of Svala there was no word at all.

`So you did me a good turn there, too, young Orm,' Brand was saying, stroking his grease-stiffened moustaches, so that they looked more like frozen eaves-water than before. 'Which is why I equip you well, as promised. I will also give you some good Arabs, the ones they call Bedu from hereabouts, three brothers and their women led by one Aliabu . . . something. He will make you look more like his people and, if you travel with the camels I will give him, there is a better chance of avoiding that stake up the arse.'

It was a good plan and I simply nodded, thinking more about how I might just miss getting arrested by Red Boots, who was now galloping off back to Tarsus. I did not hold out much hope of it, all the same —

now that he had time to think on it, Red Boots would want that silly container and the lives of all connected with it.

There wasn't much else to do, I was thinking, except brood on it and watch Kleggi and Svarvar arm-wrestle while Hookeye and Arnfinn raced each other to swallow whole ox-horns at one go. Hookeye finished, dripping and triumphant, while Finn bellowed that he had won only if the bet had been to try and drown himself in
nabidh
instead of swallow it. Hedin Flayer interrupted to excuse Hookeye on the grounds that his squint made it hard for him to get horn to meet mouth first time out.

I remembered Hookeye, draped like a Miklagard priest and arse going like a washerwoman's elbow, while the Hamdanid chief's woman under him shrieked and squealed. She had not been a pretty
Sarakenoi
princess afterwards.

None of that, though, drove the certainty of what I had to do out of me. So, swallowing the spear in my throat, I did it: I told Brand what we had done on Cyprus, for he was the only one who could, I was thinking, protect us from Red Boots and get the secret to the Basileus of the Great City. I did not tell him we had lifted the prize to trade for the sword Starkad had, all the same. I just told him what we had lifted and what I thought it meant.

He sat and frowned on it for a long time, while the din of feasting roared and flowed like a river in spate round us. So long, in fact, that I grew more wary and began to consider a way out of that place. Then he stirred, stroking his icicle moustaches.

`Here's the way of it,' he said, bent close to speak in my ear. I could see Finn watching and it came to me that it did no harm for my reputation to be seen touching heads and planning at the high seat of a jarl such as Brand.

Ì am pledged for a season to the Basileus Nikephoras,' he went on. 'This, of course, also means his commander, John Red Boots.'

My eyes must have narrowed too much, for he waved a soothing hand.

Ìt comes to me that the business of thrones in the Great City is nothing much to do with either you or me, young Orm,' he went on. 'After my season is up, why should I care what happens in their blood-feuds?

It comes to me also that keeping this a secret until I see the Basileus — a costly and long-drawn out affair of bribes, I might add — will be difficult. Red Boots, I understand, is already made aware of your name and will certainly want you dead.'

I was more afraid than ever and he saw that and chuckled. Ì can help you, but you must place your hands in mine over this. I shall take these twigs and eggs to Red Boots and say that you were my man when you did this offence and that you did it for gain and no more and thought it richer than it turned out to be. I will tell him you are a fool who does not understand what was lifted, only that it was not as golden a prize as you thought — which is no lie, after all. Nothing bad has come of it and he will have my pledge on your silence.

Ìt is as well no Romans were killed in getting this prize,' he went on, taking a swig from his
nabidh,
then passing it to me as if we were horn-paired at this feast, another thing that did not go unnoticed and gave me even more standing. I also saw that he had done it deliberately for that effect.

Às it is, of course,' he went on, wiping his lips and talking as if he was discussing a winter cull of livestock, 'Red Boots will still try and have you killed in the dark, for it is the Great City's way of things and another reason to be off smartly. He would like to do the same to me, but he needs me. He cannot hold Antioch unless the whole army stays and that isn't something that can be afforded for long. He will march off and leave a garrison behind to be besieged by the camel-humpers. That garrison will be me and most of my men.'

I blinked at that and again Brand chuckled.

Òf course, my ships will lay off around Cyprus, which is where you can find me, providing you are back by the end of the year. After that, I will be off up to Kiev and then home and if you want to be with me, as a chosen man, you had better make it in time. Then both of us will be beyond Red Boots and he can do what he likes.'

`What happens if you get besieged in Antioch?' I blurted and he smiled like a bear trap being set.

`No "if" about it. I will, of course. Red Boots knows it. I will also negotiate the surrender of Antioch to the Hamdanids — at a price and amicably. Red Boots knows that, too. The Hamdanids will prefer that to fighting several hundred well-armed men from the viks, having seen how we do it. Naturally, I will wait for the safe withdrawal of the Great City's armies to Tarsus, which is all Red Boots wants. Next year, or the year after, he will be back and the business will start again.'

There are those who say Brand got his jarldom by rolling on his back and having his belly tickled by his King, Eirik, and, after him, his son, Olof. They say Olof only got to be King of the Svears and Geats because he climbed into the lap of Svein Forkbeard like a little dog and that made Brand the lapdog of a lapdog.

That's not the right of it. They called Olof the Lap King — Skotkonung — because he took what his father Eirik had made of the Svears and Geats and made them pour a handful of dirt from their tofts into his lap, a ritual that admitted he owned the earth they walked on and would pay him in silver to keep those tofts.

Taxes, in other words.

Olof, like all the jarl-kings, made those easterners who couldn't even speak decent Norse into a kingdom called Greater Sweden — and Brand was at his shieldless side through all of it and his father's before that.

The rune-serpent torc sat round Brand's neck lighter than swansdown.

I knew what he offered was the perfect solution. It saved me from the Great City and offered protection from Sviatoslav and his hawk-fierce sons, allowing us to take the shorter route back to the North. It went a long way to lifting the weight of that jarl torc pressing on my shoulders, the ends of it forged with the runesword on one side and my thralled oathsworn oarmates on the other. The swaying balance-rod of it, hauling me this way, then the other, was crushing.

But all I could think of at that moment was her and I said her name aloud, a question.