Oathsworn 2 - The Wolf Sea (38 page)

Strangely, I found that irritating, dangerously so.

Ànd the woman? Did Allah fail her?' I prompted.

His face never flickered, but he cocked his head to one side with interest that I should know the name of his own god. `She was an Armenian, a whore and was as much an infidel as you or the Christians.

Obviously the defiling goddess she worshipped failed her, as all false deities will,' he answered crisply.

'What I am more interested in is why she and the priest died at the hands of one of your own followers.'

`When you know, please tell me.'

He sighed at that, lacing his ringed hands. His eyes were chips of jet. 'I have two dead infidels and several injured followers of the True Faith, not to mention property damaged. There was almost a riot. You have not been more than a few hours in the city and came across the desert, or down from Damascus. I ask again: why was the priest killed?'

Sweat trickled down my back, for his tone was steel-cold now I spread my hands and smiled. 'You must ask him. His name is Halfred and, until I saw his face after chasing him over the roofs and — unfortunately

— into the street traders, I did not even know it was him. Until then, I also thought him a friend.'

His gaze was dark, stooping like a hawk. 'He has been asked. At length. He does not deny culpability, but I can make no sense of his reasons for it. Something about a Greek, by name Balantes.'

Even though he made mush of the name, there was enough in it to bring my head up and he saw it.

`You know that name, then?'

I nodded. 'A Roman lord who doesn't like me. He has, I am thinking, used this Halfred for his own ends and the first arrow was meant for me. Brother John simply got in the way. The woman, I believe, was paid to lure me to where Halfred could shoot. He killed her to silence her tongue.'

He nodded, his bearded mouth pursed like a cat's arse. `More or less as he says it and I had deduced,' he replied evenly. 'Which makes you a victim rather than a suspect.'

Àm I free to go?'

`Scarcely that,' he replied flatly, with no sign of amusement. Ì want no more trouble and so the sooner you leave the city the happier I will be for it. You will be returned to your men and then escorted from the city when it is dark. The body of the priest will be returned to you, so you may deal with it decently as you see fit. A useful gesture would be to contribute to the damage caused — I suggest the price of two of those camels you have.'

I bowed. Bloodprice I knew — the Norse were no strangers to it and we were lucky to have got off so lightly — but the sick loss of Brother John robbed me of any sense of triumph, lay coiled round my heart like Nidhogg in the roots of the World Tree.

Ì have, however, a commission for you.'

I could not have been more surprised if he had suddenly lifted his robes and danced a jig. At first I thought I had misheard him and simply opened and closed my mouth like a stranded fish, which cracked the first smile on him that I had seen. Having seen it, I did not wish for a repeat.

Òut in the desert are a band of brigands,' he said. 'At first I thought you were part of them. But these have been described to me as Greeks and runaway slaves from one of the mines further north and you look neither like slaves, nor runaways, nor Greeks.'

`Just so,' I managed weakly.

Ì thought also that you were these Mamluks that the Abbasid unbelievers are so fond of, for they are no decent men but Turks and Slays and worse. But they have embraced Allah, albeit on the wrong path, which you clearly have not.'

`Good Odinsmenn, all of us,' I agreed, swallowing. 'In a Christly fashion, of course.'

`So,' he said. 'You are those
rusiyyah
I have heard of, swords for hire — is that not so?'

`Well,' I began, caught his look and drifted off into eloquent silence and a weak, ingratiating smile.

`So, I will give you provisions and letters, which will state you to be in my employ, as retainers. You will seek out and destroy these brigands for me. I need my soldiers in the city.' He paused and stroked his beard with the price of a good farm in rings on his fingers. 'When I have heard — and I will — that they are scattered or dead and their leader dealt with, you may return to me for reward. Should you decide otherwise, I will, reluctantly, be forced to deal with you as with them. Since this will cause me considerable trouble and expense, you need not look for mercy at the end of it.'

I thought about it. No fee had been mentioned and, when I looked at him, I realised none would be and if anything came by way of reward, I would take it and back out from his presence, my arse in the air and my life in his hands.

But that letter would be useful in the lands south of Jorsalir. He knew I had seen that, too, and nodded.

'Good. It is settled.'

Ànd Halfred?'

He looked surprised that I had even asked. 'He is guilty of murder. We will hang him in a cage from the walls for all the People of the Book to stone him until he dies. So justice is seen to be done, by the will of Allah.'

They let me see Halfred before they turned me out of the tower, escorting me to a small, heat-drenched room where he lay on a cot, rolling with sweat yet in no real discomfort, for they had expertly treated his broken leg and even given him something for the pain — after they had inflicted enough for him to tell all he knew.

`So,' I said to him as he turned his face, pallid beneath the wind-blast and tan, the eyes flat and grey as a summer sea, one still looking over my shoulder while the other looked at my face.

Ìndeed so,' he answered and sighed. 'It seems my luck has flowed away from me. Loki luck, mine. I had hopes of going home with something to show.'

`What did Balantes promise you and why?' I asked, hunkering down beside him, for there was no other furniture in that place.

À hundred ounces of silver,' he answered. About the price of thirty milch cows. He saw the look on my face and rasped a bitter chuckle. 'I know, not much to think on now But then I had just spent five years in a stone quarry, so it seemed a good price for killing someone. Anyway, it was only to be done when you showed that you would double-deal the Greeks and steal that leather pouch rather than deliver it as arranged.'

An age away. I remembered us on the beach, backing under cover of shields towards the
Elk
and the arrows smacking my shield from behind. Now I knew where they had come from and shivered at how close he had come to succeeding. Odin, it seems, prized me still, if only to keep around to taunt.

`You .took your time over it,' I said.

He shrugged. 'I tried once or twice,' he grunted with a twisted smile and I remembered him at Kato Lefkara, his bow strung, arrow nocked and a look on his face like a boy caught in the winter store with honey round his mouth.

Ònce we had escaped Balantes I actually thought it a good thing and that you would lead us all to this treasure hoard we heard about,' he went on. 'So I decided to let you live.'

`Generous,' I replied. 'Should I thank you now?'

He ignored it and went on. 'I was even prepared to stick by you in that fight we had near Aleppo. I did quite well out of it, though that Saracen woman was either not the princess claimed, or one who had less than regal habits, for my balls itched ever afterwards.'

We both grinned at the memory, though my throat was gripped with the waste of it all.

`Then it was clear you were not going after treasure and it seemed to me we were all wyrded to die in this oven of a country,' he sighed. 'People in Red Boots's camp wanted you dead, even after you had handed back that leather container. I agreed that it was a good idea, but even so . . . the tales of all that silver were good ones. In the end, though, I thought them just that: tales. I was to go back to Cyprus and Balantes for payment once you were dead and thought that a much better arrangement.'

More than likely, I thought to myself, you'd have ended up back in the stone quarry, but blind this time.

It came to me also that to do all this would have taken more than him alone but when I put it to him, he shook his head.

`No names from me. I will take that to the grave.'

`You will,' I answered, more bitter than I had intended to show, 'for I can't help you. Are there any at home you wish to know of your death?'

He shook his head. 'If this is my wyrd, that's what the Norns weave, but it is not a good saga to leave to loved ones,' he replied. 'I am sorry about the priest though.'

I nodded, feeling a wave of desperate sympathy, remembering all the better times. Then he scattered that to the winds with his next words.

`Not because I liked the little arse,' he said moodily, 'but I have broken my oath to Odin and suspect the only gold I will see will be the coating on the Gjallar bridge on my way to Helheim. Since I have also killed this priest, I won't get into the Christ halls, either.'

That was too much and I got up and stepped away from him in disgust. 'I shall remind the jarl of this place to put your head on your thigh, then,' I answered harshly from the door. 'He isn't going to want your fetch hanging round like a bad smell any more than I want it hagging me until I quit this country.'

`Fuck you, boy. I wish I had killed you instead.'

`You should have shut that squint eye when aiming,' I said and left him — but the black dog of it followed after me all the way back to the others: the dark despair of knowing he had broken his oath and that others with him had done the same, and the emptiness where Brother John had been.

Now the Oathsworn were fractured and what was left no more real than a painting of marble done on wood.

That same black dog padded out of the gate in the south wall of Jerusalem with us, the one they call the Dung Gate since it is where they cart out the city's shit and the joke wasn't lost on us and fed the dog more bile.

It slouched along with us for two days, to this huddle of white buildings served by a handful of priests, who took the ripe body of Brother John with reverence.

Now Abbot Dudo, his homilies spent, moved quietly off and left Finn and Kvasir and me to move into the shade and squat. Our one camel and the couple of mules I had bought were listlessly chewing fodder, standing hipshot under an awning. Even the flies were quiet, slow and lazy, hardly bothering Kvasir as he ate a fruit the monks called golden apples, putting the peel in his helmet.

Like me, he had never tasted one until yesterday and now he could not get enough of them. According to Dudo, the Old Romans believed they were brought to Italy by the daughter of a god called Atlas, who crossed the sea from the land of the Blue Men in a giant shell.

Another strange thing in this strange land. From where I sat, I could see over the long white scar of the road across the wash of green and gold fields south of Jorsalir to the ochre and tan wastes where, it seemed, we would have to go. Kvasir finished peeling the fruit and stuffed a section into his beard, where only he knew his mouth lurked.

`They want a Thing of it,' Finn said, stirring the dust with one finger. Tor the Hookeye matter.'

`Who wants a Thing of it?' I demanded sullenly. 'The ones who shared the secret with him?'

Kvasir frowned at that and Finn looked awkward.

Ìt is only right, after all,' he said. 'Short Eldgrim thinks so. And Thorstein Blaserk — he is one of our lot, Orm, and he thinks so.'

`Thorstein Blue Shirt is a droop-lipped coal-eater,' observed Kvasir and we all nodded at that. Not the sharpest seax in the sheath was Thorstein.

So if even he saw the right of it, argued Finn . . .

I sighed, for there was no going back from what happened. The Oathsworn were shattered. Those who weren't being eaten or gelded were lurching along with oarmates they could no longer trust because they had broken their oaths and were too nithing to admit it.

Inside, I was feeling a rising excitement that perhaps, at last, Odin had broken us and, tired of the affair, had gone off to annoy the new dead, or taunt bound Loki. All that remained was to survive.

Sighvat came over to us, having been in deep conversation with the priests. I had thought he was trying to find ways of avoiding his wyrd by using the Christ, for he had been braiding his eyebrows over the matter for long enough.

Now he loped over the sun-seared earth between the white buildings and squatted in the shade next to us.

Finn offered him a grubby slice of fruit and he took it, which was an encouraging sign, for he had been listless over his feed of late.

`Martin the monk was here and gone, only four days ago,' Sighvat said. `Starkad came with about fifteen men. Dudo remembers him well, says our Starkad was deeply troubled and cannot sleep at night for dreams.

He left here two days ago heading south after Martin. No one knows where the monk is going, but even Dudo was impressed by our Martin and says he has the look of a very holy man, probably destined to be a hermit, or a pole-sitter.'

No one said anything, for the way south stretched like a Muspell nightmare and I knew we all thought the same thing: who would follow me down that road from here?

The sun wheeled on. Birds flared up, flashing black and white, from the complicated network of irrigation canals, hunting insects before night fell. The air seemed brittle and thin, oddness flickered at the edge of my vision, half-seen whorls of dust and half-heard voices from the empty spaces of the desert.

The Oathsworn came, lighting torches for the bigger insects to sizzle into, gathering silently and slowly like the grim dead round the pitfire Finn had made. It was chill on top of this hill, but the fire seemed excessive to me and I wondered what he thought he was going to cook on it. We were eating boiled vegetables and gritty flatbread and unlikely to get meat from these lean monks.

It turned out to be Kleggi and Hrolf the Dane carpenter who had something to say, urged forward by Kvasir to stand in front of me, twisting the ends of their belts like boys caught with tunics full of stolen apples.

Ìt is this way,' said Kleggi, apologetically. `Halfred Hookeye was kin, you see, and we are thinking that compensation is in order.'