The Lords of the North (4 page)

'He does?'

'He hates all Christian priests. He reckons they're sorcerers, so he half buries them and
lets his dogs eat them.'

'What did he say?' Willibald asked me, pulling his mare aside before Witnere could savage
her.

'He said Kjartan will kill you if he captures you, father.'

'Kill me?'

'He'll feed you to his hounds.'

'Oh, dear God.' Willibald said. He was unhappy, lost, far from home, and nervous of the
strange northern landscape. Hild, on the other hand, seemed happier. She was nineteen years
old, and filled with patience for life's hardships. She had been born into a wealthy West
Saxon family, not noble, but possessed of enough land to live well, but she had been the last
of eight children and her father had promised her to the church's service because her mother
had nearly died when Hild was born, and he ascribed his wife's survival to God's benevolence.
So, at eleven years old, Hild, whose proper name was Sister Hildegyth, had been sent to the
nuns in Cippanhamm and there she had lived, shut away from the world, praying and spinning
yarn, spinning and praying, until the Danes had come and she had been whored. She still
whimpered in her sleep and I knew she was remembering her humiliations, but she was happy
to be away from Wessex and away from the folk who constantly told her she should return to
God's service. Willibald had chided her for abandoning her holy life, but I had warned him
that one more such comment would earn him a new and larger bellybutton and ever since he had
kept quiet. Now Hild drank in every new sight with a child's sense of wonder. Her pale face
had taken on a golden glow to match her hair. She was a clever woman, not the cleverest I
have known, but full of a shrewd wisdom. I have lived long now and have learned that some women
are trouble, and some are easy companions, and Hild was among the easiest I ever knew.
Perhaps that was because we were friends. We were lovers too, but never in love and she was
assailed by guilt. She kept that to herself and to her prayers, but in the daylight she had
begun to laugh again and to take pleasure from simple things, yet at times the darkness

wrapped her and she would whimper and I would see her long fingers fidget with a crucifix
and I knew she was feeling God's claws raking across her soul. So we rode into the hills and I
had been careless, and it was Hild who saw the horsemen first. There were nineteen of them,
most in leather coats, but three in mail, and they were circling behind us, and I knew then
that we were being shepherded. Our track followed the side of a hill and to our right was a
steep drop to a rushing stream, and though we could escape into the dale we would inevitably
be slower than the men who now joined the track behind us. They did not try to approach. They
could see we were armed and they did not want a fight, they just wanted to make sure we kept
plodding north to whatever fate awaited us. 'Can't you fight them off?' Bolti demanded.
Thirteen against nineteen?' I suggested. 'Yes,' I said, 'if the thirteen will fight, but
they won't.' I gestured at the swordsmen Bolti was paying to accompany us. They're good
enough to scare off bandits,' I went on, 'but they're not stupid enough to fight Kjartan's men.
If I ask them to fight they'll most likely join the enemy and share your daughters.'

'But. . .' he began, then fell silent for we could at last see what did await us. A slave
fair was being held where the stream tumbled into a deeper dale and in that larger valley
was a sizeable village built where a bridge, nothing more than a giant stone slab, crossed a
wider stream that I took to be the Wiire. There was a crowd in the village and I saw those folk
were being guarded by more men. The riders who were following us came a little closer, but
stopped when I stopped. I gazed down the hill. The village was too far away to tell whether
Kjartan or Sven were there, but it seemed safe to assume the men in the valley had come from
Dunholm and that one or other of Dunholm's two lords led them. Bolti was squeaking in alarm,
but I ignored him. Two other tracks led into the village from the south and I guessed that
horsemen were guarding all such paths and had been intercepting travellers all day. They
had been driving their prey towards the village and those who could not pay the toll were
being taken captive. 'What are you going to do?' Bolti asked, close

to panic.

'I'm going to save your life,' I said, and I turned to one of his twin daughters and
demanded that she gave me a black linen scarf that she wore as a belt. She unwound it and,
with a trembling hand, gave it to me and I wrapped it around my head, covering my mouth, nose
and forehead, then asked Hild to pin it into place. 'What are you doing?' Bolti squawked
again. I did not bother to reply. Instead I crammed my helmet over the scarf. The
cheek-pieces were fitted so that my face was now a mask of polished metal over a black skull.
Only my eyes could be seen. I half drew Serpent-Breath to make sure she slid easily in her
scabbard, then I urged Witnere a few paces forward. 'I am now Thorkild the Leper,' I told
Bolti. The scarf made my voice thick and indistinct.

'You're who?' he asked, gaping at me.

'I am Thorkild the Leper,' I said, 'and you and I will now go and deal with them.'

The?' he said faintly.

I waved everyone forward. The band that had circled to follow us had gone south again,
presumably to find the next group trying to evade Kjartan's war-band.

'I hired you to protect me,' Bolti said in desperation.

'And I am going to protect you,' I said. His Saxon wife was wailing as though she were at
someone's funeral and I snarled at her to be silent. Then, a couple of hundred paces from
the village, I stopped and told everyone except Bolti to wait. 'Just you and I now.' I told
Bolti.

'I think you should deal with them alone,' he said, then squealed. He squealed because I had
slapped the rump of his horse so that it leaped forward. I caught up with him. 'Remember,' I
said, 'I'm Thorkild the Leper, and if you betray who I really am then I shall kill you, your
wife, your sons and then I'll sell your daughters into whoredom. Who am I?'

Thorkild.' he stammered.

Thorkild the Leper.' I said. We were in the village now, a miserable place of low stone
cottages roofed with turf, and there were at least thirty or forty folk being guarded at the
village's centre, but off to one side, close to the stone-slab bridge, a table and benches
had been placed on a patch of grass. Two men sat behind the table with a jug of ale in front of
them, and all that I saw, but in truth I really only noticed one thing. My father's
helmet.

It was on the table. The helmet had a closed face-piece which, like the crown, was inlaid
with silver. A snarling mouth was carved into the metal, and I had seen that helmet so many
times. I had even played with it as a small child, though if my father discovered me with it
he would clout me hard about the skull. My father had worn that helmet on the day he died at
Eoferwic, and Ragnar the Elder had bought it from the man who cut my father down, and now it
belonged to one of the men who had murdered Ragnar. It was Sven the One-Eyed. He stood as
Bolti and I approached and I felt a savage shock of recognition. I had known Sven since he
was a child, and now he was a man, but I instantly knew the flat, wide face with its one feral
eye. The other eye was a wrinkled hole. He was tall and broad-shouldered, long-haired and
full-bearded, a swaggering young man in a suit of richest mail and with two swords, a long
and a short, hanging at his waist. 'More guests,'

he announced our arrival, and he gestured to the bench on the far side of the table.
'Sit,' he ordered, 'and we shall do business together.'

'Sit with him,' I growled softly to Bolti.

Bolti gave me a despairing glance, then dismounted and went to the table. The second man
was dark-skinned, black-haired and much older than Sven. He wore a black gown so that he
looked like a monk except that he had a silver hammer of Thor hanging at his neck. He also
had a wooden tray in front of him and the tray was cunningly divided into separate
compartments to hold the different coins that gleamed silver in the sunlight. Sven,
sitting again beside the black-robed man, poured a beaker of ale and pushed it towards Bolti
who glanced back at me, then sat as he had been commanded.

'And you are?' Sven asked him.

'Bolti Ericson,' Bolti said. He had to say it twice because the first time he could not
raise his voice enough to be heard.

'Bolti Ericson,' Sven repeated, 'and I am Sven Kjartanson and my father is lord of this
land. You have heard of Kjartan?'

'Yes, lord.'

Sven smiled. 'I think you have been trying to evade our tolls, Bolti! Have you been trying
to evade our tolls?'

'No, lord.'

'So where have you come from?'

'Eoferwic.'

'Ah! Another Eoferwic merchant, eh? You're the third today! And what do you carry on
those packhorses?'

'Nothing, lord.'

Sven leaned forward slightly, then grinned as he let out a huge fart. 'Sorry, Bolti, I
only heard thunder. Did you say you have nothing? But I see four women, and three are young
enough.' He smiled. 'Are they your women?'

'My wife and daughters, lord,' Bolti said.

'Wives and daughters, how we do love them,' Sven said, then he looked up at me and though I
knew my face was wrapped in black and that my eyes were deep-shadowed by the helmet, I felt my
skin crawl under his gaze. 'Who,' Sven asked, 'is that?'

He must have been curious for I looked like a king. My mail and helmet and weapons were of
the very best, while my arm rings denoted a warrior of high status. Bolti threw me a
terrified look, but said nothing. 'I asked,' Sven said, louder now, 'who that is.'

'His name,' Bolti said, and his voice was a trembling squeak, 'is Thorkild the Leper.'

Sven made an involuntary grimace and clutched at the hammer amulet about his neck, for
which I could not blame him. All men fear the grey, nerveless flesh of lepers, and most lepers
are sent into the wilderness to live as they can and die as they must.

'What are you doing with a leper?' Sven challenged Bolti. Bolti had no answer. 'I am
journeying north.' I spoke for the first time, and my distorted voice seemed to boom inside
my closed helmet.

'Why do you come north?' Sven asked.

'Because I am tired of the south.' I said.

He heard the hostility in my slurred voice and dismissed it as impotent. He must have
guessed that Bolti had hired me as an escort, but I was no threat, Sven had five men within a
few paces, all of them armed with swords or spears, and he had at least forty other men inside
the village. Sven drank some ale. 'I hear there was trouble in Eoferwic?' he asked Bolti.
Bolti nodded. I could see his right hand convulsively opening and closing beneath the
table. 'Some Danes were killed.' he said. Sven shook his head as though he found that news
distressing. 'Ivarr won't be happy.'

'Where is Ivarr?' Bolti asked.

'I last heard he was in the Tuede valley,' Sven said, 'and Æd of Scotland was dancing
around him.' He seemed to be enjoying the customary exchange of news, as if his thefts and
piracy were given a coating of respectability by sticking to the conventions. 'So,' he
said, then paused to fart again, 'so what do you trade in, Bolti?'

'Leather, fleeces, cloth, pottery.' Bolti said, then his voice trailed away as he decided
he was saying too much.

'And I trade in slaves,' Sven said, 'and this is Gelgill.' he indicated the man beside
him, 'and he buys the slaves from us, and you have three young women I think might prove very
profitable to him and to me. So what will you pay me for them? Pay me enough and you can keep
them.' He smiled as if to suggest he was being entirely reasonable.

Bolti seemed struck dumb, but he managed to bring a purse from beneath his coat and put some
silver on the table. Sven watched the coins one by one and when Bolti faltered Sven just
smiled and Bolti kept counting the silver until there were thirty-eight shillings on the
table. 'It is all I have, lord.' he said humbly.

'All you have? I doubt that, Bolti Ericson,' Sven said, 'and if it is then I will let you
keep one ear of one of your daughters. Just one ear as a keepsake. What do you think,
Gelgill?'

It was a strange name, Gelgill, and I suspected the man had come from across the sea, for
the most profitable slave markets were either in Dyflin or far off Frankia. He said
something, too low for me to catch, and Sven nodded.

'Bring the girls here.' he said to his men, and Bolti shuddered. He looked at me again as if
he expected me to stop what Sven planned, but I did nothing as the two guards walked to our
waiting group.

Sven chatted of the prospects for the harvest as the guards ordered Hild and Bolti's
daughters off their horses. The men Bolti had hired did nothing to stop them. Bolti's wife
screamed a protest, then subsided into hysterical tears as her daughters and Hild were
marched towards the table. Sven welcomed them with exaggerated politeness, then Gelgill
stood and inspected the three. He ran his hands over their bodies as if he were buying
horses. I saw Hild shiver as he pulled down her dress to probe her breasts, but he was less
interested in her than in the two younger girls. 'One hundred shillings each,'

he said after inspecting them, 'but that one,' he looked at Hild, 'fifty.' He spoke with a
strange accent.

'But that one's pretty.' Sven objected. 'Those other two look like piglets.'

They're twins,' Gelgill said. 'I can get a lot of money for twins. And the tall girl is too
old. She must be nineteen or twenty.'

'Virginity is such a valuable thing,' Sven said to Bolti, 'don't you agree?'

Bolti was shaking. 'I will pay you a hundred shillings for each of my daughters.' he said
desperately.

'Oh no.' Sven said. 'That's what Gelgill wants. I have to make some profit too. You can keep
all three, Bolti, if you pay me six hundred shillings.'