Thunder God (17 page)

The Bulgar slapped his hands together. ‘Even if the old man dies, which I grant you he probably will, the bony one is worth more than twenty coins by himself.’

My mind was racing. I drew out my sword.

The Bulgar stepped back in alarm.

I flipped the blade around and handed it to him hilt first.

The Bulgar laughed nervously as he took hold of the sword. ‘What is this engraving?’ he asked. ‘I cannot read runes.’

‘That is the name of the Saxon swordsmith, Ulfbehrt.’

The Bulgar was trying to show no expression, but by the twitching of his lips it was clear he knew the value of this blade. It was pattern-welded from many thin layers of iron pounded together by several men working in shifts, with fine steel welded on the cutting edge. The red-hot blade had then been quenched in a vat filled with honey and blood, to harden the metal. I had watched it being made for Halfdan, one sultry afternoon in Miklagard. I recalled the sweet smell of the honey and the blood rising in a cloud of vapour when the burning sword was plunged into the vat. This technique produced wavy lines which seemed to ripple like water on the surface of the metal. ‘It might be worth something,’ he said. ‘Maybe this and the gold, providing the coins are not hacked.’

‘Done,’ I said quietly.

‘Done!’ echoed the Bulgar. He slapped one palm across another, which was a sign that the transaction was complete.
While I cut the last coins from my vest, the Bulgar slid the sword into his belt. The pale flesh of his belly pressed against the blade.

In silence, Olaf watched me unfastening the coins.

The Bulgar put the coins one by one into his mouth and rolled each one around, clicking it against his teeth. Then he spat the coin out into his palm, sliming the gold with spit, and announced, ‘Pure.’ When he had finished sucking his money, the Bulgar grinned at me. ‘I cannot see what you want with those slaves. They are just a couple of mangey Christians. They are everywhere these days. Infesting the place!’

I walked down to the water’s edge where Yarl and Godfred were being unchained.

Godfred walked towards me with his arms held out. ‘God has sent you to rescue us!’

The Bulgar heard this and laughed. ‘That is what you get for buying Christians! The fat one never shuts up.’ He waved at his own servants, who hauled the remaining slaves to their feet and sent them shuffling down to the water where the Bulgar’s ramshackle boat was waiting to take them away.

One of the Bulgar’s servants carried a lump of wood tucked under his arm. The Bulgar took it from him and tossed it in the air. With the sunlight behind him, his ears glowed poppy red. The piece of wood turned lazily above his head.

I recognised it then as the strange statue Godfred and Yarl had found drifting out in the middle of the ocean. As the Bulgar threw it high again, I saw the statue’s angry face, twisting in the air. This time, the Bulgar dropped the statue. He kicked it along for a few paces. Then picked it up, stuck it under his arm and headed down to the beach, where Olaf had gone to unload his cargo.

‘How did you lose your ship?’ I asked Yarl.

‘We were on our way here with a cargo of soapstone. Raiders
caught up with us. Took everything. Food. Clothes. The lot. Then they set the boat on fire. After that, the raiders sold us to that wretched Bulgar.’

‘I see he has the little statue.’

Yarl made a ratty smile. One of his teeth had been knocked out. ‘Yes, he does. And he has been dropping it and kicking it around ever since he got his greedy hands on it.’

Godfred raised his head. His eyes were wild. ‘I hope it rots his balls off!’

We both turned to stare at him.

Godfred put his hands over his face and moaned.

I turned back to Yarl. ‘Do you have some place to go?’

‘We will get by all right.’

I reached into the lining of my vest and tore out one more coin, realising as I did that it was my last one. I pressed it into his hand, still trailing the red thread which had bound it to the vest.

Yarl folded the coin into his hand. ‘I thank you.’ He jerked his chin at Godfred. ‘He thanks you, too. Or he will thank you when he gets his wits back. Here,’ Yarl took a frayed linen bag from around his shoulder. ‘I think Godfred would want you to have this. I convinced the Bulgar it was just a toy.’

In the bag was a circular piece of wood about the size of my outstretched hand, with a hole in the middle. The bag also contained a wooden spike, which fitted into the hole in the plate. Around the edge of the circle, thirty-two small triangles were carved into the wood. Branching down from one of these triangles was a line of horizontal cuts, like the rungs of a ladder. Across the top of the hole was a straight line and below that, arcing around the hole, was another line which formed the inside of the crescent.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘This,’ he replied solemnly, ‘is the bearing dial I told you about.’

It took Yarl only a few moments to teach me that these triangles were direction markers, that the ladder signified north and that the crescent line showed the path of the sun during the summer solstice, wheras the straight line indicated the sun’s path during the equinox. Depending on what time of year I was travelling, I would either take my bearings off the straight line or the curved line. If I held the dial out in front of me, the shadow of the spike would touch on the point of north/south alignment. If I took a measurement before I left land, I could use the bearing dial to show whether I was north or south of that place.

I had heard stories that the Arabs had learned how to navigate with the use of specially-marked sticks, and that they had learned this technique from a people far to the East, but this was the first time I had seen such a thing for myself.

I thanked Yarl as he set off towards town, leading Godfred by the arm.

‘Rots his balls off!’ shouted Godfred, still lost in his raging.

When they were gone, I went back to find Olaf, who had finished his dealings with the Bulgar. ‘Will you explain to me what you just did?’ he asked. ‘I should have thought you would be pleased to see a Christian locked in chains.’

I explained how I had met them and the kindness they had shown me.

Olaf shook his head sadly. ‘That was a nice sword you just gave away.’

I nodded. For such a fine blade to have gone to a man like that Bulgar left me feeling sick to my stomach.

What the Bulgar had not bought from Olaf, we sold to people who made their way across the sand to us, hacksilver coins pinched between their thumbs and forefingers. Then, carrying their purchases, they filtered away into the night.

The weather-selling Lapp crawled from the hole where he
lived, offering to trade us a good breeze for a coin. In each hand, he carried a paddle, like a shortened oar, on the blades of which he had carved swirling rings. It was by waving these, he said, that he could change the direction of the wind. When I told him I had been up to his country, he confided in me that he was tired of selling weather and would soon be heading home, past the great forests and the mountains, until he was once more out on the wind-sheared tundra.

After picking up a few things for people in Altvik, we ran up our sails and headed out with the night tide. The boat slipped silently by crews sleeping on their decks, huddled together under the dingy blankets of their sails. As we left the port, I saw the Christian cross which had taken the place of the Norse pillars. Four bodies hung from the crossbeam, two at each end, dangling from short lengths of rope. Out in the marshes, dogs howled by the blood-soaked pillars of the Norsemen. The smell of rotting food and filth and the skeletons of men who talked too much, all jellied in the mud beneath our keel, soon gave way to the hollowing wind of the sea.

We rode towards the moon, as if we were caught in its spell, pulling tighter on the sail lines to gather more speed, until it seemed we must collide with it or sail straight through into another world. The walrus skull seemed to charge ahead, refusing to give up the chase. At the last minute, as if tired of the game, the moon rose above the water, leaving us alone out on the silver-crested waves.

Five days later, we dropped anchor in the bay at Altvik. It was evening when we rowed ashore, working the oars through the still water. The air was filled with soft, pink light, like the lining of a mussel shell.

We went straight to the alehouse to pay off the people who had given us goods to sell.

Olaf sat himself down at his usual table in the corner and began sifting through the pile of coins. People thought of this table as lucky because of all the gold and silver which had rattled over its old planks.

The news soon spread that we had returned, and it wasn’t long before the alehouse bustled with laughter and warm bodies. It had been a successful trip. No one would go hungry this winter. As the night wore on, Ingolf rolled in more barrels from his storage shed outside. Old men sat on the benches outside, sucking their teeth and drinking watered-down ale from wooden mugs.

I could still feel the movement of the ocean in my head, like a mother rocking a child.

Cabal appeared. He was immediately surrounded by people who questioned him about a batch of wine he had begun, using blueberries, bearberries and whortleberries gathered in
the fields. ‘It is not ready yet,’ he kept saying. ‘I will tell you when it is done, I promise.’ He looked above the heads of those who were pestering him and waved at Olaf and me.

‘Cabal and my mother are going in business together,’ Ingolf called across. ‘Soon they will have no need of me!’ He laughed when he said this, but there was a paleness in his face, as if that just might be the truth.

‘If that Celt can brew wine,’ said Olaf, ‘he will do all right in this town.’

Olaf and I were sitting with the owner of a trading ship that had come in the day before. He was a rat-faced man called Anskar, nicknamed Anskar Berry-Face, since he once lost a bet and had to stick his head into a vat of purple dye. He and Olaf passed a mug of ale back and forth, their upper lips slicked with foam.

Anskar Berry-Face handed me the bowl and gave me a stern look. ‘I heard talk of
you
further down the coast. The one who got struck by
lightning
and who runs the temple now.’ He had a way of talking that rose up and down like the motion of a boat in heavy seas. ‘What are you going to tell the Christians when they get here?’

At that moment, I could not imagine the Christians ever coming to Altvik. The dangers I had pictured down in Miklagard, of the old faith being overwhelmed, had not appeared. I felt safe. This was not Hedeby, Kaupang or Nidarnes, just a small place hardly worth their attention. ‘I expect I will not have to tell them anything,’ I said.

‘Indeed you
will
,’ he barked, ‘because they will be here by tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ I was sure I had misunderstood him.

Anskar shrugged. ‘They are sailing up the coast.’

‘Are they traders who happen to be Christians,’ I asked, ‘or just Christians?’

‘Traders they
are
,’ said Anskar, ‘but not trading in the goods that you and I would bring to
sell
. They want your
souls
, as soon as they can persuade you that you
have
them.
Those
are their goods. And they make enough noise about it and do enough of their Christian
magic
, that if they were selling what I am selling, they would put me out of business in a
week
.’

‘What magic are you talking about, Berry-Face?’ I asked.

‘You will see that for yourself.’ Anskar took back the bowl in his long and spindly fingers. ‘This man who’s making his way up the coast is named Brand. He is English. Brought in specially by the king of Norway to deal with hard cases like yourselves. I heard he is
already
a saint. And before you go asking me, no, I do not know what that is except that they say he can talk to his god, just as you can talk to yours.’

‘Let them make Christians of those who want to be,’ I said, ‘and leave the rest of us alone.’

‘Ah, that’s how
you
think,’ Anskar shook a finger in my face. ‘But that is not how
they
think. They
only
want you praying to their Jesus. And if you do not’ – he brought his face close to mine, breath sour from his drinking – ‘you know what they
do
? They tie you
up
,’ said Anskar, making an imaginary knot in the air. ‘Then they jam a hollow bull’s horn down your throat. Then they put a poisonous snake through the horn,
right
down your throat. And it bites you and you are
dead
.’

‘Are you a Christian?’ I asked him.

Anskar shrugged. ‘I
am
when it suits me.’ He pulled a silver ornament from around his neck, where it was held fast with a sweat-waxed leather cord. ‘This is a crucifix. They used to nail people up on these big wooden frames and leave them to
die
in the
sun
. I’m a Christian when I go among Christians. But when I am with
you
…’ He let the ornament hang upside down.

I recognised Thor’s hammer now.

‘You
see
?’ said Anskar. ‘I can be whichever one I want.’

‘But you will always be a Berry-Face,’ said Ingolf from across the room, ‘and you can take comfort in that.’

Anskar shrugged again. ‘Christians, Norsemen, Muslims. I have run into people whose gods have names I cannot even
pronounce
. I know a
lot
about religions.
That
, for example,’ he pointed at the statue of the cat-eyed man behind the counter, ‘is called a
Buddha
. They pray to him out in the east. That little man is a
long
way from home, I can tell you. People are already starting wars over which one to believe in. How much
good
is that for merchants like us?’

‘No good at all,’ said Olaf. ‘Business and religion have to ride the same horse.’

‘Business rides everybody’s horse.’ Anskar rummaged in his pocket. He pulled out a few silver coins, looked at them and sighed. ‘I did not sell much in this town, and what I made I have spent drinking. If you ask me, those Christians will be
wasting
their time in Altvik.’

‘Stop talking, Anskar,’ said Ingolf. ‘You are making me seasick.’

Anskar shrugged. ‘If you do not want to listen, then I have got nothing to say.’ He sprinkled the coins back into his pocket and headed for the door.

I looked around at the laughing crowd, each of them lost for now in the blur of their drinking. Atremor passed through me, as if the ground beneath my feet had suddenly quaked. I realised then that the safety I had felt here was only an illusion, and that the fight I had persuaded myself would never happen would have to be fought after all.

Late in the night, as I lay in bed, watching the last of the firelight fade across the sleeping face of Cabal, I looked at our old Varangian shields hanging on the wall, white paint chipped, showing the blood red beneath. Cobwebs, layered with dust, hung from the rim and swayed in some faintness of breeze I
could not feel. I stared at our rusted chain-mail vests, draped on two nails by the door. They were the same two nails my father had used to hang his winter cloak and seal-fur mittens. In the corner was Halfdan’s spear, untouched since I set foot inside this house.

Muscles clenched inside my chest, robbing me of sleep, preparing for what was to come.

The next day, late in the afternoon, a hollow moaning reached us on the wind, like the sad song of whales I had heard out on the open sea.

The whole town gathered by the water’s edge as a ship entered the bay. At the bow stood a man wearing a brown cloak tied with a black cord and a small red cap perched on the top of his head. He seemed to be alone on the boat and was blowing into a huge trumpet made from the twisted horn of a ram. The sound filled the bay, scattering the gulls.

Dogs began to howl.

The ship dropped anchor fifty paces from shore. When this was done, the man held his arms wide, heavy rings knuckling his fingers, and shouted in a voice even louder than the trumpet, ‘Do you know the power of the Lord?’

There was a murmur from the crowd.

‘Which of you’ – his voice echoed through the empty streets – ‘will join me this day on the road to Paradise?’

This time only silence drifted back across the water.

But this man was not discouraged.

‘Look at yourselves,’ he shouted. ‘Look at this place! Your old gods have forgotten you. No true god would let his people suffer the way you suffer now.’

The huge man heaved a rowboat over the side and stepped into it, bringing the rim dangerously close to the waterline. I expected his bulk to take him straight through the hull, like
Thor in the story of the Midgard serpent, when he hooked the monster and pulled so hard on the line to draw it to the surface that his legs punched through the bottom of the boat. The bow rode up precariously as the man began to row for shore, the bony arms of his oars tracing slow arcs in the still air.

Now the murmur on the beach rose to a babbling of excited voices.

As his rowboat ground against the shingle beach, the huge man climbed out into the shrugging waves. His long cloak trailed in the water. His gaze passed over us, then he smiled and showed his teeth. With one hand, he dragged his rowboat up onto the beach. His big feet crunched the empty mussel shells and dried-up seaweed. ‘Do any of you know my name?’ he asked.

‘You are Jesus Christ,’ called Tola, ‘and I can tell your fortune for a price!’ She stood at the back of the crowd, holding up her leather bag of glass beads, animal bones and sea-smoothed pebbles with which she predicted the future. ‘Make way!’ She pushed forward, jabbing with her crooked little feet, in which the blue veins twisted and doubled back on each other like the meanderings of an old stream.

‘No,’ said the man, his voice deep and patient. ‘I am not the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. My name is Brand. I have carried the word of the Lord to the farthest reaches of the earth. I am his loyal servant. I stand before you now, ready to do his work and bring you all into his flock.’ One arm flew up, the sleeve of the robe fell and his hand emerged, gripping a small wooden cross. ‘Which of you are Christians already?’

Nobody moved.

‘Who will come forward, then,’ he shouted, ‘and receive the blessing of the cross?’

‘Does it hurt?’ asked Tola, emerging from the front rank of the crowd.

‘Hurt?’ shouted Brand, peering down at the old woman as if he could not understand how such sagging skin could hold her bones together. ‘No, it will not hurt. What will hurt is if you do not accept the offer of Christ’s mercy. Then you will live in hell on earth.’ He spun about, the robe dragging after him. Small waves broke around his bare feet. His broad toes gripped the sand. ‘It is here, all around you, the endless nightmare. Can you not see it, consuming your lives in its eternal flames? Have you not suffered enough?’

There were some who craned their necks around, as if to find themselves enveloped in the blaze.

‘You doubt me?’ shouted Brand. ‘You do doubt me!’ he cried in well-rehearsed amazement. ‘Do you need proof? Is that it?’ Even though no one replied, he began to nod and look from one side to the other, as if we were all talking to him now, demanding that he show us his proof. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘You will have it! This afternoon, in the town square.’

‘We do not have a town square,’ said Olaf.

‘No town square?’ Brand’s smooth forehead crumpled and he seemed for a moment to be having second thoughts about this place. But then the confidence returned to his face. ‘On this beach then! Tonight. And when you have had proof, I will lead you one by one into the water to be baptised in the name of the Christ our saviour, and this forgotten outpost will become the house of the Lord until the end of time.’ Then Brand pulled from his rowboat a large object wrapped in a piece of sailcloth dappled with what looked like blood. He dumped it on the ground and kicked back the edges of the cloth, revealing a whole leg of beef. ‘A gift!’ he said. ‘And who is the aleman here?’

Ingolf stepped forward, nervously wiping his hands on his leather apron.

Brand pressed some coins into his hand. ‘For a barrel, so you
can wash down your meal, all thanks to the church.’ Then he stopped forward and I was close enough to hear him say to Ingolf in a quieter voice, ‘Make it the good stuff. No cheap brew, or you and I will have words about it afterwards. Can you cook this meat?’

‘I can,’ said Ingolf.

‘Then get to it,’ said Brand. He stepped back and beamed at the crowd. ‘I will see you all later this evening!’ he shouted, as he dragged the rowboat back into the surf and returned to his ship.

Ingolf set about making a fire. Then he skewered the beef on a spit, turning it slowly while fat dripped into the hissing flames.

Several smaller fires were kindled up and down the beach, which gave the place a festive look. Flames threw their light across the water, and fish gathered in the shallows, drawn by the glow. Children scooped up the fish with nets made from sacking cloth and roasted them on sharpened sticks.

Ingolf rolled a keg down from the alehouse, meaty hands slapping the iron fetters of the barrel as he pushed it out across the sand.

I stood with Cabal by the water.

‘So they have come after all,’ he said. ‘Well, they will not have this place. I promise you that.’

I glanced at him, realising that his hatred of the Christians had only grown stronger since our days in the Varangian. ‘Let him say his piece. People will decide for themselves.’

‘He can talk all he wants,’ snapped Cabal.

A fire had been lit in a brazier on the ship’s deck. It burned brightly, throwing off sparks. Brand was walking back and forth, barechested and rocking his arms in front of his chest, like a man getting ready for a fight. Then he knelt down by the brazier, holding up a wooden cross, eyes closed and lips moving in prayer.

‘What is that smell?’ asked Cabal.

‘The roasting meat, I think.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Something else. Like tar.’