Wolfsangel (34 page)

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Authors: M. D. Lachlan

BOOK: Wolfsangel
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‘Where is the girl?’ said Feileg.
Veles smiled broadly.
‘I do not have her here, but if she is to be found, then I can find her,’ said Veles. ‘A girl. A princess no doubt. Has little Ragna been taken? I will help find her and expect no payment; simply your thanks and whatever gift your generous people choose to bestow on me will be enough. ’
‘It is not Ragna, though the captive is no less dear to the king. No gift would suffice to thank you for her return,’ said Vali.
‘Well, let’s talk about the exact sums later,’ said Veles. ‘I’m joking of course. But, please, come to my house, where you will be my guests. And you must see King Hemming. We should start by asking for compensation for the raid
and
the abduction of the girl. I’m sure he couldn’t have sanctioned this, prince. He wouldn’t want to risk your father’s wrath. I will handle everything - the amount, whichever way it is paid, the form, the delivery. The details of mere trade are beneath princes, or at least that’s what the Franks maintain, and their empire seems to thrive on it. You need only return to Rogaland and wait for the happy outcome.’
Vali felt his heart leap. If anyone could locate Adisla, he thought, Veles could.
28 Bargains
Haithabyr was as much a marvel close up as it had been from the sea. Logs had been split and laid on the ground so there was a solid path, firm underfoot. The houses huddled in so close that the thatches nearly touched at some points, blocking out the light. Each yard was fenced, some with individual wells. People shoved and bustled on the waterfront, and even in the alleys that led up from the jetties you could hardly take twenty paces without encountering someone coming the other way. Still, the place was filthy. Piles of rubbish lay everywhere and in places the wooden path was slick with shit.
Would it have hurt, thought Vali, to have carried some of the mess down to the water and thrown it in? Haithabyr stank, and he wondered that people could live in such fetid conditions.
‘Danes,’ said Bragi. ‘They don’t know the meaning of washing and cleaning.’
‘They are a filthy people,’ said Veles, ‘say their enemies. However, I have always found them to be scrupulously clean, as such an opinion is more conducive to a long and happy life. This way, please.’
They moved up through the town, crossing a bridge over a small stream that ran down to the quay. Vali marvelled at that too - the stream had been cut into a channel and was as straight as an arrow. Was this stinking, teeming place the future? he asked himself.
Then, in a square not far from the channel, he saw it - the market. All around were open barns, which he could see contained livestock. One was smaller than the others, squat to the ground like a normal longhouse but without walls, the roof low and the space underneath it black. Vali went closer and saw ragged figures huddled in the darkness. Walking faster and faster, he ducked under the roof of the building and peered into the gloom. Pale faces looked back at him, some shrunken with starvation, others quite plump and healthy. All, however, were chained together. The smell was overwhelming.
His eyes went from face to face. There were two monks - as he now knew them to be - as he’d seen on the island, a mother and two children huddling together, a tall man who could only be a Swede, sitting upright and defiant, and, at the end, a girl of around seventeen, blonde-haired, pretty and staring blankly ahead. It wasn’t Adisla though, not her at all.
‘What is it you’re looking for, sir? Market is two weeks from now, but if you offer the right price the goods are yours. Or do you have slaves to sell? I will buy the right material.’
Vali turned to see a well-dressed man in a dark cloak. He was carrying a long switch of hazel. Beside him was a red-haired woman he guessed was a freed slave because she did not look Danish. She was carrying a set of keys.
‘I’m looking for a woman who might have been brought here, taken from the raid on Rogaland,’ he said.
‘The Rygir girls are cold,’ said the man. ‘Here, try this one at the end. She’ll set your bed on fire, as long as you’re willing to put up with a month of sulking while she gets used to you.’
The girl looked at him from the darkness. Her eyes didn’t contain hope, or anything in particular.
‘I want the Rygir girl,’ said Vali.
‘This one is from the western islands - that’s as near as you’re going to get to Rygir,’ he said.
‘So Haarik’s men have not been here selling slaves?’ said Vali.
‘They left a month back,’ said the slaver, ‘and I haven’t seen them since. Hey, you, pauper, come away from there.’
Vali turned to see Feileg inspecting the irons on one of the children. As the slaver ran across raising his switch, the wolfman turned and let out a low snarl - a raw and angry sound, a boiling expression of animosity, a communication of the kind certain animals have sent to humans since earliest times. It was the sound the wolf and the bear make to their prey, a sound that speaks to the instincts, not the mind, and says only one thing: ‘Run.’
Vali sensed the fear come off the slaver like the blast you feel when you pass the door of a smithy. The slaver dropped the switch and reversed direction, backing away from Feileg and falling back into some straw. The wolfman stepped forward and stood above him. Then Vali saw the knife. The slaver was a hard man and had recovered from the shock of Feileg’s fury as he had fallen. He pulled a blade from his belt and as he stood drove it forward into Feileg’s belly. There was a sound like a breaking branch, then another and then a thump. It all happened too fast for Vali to take in. A breath after the slaver fell back into the straw for the second time, Vali’s mind finally caught up with what he’d witnessed. Feileg had broken the slaver’s arm, snapped his knee joint and thrown him to the ground. His head flopped back into the mud with a squelch.
The wolfman dropped on top of his man, teeth bared. Vali instinctively knew what was about to happen and leaped forward to push Feileg off. It was one thing to get into a fight within a blink of coming into town - that might even be good for their reputation - but savaging someone with your teeth was a step too far. Vali pushed as hard as he could, but the wolfman just turned his body and Vali found himself face down in the mud. Feileg was tearing at the slaver’s face with his nails, pulling the flesh from the bone. The noise he was making was unbearable, a demented, keyless howl. The slaver lost an eye.
The woman stood watching expressionlessly as her companion suffered.
‘Feileg!’ Vali got back up and shook the wolfman by his shoulders, staring into his face as if into a mirror.
And then the nature of things seemed different: his consciousness seemed a wide and inclusive thing. It was as if the way of seeing things that he’d found in the mire had leaked into the day to day, as if the whole world was bathed in that dirty underwater light. Emotions pulled his head this way and that - the fear coming off the slaver and from Feileg a powerful sense of something trying to break out, something smothered under a blanket of pain. Vali forced himself to speak, though he didn’t know where he got the words.
‘Feileg, please,’ said Vali. ‘It’s all right. Just leave him. Come on, you must be tired. Veles will have a fine bed, I’m sure - better than the ground, eh?’
The wolfman looked back into Vali’s eyes and Vali sensed that he shared something fundamental with this man, something deeper than could be conveyed by any word. He was connected to him, more than that, the same as him. The feeling made him shiver.
The wolfman didn’t move, just looked down at the man beneath him. The slaver was silent - blue at the lips.
‘He’s dead of fear,’ said Bragi. ‘I’ve seen it before.’ Vali looked down at the body and it was as if its smells leaked memories. He tasted sour curds, sea and wood, sweat and blood, caught the scent of smoke and rain, saw piles of gold and wide bright skies. The sensations crowded upon him and then they were gone.
A crowd had been drawn by the noise.
The slaver woman now pulled at Vali’s arm. She wasn’t upset or angry. ‘I want weregild. Compensation for my husband’s death.’
Vali had the bearing of a prince, so she had naturally gone to him rather than the wild Feileg, who seemed in some sort of trance.
‘I . . .’ Vali didn’t know what to say. He was trying to think straight. The fight had registered in his mind on a level beyond the fact of its violence, terrible though that had been. The strength of the emotions had seemed to wake a new sense in him, something between smell and memory. He felt dizzy and his head began to ache. The wide consciousness of a breath before had retracted to a thin stream; there was a high-pitched ringing in his ears like the echo of a scream.
The woman spoke again. ‘Some compensation is right. I saw you arrive. You have a fine boat. If I can have that, then the matter is forgotten.’
Veles put up his hand.
‘I am the prince’s representative in all such matters. You will get no weregild from us. Your husband attacked this man. The berserk did no more than shout at him and your husband drew a knife. It is you who owe us compensation.’ He turned to the crowd, some of whom were now coming in to look at the body of the slaver.
‘Is that not right?’
There were some murmurings, a few half-hearted jokes, which Veles acknowledged with a smile.
The woman seemed to weigh Veles’ words in her mind.
‘Give me two oars and we are even.’
Veles shook his head.
‘My friends have a case against you. Give us all your slaves and it is forgotten.’
The woman looked at the crowd. She was not articulate and Veles was a popular man.
‘Give him the slaves,’ said a voice.
‘The wolfman was wronged - I saw the knife,’ said another. Others just shook their heads and laughed.
The woman looked to left and right, hoping for a friendly face. There were not many.
‘I offer you the two children,’ she said. There was a mild change in Veles’ posture, almost like a hound taking a scent. The stink of the slave barn seemed terrible to Vali, who felt as though he couldn’t move. He put his hand on the low roof for support.
‘They are more a burden than a help,’ said Veles. ‘Include the parents and my friend’s claim is done. Your man was no great loss. Look at your face - you didn’t get that bruise from his kisses.’
The woman thought again for a moment. She walked to the corpse of her husband and spat at it.
‘Take them,’ she said. ‘I thank Jesus for my release. Few people are freed twice in their lives.’
‘Have them delivered,’ said Veles. ‘I have better things to do for the moment, and see that they’re fed before they arrive. I don’t want to start paying out until I’ve had at least a day’s work.’
The woman nodded. ‘Bread, no stew.’
‘Stew,’ said Veles, ‘or we put it before the assembly, and I tell you, you’ll lose more than slaves for this.’
The woman shrugged. ‘Stew.’
‘Come,’ said Veles. ‘We must away.’
Feileg still hadn’t moved. Veles put his mask up to his face and looked at Feileg through it.
‘Woof, woof. Come on,’ he said. Some of the crowd laughed, though others were still craning over the corpse. Remarkably, the merchant’s mockery seemed to break Feileg from his trance, and he looked up and followed his companions, Bragi patting him on the shoulder and congratulating him.
‘That’s how a man deals with people who pull knives on him, son,’ he said. ‘Ah, by Lord Tyr’s holy stump, I could have done with you on a few raids. If I was ten years younger, we’d get some plunder between us, eh? If you could learn to use a sword there’d not be a man between here and Serkland who’d face you down.’
The wolfman said nothing.
Vali followed Veles through the streets. He wondered if his time in the mire had taken too great a toll on him, whether it had affected his mind. Looking into Feileg’s eyes had been a disconcerting experience, the violence worse still. There had been something intoxicating about it.
Bragi was now in conversation with Veles.
‘I thought that was going to cost us a helmet at least. You really are a magician, Veles,’ he said.
‘I have my talents,’ Veles replied. ‘She had already been paid by your wolfman. She’s a rich widow now. I think she probably wanted to give howling boy a gift; I just showed her how it could be done.’
‘What is Feileg going to do with slaves,’ said Bragi, ‘other than eat them?’
‘Give them to me,’ said Veles.
Veles’s house was a big longhouse with bulging walls in the Haithabyr style. It had a fenced area outside it, within which, on a stool, sat a Dane in a padded coat, carrying a large seax. Vali instinctively checked his sword was still at his belt.
‘No need, no need,’ said Veles, putting his hand on Vali’s. ‘This is my bodyguard, not a robber. He is paid to be here.’
This shocked Vali. Why would anyone need a personal bodyguard? Couldn’t the community guard itself against outsiders who might come to rob? Forkbeard’s plunder sat in the open air for days after a raid so the people could see his success and reflect on his power. His kin would never steal from him. Also, bodyguards worked for loyalty and honour not pay, and only nobles had them. Veles was a commoner, a thrall even. The whole thing struck the prince as immoral.

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