The Wolf Sea
Robert Low

To Lewis and Harris, two islands in a sea of troubles. I hope, one day, they enjoy what their grandfather has made for them.

Only the hunting hungry

Set sail on the wolf sea

Old Norse proverb

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Maps

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

KEEP READING

HISTORICAL NOTE

The White Raven

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Wolf Sea

Copyright

About the Publisher

Maps

ONE

MIKLAGARD, the Great City, AD 965

His eyes flicked to the bundle in my hand, then settled on my gape-mouthed face like flies on blood. They were clouded to the colour of flint, those eyes, and his snake moustaches writhed as he sneered at me, the blow I had given him having done nothing except annoy him.

‘Big mistake,’ he snarled in bad Greek and moved up the alley towards me, hauling a seax the length of my forearm out from under his cloak.

I hefted the wrapped sabre, swung it and revealed how clumsy the weapon was in that single moment. He grinned; I backed up, slithering through black-rotted rubbish, wishing I had just gone my way and ignored him.

He was quick, too, darting in fast and low, but I had been watching his feet not his eyes and swung the bundle so that it smacked him sideways into the wall. I followed it with a big overarm hack, but missed. The bundled sword cut through the wrappings and struck sparks from the wall.

Showered with brick and plaster chips, he was alarmed, both at the near miss and the fact that there was now a sharp edge involved. I saw it in his eyes.

‘Didn’t expect this, did you?’ I taunted as we shifted and eyed each other. ‘Tell you what – you tell me why you are following me all over Miklagard and I will let you go.’

He blinked astonishment, then chuckled like a wolf who has found a crippled chicken. ‘You’ll let me go? I don’t think you realise who you are facing, swina fretr. I am a Falstermann and not one to take such insults from a boy.’

So I had been clever about him being a Dane, I thought. It was a pity I had not been so clever about taking him on. His feet shifted and I had been watching for that, so that when he swung I caught the seax on the shredded bundle, wincing at the blow. I turned my wrist to try and tangle his blade in cloth and almost managed to twist the seax free of his grasp. He was too old a hand for that, though, and I was too clumsy with the sword wrapped as it was.

Worse than that – even now I sweat with the shame of it – his oarmate came up behind me, elbowed the breath out of me and slammed me to the clotted filth of the alley. Then he plucked the wool-coddled sword from my fluttering hands, easy as lifting an egg from a nest and, dimly, I realised that’s what they had wanted all along. I was gasping and boking too much to do anything about it.

‘Time to row hard for it,’ this unseen one growled and I heard his steps squelching through the alley filth.

I was sure death had not been in the plan of this, but the man from Falster had blood in his eye and I had rain in mine, blurring the world. The cliff walls of the alley stretched up to frame a patch of indifferent grey sky and it came to me then that this would be the last sight I would see.

I did not want to die in a filthy alley of the Great City with the rain in my eyes. Not that last, especially, for the vision of the first man – the boy – I had killed came back to me, lying on a heath with his bloodless face and his eyes open and startled under little pools of rainwater.

The Falstermann loomed over me, breathing hard, the seax reversed for a downward thrust straight at my belt loop, rain pearling mistily on the pitted steel, sliding carelessly along the edge…

The rain, says Sighvat, will tell you all about a place if you know how to read it. The rain in a Norway pine wood is good enough to wash your hair in but, if a city is really old, it drips from the eaves with the grue of ages, black as pitch, harsh as a curse.

Miklagard, the Great City, was ancient and her pools and gutters spat and hissed like an evil snake. Even the sea here was corroded, heaving in slow, fat swells, black and slick and greasy as a wet hog’s back, glittering with scum and studded with flotsam.

I did not even want to be in this city and the gawping wonder of it had long since palled. Stumbling from the ruined dream of Attila’s silver hoard, those of the Oathsworn who survived the Grass Sea of the steppe had washed up here, after a Greek captain had been persuaded to take us. Since then, my great plan had been to load and unload cargo on the docks, husband what little real money we had, waiting for the rest of the Oathsworn to join us from far-off Holmgard and make a crew worth hiring for something better.

At the end of it all, distant as a pale horizon, was a new ship and a chance to go back for all that silver, a thought we hugged for warmth as winter closed in on Miklagard, drenching the Navel of the World in misery.

That black rain should have been warning enough, but the day the runesword was stolen from me I was wet and arrogant and angry at being followed all along in the lee of Severus’s dripping walls by someone who was either bad at it, or did not care if he was seen. Either way, it was not a little insulting.

On a clear day in Constantinople you could almost see Galata across the Horn. That day I could hardly see the man following me in the polished bronze tray I held up and pretended to study, as if I would buy it.

A face twisted and writhed in the beaten, rain-leprous surface, a stranger with a long chin, a thin, straggled beard, a moustache still a shadow and long, brown-red-coloured hair that hung in braids round the brow, some of them tied back to keep the hair from the blue eyes. My face. Beyond it, trembling and distorted, was my shadower.

‘What do you see?’ demanded the surly Greek owner of the tray and all its cousins laid out on a worn strip of carpet under an awning, heavy with damp. ‘A lover, perhaps?’

‘Tell you what I don’t see,’ I said with as sweet a smile as I could muster, ‘you gleidr gaugbrojotr. I don’t see a sale.’

He snorted and snatched the tray from me, his sallow face flushed where it wasn’t covered with perfumed beard. ‘In that case, fix your hair somewhere else, meyla,’ he snapped, which I had to admit was a good reply, since it let me know that he understood Norse and that I had called him a bowlegged grave-robber. He had called me little girl in return. From this sort of experience, I learned that the merchants of Miklagard were as sharp as their manners and beards were oiled.

I smiled sweetly at him and strolled off. I had learned what I needed: the bronze tray had revealed, beyond my face and watching me, the same man I had seen three different times before, following me through the city.

I wondered what to do, clutching the wrapped bundle of the runesword and chewing scripilita, the chickpea-flour bread, thin and crusty on top, glistening with oil on the bottom, wrapped in broadleaves and – wonder of wonders – thickly peppered. This treat, which was never seen further north than Novgorod, was so expensive beyond the Great City, thanks to the pepper, that it would have been cheaper to dust it with gold. The seductive taste of it and the cold was what made me blind and stupid, I swear.

The street led to a little square where the windows were already comfort-yellow with light as the early winter dark closed in. I had, even in so short a time, lost the wonder that had once locked my feet to the street at the sight of houses put one on top of the other and had eyes only for my tracker. I paused at a knife-grinder’s squeaking wheel, glanced back; the man was still there.

He was from the North, for sure, for he was taller than any others and clean-shaven but for the long snake moustaches, a Svear fashion that was much fancied by dandies then. He had long hair, too, which he had failed to hide well under a leather cap, and wore a cloak, under which could lurk anything sharp.

I moved on, past a stand where a woman sold chickpea flour and dried figs. Next to her, a man in a sleeveless fleece sold cheeses out of a single basket and, leaning against the wall and trying not to let their teeth chatter in the cold, a pair of girls tried to look alluring and show breasts that were red-blue.

The Great City is a miserable place in winter. It has the Sea of Darkness at its back and behind that the Grass Sea of the Rus; and it is a place of gloom and penetrating damp. There may be a flicker of late summer and even pleasant days at the start of the year, but you cannot count on sun, only rain, between the last days of harvest and the first ones of the festival of Ostara, which the Miklagard priests call Paschal.

‘Come and warm me,’ one of the girls said. ‘I can teach you how to make a beast with two backs if you do.’

I knew that trick and moved on, trying to keep the man in sight by turning and exchanging some good insults, then bumped into a carder of wool coming up the other way, demanding that people buy his mattress stuffings or risk freezing their babies by their carelessness.

The street slithered wetly down to the docks, grew crowded, sprouted alleyways and spawned people: bakers, sellers of honey, vendors of tanned leather for making cords, those selling the skins of small animals. This was not the fashionable end of Miklagard, this collection of lumpen faces and beggar hands. They were the halt, the lame and the poxed, most of whom would die in the cold of this winter unless they got lucky.

It was already cold in the Great City, cold enough to numb my senses into thinking to find out who this man was and why he followed me.

So I slid up one of the alleys and hefted the bundle that was the runesword, it being the only weapon I had besides an eating knife. My plan was to tap him with the cushioned blade of it as he passed, drag him in the alley and then threaten him with the sharp end until he babbled all he knew.

He duly obliged, even pausing at the mouth of the alley, having lost me and wondering where I had gone. If I had stayed in the shadows, I would have shaken him off, for sure – but I stepped out and rapped him hard on the head.

There was a clatter; he staggered and yelled: ‘Oskilgetinn!’, which at least let me know I had been right about him being from the North – though you could tell by his roar that it meant ‘bastard’ even if you couldn’t speak any Norse. The curse let me know he was at least prime-signed, if not fully baptised, since only Christ-followers worried about children born out of wedlock. A Dane, then, and one of King Harald Bluetooth’s new Christ-converts. I did not like what that promised.

The third thing I found out was that his cap was a metal helmet covered in leather and most of the blow had been taken on it. The fourth was that he was from Falster and I had made him angry.

That was what I learned. I missed many things, but the worst miss of all was his oarmate, coming up behind me and leaving me gasping in the alley, the sword gone and pearled rain dripping off the Falstermann’s blade, raised to finish me.

‘Starkad won’t be pleased,’ I gasped and the big Dane hesitated for long enough to let me know I had it right and he was a chosen man of an old enemy we had blooded before. Then I lashed out with my right leg, aiming for his groin, but he was too clever for that and whacked my knee hard with the flat of the blade, which he then pointed at me.

He wanted to kill me so bad he could taste it, but we both knew Starkad wanted me alive. He would want to gloat and wave the stolen runesword in my face, the one now long vanished up the alley. The Falstermann, wanting to be away himself, started to say a final farewell, which would have included how lucky I was and that the next time we met he would gut me like a fish.

Except that all that came out was ‘guh-guh-guh’ because a knife hilt had somehow appeared beneath his right ear and the blade was all the way into his throat.

A hand pulled it out as casually as if it were plucking a thorn and the hiss of escaping blood was loud, the splatter of it everywhere as the Dane collapsed like an empty waterskin.

Blinking, I looked up to what had replaced him against the yellow lantern glow of the window lights beyond the alley: a big man, shave-headed save for two silver-banded braids over each ear, wearing the checked breeks of the Irish and a tunic and cloak that was Greek. He also had a long knife and a tattooed whorl between his eyes, which I knew was the Ægishjalm, the Helm of Awe, a runesign supposed to send your enemies away screaming in terror with the right words spoken. I wished he would turn it off, for it was working well on me.

‘I heard him call you pig fart,’ he said in good East Norse, his eyes and teeth bright in the alley’s twilight. ‘So I reasoned he bore you no goodwill. And, since you are Orm the Trader, who has a crew and no ship, and I am Radoslav Schchuka, who has a ship and no crew, I was thinking my need for you was greater than his.’

He helped me up with a wrist-to-wrist grip and I saw that his bared forearm had several thick-welted white scars. I looked at the dead Dane as this Radoslav bent and rifled his purse, finding a few coins, which he took, along with the seax. Then it came to me that I should be dead in the alley and my legs trembled, so that I had to hold on to the wall. I looked up to see the big man – a Slav, for sure – cutting his own arm with the seax and realised the significance of the scars.

He saw my look and showed me his teeth in a sharp grin. ‘One for every man you kill. It is the mark of my clan, where I come from,’ he explained, then helped me roll the Dane in his cloak and back into the shadows of the alley. I was shaking now, but not at my narrow escape – it had come to me that the Dane would have gone his way and left me lying in the muck, alive – but at what had been lost. I could have wept for the shame of losing it, too.

‘Who were they?’ asked my rescuer, binding up his new scar.

I hesitated; but since he had painted the wall with a man’s blood, I thought it right that he knew. ‘A chosen warrior of one Starkad, who is King Harald Bluetooth’s man and anxious that he get something from me.’

For Choniates, I suddenly thought, the Greek merchant who had coveted that runed sword when he’d seen it. It was clear the Greek had sent Starkad to get it and would be unhappy about the death. The Great City had laws, which they took seriously, and a dead Dane in an alley could be tracked back to Starkad and then to Choniates.

Radoslav shrugged and grinned as we checked no one could see us, then left the alley, striding casually along as if we were old friends heading for a drink-shop. My legs shook, which made the mummery difficult.

‘You can judge a man by his enemies, my father always said,’ Radoslav offered cheerfully, ‘and so you are a great man for one so young. King Harald Bluetooth of the Danes, no less.’

‘And young Prince Yaropolk of the Rus also,’ I added grimly to see his reaction, since he was from that part of the world. Beyond a widening of his eyes at this mention of the Rus King’s eldest son there was silence, which lasted for a few footsteps, long enough for my racing heart to settle.

I was trying desperately to think, panicked at what had been lost, but I kept seeing that little knife come out of the Dane’s neck under his ear and the blood hiss like spray under a keel. Someone who could do that to a man is someone you must walk cautiously alongside.

‘What did he steal?’ Radoslav asked suddenly, the rain glistening on his face, turning it to a mask of planes and shadows.

What did he steal? A good question and, in the end, I answered it truthfully.

‘The rune serpent,’ I told him. ‘The roofbeam of our world.’

I brought him to our hov in a ruined warehouse by the docks, as you would a guest who has saved your life, but I did this Radoslav no favours. Sighvat and Kvasir and Short Eldgrim and the rest of the Oathsworn were huddled damply round a badly smoking brazier, talking about this and that and, always, about Orm’s plan to get them back to sea in a fine ship, so that they could be proper men again.

Except Orm didn’t have a plan. I had used up all my plans getting the dozen of us away from the ruin of Attila’s howe months before, paying the steppe tribes with what little I had ripped from that flooding burial mound – and had nearly drowned to get, the weight of it stuffed in my boots almost dragging me down.

I could not get rid of the Oathsworn after we had all been dumped on the quayside. Like a pack of bewildered dogs they had looked to me. Me. Young enough for any to call me son and yet they called me ‘jarl’ instead and boasted to any they met that Orm was the deepest thinker they had ever shared an ale horn with, even as I spun and hung my mouth open at the sheer size and wealth and wonder of the Great City of the Romans.

Here, the people ate free bread and spent their time howling at the chariot and horse races in the Hippodrome, fighting mad over their Blue or Green favourites and worse than any who went on a vik, so that city-wide riots were common.

The char-black scars from the previous year still marked where one had spread out, incited by opponents of Nikephoras Phocas, who ruled here. It had failed and no one knew who had fed the flames of it, though Leo Balantes was a name whispered here and there – but he and other faces were wisely absent from the Great City.

A black-hearted city right enough, which turned the slither from the gutters crow-dark so that we knew, even if the story of it curled on itself like a carved snake-knot, that cruelty squatted in Miklagard. Blood-feuds we knew well enough, but Miklagard’s treachery we did not understand any better than the city’s screaming passion for chariots and horses that raced instead of fought.

We were wide-eyed bairns on this new ship and had to learn how to sail it, fast. We learned that calling them Greek was an insult, since they considered themselves Romans, the only true ones left. But they all spoke and wrote in Greek and most of them knew only a little Latin – though that did not stop them muddying the waters of their tongue with it.

We learned that they lived in New Rome, not Constantinople, nor Miklagard, nor Omphalos, Navel of the World, nor the Great City. We learned that the Emperor was not an Emperor, he was the Basileus. Now and then he was the Basileus Autocrator.

We learned that they were civilised and we could not be trusted in a decent home, where we would either steal the silver or hump the daughters – or both – and leave dirty marks on the floors. We learned all this, not from kindly teachers, but from curled lips and scorn.

The slaves were better off than us, for they were fed and sheltered free, while we took miserable pay every day from a fat half-Greek, which would not let us afford either decent mead – even if we could find it here – or a decent hump. My stock of Atil’s silver was all but exhausted and still no plan had come to me yet and I wondered how long the Oathsworn would stomach this.

Singly and in pairs like half-ashamed conspirators all of them had approached me at one time or another since we had been here, all with the same question: what had I seen inside Attila’s howe?

I told them: a mountain of age-blackened silver and a gifthrone, where Einar the Black, who had led us all there, now sat for ever as the richest dead man in the world.

All of them had been there – though none but me inside it – yet none could find the way back to it, navigating themselves like a ship across the Grass Sea. I knew they also felt the fish-hook jerk of it, despite all that they had suffered, no matter that they had watched oarmates die there and had felt the dangerous, sick magic of that place for themselves.

Above all, they knew the curse that came from breaking the oath they had sworn to each other. Einar had broken it and they all saw what had become of that, so none slipped away in the night, abandoning his oarmates to follow the lure of silver. I was not sure whether this was from fear of the curse, or because they did not know the way, but they were Norsemen. They knew a mountain of riches lay out on the steppe and they knew it was cursed. The wrench between fear and silver-desire ate them, night and day.

Almost every night, in the quiet of that false hov, they wanted to look at the sword, that sinuous curve of sabre wrenched from Atil’s howe by my hand. A master smith had made that, a half-blood dwarf or a dragon-prince, surely no man. It could cut the steel of the anvil it was made on and was worked along the blade length with a rune serpent, a snake-knot whose meaning no one could quite unravel.

The Oathsworn came to marvel at that steel curve, the sheen of it – and the new runes I had carved into the wooden hilt. I had come late to the skill and needed help with them, but those were simple enough, so that any one of the Oathsworn could read them, even those who needed fingers to trace them and mumbled aloud.

Only I knew they marked the way back to Atil’s howe in the Grass Sea, sure as a chart.

A chart I had now managed to lose.

All of this swilled round in my head, dark as the water from Miklagard’s gutters, as I hunched through the rain towards our ratty warehouse hall, dragging the big Slav with me. The wind blasted and grumbled and, out across the black water, whitecaps danced like stars in a night sky.

‘You look like you woke up with the ugly one, having gone to bed with golden-haired Sif,’ Kvasir growled as I stumbled in, shaking rain off, slapping the piece of sacking that was my cloak and hood. His good eye was bright, the other white as a dead fish, with no pupil. He looked the big Slav up and down and said nothing.

‘Thor’s golden wife wouldn’t look at him,’ said a lilting voice. ‘Though half the Greek man-lover crews here would. Maybe that is the way ahead for us, eh, Orm?’

‘The way behind, you mean,’ jeered Finn Horsehead, jerking lewd hips and roaring at his own jest. Brother John’s look was withering and Finn subsided into mock humility, nudging his neighbour to make sure he had caught his fine wit.

‘Never be minding,’ Brother John went on, taking my elbow. ‘Come away here and sit you down. There’s a fine cauldron of…something…with vegetables in it that Sighvat lifted and Finn made with pigeons. And a griddle of flatbread. Enough for our guest, too.’

The men made room round the brazier and Brother John ushered us to a place, gave us bowls, bread and a wink. Radoslav looked at the food and it was clear a stew made of the Great City’s pigeons was not the finest meal he had eaten, nor – with the wind hissing through the warehouse, flaring the brazier embers – was this the best hall he had been in. But he grinned and chewed and gave every indication of being well treated. I took a bowl, but my mouth was full of ashes.

I introduced Radoslav. I told them why he was here and that what we had feared had happened – the rune-serpent sword was gone. The silence was crushing, broken only by the sigh of wind ruffling the curls on Brother John’s half-grown forehead. You could hear the sky of our world falling in that silence.

Brother John had been on the boat when we had boarded it on the Sea of Darkness. The Greek and his crew thought he was one of us, we thought he was one of them and neither found out until after we were ashore. We had taken to Brother John at once for that Loki trick and afterwards he had astounded us all by telling us he was a Christ priest.

Not one like Martin, the devious monk from Hammaburg, the one I should have killed when I had the chance. Brother John was from Dyfflin and an altogether different breed of horse. He did not shave his head in the middle like the usual priests, he shaved it at the front – when he could be bothered. ‘Like the druids did in times of old,’ he offered cheerfully when asked.

He did not wear robes either and he liked to drink and hump and fight, too, even though he was hardly the height of a pony’s arse. He was on his second attempt to get to Serkland, trying to reach his Christ’s holy city, having failed the first time and, as he said himself, sore in need of salvation.

I was sore in need of the same and dare not look anyone in the eye.

‘Starkad,’ muttered Kvasir. ‘Fuck his mother.’ His head drooped. There were grunts and growls and sniffs, but it was a perfect summing up and the worst sound of all was the despairing silence that followed.

Sighvat broke it. ‘We have to get it back,’ he declared and Kvasir snorted derisively at this self-evident truth.

‘I will tear his head off and piss down his neck,’ growled Finn and I was not so sure that he was talking about Starkad and not me. Radoslav, food halfway to his mouth, had stopped chewing and looked from one to the other, only now realising that something truly valuable had been taken.

‘Starkad,’ said Finn in a voice like a turning quernstone. He stood and dragged the seax out, looking meaningfully at me. The others growled approval and their own hidden knives flashed.

Despair closed on me like dark wolves. ‘He works for the Greek, Choniates,’ I said.

‘Aye, right enough, we saw him there,’ agreed Sighvat and if there is a colour blacker than his voice was then, the gods have not seen fit to show us it yet.

Finn blinked, for he knew what that meant. Choniates had power and money and that permitted him armed guards and the law. We were Norse, with all that stood for in the Great City. Bitter experience had taught the people of Miklagard just what the Norse did in their halls during the long, dark winters, especially men with no wives to stay their hands. The Great City’s tabernae and streets did not want feasting Northmen getting drunk and killing each other – or worse, the good citizens – so the city had made a law of it, which they called the Svear Law. We could carry no weapons and would be arrested for the ones gleaming in the firelight here. We had only a limited time in the Great City and soon we would be rounded up and pitched out beyond the frontier if we did not get a ship in time to leave ourselves.

Finn wolfed it all out in a great howl of frustration that bounced echoes round the warehouse and started up local dogs to reply, his head thrown back and the cords of his neck standing out like ship’s cables. But even he knew we would not profit from charging up to Choniates’ marbled hov, kicking in the door and dangling him by the heel until he coughed up the runesword. All we would get was dead.

‘Choniates is a merchant of some respectability,’ Radoslav said, quiet and cautious about the smouldering rage round him. ‘Are you sure he has done this thing? What is this rune serpent anyway?’

Glares answered that. Choniates had it, for sure. Architos Choniates had seen the sword weeks ago and I had been expecting something since then – only to ease my guard at the last and lose it.

When we had first staggered on to the docks of the Great City, it was made clear we would remain unmolested provided we could pay our way. I had half a boot of coins and trinkets left, the last cull from Atil’s howe, but they were not seen as currency, so had to be sold for their worth in real silver – and Architos Choniates was the name that kept surfacing like a turd in a drain.

It took two days to arrange, because the likes of Choniates wasn’t someone you could walk up to, a ragged-breeks boy like me. He had no shopfront, but was known as a linaropuli, a cloth merchant – which was like calling Thor a bit of a hammer-thrower.

Choniates dealt in everything, but cloth especially and silk in particular, though it was well known that he hated the Christ church’s monopoly on making that fabric. Brother John found a tapetas, a rug dealer, who knew a friend who knew Choniates’ chief spadone and, two days later, this one turned up in the Dolphin.

Outside it, to be exact, for he wouldn’t set foot inside such a place, despite the rain. He sat in a hired carrying-chair, surrounded by hired men from the guild of the racing Blues, wearing their neckcloths to prove it. They were all scowling toughs sporting the latest in Great City fashion: tunics cinched tight at the waist and stiffened at the shoulders to make them look muscle-wide. They had decorated trousers and boots and their hair was cut right back on the front and grown long and tangled behind.

It was all meant to make them look like some steppe tribe come to town, but when one came into the Dolphin and asked for Orm the Trader, he was almost weeping with rage and frustration at the hoots and jeers of men who had fought the real thing.

We all went out, for the others were anxious to see what a spadone, a man with no balls, looked like, but were in for a disappointment, since he looked like us, only cleaner and better groomed. He was swathed in a thick cloak, drawn up over his head so that he looked like an old Roman statue, and he inclined his head graciously in the direction of the gawping mob of pirates who confronted him.

‘Greetings from Architos Choniates,’ he said in Greek. ‘My name is Niketas. My master bids me tell you that he will see you tomorrow. Someone will come and bring you to him.’

He paused, looking round at us all. I had followed his talk well enough, as had Brother John, but the others knew just enough Greek to get their faces slapped and order another drink, so they were engaged in peering at him. Finn Horsehead was practically on his knees, trying to squint into the carrying-chair, and I could see he was set on lifting clothing to get a better look at what wasn’t there.

‘We will be ready,’ I said, cuffing Finn’s ear. ‘Convey my thanks to your master.’

He nodded at me politely, then hesitated. Finn, scowling and rubbing his ear, was glaring at one of the smirking thugs who formed the bodyguard.

‘You may bring no more than three others,’ Niketas said as they left. ‘Suitably comported.’

‘“Suitably comported”,’ chuckled Brother John as we watched them go. ‘How are we to do that at all?’

In the end, I decided Sighvat and Brother John were best and left it at that, ignoring Finn’s demands to be included.

‘He may just decide to lift it,’ he argued. ‘Or send men to ambush you on the way.’

‘He is a merchant,’ I said wearily. ‘He depends on his reputation. He won’t get far by waving a blade and robbing everyone.’

How wrong that turned out to be.

The next day we were escorted by another of Choniates’ household to the expensive end of the city and were greeted by Niketas in the immaculate atrium of a large house. He eyed us with one brow raised, taking in our stained, worn clothes, flapping soles and long beards and hair. I felt like a grease stain in this marbled hov.

Sighvat, who took considerable pride in his appearance – we all did, for we were Norsemen and, compared to others in the world, a byword for cleanliness – scowled back at Niketas and hissed, ‘If you had balls left, I would tear them off.’

Niketas, who must have heard it all before, simply bowed politely and then left. It may be that Choniates was then busy for two hours, or that Niketas was vengeful.

But it gave us a chance to watch and learn in a part of the city where life seemed careless. People came and went in Choniates’ lavish hall with no apparent purpose other than to lean against polished balustrades and laugh and talk and bask in the perfect sun of their lives, warmed, on this chilly, damp day, by heat that came under the floor.

They drank wine from bowls, spilled it, laughingly daring, as an offering to older gods and chided each other for getting it on their expensive sleeves, patting their clothes with sticky-ringed hands. Sighvat and I spent some time wondering if you could get those sticky rings off without cutting their fingers and even more wondering how the heat came up from the floor without the place burning down.

Choniates, when we were finally ushered into his presence, was tall, dressed in gold and white and with perfect silver hair. He conducted affairs in a chair at first, surrounded by men who softened his face with hot cloths, slathered him with cream and then, to our amazement, started painting it with cosmetics, like a woman. They even used brown ash on his eyelids.

He was offhand, dismissive – I was a badly dressed varangii boy, after all, clutching a bundle wrapped in rags, accompanied by a big, hairy, fox-faced man and a tiny, bead-eyed heretic monk who spoke Latin and Greek with a thick accent.

After he had seen the coins, though, he grew thoughtful and that did not surprise me. They were Volsung-minted and the only ones in the world not in Atil’s dark tomb were the ones he turned over and over in his fat, manicured fingers. He knew their worth in silver – and, more than that, he knew what they meant and that the rumours about the Oathsworn were true.

He asked to see the sword and, made bold and anxious to please, I unwrapped that bundle and everything changed. He could scarcely bring himself to touch it, knew then who this Orm was and saw the beauty and the worth of that sabre-curve, even if he did not know what the runes meant, on hilt or blade.

‘Will you sell this, too?’ he asked and I shook my head and wrapped it up again. I saw in his eyes the look I was fast getting used to: the greed-sick, calculating stare of those wondering how to find out if the rumours of a marvellous silver hoard were true and, if so, where it was. The sword, as it was bundled up again, was like the dying sun to a flower as Choniates stood and watched it vanish into filthy wrappings. I knew then that showing it to him had been a mistake, that he would try something.

The barbers and prinkers were waved away; he offered wine and I accepted and sipped it – it was unwatered and I laughed aloud at his presumption. By the end of a long afternoon, Choniates reluctantly discovered that he would get no bargain for the coins, nor any clue as to other treasures.

He bought the coins and trinkets, paying some cash then, the bulk by promise – and extra for trying a cheap trick like getting me drunk.

‘That went well,’ beamed Brother John when we were out on the rain-glistening street.

‘Best we watch our backs,’ muttered Sighvat who had seen the same signs as I had.

Then, as we turned for a last look at the marble hov, we both saw Starkad, quiet and unfussed, hirpling through the gate like an old friend, not exactly fox-sleekit about it, but looking this way and that quickly, to see if he was observed. Even without the limp, which Einar had given him, both Sighvat and I knew this old enemy when we saw him – but, just then, the Watch tramped round a corner and we slid away before they spotted us and started asking awkward questions.

That had been weeks ago and Choniates, it had to be said, had been patient and cunning, waiting just long enough for us – me – to relax a little, to grow careless.

Oh, aye. We knew who had the runesword, right enough, but that only made things worse.

Finn grew redder and finally hacked the pigeon he had been plucking into bloody shreds and flying feathers until his rage went and he sat down with a thump. Radoslav, clearly impressed, picked some feathers from his own bowl and carried on eating slowly, spitting out the smaller bones. No one spoke and the gloom sidled up to the fire and curled there like a dog.

Brother John winked at me from that round face with its fringe of silly beard and jingled a handful of silver in one fist. ‘I have enough here for at least one mug of what passes for drink in the Dolphin,’ he announced. ‘To take away the taste of Finn’s stew.’

Finn scowled. ‘When you find more of that silver, you dwarf, perhaps we can afford better than those rats with wings that I catch. Get used to it. Unless we get that blade back, we will eat worse.’

Everyone chuckled, though the loss of the runesword drove the mirth from it. The pigeons in the city were fat and bold as sea-raiders, but easily lured with a pinch of bread, though no one liked eating them much. So the thought of drink cheered everyone except me, who had to ask where he had got a fistful of silver. Brother John shrugged.

‘The church, lad. God provides.’

‘What church?’

The little priest waved a hand vaguely in the general direction of Iceland. ‘It was a well-established place,’ he added, ‘well patronised. By the well-off. A well of infinite substance…’

‘You’ve been cutting purses again, holy man,’ growled Kvasir.

Brother John caught my eye and shrugged. ‘One only. A truly upholstered worshipper, who could afford it. Radix omnium malorum est cupiditas, after all.’

‘I wish you’d stop chewing in that Latin,’ growled Kvasir, ‘as if we all knew what you say. Orm, what’s he say?’

‘He says sense,’ I said. ‘Love of money is the root of all evil.’

Kvasir grunted, shaking his head disapprovingly, but smiling all the same. Brother John had no mirth in him at all when he met my eyes.

‘We need it, lad,’ he said quietly and I felt the annoyance and anger drain from me. He was right: warmth and drink and a chance to plan, that was what we needed, but cutting purses was bad enough without doing it in a church. And him being a heretic to the Great City’s Christ-men was buttering the stockfish too thick all round. All of which I mentioned in passing as we headed for the Dolphin.

‘It isn’t a church to me, Orm lad,’ he chuckled, his curls plastered to his forehead. ‘It’s an eggshell of stone, no more, a fragile thing built to look strong. There is no hinge of the Lord here. God will sweep it away in His own good time but, until then, per scelus semper tutum est sceleribus iter.’

Crime’s safest course is through more crime. I laughed, for all the sick bitterness in me. He reminded me of Illugi, the Oathsworn’s Odin godi, but that Aesir priest had gone mad and died in Atil’s howe along with Einar and others, leaving me as jarl and godi both, with neither wit nor wisdom for either.

But, because of Brother John, we were all declared Christ-men now, dipped in holy water and sworn such – prime-signed, as they say – though the crucifixes hung round our necks all looked like Thor hammers and I did not feel that the power of our Odin-oath had diminished any, which had been my reasoning for embracing the Christ in the first place.

The Dolphin nestled in the lee of Septimus Severus’s wall and looked as old. It had a floor of tiles, fine as any palace, but the walls were roughly plastered and the smoking iron lanterns hung so low you had to duck between them.

It was noisy and dim with fug and crowded with people, rank with sweat and grease and cooking and, just for one blade-bright moment, I was back in Bjornshafen, hugging the hearthfire’s red-gold warmth, listening to the wind whistle its way into the Snaefel forests, pausing only to judder the beams and flap the partition hangings, so that they sounded like wings in the dark.

Heimthra, the longing for home, for the way things had been.

But this was a hall where strangers did not rise to greet you, as was proper and polite, but carried on eating and ignoring you. This was a hall where folk ate reclining and sitting upright at a bench marked you at once as inferior, yet another strangeness in a city full of wonders, like the ornate basins which existed for no other reason than to throw water into the air for the spectator’s enjoyment.

The reason I liked the taberna was because it was full of familiar voices: Greeks and Slavs and traders from further north all talking in a maelstrom of different tongues, all with one subject: how the river trade was a dangerous business now that Sviatoslav, Great Prince of the Rus, had decided to fight both the Khazars and the Volga Bulgars.

It seemed that the Prince of the Rus had gone mad after the fall of the Khazar city of Sarkel, down on the Dark Sea – which event the Oathsworn had attended, after a fashion. He was now headed off to the Khazar capital, Itil on the Caspian, to finish them off, but hadn’t even waited for that before sending men further north to annoy the Volga Bulgars.

‘He’s like a drunk in a hall, stumbling over feet and wanting to fight all those he falls on. What was he thinking?’ demanded Drozd, a Slav trader we knew slightly and a man fitted perfectly to his name – Thrush – being beady-eyed and quick in his head movements.

‘He wasn’t thinking at all, it seems to me,’ another said. ‘Next you know, he will think he can take on the Great City.’

‘Pity on him if he does, right enough,’ Radoslav agreed, ‘for that means hard war and the Miklagard Handshake.’

That I had never heard of and said as much. Radoslav’s mouth widened in a grin like a steel trap and he laughed, causing his brow-braid to dip in his leather mug.

‘They offer a wrist-grasp of peace, but that is only to hold you close, by the sword-arm,’ he told us, sucking ale off the wet end of his hair. ‘The dagger is in the other.’

‘Let’s hope he does and dies for his foolishness. Maybe then we can go back north,’ Finn said, blowing froth off his straggling moustache.

I said nothing. The truth was that we could never go north, even if Sviatoslav turned his face to the wall tomorrow. He had three sons who would squabble over their inheritance and we had annoyed them all in the hunt for Attila’s hoard out on the steppe – the secret of which now lurked under Starkad’s fingertips.

He did not know, I was sure. Almost sure. He took the sword from me because Choniates the merchant had valued it and had probably offered highly for it. Even Choniates did not know what the scratches on the handle meant, but he knew how fine the blade was and where it had come from. Even if Starkad read runes well, he would make no sense of the ones on the sword’s grip.

Perhaps they even thought the rune serpent, carved into the steel when it was made, held the secret of the way to Atil’s tomb – and perhaps it did, for no one could read that spell in full, not even Illugi Godi when he was alive and he was a man who knew his runes. I had my own idea about what those runes did, all the same, and felt a chill of fear at not having the sword. Would all my hurts and ills come back in a rush now, no longer held at bay by that snake-knot spell?

Finn only nodded when I whispered all this out, eyeing me scornfully when I came to the last part, for he and Kvasir were the only ones I had shared this with and neither of them believed my good health and wound-luck was anything other than youth and Odin’s favour.

For a while Finn sat moodily stroking the beard he had plaited into what looked like black leather straps, trying to ignore the woman yelling at him from the other side of the hall.

‘She wants you, does Elli,’ Kvasir pointed out. ‘The gods know why – sorry, Brother John, God knows why.’

‘You’ll be well in there, with no silver changing hands at all,’ Sighvat added moodily.

Finn stirred uncomfortably. ‘I know. I have no joy in me for it this night.’

‘It’s the name,’ declared Sighvat and that, together with Finn’s half-ashamed scowl, managed a laugh from us. Elli, according to the old saga tales – and we had no reason to disbelieve them, Christ-sworn or no – was the giant crone who had wrestled with Thor, the one who was really Old Age.

I could see where that could be…diminishing to a man of sensitive nature. I said as much and Finn drained his mug, slapped it angrily on the table and lurched off to the whore, looking to soak his black rage in the white light of sweaty humping.

I sat back, easing. Brother John was right; we had all needed this. Now…it was clear Starkad was working for Architos Choniates, the merchant. We needed to—

Then, of course, Odin’s curse kicked in the door.

Well, Short Eldgrim did, slamming through in a hiss of damp wind and curses from those nearest as it washed them, swirling the lantern smoke. He spotted me, bustled his way through and sat, breathing heavily, the network of scars on his face made whiter by its weather-red. ‘Starkad,’ he growled. ‘He’s coming up the street with men at his back.’

‘That’s useful,’ muttered Kvasir. ‘I want to see his face when he finds out he has picked the last drinking place in the world he wants to be in.’

‘One!’ roared the crowd behind us. Elli was showing how many silver coins she could stick on the sweat of her bared breasts. Kvasir grinned. ‘She cheats – she uses honey. I tasted it once.’

‘Pass the word,’ I said softly. Odin’s hand, for sure – I knew One Eye would not let that sword fly from us so lightly, that he had walked the thief right into our clutches.

‘Three!’ Elli was doing well behind us.

Short Eldgrim nodded and slid away. Behind us, a coin slid from Elli’s ample, sweaty charms and the crowd roared. Brother John swallowed ale and narrowed his eyes.

‘A dangerous place to confront him,’ he said, looking round at the crowd.

‘Odin chooses,’ I said flatly and he glanced at me, who was now, supposedly, a prime-signed Christ-follower.

‘Amare et sapere vix deo conciditur’ he said wryly and I had felt my face flush. Even a god finds it hard to love and be wise at the same time; I wondered, after, if our little Christ priest had the power of scrying.

‘I hope that is Roman for “kill them all and let Christ Jesus sort them out”, little man,’ Finn growled, for he hated folk talking in tongues he did not understand. Since he did not understand any other than west Norse, he was frequently red in the face. Someone bumped him and he rounded savagely, slamming the man with an elbow. For a moment, it looked like trouble, but the man saw who it was and backed off, hands held up, aghast at having offended the Oathsworn. Skythians, they called us, or Franks – those who knew a little more used Varangi – and they knew if you took on one, you took on all.

Then the man himself came in, shoving through the door, pausing in a way that let me know, at once, that it was no accident, his arrival in the Dolphin. Heads turned to look; conversation died and silence drifted in with the cold rain-wind at the sight of him and the two behind him, openly armed, wearing mail and helms. That only revealed that Starkad and his crew had a powerful new friend in the Great City.

‘Starkad,’ I said and it was like the slap of a blade on the table. Silence fell, voices ceased one by one when they heard their own echo and heads turned as people sensed the hackle-rise tension that had crept into the fug and lantern smoke. Finn’s scowl threatened to split his brow and he growled. Radoslav looked quizzically from one to the other and, even in that moment, I saw the merchant in him, setting us in scales and balancing our enemies on the other pan to see who was worth more.

Starkad was splendid, I had to allow. He was still handsome, but pared away, as if some fire had melted the sleek from him, leaving him wolf-lean, with eyes sunk deep and cheekbones that threatened to break through the skin.

Wound fever, I thought, seeing how bad his limp was – Einar had given him a sore mark, right enough, that day on a hill in the Finns’ land. The Norns’ weave is a strange pattern: Einar was now dead and Starkad was standing there in a red tunic, blue wool breeks, a fine, fur-lined cloak fastened with an expensive pin and a silver jarl torc round his neck. He was, it seemed, making sure I knew his worth.

‘So, Orm Ruriksson,’ he said. There was a shifting round me, the little sucking-kiss sound of eating knives coming out of sheaths. I placed my hands flat on the table. He had two others at his back – one with squint eyes – but I knew there would be more outside, ready to rush to his aid.

‘Starkad Ragnarsson,’ I acknowledged – then froze, for he was wearing a sword at his side and he and his men had dared swagger through Miklagard with weapons openly, which fact had to be considered.

Not just any sword. My sword. The rune-serpent blade he had stolen.

He saw that I had spotted it. He had a smile like the curve of that blade and, behind me, I felt the heat and the stir and heard the low rumble of a growl. Finn.

‘I have heard of the death of Einar,’ Starkad said, making no effort to come closer. ‘A pity, for I owed him a blow.’

‘Consider it Odin luck, since he would have balanced you up with a stroke to the other leg if you had met again,’ I replied evenly, the blood thundering in my ears, ringing out the question of how he came to be wearing that sword. Had he stolen it from Choniates, too? Had the Greek given it to him – if so, why?

Starkad flushed. ‘You yap well for a small pup. But you are running with bigger hounds now.’

‘Just so,’ I answered. This was easy work, for Starkad was not the sharpest adze in the shipyard for wordplay. ‘Since we are speaking of dogs – have you been back to sniff Bluetooth’s arse? Does that King know that you have lost both the fine ships he gave you? No, I didn’t think so. I am thinking he may not stroke your belly, no matter how well you roll on your back at his feet.’

The flush deepened and he laid one hand casually on the hilt of the sabre by way of reply. He saw me stiffen and thought it recognition of the blade and smiled again, recovering. In truth, it was the sight of his pale fingers, like the legs of a spider, sliding along the marks I had made on the hilt, watching them unconsciously trace the scratches, all unknowing.

‘Look…’ began the tavern-owner, his hands trembling as he wiped them over and over on his apron. ‘I want no trouble here…’

‘Then fasten yer hole shut,’ growled the squint-eyed man, his affliction adding to the savagery of his tongue. The tavern-owner winced and backed off. I saw little Drozd sidle away from us, as though we had plague.

‘King Harald can spare two such ships,’ Starkad went on dismissively. ‘I have been tasked with something and will travel to the edge of the world to obey my King.’

I mock-sighed and waved an airy jarl hand at a seat, as if in invitation to discuss this matter that troubled him. I hoped to get him closer, away from the door and the men at his back and the ones I was sure were outside. There would be a fight and blood, since they had weapons and we did not and that would bring the authority of the Great City down on us, but still…

He was polished as a marble step and no fool. ‘You are not what I seek, boy,’ he said with a sneer that refused my invitation. ‘Nor any of these who treat you like a ring-giver on a gifthrone, for all that you have neither seat, nor neck ring, nor even ship to mark you. No sword, either, since I took it.’

He drew back a little from his hate then and forced a smile into my face, which I knew was pale and stricken. I felt the Oathsworn behind me, trembling like ale at an over-full brim and Finn, quivering, barely leashed, finally snapped his bonds.

A bench went over with a clatter and he howled himself forward at Starkad, who whipped that sabre out with a hiss of sound, fast as the flick of an adder’s tongue. Finn, with nothing but his fists, came up two foot short of Starkad’s face, with the point of the rune-serpent sword at his neck. Someone squealed; Elli, I thought dully.

I held up my hand and leashed the others, which act gave me a measure of stone-smoothness, for Starkad noted that and was impressed, despite himself. I could hardly breathe; I wondered if he knew how deadly that blade against Finn’s neck truly was. Even just resting it left a thin, red line. For his part, Finn had froth at the edges of his mouth and I knew that one more comment and he would run his neck up the blade, just to get his hands round Starkad’s own.

‘I have heard tales of this blade,’ Starkad said softly. ‘It cut an anvil, I hear.’

‘Just so,’ I agreed, dry-mouthed. ‘Perhaps, Finn, you should come and sit by me. Your head is hard, but not harder than the anvil that blade was forged on.’

The rigid line of Finn softened a little and he took a step backward, away from the blade. Each step laboured, he unreeled from the hook of that runesword. I breathed. Starkad, smirking, waited until Finn was seated, then sheathed the weapon; life flooded back to the room with a breathy sigh.

‘You have the look of a jarl,’ I said into Starkad’s smirk, my chest still tight with the fear of what might just have happened, ‘but you should beware the jarl’s torc.’

‘You should only beware it when you do not have it,’ Starkad spat back. ‘The mark of ringmoney is the mark of a gift-giver, whom men follow.’

I said nothing to that, for Gunnar Raudi – my true father – had often told me that you should never interrupt an enemy who was making a mistake. I already knew the secret of the jarl torc Starkad was so proud of wearing. It was just a neck ring of silver, which we still call ringmoney, whose dragonhead ends snarl at one another on your chest.

The secret was that the real one was made of steel, carried by the men who wielded it for you. It hung round your neck, another kind of rune serpent, at once an ornament of greatness and a cursed weight that could drag you to your knees and which you could not take off in life.

I knew that from Einar, who had warned me of it as he died by my hand, sitting on Attila’s throne. Now I felt the weight of it myself – even though I could not, as Starkad had seen, afford a real one.

‘I seek the priest, one Martin, the monk from Hammaburg,’ Starkad went on. ‘You know where he is, I am thinking.’

I was silent, knowing exactly what it was Starkad sought. Not a silver hoard at all, but Martin’s treasure, the remains of his Christ spear, the one stuck in the side of the White Christ as he hung on the cross and whose iron head had helped make the sabre Starkad now wore. He did not know that and I leached a little comfort from the secret.

Now that King Harald Bluetooth was a Christ-man himself, he fancied this god spear to help make everyone in his kingdom stronger in the Christ faith – no matter that the Basileus of the Romans claimed such a spear already resided in the Great City. Like me, Bluetooth believed Martin had the real one.

‘He fled,’ Starkad added, when my silence stretched too far. ‘The monk fled. To here, I am thinking, and to you, since you are the only ones he knows.’

It was a good thought, for Martin had been with us for long enough, but Starkad did not know that it was not as a friend. My tongue was already forming the words to tell him this when the thought came to me that we could not – dare not – take him here. It was certain that the Watch had already been called and Starkad was measuring his time like a shipmaster tallies his distances, down to the last eyeflick.

Miklagard was a haven for Starkad; he had to be lured out of it.

‘East,’ I said. ‘To Serkland and Jorsalir, his holy city.’

I have my own thoughts on who made me gold-browed at that moment, to come up with a lie and the wit to speak it with such shrugging smoothness. Like all Odin’s gifts it was double-edged.

He blinked at the ease with which I had given up the information and you could see him weigh it like a new coin and wonder if it rang true when you dropped it on a table. I felt the others twitch, though, those who knew it to be a lie, or suspected the same. I hoped Starkad did not look in their bewildered eyes.

In the end, he bit the coin of it and decided it was gold. ‘Let this be an end of things between us, then. Einar is dead and I have no more quarrel with the Oathsworn.’

‘Return the sword you stole and I will consider it,’ I told him. ‘I once thought you a wolf, Starkad, but it turns out you are no more than an alley dog.’

He had the grace to redden at that. ‘I took the sword the same way you took my drakkar – because I could and it was needful,’ he replied, narrow-eyed with hate. ‘It stays with me because you and your Oathsworn pack cost me dear and I will count it bloodprice for the losses.’

‘Not the last losses you will have,’ Kvasir interrupted angrily. ‘We are not finished with you – take care to keep beyond reach of my blade, Starkad Ragnarsson.’

‘What blade?’ sneered Starkad and slapped his side. ‘I have the only true blade you nithings owned.’

The door opened in a blast of wind and rain and a head hissed urgently at Starkad’s back. It did not take much to know the Watch was coming up the street. Starkad leaned forward at the hip a little and his lip curled.

‘I know you, Kvasir, and you, Finn Horsehead. You also, boy Bear Slayer. I will find out the truth of what you say. If you spoke me false here, or if you get in my way, I will make you all unwind your guts round a pole until you die.’

He backed out of the door while I was still blinking at the picture he had placed in my head with that last one, for I had heard of this cruel trick.

There was a surge, like a wave breaking on a skerry, and I hammered the table to bring the Oathsworn up short, while the others in the tavern scrambled to be out and away. Finn hurled one luckless chariot-racing fan sideways, then stopped, sullen as winter haar.

‘We have to kill Starkad,’ he growled, sitting. ‘Slowly.’

‘Is this sword so valuable, then?’ asked Radoslav. ‘And who is this priest?’

I told him.

‘What holy icon?’ demanded Brother John when he heard my brief tale of Martin and his spear.

‘A spear, like Odin’s Gungnir, only a Roman one,’ I answered. ‘The one they stuck in the Christ when he hung on the cross. Only the metal end is missing from it.’

Brother John’s mouth hung open like the hood of a cloak, so I did not mention that the metal end had been used in the making of the runed sabre Starkad had stolen to feed the greed-fire of Architos Choniates. I did not understand why Starkad had the sword, all the same.

‘Another Holy Lance?’ Brother John was a flail of scorn. ‘The Greeks-who-are-Romans here swear they have one, tucked up in a special palace with Christ’s bed linen and sandals.’

I shrugged. Brother John snorted his disgust and added, scornfully, ‘Mundus vult decipi.’

The world wants to be deceived…I wasn’t sure if it was a judgement on Martin’s desires or on just how genuine the spear was. But Brother John was silent after that, deep in thought.

‘Concerning this sword…’ Radoslav began, but the Watch piled in then and the tavern-owner went off into an arm-wave of Greek. There were looks at us, then back again, then at us.

Eventually, the Watch commander, black-bearded and banded in leather, peeled off his dripping helmet, tucked it in the crook of his arm, sighed and came towards us. His men eyed us warily, their iron-tipped staffs ready.

‘Who leads?’ he asked, which let me know he was no stranger to our kind. When I stood up, he blinked a bit, for he had been looking expectantly at Finn, who now showed him a deal of sarcastic teeth.

‘Right,’ said the Watch commander and jerked a thumb back at the tavern-owner. ‘Not your fault, Ziphas says, but he still thinks you brought armed men to his place. Scared off his custom. Neither am I happy with the idea of you lot blood-feuding on my patch. So beat it. Consider it lucky you have no weapons yourselves, else I would have you in the Stinking Dark.’

We knew of that prison and it was as bad as it sounded. Finn growled but the Watch commander was grizzled enough to have seen it all and simply shook his head wearily and wandered off, wiping the rain from his face. Ziphas, the tavern-owner, still smearing his hands on his apron, finally left it alone and spread them, shrugging.

‘Maybe a week, eh?’ he said apologetically. ‘Let folk forget. If they see you here tomorrow, they will not stay – and you don’t spend enough to make up the difference.’

We left, meek as lambs, though Finn was growling about how shaming it was for a good man from the North to be sent packing by a Greek in an apron.

‘We should follow Starkad now,’ Short Eldgrim growled. ‘Take him.’

Finn Horsehead growled his agreement, but Kvasir, as we shrugged and shook the rain off back in our warehouse, pointed out the obvious.

‘I am thinking Starkad’s crew are now hired men and so permitted weapons,’ he observed. ‘Choniates will stand surety for them here like a jarl.’

Radoslav cleared his throat, cautious about adding his weight to what was, after all, not much of his business. ‘You should be aware that this Starkad, if he is Choniates’ hired man, has the right of it under law. We will have warriors from the city on us, too, if blood is shed and not just the Watch with their sticks. Real soldiers.’

‘We?’ I asked and he grinned that bear-trap grin.

‘It is a mark of my clan that when you save a man’s life you are bound to keep helping him,’ he declared. ‘Anyway, I want to see this wonderful sword called Rune Serpent.’

I thought to correct him, then shrugged. It was as good a name for that marked sabre as any – and it was how we got it back that mattered.

‘Which brings up another question,’ said Gizur Gydasson. ‘What was all that cow guff about the monk going to Serkland? Has he really gone there?’

That hung in the air like a waiting hawk.

‘If force will not do it, then cunning must,’ Brother John said before I could answer, and I saw he had worked it out. ‘Magister artis ingeniique largitor venter.’

‘Dofni bacraut,’ Finn growled. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means, you ignorant sow’s ear, that ingenuity triumphs in the face of adversity.’

Finn grinned. ‘Why didn’t you say that, then?’

‘Because I am a man of learning,’ Brother John gave back amiably. ‘And if you call me a stupid arsehole again – in any language – I will make your head ring.’

Everyone laughed as Finn scowled at the fierce little Christ priest, but no one was much the wiser until I turned to Short Eldgrim and told him to find Starkad and watch him. Then I turned to Radoslav and asked him about his ship. Eyes brightened and shoulders went back, for then they saw it: Starkad would set off after Martin and we would follow, trusting in skill and the gods, as we had done so many times before.

Anything can happen on the whale road.

TWO

After Starkad’s visit to the Dolphin, we moved to Radoslav’s knarr, the Volchok, partly to keep out of the way of the Watch, partly to be ready when Short Eldgrim warned us that Starkad was away.

There was a deal to be done with the Volchok to make it seaworthy. Radoslav was a half-Slav on his mother’s side, but his father was a Gotland trader, which should have given him some wit about handling a trading knarr the length of ten men. Instead, it was snugged up in the Julian harbour with no crew and costing him more than he could afford in berthing fees – until he had heard that a famous band of varjazi were shipless and, as he put it when we handseled the deal, we were wyrded for each other.

But he was no deep-water sailor and every time he made some lofty observation about boats, Sighvat would grin and say: ‘Tell us again how you came to have such a sweet sail as the Volchok and no crew.’

Radoslav, no doubt wishing he had never told the tale in the first place, would then recount how he had fallen foul of his Christ-worshipping crew, by drinking blood-tainted water in the heat of a hard fight and refusing, as a good Perun man, to be suitably cleansed by monks.

‘The Volchok means “little wolf”, or “wolf cub” in the Slav tongue,’ he would add. ‘It is rightly named, for it can bite when needs be. My name, schchuka, means “pike” for I am like that fish and once my teeth are in, you have to cut my head off to get me to let go.’

Then he would sigh and shake his head sorrowfully, adding: ‘But those Christ-loving Greeks loosened my teeth and left me stranded.’

That would set the Oathsworn roaring and slapping their legs, sweetening the back-breaking work of shifting ballast stones to adjust the trim on his little wolf of a boat.

Trim. The knarr depends on it to sail directly, for it is no sleek fjord-slider, easily rowed when the wind drops. Trim is the key to a knarr as any sailing-master of one will tell you. They are as gripped by it as any dwarf is with gold and the secret of trim is held as a magical thing that every sailing-master swears he alone possesses. They paw the round, smooth ballast stones as if they were gems.

Knowing how to sail is easy, but reading hen-scratch Greek is easier than trying to fathom the language of shipmasters and I was glad when Brother John tore me from a scowling Gizur, while we waited for Short Eldgrim.

The little Irisher monk was also the one man I seemed able to talk to about the wyrd-doom of the whole thing, who understood why I almost wished we had no ship. Because a Thor-man had drunk blood and offended Christ-men, I had a gift, almost as if the Thunderer himself had reached down and made it happen. And Thor was Odin’s son.

Brother John nodded, though he had a different idea on it. ‘Strange, the ways of the Lord, right enough,’ he declared thoughtfully, nodding at Radoslav as that man moved back and forth with ballast stones. ‘A man commits a sin and another is granted a miracle by it.’

I smiled at him. I liked the little priest, so I said what was on my mind. ‘You took no oath with us, Brother John. You need not make this journey.’

He cocked his head to one side and grinned. ‘And how would you be after making things work without me?’ he demanded. ‘Am I not known as a traveller, a Jorsalafari? I have pilgrimed in Serkland before and still want to get to the Holy City, to stand where Christ was crucified. You will need my knowledge.’

I was pleased, it has to be said, for he would be useful in more ways, this little Irski-mann and I was almost happy, even if he would not celebrate jul with us, but went off in search of a Christ ceremony, the one they call Mass.

Still – blood in the water. Not the best wyrd to carry on to the whale road chasing a serpent of runes. Nor were the three ravens Sighvat brought on board, with the best of intent – to check for land when none was in sight – and the sight of them perched all over him was unnerving.

We tried to celebrate jul in our own way, but it was a poor echo of ones we had known and, into the middle of it, like a mouse tumbling from rafter into ale horn, came Short Eldgrim, sloping out of the shadows to say that two Greek knarr were quitting the Julian, heading south, filled with Starkad’s war-dogs and the man himself in the biggest and fastest of them.

We hauled Brother John off his worshipping knees, scrambled for ropes and canvas and, as we hauled out of the harbour, I was thinking bitterly that Odin could not have picked a better night for this chase – it was the night he whipped up the Wild Hunt hounds and started out with the restless dead for the remainder of the year.

Yet nothing moved in the dark before dawn and a mist clung to the wharves and warehouses, drifting like smoke on the greasy water, like the remnants of a dream. The city slept in the still of what they called Christ’s Mass Day and no-one saw or heard us as the sail went up and we edged slowly out of the harbour, on to a grey chop of water.

Wolf sea, we called it, where the water was grizzled-grey and fanged with white, awkward, slapping waves that made rowing hard and even the strongest stomachs rebel. Only the desperate put out on such a sea.

But we were Norse and had Gizur, the sailing-master. While there were stars to be seen, he stood by the rail with a length of knotted string in his teeth attached to a small square of walrus ivory and set course by it.

He also had the way of reading water and winds and, when he strode to the bow, chin jutting like a scenting hound, turning his head this way and that to find the wind with wettened cheeks, everyone was eased and cheerful.

Him it was who had spotted the knarr ahead, not long after we had quit the Great City, on a morning when the frost had crackled in our beards. For two days we kept it in sight, just far enough behind to keep it in view. Only one, all the same – and, if we saw it, it could see us.

‘What do think, Orm Ruriksson?’ he asked me. ‘I say she knows we are tracking her wake, but then I am well known for being a man who looks over one shoulder going up a dark alley.’

Then a haar came down and we lost her – or so we thought. Finn was on watch while the rest of us hunkered down to keep warm. The sail was practically on the spar and yet we swirled along, for we were caught in the gout that spilled through the narrow way the Greeks call Hellespont and only us and fish dared run it in the dark. I had resigned myself to casting runes to find Starkad when Finn suddenly bawled out at the top of his voice, bringing us all leaping to our feet.

By the time I reached the side, there was only a grey shape sliding away into the fog. Finn, scowling, rubbed the crackling ice from his beard.

‘It was a knarr, right enough – we nearly ran up the steer-board of it, but when I hailed it, it sheered off and vanished south.’

‘As would I have done,’ Brother John chuckled, ‘if you had hailed me in your heathen tongue. Did you try Greek at all?’

Finn admitted he had not mainly because, as he said loudly and at length, he could not speak more than a few words as Brother John knew well and if he had forgotten he, Finn, would be glad to jog his memory with a good kick up the arse.

‘Next time, try your few words first,’ advised Brother John. ‘“Et tremulo metui pavidum junxere timorem” as the Old Roman skald has it. “And I feared to add dreadful alarm to a trembling man” – bear it in mind.’

Everyone chuckled at a shipload of Greeks being scared off by a single Norse voice, while Finn, spilling ale down his beard and trying to stuff bread in his mouth as he drank, grumbled back at them.

Sighvat pointed out that if Finn did hail another ship as Brother John wished, it would turn round and vanish as well, for who wants to hear someone wanting to know how much it costs to have your balls licked?

‘Either that,’ added Kvasir, ‘or they will be confused by a demand for two more ales and a dish of mutton.’

But Radoslav looked at me and both of us knew, because we were more traders than the others, that the ship had held Starkad, or at least some of his men. Traders thrived on gossip: what cargo was going where, what prices for what goods in what ports. They sucked it up like mother’s milk and, to get it, they talked to every other trader they saw coming up against them or sailing down a route with them. Unless you looked like a warship, or a sleek hafskip, which could be more wolf than sheep, you hailed them all for news; you didn’t sheer away like a nervous maiden goosed behind her mother’s back.

Nor, if you were anyone but the Norse, did you run the Hellespont at night.

But it had vanished south and we followed. In the morning, Sighvat cast his bone runes on the wet aft-deck and tried to make sense of it, Short Eldgrim peering over his shoulder. In the end, Sighvat made his pronouncement and Gizur leaned on the steering oar as the sail cranked up; I saw we were taking the most likely trade route and wondered if that course had truly been god-picked or was Sighvat’s common sense.

What nagged me more was where the second boatload was – and if the one we had seen had had Starkad in it. For days I wondered where either had gone and whether we had passed them.

As always, Odin showed the truth, with a finger-nail trace of smoke against the sky.

The smoking boat was a Greek knarr, listing and down at the stern. It had been on fire, but the waves had soaked out the flames, leaving a smouldering hulk. Two bodies rolled and bobbed among the ash and spars nearby, reluctant to leave even in death.

Up in our bow, Arnor used his harpoon to gaff one of the bodies and drag it closer. He was an Icelander and everyone had mocked at him for seeking out a whaling harpoon instead of a spear – but Arnor knew the weapon and it had certainly been of use now.

The bodies were gashed and torn, bled white so that the wounds were now pale, lipless mouths. They had been stripped of everything and made a sorry sight on the deck of the Volchok, leaking into the bilges.

‘Stabbed and cut,’ remarked Brother John, examining them. ‘That’s an arrow wound, for sure, but they recovered it. Barbed, too – look where it hooked out heart-meat when it was pulled.’

‘I know this one,’ said Finn suddenly.

‘Which one?’ I asked.

‘That one with the heart-wound and the squint. He was in the Dolphin guarding Starkad’s back. I remember thinking that he was an ugly troll and that if I had the chance I would knock his eyes straight for him.’

Anything can happen on the whale road…

I had that proved as the knarr gurgled and sank. Brother John fell to his knees and offered up prayers to his god and the Christ, which seemed a little harsh to me, for he was congratulating this Jesus on having led these men to this doom rather than us. I had not thought the Christ, white-livered godlet of peace, was so harsh – but I had much to learn; as Finn said, even as he followed me, the horn-moss was barely rubbed off me.

Of course, the rest of us joined in piously and those, like me, who thought no harm in getting all the help we could offered silent thanks to Odin, whose hand was in this for sure.

Now we knew.

We sat and worked out what had happened as the remains of the knarr hissed away to nothing, leaving only the stink of wet char. A ship, perhaps more than one, had come on it and there had been a fight, though Finn reckoned the attackers had sat back and shot arrows until the defenders had given in.

It seemed to him that the others had been taken, probably as slaves, because there were only two bodies, but the defenders had given in when the ship had been fired. This showed that the attackers were skilled, not just for having fire aboard for arrows, but because they would have to have worked swiftly to secure cargo and prisoners in little time before the ship burned and sank.

‘It is a blade path we are on and no mistake,’ Sighvat offered mournfully, which got him some hard looks; a blade path was what steersmen call a hard pull into a gale, where the only progress was by the oarblade.

It also meant the road walked by those who had died as oathbreakers, a trail studded with sharp edges, so that those who cared enough howed such wyrd-doomed up with thick-soled ox-hide shoes, to help them walk their way to Hel’s hall.

While they were shaking their heads and making warding signs, I considered matters. It seemed to me that these Arabs would not go far from home, though that was the arrogance of being Norse and believing that only we dared the far seas. I learned later that the Arabs are good seamen – but I had the right of here, for these Arabs were bandits with a boat, no more.

Radoslav fished out a square of fine sealskin from his purse and unfolded it to reveal another of walrus hide; we all peered curiously, mainly because it was clear he did not like revealing it. Gizur growled when he saw it, for it was a fair chart that he could have used.

‘Well, a sailor’s chart is a precious thing,’ Radoslav argued, scowling, ‘and not to be handed out lightly.’

Gizur hawked and spat meaningfully, then scowled at the lines and marks on the walrus hide. Like most of us, he only half trusted maps for how, as I had been told by better men, can you mark down with little scratches and pictures where the waves change with the mood of Ran? Experience had already taught me that maps were more fancy than fact – like all of the monk-made ones, this had Jorsalir at the centre and a guddle everywhere else – and a man at sea was better off using the knowledge of those who had sailed before, or trusting to the gods when he was on the whale road.

Still, using this one, we worked out that an island called Patmos was not so far from us, at which Brother John brightened considerably.

‘St John the Evangelist was there,’ he informed us. ‘He was one of the twelve disciples and was exiled to Patmos by the Romans for preaching the word of God.’

‘Those Romans are stupid,’ growled Finn. ‘They should have slit his throat. Instead, they stick him on an island with a bunch of goat-humping sea-raiders.’

Brother John hesitated, then decided against throwing light on Finn’s hazy grasp of the Christ sagas. Instead, he told us all about this saint and his revelations.

‘What revelations?’ demanded Short Eldgrim.

‘The Revelations,’ answered Brother John. ‘A holy gospel.’

We knew what a gospel was – a sort of saga tale for Christ-men – and someone asked the obvious question.

‘It concerns the end of the world,’ Brother John answered him.

‘Ah, Ragna Rok,’ Finn said dismissively, ‘but that’s no revelation to anyone.’

Brother John was set to argue the point, but I gripped his shoulder and stopped him. ‘Is there anything you know about this island that is of any use?’

He blinked. ‘There’s a town, Skala. A harbour. A church. The cave where the saint lived…’

‘A nice little pirate haven,’ Short Eldgrim said. ‘Ah well, no ship-luck for Starkad, then.’

‘I trust we are not going after them,’ demanded Radoslav.

That is exactly what I planned to do.

Radoslav shrugged and rubbed one hand across his shaved scalp. ‘I was thinking on it,’ he went on, ‘and it came to me that we do not know how many camel-eating Arabs there are, or that Starkad is there, or this wonderful sword.’

‘I don’t care to know how many goat-botherers there are,’ growled Finn. ‘I just need to know where they are – and, if Starkad is there, the rune-serpent sword is there.’

Gizur grunted and hemmed, a sure sign he did not agree. ‘There are a deal too many goat-humpers being talked of for my comfort.’

Sighvat nodded soberly, stroking the glossy head of one of his ravens and spoke, quiet and thoughtful and smack on the mark. ‘Well, what if Starkad is there? And our sword?’

Our sword, I noted. There was silence, save for Radoslav, who rubbed his head in a fury of frustration. ‘What is so special about this sword?’ he demanded. ‘Apart from cutting anvils. Why is it called Rune Serpent?’

‘What do we do with Starkad and his men if we free them?’ demanded Gizur, ignoring him. ‘The Volchok is too small for all of us.’

‘We could leave Starkad and his men on the island once the goat-humpers have been beaten,’ Brother John said firmly. ‘Alive.’

Finn grunted, which made Brother John frown, but none of us voiced what the rest of us knew; no one could be left alive to follow us once we had the runesword back.

Still, there were heads shaking over it, but I had seen another possibility.

‘What were Starkad’s men wearing when they stood at his back in the Dolphin, Horsehead?’ I asked and Finn frowned, thinking.

‘Well, I saw one had a good cloak and a silver pin that I liked. And there was a bulge under the other one’s armpit that spoke of a fat purse…’

I sighed, for Finn’s eyes saw only what he fancied. ‘A byrnie?’ I prompted and the frown lifted when the idea dawned on him. He nodded, creasing his face in a grin. They had come helmed and armoured.

‘Coats of rings. And no doubt good swords and helms and shields,’ I pointed out. ‘Even on a scabby Greek knarr Starkad’s men would go well equipped. And even if he is not there, that loot would be worth the risk.’

Brother John clasped his hands together and looked piously at the sky. ‘Et vanum stolidae proditionis opus,’ he intoned.

Vain is the work of senseless treachery – and Sighvat nodded as if he understood it and released the raven in the direction we knew Patmos lay. Screeching raucously, the bird wheeled off over the white-caps and Sighvat offered his own translation of Brother John’s Latin.

‘Shame to leave all that battle-gear to men who treat goats so badly,’ he said.

The raven did not come back.

THREE

From the brow of the ridge we could look down on the remains of Skala, a small town where lanterns bobbed in a night wind that sighed over the barren scrub and rocks. A huge fire burned in what appeared to be the central square, flattening now and then in the breeze, and I counted a good dozen round it, laughing, talking, eating from the one dish. All the good citizens of the town had long since fled to the wilderness, or been sold to slavery.

These raiders were not so much different from us, I saw. They’d had a good day, gained plunder and were enjoying the fact so much it never crossed their minds that anyone would be here. It was something I remembered after and always set men on watch.

I also remember wondering if this was how it had been with Einar, always noting little things, always having to deep-think until your head hurt, always having the others there, at one and the same time a comfort and a curse.

We had come up to it in a fever of constant watches, tacking, gybing and working the sail furiously against a hissing wind, mirr-sodden and fretful, which swung this way and that. We had to lower the sail for a while and rock there, licking dry lips and squinting at the faded horizon for the first sight of a sail that would be pirates, for sure.

Then the wind came right, smack on the starboard quarter, and we hauled up the sail again, which it was my turn to do. It is no easy task and was a mark of how strong I had become that Gizur left it to me and Short Eldgrim – me to haul, he to tail the line, making it fast round a pin.

I was so lost in the act I didn’t notice anything, for it was not a simple pulling, more of a falling to the deck with your whole bodyweight cranking the rakki – the yoke that held the sail – up the mast to where it should be.

The line slipped, as it always does, and made a fresh welt on my hand – all of the crew had cuts and welts, slow to heal in the constant damp, filled with pus and stinging. Except me. Mine healed quickly and left no scars, which had been a hackle-raising thing for me, convinced as I was that the rune-serpent sword was the cause.

Yet it had gone and that seemed to make no difference; I healed just as well. I was cheered by that and was starting to think that perhaps I should believe what Finn and Kvasir said, that I was just young, healthy and Odin-lucky.

I was examining the fresh welt when Kvasir yelled out: ‘Land ahead.’

We all craned to see. Sure enough, there it was, a sliver of dark against the damp pewter sky. Gizur looked at me questioningly and I looked at the sky in reply. We had, perhaps, four hours of good daylight and would be on the land in one. I signalled to him and we slipped the sail up a knot, so that the Volchok surged a little harder.

‘What do you think, Trader?’ asked Sighvat.

‘Your Odin pet was a strong flier,’ I told him, then turned to the rest of the crew who were off-watch and told them to break out weapons and shields. Sighvat crooned softly to one of the two birds he had left and stroked its glossy black head. It looked at me with a cold, hard eye, showing me the black cave of its mouth in an ugly hiss.

Men checked straps and edges, faces like stones. Twelve of us, all that was left of the Oathsworn here, which was just enough to crowd the knarr and not enough for a shieldwall. I wondered how many Arab sea-raiders there were and must have said it aloud.

‘Pirates,’ growled Radoslav and spat over the side. ‘Nikephoras Phokas drove the burnous-wearing shits out of Crete about five years ago, but the survivors took to the other islands and are now like ticks on an old bitch. Sooner or later, the Great City will have to do something, for attacks on merchants are becoming too frequent.’

‘They might scare Greeks,’ growled Finn, ‘but they haven’t met us yet. Now we are raiders of the sea, not just some goat-worriers in a boat.’

Radoslav nodded thoughtfully. ‘Those goat-worriers forced the Basileus to use hundreds of ships and Greek Fire to stamp them out of Crete. Took him a year.’

Finn grinned and wiped his mouth. ‘There’s too much Slav in you and not enough good Norse blood. Eh, Spittle?’

Kvasir growled something which no one heard clearly, but Finn beamed. ‘The Basileus should have used us,’ he boasted, slapping his chest. ‘Our steel and Orm’s thinking.’

My thinking was simple enough, arrived at after a Thing held on board as we reached the island, saw the lights and moved round to the other side of it, where we land-fastened the Volchok.

No one was left aboard, for we needed every man, but I had explained a plan to them that they thought cunning enough to agree on. Everyone was eager as hunting dogs for this, sure that we had Starkad cornered and that the secret of Atil’s silver howe would be back in our grasp before long.

Save me. I knew Starkad was not here. No pack of Arab dogs would have had such an easy time of it if he had been aboard the knarr. They were his men, right enough – but where he was remained a mystery, though I was sure he was heading in the right direction in another fat knarr. He could even be lurking somewhere close, out on the black, moonglittered sea.

Short Eldgrim and Arnor and two others circled round to the left, carrying the dead men we had fished out of that sea. Brother John had insisted on this, to give them a decent burial rather than leave them to Ran, wife of Aegir the sea god and mother to the drowned. I had agreed, but not because of his Christ sensibilities; I had thought of a better task for them.

The men came back, all save Arnor. Short Eldgrim was still chuckling.

‘All is ready,’ he grunted. ‘When we see the camel-humpers move, Trader, we should rush them.’

The low wailing started almost as soon as he had finished speaking. Heads came up; mouths stopped chewing.

It was a good howl, one of Arnor’s finest: he was noted for being the very man you needed in a northern fog up a Hordaland fjord, with a voice to bounce off cliffs. I settled my shield and hefted my axe, good weapons and cheap enough for us all to afford from my vanishing store of silver. I checked a strap and tried not to let the dry-spear in my throat choke me; no matter how often I did this, my guts turned to water, yet everything else dried up and shrank.

A man stood up, shouted and two more gathered up weapons – swords curved like a half-moon and short bows like those of the steppe tribes, only smaller – and moved off. I marked the shouter, with his black, flowing robes and curling locks, as the leader.

There was a pause. Another wolf-howl wail split the night.

‘Get ready,’ I said.

The men came running back, shouting and waving. I knew what they had found: the naked bodies of the two they had left far behind in the water, dead, were now at the edge of town, seemingly wailing. I learned later that Short Eldgrim had come upon two tethered donkeys and had added a touch of his own, by strapping the men to their backs using tunic belts. Now the donkeys were braying, not at all happy with their loads, and trailing the fleeing men down the street, hoping to be unloaded of the stinking, leaking burdens.

The effect was better than I could have hoped. I had thought only to create some unease and confusion, but the sight of dead men, seemingly charging them on horseback, set all the Arabs shouting and screaming.

At which point I rose up and broke into a dead run towards the fire, yelling.

‘Fram! Fram! Odinsmenn, Kristmenn!’ bawled Brother John, and the whole pack of us, lumbering like bulls, roaring into the face of our fear, hurtled in a stumbling run down the slope, through the huddle of ramshackle houses and into the confusion of those milling round the fire.

Radoslav, who had crashed his way into the lead, suddenly leaped in the air and it was only when my knees hit something that pitched me face-first to the ground that I realised he had hurdled a rickety fence I hadn’t spotted.

I sprawled, skidding along on the shield and wrenching that arm. Cursing, my knees burning, I scrambled up and saw Finn and Short Eldgrim, axe and spear together, stab and cut their way into the pack, with the others howling in behind.

Kol Fish-hook took a rushing Arab on his shield and casually shouldered him sideways into the spear-path of his oarmate, Bergthor, whose point caught the Arab under the breastbone. Kol then slammed another one into the fire and his robes caught, so that he stumbled around, shrieking and flailing, spraying flames and panic.

The Arabs broke and scattered, Black Robe shouting at them. A few heard him and followed, back across the square to the white-painted church, a solid, domed affair that glowed pink in the firelight.

About six of them got in and thundered the wooden double doors shut before anyone could stop them and I cursed, for everyone was too busy killing and looting the others to bother with that.

I limped into the firelight, saw that the knees of my breeks were tattered and bloodstained. Sighvat came up, saw me looking and peered closely.

‘Wounded, Trader?’ he asked and grinned as I scowled back. Some jarl, looking at his skinned knees like some bare-legged, snot-nosed toddler.

‘We have to get them out of there,’ I said, pointing to the church.

He considered it, seeing the stout timbers and the studded nail-heads, then said: ‘It will burn, I am thinking.’

‘It will also burn everything inside it, including what we want,’ I replied. ‘I will be pleased to find that all the battle-gear and plunder is somewhere else – but that’s where I would put it.’

‘Just so,’ mused Sighvat, peeling off his leather helm and scrubbing his head. Screams and groans came from the darkness beyond the fire.

‘You should know, Orm,’ said Brother John, panting up like an overworked sheepdog, ‘that we need not worry about what to do with Starkad’s men.’

He jerked his head at a building behind him, a place with solid walls and one door, which looked to have once been the hov of a leather-worker, judging by the litter around it.

Inside, all of Starkad’s men were naked and dead, eleven fish-belly white corpses buzzing with flies and dark with blood, which had soaked everywhere.

‘They brought them all this way just to kill them?’ muttered Sighvat, bewildered.

‘No, indeed,’ Brother John pointed out. ‘They gelded them to be sold as slaves, but they were not clever about it. Two died because the blood poured out and would not stop and, once the thing was done, the men were untied – I think to help themselves and the others with the wounds. The others, it seems, died of strangling and this one here has had his brains bashed out.’

He straightened, wiping his hands on his tunic. ‘If I was asked,’ he said grimly, ‘I would say the ones who survived gelding strangled each other with the thongs that had once bound them and the last one ran at the wall until his head broke.’

‘Is Starkad there?’ demanded Radoslav and the silence gave him as good an answer as he would get. We stared, the sick, iron smell of blood and the drone of flies filling the space as we considered the horror of it.

Doomed, they had chosen a death that did not lead to Valholl and, because they had no weapons in their hands, led straight to Helheim, especially for the last man, who had slain himself. No man who was not whole could cross Bifrost to be Einherjar in the hall of the gods, waiting for Ragnarok. That was something I knew to my cost, for I had already lost fingers off my own hand and it was my wyrd that they were lost for ever and that I would never see the rainbow bridge.

I made a warding sign against the possibility of a fetch lurking in the fetid dark here, for I had had experience of such a thing before, with Hild in Attila’s grave-mound. Then I added the sign of the cross, but Brother John was too busy offering prayers, kneeling without a thought in the gory slush of the floor.

I wondered if the dead men were followers of Christ or Odin, for it seemed the Christ-god had a more forgiving nature and would accept them into his hov whether they had balls or no. Or fingers. Then I shook the thought away; Valaskjalf, Odin’s own hall, was open to me and that was enough. There were many halls in Asgard who would welcome the hero-dead, whole or no.

Finn and the others arrived, speckled and slathered with blood, to be told of the tragedy. That sealed the fate of the ones in the church, for even if they had been enemies, Starkad’s men were good Northmen and should not have been handled so badly.

‘There is too much of this ball-cutting for my liking,’ muttered Kol. ‘Like that greasy thrall of the Greek merchant – what was his name?’

‘Niketas,’ growled Kvasir and spat.

‘He was a spadone,’ answered Brother John. ‘The kindest treated.’

‘Eh? What’s kind about gelding?’ demanded Finn. ‘Fine for horses, but men? We do it to shame them.’

‘It is done sometimes to men for the same reason it is done to horses,’ Sighvat pointed out, ‘but I did not know there were different names for it.’

‘Different types,’ corrected Brother John. ‘A spadone has been gelded – the testicles removed neatly with a sharp blade.’ He paused, gave a little gesture and a sschikk then grinned as Finn and others shifted uncomfortably, drawing their knees tighter together.

‘They do that even to some high-borns, when they are babes,’ he went on as we gawped with disbelief. ‘Only whole men may become the Basileus, and some of these princes get it done so they can then hold high office and yet be no threat.’

‘There are also thlassiae, ones whose testicles have simply been crushed between stones.’ He slapped his hands together so that men jumped and Finn groaned.

‘And the third kind?’ I asked, curious now.

Brother John shrugged and frowned, waving a hand at the clotted corpses. ‘You do not get these in Miklagard much these days but further east, where men are permitted many wives and concubines and the women are kept apart in a place of their own. They have slaves attend them and, if they are male, they have to be…made harmless.’

‘Ah…so they can’t hump the big bull’s heifers,’ chortled Finn with considerable insight.

‘How?’ I persisted.

‘They remove everything, leave you a straw to piss through,’ answered Brother John, to be greeted with a chorus of disbelief. ‘The Greek-Romans of Miklagard call them castrati.’

There was silence where gorged flies buzzed.

‘This is what happened here?’ I asked.

Brother John nodded sombrely. ‘Yes. It is a Mussulman thing.’

Men grunted, as if dug in the ribs, for Northmen were no strangers to cutting balls, though it was rare – so rare, I had not seen it myself. Along with cutting a man on the buttocks, it was a klammhog, a shame-stroke that told everyone how unmanned this enemy had been and was done when we considered the defeated warrior’s fighting had been cowardly.

There was silence while we chewed over this; then Finn spat on his hands and took up a brace of hand axes and led us all back to the door. Even as the chips flew like snow, it was clear it was too stout for even his strength and fierce anger.

‘They built it well,’ Sighvat said, ‘as a fortress in time of trouble, I am thinking.’

‘Burn the door,’ I said and men dragged parts of the huge fire in the square over to the door, while others hauled anything that would burn out of the long-abandoned houses of the village.

Then we sat down and waited, while the smoke rose up and the door charred and the dawn fingered a way up into the night sky. I had two men stand watch, got Kvasir and two others to break down one of the mud-brick hovels for the frame-wood and stack it in the house with Starkad’s dead.

The two who had served us well on the donkeys were beginning to turn green-black, so they too were added and then it was fired. It was as close to a decent funeral as I could think of and, though the Oathsworn were tired and Kvasir had taken a cut to his side, they raised no protest at it.

The others and myself sat and watched the burning door of the church and put an edge back on blunted axes. I had others collect up the spilled weapons of the dead; though it was generally agreed that those half-moon swords were poor weapons, being single-edged and sharp-pointed for stabbing and little use to a slashing man.

Behind us, the funeral pyre for Starkad’s men growled in the wind, for the baked-mud bricks of the house acted like an oven and it would not catch fire, but seemed to glow in the intense heat. Bits of it ran like water.

Radoslav went off, poking about in the houses on his own and came back with a double-handful of something that was a puzzle to him. He held them out, a handful of sharp points. ‘I found a barrel of these iron things,’ he said, bemused.

All of us knew what they were, for we had laboured to load similar barrels for Sviatoslav’s army when it headed for Sarkel.

‘Raven feet,’ I said to him, taking one. ‘You use them to keep horsemen away from you – like so.’ I tossed one and it bounced and rolled and landed, one point upward. Radoslav saw the possibility at once: a carpet of these, scattered like sown seed in front of you. No matter how they landed, one point was always up and just right for piercing the soft flesh under a hoof.

‘Calcetrippae,’ Brother John said. ‘That’s what the Romans called them.’

‘Whatever the name,’ I declared, ‘we can take them, too, since we are headed for a land where men fight on horses.’

‘A good spear, well braced, would do it,’ growled Finn. ‘Or a Dane axe. A Dane axe is best against horsemen.’

The others nodded and growled their assent and told stories of men they had heard of who cleaved horse and rider in two with one stroke using a long-handled axe. The fire crackled against the door and the night wind breathed down the street; somewhere, the donkeys brayed.

I leaned back, having picked all the bits of dirt, stone and splinters out of my knees that I could find and remembered big-bellied Skapti Halftroll, who could make a Dane axe dance and whirr like a bird wing and would have been one of those one-stroke horse cleavers.

I remembered, too, the inch of throwing spear jutting from his mouth after it had caught him in the back of the neck as we jogged away from the three-handed fight with Starkad and the local villagers – close to two years ago, though it seemed longer. All that skill, that strength, all that Skapti had been or would be, snuffed out by a badly made javelin hurled by a Karelian sheep farmer with his arse hanging out of his breeks.

That was the day Einar had fought Starkad and given him his limp. Starkad. He had gods’ luck, that one, to have survived the wound, the vengeful locals and the battle with the Khazars at Sarkel – which we had missed by running off in search of treasure.

Gods’ luck, too, to have plucked the Rune Serpent from me, easy as whipping a toy from a squalling baby and even more to have been on the other boat, the one which did not sail into a pack of Arab pirates. Where was he, with all his gods’ luck? Where was he, with my sword?

I had luck of my own, all the same, I thought, feeling my eyelids droop. Odin luck, that gave Starkad the prize, but not the knowledge of what he truly had…

‘Trader…wake…Trader.’

I jerked back out of an already shredding dream, blinking into the firelight and the burning-pork stink of the funeral pyre.

Kvasir watched me for a moment longer, expressionless. Had I been calling out? What had I said? I shook the trailing smoke of the dream away.

‘It is dawn.’

I struggled up, wiping my dry mouth, and he handed me a skin of water, which I took gratefully, squinting at the brightness. It was the promise of a cold, brilliant day, of blue sky, whitecap sea and one of those brass-bright suns that never seemed to get warm. The men were nearby, watching and waiting, while the fire at the church door was out, though the blackened timbers still stood firm, smouldering in the morning air. The funeral-pyre house was out, too, but greasy smoke drifted from it and the building had melted like tallow.

Finn stepped forward, an axe in either hand. He tapped the door, pretended to listen, then turned to the rest of us. ‘Perhaps they are not home. Should we wait?’

The men chuckled, but I knew there was no way out of the church that could be seen, for I had studied it from all sides. Finn spat on his hands, hefted and swung, settling into the rhythm that boomed like a bell to us and must have sounded like the knell of death to those inside.

In five strokes the blackened wood caved in, exposing the equally blackened bar beyond. In four more strokes, that fell to pieces and the doors crashed open left and right, revealing the gaping maw of blackness inside, doubly dark because of the brightness outside.

Kol yelled, ‘Ha!’ and rushed forward before anyone could speak; there was a sound like thrumming bees and he shrieked and flew backwards, five arrows in him. A sixth hissed over his head and just missed Finn, who dragged the writhing Kol away from the door by one arm, but by the time he had done that and we had reached him, Kol’s shrieks had stopped. His eyes were already glazed, though his heels kicked for a bit longer.

I blinked and squatted beside him. I remembered Kol at the siege of Sarkel, huddled behind his shield as the arrows from the walls shunked into it, as if he was sheltering from rain. And on the steppe at my back, prepared to rush in and fight if I failed to persuade the Pecheneg horsemen to accept silver to let us pass without hindrance.

Gone. Another. I had wanted rid of the Oathsworn so much I had once begged Thor and Loki to intercede and let me loose from the Odin-oath, had then sworn to the Christ to try and be rid of it. But you should be wary of involving the gods in such affairs, for they are cold and cruel and it seemed their way of answering was to get them all killed, one by one. I could almost hear bound Loki laugh.

Kol’s death gave us thought on what to do next and Finn came up with a sound plan. With Kvasir and Short Eldgrim, I formed a shieldwall of three, all that would fit abreast in the space, and we lunged forward, knowing what would happen.

The arrows whirred from somewhere unseen, for the step from light to dark lost us our eyesight and, until we gained it back, we simply had to stand and brace. The first flight smacked the shields and we huddled, grunting and sweating, with Finn, Arnor and others sheltering behind, shieldless and double-armed with axes and spears.

The next thrumming sound brought arrows lower, aiming for feet and legs, but we saw them now, seven men behind a barricade of a thick table. Kvasir yelped as an arrow stung his ankle, but the angle was awkward and they bounced and skittered everywhere.

We waited, sweating and breathing in jagged rasps. I could see nothing behind the shield, but Finn, hefting a spear, watched and calculated and, suddenly, yelled, ‘Now!’

A slew of axes and spears smashed across the space, just as the archers popped up for another salvo. At the same time, we three hurled forward, roaring out our challenge.

Finn’s spear took one full in the chest and hurled him backwards. An axe took another in the shoulder, blade on, a second axe slammed into the head of a third, shaft first.

Then we were on them and Black Robe, spitting curses, hurled himself at me.

We fought across the upturned table and he had clearly done sword-work before, for he knew the moves. He stabbed out, that serpent’s tongue curve of blade darting swiftly, so that my axe swings looked even more clumsy by comparison. I shield-parried, axe-parried, swung, roared and nothing made any difference while, around me, men panted and grunted and shrieked and died.

He had battled shielded men before, but ones of his own sort, with metalled shields, which was his undoing. His breath was ragged and he knew he was done for anyway, but he fought with the savage-grinned panic of a rat in a barrel – and stabbed at the lower half of my shield, which would force it forward and expose my neck.

That tactic worked only on a wooden shield like mine if the point of the sword was rounded and almost blunt, like a good Norse sword. When his sharp point stuck in mine, the alarm showed briefly in those olive-dark eyes and he made another mistake – he tried to pull it out instead of letting go at once and finding another weapon.

When I back-cut, under his outstretched sword-arm, the axe blade went in on the upstroke under his armpit and only the shoulder blade stopped it. He screeched, high and thin like a woman in childbirth, and jerked away, freeing the axe for a downstroke that, because I was clumsy and hasty with panic, did not take him neatly between neck and shoulder, but carved away his bearded jaw on the left side.

Blood and teeth sprayed. One hit me in the eye, making me duck and turn away, which would have been fatal save that he was already gone, backwards and keening, on to the blood-slick flagstones.

Then there was that moment of rasp-breathing, broken by moans of those who hurt so much they wished they were dead, the gurgles of those so near death they can no longer feel the pain. This time, there was also a deal of cursing from Arnor, who had had his nose split by a cut and was bleeding badly. Others moved purposefully among the whimpering Arabs, cutting throats and not being kind about it – the treatment of Starkad’s men saw to that.

Finn rolled his shoulders, as if he had just done some gentle exercise, and strolled over to look at the fallen leader, who was still gasping and gurgling, drowning in his own blood. ‘Messy,’ he declared, shaking his head. ‘I must show you some points of axe fighting, Orm Trader, for you seem to think you are chopping wood with it.’

‘You might be better with a good sword,’ Brother John said and indicated the area beyond the litter of bodies. Finn’s eyes grew as wide as his grin. Plunder.

It was, too. I had expected the weapons and battle-gear of Starkad’s men, perhaps some of the provisions from their vessel, and that would have been worth the death of Kol, even by his reckoning. I had not thought, of course, that these were seasoned pirates, who had been taking easy pickings for some time from merchants unlucky enough not to sail wider around Patmos.

There were ells of cloth, from fine linen to wadmal, barrels and boxes packed with little packets of what appeared to be dust and earth.

There was the yellow one called turmeric and the fine crimson crescents of the fire-plants that could raise blisters on the mouth of the unwary but, if cooked properly with meat, made dishes the Oathsworn could not get enough of.

There were golden mountains of almonds, black, pungent spikes of cloves, great heaps of brown dust which we knew to be cumin and coriander and barrels of instantly recognis-able chickpeas.

We stared at it all open-mouthed for, in one moment, we had all become as rich as we had previously been poor, such a change as to leave us stunned – until the realisation of it struck home and we delighted in each fresh discovery.

We laughed when Short Eldgrim unwrapped a packet from a barrel of them and sneezed so that it flew everywhere, filling the room with a golden dust that made everyone sneeze and weep.

Cinnamon, Brother John told us sternly and Short Eldgrim had just sneezed away a fortune of it.

That sobered us, so that we took more care and uncovered carefully packed and almost fresh produce – capsicums and the like and small golden-yellow fruits which made your jaws ache, and Brother John said were called limon.

The treasures went on and on: barrels filled with all different kinds of olives, when we had never seen more than one sort in our lives and only since we had come to Miklagard. And pepper both light and dark, as well as leather from the Nile lands.

There were weapons, too – a consignment of spearheads and knives and Greek blades needing hilt-finishing – and three beautiful swords, all clearly made in our homeland so that it made you almost weep to see them.

They were worth more than everything else put together and those blades I took, for they were well smithed and had their story written there, like water, just below the surface of the metal. Vaegir, they were called – wave swords – and that marked them as superior, even though they had little or no decoration on hilt or handle, just good leather grips.

One I took for myself, the other two I gave to Finn and Kvasir, marking them as chosen men, and that pair could not have been happier if I had been handing them out from a gifthrone in a huge hall, like a proper jarl. My first raid had brought them all riches and I felt the power of the jarl torc then.

So we spent the whole day moving all this to the Volchok, pausing only to give Kol a proper burial, with some of the spearheads and his weapons, in a decent boat-grave marked with white stones. Brother John said his chants and I, as godi, spoke some words of praise to Odin for Kol.

Later, Brother John showed Finn how to cook with the golden limon-fruits, so that we had minted lamb meat soaked in that juice, chopped and rolled with lentils and barley. We put it in a communal bowl – the same one the Arabs had been using – and ate it with some fresh-made flatbread. It was, by far, better than the ship’s provisions – coarse bran bread, pickled mutton, salt fish, and some dried fruit – but I still ate last, after I made sure men were on watch.

We chewed, grinning greasily at each other, fat-cheeked as winter squirrels and our bellies were full of that limon-flavoured lamb when we lolled by a fire near the slow-rolling Volchok, watching the Arabs’ ship burn to the waterline; we could not crew it and did not want any we had missed coming after us, full of revenge.

The men were admiring the helms and mail and swords they had, swapping mail shirts that did not fit for ones that did, when Sighvat came up, clutching a leather bag. Men stared; he had his two ravens free of their cages, one perched on either shoulder and there were wary and uncertain looks at that, the mark of a seidr man.

‘I found this in the gear when we were sorting it out, Trader,’ he said, ignoring their glances and handed out a bound parchment. ‘It is in that Latin you read. What does it say?’

I did not know and said so, but Brother John did, for it was Greek and he knew that language well. As he read it, his brow furrowed.

‘This is from Choniates, to the Archbishop Honorius of Larnaca, saying that the men who have this message are acting on behalf of one Starkad, who is acting for Choniates and should be given all help…and so on and so on. It seems they were to collect something and carry it back to Choniates.’

‘Does it say what it is?’ I asked as everyone gathered round to listen.

Brother John examined the parchment further, then shook his head and shrugged. ‘No, not a word – but it must be expensive if Choniates handed him that sword for it.’

Aye, he had the right of it – Starkad had stolen the runesword for the Greek and then been given it back as payment for a service. If he was paid that richly, it was no small service.

‘What is so special about this sword?’ Radoslav demanded, scrubbing his head in fury.

There were shrugs. Eyes flicked to me and I smiled at the big Slav – then told him the truth of it, watching him closely as I did so. His eyes went large and round and he licked lips suddenly dry, a lizard look I did not care for much.

‘Small wonder, then, that they wanted to avoid us,’ he offered, passing it all off as casually as he could, though his fevered eyes spoiled the stone-smoothness he tried for. ‘Why was Starkad not here?’ he asked, recovering, and it was a good question.

Because he was on a second ship and still looking for Martin. It seemed to me that he had sent his men racing ahead, armed and prepared to undertake this quest for Choniates, but it was my bet Starkad couldn’t give the steam off his piss about it, did not want to waste time sailing all the way back to the Great City. He did it for the payment, but he wanted Martin the monk – no, not even that. He wanted that stupid Holy Lance, so he could go home. He had sailed on to Serkland, as rune-bound in his way as we were in ours.

I just had to say that little monk’s name, though, and everyone understood.

Kvasir spat pointedly. ‘We were no threat to those men of Starkad, if they were armed with all this,’ he noted with a grunt. ‘Loki played a bad trick on them when he made them sheer away from us, right into the path of wolves with better fangs.’

A Loki trick that had won us a rich cargo. Finn beamed when I said this, his beard slick with lamb grease.

‘Just so, Trader, and a fine price it will pull down for us.’

‘True enough,’ mused Radoslav, running that dagger blade over his head again, his circle of runes puckered on his forehead as he frowned. ‘North-made blades sell well in Serkland – those watered blades especially.’

Finn scowled. ‘I will not sell the Godi.’

‘The what?’ demanded Radoslav. ‘Is this another marvellous sword that demands a name, like this Rune Serpent?’

Finn grinned and explained about the snake-knot of runes, adding, ‘But my blade has been named. The Godi.’

‘In honour of me, no doubt,’ said Brother John drily.

‘In a way,’ Finn answered. ‘Since I seem to be killing more Christ-followers these days, it seems the name to give my blade – because it’s the last thing they see before they die. A priest.’

‘Of course,’ I went on casually into the laughter that followed, ‘there is always the other matter.’

Finn looked at me quizzically and the others sat up, interested.

‘We also have a secret message, about something to be picked up in Larnaca – where is Larnaca anyway?’

‘The island of Cyprus,’ Radoslav said. ‘Orm has the right of it. Whatever they were to get for Choniates is worth much more than what we have.’

‘Gold, perhaps,’ I said. ‘Pearls, silver…who knows? Choniates is a rich man.’

‘Gold,’ repeated Finn.

‘Hmearls,’ breathed Arnor through his ruined nose. He fretted about it, for a slit nose was the mark given by lawmakers to a habitual thief and he did not like having such a sign. That and the pain, though, was forgotten in the bright balm of promised riches.

‘What of Starkad?’ growled Finn like a loud fart at a funeral. There was silence and shame as everyone worked out what the cost of delaying on a hunt for gold and pearls in Cyprus would do to letting Starkad escape with an even greater treasure.

Then I told them what I had thought out; Einar would have been proud of me. ‘Trapping is better than hunting. Instead of chasing Starkad all over the sea, let us have Starkad come to us. This treasure Choniates desires might be worth the price of a runesword to Starkad. He cannot afford to fail two masters. We have this letter, to be carried to an Archbishop who has never seen Starkad or his men. At most he may have been told Norsemen are coming.’

Radoslav grinned. ‘We are Norsemen.’

‘Just so,’ I replied and turned into Finn’s grin.

‘You are a man for clever, right enough,’ he growled. ‘Where, on this chart of Radoslav’s, is this Cyprus?’

FOUR

The Volchock was no sleek drakkar, or even hafskip, as I have said. It bounced on the waves rather than slicing them, and fought us, as a little bear might. But you could see why the people of the Middle Sea called ships ‘she’ – that was how you sailed a knarr, teasing her into the wind rather than using force, persuading her until you found one she liked.

Finn spat derisively when I started that, saying that you did the same with bulls and stallions and old boar pigs if you were sensible, adding that a ship was a ship and no good would come of dressing it in skirts. Especially skirts, for a woman was a useless thing at sea. There was good reason, he finished, that the word for ship in Norse is neither woman nor man.

Sighvat said it was a good thing. ‘After all,’ he added, ‘there is always expense with a ship as with a woman. And always a gang of men around. And a ship has a waist, shows off a top and hides a bottom.’

‘It takes an experienced man to get the best out of a ship and a woman,’ added Kvasir into the roars of laughter. They went on with it, finding new comparisons while they cursed it in equal measure. If you could gybe or tack, a knarr was a good vessel, but when the wind failed, you hauled down the sail and waited, rolling and wallowing, until another came up from the right quarter – or just sailed in the wrong direction.

Gizur had his own views on Radoslav’s ship. ‘The rigging needs to be served, seized or whipped properly,’ he declared to me with disgust. ‘The beitiass should be shortened, the cleats moved and blocks rigged to tighten it.’ He raised a hand, as if presenting a jewel of great value, though his face was twisted with disgust. When he opened his fist, there was a handful of what looked like oatmeal. ‘Look at this. Just look at it.’

‘What is it?’ demanded Radoslav fearfully and I was close behind him. Some wood-rotting disease? A rune curse?

‘Shavings, from the rakki lines,’ Gizur said with a snort. I looked up at the rakki, the yoke which snugged round the mast and took all the strain of hauling the sail up and down.

‘The lines are rubbing the mast away,’ Gizur went on, frowning. ‘It is falling like snow!’

Radoslav rubbed his chin and tugged his brow-braids, then shrugged shamefacedly and said, ‘The truth of it is that this is only the second sea voyage I have ever done. I am a riverman, a born and bred oarsman. I traded happily up and down from Kiev, furs for silver, and made a good living at it until the troubles started with the Khazars and Bulgars. So I bought this, thinking to change my luck.’

Gizur at once changed, clapping the mournful man on one shoulder and all sympathy, for that was his way – which the others said came from being named for his mother, Gyda. His father, it was believed, had sailed off west following tales of a land there and had never come back.

We were rarely out of sight of land in this scattering of islands, so that we could put ashore each night. I preferred not to sleep there all the same, lying at anchor instead, since I was never sure of what lurked beyond the beach.

When it suited us, we sailed into the night, which was a dangerous business that no other seamen dared try – but we were Norsemen and had Gizur. The days turned warmer, but it still rained and we needed the sail as a tent on most nights, even though we slung it under a great wheel of stars in a seemingly cloudless sky. The last filling of waterskins was before the long, deep-water run to Cyprus and a succession of days followed one on the other, with a steady wind that let the ship run on blue-green water.

We never saw another ship but, on the last night before Cyprus, as the sun sank like blood-mist, Finn split and sizzled fresh-caught fish on the firebox atop the ballast and we settled cross-legged and ate them with thick gruel and watered ale flavoured with the limon-fruits, something we had all taken to doing to take away the stale taste of the drink, which had been too long casked. It was also as good as cloudberries at taking away the journey-sickness that brought out sores and loosened teeth in your gums.

We missed the taste of the cloudberries, all the same, and Arnor started singing mournful songs full of haar mists and the milk-white sea of the North, where the grit is ground out of the rocks by the ice.

Then talk turned to Cyprus and Serkland and the runesword and our oarmates and, in the end, always came down to that last, turned over and over like some strange coin, in the hope that handling and looking would suddenly reveal what the true worth of it was.

Only Radoslav knew much about Cyprus, for the Romans had only just recovered it from the Arabs. For some years, it seemed, both had tried to live shoulder to shoulder on the island, but then the Basileus had ordered the Arabs out two years before and any who stayed were warred against.

‘Just our Loki luck,’ mourned Finn moodily. ‘More heads to pound.’

As for Serkland, the only one who had been there was Brother John. Amund and Oski were two of the most far-travelled of us – with Einar, they had once raided down the coast of the Ummayads and through the Pillars of Hercules, which we called Norvasund, into the Middle Sea.

But Serkland, which we also called Jorsaland, was an unknown place to most of us. I only knew that they called it Serkland because the people there wore only serks – white underkirtles – instead of decent clothing.

Others had heard tales from freshly made Norse Christ-men, who had gone there and swum across a river called Jordan, tying a knot in the bushes on the far side to prove they were true travellers for the White Christ. The tales were of carpets that flew and how the White Christ turned water into wine, or made a flatbread and a herring feed an army.

Brother John told us of the incredible number of snakes there, the heat and how the people who ruled it, the Abbasid Arabs, were now the very worst of infidel pagans.

‘Worse than us, eh?’ grinned Kvasir.

‘Just so,’ answered Brother John soberly. ‘For you at least can be called to see the error and embrace the true God, while these believe in their Mahomet and will kill rather than convert to the true faith.’

‘Kill rather than die,’ Sighvat pointed out and Brother John nodded sadly.

‘It is to the eternal shame of good Christians that these heathens are in control of the holiest of places.’

‘Yet,’ Radoslav pointed out, ‘they have no quarrel with Christ-men, I have heard, even though the soldiers of Miklagard are making war on them. They even tolerate the Jewish-men, though that is less trouble-free, for they were ever a hard people to rule. Even the Old Romans never managed it completely.’

‘True,’ admitted Brother John and sighed. ‘Omnia mutantor, nos et mutamur in illis – times change and so must we.’

Finn grunted appreciatively. ‘The Old Romans never ruled us, either. Maybe we can get together with these Jewish-men and give Starkad a smack. If they are like the Jew-men of the Khazars, I know they can fight well enough. They did at Sarkel.’

‘Easier to get one of those flying rugs, I am thinking,’ Sighvat said, stroking the head of one of the two remaining ravens, both of which had become almost too tame to be of use. It was unnerving to see Sighvat with one on either shoulder, like some Odin fetch.

‘I am hoping we run into Starkad without having to sail to Serkland,’ I pointed out and Amund agreed, saying it was the snakes there that bothered him most. Brother John patted his shoulder.

‘That is not a worry at all,’ he declared, ‘for am I not come from the land where all snakes were banished by the blessed Patrick? No snake will bother us, for it knows where my feet have trod.’

‘In any case,’ Sighvat added, ‘I have deer antler to hand.’

Now Brother John looked bemused, so Sighvat told him how a deer cannot get with young until it has eaten a snake and so rush to hunt them whenever they see one. Which is why snakes, in their turn, will run from deer, so that deer horn is a talisman against them and even burning the shavings in a fire will kill serpents with the very smell.

Brother John nodded and I could see him tuck that away, like the find of a new and strange feather, or shell on the beach. Other Christ priests – Martin, for sure – would have made the sign of the cross to ward off evil and called Sighvat a heathen devil.

The next day we sweated against a bad wind, so that it took a long, hard sail to finally snug up in the harbour at Larnaca. I approached warily, tacking in almost against an unfavourable wind, so that it could be used to sweep us out if there was any sign that Starkad was there.

The town was a sprawl of white buildings, Christ churches and a considerable fortress on a hill, while the crescent curve of the sanded bay was studded with tiny fishing boats, all brightly painted and with eyes on the prow, which we had come to note was a Greek warding sign. Behind was what we now realised was the look of all the islands here: grey rock and dust, spattered with grey-green shrubs.

‘Pleasant spot,’ Kvasir noted, rubbing his hand and scenting the air, which was laced with the subtle wafts of cooking. ‘I smell drink,’ he added.

‘I would curb your thirst,’ Finn growled and nodded to where people were gathering, at once curious and afraid. From the fortress, winding down the short road to the quayside, came a snake of armed men, spears glittering, led by a man on a horse.

Men muttered and looked to their weapons, but I smiled and pointed to the curled-up cat sleeping under a strung fishing net on the beach.

‘There will be no battle here today,’ I said and Sighvat chuckled and nodded. The rest just looked bemused, but Sighvat had remembered. See many strange things in battle. But you never see a cat on a battlefield.

I had a brief flash of Skarti’s fever-racked face as he shivered in the shieldwall before the pocked-walls of Sarkel, telling me this in ague-stammers after we had both seen, like an Odin sign, a bird fly into that dusty hell of arrows and blood, perching on a siege tower to sing.

Minutes later, Skarti had an arrow in his throat and never spoke again, so it had been a bad omen for him and maybe he had known it.

Now I hoped he read the omens true. I had considered the chances of Starkad putting in here and discounted them; he had sent a boatload of men with a letter and would want to avoid being sucked into the quest, would want to sail hard and fast for Serkland and find his monk. I offered prayers to Odin that it would take him time to find out the lie I had told him, time I needed to rob him of this prize that would bring him rushing to us on ground we chose.

Yet here were soldiers, snaking their way down to the quayside, people parting to let them through. They formed up neatly in two ranks with their studded leather coats and metal helmets, round shields and spears.

The officer was splendid, in that armour of little metal leaves over leather that they call lamellar and a splendid helmet made to look like it was fashioned from the tusks of a boar, surmounted by a falling wash of horsehair plume.

‘You could beat them all with an empty waterskin,’ growled Finn and spat over the side. ‘These are half-soldiers.’

He was right: half-soldiers, called-out men who were tradesmen most of the time, but issued battle-gear when need or ceremony demanded. I felt easier, until I saw another group, this time a huddle of servants and one of the carrying-seats we knew well from the Great City. I realised, suddenly, that the knees were out of my breeks, my tunic salt-streaked and stained.

The carrying chair halted and a figure got out, rearranging the folds of his white robes. He was bald save for tufts of grey hair sticking from the sides of his head and clean-shaven but for a wispy lick of beard. That and his flap of ears made him look like a goat, but the officer saluted him smartly enough.

I had ordered Finn and others into what battle-gear we had, so that they made some appearance, grim being better than ragged. I slid into mail, greasy against almost-bare skin and borrowed a pair of better breeks from Amund, who then had mine, which were shorter in the leg on him. He stood behind the others on deck to hide his shame.

So I stepped ashore, flanked by mailed men, trying to look like a jarl while the bright sun beat down and the waves slapped. Goat Face stepped forward, glanced around and gave a slight nod.

I nodded back and he rattled off in Greek. I knew the tongue, though could not write it then, but he spoke so fast that I had to hold up a hand, to slow him down. That stunned him a little, for it seemed an imperious gesture, though I had meant no such thing. Even as he blinked, I realised that he had been asking which one was the leader here, never imagining it could be the most boyish of them all. By cutting him off in mid-flow, I had announced myself and with some force.

‘Speak slowly, please. I am Orm Ruriksson, trader out of the Great City, and this is my ship, Volchok.’

He raised an eyebrow, cleared his throat and said – slowly – that he was Constantine, the Kephale of Larnaca, which title I knew meant something like a governor.

The officer removed his helmet, revealing a moon-face and sweat-plastered thinning hair, to present himself, with a nod of the head, as Nikos Tagardis. He was kentarchos here, a chief of several hundred men – though if they were all like the ones sweating and shifting behind him, it wasn’t much of a command.

They were, it turned out, delighted and relieved to have us, for it seemed that the last time they had been visited by Varangi there had been more trouble about it. Constantine remounted his carrying chair and led a little procession of us away from the sea and into the town.

Behind, I could hear the noise change as the people surged forward and the Oathsworn clattered off the boat, Finn already booming out his few words of Greek. I hoped Radoslav and Brother John did as I had requested and sold only enough cargo to pay what we would owe.

The town was a deceit from the shore, since most of it lurked, sleepy and hidden, in a hollow between the scrub-covered hills and the sea. But it had a huddle of white houses and crooked alleys, a score of wells and several Christ temples, at least one of which had been a temple to a goddess of the Greeks before that. It even had a theatre, though I did not know what that was then.

There was also an area I knew was called a forum, which seemed to be a big square surrounded by columns, like a row of trees. It had a big, white building on one side of it, which turned out to be a bath-house.

We marched up to it and went in – the rich Greeks liked to trade in a bath-house and I came to enjoy it more than I did then. Inside, wine was served and my ‘guards’ scowled outside, given only watered ale. Then we spoke of this and that – and previous visitors.

‘It was five years ago now,’ said Tagardis, telling of the last visit of my ‘countrymen’. ’They raided along the coast, but always managed to escape before I arrived with my troops.’

An escape for you, I thought as I smiled and nodded, for if they had decided to stand and fight, you would not be looking so plump and pleased now.

‘In the end,’ he said, looking at me levelly, ‘they got themselves so drunk on pilfered wine that they ran aground and could not easily escape. Those we did not kill languish in our prison to this day.’

Hitting me on the side of the head would have been a more subtle threat. I lost my smile at that and the Kephale cleared his throat as he saw my face.

‘Of course,’ he smoothed, ‘Trader…Ruriksson, is it? Yes. Ruriksson. Yes. He has much more peaceful and profitable reasons for visiting our island, I am certain. What cargo do you carry?’

He was pleased with the cloth, less so with the spices, which I had suspected would be the case – the best prices for them came the further away from their origin and Cyprus was just this side of too close.

Then I announced my intention of visiting the Archbishop Honorius and the ears went up like questing hounds, for I had made it sound like I was dropping in on an old friend.

‘You know our Archbishop?’ the Kephale asked smoothly, lifting his cold-sweating cup.

‘I am paying my respects to him, from Choniates in the Great City,’ I answered casually. ‘I have a letter for him.’

‘Architos Choniates?’ asked Tagardis, pausing with cup to lip.

I nodded, pretended to savour the wine with my eyes closed. Under my lashes, I saw the pair of them exchange knowing looks.

‘My commander will no doubt wish to have you presented to him, if you will. Later this evening?’ said Tagardis. ‘The Archbishop will also be there.’

This was new. I thought he was the commander and said as much.

He smiled and shook his head. ‘A compliment which I accept gratefully, my friend,’ he said, all teeth and smiles and lies. ‘But I am garrison commander in Larnaca only. The commander of the island’s forces is a general, Leo Balantes.’

That smacked me in the forehead, though I tried to cover it by coughing on the wine, which was one of those deep-thinking moments my men praised me for; all Greeks think barbarians like us cannot drink wine, or appreciate it when we do. They smiled indulgently.

Leo Balantes, the one rumoured to have tried to riot the Basileus out of his throne the year before. So this was what had happened to him: a threadbare command at the arse-edge of what a Greek would consider civilisation, surrounded by sea-raiders and infidels.

I remembered that he was a sword-brother of John Tzimisces, the general they called Red Boots and the one currently commanding the Basileus’s armies at Antioch. That favour had at least prevented Leo from being blinded, the Great City’s preferred method of dealing with awkward commanders.

We met in a simple room at the top of that solid-square fortress, dining on what seemed to be soldier’s fare – fine for me, though the Kephale and the Archbishop hardly ate. Balantes was square-faced and running to jowl, with forearms like hams and iron-grey hair and eyebrows, the latter as long as spider’s legs.

He requested the letter, even though it was addressed to Honorius. It seemed, even to me, that we were conspirators, confirmed as Archbishop Honorius, a dried-up stick of a man with too many rings and a face like a ravaged hawk, started to explain the situation and began by looking right and left for hidden listeners. It was almost comical, but the implications of it made me sweat.

‘The…package…that you have to deliver to Choniates,’ the Archbishop said, while insects looped through the open shutters and died in a blaze of glory on the sconces, ‘is in the church of the Archangel Michael in Kato Lefkara. It was left in the charge of monks there, to be delivered here.’

‘What is it?’ I asked.

Balantes wiped his mouth with the back of one hand and said, ‘No business of yours. Yours is simply to get it and take it to your master who will take it to Choniates. Where is this Starkad I was told of anyway?’

‘Delayed,’ I replied. ‘He has other business.’

‘I have heard of his other business – some renegade apostate monk,’ growled Balantes, scowling. ‘I also know you wolves were paid enough for him to put that aside until this task was done.’

‘I am here to do it,’ I replied with as mead-honey a grin as I could pour out, spreading my hands to embrace them all. ‘Simply get me the package and I will set sail at once.’

Now Balantes looked embarrassed.

‘Not quite so simple,’ Tagardis said, hesitantly, looking to his chief and back to me. ‘There was…a problem.’

And he saga-told it all out, like a bad drunk hoiking up too much mead over his neighbours.

The island had been once jointly ruled by the Great City and the Arabs, which arrangement Nikephoras Phocas had ended by making it clear if the Arabs didn’t pack up their tents and leave, he would kick their burnous-covered arses into the sea. Most had gone. Some had not and one, who called himself Farouk, had taken to raiding from the inland hills.

‘Unfortunately, he has grown quite strong,’ Tagardis said. ‘Now he has actually captured the town of Lefkara – Kato Lefkara is a village a little way beyond it and we have had no news from that quarter for several months.’

‘How strong has he grown?’ I asked, seeing from which quarter the wind was blowing.

‘A hundred or so Saracens,’ Balantes grunted, using the Greek word for them, Sarakenoi. I learned later that this properly referred to the Arabs of the deserts in Serkland, but had come to be used for them all.

Tearing more mutton on to his plate, he added: ‘The troops I have here outnumber him three to one, so he will not attack. However, he can’t get off, nor can he get help, for my ships are better.’

‘I have seen your men,’ I replied, ‘and your ships would only need to stay afloat to be better against a man who has none at all.’

I watched Tagardis’ lips tighten, then went on, ‘What do you expect from me? I have less than a dozen men.’

‘I thought you Varangii counted yourself worth ten of any enemy,’ snapped Tagardis.

‘Romanoi, for sure,’ I answered, which was foolish, since there is never anything to be gained from insulting your hosts – but I was young then and enjoyed such things.

There was a sliding sound as Tagardis pushed his chair back and half rose, face flaming. The Archbishop fanned the air; the Kephale started to bluster.

Balantes slapped the table with a hand hard as the flat of a blade. There was silence. The General spat gristle and scowled at me. ‘I do not know you and though you look like a boy barely into chin hair, I do you the courtesy of allowing that this Starkad gave you command because you have talent for one so young. You seem witted enough. If you had more men, could you gain this church and the prize in it?’

‘Not if they are the men I have seen,’ I replied. ‘And how do you know this Farouk does not already have your prize?’

‘It is well hidden and small,’ the Archbishop declared. ‘It is a leather cylinder, the length of your forearm and slightly fatter than a scroll-case. I will tell you where it is when all is decided.’

I had no idea what a scroll-case looked like, but still had a fair idea of what to look for. ‘And the men?’

‘What say you to fifty Danes?’

I gaped like a fresh-stunned fish, recovered and managed to grin. ‘If they are the ones who have been in your prison for the last five years, I would say “farewell fifty Danes” and run like wolves were chewing at my backside. They are as likely to rip both of us a second bung hole as fight a Serklander called Farouk.’

Balantes chuckled. ‘That is your problem.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘for fifty angry and armed Danes, I am thinking, are worse to you than all the Farouks on this island.’

Balantes leaned both meaty arms on the table. ‘For the last five years they have been breaking stones to repair the fortress,’ he said flatly. ‘There is no hope for them, no chance to get off this island other than the one they take now. If they decide to turn renegade, they will have the Sarakenoi and me to fight and there will be no place for them to go.

‘They can rampage all they like, steal what they can, but they will be opposed at every turn and die for every mouthful of bread. They may gain riches, but will have nowhere to spend it. There is no way off this island.’

This last he almost spat at me and I saw then that he was as much a prisoner here as they – which, it seemed to me, made them more Odin-lucky than he.

I considered it and the more I did the more it seemed as attractive as Loki’s daughter, Hel, her whose bedhangings were Glimmering Misfortune.

‘How do they get off the island when we have recovered this prize?’ I asked. ‘My own crew is about all the Volchok will take. It is a simple trading knarr and, even allowing that some will die, those left will be too many for that boat.’

‘Your problem,’ snarled Tagardis sullenly.

‘No, for I am thinking these Danes will see that clear enough when this is put to them,’ I answered. ‘It is not a gold-gift, this offer of yours.’

Balantes stirred slightly. ‘Their ship will be returned to them,’ he said and I blinked at that, for Tagardis had given me to understand that it had been sunk.

‘Foundered, I said,’ he corrected with a smirk. ‘Holed and driven ashore. We took her and repaired her, but have found no use for her yet.’

More likely the Greeks did not know how to sail it and they would not trust the Danes back on the deck of their own ship.

‘I will give them their ship and arms,’ Balantes said, ‘and the promise that they will be unmolested for two leagues beyond the harbour. After that, if I see that ship or the crew again, I will sink one and blind everything else.

‘You will go quickly to the place, get this container and return it to me unopened. I will seal it, then you will take it back to Choniates, into his hands and no other. Time is against us here, so move swiftly. I do not care about Farouk’s destruction, only what is in the container. Understand?’

I was hardly listening. A hafskip. Even allowing for the fact that Greeks did not know bollock from rowlock when it came to Norse ships, they could hardly have botched repairs so as to make her unseaworthy.

A hafskip was within my grasp and all I had to do was persuade fifty Danes not to kill their captors, to trust me, a barely shaved boy, and to take on an Arab and all his men. After that, I would have to think up some way of keeping the hafskip – and them if possible.

All of which made the Thing we held on board later that night a lively one.

Brother John thought we should find out how many were Christ-sworn and then convert those who were not, so that we all had that faith in common. Sighvat said it did not much matter what gods men believed in, only what men they believed in.

Finn said we should get them to swear the Oath, at which my heart sank. That Odin-oath never seemed to weaken – indeed, it grew stronger with every warrior who joined.

Kvasir, of course, slashed his way to the nub of it and, for a man with only one good eye, saw clearer than anyone, save me. I had already seen what had to happen, but just did not want to have to face it.

‘These Danes will already have a leader, whether the jarl they sailed with, or one they look to if he has gone,’ he said and looked at me. ‘Orm will have to fight him and defeat him, otherwise all of them will be patient enemies for us, not sword-brothers to trust at our backs.’

There was silence – even the incessant chirrup of the night insects had stopped – so that my sigh seemed like the curl of wave on a beach.

‘You almost have the right of it, Kvasir,’ I replied. ‘I will not have to defeat him, I am thinking – I will have to kill him stone dead.’ It was an effort to make it sound like I was asking for the mutton dish to be passed, but I carried it off.

‘Just so,’ agreed Kvasir sombrely, nodding.

‘What if he kills you?’ asked Amund.

I shrugged. ‘Then you will have to think that one out for yourselves.’

It was as offhand a hero-gesture as I could make it, but I was swallowing a thistle in my throat at the very idea of a fight and my bowels were melted.

Sighvat nodded and shifted so he could fart, a long sound, like a horn call in a fog, which broke the tension into fragments of chuckles.

‘Still,’ mused Brother John, ‘five years breaking stones will have dulled this leader’s fighting skills, surely.’

A fact I was grasping at while drowning in fear.

Kvasir grunted agreement, then said thoughtfully: ‘Just don’t choose to fight with hammers.’

The next day, with Kvasir, Brother John and Finn on either side, I stood in front of the sorry Danes, as husked-out a crew of worn specimens as any seen on a slave coffle in Dyfflin. They were honed by rough work and too little food into men made of braided hawsers, with muscles like knots.

Burned leather-dark, their hair made white by rock dust and sun-scorch, they stood and looked at us in the remains of their tunics and breeks, torn and bleached to a uniform drab pale, like the stuff they hewed. Stone men, with stone hearts.

Yet there was a flicker when I spoke to them and told them of what would happen, the chances for plunder on the way, which they could also keep – this last my own invention, for I knew my kind well.

‘How do we know these Greeks will honour such a promise?’ demanded one.

There he was. Taller than the rest, with bigger bones at elbow and knees to show that, if he’d had more food, the work would have slabbed real muscle on him. A glimmer of genuine red-gold showed in the quartz-sparkled stone dust shrouding his hair and beard and his eyes were so pale a blue that they seemed to have no colour at all.

‘Because I say so,’ I said. ‘I, Orm Ruriksson of the Oathsworn, give you my own word on it.’

He shifted, squinted at me, then spat pointedly. ‘A boy? You claim to be a jarl, but if you need us you are short on followers, ring-giver.’

‘You are?’

‘I am Thrain, who says you should go away, little boy. Come back when you are grown.’

‘You may say that,’ growled someone from the back, to a muttered chorus of agreement, ‘but I would like to listen more. Five years is a long time and I am sick of stone-carving.’

Thrain whirled, spraying dust from himself. ‘Fasten that bag, Halfred. We agreed that I lead here. I speak, not you.’

‘Did you speak when Hrolf took the steering oar when he was fog-brained with mead?’ came the counter. ‘Did you speak when Bardi ordered him to steer between two shoals, he who was seeing four at the time? No. I am remembering the only noise you made was the same one as we all did – the sound of a man drowning.’

I liked this Halfred. Thrain scowled, but I had the bridle of this horse now, since I had heard the dissent.

‘Here’s the way of it,’ I said. ‘You will be free, with arms and your ship, but only if I am your jarl and you take our Oath.’

We swear to be brothers to each other, bone, blood and steel. On Gungnir, Odin’s spear, we swear, may he curse us to the Nine Realms and beyond if we break this faith, one to another.

They blinked at the ferocity of it, as everyone did, for it was a hard oath and one made on Odin’s spear, the Shaking One, and so could not be broken. It lasted for life unless you found someone to take your place – or fought to the death to keep it against someone who wanted it, which had not happened while I had been with the Oathsworn. That, I suddenly realised, was because so many tended to die and there were always places.

For all that, these stone Danes sucked it in like a parched man falling in an ale vat. They wanted what was offered and I could see them tasting the salt on their lips and finding it spray rather than sweat.

‘Those who do not wish to become Oathsworn can remain and dig stones,’ I went on. ‘Of course, anyone can become leader here if the others want him enough and, since it is clear that there will be more of you than my own men, I am supposing you will want this Thrain to take over. So I will save him all the trouble of calling for a Thing and talking round it until our heads hurt, for it will all come out the same way.’

I looked at him. ‘We fight,’ I said, trying to sound as if I had just asked someone to pass the bread.

There was a brief silence, where even the sun seemed loud as it beat down.

‘Do you so challenge? Or are you afraid?’ I asked and Thrain scowled, for he had been stunned by the speed of all this.

‘I am not afraid of you,’ he managed to growl, adding a wolf-grin.

‘I can change that,’ I told him and the grin faded. He licked dry lips and wondered about me now, this steel-smooth, cocksure boy. If he had known the effort it took to breathe normally, keep my voice from squeaking and my legs from shaking, he might have been less uneasy when he finally issued his challenge.

I had never fought a holmgang before, though I had seen it once, when two of the old Oathsworn, long gone to Valholl, had stepped into the marked-off square to fight. Hring had lasted no more than the time it took Pinleg to froth at the mouth and Hring to see that he had ended up in a fight with a berserker. There had been barely enough time for him to widen his eyes with the horror of it before Pinleg charged and hacked him to bloody shreds.

Pinleg, last seen surrounded by enemies on a beach far north in the Baltic, saving us even as we sailed away and left him.

We went to a sheltered, level spot, away from prying eyes, when the Danes were unshackled. The others, especially Finn, were full of good advice, for they knew I had never fought holmgang. Come to that, no one else had either – it was a rare thing, most fights being unofficial and settled without such formal fuss and seldom ending in death.

I remembered what my father, Gunnar Raudi, had told me: see what weapon your opponent has and if he has more than one, which is permitted. Make your own second one a good short seax, held in the shield-hand and, if you get a chance, drop the shield and surprise him with it – if you can let go of the shield and still hold the seax, which is a cunning trick.

Keep your feet moving always, don’t lead with the leg too far forward and attack legs and feet where possible, a searaiders’ battle trick, for a man with a leg wound is out of the fight and can be left.

But the best piece of advice I hugged to myself, turning it over and over and over in my mind like a prayer to Tyr, god of battles.

Finn and Short Eldgrim marked out the five ells, which was supposed to be a hide, secured at each corner by long nails called tjosnur, which we didn’t have. Finn managed to get four old Roman nails from the garrison stores, almost eight inches long and square-headed, which he then put in with the proper ritual. That meant making sure sky could be seen through his legs, holding the lobe of an ear and speaking the ritual words.

Brother John scowled at all this, though the nails interested him, for it was with such as these, he told us, that Christ Jesus had been nailed to the cross.

Each of us had two weapons and three shields and the challenged – I – struck the first blow. I had made sure to craft that part carefully enough.

If one foot went out – going on the heel, as we called it – the fight went on. If both feet went out, or blood fell, the whole thing was finished.

Thrain had not been in a holmgang either, had not been in a fight with weapons for five years, so he was nervous. He was grinning the same way a dog wags his tail – not because he is friendly, but because he is afraid. His top lip had dried and stuck to his teeth and he was trying to boost the fire in his belly by chaffering with his Danes about how this boy would not take long.

He had a shield and a sword and a leather helmet, same as me, but you could see the sword hilt was awkward in a hand that had held only a pick and hammer for five years and he knew it, was fighting the fear and needed to bolster himself as Kvasir shouted: ‘Fight.’

He half turned his head, to seek the reassurance of his men once more, before bracing for the first stroke – but I was fighting with Gunnar’s best advice ringing in my head.

Be fast. Be first.

I was already across the space between us, that perfect, water-flowing blade whirring like a bird startled into flight.

It was as near perfect a stroke as I have ever done: it took him right on the strap of the helm and cut the knot of it, sliced into the soft flesh under his chin and kept going, even after it hit the bones at the back of his neck.

I almost took his head in that one stroke, but not quite. He must have seen the flicker of the blade at the last, was trying to duck and draw back in panic, but far too slow, for the blade was through him and he dragged it out by staggering back.

Then his body fell forward and his head fell down his back, held by a scrap of skin. Blood fountained straight out of his neck, pulsing out of him in great gouts, turning the dust to bloody mud as he clattered to the ground, spattering my boots.

There was a stunned silence, followed by a brief: ‘Heya,’ from Finn.

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