Oathsworn were moving, silent and awkward, wary as cats, poking in doorways and turning in half-circles.
The only sign of life was the insects, humming and thrumming from hanging basket to pot, from blood trail to gutted corpse. There were a lot of gutted corpses.
I went to the fountain, a simple affair of basin and spout, peeled off my helmet and dipped my hand in to cup cool water on my face. My other hand rested on soft moss and, beneath it, an outcrop of stone had a perfect, round dip in it. As I watched, a drip formed above and trembled and fell with a spiderweb splash, moving one more grain of stone.
Years it had been here, this fountain, this place, watching the likes of us come and go, flitting like moths through the world. I felt like a spark, whirling on the wind, and had to grip the edge of the mossy lip to keep from falling.
`Signs of a struggle, Trader,' growled Kvasir, his voice booming. 'Blood. Bodies stripped; some opened.
Look here.'
He scooped water into his helmet, then I walked with him to where the fish-white corpse lay, sightless eyes filmed with dust. A fly crawled, bloated, from one nostril.
`See here. Gutted neatly and the liver removed.'
He did not have to say more. Raw liver was good eating when you were in a hurry and hungry and I had eaten it myself, warm from a fresh-killed deer.
I fought back to the now, blinking into his tilt-headed concern.
`The church?' I managed.
`Finn's off to find it. You should soak your head a bit, Trader. You look heat-felled to me.'
`Where are Gardi and the Flayer?' I asked, ignoring him.
Kvasir rubbed his bearded face with water, blowing it off his moustache. He shrugged. 'Scouting, I suppose. That's what they do.'
The Goat Boy came up on his thin legs, massaging his side where the lung punished him for his running, and announced that Finn had found the church and that I was to come at once. I went.
It was as typical a Roman church as any we had burned: solid walls, a dome, a stout door flung wide, narrow entrance, a floor of coloured tiles, some of them smashed away. It had long been abandoned to the spiders and rats but, as Finn said, stern as a whetstone, it had worshippers now and I had better see.
I slid in through the door, blinking at the sharp change from light to dark, heat to cool. The place seemed as empty as the inside of a bell, thick with shadows, and my feet crunched on the spill of little floor tiles from what had once been some holy picture from the Christ sagas.
Gradually, the shadows slid into the shapes of two people, one sitting cross-legged and facing me, the other kneeling, facing him, his head on the floor as if in obeisance, a magnificent rust-red cloak draped over his shoulders and back and a carpet of the same for him to kneel on. There was a dull droning, as if unseen priests muttered in the dark corners.
The cross-legged one looked up as I crunched forward, one slow, bewildered step after another. His spiderwebbed face was harsh as a sun-cracked plain, stretched tight over cheeks in which black, haunted eyes peered familiarly at me.
Orm,' said Martin in a tired voice. 'Welcome to the house of God, idolatrous though it may be. Here also is one other you know: Starkad. Forgive him if he does not get up. I fear he is past that.'
I moved closer and sideways slightly. The kneeling figure was Starkad right enough, and he wasn't wearing a red cloak on his back, he was wearing his lungs; I hunkered down, tremble-legged and dry-mouthed at the sight of a real bloodeagling.
They had cut his ribs free from his backbone moved them forward so that they could lift his lungs out and drape them on his back, like wings. He was caked in old blood, knelt in a crusted-over pool of it and the priest- droning sound was every blood-gorging insect in the land enjoying a feast.
I hid,' Martin said flatly. 'When Starkad and his men caught up with me here, I hid. They were looking for me — politely, so as not to annoy the locals — when they were attacked. Hundreds of them. Screams and death, young Orm.'
He shifted slightly and the insects rose in a puff, like smoke, then settled again.
`When I came out, everyone had gone — save him. So I sat with him and offered him the peace of God until he died.'
`He was. . alive?'
Oh yes,' Martin said calmly. 'He lived for a good hour, did Starkad, though he didn't say much. I sprinkled water on his lungs to keep them from drying out, but even that touch was pain to him.'
I wiped dry lips and batted insects away, trying to suck in the enormity of it. This was. . vicious and meaningless. It had to have been done by a Norseman — no renegade Arab or Greek would even know of this — and such a thing was done to strike fear, or as a warning. Which meant this Red Head knew who we were and did not like it much. He was as dark-hearted as he was red-haired.
Martin looked at me across Starkad's corpse, hazed by the insect flutter. `Starkad was a hound from Satan,' he declared harshly, 'who hunted me all the way from Birka to here — two long years of running, curse him. I found a place to hide here, but I could not take the Holy Lance in it. He had won, I thought — then this.' Savage as a fanged grin, he was trembling with the triumph of it. If you did not believe in God before, Orm, look on this and tremble. He smites His enemies with a terrible Hand.'
I blinked the stinging sweat from my eyes; the air was thick with death and blood and flies and I wanted out of that place. I looked at Starkad and saw only a man, stripped naked and blood-eagled. No helm, no mail, no holy spear.
And no rune-serpent sword.
Martin smiled. A fly crawled at the edges of it, but if he felt it at all he gave no sign. 'Indeed,' he said.
'The spear is gone. Your famous sword is gone. Whoever killed him has it now. We must find them-'
There were shouts from outside and the slither of feet. The Goat Boy hurled into the church, his voice echoing and shrill. `Trader. . men are coming. Hundreds of them. And a man with red hair.'
I looked at Martin as I rose. 'We do not need to find them, priest,' I answered. 'I would run back to your little hole. They have found us.'
By the time I had hauled out my sword and unshipped my shield, they were on us, spilling over the dusty fields where they had been hiding, darting among the houses, a tide of screaming, rag-arsed men, desperate with outlaw fear and well armed.
The Goat Boy skittered back from the entrance as a figure hurled in, panting and grunting. I saw a mass of matted black hair and beard, a ragged, stained tunic and a long spear. His feet slapped and skidded on the ruined mosaic tiles and he crouched, snarling Greek curses and blinking in the transition from light to dark.
I stepped forward; he spotted the movement and hurled himself at me like a mad dog, the fat spearhead slamming hard enough into the shield to stagger me backwards. He tugged; it stuck. I shook the shield free and the weight of it falling dragged the spear down. While he was trying to put out a foot and pull it free, I spun round, up the shaft of the spear in a half-turn, my sword whirring in a killing arc.
The bite juddered me to my teeth and he shrieked and fell over as ribs crunched. When I spun the rest of the way round he was sprawled out, writhing like a landed fish and gasping and moaning. I saw he was barefoot, the soles black as ash.
The Goat Boy darted in then, a little knife flashing as he cut Black Hair's throat and looked up at me, panting with effort, teeth bared like a savage little dog. Another for his dead brother.
I took four steps to the narrow entrance, to where I could see the street outside: a madness of men, flashing axes and spears and swords, where figures slid and screamed like vengeful ghosts in the shrouding dust.
The flash of flame hair was beacon-bright in it and I saw Kvasir had won his bet. Inger came crashing through the wolf pack of his own ragged men, heavy with ringmail and carrying, I saw with a shock that puckered my arse, a byrnie-biter, a three-foot long, three-edged spear-blade, with only a foot of wooden shaft to wield it with. It was a vicious stabbing spear that could carve through three thicknesses of ringmail if a man of strength used it. And Inger fancied himself as a wrestler.
He saw me, knew me. His mouth opened in an O, framed by matted red beard, a roar of challenge I couldn't
