The Wolf Sea

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