carve the runes of it on a stick, so that only Northmen could read it.
I will go,' declared the eldest, striking his chest proudly with a hand red-scarred by harsh work. 'But I will need a sword and a shield. And possibly a helmet.'
Finn chuckled, gave him all three items from his own person and watched him wilt under the weight. 'A good coat of rings as well, brave Baldur?' He smiled, then tapped the top of the helmet which was swallowing the boy's head and asked if there was anyone in there. He took it off, ruffled the boy's hair and said: 'Stick to your sling, I am thinking.'
The Goat Boy laughed and handed the battle-gear back, glad to be rid of it. I realised I could not keep calling him the Goat Boy and asked his name.
Finn groaned. 'You should not have done that, Trader,' he said, shaking his head in mock sorrow. 'We may as well all take a seat.'
The boy took a deep breath and threw out a proud little chest. 'John Doukas Angelos Palaiologos Raoul Laskaris Tornikes Philanthropenos Asanes,' he intoned and beamed. No one spoke and Finn was grinning.
`His name is bigger than he is,' I noted. 'I think I preferred Goat Boy. I will not make the mistake of asking your brother the same question.'
`His name is Vlasios,' answered the boy, then stared, bemused and angry, as everyone roared with laughter.
Then, with spears and round shields and leather helmets sent out by Tagardis, the rest of the Danes lined up with my old crew and we headed off, laden with waterskins and dried meat and bread, into the depths of the island, on the day it started to rain.
Three days later, neither it nor the cold wind that brought it showed signs of stopping and we were high in the hills, having circled round to the east. We were now close to Kato Lefkara and the bigger town of Lefkara, which was said to be Farouk's stronghold, and the rain was a mirr that you had to wipe off your face and eyelashes. Yet the day was warm enough to make us all sweat in our battle-gear.
Those whose turn it was to carry the heavy sacks I had ordered brought along grumbled twice as much, but no one was happy about being soaked inside and out.
The scouts came in from three different directions. They were all Danes, for none of the original dozen Oathsworn had the skill of hunting or tracking much. These three did and the best of them was Halfred, who had spoken up against Thrain. Hookeye, they called him, since his left one was hooked tight to his nose -
yet, squint or no, he read signs and tracks as easily as monks scan Latin.
He came in with the easy, ground-breaking lope of a seasoned tracker, which he had been for Knud, whose hov was in Limfjord. Knud was known the length of Denmark as a greedy man and made his wealth dealing in slaves, Ests and Livs from further up the Baltic, which he sold to traders bound for Dyfflin and Jorvik.
It had been his job, Halfred Hookeye told us, to track down the runaways and, since Knud skimped on proper securing, Halfred had been kept busy until he grew restless for other things. That set him apart from the others, since no one liked a hunter of runaway men, even thralls.
I was glad of Knud's stinginess now, for Halfred Hookeye could read ground like my father once read wind and current — like those old, Oathsworn scout-hounds, Bagnose and Steinthor, once did, before Odin gathered them to Valholl.
One of those domed Christ places, Trader,' Hookeye said, addressing me as he had heard Finn and others do — which was a good sign. 'Ruined, like the Goat Boy says.'
It is called a church,' sighed Brother John. 'How many times must I tell you?'
Two Danish trackers, Gardi and Hedin Flayer, kneeling and blowing snot through their fingers, reported that they had seen nothing else but rain and stones and distant hills.
`There is not a living creature here,' Hedin Flayer said morosely, 'though I saw goat droppings, so something lives in this Christ-cursed country.' And, like the good Christ-man he was, he said sorry to a bedraggled Brother John and crossed himself while making a good Odin-ward against evil at the same time.
We moved up warily to the domed church, as silently as nearly three-score Norse could move with battle- gear, which wasn't very.
We crested a bald hillock, descended a scrub slope, then crossed a swollen stream and climbed up the other side to where the church stood — or three blackened walls of it and the dome, partially collapsed on one side. The sun was white and distant and threw no shadows; there was the faint stink of charred wood over the smell of damp earth — and something else, faint and sweet as mead-sick.
`Heya,' grunted Arnor, pinching the scabbed cleft of his nose. 'The dead are here.'
They were, too, and now that I was looking for them, it was as if a doe in a dappled wood had suddenly moved and showed all.
The dead lay everywhere, slumped and sunken like empty waterskins, the grass grown up through them.
I saw the tattered remains of worn robes, the yellow of bone and, when Gardi pulled at what he thought was a brown stick, he dragged out a bone, attached to a maggot-crusted brown mass that released a waft of stinging stink to make eyes water.
Cautiously, we wandered through the place, which had been gutted and burned. I posted watchers at once, even though the signs were months old. Brother John knelt and prayed, while the others poked and prodded in the ruins. The rain slid down again: a delicate offering, like tears.
`Strange place,' muttered Sighvat, 'even allowing for it being a Christ house. I have seen those — so have you, Trader — but this is different. Why have they all these wheels?'
Now that he had spoken of it, I saw what he meant. There were the remains of shattered and burned wood, bits of metal and, everywhere, charred wheels and bits of spoke. As he said, even allowing for the strangeness of the Greek Christ-men, this was new.
`Perhaps the Goat Boy knows,' I said, but Sighvat wasn't listening. He was staring at the sky and, when I looked up, I saw the small, circling black shapes.
`Crows?' I asked, for his eyes were sharp as needles and I couldn't see which way they were wheeling -
crows were left-handed, as Sighvat constantly told us.
He shook his head. 'Kites. Loki birds and treacherous. They will tell our enemies where we are, for they have smelled the old death unearthed here and think they can make new ones to scavenge.'
He shivered and that raised my hackles, for Sighvat was always sure with animals and birds. When I said so, he turned a grim face on me and shrugged. 'My mother said I would find my doom when the kite spoke to me. She had that off a
`Can kites talk, then?' I asked. 'I have been told crows can.'
`Neither has a voice,' Sighvat corrected morosely and shrugged again. 'There are many ways of speaking.'
`Getting darker, Bear Slayer,' announced Hookeye. 'We should move.'
Bear Slayer. He had been listening to the campfire tales and clearly liked how I had been found beside the body of a great white bear from the North, a spear up through its chin. I had not killed it, though no one knew that save me, but it was not a name I preferred. It was one of those names that made fame-starved warriors with scarred faces scowl, as if you'd just challenged them to a pissing contest.
I looked again at the sky, which was pearl-grey and empty save for the distant kites. I knew we had water and shelter here, but the violent dead made it an uncomfortable place to be near at night.
Turning, I signalled to move on, indicating that the scouts should move out ahead. Then I saw Brother John, his arm round the Goat Boy, crooning soothingly. The Goat Boy shuddered in spasms and turned his snot-smeared face to me, twisted in a grief so hard on him that he could barely make a noise with his weeping.
`His friends,' Brother John said and swept a hand at a litter of corpses.
I looked closer. They were all small, ruined little rag bundles of bone and weather-wrecked cloth.
Children. Scores of them.
`This is a silk factory,' Brother John said. 'John Asanes here once laboured for them on these wheels, teasing silk from cocoons — all the silk-teasers are boys — but fled because his hands hurt too much from the boiling water they use. He has never been back until now, but had heard the monastery had been attacked by this Farouk. That's
