The Wolf Sea

The descent to hell is easy.

Fuck him, what did he know? He wasn't the one in the lead.

6

I held him and he felt like a bird, the racking sobs shaking him so that it seemed his thundering heart must burst out of his rib cage. I wanted to hold him tighter, but it was an awkward thing with others looking and I had no words for him; none of us had. So Brother John peeled the Goat Boy off me and took him to the swift-flowing stream to wash the snot and tears away.

The rest of us stood, cold and tired, uneasy in the dawn light, with the tendrils of haar like a witch-woman's hair slithering round the farm and the mulberry trees and the old corpses, still blackened and charred. Crows sat hunched and sour in those trees, rasping out a protest at a meal interrupted.

A fresh meal, on a small corpse. The smallest one in that field of death, dark curls clotted with old blood, the eyes already pecked into dark holes, which still managed to accuse us all. The wound that killed him was a back- to-breast skewer and Halfred tracked the tale of it.

The horsemen had ridden to the silk farm from the town of Lefkara, which meant I had judged Farouk right — he had come straight to the plumes of pyre smoke, found nothing and headed for the village after that. Now he was probably finding more dead and a burned church and we had a start on him, but not much of one. It was good Odin luck for us, since it meant we had missed each other in the dark — but for such luck One Eye takes a high price in sacrifice.

So he took little Vlasios into their path just as they saw what we had done to their friends. Like startled game, the Goat Boy's little brother had probably made a run for it, leaping on those wiry legs, twisting and turning, but no match for horsemen with lances.

They had spitted him, said Hookeye, pointing it out — quietly, so the Goat Boy could not hear — and carried him back to the charred remains of the pyre, stinking and wet from rain. Probably still on the spear-point, Hookeye thought.

And they would be laughing about it in a grim way, I thought to myself, as they tossed the corpse on to the ash, like an offering to their own dead. It came to me that we might well have done something similar, in another place, at another time, and the thought did nothing to help the sick feeling in my belly.

Then they had ridden off, leaving one more small, bewildered little fetch in a clearing, wondering why the world had grown cold and empty and shadowed.

We had found him after a couple of hard hours' travel, moving as swiftly as we could in the dark. My plan had been finely worked, everyone agreed, but the dead boy was a stone thrown in the pool of my deep thinking and not because the Goat Boy was melting to tears over it.

No, it was the little stick in Vlasios's belt, which the Sarakenoi had not even bothered with. The one that said, in badly cut runes: `Starkad. Go west. Dragon.'

It was from Kvasir and I knew what it meant. Starkad had arrived like a pinch of salt in clear water. Now Balantes and everyone else would know they had handed the prize to the wrong wolf and we would have all the Greeks on Cyprus after us, as well as the Sarakenoi and Starkad's men.

As Finn said, with a harsh chuckle, if you measured a jarl by the number of his enemies, then Orm Bear Slayer was mighty indeed. The others had joined in, the fierce laugh of men with steel to their front and fire at their back, showing a lot of teeth but little mirth.

At least Kvasir and the others had had warning, time enough to plan swiftly and send the Goat Boy's brother with the gist of it.

I knew what Dragon meant. On the way here, less than a day from Larnaca and perched bare-arsed over the lee side in friendly conversation while we emptied our bowels, Kvasir had pointed out the headland like a dragon- prow. We had argued whether it looked more like the fine antlered one on the old Fjord Elk, or the snarling serpent on Starkad's stolen drakkar, which had replaced it.

That was where Kvasir was heading, but I did not know if he had one ship or two — or if he would make it at all.

I laid it all out for them, while Brother John brought the scrubbed-faced Goat Boy back. Finn was all for hurtling back the way we had come, to take Starkad on and get the runesword back. No one else looked eager for that, however, and I was cold-sick in my insides at the way my crafted plans had unravelled so completely. I was no Einar.

`What do we do, Orm?' asked Kvasir and I felt a mad moment rise in me, a great storm sea that made me want to agree with Finn, to shriek out that we would take on Starkad and every Greek, get the runesword back, fight back to our ship and then away. .

Instead, I looked at them, one by one, battened down my pride and admitted the truth of it. Now we run, brothers. Now we run.'

We did, a jogging lope that burst the sweat on us, despite the chill. Across the bare slopes we went like startled game, from gully to rock, to stand of trees, heading hard west and south. Eventually, when I called a rest- halt, I could taste the brine on a breeze from the sea on parched lips and sucked it into fiery lungs. There was another village — ahead and west, if I remembered Radoslav's chart — whose name sounded like air being let out of a dead sheep's belly. Paphos, it was called, but I wanted no part of that and planned to come out to the sea short of it by some safe miles.

The men were on one knee, panting, mouths open, tossing a flopping waterskin from one to the other and I saw the Goat Boy sit with his knees at his chin, his dark eyes big and round and fixed on me. I had worried about him keeping up, but that had been foolish — this was the boy's country and he had young legs that had chased all over it since he could toddle.

I grinned and raised a hand to him and he raised one back, though he did not smile. After a moment, he snatched the waterskin deftly up before anyone could stop him and brought it to me. As I drank, he squatted beside me, silent and staring at nothing.

It was a hard thing, what happened to your brother,' I offered, handing him the skin. He stoppered it and sighed.

`My mother-' he began and then stopped. He wanted to be a man, but his lip betrayed him.

`You should go back to her,' I said, clasping one shoulder, but the look he turned on me was suddenly cat- fierce from a streaked face.

I want to be one of you. I will take the Oath. I will fight the infidels.'

Finn overheard and chuckled grimly. 'Join another army, biarki, for this one is leaving, never to return.'

He looked alarmed and I caught the flash of disbelief and then his shoulders collapsed.

Every hand is against us,' I pointed out, 'from the Kephale to the General as well as the Sarakenoi. We stole something valuable.'

`That's what we do,' added Hookeye, his voice thick with sarcasm. When I looked at him he looked challengingly back at me. At least, I thought he did, though it was hard to feel challenged when his left eye was seemingly staring over my right shoulder.

The boy was silent and someone called for the waterskin, so he got up and passed it. Brother John slid up to me and whispered: 'To leave the boy behind will be death for him. Balantes will not believe he does not know anything about this prize. Even if he does not, there is Starkad.'

The prize. I had forgotten it, still slung by its strap on my back. Now I took it and had a hard look at the outside. Interested, since this was what had caused all the trouble, the men crept closer and craned to look.

Plain leather, with a carefully fastened cap, which I opened. There was a musky smell and I tipped the contents cautiously into the palm of my hand.

Dried twigs and a leaf, browned at the edges though it had once been brilliant, glossy dark green. With it came some dark little specks, smaller than peas and hard as beads.

Is that it?' demanded Finn huffily. 'Does not scale up well to our runesword, I am thinking.'