The Wolf Sea

`Not much to look at, Trader,' said a voice.

`What is it?' said another.

I knew, even though I had never seen any of it before. The whole thing of it unwrapped like a folded cloak to reveal the pattern. I shrugged to the men, poured the whole lot back in and fastened the leather top.

I had promised them treasure, brought them to a den of wolves where men had died and could not begin to explain what had been found. They wanted treasure, so I gave it to them.

`Pearls,' I said knowingly, ignoring the shame the word flooded me with. 'Special ones.'

That made them nod and smile. Pearls they understood. Pearls could be bartered for a sword with a rune serpent curled on it — Einar would have been proud of me.

But Brother John's eyes narrowed, for he knew I was lying.

I didn't want to tell anyone the truth of it, though — that the collection of leaves and little beads were mulberry leaves and shoots and the eggs, I was thinking, from silkworms. Silk was so precious you had to have permission to buy it. It had been stolen by two daring monks from the strange people who made it in a far-off land and now the church jealously controlled it.

If a high-placed Christ priest and a truculent general were handing what was a church monopoly to the likes of Choniates on the sly, there was more here than simple theft and moneymaking. There was the sharp stink of treachery, the sort where kings slip knives in the ribs of rivals of a dark night, and I had been in Miklagard long enough to know that Roman emperors sat on precarious gifthrones. Small wonder Choniates had handed over a runed sword to Starkad for a task such as this.

Stealing this had been a mistake and a bad one, such a bad one that my balls drew up, tight and scared.

Leo Balantes made no secret of being the man of General Red Boots and Balantes was the one who had whipped up the riots in the Great City last year. If Red Boots was also behind this then the Basileus himself was the target. This was no bargain counter for a runesword. It was a death sentence.

Blood-feuds I knew about, as every Norseman did, but the feuds of the great in Miklagard were another thing entirely. Balantes would snuff us out like pinching a candle if he thought we knew too much — and the only one who could help, the Basileus Autocrator himself, was so far away as to make the sun easier to reach.

Only two winters ago, I thought wearily, my only worry was how much worm was in the keel of our little faering in Bjornshafen. Now I was wrestling with whether the gods were laughing at me for having the pride to become jarl of the Oathsworn and that this, my first serious raid, would be my doom.

Worse than that, I was hiding the truth from the others. I could almost hear Einar laughing as we ran on into a dappled day with trees like sentries on the hills behind us, so that every time I turned to look back, my heart surged, thinking they were horsemen.

But this was bad country for horsemen. I knew that when one of the three we had foundered and we turned him loose, doubling the wounded up on another. The slopes, however, were smoothing down to the sea and, suddenly, Hookeye gave a loud shout and pointed.

There, rolling gently in the swell in a curve of golden beach, was the Fjord Elk and my heart gave a jolt in my ribs.

There was a brief moment of capering and back-slapping, quickly lost as we realised the Volchok wasn't anywhere in sight. That, as Finn gloomily pointed out, meant that the cargo was lost.

Ah,' said Hedin Flayer cheerfully, 'turn the coin over, Finn Horsehead. Perhaps the cargo has been rescued. Perhaps your knarr is sailing still, just out of sight.'

Perhaps. We trotted on, filled with fresh strength and eager to quit the land for the sea. We slithered out of the steep hills and on to a flat stretch leading to the tussocked grass and then the sand. Gulls wheeled, shrieking out their calls, sometimes like the laugh of some mad hag, other times like the cries of a lost child.

Many a gull was the fetch of those drowned and uneasy in the silt-kingdom of Ran, Mother of the Waves, according to Sighvat.

We stumbled across a stubbled field, saw the thread of smoke from a chimney and the shadow that straightened from work, spotted us and sprinted away. We stopped to rest, for even the horses were blowing.

A cock crowed and Sighvat grunted.

`That's bad,' he said.

Finn spat. 'Is there one of your animal signs that is ever a good omen?' he asked.

Sighvat considered it carefully before shrugging. 'Depends,' he said. 'They warn and seldom praise.

Roosters are Odin birds, for they crow to herald the sun, which Odin and his brothers, Vili and Ve, threw into the sky as embers from Muspell. Fjalar is the red cock, who will raise the giants to war at Ragnarok and Gullinkambi the golden one who will wake the gods for that fight. And let's not forget the One with No Name who crows to raise the dead in Helheim on that day.'

`Duly remembered,' muttered Finn. 'Now. .'

`When a cock crows at midnight a fetch is passing and if it crows three times between sunset and midnight it is a death omen,' Sighvat went on mildly. 'Crowing in the day, as now, is often a warning against misfortune. Can you see if it is perched on a gate? If it is, it means tomorrow will have rain.'

Odin's balls,' muttered Finn, rubbing the sweat from his face. 'Remind me only to keep hens.'

Ah, well,' said Sighvat, 'a hen that crows is unlucky, as is one with tail feathers like a rooster. You would do well to kill them at once. And a hen which roosts in the morning foretells a death-'

'Thor's hairy arse!' shouted Finn in annoyance. 'Enough cackle about hens, Sighvat, in the name of all the gods.'

`You'd do well to listen, though,' offered Gardi, pointing behind us. 'Look.'

This time there was no mistaking the shape of horsemen, high on the ridge, picking a careful way down the scrub and scree slope. Once they hit the flat. .

`Run,' said Finn, the sweat pearling his face. 'Run like the wolf son of Loki has its teeth in your breeks.'

We ran, stumbling and cursing. One of the wounded fell off the back of the horse and the other one checked, turned, saw the horsemen fanning out down the slope, riding hard and shrilling out those illa-la-la'

cries. He galloped for it and the fallen man cursed, got up on to his good leg and started hobbling.

No one helped him, for the hooves were drumming harder now There was a familiar bird's wing whirr and the hobbling man screamed and pitched forward in mid-run, an arrow in his lower back.

Finn cursed and whirled. 'Trader.

I knew what he wanted and screamed: 'Form!'

They slithered and skidded to a halt, swept together like a flock of sparrows while the arrows came in again with the sound of knives shearing linen. A man yelped as one whacked his thigh and he started to drag himself down to the beach.

We slammed shields and faced them, no sound but the sob and rasp of our breath. Arrows hissed and shunked into wood; another man cursed and writhed, the shaft through his ankle.

`Borg,' roared Finn and the men behind swept their shields up so that there was a higher wall, angled back. The men in front, me among them, half crouched. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hookeye splashing through the water to the side of the Elk. His eyes might be squint, but his feet were sure and fast.

`Back,' I said into the gasping, sweating mass. 'We have to move back.'

We were a roofed fort, but only from the front, so had to shuffle, painfully slowly, away from the horsemen, who were sitting nocking arrows and shooting. They seemed content to do that and I saw there were only twenty or thirty of them and none that looked like an Emir — so he had split his forces to look for us.

One staggering Dane, trying hard to reach us, took about six arrows, one after the other, sounding like wet meat thrown at a wall as they hit him. He went down, one hand still clawing sand and stiff grass to try and get to us.

We backed off, while the arrows spat and hissed and slammed into shields. I hoped whoever commanded was too wary to work out that, as long as we were moving, we were not safe behind the raven claws that had done for them last time. Without those claws, we'd be hard put to stand against lance-armed heavy horsemen and arrows at the same time.

Sand slithered beneath our feet, spattered with stiff-leaved grass. Then coarse sand alone and still we moved back, shedding another two bodies, passing two riderless horses.