The Wolf Sea

men, dangerous in the loving as they are, would be seen as reckless.'

Svala eyed him up and down and smiled, a dimpled, impish smile. 'Sadly she is dead — but had she lived to see two such as you describe,' she returned, 'she would have been concerned. However, there is only a limp man with a stamp between his brows and a boy.'

While my hackles rose foolishly at that, Radoslav threw back his head and roared with laughter and, eventually, I saw the humour of it and we all three went off, laughing, to meet Brother John and Finn and go into the city.

That, even with the sheen of past remembering on it, was the last truly good time of my life.

7

The Goat — Boy lay under clean linen in a cot in a shady room whose doors were framed with vines. It was at the end of a wide avenue so quiet that we were half afraid to speak and the whirr of a pigeon wing was enough to startle us.

It had been, one of the red-tunicked staff said, a place where Arab potion-makers — the staff man called them saydalani — mixed up their elixirs, and the place was ripe with the smells of spices. Some of them we knew; others, like musk, tamarind, cloves and a sharp tang Brother John said was aconite, were new to most of us.

Now it was a place where chirurgeons from the army treated their wounded and one of these blood-letters eyed us up and down before, reluctantly, letting us in to see the Goat Boy, on condition that we did not touch him, his wound or anything else.

Brother John asked him what he had done to it and the man, a grizzle-haired individual with skin like old leather, said he had put in a drain to rid the wound of accumulating fluid and that the boy's lung would heal itself if he was given time and rest.

`That's laudable pus,' exclaimed the priest, outraged. 'You will kill him if you take it away. It is meant to be there.'

The chirurgeon looked Brother John up and down, taking in the ragged breeks and tunic, the unkempt hair and beard. I have read Galen's Tegni and the aphorisms of Hippocrates,' he said. 'I have studied the Liber Febris of Isaac Judaeus. Have you?'

Brother John blinked and scowled. 'I cut the arrowhead out of him,' he answered.

The chirurgeon nodded, then smiled. 'The surgery was smart work but heathen prayers and chants are not suitable for healing. Next time, clean the blade, or heat it. If you want your boy to survive, let me do what I do best.'

Muttering, Brother John let the leash of his annoyance fall slack and we went into the shaded, quiet place, where a few recovering soldiers sat and chatted. They looked up when we came in and a couple offered up salutes and cheers to Svala, who merely grinned back at them.

The Goat Boy was asleep, but the rasp of his breathing had gone and, though his closed eyes looked like two bruises, there was, I thought, more colour to him than before.

We chatted to the soldiers for a while, hoping he would wake, but he slept on. Instead, we learned how the Great City's army had come up against a great mass of Arab horse and foot determined to defend Antioch and the battle had been a vicious affair, though short.

An Armenian archer called Zifus, perched with his leg in a sling, said that this was the second time he had been to take Antioch and that this was something like the tenth war between the Great City and the Arabs. The Hamdanids from Mosul and Aleppo always managed to take Antioch back.

`Red Boots means to have it all this time,' Zifus observed, `for he has heard that old Saif al-Dawla is failing in health and he is the leader of the Hamdanites and the man who has kept the Romans of the Great City at bay here for twenty years, fuck his mother.'

It was all news and I was glad to have it, but only took it in with half an ear, as they say, while Brother John translated for Finn. Those silkworm eggs made the footing treacherous here and I planned to be gone just as soon as the Goat Boy was well enough — sooner, if I found out what we needed to know, though I would leave silver enough for him to be cared for.

If I wanted to make use of that silkworm stuff and save us all, I had to either trade it with Starkad or kill him and then get it to the Basileus of the Great City, the only one I could be sure was not part of any plot.

Either way seemed like digging through a mountain with a horn spoon.

We sat and drank nabidh, which is made from dates and raisins soaked in water, and talked more, with Zifus adding `fuck his mother' to the end of every other sentence he spoke.

The gist of what he revealed was that, after the Serkland army fled, the city gave up and the marks we'd seen on the walls came from stray pots of Greek Fire, shot from the great throwers the engineers called onagers, which means 'wild asses'. I had seen these machines at Sarkel, watched them leap in the air and kick at every released shot, while those tending them ran for cover. They were well named.

`We will look after the boy for you, friends,' said Zifus when it came time for us to leave the still-sleeping Goat Boy. `He is a sorry soul now, but even so he shows courage. A curse on the one who shot him, fuck his mother.'

We left in silence and, outside, Finn smacked a fist into his other hand.

One day I will come face to face with this Starkad,' he vowed. 'Then!' I will pay him back for all he has done.'

`Fuck his mother,' we chorused and, laughing, strolled on into the city.

The five of us wandered wide, stone-paved streets lined with tall columns, which supported vines to make a roof that sheltered walkers from the sun. It was cloudy and damp and hot as we strolled along the length of this street, past a basilica and a building Svala said had been a palace, made from yellow and pink marble. There were others here from Skarpheddin's force, mostly the younger men from his own house guard, swaggering along with hands on their sword hilts.

They did not impress us much. In fact, Finn had lost patience with a pair of them he caught at swordplay outside Skarpheddin's hov, leaping and dancing and clashing steel on steel until no one could stand it any longer. Finn had hurled his shield between them, so that it skittered ankle-dangerous along the dust and they had whirled angrily, then spotted him.

He had said nothing, but they knew what he had meant — no warrior places edge against edge, since a sword is too valuable a weapon to ruin in that way. Sword on shield is the way and only if you must do you block with a good edge. A warrior knows this.

`They are farmers, whose palms are calloused from ploughs, not swords,' growled Finn with disgust.

'They think they are snugged up in the meadows of home and that this is all a dream. They raise their horns and shout: 'Til ars ok fridar!' By Odin's hairy balls, what use is that to those out on the viking?'

Til ars ok fridar. To the year's crops and peace. There was a flash of Gudleif, my foster-father, flushed and grinning, almost shining in the dark reek of the Bjornshafen hov, horn held high, triumphant with what had been achieved: a good harvest, winter hunger kept at bay and no deaths among us or the thralls or livestock. Gudleif, whose head had been left on a pole by the dulse-strewn beach when the Oathsworn sailed away with me, stuck there by his own brother.

Maybe Skarpheddin's men saw that in us, or felt it, for they altered course far round us, wisely leaving us alone to enjoy the sights and swaggering only when they thought themselves beyond reach.

Antioch had countless tall buildings, domed Christ churches and some more mosques with their fat-topped towers. Then we came out into a great round place surrounded by what seemed a high stone wall and tiers of seats.

There were stalls everywhere, selling bread and vegetables and chickpeas and figs. Svala bought two red fruits with tufts at one end and tough skin, but she held it in both hands, gave a twist of her wrist and split it open to reveal hundreds of little seeds, glistening like the lalami, the rubies in Radoslav's