The Wolf Sea

`Who did you bet on?' asked Radoslav, having to raise his voice over the sudden cheers of the crowd. A man stepped out and announced the first contest, a match between two swordsmen and. . the Mighty Blade himself.

The walls bounced with cheers, blood-thick with lust. The chains dragged again and I saw the two swordsmen, ankles fastened together by short lengths of chain, then chained one to the other by about four feet of links fastened to bracelets round their wrists. They wore loincloths, old-fashioned Greek-style helmets with horsehair plumes, short swords, round shields and the desperate eyes of the doomed.

A trainer wearing a short tunic and not much else, keeping to the old Greek look, hauled them in and someone yelled: `Fight well, you bastards. I have a bundle on you fixing the Blade tonight.'

`Not if the Norns are weaving this wyrd, I am thinking,' chuckled Finn, 'for I have the Blade down to win.

I fancy his chances, for the odds-maker said he was an axeman of some skill and was fighting two with short swords. A good axeman will always win that.'

Across the other side of the marked-off area, into the fug of reeking torches and sweat and stale breath, came the Mighty Blade, naked save for a loincloth, the chain round his ankles and a long-handled Dane axe.

His shoulders, draped in the great, uncut pelt of his own hair, were like living animals when he whirled the axe from hand to hand and his entire body writhed with the coiled snake muscle on him. It was as Kvasir had once noted: he had muscles on his eyelids.

It's Botolf,' growled Finn, staring at me in horror. 'Big Botolf.'

We stared and gawped, looking one to the other, then back again. It was him. Last seen on the deck of the last drakkar to bear the name the Fjord Elk, snugged up in the harbour in Novgorod two years since.

And if he was here. . I looked frantically around for the rest of the missing crew, the ones we had sent messages to and waited for in Miklagard.

`Perhaps the lanista will sell him to us,' Brother John offered in a wavering voice.

`What's a lanista?' asked Radoslav and Brother John pointed to the man hauling the chains of the two swordsmen.

Is it that Latin tongue, priest?' asked the ever-curious Radoslay. 'What's it mean?'

It means 'trainer',' Brother John answered.

It means dead man,' grunted Finn. He rolled his neck once, twice, then headed straight towards the lanista and his charges.

`We only have eating knives,' I warned, seeing the way the sail was filling. Finn's grin belonged to Hati, the wolf who pursues the moon.

`They have steel,' he answered, nodding at the swordsmen and strolled towards the lanista, who saw the big man coming up and put out a warning hand.

`Stay back, friend.'

I am thinking your two pets look fine but I have laid good silver on them and would like to look at their teeth a while,' said Finn, all smiles, but the lanista never blinked.

`You might also want to make sure of winning,' he answered. `With a thumb of pepper in the eye, perhaps. Won't be the first time someone has tried to nobble one of my fighters, so piss off back into the crowd where you belong.'

`Good advice,' shouted someone from the crowd. 'You're getting in the way-'

Finn elbowed the shouter without even turning round and the man howled, falling away and holding his mashed nose. The lanista looked startled but then Finn booted him right up beyond the hem of his short kilt and the man folded with a strangled whoof of sound, dropping the chains.

The two swordsmen were bewildered at this, while Mashed Nose sprayed blood and curses and showed the damage to his friends, who shot looks at Finn that were uglier than giant Geirrod's grisly daughters.

Finn, however, leaned casually across and gripped the wrist of one of the swordsmen, then plucked the curved Saracen blade from his hand like a honeycomb from a child. He turned, laid the blade against the neck of the second one and Radoslav came up, grinning, and took his sword and the little shield, too.

A couple of the crowd nearest Mashed Nose took three steps forward, then Brother John stepped forward and slammed a fist into the nearest head, knocking the man sideways. The others shied away like flushed plovers but Mashed Nose whipped out a long dagger, blew out bloody snot like some mad, injured bull, then started forward, all hunched neck and scowls.

Brother John smiled at him and held up one hand, palm outward, which stopped Mashed Nose in his tracks. Then he made the cross sign in the air, which made the immediate crowd stare. Finally, he gripped Mashed Nose by the shoulders, as if in a friendly fashion, then drew back his head as if to look at the sky and pray, the way priests do. Everyone looked up.

Brother John raised himself on to his toes and brought his head forward with vicious force. There was a wet smacking sound and Mashed Nose collapsed in a heap, while Brother John rubbed the red mark on his brow and scooped up the dagger.

'Pax vobiscum,' he declared.

The shouts had brought heads round, a ripple from us outward until it finally reached the hard men who were supposed to keep order. It also reached Botolf and the man holding his chains, so that when Botolf looked up, he saw me heading across the open fighting area.

He blinked. I yelled at him. He blinked again and I cursed him for having the cunning of a tree stump.

The lanista holding his chains hauled out a leather-covered cudgel, for he saw I was unarmed, while two of the hard men came forward, spilling right and left round big Botolf in a way that let me know they had worked together before. It also let me know that I only had an eating knife.

But Botolf had worked it all out now. As Finn and Radoslav moved to take on the hard men and their knives, Botolf cuffed the lanista almost casually, a blow that spilled him his full length. Then, because he was still holding on to the chain, he hauled the groaning man back again as if he was a hooked fish, pulled him up and cuffed him back to the ground again, grinning. Then he did it again as I trotted up. The lanista finally worked matters out and let the chain go.

More hard men appeared; the crowd were shouting. Some were in fact cheering, because they thought this was a novel opening fight, but it would be minutes only before they worked it out and decided to join in.

Radoslav and Finn wasted no time against the hard men: it was short swords and shields against long knives and the not-so-hard men, after a couple of clangs and half-hearted swipes, backed off. I reached Botolf, who had reeled in the lanista yet again.

Orm. . you said you would come. Skafhogg said you were as useful as hen shit on an axe handle but he was wrong, eh?'

`No. .' whimpered the lanista, cowering under the shelter of his flapping hands as I reached for him. I took the keys while he sobbed and bled and bent to unshackle Botolf's ankles, hearing him growl as I did so.

Actually, I felt him growl, such was the force of it. A half-glance over my shoulder told me the two swordsmen had recovered and were howling across the open space towards me, released from their own chains.

It was such a mistake: I wish I had waited to see Botolf fight them before we'd started in to free him, for there were rocks with more clever in them than those two. It was only when they were within a few steps of him that they suddenly realised that they had no weapons at all and here they were, about to take on a giant armed with a Dane axe.

Botolf popped the butt end between the eyes of one of them, which slammed him to the ground, where he flopped like a sack of cats. Then he slapped the flat of the axe on the fancy helmet of the other one, proving the lack of worth in that battle-gear, because the blade caught the ornamental crest, snapped the chinstrap and screwed the whole thing sideways, so that the cheek-flap was now over the owner's nose.

Blinded and bloody, the man screamed and stumbled away into Finn, who had chased off his opponent and