The Wolf Sea

that I was unshackled from them and shackled to another lot and we were taken away — north, I think. The others went their own way, towards Damascus, I heard.'

`Together?' I asked and he nodded.

Even that little rat-faced Christ-man, Martin,' he said. The news rocked us all; I heard the rumble of One Eye laughing in my head.

`The monk?' gasped Finn and Botolf nodded, grinning.

Aye, he was rounded up with us — Starkad did not see him and Valgard thought it a good joke that what he sought so avidly was feet away from him all the time.'

`Heya,' breathed Kvasir, looking at me. 'Odin's hand, right enough, Trader. There you are telling Starkad what you believe to be lies and it was the truth all along.'

`What of the icon?' demanded Brother John, dabbing his cut head and Botolf frowned with puzzlement, then remembered and brightened.

`That spear thing? Oh, Takoub took it with him.'

`Where are the others now?' I asked, shooting annoyance at Brother John's interruption.

Botolf shrugged.

`So we have lost them, then,' growled Finn.

`Not lost,' answered Botolf cheerfully, finishing examining his cut. 'They went to Fatty Breeks. I heard men say so.'

`Who in the name of Odin's hairy arse is Fatty Breeks?' shouted Finn and then rounded on all those who woke and told him to keep quiet, folk were trying to sleep.

Easy, Horsehead,' I said, laying a calming hand on his arm. `Let's sleep on it and see if we can find someone who knows about it when it is full daylight.'

Grumbling, Finn curled up, scowling. Botolf shrugged, then grasped my wrist.

`You did well, Orm,' he said. `Valgard Skafhogg was sure it was our wyrd to die like nithings, for he did not think you had the balls for the task of saving us. It will be good to see his face when we shake his chains off.'

He lay down and started to snore almost at once. I envied him, for I still heard that thumping beat of my thoughts, a tern-whirl of confusion. Now we had our oarmates to consider, as well as the rune-serpent sword, and I dared not wonder what came next, for it is well known that the Norns weave in threes.

In the morning, after we had splashed water on our faces, we went around Skarpheddin's camp, asking about Fatty Breeks, which got us strange looks and a few scowls, which big Botolf deflected with a look of his own. We learned nothing.

The camp was a busy place, a village of wadmal cloth in fact, where folk carried on as if they were still in a toft set in hills soft and round as a breast, clothed with the tawny grass of spring and alive with gull and raven.

They worked the pole lathe, turned shoes, pumped bellows and forged, cooked solid fare against a Norway chill and tried to ignore the rising heat, a sky so pale blue it was near white, a sere roll of scrub-covered hills and the slaughtered-pig screech of the norias on the Orontes River, those huge water wheels that carried buckets up to the old arched aqueducts of the Romans and watered the fields around Antioch.

Into this bustle came the merchants, the spade-bearded Jewish Khazars whose brothers I had seen in Birka and fought at Sarkel, fat-bellied Arabs, plush Greeks and even a few Slays and Rus, smelling trade and bringing bargains.

Since Skarpheddin had parted with some of the silver he owed us, we took the chance to repair our gear and I sent Finn back to the Elk eventually, with instructions to have men on six-strong watches for two days at a time, the rest to come up and camp here as one body.

I was frantic to be gone from here, to be on some sort of trail, but no trail presented itself, neither of Starkad, nor of this mystery place, Fatty Breeks.

Radoslav, Brother John and I then haggled for good wadmal to make tents with and I managed to get a new set of striped Rus breeks and a cloak with a fine pin to go with it.

Brother John took the chance to examine my knees and eventually straightened, scratching his head and then looked at the palms of my hands, all of which was alarming.

`What?' I asked, making more light of it than I felt. 'How long do I have, then?'

He frowned and shook his head. 'Longer than anyone else,' he replied and grabbed Radoslav by the hand.

'Look here.'

Radoslav's hand was calloused and scarred, old white ones, new red ones and a couple that looked yellow with pus.

`So?' I answered. 'Everyone gets them. Ropes. Sword nicks.'

`Yours are all old,' Brother John said. 'Healed long since. Your knees, which you skinned on Patmos, will have scarcely a sign of scar.' He sighed. 'It is an ill-served world, right enough. Vitam regit fortuna non sapientia — chance, not wisdom, governs human life. There is you, whose youth repels all ills, it appears. Then there is Ivar Gautr, who is turning yellow and shrinking, even though the arrow wound in his cheek is healed.'

I felt the chill of it, for I had an idea what repelled all ills — would this fail, in time, now that Rune Serpent was far from my hand? Then Svala came up and drove all thoughts from me, for she seemed to glow.

Ignoring Radoslav and his broad smiles and winks, she cocked her head at me and said: 'The whole city is buzzing with talk of how the amphitheatre under-galleries were flooded last night, though no one can be found who saw it done.'

`You say so?' I replied flatly. 'To think we missed all this.'

She raised an eyebrow. 'The Roman soldiers are stamping up and down asking people questions and the engineers are fixing a huge leak in the arena's old underground cistern. There is talk of a giant and an axe.'

At which point Botolf came up, brandishing a new comb and trailing two or three giggling girls who were, it seems, intent on using it on his mane of red-gold hair. Spotting Svala, they found other business more pressing and looked almost afraid, which was strange. Svala smiled winsomely up at Botolf.

A giant,' she said, then looked at me. 'But no axe.'

It broke,' Botolf said with a grin, 'but if Orm gives me hacksilver, I have seen another at a fair price.'

I poured money from my limp purse, conscious of her eyes on me. Radoslav, chuckling, found something else to do and, suddenly, I was alone with her and my mouth worked like a fresh-caught cod.

`You are not as honey-mouthed as I had been told,' Svala said, then smiled and slipped an arm into mine.

'But that is no bad thing, for there is much about you that is strange and grand in one so young.'

`Just so,' I managed to croak, dazzled. Her face darkened. `Your dreams, for one thing.'

My body was a sea where my stomach and heart heaved on the swell. What did she know of my dreams?

She said nothing more, though, and we walked the camp in silence for a while, examining this and that. I saw Botolf again, stripped to the waist and showing off his skill and strength by spinning a Dane axe in one hand and a heft-seax in the other, which was a long, single-edged broad knife on a long pole. In the end, as the crowd applauded, the owner of the heft-seax had to allow he had won his bet and knocked down the price of both weapons.

Delighted, Botolf came and presented them to me for approval and I duly admired them. Behind, I saw the same giggling girls as before and, as he went off, they slid to his side. Svala snorted.

`That Thyra is always in rut, so she comes as no surprise — but Katla and Herdis have no right to be doing that,' she declared. 'Their mothers will be furious, to say nothing of their fathers. And Katla should know better, for she only has to look at a prick and her belly swells. She has two babes already and a stupid husband, though his brain is not so addled he'll assume another is his, too.'

It was the word 'prick' that did it. On her lips it would have made one of the Christ saints kick in the door of his own church. Dry-mouthed, I could only stare at her and she must have felt it, for she turned, saw my look. . and looked down to where my new breeks, fat and striped as they were, could not hide what I was thinking.

A slow smile spread on her face and she looked me straight in the eye, put her head to one side and then