The Wolf Sea

`So you say,' Brand answered, then grinned. 'I, too, had heard of Einar's hoard. A good saga tale. I took him for someone as crazed as a bag of frothing dogs and it seems I was right, for I heard he and most of his men died.'

I smiled, almost sagging with relief. Let him think so, Odin. Just this once, you one-eyed raven of treachery. .

I will help you,' Brand went on, 'but you must help me.'

A trade. Now trading I understood. .

I will help you root out Skarpheddin, for the sake of his people if nothing else,' he went on mildly. 'I am going back to claim my lands and help fight for a throne soon and will take them with me when he is dead.'

I blinked at. that, for he delivered it with the same flat calm as if he announced he was taking Skarpheddin's old ox drinking horn. The truth was, of course, that Skarpheddin had finished himself in that battle and now Jarl Brand would step in and take everything the old man had, including the high regard of the Great City.

I will also give your men the pick of battle-gear stripped from the dead, which you will need if you go in search of Starkad and lost comrades,' Brand added and then nodded sombrely. 'Worthy though I think that is, I am also thinking that your arse will end up roasting on a stake, but that is your affair.'

`Just so,' I offered, weak at the image he had made for me. If it had just been seeking out my comrades, I might have thought twice about it then — but, of course, I could not tell him I sought out the sabre and the secret of the path back to Atil's treasure.

`What you must do for me is hunt Starkad. Kill him. Bring me proof of it — his head, unless it stinks too much by then. His jarl torc otherwise. He has offended me and no man does that.'

`He is Harald Bluetooth's man,' I offered weakly, thinking it only fair to bring him visions of serious bloodprice, but he shrugged.

`Bluetooth knows when to cut his losses. Two drakkar and a couple of fistfuls of his chosen men and their battle-gear are enough, I am thinking, for I hear he has trouble with the Saxlanders of Otto now. He will not worry overly much about the loss of a chosen man two years missing.'

I left, swallowing my own sick fear, knowing that Jarl Brand was bound for greatness, for the gold rune serpent he wore round his neck hardly weighed on him at all. His men by-named him Ofegh and some of the Greeks had picked it up, thinking this was his proper name and were told it meant `long-lived'. But ofegh is more subtle than that; it means 'one who has no doom on him' and no one was better named than Jarl Brand Ofegh.

He sent his own dreng battle captain, Ljot, a man as dark as his jarl was white and he brought sixty men with him, which was too many when we tried to flit moth-silent up this riverbed.

At the end of this crack between cliffs sat the palace, which wasn't a palace at all but a tomb to some old king of a people called Sumerians, long dusted to eternity. Still, what they had left was worrying enough in the blue moonlight: lion-headed lumps of stone, worn and twisted by age and weather into something that so much resembled trolls that it made us all grunt and grip our slippery hilts the harder.

They flanked a set of steps, leading down to darkness, and Finn looked at me, licking his lips. Kvasir, squinting his one eye into the darkness, squatted on one knee, as if to begin a Thing on the matter, but Botolf, growling, pushed on to the head of the steps, Sighvat with him. The raven had returned to his shoulder and said, in his voice: 'Odin.'

A fine bird,' said Skarpheddin's skald, Harek, 'but I wish it was a tongueless breed.'

The skald's nickname was Gjallandi, so it was enough to raise a chuckle when a man called Boomer started wishing for silence. I was still wondering where his allegiance lay; though he had brought the message to us, as instructed by his lord, it seemed he was in no hurry to go back to Skarpheddin's side. Still, I had set Brother John to watch him.

Ljot pushed up, looked round us all, then at me. 'Well?'

I thought about it, frowning, then decided to sneak down with Short Eldgrim, Finn, Sighvat, Kvasir and big Botolf. I would take the skald and Brother John, too, to keep that verse-maker close. When we came to the need for blades, I would call on Ljot who should then, as I pointed out firmly to him, come at the run.

Which was a lot more calmly said than done, as I took the lead and moved down the steps into that maw of darkness. Perhaps it was the cold stone closing around me in a desert night chill, but I had to clamp my teeth hard to stop them chattering. When I turned to make sure I was not doing this alone, though, I saw Finn grinding froth round his Roman nail.

I fumbled down the steps, then froze at the sight of a faint yellow-red glow, enough for me to see that it was light bouncing off a wall. The steps led to a landing and a turn to the right led to more steps, where the light revealed two more lion-headed stones and a chamber.

The air was cold and smelled of old dust. The floor was littered with rubble and, as I came down the last steps, there was a slither of sound and shadows bounced on the walls as men took up arms round flickering torches.

Thorhalla stood with Skarpheddin and his men, while Svala held the Goat Boy, his face tight, his whole body clenched and trembling. The wink of light on the blade at his throat was blood-red.

Behind them, a great block rose from the floor and on it stood a statue of a powerful, haughty man. Once it had been painted with gold, and the empty eye-sockets perhaps held gems, but that was long ago. It was now just the shape of a man and even the ancient carvings on it were worn to nothing.

I said, I said,' Thorhalla cackled. 'I said he would. He comes, my son.'

`You did say,' Skarpheddin rumbled.

The others crept in, shields and weapons up. Skarpheddin's men stirred and the barrel-bellied jarl cleared his throat.

`Best if we lose the hard edges, I am thinking,' he said and jerked a head at the Goat Boy, sucked into Svala's embrace, the knife steady at a throat that wavered like a bird's heart. I caught her eye and she smiled, but only with her mouth.

`Drop them,' Skarpheddin said harshly.

I had seen Svala now; I knew where her heart lay. I signalled and the clatter of metal was loud and echoing. There was a sound like the desert wind — Skarpheddin's dreng letting out their held breath.

`Tell us,' Thorhalla said, shifting forward so that her face was half shrouded. It looked like something long dead and freshly dug up.

`Let the boy go,' I countered, knowing they would not.

`When you tell us where the hoard is that you found last year,' Skarpheddin answered, hitching thumbs in his straining belt.

`Tell,' cackled Thorhalla. 'Tell.'

I opened my mouth — and closed it again. I don't know why. I thought the Goat Boy a fair trade for a fortune in drowned, cursed silver and might have made up a lie easily enough. For a seidr moment, though, I saw that any answer would end the same way and the Goat Boy would die.

A voice curled into the silence, soft and reasonable and gentle as a liar's kiss. 'The boy is not precious enough for him,' said Radoslav, pushing from behind the dreng ranks. `He is just a boy. I told you that already. Good enough to get him here, not good enough for him to give up a king-gift for.'

Radoslay. Unfettered and smiling like a cornered rat. All was clear as new rainwater. Finn growled, a low sound that raised the hackles on my neck.

Radoslav merely grinned at my stricken face and spread his arms, his voice reasonable. 'I gave you every chance. I gave you a ship, my time, my patience and yet still you persisted in the silly story of needing that silly sword to go after the silver you found. I would have been your man if you had, young Orm, but it seems you are too afraid. I am not. I will go, as soon as you tell us where it lies. So what will make you -

who will make you, eh?'

I couldn't speak, the utter back-stabbing treachery of it robbing me of my tongue. I saw him pulling the dagger from the Dane's neck in the alley, ducking debris on the stairs under the amphitheatre. All that -

and now this?

Finn, though, had voice for all of us. 'Can you crawl there, you nithing?' he spat. 'I will rip off your legs and