The Wolf Sea

Sarakenoi call it the Dead Sea, though it wasn't true that it was dead. In fact, as we saw, it was greener than anywhere, though the shoreline of it was white with salt and the water undrinkable, even if you strained it through wadmal.

Finn heard out Aliabu's marvellous tale, shaking his head and marvelling at how someone could walk, unharmed, in and out of the camp of someone they had just raided. Everyone talked of that all day — save Sighvat, who sat apart, drawing runes in the sand and scrubbing them out.

Brother John, meanwhile, spent his time protesting that it was not right to leave dead-eaters like Giorgios behind. I soothed him by reminding him that we had soaked Godwin in oil and burned him and all the rest of that underground larder. Giorgios and his friends would have to eat each other now, which was only fitting.

`Maybe they will manage it before soldiers come and finish them off,' I offered.

Brother John, his face burned leather-brown so that the wrinkles at the edges of his eyes showed white, looked at me and shook his head. `Malesuada fames,' he said. 'And there is more than one kind of hunger.'

A hunger that persuades to evil. Perhaps he was right, looking back on it. We were all full-sail with it, driven across this sand sea, still hungry for the silver of Atil's hoard. Still on the whale road, yet not a whitecapped wave in sight.

Not all were happy with this. There were thirty-eight of us left, burst-lipped, sun-slapped, sweating and weary and only a handful were the old Oathsworn. Two or three Danes from Cyprus, led by a muttering Hookeye, were already growling about being no closer to this silver hoard and others were starting to listen.

It did not help that Hookeye reminded me of myself when Einar led the Oathsworn; now I knew how he had felt.

Like him, I tried to ignore it and plough on, even if the furrow was stony. We staggered from shadow to shadow, the only safe way to travel in a land where the sun will kill you and even veils won't shield you from the glare that flashes up to your face.

Anyone who stopped — or worse, collapsed and lay on the hot ground — was hauled up at once, because that sucked the water right out of your body. We learned to wrap our robes tight, which was better against the heat than having them flap loosely, and all our waterskins were coated with fat churned from camel milk to stop seepage.

Lie only in the shade, the Bedu told us. Maybe one of the lizards there will stand guard while you sleep

— since they are twice the length of your forearm, they make formidable watchdogs and only eat small animals. If you can't sleep, count the camel fleas, so big you can see them clearly.

We also learned a lot about food. The Bedu of the Beni Saher, for example, eat lean fox meat, which they say is good for sick bones. They also like rabbit, which they skin and gut like a goat, then cut the meat into pieces. Then they stuff the meat back into the skin and tie it up. A hole is dug in the sand and into that is put burning wood and two stones, one under with the wood and one over. The whole thing is then covered with embers and sand and left for three to four hours — perfect during the rest-up period of a long hot day, when no one wants to be near a fire. When it comes out, the meat looks like gold.

We ate it with the bread they made every day, taking wheat live with worms and mixing it with water and salt, the dough flattened and then covered in ash and cooked for five minutes on both sides, then removed.

The black soot was easily knocked off and it was a good taste.

All of us now had great respect for Aliabu, his brothers and his wives — but we were surprised to find that they considered us worthy of the same.

It's because you sail on the sea,' the Goat Boy told us. `They call it Ocean and fear it.'

Ocean, it turned out, has many of the most dangerous jinn, which seem to be like fetches are to us. They are everywhere else, too, but never touch the earth and you can only see them when the wind of their passing whirls the sand into little circles.

The Bedu don't talk about them much, which is sensible, for neither do we like to speak of fetches and for the same reason. These jinn can inhabit the bodies of men and make them mad in the head and Aliabu remembered seeing one such, so crazy he ate sand and had to be held down and prayed over. Even so, it seems, he was never the same.

He told us this because he was concerned about Sighvat, who was showing all the signs this man had before he started eating sand.

I was, too, and could not work it out, but Sighvat remained apart and silent and brooding all through the long days down to another ancient city, nothing but fallen pillars and ruin and which, I learned later, had been called Palmyra. We were then heading further south, into the true desert, said Aliabu, before turning west to reach the head of the Pitch Sea and then to Jerusalem.

`True desert?' gasped Short Eldgrim, sand on his lips and not enough wet in his mouth to spit with digust.

'What can be worse than we have already come through?'

We found out, moving in the dark between the colonnaded ruins of the old city of Palmyra and the Saracen stronghold called al-Gharbi, like ghosts in the night, unseen and unheard.

We rested up, as usual, all that next day, in a heat like a bread oven, with the sky a washed and weary blue. The land wriggled and the horizon was sliced through with sheets of water that were not there, or hills whose summits were halfway between earth and sky.

In the cool of the evening we set off again and, when night fell, the land leached out most of the heat and grew chill as a summer fjord.

`Muspell,' growled Finn, exasperated. 'We are in Muspell.'

`What is Muspell?' the Goat Boy wanted to know, so Finn told him. Burning ice and biting flame, that was Muspell, the place where life began.

It seethed and shone here, too, and before we had been on our way two hours, Thor unloaded his own fury and a great storm marched across our path just as we reached the remains of an old Silk Road stopping place, which was Odin luck for us.

We stopped and took shelter in this collection of ancient stones, huddled in a world gone dark, where blue- white sparks flickered in great masses of cloud, which we saw for the eyeblink of the flash.

The Thunderer spoke from them and then came a howl of sand-hail, until we were scourged and bent by a wind that scurried over the plain and took possession of the world. For all that fury, not one drop of moisture fell, which was strangest of all to us, who expected a soaking from a storm.

Even Brother John was cowed by all this, though he was more furious that we had travelled hard and fast by night, so that he had missed seeing the pillar near Aleppo where some Christ saint called Simon had perched like a bird for years, or the Street Called Straight in Damascus, or the old ruins of Palmyra.

If this was a simple journey, one of those walks you peregrinatores take,' I snapped back at his latest brooding, 'I would be agreeing with you.' I paused to let the latest flash light up his scowl, then added: 'But this is no silly Christ walk. We are surrounded by enemies and only by sneaking along in the dark can we get to where we must go.'

And where is that, young Orm?' Brother John answered bitterly. 'We pursue men, pursuing men, who pursue a priest into the bowels of Satan. If anything smacked of jinn-madness, this it it.'

It was not altogether wrong, I was thinking, and there were other faces flickering grimly in the darkness, other thoughts on the same subject.

Our way home lies along the track Starkad leaves,' I said, loud enough for them to hear, I hoped. 'We came to get the rune-serpent sword and free our Oathsworn comrades. After that, I will be going back to the Elk and sailing away from this gods-cursed country and hope never to see it again. Those still oathbound can follow if they will.'

On to a hoard of silver that will make you all kings,' Kvasir reminded them and there was silence while they drank in the rich mead of that and the sky grumbled.

If our comrades are not already eaten,' growled Short Eldgrim, his eyes white in the darkness. Thunder rumbled, as if agreeing with him. 'What if we are too late and they have already lost their balls?'