The Wolf Sea

spirits and renewed your clothing.'

`Renewed my spirit, boy,' Brother John corrected sonorously. I have stood on the spot where our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified and I have now achieved my dream. Now I can go home to Ireland.'

I blinked at that. Though the little priest could be a pain in the arse, I did not want to lose him quite as sharply as this. He saw my look and grinned, shaking his head.

I am hoping you will get me some of the way, young Orm, for I still do not swim well.'

`Just so,' I replied, then winced as a vendor bawled out a long string of words, of which I recognised only

'fish' and `Lake Galilee'.

I was not merely renewing my spirit and my clothing,' Brother John went on, falling into step with me. I sighed and went with it, taking it as a sign from the gods that the priest was with me, thus preventing me from heading for the lure of women and drink. New boots and sense, then.

`What else?'

`News. The burnings we saw came about only a few weeks

before, because the chief Greek priest here, the Patriarch John, publicly urged the Basileus to reconquer Jerusalem, the stupid man. So the Mussulmen and Jews attacked the Anastasias, set fire to the roof of the Martyrium and looted the Basilica of Holy Sion.

`They found the Patriarch hiding in an oil vat and dragged him out. Maybe a torch got too close to him, for he ended up burning. The Ikshid, this Turk, is very sorry for it and peace has been restored — but the Sarakenoi want no more trouble here.'

That was timely news; we would keep our heads down and our tongues between our teeth then.

`Just so,' agreed John, hugging himself with the glee of more news, which he finally threw out just as I was getting irritated. 'I know where Martin the monk went and so where Starkad is.'

Now that was news that stopped me in my tracks and, grinning at his cleverness, Brother John laid it all out.

He had worked out that, like him, Martin would head for one of the holiest places this holy city had to offer if he had reached it and there was none more Christ-kissed than this Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where visits from afrangi were few enough for the Greek priests to remember them all.

Sure enough, five or six days before, a hawk-nosed western priest carrying a bundle on his back had come to pray and had then asked the way to the tomb of Aaron. A day after that had come the limping man with golden hair, asking after the hawk-nosed priest. And now us.

Brother John beamed and stood, his arms folded, hands thrust inside the sleeves of his new robes.

`Fine work, right enough,' I said to him and his smile threatened to split his face, shining bright in the dying twilight. `Where and what is the tomb of Aaron?'

A church where it is said the brother of Moses is buried,' answered Brother John. 'And staffed with western priests.

Though still not good Celts, they at least cross themselves in the right way and so are better than Greeks, I am thinking. It comes as no surprise this Martin would go there, for he would be assured of rest and food.'

`Good work,' I said to him and watched him beam. 'No mention of Valgard Skafhogg, all the same.'

Even that,' grinned Brother John. A woman flitted silently behind him, paused, looked at me from over a veil, her liquid, dark eyes smiling. I swallowed, wondering if I was mistaken.

Oblivious, Brother John went on: 'The Greek priests are furious at rumours that some deserters from the Great City's army have come this far south on a raid. Caravans to the east, from Baghdad, have been attacked. The situation is delicate and they don't want any excuse to let the Mussulmen and Jews loose. .

are you listening, boy?'

I blinked, but he had caught where I was looking. By the time he had turned, the woman had drifted into an alley out of sight.

Of course I am listening,' I snapped. 'I was thinking, that was all. It sounds like the ones who have our comrades in thrall. Did they say how many?'

Brother John shook his head. 'Hundreds. Even allowing for rumour, there must be a fair few. No caravan would come from Baghdad these days without armed guards.'

Hundreds. Our comrades, perhaps growing fewer by the day out there in the desert with these dead-eaters, who were growing madder than the full moon's ghost. I saw this Dark-hearted One, crouched like a wolf in a pack, gnawing on the gods knew what and the shiver lurched along my spine so that the priest saw it.

`Just so,' said Brother John, grimly. Then he asked me brightly what I was doing now. So I told him a lie

— buying boots — while thinking of the woman and if she was still in the alley.

I'll come with you then,' he said.

`No. Buying boots is a solitary thing, priest. Go and tell Finn and Kvasir what you know.'

He looked at me, shrugged and then moved off, seeming to glide now that he had robes that went all the way down to cover his feet. I watched him disappear round a corner, then moved slowly up the alley.

She was there, I could see, for the alley had a strong yellow lantern hung at the end of it and, if I had been thinking at all, that would have warned me, for there was nothing there save some steps up on to the first level of the tangled roofs and why would a whore want to hump in lantern light?

I had no experience of Mussulmen women, so moved cautiously, knowing only that to lower their veils was a sin, though the Bedu women did this with no shame, which was confusing. Then she shrugged her shoulders, slipped the dress off and I looked at the most beautiful breasts I had ever seen, it seemed to me.

They glowed in that yellow-lit alley, tipped with dark berries and trembling. Dry-mouthed, I took a step and heard another behind me.

`Ha!' shouted Brother John. 'Boots is it, then?' He darted in front of me and raised one hand to make the sign of the cross at the woman. He started to speak as, annoyed, I was moving to thrust him aside with a curse. 'Begone,' he growled at her. 'Apage Satanas.'

I was about to roar at him when the arrow struck, a dull thump of sound that pitched him forward, leaving me to gape at this strange feathered sapling which had suddenly sprouted between his shoulder blades. The woman screamed.

I knew I was next and sprang forward, smacking the lantern off its hook, so that it clattered and rolled and went one way, while I went another, into the now darkened lee of the stairs. A second arrow whirred and the woman screamed again, then I heard her fall.

Black silence and the stink of smoking fish oil from the lantern. The woman gave a gurgling moan, but Brother John was still and quiet and the surging of blood in my ears was almost as loud as my breathing.

Strain as I might I could not hear anything around me.

Then there was a scuff, from above, from the rooftop the stairs led up to.

I saw a flicker of shadow. I wanted to get back to Brother John, pictured him bleeding to death, or lung-shot and gasping like a landed fish, able to be saved if help was at hand. But the killer lurked yet and I did a desperate, foolish thing: I charged up the stairs.

It took him by surprise and the arrow he had nocked hissed so close to my face that the flights flicked my cheek. I hit him then and heard him whoof out air, heard the bow clatter to the ground and then I was over and rolling, confused, across the flat roof. My elbow banged pain through me.

A shadow sprang up and leaped up a little way to another roof and I scrambled up and after him, grateful to all the gods that, as I only saw now, he had been alone. To my shame, I left Brother John, all thought of last-minute doctoring blasted away in the heat of the chase.

A dark shape — no cloak, I noted — vaulting over the lip of mud-brick to another roof. A pot clattered and he cursed, though he mangled it, as East Norse often do. One of Starkad's Danes, then, left to kill me in the dark.

The dark shape plunged down three short steps, fell over and cursed again. Voices yelled and figures sprang up; people, sleeping on their roofs for the cool of it, scattered as he hurled through them, cursing. I saw steel glint and so did they and they pulled apart, jabbering and yowling.

I went through them as if they were reeds and he saw me coming, though I still could not make out who he was. He slashed at someone with the knife, then ran on, leaped a fair gap and landed, stumbling, on a new roof.