well out of it, though that Saracen woman was either not the princess claimed, or one who had less than regal habits, for my balls itched ever afterwards.'

We both grinned at the memory, though my throat was gripped with the waste of it all.

`Then it was clear you were not going after treasure and it seemed to me we were all wyrded to die in this oven of a country,' he sighed. 'People in Red Boots's camp wanted you dead, even after you had handed back that leather container. I agreed that it was a good idea, but even so. . the tales of all that silver were good ones. In the end, though, I thought them just that: tales. I was to go back to Cyprus and Balantes for payment once you were dead and thought that a much better arrangement.'

More than likely, I thought to myself, you'd have ended up back in the stone quarry, but blind this time.

It came to me also that to do all this would have taken more than him alone but when I put it to him, he shook his head.

`No names from me. I will take that to the grave.'

`You will,' I answered, more bitter than I had intended to show, 'for I can't help you. Are there any at home you wish to know of your death?'

He shook his head. 'If this is my wyrd, that's what the Norns weave, but it is not a good saga to leave to loved ones,' he replied. 'I am sorry about the priest though.'

I nodded, feeling a wave of desperate sympathy, remembering all the better times. Then he scattered that to the winds with his next words.

`Not because I liked the little arse,' he said moodily, 'but I have broken my oath to Odin and suspect the only gold I will see will be the coating on the Gjallar bridge on my way to Helheim. Since I have also killed this priest, I won't get into the Christ halls, either.'

That was too much and I got up and stepped away from him in disgust. 'I shall remind the jarl of this place to put your head on your thigh, then,' I answered harshly from the door. 'He isn't going to want your fetch hanging round like a bad smell any more than I want it hagging me until I quit this country.'

`Fuck you, boy. I wish I had killed you instead.'

`You should have shut that squint eye when aiming,' I said and left him — but the black dog of it followed after me all the way back to the others: the dark despair of knowing he had broken his oath and that others with him had done the same, and the emptiness where Brother John had been.

Now the Oathsworn were fractured and what was left no more real than a painting of marble done on wood.

That same black dog padded out of the gate in the south wall of Jerusalem with us, the one they call the Dung Gate since it is where they cart out the city's shit and the joke wasn't lost on us and fed the dog more bile.

It slouched along with us for two days, to this huddle of white buildings served by a handful of priests, who took the ripe body of Brother John with reverence.

Now Abbot Dudo, his homilies spent, moved quietly off and left Finn and Kvasir and me to move into the shade and squat. Our one camel and the couple of mules I had bought were listlessly chewing fodder, standing hipshot under an awning. Even the flies were quiet, slow and lazy, hardly bothering Kvasir as he ate a fruit the monks called golden apples, putting the peel in his helmet.

Like me, he had never tasted one until yesterday and now he could not get enough of them. According to Dudo, the Old Romans believed they were brought to Italy by the daughter of a god called Atlas, who crossed the sea from the land of the Blue Men in a giant shell.

Another strange thing in this strange land. From where I sat, I could see over the long white scar of the road across the wash of green and gold fields south of Jorsalir to the ochre and tan wastes where, it seemed, we would have to go. Kvasir finished peeling the fruit and stuffed a section into his beard, where only he knew his mouth lurked.

`They want a Thing of it,' Finn said, stirring the dust with one finger. Tor the Hookeye matter.'

`Who wants a Thing of it?' I demanded sullenly. 'The ones who shared the secret with him?'

Kvasir frowned at that and Finn looked awkward.

It is only right, after all,' he said. 'Short Eldgrim thinks so. And Thorstein Blaserk — he is one of our lot, Orm, and he thinks so.'

`Thorstein Blue Shirt is a droop-lipped coal-eater,' observed Kvasir and we all nodded at that. Not the sharpest seax in the sheath was Thorstein.

So if even he saw the right of it, argued Finn. .

I sighed, for there was no going back from what happened. The Oathsworn were shattered. Those who weren't being eaten or gelded were lurching along with oarmates they could no longer trust because they had broken their oaths and were too nithing to admit it.

Inside, I was feeling a rising excitement that perhaps, at last, Odin had broken us and, tired of the affair, had gone off to annoy the new dead, or taunt bound Loki. All that remained was to survive.

Sighvat came over to us, having been in deep conversation with the priests. I had thought he was trying to find ways of avoiding his wyrd by using the Christ, for he had been braiding his eyebrows over the matter for long enough.

Now he loped over the sun-seared earth between the white buildings and squatted in the shade next to us.

Finn offered him a grubby slice of fruit and he took it, which was an encouraging sign, for he had been listless over his feed of late.

`Martin the monk was here and gone, only four days ago,' Sighvat said. `Starkad came with about fifteen men. Dudo remembers him well, says our Starkad was deeply troubled and cannot sleep at night for dreams.

He left here two days ago heading south after Martin. No one knows where the monk is going, but even Dudo was impressed by our Martin and says he has the look of a very holy man, probably destined to be a hermit, or a pole-sitter.'

No one said anything, for the way south stretched like a Muspell nightmare and I knew we all thought the same thing: who would follow me down that road from here?

The sun wheeled on. Birds flared up, flashing black and white, from the complicated network of irrigation canals, hunting insects before night fell. The air seemed brittle and thin, oddness flickered at the edge of my vision, half-seen whorls of dust and half-heard voices from the empty spaces of the desert.

The Oathsworn came, lighting torches for the bigger insects to sizzle into, gathering silently and slowly like the grim dead round the pitfire Finn had made. It was chill on top of this hill, but the fire seemed excessive to me and I wondered what he thought he was going to cook on it. We were eating boiled vegetables and gritty flatbread and unlikely to get meat from these lean monks.

It turned out to be Kleggi and Hrolf the Dane carpenter who had something to say, urged forward by Kvasir to stand in front of me, twisting the ends of their belts like boys caught with tunics full of stolen apples.

It is this way,' said Kleggi, apologetically. `Halfred Hookeye was kin, you see, and we are thinking that compensation is in order.'

`Why?' I asked, sullen and unwilling to make the road smooth for them.

Hrolf looked at Kleggi and then at me. 'Well, he is surely dead, because you left him with the Sarakenoi to be hung in a cage and stoned, which is a straw death and so twice as bad.'

`He killed Brother John,' I pointed out, astonished at this. And a woman. And wanted to kill me.'

`Murder, as it was,' Finn pointed out, 'since it was dark and unannounced. Nor did he cover the body.'

There was general agreement over this, but Kleggi and Hrolf were still unwilling to let it go, arguing that there was no proof Hookeye had done it, even if I had chased him off the roof, where he might have been innocently taking the night air, or chasing the real culprit. And anyway, the woman was a whore, probably a thrall, and so did not count. They wanted to say that Brother John was only a Christ priest and so did not count either, but even they knew how the old Oathsworn had revered the priest and did not dare go that far.

Most of the others shifted uncomfortably at what they did say, which was a step too far for most — even Kvasir who, it was clear to me, was unhappy that Hookeye had been left with the Sarakenoi, though he seemed to think it was their fault and not mine.

Вы читаете The Wolf Sea
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату