The Prow Beast

what the Rus-Slavs call kreml and detinets, though there were no Rus-Slavs here. No Wends, either, I saw and we all exchanged meaningful glances, for the leather-armoured spearholders at the gates were big, ox-shouldered Saxlanders, who stared straight ahead. The wind hissed through the cages, played teasingly with the lank straggles of remaining hair.

This Kasperick was also Saxlander, I was thinking, when we were eventually ushered into the hall, a place drifting with a mist of smoke, where people in the dim light seemed transparent as ghosts.

There was heat, but it came from a clay stove, which I had seen before in izbas in Novgorod. There was light, too, from sconces stuck on the pillars, metal-backed to keep the wood from scorching and most of them were clustered round a high seat, on which was this Kasperick.

He did not rise to greet us, which got a growl from Crowbone; his voice had broken completely now and our amusement with his testing of it had ebbed. The rest of us had been to the Great City and were used to these sorts of manners — but Kasperick was no Greek nor, I was thinking, was he Wend.

Saxlander then, I decided, watching his white hands flutter over documents. A ring caught the sconce light on a carved surface and played with it as I watched his square face, handsome once but running to jowl even under the red-gold beard, as neat-trimmed as his hair. I watched his eyes, too, which were watching us and not the documents he held.

I did not think he could read at all and, if he did, it was birchbark he read on and had probably brought out the parchment — and the seal-ring, the expensive, fur-trimmed robe he wore and the Christ cross round his neck — to impress us with his riches and power and learning. All of it, of course, a mummer’s play.

‘I am here, merchant,’ I said, like an iron bar dropped on a stone floor. He looked up languidly and I nodded at the document in his hands. Since parchment was too expensive to waste, both sides had been written on and the one I saw was in Latin and I could read it easily save that it was upside down. I took a chance that the side he was supposed to be reading was the same way.

‘You may find that more interesting if you turn it the right way up,’ I added and he fluttered his hands and scowled, a look as nasty as a black storm on the Baltic, when he realised he had given himself away. Then, in an instant, he was all smiles.

‘Of course,’ he said in smooth Norse, with only a slight accent. ‘Forgive me…I am so used to overawing these Wendish folk that I forget, sometimes, who I am dealing with.’

‘You are dealing with Orm Ruriksson,’ I said. ‘A Norse trader from Hestreng who can read runes and Latin, speaks Latin and Greek and some few other tongues and knows every sort of coin folk use in the world. Who am I dealing with?’

‘Kasperick,’ he answered, then chuckled, waving forward a thrall with a fat silver pitcher. ‘Sit, sit,’ he added, waving expansively at the benches, so we did so and the thrall poured — wine, I saw, rich and red and unwatered. Crowbone barely sipped his; Red Njal guzzled down half of his before he realised it was in a cup of expensive blue glass and fell to examining it. Finn never touched his at all and neither did I.

‘Trader?’ Kasperick went on, lacing his white fingers together and smiling. ‘You are, I suspect, no more a trader than I am a merchant.’

‘So — what are you?’

‘Slenzanie,’ he replied lightly. ‘Saxlander to you, but I am of the Slenzanie tribe and charged with holding this place as a concern by the Margrave Hodo. You may call me lord.’

‘Is that the same Hodo who got his arse kicked by the Pols at Cidini?’ Finn demanded scornfully, for he had listened carefully to the talk back in Joms. Kasperick pursed his mouth like a cat’s arse but, just then, Red Njal, engrossed in the lights within the blue glass cup, turned it up to look at the bottom; wine spashed on his knees and he looked up guiltily.

‘There was such a…setback,’ Kasperick replied stiffly. ‘We shall make the Pols pay for that and no-one should make the mistake of thinking we are weakened because of that battle. Especially you Ascomanni, who think yourselves lords of the rivers because your king, Bluemouth, is humping a Wendish princess.’

‘Well, now we are off to a fine beginning for two folk who are not merchants,’ I answered, ‘for we are trading insults well enough. It is not Bluemouth, but Bluetooth, though I am thinking you know this.’

His eyes flicked a little, but he kept his lips tight as a line of stitching.

‘You are right to call us Ascomanni — Ashmen — for we are northers with good ash spears,’ I went on into the stone of his face, ‘but we are not Bluetooth’s Danes. At least, not the ones you know of, from Joms, for they are mostly Wends of no account, but I am thinking you know this, too. We are mostly Svears and a few Slavs from further east and north, whom the Serkland Arabs call Rus, but I am not expecting you to know that. Perhaps a Dzhadoshanie or an Opolanie would have known that — even one of the Lupiglaa — but I make allowances for the wit-lack of the Slenzanie.’

I had been listening well at Joms, too. Two red spots appeared on Kasperick’s cheeks at this and there was a sucking in of breath from the ghosts who listened and watched in the dimness at the mention of the other, rival, tribes of the Silesians.

Kasperick controlled himself with an effort, though the smile started to tremble a little. He drank to cover himself and took a breath or two.

‘No matter who you are,’ he said after a moment or two and waved a dismissive hand, ‘you all appear the same to me, you Northmen. It is what you carry on your ship that matters.’

‘Ah, you still have your merchant hat on, I see,’ I replied and then spread my hands in apology. ‘I suspect some folk from downriver have tried to mire our good name, but they are mean-mouthed nithings. We have nothing much more than some wadmal and a few furs. Hardly worth your time. Besides — I have handseled a deal on that.’

‘You have the Mazur girl,’ he answered, his voice like a slap.

Finn growled and I took a breath. How had he known that? My thoughts whirled up like leaves in a djinn of wind.

‘Slaves?’ I managed to answer. ‘One slave? She is thin and you have, I am thinking, plumper girls closer to hand.’

‘I like Mazur ones,’ he replied, enjoying himself now he had set us back on our heels. Oiled smooth as a Greek beard he was now and Finn’s scowl revealed how he did not care for it much.

‘To a man used to Slenzanie women, I suppose she would be sweet,’ he grunted. ‘They all smell of fish, though they are never near the sea.’

The red spots reappeared and Kasperick leaned forward, his eyes narrowed and his fingers steepled.

‘You are the one called Finn,’ he said, ‘who fears nothing. We will see about that.’

Now how had he known that? A suspicion trailed fingers across my thoughts, but Finn was curling his lip in a sneer, which distracted me.

‘The Mazur girl,’ I said hastily, before Finn spat out a curse at him, ‘is not a slave and good Christmenn do not enslave the free, or so I had heard.’

I nodded at the cross peeping shyly out from above the neck of his tunic and he glanced down and frowned.

‘This? I took this from a Sorb, one of a band I had to deal with. You probably saw them on the way in, safely caged. I am a Christ follower but not one of these Greeks, who can all argue that God does not exist save in Constantinople.’

I stopped, chilled, as he brought it out and waved it scornfully — the Christ cross was a fat Greek one, plain dark wood with a cunning design of the Tortured God on it worked in little coloured tiles; I had seen it before, but not round Kasperick’s plump neck.

‘You are Christ-sworn yourself,’ he went on, smirking, ‘and I suspect this Mazur girl is not. So passing her to me is no sin.’

It was my turn to look down and frown. He had seen the little cross on a thong hanging on my breastbone.

‘This? I had this from the first man I ever killed,’ I told him, which was the truth — though it was truer to say the man had been a boy. I had been fifteen when I did it.

‘That other trinket that looks like a cross is a good Thor Hammer,’ I added. ‘There is another, the valknut, which is an Odin sign.’