Kasperick frowned. ‘I had heard you were baptised.’
I shook my head and smiled apologetically, more sure than ever about who had been whispering in Kasperick’s ear.
‘If your God is willing to prevent evil but not able then he is not all-wise and all-seeing, as gods are supposed to be,’ I told him. ‘If he is able but not willing, then he is more vicious than a rat in a barrel. If he is both able and willing, then from where comes all the evil your priests rave about? If he is neither able nor willing, then why call him a god?’
‘So,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘A follower of Thor? Odin? Some other dirty-handed little farmer god of the Wends, one with four faces? No matter — they will help you here no better than the Sorbs I caged outside, no matter how clever your words.’
‘I thought those Sorbs were good Christmenn,’ I answered, trying to think clearly as I spoke. ‘Like you.’
‘I took this cross from them, as they took it from a Greek priest they sold. They used the money to get drunk and once drunk they killed a man. So there is the Lord at work — even if it was only a Greek priest he worked through.’
I blinked with the thunderbolt of it, a strike as hard as Thor’s own Hammer. I had been right about the cross, then.
‘Did this Greek priest have a boy with him?’ I asked. ‘A Northerner — a Dane.’
Kasperick, bewildered at the way this conversation had suddenly darted off the path, waved an irritated hand.
‘They sold them both to another of your sort. He was going upriver.’
Upriver. A slave dealer going upriver and buying a Greek monk and a boy. The chill in me settled like winter haar.
‘The dealer,’ I asked. ‘Did he have marks on him, blue marks? A beard like a badger’s arse?’
The conversation was now a little dog which would not come to heel and Kasperick was scowling a leash at it.
‘There was such a man,’ he hissed, ‘but enough of this. Fetch the girl and be done with it, for you have no choice in the matter.’
Randr Sterki had Leo and Koll and one swift glance sideways let me know that Finn and Crowbone had realised it, too. So did Red Njal, who had been strange since Hlenni’s death and was now starting to tremble at the edges, the way wolf-coats do when the killing rage comes on.
‘Red Njal,’ I said sharply and he blinked and shook himself like a dog coming out of water. Kasperick, wary and angry as a wet cat, lifted a hand and men appeared, leather-armoured, carrying spears and bulking out the light. Finn, who hated Saxlanders, curled his lip at them.
‘Step out and go and fetch the Mazur girl,’ I told Red Njal and he looked at me, then at Kasperick and grinned, nodded and hirpled away on his bad leg. I settled on the bench, waiting and Crowbone cocked his head sideways, like a bird and stared curiously at Kasperick.
‘What?’ demanded Kasperick, suspicious and scowling, but Crowbone merely shrugged.
‘Once,’ he said, ‘a long time gone — don’t ask me when — up in Dovrefell in the north of Norway, there was a troll.’
‘This will pass the time until folk return with my Mazur girl,’ Kasperick announced pointedly and there was a dutiful murmur of laughter from the dim figures behind him. Crowbone waggled his head from side to side.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘perhaps not. This is not a long tale, for this troll was famous for two things — he was noted for his ugliness, even by other trolls and that fame was outstripped only by his stupidity. One day, he found a piece of bread in a cleft in the rock and was delighted, for food is scarce for trolls in Dovrefell. So he gripped it tight — then found he could not get his fist out unless he let the crust go. He thought about it a long time, but there was no way round it — he had to let go, or stay where he was and he could not make up his mind. For all I know, he is there yet, with a fistful of stale crumbs, but determined never to let go.’
‘Trolls are notorious fools,’ Kasperick agreed sourly.
‘A man should always know when to let go of something he cannot hang on to,’ Crowbone countered blankly.
In only minutes, it seemed, someone pounded breathlessly in and hurled himself to the ear of Kasperick, whispering furiously. The red spots flared and Kasperick leaped up.
‘Only a troll tries to hang on to what is beyond his grasp,’ Crowbone announced and Kasperick bellowed as the ox-shouldered guards dragged Red Njal back in and flung him to us; there was blood on his beard and on his teeth, but his grin let us know
‘The bigger the bairn, the bigger the burden,’ he said, then spat blood at Kasperick.
‘As my granny used to say,’ he added.
Kasperick, his face a snarl, snapped an order and the oxen Saxlander guards lumbered towards us. From the dimness, one of the ghosts gained shape, sliding forward onto the bench opposite and grinning at me as hands ripped our weapons from us.
Now I knew how Kasperick had heard so much of us. That face, with no grin on it at all, I had last seen on the hard-packed floor of Hestreng, where the hot iron that had seared the ugly scar across it and blistered one eye to a puckered hole, had started a fire on his chest. I had put it out and left him.
‘Bjarki,’ I said into his weasel smile. ‘I should have let you burn.’
FIFTEEN
The place stank like a
The cage was up against one wall of this stone room, part of the lower foundations of the keep and once an underground store for the kitchens, for the stone walls were cold. Now the place was hung with chains and metal cuffs, dark with stains and leprous from the heat of the brazier. There were two thick-barred squares to let in light and circling air but they did not do much work on either.
The Saxlanders flung us into the cage and one locked the door with a huge key, his tongue between his teeth as he concentrated on getting it right. They had taken away everything of value and left our weapons on a nearby table where we could see them, but not get to them.
When they were gone, leaving us alone in the half-light, a grinning Finn fished in one boot and brought out his long, black Roman nail.
‘If those Saxlanders had any clever in them,’ he said, grinning, ‘it was well hidden. Unlike my nail, which they should have found even if they were looking for my money — boots, balls and armpits, as any raiding man knows.’
He went to the lock and discovered, in short order and at the cost of a bloody finger, that this prison was no little chest of treasures with a dainty lock that could be snapped. The one penning us in was huge and solid and would not be cracked open with a Roman nail, which was also too thick to use as a pick.
‘That Bjarki,’ Finn growled, sucking the grimy, bleeding finger as if that man had done it to him personally. He shoved the nail back in his boot.
‘This is not much of a prison,’ Crowbone mused, looking round. It was not, as I agreed, but it was enough of one for me; what bothered me most were the wall chains and cuffs, the glowing brazier and the thick, scarred wooden table littered with tools I did not think belonged to a forge-man, though some of them were similar.
‘I did not like the look of that Kasperick at all,’ Red Njal grunted. ‘He has the eyes of one who likes to see blood spilled, provided it is not his own and there is no danger in it. A man who, as my granny used to say, prefers to build the lowest fences, since it is easiest for him to cross.’
‘Well,’ said Finn, settling down with his back to one wall, ‘we will find out soon enough.’
I did not like the idea and was envious — not for the first time — of how he could sit with his eyes half- closed, as if he dozed on a bench near a warm fire after a good meal and some ale. I said as much and he grinned.
