‘You will not take me home, then, Jarl Orm?’
I shook my head. It was too far and I would not be there to do it myself, for my wyrd was on me. The best I could offer was safety at Hestreng.
‘In time,’ I added, limping the words out, ‘it may be that you could be taken back to your people. Word can certainly be sent to your father that you are no longer held by his enemies.’
She nodded and paused, head raised as if sniffing the wind.
‘My father is called, in our tongue, Hard-Mouth,’ she said. ‘He is well-named and has a hand to match. I have two brothers and he whipped them every day from when they were old enough to walk. Every morning, before they ate, so they would know what pain was before pleasure and that such was our lot in life as Mazurs.’
She paused; a dog fox screamed somewhere far away.
‘But he called me his little white flower and it was the hardest thing he did, handing me over to the Pols. He had no choice and wept. I had never seen my father shed a tear.’
Again she paused and no-one offered words to fill the silence.
‘When he finds I am no longer held by the enemy,’ she went on, stirring suddenly, ‘he will raise up his warriors and fall on the Pols. They will slaughter him, for they are much stronger now. It will take them time, for my father is skilful and folk will follow him. They will run and fight and run again — but, in the end, they will submit, when all the young men are dead. Bairns and women and old heads will die, too. The Mazur will be rubbed out, vanished like ripples on water.’
It was as bleak as an ice-field, that vision and I felt Finn shiver next to me. Then she turned and smiled whitely in the dark of her face.
‘I have prepared a hut for us,’ she said brightly. ‘It does not matter to me whether the red sickness crawled in it. Does it bother you?’
I could only shake my head and she wraithed down the ladder and was gone. Finn looked at me.
‘Do not ask what that meant,’ I told him, ‘for up here I am as much in the dark as you.’
Later still, weary as I was, I went to find Koll and knew just where he would be. The door of the hut was open, spilling out yellow light and letting in cool air, for here Bjaelfi moved among the sick, murmuring softly.
The monk was there, wiping the neck and chest of a man, while Koll sat some way back from him, his father’s sword across his knees. Yan Alf crouched like a patient hound nearby and gave me a despairing look and a shrug when I came in, as if to say ‘what can I do?’
Koll leaped up when he saw me and Leo turned his head, a twist of a smile on his face.
‘I obey,’ Koll said and thrust out the sheathed sword as far as he could before the weight dragged it to the beaten-earth floor with a clunk. ‘I am at arm’s length.’
‘So you are,’ I said. ‘I came to make sure you had a sensible place to sleep.’
‘This is sensible,’ he answered uncertainly and Leo chuckled as I jerked my head at Yan Alf, who rose and propelled the boy outside.
‘Do you believe I mean him harm?’ the monk asked. I did not know for sure, but I knew he meant him no good and that, if he was a counter in the game, then he was my counter. Leo shrugged when I told him this.
‘It is, then, a matter of bargaining,’ he said and smiled. ‘You are, after all, a trader as well as a slayer of white bears and a finder of treasure.’
‘You are short of items to trade,’ I answered.
‘I have the boy,’ he replied and I cocked my head and told him it was the other way round.
‘You seem to wish to die here,’ he said, as lightly as if passing judgement on the cut of my cloak, or the state of my shoes. ‘What will happen to your men? To the boy?’
I had not thought beyond them drifting to safety and saw the mistake. Leo wiped the man’s fat neck with one hand, the other resting comfortably at his side. The sick man’s belly trembled as he breathed, low and rasping.
‘The quickest way to safety is through the Bulgar lands,’ Leo said. ‘I am more of the Emperor’s envoy there. In the Great City, I can provide help and aid for those who survive.’
He turned his face, less moon and more gaunt these days; life had melted some of the sleek off him.
‘I can ensure the boy is returned to his father from the Great City.’
‘For a price,’ I spat back bitterly. Leo waved his free hand, then settled it, like a small moth, lightly back on his leg.
‘What do you care — you are dead?’ he replied, crow-harsh in the dim; I heard Bjaelfi grunt at that.
‘I will return the boy, unharmed to this father,’ he went on. ‘I will make sure Jarl Brand knows that this is because of what you have done, so that you fulfil whatever vow you made. I know how you people value such vows. If there are other agreements made — what of it? The boy is still safe and your fame is safer still.’
This last was sneered out, as if it held no value at all — which, him being steeped in the Great City’s way of doing things, was accurate enough. Yet there was merit in this and he saw me pause, knew he had gaffed me with it.
‘What is the price?’ I demanded and he waved his free hand again.
‘Little enough — freedom of movement. When the time comes, let your men know you trust me to guide them, so they will take pains to help both me and the boy.’
I pondered it.
‘Of course,’ he went on smoothly, ‘it also means you cannot carry out your plan to kill me when the enemy breaks down the gate.’
He turned his bland smile on me. ‘That
It was not, exactly. I had planned to leave him tethered for the Pols to find and stake him for the red murder of Jasna and the threat to Queen Sigrith. I had the satisfaction of seeing him blink; I could feel his hole pucker from where I stood and laughed.
‘How was that killing done?’ I asked. He recovered and shifted wearily, then paused in his endless wiping of the man’s head and neck.
‘One day,’ he replied slowly, ‘you may profit from the knowing.’
Then he smiled his bland smile. ‘Of course,’ he went on smoothly, putting aside the cloth and lifting the man’s limp, slicked arm up high, ‘all this is moot. This one is called Tub, I believe. He is leaking a little and he is the first, I think. It may be that no-one goes home without God’s mercy.’
I stared at the accusing Red Plague pus-spots crawling down the arms and up the neck of Tub and heard Bjaelfi curse as I left.
In the morning, all our enemies were at the gates.
There was no skilled planning; Czcibor used his foot soldiers like a club and they came piling across the narrow causeway, fanning out under the looming cliff of earthwork and timber ramparts, throwing up makeshift ladders.
We had one good bow — Kuritsa’s — and a few more hunting ones we had found, but the horsemen had been dismounted and launched great skeins of shafts to keep our heads down, so we could do little but lob heavy stones from cover.
When the Pol foot soldiers, in their stained oatmeal tunics, finally got to the lip of the timbers, their archers had to stop firing; then we rose up and the slaughter started.
That first morning, I plunged into the maw of it, sick and screaming with fear, sure that this was where Odin swept me up and trying to make it quick.
I kicked the head of the first man who appeared, open-mouthed and gasping, so that he shrieked and went backwards. I cut down at the ladder, hooked the splintering top rung with the beard of my axe and then ran, elbowing my own men out of the way and hauling the ladder sideways; men spilled off it, flailing as they fell.
Some others had made the top rampart anyway and I plunged towards them, took a slice on the shaft of the axe, where metal strips had been fitted to reinforce the wood. In the same move, I cut up and under, splintering his ribs, popping his lungs out so that he gasped and reeled away.
Another came at me, waving a spear two-handed, so I reversed the axe and batted him off with the shaft, my left hand close up under the head — then gripped the spear with my free hand, pushed it to one side and sliced the axe across his throat like a knife.
The blood sprang out, black and reeking of hot iron, and he fell, half-dragging me as he did so, so that I staggered. Something spanged off my helmet; a great white light burst in my head and I felt the rough wood of the
