The Irish arrived, but they were farmers with spears, looking for plunder now that the battle was clearly won and did not want to get in a new and dangerous fight, so they hung about the edges, or slunk away to search bodies. The great battle, or what was left of it, was now lost and everywhere Crowbone looked he saw dead, or shrieking, groaning wounded and the only ones moving swiftly were the plunderers, flitting like flies from body to body.
But in this part of Tara the clatter and clash and grunt went on. Men shrieked and went down. Mar staggered out from the pack, clutching his cheek and cursing, then saw Kaup and gave a great cry, stumbling to where the Burned Man lay.
‘The battle is not yet done,’ Crowbone said and Mar looked up at him, misery and flaring anger in his eyes.
‘He is already dead,’ Crowbone pointed out gently and Mar blinked, nodded wearily and climbed to his feet to get back in the fight. Just then, the end came.
Raghnall’s men broke, like a quarry stone chisel-hit in the sweet spot; the Oathsworn surged forward after them, howling their triumph. The giant, roaring and flailing, sent men scattering on either side and Murrough closed on him with a great bellow of his own, but was shouldered off his feet as the giant forged forward, straight at Crowbone, sword up and the slaver trailing from his mouth.
Crowbone’s first spear took the giant in the thigh, a slicing stroke that opened a great tearing mouth that trailed gore as the giant ran. The second shunked into Wolf-Ember’s side, bursting rings apart and biting deep, but the giant simply tore it out in the next step and hurled it back.
It smacked Rovald as he hirpled desperately forward, went through the shield and into his ring-mailed body hard enough to make him grunt and tumble backwards. Wolf-Ember kept coming and Kaetilmund dropped the point of the spear and thrust it, banner and all, so that the cloth of it furled round the giant’s head, blinding him.
Crowbone had his sword out now and stepped once, twice, spun to avoid the blundering flails of the giant and cut just once. His stroke frayed one end of the banner and went into the back of the giant’s neck, so that he arched and howled, falling like a crashing oak. Blood flushed up the length of the blue banner, even as Kaetilmund wrenched it away.
It was then that Crowbone realised that Wolf-Ember had been forging a path for Raghnall to reach him.
The son of Olaf Irish-Shoes had the eyes of a mad rat in a blocked tunnel and a fistful of vengeful steel. When he saw Wolf-Ember go down, he gave a great howl and a savage leap into the air, both hands on the shaft of an axe.
Crowbone saw it in a fixed flash, watched his doom come down on him and marvelled at it, for this was the way he had himself killed both Klerkon and Kveldulf. The gods’ jokes are seldom funny, but you can always hear them laugh if you listen, he thought.
Two blurs passed him. One was yellow and low to the ground, a fast snarling bitch who ploughed into the shins of the leaping Raghnall. The second was faster still, a bird-whirr of sound that stirred the wind on Crowbone’s cheek and took Raghnall in the throat, snapping his head back.
The heir to Dyfflin crashed to the feet of Crowbone, the yellow bitch’s jaws locked in his leg as it snarled and wrenched. The axe wyrded for Crowbone’s skull spun harmlessly over his head and skittered through the bloody mud.
There was no resistance from Raghnall, not even a sound, for the arrow that had taken him in the throat had ripped the voice and the life from him in one. His eyes were wide with surprise and his mouth worked once or twice then froze; after that the only movement from him came because the yellow bitch was jerking him to and fro and growling deep in the back of her throat.
‘Leave off,’ Crowbone snarled and the hound let go and slithered backwards on her belly, bloody jaws on her paws, tail moving uncertainly. Crowbone was only mildly surprised that the animal had obeyed him, but his mind was elsewhere. It was on what he hoped he would find when he turned his head — his legs, he knew, were not up to the task of moving at all from the shock. He hoped he would find Vandrad Sygni, nocking another arrow and grinning at him.
It was as bad as he had thought. No Vandrad Sygni — but back across the slope they had come down, over all the dead and groaning wounded, all the way back to the copse of trees — Odin’s arse, a hundred long paces or more — a small figure perched in a branch and waved her bow at him. Crowbone knew for certain it would be the same branch where the exhausted bird had sat, staring at him with a prophetic black eye.
‘By The Dagda,’ said Murrough admiringly, hefting his axe and testing the distance between its edge and Raghnall’s neck, ‘that wee woman of yours can shoot, Crowbone.’
Orm
The walkway planks were hot beneath their boots and the resin smell from the sun-cracked roofs was as rich as the cackle of strange tongues. There was a stir in the crowd at the woman who was offered; anyone with a trader’s eye would admire the skill of the dealer.
A long fall of linen the colour of old slate covered the figure but it was clearly a woman who tugged slightly at the end of the thin line fastened carefully round sheepskin cuffs to her wrists, so the rope would not bruise the flesh.
The dealer, a Khazar Jew smiling the last of his teeth at the crowd, hauled a ratty fur hat off his head in a glorious bow, then pulled the veil away with a flourish; she stood before them naked, unable to crouch or use her tethered arms to hide herself. In the end, she stood in a slight curl, halfway between shame and defiance.
They were enthusiastic, the crowd, even though the day was hot. Orm caught Finn’s eye and the slave- master turned the docile merchandise this way and that with a practised hand as he called out to the crowd in Greek, which was the tongue of traders.
‘This one is a certified virgin. A captive princess from the far regions beyond the Khazar Sea, you can see from her shy ways that she has never known the hand of a man.’
You had to admire him, Orm thought to himself. She had almost certainly been humped full of at least one bairn and by a horny-handed farmer, since she was as much a captive princess as Finn was. Nor did she come from beyond the Khazar Sea and had clearly been told to fasten her mouth or it would be worse for her — whoever bought her would be surprised at the amount of Slav she knew.
The dealer took his fingers, heavy with bright-stoned rings, and grimed them through the woman’s thick, dark hair. In the crowd, the Arabs and Jews, rivals in anything and everything that could be bought and sold, shifted expectantly.
‘This incredible shade of night is her hair’s natural colour,’ he said, then took her firmly by the chin and raised her face up. ‘And this has had no help from dye pots.’
He turned and leered a little as he stroked the hand down one naked, flinching flank.
‘These delicate white curves speak for themselves. This is a rich ornament, worthy of any bek or jarl or sheikh. It is only due to chance and my own financial misfortune that such a rare creature is being offered at all, for I was keeping her for the Basileus in the Great City himself. I am stabbing myself in the heart to offer this to you.’
Someone would, this day or the next, if this slave trader kept lying at this level, Finn whispered out of the corner of his mouth. Orm agreed — but not before he had, hopefully, told where to find Takoub and his brother in this reeking trade town of the Khazars.
Tmutorokan was what was left to the Khazars after Sviatoslav’s Kievans broke them. Once, it had belonged to the Great City and probably would again, unless the Kievans got to it first, and it sat on the Dark Sea like a boil, pus-filled with crooked traders and hard men looking for work. It had buildings of brick with tiled roofs, more of wood — and, in the heat of summer, most of the Khazars sensibly took to living in tents, which sprouted like evil, coloured mushrooms on every spare piece of ground.
The place festered with everything else, too — bad drink, worse women and men prepared to do anything for money, even to telling the truth now and then. This time, it took only the sparkling spin of a whole silver coin to brighten the slave dealer’s day and point them in the right direction; they left, feeling the eyes of the Slav woman, hopeful as a hungry dog.
Takoub’s slave hold was a rough square of sharp-pointed timbers. The gate was merely a circle cut in timbers, which was woodworking skill in itself. In the arch at the top, in a semi-circle, was a spatter of sharpened
