from Brand and his crew.
“What would you know about it, Jutlander?” He exaggerated the hoarse gutturals of the Ribe dialect they spoke. “Is that Norse you are speaking, or is it a disease of the throat? Try stirring honey in your beer and maybe you can cough it up.”
The traders checked their horses and stared at him. “You are no Ditmarsher,” said one of them. “You do not sound like a Dane either. Where are you from?”
“
“You sound like a Norwegian, and one from the back end of nowhere at that. I have heard voices like yours trading furs.”
“I am an Englishman,” Shef repeated. “And it is not furs I am trading. These folk and I are going to the slavering at Hedeby, where they hope to sell me.” He pulled his ladder pendant into view, turned his face full on to the Danes, and winked his one eye solemnly. “No need to keep it a secret. After all, I have to find a buyer.”
The Danes looked at each other and rode on, leaving Shef well content. An Englishman, with one eye, and a silver pole-ladder round his neck. It only needed one friend of Brand, or of the Way, or even one of his skippers from last year's campaign gone home to retire to hear that, and Shef should at least have enough credit to get passage back to England: though he did not want to take ship from Hedeby on the Baltic shore.
Nikko scowled at him, feeling that the situation was slipping beyond his grasp. “I'll have that spear of yours before we reach the market.”
Shef used it to point to the wooden stockade round Hedeby coming into view.
As he shuffled slowly forward in the line of merchandise for sale the next day, Shef felt his heart beating faster. He still had the inner calm—or was it indifference?—which had never left him since he woke up, king no more, in Karli's hut. Yet though he knew what he planned to do, he could not know how it would be taken. It depended on what a man's rights were. In the slave-market at Hedeby, what he and his friends could enforce, likely enough.
The market itself was no more than a cleared space on the shore, with a central knoll a few feet high to display the goods to the buyers. Behind it the tideless Baltic lapped gently on a thin strip of sand. To one side wooden piers ran out far into the shallow water, to enable the broad-hulled knorrs to come in and out with cargo. Around the whole ran a stout stockade of logs, flimsy enough in comparison with the Roman walls of York far away, but in good repair and heavily manned. Shef had heard little of the deeds of King Hrorik, who ruled in Hedeby and from it to the Dane-dyke thirty miles to the south. But his revenues depended entirely on the tolls he took from traders in the port, and he both guarded it and ruled it with a prompt and heavy hand. Shef glanced from time to time at the gallows erected in plain sight on the outermost jetty, a half-dozen bearded corpses dangling from it. Hrorik was anxious to show traders their rights would be protected. One of the many things Shef could not know was whether his plan might be taken as a discouragement to trade. But in any case, as the morning drew on and the line moved forward, his mood grew grimmer.
The lot being put up this time consisted only of women: six of them, pushed forward by a group of grinning Vikings. His man held each of them by the arm while their leader walked round the knoll shouting their merits out. All young girls, Shef could see. At a word, their mantles were pulled away and each stood in a short tunic, bare- legged to above the knee, the white skin drawing all eyes in the sunlight. Whoops filled the air, lewd suggestions shouted across the crowd.
“Where are they from?” Shef asked the armed guard standing near the slave-line. The man eyed Shef's build and bearing curiously, grunted a reply.
“Wends. See the white skin and the red hair. They catch them on the south shore of the Baltic.”
“And who are the buyers?” Shef could see, now, a group of dark men in strange clothing pressing forward to inspect the women more closely. They wore head-cloths instead of standing helmeted or bare-headed, and the curved daggers in their belts glittered with precious metal. Some of them at all times faced outward, as if expecting surprise attack.
“Men from the Southlands. They worship some god who is a rival to the Christ-god. Great buyers of women, and they pay in gold. Have to pay high this year.”
“Why is that?”
The guard looked at him curiously again. “You speak Norse, but don't you know anything? The woman-price went up as soon as the English market turned nasty. Used to get good girls from England.”
The Cordovan Arabs were asking questions now, through an interpreter. A bystander relayed them to the crowd.
“He wants to know if they're all virgins.” Roars of laughter and a great bull voice crying, “I know the tall one isn't, Alfr, I saw you trying her out yesterday outside your booth.”
The leader of the sellers looked round angrily, trying to scowl the barrackers into silence. The Arabs called to their interpreter, huddled together. Finally, a bid. Expostulation, rejection. But no counter-bids. A deal struck—Shef saw the flash of money as it was paid out, and drew in his breath at the sight, not of silver, but of gold dinars. A toll paid to the auctioneer, another to the jarl of King Hrorik, watching with careful eye, and the women were wrapped and hustled away.
Next to go forward was a strange figure, a middle-aged man in the remains of a black robe. He appeared to be bald, but a slight black fuzz grew on his scalp. A Christian priest, Shef realized, with a tonsure that had not been shaved recently. As he came out, another man pushed his way out of the crowd and seemed to go to embrace him: another priest, another black robe, but this time with fresh tonsure. A guard thrust him back, another called for bids.
Instant response, from a party of tall men, heavily-built and swathed in furs even in the spring sunlight. Swedes, Shef thought, remembering the accent of Guthmund the Greedy and some of the others he had met in the ranks of the Ragnarssons' Great Army. They were offering eight ounces of silver. One of them pulled a purse from his belt and threw it on the ground to back the offer up.
The priest who had been pushed away was back again, dodging the guards, spreading out his arms and shouting passionately.
“What's he say?” muttered the guard by Shef.
“He's trying to forbid the sale,” Shef answered, catching some part of the gabble of Norse and Low German that the priest was using. “Says they have no right to sell a priest of the true God.”
“They'll sell him too if he doesn't shut up,” said the guard.
Indeed, the Swedes had thrown another purse on the ground, exchanged words with the auctioneer, were walking forward towards both men, satisfaction on their faces.
Another man stepped from the crowd and the satisfaction faded, replaced by looks of wary calculation. Shef, used to judging warriors, could see immediately why.
The newcomer was not a tall man, shorter than the shortest of the Swedes. But he was immensely broad across the shoulders. More, he moved with an easy confidence that set men back. He wore a padded leather jacket, worn and with different strips let into it here and there. His left hand rested on the pommel of a long horseman's sword. His hair stood up like a stiff, blond brush, over a face tight-drawn, clean-shaven, as hard as stone. But it was smiling.
The blond man put a toe under one of the purses, flicked it back to the Swedes, flicked back the other.
“You can't have him,” he said in stilted Norse, his voice carrying in the sudden silence. “Neither of them. They are priests of Christ, and they are under my protection. The protection of the
“We'll pay for one of them,” called the blond man conciliatingly. “Eight ounces. Christian money is as good as heathen.”
“Ten ounces,” said the leader of the Swedes.
The auctioneer looked questioningly at the blond man.
“Twelve ounces,” he said in a slow, deliberate voice. “Twelve ounces and I will forget to ask how one of you comes to have a Christian priest—and what you others want Christian priests for. Twelve ounces and think you are
