Thorfinn dropped to his knees and slowly raised his head. A worm of blood crawled from his mouth. One hand groped behind him. Pink spittle popped between his lips. ‘Finish it, Frankish.’
Vallon stepped in and raised his sword and in the same moment Thorfinn drew his scramasax and lunged up to find his enemy gone. He was still blinking around when Vallon at his back cut off his head. Thorfinn’s body dropped into a kneeling position, two fountains of blood spouting from his neck. His hands groped at the ground as if he were trying to get up. Vallon shoved him on to his side. Thorfinn’s heels drummed and then he stopped moving.
The Vikings and the company surged forward and then stopped. The two sides came into Vallon’s focus.
Raul jabbed with his crossbow. ‘I’ll shoot any cunt who moves.’
Vallon began walking towards the Vikings. Blood squelched in his boots. He lifted his sword. ‘Thorfinn died as he lived. Bravely. The Valkyries will welcome him into the shield hall to take his place with all the other heroes.’ Vallon pointed his sword. ‘He swore that you’d acknowledge me as leader if I defeated him. Break that oath and I’ll send you down into the hellpit where the walls are woven from serpents.’
‘If we join you, we want a share of your silver.’
The speaker was the lieutenant who’d shared the rock in the river with Thorfinn. His name was Wulfstan.
‘You’ve done nothing to earn it. Food is the only thing I’ll give you, and you won’t get that until you’ve released the prisoners.’
‘The slaves are all the treasure we have.’
‘If you want to keep them, you’ll have to kill me.’
Drogo tugged at his arm. ‘You aren’t in any condition to fight again. Leave it to me and Fulk.’
‘I’m not going to fight,’ Arne shouted. His companions rounded on him. ‘What’s Thorfinn brought us? Nothing but pain and hunger. We’d be better off serving the Frank. You’ve heard how he outwitted his enemies and gathered riches in the home of ice.’
Vallon was feeling sick and faint. He caught Hero’s pleading look before turning back to the Vikings. ‘You’ve got until sunset.’
Vallon retired from the field in a stumbling crouch, blood squirting through the seams of his boots. Hero and Richard attempted to support him, but he flapped them away. ‘Can’t let them see how weak I am.’
He reached the place where he’d spent the night and sank to the ground. ‘It doesn’t hurt much. Probably looks worse than it is.’
Hero took charge. ‘Let’s get your hauberk off.’
He and Richard dragged the mail over Vallon’s head and stripped him of the blood-soaked gambeson. Then Hero pulled up Vallon’s sopping red tunic. Thorfinn’s axe had sliced through the iron mail and padding, severing the stomach wall for a distance of nine inches and exposing a bulge of intestine. Hero tested the depth of the wound. He grimaced.
‘Bad?’
‘It could be worse. No major blood vessels severed. The blade nicked your large intestine but didn’t cut through. Half an inch deeper and we’d be preparing your burial shroud.’
‘Let me look,’ said Vallon. He sat up with Hero’s assistance and examined the grey tube of gut with a lop- sided smile. ‘It’s a sobering thing to see your own innards.’ He flopped back.
‘I have to clean the wound. Richard, fetch the cauldron.’
Mosquitoes roused by the sun homed in on the reek of blood, speckling the wound as fast as Hero could clear it. He wiped his face on his shoulder.
‘Light some smudge fires.’
‘Just swab it and stitch it,’ said Vallon.
Hero spat out a mosquito. ‘There’s a lot of foreign matter in the wound. Let me do it my own way.’
Vallon cuffed him and closed his eyes.
The company got two smudge fires going. Hero tweezered out fragments of metal and textile, bits of bark and pine needle. ‘Richard, sprinkle some sulphur on the flames to purify the air.’
Vallon coughed on the rotten-egg atmosphere. ‘Hero, your cure is worse than the cut.’
The brimstone fumes killed the mosquitoes in their thousands. Their bodies spiralled down and Hero had to keep removing them from the wound. He took a bottle from his chest.
‘What’s that?’
‘Strong wine fortified with Venice turpentine and balsam. It fights corruption.’
Vallon recoiled from the volatile vapours.
‘I’m not drinking that. It smells like embalming fluid.’
‘It’s for dressing the wound. It will sting.’
Hero decanted some of the antiseptic into a cup, dipped a squirrel-hair brush into it and dabbed at the wound. Vallon gasped as the mixture bit into his raw flesh. Hero swabbed the wound and the surrounding skin. ‘That’s as clean as I can make it. Now I have to close it. It will be painful. You’d better take some of the drowsy mixture.’
‘Save it for someone worse hit than me. It’s only a flesh wound.’
‘Don’t be such a hero.’
‘This isn’t the first time I’ve been wounded. Jam a stick in my jaws and get on with it.’
Raul knew what to do. He cut a branch of the right thickness and gave it to Vallon and gripped his arms. ‘Wayland, you grab one leg. Drogo you take the other.’
Hero threaded a needle with gut. He clamped the edges of the wound with forceps. His hand trembled as he prepared to make the first suture. ‘I’ve not done this before. Not on a live person.’
‘Give it to me,’ Wayland said.
Raul grinned at Vallon. ‘You’ll be all right with Wayland. I once saw him stitch up his dog’s belly as dainty as you please.’
‘That’s a comforting thought.’
‘Wash your hands,’ Hero told Wayland. ‘Scrub them clean.’
Wayland washed his mitts and Hero made him rinse them in the antiseptic. ‘Sew each stitch about a finger’s width apart. That way the wound can drain.’
Wayland looked at Vallon. ‘Ready?’
Vallon clamped his teeth on the stick.
Wayland inserted the needle into the flap of muscle, pulled it through and threaded it through the opposite lip. Vallon’s abdomen cramped up and the tendons in his neck stood out. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Wayland completed the first stitch and looked at him.
‘Keep going,’ said Raul.
Twenty-one sutures were needed to sew up the wound. Vallon sobbed, rocked his head and clawed at the ground, but he didn’t call halt until the operation was finished.
‘It’s done,’ Hero said.
Vallon spat out the stick, leaned to one side and retched. His eyes were streaming, his face almost black. Gasping like a woman in labour, he arched up, stared at his navel, gave a childlike cry and fell back.
Hero applied a poultice of sphagnum moss and bandaged it with strips of linen. ‘You must avoid movement until the wound knits. No solid food until I say so.’
Vallon’s laugh terminated in a wincing cry. ‘Do I look as if I’m hungry or eager for strenuous activity?’ The blood drained from his face and his eyes flickered. ‘I think I’m going to pass out.’
Vallon woke at twilight to find Hero sitting beside him.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Sick. Sore. Like a horse had kicked me in the belly. Thirsty.’
Hero gave him some water. ‘The Vikings have accepted your conditions.’
Vallon could hear a muffled roaring. He turned and saw the trees outlined by an apocalyptic glow.
‘It’s Thorfinn’s funeral pyre,’ said Hero.
Vallon lifted a hand.
