“Who guards it?” I asked.
“That’s one of their jobs,” Tekil said, “but the second is to kill people. It’s how he’ll kill you. He’ll take your eyes first, then you’ll be torn to pieces by his hounds. Or perhaps he’ll take the skin off you inch by inch. I’ve seen him do that.”
“Kjartan the Cruel,” I said.
“He’s not called that for nothing,” Tekil said.
“So why do you serve him?”
“He’s generous,” Tekil said. “There are four things Kjartan loves. Dogs, treasure, women, and his son. I like two of those, and Kjartan is generous with both.”
“And the two you don’t like?” I asked.
“I hate his dogs,” he admitted, “and his son is a coward.”
“Sven?” I was surprised. “He wasn’t a coward as a child.”
Tekil stretched out a leg, then grimaced when the slave shackles checked his foot. “When Odin lost an eye,” he said, “he gained wisdom, but when Sven lost an eye he learned fear. He’s courageous enough when he’s fighting the weak, but he doesn’t like facing the strong. But his father, now, he’s no coward.”
“I remember Kjartan was brave,” I said.
“Brave, cruel, and brutal,” Tekil said, “and now you’ve also learned that he has a lordly hall filled with hounds that will tear you to bloody scraps. And that, Uhtred Ragnarson, is all that I will tell you.”
I shook my head. “You will tell me more,” I said.
He watched as I put a log on the fire. “Why will I tell you more?” he asked.
“Because I have something you want,” I told him.
“My life?”
“The manner of your death,” I said.
He understood that and gave a half-smile. “I hear the monks want to hang me?”
“They do,” I said, “because they have no imagination. But I won’t let them hang you.”
“So what will you do instead? Give me to those boys you call soldiers? Let them practice on me?”
“If you don’t talk,” I said, “that’s just what I’ll do because they need the practice. But I’ll make it easy for them. You won’t have a sword.”
Without a sword he would not go to the corpse-hall and that was threat enough to make Tekil talk. Kjartan, he told me, had three crews of men at Dunholm, which amounted to about a hundred and fifty warriors, but there were others in steadings close to the stronghold who would fight for him if they were summoned so that if Kjartan wished he could lead four hundred well-trained warriors. “And they’re loyal to him,” Tekil warned me.
“Because he’s generous to them?”
“We never lack for silver or women. What more can a warrior want?”
“To go to the corpse-hall,” I said and Tekil nodded at that truth. “So where do the slaves come from?” I asked.
“From traders like the one you killed. Or we find them for ourselves.”
“You keep them at Dunholm?”
Tekil shook his head. “Only the young girls go there, the rest go to Gyruum. We’ve got two crews at Gyruum.” That made sense. I had been to Gyruum, a place where there had once been a famous monastery before Ragnar the Elder destroyed it. It was a small town on the south bank of the River Tine, very close to the sea, which made it a convenient place to ship slaves across the water. There was an old Roman fort on Gyruum’s headland, but the fort was not nearly so defensible as Dunholm, which scarcely mattered because if trouble loomed the Gyruum garrison would have time to march south to the larger fortress and find refuge there, taking their slaves with them. “And Dunholm,” Tekil told me, “cannot be taken.”
“Cannot?” I asked skeptically.
“I’m thirsty,” Tekil said.
“Rypere!” I shouted. “I know you’re out there! Bring some ale!”
I gave Tekil a pot of ale, some bread, and cold goat-meat, and while he ate he talked of Dunholm and assured me it was truly impregnable.
“A large enough army could take it,” I suggested.
He scoffed at that idea. “You can only approach from the north,” he said, “and that approach is steep and narrow, so if you have the greatest army in the world you can still only lead a few men against the defenses.”
“Has anyone tried?”
“Ivarr came to look at us, stayed four days, and marched away. Before that Earl Ragnar’s son came and he didn’t even stay that long. You could starve the place, I suppose, but that will take you a year, and how many men can afford to keep a besieging force in food for a year?” He shook his head. “Dunholm is like Bebbanburg, it’s impregnable.”
Yet my fate was leading me to both places. I sat in silence, thinking, until Tekil heaved at his slave shackles as if to see whether he could snap them. He could not. “So tell me the manner of my death,” he said.
“I have one more question.”
He shrugged. “Ask it.”
“Thyra Ragnarsdottir.”
That surprised him and he was silent for a while, then he realized that of course I had known Thyra as a child. “The lovely Thyra,” he said sarcastically.
“She lives?”
“She was supposed to be Sven’s wife,” Tekil said.
“And is she?”
He laughed at that. “She was forced to his bed, what do you think? But he doesn’t touch her now. He fears her. So she’s locked away and Kjartan listens to her dreams.”
“Her dreams?”
“The gods talk through her. That’s what Kjartan thinks.”
“And you think?”
“I think the bitch is mad.”
I stared at him through the flames. “But she lives?”
“If you can call it living,” he said drily.
“Mad?”
“She cuts herself,” Tekil said, drawing the edge of a hand across his arm. “She wails, cuts her flesh, and makes curses. Kjartan is frightened of her.”
“And Sven?”
Tekil grimaced. “He’s terrified of her. He wants her dead.”
“So why isn’t she dead?”
“Because the dogs won’t touch her,” Tekil said, “and because Kjartan believes she has the gift of prophecy. She told him the dead swordsman would kill him, and he half believes her.”
“The dead swordsman will kill Kjartan,” I said, “and tomorrow he will kill you.”
He accepted that fate. “The hazel rods?”
“Yes.”
“And a sword in my hand?”
“In both hands, if you want,” I said, “because the dead swordsman will kill you all the same.”
He nodded, then closed his eyes and leaned against the wall again. “Sihtric,” he told me, “is Kjartan’s son.”
Sihtric was the boy who had been captured with Tekil. “He’s Sven’s brother?” I asked.
“His half-brother. Sihtric’s mother was a Saxon slave girl. Kjartan gave her to the dogs when he believed she tried to poison him. Maybe she did or maybe he just had a pain in his belly. But whatever it was he fed her to his dogs and she died. He let Sihtric live because he’s my servant and I pleaded for him. He’s a good boy. You’d do well to let him live.”
“But I need eight heads,” I reminded him.
“Yes,” he said tiredly, “you do.” Fate is inexorable.
