The man grunted at that. ‘Shut the gate!’ he ordered his companions. The gate scraped shut and two locking bars dropped into place. ‘Make a line!’ he snapped at the children, and they obediently shuffled into a rough line. They looked terrified. They might have known this was all pretence, but the lank-haired man with his coiled whip was frightening. He began inspecting them, lifting Aldwyn’s face to look closer.
‘I know none of these men,’ Benedetta whispered close to me.
‘They need feeding,’ the man said, and stopped to look at Alaina. He tilted up her face and grinned. ‘Pretty little thing.’ I felt Benedetta stiffen beside me, but she said nothing. ‘Very pretty,’ the man said and put his hand to the neck of Alaina’s dress as if he was about to rip it down.
‘She’s not yours yet,’ I growled.
The man looked at me, surprised to be challenged. ‘Something wrong with the bitch?’ he asked. ‘Got pox rash, has she?’
‘Leave her alone!’ Father Oda and I said at the same time.
The man snatched his hand away, but scowled. ‘If she’s clean,’ he said grudgingly, ‘she might be worth something, but not this little bastard.’ He had moved on to the Ræt.
I was looking around the yard. The entrance gates faced a high building as large as any mead hall. The lowest floor was made of big blocks of dressed stone, while above that the higher floors were constructed of tarred timber. There was only one door, and a single window that was a small shuttered opening set very high on the forbidding black gable. To the right was a smaller shed, which, from the horse-droppings in the yard, I suspected was a stable. That too had a closed door. ‘How many men are usually here?’ I asked Benedetta in a low voice.
‘Ten? Twelve?’ she whispered, but her memory was from twenty years before and she sounded uncertain. I wondered how Gunnald Gunnaldson, if he still lived, manned his ship, which, if Aldwyn was right, must have benches for at least twenty rowers. Presumably he hired men for each voyage or, more likely, used slaves. Finan and I had been slaves aboard just such a ship, chained to the benches and scarred by the whips.
The other two guards now stood beside the door of the larger building, lounging there with bored expressions. One yawned. I strolled along the line of children with Serpent-Breath still in my hand. ‘This one should be valuable,’ I said, stopping beside a tall, thin girl who had straggly brown hair framing a freckled face. ‘She’ll be pretty if you clean her up.’
‘Let me look.’ The lank-haired man walked towards me and I brought Serpent-Breath up and lunged her into his throat and I kept pushing her as his blood brightened the dawn, and one small boy screamed in fright before Aldwyn silenced him with a hand, then the boy just watched wide-eyed as the dying man went backwards, hands fumbling at the blade in his torn gullet, and his bowels opening to foul the morning with his stench. He went down hard onto the red-slicked stones and I wrenched the blade left and right, opening the savage cut, and pressed again until the blade jarred against his spine. Blood was still pulsing, spurting, but each spurt was smaller, the gurgling noise of his dying fading with each gasping breath, and by the time his twitching stopped my men had crossed the yard and had butchered one guard and captured the other. We had killed two and seized the third without making too much noise, but then some of the smaller children started wailing.
‘Quiet!’ I snarled at them. They went silent in terror. I glanced up as a movement caught my eye and wondered if it had been the shutter on the small window, which appeared to be open a crack. Had it been like that before? Then a kite launched itself from the high gable and flew westwards. Maybe that bird was all I had seen moving. An omen? Alaina ran and buried herself in Benedetta’s skirt. I pulled Serpent-Breath free and wiped her tip on the dead man’s jerkin. Aldwyn was grinning at me, excited by the death, but the grin vanished when he saw my glowering face that was spattered by the dead man’s blood. ‘Finan,’ I said, and pointed to the shed.
He took two men, dragged the door open, and went inside. ‘A stable,’ he reported a moment later. ‘Two horses, nothing else.’
‘Take the children in there,’ I told Benedetta. ‘Shut the door, wait till I send for you.’
‘Remember your promise,’ she said.
‘Promise?’
‘To let me kill Gunnald!’
I walked her to the stable. ‘I have not forgotten,’ I said.
‘Make sure he is alive,’ she said bitterly, ‘when you send for me.’
I looked up. Night was fading and the sky was a dark blue, not a cloud in sight.
Then the dogs started howling.
Seven
So we had been heard. The crying of frightened children had alerted Gunnald’s men inside the warehouse and they had loosed dogs that now barked frantically. I heard footsteps, a shouted command, and a woman’s yelp of protest. I was standing at the door where the man we had taken captive was pinned against the wall with Vidarr’s sword at his throat. ‘How many men inside?’ I snarled at him.
‘Nine inside!’ he managed to say despite the blade’s pressure.
He had already been disarmed. I now kicked him hard between the legs and he crumpled, yelping as Vidarr’s blade sliced a shallow cut on his chin as he fell. ‘Stay there,’ I snarled. ‘Finan?’
‘Lord?’ he called from the stable door.
‘Nine men left,’ I called as I beckoned him.
‘And dogs,’ he said drily. I heard paws scrabbling furiously on the door’s far side.
The door was barred. I lifted the heavy latch and tried pulling and pushing, but it would not budge. And now, I thought, the men inside would be sending for help from the East Anglians on
