my word. You can have them back if I find your report satisfactory.’
Again Leshii smiled. This place, he was sure, would be the death of him. There was no trade to be had one way or the other, no entertainment and not even any food. The best he could hope to come away with was a case of scurf. The worst, well, that would be not coming away at all. Still, Leshii was a practical man and knew the northerners stood by their oaths. The bags might be safer with the king than at his own side. And at least the Vikings had not mentioned that he had claimed to have known the king since he was a boy.
They went out past the smouldering fires of the camp, through the bands of mist and up the incline for a very long way. Leshii looked behind him as they climbed. The mist sat in the shallow valley of the river like broth in a bowl. And what a broth, a brew of trouble, plague, suspicion and death. They reached the edge of the forest, where already people were chopping logs, and went under the trees. There was a narrow track, just a depression in the grass really, and they followed that. The woods were wet and lovely: the dew sparkled in the pale sun and bluebells flashed like jewels in the web of the low mist. Leshii could not enjoy the morning, though. He was a captive. He glanced at Aelis. What was she? The captive of a captive. Quite a fall for a noblewoman in just one night, he thought.
They were no more than a spring hour into the woods when they came to a clearing. The trees were high here, huge oaks budding into leaf.
‘It’s here,’ said Fastarr.
Leshii could see nothing to indicate a camp. They went into the clearing.
‘Hrafn!’ shouted Fastarr. ‘Hrafn!’
From up in the trees a raven stirred from its nest.
‘Wrong one,’ said Ofaeti. No one laughed.
The bird sat looking at them from a high branch.
‘They’re strange things, those,’ said Ofaeti. ‘They won’t nest together, but as soon as one of them gets a sniff of food they’re cawing their heads off calling for the others to come and join in.’
‘Let’s hope there’s no more like Hrafn around,’ said Fastarr.
‘You should let me gut that corpse-muncher,’ said Ofaeti.
Fastarr smiled. ‘If we ever meet him out of the protection of Sigfrid’s people then I’ll race you to cut his throat.’
‘You shouldn’t say that,’ said Svan. ‘He’s a priest of Odin. He cures people, and he’s worth ten men in battle, I’ve seen it.’
Fastarr grunted, clearly unwilling to debate the subject. ‘Hrafn!’
There was a stirring down in the wood.
‘Oh, on Freyr’s fat cock, it’s her,’ said Ofaeti.
‘Let’s leave the prisoners and get it over with then,’ said Fastarr. ‘I don’t want to be around to watch this.’
‘Are you so soft, Fastarr?’
Leshii looked around. It was Saerda, the hard little man who had delighted in tormenting Aelis.
‘I have killed a score of men,’ said Fastarr, ‘but they have been the honest deaths of sword, axe and spear. This offends me.’
‘You don’t like to see your enemies suffer?’ said Saerda.
‘I like ’em dead and quick,’ said Fastarr, ‘the quicker to return to my ale and my women.’
‘Each to his own,’ said Saerda with a shrug, ‘I can stay with them if you like.’
‘Do as you want,’ said Fastarr. ‘Just the sooner…’
His voice trailed away. Leshii’s mouth fell open. Aelis actually screamed, but no one seemed to notice, they were too busy holding on to their own stomachs. Leshii had encountered a leper on his travels, though he had run from him quick enough. This, though, was another kind of deformity entirely.
A woman had appeared at the edge of the clearing. Her hair was black and disordered, she wore a dirty white shift stained red with blood at the front from two raw wounds at her neck, and she swayed as if almost too weak to stand. It was her eyes, though, that caught Leshii’s attention. She didn’t have any. Her face was marked with cuts, like her brother’s, but much more numerous and severe, and her head was swollen, almost spongy in appearance, like a monstrous oak gall. There was no discernible nose, just a ragged slit for a mouth, and where her eyes should have been were torn and vacant sockets, the shape of them hardly distinguishable. What had done that to her? Leshii wondered. Disease? It looked like no disease he had ever seen, though her face was bruised black and red with infection, puffed out unevenly on one side, almost shrunken away on the other. Her, eyes, though, her eyes were truly terrible. He remembered fetching bread from his grandmother to his mother when he had been young. The old woman had given him half a loaf, and on his way home he’d thought he’d just take a nibble, so he’d pinched a little off as he walked. It had been delicious and he couldn’t resist taking another pinch, then another, until the inside of the loaf was nearly hollow. That was how the woman’s eyes appeared, like the inside of that loaf, ruined by tiny degrees.
The woman swayed forward across the clearing and then tripped and fell, groping blindly on her hands and knees, sniffing and feeling her way towards them.
‘What do we do?’ said Fastarr.
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Ofaeti.
‘This is their camp. She wants the monk; give her the monk,’ said Saerda.
‘How, in the name of the Norns’ icy tits, do you know what it wants? Are you a bastard mind-reader now?’ said Ofaeti.
The woman heard their voices and craned her head. Leshii watched as she got to her feet and stood facing them, arms by her side, about twenty paces away. This was becoming rather too weird for the merchant’s tastes. He was, he thought, only a morning’s hard walk away from the area the Norsemen controlled. If he could, he would take the lady and just strike out for Ladoga. He’d have to leave his silks and his mules, but the prince would provide him with ample compensation for those if he delivered him the girl. For the first time since he’d left the east, Leshii wished the wolfman was back by his side. He at least would give him a chance of escape.
‘This is meant to be where we leave the monk. Let’s just leave him and get out of here,’ said another berserker.
Fastarr shook his head. ‘We need to find out where this girl is. If that’s what the Hrafn’s after, we need to get to her before him. We have to hear the prophecy and react before he gets his claws into her.’
‘Well, shall I get the monk down or not?’ said Ofaeti.
‘Yes.’
Leshii looked around. The tall figure of Hugin had appeared from the other side of the clearing. He was carrying three small bags across his shoulders and wearing a pair of ragged trousers and a torn smock of dirty grey wool, still greasy as if it had just come from the animal and had not been soaked in hot piss to get the grit and the grease out of it. At his side was that cruelly curved sword. Leshii had heard of such swords, of course — they were a legend among the Moors and the blue men of Africa — but even when he had travelled down the camel roads to Serkland, he had never seen one and wondered what smith had the skill to make such a weapon.
‘Leave the monk,’ said the Raven. ‘Set him down here, at the edge, under the branch of this oak.’
Leshii watched as the confessor was taken from the back of the mule. It almost broke his heart to see. The value of a saint had to be huge, he thought. Even the man’s bones would be worth a fortune to the right monastery. Perhaps, thought the merchant, he might get a chance to steal the corpse — as he was certain the confessor was about to become — once Hugin had finished with him.
The confessor didn’t complain as he was taken down. The Raven kneeled beside him and put his hands on his brow and on his chest. Leshii thought he almost looked as if he was tending to him. It was when he saw the noose, with its tricky, sticky knot, that he knew for certain he was not.
The Raven cast the rope up over the branch of the tree and then slipped the loop over the head of the monk. He took up the slack, pulling the confessor up into a seated position. The rope was not strangling the monk, Leshii could see, but it was forcing him to work for his breath. The merchant was meant to stay to find out for the king what the confessor said. As far as Leshii could see, the confessor would do very well to keep breathing, let alone issue any prophecies.
‘You can discover where the girl has gone like this?’ said Ofaeti.
‘Perhaps,’ said Hugin.
