by Mia Marlowe
“Al-Amin,” she said, as he helped her don a palla. The fabric was so thin Rika felt she was still naked even though she was fully clothed. “Someone must have put those words into Sultana’s ear before they could come out of her mouth. Who do you suppose that was?”
“Ah, my lady is the soul of discernment,” he said. “That very question was on my mind as well.”
“As I recall, only my party and Farouk’s dinner guest were present,” she said carefully. “And you, of course.”
His face went pale. “My mistress, you cannot possibly think that I—”
“I’m not sure what to think,” Rika said. “I need to know where your loyalties lie. Do you serve me or Farouk-Azziz? Or perhaps you have some furtive arrangement with Sultana?”
“You wound me, my lady,” he said with great dignity. “When I served Farouk-Azziz, it was with my whole heart. Now that he has given you my papers, I am yours to command. Perhaps my lady does not know the practice of naming among our people. I am not called Al-Amin for nothing.”
“Forgive my ignorance.” Rika bit back a smile at his indignation. He reminded her of a peacock whose feathers had been ruffled. “What is the meaning of Al-Amin?”
He bowed his head toward her, hand over his heart. “Trustworthy One.”
Chapter 33
The oliphant blasted three times. The ivory horn’s signal marked the end of the soldiers’ working day. Sweat poured down Bjorn’s body. He swiped the stinging moisture from his eyes and trudged off the drilling yard. Even though the mock battle was played out with wooden swords, a couple of his opponents managed to land some solid blows. A bruise that went clear to the bone purpled his right shoulder.
In the Northlands, brute strength and the ability to ignore pain usually won the day in hand-to-hand combat. His new comrades-in-arms were teaching him some different tricks. Bjorn learned to feint and counter-swing, using his opponent’s own momentum against him. His lessons with Ornolf came back to him and he used one or two of those maneuvers to good effect. Even Argus, the tough one-eyed veteran Bjorn had brawled with, gruffly admitted that Bjorn might live through his first battle as a tagmata after all.
Blessed forgetfulness came upon him when his sword whistled through the air. The concentration required to keep his balance during the deadly dance kept thoughts of Rika locked away in a far corner of his mind. But once Bjorn was done for the day, she rushed back to him, piercing as the sharpest blade, sweet as honeyed fruit, and inevitable as the tide.
He drank too much each night. But never quite enough to dull the pain beyond a keening ache.
“Bjorn!”
Jorand strode toward him, leading a black stallion. The horse sidestepped, prancing skittishly, its large eyes bright with intelligence. Bjorn met them halfway across the yard.
“He’s a beauty.” Bjorn ran a hand over the withers and down the stallion’s deep chest. “A fine animal. But what does Sogna’s best shipwright need with a horse?”
“He’s yours,” Jorand said. “Ornolf wants to see you in the cavalry.”
“I’ll think on it.” Bjorn’s mouth tightened. He knew his uncle meant well, but he didn’t want his interference. “Are you all staying at the Xenon?” He couldn’t help himself. He wanted to ask if Jorand had seen her, if the wedding had already taken place, but he couldn’t bring himself to form the words.
Jorand had sailed with Bjorn long enough to understand. “Ornolf and I are at the hostel, though we frequently visit the Arab. Your uncle says he can’t be a guest in Farouk-Azziz’s home and a profitable trader at the same time. Rika and Helge are at the Arab’s house, along with Torvald. Farouk insisted on it once he learned the old man was Rika’s father.”
“So.” Bjorn sighed. “It’s done then.”
“No. The wedding is postponed for a time,” Jorand said. “A religious question, I guess.”
Irrational hope surged through him, but he forced it down as Jorand explained how Rika had agreed to extend her betrothal to the Arab so she could learn about Islam.
“How does Rika feel about Torvald being there?” Bjorn asked. “She never did warm to him after she learned the truth.”
“I haven’t seen her,” Jorand said, guessing that was Bjorn's real question. “She keeps to her chambers in the Arab’s house when Ornolf and I are there, after the custom of their women.”
“She’s held against her will?”
“Torvald says not,” Jorand shook his head. “He sees her every day. She studies the Arab’s faith with an eye to converting, but hasn’t committed to it yet.”
“Hmph!” His gut twisted afresh with longing. Having it done with or dragging out the agony—Bjorn didn’t know which was worse.
Argus sauntered over to inspect Bjorn’s new mount. “A worthy beast,” he pronounced. “This reminds me. There’s someone you both might be interested in meeting. A countryman of yours, a Northman, anyway. He just returned from maneuvers with his unit. Fenris the Walker, they call him.”
“Why?” Jorand asked.
“Because we haven’t found a horse big enough to carry him yet.” Argus’s one eye glittered with amusement. “I’ll take care of this dark son of Satan.” He took the stallion’s lead rope from Jorand and led him toward the stables. “Fenris will be in the chow line, no doubt,” he called over his shoulder.
Bjorn and Jorand had no trouble finding the big man. Fenris the Walker towered over the Byzantines around him and even topped Bjorn by half a head. A braided russet beard flowed over his barrel-chest and his beefy arms were bigger around than most men’s thighs.
Bjorn and Jorand introduced themselves, enjoying the chance to let Norse trip off their tongues instead of the labored Greek they used most of the time in Miklagard. Fenris was ugly as a troll, coarse-humored and loud. Bjorn was just beginning to like the man when the giant pulled out a sword for him to inspect.
“Galata steel,” Fenris said. “The sweetest blade I’ve ever owned. Try it.”
Bjorn sliced the air in glittering arcs and then rested the flat of the blade on one finger just below the hilt. Perfectly balanced. “It’s a fine sword,” he said, handing it back to Fenris. “Even with the nick in the blade, the balance is still true.”
“Ja, the pesky thing. It was too deep to grind out completely.” Fenris slid the sword back into his shoulder baldric. “I got that nick in your part of the world too, in Sognefjord.”
“Really?” Alarm bells clanged in Bjorn’s brain. He noticed for the first time that Fenris wore a fine silver armband, not on his bulging bicep—Bjorn doubted that one big enough had ever been made—but on his forearm. It was cunningly designed to look like intertwined serpents with amber inset for the eyes. With a lurch in his stomach, Bjorn recognized it. He looked back up at Fenris, studying him intently. “I don’t remember seeing you in Sogna and I think I would.”
“Of course, you would.” Fenris guffawed. “Not exactly inconspicuous, am I? I’m a Birkaman. I came overland into your forests, but didn’t come down into Sogna itself.” Fenris grimaced, making his features even more hideous. “We are all men who have sold our blades here, so I’ll make no pretense. I was hired to kill a man in Sognefjord.”
“Was that armband your pay?”
“It was.” Fenris slanted a questioning gaze at Bjorn.
“The man you killed, who was he?”
“He was the jarl, Harald Gunnarsson.”
Bjorn had only his wooden practice sword, so he reached for Jorand’s real one. He yanked it out of his friend’s shoulder baldric with a metallic scrape. Legs spread, knees flexed, Bjorn used a two-handed grip to point the long broadsword at Fenris’s ample middle.
“Defend yourself, Fenris the Walker, for I am Bjorn the Black, son of Harald of Sogna. You killed my father and tonight you will feed the worms.” He glanced sideways at Jorand. “Interfere this time and you’re next.”
Fenris sidestepped out of the line, his pale eyes never leaving Bjorn’s. “Don’t be too hasty, youngster. W
e’re a long way from the Northlands and there’s no need for you to start a blood feud over this. The killing was just business. Nothing personal.”
“It was personal to me.”
The Byzantine soldiers didn’t understand the Norse words, but they recognized the intent. A ring of onlookers formed around Bjorn and the Walker.
“So be it.” Fenris spat on his palm and rubbed both hands together. Then he unsheathed the Galata again. “Shame to kill a man and his son with the same blade, but Odin be my witness, you force me to it.”
Fenris’s chest heaved and he released a cavernous roar that made all the Byzantines reel back. Quicker than Bjorn would have thought possible for a man of his girth, Fenris swung the blade over his head with a whoosh and brought it down.
Bjorn quickly raised his sword to meet the blow and, with a clang of steel on steel, the shock reverberated up Bjorn’s arms to his shoulders. If he hadn’t locked his wrists and elbows, Fenris would have cleaved him from nose to navel in one stroke.
The giant’s blade slid off and flashed in a wide arc across Bjorn’s chest. Bjorn jumped back, arms spread wide to avoid the slash, but a row of red beads bloomed on his skin where the tip of Fenris’s sword sliced him.
Fenris rained down a hailstorm of blows, which Bjorn managed to parry, but only with grunting effort. The Birkaman fought without finesse, heaving one punishing stroke after another. With his brute strength, Fenris didn't need finesse.
Bjorn danced backward, trying to formulate a plan. He knew from the outset he was outmatched for size and reach, but he’d expected the bigger man to be slower. He wasn’t. All Bjorn could manage was a shaky defense from the relentless hammering, and even at that, Fenris had nicked him in several places. Blood streamed from gashes on his shoulder and thigh. As sweat burned into the corners of his eyes, Bjorn realized with a tightening in his gut that he was in trouble.
He circled, trying to slow his breathing and stay out of the wide arc of death that surrounded Fenris the Walker.
“Come to me, boy,” Fenris urged, his gruff voice almost kind. “You’ve fought well enough for honor’s sake. I’ll kill you clean and you’ll be in Valhalla in time for nattmal. You can drain a horn for me there with your father.”
His father. Had Fenris’s hideous face been the last thing Harald had seen? Rage boiled inside Bjorn, but he shoved it down. If he didn’t keep a cool head, he was lost. He couldn’t win in a test of strength against Fenris. Bjorn’s stamina was being leached away by the constant need to defend himself and he still hadn’t so much as scratched Fenris.
Fenris tossed his sword from hand to hand, toying with him. Bjorn had to move quickly while he still had wind. It was time to meet his fate and all that was left to him was guile.
He dragged in a lungful of air and hefted his sword for another round. Bjorn bellowed his defiance in a berserkr cry and lunged, his blade sweeping the air in glittering swaths. Fenris met the challenge and soon had Bjorn giving ground once again.
The Walker delivered a ringing blow that knocked Bjorn off his feet. Panting, he struggled to his knees, his back to Fenris. The sinking sun projected the big man’s shadow over Bjorn and he saw the dark phantom of death looming in Fenris’s upraised arms.
In a flash, Bjorn whipped around and plunged his blade into Fenris’s belly halfway to the hill. Then he rolled out of the away as the Galata clattered to the ground and Fenris sank slowly, his fingers grasping at the steel protruding obscenely from his gut.
Bjorn rose to his feet and staggered back to his adversary. He grasped the hilt, slick with blood, and yanked it out of Fenris’s flesh. The fetid odor from the wound told him that the big man’s bowels were perforated. He would suffer much, perhaps for days, before death came.
Bjorn turned to go.
“Finish me, Sognaman,” Fenris croaked.
“Like you finished my father? With a blade in his back?” Bjorn’s eyes blazed, as much with shame at his father’s cowardice as fury at his killer.
“Your father didn’t run,” Fenris panted. “He was a braw fighter, like you. In truth, he almost had me, but—” He shuddered as blood strangled his innards.
“What happened?” Bjorn knelt beside his foe.
Fenris lifted the arm that bore the entwined serpents. “The man who gave me this came out from his hiding place. He stabbed your father from behind as we were fighting.”
“His name? Who paid you to murder Harald of Sogna?” Bjorn demanded as he gulped air. The fight had been close. If not for Ornolf’s tutelage, Bjorn would be worm’s meat already. He didn’t want to believe the Birkaman, but he trembled with fury at his suspicions. “I need to hear you say his name.”
“I never knew it,” Fenris said with a grimace of agony. “He said it was cleaner that way. Come now and make an end. Don’t leave me to die in bed covered in my own piss.”
Bjorn pulled out his knife and drew it across Fenris’s throat in a quick stroke. The Walker half-smiled at him before the light went out of his eyes.
“Drain a horn for me in the Hall of the Slain, Birkaman,” Bjorn said softly.
Suddenly the circle of onlookers parted and two officers grabbed Bjorn by the shoulders.
“Northman, you are under arrest for the murder of a fellow tagmata.”
As he was dragged away, Bjorn called back over his shoulder to Jorand. “Claim his sword and the armband. Take them to Ornolf. He’ll know what to do.”
Bjorn was sure his uncle would remember the armband. After all, he was the one who’d given it to Gunnar.
Chapter 34
Wind whipped over the headland. Behind her, Rika heard Al-Amin whimper about the cold. She scoffed under her bourka. What did these southlanders know? What they called winter here was more like a fresh day in early spring to her.
“Why must we come here each week, mistress?” he asked. “The statues in the Acropolis don’t suffer from the chill, but I assuredly do.”
“Stay home next time.” She lengthened her stride toward the marble figure that drew her back to this place since she’d first seen it. It was a statue of Mars, his alert eyes turned to the Bosporus in an eternal stare. “Go back home now, if you like.”
“My mistress torments me with thoughts of a warm brazier. The master would have me flayed alive if I should leave you unattended,” he said. “You know this. I did not expect you to be so unfeeling, my lady.”
“But you serve me, not the master,” Rika countered. “I would not let him beat you. Stop whining and we’ll visit the market for some pistachios on the way home.”
“My lady is kindness itself.” He dipped in a half-bow. “Only let us return together.”
“If you give me some peace, I’ll only be a few moments.”
They passed a stylite, a holy man who lived atop a tall column five times higher than a man’s head. Pilgrims dropped offerings of food and water into the basket at the bottom of his perch, hoping for the effectual prayers of the saint above them. Rika would never get used to the odd assortment of beliefs in the great city, but at least the broad base of the spire provided a good windbreak for Al-Amin.
“Wait here,” she ordered.
The teachings of Islam were a blur of rules and rites to her. Christians in the great city squabbled among themselves, sometimes in bloody argument, over which doctrine was heretical and which was orthodox. She could make no sense of their constant disputes. The gods of Asgard were a distant memory. She was sure they couldn’t hear her prayers this far from the North. So she made this weekly pilgrimage to her own private shrine, high on the Acropolis amid the myriad of statues dedicated to the now defunct gods of Rome.
She walked on to visit Mars with a growing disquiet in her belly. It was the same every time—the shortness of breath, the tightness in her chest. She felt hollow as a gourd, stripped bare, and so light and brittle, she might shatter. At the slightest gust, the tiny pieces of her would scuttle away with the remnants of autumn’s dead leaves.
Sometimes she
wished it would happen, just like that.
Rika looked up at the statue. The set of his broad shoulders, the tilt of his head, his calm steady gaze, his mouth ... it was so like Bjorn, her vision had tunneled the first time she’d seen it.
Farouk-Azziz insisted she wear the bourka in public.
This was the only time she felt grateful for the way it shielded her from prying eyes. The veil covered her completely and she viewed the world through thin gauze stretched over part of her face. The statue’s unsmiling features filled her view until her tears made the image waver. Then she pressed her forehead to the cold marble base.
“Oh, Bjorn,” she sobbed. “Where are you?”
What little Rika knew had been pieced together from snippets of overheard conversations. Jorand had come to Ornolf with an armband and a sword, the significance of which she never learned. But she did hear that Bjorn had been arrested. By the time Ornolf and Jorand returned to the barracks the next day, Bjorn’s trial was over. He’d been found guilty and handed over to the civil authorities for punishment. The military didn’t want to execute a foreign member of their corps themselves. That sort of thing dampened recruitment, so Bjorn’s punishment was left to civilians.
Somehow in the transfer, all records of Bjorn the Black, Northman and convicted murderer, were mislaid. Ornolf greased as many palms as he could, trying to find Bjorn’s trail, but all they had was conjecture. Perhaps he had been consigned to a galley and was chained to an oar somewhere on Middle Earth’s great inland sea. He may have been sold to a wealthy widow and gelded; late-made eunuchs reputedly were still able to sustain a rock-hard erection far longer than an intact man, without the troubling aspect of conception to bother with. Or Bjorn could have been summarily garroted and his body dumped in a cesspit outside the city gates. There was no way to know for sure.
