The Wolf Sea o-2

by Robert Low

  I just had to say that little monk's name, though, and everyone understood.

  Kvasir spat pointedly. 'We were no threat to those men of Starkad, if they were armed with all this,' he noted with a grunt. 'Loki played a bad trick on them when he made them sheer away from us, right into the path of wolves with better fangs.'

  A Loki trick that had won us a rich cargo. Finn beamed when I said this, his beard slick with lamb grease.

  `Just so, Trader, and a fine price it will pull down for us.'

  `True enough,' mused Radoslav, running that dagger blade over his head again, his circle of runes puckered on his forehead as he frowned. 'North-made blades sell well in Serkland — those watered blades especially.'

  Finn scowled. 'I will not sell the Godi.'

  `The what?' demanded Radoslay. 'Is this another marvellous sword that demands a name, like this Rune Serpent?'

  Finn grinned and explained about the snake-knot of runes, adding, 'But my blade has been named. The Godi.'

  In honour of me, no doubt,' said Brother John drily.

  In a way,' Finn answered. 'Since I seem to be killing more Christ-followers these days, it seems the name to give my blade — because it's the last thing they see before they die. A priest.'

  Of course,' I went on casually into the laughter that followed, 'there is always the other matter.'

  Finn looked at me quizzically and the others sat up, interested.

  `We also have a secret message, about something to be picked up in Larnaca — where is Larnaca anyway?'

  `The island of Cyprus,' Radoslav said. 'Orm has the right of it. Whatever they were to get for Choniates is worth much more than what we have.'

  `Gold, perhaps,' I said. 'Pearls, silver. . who knows? Choniates is a rich man.'

  `Gold,' repeated Finn.

  `Hmearls,' breathed Arnor through his ruined nose. He fretted about it, for a slit nose was the mark given by lawmakers to a habitual thief and he did not like having such a sign. That and the pain, though, was forgotten in the bright balm of promised riches.

  `What of Starkad?' growled Finn like a loud fart at a funeral. There was silence and shame as everyone worked out what the cost of delaying on a hunt for gold and pearls in Cyprus would do to letting Starkad escape with an even greater treasure.

  Then I told them what I had thought out; Einar would have been proud of me. 'Trapping is better than hunting. Instead of chasing Starkad all over the sea, let us have Starkad come to us. This treasure Choniates desires might be worth the price of a runesword to Starkad. He cannot afford to fail two masters. We have this letter, to be carried to an Archbishop who has never seen Starkad or his men. At most he may have been told Norsemen are coming.'

  Radoslav grinned. 'We are Norsemen.'

  `Just so,' I replied and turned into Finn's grin.

  `You are a man for clever, right enough,' he growled. 'Where, on this chart of Radoslav's, is this Cyprus?'

  4

  The Volchock was no sleek drakkar, or even hafskip, as I have said. It bounced on the waves rather than slicing them, and fought us, as a little bear might.

  But you could see why the people of the Middle Sea called ships 'she' — that was how you sailed a knarr, teasing her into the wind rather than using force, persuading her until you found one she liked.

  Finn spat derisively when I started that, saying that you did the same with bulls and stallions and old boar pigs if you were sensible, adding that a ship was a ship and no good would come of dressing it in skirts. Especially skirts, for a woman was a useless thing at sea. There was good reason, he finished, that the word for ship in Norse is neither woman nor man.

  Sighvat said it was a good thing. 'After all,' he added, 'there is always expense with a ship as with a woman. And always a gang of men around. And a ship has a waist, shows off a top and hides a bottom.'

  It takes an experienced man to get the best out of a ship and a woman,' added Kvasir into the roars of laughter. They went on with it, finding new comparisons while they cursed it in equal measure. If you could gybe or tack, a knarr was a good vessel, but when the wind failed, you hauled down the sail and waited, rolling and wallowing, until another came up from the right quarter — or just sailed in the wrong direction.

  Gizur had his own views on Radoslav's ship. 'The rigging needs to be served, seized or whipped properly,' he declared to me with disgust. 'The beitiass should be shortened, the cleats moved and blocks rigged to tighten it.' He raised a hand, as if presenting a jewel of great value, though his face was twisted with disgust. When he opened his fist, there was a handful of what looked like oatmeal. 'Look at this. Just look at it.'

  `What is it?' demanded Radoslav fearfully and I was close behind him. Some wood-rotting disease? A rune curse?

  `Shavings, from the rakki lines,' Gizur said with a snort. I looked up at the rakki, the yoke which snugged round the mast and took all the strain of hauling the sail up and down.

  `The lines are rubbing the mast away,' Gizur went on, frowning. 'It is falling like snow!'

  Radoslav rubbed his chin and tugged his brow-braids, then shrugged shamefacedly and said, 'The truth of it is that this is only the second sea voyage I have ever done. I am a riverman, a born and bred oarsman. I traded happily up and down from Kiev, furs for silver, and made a good living at it until the troubles started with the Khazars and Bulgars. So I bought this, thinking to change my luck.'

  Gizur at once changed, clapping the mournful man on one shoulder and all sympathy, for that was his way — which the others said came from being named for his mother, Gyda. His father, it was believed, had sailed off west following tales of a land there and had never come back.

  We were rarely out of sight of land in this scattering of islands, so that we could put ashore each night. I preferred not to sleep there all the same, lying at anchor instead, since I was never sure of what lurked beyond the beach.

  When it suited us, we sailed into the night, which was a dangerous business that no other seamen dared try — but we were Norsemen and had Gizur. The days turned warmer, but it still rained and we needed the sail as a tent on most nights, even though we slung it under a great wheel of stars in a seemingly cloudless sky. The last filling of waterskins was before the long, deep-water run to Cyprus and a succession of days followed one on the other, with a steady wind that let the ship run on blue-green water.

  We never saw another ship but, on the last night before Cyprus, as the sun sank like blood-mist, Finn split and sizzled fresh-caught fish on the firebox atop the ballast and we settled cross-legged and ate them with thick gruel and watered ale flavoured with the Limon-fruits, something we had all taken to doing to take away the stale taste of the drink, which had been too long casked. It was also as good as cloudberries at taking away the journey-sickness that brought out sores and loosened teeth in your gums.

  We missed the taste of the cloudberries, all the same, and Arnor started singing mournful songs full of haar mists and the milk-white sea of the North, where the grit is ground out of the rocks by the ice.

  Then talk turned to Cyprus and Serkland and the runesword and our oarmates and, in the end, always came down to that last, turned over and over like some strange coin, in the hope that handling and looking would suddenly reveal what the true worth of it was.

  Only Radoslav knew much about Cyprus, for the Romans had only just recovered it from the Arabs. For some years, it seemed, both had tried to live shoulder to shoulder on the island, but then the Basileus had ordered the Arabs out two years before and any who stayed were warred against.

  `Just our Loki luck,' mourned Finn moodily. 'More heads to pound.'

  As for Serkland, the only one who had been there was Brother John. Amund and Oski were two of the most far-travelled of us — with Einar, they had once raided down the coast of the Ummayads and through the Pillars of Hercules, which we called Norvasund, into the Middle Sea.

  But Serkland, which we also called Jorsaland, was an unknown place to most of us. I
only knew that they called it Serkland because the people there wore only serks — white underkirtles — instead of decent clothing.

  Others had heard tales from freshly made Norse Christ-men, who had gone there and swum across a river called Jordan, tying a knot in the bushes on the far side to prove they were true travellers for the White Christ. The tales were of carpets that flew and how the White Christ turned water into wine, or made a flatbread and a herring feed an army.

  Brother John told us of the incredible number of snakes there, the heat and how the people who ruled it, the Abbasid Arabs, were now the very worst of infidel pagans.

  `Worse than us, eh?' grinned Kvasir.

  `Just so,' answered Brother John soberly. 'For you at least can be called to see the error and embrace the true God, while these believe in their Mahomet and will kill rather than convert to the true faith.'

  `Kill rather than die,' Sighvat pointed out and Brother John nodded sadly.

  It is to the eternal shame of good Christians that these heathens are in control of the holiest of places.'

  `Yet,' Radoslav pointed out, 'they have no quarrel with Christ-men, I have heard, even though the soldiers of Miklagard are making war on them. They even tolerate the Jewish-men, though that is less trouble-free, for they were ever a hard people to rule. Even the Old Romans never managed it completely.'

  `True,' admitted Brother John and sighed. Omnia mutantor, nos et mutamur in illis times change

  —

  and so must we.' Finn grunted appreciatively. 'The Old Romans never ruled us, either. Maybe we can get together with these Jewish-men and give Starkad a smack. If they are like the Jew-men of the Khazars, I know they can fight well enough. They did at Sarkel.'

  Easier to get one of those flying rugs, I am thinking,' Sighvat said, stroking the head of one of the two remaining ravens, both of which had become almost too tame to be of use. It was unnerving to see Sighvat with one on either shoulder, like some Odin fetch.

  I am hoping we run into Starkad without having to sail to Serkland,' I pointed out and Amund agreed, saying it was the snakes there that bothered him most. Brother John patted his shoulder.

  `That is not a worry at all,' he declared, 'for am I not come from the land where all snakes were banished by the blessed Patrick? No snake will bother us, for it knows where my feet have trod.'

  In any case,' Sighvat added, 'I have deer antler to hand.'

  Now Brother John looked bemused, so Sighvat told him how a deer cannot get with young until it has eaten a snake and so rush to hunt them whenever they see one. Which is why snakes, in their turn, will run from deer, so that deer horn is a talisman against them and even burning the shavings in a fire will kill serpents with the very smell.

  Brother John nodded and I could see him tuck that away, like the find of a new and strange feather, or shell on the beach. Other Christ priests — Martin, for sure — would have made the sign of the cross to ward off evil and called Sighvat a heathen devil.

  The next day we sweated against a bad wind, so that it took a long, hard sail to finally snug up in the harbour at Larnaca. I approached warily, tacking in almost against an unfavourable wind, so that it could be used to sweep us out if there was any sign that Starkad was there.

  The town was a sprawl of white buildings, Christ churches and a considerable fortress on a hill, while the crescent curve of the sanded bay was studded with tiny fishing boats, all brightly painted and with eyes on the prow, which we had come to note was a Greek warding sign. Behind was what we now realised was the look of all the islands here: grey rock and dust, spattered with grey-green shrubs.

  `Pleasant spot,' Kvasir noted, rubbing his hand and scenting the air, which was laced with the subtle wafts of cooking. 'I smell drink,' he added.

  I would curb your thirst,' Finn growled and nodded to where people were gathering, at once curious and afraid. From the fortress, winding down the short road to 'the quayside, came a snake of armed men, spears glittering, led by a man on a horse.

  Men muttered and looked to their weapons, but I smiled and pointed to the curled-up cat sleeping under a strung fishing net on the beach.

  `There will be no battle here today,' I said and Sighvat chuckled and nodded. The rest just looked bemused, but Sighvat had remembered. See many strange things in battle. But you never see a cat on a battlefield.

  I had a brief flash of Skarti's fever-racked face as he shivered in the shieldwall before the pocked-walls of Sarkel, telling me this in ague-stammers after we had both seen, like an Odin sign, a bird fly into that dusty hell of arrows and blood, perching on a siege tower to sing.

  Minutes later, Skarti had an arrow in his throat and never spoke again, so it had been a bad omen for him and maybe he had known it.

  Now I hoped he read the omens true. I had considered the chances of Starkad putting in here and discounted them; he had sent a boatload of men with a letter and would want to avoid being sucked into the quest, would want to sail hard, and fast for Serkland and find his monk. I offered prayers to Odin that it would take him time to find out the lie I had told him, time I needed to rob him of this prize that would bring him rushing to us on ground we chose.

  Yet here were soldiers, snaking their way down to the quayside, people parting to let them through. They formed up neatly in two ranks with their studded leather coats and metal helmets, round shields and spears.

  The officer was splendid, in that armour of little metal leaves over leather that they call lamellar and a splendid helmet made to look like it was fashioned from the tusks of a boar, surmounted by a falling wash of horsehair plume.

  `You could beat them all with an empty waterskin,' growled Finn and spat over the side. 'These are half-soldiers.'

  He was right: half-soldiers, called-out men who were tradesmen most of the time, but issued battle-gear when need or ceremony demanded. I felt easier, until I saw another group, this time a huddle of servants and one of the carrying-seats we knew well from the Great City. I realised, suddenly, that the knees were out of my breeks, my tunic salt-streaked and stained.

  The carrying chair halted and a figure got out, rearranging the folds of his white robes. He was bald save for tufts of grey hair sticking from the sides of his head and clean-shaven but for a wispy lick of beard. That and his flap of ears made him look like a goat, but the officer saluted him smartly enough.

  I had ordered Finn and others into what battle-gear we had, so that they made some appearance, grim being better than ragged. I slid into mail, greasy against almost-bare skin and borrowed a pair of better breeks from Amund, who then had mine, which were shorter in the leg on him. He stood behind the others on deck to hide his shame.

  So I stepped ashore, flanked by mailed men, trying to look like a jarl while the bright sun beat down and the waves slapped. Goat Face stepped forward, glanced around and gave a slight nod.

  I nodded back and he rattled off in Greek. I knew the tongue, though could not write it then, but he spoke so fast that I had to hold up a hand, to slow him down. That stunned him a little, for it seemed an imperious gesture, though I had meant no such thing. Even as he blinked, I realised that he had been asking which one was the leader here, never imagining it could be the most boyish of them all. By cutting him off in mid-flow, I had announced myself and with some force.

  `Speak slowly, please. I am Orm Ruriksson, trader out of the Great City, and this is my ship, Volchok.'

  He raised an eyebrow, cleared his throat and said — slowly — that he was Constantine, the Kephale of Larnaca, which title I knew meant something like a governor.

  The officer removed his helmet, revealing a moon-face and sweat-plastered thinning hair, to present himself, with a nod of the head, as Nikos Tagardis. He was kentarchos here, a chief of several hundred men

  — though if they were all like the ones sweating and shifting behind him, it wasn't much of a command.

  They were, it turned out, delighted and relieved to have us, for it seemed that the last time th
ey had been visited by Varangi there had been more trouble about it. Constantine remounted his carrying chair and led a little procession of us away from the sea and into the town.

  Behind, I could hear the noise change as the people surged forward and the Oathsworn clattered off the boat, Finn already booming out his few words of Greek. I hoped Radoslav and Brother John did as I had requested and sold only enough cargo to pay what we would owe.

  The town was a deceit from the shore, since most of it lurked, sleepy and hidden, in a hollow between the scrub-covered hills and the sea. But it had a huddle of white houses and crooked alleys, a score of wells and several Christ temples, at least one of which had been a temple to a goddess of the Greeks before that. It even had a theatre, though I did not know what that was then.

  There was also an area I knew was called a forum, which seemed to be a big square surrounded by columns, like a row of trees. It had a big, white building on one side of it, which turned out to be a bath-house.

  We marched up to it and went in — the rich Greeks liked to trade in a bath-house and I came to enjoy it more than I did then. Inside, wine was served and my 'guards' scowled outside, given only watered ale. Then we spoke of this and that — and previous visitors.

  It was five years ago now,' said Tagardis, telling of the last visit of my 'countrymen'. 'They raided along the coast, but always managed to escape before I arrived with my troops.'

  An escape for you, I thought as I smiled and nodded, for if they had decided to stand and fight, you would not be looking so plump and pleased now

  In the end,' he said, looking at me levelly, 'they got themselves so drunk on pilfered wine that they ran aground and could not easily escape. Those we did not kill languish in our prison to this day.'

  Hitting me on the side of the head would have been a more subtle threat. I lost my smile at that and the Kephale cleared his throat as he saw my face.

  Of course,' he smoothed, 'Trader. Ruriksson, is it? Yes. Ruriksson. Yes. He has much more peaceful and profitable reasons for visiting our island, I am certain. What cargo do you carry?'