by Robert Low
The gist of what he revealed was that, after the Serkland army fled, the city gave up and the marks we'd seen on the walls came from stray pots of Greek Fire, shot from the great throwers the engineers called onagers, which means 'wild asses'. I had seen these machines at Sarkel, watched them leap in the air and kick at every released shot, while those tending them ran for cover. They were well named.
`We will look after the boy for you, friends,' said Zifus when it came time for us to leave the still-sleeping Goat Boy. `He is a sorry soul now, but even so he shows courage. A curse on the one who shot him, fuck his mother.'
We left in silence and, outside, Finn smacked a fist into his other hand.
One day I will come face to face with this Starkad,' he vowed. 'Then!' I will pay him back for all he has done.'
`Fuck his mother,' we chorused and, laughing, strolled on into the city.
The five of us wandered wide, stone-paved streets lined with tall columns, which supported vines to make a roof that sheltered walkers from the sun. It was cloudy and damp and hot as we strolled along the length of this street, past a basilica and a building Svala said had been a palace, made from yellow and pink marble. There were others here from Skarpheddin's force, mostly the younger men from his own house guard, swaggering along with hands on their sword hilts.
They did not impress us much. In fact, Finn had lost patience with a pair of them he caught at swordplay outside Skarpheddin's hov, leaping and dancing and clashing steel on steel until no one could stand it any longer. Finn had hurled his shield between them, so that it skittered ankle-dangerous along the dust and they had whirled angrily, then spotted him.
He had said nothing, but they knew what he had meant — no warrior places edge against edge, since a sword is too valuable a weapon to ruin in that way. Sword on shield is the way and only if you must do you block with a good edge. A warrior knows this.
`They are farmers, whose palms are calloused from ploughs, not swords,' growled Finn with disgust.
'They think they are snugged up in the meadows of home and that this is all a dream. They raise their horns and shout: "Til ars ok fridar!" By Odin's hairy balls, what use is that to those out on the viking?'
Til ars ok fridar. To the year's crops and peace. There was a flash of Gudleif, my foster-father, flushed and grinning, almost shining in the dark reek of the Bjornshafen hov, horn held high, triumphant with what had been achieved: a good harvest, winter hunger kept at bay and no deaths among us or the thralls or livestock. Gudleif, whose head had been left on a pole by the dulse-strewn beach when the Oathsworn sailed away with me, stuck there by his own brother.
Maybe Skarpheddin's men saw that in us, or felt it, for they altered course far round us, wisely leaving us alone to enjoy the sights and swaggering only when they thought themselves beyond reach.
Antioch had countless tall buildings, domed Christ churches and some more mosques with their fat-topped towers. Then we came out into a great round place surrounded by what seemed a high stone wall and tiers of seats.
There were stalls everywhere, selling bread and vegetables and chickpeas and figs. Svala bought two red fruits with tufts at one end and tough skin, but she held it in both hands, gave a twist of her wrist and split it open to reveal hundreds of little seeds, glistening like the lalami, the rubies in Radoslav's earring.
He admired her skill and had her show him how to do it, while the rest of us marvelled at the tart sticky sweetness of the seeds in what she called a rumman fruit.
`What is this place?' asked Finn, wiping juice from his beard.
An amphitheatre,' answered Brother John, 'where the old Romans used to have gladiator shows.'
I have heard of them,' Radoslav said. 'They were fighting contests, sometimes men against wild beasts as well as other men.'
`That sounds like more fun than the chariot races in Miklagard,' Finn growled.
Brother John scowled at him. 'It was banned in the time of the Emperor Justinian. It is the death penalty for anyone staging such contests now.'
`They do it all the same,' Svala said and we all looked at her. 'There are contests held in secret and bets laid,' she told us. 'If you know someone, they will tell you where they are to be held that night and give you a ticket to get in.'
`Bets?' said Finn and then fell silent, thinking about it.
We strolled and gawped and finally I thought it was time we went back to the ship, which would take us all day. I had arranged for food and drink for the men there and knew they would have rigged the sail as a tent, but if I did not fix ways by which some could go to the city and some stay behind, they would all take it into their heads to abandon the Elk to the Norns and go humping and drinking.
So we sat in a shaded taberna near the amphitheatre for one last wine and my head swam from the night before, so that all I wanted was to close my eyes and listen to Radoslav flirt with Svala, while Brother John and Finn argued about who could spit olive seeds furthest.
I saw myself back on the Elk, rowing hard away from Cyprus and was not sure whether the harsh whistle of breathing was my own or the Goat Boy's. But someone, somewhere was beating time for the oarsmen and each blow was a question, over and over. . where was Starkad? Where were our oarmates? Where was Starkad? Where were our oarmates?
Adrift on a black sea, I stood at the prow of a dead ship, with the sails flapping, ragged and torn, though there was no wind at all. Ahead, bergs had calved off a glacier and moved like ponderous white bears. Ahead, a pale face surrounded by rags of hair, eyes so sunken and dark they looked like the accusing pits of little Vlasios. Ahead, a face I knew and, in that dark place, bright as a tear, sharp as a sliver of moonlight, the curved sword she raised. .
`Heya, Trader. . enough.'
The voice snapped me back to the taberna, where concerned faces loomed, pale as butter and swimming until I managed to focus.
`Bad head right enough,' said Radoslav and Brother John offered me watered wine, which I drank, suddenly parched.
`Who is Hild?' asked Svala archly and my stomach heaved, so that I couldn't speak. She waited for an answer and, when it was clear none was forthcoming, shrugged, pouted and walked off. Even long gone, the mad woman who had led us first to Atil's treasure still managed to poison my life.
`The sun has boiled your head,' Brother John offered helpfully. 'We'd better return to the Elk.'
And you can go and boil yours,' announced Finn cheerfully, striding back into the company, tossing something in his hand, 'for it would be a shame to leave now and miss seeing the fighting men.'
Then he showed us the carved wooden token he had been given and the information that, when a bell was sounded, all those with tokens would make for the main entrance to the amphitheatre.
A bell?' scoffed Brother John. 'What bell?'
Did you part with money for this, Finn Horsehead?' demanded Radoslav with a chuckle. 'I fancy the man that took it is now wearing out shoe leather heading for a drinking place on the other side of the city.'
`No, no,' said Svala. 'It will be the vespers bell he is speaking of.'
Radoslav had to be told that the vespers bell was the one calling the faithful to prayer. We had already heard the Mussulman wailings that called their faithful to prayer five times a day. That seemed excessive to us, who did not pray to our gods at all unless we needed to, an arrangement, I thought, that served both sides well.
`Surely they cannot mean to hold fights in the amphitheatre,' Brother John declared and Finn stroked his beard and pointed out that the market would probably close at night, leaving it empty.
It is death to hold such fights,' Brother John retorted scornfully. 'This arena is not a secret place, is it?
You can hardly avoid attracting the Watch soldiers with hundreds of cheering people and the clash of steel.'
Finn swore, for he saw Brother John had the right of it and it came to him then that he had been gulled.
This made him all the more determined to wait and, knowing him well
enough, I sighed and said I would wait with him. Radoslav announced he was willing, at which point Brother John said he would take Svala back to her hov and return, hopefully before vespers.
Naturally she protested and had to be huckled off, furious at me, though it had not been my idea. So we settled down and stayed near the market in the shadow of the Iron Gate until the day sank slowly behind the citadel mound they called Silpius in a strange, cloud-wisped glory of red and gold.
Brother John came back, as planned, and we ate a couple of roast fowl with greasy flatbread and olives, while Finn searched all the faces in case he saw the man who had sold him the token. We watched the stalls pack up and the people in the market trail off one by one, listened to the muezzin calling the Arabs to their god, talked quietly of this and that and nothing at all.
Then the bell rang out for vespers, echoed by all the others in the city and, almost at once, we saw people move, quiet and flitting as moths.
Oh-ho,' said Finn, rubbing his hands with glee, 'perhaps I have not lost at all.'
We followed what looked like a good group, half a dozen Greeks who might have been off-duty soldiers or merchants, to the main entrance of the amphitheatre, where now two burly men stood, all scarred fists and neck-rolling, armed with clubs. In almost total darkness we stood in a line and shuffled to the arched gate, the excitement sneaking from one to another in that milling crowd.
The guards took the token and searched us for weapons, but we only had our eating knives thanks to Skarpheddin, for it was only polite to attend his feast without serious blades.
Under the arch, three more men, holding dim lanterns, directed us sideways to where a door was now open in the side wall of the arena. In there, where torches guttered, a short passage led to steps and then down, a spiral that spilled us into a huge underground chamber, dank and cold.
`Where are we?' Finn demanded and Brother John looked round.
Under the arena,' he declared. 'Here is perhaps where the animals were prepared. This would have been sectioned off. .'
I didn't think so, for I smelled old rot and damp and saw the huge, rust-streaked pipe and its wheel. When I pointed it out, Brother John gave a low whistle of amazement.
`You have it right, Orm. This was where they stored the water to turn the arena into a lake. If we looked around, we could probably find the old pumps.'
`Lake? What lake?' demanded Radoslay.
Brother John explained that sometimes the men fought sharks or whales, or from boats, and then the arena above could be flooded to make a lake, and drained away again afterwards. This left both Radoslav and Finn drop-jawed at the deep-minded cunning of the old Romans.
Then Finn spotted an odds-maker and I did not know how he did that, for the man looked like any scarred-armed, bent-nosed ugly I had ever seen. Finn spoke to him, hauled out some coins and handed them over, then took a new wooden token. It was then I saw the marked-off area and the buckets and brooms to wash away the blood.
The crowds were milling and had even gone up the stairs to what had been the gallery walkway where the pumps and inlet valves were worked. They sounded like bees in the echoing chamber. Then the humming grew louder and, as Finn strolled back, we could all hear the sound of dragging chains.
`Who did you bet on?' asked Radoslav, having to raise his voice over the sudden cheers of the crowd. A man stepped out and announced the first contest, a match between two swordsmen and. . the Mighty Blade himself.
The walls bounced with cheers, blood-thick with lust. The chains dragged again and I saw the two swordsmen, ankles fastened together by short lengths of chain, then chained one to the other by about four feet of links fastened to bracelets round their wrists. They wore loincloths, old-fashioned Greek-style helmets with horsehair plumes, short swords, round shields and the desperate eyes of the doomed.
A trainer wearing a short tunic and not much else, keeping to the old Greek look, hauled them in and someone yelled: `Fight well, you bastards. I have a bundle on you fixing the Blade tonight.'
`Not if the Norns are weaving this wyrd, I am thinking,' chuckled Finn, 'for I have the Blade down to win.
I fancy his chances, for the odds-maker said he was an axeman of some skill and was fighting two with short swords. A good axeman will always win that.'
Across the other side of the marked-off area, into the fug of reeking torches and sweat and stale breath, came the Mighty Blade, naked save for a loincloth, the chain round his ankles and a long-handled Dane axe.
His shoulders, draped in the great, uncut pelt of his own hair, were like living animals when he whirled the axe from hand to hand and his entire body writhed with the coiled snake muscle on him. It was as Kvasir had once noted: he had muscles on his eyelids.
It's Botolf,' growled Finn, staring at me in horror. 'Big Botolf.'
We stared and gawped, looking one to the other, then back again. It was him. Last seen on the deck of the last drakkar to bear the name the Fjord Elk, snugged up in the harbour in Novgorod two years since.
And if he was here. . I looked frantically around for the rest of the missing crew, the ones we had sent messages to and waited for in Miklagard.
`Perhaps the lanista will sell him to us,' Brother John offered in a wavering voice.
`What's a lanista?' asked Radoslav and Brother John pointed to the man hauling the chains of the two swordsmen.
Is it that Latin tongue, priest?' asked the ever-curious Radoslay. 'What's it mean?'
It means "trainer",' Brother John answered.
It means dead man,' grunted Finn. He rolled his neck once, twice, then headed straight towards the lanista and his charges.
`We only have eating knives,' I warned, seeing the way the sail was filling. Finn's grin belonged to Hati, the wolf who pursues the moon.
`They have steel,' he answered, nodding at the swordsmen and strolled towards the lanista, who saw the big man coming up and put out a warning hand.
`Stay back, friend.'
I am thinking your two pets look fine but I have laid good silver on them and would like to look at their teeth a while,' said Finn, all smiles, but the lanista never blinked.
`You might also want to make sure of winning,' he answered. `With a thumb of pepper in the eye, perhaps. Won't be the first time someone has tried to nobble one of my fighters, so piss off back into the crowd where you belong.'
`Good advice,' shouted someone from the crowd. 'You're getting in the way-'
Finn elbowed the shouter without even turning round and the man howled, falling away and holding his mashed nose. The lanista looked startled but then Finn booted him right up beyond the hem of his short kilt and the man folded with a strangled whoof of sound, dropping the chains.
The two swordsmen were bewildered at this, while Mashed Nose sprayed blood and curses and showed the damage to his friends, who shot looks at Finn that were uglier than giant Geirrod's grisly daughters.
Finn, however, leaned casually across and gripped the wrist of one of the swordsmen, then plucked the curved Saracen blade from his hand like a honeycomb from a child. He turned, laid the blade against the neck of the second one and Radoslav came up, grinning, and took his sword and the little shield, too.
A couple of the crowd nearest Mashed Nose took three steps forward, then Brother John stepped forward and slammed a fist into the nearest head, knocking the man sideways. The others shied away like flushed plovers but Mashed Nose whipped out a long dagger, blew out bloody snot like some mad, injured bull, then started forward, all hunched neck and scowls.
Brother John smiled at him and held up one hand, palm outward, which stopped Mashed Nose in his tracks. Then he made the cross sign in the air, which made the immediate crowd stare. Finally, he gripped Mashed Nose by the shoulders, as if in a friendly fashion, then drew back his head as if to look at the sky and pray, the way priests do. Everyone looked up.
Brother John raised himself on to his toes and brought his head forward with vicious force. There was a wet smacking
sound and Mashed Nose collapsed in a heap, while Brother John rubbed the red mark on his brow and scooped up the dagger.
'Pax vobiscum,' he declared.
The shouts had brought heads round, a ripple from us outward until it finally reached the hard men who were supposed to keep order. It also reached Botolf and the man holding his chains, so that when Botolf looked up, he saw me heading across the open fighting area.
He blinked. I yelled at him. He blinked again and I cursed him for having the cunning of a tree stump.
The lanista holding his chains hauled out a leather-covered cudgel, for he saw I was unarmed, while two of the hard men came forward, spilling right and left round big Botolf in a way that let me know they had worked together before. It also let me know that I only had an eating knife.
But Botolf had worked it all out now. As Finn and Radoslav moved to take on the hard men and their knives, Botolf cuffed the lanista almost casually, a blow that spilled him his full length. Then, because he was still holding on to the chain, he hauled the groaning man back again as if he was a hooked fish, pulled him up and cuffed him back to the ground again, grinning. Then he did it again as I trotted up. The lanista finally worked matters out and let the chain go.
More hard men appeared; the crowd were shouting. Some were in fact cheering, because they thought this was a novel opening fight, but it would be minutes only before they worked it out and decided to join in.
Radoslav and Finn wasted no time against the hard men: it was short swords and shields against long knives and the not-so-hard men, after a couple of clangs and half-hearted swipes, backed off. I reached Botolf, who had reeled in the lanista yet again.
Orm. . you said you would come. Skafhogg said you were as useful as hen shit on an axe handle but he was wrong, eh?'
`No. .' whimpered the lanista, cowering under the shelter of his flapping hands as I reached for him. I took the keys while he sobbed and bled and bent to unshackle Botolf's ankles, hearing him growl as I did so.
Actually, I felt him growl, such was the force of it. A half-glance over my shoulder told me the two swordsmen had recovered and were howling across the open space towards me, released from their own chains.
