by Robert Low
They let me see Halfred before they turned me out of the tower, escorting me to a small, heat-drenched room where he lay on a cot, rolling with sweat yet in no real discomfort, for they had expertly treated his broken leg and even given him something for the pain — after they had inflicted enough for him to tell all he knew.
`So,' I said to him as he turned his face, pallid beneath the wind-blast and tan, the eyes flat and grey as a summer sea, one still looking over my shoulder while the other looked at my face.
Indeed so,' he answered and sighed. 'It seems my luck has flowed away from me. Loki luck, mine. I had hopes of going home with something to show.'
`What did Balantes promise you and why?' I asked, hunkering down beside him, for there was no other furniture in that place.
A hundred ounces of silver,' he answered. About the price of thirty milch cows. He saw the look on my face and rasped a bitter chuckle. 'I know, not much to think on now But then I had just spent five years in a stone quarry, so it seemed a good price for killing someone. Anyway, it was only to be done when you showed that you would double-deal the Greeks and steal that leather pouch rather than deliver it as arranged.'
An age away. I remembered us on the beach, backing under cover of shields towards the Elk and the arrows smacking my shield from behind. Now I knew where they had come from and shivered at how close he had come to succeeding. Odin, it seems, prized me still, if only to keep around to taunt.
`You.took your time over it,' I said.
He shrugged. 'I tried once or twice,' he grunted with a twisted smile and I remembered him at Kato Lefkara, his bow strung, arrow nocked and a look on his face like a boy caught in the winter store with honey round his mouth.
Once we had escaped Balantes I actually thought it a good thing and that you would lead us all to this treasure hoard we heard about,' he went on. 'So I decided to let you live.'
`Generous,' I replied. 'Should I thank you now?'
He ignored it and went on. 'I was even prepared to stick by you in that fight we had near Aleppo. I did quite well out of it, though that Saracen woman was either not the princess claimed, or one who had less than regal habits, for my balls itched ever afterwards.'
We both grinned at the memory, though my throat was gripped with the waste of it all.
`Then it was clear you were not going after treasure and it seemed to me we were all wyrded to die in this oven of a country,' he sighed. 'People in Red Boots's camp wanted you dead, even after you had handed back that leather container. I agreed that it was a good idea, but even so. . the tales of all that silver were good ones. In the end, though, I thought them just that: tales. I was to go back to Cyprus and Balantes for payment once you were dead and thought that a much better arrangement.'
More than likely, I thought to myself, you'd have ended up back in the stone quarry, but blind this time.
It came to me also that to do all this would have taken more than him alone but when I put it to him, he shook his head.
`No names from me. I will take that to the grave.'
`You will,' I answered, more bitter than I had intended to show, 'for I can't help you. Are there any at home you wish to know of your death?'
He shook his head. 'If this is my wyrd, that's what the Norns weave, but it is not a good saga to leave to loved ones,' he replied. 'I am sorry about the priest though.'
I nodded, feeling a wave of desperate sympathy, remembering all the better times. Then he scattered that to the winds with his next words.
`Not because I liked the little arse,' he said moodily, 'but I have broken my oath to Odin and suspect the only gold I will see will be the coating on the Gjallar bridge on my way to Helheim. Since I have also killed this priest, I won't get into the Christ halls, either.'
That was too much and I got up and stepped away from him in disgust. 'I shall remind the jarl of this place to put your head on your thigh, then,' I answered harshly from the door. 'He isn't going to want your fetch hanging round like a bad smell any more than I want it hagging me until I quit this country.'
`Fuck you, boy. I wish I had killed you instead.'
`You should have shut that squint eye when aiming,' I said and left him — but the black dog of it followed after me all the way back to the others: the dark despair of knowing he had broken his oath and that others with him had done the same, and the emptiness where Brother John had been.
Now the Oathsworn were fractured and what was left no more real than a painting of marble done on wood.
That same black dog padded out of the gate in the south wall of Jerusalem with us, the one they call the Dung Gate since it is where they cart out the city's shit and the joke wasn't lost on us and fed the dog more bile.
It slouched along with us for two days, to this huddle of white buildings served by a handful of priests, who took the ripe body of Brother John with reverence.
Now Abbot Dudo, his homilies spent, moved quietly off and left Finn and Kvasir and me to move into the shade and squat. Our one camel and the couple of mules I had bought were listlessly chewing fodder, standing hipshot under an awning. Even the flies were quiet, slow and lazy, hardly bothering Kvasir as he ate a fruit the monks called golden apples, putting the peel in his helmet.
Like me, he had never tasted one until yesterday and now he could not get enough of them. According to Dudo, the Old Romans believed they were brought to Italy by the daughter of a god called Atlas, who crossed the sea from the land of the Blue Men in a giant shell.
Another strange thing in this strange land. From where I sat, I could see over the long white scar of the road across the wash of green and gold fields south of Jorsalir to the ochre and tan wastes where, it seemed, we would have to go. Kvasir finished peeling the fruit and stuffed a section into his beard, where only he knew his mouth lurked.
`They want a Thing of it,' Finn said, stirring the dust with one finger. Tor the Hookeye matter.'
`Who wants a Thing of it?' I demanded sullenly. 'The ones who shared the secret with him?'
Kvasir frowned at that and Finn looked awkward.
It is only right, after all,' he said. 'Short Eldgrim thinks so. And Thorstein Blaserk — he is one of our lot, Orm, and he thinks so.'
`Thorstein Blue Shirt is a droop-lipped coal-eater,' observed Kvasir and we all nodded at that. Not the sharpest seax in the sheath was Thorstein.
So if even he saw the right of it, argued Finn. .
I sighed, for there was no going back from what happened. The Oathsworn were shattered. Those who weren't being eaten or gelded were lurching along with oarmates they could no longer trust because they had broken their oaths and were too nithing to admit it.
Inside, I was feeling a rising excitement that perhaps, at last, Odin had broken us and, tired of the affair, had gone off to annoy the new dead, or taunt bound Loki. All that remained was to survive.
Sighvat came over to us, having been in deep conversation with the priests. I had thought he was trying to find ways of avoiding his wyrd by using the Christ, for he had been braiding his eyebrows over the matter for long enough.
Now he loped over the sun-seared earth between the white buildings and squatted in the shade next to us.
Finn offered him a grubby slice of fruit and he took it, which was an encouraging sign, for he had been listless over his feed of late.
`Martin the monk was here and gone, only four days ago,' Sighvat said. `Starkad came with about fifteen men. Dudo remembers him well, says our Starkad was deeply troubled and cannot sleep at night for dreams.
He left here two days ago heading south after Martin. No one knows where the monk is going, but even Dudo was impressed by our Martin and says he has the look of a very holy man, probably destined to be a hermit, or a pole-sitter.'
No one said anything, for the way south stretched like a Muspell nightmare and I knew we all thought the same thing: who would follow me down that road from here?
The sun wheeled on. Birds flared up, flashing black and white,
from the complicated network of irrigation canals, hunting insects before night fell. The air seemed brittle and thin, oddness flickered at the edge of my vision, half-seen whorls of dust and half-heard voices from the empty spaces of the desert.
The Oathsworn came, lighting torches for the bigger insects to sizzle into, gathering silently and slowly like the grim dead round the pitfire Finn had made. It was chill on top of this hill, but the fire seemed excessive to me and I wondered what he thought he was going to cook on it. We were eating boiled vegetables and gritty flatbread and unlikely to get meat from these lean monks.
It turned out to be Kleggi and Hrolf the Dane carpenter who had something to say, urged forward by Kvasir to stand in front of me, twisting the ends of their belts like boys caught with tunics full of stolen apples.
It is this way,' said Kleggi, apologetically. `Halfred Hookeye was kin, you see, and we are thinking that compensation is in order.'
`Why?' I asked, sullen and unwilling to make the road smooth for them.
Hrolf looked at Kleggi and then at me. 'Well, he is surely dead, because you left him with the Sarakenoi to be hung in a cage and stoned, which is a straw death and so twice as bad.'
`He killed Brother John,' I pointed out, astonished at this. And a woman. And wanted to kill me.'
`Murder, as it was,' Finn pointed out, 'since it was dark and unannounced. Nor did he cover the body.'
There was general agreement over this, but Kleggi and Hrolf were still unwilling to let it go, arguing that there was no proof Hookeye had done it, even if I had chased him off the roof, where he might have been innocently taking the night air, or chasing the real culprit. And anyway, the woman was a whore, probably a thrall, and so did not count. They wanted to say that Brother John was only a Christ priest and so did not count either, but even they knew how the old Oathsworn had revered the priest and did not dare go that far.
Most of the others shifted uncomfortably at what they did say, which was a step too far for most — even Kvasir who, it was clear to me, was unhappy that Hookeye had been left with the Sarakenoi, though he seemed to think it was their fault and not mine.
`So you think it was not murder? If a thing looks like a duck, makes a noise like a duck and walks like a duck, chances are it is not a chicken,' I told them. 'Besides, he confessed it.'
I looked them over hard as I told them this and that he had planned to return to Balantes on Cyprus and what he had been promised for it all. 'Nor was he alone in this,' I ended and watched the alarm crawl over their faces.
I had an idea they were the ones Hookeye had dragged into his scheme, but thought it unlikely he had told them much about what he would do, so that these events were a nasty shock to them. Now they heard the ice they walked on creaking.
`This means that he and those he spoke with broke their oath,' I pointed out and they now stood there feeling the lance-eyes of all the others, who sat behind them.
Then I shrugged. 'If he has kin who will not see it this way, I would rather have the matter settled, but we have no Law Speaker or summoning days or jury panel here, so it is a rough Thing at best. However, if you will allow Sighvat to justify on this, we can fix it all this night.'
Trapped, they could only nod, for Sighvat, everyone agreed later, was a deep-thinking choice, not only because he was clearly a full-cunning man, a volva of some strength, but his doom was on him, so there was no point in him grinding any new axes, as they say.
I had reasoned all this out and thought myself double-clever for it. As they say: if you want to hear the sound of gods laughing, all you need do is tell them your plans.
`Having reduced himself to a nithing by killing a Christ priest and breaking an Odin-oath,' Sighvat said,
'then Hookeye is worth no more than a new thrall, it seems to me. I set his death at twelve ounces of silver.'
Twelve ounces: the weight of a jarl torc. I wondered if there was more in that than there seemed, but faces were bland when I studied them.
The price was even better than I'd hoped, for Kleggi and Hrolf were too aware of what continued refusal would signify to the others — that they had been in the plot with Hookeye. I had no idea whether they were or not, but if it healed this widening breach I'd be happy. That way, I was thinking, we could all part, if not as friends, at least not as enemies.
`Just so,' added Sighvat. 'This must now be ratified and sanctioned by the gods, so a sacrifice must be made to Odin by Orm, who is godi here. I say a mule, which is as close to a good horse as we will get here.'
I bit my lip at that, for we needed the mule, but I nodded. So did Kleggi and Hrolf.
`Then we can all swear our Oath anew,' Sighvat said cheerfully, 'in case Orm is right and Hookeye managed to induce others to tempt Odin's anger.'
Then I saw Short Eldgrim, Finn and Kvasir nodding and smiling and suddenly realised why the long firepit had been dug and what they had planned to cook on it.
They had conspired this on their own and it was cunning, right enough. As Finn said later, mild as summer, I would have done it myself had I not been grieving for Brother John. That made me ashamed, for I was not grieving — I was blinded by the lamb-leaping idea that, at last, the Oath was broken and I was free of them all.
Now I had to sit and smile while Finn winked at me and rubbed his hands with glee at how their little scheme had saved the day.
The mule was duly dragged out and I, as godi, said suitable dedication words. The monks were outraged and started to demand that we quit the place but a few growls and waved weapons sent them scurrying. Finn had the mule's head off, neat as snipping an ear of corn, and, in the red-glowed dark, with the stink of fresh blood in our nostrils, we all intoned the Odin-oath once again.
We swear to be brothers to each other, bone, blood and steel. On Gungnir, Odin's spear, we swear, may he curse us to the Nine Realms and beyond if we break this faith, one to another.
Every word was a great Roman nail driven into me.
Hedin Flayer butchered the beast and Finn started to cook it while the rest of us trooped over, in packs and singly, to the church. The torchlight flickered on the little coloured tiles that made a picture of some robed, winged man with a bright sword and one of those gold circles round his head and I marvelled at all that work for something you walked on.
We let Dudo intone the Christ words, while Brother John lay on a stone table, wrapped in linen strips so that he was just a bundle with candles at his head and feet. At the end of it, when Dudo made the cross-sign in the air and said, 'Pax vobiscum,' I heard a sob and found the Goat Boy, wiping tears into a damp sleeve.
`He is in heaven now,' he hiccuped. I hoped so, but it was the pax vobiscum that had crashed the whole thing on me. Somehow, the thought of never hearing Brother John spout Latin made him more dead than before. Botolf laid one of his ham-hock hands on the boy's head and patted it with surprising gentleness.
What with that and the weight of the rune serpents — both round my jarl torc and down that cursed sabre
— curling tight on my throat and twice as heavy, it seemed, to me, I could not choke much of the mule down.
I was surprised to see others were as off their feed as I was; the death of Brother John had affected us all more than anyone had thought it would.
In the end, we passed platters of it to the monks and, for all they wrinkled their noses at the 'pagan rites', they were too drool-mouthed to turn down meat after a long diet of boiled vegetables. They had a long discussion about whether a mule was a horse or not and the smell made them vote in favour of not, so they fell on it as the insects whined and fluttered.
But Kvasir kept the mule's head and spent the night huddled with Short Eldgrim, who knew his runes, carving great serpent skeins of them on a spear-shaft, winding from spearhead to butt, squinting into the fading embers of the pitfire. I watched him uneasily until my eyes slowly drooped to sleep.
In a charcoal land split by a ribbon of water blacker than old iron, black as a blind man's eyes, I s
aw the dust of that place whirl like a jinni of raven feathers and there was no noise to it. I stood while the river flowed without sound and, on the other side, gathering silent as a murder of crows, came dark figures with pale faces: all the dead I had known.
There was Eyvind and Einar and Skapti Halftroll, still with his mouthful of spear. There was Pinleg and I felt a pang at that for we had always said that, because we did not actually see him die, perhaps he had not been hacked down, surrounded and outnumbered and berserking.
Then Hookeye appeared at my side, climbing into a boat which had not been there before. He looked at me, his head canted to one side so that I could see the great blue bruise round his neck. I knew — and didn't know how I knew — that he had shoved his head between the bars of his cage and broken his own neck.
`Did it hurt?' I asked.
`Not as much as it will,' he answered, sitting down in the boat. It moved off, spray rising from it and soaking my face, blinding me as if with tears, so that I could not be sure I saw someone limp to the front of that throng on the other side of the river and stare at me with a face I knew.
A pale face on a pale man with pale hair. And no runesword.
I woke to see the Goat Boy and Botolf standing over me, the boy with one hand still dripping from where he had sprinkled me with water.
`You were dreaming of Starkad,' Botolf growled. 'Still, makes a change from that Hild creature.'
I struggled up, feeling the sweat cool on me. Odin's balls, did everyone know my dreams? Did they form above my head, then, like reflections in a still pool?
`That would be interesting,' chuckled Kvasir when I grumbled this out, 'but the truth is simpler: dream silently.'
It was dark, with a moon too like one of those pale faces from the dream for my comfort and a great wheel of stars, so vast a frosting that it shrank everyone beneath it.
If that should fall. .' Kvasir mused, looking up from where he was wrapping the head of the mule in sacking. I knew what he meant; it was like crawling through a tunnel and feeling the weight of the rock press on you. After the dream, the whole world seemed skittish and hair-raising with strangeness.
