The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 3

by Robert Low

  ‘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 Radoslav.

  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, bentnosed 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 Radoslav. ‘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.

&nb
sp; 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.

  It was such a mistake: I wish I had waited to see Botolf fight them before we’d started in to free him, for there were rocks with more clever in them than those two. It was only when they were within a few steps of him that they suddenly realised that they had no weapons at all and here they were, about to take on a giant armed with a Dane axe.

  Botolf popped the butt end between the eyes of one of them, which slammed him to the ground, where he flopped like a sack of cats. Then he slapped the flat of the axe on the fancy helmet of the other one, proving the lack of worth in that battle-gear, because the blade caught the ornamental crest, snapped the chinstrap and screwed the whole thing sideways, so that the cheek-flap was now over the owner’s nose. Blinded and bloody, the man screamed and stumbled away into Finn, who had chased off his opponent and now stabbed this new one in the thigh.

  ‘Stairs!’ screamed Brother John, pointing, and we all sprinted for them, me bringing up the rear just as the howling crowd surged forward – which at least got them between us and the rest of the better-armed bruisers who were supposed to keep order.

  ‘Keep going! The door,’ I shouted, pointing upwards. A hand grabbed my tunic and I heard it tear, so I whirled and let him have Botolf’s chains, ring-bracelets and all. He fell back, screaming and losing teeth, which made the rest of the crowd think twice about crowding up behind me.

  Ahead, Botolf pitched someone off the gallery and his shriek only ended when he hit the floor below with a meaty smack. Finn hauled me up and past him, turning to threaten the crowds. Something whirled through the air and smashed: an empty wine flask. A coin tinkled on the iron railings and Radoslav grinned.

  ‘We must be good – they’re throwing money—’ He ended in a yelp as another coin smacked his elbow with a vicious sound. ‘Turds – who did that?’

  We were stuck on the stair, I saw, unable to go ahead until Botolf dealt with the armed hard men keeping us from the door. He was too dangerous, with that Dane axe, for them to rush in and tackle but there were too many for Botolf to take on if he left the narrow gallery for the open area round the exit, where they could surround him.

  The crowd below threw curses, jeers and anything they could find. Coins and cheap pottery bowls rained on us and it stopped being funny when Brother John went down with his head bleeding. I helped him up, to the poor shelter under the jut of the inlet valve and took a swift glance at the flap of skin, while the blood poured over his face.

  ‘Morituri te salutant,’ he gasped, which was apt and let me know he still had humour in him. Finn and Radoslav backed up the stairs, their little shields up – though we’d have more chance keeping dry under a fern, for all the use they were.

  Then I heard Radoslav start muttering the chant that would set his Helm of Awe to working and I knew things were desperate but the clash and clatter were a cloud on my thinking. When I had to duck a missile and clonked my skull on the rusted inlet valve I roared with frustration and pain.

  The inlet valve.

  ‘Botolf!’ I shrieked and he risked a half-look over one shoulder and saw me frantically waving for him to come to me.

  ‘Finn … Radoslav …’

  They lumbered off to take his place. Something smashed into fragments and the crowd, seeing the swords disappear, were cautiously coming up the stairs. More coins whirred and rang to the catcalls from the crowd.

  Botolf, a cut on one massive bicep, loomed over me and I pointed to the rusting valve.

  ‘Hit it.’

  Brother John scrambled frantically from under it as Botolf spat on his hands, gripped the Dane axe and whirled it up. A wine bowl bounced off his shoulder and I doubt if he noticed. The axe came down, the boom of it echoing round the brick walls. It smashed the rusting valve open, the axehead snapped off and was whirled away in the great gouting stream of water that spat out, catching Brother John on one arm. It would have torn him away if I hadn’t grabbed the other and the roar of it drowned out everything else.

  The crowd baulked when they saw it arc out, as if Thor himself had decided to take a piss. Then they realised what it meant and went mad with panic.

  Of course, we were first to the door and beat the rush. I found myself shooting out into the empty, cool night air of the amphitheatre, spilling from the dark entrance out into the middle of the dusty circle. Alongside me, one of the hard men, spat out in my wake and on his hands and knees, looked at me, thought better of it, scrambled to his feet and darted off.

  Finn and Brother John came up, then Radoslav and then, ambling carelessly away, the splintered shaft of the Dane axe across both shoulders, came Botolf, grinning and leaking blood. Behind him, spewing from the doorway and shrieking, came the fans of gladiators.

  ‘By Thor’s arse, Orm,’ Bot
olf declared, clapping me happily on the back, so that I was sure I had been driven into the ground, ‘you are a jarl and no mistake. Even if Skafhogg never says it to you, I do, for sure.’

  I doubted if Skafhogg, the old Oathsworn’s grizzled shipwright, would ever count me jarl enough – but, for the moment, I had no care of it. Finn, on the other hand, had something to say.

  ‘You can drown him in drink,’ growled Finn, ‘but somewhere else. You can drown us all in drink, for I lost money on you.’

  I followed them out of the amphitheatre, limping on that old ankle wound, the sound of the chains I dropped behind me lost in the screams of those running from the arena.

  ‘Does this mean I am not a slave?’ I heard Boltolf ask and wished then I had held on to the chains, so I could hit him.

  We came to Skarpheddin’s camp and talked our way past the Watch and up to his great tented hall in the dark, which confused the door-thrall. We had some Odin luck, though, for he was an Irisher known to Brother John from the night before, so it was no trouble for us to pile into the hov with an extra giant and rummage for sleeping space amid the curses of Skarpheddin’s disturbed household.

  Most were snoring in the reek of smoke and meat and mead and sweat, but two were blearily shoving ’tafl pieces round the board and Skarpheddin’s skald was muttering his way through some draupa verse. I looked for Skarpheddin but he was in his lok-rekkja, his curtained bed-space – as was his mother, for which we were all thankful.

  We all sank down in a cleared space, whispering out of politeness and secrecy and all of us wanted to know the one thing right away: where Valgard and the others were.

  Botolf, craning to examine the slash on his bicep, picked at loose flesh and shrugged. ‘We were sitting in Holmgard, waiting for word that Einar and the rest of you were rich,’ he told us. ‘Then word came that the Rus had fought with the Khazars, who had been beaten, and Sarkel had fallen, so we wondered how you had fared, for no word came.’