The Oathsworn Series Books 1 to 3

by Robert Low

  He saw me, knew me. His mouth opened in an O, framed by matted red beard, a roar of challenge I couldn’t hear above the din and he hauled out a seax, slinging his shield on his back. Now with a weapon in either fist, he hurled himself at me from behind the mass of men, all hacking and cursing and slipping and dying in the dirt and blood of the street.

  Botolf was trying to get to him, roaring spittle, but Inger dropped a shoulder and slammed him sideways, which staggered him off-balance, so that Sighvat thought he had a chance and leaped in, slashing.

  I saw it framed neatly in the narrow doorway like an ikon painting. Inger took the blow on that byrnie-biter spear of his, half turned on the run and sliced with the seax, so that I saw the spray of blood arc out from Sighvat’s throat as his head was flung back.

  I shrieked then, howled like a dog as Sighvat vanished into the maw of the fighting, tumbling backwards.

  Inger was still running as I headed for the narrow entrance, but he was faster and stronger and I was dead, for sure, against that vicious byrnie-biter spear. The thought of it melted my bowels and I skidded to a halt, frozen, shieldless. Doomed.

  He knew it, was screeching his triumph as he pounded through the doorway, the byrnie-biter up like a cavalry lance, aimed right at my chest and looking like a ship’s mast as it hurtled down on me.

  Then the shield on his back slammed into the doorposts, too wide to pass.

  Even as the strap fastening it to his back snapped his legs flew out from underneath him, dumping him hard on his arse. The byrnie-biter flew in the air, turning end over end, right over my head and clattered to the mosaic floor, bouncing and scattering blood-fat flies into the air.

  I stepped forward, raised my sword and swung. Just the last three or four inches caught him on the forehead, above the right eye, splitting his skull like a rumman fruit, even as he blinked away the dust and whirling stars and realised what had happened to him.

  He had time, I was thinking afterwards, to see the edge of that wave-patterned blade come down on him, the new oil on it running with the colours of Bifrost. I did not care what he felt, only that he was dead. He wore Starkad’s gilt-edged dagged mail, so I knew who had done the blood-eagling.

  ‘I got your message,’ I said to his splintered face, then stepped over him and out into the hazed dust and the bodies and dark shapes, looming like ships in fog. Steel flashed; there was the wet sound of edge on flesh.

  Botolf loomed like the Cliff of Ziz, holding up one hand as he saw me drop into fighting stance. I relaxed; the fight seemed over.

  ‘We would not be standing if they had not arrived,’ panted Botolf, jerking his beard in the general direction of the Dead Sea. I looked up in time to see, through a swirl of red-gold dust, a magnificent figure on a white horse that was all arched neck and proud tail. One hand held a riding whip, the other peeled off a plumed helmet – the only armour he wore – to reveal a shaved head, and a young, sweat-streaked, bearded face, smiling with dazzling teeth.

  He wore a white jubba over a long full tunic and the trader in me recognised satin from the Great City and that his cloak was hemmed with golden Arabic squiggle-writing and he smelled of aloes, even through the stink of shit and dust and death.

  ‘I am the Bilal al-Jamil ibn Nidal ibn Abdulaziz al-Mişrī,’ he declared. ‘If you do not have a letter I have been told of, make your peace with whatever gods you worship.’

  I fumbled like a sleepwalker in my pouch and fished out the governor’s crumpled, stained letter, then bowed, which seemed only right in the circumstances. He plucked it, smoothed it, read it, then handed it back to me with a small smile, raised the whip in salute, wheeled that magnificent horse round and pranced off the way he had come.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ demanded Finn, lumbering up, sword out and shield scarred with fresh marks.

  ‘Our saviour,’ I said, still bewildered.

  ‘So be nice,’ added Botolf with a grim chuckle. Finn laughed back, just as savagely, and ruffled the Goat Boy’s dust-matted hair. His young laugh was high and shrill and ended on a rack of coughing. Everyone joined in the laughter, even me. The mad relief of survivors.

  Then Kvasir stuck his one eye into it and brought us back to the now. ‘Ten dead, six wounded,’ he said to me, flat and grim as an altar stone. ‘Sighvat is one of the dead. We found Gardi and Hedin Flayer out in the bean fields, gutted and stripped.’

  Botolf let out a long, weary groan and Finn flung his head back and howled like a sick dog until Kvasir shook him out of it.

  ‘It would have been more if those Sarakenoi had not come up,’ he said, taking Finn’s bowed head on one shoulder. ‘Old Ahmad here says their leader is commander of the garrison at En Gedi.’

  I saw the haunted-cheeked leader of the community hovering in the background and he inclined his head in a stiff little bow, then went off as his people flooded back in to reclaim their village.

  Sighvat lay on his back with two grins, one a wistful affair from cheek to cheek, the second a lipless grimace from ear to ear. The blood had pooled to muddy slush under his head.

  ‘That magpie had the right of it after all,’ said Short Eldgrim morosely. ‘His doom was on him.’

  ‘At least that Inger was killed for it,’ Botolf growled, coming out from the ruined church and hefting the byrnie-biter in one massive fist. ‘We can put him at the feet of Sighvat and the others.’

  Which we did, making a good boatgrave a little way outside the village, helped by the villagers themselves. We howed Sighvat up with Gardi and Hedin Flayer, Oski, Arnfinn, Thorstein Blue Shirt, Thord, Otkel, Karlsefni and Hrolf the Dane woodworker, all washed and laid out neat and clean, with their weapons and mail and Inger at their feet, as was right.

  We added Starkad and what was left of his men, picking our way through the ravaged fields and irrigation ditches to find them.

  Kleggi, black-browed at the death of Hrolf the woodworker, was sure these men would be dug up as soon as we had left, for we had buried them with their mail and swords, but Ahmad looked so astounded and shocked when the Goat Boy told him this that I believed they would rest quietly.

  We slumped down in the lee of the ruined church for the night – no one wanted to go in it, for it still stank of blood and death, even after the weary villagers had collected the dead brigands and buried them somewhere else.

  For all that they were going hungry themselves, Ahmad and the others did their best, bringing what had been scavenged from the fields, but it was poor stuff. However, that and our own meagre provisions allowed us to eat and we tried to ignore the cooking smells from the Sarakenoi camp nearby.

  ‘We took a sore dunt today,’ Kvasir said and everyone hunkered round the fire, morose as crows in the red glow, growled agreement.

  ‘Sorer for some than others,’ grumbled Botolf, two ounces of hacksilver lighter after his bet with Kvasir – but even Kvasir was not grinning at his win.

  ‘There is worse to come,’ I said and that fell on stony silence, so I closed my teeth on it and stared into the flames, brooding on what had happened to Martin – vanished during the fighting – and his holy spear and the serpent sabre. Neither had been found on Inger or anywhere nearby and the only prize taken was from Inger: he wore Starkad’s jarl neckring as well as his dagged mail and so I had what Jarl Brand wanted. Whether it was worth all the dead was another matter.

  Two sarkenoi loomed out of the dark, fully armed and armoured, to invite me to speak with Bilal al-Jamil ibn Nidal ibn Abdulaziz al-Mişrī. I almost sprang up with the relief of getting away from the fire and the despair that hunkered at it, signalling the Goat Boy to come with me; on the way he told me that this Bilal al-Jamil’s name meant ‘Father of Salim, Bilal the beautiful, son of Nidal, son of Abdul the Magnificent, the Egyptian’.

  ‘But you may call him Lord,’ he added pointedly, when I grumbled about constantly filling my mouth with so much name.

  This Bilal al-Jamil had a brilliant gold and white tent, blazing with lanterns and
carpets and tables and cushions. He ushered me and the Goat Boy to sit and, aware of the dust and blood and worse that stained me, I almost refused.

  ‘You are Orm,’ said Bilal al-Jamil, in Greek and almost without accent. ‘Al-Quds sent word you were pursuing brigands who have been a plague for some weeks now. At least we were able to dispatch some – about thirty in the end, including kinsman of yours, I understand.’

  ‘No kinsman,’ I answered hastily. ‘From the north like us, but not a kinsman. We thought him a prisoner of these brigands, but it seems he was leading them.’

  Bilal al-Jamil frowned while a silent, padding slave offered suitable nabidh in silver cups and sugared nuts, which the Goat Boy crammed until his cheeks bulged.

  ‘Not the leader,’ he said with a dismissive wave. ‘A captain, not a general. Not the Dark Hearted One. That one has taken all the foodstuffs he has raided from here back to his lair with the bulk of his forces, some three hundred men.’

  He made a grimace of distaste. ‘They are eaters of their own dead,’ he confided, as if it had been a mystery to me. Then he smiled, that dazzling, open, happy smile you see on madmen and drunks ‘But we will beard him in his lair, this Qualb al-Kuhl, you and I.’

  I choked on my nabidh. I had thought the affair done with and now this. As far as I could see, this Amir had a small unit of horsemen, what the sarakenoi call a saqa, plus some foot soldiers. Together, he had a hundred men at best and there were a handful of Oathsworn left, no more. I wanted to tell him to go fuck a goat, that I would be lucky to get the Oathsworn to stay together until tomorrow, never mind march off to the gods knew where and take on too many enemies.

  Instead, I wiped my lips and managed to ask where the Dark-Hearted One had his lair.

  Bilal al-Jamil smiled happily. ‘Masada,’ he declared airily, ‘not far from En Gedi.’

  SIXTEEN

  It was, as Finn said, Hel’s privy and a suitable place for a baby-killer like old Herod. His grasp of the Christ Gospel sagas was loose, but he had the right of it for all that.

  A flat-topped camel-dropping, the mountain of Masada was a dung-coloured horror slashed with the white of Old Roman camps and the great spillway of the ramp they had made to get to the top was a waterfall of scree.

  The ramparts were crumbling, but it was a sheer cliff, high enough to be seen from En Gedi, so they didn’t have to be in good repair. Even climbing that old ramp would take half an hour and, in the merciless sun and under a hail of arrows and rocks, it would be a bloody killing ground.

  ‘Then we will attack at night,’ declared al-Mişrī. I wiped sweat from my face and looked at his troops: Bathili from Egypt, the blue-black Masmoudi, some local Bedu. Only the Masmoudi were footsoldiers, wearing robes and turbans, armed with shield, spear and bow, and they couldn’t find their own pricks in daylight, never mind climb a mountain at night.

  There was another way up, for I had asked that. It was called the Serpent Path – and there was Odin’s hand, right there – round to the north and east of that great ship-prowed fortress-mountain. Bad enough in daylight, it was a narrow place where one good man could hold off hundreds. At night it would be easier to close with any guards, but treacherous to climb – worse still, the defenders had blocked off the last part of it, according to scouts al-Mişrī had sent out.

  ‘The only way up is climbing a cliff the height of ten men,’ they had reported.

  Finn looked at me and I looked at Kvasir and my heart shrank as my bowels twisted.

  ‘Piece of piss to a boy who hunted gull eggs in Bjornshafen,’ Finn growled cheerfully, clapping me on the back.

  ‘If you see that child, let me know,’ I answered bitterly. ‘Perhaps you may like to ask him if he has ever done such a thing in the dark, on a strange cliff in a foreign country.’

  But I already knew it had to be done, had suspected my wyrd was on me from the moment the Goat Boy had come to the quiet fire beside me in En Gedi and, with one simple question, ripped the veil from the face of truth.

  En Gedi, when we came to it, was a Dead Sea jewel in that land of wasted folds of tan and salt-white hills, a place of feathered palms and – wonder of wonder – waterfalls. We simply stood, faces raised like dying plants to have the mirr on our cheeks and dreams of ships and sea and wrack-strewn strand circling in our heads like gulls.

  We were honoured guests of al-Kunis, but settled in cool tents outside the towers and fortress built to protect the balsam fields, whose plants soaked the air with scent. Our host was too wise a commander to allow the likes of us inside his walls.

  We lit fires and soft-footed thralls brought food in bowls – such food. Mutton and lamb and young doves, cooked in saffron and limon and coriander, with rosewater and murri naqi. We ate with fingers, stuffed ourselves and belched through greasy beards.

  For two days we lived like this, repairing gear and sharpening edges, braiding ourselves back together like a frayed ship’s line.

  We swam in the waterfall pool, while the black-shawled women who came with jars for water shrieked at our nakedness and scuttled away, hiding their faces in their hands – and peeping, giggling, through their fingers. There were even women we could touch, sent by al-Mişrī, whom everyone agreed was as fine a jarl as any open-handed Northman. If any had worked out that it was because he needed us to kill ourselves on his behalf, no one spoke it aloud.

  On the night before we were to march to Masada, while the insects whirred and flicked round the fire, I sat and listened, half lost and yet – Einar would have been proud – feeling out the Oathsworn’s mood.

  Someone was playing a pipe, going through the notes rather than playing a tune. Finn was trying to make scripilita out of the local flatbread, arguing with Botolf about when he was going to get the rest of his money for being right about Inger. Kvasir and Hlenni, whom they called Brimill – Seal – because he slicked back his hair with scented oil, were playing ’tafl and arguing because it was really too dark to see.

  And Kleggi was sitting with the Goat Boy near the prone figure of Short Eldgrim, who had taken a sword hilt to his temple and was one of the six wounded we had and the worst of them, too.

  At first it had seemed just a blow to the head and he had got up from it, staggering and rubbing the blood away, grinning. He had hoiked up his belly an hour later and an hour after that had folded up like an old tent and stayed that way, his breathing so hard I could hear the snore of it from where I sat.

  I would leave him here, together with Red Njal and Thorstein Cod Biter, the one with his thigh laid open, the other missing two toes off his left foot. I hoped they would keep Short Eldgrim alive for us to find on the way back. If we came back.

  Then the Goat Boy loped over and plunked down beside me, greasy-grinned and chewing Finn’s efforts. Goat Boy, as everyone agreed, was the perfect name for him, for he ate anything and everything and all the time.

  ‘How is it?’ I asked and he nodded, cheek bulging, frantically chewed and swallowed so he could speak.

  ‘Good. Almost as good as the ones in Larnaca.’

  ‘Ah, wait until you taste it in Miklagard,’ I said to him and he grinned brightly and chewed for a moment.

  Then he said: ‘Will Short Eldgrim die?’

  I shrugged. ‘Odin knows. By that snoring, though, he is sleeping only. He will be awake by the time we get back.’

  More chewing. Then he said: ‘If he does die, can we wash him? Not the women?’

  I blinked at that and agreed we could. His smile was relieved.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘I should think Short Eldgrim, even dead, would like to be washed by women.’

  The Goat Boy wrinkled his nose. He knew what I spoke of, but girls were creatures who got in the way and women were worse, always wanting to comb his tangled hair.

  ‘They laugh,’ he said. ‘I heard them when they washed the red-haired man.’

  ‘Well,’ I offered, only half listening, ‘he was their enemy.’ He had, I thought, probably sent them screaming and
running and had maybe thrown at least one on her back.

  The Goat Boy knew what I meant; he knew us well by now. He shook his head, swallowed the last of his scripilita and looked at me with those dark, cat-stare eyes. ‘They laughed because he had no … no … nothing,’ he said and grabbed his crotch. ‘Does Short Eldgrim have a pisser, Trader?’

  The night air was suddenly blade cold, enough to creep my flesh. ‘What?’

  He heard the change in my tone and grew uneasy at it, wary and silent.

  ‘What about Inger?’ I demanded, more fiercely than I had intended, and he blinked and shrank. I took a breath and smiled. Asked him again, gently.

  ‘When they stripped him, he had no pisser. The women laughed and said he was no man. Had no balls, nor pizzle.’

  I was dry-mouthed and silent, thoughts tumbling like water down the falls. No balls. No pisser. Cut.

  And then the other thought that had nagged me crept in and grinned with wolf teeth, making a mockery of all, leaving me stunned and silent and lost.

  I was still lost when we were standing under the dawn-smeared night at the top of the Serpent Path, rope coiled round me and the rest of the Oathsworn hunkered down, watching, pale and grim in the blue shadows.

  ‘Easy as shinning up a mast,’ growled Finn, mistaking my silence for worry about the climb. He looked even more worried when I didn’t tell him to go fuck his mother or something like it, but he clapped a hand on my shoulder after a moment and both of us looked up at the wall of it, which seemed to tower into the dawn.

  It wasn’t the climb that bothered me but what I would find at the top. What I could not – dare not – tell the others, though they would have to know soon.

  The first four feet went well enough and the night wind hissed puffs of dust from under my handholds, which was a sign I did not miss. This was no black sea-rock, slick with spray and gull shit, where terns screamed at you and puffins whirred out of their secret holes into your face – that I knew well enough. This was dry and crumbling and treacherous with dust.