all craned to see. Sure enough, there it was, a sliver of dark against the damp pewter sky. Gizur looked at me questioningly and I looked at the sky in reply. We had, perhaps, four hours of good daylight and would be on the land in one. I signalled to him and we slipped the sail up a knot, so that the Volchok surged a little harder.
‘What do you think, Trader?’ asked Sighvat.
‘Your Odin pet was a strong flier,’ I told him, then turned to the rest of the crew who were off-watch and told them to break out weapons and shields. Sighvat crooned softly to one of the two birds he had left and stroked its glossy black head. It looked at me with a cold, hard eye, showing me the black cave of its mouth in an ugly hiss.
Men checked straps and edges, faces like stones. Twelve of us, all that was left of the Oathsworn here, which was just enough to crowd the knarr and not enough for a shieldwall. I wondered how many Arab sea-raiders there were and must have said it aloud.
‘Pirates,’ growled Radoslav and spat over the side. ‘Nikephoras Phokas drove the burnous-wearing shits out of Crete about five years ago, but the survivors took to the other islands and are now like ticks on an old bitch. Sooner or later, the Great City will have to do something, for attacks on merchants are becoming too frequent.’
‘They might scare Greeks,’ growled Finn, ‘but they haven’t met us yet. Now we are raiders of the sea, not just some goat-worriers in a boat.’
Radoslav nodded thoughtfully. ‘Those goat-worriers forced the Basileus to use hundreds of ships and Greek Fire to stamp them out of Crete. Took him a year.’
Finn grinned and wiped his mouth. ‘There’s too much Slav in you and not enough good Norse blood. Eh, Spittle?’ Kvasir growled something which no one heard clearly, but Finn beamed. ‘The Basileus should have used us,’ he boasted, slapping his chest. ‘Our steel and Orm’s thinking.’
My thinking was simple enough, arrived at after a Thing held on board as we reached the island, saw the lights and moved round to the other side of it, where we land-fastened the Volchok.
No one was left aboard, for we needed every man, but I had explained a plan to them that they thought cunning enough to agree on. Everyone was eager as hunting dogs for this, sure that we had Starkad cornered and that the secret of Atil’s silver howe would be back in our grasp before long.
Save me. I knew Starkad was not here. No pack of Arab dogs would have had such an easy time of it if he had been aboard the knarr. They were his men, right enough – but where he was remained a mystery, though I was sure he was heading in the right direction in another fat knarr. He could even be lurking somewhere close, out on the black, moon-glittered sea.
Short Eldgrim and Arnor and two others circled round to the left, carrying the dead men we had fished out of that sea. Brother John had insisted on this, to give them a decent burial rather than leave them to Ran, wife of Aegir the sea god and mother to the drowned. I had agreed, but not because of his Christ sensibilities; I had thought of a better task for them.
The men came back, all save Arnor. Short Eldgrim was still chuckling.
‘All is ready,’ he grunted. ‘When we see the camel-humpers move, Trader, we should rush them.’
The low wailing started almost as soon as he had finished speaking. Heads came up; mouths stopped chewing.
It was a good howl, one of Arnor’s finest: he was noted for being the very man you needed in a northern fog up a Hordaland fjord, with a voice to bounce off cliffs. I settled my shield and hefted my axe, good weapons and cheap enough for us all to afford from my vanishing store of silver. I checked a strap and tried not to let the dry-spear in my throat choke me; no matter how often I did this, my guts turned to water, yet everything else dried up and shrank.
A man stood up, shouted and two more gathered up weapons – swords curved like a half-moon and short bows like those of the steppe tribes, only smaller – and moved off. I marked the shouter, with his black, flowing robes and curling locks, as the leader.
There was a pause. Another wolf-howl wail split the night.
‘Get ready,’ I said.
The men came running back, shouting and waving. I knew what they had found: the naked bodies of the two they had left far behind in the water, dead, were now at the edge of town, seemingly wailing. I learned later that Short Eldgrim had come upon two tethered donkeys and had added a touch of his own, by strapping the men to their backs using tunic belts. Now the donkeys were braying, not at all happy with their loads, and trailing the fleeing men down the street, hoping to be unloaded of the stinking, leaking burdens.
The effect was better than I could have hoped. I had thought only to create some unease and confusion, but the sight of dead men, seemingly charging them on horseback, set all the Arabs shouting and screaming.
At which point I rose up and broke into a dead run towards the fire, yelling.
‘Fram! Fram! Odinsmenn, Kristmenn!’ bawled Brother John, and the whole pack of us, lumbering like bulls, roaring into the face of our fear, hurtled in a stumbling run down the slope, through the huddle of ramshackle houses and into the confusion of those milling round the fire.
Radoslav, who had crashed his way into the lead, suddenly leaped in the air and it was only when my knees hit something that pitched me face-first to the ground that I realised he had hurdled a rickety fence I hadn’t spotted.
I sprawled, skidding along on the shield and wrenching that arm. Cursing, my knees burning, I scrambled up and saw Finn and Short Eldgrim, axe and spear together, stab and cut their way into the pack, with the others howling in behind.
Kol Fish-hook took a rushing Arab on his shield and casually shouldered him sideways into the spear-path of his oarmate, Bergthor, whose point caught the Arab under the breastbone. Kol then slammed another one into the fire and his robes caught, so that he stumbled around, shrieking and flailing, spraying flames and panic.
The Arabs broke and scattered, Black Robe shouting at them. A few heard him and followed, back across the square to the white-painted church, a solid, domed affair that glowed pink in the firelight.
About six of them got in and thundered the wooden double doors shut before anyone could stop them and I cursed, for everyone was too busy killing and looting the others to bother with that.
I limped into the firelight, saw that the knees of my breeks were tattered and bloodstained. Sighvat came up, saw me looking and peered closely.
‘Wounded, Trader?’ he asked and grinned as I scowled back. Some jarl, looking at his skinned knees like some bare-legged, snot-nosed toddler.
‘We have to get them out of there,’ I said, pointing to the church.
He considered it, seeing the stout timbers and the studded nail-heads, then said: ‘It will burn, I am thinking.’
‘It will also burn everything inside it, including what we want,’ I replied. ‘I will be pleased to find that all the battle-gear and plunder is somewhere else – but that’s where I would put it.’
‘Just so,’ mused Sighvat, peeling off his leather helm and scrubbing his head. Screams and groans came from the darkness beyond the fire.
‘You should know, Orm,’ said Brother John, panting up like an overworked sheepdog, ‘that we need not worry about what to do with Starkad’s men.’
He jerked his head at a building behind him, a place with solid walls and one door, which looked to have once been the hov of a leather-worker, judging by the litter around it.
Inside, all of Starkad’s men were naked and dead, eleven fish-belly white corpses buzzing with flies and dark with blood, which had soaked everywhere.
‘They brought them all this way just to kill them?’ muttered Sighvat, bewildered.
‘No, indeed,’ Brother John pointed out. ‘They gelded them to be sold as slaves, but they were not