I could smell it and hear it dripping. Gelgill was standing very still, watching me, his narrow face expressionless. Hild was smiling. A half-dozen of Sven’s other men were facing me, but none dared move because the tip of Serpent-Breath, her blade smeared with blood, was at Sven’s throat. Witnere was beside me, teeth bared, one front hoof pawing at the ground and thumping very close to Sven’s head. Sven was gazing up at me with his one eye that was filled with hate and fear, and I suddenly stepped away from him. ‘On your knees,’ I told him.
‘Egil!’ Sven pleaded again.
Egil, black-bearded and with gaping nostrils where the front of his nose had been chopped off in some fight, levelled his spear.
‘He dies if you attack,’ I said to Egil, touching Sven with Serpent-Breath’s tip. Egil, sensibly stepped backwards, and I flicked Serpent-Breath across Sven’s face, drawing blood. ‘On your knees,’ I said again, and when he was kneeling I leaned down and took his two swords from their scabbards and lay them beside my father’s helmet on the table.
‘You want to kill the slaver?’ I called back to Hild, gesturing at the swords.
‘No,’ she said.
‘Iseult would have killed him,’ I said. Iseult had been my lover and Hild’s friend.
‘Thou shalt not kill,’ Hild said. It was a Christian commandment and about as futile, I thought, as commanding the sun to go backwards.
‘Bolti,’ I spoke in Danish now, ‘kill the slaver.’ I did not want Gelgill behind my back.
Bolti did not move. He was too scared to obey me, but, to my surprise, his two daughters came and fetched Sven’s swords. Gelgill tried to run, but the table was in his way and one of the girls gave a wild swing that slashed across his skull and he fell sideways. Then they savaged him. I did not watch, because I was guarding Sven, but I heard the slaver’s cries and Hild’s gasp of surprise, and I could see the astonishment on the faces of the men in front of me. The twin girls grunted as they hacked. Gelgill took a long time to die and not one of Sven’s men tried to save him, or to rescue their master. They all had weapons drawn and if just one of them had possessed any sense they would have realised that I dared not kill Sven, for his life was my life. If I took his soul they would have swamped me with blades, but they were scared of what Kjartan would do to them if his son died and so they did nothing and I pressed the blade harder against Sven’s throat so that he gave a half-strangled yelp of fear.
Behind me Gelgill was at last hacked to death. I risked a glance and saw that Bolti’s twin daughters were blood-drenched and grinning. ‘They are Hel’s daughters,’ I told the watching men and I was proud of that sudden invention, for Hel is the corpse-goddess, rancid and terrible, who presides over the dead who do not die in battle. ‘And I am Thorkild!’ I went on, ‘and I have filled Odin’s hall with dead men.’ Sven was shaking beneath me. His men seemed to be holding their breath and suddenly my tale took wings and I made my voice as deep as I could. ‘I am Thorkild the Leper,’ I announced loudly, ‘and I died a long time ago, but Odin has sent me from the corpse-hall to take the souls of Kjartan and his son.’
They believed me. I saw men touch amulets. One spearman even dropped to his knees. I wanted to kill Sven there and then, and perhaps I should have done, but it would only have taken one man to break the web of magical nonsense I had spun for them. What I needed at that moment was not Sven’s soul, but our safety, and so I would trade the one for the other. ‘I shall let this worm go,’ I said, ‘to carry news of my coming to his father, but you will go first. All of you! Go back beyond the village and I shall release him. You will leave your captives here.’ They just stared at me and I twitched the blade so that Sven yelped again. ‘Go!’ I shouted.
They went. They went fast, filled with dread. Bolti was gazing at his beloved daughters with awe. I told each girl they had done well, and that they should take a handful of coins from the table, and then they went back to their mother, both clutching silver and bloody blades. ‘They’re good girls,’ I told Bolti and he said nothing, but hurried after them.
‘I couldn’t kill him,’ Hild said. She seemed ashamed of her squeamishness.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. I kept the sword at Sven’s throat until I was sure all his men had retreated a good distance eastwards. The folk who had been their captives, mostly young boys and girls, stayed in the village, but none dared approach me.
I was tempted then to tell Sven the truth, to let him know that he had been humiliated by an old enemy, but the tale of Thorkild the Leper was too good to waste. I was also tempted to ask about Thyra, Ragnar’s sister, but I feared that if she did live and that if I betrayed an interest in her, then she would not live much longer, and so I said nothing of her. Instead I gripped Sven’s hair and pulled his head back so that he was staring up at me. ‘I have come to this middle earth,’ I told him, ‘to kill you and your father. I shall find you again, Sven Kjartanson, and I will kill you next time. I am Thorkild, I walk at night and I cannot be killed because I am already a corpse. So take my greetings to your father and tell him the dead swordsman has been sent for him and we shall all three sail in Skidbladnir back to Niflheim.’ Niflheim was the dreadful pit of the dishonoured dead, and Skidbladnir was the ship of the gods that could be folded and concealed in a pouch. I let go of Sven then and kicked him hard in the back so he sprawled onto his face. He could have crawled away, but he dared not move. He was a whipped dog now, and though I still wanted to kill him I reckoned it would be better to let him carry my eery tale to his father. Kjartan would doubtless learn that Uhtred of Bebbanburg had been seen in Eoferwic, but he would also hear of the corpse warrior come to kill him, and I wanted his dreams to be wreathed with terror.
Sven still did not move as I stooped to his belt and pulled away a heavy purse. Then I stripped him of his seven silver arm rings. Hild had cut off part of Gelgill’s robe and was using it to make a bag to hold the coins in the slave-trader’s tray. I gave her my father’s helmet to carry, then climbed back into Witnere’s saddle. I patted his neck and he tossed his head extravagantly as though he understood he had been a great fighting stallion that day.
I was about to leave when that weird day became stranger still. Some of the captives, as if realising that they were truly freed, had started towards the bridge, while others were so confused or lost or despairing that they had followed the armed men eastwards. Then, suddenly, there was a monkish chanting and out of one of the low, turf-roofed houses where they had been imprisoned, came a file of monks and priests. There were seven of them, and they were the luckiest men that day, for I was to discover that Kjartan the Cruel did indeed have a hatred of Christians and killed every priest or monk he captured. These seven escaped him now, and with them was a young man burdened with slave shackles. He was tall, well-built, very good-looking, dressed in rags and about my age. His long curly hair was so golden that it looked almost white and he had pale eyelashes and very blue eyes and a sun-darkened skin unmarked by disease. His face might have been carved from stone, so pronounced were his cheekbones, nose and jaw, yet the hardness of the face was softened by a cheerful expression that suggested he found life a constant surprise and a continual amusement. When he saw Sven cowering beneath my horse he left the chanting priests and ran towards us, stopping only to pick up the sword of the man I had killed. The young man held the sword awkwardly, for his hands were joined by links of chain, but he carried it to Sven and held it poised over Sven’s neck.
‘No,’ I said.
‘No?’ The young man smiled up at me and I instinctively liked him. His face was open and guileless.
‘I promised him his life,’ I said.
The young man thought about that for a heartbeat. ‘You did,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t.’ He spoke in Danish.
‘But if you take his life,’ I said, ‘then I shall have to take yours.’
He considered that bargain with amusement in his eyes. ‘Why?’ he asked, not in any alarm, but as if he genuinely wished to know.
‘Because that is the law,’ I said.
‘But Sven Kjartanson knows no law,’ he pointed out.
‘It is my law,’ I said, ‘and I want