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 clever about it. Two died because the blood poured out and would not stop and, once the thing was done, the men were untied – I think to help themselves and the others with the wounds. The others, it seems, died of strangling and this one here has had his brains bashed out.’
He straightened, wiping his hands on his tunic. ‘If I was asked,’ he said grimly, ‘I would say the ones who survived gelding strangled each other with the thongs that had once bound them and the last one ran at the wall until his head broke.’
‘Is Starkad there?’ demanded Radoslav and the silence gave him as good an answer as he would get. We stared, the sick, iron smell of blood and the drone of flies filling the space as we considered the horror of it.
Doomed, they had chosen a death that did not lead to Valholl and, because they had no weapons in their hands, led straight to Helheim, especially for the last man, who had slain himself. No man who was not whole could cross Bifrost to be Einherjar in the hall of the gods, waiting for Ragnarok. That was something I knew to my cost, for I had already lost fingers off my own hand and it was my wyrd that they were lost for ever and that I would never see the rainbow bridge.
I made a warding sign against the possibility of a fetch lurking in the fetid dark here, for I had had experience of such a thing before, with Hild in Attila’s grave-mound. Then I added the sign of the cross, but Brother John was too busy offering prayers, kneeling without a thought in the gory slush of the floor.
I wondered if the dead men were followers of Christ or Odin, for it seemed the Christ-god had a more forgiving nature and would accept them into his hov whether they had balls or no. Or fingers. Then I shook the thought away; Valaskjalf, Odin’s own hall, was open to me and that was enough. There were many halls in Asgard who would welcome the hero-dead, whole or no.
Finn and the others arrived, speckled and slathered with blood, to be told of the tragedy. That sealed the fate of the ones in the church, for even if they had been enemies, Starkad’s men were good Northmen and should not have been handled so badly.
‘There is too much of this ball-cutting for my liking,’ muttered Kol. ‘Like that greasy thrall of the Greek merchant – what was his name?’
‘Niketas,’ growled Kvasir and spat.
‘He was a spadone,’ answered Brother John. ‘The kindest treated.’
‘Eh? What’s kind about gelding?’ demanded Finn. ‘Fine for horses, but men? We do it to shame them.’
‘It is done sometimes to men for the same reason it is done to horses,’ Sighvat pointed out, ‘but I did not know there were different names for it.’
‘Different types,’ corrected Brother John. ‘A spadone has been gelded – the testicles removed neatly with a sharp blade.’ He paused, gave a little gesture and a sschikk then grinned as Finn and others shifted uncomfortably, drawing their knees tighter together.
‘They do that even to some high-borns, when they are babes,’ he went on as we gawped with disbelief. ‘Only whole men may become the Basileus, and some of these princes get it done so they can then hold high office and yet be no threat.’
‘There