‘It’s an eggshell of stone, no more, a fragile thing built to look strong. There is no hinge of the Lord here. God will sweep it away in His own good time but, until then, per scelus semper tutum est sceleribus iter.’
Crime’s safest course is through more crime. I laughed, for all the sick bitterness in me. He reminded me of Illugi, the Oathsworn’s Odin godi, but that Aesir priest had gone mad and died in Atil’s howe along with Einar and others, leaving me as jarl and godi both, with neither wit nor wisdom for either.
But, because of Brother John, we were all declared Christ-men now, dipped in holy water and sworn such – prime-signed, as they say – though the crucifixes hung round our necks all looked like Thor hammers and I did not feel that the power of our Odin-oath had diminished any, which had been my reasoning for embracing the Christ in the first place.
The Dolphin nestled in the lee of Septimus Severus’s wall and looked as old. It had a floor of tiles, fine as any palace, but the walls were roughly plastered and the smoking iron lanterns hung so low you had to duck between them.
It was noisy and dim with fug and crowded with people, rank with sweat and grease and cooking and, just for one blade-bright moment, I was back in Bjornshafen, hugging the hearthfire’s red-gold warmth, listening to the wind whistle its way into the Snaefel forests, pausing only to judder the beams and flap the partition hangings, so that they sounded like wings in the dark.
Heimthra, the longing for home, for the way things had been.
But this was a hall where strangers did not rise to greet you, as was proper and polite, but carried on eating and ignoring you. This was a hall where folk ate reclining and sitting upright at a bench marked you at once as inferior, yet another strangeness in a city full of wonders, like the ornate basins which existed for no other reason than to throw water into the air for the spectator’s enjoyment.
The reason I liked the taberna was because it was full of familiar voices: Greeks and Slavs and traders from further north all talking in a maelstrom of different tongues, all with one subject: how the river trade was a dangerous business now that Sviatoslav, Great Prince of the Rus, had decided to fight both the Khazars and the Volga Bulgars.
It seemed that the Prince of the Rus had gone mad after the fall of the Khazar city of Sarkel, down on the Dark Sea – which event the Oathsworn had attended, after a fashion. He was now headed off to the Khazar capital, Itil on the Caspian, to finish them off, but hadn’t even waited for that before sending men further north to annoy the Volga Bulgars.
‘He’s like a drunk in a hall, stumbling over feet and wanting to fight all those he falls on. What was he thinking?’ demanded Drozd, a Slav trader we knew slightly and a man fitted perfectly to his name – Thrush – being beady-eyed and quick in his head movements.
‘He wasn’t thinking at all, it seems to me,’ another said. ‘Next you know, he will think he can take on the Great City.’
‘Pity on him if he does, right enough,’ Radoslav agreed, ‘for that means hard war and the Miklagard Handshake.’
That I had never heard of and said as much. Radoslav’s mouth widened in a grin like a steel trap and he laughed, causing his brow-braid to dip in his leather mug.
‘They offer a wrist-grasp of peace, but that is only to hold you close, by the sword-arm,’ he told us, sucking ale off the wet end of his hair. ‘The dagger is in the other.’
‘Let’s hope he does and dies for his foolishness. Maybe then we can go back north,’ Finn said, blowing froth off his straggling moustache.
I said nothing. The truth was that we could never go north, even if Sviatoslav turned his face to the wall tomorrow. He had three sons who would squabble over their inheritance and we had annoyed them all in the hunt for Attila’s hoard out on the steppe – the secret of which now lurked under Starkad’s fingertips.
He did not know, I was sure. Almost sure. He took the sword from me because Choniates the merchant had valued it and had probably offered highly for it. Even Choniates did not know what the scratches on the handle meant, but he knew how fine the blade was and where it had come from. Even if Starkad read runes well, he would make no sense of the ones on the sword’s grip.
Perhaps they even thought the rune serpent, carved into the steel when it was made, held the secret of the way to Atil’s tomb – and perhaps it did, for no one could read that spell in full, not even Illugi Godi when he was alive and he was a man who knew his runes. I had my own idea about what those runes did, all the same, and felt a chill of fear at not having the sword. Would all my hurts and ills come back in a rush now, no longer held at bay by that snake-knot spell?
Finn only nodded when I whispered all this out, eyeing me scornfully when I came to the last part, for he and Kvasir were the only ones I had shared this with and neither of them believed my good health and wound-luck was anything other than youth and Odin’s favour.
For a while Finn sat moodily stroking the beard he had plaited into what looked like black leather straps, trying to ignore the woman yelling at him from the other side of the hall.
‘She wants you, does Elli,’ Kvasir pointed out. ‘The gods know why – sorry, Brother John, God knows why.’
‘You’ll be well in there, with no silver changing hands at all,’ Sighvat added moodily.
Finn stirred uncomfortably. ‘I know. I have no joy in me for it this night.’
‘It’s the name,’ declared Sighvat and that, together with Finn’s half-ashamed scowl, managed a laugh from us. Elli, according to the old saga tales – and we had no reason to disbelieve them, Christ-sworn or no – was the giant crone who had wrestled with Thor, the one who was really Old Age.
I could see where that could be…diminishing to a man of sensitive nature. I said as much and Finn drained his mug, slapped it angrily on the table and lurched off to the whore, looking to soak his black rage in the white light of sweaty humping.
I sat back, easing. Brother John was right; we had all needed this. Now…it was clear Starkad was working for Architos Choniates, the merchant. We needed to—
Then, of course, Odin’s curse kicked in the door.
Well, Short Eldgrim did, slamming through in a hiss of damp wind and curses from those nearest as it washed them, swirling the lantern smoke. He spotted me, bustled his way through and sat, breathing heavily, the network of scars on his face made whiter by its weather-red. ‘Starkad,’ he growled. ‘He’s coming up the street with men at his back.’
‘That’s useful,’ muttered Kvasir. ‘I want to see his face when he finds out he has picked the last drinking place in the world he wants to be in.’
‘One!’ roared the crowd behind us. Elli was showing how many silver coins she could stick on the sweat of her bared breasts. Kvasir grinned. ‘She cheats – she uses honey. I tasted it once.’
‘Pass the word,’ I said softly. Odin’s hand, for sure – I knew One Eye would not let that sword fly from us so lightly, that he had walked the thief right into our clutches.
‘Three!’ Elli was doing well behind us.
Short Eldgrim nodded and slid away. Behind us, a coin slid from Elli’s ample, sweaty charms and the crowd roared. Brother John swallowed ale and narrowed his eyes.
‘A dangerous place to confront him,’ he said, looking round at the crowd.
‘Odin chooses,’ I said flatly and he glanced at me, who was now, supposedly, a prime-signed Christ-follower.
‘Amare et sapere vix deo conciditur’ he said wryly and I had felt my face flush. Even a god finds it hard to love and be wise at the same time; I wondered, after, if our little Christ priest had the power of scrying.
‘I hope that is Roman for “kill them all and let Christ Jesus sort them out”, little man,’ Finn growled, for he hated folk talking in tongues he did not understand. Since he did not understand