Oathsworn 2 - The Wolf Sea (42 page)

`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
saga,
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.'

16 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-Misri. 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-Migi 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.

Ìf 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-Mi§ri, 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.'

Àh, 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.

Èasy 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.

I went on, fumbling in the half-dark for small folds and fissures that didn't even deserve the name of handhold, feeling the weight of the rope drag at me, feeling the wind bite with the chill of night, yet the sweat on me was slick as oil.

Halfway and I rested, looked down, saw only a black fleece of shadows. Out on the horizon, the smear of light was larger, brighter, and I knew I had little time left.

Two feet further up and my foot slipped, pulling loose my left hand, the one with the fingers missing. I swung, held only by my right arm, dangling like a hanged man, feet flailing. I would have screamed if I hadn't bitten my lips until they bled; the sinews in my arm were doing all the shrieking for me anyway.

I heard my grunts, loud in my ear. My feet kicked rocks loose and, from below, I heard a faint hiss that might have been curse or query.

Panting, I curled at the waist, as far as the rope would let me, scrabbled, caught one foot, lost it, caught it again. Swung against the rock, slapped my ruined hand back on rock and clawed into a niche.

Sagging a little, I felt the sweat run in my eyes and tasted salt in my mouth. My arms and thighs and calves all creaked with pain, trembling against the rock.

I reached up, my hand fluttering like a lost moth, found another handhold, clamped fingers on it and brought a foot up, hearing the leather seaboots rasp, knowing they would be finally wrecked, shredded on these rocks. Strange what bothers you at the oddest times.

The top came as a surprise and I heaved myself over the last of it, panting and gasping. The Serpent Path was lost in darkness away to my left and there were no ramparts here. The bulk of Herod's tiered palace slouched to my right and the wind hissed and moaned over the plateau, studded with strange shadows and the red flowers of fires. Somewhere, goats bleated.

I moved up slowly, trying hard to listen and not scrabble like a mad chicken on the rock and loose scree.

There was a nub of stone, the last of a fat pillar that had once held up a shaded walkway. Now it took a loop of the rope and the rest of it slithered over the edge in a rustle of stones and dust.