Robert Low - The Wolf Sea

`Sorer for some than others,' grumbled Botolf, two ounces of hacksilver lighter after his bet with Kvasir

— but even Kvasir was not grinning at his win.

`There is worse to come,' I said and that fell on stony silence, so I closed my teeth on it and stared into the flames, brooding on what had happened to Martin — vanished during the fighting — and his holy spear and the serpent sabre. Neither had been found on Inger or anywhere nearby and the only prize taken was from Inger: he wore Starkad's jarl neckring as well as his dagged mail and so I had what Jarl Brand wanted.

Whether it was worth all the dead was another matter.

Two sarkenoi loomed out of the dark, fully armed and armoured, to invite me to speak with Bilal al-Jamil ibn Nidal ibn Abdulaziz I almost sprang up with the relief of getting away from the fire and the despair that hunkered at it, signalling the Goat Boy to come with me; on the way he told me that this Bilal al-Jamil's name meant 'Father of Salim, Bilal the beautiful, son of Nidal, son of Abdul the Magnificent, the Egyptian'.

`But you may call him Lord,' he added pointedly, when I grumbled about constantly filling my mouth with so much name.

This Bilal al-Jamil had a brilliant gold and white tent, blazing with lanterns and carpets and tables and cushions. He ushered me and the Goat Boy to sit and, aware of the dust and blood and worse that stained me, I almost refused.

`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.'

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.

If 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.