Bernard Cornwell - Death of Kings

‘You’re looking for women?’ one of the traders asked. ‘Or for girls? Something young and tender? I have just what you need. Unspoilt goods! Juicy and precious! Gentlemen?’ He bowed, gesturing us towards a crude door inserted into a Roman arch.

I looked at Father Cuthbert. ‘Take the grin off your face,’ I snarled at him, then lowered my voice, ‘and go and find Weohstan. Tell him to bring ten or a dozen men. Quickly.’

‘But, lord…’ he began, wanting to stay.

‘Go!’ I shouted.

He fled. ‘Always wise to lose the priests, lord,’ the trader said, assuming I had sent Cuthbert away because the church frowned on his business. I tried to make a friendly response, but the same anger that was seething in Finan was now curdling my belly. I remembered the humiliation of slavery, the misery. Finan and I had once been chained in a dank building exactly like this. The scar on my upper arm seemed to smart as I followed the trader through the low door. ‘I brought a half-dozen girls across the water,’ he said, ‘and I assume you’re not wanting dairymaids or kitchen drabs?’

‘We want angels,’ Finan said tightly.

‘That’s what I supply!’ the man said cheerfully.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Halfdan,’ he said. He was in his thirties, I guessed, burly and tall with a head as bald as an egg, and a beard that reached to his waist where a silver-hilted sword was strapped. The room we entered had four guards, two armed with cudgels and two with swords. They watched a score of slaves who sat chained in the floor’s sewage-stinking sludge. The back wall of the hut was the city-side of the river rampart, its stones green and black in the small light that came through chinks in the rotting thatch roof. The slaves watched us sullenly. ‘They’re mostly Welsh,’ Halfdan said carelessly, ‘but there’s a couple from Ireland.’

‘You’ll take them to Frankia?’ Finan asked.

‘Unless you want them,’ Halfdan said. He unbolted another door, then rapped on its dark wood and I heard a second bolt being drawn on the further side. The door was pulled open to reveal another man waiting there, this one with a sword. He guarded Halfdan’s most valuable merchandise, the girls. The man grinned a welcome as we stooped through the doorway.

It was difficult to see what the girls looked like in the gloom. They huddled in a corner, and one appeared to be sick. I could see that one girl was very dark-skinned while the others were fair. ‘Six of them,’ I said.

‘You can count, lord,’ Halfdan said in jest. He bolted the door that led back into the larger room where the men slaves were kept.

Finan knew what I meant. Two of us and six slavers, and we were angry, and we had not been given a chance to fight anyone for too long, and we were restless. ‘Six is nothing,’ Finan said. Ludda sensed an undertone and looked nervous.

‘You want more than six?’ Halfdan asked. He banged open a recalcitrant shutter to let in some light from the street and the girls blinked, half dazzled. ‘Six beauties,’ Halfdan said proudly.

The six beauties were thin, bedraggled and terrified. The dark-skinned girl turned her face away, but not before I saw that she was indeed beautiful. Two of the others were very fair-haired. ‘Where are they from?’

‘Mostly from north of Frankia,’ Halfdan said, ‘but that one?’ He pointed to the cringing girl, ‘she’s from the ends of the earth. The gods alone know where she sprang from. Could have dropped from the moon for all I know. I bought her off a trader from the south. She speaks some weird tongue, but she’s a pretty enough thing if you like your meat dark.’

‘Who doesn’t?’ Finan asked.

‘I was going to keep her,’ Halfdan said, ‘but the bitch won’t stop crying and I can’t abide a weepy bitch.’

‘They were whores?’ I asked.

‘They’re not virgins,’ Halfdan said, amused. ‘I won’t lie to you, lord, if that’s what you want then I can find some for you, but it might take a month or two? But not these girls. The dark one and the Frisian were put to work in a tavern for a time, but they weren’t overused, just broken in. They’re still pretty. Let me show you.’ He reached down with a massive hand and pulled the dark girl out of the huddle. She screamed as he pulled, and he slapped her hard around the head. ‘Stop crying, you silly bitch,’ he snapped. He turned her face towards me. ‘What do you think, lord? She’s a weird colour, but a lovely girl.’

‘She is,’ I agreed.

‘Same colour all over,’ he said, grinning, and to prove it he yanked her dress down to reveal her breasts. ‘Stop whimpering, bitch,’ he said, slapping her again. He lifted one of her breasts. ‘See, lord? Brown tits.’

‘Let me,’ I said. I had drawn my knife and Halfdan assumed I was going to cut off the remains of the girl’s dress and so he stepped away.

‘Have a good look, lord,’ he said.

‘I will,’ I promised, and the girl was still whimpering as I turned and drove the blade up into Halfdan’s belly, but there was metal beneath his tunic and the blade was stopped dead. I could hear the whisper of Ludda’s sword sliding from the scabbard as Halfdan tried to head bang me, but I already had hold of his beard with my left hand and I pulled it down hard. I had turned the knife upright and I pulled Halfdan’s head down onto the point. The girls were screaming and one of the guards in the other room was hammering the bolted door. Halfdan was bellowing and then the bellow turned to a gurgle as the blade tore into his lower jaw and throat. There was blood brightening the room. Finan’s man was already dead, killed by the Irishman’s lightning speed, and then Finan slashed the blade across the back of Halfdan’s legs, hamstringing him, and the big man went to his knees and I finished the job properly by slitting his throat. His big beard soaked up most of the blood.

‘You took your time,’ Finan said, amused.

‘I’m out of practice,’ I said. ‘Ludda, tell the girls to be quiet.’

‘Four more,’ Finan said.

I sheathed the knife, wiped the blood from my hand on Halfdan’s tunic, and drew Serpent-Breath. Finan unbolted the door and it burst open. A guard ducked inside, saw the blade waiting for him and tried to back away, but Finan pulled him inside and I drove the sword deep into his belly, then brought a knee into his face as he buckled. He went down on the blood-soaked floor. ‘Finish him off, Ludda,’ I ordered.

‘Jesus,’ he murmured.

The other three guards were more cautious. They waited at the long room’s farther end and they had already called for help from the other slavers. It was in the traders’ interest to help each other, and their appeal brought still more men into the room. Four more, then five, all armed, and all eager for a fight. ‘Osferth always says we don’t think enough before we start a fight,’ Finan said.

‘He’s right, isn’t he?’ I said, but then there was a huge shout from the street. Weohstan had arrived with some of his garrison troops. Those troops forced their way into the shack and herded the slavers out into the street, where two traders were complaining to Weohstan that we were murderers. Weohstan bellowed for quiet, then explored the shack. He wrinkled his nose at the stench in the large room, then ducked into the smaller room and looked at the two corpses. ‘What happened?’

‘These two had an argument,’ I said, pointing to Halfdan and the guard Finan had slaughtered so quickly, ‘and they killed each other.’

‘And that one?’ Weohstan nodded at the third man who was curled on the floor and whimpering.

‘I told you to finish him,’ I said to Ludda, then did the job myself. ‘He was overcome with grief at their deaths,’ I explained to Weohstan, ‘so tried to kill himself.’