He grunted when I grabbed for the hand, spilled me off him and we rolled now, me desperate not to let go of his knife-hand. I banged my nose and the pain of it made my whole head explode in red.
Men were yelling and the world was a whirl of grass and cracking twigs, heavy with the fetid stink of sweat and fear and fresh-scabbed muddy earth. I heard shouts, felt the thump that hit the man I struggled with; he fell away from me then.
‘That will tame him,’ growled a voice.
‘After the other one…quick now. Move yourselves.’
A hand hauled me up and light flared as someone lit a torch from the coals and brought it. Finn looked me over with narrowed eyes as men thronged around, then he relaxed.
‘That neb of yours is not lucky,’ he pointed out, but I did not need him to tell me that, for it throbbed blindingly. Someone held the torch over a little and, as Finnlaith fetched his axe, grinning, I saw what I had been fighting.
‘Sure and that was a fine throw,’ he said cheerfully, ‘though you are lucky it is not so balanced and only the shaft hit him, else he would be dead.’
‘Sure and it is a fine thing,’ I answered, mimicking his tone, ‘that I did it when I did, else you would be dead and we would have to wake you to let you know of it.’
Finnlaith’s grin slipped a little and he nodded wryly, scrubbing his head with embarrassment. The giant red-head, Murrough, reached down and plucked a limp figure from the bruised grass.
He was a small man, dressed in a stained tunic that might have been white once and wearing bits of fur here and there, which is why I took him for a mangy bear. His face was mole-sharp and shaved clean, though he had greasy hair the colour of old iron worked in three braids, two from his brow and one behind him. He half-hung in Murrough’s grip looking one way then another with small, narrow eyes, as if to find something he could bite.
‘Is this a Wend or a Sorb?’ I asked. ‘Does anyone speak enough to ask him?’
‘Only the girl,’ growled Alyosha and Crowbone appeared then, his cheeks flushed and eyes bright from running.
‘The second man ran for it and we lost him in the dark — who is this one?’
‘A Sorb,’ grunted someone.
‘Or a Wend.’
Mole-Face said nothing, but tried a smile with more gap than tooth and spread his hands, moving them to his mouth.
‘Came to steal food, I am thinking,’ Finn growled. I picked up the man’s long knife; it was a good one, ground down from what had once been a decent sword, so that the hilt and fittings were all there and they were Norse. The likes of Mole-Face would have sold it long ago if he was so starving and I said so.
I handed it to Finn and added: ‘Well, I have my truth knife and it has never failed, no matter whether we speak the same tongue or not. So string him up and we will start with his fingers, until they are all gone. Then we will move to his toes…’
‘Until they are all gone,’ chorused those who knew the way of it, laughing like tongue-lolling wolves.
‘Then I will start on his prick and balls,’ I added.
‘Until they are all gone,’ came the chorus.
‘Ah, no, wait — Christ’s bones, no.’ The man’s tongue flicked like an adder and he stared wildly from one to the other.
‘That truth knife,’ Finn grunted, ‘seldom fails to impress me. Already we know he speaks good Norse and is a Christmann and we have not even drawn blood.’
‘I know who he is,’ Styrbjorn declared, bursting through the throng. ‘His name is Visbur, by-named Krok, but most know him as Pall, which name he took when he was baptised and chrism-loosened. He is one of Ljot’s men.’
‘You may not have any food,’ Finnlaith said to the mole-faced man, ‘but you are rich in names.’
‘Bind him,’ I said and men sprang to obey; the man panted and struggled briefly, but he stayed silent, stumbling back to the ship with the press of men at his back. Once there I had them loop a cord round his ankles and then hauled him a little way up the mast, where he hung and swung like a spider’s prey. I brought the truth knife out, feeling the cold sick settle in me, for I never liked this.
‘Now,’ I said, ‘I know you are called Hook and named after a Christ-saint called Paul and that you are no Wend or Sorb.’
‘True, true,’ he panted. ‘Let me down — I will tell you everything. Anything.’
‘Who was the other man?’
‘What other man? I was…’
He broke off, for I had grabbed one bound hand and whicked the little finger off him; the knife was so keenly sharp that he felt it as no more than a tug — then he saw the blood spurt and the pain hit him and he shrieked, high and thin, sounding like Sigrith when she was birthing her son.
‘Yes, yes,’ he screamed. ‘Two of us. We were sent by Pallig.’
‘I remember now,’ Styrbjorn spat out suddenly. ‘He was always at the elbow of another called Frey…something.’ He frowned, then brightened. ‘Freystein, that is it.’
The hanging man moaned and blubbered and Finn, with a scornful look, thanked Styrbjorn for his part, while wishing he had been a little quicker.
‘I am sure Pall here will forgive you for the loss of his finger,’ he added, ‘it being just a little one.’
Styrbjorn scowled and the pair of them bristled at each other for a moment — but this was Finn, who made stones tremble and Styrbjorn wisely slunk off. I was aware of them only at the edge of my mind, for Visbur/Pall had started to babble.
It all spilled out like blood from his finger-stump, while the torch guttered in a rising wind and he turned and swung and bumped against the mast.
Pallig had sent him and three others. This Pall and the one called Freystein had been dropped off when they spotted the boat; the other two had rowed their little faering silently past, the idea being to pick Pall and his oarmate up once they had done their task. They had planned to set the boat adrift, maybe even fire it if the occasion presented itself.
I sent men off down the bank and we waited moody as wet cats, while Pall swung and moaned.
‘Cut him down,’ said a small, light voice and Dark Eye stepped into the torchlight.
‘This is no matter for you,’ growled Finn. ‘Go and lie down somewhere warm.’
Dark Eye studied him and most would have said she did it as cool as a calved berg, but I saw the tremble in her and, suddenly, stepped away from myself to her side and saw it as she did — a band of savage-eyed, grim men, tangle-haired beasts gathered round a pole to poke and taunt a hapless victim. She looked at me with those seal eyes and I felt shame.
‘Take him down,’ I said and, after a pause, Red Njal and Hlenni did so. Pall collapsed on the deck in a heap and Bjaelfi, who never liked this business, came forward and thrust a scrap of cloth at him, one of the many he had rune-marked for healing.
‘Here,’ he said gruffly. ‘Bind the wound with this and keep it clean. Do not take it off, for the rune on it is Ul, a limrune, which is to say a healing rune, in case you have Christianed yourself away from even that knowledge. It invokes Waldh, who is an old healing-god of the Frisians.’
Dark Eye smiled, a small sun that flared for a moment and was gone as she moved off back to her place in the lee of the stern. Finn hawked and spat over the side.
‘So thralls rule us now,’ he growled and I felt a surge of anger; any less a man would have had my fist on him.
‘She is no thrall,’ I answered, stung. ‘A princess in her own lands and as valuable to us as a queen. And no-one rules us, not even me and, for sure, not you.’
He saw the thunder in my face and realised he had gone too far. Unable to row back from what he had said, he simply turned and rolled off down the ship to the prow, pulling off his crumpled hat and scrubbing his head with confusion.