I had been listening well at Joms, too. Two red spots appeared on Kasperick’s cheeks at this and there was a sucking in of breath from the ghosts who listened and watched in the dimness at the mention of the other, rival, tribes of the Silesians.
Kasperick controlled himself with an effort, though the smile started to tremble a little. He drank to cover himself and took a breath or two.
‘No matter who you are,’ he said after a moment or two and waved a dismissive hand, ‘you all appear the same to me, you Northmen. It is what you carry on your ship that matters.’
‘Ah, you still have your merchant hat on, I see,’ I replied and then spread my hands in apology. ‘I suspect some folk from downriver have tried to mire our good name, but they are mean-mouthed nithings. We have nothing much more than some wadmal and a few furs. Hardly worth your time. Besides — I have handseled a deal on that.’
‘You have the Mazur girl,’ he answered, his voice like a slap.
Finn growled and I took a breath. How had he known that? My thoughts whirled up like leaves in a djinn of wind.
‘Slaves?’ I managed to answer. ‘One slave? She is thin and you have, I am thinking, plumper girls closer to hand.’
‘I like Mazur ones,’ he replied, enjoying himself now he had set us back on our heels. Oiled smooth as a Greek beard he was now and Finn’s scowl revealed how he did not care for it much.
‘To a man used to Slenzanie women, I suppose she would be sweet,’ he grunted. ‘They all smell of fish, though they are never near the sea.’
The red spots reappeared and Kasperick leaned forward, his eyes narrowed and his fingers steepled.
‘You are the one called Finn,’ he said, ‘who fears nothing. We will see about that.’
Now how had he known that? A suspicion trailed fingers across my thoughts, but Finn was curling his lip in a sneer, which distracted me.
‘The Mazur girl,’ I said hastily, before Finn spat out a curse at him, ‘is not a slave and good Christmenn do not enslave the free, or so I had heard.’
I nodded at the cross peeping shyly out from above the neck of his tunic and he glanced down and frowned.
‘This? I took this from a Sorb, one of a band I had to deal with. You probably saw them on the way in, safely caged. I am a Christ follower but not one of these Greeks, who can all argue that God does not exist save in Constantinople.’
I stopped, chilled, as he brought it out and waved it scornfully — the Christ cross was a fat Greek one, plain dark wood with a cunning design of the Tortured God on it worked in little coloured tiles; I had seen it before, but not round Kasperick’s plump neck.
‘You are Christ-sworn yourself,’ he went on, smirking, ‘and I suspect this Mazur girl is not. So passing her to me is no sin.’
It was my turn to look down and frown. He had seen the little cross on a thong hanging on my breastbone.
‘This? I had this from the first man I ever killed,’ I told him, which was the truth — though it was truer to say the man had been a boy. I had been fifteen when I did it.
‘That other trinket that looks like a cross is a good Thor Hammer,’ I added. ‘There is another, the valknut, which is an Odin sign.’
Kasperick frowned. ‘I had heard you were baptised.’
I shook my head and smiled apologetically, more sure than ever about who had been whispering in Kasperick’s ear.
‘If your God is willing to prevent evil but not able then he is not all-wise and all-seeing, as gods are supposed to be,’ I told him. ‘If he is able but not willing, then he is more vicious than a rat in a barrel. If he is both able and willing, then from where comes all the evil your priests rave about? If he is neither able nor willing, then why call him a god?’
‘So,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘A follower of Thor? Odin? Some other dirty-handed little farmer god of the Wends, one with four faces? No matter — they will help you here no better than the Sorbs I caged outside, no matter how clever your words.’
‘I thought those Sorbs were good Christmenn,’ I answered, trying to think clearly as I spoke. ‘Like you.’
‘I took this cross from them, as they took it from a Greek priest they sold. They used the money to get drunk and once drunk they killed a man. So there is the Lord at work — even if it was only a Greek priest he worked through.’
I blinked with the thunderbolt of it, a strike as hard as Thor’s own Hammer. I had been right about the cross, then.
‘Did this Greek priest have a boy with him?’ I asked. ‘A Northerner — a Dane.’
Kasperick, bewildered at the way this conversation had suddenly darted off the path, waved an irritated hand.
‘They sold them both to another of your sort. He was going upriver.’
Upriver. A slave dealer going upriver and buying a Greek monk and a boy. The chill in me settled like winter haar.
‘The dealer,’ I asked. ‘Did he have marks on him, blue marks? A beard like a badger’s arse?’
The conversation was now a little dog which would not come to heel and Kasperick was scowling a leash at it.
‘There was such a man,’ he hissed, ‘but enough of this. Fetch the girl and be done with it, for you have no choice in the matter.’
Randr Sterki had Leo and Koll and one swift glance sideways let me know that Finn and Crowbone had realised it, too. So did Red Njal, who had been strange since Hlenni’s death and was now starting to tremble at the edges, the way wolf-coats do when the killing rage comes on.
‘Red Njal,’ I said sharply and he blinked and shook himself like a dog coming out of water. Kasperick, wary and angry as a wet cat, lifted a hand and men appeared, leather-armoured, carrying spears and bulking out the light. Finn, who hated Saxlanders, curled his lip at them.
‘Step out and go and fetch the Mazur girl,’ I told Red Njal and he looked at me, then at Kasperick and grinned, nodded and hirpled away on his bad leg. I settled on the bench, waiting and Crowbone cocked his head sideways, like a bird and stared curiously at Kasperick.
‘What?’ demanded Kasperick, suspicious and scowling, but Crowbone merely shrugged.
‘Once,’ he said, ‘a long time gone — don’t ask me when — up in Dovrefell in the north of Norway, there was a troll.’
‘This will pass the time until folk return with my Mazur girl,’ Kasperick announced pointedly and there was a dutiful murmur of laughter from the dim figures behind him. Crowbone waggled his head from side to side.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘perhaps not. This is not a long tale, for this troll was famous for two things — he was noted for his ugliness, even by other trolls and that fame was outstripped only by his stupidity. One day, he found a piece of bread in a cleft in the rock and was delighted, for food is scarce for trolls in Dovrefell. So he gripped it tight — then found he could not get his fist out unless he let the crust go. He thought about it a long time, but there was no way round it — he had to let go, or stay where he was and he could not make up his mind. For all I know, he is there yet, with a fistful of stale crumbs, but determined never to let go.’
‘Trolls are notorious fools,’ Kasperick agreed sourly.
‘A man should always know when to let go of something he cannot hang on to,’ Crowbone countered blankly.
In only minutes, it seemed, someone pounded breathlessly in and hurled himself to the ear of Kasperick, whispering furiously. The red spots flared and Kasperick leaped up.
‘Only a troll tries to hang on to what is beyond his grasp,’ Crowbone announced and Kasperick bellowed as the ox-shouldered guards dragged Red Njal back in and flung him to us; there was blood on his beard and on his teeth, but his grin let us know Short Serpent was safe away.