EIGHTEEN
His breathing, as Bjaelfi took pains to tell us, was just a habit, for the fever had fired him so that his blood had boiled up into his thought-cage and destroyed his thinking entire. What was left sucked in air the way a deer kicks long after you have gralloched it.
It was a habit strong in him, for he took three days to be quit of it and, at the last, was open-mouthed and desperate as a fish. Ulf, his name was, called Amr by his oarmates, which meant Tub on account of his considerable belly. Well, it had been considerable, but in three days of vomit and leaching sweat he had melted like grease on a skillet, become a wraith, his face pocked red and white and pus yellow and his eyes gone white as boiled eggs.
Bjaelfi tied his mouth back up with a scrap of cloth and we sat back and stared; Ulf, the emptied Tub, first to die of the Red Plague and lying there with drooping hare-ears of cloth on top of his head, making him look as if he was being silly to amuse bairns.
‘They are coming again,’ roared a voice from outside the dim hut.
I heaved myself wearily up, took up the blood-gummed shaft of the bearded axe and looked at Bjaelfi.
‘Burn him,’ I said and he nodded. Then I lumbered out to war.
We first saw our enemy when they filtered out onto the soaked plain in front of the grod not long after we had panted our way into it and barred the gate; we made it easier for them to find us, for we burned the main hall, after tying bound cloths round our faces — for all the good it would do — and dragging all the scattered, half-chewed bodies there, where most of them already festered.
Their horsemen trotted up, spraying water up from the steaming ground, to be greeted by great black feathers of reeking smoke; close behind came foot soldiers in unbleached linen and only helmets and spears and round shields. Behind them came a knot of iron-clad horse soldiers, sporting lances with proud pennons and one huge banner with what appeared to be a wheel on it. Dark Eye said that was the mark of the Pol rulers, who had been wheelwrights until the favour of their god raised them up.
‘They will think we slaughtered all the folk of this place and burned some of it,’ Styrbjorn said bitterly. ‘Someone should tell them there is pest here and that we are doomed. That will send them running as far from this place as they can get.’
‘It would send you scampering,’ Alyosha replied, watching the enemy closely as they assembled — counting heads, as I was. ‘What they will do is keep a safe distance and shoot anyone who leaves with arrows. When we are all dead, they will burn it. The last thing these folk want is us running all over their land, spreading Red Plague.’
‘Better they do not know we have disease here,’ I said, loud enough for others to hear and spread the sense of it. ‘It will mean the reddest of red war and no-one will be able to throw down their weapons and be spared.’
Finn and I exchanged looks; we knew no-one would be spared anyway, once the talking had stopped.
‘I make it four hundreds, give or take a spear or two,’ Alyosha said, coming quietly to me. I had much the same; the rest of the men, grim and silent on the ramparts, knew only that the plain in front of the grod was thick with men who wanted to kill us.
‘Get them working,’ I said to Alyosha, ‘for busy hands mean less chance to think on matters. Send Abjorn to the river wall — there is a small gate in it, used by the fishermen, I am thinking. It may also be the only way to bring water in from the river unless you can find a well. We have small beer but not enough, so we will have to drink water in the end. Finn — since you can tally a little without having to take your boots off, find out what we have in stores. Slaughter the livestock if we cannot feed them, but leave the cows until last, for they at least provide milk.’
There was more — making arrows from what we could find, ripping out heavy balks of timber and finding all the heavy stones we could to drop on heads.
Hot oil, Crowbone told us with all the wisdom of his few years. Or heated gravel where there was no oil, he added and Finn patted him, as if he was a small dog, then went off, shaking his head and chuckling. It was left to Alyosha to patiently explain that flaming oil and red-hot stones were not the cleverest things to be dropping all over the wooden gate and walls of our fortress.
Randr Sterki came up to me then, badger-beard working as his jaw muscles clenched and unclenched.
‘Give us our weapons back and we will fight,’ he growled.
I looked at him and the men clustered behind him. They wanted their hands on hilt and haft, were eager — even desperate — to defend themselves, if no-one else.
‘We are in this leaking ship as one,’ I pointed out, more for the men behind than him. ‘Those dog-fuckers out there call us flax-heads, think we are all Saxlanders and will curl their lips at any man who crawls out to claim he can open the gate if only he is spared. They will kill him once he has served the purpose.’
Feet shifted at that and I knew I had them; Randr Sterki half-turned to his men, then turned back to me.
‘We will fight, until dead or victorious.’
It had been said in front of witnesses and was Oath enough, so I gave him my V-notched sword back, for I would not give him Jarl Brand’s own. He grinned, then drew it and stood, naked blade in hand and within striking distance of me, who had nothing in his hand but old filth and callouses.
‘If we survive, Bear Slayer,’ he said flatly, ‘there will be matters to discuss.’
I was sick of him and his matters, so I turned away, putting my back to him and the blade he held, though I felt the skin creep along my backbone as I did so.
‘I would not count on living out the rest of this day,’ I answered over my shoulder, going off to fetch Brand’s sword, ‘never mind having a cunning plan for tomorrow.’
When I was sliding the baldric over my head, Koll trotted up, followed by Yan Alf, whom I had set to guard him. The boy’s white-lashed eyes stared up into mine, sullen as a slate-blue sea and he wanted to know why I had stopped him from going near the monk.
‘He ran off with you,’ I answered, annoyed at this. ‘Is that not reason enough? Because of him we are here, a long way from home and…’
I stopped then, before the words ‘dying for the matter’ spat past my teeth; I did not want the boy — or anyone else — empty of hope.
‘He saved me,’ Koll persisted.
‘He has done killing in the night,’ I countered, ‘with some strange magic.’
I broke off and looked at Yan Alf, who shrugged.
‘Alyosha and Ospak stripped and searched him,’ the little man said. ‘The only way he could be more naked is if they flayed him. They found no weapon. Ospak guards him now and he has asked to help Bjaelfi with the sick.’
Very noble and Christ-like — but Alyosha would have turned the monk inside out rather than leave him as a threat to his charge, little Crowbone, and, if he had found no weapons…
Yet I did not trust Leo and said so.
‘Keep at arm’s length from that monk,’ I added and saw the hard set of Koll’s lip and, worse, the dull sadness in those pale eyes. I had told him of his mother’s death and he had taken it with no tears — and yet…
‘Did your father tell how to behave as a fostri?’ I persisted and he nodded reluctantly, then repeated the words all sons are told — obey and learn. I merely nodded at him, then had an idea and handed him Brand’s sword.
‘This belongs to your father and so to you. You are come early to it and it is likely too large and heavy for you to use, even if you knew how. One day Finn will show you the strokes of it — but for now you can guard it.’
The pale blue eyes widened and brightened like the sun had burst out on a summer sky. He took the sheathed weapon in both hands and turned, grinning to Yan Alf, before running off with it.