`Forage parties,' said Illugi triumphantly. `Good reasons for being away from here with carts and horses and gear.'
`Right enough,' agreed Bersi and chuckled. 'Now there's deep-minded.'
I kept my counsel, for I had already seen forage parties going out, a collection of carts and horses, with thralls and women for the labouring and lance-armed cavalry for the muscle. Never foot warriors of the druzhina, though.
There was only one way, I realised, for varjazi like us to be away from all others, on the steppe with carts and horses and no questions asked, out of deference to our own rituals.
And some of us would have to die first.
`Forage parties. Deep thinking, right enough,' agreed Steinthor and tipped his ale horn empty. 'Now give us a riddle, Bag-nose, and brighten up the evening.'
And, as Bagnose screwed up his face and worked one out in his head, Einar met my stare across the fire, knew what I was thinking, dared me to speak it.
Ì am a strange creature, for I satisfy women, grow very tall and erect in bed, am hairy underneath and, now and then, a brave daughter of some fellow dares to hold me, grips my reddish skin, robs me of my head and puts me in her pantry. She remembers the meeting, her eyes moisten—' Bagnose intoned.
Àn onion,' roared someone from the back. 'Heard that one when I was still crawling . . .'
Eventually, Einar dropped his eyes, but I ached with too much tension to claim a triumph.
13 Up close, the dazzling walls of the White Castle were a disappointing tan and yellow, pocked with the scabs of hurled rocks and scored with lashes of black where fireballs had gored.
Merlons had crumbled, giving it the gap-toothed grin of a crone at whose feet was a litter of smashed tiles: Turk pictures of horses and men that looked like runes to us. Tamgas, they called them, and our battering stones had ripped them away.
The plain before the city seethed like an anthill. Horsemen thundered, lance-tips glittering through the huge pall of dust that hazed everything to a golden fog.
I sweated and longed for a drink. My eyes stung from the dust and it gritted in every crease under the armour and my helmet, even in the corners of my mouth, turning to mud with my spittle.
To my left was Bersi, shield lying against his knees, tying a leather thong round the fourth of his red braids, trembling from fever fits. To my right, Wryneck stuck the finger of one gnarled hand up his nose and dug out a plug of dust and snot, which he wiped absently on his breeks.
I saw the glassy white of old scars on the back of his hand, the mark of seasoned warriors everywhere—
the marks that were still raw and new on my own—since hands were almost always cut in fights, even friendly ones.
Behind us came the screeching groan of a giant with bellyache. It went on and on and ended with a clunk.
Then there was a sudden blast of heat and I shrank my head down into my neck, seeing that others were doing the same.
A pause. A huge blast of hot air and a deep booming thump: the great engine heaved a fireball over our heads, a streak of orange-red, trailing oily black smoke through the golden haze. I never saw or heard where it landed.
I saw a woman and child moving through the Oathsworn ranks, carrying yokes of clay water pitchers into which the men dipped, then drank gratefully. The woman smiled at Bersi, who grinned back through the fat, rolling globules of sweat on his face and said something in her ear that earned him a thump on the shoulder. But as she moved on, she was still smiling. , A horseman, bare-armed and wearing a leather helmet, trotted up to where Einar stood, a silhouette in the dust-gloom.
`Shit,' muttered Wryneck and I tensed, sensing his unease.
The horseman and Einar exchanged words, then the man galloped off and Einar said something to Valknut.
The Raven Banner went up so that everyone could see it. Then it dipped twice, three times in quick succession, the signal to move forward.
There was a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, a coldness that reached to my groin and shrank it to the kernel of a nut. I was in the front rank: the Lost. Behind was another mailed rank and behind that two ranks of unarmoured men with long spears. A fifth rank contained Bagnose, Steinthor and every other man who knew which end of a bow was which.
Twenty men wide, five ranks deep, the Oathsworn tramped through the haze to war.
I had no idea who was to our left or right—or if anyone was. I knew our job was to protect this engine, now thrust close to the walls, which loomed now and then through the swirl of dust and smoke.
Àre we attacking?' I asked Wryneck and he grunted, hefting his shield to a more comfortable position.
'Nah, they are coming at us, I am thinking,' he replied, blinking sweat from his eyes.
The Raven Banner swung side to side. I had forgotten what that meant, but no one moved so I stayed where I was, too. Then I saw bowmen and realised Einar had called them out to skirmish in front of us.
Engines thumped and whooshed, men shrieked and cried in the unseen haze, horses galloped back and forth. Horns blared somewhere. A block of spear-armed men jogged diagonally across our front, heading to our rear. Ours? Khazar? Attacking? Running? I was licking cracked lips and looking wildly left and right when Wryneck nudged me.
`Don't try to eat it, Orm Bear Slayer,' he growled. 'If they come up our arse, there is nothing you can do now to prevent it. If it happens, we will deal with it, but there's no sense in chewing on it. That way, you not only end up with men up your arse, but you have ruined all this perfectly quiet time.'
Perfectly quiet? Horns blasted again.
Horsemen cantered up and past us. I saw one . . . then another . . . and another turn in the saddle, nock arrows and let fly behind them.
`Get ready,' said Bersi, hunching his shoulders.
`Shield!' roared Einar. A pause. 'Wall!'
The shields came up with a single great clash of overlap. My right hand slammed the crosspiece of my sword hard against the join with my neighbour and we were now locked. Einar and Valknut turned and moved to one end, rather than force a way through us.
Arrows hissed out of the murk, skittering along the raw, tramped earth, slapping weakly off a shield here and there. Bersi was shaking, the sweat rolling off him and mixing with the dust to turn his back and underarms to mud.
Our bowmen scampered back, trying to make for the ends of our line. Those who couldn't pitched their bows over our heads and dived for our feet, wriggling like eels between our boots.
The ground trembled. More horsemen appeared, swirling like sparrows when they saw us. They looked no different to our own: men on horses with bows, fur-clad helmets, tan cloaks, white tunics. They shrieked from black-bearded faces, loosed a straggle of arrows and wheeled away, back into their own dust.
We stood. Wryneck reached over his locked shield, swept his sword down and sheared off the shaft of an arrow I had not even seen or heard. I swallowed the hot lump in my throat, but it stuck and choked me.
The ground shook and thunder rolled somewhere.
`Spears,' Einar called and they came hissing past my ear, sticking beyond us, a hedge of points.
'F-fucker,' stammered Bersi, his teeth clattering. 'Nearly had m-m-my f-f-fucking ear then.'
The ground danced; the thunder resolved to a rolling drum of noise. The dust seethed, figures loomed and the Khazar horse crashed out of the gloom.
They were unsure where we were, moving too slowly and too late to speed up when they spotted us.
They were a sally force to wreck the siege engines and were out to hit hard and run, but the sight of a hundred-odd men, mailed, with the obvious red cloaks of a druzhina and the grim faces of seasoned warriors, made them haul on reins.