Jon shifted slightly, anxious to join in with a few choice insults, but aware that I would be annoyed if he did. Around us, the marketplace of Novgorod heaved with life, buying and selling, shifting with furs and green clay pots and amber and offerings laid at the feet of Perun — yet it seemed that there was a circle round us three and, inside it, we were unseen, unapproached.
When I did not answer, Martin blinked like a lizard and grinned his rotting grin. 'I see you have a heathen sign on you, as always. Odin's sign. Swear on it that you will give me what I seek when I tell you what I know.'
'No great bargain for me there. I have no wish to know how to feed a multitude with a loaf and a herring, even if I believed you knew the trick of it. Mind you, if you know the way to turn water into wine. .'
That harsh voice interrupted me. 'Judge for yourself. My secret concerns an old enemy and a tomb packed with silver.' And then he said simply, 'Brondolf Lambisson is the old enemy.'
When the dig of that did not make me flinch as he had hoped he narrowed his eyes.
'Brondolf went back to Birka,' I said, as casually as I could, as if the man meant nothing to me now
Martin saw it and nodded.
'Ja, Birka. Where else would he go? He sat there, watching the place die round him and desperate for something to save it. He failed; Birka is a town of empty doorways and crumbling timbers. Brondolf went to Hedeby, following the trade. When he found two Oathsworn he knew there, he must have thought the hand of God was in it — if he hadn't been a Hell-damned pagan.'
'So? What did he hope to gain?' I snarled, knowing full well.
'The secret of Atil's tomb, of course.'
'Cod-Biter couldn't find his arse with both hands and Short Eldgrim is. .'
'Eldgrim,' repeated Martin, as if tasting the name. 'The little one with the scars on his face, ja?' He had become more German these days.
'He is addled,' I said and Martin agreed with a nod.
'Which is why Lambisson came to me,' he answered. 'He thought I owed him a debt, thought that I might know a way into Eldgrim's head. He had some of it from Cod-Biter, enough to let him know that this Eldgrim knew more.'
Now the gaff of it took me under the chin and made me jerk and Martin saw it. Aye, Eldgrim knew some of it. Me, who could speak Latin and Greek, had no better knowledge of runes than a bairn. Who else could I have asked to help carve the secret on that sword hilt but the man who, of all the Oathsworn left on the steppe then, made the least mistakes with runes?
A sore dunt in a fight in Serkland had left him addled. I wished I was sure his mind was washed clean of the secret, but his thought-cage was a strange place now, where he could sometimes recall old events as if they had happened the day before and yet forget everything that happened an hour ago.
'You could not help Lambisson,' I said flatly to the monk, more hopeful than sure.
Martin grinned his rotted grin. 'He persuaded me to do my best. He smashed all the teeth in my mouth and gave me healthy bowls of tough meat, which I could only suck. Until I managed to free something from Eldgrim's mouth, nothing would pass my own that I could eat.'
There was clever and vicious in it, but it was only another little Truth Knife when all said and done. I said as much and he glanced at the stump of his finger, remembering. It was a nasty lash from me, born of fear for Eldgrim and Cod-Biter and should not have been done, for he had an answer to it and more.
'I am alive. I ate.'
I was silent, the words penned up in me and my mouth locked.
'And Short Eldgrim?' I managed after a struggle.
Martin twisted his face in what was now the parody of a sneer. 'Alive. He and I raked through his mind and came up with just enough, when added to what Cod-Biter was persuaded to recall. But Lambisson took them both when he went to Sarkel.'
That name made me twitch and Martin's black grin grew even wider. Not for the first time I wished I had killed him when I had had the chance.
'And he let you go?' I managed scornfully, as if that fact made his tale no more than a confection for children.
'No,' he answered simply. 'He needed me, too. I took myself away at the first chance.'
Aye, he would have done that. Martin had many skills, but his greatest was the ability to vanish.
'He has had a month or more,' Martin said. 'He has hired men, as hard as the Oathsworn — Krivichians and even Khazars, I hear. He has taken your friends and gone after Atil's hoard, but there is a limit to how much Eldgrim can be made to remember. It may take Brondolf some time. He may not find it at all.'
Then he stiffened and one eye twitched.
'Christ's bones,' he said and I turned to where he looked.
Jon's hand on my forearm gripped tighter and I thought it was for what had been said, but when I looked, he was staring across the market square — to where Klerkon knelt at the feet of Perun, offering coins and trinkets.
Martin's stare was raddled with hate for Klerkon and as I strode past him towards Klerkon I wondered what he had been subjected to by his captor, only seeing, at the last moment, the little man with him, his high cheekboned face turning towards me, a grin revealing more gap than tooth — Takoub.
He held a length of chain and attached to it were three women, one of them Thordis. On the far side, coming up at a brisk pace, was Finn and, behind him, Kvasir and Thorgunna.
Klerkon straightened, bowed once to the great oak pillar and turned to see me. He blinked at me, turned and shot a glance round at Finn, then grinned.
'A fronte praeciptium, a tergo lupi,' he declared.
'That had better be translated as "here you are lads, sorry I stole them", or you will feel my blade up your arse, Klerkon,' snarled Finn.
'A cliff in front, wolves behind,' I informed Finn. 'Klerkon is caught and wondering how to wriggle out of it.'
Klerkon raised an eyebrow, stretched a languid hand — slowly, to show it was empty and going nowhere to be filled.
'It would not be a clever thing, I am thinking, to start something in the market square of Lord Novgorod the Great,' he smiled. 'Especially since Takoub here has just bought three slaves. Legally.'
'They are not slaves,' growled Finn, then scrubbed his face in confusion, for two of them were, in fact, thralls from Tor's steading. Only Thordis was freeborn. I saw her, face set like bad dough but with eyes hard and determined, knowing I would not let this happen. There was also the heart-leap in me at the knowledge that he had not known who Thordis was, or else he would never have sold her.
'Beatipossidentes,' smiled Klerkon. Finn's mouth twisted and even if he had understood about possession and the law, it wouldn't have mattered. I raised a hand and he stopped in mid stride.
'Greek boys and — well, well, the very Christ priest I came to find,' noted Klerkon, glancing over my shoulder to where Martin scowled and crouched like a rat looking for a hole.
'I was thinking you might come to find him and shut his mouth — not that you would be so quick over it, all the same.'
'You should not have come to Hestreng,' I told him. He spread his hands.
'Just a wee strandhogg. A dip of the beak. No hard feelings — you hardly lost a thing from it and had a rival neighbour removed. Hodie mihi, cras tibi.'
I felt Finn tremble on the unseen leash. One more drawl of Latin and there would be blood spilled, which I did not want. Klerkon was right; this was a city ruled by the veche, a council who treated their city as if it were alive, who settled disputes between them with mass brawls on the Volkhov Bridge and who staked people who offended the peace.
I was almost dizzy with relief, all the same; Klerkon had not known the true value of Thordis as a lever against me and had sold her as a simple slave. He had come looking for Martin, to see what he could force the priest to tell him — saw that priest, hunched and rat-crouched, looking to sidle away to the shadows.