Oathsworn 2 - The Wolf Sea (35 page)

It did not help that Hookeye reminded me of myself when Einar led the Oathsworn; now I knew how he had felt.

Like him, I tried to ignore it and plough on, even if the furrow was stony. We staggered from shadow to shadow, the only safe way to travel in a land where the sun will kill you and even veils won't shield you from the glare that flashes up to your face.

Anyone who stopped — or worse, collapsed and lay on the hot ground — was hauled up at once, because that sucked the water right out of your body. We learned to wrap our robes tight, which was better against the heat than having them flap loosely, and all our waterskins were coated with fat churned from camel milk to stop seepage.

Lie only in the shade, the Bedu told us. Maybe one of the lizards there will stand guard while you sleep

— since they are twice the length of your forearm, they make formidable watchdogs and only eat small animals. If you can't sleep, count the camel fleas, so big you can see them clearly.

We also learned a lot about food. The Bedu of the Beni Saher, for example, eat lean fox meat, which they say is good for sick bones. They also like rabbit, which they skin and gut like a goat, then cut the meat into pieces. Then they stuff the meat back into the skin and tie it up. A hole is dug in the sand and into that is put burning wood and two stones, one under with the wood and one over. The whole thing is then covered with embers and sand and left for three to four hours — perfect during the rest-up period of a long hot day, when no one wants to be near a fire. When it comes out, the meat looks like gold.

We ate it with the bread they made every day, taking wheat live with worms and mixing it with water and salt, the dough flattened and then covered in ash and cooked for five minutes on both sides, then removed.

The black soot was easily knocked off and it was a good taste.

All of us now had great respect for Aliabu, his brothers and his wives — but we were surprised to find that they considered us worthy of the same.

Ìt's because you sail on the sea,' the Goat Boy told us. `They call it Ocean and fear it.'

Ocean, it turned out, has many of the most dangerous
jinn,
which seem to be like fetches are to us. They are everywhere else, too, but never touch the earth and you can only see them when the wind of their passing whirls the sand into little circles.

The Bedu don't talk about them much, which is sensible, for neither do we like to speak of fetches and for the same reason. These
jinn
can inhabit the bodies of men and make them mad in the head and Aliabu remembered seeing one such, so crazy he ate sand and had to be held down and prayed over. Even so, it seems, he was never the same.

He told us this because he was concerned about Sighvat, who was showing all the signs this man had before he started eating sand.

I was, too, and could not work it out, but Sighvat remained apart and silent and brooding all through the long days down to another ancient city, nothing but fallen pillars and ruin and which, I learned later, had been called Palmyra. We were then heading further south, into the true desert, said Aliabu, before turning west to reach the head of the Pitch Sea and then to Jerusalem.

`True desert?' gasped Short Eldgrim, sand on his lips and not enough wet in his mouth to spit with digust.

'What can be worse than we have already come through?'

We found out, moving in the dark between the colonnaded ruins of the old city of Palmyra and the Saracen stronghold called al-Gharbi, like ghosts in the night, unseen and unheard.

We rested up, as usual, all that next day, in a heat like a bread oven, with the sky a washed and weary blue. The land wriggled and the horizon was sliced through with sheets of water that were not there, or hills whose summits were halfway between earth and sky.

In the cool of the evening we set off again and, when night fell, the land leached out most of the heat and grew chill as a summer fjord.

`Muspell,' growled Finn, exasperated. 'We are in Muspell.'

`What is Muspell?' the Goat Boy wanted to know, so Finn told him. Burning ice and biting flame, that was Muspell, the place where life began.

It seethed and shone here, too, and before we had been on our way two hours, Thor unloaded his own fury and a great storm marched across our path just as we reached the remains of an old Silk Road stopping place, which was Odin luck for us. .

We stopped and took shelter in this collection of ancient stones, huddled in a world gone dark, where blue-white sparks flickered in great masses of cloud, which we saw for the eyeblink of the flash.

The Thunderer spoke from them and then came a howl of sand-hail, until we were scourged and bent by a wind that scurried over the plain and took possession of the world. For all that fury, not one drop of moisture fell, which was strangest of all to us, who expected a soaking from a storm.

Even Brother John was cowed by all this, though he was more furious that we had travelled hard and fast by night, so that he had missed seeing the pillar near Aleppo where some Christ saint called Simon had perched like a bird for years, or the Street Called Straight in Damascus, or the old ruins of Palmyra.

If this was a simple journey, one of those walks you
peregrinatores
take,' I snapped back at his latest brooding, 'I would be agreeing with you.' I paused to let the latest flash light up his scowl, then added: 'But this is no silly Christ walk. We are surrounded by enemies and only by sneaking along in the dark can we get to where we must go.'

Ànd where is that, young Orm?' Brother John answered bitterly. 'We pursue men, pursuing men, who pursue a priest into the bowels of Satan. If anything smacked of jinn-madness, this it it.'

It was not altogether wrong, I was thinking, and there were other faces flickering grimly in the darkness, other thoughts on the same subject.

Òur way home lies along the track Starkad leaves,' I said, loud enough for them to hear, I hoped. 'We came to get the rune-serpent sword and free our Oathsworn comrades. After that, I will be going back to the
Elk
and sailing away from this gods-cursed country and hope never to see it again. Those still oathbound can follow if they will.'

Òn to a hoard of silver that will make you all kings,' Kvasir reminded them and there was silence while they drank in the rich mead of that and the sky grumbled.

Ìf our comrades are not already eaten,' growled Short Eldgrim, his eyes white in the darkness. Thunder rumbled, as if agreeing with him. 'What if we are too late and they have already lost their balls?'

Àll the more reason for haste,' Finn said vehemently. Ìf it were any of us . . . By the gods, think of it.

Dragged along by dead-eaters, already having lost your balls? You would give up all hope, even of the Oathsworn.'

Àt least, if they have lost their balls,' Kvasir pointed out moodily, 'it is one less thing for the dead-eaters to cook.'

There were grunts and growls of derision at this, while Kvasir spread his hands and demanded to know what was so bad about what he had just said.

I said nothing, for the fear and uncertainty was rich in the voices I had heard. I caught Botolf's eye and the look that passed between us let me know he was thinking the same.

Ìt isn't a disease,' said a voice into the sullen silence of this, in between the moody mumbling of the thunder. Sighvat.

`What say you? Woken up, have you? About time,' growled Finn.

Sighvat ignored him, shuffling closer as the wind screamed and Redbeard's unseen goat-chariot banged about the sky on iron-rimmed wheels. 'Eating the dead isn't a disease, nor are they fetch-haunted. It is hunger only, so bad that meat is meat no matter what it looks like.'

`Men are never the same after they have done it,' Brother John persisted. 'At best, they cannot be trusted.'

`None of us can be trusted then,' answered Sighvat sonorously, 'for we are all as likely to turn to it, given the same circumstance.'

`You would be last on my list of fare,' I offered, trying to make lighter of all this. A few chuckled, but Sighvat, curse him, was not for bringing cheer into that Thor-raging night.

Ì may be first available,' he said, flatly. 'For my doom is on me.'

`What's this?' demanded Botolf, alarmed. Doom was not a word anyone cared for and, for all his muscles, the giant was mortally afraid of the Norns and their weaving.

`That Godwin, the Saxon,' said Sighvat. 'He spoke to me first. My wyrd, as my mother has told me.'

The sky banged like a great flapping door and the blue-white seared my eyes. I felt the sick in my belly like a ballast stone, smooth and round and sinking, saw him look at the greyed sky on Cyprus and tell me how his mother had it from a
volva
in the next valley that her son would find his doom when the kite spoke to him.

Godwin's name, Puttoc, did not mean 'buzzard' — my
Englisc
was limited. It meant 'kite'.

Sighvat told them of it and everyone was silent. Those nearest to him touched a shoulder, or clasped his forearm in sympathy and none doubted the fact of his doom — save Brother John, of course, who was driven to a near frenzy of tongue-lashing over it.

He called us useless pagans, nithings, never to enjoy the fruits of the Christ heaven until we had stopped being stupid, hag-ridden barbarians and how a good dipping in holy water would be a waste of his and God's time.

I thought, at one point, that I would hear the meaty smack of someone hitting him, but none did. Instead, they hunched against his ravings as they did against the storm and, like it, he ran out of breath before long.

Then, burned away to the enduring husk, we staggered out of the desert. Which is easy to say and hard to do and, though it took us only a few days, it was through a world of sand, piled up in great waves like an ocean frozen in time. Rippled and ridged, it flowed round us like water, crawled as if alive into every crease and crevice.

Even here, in this absolute waste, I watched Aliabu dig in a certain place, insert a long reed and, like some seidr magic, there was water you could sip. Warm and filthy, but mead in that place.

It was our only comfort. Even Botolf's strength was fading by the time that great sand sea lapped on to firm rocks, but by then he was carrying the Goat Boy on his shoulders and the rasp of that little one's breathing, from the dust that lashed his barely healed lung, cut like an adze.

`He weighs about the same as the ring-coat I don't have,' Botolf muttered, which would have made us chuckle but for the fact our faces were fixed in masks of crusted sweat and dust.

Bergthor, who had been Kol Fish-hook's oarmate, had taken a cut in the fight at Aindara, a little slash on the forearm that had gone bad, spreading red lines and foul smells, despite Brother John wrapping it in a cloth marked with his most potent prayers.

Watery red pus oozed out of the wound, dripping on his breeks. It dried in the heat, but still managed to infect the air with a sickly sweet smell. Now Bergthor had turned green and staggered like a drunk when he walked and, as he saw the climb ahead, he sank to his knees and cried, though no sound came, only tears.

A strong man, who had survived everything the gods could throw at him, was crying because of a cut arm. Even as we marvelled that anyone had moisture left to waste, we looked away, because we were also strong men and knew we would weep when our time came. When we foundered, our eyes and minds struggling even as we lost control over our bodies, we would weep like this.

I should have used The Godi on him there and then, but wanted him to savour his last moments. Four of us carried him up to higher ground of rock and yellow-brown scrub, a sweating affair of groaning men and camels until, at the top, a breeze like balm took us and we saw the sparkle of water and the eye-aching sight of green.

`The Jordan,' Aliabu declared. 'My task is finished. I will lead you to where you can cross, then you will follow the road south to Jerusalem.'

`The Jordan,' Brother John said, blood seeping from lips too cracked to take his smile.

Ìs it safe?' panted Short Eldgrim.

Aliabu shrugged. 'Jerusalem is held by a Turk, called Muhammad ibn Tugh,' he answered. 'He has taken the title of Ikshid but his rule is a fragile thing, though he holds to the view that the city is holy to all People of the Book. There are more Christ-men in Jerusalem than either Jews or men of the True Faith.

`There are mosques and Jewish temples and Christ churches there, but the Jews fare better than Christians, for Christ temples are sometimes molested, especially when the Great City makes war. A law prevents either new ones being built or old ones repaired; but the city is holy to all, so none are molested, according to the law.'

`Mirabile visu,'
said Brother John and got down on his knees and started to pray. He would have wept had there been any moisture left in him — and, to be truthful, so would we all, for it was wonderful to behold, as the little priest said. I have never seen a green so green as that day.

Then Bergthor vomited and the juice of it ran sluggish at our feet, mixing with the dust on our boots and forming small clumps of sand. Lines of blood streaked it and the desert sucked it up. Pus, thick and yellow as cream, dripped from the black ruin of his arm.

Of course, we should have killed him, for it was clear he wasn't going to make it, but I could not bring myself to it, not after what we had all done. I wanted him to live a little longer in the sight of the green and feel the breeze on his cheeks. When I said this, the others nodded and hunkered down, understanding it at once.

The Goat Boy made him a shelter and we sat and listened to him vomit into the dry desert sand. We gave him our water to drink, but he threw that up, too, and the desert lapped it up.

Towards the end, Finn shoved the handle of his seax into Bergthor's good hand, but he was too far gone to hold it, so I sat with it, holding his hand in mine, both wrapped round the hilt. It felt like a bird's wing.

Others stirred themselves wearily, began collecting stones and scuffing out a hole.

`This is how we will all end up,' muttered Hookeye and a few others growled their agreement. I said nothing, but saw where the lines were being drawn, saw that the weld between the old Oathsworn and the Danes from Cyprus was fracturing now