Scramasax (11 page)

Snorri guffawed. ‘He doesn't know we, er, borrowed it. He'll be hunting for it all over the place.'

‘Oh!' exclaimed Solveig.

‘He doesn't even know you're coming,' Halfdan said. ‘No one does.'

Cool as the night air was, it smelt rancid too and in one narrow street much worse than that. The stink made Solveig cough.

‘Follow in my footsteps,' her father told her. ‘You too, Snorri.'

‘They're even worse during the day,' said Solveig, ‘some streets are. All the dead rats and the dung and droppings. When Maria took me to meet her father, one street was … slobbering.'

As soon as the three of them had crested the hill, they could hear a hubbub rising from the dark below them. Clanking and banging and bawling and neighing. They could see a network of criss-crossing lights. But already, in the east, the velvet curtain of light was beginning to lift.

Some way down the track in front of them, a man began to sing:

‘Grimizo,' said Snorri at once. ‘A voice fit for the gods.'

‘The strongest in the guard,' Halfdan agreed.

‘Strange, that. Mulish man, matchless voice.'

‘Syracuse?' asked Solveig.

‘The main town in Sicily,' Halfdan told her. ‘So Harald says.'

‘Grimizo!' Snorri called out.

The German didn't answer him. Not one word. It was as if night had swallowed him whole.

‘I told you,' said Snorri. ‘A mule of a man.'

‘Not one,' observed Halfdan, ‘as you'd choose to meet on a dark night.'

Two minutes more and Solveig and the men had descended to the Varangian quay and at once they were swept into a muscling throng.

Grimizo's words are singing them all to life, Solveig thought. The sea-steeds and the land-steeds and the guards and oarsmen. Some words can do that. They can make things happen.

By lamplight and quickening daylight, Solveig soon saw how purposeful all the Vikings were. Carrying heavy chain mail, padded leather jerkins and armfuls of shining weapons, they hurried to and fro, their scarlet cloaks swirling.

In contrast, the Byzantine harbour-men, stablemen, horses all seemed to be getting in each other's way, but Halfdan and Snorri knew where they were heading. They bumped and bruised their way through the crowd, and led Solveig up a shuddering gangplank.

Solveig saw Harald Sigurdsson at once, standing in the stern in his ivory cloak, towering over a group of his guards.

‘Ah!' he boomed. And as Solveig stepped up to him, ‘The first shapely sight I've seen all night.'

Solveig bit her lower lip. She smiled.

‘Look at this mess!' he complained, waving at the confusion down on the quay. ‘Sawyers, caulkers, sail-makers, rope-makers, oarsmen and porters, cooks, grooms …'

‘When are we leaving?' asked Solveig.

Harald growled. ‘We should've set sail already. To leave you in the palace until the last moment, and to sail before dawn. Those were my orders.'

‘No one saw us,' Halfdan assured Harald. ‘Not even Solveig's servants.'

Harald inspected Solveig. ‘Now! You're not the only woman aboard, but you're the only one who's young, and not a drudge or a camp follower.'

Solveig wasn't sure she knew what drudges or camp followers were. ‘I'll find out what I can do,' she assured Harald in a measured voice.

‘You'll do what I tell you to do,' he retorted. And then he hawked and spat the phlegm overboard.

Solveig drew herself up, but the top of her helmet was still only a little higher than Harald Sigurdsson's shoulders. ‘I'm not a Valkyrie,' she began with a bright smile.

‘Well,' said Harald, grating his teeth, ‘I suppose we should be grateful for that.'

‘And not a one-breasted Amazon.'

One of the guards sniggered.

‘But I can carve bone and wood and stone. I helped Bruni.'

Harald sniffed.

‘Red Ottar's smith,' explained Solveig. ‘Bruni Blacktooth. I know how to put an edge on a weapon.'

Before Solveig realised what he was doing, Harald Sigurdsson reached inside his cloak, snatched a blade from the back of his belt and roared.

Solveig gasped and swayed back.

Harald held the blade up right in front of her nose. It gleamed in the half-light.

‘Know what this is?' he asked in a threatening voice.

‘Yes. Yes, I do. Bruni forged them.'

‘Scramasax,' hissed Harald. He stared at Solveig. ‘Sharper than a sword. Deadlier than an axe.'

Solveig swallowed, and then nodded.

‘It's yours!' Harald announced.

‘Mine?' yelped Solveig.

‘Just in case …'

Solveig took the scramasax. She grasped the handle and gazed at the blade, the way in which both the edge and the back curved towards the tip. It was almost one foot long. Then Harald closed his fist over hers. She felt his great strength, she felt her own fear. In her head. Her bloodstream. In all her limbs.

‘I'll be brave,' she said. ‘I'll try to be.'

‘Being brave,' Harald told her, ‘doesn't mean you're not afraid. Not at all. Being brave is when you take action despite your fear.'

Harald opened his fist, flexed his fingers and pushed his right thumb against the tip of the scramasax. ‘Just in case …' he told Solveig again. ‘Anyhow, it'll come in handy. For skewering meat, and shearing your golden hair. For fending off young Vikings!'

Solveig looked up at Harald under her eyelashes. ‘If it weren't for you …' she began, but then she hesitated and shook her head.

Harald pursed his mouth. ‘So long as you know it,' he told her.

S
houlder to shoulder, Solveig and her father stood at the starboard gunwale, looking forward, looking aft, while the Greek oarsmen eased their galley out of the Golden Horn, followed by a fleet of twenty-three ships.

Halfdan sighed. A long, noisy sigh.

‘What?'

‘Oh! … Herring. Goat's cheese – so sweet. Tenderskinned blueberries, small as a baby's fingernails.'

‘Home, you mean.'

‘Up the fjord, fishing. Just you and me.'

Solveig leaned into her father, and smiled.

‘I'm sick of grilled meat and more grilled meat and horse-piss wine and—'

‘Father!'

‘You will be too.'

‘Nothing could have stopped me from sailing to Miklagard, but there were many days when I longed for home,' Solveig admitted.

‘Like father, like daughter,' Halfdan replied.

For a while the two of them were silent, but then Solveig began, ‘That palace …'

Halfdan waited.

Solveig moved away from him and crooked her arms and pulled back her shoulders. ‘I didn't realise. That
palace is a prison. I was bound with hoops of wire. But now I'm free. Free!'

‘A boat can be a prison too,' her father told her.

‘I know,' said Solveig, remembering her long journey through the forests of Garthar.

‘Being on a galley with a hundred men,' Halfdan continued. ‘Come on. Let's talk to Nico.'

‘Who?'

‘The helmsman. Nicolaus.'

Solveig frowned.

‘Greek or Latin or something,' Halfdan said. ‘He's the saint Christian sailors pray to. Anyhow, he speaks decent Norwegian.'

‘Why haven't we got a Varangian helmsman?' Solveig asked.

‘Because this galley belongs to Empress Zoe,' her father told her. ‘She's part of the Imperial Fleet. Nico will tell you about her.'

Nicolaus was as upright and thin as a broom handle. His hair was so sparse that it seemed to consist of single strands, and he had high cheekbones and a pointed chin.

‘Yes, twenty-three ships,' Nico informed Solveig – and her father was right, he did speak good Norwegian.

‘Twenty-four including us, but two are transporters, carrying our siege engines, and twenty are tubs. Not fit for fighting-men. Tubs for traders!'

Solveig shook her head.

Nico thrust out his lower lip. ‘Empire,' he told Solveig. ‘Byzantine Empire is like tub.'

‘What do you mean?'

Nico jabbed towards the deck with his chapped right forefinger. ‘Leak!' he explained. ‘Plug it. Moss. Tar.'

‘I know,' Solveig said. ‘Wool. Resin. Fat. Anything.'

‘Anything,' agreed Nico, and he jabbed towards the deck again, this time with his chapped left
forefinger. ‘Next day, new leak. New place. Empire like tub.'

‘Nico's right,' Halfdan said. ‘Empress Zoe is fighting on too many fronts. Her empire's not watertight. But it's the same at home, isn't it? How can one man ever rule for long over all of Norway and Denmark?'

‘And England too,' added Solveig.

‘Even Harald,' said Halfdan with a sly smile.

‘Could he?' cried Solveig. ‘I mean …' Her eyes shone.

‘No man knows what lies in store for him,' her father replied. ‘But the wish, what's the saying, the wish is father to the son.'

‘Mother to the daughter,' Nico corrected him. ‘Fathers don't bear children.'

Solveig laughed. ‘No,' she said, ‘daughters bear their fathers.'

The helmsman looked perplexed.

‘What's this galley called?' Solveig asked him. ‘I mean, I know she's not a karv, or a knar or a skute, so what is she?'

‘A dromon. Every warship's a dromon. This kind is
ousiai
.'

‘Ooze-ee-eye,' Solveig repeated slowly.

‘She's light,' Nico told her. ‘She's fast. One hundred oarsmen.'

‘Ooh!' exclaimed Solveig. ‘That many? There were only six on Red Ottar's boat. I rowed a half-shift.'

‘You won't be rowing on this one,' Halfdan told her.

‘I will if Harald tells me to,' replied Solveig, and she slipped her father a cheeky smile. Then she turned to Nico again. ‘Ooze-ee-eye.
Ousiai!
I like that word. How far is it to Sicily?'

The helmsman held out his hands and balanced them. ‘Seven days. First, Sea of Marmara. Here, in front of us.'

‘And then?'

‘Very soon the Great Sea.' Nico opened his arms and puffed out his cheeks like a statue of a sea-god, but Solveig still thought he looked more like the skeleton of a bream or a mackerel. ‘Sudden winds,' added Nico. ‘Sudden squalls. Near Chios.'

‘Where?'

‘The island of Chios. Then we sail south-west and west, five more days to Sicily.'

‘Unless …' said Halfdan, but he didn't complete the sentence.

The helmsman shrugged. ‘Always unless,' he agreed.

‘Tell Solveig about the ram.'

‘Ah!' exclaimed Nico, and his dark eyes glittered.

But at this moment Skarp came bounding along the deck between the upper banks of oarsmen.

‘There you are!' he exclaimed. ‘Still wearing Tamas's cloak, I see.'

‘Oh! Has he asked for it?'

Skarp guffawed. ‘He doesn't even know, does he?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘He's not on this boat. Not as far as I know.'

‘Oh!' Solveig lowered her eyes to hide her disappointment – and so she didn't see Skarp winking at her father.

‘Hmm!' grunted Halfdan. ‘Well, let's hope we haven't left him behind. It's a long swim from Miklagard to Sicily.'

‘Pfff!' exclaimed Skarp. ‘He doesn't even know how to swim!'

When it came, it was so sudden.

One moment Solveig was standing at a long wooden table in the stuffy hold, chopping up hunks of mutton alongside muscular Vibrog and lanky Edla and the three Greek cooks, all of them twice her age or older, and
the next moment the galley was lurching as if Ægir had grasped it and was giving it a good shaking. The Greek women were bawling, and all the mutton slid off the slimy counter into the soupy water swilling around in the bottom of the galley.

It was so sudden, and yet Solveig had already sensed it.

Sometimes, she thought, I'm like … more like a gull or a wild goose, like a goat or a cow. They know when to take wing, and when to huddle and herd and keep their heads down. My earlobes tingle. My feet sweat. Sometimes my back teeth ache. Yes, my body tells me when a storm is coming.

At dusk, the wind from the north sprang up and smacked the galley.

‘Etesian! Etesian!' wailed the Greek women. Ai-ee! Ai-ee! That's how the wind sounded.

And then a wind from the north-west added its voice to the storm: violent, thudding, hissing.