‘Nothing, lord.’
Sven leaned forward slightly, then grinned as he let out a huge fart. ‘Sorry, Bolti, I only heard thunder. Did you say you have nothing? But I see four women, and three are young enough.’ He smiled. ‘Are they your women?’
‘My wife and daughters, lord,’ Bolti said.
‘Wives and daughters, how we do love them,’ Sven said, then he looked up at me and though I knew my face was wrapped in black and that my eyes were deep-shadowed by the helmet, I felt my skin crawl under his gaze. ‘Who,’ Sven asked, ‘is that?’
He must have been curious for I looked like a king. My mail and helmet and weapons were of the very best, while my arm rings denoted a warrior of high status. Bolti threw me a terrified look, but said nothing. ‘I asked,’ Sven said, louder now, ‘who that is.’
‘His name,’ Bolti said, and his voice was a trembling squeak, ‘is Thorkild the Leper.’
Sven made an involuntary grimace and clutched at the hammer amulet about his neck, for which I could not blame him. All men fear the grey, nerveless flesh of lepers, and most lepers are sent into the wilderness to live as they can and die as they must.
‘What are you doing with a leper?’ Sven challenged Bolti.
Bolti had no answer. ‘I am journeying north.’ I spoke for the first time, and my distorted voice seemed to boom inside my closed helmet.
‘Why do you come north?’ Sven asked.
‘Because I am tired of the south,’ I said.
He heard the hostility in my slurred voice and dismissed it as impotent. He must have guessed that Bolti had hired me as an escort, but I was no threat, Sven had five men within a few paces, all of them armed with swords or spears, and he had at least forty other men inside the village.
Sven drank some ale. ‘I hear there was trouble in Eoferwic?’ he asked Bolti.
Bolti nodded. I could see his right hand convulsively opening and closing beneath the table. ‘Some Danes were killed,’ he said.
Sven shook his head as though he found that news distressing. ‘Ivarr won’t be happy.’
‘Where is Ivarr?’ Bolti asked.
‘I last heard he was in the Tuede valley,’ Sven said, ‘and Aed of Scotland was dancing around him.’ He seemed to be enjoying the customary exchange of news, as if his thefts and piracy were given a coating of respectability by sticking to the conventions. ‘So,’ he said, then paused to fart again, ‘so what do you trade in, Bolti?’
‘Leather, fleeces, cloth, pottery,’ Bolti said, then his voice trailed away as he decided he was saying too much.
‘And I trade in slaves,’ Sven said, ‘and this is Gelgill,’ he indicated the man beside him, ‘and he buys the slaves from us, and you have three young women I think might prove very profitable to him and to me. So what will you pay me for them? Pay me enough and you can keep them.’ He smiled as if to suggest he was being entirely reasonable.
Bolti seemed struck dumb, but he managed to bring a purse from beneath his coat and put some silver on the table. Sven watched the coins one by one and when Bolti faltered Sven just smiled and Bolti kept counting the silver until there were thirty-eight shillings on the table. ‘It is all I have, lord,’ he said humbly.
‘All you have? I doubt that, Bolti Ericson,’ Sven said, ‘and if it is then I will let you keep one ear of one of your daughters. Just one ear as a keepsake. What do you think, Gelgill?’
It was a strange name, Gelgill, and I suspected the man had come from across the sea, for the most profitable slave markets were either in Dyflin or far off Frankia. He said something, too low for me to catch, and Sven nodded. ‘Bring the girls here,’ he said to his men, and Bolti shuddered. He looked at me again as if he expected me to stop what Sven planned, but I did nothing as the two guards walked to our waiting group.
Sven chatted of the prospects for the harvest as the guards ordered Hild and Bolti’s daughters off their horses. The men Bolti had hired did nothing to stop them. Bolti’s wife screamed a protest, then subsided into hysterical tears as her daughters and Hild were marched towards the table. Sven welcomed them with exaggerated politeness, then Gelgill stood and inspected the three. He ran his hands over their bodies as if he were buying horses. I saw Hild shiver as he pulled down her dress to probe her breasts, but he was less interested in her than in the two younger girls. ‘One hundred shillings each,’ he said after inspecting them, ‘but that one,’ he looked at Hild, ‘fifty.’ He spoke with a strange accent.
‘But that one’s pretty,’ Sven objected. ‘Those other two look like piglets.’
‘They’re twins,’ Gelgill said. ‘I can get a lot of money for twins. And the tall girl is too old. She must be nineteen or twenty.’
‘Virginity is such a valuable thing,’ Sven said to Bolti, ‘don’t you agree?’
Bolti was shaking. ‘I will pay you a hundred shillings for each of my daughters,’ he said desperately.
‘Oh no,’ Sven said. ‘That’s what Gelgill wants. I have to make some profit too. You can keep all three, Bolti, if you pay me six hundred shillings.’
It was an outrageous price, and it was meant to be, but Bolti did not baulk at it. ‘Only two are mine, lord,’ he whined. ‘The third is his woman.’ He pointed at me.
‘Yours?’ Sven looked at me. ‘You have a woman, leper? So that bit hasn’t dropped off yet?’ He found that funny and the two men who had fetched the women laughed with him. ‘So, leper,’ Sven asked, ‘what will you pay me for your woman?’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
He scratched his arse. His men were grinning. They were used to defiance, and used to defeating it, and they enjoyed watching Sven fleece travellers. Sven poured himself more ale. ‘You have some fine arm rings, leper,’ he said, ‘and I suspect that helmet won’t be much use to you once you’re dead, so in exchange for your woman I’ll take your rings and your helmet and then you can go on your way.’
I did not move, did not speak, but I gently pressed my legs against Witnere’s flanks and I felt the big horse tremble. He was a fighting beast and he wanted me to release him, and perhaps it was Witnere’s tension that Sven sensed. All he could see was my baleful helmet with its dark eye holes and its wolf’s crest and he was becoming worried. He had flippantly raised the wager, but he could not back down if he wanted to keep his dignity. He had to play to win now. ‘Lost your tongue suddenly?’ he sneered at me, then gestured at the two men who had fetched the women. ‘Egil! Atsur! Take the leper’s helmet!’
Sven must have reckoned he was safe. He had at least a ship’s crew of men in the village and I was by myself, and that convinced him that I was defeated even before his two men approached me. One had a spear, the other was drawing his sword, but the sword was not even halfway out of the scabbard before I had Serpent-Breath in my hand and Witnere moving. He had been desperate to attack, and he leaped with the speed of eight-legged Sleipnir, Odin’s famed horse. I took the man on the right first, the man who was still drawing his sword, and Serpent-Breath came from the sky like a bolt of Thor’s lightning and her edge went through his helmet as if it were made of parchment and Witnere, obedient to the pressure of my knee was already turning towards Sven as the spearman came for me. He should have thrust his blade into Witnere’s chest or neck, but instead he tried to ram the spear up at my ribs and Witnere twisted to his right and snapped at the man’s face with his big teeth and the man stumbled backwards, just avoiding the bite, and he lost his footing to sprawl on the grass and I kept Witnere turning left. My right foot was already free of the stirrup and then I threw myself out of the saddle and dropped hard onto Sven. He was half tangled by the bench as he tried to stand, and I drove him down, thumping the wind from his belly, and then I found my feet, stood, and Serpent-Breath was at Sven’s throat. ‘Egil!’ Sven called to the spearman who