Gizur at once changed, clapping the mournful man on one shoulder and all sympathy, for that was his way – which the others said came from being named for his mother, Gyda. His father, it was believed, had sailed off west following tales of a land there and had never come back.
We were rarely out of sight of land in this scattering of islands, so that we could put ashore each night. I preferred not to sleep there all the same, lying at anchor instead, since I was never sure of what lurked beyond the beach.
When it suited us, we sailed into the night, which was a dangerous business that no other seamen dared try – but we were Norsemen and had Gizur. The days turned warmer, but it still rained and we needed the sail as a tent on most nights, even though we slung it under a great wheel of stars in a seemingly cloudless sky. The last filling of waterskins was before the long, deep-water run to Cyprus and a succession of days followed one on the other, with a steady wind that let the ship run on blue-green water.
We never saw another ship but, on the last night before Cyprus, as the sun sank like blood-mist, Finn split and sizzled fresh-caught fish on the firebox atop the ballast and we settled cross-legged and ate them with thick gruel and watered ale flavoured with the limon-fruits, something we had all taken to doing to take away the stale taste of the drink, which had been too long casked. It was also as good as cloudberries at taking away the journey-sickness that brought out sores and loosened teeth in your gums.
We missed the taste of the cloudberries, all the same, and Arnor started singing mournful songs full of haar mists and the milk-white sea of the North, where the grit is ground out of the rocks by the ice.
Then talk turned to Cyprus and Serkland and the runesword and our oarmates and, in the end, always came down to that last, turned over and over like some strange coin, in the hope that handling and looking would suddenly reveal what the true worth of it was.
Only Radoslav knew much about Cyprus, for the Romans had only just recovered it from the Arabs. For some years, it seemed, both had tried to live shoulder to shoulder on the island, but then the Basileus had ordered the Arabs out two years before and any who stayed were warred against.
‘Just our Loki luck,’ mourned Finn moodily. ‘More heads to pound.’
As for Serkland, the only one who had been there was Brother John. Amund and Oski were two of the most far-travelled of us – with Einar, they had once raided down the coast of the Ummayads and through the Pillars of Hercules, which we called Norvasund, into the Middle Sea.
But Serkland, which we also called Jorsaland, was an unknown place to most of us. I only knew that they called it Serkland because the people there wore only serks – white underkirtles – instead of decent clothing.
Others had heard tales from freshly made Norse Christ-men, who had gone there and swum across a river called Jordan, tying a knot in the bushes on the far side to prove they were true travellers for the White Christ. The tales were of carpets that flew and how the White Christ turned water into wine, or made a flatbread and a herring feed an army.
Brother John told us of the incredible number of snakes there, the heat and how the people who ruled it, the Abbasid Arabs, were now the very worst of infidel pagans.
‘Worse than us, eh?’ grinned Kvasir.
‘Just so,’ answered Brother John soberly. ‘For you at least can be called to see the error and embrace the true God, while these believe in their Mahomet and will kill rather than convert to the true faith.’
‘Kill rather than die,’ Sighvat pointed out and Brother John nodded sadly.
‘It is to the eternal shame of good Christians that these heathens are in control of the holiest of places.’
‘Yet,’ Radoslav pointed out, ‘they have no quarrel with Christ-men, I have heard, even though the soldiers of Miklagard are making war on them. They even tolerate the Jewish-men, though that is less trouble-free, for they were ever a hard people to rule. Even the Old Romans never managed it completely.’
‘True,’ admitted Brother John and sighed. ‘Omnia mutantor, nos et mutamur in illis – times change and so must we.’
Finn grunted appreciatively. ‘The Old Romans never ruled us, either. Maybe we can get together with these Jewish-men and give Starkad a smack. If they are like the Jew-men of the Khazars, I know they can fight well enough. They did at Sarkel.’
‘Easier to get one of those flying rugs, I am thinking,’ Sighvat said, stroking the head of one of the two remaining ravens, both of which had become almost too tame to be of use. It was unnerving to see Sighvat with one on either shoulder, like some Odin fetch.
‘I am hoping we run into Starkad without having to sail to Serkland,’ I pointed out and Amund agreed, saying it was the snakes there that bothered him most. Brother John patted his shoulder.
‘That is not a worry at all,’ he declared, ‘for am I not come from the land where all snakes were banished by the blessed Patrick? No snake will bother us, for it knows where my feet have trod.’
‘In any case,’ Sighvat added, ‘I have deer antler to hand.’
Now Brother John looked bemused, so Sighvat told him how a deer cannot get with young until it has eaten a snake and so rush to hunt them whenever they see one. Which is why snakes, in their turn, will run from deer, so that deer horn is a talisman against them and even burning the shavings in a fire will kill serpents with the very smell.
Brother John nodded and I could see him tuck that away, like the find of a new and strange feather, or shell on the beach. Other Christ priests – Martin, for sure – would have made the sign of the cross to ward off evil and called Sighvat a heathen devil.
The next day we sweated against a bad wind, so that it took a long, hard sail to finally snug up in the harbour at Larnaca. I approached warily, tacking in almost against an unfavourable wind, so that it could be used to sweep us out if there was any sign that Starkad was there.
The town was a sprawl of white buildings, Christ churches and a considerable fortress on a hill, while the crescent curve of the sanded bay was studded with tiny fishing boats, all brightly painted and with eyes on the prow, which we had come to note was a Greek warding sign. Behind was what we now realised was the look of all the islands here: grey rock and dust, spattered with grey-green shrubs.
‘Pleasant spot,’ Kvasir noted, rubbing his hand and scenting the air, which was laced with the subtle wafts of cooking. ‘I smell drink,’ he added.
‘I would curb your thirst,’ Finn growled and nodded to where people were gathering, at once curious and afraid. From the fortress, winding down the short road to the quayside, came a snake of armed men, spears glittering, led by a man on a horse.
Men muttered and looked to their weapons, but I smiled and pointed to the curled-up cat sleeping under a strung fishing net on the beach.
‘There will be no battle here today,’ I said and Sighvat chuckled and nodded. The rest just looked bemused, but Sighvat had remembered. See many strange things in battle. But you never see a cat on a battlefield.
I had a brief flash of Skarti’s fever-racked face as he shivered in the shieldwall before the pocked-walls of Sarkel, telling me this in ague-stammers after we had both seen, like an Odin sign, a bird fly into that dusty hell of arrows and blood, perching on a siege tower to sing.
Minutes later, Skarti had an arrow in his throat and never spoke again, so it had been a bad omen for him and maybe he had known it.
Now I hoped he read the omens true. I had considered the chances of Starkad putting in here and discounted them; he had sent a boatload of men with a letter and would want to avoid being sucked into the quest, would want to sail hard and fast for Serkland and find his monk. I offered prayers to Odin that it would take him time to find out the lie I had told him, time I needed to rob him of this prize that would bring him rushing to us on ground we chose.
Yet here were soldiers, snaking their