Scramasax (15 page)

Her mind idled; over surfaces it drifted like a seabird on outstretched wings.

It's like this for Allfather, she thought, when he sits in his high seat. Odin witnesses everything that is – everything in the nine worlds. He remembers everything that has been and can foretell everything that will be.

All the pain. The horrors. All the cruelty …

Solveig swayed. She closed her aching eyes.

How can I belong? How can I?

They're animals. Vikings, pirates, pirates, Vikings.

This is not my world.

How can I go down?

T
he Vikings sailed west, boasting and jesting, but frustrated not to have boarded and plundered either of the Saracen dhows, and angry at the deaths of three of their companions, Priskin one of them.

‘Mind you,' said Skarp, ‘dying won't stop Priskin's mouth.'

‘By now, he'll be sitting in Valhalla,' agreed Snorri, ‘and boring Odin himself.'

‘I never knew a man who talked so much,' Skarp added.

‘And unless I'm mistaken,' Snorri observed, ‘Halfdan here is bound to know some saying …'

Halfdan fixed Snorri with a knowing look. ‘A wise man is wary,' he began. ‘He listens with his ears, watches with his eyes, and keeps his mouth shut.'

‘What did I tell you!' exclaimed Snorri. ‘Poor Priskin! May those Saracens die a thousand deaths.'

‘They have a saying much the same as ours,' Halfdan volunteered.

‘Another time!' said Skarp, waving him away.

But Solveig's father had the last word. ‘Nothing speaks more loudly than silence,' he announced. And with that, he spun slowly on the ball of his right foot and stumped off.

For her part, Solveig was sickened by the deadly
fighting she had witnessed at such close quarters, and troubled by the way in which the Vikings had been so unnecessarily cruel. She felt as if her blood were on fire inside her.

I've seen a man die before. I saw that Pecheneg arrow go straight through Red Ottar's mouth and stick out of his back. I was standing right next to him, I saw the scarlet bubble. But this was much more horrible. That head … How could they kill that boy when he was begging for mercy? And then dishonour him?

On the evening before they sighted Sicily, Nico told Solveig they were nearing land.

‘How do you know?'

‘How does a man know he is hungry? His own body tells him.'

‘Yours doesn't,' Solveig said. ‘You're too thin.'

The helmsman shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘Look!' he exclaimed. ‘That flock of birds. They only fly near shore. Look there! That cloud-cap. My eyes, tongue, my nose … everything tells me.'

‘Mihran was like that,' Solveig said. ‘Our helmsman – all the way from Ladoga to Miklagard. He could always tell.'

‘God of winds lives in Sicily,' Nico told her. ‘Aeolus.'

‘No,' said Solveig, ‘Njord – he's the wind-god, and he lives in Asgard.' She smiled ruefully. ‘But as I keep finding out, people in different places have different names and stories for the same gods.'

‘God of winds,' the helmsman repeated. ‘God of fire. Mount Etna. You will see. You will hear.'

But all Solveig kept seeing was Egil and Bolverk playing catch, and hacking and slicing and chopping and blood, and all she kept hearing was yelling and howling and screaming. Nico understood how distressed Solveig still was. He took her chapped right hand
and placed it on the tiller and laid his own hand over it.

‘Hope,' he reminded her. ‘Don't forget your light friend.'

That night, Solveig lay under the stars with her head full of all kinds of bits and pieces with which the kind helmsman had tried to cheer her: how the Greeks call Sicily the three-pointed island and how it was once part of the Empire of Byzantium, how the great volcano Etna had once erupted and covered half the island with ash, how dark-skinned Saracens have ruled it for eight generations, and how most of the men have more than one wife, and all the women wear veils, and how a monster-dog with six heads used to grab six men for dinner from each passing ship, and how some islanders know how to stop ice from melting, even when it's blazing midsummer.

‘Now sleep and wake,' Nico said, ‘and when you wake, the island will be waiting.'

Nicolaus had steered traders to Sicily more than half a dozen times and knew exactly where he was heading, and where Harald Sigurdsson and the commander of the Imperial Fleet were to meet and combine forces.

First he steered straight towards the twin peaks of Mount Etna and then veered south.

‘Round this cape,' he told Harald at daybreak, ‘then west again. We make landfall at small bay …' The helmsman pushed out his lower lip. ‘Cove near Girgenti. About noon tomorrow.'

‘What about Maniakes?' Harald asked.

Nico shook his head. ‘Already there? Maybe.'

Harald gritted his teeth. ‘Thousands of Greeks,' he said. ‘Thousands. And forty-seven Varangians.'

With both hands, Nico patted the air in front of him, calming Harald's impatience.

‘And the girl?' Harald asked him. ‘Solveig.'

The helmsman patted the air again. ‘Time,' he said. ‘She needs time.'

Under his breath, Harald growled. ‘I should never have brought her.'

Once Solveig had helped the other women prepare food below deck – grilled meat and fruit, some of it rancid, some mushy, and none of it appetising – she picked her way to the bows and tucked herself into the space between the forestay and the stem-post. Her father and Tamas both saw her there, but each knew she wanted to be left alone. As for Harald Sigurdsson, he took the helmsman's advice about giving Solveig time, or else he was too preoccupied with other matters.

Solveig gazed at the island of Sicily spread out in front of her. It occupied the whole western horizon.

Later, she told the helmsman that it didn't look like an island at all, but Nico just shrugged and said that, even with favourable winds, it still took two days to sail the length of Sicily and more than four days to sail right round it.

It all looks so dead, thought Solveig. So dry. Burned.

Why would anyone live here when they could live where grass grows green and trees whisper and fields wear coats of many colours?

Why have so many people fought to win Sicily? Not just Saracens and settlers from Miklagard but Greeks and Africans and Romans and … I can't remember everything Nico told me.

As Solveig gazed across the jingling water, the large pancake of cloud over the island somehow congealed and darkened, and the wavelets between her and the shore looked quite steely.

Solveig sighed. Weather changes, she thought. And
my moods change. But I want one part of me, the core of me, not to change. So I can be afraid or hopeful or joyful, so I can be angry or ache like when I met Maria's father, and yet still be the same. I don't know how I can be like this, I don't even know how to say it exactly. But I know I must try.

In this way, sometimes staring out at the island, picking out squat white farmsteads and trees with one hundred begging hands, sometimes looking into herself, her own head and heart, Solveig slowly began to look forward again as well.

For much of the morning, Nico sailed their
ousiai
along the coast about half a mile offshore, passing several wide-mouthed bays. But then the land began to rise and become more rocky and almost at once the helmsman swung the boat round towards a much smaller bay – a cove almost – and called on the Greek oarsmen to man their oars.

As soon as they had driven the boat up the gravelly beach and the gangplank had been pushed out, Harald bounced down it and splashed ashore. He unsheathed his sword and shouted. The cliff guarding the far side of the cove heard him.

Harald rounded on the boat and his companions. ‘Hear that?' he yelled. ‘What I say, Sicily says.'

Then he turned again to the cliff. ‘Sicily,' he yelled. ‘Sicily, fall to me! Follow me!'

‘Fall to me,' grumbled the cliff. ‘Fall to me! Follow me!'

First the Vikings waddled and stamped around, finding their land legs. Then Harald ordered some men to scale the cliff-top and establish a lookout post there – and he showed others exactly where he wanted them to pitch their poled tents, on the stubby foreshore well above the tideline at the back of the beach. While he was
doing this, Solveig sighted a ship heading straight for them.

Then another.

Almost at once a third.

‘We're trapped!' she cried. And she leaped back up the gangplank and ran to the stern.

The helmsman scrutinised the three ships very carefully. His brow was furrowed and he pressed his lips together.

‘Nico!' barked Harald from below. ‘Who are they? Nico?'

‘Dhows, are they?' Solveig asked him fearfully.

The helmsman didn't reply. He kept tugging his oily wisps of hair with his splayed fingers.

‘How could they have followed us without our seeing them?'

Nico looked Solveig straight in the eye, and he smiled. ‘No,' he said. ‘No.' Then he leaned over the gunwales and called down to Harald. ‘
Ousiai!
They're
ousiai
. Your own companions.'

Hearing this, many of the men around Harald yelled and raised fists above their heads.

Harald himself stood still as a statue, gazing at the approaching ships, and Solveig couldn't be sure whether he was smiling or scowling.

Both at the same time, she thought.

Before nightfall, nine of Harald's fleet had sailed in, and the cove was crammed with Vikings and Greek oarsmen embracing their companions, talking, laughing, and establishing a first footing on the island. By the time another eleven
ousiai
had come in during the next morning, only three boats were missing. One old tub and the two transporters carrying all the Vikings' siege engines.

‘The etesian!'

‘Mother storm!'

‘Whirled us round and round.'

‘Yes, we saw them go down.'

‘Three boats, yes. The two transporters.'

‘Upended.'

‘We couldn't get near them.'

‘No one. No.'

Harald Sigurdsson filled his lungs with salty air and then slowly, very slowly, he expelled it all again. The press of men around him fell so silent that everyone could hear the wavelets chafing and chiding the bulwarks of the boats lined up along the shore.

‘A cruel mistress, the sea,' observed Harald in an almost expressionless voice that somehow gave his words more force – words that at once reminded Solveig of Edith's song about a woman waiting for her husband, and how:

‘Yes,' said Harald, ‘she makes wives widows, mothers childless, and children fatherless. That etesian
. . .
' Harald looked around him. ‘Snorri! Where are you?'

‘Behind you,' a voice replied.

Harald turned. ‘Right! I want you to shape a poem about this disaster. Shape a poem. And you, Solveig, you cut Snorri's words, and we'll raise a stone here, beside the water.'

Solveig nodded. It's right to remember our dead, she thought. I know it is. But that pirate … Don't we dishonour ourselves when we dishonour our enemies?

‘So these dead men will never die,' shouted Harald.

‘Never die,' the cliff answered him.

‘Never die!' shouted Harald again, and with that he
clamped his jaws and stalked across the beach until he was standing right under the cliff. He raised both arms and the great crowd of Vikings milled around him.

Harald's closest companions, Snorri and Skarp, flanked him, and Halfdan was next to Snorri, the four of them facing almost one thousand men.

Standing with the galley-women, Solveig saw her father was holding a furled banner.

Land-Ravager!

‘Unfurl it!' Harald ordered Halfdan. ‘Let it fly. We'll build new siege engines. We'll flatten all the Saracen strongholds.'

Then Solveig's father unfurled the banner. He held it high, and Solveig shone with pride. Harald Sigurdsson listened to the fierce shouts and whoops and cheers of the Varangians. He raised both hands and clapped them above his head.

‘Vikings!' he proclaimed. ‘You are Vikings, not southerners. You know how to fight better than any men on middle-earth. And you know who your best companions are. Grit. Guile. Ferocity. Yes, and you know what your rewards will be. Friendship. Fame. Booty.

‘I know! We're fighting for a cause. I heard what Empress Zoe said as clearly as you did. We're fighting to clean this island of filth.' Harald raised his voice an octave. ‘“All the filthy Saracens who've swarmed in from north Africa. Drive them out. Better yet, put them to death.” Fellow Varangians, we are fighting a cause. But …'

‘What about Maniakes?' one Viking called out.