The Lords of the North. Bernard Cornwell

that horsemen were guarding all such paths and had been intercepting travellers all day. They had been driving their prey towards the village and those who could not pay the toll were being taken captive. ‘What are you going to do?’ Bolti asked, close to panic.

      ‘I’m going to save your life,’ I said, and I turned to one of his twin daughters and demanded that she gave me a black linen scarf that she wore as a belt. She unwound it and, with a trembling hand, gave it to me and I wrapped it around my head, covering my mouth, nose and forehead, then asked Hild to pin it into place. ‘What are you doing?’ Bolti squawked again.

      I did not bother to reply. Instead I crammed my helmet over the scarf. The cheek-pieces were fitted so that my face was now a mask of polished metal over a black skull. Only my eyes could be seen. I half drew Serpent-Breath to make sure she slid easily in her scabbard, then I urged Witnere a few paces forward. ‘I am now Thorkild the Leper,’ I told Bolti. The scarf made my voice thick and indistinct.

      ‘You’re who?’ he asked, gaping at me.

      ‘I am Thorkild the Leper,’ I said, ‘and you and I will now go and deal with them.’

      ‘Me?’ he said faintly.

      I waved everyone forward. The band that had circled to follow us had gone south again, presumably to find the next group trying to evade Kjartan’s war-band.

      ‘I hired you to protect me,’ Bolti said in desperation.

      ‘And I am going to protect you,’ I said. His Saxon wife was wailing as though she were at someone’s funeral and I snarled at her to be silent. Then, a couple of hundred paces from the village, I stopped and told everyone except Bolti to wait. ‘Just you and I now,’ I told Bolti.

      ‘I think you should deal with them alone,’ he said, then squealed.

      He squealed because I had slapped the rump of his horse so that it leaped forward. I caught up with him. ‘Remember,’ I said, ‘I’m Thorkild the Leper, and if you betray who I really am then I shall kill you, your wife, your sons and then I’ll sell your daughters into whoredom. Who am I?’

      ‘Thorkild,’ he stammered.

      ‘Thorkild the Leper,’ I said. We were in the village now, a miserable place of low stone cottages roofed with turf, and there were at least thirty or forty folk being guarded at the village’s centre, but off to one side, close to the stone-slab bridge, a table and benches had been placed on a patch of grass. Two men sat behind the table with a jug of ale in front of them, and all that I saw, but in truth I really only noticed one thing.

      My father’s helmet.

      It was on the table. The helmet had a closed face-piece which, like the crown, was inlaid with silver. A snarling mouth was carved into the metal, and I had seen that helmet so many times. I had even played with it as a small child, though if my father discovered me with it he would clout me hard about the skull. My father had worn that helmet on the day he died at Eoferwic, and Ragnar the Elder had bought it from the man who cut my father down, and now it belonged to one of the men who had murdered Ragnar.

      It was Sven the One-Eyed. He stood as Bolti and I approached and I felt a savage shock of recognition. I had known Sven since he was a child, and now he was a man, but I instantly knew the flat, wide face with its one feral eye. The other eye was a wrinkled hole. He was tall and broad-shouldered, long-haired and full-bearded, a swaggering young man in a suit of richest mail and with two swords, a long and a short, hanging at his waist. ‘More guests,’ he announced our arrival, and he gestured to the bench on the far side of the table. ‘Sit,’ he ordered, ‘and we shall do business together.’

      ‘Sit with him,’ I growled softly to Bolti.

      Bolti gave me a despairing glance, then dismounted and went to the table. The second man was dark-skinned, black-haired and much older than Sven. He wore a black gown so that he looked like a monk except that he had a silver hammer of Thor hanging at his neck. He also had a wooden tray in front of him and the tray was cunningly divided into separate compartments to hold the different coins that gleamed silver in the sunlight. Sven, sitting again beside the black-robed man, poured a beaker of ale and pushed it towards Bolti who glanced back at me, then sat as he had been commanded.

      ‘And you are?’ Sven asked him.

      ‘Bolti Ericson,’ Bolti said. He had to say it twice because the first time he could not raise his voice enough to be heard.

      ‘Bolti Ericson,’ Sven repeated, ‘and I am Sven Kjartanson and my father is lord of this land. You have heard of Kjartan?’

      ‘Yes, lord.’

      Sven smiled. ‘I think you have been trying to evade our tolls, Bolti! Have you been trying to evade our tolls?’

      ‘No, lord.’

      ‘So where have you come from?’

      ‘Eoferwic.’

      ‘Ah! Another Eoferwic merchant, eh? You’re the third today! And what do you carry on those packhorses?’

      ‘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