The Lords of the North. Bernard Cornwell

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 had been driven back by Witnere, but Egil dared not attack me while my sword was at his master’s gullet.

      Bolti was whimpering. He had pissed himself. I could smell it and hear it dripping. Gelgill was standing very still, watching me, his narrow face expressionless. Hild was smiling. A half-dozen of Sven’s other men were facing me, but none dared move because the tip of Serpent-Breath, her blade smeared with blood, was at Sven’s throat. Witnere was beside me, teeth bared, one front hoof pawing at the ground and thumping very close to Sven’s head. Sven was gazing up at me with his one eye that was filled with hate and fear, and I suddenly stepped away from him. ‘On your knees,’ I told him.

      ‘Egil!’ Sven pleaded again.

      Egil, black-bearded and with gaping nostrils where the front of his nose had been chopped off in some fight, levelled his spear.

      ‘He dies if you attack,’ I said to Egil, touching Sven with Serpent-Breath’s tip. Egil, sensibly stepped backwards, and I flicked Serpent-Breath across Sven’s face, drawing blood. ‘On your knees,’ I said again, and when he was kneeling I leaned down and took his two swords from their scabbards and lay them beside my father’s helmet on the table.

      ‘You want to kill the slaver?’ I called back to Hild, gesturing at the swords.

      ‘No,’ she said.

      ‘Iseult would have killed him,’ I said. Iseult had been my lover and Hild’s friend.

      ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ Hild said. It was a Christian commandment and about as futile, I thought, as commanding the sun to go backwards.

      ‘Bolti,’ I spoke in Danish now, ‘kill the slaver.’ I did not want Gelgill behind my back.

      Bolti did not move. He was too scared to obey me, but, to my surprise, his two daughters came and fetched Sven’s swords. Gelgill tried to run, but the table was in his way and one of the girls gave a wild swing that slashed across his skull and he fell sideways. Then they savaged him. I did not watch, because I was guarding Sven, but I heard the slaver’s cries and Hild’s gasp of surprise, and I could see the astonishment on the faces of the men in front of me. The twin girls grunted as they hacked. Gelgill took a long time to die and not one of Sven’s men tried to save him, or to rescue their master. They all had weapons drawn and if just one of them had possessed any sense they would have realised that I dared not kill Sven, for his life was my life. If I took his soul they would have swamped me with blades, but they were scared of what Kjartan would do to them if his son died and so they did nothing and I pressed the blade harder against Sven’s throat so that he gave a half-strangled yelp of fear.

      Behind me Gelgill was at last hacked to death. I risked a glance and saw that Bolti’s twin daughters were blood-drenched and grinning. ‘They are Hel’s daughters,’ I told the watching men and I was proud of that sudden invention, for Hel is the corpse-goddess, rancid and terrible, who presides over the dead who do not die in battle. ‘And I am Thorkild!’ I went on, ‘and I have filled Odin’s hall with dead men.’ Sven was shaking beneath me. His men seemed to be holding their breath and suddenly my tale took wings and I made my voice as deep as I could. ‘I am Thorkild the Leper,’ I announced loudly, ‘and I died