Blood Eye(5)

'Your word is good enough for me, Sigurd,' Griffin said with a solemn nod. 'Now I will speak to my people.' Sigurd gripped Griffin's arm in a final gesture of trust before Griffin turned and began to receive the questions of the other influential men of the village.





Sigurd turned to me. 'What is your name, red-eye?' he asked in Norse.





'Osric, lord,' I said, 'and this is Ealhstan my master,' I added, nodding at the old man and marvelling at how I had found the words in the heathen's language.





'You serve that tongueless old goat?' Sigurd asked. He grinned. 'Ah, I understand. You don't like being told what to do.'





'I assure you, my master has other ways of getting what he wants,' I said with a smile as Ealhstan prodded my shoulder irritably and waggled his hand like a fish. I shook my head and the old man grimaced crabbily before shuffling off. He would have to forgo his mackerel now and he was not happy about it.





'How did you learn our tongue?' Sigurd asked.





'I did not know I could speak it, lord,' I said, 'until today.'





'That priest of the White Christ does not like you, Osric,' he said, rubbing a thumb along his sword's blade to clean the mud from it.





'Most of the people here fear me,' I said with a shrug.





Sigurd pursed his thick lips and nodded. I had never seen anyone like him. He looked like the kind of man who would fight a bear with his own hands. And win.





'We are the first among our people to take our dragons across the ill-tempered sea,' he said, 'but even we are not without fear. Do you know what I fear, lad?' I shook my head. Surely nothing, I thought. 'I fear a dry throat. Fetch us something to drink. Mead greases the barter.' He smiled at the giant Norseman with the red hair and beard, who grinned back, and I turned to go and fetch mead from Ealhstan's house. 'Don't put a curse on the damn stuff, Satan's minion!' Sigurd called after me, mimicking Wulfweard. 'I'm thirsty!'





The Norsemen fetched goods from their ships while the local children and even some of the men buzzed around them, marvelling at their sleek dragon-prowed vessels, the likes of which they had never seen. The children helped carry the heathens' goods back to the village where noisy clusters of women waited, eager to see what these strangers had to sell. The outlanders' deer furs were thick and full and their whetstones were fine-grained, though Siward the blacksmith insisted they were not as good as English stones. They threw down leather skins and covered them with amber, much of which had been fashioned into beads, and leather jacks full of honey. There was dried fish, reindeer bone, and walrus ivory which proved very popular with the village men, for they bought every piece on show. Having obtained it cheaply they would later pay Ealhstan to carve the ivory into smooth or patterned hilts for knives and swords, or amulets for their wives. The last women and children abandoned their hiding places in the eastern woods and came to join the throng and barter with the Norsemen. They brought their scales to weigh coin and beads and gestured fervently, trying to make themselves understood, though Sigurd was needed to resolve several confusions and did so willingly, a smile etched in his strong face.





'Osric speaks their tongue,' Griffin announced above the bustle, winking at me, and soon the folk of Abbotsend forgot that I was Satan's minion in their rush to employ me as a translator to grease their trade. But I was pleased to do it and I wondered if these same folk who had shunned me would treat me well when the Norsemen left, because I had helped them. At first finding the words was like rooting for berries after the birds have been, but the more I listened the more I understood. I was too immersed in men's negotiations to wonder what strange magic was at work.





Old Ealhstan made a sound in his throat and nodded, fingering an oval brooch of bronze which a Norseman had thrust into his hands. At the heathen's feet dozens of the things sat on a smooth hide, glinting in the late afternoon light. Most of the trading was finished, but the village was still buzzing as folk compared their new goods and boasted about how cheaply they came by them.





'I don't think he sold many of these, Ealhstan,' I said, seeing how keen the Norseman was to sell a woman's brooch to a mute old man. Ealhstan made the sign of the cross, curled his dry old lips and pointed off in the direction of the church.





'The women feared they'd get too much earache from Wulfweard for wearing them?' I asked as he handed me the brooch. 'God-fearing women sporting pagan brooches.' I tried to imagine it. 'Wulfweard wouldn't like that. Wouldn't like it one bit.'





To the heathen's disappointment I placed the brooch back on the hide with the others. All were longer than a finger and some had projecting bosses of amber or glass shining amongst intricate, swirling patterns engraved in the metal. 'Where is Wulfweard, anyway? I haven't seen the red-faced bag of wind since this morning.'