LITMIR.BIZ

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trying to be honest, ‘is fair. He deals properly with folk, or most of them. You can trust his word.’

      ‘That’s good,’ Guthred said.

      ‘But he’s a pious, disapproving, worried bastard,’ I said, ‘that’s what he really is.’

      ‘I shall be fair,’ Guthred said. ‘I shall make men like me.’

      ‘They already like you,’ I said, ‘but they also have to fear you.’

      ‘Fear me?’ He did not like that idea.

      ‘You’re a king.’

      ‘I shall be a good king,’ he said vehemently, and just then Tekil and his men attacked us.

      I should have guessed. Eight well-armed men do not cross a wilderness to join a rabble. They had been sent, and not by some Dane called Hergild in Heagostealdes. They had come from Kjartan the Cruel who, infuriated by his son’s humiliation, had sent men to track the dead swordsman, and it had not taken them long to discover that we had followed the Roman wall, and now Guthred and I had wandered away on a warm day and were at the bottom of a small valley as the eight men swarmed down the banks with drawn swords.

      I managed to draw Serpent-Breath, but she was knocked aside by Tekil’s blade and then two men hit me, driving me back into the stream. I fought them, but my sword arm was pinned, a man was kneeling on my chest and another was holding my head under the stream and I felt the gagging horror as the water choked in my throat. The world went dark. I wanted to shout, but no sound came, and then Serpent-Breath was taken from my hand and I lost consciousness.

      I recovered on the shingle island where the eight men stood around Guthred and me, their swords at our bellies and throats. Tekil, grinning, kicked away the blade that was prodding my gullet and knelt beside me. ‘Uhtred Ragnarson,’ he greeted me, ‘and I do believe you met Sven the One-Eyed not long ago. He sends you greetings.’ I said nothing. Tekil smiled. ‘You have Skidbladnir in your pouch, perhaps? You’ll sail away from us? Back to Niflheim?’

      I still said nothing. The breath was rasping in my throat and I kept coughing up water. I wanted to fight, but a sword point was hard against my belly. Tekil sent two of his men to fetch the horses, but that still left six warriors guarding us. ‘It’s a pity,’ Tekil said, ‘that we didn’t catch your whore. Kjartan wanted her.’ I tried to summon all my strength to heave up, but the man holding his blade at my belly prodded and Tekil just laughed at me, then unbuckled my sword belt and dragged it out from beneath me. He felt the pouch and grinned when he heard the coins chink. ‘We have a long journey, Uhtred Ragnarson, and we don’t want you to escape us. Sihtric!’

      The boy, the only one without arm rings, came close. He looked nervous. ‘Lord?’ he said to Tekil.

      ‘Shackles,’ Tekil said, and Sihtric fumbled with a leather bag and brought out two sets of slave manacles.

      ‘You can leave him here,’ I said, jerking my head at Guthred.

      ‘Kjartan wants to meet him too,’ Tekil said, ‘but not as much as he wants to renew your acquaintance.’ He smiled then, as if at a private jest, and drew a knife from his belt. It was a thin-bladed knife and so sharp that its edges looked serrated. ‘He told me to hamstring you, Uhtred Ragnarson, for a man without legs can’t escape, can he? So we’ll cut your strings and then we’ll take an eye. Sven said I should leave you one eye for him to play with, but that if I wanted I could take the other if it would make you more biddable, and I do want you to be biddable. So which eye would you like me to take, Uhtred Ragnarson? The left eye or the right eye?’

      I said nothing again and I do not mind confessing that I was scared. I again tried to heave myself away from him, but he had one knee on my right arm and another man was holding my left, and then the knife blade touched the skin just beneath my left eye and Tekil smiled. ‘Say goodbye to your eye, Uhtred Ragnarson,’ he said.

      The sun was shining, reflecting off the blade so that my left eye was filled with its brilliance, and I can still see that dazzling brightness now, years later.

      And I can still hear the scream.

      Chapter Three

      It was Clapa who screamed. It was a high-pitched shriek like a young boar being gelded. It sounded more like a scream of terror than a challenge, and that was not surprising for Clapa had never fought before. He had no idea that he was screaming as he came down the slope. The rest of Guthred’s household troops followed him, but it was Clapa who led, all clumsiness and savagery. He had forgotten to untie the scrap of torn blanket that protected the edge of his sword, but he was so big and strong that the cloth-wrapped sword acted like a club. There were only five men with Tekil, and the thirty young men came down the steep bank in a rush and I felt Tekil’s knife slice across my cheekbone as he rolled away. I tried to seize his knife hand, but he was too quick, then Clapa hit him across the skull and he stumbled, then I saw Rypere about to plunge his sword into Tekil’s throat and I shouted that I wanted them alive. ‘Alive! Keep them alive!’

      Two of Tekil’s men died despite my shout. One had been stabbed and torn by at least a dozen blades and he twisted and jerked in the stream that ran red with his blood. Clapa had abandoned his sword and wrestled Tekil onto the shingle bank where he held him down by brute strength. ‘Well done, Clapa,’ I said, thumping him on the shoulder, and he grinned at me as I took away Tekil’s knife and sword. Rypere finished off the man thrashing in the water. One of my boys had received a sword thrust in his thigh, but the rest were uninjured and now they stood grinning in the stream, wanting praise like puppies that had run down their first fox. ‘You did well,’ I told them, and so they had, for we now held Tekil and three of his men prisoner. Sihtric, the youngster, was one of the captives and he was still holding the slave shackles and, in my anger, I snatched them from him and whipped them across his skull. ‘I want the other two men,’ I told Rypere.

      ‘What other men, lord?’

      ‘He sent two men to fetch their horses,’ I said, ‘find them.’ I gave Sihtric another hard blow, wanting to hear him cry out, but he kept silent even though blood was trickling from his temple.

      Guthred was still sitting on the shingle, a look of astonishment on his handsome face. ‘I’ve lost my boots,’ he said. It seemed to worry him far more than his narrow escape.

      ‘You left them upstream,’ I told him.

      ‘My boots?’

      ‘They’re upstream,’ I said and kicked Tekil, hurting my foot more than I hurt his mail-clad ribs, but I was angry. I had been a fool, and felt humiliated. I strapped on my swords, then knelt and took Tekil’s four arm rings. He looked up at me and must have known his fate, but his face showed nothing.

      The prisoners were taken back to the town and meanwhile we discovered that the two men who had been sent to fetch Tekil’s horses must have heard the commotion for they had ridden away eastwards. It took us far too much time to saddle our own horses and set off in pursuit and I was cursing because I did not want the two men to take news of me back to Kjartan. If the fugitives had been sensible they would have crossed the river and ridden hard along the wall, but they must have reckoned it was risky to ride through Cair Ligualid and safer to go south and east. They also should have abandoned the riderless horses, but they were greedy and took them all and that meant their tracks were easy to follow even though the ground was dry. The two men were in unfamiliar country, and they veered too far to the south and so gave us a chance to block the eastward tracks. By evening we had more than sixty men hunting them and in the dusk we found them gone to ground in a stand of hornbeam.

      The older man came out fighting. He knew he had small time left to live and he was determined to go to Odin’s corpse-hall rather than to the horrors of Niflheim and he charged from the trees on his tired horse, shouting a challenge, and I touched my heels to Witnere’s flanks, but Guthred headed me off. ‘Mine,’ Guthred said and he drew his sword and his horse leaped away, mainly because Witnere, offended at being blocked, had bitten the smaller stallion in the rump.

      Guthred was behaving like a king. He never enjoyed fighting, and he was far less experienced in battle than I, but he

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