I looked at the man, stared at him; the voice I recognized, but the battered face I no longer knew. "Gunnar?" One eye was horribly bruised and blood trickled down his face and neck from a gash in his scalp; his lips were split and bleeding, one ear was all but torn away, and there was a hideous blue-black knot on his forehead. "Gunnar…" I hardly knew what to say. "You are alive!"
"For a little yet," he whispered, wiping blood from his eyes. "But if your Christ saves us this time, then I, too, will worship him."
Just then, a fourth prisoner was yanked to his feet so that the dark-cloaked foe could impale him with a spear. Two enemy warriors held the Sea Wolf while a third put a spear through his belly.
"No one can save us now," I said bitterly.
"Then farewell, Aeddan," Gunnar said.
The unfortunate Dane was still twitching on the ground when the leader of the dark ones arrived, seated on a brown horse. I suppose he had directed the battle from a safe distance, and now that it was over, felt sufficient courage to come and inspect the spoils, such as they were.
He rode directly to where the prisoners were being slaughtered and slid from the saddle. Taking hold of the man who had murdered the last prisoner, he struck the warrior twice in the face, and shoved him away hard. Then he turned and began shouting at the others; I watched the mirth disappear from their faces. They put up their weapons and the killing stopped at once.
"He works fast, this Christ of yours," whispered Gunnar knowingly. "What is that one saying?"
"I do not know."
"They are Arabs?"
"Maybe," I answered. "But they do not speak like the amir and his people."
The leader of the dark ones shouted some more commands, and then climbed back onto his horse and rode away. The few remaining prisoners were then bound hand-to-hand, one to another, with rope made of leather strips. We were prodded to our feet at spearpoint and made to stagger back down the hill over the still-warm corpses of the fallen.
The dead lay in very heaps on the ground: whole families cut down as they ran, Danes in tight battle groups, toppled over one another. It was as if a forest had been laid waste, the trees levelled and left where they dropped. Women and children and merchant men lay in silent scores upon the bloody ground, ridden down and slaughtered, their bodies hacked, split, broken and discarded. The stink of blood brought bile to my mouth; I retched and gagged, and closed my eyes to shut out the sight.
My God, I wailed within myself, why?
I lurched blind over the uneven ground, stumbled, and fell over a battered corpse-a mother with her infant clutched tight in her arms, both pierced with the same spear. Christ have mercy! I cried. But there was no mercy for them, or for anyone else that day. God had abandoned them, like he abandoned everyone in the end.
I passed the body of the eparch, still lying with the spear in his back, an expression of contemplation on his face. I heard the strangled call of a crow and looked to the corpse-strewn hillside where the carrion birds were already commencing their cruel feast. I hung my head and wept. Thus, I began my long torturous walk to the caliph's mines.
The shade of death lies on thy face, beloved,
But the Lord of Grace stands before thee,
And peace is in his mind.
Sleep, O sleep in the calm of all calm,
Sleep, O sleep in the love of all loves,
Sleep, beloved, in the Lord of life.
A thousand curses on his rotting corpse!" muttered Harald, bringing the pick down sharply on the stone. "May Odin strike his treacherous head from his worthless shoulders."
"And feed it to the hounds of hel," Hnefi added, and spat into the dust for emphasis. He raised his pick and swung it down as if he were smiting an enemy.
Harald swung the pick high and smashed it down once more. "As I am a king," he intoned ominously, "I will yet kill the traitor who has brought us to this slavery. Odin hear me: I, Harald Bull-Roar, make this vow."
He was talking about Nikos, of course; and the vow, though heartfelt and infinitely sincere, was not new. We had all of us heard the same promise, with slight variations, ten score times since coming to Amida where we had been sold in the Sarazen slave market. Danes were considered too wild and barbaric to be used in any way other than for the most brutish labour. Thus Harald, together with the sad remnant of his once-fearsome Sea Wolf host, had been purchased by the caliph's chief overseer and promptly put to work in the silver mines.
