To be a slave was a humiliation intolerable to Harald, who would have preferred death a thousand times over-save for the fact that it would have placed him beyond revenge, and wreaking his vengeance on the one who had brought him to such ignominy had become the sole aim and purpose of his life. The Roaring Bull of Skania was now intent on keeping himself and his few men alive with the hope of returning to Trebizond, reclaiming his ships, and sailing to Constantinople to rend Nikos body from soul in the most brutally painful way possible.
It was Jarl Harald's belief that Nikos had betrayed us to the enemy-a conviction which the captive Danes supported with the undying zeal of true believers. Sure, I was no dissenter. I thought Nikos guilty, too, but could not work out why he should have done such a thing. Hundreds of people on both sides had died to further Nikos's dark design. But what was the gain? I kept asking myself. What hidden purpose did it accomplish?
Following the ill-fated battle, our captors had pursued a relentless pace through a wasteland of arid hills and rock-filled ravines. Settlements were rare, the land desolate and unfriendly. We rested little, and ate less; our captors gave us only enough sleep and food to keep us on our feet. Since so little of our time was taken up with resting or eating, we had ample leisure to speculate on our plight and the chances of making good an escape, and did so as we walked along. All our contemplation counted for nothing in the end, however; we neither escaped, nor learned the nature of the fate awaiting us.
Twelve or thirteen days after the ambush, we arrived footsore and hungry in Amida, with its low buildings of white-washed mud, and were marched to the open square of wind-blown dust they called a market. It was only when-along with another group of thirty Greek captives-we were herded into the ragged, thorn-infested hills north of Amida, that the nature of our fate penetrated our hunger-dazed minds: we were consigned to the caliph's silver mines.
These mines were no great distance from Amida, which, to my best reckoning, lay far to the south and east of Trebizond, well beyond the borders of the empire, and deep in Sarazen lands. Some of the Greeks with us knew of the caliph's mines; I heard several of them talking, and what they said did not make for glad rejoicing.
"It is death they have given us," said one slave, a slight young man with curly dark hair. "They work you until you drop."
"We could escape," suggested the captive beside him, an older man. "It has been known."
"No one ever escapes from the caliph's mines," replied a third, shaking his head slowly. "This is because anyone who tries is beheaded at once, and the guard who is responsible is disembowelled with his own sword. Believe me, they make certain no one escapes."
I relayed what the Greeks were saying to Harald, who merely grunted and said, "That may be. Either way, I do not intend to remain a slave very long."
The mines occupied the whole of a tight, many-folded valley at the foot of a range of high barren hills. A single road passed into the valley, overlooked by guard posts on either side along its length, with three or four Arab guards at each position. At the valley entrance a great stone wall had been erected with a huge timber gate through which all who would come or go must pass.
Once beyond the gate, we entered a veritable city of small white-washed dwellings built from packed mud where the guards and mine overseers lived, many with their families, judging from the clots of women and children we saw here and there in the cramped, winding streets. Harald saw this and laughed. "They are slaves like us!" he hooted, and called all his men to heed and remember this.
Yet, slaves we were, and we were housed in long low huts outside the entrances to the various pits, of which there were many-perhaps several score-scattered in among the folds of the valley floor, and up among the slopes and crevices of the hills themselves. The huts were nothing more than a roof and a rear wall with a few partitions; they remained open at the front, like pig sties; there were no doors to keep out the wind, and the men slept with their legs and feet outside. But as we were somewhat further south, the weather was milder, and it seldom rained.
The first day was taken with fitting shackles. All the slaves wore iron leg chains held in place with iron bands around the ankles. Some of the Sea Wolves were so big that the normal bands were too small, and larger ones had to be made. As an extra precaution, because of the size and ferocity of the Danes, the overseer decided to bind each Sea Wolf to another with a short length of chain so that they could not move so quickly or adroitly. This safeguard failed to impress Harald, who deftly manipulated the pairings so as to match those who fought best together with one another.
"You never know," he explained. "It might prove useful."
