The Soul Thief Page 8

  “My poor sister,” Corban said.

  Grod gave him a sharp look. “You are just now realizing this? You’ll need a quicker wit than that, in Jorvik.”

  Late in the day they saw, ahead of them on the road, a crowd of other people traveling in the same direction. Until nightfall they walked along behind them, making no effort to catch up, but the following day the other folk set off very slowly, and Corban and Grod drew even with the stragglers of their band not long after they started off for the day’s journey. The two men they caught up with were young, and had packs on their backs. They walked along nearly side by side with Corban and Grod for more than a mile, not talking at all, but exchanging sideways looks.

  Then suddenly one of the men spoke in dansker to Grod, and Grod answered back, and before Corban took another step they were standing in the middle of the road, passing around a leather water bag. Corban had the last of their bread wrapped up in a corner of his cloak and he took it out and broke it and they stood there eating the bread and drinking water. After that they walked along as if they had known each other always, Grod chattering away in their midst.

  Corban was thinking about gods; it bothered him that there were so many of them. With all the world divided up among them, how could any one of them have any real power? And yet each god pretended to be all-powerful, as Christ did. It seemed to him a misdirection at the heart of the whole idea. In his ears the dansker chatter was like a drone. He wanted to ask Grod about the gods in his homeland, since Grod clearly was no Christian, but the rapid garble of the other speech fenced him out.

  He felt suddenly as if he walked along invisible to these other men. He began listening to the sounds of the forest; the path was leading them steadily higher into the peaked hills. The oak trees around them stirred in the wind, rubbed and banged their branches together, and let go showers of their leaves. From far up in the sky he heard the sad skirling cry of a hawk.

  His heart flew upward like the hawk. He felt around him the seamlessness, the one-ness of the world, alive everywhere; only people, with their different words for things, their different little gods, broke it all to pieces. He began thinking again of Mav, and wishing he knew whom he might pray to for her sake, if any god at all could help her.

  He remembered the abbot, smooth and smiling, who had assumed there were only two kinds of gods: his and the Vikings’, good and bad, true and false. He did not think anything of the world was so clean as that.

  They went by a patch of wood all blackened and charred in a fire, and climbed over a great tree that had fallen over the path. By night they had caught up with the rest of the travelers, a big group of people, men and women, and made camp with them in a clearing in the middle of a beech wood. Moldering leaves and prickly burs littered the ground under the trees. The main group of travelers, who were obviously a single family, built a great fire in the middle of the clearing and crowded out everybody else. Grod and Corban made their own little camp back in the grove; Grod fussed around, sweeping back the burs and leaves and looking for kernels of the nuts.

  The two men they had been walking with called them back to the fire, and gave them bread. They stood there by the roaring, leaping fire, on which the children of the camp were heaping every branch they could find, and broke pieces off flat loaves and dunked them in water and gnawed them down.

  Grod was talking to the other two men; Corban stepped off a little by himself. The women all around him drew his eyes. He tried not to look at any of them too long; he knew each of them had men to watch out for her. After a while, he turned his gaze to the fire.

  Grod tapped his arm. “This woman here says she will give you three loaves, and a jar of honey, and all those apples for your cloak.”

  Corban looked where he was nodding. A large, heavy-fleshed woman sat by the fire, a child on her knee, and when she saw him looking smiled at him; yet he did not like her looks.

  “No,” he said. The cloak was wrapped around him, the end thrown over his shoulder; he gripped it with his fist. He had come to love it, and something in her put his back up. He saw the woman read his answer in his looks, and lose her smile.

  She pushed the child impatiently out of her lap and spoke again, more sharply. Grod answered, shaking his head, not even bothering to translate for Corban. Listening, Corban picked out some words—he realized the old woman was offering him more bread, more apples. Grod kept shaking his head. Around them other people were watching. A lanky young man came up beside the woman and squatted beside her, as if to be ready for an order.

  Corban saw they were getting into trouble; he thought of giving her the cloak, to avoid that, but the idea rankled with him. He thought: I am a match for them, surely. He said, “Tell her I will never trade away my cloak, and she can stop asking.”

  When Grod said that, the woman spat to one side. The man squatting beside her reached out and touched her arm, and she glanced at him and their eyes met and she said nothing more. Corban glanced at the people around them, who were watching with interest, and then went away from the fire, back to their camp.

  There he wrapped himself up in his cloak and lay down for the night, Grod beside him. The blaze of the fire cast a flickering orange light everywhere through the grove, making all the trees seem to dance. Other people were going to sleep, however, especially the children, and the fire began to die.

  Corban did not sleep. He watched the darkness creep back under the trees and he heard the grove around him fall silent. The night grew cold around him. When he thought the whole camp slept, he got up and woke Grod, and made him move off deeper into the darkness, dragging him by the arm when he stumbled.

  There, in the dark, Grod went back to sleep at once, but still Corban did not sleep, but looked back toward the fire, and the place where he had lain. So he saw a lanky man creep up through the dark, two others on his heels, with clubs in their hands.

  He put his feet under him, and stood. He watched the men steal through the dark trees to the place where he and Grod had lain down to sleep, and suddenly pounce, the clubs swinging down. He shook Grod quickly out of his blanket and made him run. Behind him the men were kicking and striking furiously at the ground, their voices rising, as if they had been cheated. Corban with one hand on Grod’s shoulder steered him back into the trees and down a bank. There they waited, sleeping fitfully, until the dawn.

  When they came carefully up toward the road again Corban saw that the great crowd of travelers was ahead of them, already moving off to the east. He and Grod waited for a long while to let them get far ahead of them. Grod searched through the litter under the trees and found a few whole beechnuts.

  Soon after they set out, they left the forest and came out onto a broad and treeless moor, tilting downward in long soft slopes. Far ahead of them they could see the other travelers straggled out along the road. Corban was relieved; now in the open he could see easier if anybody lay in wait for them.

  Far down on the moor, just off the road, he saw some loose horses.

  The thronging travelers had seen them too. Some of the men chased them, crashing through the heather, but the horses galloped away. As they drew closer Corban saw that two of the horses wore saddles, and all three had bridles on their heads. When the travelers had gotten tired of chasing the horses and gone back to the road, he set off after the horses, walking steadily toward them.

  The horses moved away from him and he walked after them, following the paths they made through the waist-high brush. All the morning he followed, until at last he walked one of the horses down. When he laid hands on it, it was quiet at once and stood while he freed it of the saddle and bridle. There was a sack of moldy bread tied to the cantle of the saddle and he threw it away for the winter birds. The saddle and the horse he left where they were, but the bridle he took back with him to the road, where he caught up with Grod, who was sitting on the side of the road, dozing.

  “What a fool,” Grod cried. “Why didn’t you bring back the horse, you big lout?”
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br />   “I don’t need a horse,” Corban said, surprised. He was cutting the leather of the bridle into narrow strips. “Do you think I would eat it, like a dansker?”

  “I could have ridden it! My legs hurt! I’m tired! I’m old! Did you think of me?”

  Corban laughed. “No,” he said, and braided together the leather into a cord. They were well behind the crowd now, and the sun was near the western edge of the world; he was hoping the people in front of him would stop soon for the night. He doubted they were finished with him, and he was afraid of catching up to them in the dark. His belly hurt with hunger, but now he had a long springy leather cord. He had carefully saved out a wide bit of the leather for the socket of the sling and this he fit to the middle of the cord, and got up to look for stones. Grod watched him, morose, but no longer whining.

  Before sundown the crowd made their camp on the open road. Corban and Grod loitered behind them, Corban practicing with his new sling, hurling stones off into the heather; but he saw nothing to kill. When the dark fell they circled cautiously around the camp, fighting their way through the close-growing tangling brush.

  This took them nearly half the night, and they found nothing to eat. Grod moaned and begged to stop and sleep but Corban dragged him on. At last they reached the road again, well ahead of the travelers’ camp, and then he let Grod sleep, and slept himself, the sling and some stones in his hand.

  In the morning they went on, but they had not outdistanced the others, and Corban, looking back, saw several men striding out after them. It was just after dawn and there were hares and birds fluttering in the brush. He made some casts at them but missed. With the men stalking them he could not be patient enough to kill anything.

  “I have to stop,” Grod said. “I’m worn out. I can’t go on any more.”

  Corban swung an arm around him and helped him walk along. When they came over the brow of a low hill, he looked back along the road, winding away over the heathery moor, and saw the lanky man and several others coming after them. They were not gaining ground; he thought they walked slower, now, as if they were giving up.

  He doubted they had given up.

  “Stay here, then.” He let Grod sink down to the ground. “They won’t hurt you, it’s the cloak they’re after.” He wound the cloak around him and went off through the heather, and rambling away from the road came eventually to a meadow by a spring. There he waited a while, still and patient, until some little birds with bobbles on their heads came to the water, and he killed three of them with stones from his sling.

  When he reached the road again, the lanky man and his friends were just climbing up the hill toward Grod. Seeing them come, the old man had stood up, and found a piece of wood somewhere, which he had cocked back over his shoulder like a club. He was shouting at the lanky man to stay away, and did not see Corban until the first stone flew by him and hit the lanky man in the arm.

  The three men stopped in their tracks, their heads swiveling around toward Corban. Stopping to pick up stones as he went, Corban ran up the road toward them, and cast three or four more times at them; he saw a fat stone bounce off a shoulder and another hit smack above an ear. The three men wheeled and ran hastily back the way they had come. Behind them, Grod stood yelling insults and taunts at them.

  “I’d have killed them all,” he said, when Corban reached him. “I once killed four men just like them, down in England. They’re just lucky you came along.”

  “So are you,” Corban said, and showed him the three little birds. Grod gave a cry of pleasure.

  “We’ll make a fire. There’s plenty of brush.”

  “Wait,” Corban said. “Not here.” Down the road, the lanky man had stopped, back there, out of range of the sling, and was watching them. “They haven’t quit. They’ll wait until we camp, and then steal up on us. We have to find someplace safe.”

  Grod gave a wail. “I’m tired. And I’m so hungry I can’t even walk. Give them the cloak.”

  “I won’t give them my cloak,” Corban said, through his teeth. The cloak was his, and too good for these base crooked people. He helped Grod hobble along, the old man leaning on him, his breath short and loud. After a little while, Corban picked him up on his back and carried him. The lanky man and his friends trailed after them, staying well out of the sling’s range.

  As he went along, bent under Grod’s weight, Corban looked for some place he could defend. There seemed no refuge anywhere along this road. There were no trees, not even a steep hillside, or a big rock. The way bent down along the cheek of a long low hill, and as the sun was setting, they came on a great stone cross, where another road ran in from the north.

  There, opposite the stone cross, a gallows had been raised, and on the gallows hung three dead men. Corban stopped, thinking this over.

  The bodies were very old, and stank powerfully. Scraps of cloth still clung to them and the birds had eaten most of their flesh, so that the bones of their legs and feet dangled down from the rags of their clothes. Corban went in directly beneath them and lowered Grod down to the ground.

  The old man had been asleep; now, lying on the grass, he lifted his head and looked around like a startled bird. Corban put stones in a ring for a fire.

  Down on the road, the lanky man had stopped too, and was arguing with his friends.

  “You can’t be camping here!” Grod cried. He scrambled to his feet, staring up at the gallows.

  Corban was laying out the fire. “No one will bother us here, will they? Sit down, you’ll get used to them soon enough.” He straightened to look down the road, and laughed. The lanky man was walking back forlornly along the road, following after his friends, who were running.

  Grod sank down on his haunches, but he could not help tipping his head every few minutes to look up at the bodies dangling from the crossbar of the gallows. “Better we should hide in the forest.”

  “There is no forest.” Corban spitted the birds and put them over the fire to roast. “And I have to stop, I can’t walk much farther. We are close to this city, which you say is so wicked, and certainly this tree here proves that, so tomorrow we can go there, but tonight we have to sleep. Just sit still, and don’t let it bother you.”

  Grod came around to sit next to him. “Likely their spirits are still here somewhere.”

  In fact now the wind blew up suddenly, and the three bodies dangling down began to shift and move, as if they were trying to walk in the air. Corban remembered gathering up the dead of his family, back at his home; he thought no corpse would ever frighten him again. The dark was falling around them like a soft blanket of moving night. Bats twittered and dashed through the air above the gallows. Grod huddled close, but he was falling asleep again; Corban had to waken him to give him his dinner.

  “You’re mad,” Grod said. “I can feel ghosts all around here. They’ll kill us in our sleep.”

  “Pagh,” Corban said. “They are just lonely, hanging up there in the air all this while, and cold, too. I think I’ll bring them down and let them sit by the fire and get warm.”

  At that Grod gave him such a look that he burst out laughing. Corban ate all the meat on his bird, crunched up the bones, and devoured everything that Grod left also. His belly wasn’t full but he felt stronger, and now very sleepy. He wrapped himself in his cloak, and slept.

  The night turned around them. Corban woke once, and saw the moon overhead, a thin white sail ghosting through the stars. He slept again, and dreamt that one of the corpses called to him—the middle one—and tried to tell him something, but he could not understand because the corpse spoke dansker.

  Just before dawn hoofbeats woke him up.

  He opened his eyes. There on the road a troop of men was trotting up from the direction of the city. The watery, pale, predawn light gleamed on the studs of their leather breastplates and the swords hanging from their belts. Corban did not rise, but under his cloak he took hold of his knife. Beside him Grod slept on.

  The leader of the band called ou
t sharply, and his troop slowed and stopped in the crossroads. The leader had seen Corban and Grod lying there, and he reined his horse around, and drew his sword. From his troop someone called, pointing to the gallows.

  From the edge of the world the wind rose, and the hanged men swayed; their leg bones clattered together, and their bony arms swung. The leader of the little army flinched back from the sound, sheathed his sword and wheeled his horse and galloped off. His men rushed after him.

  Corban let go of his knife. Under his breath he said a little thanks to the hanged men. He shut his eyes and went back to sleep, and Grod never woke at all until the morning sun was fierce in his eyes.

  Hedeby.

  Of the voyage that had brought her here Mav remembered almost nothing: salt spray, a steep sea before the wind. She had spent most of the journey in the far, gray, cold place. Now that they were here she felt the city all around her, a puzzle of wooden walls and walks up and down, forward and backward, of canals and dikes, morning fog and afternoon wind; a jumble of people, all talking at once. She lay in the bed the Lady had given her, shut up and away from everything else, and was sick in the belly as if she had drunk up the sea.

  The Lady herself came, and sat by her. Fed her broth and dry bread. Her hand stroked Mav’s hair. “Never mind, girl. Never mind.”

  Mav shut her eyes, sick. She wondered how she knew the name of this place. All around her she felt it, chamber after chamber, boxes of wood filled with people, and the sea around it like a cold chain. Even that chain could not hold her. She could feel herself stretched out now to the edge of the world, thin and feeble, streaked with failing light.

  She felt the bloodknot in her body, smaller than a fingernail, that was not her, but only within her, waiting. She was sick again, and threw up into a basin.

  The Lady sent that off with one of her servants. There were many other people in this house, all gray and afraid, going up and down, scrubbing and scouring, bending and lifting, talking to no one. In the middle of it was the Lady, who knew all, who alone had no fear.