Oathsworn 2 - The Wolf Sea by Qaz Page B

milk-white sea of the North, where the grit is ground out of the rocks by the ice.

    Then talk turned to Cyprus and Serkland and the runesword and our oarmates and, in the end, always came down to that last, turned over and over like some strange coin, in the hope that handling and looking would suddenly reveal what the true worth of it was.
    Only Radoslav knew much about Cyprus, for the Romans had only just recovered it from the Arabs. For some years, it seemed, both had tried to live shoulder to shoulder on the island, but then the Basileus had ordered the Arabs out two years before and any who stayed were warred against.
    `Just our Loki luck,' mourned Finn moodily. 'More heads to pound.'
    As for Serkland, the only one who had been there was Brother John. Amund and Oski were two of the most far-travelled of us — with Einar, they had once raided down the coast of the Ummayads and through the Pillars of Hercules, which we called Norvasund, into the Middle Sea.
    But Serkland, which we also called Jorsaland, was an unknown place to most of us. I only knew that they called it Serkland because the people there wore only serks — white underkirtles — instead of decent clothing.
    Others had heard tales from freshly made Norse Christ-men, who had gone there and swum across a river called Jordan, tying a knot in the bushes on the far side to prove they were true travellers for the White Christ. The tales were of carpets that flew and how the White Christ turned water into wine, or made a flatbread and a herring feed an army.
    Brother John told us of the incredible number of snakes there, the heat and how the people who ruled it, the Abbasid Arabs, were now the very worst of infidel pagans.
    `Worse than us, eh?' grinned Kvasir.
    `Just so,' answered Brother John soberly. 'For you at least can be called to see the error and embrace the true God, while these believe in their Mahomet and will kill rather than convert to the true faith.'
    `Kill rather than die,' Sighvat pointed out and Brother John nodded sadly.
    Ìt is to the eternal shame of good Christians that these heathens are in control of the holiest of places.'
    `Yet,' Radoslav pointed out, 'they have no quarrel with Christ-men, I have heard, even though the soldiers of Miklagard are making war on them. They even tolerate the Jewish-men, though that is less trouble-free, for they were ever a hard people to rule. Even the Old Romans never managed it completely.'
    `True,' admitted Brother John and sighed. Òmnia mutantor, nos et mutamur in illis times change
    —
    and so must we.' Finn grunted appreciatively. 'The Old Romans never ruled us, either. Maybe we can get together with these Jewish-men and give Starkad a smack. If they are like the Jew-men of the Khazars, I know they can fight well enough. They did at Sarkel.'
    Èasier to get one of those flying rugs, I am thinking,' Sighvat said, stroking the head of one of the two remaining ravens, both of which had become almost too tame to be of use. It was unnerving to see Sighvat with one on either shoulder, like some Odin fetch.
    Ì am hoping we run into Starkad without having to sail to Serkland,' I pointed out and Amund agreed, saying it was the snakes there that bothered him most. Brother John patted his shoulder.
    `That is not a worry at all,' he declared, 'for am I not come from the land where all snakes were banished by the blessed Patrick? No snake will bother us, for it knows where my feet have trod.'
    Ìn any case,' Sighvat added, 'I have deer antler to hand.'
    Now Brother John looked bemused, so Sighvat told him how a deer cannot get with young until it has eaten a snake and so rush to hunt them whenever they see one. Which is why snakes, in their turn, will run from deer, so that deer horn is a talisman against them and even burning the shavings in a fire will kill serpents with the very smell.
    Brother John nodded and I could see him tuck that away, like the find of a new and strange feather, or shell on the beach.