Pausing only long enough to make doubly certain that none of my friends was left behind, I counted eighteen Sea Wolves, and three Celts. To Faysal, I said, “Mount those who cannot walk.” He hurried away, shouting orders to Bara and Nadr.
The chief overseer, who had stood aside biding his time, now pressed forward. “You take my slaves;” he protested, shaking his fist in the air, “what will you give me for them?”
Rounding on him, I said, “You have read the decree. It says nothing of payment.”
“You cannot take my slaves!” he whined. “I must be paid!”
Ignoring him, I called to Faysal, “Is everyone ready?”
“Lead the way,” he replied. “We will follow.” He looked around at the guards, who appeared sullen and unhappy. Some shifted uneasily in their places, as if weighing the consequences of siding with the overseer.
“This way,” I called, raising my hand and striding forth. I took but two steps and was stopped by Jarl Harald, who put his hand to my sleeve and said, “We cannot leave yet.”
“Cannot leave?” I stared at him. “What do you mean?”
He glanced furtively towards the overseer, who still waved his arms in protest, crying his outrage at our uncaring treatment of him. Putting his mouth to my ear, Harald whispered a terse explanation.
“What?” I wondered in disbelief. “You cannot mean it.”
He nodded solemnly. “We did not know you would return today,” he said.
“I am sorry,” I told him flatly. “There is no time.”
Folding his arms across his chest, the king shook his head solemnly. “Nay.”
Faysal, seeing my hesitation, hastened to my side. “We must go.”
“There is a small matter yet to be resolved,” I muttered, staring hard at the king, who remained adamant.
Faysal made to protest, then glanced at the Danish king, his face set in a stubborn frown. “Resolve it quickly, my friend,” he relented. “I fear your decree will not detain this greedy fellow very much longer.”
I looked to the slave master, who was now urgently gesturing for several of his guards to join him. There was nothing for it but to seize the lion by his beard, as it were. “Come with me,” I ordered Faysal, “and bring two warriors.”
Marching directly to the angry overseer, I faced him squarely. “We are leaving,” I announced, “but not before the chains are removed and we have secured the bones of our brothers.”
“Bones!” he brayed in disbelief. “There was nothing said about bones!”
“Listen to me well,” I told him darkly as Faysal and the two rafiq came to stand behind me, “your worthless life hangs by a thread over the pit, but hear me out and you may yet save yourself.”
The slave master subsided, grumbling and cursing.
“I was a slave here,” I began. “On the day I left this place, two of my friends and I were to have been executed.” The slow dawn of recognition broke over the man’s fleshy face. “Faysal stopped the execution, but not before you killed an old man who gave himself in my place. Do you remember?”
An expression akin to fear crept into the overseer’s sun-blasted features. Yes, he remembered it all now.
“Answer me!”
His eyes flicked to the two warriors whose hands moved towards the hilts of their swords. “It is possible,” he allowed.
“That man was a priest of God,” I said. “He was a holy man, and he was my friend. I will not allow his bones to remain in this accursed place. Therefore, we will take them with us.” The overseer gaped, but did not disagree. “Now then, tell me where his body is buried.”
“We do not bury slaves,” the overseer informed me with smug self-assurance. “We throw their corpses to the dogs.”
“If that is the way of it,” I replied, my voice falling to what I hoped was a withering whisper, “you must pray to whatever god will hear you that we find his remains.” I let him imagine the worst. “Show me where his body was thrown.”
The overseer pointed to one of the guards. “That one knows. He will show you.”
Turning to Faysal, I said, “See that the leg irons are removed, and then take the overseer into his house and wait there with him until I return.”
As soon as the first slaves were freed from their leg chains, we set off: Harald, Brynach, Gunnar, Hnefi, no fewer than six other Sea Wolves, the guard and myself. Once out of sight of the yard, I took Harald by the arm, “We will take our time, but you must hurry.” I told him then what I had in mind and ordered him to do the same. “Do you understand?”
Nodding, the jarl and his men hobbled off up the long slope in the direction of the mines, walking in a laborious, rolling amble; they had grown unused to moving their feet so freely. The guard watched them suspiciously. “Where are they going?” he demanded.
“Show us where you put the body of my friend,” I commanded.
The guard pointed at the retreating Danes, and prepared to renew his demand.
“Now!” I told him. “I grow weary of your insolence.”
The guard clamped his mouth shut, turned on his heel and led us in the opposite direction. We walked to a place behind the settlement and he showed me a small ravine, little more than a dry ditch choked with the tough little desert thorn bushes and twisted, stunted cacti. Judging from the bits of broken pottery and the stink, I guessed the refuse of the settlement was pitched down the slope. “There,” the guard muttered with a downward jerk of his chin.
“We will begin searching,” I told him. “Bring us a robe.”
As the guard sauntered away, I told Brynach what I had in mind to do. He commended my thoughtfulness, saying, “Ah, a man after my own heart. May your compassion be rewarded forever.” Then, raising his shaggy head, he said, “And Joseph made the Sons of Israel swear an oath and said, ‘God will surely come to your aid, and you must carry my bones from this place.’” So Joseph’s sons took up his bones and bore them out of Egypt.”
“I will go down and see what I can find,” I told him, and left him reciting Holy Scripture on the edge of the ravine. I picked my way carefully down the steep slope, sliding the last few steps. I found a broken stick and began poking here and there among the refuse, potsherds, and sheep dung. There were bones aplenty—mostly those of animals, but some human.
And then, half hidden under a pile of dung and shrivelled garbage, I glimpsed a wad of sun-rotted cloth and my heart missed a beat. The cloth was the coarse weave of a monk’s cloak. I scraped away the refuse to reveal a tell-tale bulge. Squatting down, I lifted away the scrap of discarded clothing to reveal the discoloured skull of Bishop Cadoc. The bone was white where the sun had scoured it, but brown where it had laid in the dirt; there were scrags of hard-baked flesh still clinging to the underside, dry and black.
Laying aside the skull, I prodded a little more and turned up a long leg bone, and a single curved rib. Here and there, I found other bones: an arm without a hand, the lumpy cradle of a pelvis, some more ribs.
“Aidan?” came a call from the edge of the ravine above. “Have you found anything?”
“Yes,” I answered, and told him what I had found so far.
I do not know what I expected; Cadoc had been cut in two, the pieces carelessly heaved into the pit, and the corpse worried by dogs. No doubt, there were pieces of the good bishop scattered from one end of the ditch to the other.
“Do you want me to come down now?” Brynach called from above.
“No, brother, I think we will not find much more.”
“The skull is the most needful,” Brynach told me. “And the leg bones. Do you have two leg bones?”
“Just one,” I replied.
“Ah, a pity,” sighed Brynach. “Still, it is a handsome gesture. God is smiling even now.”
I moved further down the ravine and found what appeared to be a shoulderblade. I did not take it, though, for it was gnawed rough and covered with the teeth marks—those of dogs, and smaller, sharper ones that fit a rodent’s jaws. The
slave guard returned while I was searching among the rocks and refuse, and I ordered him to join me, bringing the garment he had been sent to find. He came, reluctantly, dragging a long, pale yellow robe of the kind the Arabs use to repel the sun and dust when travelling.
Taking the robe, I spread it on the rocks and shifted the bones onto it. Brynach crept a little way down the slope to watch me. When I finished, he raised his hands and declaimed aloud: “When I die, bury me in the place where the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones.” Lowering his hands, he said, “That is from the Book of Kings. Thanks to you, Aidan, we will bear our departed brother back to his beloved soil and give him a burial proper to his station.”
I made no reply, ashamed of my true purpose and wishing that I had thought of this for its own sake. I looked at the meagre offering, a pitiable reminder of a great man’s existence. No doubt a more diligent search would have reclaimed more, but I was growing anxious that we had been away too long already. So, I folded the robe over the paltry assortment, gathered the ends, and carefully swung the bundle onto my back. I climbed to the top of the ravine and, with Brynach and the guard, returned to the place where I had told Harald and his men to meet us.
There was no one in sight.
60
I should never have let them go off by themselves,” I muttered irritably. I could see the gleaming hope of freedom, so close as to hear the whir of its golden wings, beginning to recede. There was nothing to do but wait; lowering the bundle of bones to the ground, we stood in the blazing sun, shifting the powdery dust with our feet. The slave guard, already deeply suspicious, held himself a little to one side, watching every move.
“Those men are Danes,” observed Brynach.
“That they are,” I sighed.
“The same that took you away that night?”
“Near enough as makes no difference,” I replied, hoping to save myself a lengthy explanation.
But Brynach only nodded thoughtfully. “The Arabs with you,” he continued, “they were here the day Cadoc was killed. They took you away.”
“True.” I glanced at the British monk, hand to forehead, shielding his eyes from the sun; he seemed unconcerned that his only hope of freedom dwindled with every drop of sweat that rolled down his neck.
“Who are they?” he asked. “And who are you, that they should have saved you?”
I looked away, not wishing to offend, but unwilling to relate that too-lengthy tale just now. “It is not told in words of a moment,” I replied. “Perhaps later, when I can properly explain.”
He accepted this with good grace. “Truly, God moves in mysterious ways, and the musings of his heart are beyond discovery,” he declared. “And that is a fact.”
Then God must surely be an Arab, I thought. Or the Emperor of Byzantium’s elder brother.
Brynach, having found his voice, was apparently keen to use it. “The Danes,” he said, “where did they go?”
I was saved from having to make up an answer by a sound not unlike that of pigs being slaughtered. It seemed to come from up the hill in the direction of the mines. We all three turned as one towards the sound. “Whatever can it be?” wondered Brynach.
The sound increased, and into view came a column of Sea Wolves, marching in a ragged double rank. Between each pair was slung a weighty bundle, similar to that which contained the bishop’s bones, only larger, and clearly much heavier. They were struggling down from the mines, dragging their heavy burdens, and they sang as they marched.
“Did you have to listen to that?” Brynach asked.
“Not often.”
“Thank God.”
“Heya!” cried Harald limping to where we stood. The column halted and the men all but collapsed upon their bundles. “We are ready to leave now,” he said, gasping for breath from his exertion, “and we will not be looking back.”
Brynach stared at me as I answered in Harald’s tongue. “I had no idea there would be so much, or I would not have agreed,” I said without enthusiasm. Any hope that we might leave unmolested had deserted me. The chief overseer would certainly not let us go when he saw how much the Sea Wolves intended to take away with them. And, as we could not avoid crossing the yard, there was nothing for it but to brazen the thing through. “If you are ready, then follow me.”
Brynach and I took up our bundle and an odd procession fell in line behind us as we made our slow way back down the slope to the yard where the others stood waiting.
The overseer, who had by this time overcome his fear of the caliph’s decree, came flying out of his house as we entered the yard. “What is this? What is this?” he cried, waving his arms.
“I have already told you,” I replied icily. “We bear away the bones of Bishop Cadoc.”
His squint-eyes narrowed to mere slits as he counted all the bundles on the ground. “So many bones?” he whined. “It is not possible.”
Faysal, Nadr, Bara, and Musa took up places behind me. The gathered slaves looked on, growing excited once again. “What is he saying?” hissed Brynach anxiously.
By way of reply, I bent down and unknotted the bundle Brynach and I carried. Withdrawing the skull, I stood and thrust it before his face. “Look upon the visage of one who died by your hand,” I told him. “Look long, Oppressor, and remember. His blood shall cry witness against you on Judgement Day.”
The overseer blenched at this, so I continued my bluff. Putting out a hand to the Sea Wolves’ bundles, I declared, “And likewise the blood of all those who suffered under the lash and died at your pleasure—all these shall rise up on the last day and condemn you before Allah, the Righteous Judge.”
The slave master made bold to protest, but I stopped him before he could say a word. “Detain us now and you will surely never see Paradise.”
“Be gone with you!” he shouted, angry now. Summoning a few of the guards to him, he said, “The sight of them offends me. See that they leave at once!”
I suppose he took on this guise to preserve what little dignity remained him, but he need not have worried that we would overstay our welcome. No man was more impatient to be gone than the one standing before him at that moment.
Replacing the skull, I carefully retied the bundle and gestured for Dugal to come and carry it, and instructed that Ddewi, and some of the others should be mounted on the five horses along with as many of the bundles as they could hold. Then, turning on my heel, I led my bedraggled band of Vikings and monks from the yard like the Prophet Moses escorting the Chosen out of Egypt. Realizing that we were leaving, the watching slaves began to clamour; just as we reached the street leading to the gate, they surged after us, begging—demanding—to be included in our number. All at once the overseer and his guards were fighting to keep from being trampled in the rush.
Making what haste we could, we proceeded down the single narrow street of the settlement to the gate, arriving just ahead of the oncoming mob. Behind us, I could hear the voice of the overseer crying orders for the gate to be closed at once.
“Faysal!” I yelled, shouting above the rising commotion. He raced to my side. “Run ahead and hold the gate. If they close it now we will never get free. Hurry!”
Off he ran, taking two warriors with him; the others remained behind to guard our retreat if they could. I called to Harald and Dugal. “Make for the gate, men! Hurry!”
“We are hurrying as fast as we can,” Dugal answered, lumbering past; he all but dragged poor Brynach, who appeared to have scant appreciation for our predicament.
“God help us!” said Brynach, invoking divine aid and intervention on our behalf.
“Save your breath,” I snarled. “God is done with us. It is we who must be saving ourselves!”
He broke off, staring at me. I pushed him on. “Go! Go! Do not stand there gawking, man. Run!”
The Danes needed no coaxing. Lugging their bundles, they slewed on through the dust, heads down, sweating and grunting with the effort. I urged them on, shouting, pointing ahead to t
he gate, where Faysal gestured wildly. I looked and saw the great timbers swinging slowly shut.
The opening was a hundred paces or more from where I stood. Whirling around, I looked to where the last of the Sea Wolves toiled toward freedom. We would never make it!
“Throw down your burdens,” I cried. “Run! Save yourselves!”
No one paid the slightest heed. The stubborn Danes lowered their heads and laboured on. Unless the gate was held, they would be cut off; once closed, I had little hope that it would be opened again—not for me, or the amir, or anyone else.
I dashed to where Faysal was contending with the guards. “We cannot hold it any longer!” he cried.
The great timbers continued to close. Darting forward, I pushed against one of the huge cross-members with all my might, but could not so much as discourage its inevitable progress. “Help me!” I shouted. Bara and Musa leapt to my aid, and we desperately strove to slow the closure, while Faysal renewed his protestations with the gatemen. Meanwhile, the gate, groaning under its own weight, ground ahead regardless.
Dugal was first to reach the opening; bearing the bundle of bones, he hastened through pulling Brynach with him. Meanwhile, Faysal, seeing his efforts were wasted with the gatemen, ran to join us, adding his strength to ours. Even so, it was no use; our feet slid in the dust. The gate ground ahead, more slowly, but just as relentlessly as before.
We could not stop it.
A few of the first Sea Wolves hastened empty-handed through the ever-narrowing portal. They were free!
But one glance over my shoulder, and my heart fell. Harald and the remaining Danes, striving heroically with the weight of their bundles, were still too, too far away. What is more, the mad rush of slaves, despite the shackles and leg chains, was gaining on them from behind.
“Throw down the sacks!” I cried. “Save yourselves!”