The Half-Slave Read online

  The other slaves sat with their eyes closed, rocking gently, resigned to their fate. A young girl had her arms around the shoulders of two boys who, Ascha guessed, were her brothers. The boys were asleep, beyond weeping. She caught him looking at her and twitched her head away.

  ‘And the big feller?’

  Ascha gestured to a weather-burned giant who looked as if he had fought his own war and lost. His bearded face was misshapen and swollen with sores. He had a large leaking bruise on his forehead, one eye was filled with blood and the nose sliced open.

  ‘Gydda the Jute,’ Lucullus said. ‘He was sold at Noricum. They caught him trying to escape and…’

  He put one long finger up to his nose and flicked it away.

  The Jute looked up as if he’d guessed they were talking about him. He repeated the gesture Lucullus had made, putting one thick finger by the side of his nose and yanking it sideways and laughed loudly revealing a mouthful of blackened teeth.

  ‘One blood,’ he said to Ascha, his voice deep.

  ‘We be of one blood,’ Ascha replied.

  ‘You’re no Cherusker,’ the Jute said. He spoke slowly with the flattened speech of the Almost-Island peoples. Like pigs farting, his father used to say.

  Ascha shook his head. ‘Theod,’ he said.

  ‘Gydda knew a Theod once,’ Gydda said.

  ‘What was his name?’

  The big man paused and frowned. ‘Aelfric,’ he said. ‘Aelfric Osricson.’

  Ascha jerked his head and looked at him, eyes narrowing. He saw Tchenguiz glance up. ‘How do you know Aelfric?’

  ‘You know him?’ the Jute said. He slapped a massive hand against his thigh and laughed delightedly. ‘He is still your war leader perhaps?’

  ‘No, he died almost a year ago.’

  A shadow crossed the Jute’s face. ‘Ah, that is a sadness. He were a good man, Aelfric’

  ‘He was more than that. He was my father.’

  Gydda’s lips curved in a gentle smile. He wiped a huge hand against his shirt and thrust it towards Ascha. ‘Gydda is honoured to meet the son of the great Aelfric.’

  Ascha winced as Gydda’s fist crushed his hand, but he was aware of Lucullus looking at him with new interest. It had been a while since he’d thought of his father. He felt a tinge of sadness and gave Gydda a short smile. Men always had fond memories of Aelfric.

  He turned back to Lucullus. ‘Where are they taking us?’

  ‘Levefanum, which you northerners call Thraelsted.’

  Thraelsted, the slave-town. But Levefanum sounded vaguely familiar. ‘Is it far?’

  ‘The mouth of the Rhine. The slavers think they’ll get a better price for us there.’

  Ascha looked at him. The Gaul spoke about the price of slaves as merchants might discuss the price of wine.

  ‘The slavers,’ Ascha said, nodding towards the crew. ‘What are they?’

  ‘The scum of the earth,’ Lucullus said. ‘The slavemaster is Kral, and the boy who cut your bonds is his son.

  Kral was a big bellied man with fish coloured skin. Ascha watched him, filled with fear and disgust. Kral now owned him as he owned every slave on board. Kral would decide whether they lived or died. He was Kral’s property, and Ascha loathed him with every muscle in his body.

  Kral looked up suddenly and caught Ascha staring.

  ‘What you lookin’ at?’ he shouted, raising his fist. ‘They warned me about you. You’re the Frankish spy. You want to kill me? I know you do. I can see it in your eyes. Well I’ll tell you something, I will kill you first. Mess with me and I will kill you, like that.’

  He snapped his fingers, the sound of a dry branch breaking.

  Ascha looked away.

  He was a slave, a tool with the power of speech, to be bought and sold like cattle.

  He breathed in deep and held it, closed his eyes and waited for the panic to subside. He must control the fear. Not give in. He was the son of Aelfric Osricson. He would survive.

  Kral’s boy came down the boat carrying a sack which he threw at them. The sack burst open spilling onions and turnips across the deck. The slaves had not eaten since Radhallaburh. They jumped up and scrabbled for the food while the slavers laughed and jeered. Gydda picked up a turnip in one huge hand and smashed it against the side, breaking it into chunks.

  ‘You have to eat,’ he said gnawing the white flesh. ‘Eat to live.’

  Ascha followed his lead, picking up a turnip and pounding it to fragments. The turnip was hard and fibrous and difficult to chew. Lucullus held an onion in his fingers and bit into it, delicately as a squirrel might a nut. Ascha saw the girl trying to break a turnip against the strake. He took it from her, hammered it into chunks and handed them back. She took them without a word and offered them to her brothers.

  Kral’s son watched them. He kicked an onion towards Gydda and laughed when Gydda snatched it and shoved it into his mouth. He kicked another, laughing all the while. There was a warning shout from Kral. The boy turned to say something, and Gydda sprang.

  In one easy movement Gydda had grabbed the boy with one hand, pulled the boy’s belly knife with the other and laid it against his throat. Kral’s son screamed in terror. Kral roared and came running, shoving the other slavers aside, his face dark with fury. The slaves drew back and watched fearfully as the slavers circled Gydda, weapons drawn. Gydda gave them all a grin, his open mouth full of turnip, and backed away, eyes flicking from side to side, taking the boy with him. The boy hung from Gydda’s arms like a rag doll, feet jerking wildly and blubbering.

  Ascha went to rise.

  Lucullus laid a hand on his arm. ‘It’s not your business,’ he hissed out of the side of his mouth.

  ‘I know,’ Ascha said. He shook his arm free and got to his feet and pushed his way through the slavers. He wasn’t sure why. He just knew that killing the boy was not right. The boy should not have to suffer for his father’s deeds.

  He shouted at Gydda. ‘Put the boy down, Gydda.’

  Gydda looked at him and shook his head, sweat flying from his brow. ‘Gydda will not,’ the Jute said. He backed away, taking the boy with him, one thick arm tight around the boy’s throat. The boy wailed, long green ropes of snot sliding down his cheek.

  Ascha moved towards Gydda, one hand outstretched. ‘Let the boy go, Gydda. Let him go or they will kill us all.’

  Nobody moved.

  Gydda began to laugh.

  He stopped laughing and blinked uncertainly. The boat rolled and the wind flicked whitecaps off the waves. Gydda looked to Kral and the slavers and then to Ascha. He leaned to the side and spat and then slowly lowered the knife. Ascha took the blade from Gydda with one hand and grabbed the boy with the other and dragged him away.

  There was the sound of escaping breath from slaves and slavers. The boy erupted in choking sobs. Ascha pushed him toward Kral without a word.

  Gydda slapped his thighs and threw back his head and roared with laughter.

  He never knew why Gydda had done as he asked. Maybe it was because Gydda saw something of his father in him. Maybe he realized that if he did not let the boy go they would all die.

  Maybe it was none of those things.

  Kral carried the boy off to the stern while the slavers laid into Gydda. They hurt him bad, stopping only when they realized that if they killed him they would have nothing to sell at Thraelsted. But Kral returned determined to make the Jute pay. The slavers held Gydda down while Kral straddled him and took his seaxe and ran it down both sides of Gydda’s head, taking off his ears.

  Gydda screamed once each time and then was silent. The slavers left him lying on his side with his blood leaking onto the deck in a slowly widening pool.

  Tchenguiz and Ascha sluiced sea water over the Jute and cleaned him up as best they could while Gydda lay with his hand to his mouth, moaning like a sick animal.

  The slavers returned and drove them down the boat. This time Ascha did not resist. He was only thankful the yokes were not brought
out again. A slaver came with shears and sheared them one by one, the women and children first and then the men. They watched in silence as their hair fluttered like small birds onto the deck, leaving their heads raw and naked and bleeding. When it was done, they couldn’t look at one another. Each found their own bit of horizon and stared at it with empty eyes, silently calculating their chances of survival.

  Now, Ascha thought, we look like what we are.

  The boat sailed west and then turned south-west. Kral took them inshore, slipping between the sandy coastline and an offshore bracelet of islands where the sea was less choppy. Ascha recognized where they were. The Raiders’ Road, his father had called it, the sea-path to Gallia and Pritannia.

  The rain eased and the sun feathered their faces. Ascha sat back and watched the ocean roll past. The last time he had sailed this road, he had been with his father and brothers, heading for Samarobriva. He had been a different person then, he thought bitterly, full of hope.

  Later, while Gydda sang dull Jutish songs in a tuneless voice, Ascha and Lucullus spoke together.

  ‘How do you know Gallia?’ Lucullus said. ‘Did you raid there?’

  Ascha guessed that the Gaul was curious, trying to make him out. ‘I was a hostage of the Franks for five years,’ he said quietly. ‘I served in the Frankish scara, under Bauto. We campaigned against the Heruli near Andecavus.’

  ‘You served with Butcher Bauto?’ Lucullus said, incredulous.

  Gydda stopped singing and a giant grin appeared on his face.

  ‘Gydda knew it!’ he said and rose to slap Ascha on the shoulder. ‘You are the son of Aelfric. You had to be a fighter.’

  Lucullus gave him a sardonic smile and said no more.

  Ascha felt a quiet satisfaction. Slave or no slave, now they knew who he was.

  After that a change came over Gydda. The big Jute stuck close to Ascha like a burr. Gydda would not speak unless Ascha spoke to him first and slept at Ascha’ feet, like some huge wolfhound.

  Lucullus saw it too.

  He rubbed the side of his cheek with the back of his hand and said, ‘Damned if Gydda hasn’t taken a liking to you. The big lunk seems to think he’s your bodyguard.’

  Ascha looked round and saw Gydda, his earless face streaked with mud and blood, winking and grinning.

  Ascha felt the wind shift on his cheek as they entered the Rhine mouth. The Rhine here was huge, he thought, as wide as an ocean.

  ‘What land is this?’ he said to Lucullus.

  The Gaul waved a long arm towards the north bank of the river mouth. ‘That is Friesland,’ he said. ‘The other side belongs to the Franks, the Salt-People.’

  Ascha surveyed the muddy smear to the south.

  Clovis’ kingdom.

  He breathed in a lungful of sea air and allowed himself the tiniest tremor of hope.

  Thraelsted lay on a fork of the Rhine close to a small harbour. It had once been a Roman naval base, so Lucullus said, and the broken ruins of the castellum that had guarded the harbour still stood on a low promontory behind the village. Ascha saw boats coming and going, slavers and traders, warships sharking through the waves. Green pasture ran to the river under a thin cover of birch. At the water’s edge, there was a squalor of cabins, dominated by a ramshackle hall with a bowed roof.

  ‘I was here before.’ Lucullus said. ‘That shed is where they will sell us.’

  Kral got them on their feet. They were driven off the boat and onto a landing and then pushed down a walkway of rough planks that had been layed across the mud from the harbour to the settlement. Guards stood with legs akimbo and watched them pass, lashing out occasionally with sticks and whips. The slaves hurried by with arms raised, shielding their faces. One older man delayed too long and was knocked to the ground with a single blow.

  At the end of the walkway they came to a muddy yard packed with people. Hawkers and traders milled and bargained, taking each other by the elbow to whisper a deal or share a confidence. Raiders from the warboats in the harbour weaved through the throng, drunk and flushed with booty. Women in headscarves sold milk, cheese, eggs and chickens from makeshift stalls. Ascha saw a fair-headed Dane in a green woollen cap empty a sack of silver and broken jewellery into a woman’s lap and grab armfuls of food to take away.

  Kral’s guards drove them across the yard to a timber stockade, guarded by Frisians. Behind the stockade, he could see an obscure mass of slaves. He was shocked by their appearance. They looked haggard and filthy, their heads shaved, dressed in rags and covered with grime. He heard the murmur of many voices and the occasional anguished wail.

  We’re to be kept in a holding pen, he thought. Like sheep.

  The gate was drawn up by a mud stained rope and they were pushed inside.

  By the end of the day the stockade had been churned into a muddy soup, a place stripped of all colour but shades of brown. Wherever Ascha looked, slaves squatted against the wall or sat gazing into nothingness with never ending stares. Some lay in the mud, their heads wrapped in their arms, asleep or dead.

  The stench was overwhelming. It filled Ascha’s nostrils and clogged his throat. Tchenguiz hunkered down on his heels and, Gydda went and sat beside him. Neither of them spoke, but they cradled their heads in their arms and slept. Lucullus was leaning on the stockade wall, looking out.

  Ascha wanted to talk, but was unsure how far he could trust the Gaul. The fog that had clouded his thoughts since Radhallaburh had lifted and he could think more clearly. He was ashamed at how far he had sunk. He had overcome abandonment and exile and he knew he could overcome this. You’ve got a job to do, he reminded himself. Maybe the slavers had done him a favour, bringing him so close to Frankland. If he could get across the Rhine, he would be in Frankland and could warn the Franks. But he couldn’t do it alone. He needed help and the only one who could help him was the aloof and aristocratic Gaul.

  Ascha joined Lucullus. The Gaul made room for him and they stood side by side without speaking. A young woman went by. She wore a mud stained robe and had an anguished look about her, like a startled bird. A child walked by her side, her hand to her mouth, holding onto her mother’s dress.

  ‘They’re not going to survive,’ Lucullus muttered.

  ‘Lucullus, I need to get out of here,’ Ascha said bluntly.

  The Gaul looked at him. ‘You can’t! Do you want to lose your ears like Gydda?’

  ‘I won’t be a slave.’

  ‘You’ll get used to it,’ Lucullus snorted.

  ‘I will not be a slave,’ Ascha repeated. ‘I must escape.’

  ‘Where would you go? The slave-hunters would find you before the day was out.’

  ‘Then help me.’

  ‘Why should I help you?’

  ‘Because I have news that is vital to the military high command of Frankland and Roman Gallia,’ Ascha snapped, breaking into Latin. ‘And you would do better to help me rather than ask damn fool questions I cannot answer.’

  The Gaul’s jaw dropped.

  He studied Ascha as if seeing him for the first time. He stroked his chin and rolled his tongue around his teeth and looked over his shoulder at the Frisian guards and then nodded and said, ‘Very well, I will help you. But you’ll only have one chance. If they catch you, they’ll mark you for life.’

  He tapped the side of his nose.

  ‘And Tchenguiz?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s coming with me.’

  Lucullus rolled his eyes. ‘You’ll stand a better chance alone. The Hun stands out like a daisy on a dung heap, but you’re Saxon, one of their own.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘No,’ said Lucullus. ‘There’s anger in your eyes and that’s dangerous. You are a slave now and must act like one. If they see anger in you, the good masters will move on, but the brutes will buy you just to whip the devil out of you. If you value your life, look away.’

  ‘I’m not a slave,’ Ascha said through clenched teeth. ‘I’ll die first.’
r />   ‘Die, if you must,’ Lucullus said calmly. ‘But you’re not taking us with you. Slavery is a curse, not a choice.’

  He wondered about that. He had chosen to spy on the Saxons when he could have stayed in Gallia. He had chosen to go to Radhallaburh when he could have remained in his village, and he had chosen to let Radhalla live when he had the chance to kill him.

  His problem was he’d had too many choices.

  There was a sudden bustle and the gate opened and a knot of armed men moved into the stockade, shouting and whipping back the slaves.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Ascha said in alarm.

  ‘It seems we are about to be sold,’ Lucullus said.

  The slaves were driven in from a side door. They found themselves in a large hall with a broken roof and a floor streaming with water. The shutters were thrown back and a crowd of women and children gathered to gawp. Slave dealers assembled at one end of the hall while Ascha and the others were driven in at the other. The slaves huddled together and waited. The buyers moved forward and began to inspect them, pulling at their mouths, pinching their upper arms and prodding their ribs, making them walk up and down as if they were horses.

  First to be sold were the children and young adults. The young, Ascha assumed, were soft and easy to train. A trader grabbed a young boy by the ears, pushed back his head and used his thumbs to roll back the boy’s lips, exposing his teeth. The boy grimaced with pain, the trader grunted, waved his hand and walked away.

  ‘What is she doing?’ Ascha said, pointing to a middle aged woman in a red shawl holding two children by the hand.

  ‘She’s selling them,’ Lucullus said. ‘In Levefanum it’s good business. People buy young children and sell them at a profit when they’re older,’

  And then Ascha remembered where he had heard of Levefanum.

  ‘Lucullus,’ he gasped. ‘I know a merchant here. We met on the Rhine. I think he would help me.’

  Lucullus looked at him, his eyes glittering. ‘What was his name?’

  Ascha struggled to remember. ‘Octha! His name was Octha. He said to call him if ever I needed help.’

  Lucullus rolled his bottom lip and put his head on one side, thinking it through. ‘Would he buy you?’