The Wendish prioress was an educated woman. She said Isprit had known greater glory. The real center of power had shifted to Venice. The Norseman had made a good choice. Using the local name for the place, the prioress told me the old imperial port was little more than three days' ride on a good horse. Two, the buxom Wend offered with a hearty laugh, if I wished to risk trespassing in Satan's backyard. She hugged my shoulders in an embrace which might have snapped a less battle-hardened invalid. I relaxed in her uncomplicated warmth.
The sailor had said the Norseman was anxious to leave port as soon as possible. He feared they should be trapped there. The Vikings had already angered the Venetians with a raid on Pag, which was successful, and another on Rab, which was not. Those dreaming old Adriatic ports now relied upon Venice for their prosperity and security and were glad to be off the main crusader routes. The knights and their armies brought little benefit and much destruction. The pope had called the Crusade in 1148. He had infected the whole of Europe and Arabia with his own dementia, which he then proceeded to die of. He had invented the jihad. The Arabs learned his lesson well.
I had no quarrel with any of the warring sects, who all claimed to serve an identical God! Human madness was ever banal. Jerusalem commanded no more of my interest. I had all I needed from the city. I had my horse, some gold and the odd ring on my finger. I found myself dragged briefly into the civic business of the city, but it was of no interest to me now whether or not order had been restored. Jerusalem was the turbulent heart of all their sects and would no doubt remain so.
Meanwhile Venice expanded her influence wherever the Turk's attention was distracted. Venice had most reason to see a nuisance in the Norseman. Her navy had already tried to trap him at Nin, but he had escaped, damaging The Swan in the attempt. The Viking would not take the risk of his beloved Swan being captured. They said she was the last of her kind, as Gunnar was the
last of his. The other Vikings had made themselves kings and indulged in imperial expansion, missionaries of their Prince of Peace.
While the Crusades drew the world's attention, the man I sought was raiding through the winter months, taking the rather impoverished towns of the Adriatic, careful never to attract the wrath of Venice. Until recently neither Byzantines, Turks nor any other of the various local powers had will or men to send ships after a sea-raider. His skills and ferocity were infamous, his vessel so fast and lithe in the water many thought her possessed. The Swan was as lucky as she was beautiful. But previously neutral or disputed ports now came under the protection of Venice. Venice was rapidly expanding her trade. The Doge coveted Gunnar's legendary ship.
Gunnar, I was told, was not even a Viking by birth. He was a Rus. Outlawed from Kiev he'd returned to the reiving trade of his forefathers more from necessity than romance. Otherwise he was something of a mystery. Evidently neither Christian, Jew nor Moslem, he had never revealed his face, even to his women. Night and day he wore a reflective steel mask.
"Sounds a devilish wicked creature, eh?" the prioress said. "Not plague or leprosy, so I gather."
This matronly prioress, a woman of the world, had, until her retirement, run a brothel in Athens. She had a strong interest in the doings of the region. It was useful, pleasurable and politic to succumb to her charms, even if she found mine a little more supernatural than she bargained for. Before retiring, however, we were joined by another intelligent person of some experience, who was, by coincidence, lodging there for the night.
This guest had arrived a few hours ahead of me. A cheerful, wide-mouthed redheaded little man, he might have been a relative of my old friend Moonglum. My memory, as always in these dreams, was a little dim regarding any other life. This friar was a soldier-priest, with a mail shirt under his heavy homespun cassock, a useful-looking sword of Eastern pattern in an elaborate sheath and boots of fine quality that had seen better days.
He introduced himself in Greek, still the common tongue of the region. Friar Tristelunne had been a Heironymite hermit until his own natural garrulousness took him back, he said, to society. He now made ends meet as best he could, from marriages, deaths, funerals, letter writing, and selling the occasional small relic. Sadly there was often more work for his sword than his prayer book. The Crusade had been a disappointment to him. It no doubt satisfied the Christian appetites of the city's liberators, he said, but it wasn't man's work. He drew the line at skewering old Jewish women and babies in the name of the Lord of Light.
Friar Tristelunne knew the Norseman. "Some call him Earl Gunnar the Ill-famed, but he has a dozen worse names. A captain so cruel only the most desperate and depraved will sail with him."
A pagan, Gunnar's attempt to join and profit from the Crusade had been thwarted.
"Even the realistic, pious and opportunistic Saint Clair could not excuse the recruitment of an unreformed worshipper of Woden."
Gunnar was famous for his treachery, and there was no guarantee that once he reached the Holy Land he would not discover a better master in Saladin. The only good reason anyone would have to strike an alliance with Gunnar the Doomed was if they needed a good navigator. "His skills are greater than the Ericssons'. He uses magic lodestones. He takes wild risks and survives them, even if all his comrades do not. Not only has he reached the rim of the world, he has sailed completely around it."
Friar Tristelunne had met Earl Gunnar, he said, when the captain was a mercenary in Byzantine employ. The monk had been fascinated by his mixture of intelligence and rapacity. Indeed, Gunnar had tried to get him involved in a scheme for robbing a wealthy Irish abbey said to be the home of the graded sante. But his methods ultimately disgusted the Byzantines, who outlawed him. He had worked for the Turkish sultan for a while but was once again sailing on his own behalf, getting a new expedition ready. He was busy promising every man who would sail with him that even their fleas' shares would be worth a caliph's ransom.
Friar Tristelunne had considered joining the adventure, but he knew Gunnar to be notoriously treacherous. "The chances of returning alive to the civilized world would be slim indeed." He had a passage on a ship leaving Omis for the Peninsula in a few days' time. He had decided to strike out for Cordova, where he could get plenty of translation work and study to his heart's content at their great library, assuming the caliph was still well disposed towards unbelievers.
The friar, like so many in that region, knew me as Pielle d'Argent or 'the Silverskin', and my sword was called Dentanoir. Many avoided me for my sickly looks, but Friar Tristelunne seemed untroubled. He spoke to me with the easiness of an old, affectionate friend. "If, against the good prioress's advice, you choose the short route to the coast, it might be to your advantage to pause when you meet the Grandparents. They might have something to tell you. They speak briefly but very slowly. There is a trick to hearing them. Each deep note contains the wisdom of a book."
"The Grandparents? Your relatives?"
"They are the relatives of us all," said the redheaded monk. "They knew the world before God created it. They are the oldest and most intelligent stones in this part of the world. You will recognize them when you see them."
While I respected his beliefs and judgment, I did not pay a great deal of attention to his words. I was determined to take the shortest route I could through the mountains and down to the port, so was already prepared to ignore the nun's warning.
I thanked the warrior-monk and would have spent longer talking to him if he had not made an excuse and headed for his bed. He could stay here, he said, for only a short time. He had a dream of his own to follow. And I was already engaged for the evening.