Lord of Raven's Peak (Viking Era 3)

1

The Slave Market of Khagan-Rus

Kiev, A.D. 916

THE SLAVE RING was as sweet-smelling as it would ever be, Merrik thought. It was early morning and still cool; a breeze off the river Dnieper rustled gently over the scores of unwashed bodies. It was July and the water below the embankment flowed smoothly and serenely within the Dnieper’s broad banks now, the ice floes having finally melted early the month before. The consequent flooding had eased now as well, sending cleansing river smells upward.

The sun had just risen behind Kiev, showing bright gold behind the endless stretch of barren hills and jagged mountains to the east. The stench of winter-dirty furs and scrawny bodies too long unwashed wouldn’t offend the nostrils until later in the day, even here in the slave ring. The only thing here to offend anyone was the abject human misery, and that was a condition so familiar in a place like this, it hardly bore notice.

Merrik Haraldsson had unfastened the pounded silver brooch and slipped its sharp point from the soft otter fur cloak. He’d slung the cloak over his arm as he walked toward the slave market’s perimeter. He’d come from his longboat, The Silver Raven, moored below at a long wooden pier that lay in a protected inlet of the Dnieper just below Kiev. He wasn’t sweating now, but the climb was a hard one, and he’d walked briskly, wanting to be here as early as possible to find a slave his mother would approve before they’d been picked over and only the sick and wasted were left.

The Khagan-Rus slave market was set apart from the town. Its name was the same as that of the prince of Kiev: a reminder that there was a tax at each purchase that would go directly into Prince Khagan-Rus’s capacious pockets.

Merrik turned to Oleg, a man he’d known since they’d both been boys—wild and passionate and eager to best their older brothers and acquire their own longboats to trade and fight and grow rich, rich enough to buy their own farmsteads sometime in a future that they pondered only rarely, richer even than their fathers and older brothers.

“We will leave after I buy a female slave. Keep a sharp eye, Oleg, for I don’t want a drudge for my mother’s longhouse, or a sloe-eyed maid that would unduly strain my father’s faithfulness. He has had no concubine for thirty years. I don’t want him to begin now.”

“Your mother would break his head open were he ever to gaze fondly at another woman and you well know it.”

Merrik grinned. “My mother is a woman of strong passions. Very well, then, I think of my brother’s wife. Sarla is a shy little thing and could easily be governed by a clever female, slave or no.”

“And your brother is a man of strong appetites, Merrik. A female doesn’t necessarily have to be toothsome for Erik to want her. Look at Caylis, I’ll grant you she’s a beauty even though her son is close to ten years old now, but Megot, whom he beds just as much, is a plump pullet and her chins shake when she laughs.”

“Aye, ’tis true. We must consider many factors before I pick the right female. My mother needs a female slave who will be loyal to her and work only for her. My mother wants to teach her to spin, for her fingers stiffen and give her pain now. Roran told me this should be an excellent selection this morning, many slaves were brought in just last night from Byzantium.”

“Aye, and the great golden city of Miklagard. How I should like to voyage there, Merrik. It is the greatest city in the world, it is said.”

“Aye, ’tis difficult to believe that more than half a million people live there. Next summer we will have to build a stronger longboat, for the currents and rapids below Kiev are vicious. There are seven rapids and each is more deadly than the last. The one called Aifur kills more men than all the others combined. Even the portage is dangerous for there are many vicious tribes living along the Dnieper waiting for men to come ashore with their longboats to drag them overland to beyond the rapids. Aye, we’ll join an armada of other trading ships for protection. I don’t wish to die just to see Miklagard and the Black Sea.”

“The Aifur, huh?” Oleg grinned at Merrik. “You have been talking to other traders, Merrik. You are already preparing this in your mind, aren’t you?”

“Aye, I am, but Oleg, we grow rich trading in Birka and Hedeby, for we are known there and trusted. The Irish slaves brought more silver than even I believed possible. And this year we grew even richer trading our Lapp furs in Staraya Ladoga. Remember that man who bought every reindeer comb we had? He told me he had more women than he wanted and all of them begged combs from him. He said their hair would beggar him.

“Nay, we will wait to travel to Miklagard next year. Be content.”

“ ’Tis you who aren’t content, Merrik.”

“Very well, I will be patient. We return home with more silver than our fathers and brothers have. We are rich, my friend, and there is no one to gainsay us now.”

“Forget not that lovely blue silk that came from the Caliphate, at least that’s what Old Firren claimed.”

“He’s a liar who has grown over the years to believe his own words, but the material is beyond beautiful.”

“Aye, and you will continue the lie. Will you give it to your bride? You plan to buy your own farmstead now, Merrik? Or perhaps return with your bride to her father’s?”

Merrik said nothing, but he frowned. During the winter, his father had negotiated with the Thoragassons, not bothering to tell his son until the two fathers had come to agreement. Merrik barely knew the seven

teen-year-old Letta. He’d felt anger at his father at such interference, for Merrik was, after all, nearly twenty-four years old, but he’d said nothing. The girl was lovely, appeared gentle, and her dowry would be impressive. He would look closely at her when he returned home, then make his decision. But if he wedded her he would have to leave his father’s farmstead, for already his eldest brother and his wife of two years, the gentle Sarla, lived there and would continue there after their parents died. Surely they would have many babes, and soon it would be too crowded, what with all his father’s and brother’s people and his own men and slaves as well. He shook his head. He disliked thinking of leaving his home, but if he wed, he would have to take his wife somewhere, and there was no more land in Vestfold that could be farmed. His brother, Rorik, had gone to Hawkfell Island, just off the coast of Britain, and had prospered. Ah, but to leave his home, it was something he didn’t yet wish to do. He also disliked knowing he was now rich enough to leave.

He said only to Oleg, “A farmstead and a wife are two decisions a man must weigh carefully.”

“That is what my father says, but he is always smiling at me when he says it. Think you he wants me out of his longhouse?”

There were at least eighty slaves in the pit, as it was called. They were of all ages, both sexes in nearly equal numbers, some few still proud, their shoulders squared, but most stood still as stones with their heads bowed, knowing what was to come, perhaps praying to their gods that the men or women who bought them would be kind.

Merrik walked slowly through the rows. The young women were lined up on one side, the older women behind them, and the boys and men on the other side of the pit. There were guards only behind the men, whips in their hands, watching, ever watching, silent and menacing, but they really weren’t concerned. None of this group would cause any problems. They’d been broken sufficiently since they’d been captured on raids, some of them had been slaves for decades, some even born of slaves.

It was a sight Merrik had seen since he’d been a boy when his father had first taken him to York to buy slaves. This was nothing new, save that this slave market wasn’t as grim or as dirty and didn’t smell yet since it was so early in the day and they were in the cool fresh air of Kiev and not in the Danelaw where the Saxons smelled as bad as the slaves, and their stench filled the air. Here a man could breathe as he made his selections.

Many of the girls were fine looking and appeared clean enough. They were from all parts of the world, some with yellowish skin and beautifully slanted eyes and the thickest black hair he’d ever seen, long and board-straight. They were slight, and all had their heads down. There were redheads and blonds from Samarkand, some very tall and broadly built, others squat with heavy torsos and short legs who hailed from Bulgar and beyond. Merrik saw a girl who pleased him. He realized she pleased him too much, for she had the pale golden hair of his people, pale clear flesh, and a long slender body. He felt a mild spurt of lust and shook his head. No, she wouldn’t do for his mother. His brother would soon have her flat on her back, if Merrik didn’t take her first. He wouldn’t provide another concubine for his brother Erik, for unlike his brother, he saw how much it hurt Sarla when her husband ignored her at night, then took himself off to bed with one of his women.

He must search for a comely face, but not too comely, certainly no more than a pleasant face, perhaps one on the broad, flat side. His brother disliked thin women; Merrik searched out females with hollow cheeks, showing bones. He selected three possible young slave girls, turned to search out the slave-auction merchant, Valai, to bargain. As he waited for Valai to finish with a Swedish merchant who smelled of rotted fish and stale sex, he realized he’d seen that same merchant—so obese he wheezed even as he spoke—the night before with a dozen more merchants at the house of a man who had many female slaves to sell. Each merchant was given a girl and they had, each one in turn, with all the others looking on, stripped the girls and had sex there on the wooden benches that lines the inside wall of the great hall. Merrik had felt immediate lust, for he saw that there were still half a dozen girls left and one would be his, until he saw a merchant over a girl, and the girl was lying there, her eyes closed, so still she could have been dead, and the fat merchant had shoved into her, huffing, his great belly shaking, until, finally, he’d spilled his seed inside her. She’d never opened her eyes. Merrik saw tears seeping from beneath her closed eyelids, streaking down her face. He had left.

He turned away from the fat merchant, and looked indifferently at the long line of men and boys. He froze.

He didn’t know why that of all the scores of men he looked directly at the boy, but somehow, once he had, he couldn’t seem to look away. The boy was perhaps twelve years old, not older than thirteen. He was so thin Merrik could see the long bones clearly in his bare arms, the knobby scabbed elbows, the wrists so thin he could wrap his fingers about them twice over, long narrow hands held loosely to his sides. His legs, bare from the knees down were just as thin and very white where they weren’t blackened and streaked with filth and scabs from cuts. He could even see the pale blue veins. The boy was pathetic and would die soon if he weren’t bought by a master who would at least feed him properly. He’d doubtless been mistreated in the past. He was wearing rags and a ripped filthy sealskin.