Not that it concerned Merrik. The boy was a slave and would be sold, perhaps to a cruel master, perhaps not, perhaps to a master who would let him buy his freedom someday. It was a common practice and perhaps the lad would be lucky. It didn’t matter. Ah, but there was something about him that held Merrik very still, that wouldn’t allow him to look away. But he forced himself to look away. He wanted to sail from Kiev this morning and there was much he still had to do before leaving. He turned to go when the boy suddenly looked up and their eyes met. The boy’s eyes were a gray-blue, two colors that sounded normal, even common, particularly in Norway, but this boy’s eyes were different. The gray color was deeper than the rich pewter bowl Merrik’s mother had received as a gift upon her wedding to his father, and the blue darker than a sea in winter. He could tell that the boy’s flesh was very white despite all the dirt. His brows were dark and well-drawn but the tangled, filthy mat of hair on his head was too dirty and oily to determine its true color. It was simply dull and dark and filthy. The boy was beneath notice were it not for those eyes. They caught Merrik cold. Eyes weren’t made filthy; but eyes could reflect a man or woman’s thoughts, and the boy’s eyes were drained empty, dull, accepting. Certainly that wasn’t odd. But then, quite suddenly, there was a remarkable shift—where there’d been emptiness, there was now coldness and a look of defiance that would probably get the boy killed or beaten to death if he didn’t learn to mask that spark better. In a flash that look of defiance turned to one of anger, immense anger that held such violence and rage, it shook Merrik. Then, just as suddenly, the boy’s eyes became blank again, all that fury and passion buried beneath hopelessness and awareness that his lot in life was that of a slave and probably would remain so until he died. It was as if Merrik could see the boy withdrawing into himself. He could see him dying and accepting death before his eyes.
Merrik roused himself from this ridiculous revery. The boy was a slave, nothing more. It didn’t matter if he’d been captured from a hovel in a small village or from a rich farmhouse. Merrik would never see him again after he left the slave pit. He would cease to think about him the moment his hand was on the rudder of his longboat and the wind from the sails was sharp in his face. He shrugged and shook his head. He turned then when Oleg tugged on his arm to point out another slave.
He heard an agonized cry and turned back. The very fat merchant, the same Swedish merchant Merrik had seen the night before, the same merchant who had just been dealing with Valai, had grabbed the boy’s arm and was pulling him away from the line of other boys and men. He was shrieking that he’d paid too much silver for the filthy little garla, or puny pig, and he would shut up now or be very sorry for it. But the shouts an
d cries weren’t all coming from the boy. The most piercing ones were from a small child who had a death grip on the boy’s other hand. By all the gods, Merrik thought, it was the boy’s little brother and the man hadn’t bought him. The child was screaming, terrified cries that were pathetic, and it made something deep inside him twist and cramp and he didn’t understand it. He took a step forward, then saw the fat merchant slap the boy, for he was now trying to grab his little brother. The merchant then kicked the child hard. Merrik watched him fall onto his face and remain still, saw him just lie there, huddled into himself, sobbing. The boy hit the merchant, not a hard hit, for Merrik doubted he had the strength, but a fist in that oaf’s fat belly that surely had to hurt. The merchant raised a fist, but then lowered it. He cursed, threw the boy over his shoulder and walked away.
The child rose slowly, holding his ribs, and just stood there, not crying out now, just staring after his brother, and suddenly, quite without warning, Merrik couldn’t bear it. Something gave way deep inside him. No, he couldn’t bear it, he wouldn’t bear it. “Wait here,” he said to Oleg.
He was on his knees in front of the child. He gently cupped the child’s chin in his large hand and lifted it. The tears were still streaming down his dirty face, leaving obscene white marks in their wake. “What is your name?” Merrik said.
The little boy sniffed loudly. He stared at Merrik, his small features so drawn with fear that Merrik said, “I won’t hurt you. What is your name?”
The child said quite clearly, his words only mildly accented, “My name is Taby. That fat man took my—” His voice died, just stopped cold. He looked at Merrik and the tears were thicker now and the child was sniveling and hiccuping. And there was such fear in the child’s eyes that Merrik wanted to snarl like a wolf, but he didn’t. He didn’t want the child to fear him more.
He said only, his voice low, slow, “What is your brother’s name?”
The child ducked his head down and said nothing.
“Is he your brother?”
The child nodded, nothing more. He was very afraid. Merrik didn’t blame him.
Merrik had looked up as he’d spoken, but the merchant was gone. The child was alone. He looked down at that bowed head, saw the child’s thin shoulders heave and shake with his crying. He knew well what became of children who were alone and were slaves. Most of them died, and if they didn’t, well, perhaps what became of them was even worse. Suddenly, Merrik didn’t want this child to die. He took the little boy’s hand, felt the filth on the child’s flesh, felt the delicate bones that would snap like twigs at the slightest pressure, and something lurched inside him. The child wasn’t as thin as his brother, and Merrik knew why. The older brother had given what food he’d gotten to the little boy. “You will come with me, Taby. I will take you from this place. You will trust me.”
The child shuddered at his words and didn’t raise his head or move.
“I know it is difficult for you to believe me. Come, Taby, I won’t hurt you, I swear it.”
“My brother,” the child whispered, and he raised his head then and looked at Merrik with pathetic hope. “My brother is gone. What will happen to him?”
“Come,” he said, “trust me.” He walked away from the line of slaves, the little boy’s hand tucked firmly in his large one.
Merrik knew he would buy the child for a very small weight of silver, and he was right. Soon he had completed his business with Valai, a small man with a twinkling eye and a shrewd, ruthless brain. Valai wasn’t, however, necessarily cruel, just matter-of-fact and spoke his mind when it couldn’t hurt his trade. He said to Merrik, “I know you aren’t a pederast, thus the child will bring you no pleasure and will be only a burden to you.”
“Aye, but it doesn’t matter. I want him.”
“It’s possible that someone would buy him and he would be raised well, used only to service his masters. Not a bad life for such as he. Better than dying, which is what would happen at many other places.”
Merrik said nothing but he felt his guts surge with rage. Aye, the best that could happen would be that the child would be raped endlessly, then trained to pleasure men, those damned Arabs who kept both sexes in their keeping to pleasure them at their whim. After Taby grew up and no longer had a boy’s allure, he would be thrown into the fields to work over crops until he died. And Merrik couldn’t bear that. He looked down at Taby. No, he wouldn’t allow that to happen. He didn’t question what he would do with the child. He paid Valai, then went to find Oleg.
If Oleg believed him mad, he said nothing, merely stared at the small boy, then grinned and nodded, rubbing his hands together. Oleg always loved an adventure. Merrik realized he was thinking he would grant him one this day. And Oleg would probably be right, Merrik thought.
2
THRASCO, A VERY rich fur merchant of Kiev who prided himself on the quality of his miniver and his judicious use of bribes, looked down at the boy, smiled grimly, and nodded to himself. He tossed the whip to his slave, Cleve, who was also looking at the thin bloodied back, at the shuddering skinny body.
Thrasco was too fat to come down on his haunches, so he merely leaned down a bit, breathing hard even with that mild exertion, and said, “Now, boy, you will know that any disobedience from you, any hesitation in doing whatever I bid you to do, and I will flay the flesh off your pretty back. Do you understand me, boy?”
The boy’s head finally nodded.
Thrasco was pleased; he was also relieved. He’d paid a goodly amount for the boy and he didn’t want to kill him, but he’d had to discipline him for the blow in the belly he’d given him at the slave market. Now he was broken. Thrasco straightened. Aye, it was good now. Once he’d fed the boy for several weeks, he would be repaid many times over for his investment. He said his plans aloud to Cleve. “This boy will be a fine present to Khagan-Rus’s sister, Old Evta. She is fond of young boys, and I know once this one is bathed and given a bit of food, he will please her. She will gain much enjoyment from him. If he shows her a bit of spirit, why then, she will enjoy whipping it out of him.”
“Aye,” Thrasco’s man said, one eye on that whip. He said nothing more because he had no wish to taste the whip on his own back, and Thrasco was unpredictable.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Thrasco continued, still staring down at the boy. “You’re thinking that the boy is a pathetic scrap and even clean will still look a pathetic scrap. I am a man of experience and I know that the boy has a fine-boned face. He is slight, delicate even. Just look at those hands and those feet, long and narrow. Aye, it’s good blood he carries in his skinny veins. His parents weren’t slaves. No, this one is different, and I will use his differentness to my advantage. See to him now, bathe his back and use some of that cream my mother sent me from Baghdad, ’twill prevent scarring. Leave him filthy for the moment, leave him clothed in his torn rags. He deserves to wallow in his dirt for the blow he struck me. All saw it and Valai laughed, others too. If he obeys you completely, you will bathe him on the morrow.”
Cleve nodded. Poor little boy, he thought.