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 seventeen-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.

Copyright © 1994 by Catherine Coulter