Crowbone

TWELVE

Finnmark, the mountain of Surman Suuhun …

The Witch-Queen’s Crew

WHEN she thought of ravens at all, which was not often or with any regard, she thought always of the white one. They said the worst winters were when AllFather let loose the third of his ravens, the white one. While his black brothers, Thought and Memory, stuck their heads under one hunched wing, the white raven trailed frosted pinfeathers over the world, teased clouds with talons, drawing out the long, slow tumble of soft white, silent as sleep that fell on high peaks, was razored by thin crags, sifted softly into the deep soul of the world.

Once, long ago, beyond this place, she had been a girl in a fire-warmed home who looked out to a world softening to curves of drifting landscape, looked out in wonder at how the world could come to such a whispering end. She was young and hugged herself then, wishing for warmer winds and the kiss of sun on her skin.

It was not to be. She had been brought here not much later and ever since the only world that existed was the one of short, blazing-passionate summers and long winters full of dancing night fires that skeined the dark with green and red.

There had been travellers, the curious and brave who tried to seek her out. The ones who came for riches seldom arrived, but those who sought wisdom were allowed and sometimes stayed long enough to tell her their own secrets and some of the workings of the world beyond the fire mountain. There had even been two Greeks and a Serkland Arab who all professed to know the secrets of snow and other matters, speaking loftily of winds and tides and clouds.

Once, she had travelled out of the mountain, out of the Finnmark, hoping to learn more of this strange new god, the Christ. In the cut of cold, folk struggled to badly-heated eggshells of stone where Christ prayers smoked; some who shivered there secretly went home to bind their hearth with an older invoking. Those she smiled at, for there was hope for them — then she came home to the smouldering mountain and left them to their world.

Yet she envied all of them, for they all crouched by fires, succoured by the light as much as the heat, sharing a hope as old as dark that the flames would not fail. It was no longer a part of her life, to be with them, to have ones she loved and who loved her.

So here she was at the end of days, pushed by obligation and if any saw her they fastened their lips on it. Ajatar’s handmaiden, they called her, which made her smile. It had pained her, that name from her own Sami folk, but she knew what made them liken her to the favourite of a goddess of pestilence and disease, who could strike you with a look and who suckled serpents. They reflected their own twists of ugly suspicion on her, making her monstrous.

Yet even some of them came to her, struggling up the fire mountain for the power they believed she had. Wise woman some called her and she liked that name, though it was plain and there was pride enough left in her to resent it; all women were wise, long before her age and certainly by it, for they had learned the feel of the world. Younger folk were not for listening and so missed a deal of life, for you fished more meat out of that cauldron by just looking and remembering.

It was all about Hugin and Munin, the black brothers of the white raven, all about Thinking and Remembering and there was enough of the norther in her to appreciate that. The north god, AllFather, knew this, had learned this through hanging pain and spear-thrust, nine nights on the World Tree for the whisper of runes, the mystery she knew well as a result.

Those northers who feared her called her a silly auld wummin, only half believing it was true, hoping that she was diminished by them making her seem small. Some, who knew a little better, called her ‘cunning’ and that never bothered her, although she doubted it meant what they thought. She did not mind the scathing wyrd-rider either and was as likely to tell folk that she had wyrd needed riding as ‘farewell’ when she had decided to close the door on herself.

Only a few called her by her true name, a name older even than the dancing lights that split the long north dark. Spaekona. Witch-Queen. It was the name they used when they came with heads lowered and eyes resting everywhere but on her own, twisting their hands in their lap and looking for daftness they should not be seeking.

She did not hear it from those who wanted a leech wort release from pain, or root potion to help with a sad loss, or relief from the sickness of the long dark. She only heard it from those wanting to snare an unwilling man, or curse a rival, or lose a bairn. When she refused them, that was when they hissed ‘spaekona’ under their breath and for those whose hate made them bold, she had her hunters, with their skin cloaks and spears. Those hunters knew her true worth, knew she belonged to the north mountains and them and understood the wordless bargain that went back before the first handsealed contract, beyond even the blood oath.

Now they watched her closely, hunkered round fires that were near yet far enough away and wearing the full masks of the beasts they killed, though she only half understood why. She did not mind being worshipped for it was the least due to her, latest in a long line who were chosen for this. Last in a long line, she thought suddenly, unless a new goddess is found to learn from me.

The one who had gone before her — she could not remember her name now — had sent men to her village and stolen her, such was her desperation. There had been a long time of fear and hate, then a moment when she saw what was being taught to her and, finally, a too-brief time when the pair of them worked in tandem. Then, suddenly, she was alone with the burden of waiting, for the axe and her own successor, the first to be returned to the stone kist until someone brave came to claim it, the second to sit at her fire and begin the task of shouldering the burden of all the long years of old knowing. So it had always been, so it would always be.

Well, the first had come, passed hand to hand through blood and danger, for the axe had claimed its cursed victims — she remembered being told that the axe had failed to return only once, when a true spaekona, a full-cunning woman of the north had tricked the Sami carrying it into revealing their powers and those of the Bloodaxe. That spaekona had given it to her husband, for the power in it and hoped to pass it to all of her sons in turn — but the curse of the axe tainted all her sons, according to the man who had last brought it back to the fire mountain.

Svein he had called himself, a man bitter with defeat and death, she had seen, twisted from his faith by the betrayal of that axe. His king and master had commanded him to take it here, he said. He did not want his sons to get it, she learned, even the worst of them, for none were worthy and all would be betrayed, like him. She had watched this Svein stumble off and thought it likely he would die in the Finnmark cold, for he was so uncaring of life.

The second had not come and she was beginning to wonder if it would ever happen. There was always the raid on a village — but she remembered the fear and the hate of it and balked at doing it.

Now, she thought, it might be too late. There were many folk plootering over her fire mountain to claim the Bloodaxe and her hunters had suffered for it. It had come to her, just recently, that perhaps she was the last of her kind and the thought troubled her.

She found a nice spot by the clawed hand of tree, while the wind hissed down the bowl of the valley and drew the reeking white smoke out of the entrance to it. She knew the swirl of it sucked the smoke from the strange hot, bubbling pits in the Cleft, then roared it out through the mountain beyond, as if the place breathed.

She had made fires here before and liked the place, for it reminded the air about true cold. It took a hard winter to make this sheltered, eldritch-heated valley clog with snow and she was used to the warmth, so that stepping out beyond it ached her bones these days; she preferred to wait until folk came to her.

She found her ring of old stones, coned a few sticks together and sparked up a fire. Her hunting men settled down to watch. They were hurting and sick and too many of them had died and she was sorry she had asked them to. They thought they had been fighting to keep the northers away from this place, the home of their wise-woman goddess and that they were failing; they did not know that they were meant to fail if one wyrd was to prove a success.

The soft flames spilled red-gold into another long night of white and bruise-blue. A good fat moon, crisp air and a warm hue dancing in a hearth. Grandma was another name she didn’t mind, though only children, the ache of her lost heart, called her that. She had not seen one for some time, but remembered how they had liked her stories, in the days when she had gone abroad more.

She liked to tell stories to herself — at least, that is what she said when she caught herself mumbling into the straggles of her hair. Sometimes she let the fur-masks listen, but even those hunters preferred to creep away, ducking away from an old-young, shapeless, mumbling woman hung about with odd weavings and difference.

She knew one or two stopped to listen and would have been surprised at the few, the very few, who wondered if what she muttered needed some other name than ‘story’ — but they only wondered that sort of thing when they could not hear it being told.

While they were listening they felt lifted up into a cloud of dusted age, where there was nevertheless something firm and strong, like finding a good pass through the mountains. There were some who said she spoke of their own home, but long ago, where their people must have lived forever. No-one who listened went away unmoved and some were woken to wondering who the stories were for.

Now, though, the Sami beast-warriors saw that she just seemed to be humming to herself, and kicking snow off the old hearth, talking life back into it, like a bitch mouths and licks the litter’s failing runt. The hunters sat silent and waiting.

The man came quiet out of the cleft, but the hunters knew and their beast-masked heads came up; others followed the man. The hunters glanced at their goddess, but she showed no alarm and they took the hint, lowered their weapons and waited.

She watched the group coming towards her — a litter on poles, with a man at each corner, another man hirpling painfully, and one with a bow, some more behind. The hirpling man had a robe which might have been any colour but now was mainly stain, dagged and torn round the hem where it straggled in strips. He carried a staff in one hand, had a face like a long stretch of bad road and one foot was bare. Twisted and crippled, that foot, but not so dead that it never felt the bite of stone or cold, but the eyes in him were even more dead than that and the dangling cross made her catch her breath.

A Christ priest. Here. Did he come to claim the axe? The thought stunned her, almost crushed her with the wyrd of it — then the litter was set down and she sensed the seidr from it, even before the figure was helped out, moved slowly towards her.

Old, she thought. An old power, this, and one to be feared. Still, she did as she was supposed to do. She nodded at the curved roots opposite and watched as her visitor sat down. The wind sighed and the fire hissed and the Old Power looked at the hunters and they looked back at her, hackles ruffed as dogs, for they sensed what she was. She looked round at the place, at the lack of snow, and the warmth compared with what was on the other side of the rock walls and nodded.

Then, finally, she turned and looked into the sere, ageless face of the woman opposite.

‘Goddess, is it?’ she said, in a voice made harsh by design. The woman nodded briefly, trying to look through the spiderweb-silk veil and seeing only the glitter of old ice eyes.

‘Aye, so they call you now. They have power, the Sami, but no common sense.’

She stopped, sucked in breath and muttered.

‘Still, no reason to be discourteous,’ Gunnhild added. ‘I have come for the Bloodaxe,’ Gunnhild said. ‘I had it before, when your … predecessor … was here, though I did not ask politely then. I had it then for my husband. Now I take it for my son.’

All her trepidation about old power vanished and the Sami goddess laughed with the sheer delight of this funny little veiled woman who thought the Sami had no common sense, yet came for the axe that had killed her husband and all her sons but one.

Finnmark …

Crowbone’s Crew

The masked Sami would not stop. They were harried from rock to treeline, into clumped stands of pine and out on to the bare tumble of snow-draped rocks and still they would not go away. Crowbone wondered what hand guided them, for he knew there was a leader driving them. There seemed, to most, to be no sense in the losses they took, but Crowbone knew the game of kings well and the King Player’s best defence was to hurl his warriors at the enemy. The Orkneymen had died in winnowed droves and now Crowbone’s men did, too.

They found Mar spreadeagled on a rock, his insides laid out in some ritual. Gjallandi thought that a Sami wizard had done it, but the why remained a mystery. Crowbone sat back on his heels and looked at the iron-tangle of the man’s beard, the frosted eyes. Because he had broken that Oath he had taken so lightly? He looked to where Onund and Kaetilmund stood, accusing-grim, but they said nothing and, eventually, he broke their gaze.

‘We should give this axe foolishness up,’ growled Klaenger, a tall, rangy man with a nose red-raw with cold. ‘It is clear the folk here do not want us to have Odin’s Daughter.’

Crowbone knew that the man and Mar had been friends and saw a few agreeing nods from others. He looked up, to where the grey-green rocks piled ever higher, right up to the mountain fang where the white smoke plumed.

‘Look behind you,’ he said to Klaenger, who jumped and did so. When he saw nothing threatening, he turned back, scowling and wary.

‘Do you see the sea?’ Crowbone demanded. ‘Our ships?’

Klaenger’s lip drooped sullenly.

‘Look ahead,’ Crowbone offered and it was no longer for Klaenger, but for all the men. ‘There is the mountain where our quest ends. Which is easier to get to now?’

Men scuffed the ground with what was left of their boots and said nothing — the mountain was easy enough to navigate to, but no-one knew what terrors lay in it. But they went on. When the dog found Vandrad Sygni not long after, no-one even grunted.

It was clear that he was dead from the way his head lolled brokenly to one side. His eyes had been dug out with his own horn spoon, which had been left beside him. The strange, loose, sideways turn of his feet showed where he had been hamstrung; as a message it was as subtle as a slap on the forehead — your best tracker cannot see us, cannot move quietly enough, is no match for us.

They were attacked again not far ahead, a sudden rush as short and vicious as the day itself — a shower of black-shafted arrows and a howling of beast-masked men. Almost in a heartbeat it was over and, again, they left more dead than they caused.

Yet one of those they killed was Vigfuss Drosbo and another Thorgils, who had taken an arrow in the armpit, straight up the short sleeve of his ringmail. They are whittling us away, Crowbone thought, desperate and weary, like flakes from a lathed bowl.

It was then that Murrough, cleaning his axe beside a body, announced that he was sure he had killed this one the day before.

‘They all look the same,’ Kaetilmund growled in savage answer, trying to warn the Irisher off such a topic with his eyes. ‘Slit-eyed, flat-faced fucks with stolen weapons.’

No-one laughed, all the same and the idea persisted that they were killing the same men over and over again.

The next short day saw no sign of live men at all, but the yellow dog spoored out more dead, some from under fresh snow. One was a Sami and he had been burned with crosses and shot with a black-fletched arrow, then hung from a tree like a gralloched deer. That was clearly the work of Martin and Crowbone scowled and squinted at the snow glare, as if he could hook the monk to him with his odd eyes.

‘Perhaps not exactly in that order,’ Kaetilmund argued, frowning, ‘but all of those matters took place here.’

The other was a snow-buried norther and Gjallandi was sure this one was a Norwegian, though he could not be certain. He could be certain the man had died because an arrow had gone into his kidneys. Most of the rest did not care, one way or the other, for they had found the remains of a deer hanging in a nearby tree and there was a lot left on it, even if it was hard as stone.

Crowbone looked at the growing dark and felt the cold stone slide into his bowels; the days were so short, the nights long and fired by red and green lights, so that the mountain never seemed to get closer. They were danger-close to failing — yet he could feel the nearness of that axe, like heat.

Men started fires with old twigs and branches dug from under the snow, lichen plucked from rocks at the start of the day and dried out down boots or inside tunics. Stacked into small cones, sparked into life by flint, steel and gentling breath, fire budded, then blossomed.

The men thawed out the meat enough to cut, stuck it on strong twigs or even their knives, careless of the soot blacking the metal. Men on watch stamped and looked at the fires enviously, licked their lips as the white fat slowly began to broil and sputter; meat and smoke smells eddied up and away into the maw of the night.

Crowbone closed his eyes, swathed in the too-small white cloak, but those nearest him were never sure if he slept or not.

‘What are you after thinking?’ asked a voice and Bergliot swam into his waking vision, holding out a sharpened branch which speared meat. A rush of saliva drowned his reply and he held the stick with one hand, biting into the meat, then sliding his eating knife along to slice the mouthful free with a casual pass.

Crowbone never answered and she, thinking her attempt to mend fences had been spurned, did not ask again, merely huddled nearby and ached for the lee of his body. Crowbone never noticed; he was thinking that the dead Sami, whoever he had been, had been handled badly and that the Christ priest had done it. It was Martin, for sure — once before Crowbone had seen this cross-burning work of his, done on the back of the addled Short Eldgrim to try and get him to tell what he knew. That was when Crowbone had made a mistake and quit Orm in favour of Prince Vladimir.

He remembered it well enough, for Vladimir had been too young, not yet enough of a prince and matters got out of hand — Thorgunna’s first husband died and Thorgunna herself had been kicked in the belly, hard enough to ruin a child out of her. The same man who had done it to his mother, Crowbone remembered — Kveldulf, who had paid for it later.

For a moment Crowbone remembered the utter hopelessness, recalled his tears and snot as he huddled beside Thorgunna, stacked like a log in the boat Vladimir planned to use to sail down to the Black Sea and away from Orm and the Oathsworn.

He had wept like a cracked heart, for his mother, whose face he could not remember, for Thorgunna who had been like one to him and for himself, alone and abandoned and afraid. Poor Thorgunna, Crowbone thought, to have lost two men and two bairns.

Orm had stolen the boat and Thorgunna, dragged him out into the light and, Crowbone remembered, could have killed him but did not. He had taken him almost as a son. And married Thorgunna, too, later.

Yet Orm had been treacherous now, Crowbone was sure of it. The Oathsworn he had taken — Onund and Kaetilmund and the others — had not been been chosen by him, he remembered, but by Orm, sent to make sure Crowbone tripped all the traps Martin had made. Orm wants the prize, he thought bitterly, using me like some stupid young hunting dog.

Yet Orm does not know me, Crowbone thought. I will not be surrounded in this game; I am no fawning hound, to be sent out to spring snares.

As if it had heard, the yellow bitch nosed hopefully and he flung it the gristle of his meal, which it snapped up. Bergliot, smiling, tossed it some better chunks and men laughed. There was a murmur of soft talk.

As if they were not freezing on a bare mountain with all oaths in tatters, chasing a madness and fighting beast-men to do it, Kaetilmund thought. He murmured as much, quietly, to Onund, adding: ‘Perhaps Orm has not judged this well.’

Onund grunted his bear grunt, which could mean anything.

When the light struggled reluctantly back, they moved on, with mountains in every direction save the way they had come, which was a long, winding trail back down through the scree and pine and rocks. A river ran through it, frozen to milk-white, iced rills curling round and over the rocks and narrowing until it ended at the foot of a cliff.

Halfdan looked up, squinting at the white glare of it.

‘In summer,’ he said wistfully, ‘this would be a pleasant place of sounding water and wildflowers, birds and good air. A man could take some refuge from the heat of the sun in the pool here.’

It was a good vision, yet as forlorn as a flower in that place and he had back harshness for fetching it up.

‘Even in summer the water would be freezing,’ Onund pointed out, ‘while the insects would drive you out of your thought-cage entire. I have seen elk running off the top of cliffs because the insects plagued them to blind madness.’

‘You would not want to bathe in it now,’ Tuke added, lumbering past and cackling. Halfdan looked up and could only agree; the river was frozen like an immense hall hanging, stopped still in the middle of falling down the rocks and layered in folds like white stone. He turned as something black flitted and stared at a raven, the first bird he had seen for some time.

Crowbone stopped, too, the hackles on him stiff as hog bristle. It had gobbets of meat hanging red in its beak and shouldered into the depths of a dead, stunted pine at the foot of the falls, a tree now a splintered and frost-sparkled larder for the bird.

‘Steady,’ he said, low and soft. ‘That bird’s beak tells a whole saga.’

Kaetilmund saw it at once — fresh meat, unfrozen. A recent kill. He nodded and sent men on ahead; they began to climb the treacherously rimed trail alongside the waterfall, Crowbone, last to start up it, watching the raven as it watched him with its cold unwinking black eye. Only when it took its full beak into the depths of the tree did Crowbone blink back to the now of matters and start to climb; he was surprised to see the yellow dog at his heels.

At the top was a flat area through which the little stream flowed when it was not a ribbon of ice. There were hardly any rocks for a long way round, making it a good place to camp — which is why the men who had got there first had done so.

Crowbone arrived to find men panting hard, shoulder to shoulder and the breath rising from them like spray from a blowhole. Kaetilmund looked round, saw him and simply jerked his chin out in front. There were dead beast-men dotted here and there, stiff but not yet frozen; the raven’s feast. Beyond the scattered dead stood men, shields up and weapons ready.

They are iron-grim, these men, Crowbone thought. Faces like bruises, eyes red-rimmed and not looking at you so much as through you to somewhere distant, while the meltwater from their smoking breath ran off their helmets and refroze on their beards. They were stained and bloodied and coldly desperate, their hands on hilt and shaft flexing and clenching. Crowbone half turned, realising they were no different at all from the men at his own back.

‘How many of them, are you thinking?’ Onund asked, craning to see. A stone’s worth, said Gjallandi, though he was prepared to revise that upwards a few times, aiming it at men who tallied laboriously from one to twenty — ein, tveir, ?rir — then took a stone from a pile and started again.

Crowbone heard a voice claim three stones’ worth, but that was from Tuke, who came from somewhere north of Jorvik and counted in some eldritch way — yan, tan, tethera — and did not do it well, even with his boots off.

‘There are enough,’ Kaetilmund claimed and the air grew thick and heavy with frosted fear. Crowbone pushed his way to the front and spread his empty hands wide. There was a pause, a stir as if a bird fluttered in the bush of them, then a man stepped from safety and stood looking at Crowbone.

He was middling old, though the cold had crippled his face to that of an old man, a rough, greying beard frozen to it like lichen to a rock and a nose that seemed to spread across what remained of his face. Crowbone knew him as if he had been a brother, had followed the name from Hy to Orkney to here — Erling Flatnose; he felt the ice-spear in his head stab viciously, so that one eye shut and he winced with the pain of it.

Erling watched the boy curiously, saw the sudden twist, the flicker of pain and wondered at it — or if he had seen it at all, for it was gone in an eyeblink. It left a sharp face, coin-weighted yellow braids dangling on either side and the dusting of a good beard rising to meet them. Average height, not any sign of special on him at all and wearing ringmail that a dead man would scorn from the grave.

Yet the eyes Gudrod had warned him about gripped him, one blue, one brown; he felt them on his face like the trail of cold fingers and it made him shiver.

‘Here we are, then, son of Tryggve,’ he declared, attempting to get matters walking on the trail he wanted. ‘Seeking the same, fighting the same. It seems to me that the Sami are watching us and will laugh to see us carve each other up.’

‘No need for it,’ agreed Crowbone, so amiable and quick that Erling was confused. ‘There are other ways to settle matters. Where is Gudrod and that mother of his?’

‘Gone, with the axe you seek, of course. I will be following them once matters are done with here.’

Crowbone laughed and stood, hip-shot, though he trembled and hoped it did not show.

‘So,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘Gudrod has left you here to … what? Kill me? Die for him? For a man with the Bloodaxe of victory, he seems strangely reluctant to face me in person. Perhaps he fears the curse of it.’

Erling shifted slightly, for the thought had entered him also.

‘He plays the game of kings,’ he answered, shrugging. ‘To win it, you get your king to safety.’

Crowbone flung back his head and laughed with what he hoped sounded like genuine delight.

‘Only if you play it on a cloth of nine squares,’ he answered. ‘There are other ways to win — but if that is what you intend, then matters are simple here and only one needs to die.’

Erling nodded, for he had been told to expect this.

‘Were you thinking only two need risk themselves? Yourself being one of them? What does the winner gain?’

‘Everything,’ Crowbone said, wondering at the ease with which Erling had helped steer this course. ‘The winner agrees that his oath-men go their own way unharmed. Those that wish and are acceptable may even join with the winner.’

Onund gave a barking growl at that and Erling heard it, flicked his eyes briefly to the hunchback, then back to Crowbone’s face.

‘It seems not all your oath-men agree,’ he answered.

A prince should always strive to be good, Crowbone thought, but if necessary he should be capable of evil.

‘Some are oathed to me, others have taken an Odin Oath to each other. Those whom we do not trust, we can kill,’ he harshed out, loud enough for all those behind to hear it. ‘For we are choosers of the slain, you and me. I am thinking it will not matter to you which ones I take a mistrust to, since you will be dead.’

Erling laughed.

‘Agreed,’ he said and it came to Crowbone, too late, that Erling would not be the one he would fight, as he had thought. Even as the spit dried in his mouth, he saw the man turn and raise a hand. Everyone watched the youth step out, gliding as if on bone skates, the sword in a ring at his belt.

‘This is Od,’ Erling said. ‘Od, this is Olaf Tryggvasson, called Crowbone. Kill him.’

The youth flicked the sword out of his belt-ring with one hand as Crowbone drew his own blade; men made yells of encouragement as he fell into a fighting crouch, watching the youth called Od, who made no movement at all save for the tilt of his head as he studied Crowbone.

Crowbone saw the face in the slow heartbeats that ticked away. Beautiful as a girl, it was, untouched by the weather or the world and, for a moment, Crowbone felt a sharp pang deep in him and wanted the boy to go away, to keep his face untroubled and unblemished.

Od saw the eyes of the man he would kill, blue and brown, and thought they were pretty, like agate stones he had found once on a beach. He smiled; they would be good on a sacrifice to Tyr and the god would be pleased. Above them was a domed helmet with a plume of white horsehair braiding its way out of the top and he thought he might like that — then he frowned.

‘It has a dent in it,’ he said and Crowbone, puzzled, did not understand him at first, thought it some ploy and watched him warily.

‘Your war hat,’ the boy said, waving the sword in the general direction of Crowbone’s head. ‘It has a dent in it.’

‘So will your head,’ Crowbone croaked out, ‘since you do not wear one at all.’

Od smiled brightly at that and shook his head.

‘I never get hurt,’ he declared proudly. ‘Tyr protects me.’

The boy moved then and Crowbone almost squealed with the terrible speed of him — but he got his sword in the way and Od’s blade skittered off it with a high, thin tang. Then the boy was whirling, sure-footed, across the frozen stream, skipping like a flung stone.

He did it again and Crowbone fended it off again, though he felt the sick certainty that he could not hit this youth, who seemed like smoke. Onund thought so, too, and looked at Kaetilmund and they nodded — whatever happened, the Oathsworn would not become Gudrod’s men.

The third whirl of the sword was another high slash and Crowbone turned it yet again and this time managed a half-hearted slash of his own, but Od was already turning, almost strolling, back into striking range.

Then Crowbone saw it, saw that the fourth would come in like the others, but it would be feint, for he would whip it low and up, hoping to get under Crowbone’s defence and cut up into the armpit.

It came, the high cut, a whirr like a bird wing and Crowbone held back — when the feint slice came in, his sword met it with a resounding ring of steel and, when Crowbone had shaken the sting of sweat from his eyes, he saw that Od was frowning.

Men were yelling on both sides, screaming at their men to finish it. Erling was only aware of them as a noise, like insect whine, for he was watching Od. He had seen the move, seen the strange-eyed boy counter it and the frown on Od’s face; for the first time he felt a worm of unease creep into his belly, for Od had never taken so long to finish a man.

It was the game of kings, thought Crowbone, only faster and using steel. He felt better for knowing it, for the game of kings was his game; he smiled.

When Od skipped in again, Crowbone sucked the breath from those watching — he flipped his sword from right to left hand and Od, just as he started to cut, found himself open all along one side and desperately changed his mind. His feet skidded a little and Crowbone, exultant, slashed at him.

There was another clash of iron and the boy reeled away, his beautiful face twisted, pale and ugly with fear and hate now. This had never happened before. He had never been made to do this before, to feel this way.

Crowbone heard the rasp of his own breath in his ears, felt the sick hopelessness. He should have had him, there and then — by all the gods, this Od was fast. Perhaps he really was beloved of Tyr One-Hand. Perhaps Gunnhild’s seidr magic was still strong and, somewhere far away, she worked it in the muttering dark.

Od came in, all anger and blinding speed, so that Crowbone backed away, a foot skidded on the ice and he went down on one knee and the helmet, badly fastened, slid off and clattered away; men howled and roared as Od closed in and started to hack, madly, blind with fury.

Erling shoved to the front, roaring with anger. ‘No, no — kill him, Od. Kill him now.’

But the boy was using brute strength and no finesse. A sliver to the right or left and Crowbone, sword held up and across him, would have been cut to the bloody core — but Od slammed his sword against Crowbone’s blade again and again, as if trying to drive it down into Crowbone’s own pale, upturned face.

There was a sudden sharp bell of sound and everything stopped. No-one spoke, or even seemed to breathe; Od stared at the shattered nub of his sword blade while the main length of it spun lazily through the air. When it landed, with a soft tinkle that skidded it along the frozen stream, time and noise began all over again.

Crowbone hurled himself upright. He had this chance, this one chance and Od, stunned and squealing, backed away. Crowbone tried once, twice, three times to carve his blade into the body of the boy, but, even with the broken remnants of his sword, Od’s hand-speed glissaded the danger away from him.

Panting, sobbing for breath, Crowbone paused briefly and launched a new attack. Od half-turned, dropped to one heel and flung the broken blade at Crowbone’s face, making him shy sideways and lose his concentration. Something whacked his sword hand and he felt the fingers go numb and uncurl, heard the blade ringing on the ice. Erling’s men bellowed out hoarse cheers.

Crowbone closed with the boy, before he could get away and find a new weapon; he was stronger and taller, yet the fight had sucked at him and they both locked together, straining for advantage, feet skidding on the ice and snow. There was an axe snugged in the belt at the small of Crowbone’s back but there was no way he could get to it quickly, even when he freed one hand.

It had irritated Crowbone since he had started to wear it, but he had had the idea from Finn and the nail in his boot. Crowbone, since he had strapped the dagger sheath to the outside of his left ankle, wondered how Finn stood the rubbing and annoyance — and he did not even have a sheath to ease matters. More than a few times, Crowbone had thought of taking the contraption off; now he prayed to Odin for the wisdom the god had clearly provided.

His hand drew it out, a long, thin, sliver of steel only slightly shorter than the length of his forearm. He got it up and round, saw Od’s eyes widen with shock when he saw it and felt the great surge of triumph that comes with the certainty of victory — then the world exploded in red mist and pain.

He stumbled back, blinded by tears, desperately dashed them and the blood from his nose, cracked by Od’s forehead. He saw the boy, smiling, standing hip-shot and easy and with the dagger dangling loosely in one hand; he had not even felt the boy pluck it from his hand.

Here it comes then, he thought numbly. Somewhere, the Norns’ weave had gone awry, for this was clearly not what Olaf Tryggvasson had seen of his own future — but it was happening. The snips were closing on his thread.

He lunged, the boy skipped away, smiling, while people jeered.

‘Freyja’s tits, boy — fucking kill him!’ screamed Erling and Od, frowning, struck like a snake. Crowbone saw the wink of it, the cold, shining stab of it and then the length was in his shoulder, right in, driving the rot-brown metal rings into his flesh, spearing through them and the sweating skin and the raw meat until it grated on the bone; he screamed — though there was no pain yet — at the violation of the iron in his flesh.

Od slid, skate smooth, behind him, keeping one hand on the dagger, putting the other round Crowbone’s pale, sweating forehead; Erling tensed and dared not speak, for the pair were close to the edge of the waterfall now, not on the frozen spill, but to the right of it, where the rocks were just as slick with ice spray.

Crowbone felt the wash of pain, then, the hot, sick surge of it and his legs almost buckled. Behind him, Od crooned and stroked his hair, sweat-plastered to his forehead. At the same time, he worked the dagger into the wound a little more, a slow circle, so that Crowbone could feel it in great red billows of pain.

He heard Od chuckle, a wet, sick sound. He felt the heat of the boy behind him, the groin heat and the hardness and the revulsion blasted the pain away in a white light. Od’s chin was down on his shoulder, his breath hot under Crowbone’s ear and Crowbone took one hand and placed it over Od’s, the one holding the knife, just as the boy began to intone his dedication to Tyr.

Od stopped and frowned, for he had been about to cut Crowbone’s throat, but he laughed instead, for now Crowbone seemed to be trying to prevent him moving the dagger out of the wound. It would keep it from his throat, but Od did not mind a little more play; when Crowbone’s second hand came up and covered the first, he grew even more eager for the idea. He did not understand it, but the pleasure of it seemed to suck the breath from him and he wanted desperately to press himself tight against Crowbone.

Three hands clasped on the hilt, they stood for a moment, their mingled breath smoking, cooling and pearling. Men fell silent, not understanding what was happening, why one did not kill the other and there was unease at it.

Then Crowbone roared and thrust with all his strength. The dagger went through, right to the grind of the hilt on the ringmail of his shoulder under the bone and out the other side, into Od’s neck. The pain tore the feet out from under Crowbone, sent him blind and retching to his knees — but Od staggered and clutched himself.

Erling saw it then, the dagger through from one side of Crowbone to the other, saw Od grab his neck and scream. No great jet of blood, Erling saw with a leap of relief. Not a dangerous cut then — but he saw the boy take his hand away and look at it, then search for Erling across the distance between them, his fine, girl’s face twisted with shock and fear, the blood clear on his fingertips.

He has never been injured, Erling realised. Tyr has failed him …

He was about to call out for him to stay, to wait. Od reeled, panicking and Erling saw the boy’s eyes roll up into his head, one foot slither out from under him and he yelled, seeing the inevitable. With a sharp cry and a slither like the rushing of wind, Od vanished over the edge; there was a crash and a shrill screaming that ripped through everyone, so that some crouched and put their hands over their ears. Then silence.

Surfacing, with a whoop as if he had plunged into cold water. Breaching like a whale from an ocean of dark into blinding agony that made him roar.

‘Easy, easy,’ Bergliot soothed, while she seared lances into him and men held him down. He saw her, fingers and bone needle bloody, hooking another rusted iron ring out of the wound and flicking it away like a tick from a dog. The cold chewed on the stripped bare shoulder, the rest of him swaddled in a cloak, his hauberk and tunic both removed.

There was a flurry of movement behind Crowbone that drew all their heads round; men milled, uncertain and uneasy about what to do next as Erling came up, with Onund and Kaetilmund, the three of them carrying the body of Od. They had scambled down scree and snow to the foot of the frozen falls, Crowbone realised, while Gjallandi and Bergliot had been busy with his shoulder, howling more agony into him with their attempts at healing. Who did they now stand with, he wondered?

Kaetilmund saw Crowbone’s stare and ignored it, for his mind and eyes were still full of Od in the raven tree. When he and Onund and the tallow-faced Erling had skidded and slithered to the foot of the waterfall, they saw Od spreadeagled across the splintered remains of the dead, stunted pine, skewered through arms and legs and body.

The worst was the branch which had gone up under his chin, needled through his tongue and come out of his mouth. The force of him landing had snapped it, so that his ruined face lolled sideways, staring at them with eyes like a fresh-kicked dog. On a rock nearby, the disapproving raven glared at them, black and unwinking.

Getting him off had been a hard, panting struggle of cracking ice-hard branches, but they managed it and lugged him back up the side of the falls again. Onund, sucking air into his searing lungs, lowered the feet of the boy and straightened into the eyes of Crowbone.

‘Is he dead?’

Erling, his face twisted still with the shock of it, heard Crowbone’s question and the truth of it crashed like a wave, so that he grunted and almost buckled to his knees. The boy was dead. Od was gone.

When no-one answered, Crowbone shoved folk away from him and struggled up, weaving, hoping his knees would not buckle. The earth heaved like a ship in a swell.

‘As well,’ Crowbone said to Erling. ‘That boy was wrong in his head.’

Erling gave a hoarse, high shrill of sound and Crowbone, gasping with the pain it caused him, hauled out the axe stuck down his belt in the small of his back. Onund and Kaetilmund had grabbed the struggling Erling, were forcing him to his knees, the great hunchback cooing at him as if he was soothing a restive horse.

‘You need to guard your mouth, Crowbone,’ Kaetilmund said bitterly.

‘You mistake me for someone who cares about a man trying to kill me,’ Crowbone spat back. He stepped forward to where Erling, his eyes raving and wild, struggled and kicked, held tight by the two men.

For a moment he stood, while Erling, his mouth covered by Onund’s massive hand, hoarsed out screams between the fingers and lurched, fighting to get to Crowbone now that his target was close.

‘In the name of the gods,’ Kaetilmund panted, ‘move away at least.’

Crowbone looked at them each in turn and shook his head. He could not believe that Erling was still alive and wondered why these, his men, had allowed it. His shoulder burned and the side of his head had that cold icicle driven in it. In a movement, quick as a snake strike, he brought up the butt of the hand-axe and slapped Erling in the forehead, then grunted and cursed with the pain it seared through his shoulder and into his whole body.

Erling slumped like a sack, then stirred and blinked.

‘Let him go,’ Crowbone ordered and Kaetilmund and Onund did so; Erling fell to his knees and started to retch.

‘Behave yourself,’ Crowbone said to him, ‘or I will use the blade.’

Then he looked at Onund and Kaetilmund.

‘This one should be dead. He wanted to attack the jarl you are oathed to protect — yet all you did was struggle with him.’

‘Which oath?’ asked Onund savagely. ‘The one all Oathsworn give to Odin? Or the one you had others swear to you alone?’

Crowbone ignored him, looked round at Erling’s tight-faced men while their leader wiped his mouth and climbed to his feet.

‘Who among you is a shipmaster?’ Crowbone demanded and, after a series of shuffles and looking from one to the other, a man stepped forward, small and ice-grimmed, his eyes like wary beasts in the thicket of his face.

‘I am Ulfar Arnkelsson,’ he declared. ‘I know the stars and the waves, rarely make a mistake in runes and am a shipmaster of note. I can ski a little …’

‘I am not looking to hire you,’ Crowbone snarled and the man’s teeth clicked together.

‘You should be wondering why you are all alive,’ Crowbone told him and the men at his back, ‘so I shall tell you. You will take the body of Od back to Gudrod in Orkney. You will take those men stupid enough to pass up the chance of riches with me and had better hope there are enough of them to crew a ship, for you will get no more.’

Ulfar glanced over Crowbone’s shoulder, to where Erling stood like a weary ox.

‘No,’ said Crowbone softly, shrugging the cloak free and leaving himself naked to the waist, though he felt no cold. ‘Do not look to Flatnose, for his day is done.’

He turned then and struck, knowing the distance between them to the last finger-width. The axe split Erling’s head sideways under the hairline so hard that the man’s feet shot out from under him. He hit the ice of the frozen riverbank with a crash, blood and yellow gleet spilling from his head, cracked like an eggshell. If he made a sound, or knew what had hit him, he gave no last sign of it.

There was a howl of outrage and the Orkneymen stirred like a broken byke; weapons came up, shields clattered.

‘Mother of God,’ whispered Adalbert, but Onund roared him down.

‘Odin’s holy arse, boy — what are you?’

Crowbone fixed him with his odd-eyed stare as his own men fell into fighting crouches, weapons ready.

‘A prince,’ he rasped back, ‘who knows the game of kings enough not to leave a threat at his back.’

There was sense in it, enough so that Kaetilmund, sick at the ease with which Crowbone had killed Erling, flicked a worried gaze at Onund. The Icelander’s face was thunderous, his neck drawn in and his hump towering up like the mountain itself.

‘The gods have given up on you, boy prince,’ he snarled. ‘And so have I.’

Crowbone tensed. He had half-expected it, but the actual moment of it was crushing. Behind, he heard confusion and angry voices, knew that men were drawing apart, the Oathsworn sliding towards Onund and Kaetilmund. Across the way, the Orkneymen were looking at one another and spotting a chance, while Erling and Od bled sluggish tarns on to the scuffed ice.

The cold air grew thick with fear and tension, the shouting rose up like the smoke of their panting breath. Kaetilmund blinked once or twice, looked at the furled Stooping Hawk banner he carried, then flung it at Crowbone’s feet and stepped back; Crowbone’s men growled and the yellow bitch, picking up on the thick angry air, whined uneasily, not knowing who was the enemy.

Then a voice cut through it like the whirl of Crowbone’s hand-axe.

‘I have come just in time, it seems.’

There was silence. Orm Bear-Slayer stepped up over the edge of the falls trail and men spilled up after him, springing eager and weapons ready. One was Finn.

‘By the Hammer,’ he said, with a look towards Crowbone that mingled disgust and admiration, ‘you have not learned the lesson of axe and head, have you, boy?’