Crowbone

EPILOGUE

Sand Vik, Orkney, the next day …

The three of them stood on the sighing shingle watching their men load the ships. They had just been to see Martin kisted up in a stone-lined grave, the spear lying on his breast; only the three of them and Adalbert had witnessed it and, after mumbling what words were necessary, he had started asking Crowbone about the spear. Orm wondered how long the grave would lie undisturbed.

‘What of the axe?’ Finn asked and Crowbone grinned.

‘It will end up with Haakon Jarl, of course,’ he said and the other two looked at him quizzically. Crowbone ticked the matters off on his fingers.

‘Already Arnfinn and his brothers are shouldering each other to have it, even before the blood of Gudrod’s head is wiped clean,’ he told them. ‘When they have ruined each other for it, Haakon Jarl will move in and take it from them and Orkney, too, perhaps — much good may either do him.’

‘Why do men want it so badly if all it brings is ruin?’ Orm wondered aloud and Crowbone’s smile was scornful.

‘For one it will bring victory. The worthy one.’

They looked at him then and it was clear who he thought that Yngling hero was.

‘I shall take it back from Haakon’s hand, together with the throne of Norway,’ Crowbone added blandly. ‘He is not the one worthy to marry Odin’s Daughter — but I will prove my worth by taking Haakon’s High Seat with my own strength and fame. Then Odin’s Daughter will be worthy of me, as well as me of her. Together we will make an empire in the north.’

Orm smiled back at him, a little sad twist of a smile.

‘Make sure you get it before that axe goes all the way home to that goddess. I am thinking you may not survive another encounter with the Sami.’

‘Especially their new goddess,’ Finn growled and then stopped, shaking his head.

‘That was a poor way to treat a Wend woman,’ he added.

Crowbone’s glance was cool.

‘I am after thinking it was no good matter with her,’ Finn persisted, squinting and rubbing his iron beard. ‘It seems she had feelings for you and did not take kindly to becoming the next goddess of the mountain.’

‘Fear and love are fox and dog,’ Crowbone said and his voice was a chill down their necks. ‘They do not walk well together and so it is best to choose one or the other. In balance, it is safer for princes and kings to be feared than loved.’

Then he sighed and shrugged.

‘I am sorry for it, all the same,’ he added, killing their sympathy in the next second. ‘I could not persuade the yellow hound to leave her. I will miss that hound — but I hear there are good ones to be had raiding the Englisc these days.’

They watched him slosh, boot-careless through the half-frozen shallows, and be hauled up into the ship where his Stooping Hawk banner flew. Oars clattered and the drakkar sloughed away through the grue of ice, men yelling and setting a blood-red mourn of sail — in time, Crowbone had told them, he would paint the ship black too, and call it Shadow.

It was an echo of the Oathsworn and their Fjord Elk, but a distant one that left Orm more forlorn than comforted.

‘May the gods save us when he becomes Norway’s king,’ Finn grunted, then scrubbed his beard.

‘Ireland, is it?’ he said and Orm smiled grimly. Ireland and Thorgunna.

‘Digging an unwilling wife out of a Christ place in Ireland,’ growled Finn, shaking his head and following him to their own ships.

‘It might well be safer following bloody Crowbone.’