Crowbone

FIVE

The Manx Sea, days later …

Crowbone’s Crew

Shadows shifted as men gathered gear and moved softly under the creak and flap of the old-blood sail; even before Crowbone reached the prow he saw Onund waiting, watching, with the tools in his hand that would unfasten the snarling dragon-prow, keeping it from challenging the fetch of this land. More importantly, it would announce that the folk following it came in peace.

Crowbone, Kaetilmund and Onund stood with Stick-Starer, all of them staring out beyond the prow at the distant, silvered horizon and the smear on it.

‘Smoke, I am thinking,’ Stick-Starer declared and Kaetilmund, his hair whipping ahead of him with the strong wind, gave a grunt that might have been agreement and squinted a little, so that he was looking more sideways at the stained horizon.

‘Could be a place with a borg on a hill,’ he admitted finally and Stick-Starer looked relieved.

‘Of course it is a place with a borg on a hill,’ he answered scornfully. ‘Holmtun on Mann, as I said.’

‘You have not been in these waters for some time,’ Crowbone pointed out mildly, ‘and we have seen no land on our steerboard side, which should be expected if we have sailed up the west coast of Mann.’

‘Where are we then?’ Kaetilmund demanded challengingly, curling his lip at Stick-Starer. ‘Is this not Holmtun?’

Stick-Starer stroked his chin and looked at the milk-sodden sky. Truth was, he did not exactly know and the prince who was now their leader had the right of it — he had been long out of these waters, so that the warp and weft of old wisdom was being dragged from him with some trouble. He muttered, pored over the tally-marks and the wooden wheels for some time. Then he threw a wood chip in the water, watching it bounce away behind them in the curling wake.

Crowbone leaned, one foot up on the thwart, brooding from under his eyelids. The Great City shipmasters had matters marked on scrolls and drawn on vellum, so that all they had to do was haul them out and look them over to find the description of how to get to a place, whether they were far south in the Middle Sea, or north into the Dark Sea. Yet northmen were considered much better seamen than the sailors of Constantinople and Crowbone wondered why that was.

He looked at Stick-Starer mumbling over his wooden instruments like some Pecheneg shaman casting bones and with about as much chance of solving the problem; he wished he had some of the Great City scrolls. Not that they would be of any help to Stick-Starer since he could not read — but that was unfair, Crowbone thought, for neither can I, not Latin nor Greek. I cannot even decently read runes, he added to himself and made a promise to at least learn that.

When, though, was the problem — there was enough for a prince-who-would-be-king to learn, not least of it using either hand in a fight and getting out of ringmail underwater while still swimming like a fish. All that and how to lead men and read the ways of power — a prince was never done working.

‘I believe,’ admitted Stick-Starer, breaking into Crowbone’s brooding, ‘that we may be a little bit off. I need a landmark before I can be sure.’

Onund gave his familiar grunt.

‘Engi er allheimskr ef?egja ma,’ he said, his thick Iceland accent enough to make decent Norse speakers frown over it. Crowbone smiled as Stick-Starer worked it out and glared — no-one can be really stupid who stays silent.

Not much later, the truth of it was unveiled and Stick-Starer had a single eyebrow from scowling, while the beaten walrus-skin of his seamed face was red as a skelpt arse.

‘A place with an island fort,’ Kaetilmund jeered. ‘You had that right, for sure — but you have managed to miss Mann island entire.’

Stick-Starer hunched into it and stared at the water running in a V from the prow, while Onund and others fought the dragon-beast down from the prow before the Shadow got too close. In the end, most folk were agreed on where they were — Hvitrann, which was stuck on the end of a tongue of land which Murrough knew as Galgeddil. It was, he said, part of the kingdom of Cwymbria, which ran all the way up to the river fort at Alt Clut and was run by a skilled and hard man called Mael Coluim, though the kings of Alba said they owned him.

The locals called it Hwiterne, Murrough went on, which means White House and comes from the white stone church the Christians built, which in Latin is called candida casa. It was a good Norse place once, though none of them around here were welcoming to men on the vik.

All of which was interesting, Crowbone said, but of no real aid to men looking for Holmtun on Mann and one or two, hoping to be helpful, said that if they were to sail south and a little west for a day they could not miss the island. Crowbone looked at Stick-Starer, who licked his lips nervously and said nothing at all, for he thought the odd-eyed youth had a hard look on him, like a man about to throw his shipmaster over the side.

Crowbone knew what Stick-Starer thought and let him sweat a little; the truth of it was clear to him now — the Norns wove this and Stick-Starer’s poor way-finding was another thread that had led Crowbone to this place. The storm had lashed them hard and Hoskuld was gone in it; Crowbone did not think he had sunk, but he had poor hopes for Bergfinn and Thorgeir, who would not have allowed Hoskuld and his men to sail off without arguing out the folly of it.

He knew, all the same, that the great, mysterious tapestry of the world was woven of men’s lives and his own thread was bright in it, shining with the men and ships and silver and kings the Norns wove it with. Even the threads of gods, he thought to himself grimly, are braided with my wyrd, for the Norns weave even Asgard’s lives.

‘Well,’ growled Mar as the clang of alarms began to sound, ‘do we sail off or try to show these folk how friendly we are?’

‘Do not land on the east side,’ Stick-Starer added, attempting to redeem himself and remembering something about the place they were sailing to. ‘There is a bay there which looks inviting, but it is all stinking marsh.’

There was, thought Crowbone with a frown, no reason at all for stopping here, other than the fact that heading south for Mann would put the wind in their teeth and mean a hard row of it. It was not as if they needed food, though the bread was mushy and more than a little green, nor water, which was still drinkable if you strained it through your linen kirtle first. Yet the Norns were in this, he was sure of it, ever since he had seen the three terns screaming sunwise round the mast that morning.

Then the yellow bitch barked and Berto shaded his eyes with one hand and pointed with the other.

‘Looking yonder,’ he said in his crippled attempt at West Norse. ‘Is that not the ship of that Hoskuld, harboured there?’

There was a flurry of peering and pointing, then Kaetilmund gave a nod and a grunt, smacking the little Wend on the shoulder hard enough to rattle the leather helmet over his brow.

‘Good eyes, No-Toes,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It is that lost ship, for sure.’

Crowbone felt the hairs on his arms raise, tasted the tingle of the Norn-weave moment on his tongue. The sail came flaking down, the prow beast was lifted off and the oars clattered out. On the way to his sea-chest oar bench, Mar offered Crowbone a hopeful grin.

‘All we need are some quiet words,’ he said and Crowbone looked sourly back at him, then at Kaup, the dark shadow following him. Quiet words. From a black ship with a blood-red sail whose crew contained at least one walking dead man. In every saga told, the villain was always a powerful magic-worker with a pack of trolls, rabid wolves, alfar — and black men.

‘Aye,’ he declared as the men picked up the oar rhythm. ‘There is no bother in this at all.’

An hour later, of course, matters had turned out as sour as Crowbone had thought and he stood in the prow, shaking his head at the wyrd of it.

It was, he brooded, ridiculous. Between us all we have command of a fair wheen of tongues, yet I am standing in the prow of a boat trying to find one gods-cursed person we can talk to.

Crowbone, fretting and churning deep in himself, wondered if it was worth pitching Stick-Starer over the side and ignoring the sunwise terns and his own surety of Norn-weaving. All unknown to him, Mar watched the hood-eyed prince and marvelled at his stillness and seeming unconcern as the youth stood, hipshot and silvered by the dawn, as if waiting patiently for his rising-meal.

The Shadow rose and fell in slow, rolling swells, the snarling prow of it removed and safely covered, the strakes grating on the harsh sand and shingle but not driven hard enough up on the beach so that it could not be rowed swiftly out again. To the left, jostling with fishing craft, Hoskuld’s knarr nudged the stone quay, fastened snugly to an iron ring. Beyond the curve of shingle, sand and stiff grass was a sea wall, behind which huts and houses huddled. To the right was a great rock, hunched as Onund’s shoulder and with a stone-walled borg barnacled tight on it; somewhere there a bell clanged.

‘Call them again — surely they know even your bad Frankish? The land is only across the water from them.’

Onund glanced briefly at Crowbone, then called out that they came in peace, but held his own council as to how close this place was to the land of the Franks.

Crowbone watched and waited, but no-one came, not even from the borg and he studied the round gate-towers, saw the strength of it — but saw no spear points or helmets. There were folk around, all the same, for a handcart and people hurried across the raising-bridge into the maw of the borg; two of them were girls, their skirts flying. The bridge came up not long after, with a rending screech of cogs and wheels needing greased.

‘Well,’ growled Kaetilmund, ‘we have tried Frank and Norse and Slav and a bit of Wend and some Greek — even Murrough’s Irish, which you would think they would know, being even closer to them than the Franks, but unless you know Englisc or the Christ-tongue, then we are done with talking here.’

Mar shrugged as Crowbone looked at him.

‘I know the prayers in Latin,’ he said. ‘Well, a bit, here and there.’

‘Well, we did not sail in here to stand and stare at Hoskuld’s ship,’ Crowbone said and jerked his chin at Kaetilmund. ‘Take two men and get aboard her. Murrough, you and Rovald come with me — there may yet be someone who speaks the Irisher tongue. Gjallandi, you speak well and know the Latin a bit. Berto, you can come as well, since it is the only way to get the dog — it is an ugly animal, but a wagging tail is a soothing sight.’

Then he leaped over the prow into the shallows and sloshed his way to the shore, the others following him. Half-way up the shingle, he turned and called out to Onund.

‘If you see us coming back at a fair speed, it would be nice to think that folk were bending the oars for the open sea even as we leap aboard.’

‘Not too fast, all the same,’ Murrough added with a scowl. ‘For it would be nicer if we were actually aboard when you bend them.’

The laughter was nervous and those left behind soon fell silent and watched Crowbone and his four men and a dog trudge up the shingle into the grass-stabbed dunes and over the sea wall. The gulls wheeled and screamed at the yellow dog as it ran back and forth, tail beating furiously.

They came into the fringes of the place, cautious as old cats, past the drunken fences and the plots they bounded, up through the houses with the doormouths of them stoppered and the shutters closed. For all their blindness, Crowbone thought to himself, those wind-holes watch us.

They prowled round a little, in wide, wary circles, stepping light-footed as wolves then went on up to the church which Crowbone thought more gull-grey than white. It had thick walls, small slits set high up and a single massive door, set in an archway and studded with iron-headed nails. As good a fortress as the one to their right, which men eyed warily now that they were far from the ship and in danger of being cut off if anyone sallied out from it.

Gjallandi stepped up and banged the door, yelling out in Latin until a slat opened and eyes looked warily out at him. Men cheered mockingly.

‘Whisht,’ Crowbone ordered, not wanting to tip the balance of the door-slat into shutting again. Gjallandi gabbled and had an answer, then gabbled some more. Then the slat shut with a bang and he stepped away, his great lips pursed.

‘They are wary,’ he said. ‘I have promised that there will be no trouble and that all here are good Christmenn.’

‘Well,’ Crowbone declared with princely assurance, ‘half right is almost no lie.’

The door of the stone church cracked open like a smile and spat out a priest called Domnall, a tall, thin streak of a man with cool grey eyes and the sort of chin that could never be shaved clean even with the sharpest knife. He had hair cut so that it looked like an upturned bird nest on his head and the centre of it was shaved, which was the way of most Christ priests. More to the point, he spoke Norse after a fashion.

He saw through Crowbone almost at once, despite the prince’s attempts to turn his Thor Hammer amulet into something resembling a cross, and refused to speak further until the scowling youth agreed to be prime-signed at least into the company of Christian folk.

For his part, Crowbone permitted the holy water cross-marking on his brow well enough and ignored the black looks of the good Odinsmen of the Oathsworn, though he had more trouble with Onund, who spat almost on the prince’s boots and offered the opinion that Orm would not have done this and would not be pleased to hear of it.

Crowbone choked his rage in his throat and swallowed, though it burned his belly. He smiled at Onund, as sweet as his insides were sour.

‘Orm will understand,’ he said soothingly, while thinking that Onund was right — Orm would never have given in by as much as a finger-length to the Christ priest’s demands, for he had done it before and had annoyed, he thought, the gods in Asgard.

Which is why Orm, Crowbone thought, will never amount to more than a raiding captain in this part of the world where he had never set his foot before, since Christ folk would never deal with him. Here, it seemed, the Tortured God held sway and it was a prudent prince who took note of it — prudent gods in Asgard, too.

He dared to say as much, then had to duck under Onund’s scowl to go after the now talkative priest. He discovered that the church they had come up on was not the candida casa, but a smaller chapel for pilgrims of some Christ martyr called Ninian. Nor had they landed where they had thought to land — in Hvitrann town proper — but only at the port, which was at the end of a thin stretch of land that would have been an island but for the saving grace of a last narrow neck. He learned this sitting out of the wind in a wooden lean-to tacked on to the church wall, drinking nutty ale and eating cheese and bread while some hurrying girl went to fetch the commander of the borg, a keg-shaped belcher called Fergus.

And all this, Crowbone marvelled, because he had muttered some praise for the White Christ and had his forehead wetted. That sort of matter was worth remembering.

Crowbone already knew that Hoskuld’s knarr was empty as a blown egg and learned from this Fergus that Hoskuld had been grabbed by one Ogmund, who claimed to belong to Olaf Irish-Shoes. They had all left in a snake-boat.

‘Like your own, only smaller,’ Fergus offered, chewing bread and cheese while the priest sat with his hands in the folds of his sleeves and Crowbone perched on a stool opposite the pair of them, so he could reach the seax in his boot if matters spilled over.

‘Was his crew also taken?’ Crowbone asked lightly and Fergus grinned, showing two blue teeth in the front of his mouth. He was easier now that he had been assured Crowbone was no threat, but still cautious, for no northman could be trusted.

‘No. Held until my lord arrives from Surrby,’ he answered, ‘and judges whether they are the raiding men this Ogmund claims. Two at least are no traders, but fighting men and claim to come from Gardariki, though I think they are great liars. We picked them up on their own, from further down the coast, but they knew the trader’s crew at once.’

Bergfinn and Thorgeir, Crowbone thought and kept his face as bland as fresh-scraped sheepskin.

‘The cargo?’

‘Held in safekeeping. Berthing fees. Tithes. Custom duties.’

Crowbone was silent while he assembled the weft and warp of this. Hoskuld, for all his cleverness, had sailed into the arms of this Ogmund, who clearly had been sent to find him and bring him back to Olaf Irish-Shoes in Dyfflin. The fact that Ogmund had left knarr, cargo and crew behind told Crowbone he had all the clever in him of a stone; bring Hoskuld the Trader he had been told and so he did that and no more.

Fergus had then seized crew, cargo and ship and thought himself no end of a fine fellow for having done so. Crowbone wondered, idly, why Bergfinn and Thorgeir had been on their own and not with the crew; he was pleased they were alive, but curious as to why that was, since it spoke of having done nothing much to thwart Hoskuld’s attempts to run away.

A more worrying fact was that this arse Fergus, grinning and spraying crumbs as he stuffed food in his maw with thick fingers, had also sent word to his lord at Surrby — Crowbone wondered where Surrby was and how long it would take to get from there with armed men. The name of it soothed him a little for it was Norse, though it meant ‘sour land’ which did not have a happy ring to it.

‘It would be best,’ Fergus added, swallowing ale, ‘if you were gone when my lord arrives. Lest there is confusion over your own relationship to these raiders.’

The priest cocked one disapproving eyebrow.

‘The holy chapel of Saint Ninian has offered succour to these Christians,’ he pointed out and Fergus shrugged.

‘There is no confusion,’ Crowbone answered lightly. ‘Your prisoners are part of my crew and innocent of such charges. It surprises me that some Dyfflin men can land here and snatch away a trader so arrogantly. I am sure your lord will also see this when it is put to him — who is he?’

The lord, he learned from the scowling Fergus, was called Duegald Andersson, a Dane by the sound of it, or one of those half-Norse the locals called fion ghaill — fair strangers — and it told Crowbone that this area called Galgeddil was more Norse than anything else. He said as much and Fergus shrugged and showed his blued teeth in a sneering smile.

‘I would not depend on anything coming from that,’ he offered, then rose abruptly, scraping the bench back with a screech. He was a lot less sure of matters than he had been when he had woken that morning and did not like this odd-eyed youth for having spoiled his day.

‘Get gone from here,’ he said, which was a flat blade smacked on the table to the likes of Crowbone, but he was enough of a prince to know that Fergus did it because he was confident of his borg being able to hold out against a shipload of Norse until this Duegald arrived. Since there was nothing to be gained from spitting and scowling, Crowbone smiled and nodded politely instead.

Domnall saw the manners of it and considered that the prince was a better man than Fergus, which was not a hard thought for him; he knew Fergus as a farter and swearer, with nothing much in his head other than where his next drink would come from. Still — he had the right of it in this matter and Domnall said as much to the polite prince.

‘It would be best if you sailed, I am thinking,’ he added finally. ‘Fergus sent for Lord Duegald some days ago and he will be here tomorrow, or the day after.’

Crowbone nodded and feigned sighs at having to leave his men to their fate, then went back to the cookfires and sail-tent camp on the beach and near their ship. He found the crew looking morosely at the canted dragon-ship and the great, slick expanse of seaweed, shell and mud that stretched from it; low tide sucked the water away entirely from the place and Crowbone cursed himself for not having thought of it. Baltic waters had no tide worth the name and all these men were Baltic raiders until recently.

‘Well, that is that, then,’ Mar declared moodily. ‘We should leave when the sea comes back, hoping it does before this lord and his men arrive from this Surrby.’

‘I have heard of that place,’ Stick-Starer answered, aware that he was also being blamed for not knowing about the tide. ‘It is a Norse borg, surrounded on three sides by marshes, which accounts for its name.’

‘Interesting,’ Crowbone snarled at him, ‘but of less use than gull shit on a rope end.’

‘What of the prisoners in the borg?’ demanded Berto, feeding fish scraps to the yellow dog.

‘What of them?’ Kaup asked, astonished that anyone would care; they were nothing to do with the Shadow’s crew and had been treacherous besides. Folk argued it back and forth while the wind hissed out of the dark land and flattened the flames of the fire.

In the end, Onund silenced them with a smack of one hand on his thigh.

‘Bergfinn and Thorgeir are there,’ he pointed out and Crowbone saw the puzzled looks on more than a few faces, particularly those of the Christians. He sighed, for he knew it would come to this.

‘They are Oathsworn,’ he reminded them and saw the cat and dog chase of that across faces until they worked out the power of the oath they had sworn. Crowbone saw Mar and Kaup look at each other and knew what they were thinking — we have sworn only to the prince, so what is this oath to decent Christians? He saw that Onund had spotted this too, and decided it was a princely matter to speak up quickly.

‘We cannot leave them,’ he said. ‘Besides — they may know exactly where this Ogmund has taken Hoskuld.’

‘Which is what to us?’ demanded a tall man, a Saxlander called Fridrek. Good with a bow, Crowbone recalled.

‘I mean no disrespect,’ the man lied, his bold stare into Crowbone’s blank face a clear challenge. ‘I just wonder why we are pursuing this trader. I wonder why we are in this part of the world at all, trying to get to Mann. For some axe?’

There was silence enough for the wind to seem to roar, then a stillness came down until it seemed even the world held its breath.

‘It seems to me,’ Fridrek went on, seemingly oblivious to any silence, ‘that we are following a youth of little fighting experience for no gain I can see in it.’

Crowbone shifted a little and spread his arms. He was trying to be liked, though the matter of the tides and this Fridrek’s tone was a powering sea to the crumbling cliff of it.

‘We seek my destiny,’ he said finally, ‘which is to be king of Norway …’

‘Norway has a king,’ Fridrek interrupted. ‘You seem short on men and war skill to be claiming a throne. Now we are stuck in the mud and at the mercy of some Galgeddil men.’

‘It is true that I am a little light in the ways of battle,’ Crowbone said, smiling — then he lashed out with one foot and it was only then that folk realised he had shifted to balance himself on the other. The nail-studded sole of his boot took Fridrek in the sneer of his face; his nose burst with a great gout of blood and teeth flew when he went over backwards with a muffled shriek.

‘I have some skill in surprise, all the same,’ Crowbone added, fierce with the release of the moment. ‘Nor do I like folk yapping when I am speaking.’

‘You are a little mean-spirited tonight,’ Onund growled as men helped Fridrek up and began to look to his nose and mouth.

‘I am not,’ Crowbone countered. ‘I am the happiest of men, for I know how to take that borg away from Fergus and release both the men in it, Hoskuld’s cargo and all the other cargoes no doubt stored there.’

Men leaned forward, glaured with the vision of all the plunder that might be to hand. Even those tending Fridrek let him bleed a little as they turned to listen.

‘Otherwise,’ Crowbone added, looking sourly at the Saxlander, ‘I would just have killed him.’

Somewhere, a bleared sun smeared through the mist, making silhouettes on the road up to the borg. It was a cold sun, a dirty grey light that fell on the handcart being pushed by four weary peasants and preceded by two girls in decent overcloaks and white headsquares, carrying covered jugs.

Maccus, who only liked this gate guard duty because of the morning girls with their milk, nudged Cuimer and nodded in their direction, licking his lips ostentatiously. Cuimer grinned, set his spear to one side and pulled off his helmet, the better to free his hair, which made Maccus frown. Cuimer had thick, wavy hair only slightly infested with nits, while Maccus dared not do the same, since the helmet, he swore, had worn all the hair from the front half of his head.

Still, the girls looked winsome enough, and he thought they had probably come from Hvitrann proper, since he had not seen them before. New girls; the prospects made him lick his lips. One was short and plump — that one is Cuimer’s, Maccus promised himself, tonguing his loose teeth — but the other was tall and had started to sway lasciviously as she came up and across the raising-bridge.

Not far away, Murrough and Mar turned their heads at the sweet sound wafting from the chapel, where most of the people had sensibly gone including two girls shamed and clutching themselves in their underclothes and four peasants worried about their handcart. Two hard men with spears made sure they stayed there, grinning at the girls and the discomfited monks.

‘Like honey to the ears,’ Murrough said softly.

‘The sound of swan-maidens,’ agreed Mar.

Inside the chapel, Domnall led his charges in loud Latin, chanting sonorously that the borg was in danger until Gjallandi stormed in with the great scowl that was Kaup alongside him and gave the priest a look that let him understand the Norse skald knew Latin well enough, even when sung. Domnall shrugged — he had done his best and it had been a forlorn hope, since he knew no-one in the borg, especially keg-head Fergus, understood more Latin than the proper responses.

Yet he had done his duty so that he could face his God and Lord Duegald both with the knowledge that he had tried to thwart these raiders, while also keeping the raiders — who were now certainly in charge of matters — from burning God’s house or harming the innocents. Warriors would die, of course, but that was the nature of fighting men, Domnall thought to himself. Pater Noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen Tuum …

The mist and the water blended with vague strokes of rushes, grass and trees. The guards were grey on grey stone as the peasants laboured the handcart of bread and the girls hefted the heavy jugs of milk, a rising-meal for the garrison.

Cuimer, plump and pink, his helmet held in the crook of his arm and his hair flowing over his ears, stepped forward, grinning a yellow smile at the tall, slender girl. He said something the tall girl obviously did not understand, but his wink was lewd and he laughed, even though she had odd eyes, neither one colour nor another.

Then, sudden as a flaring spark, he wasn’t laughing at all and the tall, slender girl had whipped a seax out from the jug she carried, slammed the earthware into the man’s face and followed it up with an expert slash across his throat.

Maccus, who had been scowling at Cuimer as he stepped forward to talk to the winsomely tall maiden, gawped as the blade flashed, bright as kingfisher wings in the mirk and Cuimer fell backwards, the blood slushing from his throat and his face full of pottery shards. Maccus opened his mouth to shout and something darted at him from one side like the tongue of a snake, so that he reared back with a little scream, half-turning to see the round face of the plump girl, her eyes wide and bright. He thought he saw reluctant sadness there, but there was nothing reluctant about the fistful of steel she had. The strength went from his legs and then the plump girl stabbed him in the liver and lights and he fell, scrabbling away from this horror, pleading in a voice that wheezed because his lung was burst.

‘Leave him — get to the draw-weights!’

Crowbone tore the headsquare off and flung it away, while the peasants grabbed the hidden axes from the handcart and turned, in that instant, into four rann-sack nightmares, the sort ma tells her bairns to beware of when they get lippy and foot-stamping. Two of them took wooden wedges and hammers and sprinted for the gatehouse. Berto gathered up his skirts and followed the men with hammers into the gatehouse.

They wedged the cogwheels, cut the ropes and pulleys and, even as the garrison started beating metal alarms, the rest of the Shadow’s crew spilled out from where they were hidden and ran screaming at the wide-open gate, across the raising-bridge that could not be raised, scouring the cold out of their mist-frozen bodies in blood and fire while the garrison scattered like crazed geese.

‘Just as well we attacked when we did,’ growled Onund, lumbering up like a sleepy bear. ‘I think that guard with the pretty hair was about to take liberties.’

Crowbone, standing with a seax dripping slow, heavy pats on the hem of his skirt, gave a rueful smile, looked at the handle of the pottery jug still clenched in one fist and tossed it away. The cold dawn wind stroked his freshly-shaved face like a blade. Onund had done it, deliberate and slow and unsmiling while men nudged and jeered at how much of a girl it made their jarl look; Crowbone, as the cold steel had caressed his throat, had never taken his eyes from the hunchback’s face, but had seen nothing there but implacable concentration.

Berto had needed no shaving, but insisted that he keep his breeks on under the skirt. Men jeered at him, all the same and pretended to kiss him, so that he flushed. That changed to pale when Crowbone handed him the seax and he realised what he had to do — Crowbone had not been sure the little Wend would manage it up until he had stuck the blade in the guard’s ribs.

They killed everything that moved or begged, burned what would burn, stacked what could be carried and unlocked all doors until they found the men they sought.

Hoskuld’s crew staggered blinking into the daylight to behold, open-mouthed, the body of Fergus, face as black as Kaup’s own, turning slowly as it hung beneath the arch of the gate while ash and sparks whirled round them. Thorgeir and Bergfinn stared at the ground, shamefaced and scowling.

‘We were tricked,’ Thorgeir told Crowbone and it was Halk the Orkneyman who gave a nervous laugh at that and told Crowbone what Hoskuld had done. Crowbone studied Halk, then the others; Gorm was the only one who returned his stare, eye to eye.

‘Now you can take care of the ones who fooled you,’ Crowbone said to Thorgeir and Bergfinn and handed Thorgeir the bloody seax. Onund, grim as a wet cliff, handed Bergfinn an axe.

‘Do not be tricked again,’ Crowbone ordered. ‘Take them to the ship and watch them — I will have words and questions later.’

They were moving carping geese and blue-glass goblets, bales, barrels and boxes under the dangle of the dead Fergus when Kaup came up, panting fast and so wild his eyes seemed huge and white.

‘Horsemen,’ he said, ‘coming up fast.’

Crowbone felt his belly turn a little, for he had hoped to be away before this Lord arrived with his men.

‘How many?’ he asked and Kaup cursed at not telling this important matter immediately. He flashed both hands four, perhaps five times.

‘Fuck,’ Rovald spat. ‘Horsemen.’

‘Do they fight on horses here, or on foot?’ Crowbone demanded of Murrough, who shrugged and grinned, hefting the long axe off his shoulder and handing Crowbone his sword, rescued from the handcart.

‘No matter,’ he said. Crowbone nodded and sent laden men to the ships, so that Bergfinn and Thorgeir, with four others, found themselves back on the knarr working up a sweat stacking the plunder and shoving her off into the wind. Those with ringmail stayed near Crowbone, moving slowly and standing rearguard, though most of them had plunder, too.

Not for long. Trussed fowls and bread, blue-glass and bales all went one way when the horsemen appeared, milling in some confusion. They had come on at speed towards the smell and sight of smoke, not knowing what to expect; they had not thought to find ring-mailed raiders, so they reined in and waited while a man in a white cloak talked to those on either side of him, waving his hands.

‘Horsemen, then,’ Kaetilmund declared, seeing the men remained mounted.

Not good ones, Crowbone thought to himself, as a man fought his nervous mount and another clattered his long spear off his neighbour’s helmet and had back curses for it. They were clearly new to this business of fighting mounted.

‘Perhaps they will let us go away, seeing as the damage is already done,’ Vandrad Sygni said, nocking an arrow. Murrough laughed.

Berto was the last laden man to reach the Shadow, having ripped off the dress. Now he waded out to the Shadow clutching a new bow and with the yellow dog splashing at his heels; the great blood sail flapped and filled and it stirred, fighting the clutch of mud still under the keel, for the tide was rolling in as the wind was rolling out.

The horsemen shifted at that sight, but the line of men on the sand stood and waited, then Crowbone yelled out an order and they began to step in rowing time, shields up but moving backwards to the shingle and the shallows, where the tendrils of mist trailed like hag hair.

The white-cloaked man saw them sliding back to the water and the dragon-ship, barked an order and the horsemen shifted into a ragged line; bits spumed with slaver, bridles jingled and the horses pawed and snorted, sensing what was coming.

‘Well, then,’ growled Mar, stuffing his helmet more firmly on his head, so that the great froth of his iron-coloured hair stuck out like wire, ‘they will make a fist and shake it at us, it seems.’

He turned to big Murrough who would be on one side of him in this, their first fight together; they slammed helmets together, forehead to forehead, a rough kiss of greeting and farewell.

‘May the Dagda smile on the Ui Neill this day,’ roared Murrough and Crowbone felt the fierce fire of the moment; he had a single crew now.

They were matched fairly in numbers, though the Shadow’s crew were better armed and better men, which Crowbone bellowed out in as deep a voice as he could manage as they slid into a shieldwall. Murrough stepped forward of the front ranks and began swinging the hook-bitted axe in that killing snake-knot that makes it impossible for a man to get near without suffering and the horsemen checked a little at the sight of him, then moved forward again at a walk. Everyone could see how ragged they were, how they waved their long spears like beetle feelers.

Their voices were brave enough, all the same, for they traded shouted insults on the size of balls and bellies — but it was Kaup who undid them, stepping out from the ranks a little and shaking a spear. Then Kaetilmund yelled ‘Oathsworn’ so that the others took up the chant.

The sight of a draugr, a dead man walking, was bad enough, never mind one armed with a spear and followed by fighting men of the Oathsworn, who were known even here. Crowbone, slapping on his horsetailed helmet and tucking his woman’s skirt up into his belt to free his legs, marvelled at how far that fame had reached.

There was a ripple then, a stone of argument in the sure pool of the horsemen. Crowbone could almost hear them thinking — here was something more than some raiders come badly timed to the wrong feast. Here was the iron hand of the Oathsworn, who had fought dragons and half-woman, half-horse steppe horrors and who had Burned Men fighting for them.

For all that, Crowbone and others all agreed later, the Galgeddil horsemen had ridden the great swell of it bravely enough, ridden it right to the top and looked down on their own deaths — and then swooped down, screaming.

‘Hold,’ Crowbone yelled, which was all he had time for before the shriekers crashed on the shieldwall like a raging wave on a rock dyke.

They were too new to the saddle, came in too fast and too loose, desperate with fear; the horses veered or reared for the riders could not press them home, so that those who did not fall off could only throw their long lances, which clattered off the implacable wall of ring-mailed men like angry dogs clawing at a door.

Murrough’s skill and strength took one loop of the long axe in a downward cut straight through the neck of a horse, then the upward scythe of it took the falling rider and sheared the head and part of a shoulder off him. The Irisher stood like a rock as the headless pair ploughed a bloody furrow through the sand to his left, spraying gore and grit. The other riders, looking only for escape, spilled right and left away from him, heading round the flanks.

Crowbone had been waiting for that, standing calm behind the shieldwall and watching, like a good jarl should; when he saw them stumbling sideways, he sent men left and right from the back rank. He was so intent on that he missed white cloak, urging the shoulder of his mount into Rovald, barrelling him aside.

It was only the desperate howling of the white-cloaked Lord, screaming courage into himself as he bore down, that snapped Crowbone’s head round. An eyeblink later something slammed hard on the side of his shield, half throwing him sideways and whirling stars into him; he knew it was the toppling Rovald even as he heard the grunting man fall. No, he thought, in a strange quiet place in his head that was all the more mad for the stillness there. Not killed in a woman’s dress. I will never live the shame of it down.

Crowbone hardly knew he did it, he dropped in a crouch so low that he felt his arse brush the stiff grass and sand, half spun on one foot and scythed the legs from the horse, even as the rider’s longsword hissed a silver arc over his head, a backward cut that snicked trailing hairs from the horse-plume of his fancy helmet.

The horse shrieked, a high, thin sound, one fetlock cracked, the other severed almost entirely. It drove nose first into the sand, throwing up a bow wave, its screams swallowing the hoarse bellow of the rider as he was hurled to the ground.

Crowbone was up and moving even before the rider had stopped rolling. The Lord Duegald, tangled in his blood-streaked white cloak, staggered to his feet in a spray of wet sand to find a tall, beardless youth standing over him, his odd eyes glaring like burning glass. He had time to wonder why the man wore what appeared to be a dress.

The Galgeddil lord had a long-nosed face, neat with trimmed beard and bewildered blue eyes. Somewhere, a mother loved that face, but Crowbone, shaking with anger and fear, snarled it all out on the long nose and blue eyes in a furious flurry of wet-sounding chops.

When he surfaced from this, it was all over. A few horsemen were bolting for it, riderless mounts following after. A horse hirpled, one leg skewed. A man dragged himself, coughing and cursing, until Kaup, grinning, dragged his head back by the sand-and-blood-crusted hair and slit the terrified screams out of his throat.

The aftermath saw men retching, or panting, open-mouthed with disbelief and mad exultation that they had survived. Some did this after every fight and no-one thought the worse of them for it; the unaffected considered it booty-luck, since they were hunting, unopposed, in crotches, under armpits and down boots for hidden valuables, paddling in blood and all unconcerned. There was a rich choke of spilled shite and new blood.

Staggering a little, Crowbone went to the dead lord’s horse, which was flailing sand and screaming, and cut the life out of it in two weary strokes. The ending of the screams was like balm.

‘Good fight,’ said a voice and Crowbone turned to see the great grinning face of Murrough wandering towards him, hook-bitted axe over one shoulder, tossing a fat purse in the other. He looked at the dead man in the blood-soaked white cloak and nodded admiration.

‘I thought he had you — but you fooled him entirely,’ he added. Crowbone kept his lips sewed on the fact that he had thought the man had him, too. Mar loped up and searched the lord swiftly, came up with hacksilver and trinkets and handed that and Murrough’s fat purse to Crowbone, looked at the sword briefly and left it alone.

That was all a good sign, Crowbone thought. Not that Mar knew how matters worked in the Oathsworn — that they shared all, though looted weapons and ring-coats were the jarl’s to give or keep — but that he did it easily enough. Of course, everyone hid a little, running the risk that they might be found out and pay the price for it, which began with losing all you had and greeting the Oathsworn’s other true friend, pain.

Crowbone tried not to look at Mar, or the ruin of the Galgeddil lord’s face, fought to look smooth as a blue-glass cup as he turned away to bawl at Kaetilmund to leave off plundering and get to the ship.

He picked up the lord’s sword; it was a solid Frankish blade fitted with down-curved iron quillons and a fat three-lobed pommel above a braided leather grip. Basic and workmanlike, it was not the ornate sword of a little lordling, but one used by a fighting man; still a fearsomely expensive item all the same, since it had one purpose only and that was killing people. A luxury, then, to folk who used blades for chopping wood, or fish, or chickens. Beyond that, though, it was the mark of a warrior and increased in worth because of it; men without one watched Crowbone as he hefted it, hoping they had been noticed enough to warrant the gift of such a blade.

They tallied the losses as well as the gain — a man dead and four hurt, one almost certain to lose his hand. The dead man was curled on himself, skewered on a spear, the splintered haft showing ash so white it was almost too bright to look at. His face, half-turned to the last dying light he had ever seen, held only slack jawed astonishment that made him look stupid, which he had not been in life; Crowbone remembered him, shooting wit like arrows and laughing with the joy of what he was and who he was with.

‘Fastarr,’ said a voice and Crowbone turned to see Mar looking at the dead man. He pulled his helmet off, ran a hand through the sweat-damp iron tangle of his hair.

‘His name,’ he explained. ‘Fastarr, by-named Skumr. A boy we picked up in Jutland when we were the Red Brothers. Said he had seen fighting, but I did not believe him. He wanted to go far-faering, all the same, and was pleasant company.’

Crowbone stared. He had never heard his name and that shook him a little, for he knew it was an important matter to know the names of men prepared to die for you. He felt a jolt run through him, like a blow badly blocked, when he realised he had never spoken to this boy, whose by-name, Skumr, meant ‘brown gull’ and was a name given to one who chattered as noisily as that bird.

‘Well, now he is farlami,’ Mar declared. ‘So also is Kari Ragnvaldrsson, I am thinking.’

Faring-lamed — a term used as a wry joke as much as a small comfort of words. Not dead, just farlami, unable to go further on this journey.

When Crowbone went to him, Kari was pale with blood-loss, cradling his smashed hand, which was wrapped in the tail of his own tunic. His sword hand, too. Crowbone offered him thanks and promised him wealth enough and then told him he was done with the Oathsworn and that he would be left on Mann when he found someone to stand in his stead, his oath fulfilled.

Crowbone turned from the stricken look on Kari’s face, knowing the man would have given the other hand to stay, but he was spared the awkwardness of argument by the arrival of Rovald, nursing his shoulder and spitting sand.

‘You have not had a good day of it,’ Crowbone pointed out and Rovald, knowing that he had failed to protect his jarl when he was bundled aside like old washing, flushed a little and went tight-lipped, which at least kept him from saying something stupidly dangerous.

Instead, he nodded to where a lone figure moved steadily towards them, almost seeming to glide because his feet were hidden by the flap of his long robe.

It was brave of this Domnall, Crowbone thought, to plooter through the gore-muddy sand towards snarlers filled with victory and blood-fire. He said as much aloud, so folk would get the point of it; the snarlers grinned their wolf grins, cleaned their clotted weapons in the sand, ignored the priest and hefted their dead and wounded off towards the Shadow.

‘You have slain the Lord Duegald,’ Domnall said and his face was pale. He clasped his hands together and bent his head to pray.

‘Once,’ he heard a voice say, ‘a Raven was overtaken by a Fox and caught. Raven said to Fox: “Please, pray first before you kill me, as the Christmann does.” This was the time when beasts had voices, you understand.’

Domnall, astonished, opened his eyes and stared at Crowbone, who stood with his legs slightly apart and his silly woman’s dress tucked up into his belt at the front, so that it looked as if he wore baggy, misshapen breeks. The priest saw that those odd-coloured eyes were dull, like misted beads.

‘Fox asked: “In what manner does he pray? Tell me.”

‘“He folds his hands in praying,” said Raven and Fox sat up and folded his paws as best he could, which meant letting go of Raven. “You ought not to look about you as you do. You had better shut your eyes,” added Raven and Fox did so. Raven flew away, screeching, into a high tree.

‘“Pray away, fool,” he said and Fox sat, speechless, because he had been outdone.’

Domnall stared. Crowbone blinked and shifted, then smiled at the priest.

‘Pray away, fool. When you open them, your prayers and your prey will both be gone and all this will be a dream.’

‘God is not mocked,’ Domnall said sternly and Crowbone laughed as he turned away, hefting his sword on to one shoulder.

‘Of course he is, priest,’ he called out as he went. ‘His son was sent to promise an end to wicked folk. Odin promised an end to the ice giants. I see no ice giants, priest — but the world is full of wicked men.’

Domnall could still hear the laughter as the swaggering youth reached the tideline and was hauled up the strakes of the Shadow by willing hands.

The embers whirling round their ears from the dying fires of the borg, the people of the White House crept out from hiding to stand at the side of Domnall the priest while the black ship unleashed itself from the land. The blood-red mourn of sail sped it away after the knarr, the plumes of ash and smoke trailing over them both like curled wolf tails.