Crowbone

SIX

Holmtun, Isle of Mann, a day later …

The Witch-Queen’s Crew

The wind hissed out of the dark, thick with sea-salt and fear, for it was a raider’s wind, one that could drive dragon-ships straight down the throat of the town and folk huddled, seeing them out there in the dark. The three men moved closer to the flattening flames of the brazier; the youngest stared over his shoulder at the comfort of the gate they guarded.

‘A raw night,’ said a voice and men turned to stare at the cloaked man who limped up. The nearest to the visitor was an old man whose hair wisped like white smoke in the dark and he half-lowered the point of his suspicious spear a little. Next to him, a man with a timber leg struggled to get off the log he squatted on. The boy, his face bright with firelight, squinted at the newcomer, who was no more than a dark figure, blooded here and there by the flames.

Erling came up, slow and easy, then flourished a leather flask out from under the cloak and unstoppered it.

‘As well you have me, then, to take the chill off,’ he grunted and passed it over. ‘Thought you lot could use it. Done this meself an’ no-one cares, do they?’

The old man hesitated, then laid the spear down and took the flask, tilted it and swallowed.

‘You have the right of it friend,’ he said, hoarse with the spirit’s grip on his throat. He passed it to the timber-leg, who raised it in a grinning salute to Erling before swallowing.

‘You with the masons, then?’ asked the youth and Erling nodded.

‘If your lot would fix the yett,’ the old man grumbled, ‘we would be in the dry and warm.’

He got the flask back and held it a longer time at his lips before handing it back to Erling. He hefted it for a grinning moment, then handed it to the boy.

‘Your ma will flay you,’ the old man declared and the boy bristled.

‘Old enough to stand here with my arse frozen,’ he said, trying to be gruff. ‘Old enough to hold a spear.’

‘Aye, right enough,’ Timber-Leg added bitterly. ‘If the raiders come, old enough to die at this gate, too — so old enough to drink.’

‘They say the Witch-Queen’s son is out there,’ the old man added softly.

‘With some sort of shapechanger,’ the boy added, eyes moist and bright with drink that choked him and which he would not admit did just that. The course of it in his blood added to the raw thrill of stories brought back by Ogmund’s men.

‘They say he can kill in an eyeblink. Maelle saw it happen when Ulf died.’

Timber-Leg snorted.

‘Shapechanger my arse,’ he spat bitterly. ‘Not that one is needed here — all the good men are gone to Olaf’s army at Dyfflin, save for Ogmund. Him and a handful in a fortress with a broken gate. And us. Old, crippled and over-young — what are we likely to do against sea-raiders?’

‘Not much for your part,’ answered the boy scornfully, ‘but I have two good legs and can use a spear.’

‘Enough,’ snapped the old man angrily. ‘Ghile-beg here has seen fighting which you have not. It is more than likely that if the raiders come, you will not be dancing this time next year.’

He turned to Erling and seemed surprised to find the flask still in his hand. He raised it in toast and drank, then smacked his lips and scowled back at the boy.

‘No more for you. You are already at the moment when rudeness seems wit.’

Erling laughed and shook his head in mock sorrow.

‘If the Witch-Queen comes, with her son and the shapechanger,’ he declared, ‘it might be better to be gone away. But that is unlikely. After all — what would bring them to Holmtun that is worth the taking?’

The old man spat angrily in the flames.

‘Some prisoner,’ he declared. ‘Dragged into the borg to be put to the question by Ogmund.’

‘He should have taken him to Olaf in Dyfflin,’ Timber-Leg declared, ‘but wants to wave answers at the king and the jarl, to show his cleverness.’

‘Aye,’ said Erling, stretching a little so that the cloak slackened round his body. A shadow flitted like an owl in flight and only he noticed it. ‘This is as I had heard it and so it is a sore struggle of task you have, lads, and no mistake. You seem brave boys, all the same, and we have shared drink this night, so it is all a right pity.’

The old man held the flask up to his lips and realised it was empty as he lowered it.

‘Pity?’ he demanded owlishly, handing the empty flask back to Erling. ‘What is a pity — other than that this fine flask is empty?’

He handed the empty flask back to Erling, who took it with one hand and came up with the other full of bright, winking steel.

‘This is,’ he said and gave three quick, sharp blows into the old man’s ribs, catching the body close to him so that the shocked eyes, rheum-bright and bewildered stared into his own. The last breath tickled the hairs in Erling’s nose.

‘And he is,’ he added with a nod to Timber-Leg, holding the old man in the crook of one arm before letting him slide to the cobbles. Timber-Leg whirled as the dark figure spirited out of the blackness behind them; he had time to see an angel’s face, bloody with firelight, before a great scythe of light stole his sight forever.

The boy whimpered and backed away, the horror robbing his throat of sound. Od came out of the darkness towards him, his head cocked to one side like a bird studying a beetle. He waved the sword to make the boy twitch and dance.

‘Do not play with him,’ Erling ordered sharply and Od gave a little shrug and struck like an adder.

Erling whistled and now the dark spilled out men, Gudrod striding at their head over the unguarded raising-bridge, through the broken yett and over the three bodies and blood, into the borg of Holmtun.

In the deep of the place, Ogmund stood slick with sweat before the hanging figure of Hoskuld, the trader’s naked body dark with streaks of blood and shit. Ogmund was thinking he should have called Murchadh down to do the heavy work with the whip and hot iron. He did not like the burning feeling he had down one arm, nor the rasp when he tried to breathe — but the lure of winning for himself the information everyone sought was too strong. It was an advantage to have this place empty of fighting men save for his own ship’s crew.

Old, am I, he thought savagely and hefted the whip. He wondered if this trader had, as he claimed, told all he knew. A limping priest and a written message held by the monks — he glanced sideways at the document he’d had fetched from the monastery. The monks had squealed a bit at that, he had heard. The original had been sealed and marked for a Jarl Orm, as the trader had said — so that was real enough but might be anything, since Ogmund could not read it. He did not know of any jarl called Orm.

‘You have more to say,’ he crooned to the bloody dangle that was Hoskuld and took a deep breath as he raised the whip, wincing at the stitch in his side. ‘I will have it.’

There was a clattering on the stairs and he turned with annoyance; he wanted no-one around when the trader vomited up all he knew.

‘Murchadh, I told you …’

It was not Murchadh. It was the Witch-Queen’s son, with the terrible, beautiful youth behind him.

He had time only to discover how old and slow he truly was before the angelic youth blurred the life from him with a handful of bright steel, cold and silvered as a winter dawn.

North and west of Mann, not long afterwards …

Crowbone’s Crew

The sea Mann sits in is a black-souled, scawmy water that can turn vicious out of a clear blue sky. Like a woman with a smile, Stick-Starer said, who has one hand behind her back with an iron skillet in it and a deal of stored-up argument.

The two ships had tacked and twisted a painful way south from Hvitrann — Crowbone did not want to row the Shadow off and leave the knarr behind again — a long muscle-ache of hauling the sail up and down until the palm-welts burst. Men did not complain, all the same, for they were aware that they had burned out a borg and slain a Galgeddil lord; putting distance between them and the bodies on the shingle was well worth some blisters and ache.

‘I wish we had Finn’s weather hat,’ Kaetilmund roared out when the first wind squalled out on them, hard on the berthing side, swirling like the tongue of a lip-licking cat, so that the Shadow heeled and staggered with it.

Those who knew about Finn’s reputedly magical headgear laughed, but Crowbone stayed grim; he did not like the white-faced, fork-tailed Ran-sparrows he had seen earlier, whipping through the wave spume, low and fast as arrows.

‘St Peter’s birds,’ Gorm declared, seeing Crowbone watch them.

‘Because they seem to walk on water, like Christ as witnessed by that holy man once,’ he explained. Crowbone did not care what the Christ-followers called them; he only knew the Ran birds spoke of storm. Besides, he did not want to speak to Gorm, or the others now — he had what he wanted from Halk, the Orkney steersman, who made it clear he was too new to Hoskuld’s crew to care about them much.

‘Hoskuld had three gold coins from this priest he met in Holmtun,’ Halk told Crowbone, the wind that took them from under the smoke of Hvitrann whipping the hair away from his round, thick face. ‘One took the priest and ship to Olaf in Dyfflin, as you know. A second took him to Sand Vik, where they found me to steer for them.’

He broke off and grinned ruefully.

‘If I had known …’ he began and Crowbone’s stare silenced him as surely as if he had clapped a hand across his mouth. It was clear the prince did not care much what Halk thought, clearer still that he cared less for the regret Halk felt. The steersman wondered if he had made a mistake in allying himself to this prince, for he felt the eyes of Gorm and the others on him from the far end of the boat and the blue-brown gimlets of Crowbone from this end; now he knew how the iron felt between hammer and anvil.

‘The third,’ he went on, feeling the spit dry in his mouth under the odd-eyed stare, ‘took the priest across to Torridun, where he was left. We then went back to Mann where Hoskuld took the writing for Orm. Then on to the Baltic, charged with finding Orm Bear-Slayer and telling him of matters.’

‘Torridun?’ demanded Crowbone and had the answer — the last old fortress-town of the Painted Folk who had once been strong in the north, before the vik-raiders from Norway ended them and let the kings of Alba reduce them further. Torfness, some knew it as, because the folk there found grass sods that burned like wood. Why would a monk be plootering in the ruins of that place?

He asked Halk, who shrugged.

‘Not ruined entirely — traders from Norway still go there. Besides, he is a priest,’ he corrected. ‘Not a monk.’

‘They are all the same,’ Crowbone declared, waving a dismissive hand and Halk, politely enough, Crowbone noted, put the matter to rights. A priest was more of a Christ-follower than a monk. Anyone could become a monk, but a priest was trained by others of his kind to talk to their god personally.

‘He was a hard man, this Drostan,’ Halk ended. ‘A skelf has more meat, yet he was wiry for all that — and the foot must have pained him a great deal, judging by the limp he had, but he never made a sound on matters. Not that you could have understood it much, between his lack of teeth and his way of speaking. Saxlander, Gorm said. From Hammaburg.’

The hackles rose on Crowbone’s neck.

‘We have to run with the wind,’ Stick-Starer yelled, whirling Crowbone to the sound of his voice. The wind keened and he saw the rain sheet between him and the knarr; he fretted like the spume-ragged tops of the waves, wanting to keep the knarr in sight.

He was vaguely aware of it, as if, like the alfar, it was truly visible only out of the corner of the eye. His mind was back on the winter steppe, the Great White, where he huddled in the lee of Orm’s armpit under an upturned cart as the howling wind scoured snow over the enemies who had kidnapped them. They had been led by a priest from Hammaburg called Martin, a man with a mouthful of ruined teeth, who had lost his shoe trying to kick out at Orm before vanishing into the shrieking whiteness, staggering towards Kiev, four days away.

Much later, Crowbone had heard how this Martin had been picked up and carted to Kiev. In return for them saving his life, he had told the ruler there, Yaropolk, all he knew of Orm and the men out on the steppe hunting all the silver of the world. He had lived, too, Crowbone had heard — though it had cost him a foot and he limped badly.

Martin. Orm’s bane. The one who had set the Oathsworn on the path of silver riches, in the days when Einar was jarl.

The dark grew; things sparked in it and Thor rumbled out a laugh.

‘Third reef,’ bellowed Stick-Starer and men sprang to the walrus-hide ropes. Mar blinked rain from his lashes and saw the grim jut of Crowbone’s jaw; the knarr could no longer be seen, yet the boy, shaven face pebbled with water, stared stubbornly at where it had been, as if he could reel it in with the force of his odd eyes.

Nothing, Mar thought, would surprise me about this prince — yet the world was reduced to grey and black, as if it sat on them like a gull on eggs. Then the searing light split it with a flash that left the jagged print of it on the back of his eyeballs and the stone in Mar’s belly sank, cold and deep.

‘Not even Finn’s Weatherhat will find a safe harbour now,’ Onund roared and even through the tearing wind the bitterness in his voice was gall to Crowbone. The waves had no rhyme to them, torn and ragged by the wind before they could take shape or order. They hurtled at the Shadow and a sheet of water creamed down the length of her, the spray horizontal as braced spears.

Yet they all saw Crowbone, still as the prow beast, standing with one hand on a line and the wind whipping his braids on either side of his face, staring straight ahead as the Shadow plunged into the long dark, the scowl on him darker yet.

They thought he was raging at being separated from the knarr, or furious at the storm itself. They were wrong. Crowbone’s head was full of a name which told him almost everything he needed to know.

Martin.

Run with the wind, Thorgeir had said, for that is what the Shadow will do. Bergfinn had no better option, so that is what they did. It was a good knarr, even laden as it was, coursing up the great glassy swells, cutting through the white spume-mane, planing down the far side. It was built for this, after all, more so than a drakkar.

After a while, with the sail reefed to the last knot, enough only to keep them steering, men curled their bodies a little less; they would ride the storm out and, with the luck of whatever gods they followed, perhaps meet the Shadow when the last clouds blew themselves to rags.

Thorgeir began to ease the thought that had padded blackly after him since he and Bergfinn had been sent back to this knarr — that the boat was their doom, a wyrd woven in wood by the Norns. He looked to where the wrapped body of Fastarr Skumr rolled in the wet, waiting a decent burning; next to it, Kari Ragnvaldrsson hugged his shattered hand and his misery, facing nothing better than a purse of hacksilver and an uncertain future no matter where they reached.

Cripples and the dead, Thorgeir brooded. Not the best crew, but fitting for such a ship as this.

The wyrd of it cracked open not long after when the steering oar collar snapped for the second time.

Torvold, a fair smith in his day, could do nothing with his forge-built muscle. He should have let the steerboard go, but without it they were all doomed, so he dared not and the weight of it dragged him over the side even as men, their screams torn away by the howl of wind, sprang too late to help him.

The Swift-Gliding balked, whirled like a stung stallion, no more use than a wood chip in a flood. Bergfinn had time to look at Thorgeir, to see his answering, flat-eyed gaze, all hope sucked from it as he watched the Norn curse come at them, woven now in water.

Then the great black-glass curl of sea fell on them like a cliff.

Later …

Vigfuss Drosbo looked, but could not see Crowbone in the deck huddle; he wondered if the prince was looking for birds to guide them, then realised that, sensibly, they were all on shore with a head under one wing. He saw Kaup, clinging to the mast with one hand, his mask of a face twisted with terror; he did not like a sea storm, it seemed. No sane man did, though the way of it, as Vigfuss said to the Burned Man, was to keep bailing and not think hard on anything.

It was day, Stick-Starer said, though you would be hard put to know it, but Mar and Kaetilmund staggered down the length of the deck, handing out a rising-meal of wet bread with most of the mould removed. There were some of the old crab claws too, so that Rovald, grinning and dripping, declared that he would at least get to eat them before their kin ate him.

Crowbone blinked out of his head, where a storm raged almost as bad as the one sweeping the Shadow.

Martin was the Drostan Orm had told him of, that was clear. If there had been a real Drostan to begin with, that one was dead and gone. Martin was a venom-spider and Crowbone remembered him, remembered the way the Saxlander priest had slit the throat of Bleikr, the beautiful dog Vladimir had given him. It would not, Crowbone thought, be much of a step to slitting the throat of an innocent monk called Drostan.

That whirling wind of possibilities, lashed with the confused sleet of what Martin was plotting, was bad enough. What was worse, what was the shrieking tempest of it all, was the matter of Orm in it. What had he been told? Had he told Crowbone all he knew?

And the great crushing wave of it — could Orm be trusted? It had come to him that he had, perhaps, misjudged Orm, dismissed him as a little jarl. It had come to him that this might not be the truth of matters, that Orm had ambitions and silver enough to raise men and ships — and use the Bloodaxe for his own ends. His hackles rose as his stomach fell away at the thought of Orm standing against him.

Yet all that had happened pointed to it like a good hound scaring up game; Orm had sent him with Oathsworn, supposedly to guard and help him, but probably to spy as he tripped all the traps set by Martin for those chasing the secret of this Bloodaxe. Then Orm would snatch it at the last, was perhaps close by even now. The thought turned him left and right to search, burned him with the treachery in it.

The worst of the real storm was gone, Crowbone realised when he surfaced from all this, and he said as much as he eased the stiff wet of himself. Nearby, Berto sat and stared at the deck with unseeing eyes, while the yellow bitch lay, head on paws and eyes pools of wet misery as deep as the ones that sluiced the length of her and down the rest of the boat. Stick-Starer glanced at the sky while the wind tried to tear his beard out by the roots, then shook his head.

‘We are in the mouth of it,’ he said. ‘We are running hard with the wind and it will get much worse than this before we see the last of this weather.’

‘There is cheer for you,’ grunted Murrough and Onund, coming from checking the mast and steerboard and how much water was shipped, looked at Gjallandi and said: ‘A tale would be good while we throw water out of the ship.’

‘Not one about the sea, all the same,’ added Murrough, scooping water over the side with his eating bowl. He nudged Berto, who seemed to wake from a dream and took another bowl up listlessly.

‘Or dogs,’ added Vandrad Sygni, as the yellow bitch, staggering in the swells, shook water out of itself all over him.

‘You can stop a dog from barking and howling by turning one of your shoes upside down,’ declared Murrough and then stared, a crab claw almost at his mouth, when he felt eyes on him.

‘What?’ he said.

‘When did you know so much about dogs?’ demanded Kaetilmund, shaking a cask to see how much drinking water was left in it.

‘We of the Ui Neill know everything about good hounds,’ the big Irishman boasted. ‘The health of childer will always be better if you allow them to play with dogs. If you see a dog rolling in the grass, you should expect good luck or news.’

‘Or expect it to be covered in its own shit,’ Kaetilmund countered.

‘Good news?’ demanded Vigfuss Drosbo, looking at the yellow bitch. ‘Does it work if the beast rolls on ship planking?’

‘No,’ answered Murrough with a grin, ‘but it is good luck to allow strange dogs to follow you home. And wherever else we are going, we are going to my home.’

‘Never give a pig away,’ Gorm offered, huddled with the others of Hoskuld’s men, who were doing nothing much at all. ‘I had that from my old da, before I took to the sea. He said it was a curse from the old time, but most who heard it thought it only sensible trading.’

‘No help, even if we had a pig,’ Gjallandi noted pompously. ‘Maybe, though, it would take your place at the bailing. Time you sleekit seals did something for your bread and water.’

Since he was wrapped imperiously in his wet cloak and doing nothing much himself at the time, this brought laughter — but the idea was sound and Hoskuld’s crew were handed buckets and bowls. Crowbone saw that Halk had moved to help Rovald at the steering oar.

‘Since you do not bail,’ Crowbone declared bitterly to Gjallandi, ‘it would be good to have those tales now.’ And he threw more water over the side, with a flourish to show that he was also working, prince or no.

‘As you command, my prince,’ Gjallandi answered wryly, though it was clear he had no stomach for the thought. Crowbone narrowed his eyes a little and stopped throwing water.

‘I am bound by the Odin oath, same as you,’ he said pointedly, ‘but do not press too hard on me keeping to it and not harming you at all.’

Gjallandi felt his mouth dry up, which made it the only dry place on that ship. He began to gather his thoughts, but Crowbone’s odd eyes had turned to soapstone.

‘A great bear, who was the king of a great forest, once announced to his subjects that he wanted someone to tell stories one after another without ceasing,’ he said and Gjallandi closed his mouth on his own tale.

‘If they failed to find somebody who could so amuse him, he promised, he would put them all to death.’

The men had all stopped and Onund kicked first one, then another, into starting bailing again.

‘Well,’ Crowbone said, settling back on his haunches, ‘everyone knew the old saying “The king kills when he wills”, so the animals were in great alarm.

‘The Fox said, “Fear not; I shall save you all. Tell the king the storyteller is ready to come to court when ordered.” So the animals did so and the Fox bowed respectfully, and stood before the Bear King, who ordered him to begin. “Before I do so,” said the Fox, “I would like to know what your majesty means by a story.”’

‘Something Gjallandi does not tell,’ bawled a man from down the deck; Bodvar, Crowbone remembered, by-named Svarti — Black — because of his nature rather than his looks. Gjallandi’s scowl was soot after that.

‘The Bear King was puzzled by this,’ Crowbone went on, ignoring the pair of them. ‘“Why,” he said, “a narrative containing some interesting event or fact.” The Fox grinned. “Just so,” he said and began: “There was a fisherman who went to sea with a huge net, and spread it far and wide. A great many fish got into it. Just as the fisherman was about to draw the net the coils snapped. A great opening was made. First one fish escaped.” Here the Fox stopped.’

‘Just as well,’ muttered Onund, ‘since a tale about the sea is not so welcome.’

Crowbone ignored him, too. ‘“What then?” demanded the Bear King. “Then two escaped,” answered the Fox.

‘“What then?” demanded the impatient Bear. “Then three escaped,” said the Fox. Thus, as often as the Bear asked, the Fox increased the number by one, and said as many escaped. The Bear grew annoyed and growled loudly. “Why, you are telling me nothing new!” he bellowed.

‘“I wish your majesty will not forget your royal word,” said the Fox. “Each event occurred by itself, and each lot that escaped was different from the rest.”

‘The Bear King showed his fangs. “Where is the wonder in all this?” he demanded.

‘“Why, your majesty, what can be more wonderful than for fish to escape in lots, each exceeding the other by one?” said the Fox. “I am bound by my word,” said the Bear King, gnashing his fangs and flexing his great claws, “or else I would see your carcass stretched on the ground.”

‘The Fox, in a whisper to the rest of the animals, said: “If rulers are not bound by their own word, few or no matters can bind them. Even oaths to Odin.”’

The wind was loudest on the ship for a long moment, then Gjallandi cleared his throat.

‘The Lay of Baldur,’ he began and Onund whacked him on the shoulder.

‘Shut up and bail,’ he growled. ‘There are too many fish in the boat and not all of them are escaped from that story.’

South of Hy (Iona), some days later …

The Witch-Queen’s Crew

The sea creamed and smoked where it was not black as a slice of night and the spray smoked in Erling’s face, so that he turned away and let the raggles of his hair flail one cheek for a moment.

Od, unmoved by anything other than keeping his blade dry, grinned back at him from a pearled face; he sat alone, for Gudrod’s crew would not go near him if he could be avoided. They did not do this with any sneering, for the last thing they wanted was to annoy the beautiful boy, so they busied themselves with little tasks that kept them from sitting near him.

There were enough tasks to go round, Erling decided moodily, since the wind was thrawn in the rigging lines, singing like a harp while the waves hit the unmoved dragon-beast with a shuddering power that broke them into shards and smoke.

Standing up in this, watching the horizon, was Gudrod, one hand on a rigging line, one just touching the sealskin pouch where the letter they had taken from Holmtun was snugged up, warm and dry with his other precious treasure, the cloth nine-squares and bone counters of ’tafl.

One is as unreadable to me as the other, Erling thought bitterly, remembering the sighs and sneers of Gudrod over his playing. That left his mood as black as the sky behind them, where clouds, massive as bulls, were silvered by flickers of light.

‘We have to make for land,’ Hadd screamed out. Gudrod did not need his shipmaster to tell him, though he suspected they had skipped under the worst of the storm, which was roaring and stamping closer to Mann. Still, they had a wind coming out of the east which wanted to push them west and contrary currents slamming waves into them from the north. The thought of running with the wind turned his bowels to water, for he had heard of others who had done this and missed Ireland entirely, never to be heard from again.

‘Hy,’ he roared back and Hadd left the mastfish and stumbled to his side, where he did not have to bellow his fears for the others to hear. Hy was not far off but a small island, hard to approach at the best of times, never mind at night in a storm. Difficult landing on an open beach where a mistake would rip the bottom off.

‘The wind is wrong and the wave with it,’ he said, his mouth fish-breath close to Gudrod’s ear. ‘It will be a hard row.’

Gudrod looked at his men and knew they needed something to shove fire into them, something more than muscle. He was the Witch-Queen’s son and he had been around his ma long enough to have learned a few things. He nodded to Erling, then to the miserable, bound figure of Hoskuld.

It was a right shame, he thought to himself, stepping up to the prow, an iron-headed axe in each out-thrust hand, bellowing out old chants to Aegir and Ran and Thor, for he had hoped to bring Hoskuld all the way back to his mother, who would know if the old trader had anything left worth telling.

Still, there was the writing in Latin-runes, which probably told all there was to know and he planned to sail into Hy and get the monks there to read it. He threw the axes over the side for Thor’s consideration, then drew his seax and turned to Hoskuld, whose face was stiff with fear, for there was too much sailing-salt in his blood for him not to know what would happen.

He wanted to tell Gudrod of the three gold coins sewn in the hem of his tunic but stitched his lips thin on that, for he knew Gudrod would then get the coins and would still use the knife.

The spray pearled on the silver of the blade and Hoskuld looked at it, then at Gudrod’s set face. Then he spat, though the gesture was lost a little when the wind sprayed it back in his own beard. Gudrod laid one hand gently on the old man’s wind-whipped hair, feeling the flinch in the man then.

Hoskuld’s eyes grew wide and panicked as a hare; Gudrod felt him shake then, heard him squeal, but the words were whipped away by the wind — something about his tunic. He gripped, pulled the throat up and sliced. The men howled as the blood flashed, whipping away in red ropes by the wind. Hoskuld, like an old anchor stone, toppled over the side and was gone; the crew scrambled to their rowing places.

An hour later, the wind died and the sea settled to a long, slow, black heave, like a sated wolf breathing in its sleep.

The Manx Sea, at the same moment …

Crowbone’s Crew

‘We are turning,’ Stick-Starer screamed and it was not a request. Onund, his hair and beard all to one side and stiff as a hackle, bellowed something back at him, but the wind ripped it away. They traded mouthings while the rain and wind tore and spat; Crowbone saw, in the blue-sparked dark, the tight, grim faces of men, wet with the sweat of fear as much as spray and rain.

‘We have lost the shore,’ Onund bellowed, forcing himself close to Crowbone’s ear. ‘He is guessing where it is.’

Now Crowbone was afraid. They had seen the land in the last of what passed for day, a silver sliver of light below a great black glower of thunderclouds, and started to row for it. Then the grey mirk had sheeted down on them, the wind drove it sideways like a sleeting of arrows and they had lost sight of that thin, dark lifeline. Stick-Starer had raised the sail a notch and they ran on with the wind, hoping it did not plough them into unseen rocks as they slanted towards where the land had been.

They needed ship-luck and wave-luck. The deck felt pulpy to Crowbone and he fancied he could feel the Shadow wallow, fat with shipped water; he felt sick at the thought of being plunged into that madly shifting black maw and, at the same time, almost welcomed it, for he had dived in it daily in his ringmail, threshing and choking, training himself to slither out of the stuff underwater. That had been in quiet shallows, all the same, where he could recover the byrnie.

Then the yellow bitch barked. The roar and hiss of the wind chopped the sound off with a vicious abruptness, but the dog stood on splayed, staggering legs, stiff-ruffed and shaking with every bark, as if its whole body was forcing them out.

Berto went to it, turned and pointed out into the dark. In the next flare of blue-white, the curve of shingle between thick forests etched itself on the back of all eyes and a delighted Onund thumped Stick-Starer on the shoulder, hard enough to spurt water.

He sprang to the steersman, already helped by Halk and two others, while men fought the sail back on to the spar, gripped the oars and started to pull; laboriously, the Shadow turned, wallowingly and rocking like a sick cow, the rowers hauling and grunting. One fell sideways and men hauled him away; Rovald slid to the bench and began to pull, while others hunkered, waiting to relieve those who collapsed.

There was a long time of wind and rain and cursing. The Shadow plunged and bucked, tried to spin, was flung forward, then sucked back.

Finally it staggered to a sudden stop, throwing everyone flat. The sea grabbed it and sucked it out again, then flung it back to the shore, this time hard enough that everyone heard the harsh grating and the sudden crack. Onund howled into the wind and rain, wolfing out his pain and outrage at what was happening to the ship, as if it was his own bones breaking and not planks, but the sudden tilt of the deck flung everyone sideways, some of them completely out of the ship.

Then there was a longer time of struggling in knee-deep water that slapped and sucked folk off their feet as they staggered to the shingle, hefting precious sea-chests. Kaetilmund and Stick-Starer fought through the surf and heaved lines ashore, looking for good fastenings.

Finally, safe ashore and looking back, Crowbone saw that the storm was growing and spat salt water as the crew gathered slowly beside him, slipping their sea-chests down and rubbing the rain and spray off their faces.

‘Cracked like an egg,’ roared Onund against the whine and howl of the wind and did not need to say more; the Shadow lay canted on the shingle and sand, the white of splintered wood bright on her.

‘As well we made it to the shore,’ Stick-Starer yelled back. ‘Now we need shelter.’

‘At least someone has found a mate,’ Murrough bawled and stabbed his axe towards the yellow bitch, then stumped off up the rain-hissed beach, laughing.

Everyone turned; a brindle hound circled the yellow bitch, the pair of them sniffing each other’s arse while men chuckled.

‘Well,’ said Kaetilmund to Berto, ‘there was me thinking your yellow bitch was as magic as Finn’s Weatherhat, or Crowbone himself — yet it was all because she is as prick-struck as a weasel in heat.’

‘Different magic, same effect,’ muttered Rovald. ‘What I want to know is — who owns the other dog?’

‘I fancy the light will tell us,’ Gorm growled and pointed to where the faint yellow glow of the lantern bobbed and swayed.

The owner was a cloak-wrapped figure looking for his dog and cursing it for having run off on such a foul night. Instead of his dog he came on a pack of wolves and, screaming, dropped the lantern and fled into the dark.

‘Fuck,’ said Vigfuss Drosbo with some disgust. ‘All we want is a bit of shelter.’

‘And some food,’ added a voice.

‘Ale would be good,’ said Vandrad Sygni. ‘And a woman or two.’

‘And all the gold and silver they have,’ Murrough finished, making everyone laugh as the rain dripped down their necks.

It was not hard to find where the man had come from — a huddle of buildings shut tight save for one back door of the main steading, left banging in the wind; the owners had fled into the storm night. Murrough stepped inside and found the fire in the hearth and a cauldron bubbling; a little salty, but that could as well be kale as the owners having gobbed in it before they left. As good a stew as you could hope to find in Ireland, he announced after tasting it.

‘If we are in Ireland,’ Crowbone growled back, with a pointed look at Stick-Starer, who shrugged.

‘Storms run us where the gods wish,’ he answered, ducking under Crowbone’s black look and into the warmth and shelter. One by one, men crowded in, grateful to be out of the wind and rain, dumping sea-chests and shaking themselves like dogs.

Crowbone sent Kaetilmund off to explore the other outbuildings; when he came back, he announced that the place had storerooms, a brewhouse, a decent cookhouse with a bread oven, a byre with plough oxen contentedly chewing — and the building Crowbone had been most concerned about, a stable.

‘Four wee ponies, five stalls,’ Kaetilmund said and Murrough spat into the hearthfire.

‘So they have sent word somewhere,’ he growled, then helped himself to the stew.

Crowbone went to the door and looked out; the wind was rising and the rain pelting. Blue-white light rippled, the sky cracked and he could not see the sea from here, though he knew it would be lashing itself. He did not think a messenger would make good time to any warriors, nor they back to this place — and no man would want to drape himself with metal when Thor hurled his Hammer. He turned back to the fire and said so and Gjallandi shrugged.

‘Unless there is a borg close by,’ he pointed out. ‘Where would the folk from this place be running to, after all?’

Murrough snorted.

‘Anywhere. Too many women and weans to risk putting up a fight. They will find what shelter they can and spread the word of us for miles … gods curse it, boy, get your wet serk and breeks off or you will die.’

This last was directed at Berto, who was shivering near the fire in his wet clothes while men stripped and tried to find space to dry their clothes. The Wend eyed the big Irishman with a jaundiced look.

‘When the same sort of men as we found in Galgeddil arrive here,’ he piped back, ‘I would rather be dressed and wet than have to face them bare-arsed.’

Which made a few laugh — and even more decide to get dressed again.

Crowbone looked to where Hoskuld’s crew hugged themselves in wet misery — Halk was apart from them now — and looked pointedly at Gorm.

‘How good are your trading skills?’ he asked and had back a wary stare. ‘Let us suppose they are great and we manage to persuade the people of this place that we mean no harm. Let us suppose that, if they had not run off, you might have helped in this and that, as a result, they generously agree to providing a good eating horse in exchange for, say, four new slaves. Seems a shame to wait for all this to work itself out, so we shall take the horse now.’

‘I am no thrall, to be bought and sold,’ Gorm exclaimed. ‘It is against the law to sell a decent freeman as a thrall, never mind a Christian.’

Crowbone cocked his head to one side and curled his lip, having waited for this moment to let Gorm and the others of Hoskuld’s crew know where they stood.

‘I am the law,’ he answered. ‘And no decent Christian, as you pointed out before. You are thralls now, whatever you were before.’

Kaetilmund, on his way back to the stables with two others and a throat-slitting knife, laughed at the look on Gorm’s face — but the Christians, Mar noted, kept their eyes on the floor.

They spit-roasted the best of the pony and had shelter, food and warmth in a storm, which was enough for everyone to feel content. Lolling in the steading, with a good hearthfire and watchers posted in case folk crept up, they listened to the storm whine and shriek, so that it was generally agreed only madmen would come to a war in this. The only fighting was between those jostling for drying space or the last of the horse and, apart from growls and scowls, nothing much came of it.

The wind heightened during the night and only the yellow dog slept soundly, for strong winds made men restless, as did the lurking possibility of armed men arriving. So men checked edges and helmet thonging in preference to sleep.

Gjallandi came to Crowbone after a little while, squatting beside him and nodding to where Berto sat, shivering a little and staring into the flames.

‘I am thinking death sits hard on that boy,’ he said softly. ‘It occurs to me that the man he killed in Hvitrann was his first.’

Crowbone looked, then nodded and Gjallandi moved away. After a moment, Crowbone moved quietly to the side of the little Wend, who jerked from the flames as if stung.

‘It is a hard matter to kill a man,’ Crowbone said and Berto’s deep brown eyes seemed luminous as moonlit pools when he looked in them. He remembered his first killing; Klerkon, the raider who had taken him and his mother and his foster-father. His mother and foster-father dead, Crowbone had been freed from his privy-shackling by Orm who, though he did not know who Crowbone was, had treated him kindly. More than kindly — in Novgorod, he had sent him off with Thorgunna to buy clothes and other necessities, part of which had been a little axe, for the nine-year-old Crowbone had argued that he was a warrior and so needed a weapon.

In the main square of Novgorod, he had seen Klerkon with Orm and Finn and the others — Martin had been there, too. Crowbone did not even see them clearly, did not know then that they had been arguing about momentous events. He simply saw Klerkon.

He remembered the feelings then — a sudden, savage exultation that had taken him across the square with a hop and a skip, for he was too small to reach high, that took him up into the face of Klerkon, burying the axe in the man’s forehead.

It had gone in like a knife on an egg, he remembered as he told this to Berto. He did not tell how that feeling had come back to him night after night for a long time, bringing a strange sick itch to the palm of the hand that had held the axe. He did not need to, for Berto saw it all in the clouded eyes and, suddenly, laid a hand along Crowbone’s wrist.

That stirred the prince from his darkness and he shivered a little, then rheumed some gruff into his voice, for he was supposed to be consoling Berto, not the other way round.

‘Later,’ he added, ‘I killed Kveldulf, the man who killed my mother, in much the same way, but I did not have dreams about him.’

Berto had eyes like the yellow dog when Crowbone glanced at him and it made him uncomfortable — reminded him, in fact, of the Khazar girl he had first lain with and he said so, trying to change the subject. Berto’s cheeks flamed and his eyes grew round.

‘You have had many women?’ he asked and Crowbone considered the matter.

‘The first was the Khazar girl. Vladimir and I called her Bench because she always did it on her hands and knees.’

Those nearest laughed and Berto’s eyes grew even larger and rounder, so it was clear to all of them there that the Wend youth had never humped in his life.

‘I was eleven,’ Crowbone went on, ‘which folk tell me was late in starting.’

‘You made up for it,’ Kaetilmund growled morosely. ‘There was the Dane girl we took in a raid and you would not share.’

‘Sigrid,’ Crowbone said slowly, remembering. ‘She died of the flux not long after, so no-one had much joy of her.’

‘Then there was the famous twenty,’ Kaetilmund declared. ‘Last year, when we went to Polotsk to get Vladimir the bride who spurned him.’

Crowbone stayed silent, for the memories of that brief and bloody little campaign were locked in the black sea-chest inside his head and he did not want to drag them out.

‘The Prince of Polotsk,’ Kaetilmund explained to a droop-mouthed Berto, ‘objected to his daughter marrying Prince Vladimir — so we all went to his fortress, killed him and took her. We took twenty Polotsk girls, too and little Olaf here had them all before we sold them. It is a wonder he could stand up, never mind find the strength to whack Vladimir’s brother between the eyes with an axe.’

Men roared with laughter and Crowbone shifted, feeling Berto’s eyes on him and not liking to look, for he felt hot and uncomfortable under the gaze and did not know why. So he grew serious as a reef, talked about shieldwalls and large battles.

‘You have never been in any battles,’ he said to Berto, ‘nor have we had much chance to show how we form Burh and shieldwalls for practice, then we fend off Murrough’s pretend berserk lunges and Kaetilmund’s shield kicks.’

‘Have you been in battles, then?’ asked Berto and Crowbone wondered if the boy was as innocent as his eyes said he was, for the question had only made Crowbone aware of what he did not know.

‘One or two,’ he said, then rubbed his beard ruefully. ‘Not big ones,’ he admitted.

‘I have,’ growled Murrough, passing by and hearing this. He squatted without asking, which made Crowbone scowl, but Murrough only grinned at him, then turned to Berto.

‘You have a bow, I see. Learn to use it, for it is easier to kill a man at distance than when you are looking into his eyes,’ he said. ‘If you have ringmail you will stand in the front line — The Lost. That’s the place of honour, where the best warriors belong. Others, usually the called-out men, the fyrd, fall in behind them with their spears and leather jerkins and old war hats.’

Lifting a piece of horse on a stick and blowing on it he went on, ‘You saw us do that against that Galgeddil horse lord.’ He tested the horse for heat, then tasted it, smacking his lips. ‘Oh, for some of that limon Finn got out of Serkland,’ he said, dreamy with remembering. Then he became aware of Berto, patiently waiting. He sighed.

‘Well, here there is no fyrd, for we are all Chosen Men — the Oathsworn,’ he went on, beaming. ‘Our fame is great and jarls want us on their side when they fear even their own house warriors will flee. The fyrd, of course, are men who take up arms when their families or land is threatened. They are farmers first and fighting men second, unlike us.’

He sucked the meat while the fire swirled a little in a draught, the reek catching his eyes and making him curse. Crowbone still scowling at this intrusion said nothing, was acutely conscious of Berto’s hand still on his wrist. Berto was patient and still as old stone, though there was a tremble in the underneath of him that Crowbone could feel, like a fly-twitched horse.

‘For all that, it is necessary to have second and even third ranks, spear-armed,’ Murrough went on. ‘In the front rank all you have to do is stand and not get killed — harder than it sounds. You cannot do much fighting, for there is hardly room to lift an elbow and all you are there to do is protect the men behind you, whose spears will be stabbing past your ears and doing the real work.’

‘No fighting?’ Rovald said, leaning forward to get meat and then having to slap the ends of his burning hair. ‘It is The Lost who win such battles.’

‘In the end, of course,’ admitted Murrough and took up his axe, which was rarely far from a hand, ‘for there is only one way to find room to fight — you push into them, step by step until they break apart. Then you fight them to ruin. In pairs, which is why we practise that, too.’

Mar, who had been paired with Murrough, nodded and grinned across at his partner, who raised his beard-bladed axe to him. Berto already knew that Murrough used it to hook shields to one side, while Mar did the killing of the exposed man.

‘This axe trick is used by the Irishers,’ Murrough went, grinning and looking the hook-bitted weapon over like a man does a willing girl. ‘The Dal Cais of this Brian Boru fellow perfected it, and much as it pains me to admit it, folk call these axes after them.’

‘Mark you, that trick is fine when you are moving forward,’ added Halfdan. ‘The hardest matter is to step back a pace or two and still keep the line.’

‘Aye,’ admitted Murrough. ‘It is bad enough being in The Lost with no-one else in front of you and the enemy howling down — the second and third ranks seem pleasant places then. But stepping back is hard.’

‘Why would you?’ Berto demanded and those who knew chuckled. Because war is hard work, he learned from a dozen throats. An hour of struggling and sliding and yelling and stabbing seems like a whole day and actual edge-swinging leaves you on your knees and gasping in half of that.

Murrough’s understanding was that men whose world is war will last the pace — farmers with spears and axes will not, but even fame-laden warriors such as the Oathsworn would need to step back and take a breath or two eventually. It was possible to feed fresh men into the fight, exchanging one rank for another, but few had the Roman skill of this and did not use it much for fear of the chaos it caused.

All this talk did nothing to send men to sleep and Berto eventually got up and went into the dark looking for the yellow bitch, leaving Crowbone feeling the heat of his touch on his wrist and confused by the loss of it. Halfdan joked that the Wend was jealous of the brindle hound, now vanished.

‘I wonder how the knarr is faring,’ Onund muttered and Crowbone saw Gorm’s head come up at that.

‘Sunk entire,’ Stick-Starer declared moodily. ‘We will find them strewn all over the shingle come morning.’

‘You are a hard man, Stick-Starer,’ Kaetilmund answered, shaking his head. ‘That is no wish to put on sailors.’

‘Go down to the shore and hail them if you are so concerned,’ Crowbone told him and Kaetilmund waggled his head from side to side in a non-commital way. Vigfuss Drosbo stuck his bluff, square face into the conversation and announced he would go if Stick-Starer would, since he had left his own porridge pot on board the knarr and was missing it now. They talked round it until they wore the subject to a nub, but did not go all the same.

‘Aye, it is hard life at sea,’ Murrough declared, stretching languidly in the fire heat. He farted and took the rough edge of tongues from those nearest him as his due for it.

‘What would you know of it?’ scoffed Stick-Starer. ‘You Irishers plooter in the shallows in a skin bowl, so you do.’

‘I have sailed,’ Murrough spat back indignantly. ‘I have seen the smoke-spray where the sea pours off the edge of the world.’

‘The world is round, you oaf,’ Onund rumbled. ‘As any sailing man will tell you.’

‘And how do you know this?’ demanded Halfdan — and a few others, Crowbone noted, stirring interestedly from half-sleep. ‘Are there not duergar at the four corners of the world, holding up the sky? Four corners, note. Of a square. Even I know this of our gods and I am not a learned man.’

‘It is a disc,’ said Stick-Starer. ‘Surrounding the World Tree. That ocean you see is the one that separates us from Utgard, the void of all matters.’

‘The world is curved like a round ball — how else do you account for the masts of ships showing over the horizon before the hull?’ answered Onund, sitting like a lopsided hill by the fire.

‘Sailing uphill now are we?’ jeered Halfdan and Onund, who could not quite find an answer to that, hunched and said nothing. Stick-Starer simply spat a hiss into the fire.

‘The world is round,’ Gjallandi told them sonorously, ‘for Odin and the gods of Asgard decreed it so to spoil the desires of High Kings. No matter how far they go in conquering, they will only end up staring at the dungheap in their own back yard.’

There was laughter at that, contented and easy; someone broke up a bench for firewood and the wind shouldered the steading so that the rafter-bones of it groaned; draughts fluttered the flames and, if Crowbone shut his eyes, longing painted the inside of his eyelids with Vladimir’s fortress in Novgorod when he was fourteen years old and clasped with the comfort of being warm and safe while the world raged.

Novgorod, he noted to himself. Not Orm’s hall at Hestreng, where he had also spent storm-lashed nights in warm comfort. He did not like to admit to himself, but was aware of this being because of the revelation that the monk they sought was Martin.

Martin, who had sent word to Orm. Now Crowbone had to consider the possibility that Orm had not told all he knew of the matter for good reasons of gain and felt sick at that thought. The closest Crowbone had come to a father had not been Uncle Sigurd when he had been alive — it had been Orm, with his tales of when he was a boy, with nothing more worrying than having his fringe cut or his ears washed. Crowbone, who had never had any similar experiences, hugged Orm’s childhood to himself, from scaling slick, wet-black cliffs for gull eggs, to perching on the muscled rump of the fierce stud stallion in its stall.

For all that, Crowbone did not want to become Orm. He looked round at the growling, snoring, whispering, farting men, all beards and grim fierceness; he was still in Orm’s hall and here Orm’s family. This is not for me, Crowbone thought. Men are weapons and tools, to be used to make kingdoms. Then that serpent-thought coiled in on him again — perhaps Orm has also worked this out and, like me, realised that fame alone lasts only as long as the last stone with your name carved on it.

He thought of Grima of the Red Brothers, fameless under his lonely pile of stones on a strange shore, and shivered.