Crowbone

EIGHT

Ireland, some time later …

Crowbone’s Crew

There was a little wind that fretted this way and that, a hound fresh released from the lead. It slithered and snaked through trees and grass like the invisible water which found its way between neck and tunic and, if he could have seen any wet at all, Crowbone would have cursed it.

There was no rain, only a white, thick, soaking milk-mirr that even the little wind could not do more than shift a little, like a spurtle in a pot of porridge. It reduced the world to the length of a poor spear-throw and made tracking almost impossible; if it had not been for Kaup and the yellow bitch, Crowbone thought, we would not be on any heading that made sense.

That fuelled the slow-stoked anger in him, flared to life the moment he had been told that Gorm and the three others of Hoskuld’s crew had fled. That Halk was with them did not help, while the news that Fridrek and four others of the Oathsworn crew had also gone with them was a breath of forge bellows to his rage.

‘Well,’ Gilla Mo said when he heard of it, ‘it is bad enough that your thralls are running round loose in my land without half your own warriors gone with them, waving their blades and frightening folk.’

He perched on his High Seat in the brindle morning of his hall, where the smoke swirled greasily grey and people still farted and snored. He drew his cloak more snugly round him against the damp, kicked his own thralls into blowing life into the pitfire embers and so clearly enjoyed seeing Crowbone smoulder in front of him that he prolonged the whole business of giving his permission to pursue them.

‘Take what men you think you need,’ he went on, peering under the bar of his scowl, ‘but make one of them that blue man you have. My folk are no strangers to blue men, since they are common enough on the Dyfflin slave blocks, but the sight of one as dark as he and treated like a true man and a warrior is unnerving to them. I do not want trouble over it.’

He eased his buttocks on the seat and savoured the last few moments of Crowbone squirming.

‘Congalach will go with you,’ he added. ‘There is no need to thank me for the help. You have two days only — have this resolved and be back with the army to march to Tara.’

Crowbone could only offer a curt bow and clack his way over the flagged stones out into the rainwashed day, where the clouds scudded as fast as his beating heart. Old arse, he thought viciously, who only sits in his own High Seat because Mael Sechnaill is sleeping in his bedspace.

Tracking after Fridrek and Gorm had not improved his mood, for it had been a long, slow stumble through the tired yellow light of a dying day, questing here and there after the trail like a bat among moths.

They came on a line of slow cattle, the drovers wisely hiding until they knew who came up on them, stepping out suddenly from behind trees to stand, packbags on their backs, while Congalach shot Irish at them and had it fired back in measure. Eventually, he turned to Crowbone.

‘Two handfuls of men passed them a quarter-day ago,’ he said. ‘They tried driving off a beast or two, but were bad at it and gave up. They have one of their number with a bow and the shafts for it.’

‘That will be Lief Svarti,’ Mar said. ‘He is as good with that weapon as he is with his little-headed axe, so we should be wary.’

Crowbone almost asked why the drovers had not fought back, then thought better of it; they were not fighting men and the cattle were not their own, but belonged to Gilla Mo and were meant for feeding his army.

‘What’s ahead?’ he asked Congalach and had a squint look and a shrug in return; the man was fretting over his son, Maelan, who had wanted to come with them and had been refused. Crowbone knew already that Congalach found it hard to refuse his boy anything. Besides that, Congalach had been sent to shepherd these Norse and did not care for the task.

‘Not much,’ Congalach growled. ‘The Boinne, which we do not wish to cross, for that will take us too close to the Dyfflin Norse. We are out in front of the whole army here.’

Crowbone heard the annoyance in his voice and offered the man his two-coloured stare, seeing the truculent twist to Congalach’s jaw and the rain pearling off his black moustaches.

‘Then that is where they are going,’ he said, seeing it clearly. ‘They are Norse themselves and will arrive with news that will make Olaf Irish-Shoes smile.’

‘What news?’ demanded Congalach, blowing rain off his moustaches.

‘Numbers,’ Crowbone explained patiently. ‘That and how the High King has drovers with cattle, which means he has prepared not only for a fight at Tara but for a siege at Dyfflin.’

Congalach was impressed despite himself, but pretended scepticism; he knew numbers only as others did — a handful, some, many and, finally, enough to run away from.

‘What can folk like those know of numbers?’ he snorted and Crowbone sighed, wiping the drops that ran round the rim of his helmet and down the nasal.

‘Gorm and his men are traders,’ he answered patiently, ‘who can tally in at least three tongues. Unlike your Irishers, they can do it without the need to take their boots off and use their toes. Olaf Irish-Shoes is a king, so he knows the worth of this. I am a prince, so I do also.’

You are nothing much at all, so you do not understand it, was what was not said, though Congalach felt the lash of it and hunched bristling, though he could find nothing to say as they rode. He saw the Burned Man and the yellow dog questing ahead and thought them as ugly a brace of animals as any he had seen. Then the light turned to pewter and, finally, to white.

‘We should seek shelter out of this,’ Congalach declared suddenly, reining sideways into the face of Crowbone’s pony, so that it shied away and tossed its head high and hard enough to almost hit Crowbone in the face.

‘You seek it,’ Crowbone replied sourly and jerked the reins hard, turning the pony off after the faint shape of the yellow bitch, a small sun in the white. He saw a figure ahead and thought it was Berto, since he and the dog were never far from one another; behind, he heard Congalach spit out some Irish and knew it for a curse.

Something snaked through the white, a little blur, fast as a whirring bird. Congalach gave a sharp cry and fell; men yelled and milled uncertainly.

Crowbone was bewildered, heard the yellow bitch baying, saw it contract its whole body as if to squeeze the yelping howls out of it. A second bird whirred, struck his helmet and rang his head like a bell, so that he jerked hard away from it.

The pony reared and almost flung him off. Arrows, he thought. Lief Svarti …

He was a sack on a horse and he knew it. When the pony lost reason and bolted, all he could do was hang on grimly, jouncing on the saddle. He went past two figures, panting and seemingly locked together; one was Berto — then they were gone behind him into the mist and he half-turned to try and see, almost pitched off and clung round the pony’s neck as it sped off.

It seemed a lifetime and a half to Crowbone but the ride ended as he had known it would — the pony came to something it could not go through or over and simply veered sideways, pitching Crowbone off. He crashed into something which splintered under him, hit the ground hard enough to drive the air out, rolled over and over, feeling the sword batter down the length of him, the hilt gouge his ribs.

There was a moment when he knew he had just woken, but had no idea if he had been out of it for a minute, an hour, or longer, for the world was still white and his body ached so much he thought the pony might have galloped back and forth on him for malice.

It was nowhere to be seen, though something loomed out of the pearling mist. He was lying at the foot of it and, as he started to climb to his knees, wincing and checking for bits broken, he saw it was a great stone cross with a ring round the join of it, one of those Christ runestones, worked with panels showing scenes from their sagas. Every inch of it was covered and there was a little steading house carved right on the top, a representation in stone of one of those boxes Christmenn kept their saint bones in.

Under him he saw wood, new-white where it had broken and realised he had crashed through a rough fence and rolled to the foot of the cross; he looked up at it and wondered if this was an omen.

‘I would not move at all were I you,’ hissed a voice and Crowbone jerked, which he realised in the next second had been the wrong thing to do; the steel felt wet and cold against his neck. His helmet, he saw, was some feet away and the ties on it had snapped.

‘I will be after slitting you, so I will,’ the voice said and this time Crowbone got control of himself. It was a slight voice and he squinted sideways to see the hand that held the steel; a small fist, white round the knuckles with gripping.

‘You are holding that too tight,’ Crowbone offered politely. ‘For if someone did this …’

He rolled and whipped one hand up, cupping the little fist in his own and squeezing. There was a sharp cry and then Crowbone had the knife in one hand and the front of a tunic in the other.

It was a boy, with a snub nose, a shock of flame hair and a face as red as the arse of a sunburned pig. He glared back at Crowbone, rubbing his hand, truculent rather than afraid.

‘Who are you, then, who sticks a knife at the throat of a prince of Norway?’ Crowbone demanded and the boy wriggled a little until he saw the grip on his tunic front was not about to slacken.

‘Echthigern mac Oengusso,’ he said, then added defiantly. ‘My da is lector here.’

‘Odin’s arse,’ Crowbone snarled. ‘Do you folk have no easy names to call yourself? And where is here? And what is a lector?’

The boy told him, his voice slightly strained until Crowbone eased the pressure on his throat a little. Mainistir Buite was the place, a monastery where Echthigern’s da read the tracts and lessons — lector, Crowbone was told, was the Latin that meant ‘reader’.

‘Will you kill me?’ demanded the boy at the end of this and Crowbone cocked his head a little at him and grinned.

‘Why for would I?’ he asked and the boy blinked once or twice, suddenly seeing the odd-coloured eyes for the first time and not liking them much.

‘Because the rest of your heathen Dane kin are in the church,’ he answered bleakly, then his lip trembled. ‘My da is there.’

Crowbone let the boy go and he sank, rubbing his throat and looking up into Crowbone’s face.

‘No kin of mine,’ Crowbone said. ‘I am here with King Gilla Mo’s men to hunt them down, so you can show me where they are.’

‘You fight for Brega?’ the boy declared, grinning and hopeful. ‘But you are a Dane.’

‘Not all Norse are Danes, boy,’ Crowbone answered climbing to his feet and fetching his helmet. He winced as he tested various muscles. ‘Not all Norse care for the Dyfflin king, either.’

The running figure took them both by surprise; the boy yelled and Crowbone whirled, cursing and trying to drag out his sword. The figure burst forward, a dark stain out of the mist, stumbled over the ruins of the fence and then skidded to fall at Crowbone’s feet.

Crowbone looked down and saw the white, frightened face of Berto looking up.

‘Bowman …’ Berto panted and, at that moment, a second figure pounded like a shadow from the mist. Lief, Crowbone thought wildly and half-crouched, sword up.

Lief was half-stumbling and screaming, which was a surprise to everyone, for it was clear he had been chasing Berto and now seemed to be running away from something else. Then the yellow bitch hurled itself into the huddle at the foot of the stone cross, a brass dagger of snarls and teeth. Lief went down, the jaws ripping and shaking the forearm he put up to keep them from his neck; he was flung this way and that like a rat.

‘Call him off,’ Crowbone ordered hoarsely and Berto struggled up and started making kissing sounds. The yellow bitch, jaws locked, merely hauled the screaming Lief towards the little Wend.

‘Odin’s hairy arse!’ Crowbone exploded and whacked the snarling curl of yellow with the flat of the sword, hard enough to knock the animal sideways — but it held grimly on. The Irish boy moved swiftly then, past Berto with his pathetically flapping hands and kisses, to the rear of the fight. He paused, grabbed the bitch’s tail and shoved two fingers hard into the softness under it.

The bitch, outraged, opened its jaws and howled, allowing Lief to scrabble away. The boy let go and leaped away as the bitch whirled to snap at him, but Crowbone kicked it hard, so that it tumbled over and over and got up shakily, the fight knocked from it. Berto moved to it while Crowbone grabbed Lief and hauled him up to his knees. Blood sprayed from him.

‘You shot at me, you hole,’ he spat, but Lief’s eyes were rolling and one look at the stripped red-meat remains of his right forearm told Crowbone that Lief would not be shooting any more bows, even if he survived. Crowbone let him flop, an empty sack, back to the ground.

‘Are you hurt?’ he demanded of Berto, who shook his head, eyes wide with shock and his face as white as the mist. The yellow bitch looked back at Crowbone with reproachful eyes.

‘He tried to shoot you and we fought,’ Berto managed to explain. ‘He was stronger and I had to run for it. Then Yellow here chased him as he chased me.’

The Irish boy cleaned his fingers on the wet grass and Crowbone nodded to him.

‘Good trick, that.’

‘Sure, we have hounds ourselves and they are always quarrelling,’ he answered levelly. ‘Can we go and help my da now?’

‘Lead on,’ Crowbone ordered and the boy looked at the moaning Lief pointedly. Crowbone sighed; it made sense not to leave anyone in their rear, even one as hurt as Lief. He crossed to the man, remembering the tall, rangy figure laughing round a fire somewhere, hauling on a line during the storm. He was a handsome man with a neat, grey beard and the giggle of a girl when he was drunk.

Lief had lost his helmet but still wore the padded linen arming cap, as like the headsquare of a woman as to be funny on a bearded man. He was not laughing now, all the same, though he stopped moaning as Crowbone knelt and his black eyes, pools of misery already, grew bright with the fear of what was to come.

‘You are a prince,’ he gasped, the slaver wild on his lips. ‘It is princely to grant mercy.’

‘Once,’ Crowbone said dreamily, ‘in place far from here, do not ask me where, a woodsman entered a wood with his axe on his shoulder. The trees were alarmed, and addressed him thus: “Ah, lord, will you not let us live happily some little time longer?” It was the time in the world when trees had voices, you understand.’

‘The concern of these trees I can understand,’ Lief panted, hoping to prolong the tale. The blood was seeping from the forearm and the pain almost blinding; he could see the white of bone in it and did not want to look more closely. Crowbone ignored him.

‘The woodsman,’ he went on, ‘said he was willing to do so. “However,” he added, “as often as I see this axe, I am tempted to come to the wood, and do my work in it. So I am not so much to blame as this axe blade.” “Don’t blame the axe bit,” answered the trees. “We know that the handle of the axe, which is a piece of the branch of a tree in this very wood, is more to blame than the iron; for it is that which helps you to destroy its kindred.”

‘The woodsman spat on his hands and hefted the trees’ worst fear. “You are quite right,” he said. “There is no foe so bitter as a renegade.” And he set to chopping.’

Lief tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry.

‘Have you another?’ he started to say, but the bright flash of the blade made his eyes squint and the tug at his throat seemed to steal the words from his mouth. He saw Crowbone’s hand come down to cover his eyes and heard his voice.

‘Tell Hel — not yet, but soon.’

Crowbone climbed to his feet and saw the Irish boy looking at him, wary as the yellow bitch. Berto knelt beside Lief and covered his face with the arming cap; he seemed to be praying, Christ-fashion.

‘Do you tell stories to all you kill?’ the Irish boy asked and Crowbone merely smiled and settled his helmet snugly on his head.

‘Remind me never to ask you for one,’ the boy muttered.

‘What is your name again?’ Crowbone demanded and the boy scowled.

‘Echthigern mac Oengusso,’ the boy answered sullenly.

‘Eck,’ Crowbone declared firmly. ‘Lead on.’

A wind got up and shredded the mist to witch hair, so that the body they would have stumbled over was easily seen, right at the door of the dark gable end that was the church. Crowbone was distracted, concentrating so hard on the church, marvelling at the tall building of wood and half-stone and why folk would go to all the trouble of it when they did not live in it most of the time. It was as useless as the tower, a tall, slender stone prick rearing up not far off — the height of a couple of ship masts and all it did was hold a bell.

‘Christ and all his saints preserve us!’ the Irish boy burst out, crossing himself at the sight of the rag-doll shape at the door.

‘For ever and ever,’ Berto repeated without thinking and Crowbone shot him a glance; he had not known the Wend was so hot for the Christ that he knew the responses — but the body shoved that from his mind.

It was Gorm, his head lopsided and smashed in like an egg, the blood spreading in a dark lake underneath him, right down to his knees.

‘One less,’ he grunted and looked at the door, which lay slightly open. A postern, the boy called it, used for daily coming and going while the big main door was used only for letting in folk to glory in their god.

He started forward, but Berto, as if released from a bow, suddenly darted in front of him and in through the door. There was a high-pitched squeal, a scuffling and, with a curse, Crowbone ducked inside, blinking in the dark. He heard a rustle, felt the breath of movement and half-turned, just as someone yelled.

The blow crashed on him, rattling his whole head almost off his neck and the world exploded in bright light and then a great well of darkness, which he fell into.

Tunsberg in Vestfold, Norway, on the first day of little snows …

Martin

He knew they were watching him, so he minded his manners and, when he smiled at the little girl whose doll he was repairing, he did it with his lips stitched so his ruined mouth would not frighten her to screams. It felt strange to his cheeks, all the same and he did not do it again.

The hall of Haakon Jarl, King of Norway, was bright and bustling, though folk avoided where the priest sat, both for the look of him and for what he was. Martin knew that Haakon Jarl had broken with his supposed overlord, Harald Bluetooth of the Danes, and it was said he did it because Bluetooth had forced Christ priests on him while he was visiting Denmark. The tales had it that Haakon had pitched them into the sea and forced them to swim home, so there was danger in coming so openly to his hall wearing a cross.

The truth, of course, was a matter of princes, Martin mused to himself, while he fiddled out the broken straws that fastened the doll’s leg to the body. Haakon now ruled Norway in his own right and dared Bluetooth to do something about it. Bluetooth looked to be daring just that and so there would be red war between them — Eirik’s axe would be a powerful attraction for fighting men and was not a prize Haakon could overlook.

The thought made Martin smile, just as a thrall woman brought meat and bread and ale for him; she shoved it across and left, hurriedly.

He gave the doll to the girl and she looked solemnly at him for a moment or two and clutched it tightly to her.

‘You are very ugly,’ she said and a man laughed close by, making Martin twist to see, a movement that spasmed pain through his foot.

‘Such reward for your labours,’ said the man, shifting into a bench opposite. Martin saw his russet and green tunic, his friendly, open smile and shock of dark hair. He envied the man his neatly trimmed — and curled, he saw — beard and, most of all, his teeth. Almost to spite himself, he took a large portion of meat which he knew he could only suck, a noisy and messy business.

‘I trust kings are kinder,’ he growled. He knew this man and, for all he had his hair and beard still, he was a thrall. He was also Haakon’s friend and what he said might just as well come from the jarl’s mouth, while what he heard went straight in the jarl’s ear.

‘You have news for me, Tormod Kark?’ he asked, mushing his gums round the meat in a deliberately repellent fashion. The thrall did not flinch at all.

‘The king finds it strange that a Christ priest should come all the way from Hammaburg to tell him he knows the way to Eirik’s Bloodaxe, a rich prize for what you folk call heathens.’

That was straight out, a flat blade of a statement banged on a wooden bench. Martin spat out the sucked gobbet and wiped his fingers down his front; his smile was greasy and blackened.

‘I am a long time gone from Hammaburg,’ he said, ‘but Haakon Sigurdsson knows this, for I came in a trading ship from Torridun in the north of Alba and, before that, from Orkney.’

He leaned forward a little and now Tormod Kark did flinch, drawing back a little and touching the silver amulet band round his left wrist as a protection against spells. Martin saw that but kept the sneer to himself. He had stirred up all the hornets who sought the Bloodaxe and now needed the one with the biggest sting, to make sure he and God received the reward for such cunning.

‘The Witch-Queen and her last son,’ he said, ‘plus Olaf, Tryggve’s son, and Orm Bear-Slayer of the Oathsworn. All Haakon’s enemies, lured by me out into the wilds of the Finnmark after this axe, to be slain by him and the prize taken. All you need do is provide the ships and the men to take me there and guard me while the axe is recovered from where I know it lies. Then you kill them all and we come home.’

Tormod Kark blinked a little. This limp-footed little ruin of a man did not look like any of the shaved, tonsured Christ priests the jarl had pitched into the sea, but he claimed the role and wore a battered cross. There was also something about him — Haakon had already agreed to provide ships and men, but he would not speak directly to the little priest because he worried what magic the man had and whether even his breath was a curse. It could be, Tormod thought bitterly, if the smell is anything to go by.

Tormod, of course, had pointed out to Haakon that, if this ragged-arse priest really knew the way to Eirik’s famed axe, he had already promised all the others the same. Haakon merely smiled; this was the game of kings, as well constructed as a spiderweb and with much the same purpose — all you had to do was pick your way safely to the prize at the centre of it.

He said as much and Tormod bowed, thinking to himself that the real trick was to pick your way out again with the riches. He said nothing all the same, just smiled, the same way he now smiled at the priest.

‘Your reward for this gift?’ Tormod asked, with the air of one who has already sold himself and thinks all the world is the same. Martin looked sourly at him.

‘A stick,’ he answered, which made Tormod blink.

‘A stick?’

‘An old spear. Orm will have it, or know where it is. Do not kill him until I have my stick.’

Tormod swallowed, for he wondered if the priest was working some subtle magic, as Haakon had feared. He wondered if this spear-stick was part of it.

‘We will consider it,’ Tormod said and rose, easy and white-toothed. He spread his hands. ‘Meanwhile, I offer you the hospitality of the hall of Norway’s king.’

‘No gift from a thrall, who owns nothing, not even his own name,’ Martin said viciously, which brought the blood surging to Tormod’s face. ‘Thank the king for it from me, all the same. Tell him not to take too long in the considering, for the year turns.’

Tormod swept off, trailing a chill cloak of indignity; Martin went back to sucking noisily on his meat, mainly because it kept folk from sitting near him and that suited him well enough.

It would be endless day in the north now, but they were shortening fast and soon Bjarmaland and the Finnmark would be cloaked in long night and ice.

Dark and cold, Martin thought. Like revenge.

Mainistir Buite (Monasterboice), Ireland, around the same time …

Crowbone’s Crew

‘You were lucky,’ said the voice and Crowbone tried to see the face that belonged to it, but his eyes would not open entirely and the little they did would not permit focus; the light was blinding. A woman, he noted, with the part of his thought-cage that was not thundered with pain.

‘You were,’ echoed another voice, deeper and stronger. A man, then.

‘It was as well the girl squealed when she did,’ the woman went on, ‘for it made you more wary and Oengusso’s blow was badly struck.’

‘It was, so it was,’ echoed the man and the woman sighed.

‘Oengusso, go away. You are not helping here — drink this, young Olaf.’

‘I just wished to make sure the wee prince was not too dunted,’ the man answered, while Crowbone felt the bowl click against his teeth and a slightly bitter liquid filled his mouth. He swallowed and then felt warm breath, smelling of rosemary, close to his mouth, then his ear. The woman sang, whisper-soft and seeming nonsense, but Crowbone knew seidr when he heard it and the hairs on his arms rose. He felt her draw away from him and the voice of her was so familiar that her name was on the end of his tongue.

‘He will be finer than new linen,’ the woman replied firmly. ‘I have sung the charms of mugwyrt, plantain, lamb’s cress, cock’s-spur grass, camomile, nettle, crab-apple, chervil and fennel into his mouth and ears.’

‘In the name of God, I hope,’ the man said and Crowbone knew him for a monk by the tone. Suddenly, with a rush as warm as strong wine, he knew the woman, too, had heard that voice a hundred times when he could not see the face, as she sat behind him and combed his hair. Before that she had salved his scabbed, badly shaved head the day Orm had rescued him from his tether by the privy on Svartey.

‘Thorgunna,’ he said and opened his eyes into the great smiling sun of her face. Then the other face swam into view and ruined the moment.

Oengusso had eyes like a pig, tiny and blue, fringed with straw lashes. He was big and fat-bellied, too, yet there was muscle under the monk’s garb and quiver of him, which Crowbone had to acknowledge when he saw his helmet, held out to him by apologetic hands.

‘Sure, I am sorry for it,’ Oengusso said, watching Crowbone slowly sit up and swing his legs over the side of the pallet bed. He sat for a moment until the world settled, then took the helmet from the Irish monk; the left side of it was dented, the little plume-holder battered.

‘We could not get it more straighter, sure,’ Oengusso offered, seeing Crowbone’s silence as accusing. In fact, Crowbone was wondering what the side of his head was like if the helmet had been this bad; if the throb and ache of it was anything to go by, it was crushed and his left ear was almost certainly missing.

‘No, no,’ Oengusso said when Crowbone said as much. ‘Hardly a dunt on you. A good helmet that.’

Crowbone said nothing else, for he was trying to stand up and the floor would not help him. It swayed like a ship side on to a swell and, eventually, Oengusso thrust out an arm for Crowbone to grip. It felt, he thought, like a bar of iron and he knew now where the strength that all but flattened his head had come from.

He held it for a long moment, staring at the hanging on the wall until the bird on it stopped flying round in circles and stayed fixed on the blue square.

‘The dove of peace,’ Oengusso explained, seeing him look and thinking he was puzzling on it, ‘returning to Noah’s marvellous boat with a twig to prove that the Flood was ended and God had spared Mankind.’

‘We do the same,’ Crowbone managed to say, ‘though we use ravens to find land.’

‘I thank you for my son,’ Oengusso said and Crowbone looked at him. This would be the lector.

‘You are a singular Christ-follower,’ he managed, trying to keep the sickness from bokking up in him. ‘Not many of your kind hit so hard.’

Except here, he discovered a day later, when he had recovered somewhat. There were many hard-hitting monks here, it seemed, for all the renegades had been laid out and six were dead of crushed skulls. The only casualty had been one monk with his thumb flattened — carelessly getting it between skull and hammer — and Congalach with an arrow through his forearm, though it was his pride that truly smarted.

It must have come as a shock to Gorm and Fridrek, two of the dead, to find wolves when they sought mice, Crowbone thought. He asked if that had been the way of it when Oengusso brought him broth and the monk pursed his fleshy lips and frowned.

‘A person who would distress thee more, thou shalt not admit him to thee, but at once give him thy benediction should he deserve it,’ he said piously. ‘As the blessed Coluim would have it. Or thereabouts. So we gave them benediction.’

‘With what — a forge hammer?’

‘The holy cross,’ Oengusso replied blandly and fished it out from under his thick, rough tunic; Crowbone blanched, for it was as big as any forge hammer, suspended on a thick braided cord, the ends of the crosspiece capped with black iron, dented and streaked.

‘I had this from owld Brother Conchobar, who had it himself from one who knew it to have been wielded by Abbot Cathal of Ferns,’ Oengusso went on beatifically. ‘That was a wheen of years ago, when the monastery of Taghmon, assisted by Cathal mac Dunlainge, king of Ui Chennselaig at the time, made bloody war on the monastery of Ferns, in which four hundred were killed. Cathal made himself vice-abbot of Ferns after the victory.’

He went on, while Crowbone stood, mazed and wary of the room, which was still not as steady as he would have liked. It was a long litany of head-bashing, attack and counter-attack between Clocnamoise, Birr, Durrow, Drumbo, Taghmon and a score of other Irish monasteries. By the time Crowbone had finished the broth, he was reeling with Oengusso’s tales and had made up his mind that raiding Irish monasteries was not a sensible or easy occupation; if he wanted silver for ships and men he would look elsewhere than the Christmenn of Ireland.

He was relieved when the monk tucked the Christ amulet back inside his tunic, but impressed; this was the first time he had come on Christ priests who would fight and who sired sons with no shame, though Orm had told him of a Brother John whom he had met and travelled with. He had been Irish, too, Crowbone recalled.

‘You should not be on your feet.’

The voice brought both of them round and Crowbone smiled. Thorgunna stepped forward, neat in a sea-grey dress fastened with a loop of braided leather and wearing a white headsquare — it was a strange garb for her to be seen in, for Crowbone had usually seen her in brighter clothing and with more silver hanging off her, while the headsquare had not been part of her dress at all.

‘It is the way Christian women wear it,’ she answered, seeing his look. ‘If they are married.’

‘You are still married, then …’ Crowbone moved slowly towards her and took her hands in his own. ‘If so, there is a husband looking for you.’

‘You have seen him recently?’

Her voice, he thought, held only an echo of eagerness and he was sorry to hear so little.

‘Aye, not so long since. He seeks word of you, though he is in Gardariki lands at present. Conspiring with Vladimir, possibly.’

She heard the bitter bite of that and studied him a little. How he had grown — fine and tall and true. As fine and tall as any son she had hoped to have …

Crowbone saw the sudden flick of her head and the brightness in her eye, thought it was about Orm and was confused — apathy and now tears?

‘You have quarrelled with Orm,’ she said and he blinked a bit, wondering how she had reached out and grabbed that idea from the air. Before he could think, his mouth answered.

‘I am certain he has betrayed me.’

There. He could scarcely believe he had said it at all, but when it was out, he knew it had tumbled from his heart. Oengusso, not part of this and bewildered, shuffled his feet and looked from one to the other, as if it was a blow-for-blow holmgang fight.

Thorgunna showed no surprise; Crowbone had never been able to keep his heart stopped up when she asked and she was pleased that growing up with the games kings play had not robbed him of it. Not yet, at least.

‘Why do you believe this?’ she asked and the dam in him split, spilling the whole tale of it through the cracks until, at the end, he had to sit down again. He felt better, all the same.

Thorgunna tasted the wormwood in it, saw his wavering pride and uncertain strength. Olaf Tryggvason knew what a king should be and would try to make himself one, she thought sadly, but it would eat the best of what made him a man.

‘I never liked this Martin,’ she said eventually. ‘Sleekit. Anything he was involved with always was rancid as old cod. You think he killed this Drostan?’

Crowbone nodded, too numb even to speak.

‘You are after thinking that he sent word to Orm, then went round all the others — Dyfflin and Orkney and the like — to set a trap?’

Again he nodded.

‘You believe Orm knew it was Martin who sent word? That he sent you without telling you of this because he desires this silly axe for himself?’

It was the sick heart of what Crowbone believed and she saw it in his eyes. For a time, she did not say anything at all and, eventually, Crowbone regained some strength, so she went on.

‘The matter of Eirik’s axe is certainly true,’ Thorgunna said, ‘otherwise there would be nothing to tempt Dyfflin or Orkney at all. Martin will be promising them a dazzle of prizes. Olaf Irish-Shoes needs men and the axe will also make him feel he has one more triumph over his old enemy, Eirik. Gunnhild in Orkney — well, you know more of that. She wants you as much as she wants her man’s old axe.’

‘I had worked this much out,’ he answered and she raised an eyebrow.

‘Had you now? This cleverness did not give you cause for an easy sleep, or ease the worry of what Orm’s part in all this was.’

He acknowledged it with a flap of one hand and Thorgunna sucked in a deep breath until her prow-built breast threatened the seams of her dress.

‘Ask yourself what Martin truly wants,’ she said simply. ‘Ask yourself what Orm truly wants.’

Crowbone blinked a bit, but his mind was smoke and mirrors, so he smiled wanly at her and risked standing up.

‘Orm wants you, lady,’ he said and she laughed, a bitter, sad affair that reminded Crowbone of blowing red leaves and claw-branched trees.

‘Aye, may be,’ she said simply and then waved one hand. ‘He has his faults in that regard — he is always saying how he hates faring here and there, yet he was away more often than home. He loves his gods and his men more than he loves me.’

‘Come back to Hestreng and see,’ Crowbone said, but she shook her head.

‘I will never go back to Hestreng.’

‘Somewhere else, then,’ Crowbone answered, remembering why she would hate Hestreng, where the malformed mite she had given birth to had been left on a stone, put into the care of the gods. Crowbone had stood with Orm and others round that stone, had seen the tears in Orm’s eyes and said as much.

‘Aye, aye,’ Thorgunna said. ‘If tears would undo the gods of Asgard, then I had enough to drown them all. They are unmoved; I am done with Asgard and Hestreng and the Oathsworn. If it means I am also done with my man, then so be it.’

She stopped and sighed, then held up her hands.

‘I miss my sister Thordis and cousin Ingrid, though,’ she added, ‘not least because no-one here can sew me into my sleeves, or unpick them again at night.’

‘So you are one of Christ’s women?’ Crowbone said and could not quite keep the sneer from his voice. She looked sharply at him, then smiled.

‘A nun? Not me. I am not about to climb off my knees to Odin just to get back on them to Jesus.’

Oengusso shook his head in sorrow and made the sign of the cross at her, but Thorgunna patted him lightly on one arm.

‘I am a Veiled Woman,’ she said. ‘Permitted to remain alongside priests and monks, provided I do not molest them or turn them from their ways. This is possible here in Ireland, less so elsewhere. I am happy here.’

‘Useful, too,’ said Oengusso. ‘Who knew that wearing the bone from a cod on your head takes away belly ache before she came? Or the Nine Herb Charm she worked on your head?’

Crowbone looked at her sideways.

‘Seidr?’ he replied. ‘You always said that magic neither worked for you or against you.’

‘God love us all,’ Oengusso exclaimed, crossing himself.

‘For ever and ever,’ Thorgunna responded, then smiled at Crowbone.

‘Old healing is hardly seidr,’ she said. ‘Not like you and those birds.’

Oengusso looked frantically from one to the other and Crowbone stared at him from under a single brow, his odd eyes glowering.

‘One crow, sorrow, two crows, mirth, three crows, a wedding, four crows, birth,’ he said, then winked at the astounded monk. ‘See what women bring down on your house?’

Oengusso crossed himself again and then frowned, seeing he was mocked.

‘You should not be so hard on women, boy,’ he said firmly. ‘Sure, was it not one who kept my benediction from breaking the egg of your head entire?’

‘What woman?’ Crowbone demanded, puzzled and Thorgunna looked at him and laughed, seeing the truth of it.

‘The one you have clearly imagined to be a boy for some time,’ she said. Then, into his open-mouthed disbelief, she added:

‘The Wend you call Berto. Her real name is Bergliot.’