Crowbone (12 page)

There was silence, save for a few grunts.

‘Do not get too annoyed by what others are saying,’ Crowbone finished, looking at the two men, who were grinning wryly at him through the blood on their faces. ‘It could burst you.’

‘Besides,’ he added pointedly, ‘the jarl always has the strongest blow.’

There were grunts and a few cheers. Folk helped the two men up, so that they staggered back to seats side by side and set to swearing to each other how they had never meant any harm.

It would take time to unravel the old rules, Crowbone thought, so best to start at once. He looked for Onund, for he had seen the hunchback’s cold face when the Christmenn had sworn to him and wanted to see if a little time had tempered the look – but the shipwright was nowhere to be seen.

Gjallandi fell to telling tales, having made one up about the death of Balle at the hands of Prince Olaf. It was a good tale, ending with a feather of black smoke coming out of the dead man’s mouth, taking the shape of a raven and flying away.

‘That did not happen,’ said a man.

‘Did the story of it make you shiver?’ demanded Gjallandi haughtily, pouting his beautiful lips and throwing his considerable chin at the man, who admitted it did. Gjallandi smacked one hand on another, as if he had made a good law-point at a Thing.

‘What was the raven, then?’ demanded Kaup, fascinated and Gjallandi did not miss a beat.

‘Odin, it was, shapechanged and possessing the body of Balle. A test, it was, to see if our Prince Olaf was ready.’

‘Ready for what?’ demanded Stick-Starer and Halfdan snorted derisively.

‘To be king in Norway,’ he answered, then turned to Gjallandi. ‘Is that not the right of it?’

Gjallandi nodded portentously and men looked at Crowbone, sitting among them and yet apart, his face bloody with flame.

‘Now you come to mention it,’ said Stick-Starer, ‘I think there was some smoke.’

‘I saw a raven,’ another man offered. ‘For sure.’

Gjallandi grinned.

Northeast of Holmtun, Isle of Mann, at the same time …

THE WITCH-QUEEN’S CREW

Gudrod sat with Erling Flatnef on the night-stippled beach, apart from the rest of their men as was fitting. He was playing ’tafl with Erling, for the game was his obsession and a good contest pleased him because he invariably won. Erling, with his boneless nose wobbling, was no contest as usual and Gudrod was bored, glancing across to where Od sat alone, for the men did not like him and he did not care for fire, or company or even, it seemed to Gudrod, for food, since Erling had to tell him to eat.

‘My sister’s boy,’ Erling declared moodily, following Gudrod’s eyes. ‘A strange one, from a birth that killed his mother. His father died in a bad winter four years later, so I got him.’

‘Who taught him to fight?’ Gudrod demanded and Erling, frowning over moving, took some time to reply.

‘I showed him the strokes,’ he answered, ‘but no-one taught him the things he does, or the way he moves.’

He leaned forward a little.

‘You should know this,’ he said, low and slow as if the words had to be forced out. ‘The boy kills. That is what the gods made him for. Chickens, dogs, deer, men, women, children – he has killed them all in his short life and not one of those deaths meant anything more than another or anything at all to him. I am sure Loki made him, but I have leashed him with Tyr, telling him that the death of people is a god-sacrifice and the best sacrifice is a warrior, dedicated to Tyr. I tried God and Jesus, but could not persuade him of the fighting worth of those two.’

Gudrod felt the skin along his arms creep and he glanced at Od, sitting still and quiet and staring up at the grey-black sky.

‘Perhaps Tyr has taken him, after all. Best avoid him,’ Erling said and so Gudrod, with a sharp sneering glance at the man, got up and deliberately went to the side of Od. For a time it seemed Od had not even noticed him and Gudrod was not used to that, did not like it.

‘Are they eyes?’ Od asked suddenly and, for a moment, Gudrod was lost. Then he realised the boy was looking at those stars the clouds unveiled.

‘Embers,’ Gudrod corrected. ‘Flung there by Odin and his brothers, to help guide folk on the whale road. Folk like us.’

He paused as Od’s head dropped and turned to look at him.

‘Do you play
hnefatafl
?’ Gudrod asked and had back a blank stare.

‘The game of kings?’ he prompted and had back a beautiful, slow smile.

‘The game of kings,’ the boy replied slowly, ‘is to ask me to kill their enemies.’

Gudrod was too stunned to speak for a moment, for it was clear the boy had never played the game in his life. What lad did not learn
hnefatafl
? Or even
halatafl
– the fox game?

‘You did well with that upstart warrior Ulf Bjornsson,’ Gudrod said finally, to break the oppressive silence. ‘One stroke.’

Od said nothing, his face like a fresh-scraped sheepskin. Gudrod, trying to smile, told him of the first time he had killed a man, when he was fifteen. On a russet hillside slick with rain and entrails, he had shoved his sword into the man’s face, leaving him lying there with the wet and blood pooling under him. Later, someone had told him that it was the Rig-Jarl Tryggve, so the first man he had killed had been a king.

He looked at Od, expecting something and nothing came for so long that Gudrod began to get angry, sensing he was being insulted. Then at last Od spoke and Gudrod’s mouth was filled with ash, choking his angry words.

‘I killed a boy who annoyed me when I was five,’ Od said, as if he spoke of cutting down a tree, ‘but Erling gave me my first man-kill for my name-day. A thrall we had captured. He was a Jutlander, I think.’

‘Gave you?’

Od looked at Gudrod, that bland sea-gaze, as if this was something that happened every name-day, that every uncle gave a nephew such a present. Gudrod felt the back of his neck prickle with a sudden rush of sweat.

‘Aye. I was learning how to properly cut throats,’ he explained and smiled, warmed with the old memory of his fine day. ‘There were ten thralls in all, but I was a fast learner and needed only six.’

Gudrod’s armhairs were bristled now and the back of his neck prickled with a sudden rush of sweat. He managed to point out that he was sure the remaining four were grateful and Od turned that bland sea-gaze on him.

‘I used those ones to learn how to hamstring,’ he said, then stretched and rose up, yawning.

‘Best name-day I ever had,’ Od said. ‘I was seven.’

He went off to find his cloak, leaving Gudrod in the darkness, feeling older than stones and colder than the hissing wind, which had long since upset the abandoned game of kings.

Valland to the Manx Sea, two weeks later …

CROWBONE’S CREW

‘Each one of these should be coated with gold,’ Crowbone growled moodily, waving a crab claw. Kaup, cooking them on a coal-grill by the mastfish, grinned back at him.

‘We should not have traded, then, but raided these Franks,’ said Berto and one or two nearest him chuckled at his Wend fierceness towards northmen. When they said it was a foolish risk for crabs, he only scowled more deeply and spat back that these Franks were too far removed from northmen nowadays. Then he swaggered off, chewing and spitting out shell, so clearly a boy trying to be a man that men laughed, remembering what that had felt like.

‘They no longer speak decent Norse in Valland,’ Onund admitted. ‘Not for years. They are still northmen, though they have forgotten a lot of that and now call this coast Normandie. Now they cannot sail worth a fuck and have taken to fighting on horseback.’

He spat out shell, so that the wind whipped it away over the side, then worried more meat out of the claw.

‘They are Norse enough that it would be foolish to annoy them,’ he added and glanced sideways at Crowbone. ‘They are ruffled by us. It is this ship. You may as well shake a sword and scream at them. We should paint it an easier colour.’

Crowbone scowled, for he liked the black ship and bloody sail.

‘Once there was a fox,’ he said and, because the sail was up and rowing men were lounging in sheltered spots out of the wind, he was the centre of all their attention at once; already the crew knew that Crowbone’s tales were even better than those of Gjallandi.

‘This fox seated himself on a stone by a stream and wept aloud,’ Crowbone went on. ‘The crabs in the holes around came up to him and asked: “Friend, why are you wailing so loud?” The fox told them: “My kindred have turned me out of the wood and I do not know what to do.”

‘Of course, the crabs asked him why he had been turned out. “Because,” said the fox, sobbing, “they let it be known they would go out tonight hunting crabs by the stream and I said it would be a pity to kill such pretty little creatures.”

‘Then the crabs held a Thing on it and came to the conclusion that, as the fox had been thrown out by his kindred on their account, they could do nothing better than engage his services to defend them. So they told the fox and he readily consented, then spent the whole day in amusing the crabs with all kinds of tricks.’

‘Sounds like Gjallandi,’ said Halfdan, sucking his fingers where he had burned them on the grill; the cloak-swathed skald acknowledged him with a good-natured wave.

‘Night came,’ Crowbone went on. ‘The moon rose in full splendour. The fox asked: “Have you ever been out for a walk in the moonlight?” The crabs had not and told how they were such little creatures that they were afraid of going far from their holes by the riverbank. “Oh, never mind that,” said the fox. “Follow me. I can defend you against any foe.” So the crabs followed him with pleasure.

‘On the way the fox told them all sorts of pleasant things and made them laugh and think they were having such a good time. Then the fox came to a halt and gave a short, sharp bark. Instantly, a horde of foxes came out of the wood and joined their kinsman, all of them hunting the poor crabs, who fled for their lives in all directions, but were soon caught and devoured.

‘When the banquet was over, the foxes said to their friend: “How great your skill and wisdom. You are truly a prince of cunning.” Which was only the truth, after all.’

A few laughed, others frowned, for they knew there was a meaning in the tale but did not want to admit they had not understood it. Except Kaup, of course, who always wanted explained what he did not understand about men of the north.

‘Does this tale reveal that all crabs are stupid, or all foxes clever?’ he asked, smiling.

Crowbone, his head on one side like a quizzical bird, did not smile.

‘Perhaps it reveals that there is more than one way to catch crabs,’ he answered.

‘Perhaps,’ Berto offered, looking at Crowbone, ‘it is more a tale about how a fox can succeed by seeming to be a friendly prince.’

Crowbone smiled, but others frowned and one or two snorted, saying there had been hardly a mention of a prince in it at all and what did a Wend know of Norse tales anyway?

‘Now that you have warmed the pot of your skills,’ Gjallandi declared to Crowbone, before Berto boiled over into fighting, ‘perhaps you would favour us with another. Such as what they are saying.’

He uncoupled one hand from his cloak and waved it at a distant wheel of wind-ragged birds. Crowbone did not reply for a moment and let folk think he was considering matters, though the truth was that he was wondering whether the skald was worth the effort of keeping. He was more jealous than a woman when it came to his skills, seeing Crowbone as a rival and, though it was always good for a prince to have someone spreading your fame, Crowbone thought, Gjallandi was more irritating than grit in bread.

For a moment, he savoured the sight of the man’s big head, the fleshy lips opening in an O of surprise as he was pitched into the sea – but the thought brought back the memory of his foster-father, Lousebeard, and he shivered.

‘I can tell you what lies ahead,’ Crowbone announced and stared pointedly at Gjallandi. ‘Provided you have the stomach for the knowing.’

‘You can tell me what lies ahead,’ Stick-Starer declared, bustling down one side, following another wood chip’s bobbing dance, ‘provided it has nothing to do with crabs, for I have eaten too many.’

So Crowbone told them how the birds were struggling back to land, as fast as they were able, because a storm was coming. Men looked at the sky and squinted, but it was grey-blue, scudding with clouds and gave nothing away.

Stick-Starer stroked the grizzle of his face, then the yellow bitch barked once or twice and Berto declared that there was a storm coming, for sure. Men laughed and Stick-Starer shrugged.

‘I do not know the workings of birds,’ he said slowly, ‘but a man with his head up his arse could tell you it is late in the year for heading up to Mann. Storms are more than likely. If you want to follow the barking of an ugly bitch and the wheeling of birds, you must tell me and I will fold my arms and sit.’

Crowbone nodded and men groaned, for the wind was mostly from the shore and now they had to climb on to sea-chest benches and pull hard for land.

Later, when the
drakkar
was keel-snugged in the shelter of a natural scoop of shingled harbour, men huddled round a flattening fire on shore under a wool sail that flapped like a bird wing in the rising wind. They did not mind the wind or the ticking of rain on the canopy and joked about whether to thank Crowbone’s birds or Berto’s yellow bitch for getting them clear of bad weather.

Crowbone sat and stared into the darkness, wondering where Hoskuld’s
knarr
had gone.

The mica panels in the unlit lantern were loose and their trembling woke Thorgeir Raudi.

‘Awake are we?’ growled Bergfinn, appearing from behind him. ‘An eyeblink before I kicked you, so that was rib-luck for you.’

The darkness puzzled Thorgeir for a moment, for he could not have slept, he thought, all through the day and into night. Besides, he said to himself, Bergfinn would never have let him.

Then he realised that the light puling on the horizon still marked the day, but clouds had smothered it like smoke. The wind whipped the raggles of his hair and the lantern swung above him, hung from a hook at the stern; Thorgeir knew that tremble well enough, felt the heavy slap of wave that caused it.