Crowbone (15 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Fuck,’ Rovald spat. ‘Horsemen.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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