Crowbone (20 page)

‘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.

The coast of Ireland, a day later …

CROWBONE’S CREW

CROWBONE woke to find Berto cradled in the hook of one arm, a warmth that was welcome and a strange, disturbing softness that was not, that made him unlatch himself and move away, pretending to check on the weather.

The wind had backed, was blowing inshore and had been for some time, for the whole place was palled in spindrift, sucked off the creaming shore and flung landward like quivering snow. But the storm was gone, no more than hollow puffs and sighs and the dull rumour of it in the sea.

There was no sign of the
knarr
.

Vigfuss Drosbo and Svenke Klak found this out when they left together into the pewter of the day, the one anxious for his porridge pot, the other frantic with the remembering of his ringmail, rolled in sheepskin and stowed under the corpse of Skumr.

Now they came back, stumbling up, wild-haired and wild-eyed, with the news that there was a hole in the world where all their plunder should be.

‘Sunk entire,’ Stick-Starer declared, with some relish, as though he had seen it and told everyone just that.

‘There is no wreckage,’ Svenke answered hopefully, sick with the knowledge that his ringmail was probably gone forever. That and the view of the Shadow in daylight made men hunch into the spattering rain, gloomy as the grey day itself.

Crowbone saw that the Shadow was done and did not need Onund to look at him and shake a mournful head – the straked planks along one side of the prow were splintered in a great gash the length of a man and as wide as a forearm.

They would have to carry their gear and Crowbone’s resolve on not raiding this place, wherever it was, now vanished; they needed ponies and carts if there were any and he sent men scurrying for them, while Onund and Kaetilmund wrestled the prow beast off and started to fasten it on a spear; on or off the ship, the power of the prow could still battle the spirits of the land.

Drosbo sat with his chins drooped at the thought of his missing pot and Svenke stood with the look of a ram which has just butted a wall. Folk patted his shoulder, for ringmail was as fabulous as a dragon egg and as hard to come by – especially for the likes of Svenke, whose by-name, Klak, meant peg and had been handed to him because he was so broad across the shoulder and narrow in the hip that he looked like one.

‘Borrow the prince’s,’ Rovald said daringly and everyone laughed; Crowbone acknowledged them with a wry wave of one hand, then hauled out the offending ringmail. It had been boiled in whale oil, which made it almost black and helped proof it against the rot – but it hung like a shed snakeskin, streaked red and with rings dropping from it. Which was the result of Crowbone training himself to swim in the sea with it and men who prized the craft and work of it as much as the expense, shook their heads at the ruin. Svenke Klak’s gaze was bitter on a man who could treat ringmail so badly.

‘Perhaps we will find a smith who can move a few links in one we take as a prize,’ Kaetilmund soothed and Svenke nodded miserably.

‘He may get the chance soon,’ panted Halfdan, coming up at a hard trot. ‘Riders are coming – lots of them.’

It was not the place Crowbone would have chosen for a fight, this shingle beach slathered in sea foam, but men came spilling up in knots, half-dressed for war and aware that all their sea-chest possessions were still in the steading.

‘Ach,’ Murrough yelled out, hearing them mumble and fret, ‘I had a good pair of
naal-bind
socks in my chest, only darned twice and hardly a hole in them. Now I will have to go and buy for new.’

Men left off their grumbles and a few laughed, shamed and sheepish, hardened raiding men who knew that you should be able to leave anything behind in an eyeblink, for it was sometimes the way of the wave and war that a good sea-chest vanished. Yet there was a mutter, about how all the plunder from one place was gone and now it looked as if the rest was lost, too. Poor raiding luck from this new jarl.

Crowbone heard it. Fridrek, he thought, still breathing through his mouth since his nose was broken. He felt the rage surge in him then, and wanted to stop Fridrek breathing entirely – but he knew what to do instead.

‘We have not even thrown a few sparks off an enemy blade,’ he bellowed out. ‘We are not turned and burned yet.’

So they laughed and formed up, shields casual and ready by their sides. But when the men came up, they made everyone blink; Crowbone felt his face go stiff with the sight of them.

They were not horsemen, just men on horses and they had wisely climbed off them and sorted themselves out into a long thick thread of shields and helmets and spears. Their leader rode a little
fyrd
pony, was slathered in ringmail cut for riding and coming down over his thighs; off the horse it would drag at his ankles.

He had a decorated helmet with a brass boar crest and mail all round the front so that only his eyes showed, like a dog peering from a kennel. He rode forward a little and peeled off the helmet, revealing a flushed face, black hair bound back and ragging in the wind and a chin shaved save for a long moustache. Slightly behind him, a boy looked on from the back of his own horse, curious and unafraid.

‘More driftwood washed up?’ the man said in heavily accented Norse, fighting the mouth of the pony so that slaver flew. Eighty men, Crowbone counted and felt his own men shift slightly, for even if they could not tally beyond fingers, they knew when they were outnumbered.

His tongue felt like old wood, but Crowbone forced himself to be light and easy, as relaxed as if he sat at his own hearthfire with a horn in one hand and a woman in the other.

‘You have found some driftwood already?’ he asked and the horseman frowned a little at that, cursing as the pony tried to dance him round in a circle.

‘Aye,’ he answered and waved a hand. Men came forward carrying a limp form and laid it down alongside the pony, which snorted and stamped at the smell of death.

‘One less Dyfflin raider,’ the horseman snarled and Crowbone stepped forward. It was Kari, puffed with water, his shattered hand still stuck in his tunic belt. Men groaned when they saw it, for the fate of the
knarr
was now confirmed.

‘By all the gods of Ireland,’ bellowed a voice which snapped heads round. Murrough stepped forward, his big hooked axe held in front of him. ‘You dare call me a Dyfflin raider? Who are you to insult a son of the Ui Neill then?’

Crowbone flared with anger that someone should have crashed into his speaking without a by-your-leave – yet he also saw the horseman’s head snap up and his eyebrows go even further than that. Then Murrough went off into Irish, a great scathing, snarling dragon-spit of words which left the horseman lashed and even more flushed, his lips thin as wires.

‘Your Chosen Man reminds me of my manners,’ he said eventually, stiff and painful. ‘Congalach macFlann, macCongalaig, macDuin macCernaig. I serve Gilla Mo Chonna macFogartach macCiarmac, ri Deiscert Breg.’

He broke off and indicated the boy behind him, who kicked his horse forward and rose up a little in the stirrups to announce, in a shrill voice, that he was Maelan macCongalach, macFlann and so on.

None of which made the least sense to Crowbone, but he knew the Irishers were reciting their lineage and that they were father and son. Not that it meant much, since every ragged Irisher was as proud as a king, even if he had no arse in his breeks, and every one was rich with names if nothing else. Still, he had no idea who Gilla Mo was but did not show it, for he knew how to behave like a prince. Vladimir had taught him that.

‘Olaf Trygvasson, of the Yngling line of Harald Fairhair, king of Norway and a prince in my own right,’ he declared. ‘And no friend to the Norse of Dyfflin.’

‘So this Murrough macMael fellow says,’ Congalach replied. ‘You are part of the Oathsworn of Jarl Orm, the White Bear Slayer.’

Crowbone glanced at Murrough with narrowed eyes, wondering what else the Irisher had said, but only had a broad grin in reply. Behind him, Kaetilmund grunted as if kicked.

‘Oh fuck,’ he muttered. ‘Now we have trouble – they know us.’

Crowbone merely inclined his head and the horseman cuffed the head-tossing pony on one ear.

‘I have heard of those men,’ Congalach declared, frowning. ‘I am told they are not Christians.’

‘The Oathsworn have been prime-signed,’ Crowbone replied, which was no lie for they had all been once; Crowbone had the tales of it from Finn. ‘I myself have just come from the chapel of St Ninian at Hvitrann.’

Leaving a deal of dead and a Galgeddil lord’s family weeping – but there was still no lie in it, thought Crowbone, though he felt the heat of black stares on his back from the likes of Onund and Kaetilmund and all the other firm pagans. He willed their teeth together.

Congalach smiled.

‘Then you are welcome,’ he said, ‘in the lands of the Ui Neill.’

‘God bless the Ui Neill,’ Murrough added cheerfully and made the sign of the cross on his breast, over the Thor Hammer neatly hidden beneath his tunic.

‘
Amén
,’ Crowbone lied smartly.

The island of Hy (Iona), around the same time …

THE WITCH-QUEEN’S CREW

‘I believed you to be Christians,’ said the abbot and Gudrod acknowledged him with a slight ironic bow, which flitted up the stone walls and flickered, wavering, as the wind threatened the fish-oil lamps.

‘As Christian as you are,’ he replied and the lash of it was not lost on the abbot, who had barred the door of the monastery when the ship had first appeared, afraid of the sleek of it and not consoled enough by the friendly removal of the dragon-prow to offer Christian charity. The door, which had been briefly opened, was shut and barred once more for the abbot was Frankish and from the eastern borders of that place, where no-one was to be trusted.

It had taken Od’s toying with some of the monks who had stayed outside the monastery, cowering or praying in their beehive huts, to get the door opened again, by which time Gudrod was rain-soaked and bad-tempered as a wet cat. He waved the written parchment under the abbot’s nose and demanded he read it in a decent tongue but all he got was a babble of Frankish prayers. It came as no surprise to Erling that the abbot soon found himself strung by the ankles above his own altar, but what amazed him was the passive courage of the other monks, who simply knelt and started to pray. One or two rose up, shouting, ‘Saint Blaithmac’, then subsided to prayer again.

‘Who is this Blaithmac?’ Od demanded.

Erling did not know, so he asked and, eventually, a whey-faced priest told him in stumblingly poor Norse – a monk, martyred by raiders for refusing to give up the shrine of Columba on the island of Hy a hundred years ago at least.

‘So he is dead?’ asked Od and Erling nodded, which made the youth shrug; a god who would not protect his own from death was not much of a god – though the house these folk had built for him was interesting. Stone and solid as a fortress.

Erling pointed out that the priests seemed to be made of the same stuff as the saint, for Od had killed three already and the abbot was still refusing to read anything to help pagans and murderers. He continued babbling prayers in his own tongue.

‘Remember also the signs of old burnings on the way up here,’ Erling pointed out as they stood in the flickering half-dark, waiting for Gudrod’s next move. ‘This Hy place has been scorched before. My da’s da probably did it.’

Laughter flitted round the stone columns, so that the monks shut their eyes and prayed harder, trying not to notice the skull-grins from the shadowed men lurking beyond the light and angry at having been left so long out in the wind and rain.