Crowbone (23 page)

‘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 Óengusso,’ 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 Óengusso,’ 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.

Túnsberg 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.