Crowbone (34 page)

Borg – fortress – was the best name for it all the same, thought Crowbone. In the years between Sigurd and now, the place had recovered itself. Three walls now stretched across the narrow neck and a great semi-circle of rampart behind that, all oak and iron and stone, so that the Bull Kings who claimed Moray could strut and trade.

Strange folk, for the most part, who spoke like the Irish and wore tunics and breeks woven in a pattern of squares – when they wore breeks at all – and with a fringing along the bottom. It kept the damp from sucking up from the hem, Bergliot said to those who marvelled at it, which was a sensible thing, especially for the long skirts of the women.

Adalbert said the Old Romans had called them
pictii
, meaning Painted People and so called because they had skin-marked their faces in blue. They named them with reverence, all the same, for these
pictii
were one of the few folk the Old Romans failed to conquer – but that was then and this was now.

They were sensible folk, Murrough thought, but they had had their day, the Bull Kings of the north, with their skin-markings and their strutting nobles and their endless chipping away on stones. Worse than the Norse, the Irisher thought to himself, for stone marks no-one but themselves could properly read and understand.

Scores of those stones lined the road up to the gate of the place and Crowbone was aware of the effect, knew it for what it was – another piece in the game of kings. Look at us, the stones demanded. Look at us, see the power and time it took to make and raise us. Only a great people can do this. We are choosers of the slain.

Yet three stones had started to lean drunkenly to one side, the foundations eroded, and Crowbone knew these people’s greatness was the same. Sooner rather than later, the Norse of Orkney would come and take the entire of Moray, if only to keep the Albans of the south from doing the same.

Meanwhile, though, there were declarations of peaceful intent to be made and gifts to be given to appease the haughty nobles of the place with their silly, fringed, wool tunics and Irish shoes. Of course, the nobles were sensible enough to keep the scores of Norse outside their fortress, camped on the great curve of bay between the borg and the town. The town was prepared to sigh with relief that the Norse were not about to rampage through them – and, once they learned that the men had good weight silver about them, flocked out to invite them in.

Crowbone was happy, all in all, as he sat down to feast with the nobles of Borg, for he had learned that Martin had been here and left for Norway and Haakon Jarl. The letter to Orm had been flat and cold, scarcely surprising since they were far from friends, yet it revealed what Martin wanted and where he was headed to get the Bloodaxe.

Now Crowbone knew, though had turned all the words of it over in his head as if examining suspect coin and still could not work out whether Orm was playing him false or not. He could not be sure that Hoskuld had not been charged to tell him of the letter when the time was right – like a bairn at learning, Crowbone thought bitterly. Yet Hoskuld had tried to run from him – though Crowbone was nagged with the idea that he might have caused that himself with his harshness.

Yet he was content. His men were in shelters on a cold beach, but they were used to colder still and he had handed them out buckets of silver, so that there was warmth and comfort to be had for a price in the town.

The silver had come from Orkney and the glow of it, the sheer surprise of it, still made Crowbone smile.

From Hy they had sailed for Orkney and come ashore at Sand Vik, storming through the creaming surf and forming up for a fight, Crowbone’s heart thundering as it never had before at the prospect of taking on the Witch-Queen, bane of his life – except that no enemy force appeared. Crowbone was confused by this, uncertain of whether to plough on to the hall and its huddle of buildings and did the worst thing possible – nothing at all. In the end, just as he cursed his uncertainty and made his mind up, Stick-Starer called out that riders were coming.

A fistful of men stopped a long bowshot away and dismounted. A man held the little stiff-maned ponies and the rest trudged towards them, one holding up a white shield.

‘They want to talk,’ Mar declared, which was so obvious that Crowbone scoured him with a glance that made him flush. He called out Murrough and Kaetilmund, with the Stooping Hawk snapping out behind him as he walked. He indicated to Gjallandi to join them, because the man was a skald and he wanted this remembered – and the priest, Adalbert, still getting his land-legs back and whey-faced from bokking up his dinner as an offering to the goddess Ran.

There were four Orkneymen in all, all ring-mailed and armed. One carried the raven banner – the
hrafnsmerki
– and Crowbone marked him; it was said that the banner had been made by Gunnhild, or one of her kind and that it made sure of victory, even as it guaranteed the death of the man who carried it.

The man, stern and spade-bearded, met Crowbone’s gaze coolly enough, but had the flat, grey eyes of the hopeless; later, Murrough wondered what made a man take the pole of that banner in his hand and Kaetilmund said a woman was at the bottom of it, needing money and driving the fool to fame. Crowbone did not answer, but he knew the truth; the man’s jarl, to whom the banner-bearer had oathed away his own reason, had chosen him as the slain.

One other was there to defend the banner and he held high the white shield of peace. The other two were chieftains, for sure, in their best war gear of brass-dagged long coats of rings and fancy silver-ended swords – one older and one young, built like a barrel of ale.

‘I am Arnfinn Thorfinsson,’ the older one said, peeling off his helmet to let the grey-streaked hair be ruffled by the sea breeze. ‘This is Sigurd, son of my brother Hlodvir and brought here for the learning in it.’

Crowbone nodded. Sigurd was older than Crowbone by two or three years, no more, and one day would be a ruler of Orkney – if his father lived and his uncles let him. Crowbone searched the boy’s face for a sign, a mark, anything that revealed why he had been picked for greatness and not another. There was nothing but his red-flushed cheeks and a lopsided half-grin.

‘Olaf,’ he said, before the silence grew insulting, ‘son of Tryggve. I am a true prince of Norway and the rightful king.’

‘Just so,’ Arnfinn declared. ‘I had heard this. You have come for my wife’s mother, of course and her son, the last of the brood. Did you know he was the one who killed your father? He tells of it often, for it was the first man he cut down in a fight and he is very proud that it was a king who blooded him.’

Crowbone raised an eyebrow. Was the man deliberately trying to provoke? Yet Arnfinn’s face was bland, almost cheerful.

‘Gunnhild and her son are gone, with a wheen of my men. Good riddance I say, even if it means I have fewer men than I would like if it comes to a fight. My wife is of the same mind, for she is nothing like her mother at all.’

Crowbone saw it then, a flare like flint and steel sparking in his head. Gunnhild and Gudrod had gone, following the instructions in the monk-message and taking a lot of Arnfinn’s men with them, so that Orkney was only lightly defended. Arnfinn wanted to deal and Crowbone had an idea what he wanted thrown into the trade.

When he realised what the offer was, the force of it took his breath away. Arnfinn hauled out buckets of silver and offered supplies for Crowbone and all he seemingly wanted was for Crowbone’s men to go away without a fight. All they took in exchange was the body of Rovald, who had wheezed his last and was to be decently howed up.

‘Just like that,’ Gjallandi declared into the delight of men loading the stuff on the ships. ‘With no fighting at all, only the threat of it. Young Crowbone here did not as much as wave his sword and all of Orkney handed him its riches.’

The knowledge that silver could be had for the threat stayed with them all the way to Borg and sat beside Crowbone on the Bull Kings’ feast bench as men roared and boasted and threw bones at each other. Crowbone smiled and nodded, but kept his counsel.

It did no harm for the men to think that Arnfinn and the rest of Orkney had handed out silver out of fear, but the truth was another piece in the game of kings, a truth arranged in private in the dim dark of the hall; if Gunnhild and Gudrod came back from this axe hunt, Arnfinn would be a man disappointed in the true prince of Norway. It was ceasing to surprise Crowbone, the way folk were prepared to pay to be rid of the unwanted.

When sufficient honour to each other had been done, Crowbone and the others he had brought – Kaetilmund, Onund and Murrough, who were the captains of his other three ships – thanked their drunken
pictii
hosts, wrapped themselves in their cloaks and walked out of the gate and back down the avenue of Bull stones, round to the curve of bay and bright red fire-flowers there.

‘One day,’ Murrough said, looking back at the bulk of the fort, ‘better men will make these strutters bow the knee.’

‘You are only annoyed because they say a man who fights with an axe is no man at all,’ Onund chided and Murrough chuckled in the dark.

‘Nor do they fight with the bow,’ he added and shook his head. ‘It is a wonder they have endured this long, what with all that and their silly little square shields and their tunics you could play ’tafl on.’

Crowbone was only happy to be leaving them entirely, though he notched the place in the tally stick of his head; one day, when Norway was his, this would be a good stepping stone for the rest of the north of Alba.

Back at the camp, music filtered, strange and fine in the night, as someone plucked strings in a delicate, leaping lilt. Men shuffled in a stamping jig, while others kept time beating hands on thighs and laughing; flames danced shadows and the smell of cooking was a comfort wafted on the cold wash of night air.

Crowbone came into the middle of them, grinning and getting chaffered about him deigning to join them from his richer revels; he acknowledged it with a good-natured wave and came up to the fire and the player. It was Bergliot, who smiled at him but did not stop her fast fingering of the instrument.

It was a
gusli
,
which one of the Slavs from Kiev had brought with him, a five-stringed affair called
krylovidnye
which meant ‘shaped like a wing’. There was another type, bigger and shaped like a helmet and with more string, but this was a good travelling instrument and Bergliot played it well. When she finished, he graciously said so and she flashed flame-dyed teeth across the fire at him.

‘Shall I play you something?’ she demanded sweetly. ‘A wee cradlesong, perhaps, like your ma no doubt did for you to sugar your dreams.’

‘My ma never played such,’ he answered, harsh as a crow’s laugh. ‘Thralls were not allowed instruments and I was usually chained to the privy, so there was nothing much that could sweeten my dreams save revenge on those who did it to us.’

There was silence at that, both from those who knew the tale of Crowbone’s past and those finding out about it for the first time. Everyone now knew that the reason they had gone to Orkney was to visit that revenge on Gunnhild. Still, that and the pursuit of an axe now seemed better business with silver weighing the purses tucked under armpits or between their balls and, besides, this so-called prince of Norway had plucked most of them from ruin in Dyfflin.

Bergliot went still and quiet, her eyes bright in the firelight and so close to tears, it seemed to Crowbone, that he felt ashamed at having been so snarling.

‘She did tell me stories, though,’ he added lamely and the tension slid away from the fire. Bergliot wavered up a smile.

‘Long ago in Lord Novgorod the Great, lived a young musician,’ Crowbone said suddenly and there was a wind of sighing as those closest leaned in to hear better. ‘Every day, a rich merchant or noble would send a messenger to this man’s door, calling him to play at a feast. The musician would grab his twelve-string
gusli
and rush to the banquet hall and make them dance. The host would pass him a few small coins and let him eat his fill from the leftovers – on such as he was given did the musician live.’

‘My life entirely,’ said the owner of the
gusli
sadly, a man called Hrolfr, and those who knew him laughed.

‘Then you will know this man’s friends,’ Crowbone went on, ‘who would often ask how he could survive on so little. “It’s not so bad,” the man would reply. “I go to a different feast each day, play the music I love and watch it set a whole room dancing.”’

Crowbone paused. ‘Now that I think of it, I am sure – more than sure – that his name was Hrolfr.’

People laughed at that and clapped the man from Novgorod on the back, he beaming back at them. Crowbone saw Bergliot, her eyes round and bright as an owl.

‘Yet,’ Crowbone went on as more men filtered quietly in, attracted by the news that a story was being told, ‘sometimes Hrolfr was lonely. The maidens who danced gaily to his music at the feasts would often smile at him and more than one had set his heart on fire. But they were rich and he lived on thrown coins and leftovers and not one of them would think of being his.

‘One lonely evening, Hrolfr walked sadly beyond the city walls and down along the broad River Volkhov. He came to his favourite spot on the bank and set his
gusli
on his lap. “My lovely River Volkhov,” he said with a sigh. “If only you were a woman, I’d marry you and live with you here in the city I love.”’

‘It is true,’ Hrolfr burst out. ‘Is there another city such as Lord Novgorod the Great in all the world? Is there any better place to be?’

‘Silent is a better place to be,’ growled Stick-Starer from the shadows and Hrolfr, prepared to argue the point, was patted and soothed to be quiet.

‘Hrolfr played and the notes of his
gusli
floated over the Volkhov,’ Crowbone continued. ‘All at once a large shape rose from the water and Hrolfr yelled with fear. Before him stood a huge man, with a crown crusted with jewels like barnacles, with a great neck veil of pearls and, under it, a flowing mane of seaweed hair. “Musician,” said the man, “behold Aegir, King of the Waters. To this river I have come to visit one of my daughters, the Princess Volkhova. Your sweet music reached us on the river bottom, where it pleased us greatly.” It was all Hrolfr could do to stammer his thanks.