Crowbone (41 page)

Surfacing, with a whoop as if he had plunged into cold water. Breaching like a whale from an ocean of dark into blinding agony that made him roar.

‘Easy, easy,’ Bergliot soothed, while she seared lances into him and men held him down. He saw her, fingers and bone needle bloody, hooking another rusted iron ring out of the wound and flicking it away like a tick from a dog. The cold chewed on the stripped bare shoulder, the rest of him swaddled in a cloak, his hauberk and tunic both removed.

There was a flurry of movement behind Crowbone that drew all their heads round; men milled, uncertain and uneasy about what to do next as Erling came up, with Onund and Kaetilmund, the three of them carrying the body of Od. They had scambled down scree and snow to the foot of the frozen falls, Crowbone realised, while Gjallandi and Bergliot had been busy with his shoulder, howling more agony into him with their attempts at healing. Who did they now stand with, he wondered?

Kaetilmund saw Crowbone’s stare and ignored it, for his mind and eyes were still full of Od in the raven tree. When he and Onund and the tallow-faced Erling had skidded and slithered to the foot of the waterfall, they saw Od spreadeagled across the splintered remains of the dead, stunted pine, skewered through arms and legs and body.

The worst was the branch which had gone up under his chin, needled through his tongue and come out of his mouth. The force of him landing had snapped it, so that his ruined face lolled sideways, staring at them with eyes like a fresh-kicked dog. On a rock nearby, the disapproving raven glared at them, black and unwinking.

Getting him off had been a hard, panting struggle of cracking ice-hard branches, but they managed it and lugged him back up the side of the falls again. Onund, sucking air into his searing lungs, lowered the feet of the boy and straightened into the eyes of Crowbone.

‘Is he dead?’

Erling, his face twisted still with the shock of it, heard Crowbone’s question and the truth of it crashed like a wave, so that he grunted and almost buckled to his knees. The boy was dead. Od was gone.

When no-one answered, Crowbone shoved folk away from him and struggled up, weaving, hoping his knees would not buckle. The earth heaved like a ship in a swell.

‘As well,’ Crowbone said to Erling. ‘That boy was wrong in his head.’

Erling gave a hoarse, high shrill of sound and Crowbone, gasping with the pain it caused him, hauled out the axe stuck down his belt in the small of his back. Onund and Kaetilmund had grabbed the struggling Erling, were forcing him to his knees, the great hunchback cooing at him as if he was soothing a restive horse.

‘You need to guard your mouth, Crowbone,’ Kaetilmund said bitterly.

‘You mistake me for someone who cares about a man trying to kill me,’ Crowbone spat back. He stepped forward to where Erling, his eyes raving and wild, struggled and kicked, held tight by the two men.

For a moment he stood, while Erling, his mouth covered by Onund’s massive hand, hoarsed out screams between the fingers and lurched, fighting to get to Crowbone now that his target was close.

‘In the name of the gods,’ Kaetilmund panted, ‘move away at least.’

Crowbone looked at them each in turn and shook his head. He could not believe that Erling was still alive and wondered why these, his men, had allowed it. His shoulder burned and the side of his head had that cold icicle driven in it. In a movement, quick as a snake strike, he brought up the butt of the hand-axe and slapped Erling in the forehead, then grunted and cursed with the pain it seared through his shoulder and into his whole body.

Erling slumped like a sack, then stirred and blinked.

‘Let him go,’ Crowbone ordered and Kaetilmund and Onund did so; Erling fell to his knees and started to retch.

‘Behave yourself,’ Crowbone said to him, ‘or I will use the blade.’

Then he looked at Onund and Kaetilmund.

‘This one should be dead. He wanted to attack the jarl you are oathed to protect – yet all you did was struggle with him.’

‘Which oath?’ asked Onund savagely. ‘The one all Oathsworn give to Odin? Or the one you had others swear to you alone?’

Crowbone ignored him, looked round at Erling’s tight-faced men while their leader wiped his mouth and climbed to his feet.

‘Who among you is a shipmaster?’ Crowbone demanded and, after a series of shuffles and looking from one to the other, a man stepped forward, small and ice-grimmed, his eyes like wary beasts in the thicket of his face.

‘I am Ulfar Arnkelsson,’ he declared. ‘I know the stars and the waves, rarely make a mistake in runes and am a shipmaster of note. I can ski a little …’

‘I am not looking to hire you,’ Crowbone snarled and the man’s teeth clicked together.

‘You should be wondering why you are all alive,’ Crowbone told him and the men at his back, ‘so I shall tell you. You will take the body of Od back to Gudrod in Orkney. You will take those men stupid enough to pass up the chance of riches with me and had better hope there are enough of them to crew a ship, for you will get no more.’

Ulfar glanced over Crowbone’s shoulder, to where Erling stood like a weary ox.

‘No,’ said Crowbone softly, shrugging the cloak free and leaving himself naked to the waist, though he felt no cold. ‘Do not look to Flatnose, for his day is done.’

He turned then and struck, knowing the distance between them to the last finger-width. The axe split Erling’s head sideways under the hairline so hard that the man’s feet shot out from under him. He hit the ice of the frozen riverbank with a crash, blood and yellow gleet spilling from his head, cracked like an eggshell. If he made a sound, or knew what had hit him, he gave no last sign of it.

There was a howl of outrage and the Orkneymen stirred like a broken byke; weapons came up, shields clattered.

‘Mother of God,’ whispered Adalbert, but Onund roared him down.

‘Odin’s holy arse, boy – what are you?’

Crowbone fixed him with his odd-eyed stare as his own men fell into fighting crouches, weapons ready.

‘A prince,’ he rasped back, ‘who knows the game of kings enough not to leave a threat at his back.’

There was sense in it, enough so that Kaetilmund, sick at the ease with which Crowbone had killed Erling, flicked a worried gaze at Onund. The Icelander’s face was thunderous, his neck drawn in and his hump towering up like the mountain itself.

‘The gods have given up on you, boy prince,’ he snarled. ‘And so have I.’

Crowbone tensed. He had half-expected it, but the actual moment of it was crushing. Behind, he heard confusion and angry voices, knew that men were drawing apart, the Oathsworn sliding towards Onund and Kaetilmund. Across the way, the Orkneymen were looking at one another and spotting a chance, while Erling and Od bled sluggish tarns on to the scuffed ice.

The cold air grew thick with fear and tension, the shouting rose up like the smoke of their panting breath. Kaetilmund blinked once or twice, looked at the furled Stooping Hawk banner he carried, then flung it at Crowbone’s feet and stepped back; Crowbone’s men growled and the yellow bitch, picking up on the thick angry air, whined uneasily, not knowing who was the enemy.

Then a voice cut through it like the whirl of Crowbone’s hand-axe.

‘I have come just in time, it seems.’

There was silence. Orm Bear-Slayer stepped up over the edge of the falls trail and men spilled up after him, springing eager and weapons ready. One was Finn.

‘By the Hammer,’ he said, with a look towards Crowbone that mingled disgust and admiration, ‘you have not learned the lesson of axe and head, have you, boy?’

Finnmark, the mountain of Surman Suuhun, days later …

CROWBONE’S CREW

THERE was not one among them who liked the place, though only one admitted it openly, scowling up at the slick, grey-green rocks and the dark cleft spilling out white smoke which stank.

‘It has always been my belief,’ Murrough grunted, glancing uneasily at the dark split and the white vapour, ‘that such a place is the home of a dragon.’

It raised hackles on everyone at once, for the suck and roar of it, with the hot, smoking breath that went with it, certainly looked as much like the breathing of a great, scaled wyrm as any had imagined. Finn, of course, merely grinned, heady with delight at having found warmth and only slightly annoyed by the smell.

‘What do you know of dragons?’ he countered, while the Irisher glowered back at him. ‘You come from a country where there are not even snakes, let alone a decent-sized wyrm.’

‘Regardless,’ Murrough muttered. ‘A hole in a wall of rock with stinking hot smoke coming from it is not a welcoming place.’

‘Dwarves,’ agreed Tuke. ‘If not wyrm, then a
jötunn
, for sure, perhaps even Surt himself.’

Then he grinned.

‘Or a
duergar
, forging up some marvellous blade.’

Since he looked so much like one, folk made warding signs, not entirely certain he was not planning to introduce them to his kin.

‘Cursed, so it is,’ Murrough added with relish and everyone nodded and agreed that this was almost certainly the case. Finn, festooned with bundles, stopped adjusting himself and stared at the Irisher, clearly impressed.

‘A wyrm,’ declared one of the Orkneymen who had come with them, ‘for that stink is its fire-breath, waiting to happen.’

Onund Hnufa gave his usual preliminary grunt and heads turned as he forced his huge, deformed shoulder – as big, it seemed, as the cliff towering over them – into the pack.

‘By the Hammer,’ he growled, then spat derisively. ‘Gather up your skirts and listen to me, you fuds. I am from Mork in Iceland. I have lived a deal of my life with Hekla on one side and Katla on the other, two great mountains only reached across a field of black rock where nothing grows at all. There is this same stink and same white smoke almost all the while from those places – at night I have seen the red glow off them. Folk who live there assure me this is because the World Wyrm itself has his slumbering head right beneath our feet. Yet I have never, ever, in all my life, seen anything that resembled a single scale.’

No-one spoke, for Onund was fearsome when he scathed. In the end, only Murrough dared.

‘Well then. Not Jörmungandr’s head, as Onund tells us that is in Iceland. His arse, probably, judging by the smell.’

‘Ha,’ scoffed Halfdan, ‘that is Finn, suffering from his own cooking.’

Finn, who was reeking most of the time, beamed and that brought some chuckles. They were forced, all the same; no-one cared for this place and they had struggled up to it over fresh snow, studded with bits and pieces of men’s life – and the men themselves.

They had found helmets, a scrag-end of fur, a broken spear – a hand. They dug out the bodies at first, saw them frozen as wooden dolls and soon realised there were so many it would take them forever.

‘Haakon’s men,’ Orm declared. ‘Gudrod’s Orkeneyers also. They fought and here is where Gudrod won his victory.’

Crowbone knew he was wondering if the priest, Martin, was among them, for he was not with anyone else. Unless he was alone, of course. It would not surprise Crowbone to find that Martin had come to this place alone, where scores of men had clearly failed.

‘So Erling spoke true,’ he answered, bitter with thought that Gudrod had won.

‘The curse of the axe,’ growled Klaenger and men looked from one to the other, unsure of matters and bitter that they had come all this way after having been told the truth by Erling after all. Orm saw it; he knew the Oathsworn could be relied on, but only those who had clearly walked to his side as they sorted out who was who at the top of the waterfall.

When it became clear that Onund, Murrough and Kaetilmund and the other survivors of the original eight he had taken were back at Orm’s side, together with a good number of the old Red Brothers who considered the Oath binding, Crowbone felt the bitter gall of it in his mouth.

He had the Christmenn and some of those who still thought their prince was gods-blessed and would bring them to riches. Most of the Orkneymen, having gathered up the dead Od and Erling, let themselves be led by Ulfar the shipmaster, who gave no more than a grim nod to Orm, and filtered out, heading back to the coast and their ships.

‘That may have been a mis-move,’ Crowbone frowned to Orm, watching them leave. ‘They may put a torch to our ships and try and strand us here.’

‘Why would they?’ Orm declared. ‘They gave their word.’

Crowbone said nothing for a moment, though it was clear he thought Orm wrong-headed. Then he glanced at the sky, where a distant honking revealed the last skeins of geese, fleeing the land northmen knew as Cold Shores for the south.

‘I have tripped every trap you put me at,’ he said bitterly. ‘Though there may be one or two ahead left for you. We had better hurry, all the same, for the winter is closing in and if we time this badly, we will be iced here for months.’

Orm nodded and forced a smile, trying to mend some bridges.

‘I did not set you at traps,’ he answered. ‘I had work of my own and thought you would want this axe for your greatness. I thought to bring you the key to the King’s Key – the stick Martin wants in return for the Bloodaxe.’

‘You do not want it, then?’ Crowbone snapped back.

Orm did not answer, for the fact that the boy – he must stop thinking of him as the nine year old he had rescued from Klerkon’s privy chains, he snarled to himself – had asked that at all was a crushing stone to all his hopes. In the end, all he could do was shake his head.

‘I thought to make sure your sky did not fall,’ he said, but the words felt as if he was dragging them from some endlessly-deep sea-chest. ‘I handed you some good men and gave you to the care of Hoskuld. All you had to do was go with him to find out where the axe lay.’

‘You knew Martin was at the bottom of it,’ Crowbone countered sullenly. ‘You knew he was pretending to be this Drostan, yet you did not tell me of that.’

‘I was not sure,’ Orm answered. ‘This Drostan may have been a part of it, though Martin was the cunning in it. I am thinking Martin killed Drostan – it would not be beyond him. Once you got to Mann I thought matters would become clear to you.’