Crowbone (44 page)

‘What can we trade to leave here with no fight from these hounds of yours?’ he rasped, knowing the answer already and Thórgerth blinked her eyes up into his – then slid them back to Bergliot. Crowbone smiled, a long, slow triumphant smile and nodded.

For a moment, Bergliot stared at him bewildered, disbelieving, then her eyes widened, Finally, she screamed.

Sand Vik, Orkney, three weeks later …

THE KING PIECE

Gudrod sat at the far end of a long table, drinking from a green-glass cup. His gilded helmet was perched on the end, the nasal of it scoring a new mark in the scarred wood, the ringmail puddling round it. A board of nine squares sat in front of him, glowing soft as red-gold in the sconces, the pieces winking back fire.

In front of that, stretching the width of the table, lolling like the whore of fortune that she was, lay Odin’s Daughter, the long handle of the Bloodaxe dark with age and sweat and old wickedness, the head gleaming, worked with the inlaid silver mystery of endless snake-knots and strange gripping beasts.

In front of the axe lay another long batten of wood, also dark with age, slightly swollen in the middle and with a nub-end of dark metal licking from the tapered wooden point. It had been taken, swaddled in cloth, from Orm’s shoulder when their weapons had all been removed. It was an Old Roman spear, Crowbone knew, which the priest Martin coveted as a
seidr
of his own.

Crowbone had not known what to expect from this last son of the Mother of Kings, but what he saw was a big man whose neck was thick and roped with great veins down either side, a fleshy face with a neat-trimmed beard more iron than black and eyes a little too bright with drink. Gudrod gestured, the cup in that meaty hand seeming as dainty as an eggshell.

‘Olaf, son of Tryggve,’ he said. Crowbone nodded curtly and walked forward a little, to where the swirling blue dim of the hall broke against the torchlight. Here he was, the killer of his father, the son of Gunnhild who had scattered the lives of him and his mother like chaff to the wind. And there, behind him …

She shifted from the dark like a detaching shadow and the light fell on the stiffened planes of her face, so that he caught his breath. Gunnhild, the hand who wielded the sword, the power which had conspired. He tried to see the eyes, but saw only the knobbed fingers of a hand. He tried to find the hate, but discovered that, strangely now that he was so close after the years running from her, he had no fear, only curiosity.

‘Orm,’ said Gudrod. ‘Finn.’

Each name was a flat slap and, at each one, the owner stepped into the light. Out of the side of an eye, Crowbone saw the iron pillars which followed them, one for each, like watching hounds.

‘Who was it who told you I play ’tafl?’ Gudrod asked Crowbone suddenly.

‘The abbot on Hy,’ Crowbone replied. ‘Or perhaps Erling, before I killed him. I forget which.’

‘Just after he killed that strange lad,’ Orm added. ‘Od.’

The sibilant hiss came from the dark, a herald of the dust and rheum voice to follow.

‘You have them in your power here,’ she said warningly and Gudrod stiffened a little, then hunched his shoulders, as if against a chill breeze on his neck.

‘You are resourceful,’ he said, ignoring her. ‘Survived the Sami and the cold, Erling and that boy. Especially that boy. He was strange and gifted, that one. I respect that – admire it even – but I am not witless. Do you really think to beat me at the game of kings? And that I will hand over the axe if you do?’

That had been the plan when Orm and Finn, Crowbone and the others had reached the Finnmark shore, using axes to break up the forming ice and having to leave two ships behind because they did not have men enough to sail them. Even those who climbed on to their rimed sea-chest oar benches were burst-lipped growlers, trembling with cold.

Crowbone had stood with Orm and Finn on the snow-clotted shingle amid the frozen puddles of the beach arguing this plan; he knew they thought it madness, yet Orm went with it because he saw the hand of Odin in it and Finn went with it
because
it was mad and bold. Crowbone had known that, too, for they were all pieces in the game of kings.

Orm, watching the boy now, felt the grey slide into his heart, for he knew that whatever happened here, Crowbone was gone from him. He wondered what would become of the boy he had loosed from Klerkon’s privy all those years ago.

Not yet into the full of his life, he had said for as long as he could recall, fooling himself with it. Crowbone was into the full of his life now and, just as Orm had predicted long since, was not a man you wanted to be around; the Wend woman had shown that, if nothing else. Orm hoped that Odin had not abandoned them completely – and that Crowbone could play ’tafl.

‘I had heard you could play a bit,’ Crowbone said to Gudrod, with an off-hand shrug, then nodded towards the black-handled axe. ‘Now that you have that blade of victory, I thought to come and lay matters to rest between us. If I win, you and your mother stop working against me.’

Gunnhild’s hiss was enough to bend Gudrod’s backbone and he half turned as if irritated by something between his shoulderblades. Then he drank from the blue-glass cup and set it down gently.

‘You seem to believe you can trade,’ he said. ‘You have nothing to trade. Two words from me and you are a corpse.’

Finn growled and Gudrod glanced up and twisted his fleshy face into a grimace of smiles.

‘I hear you, Finn-who-fears-nothing,’ he sneered. ‘And I feel your stare, slayer of bears. You were foolish to entangle yourselves in this.’

Orm spread his hands and smiled, easy and loose.

‘I am a trader, if you have heard anything of me at all,’ he answered. ‘I thought to help a prince I know. I thought I would be dealing with a Christ priest, mark you.’

‘Ah,’ Gudrod said knowingly and raised one hand above his head. There was a stirring in the shadows and then another iron pillar came forward, thrusting a figure by one shoulder. So, Crowbone thought, three guards …

‘Martin,’ said Orm and the figure raised its slumped head. He was blackened with ice rot and lurched, hip-shot to take the weight off his crippled foot. One hand was held awkwardly, the fingers of it clearly broken and sticking out at odd angles and his mouth was a fester of brown and black that showed when he breathed, for his nose was smashed and he sucked air in over raw gums.

Yet the eyes were a glittering grue at the sight of the Roman lance and he stretched out his good hand towards it.

‘Mine,’ he said and Gudrod backhanded him, so that the priest’s head flew sideways. Finn and Orm both half started to their feet and Crowbone stared at them, astonished. Here was their arch-enemy – why did they care how badly he was handled?

Orm laid a hand on Finn’s arm and they both sank back to their benches, so that the ring-mailed hounds behind them eased a little and let their swords slide back into sheaths.

‘Mine,’ Gudrod replied mockingly as Martin struggled to his feet.

‘Tscha,’ spat Gunnhild, forcing herself forward into the light. ‘Kill them now and be done with this. It is bad enough you let Haakon’s people go free and kept this festered monk …’

‘Thank you,’ Martin lisped, puffing blood on to the wild matting of his beard. ‘That tooth pained me more than the others.’

Then he smiled, showing the bloody ruin of his swelling tongue and the blood in his mouth.

‘I have had the winter eat my foot to endless pain,’ he puffed at Gudrod. ‘Brondolf Lambisson, whom you never knew and should thank God for it, broke my mouth long since. I have suffered the wrath of my God, little man, and there is no pain the equal of that. Think you are a king in making, a hard man from the
vik
? My first baby shite was harder than you can hit.’

Crowbone heard the delighted ‘heya’ from behind him. He turned to where Finn grinned, shaking his head with admiration.

‘You have to say it,’ he declared, beaming into Gudrod’s thunder, ‘our Martin speaks true enough. He is the hardest man I know, for sure.’

Our Martin. Crowbone could hardly believe he heard it – there was even affection there. Martin wobbled his head round and fixed it on them.

‘Is that yourself, Finn? Ja, I think so. Orm also must be there. For certain you have sold yourselves to the Devil, to have come this far. You should both be dead.’

‘I know you planned matters differently,’ Orm answered coldly. ‘Good men died for that and there is not much left of you. I have decided that this foolishness between us ends here.’

‘You have decided?’

It was Gudrod’s cracking bone of a voice and his eyes blazed behind it. ‘You? In my own hall, you say this. To me?’

‘Arnfinn’s hall,’ Finn answered with a scowl. ‘You have no hall of your own.’

‘Nor will have if you do not behave like a king …’ Gunnhild interrupted, her voice cracking like the paint on her twisting face.

‘Quiet!’

The thunder of it rang them all to silence and Gudrod stood, his face dark and his whole body heaving with the effort of controlling his anger. His eyes raged at them all and, momentarily, he put a hand to one temple, then let it drop.

‘I should kill you now,’ he declared and sat down, suddenly, like a dumped bag of winter oats.

‘That you can is undeniable,’ Crowbone answered. ‘You will not, of course. Because your mother wishes it and you wish to defy her. Because you wonder if you have the beating of me in the game of kings.’

‘Son, there is danger …’ Gunnhild began and Gudrod rolled his head and shoulders and bellowed incoherently until she was quiet, glowering in the dark, seeing his blood-suffused cheeks and feeling the threads slipping away from her.

‘After I beat you,’ Gudrod said slowly to Crowbone, ‘if you have played half well, I shall keep you for the amusement of it. The others I will kill.’

‘When I win,’ Crowbone countered, ‘I may stay the winter with you, for the amusement of it. The others will go free, the priest with Orm and Finn.’

Gudrod paused for a moment, then shoved the board forward slightly, pushing the axe into the spear so that, for a moment, they nestled together.

‘Choose,’ he said.

Orm watched. He had played
hnefatafl
, as most northmen of worth did but he was middling fair at it and saw that Crowbone had opted to be the attacker. That gave him sixteen dark counters –
taeflor
, or table-men – surrounding Gudrod’s eight white-bone pieces, plus the
hnefi
, the King piece.

The object was simple – surround the King and capture him before he was escorted to safety in any corner, using moves up and down, left and right only. The safety-corner was the Norwegian way of playing, for most folk settled for escape to the table-edge on small boards, allowing the more difficult corner escape for larger boards with more pieces.

At first sight, then, it seemed to onlookers that Crowbone had all the advantages – twice as many men and no easy escape for the
hnefi
. Yet that was the deception of the game of kings – the King’s men need only arrange for their Lord to escape the board, so the King player must try to capture as many attackers as possible to clear an escape route, while not trying too hard to protect his own men since they, too, can block the King’s escape. He was the chooser of the slain and it did not matter to him how many died, only that the King got away.

The attacker had not only to prevent the King’s escape, but also capture him, which was not as simple as it seemed. The best way was actually to avoid taking any pieces early in the game, instead scattering the attackers so that they got in the way and also blocked possible escape routes.

They played in silence, until Gudrod, hovering over a piece, hesitated and smiled.

‘You play well,’ he said. ‘I am pleased.’

‘You should drink less,’ hissed his mother from the dark, where she gnawed her knuckles and tried to make spells. Crowbone saw her and laughed aloud, making Gudrod turn, scowling.

‘Enough of that, mother,’ he said lightly. ‘He is good and I shall keep him – but I am better and will win without your help.’

‘She has no power over me,’ Crowbone chuckled, hoping it was true. A move later, he stroked his thickening beard and smiled ruefully.

‘Perhaps we should have played
brandubh
instead,’ he said and Gudrod laughed, hugely enjoying himself.
Brandubh
was the same game, but played by the Irish using dice; every norther knew that the true game of skill was played without those marked cubes.

Yet the next move, Crowbone announced, as the game bound him to do: ‘Watch your King’, meaning he had the capture of it in the very next move. Frowning, Gudrod managed to avoid the trap and Finn let out his breath and shifted in his seat.

They played in silence for the next few moves. Crowbone looked over to where Orm and Finn sat, tense as birds on a washing line. The plan had been spelled out beforehand, but it now seemed less obvious; he wriggled his toes in his boot, where the dagger nestled. He knew Finn’s nail was down his and that the guards had missed it, too. Three guards only – and Crowbone knew that, no matter what shouts and noise happened here, no-one was coming to Gudrod’s aid in this hall.

How quickly could he pull out the dagger? It did not seem to Crowbone that he would get it out of the boot before the guards saw him and even without them, Gudrod seemed a big, powerful man, which Crowbone had not expected. The idea of pulling a knife on a man that size seemed suddenly ludicrous and Crowbone’s mouth went dry, while the sheath-straps burned round his ankle. Then he saw the shadowed planes of Gunnhild’s cheekbones, the eyes fixed on him, feral as a mad cat and he was sure she was trying to read his thoughts.

‘Passage,’ Gudrod declared triumphantly. ‘Doubled.’

Which meant he had two ways to freedom and Crowbone saw at once that he could block only one. Gudrod watched Crowbone’s face, looking for the moment hope left it and was surprised to be denied that. To provoke it, he added: ‘The King has escaped you.’

Crowbone slumped a little, as if dejected, his hands dropping beneath the table. Then he raised his head.