by Robert Low
At which point there were admiring noises about Crowbone’s feat of memory, from those who did not realise he was not the boy he appeared.
‘The flea,’ said Crowbone, ignoring them, ‘thought about it for a moment, then said: “Why not? Here I go.” And he crawled right up the arse of the ox and bit, which made the beast dash into the pool of water and stir it up. The water splashed and began to put out the fire, which went mad and burned the white beard of the old man, who beat the dog, who ran after the cat and bit her. The cat caught the rat, who had to gnaw the string of the hunter’s bow before she was freed. The hunter tied on a new one and shot an arrow at the pig, who went and rooted up the carrots of the smith.
‘“Aha, aha!” shrieked the gull-king in triumph and the smith, looking ruefully at the remains of his carrot patch, shrugged and said: “You have succeeded, right enough, Sterki.”
‘The gull-king swooped and laughed. “Then hand back my egg,” he screamed. The smith blinked once and blinked twice.
‘“Is that what this is all about?” he asked and shook his head. “I ate that egg for breakfast days ago.”’
There was silence as the story echoed to a close. Men shifted, not liking the ending much.
‘Take the silver,’ Crowbone said softly. ‘Your egg is gone, Randr Sterki, and all your long revenge will not bring it back.’
There was silence, broken only by the hissing wind and the sibilance of shifting feet.
‘I should have killed you when I caught you running off,’ Randr said bitterly and Crowbone stepped closer, a spear in each hand and his voice sharper than either of them.
‘Instead,’ he said, his voice suddenly deeper than before, ‘you gave me to Klerkon’s woman, to beat and chain like a dog outside the privy. Instead, you had your woman and boy shave me with an edgeless seax. You let Kveldulf put his wean in my ma’s belly and then kick the life out of both of them when it suited him. And laughed.’
Randr blinked and shook his head, as if trying to drive that away like an irrelevant fly – but it would not quit him and he had no answer to it. Slowly, he nodded once, then twice. Behind him, men shifted and muttered and then a bearcoat threw back his head, howled and lurched at Crowbone. The gods alone know why, for there was no profit or sense in it, but those skin-wearing droolers seldom fight for either, though fighting is all they know.
It was like watching a cliff fall on a mouse – yet Crowbone did not even flinch, merely looked up, half-spun and threw with both hands. Two spears smacked the man, one in his chest, the other in his right thigh and he went pitching forward on his nose. Alyosha stepped forward smartly and axed his throat open, knowing a pelt-wearer was not dead until he was really dead.
Someone – from Randr’s own men – gave an admiring ‘heya’ even as the victim curled and writhed round the spears, like a hooked worm; the last trio of bearcoats, trembling on the brink of summoning power, looked at each other – and all their skin-magic soaked away, so that they seemed to wrinkle and sag like empty skyr-bags.
‘Courage is not hacksilver, to be shut always in a purse,’ Red Njal growled, seeing this. ‘It needs to be taken out and shown the sun, as my granny used to say.’
‘Finish this,’ Hlenni called out, but I saw Crowbone’s warning eye and held up a stopping hand.
‘Enough has been done, one to the other,’ I said. ‘Take the silver you have dug up and let that be blood-price for any loss. Let this be an end.’
Randr’s face was smeared with twisted hate, yet he backed away then, into the maw of his men, hauling Hallgeir with him; one by one at first, then in groups, they sidled round the half-hidden men of Crowbone and slithered into the shadows, heading for my silver and safety.
Alyosha let out his breath with a sharp sound as the last one vanished and my own men rushed forward to free me.
‘Good throwing,’ Alyosha declared, but Crowbone frowned, looking at the dying man with disdain.
‘Too weak in the left hand,’ he answered. ‘Both spears were meant to go in his chest.’
In later life, Crowbone perfected throwing spears with both hands at the same time and it served him well, but this first attempt was timely enough for me, I thought, as eager hands untied me. I managed to get that out to him before Thorgunna’s embrace drove the air from me entirely.
Crowbone’s scowl vanished.
‘Aye, it was timely at that,’ he answered brightly, as if realising it for the first time.
‘You should have finished Randr Sterki,’ Hlenni pointed out and, even washed by the safe and loving press of friends and those who held me dear, I could feel Randr’s hate and wondered why the boy had not pressed the fight.
‘He still has Sigurd’s nose,’ I said to him.
‘Your sword also,’ he replied, then lost the grin and sighed. ‘I would have, but…’
Right there and then I heard the crack as his voice broke to manhood. He cleared his throat and looked bewildered for a moment or two, then spoke on, his voice breaking on every second or third word, to his annoyance.
‘I came short-handed to the feast. Alyosha was concerned.’ Then he motioned, so that a mere ten men stepped forward from the shadows behind him. If Randr had decided to fight, Crowbone and his men would almost certainly have gone under. Alyosha peeled off his gilded, face-mailed helmet, puffing out sweat-sheened cheeks and grinning from behind a damp beard.
‘We left too many men with Short Serpent,’ he declared and shot Crowbone a sharp, sideways look that made it clear whose fault that had been; the boy loved his ship too much. Crowbone ignored him and held out his small fist; I clasped him, wrist to wrist and heard his voice, rising and falling like a ship on a bad sea.
‘I will take back Sigurd’s nose one day, from off the stump of Randr Sterki’s neck,’ he said, trying to growl and only half succeeding. ‘But all is done with for now.’
The grin returned, making it clear who I had to thank for it. Somehow, I knew there would be a price to pay for that – if Odin let me live that long.
‘Will he be done with this now that he has your silver?’ Red Njal asked and I remembered Randr’s hate-mask of a face. My look told him all he needed to know.
Still, we were free of danger for now, so that people clapped each other on the shoulder, or hugged one another, smiling and the children, caught up in the moment, laughed and danced. But the joy of it was soured by the weeping for Botolf – and, later, the great red glow which I knew was Hestreng hall burning, a last spiteful act that told me Randr had not finished yet with his hate.
‘That and your silver loss,’ Crowbone mused, watching the red glow, ‘must be a sore dunt – but I saw the state Dragon Wings was in and it comes to me that those burned strakes will maybe leak him all the way to the bottom of the Baltic, weregild silver and all.’
I said nothing. The one child not laughing was red-faced, flame-haired Helga Hiti, wailing because her mother wailed for Botolf – yet it was still birdsong to me, as was every other voice I heard, for they were alive and safe and I said as much, so that the new man that was Crowbone nodded soberly.
‘Fitting, then, for that old tale,’ he said and, through the pain of Thorgunna spooning the blood clots from my tortured nose, I managed to tell him that I owed him for the telling of it, which made him grin. The grin broadened as Thorgunna and her sister told me to be still and to weesht and stop behaving like a bairn while they tortured my neb further.
Through the tears I saw Crowbone, too pleased to take the news of it blandly, as an older prince would do. He managed to stammer out that nothing was owed between friends and I am sure he meant it, seeing the baleful red eye turning Hestreng to ashes and Randr Sterki running off with my wealth.
Well, that was one moonlit burial and, though it was the largest amount of Atil’s cursed silver, it was not the only hoard of it; only a careless man piles all his wealth in one hole. I kept my teeth shut on that matter around Crowbone, all the same, for it is a doubly-careless man who boasts of suc
h cleverness.
Anyway, if I had opened my mouth at all, only foul curses would have come from it at what Thorgunna and her sister were doing to my nose, which would have left me with cold oatmeal and a turned back for weeks. With everything else, that would have been a mountain weight on my shoulders.
The air was a sharp breath of ash and snow around Hestreng hall on the day we trundled back to it. A ribcage of wet, black timbers it was, collapsed on itself like a dead beast and a light rain sifting down like tears to turn the ground round it to black mud.
‘I am sorry for it,’ said the queen, coming up behind Thorgunna and Aoife and me as we stood, stilled by the loss, while the others poked about and cried out when they recognised the remains of something they had once known well.
‘Aye,’ agreed Crowbone, though too young to make his pretended sombre look work. He had seen too much of this – done a deal of this himself – up and down the Baltic to be truly moved by a tragedy that was not his to bear. It came to me then that I had done the same, in my time.
‘I shall have men and timber sent,’ the queen said, ‘when I am home.’
I remembered Finn telling Botolf about what a king such as Eirik would do for those who saved his little prince and hoped the big man heard this now in Odin’s hall, enough to nod and smile at it all, standing proud and tall on two good legs.
Thorgunna and Thordis embraced, then bustled off to choke their tears in ordering folk about, to set up what shelters and cooking fires we could; Ingrid, red-eyed, chivvied Helga away from the ruins of Hestreng hall, too late to prevent black streaking her dress and face.
‘At least the bairns are safe,’ Red Njal offered, trying to be bright. ‘And if you need silver…well, I have most of my share in a secret hole. Hlenni Brimill, too.’
I felt the warmth of them then, felt the other side of that cold Oath we had sworn when we had followed the prow beast and owned no more than could be safely stowed in a sea-chest. I told him I still had my own secret hole, at which he nodded as if he had known it all along. Then he clapped me on the shoulder and went off to help sort matters out; the old yard of Hestreng rang with noise and bustle, just as if it was not burned.
Yet not all the bairns were safe. Somewhere, out on the slow-heaving grey-green water of the whale road, Jarl Brand’s son shivered and hoped.
NINE
It was an island humped like Onund’s shoulder, where green slopes ran down to meet sand, then water; on a day of bright sunshine and birdsong it would have been a pretty place to be, but on this day, with what we had come for and the rain in our faces, it had no charm.
On the shore were buildings, mean as sties most of them, but others large and prosperous-looking, with carved wooden doorways and thatched roofs. In the quiet curve of this cluster of houses lay a series of wharves, like spokes on a half-wheel, where ships were tied up; more vessels were run up on the beach not far away and most were the solid, heavy riverboats the Slavs call strugs, carved from a single tree. The others were fat trading knarrer, but the only raiding ship other than the one I stood on was hauled up for careening; I knew it at once as Ljot’s ship.
‘Look at them run,’ laughed Ospak, pointing and a few others joined in, harsh with the excitement of it all. They were all the newer crew, who had never been anywhere; the old hands hardly looked up.
There was a clanging noise from the solid fortress, a square of fat timber piles, their sharpened points softened by age and moss, with square towers at each corner and flanking the gate. I had taken the prow beasts off, but the settlement swarmed like an anthill and the alarm was sounding in the fortress which glowered over it.
‘Send a man to the prow,’ I said to Crowbone. ‘Unarmed and without byrnie. Let him stand there with his arms out and weapon-free, to show we mean no harm.’
He acknowledged it with a small nod and passed it on to Alyosha, who cut a man from the pack and sent him. So far, so good – but having Crowbone and his crew as Oathsworn was like walking on the edge of a seax; I would not have done it had it not been for Jarl Brand and Koll.
Jarl Brand had been the only one not at the feast King Eirik gave for the safe return of his queen and his son. As Finn had said, once we had done with our greetings, that was not because Brand was lacking the strength or grit for it, but just because he had a wounded face that would put folk off their eating.
Not that everyone at the feast, where King Eirik presented his son, had an appetite; too many of the guests were strange company for that.
There were Christ priests, a gaggle of them from the West Franks and the Saxlanders of Hammaburg, all gabbling about baptisms and chrism-loosenings while glaring at each other and trying to make sure they had no horse meat in their bowls.
Then there was Haakon of Hladir, ruler of Norway which he had from the hand of Denmark’s King Harald Bluetooth and which hand he was now trying to bite. Bluetooth, not quite a broken-fanged dog, was snarling back and so Haakon was seated at King Eirik’s left, looking for help and smiling politely through the teeth he had to grit every time he heard Crowbone called ‘Prince of Norway’.
Eirik himself, though crowned king of the Svears and Geats, still had troubles up and down his lands and Bluetooth had designs on them that he was not about to give up, so any enemy of Bluetooth was a friend of King Eirik and Haakon had been handy for the fight against Styrbjorn.
Then, astoundingly perched in the guest bench, was Svein, Bluetooth’s son, who had also helped against Styrbjorn, though he was scarce older than that cursed youth. Young enough, in fact, not have fleeced up the chin-hair that would give him his famed by-name in later life – Forkbeard – he was here to annoy his da, for he wanted more say in Danish matters and Bluetooth had no liking to let him.
Then there was Crowbone, fresh broken to manhood and following Queen Sigrith with his dog-eyes. For her part, she was dressed in a blue so dark it was almost black, trimmed with white wolf and dripping with amber and silver, every inch the queen she wanted to appear, pleased with herself for presenting a son to her king, rich and ripe with life because she and the boy had survived the affair. Better still, of course, was her man’s acceptance of little Olaf, for he had not been near the birth himself as was proper and that was a matter doubled when kings were involved.
So she knew the effect she had on the new man that was Crowbone and revelled in the power of it while spurning him, as you would a little boy, with witty flytings wherever possible.
Some trader had brought a talking-bird all the way from Serkland, a green affair with a crown of blood and Haakon had bought it for show. It sat, hunched, with its feathers falling out and miserable from the cold and dark of the north as well as the lack of proper food – the thrall weans kept trying to feed it flakes of fish, as if it was a gull.
‘It speaks,’ Svein called, trying to make himself a presence, ‘in that tongue they use in Serkland.’
Then he turned to me, a twisted little smile smeared on his face and called out the length of the table: ‘Orm Bear Slayer, you speak some of that. What does it say?’
It gave the proper response to a greeting in the Mussulmann tongue, as well as phrases such as ‘God is great’ and ‘There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet’ and so people oohed and aahed when it seemed that I chatted amiably to the bird. My standing, fame-rich already, was confirmed and it was clear from his scowl that Svein had not meant that to happen. Nor, it seemed, was Haakon any happier and he did not like me to begin with because of my closeness with young Crowbone. I could not blame him for that – he was king in Norway and sitting a few careful benches down from a boy claiming to be the true prince of that land.
‘Perhaps the Bear Slayer can use this gift to command the return of his fostri, Koll Brandsson,’ he said nastily and smiled a sharp-toothed grin. I marked it, pretended disinterest and continued to tell the thralls charged with caring for the bird that it needed berries and nuts, should be kept out of the cold and put in the sun, when it actually shone.
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Then, eventually, I turned into his smile and ignored it, looking at King Eirik instead.
‘A marvellous bird,’ I told him. ‘Seldom seen in these parts and so doubly strange that Jarl Haakon here has come into possession of it.’
‘Strange?’ Eirik asked.
‘Aye,’ I mused. ‘I know Gunnhild is old and fled from Norway – but her seidr is still strong enough.’
The smile died on Haakon’s face; panic and fear chased over it like cat and dog and he looked wildly from me to the bird and back again. He had ousted Gunnhild, and the last of Bloodaxe’s sons, from Norway five years ago – they had fled to Orkney and were causing trouble there – but he feared the witch Mother of Kings still. She was reputed to be able to take the shape of any bird and fly through the Other, far and wide, to perch and listen to plots and plans.
‘Such seidr,’ I added, lightly vicious as the kiss of a fang, ‘has no effect on me.’
Which, because they had heard all the skald tales of the witches I had supposedly killed and the scaled trolls and all the rest, was a boast accepted easily by the company and they laughed, though shakily.
As a result King Eirik had the bird removed from the feasting hall and Haakon watched it all the way out of the room; later, I heard he had it thrown to his deerhounds and felt sorry for that, even though I knew the bird would have died soon anyway.
One other watched that bird leave the room. I had forgotten that Crowbone had developed his way with birds because of Gunnhild’s reputation; she, of course, had hunted the young Crowbone after killing his father to get the throne Haakon now sat on. It was that which prompted Crowbone to do what he did next, I am sure of it, for he always acted on the signs birds offered up to him and there was no more singular bird than that blood-headed talking one from Serkland.
‘If you go after Koll Brandsson,’ he whispered to me, ashenfaced, ‘I will take your Odin Oath and follow you.’