by Robert Low
Not for the first time, I wondered what Vuokko had seen in his drum later on that feast night for the return of Eirik’s bairn. The Sea Finn had appeared out of the shadows like some nightmare, just as Finn and I were picking our way in the salt-tanged dark to see Jarl Brand.
‘I have called it and the drum has spoken,’ he told us in his rheum-thick accent. ‘It says to take the Mazur girl.’
With three runes to speak with it might have said more, but I had gone to Sigrith in the night, half-ashamed at doing it just because of the Sea Finn’s drum, and asked her to let me have Blackbird, whose real name was Dark Eye. She, even knowing the worth of the girl to her father and where I was headed, did so, as she said, ‘for the loss of her Birthing Stool’.
Now Blackbird was stowed like baggage on Short Serpent and as nagging as a broken nail in my mind as we clumped back down to the ship, where Finnlaith and Alyosha were growling at men to get them loading supplies.
They crowded round, wanting to hear what had been said and by whom, so I laid it out for them.
‘Take these Joms bladders now,’ growled a big Swede called Asfast when I finished.
‘Burn them,’ snarled Abjorn, ‘as Ljot burned Hestreng.’
‘Ljot did not burn Hestreng,’ Rorik Stari pointed out. ‘It was Randr Sterki who did that.’
There were rumbles for and against charging up and cutting them down, calls for blood and fire. There were also growls about going upriver at all, for there was little in it that raiding men could see.
So I put them on the straight course of that simply enough.
‘There are two matters that must be done,’ I told them. ‘One is to free Styrbjorn, for King Eirik’s sake.’
Finn grunted, but said nothing, for only he and I knew that it was also to kill him, for Jarl Brand’s sake, though neither he nor I had worked out a way to make a square out of that circle.
‘I am also going after my fostri,’ I added, ‘for it is my honour and good name here. You may follow if you choose, but will break your Oath if you do not. The only other way is for one of you to become jarl.’
That silenced them, so much so that I was sure they could all hear the bird-fluttering beating of my heart at the idea of one of them challenging me for the dragon-torc of jarl. Fame, that double-edged sword, held them at arm’s length, for this was Orm, single-handed slayer of white bears, killer of scaled trolls, who had once won a holmgang with a single stroke and only recently had fought and killed berserkers, two at a time.
Yet they were sullen about it and a broad-faced growler called Gudmund could not let the bone of it loose.
‘Pallig does not want us to go upriver,’ he offered moodily.
‘So?’ spat Red Njal, fanning the flames of it. ‘Who is Pallig Tokeson to tell the Oathsworn of Orm Bear Slayer where they can go or not?’
‘He is kin to Harald Bluetooth,’ Crowbone offered brightly. ‘The wife he took pains to introduce us to is Bluetooth’s daughter and the sister of the Svein who was at King Eirik’s feast.’
He stared into the astonished faces, then innocently up into mine and I knew now what he had been doing, while seeming to play the eyebrow-batting boy with the womenfolk.
Bluetooth was not a name you ignored lightly, as Gudmund persisted. Finn spat and pointed out that we had been ignoring Bluetooth for years, had stolen his ships and killed his men and were none the worse for it, which cheered everyone, for they knew we were going upriver, no matter what.
Then Onund cleared his throat, which he always did before he said something important and we all stopped, thinking it would be ship talk and being as wrong as a two-headed cow.
‘If it is such a bad thing to be going upriver, for the trouble it will cause the brothers of Joms,’ he rumbled thoughtfully, ‘I am wondering why they let Randr Sterki and his dogs go up?’
TEN
Having hurled the axe of that into the middle of us, the hunchback laid out the saga of how he had found out about Randr. While we spoke with Pallig, he had gone off to find decent wood to fix the steerboard and quickly found an entire steerboard, in good condition, which he thought was ship-luck.
A few traders further on, as he looked for just the right cut of ash wood to make an elk prow for the ship – Crowbone shifted and scowled at that part of his tale – he had found good nails and ready-cut ship planks, far better quality than he would have expected in a place such as Joms. Then a trader said it would be better to have a whole prow rather than go the trouble of carving one and showed Onund one he had.
‘So I asked him where he had it from,’ Onund told us. ‘I had to be firm with him, too, for he was reluctant. I picked him up by the heel and hung him for a while until he spoke and we concluded the business. I was pleased to have done it with no violence.’
That got him chuckles and I wished there was no feasting that night, for I wanted to be away as fast as supplies could be loaded, if for no other reason than to avoid the results of Onund’s firmness with a trader.
In the end, Onund was shown the source of the snarling dragon prow he knew well – we all knew well. On the far side from the settlement, wallowing half-in, half-out of the weak Baltic tideline, stripped to the ribs and the keel and the charred strakes no-one wanted, was what was left of Dragon Wings.
‘We should go to Pallig and his brother,’ Finn growled after this news was out, ‘and use your little truth knife on them.’
Those who knew of the truth knife, which whittled off body parts until the victim stopped lying, agreed with relish and I felt the little, worn-handled blade burn where it nested in the small of my back. It had belonged to Einar the Black once and had served me as well as it had him, but there was no need for it now.
‘Randr Sterki had ship-luck to make it this far,’ I pointed out. ‘He would be coming to have it out with Ljot for leaving him and I bet he had more men bailing than rowing by the time he ran Dragon Wings ashore here.’
They nodded and growled assent to that.
‘What of the hoard they had from you?’ demanded Finn of Onund and the hunchback shrugged, a frightening affair.
‘If he did not take it with him, then it is scattered through the settlement,’ he answered. ‘And so lost to you, Orm – these rann-sack pigs took every last rivet from the wreck.’
There would be no hoard found, I was bitter-sure, for Randr would have used some of it to buy supplies and one of those tree-carved riverboats. The rest would be either with him or buried secretly and I had no doubt a deal of it went to Pallig, for no balm soothes like silver.
‘Why is he going upriver at all?’ Finn had asked. That one was easier still; to get Koll and the monk. The monk, in Randr Sterki’s hate-splintered eye, either owed money or blood or both and the boy was my fostri. He would want the boy alive, would know I was coming after him with Crowbone. All his enemies, sailing straight towards the revenge he was not yet done with.
‘He did not take the lesson from your last story,’ I said to Crowbone and he shrugged.
‘I will tell him a harder one, then,’ he growled back and everyone laughed at his new, deep voice, so that his cheeks flushed. He looked at me, those odd eyes glittering like agate.
‘I have a thought on how to get Styrbjorn away,’ he said, then inclined his head in a gracious little bow.
‘If my lord is pleased to hear it,’ he added and folk chuckled. I heard Finn mutter, though, and did not need to hear it clearly to know what he was saying: that boy is older than stones.
‘A prince’s wisdom is always welcome,’ I said and he grinned his sharp-toothed mouse grin and then laid it out. It was a good plan, put him at the centre of matters and at no little risk – which was what the fame-hungry little wolf cub wanted – and gave the skill and strength of it to Finn. I looked at Finn after Crowbone had finished.
‘Can you do this?’
Finn’s grin was the same one seen an instant before fangs closed on a kill and folk chuckled at so eloquent an answer with not a word sp
oken.
It seemed less of a good plan in the flickering red roar of Pallig’s feasting. He sat on my high seat flanked by two big men in ringmail and helms who scowled at having to miss the best of the feast because of this duty. Pallig beamed greasily while his men growled and gorged and threw bones at one another, or grabbed the female thralls who stumbled in with platters of mutton boiled outside in a stone-lined pit heated by rocks.
I sat on a bench directly across the pitfire from Pallig, horn-paired with Crowbone for the feasting. None of my own men were here and Pallig knew why – they were with the ship, pointedly kept there because I did not trust him. I had already noted that, while Pallig’s women were clustered round him, there was no sign of Ljot, nor of the two bearcoats, last of the beasts, it seemed. Styrbjorn, his mouth in a thin, tight line, sat clenched in on himself on a lower bench and far enough away from the door that he could not make a run for it if he chose.
A skald had been wintering here, a man with a lean face and a body thin as gruel. His name was Helgi and he claimed the by-name of Mannvitsbrekka – Wisdom-Slope – though it was clear any deep thinking he had was long since slid away, for he persisted in trotting out the same old stuff he had most likely been giving them for months. Even the commands of Pallig failed to stop men deep in their ale from flinging bread and bone at him.
Crowbone looked at me with his odd eyes and grinned his mouse grin. Then he stood up.
‘I have a tale or two,’ he said.
Silence fell almost at once, for the marvellous tales of this man-boy were fame-richer than my own supposed heroics. Graciously, Pallig waved a hand for him to continue.
Crowbone told tales of Dyl U’la-Spegill, which was perfect for the audience he had. They were old tales and still told today, for the laughter in them. Dyl U’la-Spegill is sometimes a youth, sometimes an old man and his very name is as much a whispered mystery as runes; there were those present, I saw, who fancied Crowbone was Dyl U’la-Spegill himself and I could not have refuted it if asked, for he held them as if enchanted.
‘Once,’ Crowbone said into the silence, ‘there was a man down on his luck – we shall call him Ljot – who was given a piece of bread. Hoping this was a sign from Asgard’s finest, he went to the market stalls and begged, thinking some meat or a little fish would go well with his bread. They all turned him away with nothing, but Ljot saw a large kettle of soup cooking over the fire. He held his piece of bread over the steaming pot, hoping to thus capture a bit of flavour from the good-smelling vapour.’
Folk chuckled – those, I was thinking, who knew how it felt to be that hungry. Pallig glared them to silence.
‘Suddenly the owner of the soup – let us call him Brand – seized the unhappy Ljot by the arm and accused him of stealing soup,’ Crowbone continued. ‘Poor Ljot was afraid at this. “I took no soup,” he said. “I was only smelling it.” “Then you must pay for the smell,” answered Brand. Poor Ljot had no money, so the angry Brand dragged him before his jarl.’
‘Is that where Ljot has gone, then?’ shouted someone and I knew Finn’s voice when I heard it. Pallig snarled a smile into the laughter that followed and Crowbone went on with his tale.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘it so happened that Dyl U’la-Spegill was visiting with this jarl at the time and he heard Brand’s accusation and Ljot’s explanation. “So you demand payment for the smell of your soup?” he asked as the jarl struggled to come to a decision on the matter.
‘“I do,” insisted Brand.
‘“Then I myself will pay you,” said Dyl and he drew two silver rings from his arm and juggled them in his hand so that they rang – then he put them back, much to Brand’s annoyance.
‘“You are paid,” Dyl told the man. “The sound of silver for the smell of soup.”’
They laughed and thumped the tables at that one and, hidden by the noise and uproar, Finn slid to my side briefly and nodded, then rolled his shoulders.
‘They will choose the bearcoat called Stammkel, the one they call Hilditonn – War Tooth,’ he said quietly to me. I did not ask him if this would be a problem.
‘Once,’ Crowbone began again, ‘Dyl U’la-Spegill lay in the shade of an ancient oak tree, thinking as he always did, on the greatness of the gods and the mightiness of Odin.’
There was a loud throat-clearing sound from down the table, where the Christ priest sat and, for a moment, all heads turned to him, so that he flushed at being the centre of such attention.
‘God will not be mocked,’ he offered and Crowbone shrugged.
‘Then let him sit elsewhere,’ he replied, which brought laughter – though muted, for there were more than a few Christ men here. Pallig craned a little to look down the benches at the priest, who drew in his neck a little and, after a pause, the jarl turned his poached-egg eyes back to Crowbone and beamed.
‘Go on, little man,’ he said expansively, ‘for this is better stuff than we have had for some time.’
At which the skald scowled.
‘Dyl,’ Crowbone began, ‘considered the wisdom of Odin – and then questioned whether it was indeed wise that such a great tree as this be created to bear only tiny acorns. Look at the stout stem and strong limbs, which could easily carry, say, fat marrows that sprout from spindly stems along the ground. Should the mighty oak not bear such as a marrow and the acorn creep in the mud?’
‘I have often thought so myself,’ the skald interrupted desperately, but voices howled him down.
‘So thinking,’ Crowbone continued, ‘Dyl went to sleep – only to be awakened by an acorn that fell from the tree, striking him on his forehead. “Aha,” he cried. “Now I see the wisdom of One-Eye – if the world had been created according to Dyl U’la-Spegill, I would have been marrow-killed for sure.”’
Crowbone paused and stared at the priest.
‘Never again did Dyl U’la-Spegill question the wisdom of Odin,’ he finished and the hall banged tables and hooted; a few bones flew at the priest – in a good-natured way and Pallig stood and held up his hands for silence, planning no doubt to lay into them for treating the priest so poorly. Just as the wobbling-bellied jarl opened his mouth to the silence, he broke wind noisily.
Folk sniggered and Pallig went white, then red. Crowbone cleared his throat a little and spoke into the embarrassment.
‘There was once a jarl who farted dishonour to himself forever,’ he began and Pallig’s face had thunder on it – but there were enough drunks in the hall to cheer stupidly at another Crowbone tale, so he sat back down, silent and dangerously black-browed.
‘It was at his own wedding,’ Crowbone went on. ‘The bride was displayed in all her gold to the women, who could not take their eyes off her for the jealousy. At last the bridegroom was summoned to stand by her side, while the godi stood ready with his blessing hammer.’
At this point, the priest stood up and made the sign of the cross and there were as many who joined in as those who hooted. Say what you like about Christ priests, say they are as annoying as a cleg-bite in summer, say they have minds so narrow it is a wonder anything can live there – but never say they are afraid. I seldom encountered one who had no courage.
Crowbone favoured him with a look until the priest had finished and was sitting. Then he cleared his throat and went on with his tale.
‘The jarl rose slowly and with dignity from his bench,’ he said and then paused, looking round the breathless company.
‘In so doing,’ he went on portentously, ‘he let fly a great and terrible fart, for he was overfull of meat and drink. It was a Thor-wind, that one, a mighty cracking.’
‘I think I know this jarl,’ shouted someone, anonymous in the dark and Pallig shifted in his seat a little, then braided his scowl into an uneasy smile. Crowbone waited a little, then went on.
‘Of course, it was a great insult to the bride and her kin and, in fear of blood-feud and the ruin of a good day and dowry, all the guests immediately turned to their neighbours and talked aloud, pretending to h
ave heard nothing.
‘The mortified jarl, in that instant, was so overcome by shame that he turned away from the bridal chamber and as if to answer a call of nature. He went down to the courtyard, saddled his mare and rode off, weeping bitterly through the night. In time he reached Dovrefell, went on across it to the very snows, where he sacrificed the horse and lived among the Sami for years.’
‘Safe enough there,’ observed a growler morosely, ‘since they are all expert breakers of wind in that country.’
He was hissed to silence and Crowbone went on with his tale.
‘Finally, this unlucky jarl was overcome with longing for his native land – like that of a lover pining for his beloved it would not be denied, though it nearly cost him his life. He sneaked away from the Sami without taking leave and made his way alone and dressed in the rags of a seer, enduring a thousand hardships of hunger, thirst and fatigue, braving a thousand dangers from trolls and wyrm and draugr. He eventually came to his old home and, eyes brimming with tears, walked among the houses of it, unknown, pretending to be an old seer of no account.’
Crowbone paused; there was not a breath of sound.
‘He was delighted with being home,’ he went on, ‘thought of announcing himself and abjectly grovelling in apology for his foolishness in running away for so trivial a reason, no doubt forgotten a day or two after it had happened. Just as he had made up his mind to do just that, he passed a hut and heard the voice of a young girl saying, “Mother, tell me what day was I born on, for there is an old seer outside and I want him to tell my fortune.”
‘The mother did not hesitate. “My daughter,” she said, “you were born on the very night the old jarl farted.” No sooner had the jarl heard these words than he rose up from the bench and fled for the last time, for his fart was now a date that would be remembered for ever and ever.’