by Robert Low
The boy swung again and more chips flew.
‘Here, give me that – you need more muscle,’ said Runolf Harelip with a grin. The boy handed him the axe and stepped back. Harelip split the bed in two blows and Kvasir, Tjorvir, Throst and the others scrambled to gather the coins that spilled from the hollow frame.
In the end, they filled a sack the size of a the thrall boy’s head, all gold coins, most of them Serkland dinar with their squiggly markings, each worth, I reckoned it up in my head, about twenty silver dirham each. It was as great a loss for Klerkon as it was a gain for us.
The boy stood, unsmiling and straight. I saw that the iron collar was rubbing his skin raw and looked at Kvasir, who had also seen it.
‘Ref Steinsson has tools,’ he said, ‘that can strike that off.’
‘Just so,’ I said, then turned to the boy, feeling that heart-leap as our eyes met. ‘Do you have a name, then, or will we simply call you Prince?’
‘Olaf,’ said the boy with a frown. ‘But Klerkon called me Craccoben.’
There was silence. The name squatted in the hall like a raven in a tree. It was a name you gave to a full-cunning man, rich in Odin’s rune magic and one who, like him, could sit at the feet of hanged men to hear the whispered secrets of the dead.
Not a name you took or gave lightly and I wondered what had made Klerkon hand it out to this thrall boy.
Crowbone.
FIVE
We came up the coast, running before a freezing wind until we had found the narrow mouth of the river we sought and had to drop sail or risk running aground.
We all groaned, for we would have to row upriver now and crew light at that. It was a heavy, lumbering beast of a ship when there were not even enough men on benches for one oar shift, never mind two.
I sweated with the others, which at least took my mind off the boy, who had been cooed over by Thorgunna the minute she had set eyes on him. Ref had deftly struck off the iron collar and Thorgunna had at once started to wash and salve the sores it had made on his neck – not to mention the ones on his head, which showed where he had been shaved by ungentle hands. Old, white scars showed that such a razoring had not been his first and she tutted and crooned at him.
Finn, grinning and happy now that he was raiding and getting money out of it rather than feathers and acorns, gave Kvasir a nudge where he sat, in front of Finn and pulling hard to the stroke.
‘You have been hung up like old breeks, Spittle,’ he chuckled, nodding to where Thorgunna was wrapping the boy in a warm cloak and patting him. I wondered if she would croon quite so softly when she found out the whole story of what he had done, what he had urged hard men to do back there in Svartey.
The wind hissed, the skin of the river crinkled and the thrall women huddled, blowing into chapped, cupped hands, but none of that was as cold as the dead we rowed away from.
‘It seems,’ Kvasir agreed, grunting the words out between pulls, ‘that I brought back a treasure greater than my share of those dinar coins, which I plan to make into a necklace for her.’
‘She’s broody as an old hen. You will have to bairn that one and soon,’ agreed Finn, which left Kvasir silent and moody.
There was a flash behind my eyes of the fat limbs and round little belly, fish-white and so small it made Thorkel’s blood-smeared hand look massive. The bud-mouth and wide, outraged blue eyes crinkling in bawls in a red face while, somewhere off to the right and pinioned, the mother screamed.
Crowbone had glared at her with savage triumph, then looked back to Thorkel and nodded; Thorkel hurled the bairn against a stone and the bawling ended in a wet slap and the mother’s even louder screams. And I watched, doing nothing, saying less.
What had she done to Crowbone? He would not say, save that she was one of Randr Sterki’s women, so the bairn was his and hers. Most probably she had been less than kind to him – perhaps even the one who shaved him so cruelly. There was no point in trying to stop the shrieking, bloody mess he had fermented, so that the mother’s death soon after was almost a mercy.
Aye, he was a strange one, that boy. Afterwards, men could scarce look each other in the eye for what they had done, though they were no strangers to hard raiding and red war. Yet there had been something slimed about what he had driven them to do that left even these ashamed.
If it was not unmanly seidr he had unleashed, it was a close cousin and further proof of his powers came when we ran up to the river mouth, slashing through the ice-grue water, Gizur looking this way and that, cupping the sides of his eyes with his cold-split red hands, looking for the signs that would tell us where land lay in the mist.
Then the boy had stood up and pointed. ‘That way,’ he said.
There were chuckles and a few good-natured jibes at Gizur. Then Pai, the lookout, shouted out that there was smoke.
‘No,’ said the boy, certain as sunrise. ‘It is not smoke. Those are birds.’
So it was, a great wheeling mass of them. Terns, said the boy, before even sharp-eyed Pai could spot whether they were terns or gannet.
‘How do you know that?’ demanded Hauk Fast-Sailor.
‘You can hear them,’ said the boy. ‘They are calling each other to the feast, shouting with delight. Herring are there, too, if you want to fish.’
He was right – terns were diving and feeding furiously and it was easy to follow them to where Gizur picked up the marks for steering to the mouth of the Neva and into Lake Ladoga, where we turned south on the Volkhov river.
By that time, of course, the men were silent and grim around a boy who could hear birds and knew what they said and was called Crowbone. He reminded me of Sighvat and when I mentioned it, Finn and Kvasir agreed.
‘Perhaps he is Sighvat’s son,’ Finn offered and we fell silent, remembering our old oarmate and his talk of what birds and bees did. Remembering, too, him lying in the dusty street of a filthy Serkland village with the gaping red smile of his cut throat attracting the flies.
By the time the dark rushed us on our first day’s pull upriver to Aldeigjuborg, we were still too far away to risk going on, so headed to the bank. Cookfires were lit and the awning stretched on deck, so that we ate ashore and slept aboard.
Kvasir, Finn and I, sitting together as usual, talked about the boy and wondered. Kvasir said Thorgunna was good at finding things out and would listen while she and the boy talked.
All of us agreed, half-laughing at ourselves, that little Prince Olaf was a strange child. Finn half-joked that it was just as well we had kept to our bargain and left the thralls alive, for he looked like a dangerous child to cross.
I did not think it a laughing moment, for we had killed all the freeborn there, wives and weans – even the dogs – of Klerkon and his crew. That little nine-year-old boy had taken his revenge on everyone who had done him wrong, so that he was red-dyed to the elbows with his hate, even if others had done the slaughter.
Thorgunna bustled up not long after, looking for the same strange child and fretting about him being alone in the dark on an unknown shore, so we all had to turn out and look for him.
He turned up after an hour, sauntering out of the shadows so silently that Thorkel nearly burned his own hair off jumping with fright with a torch in his hand.
‘Where were you?’ demanded Thorgunna and those two-coloured eyes, both reddening in the torch glow, turned on her.
‘Listening to the owls talk about the hunting,’ he said.
‘Was it good for them?’ chuckled Finn and the boy shook his head, serious as a stone pillar.
‘Too cold,’ he said and walked to the fire, leaving us trailing in his wake, stunned and thoughtful.
‘Here,’ said Thorgunna sharply, thrusting something at him. ‘Play this and stay by the fire. It will keep you out of mischief.’
It was a tafl board and some polished stones for it in a bag. Men chuckled, but the boy took the wooden board politely enough and laid it beside him.
‘It is too dark to play,’ he said,
‘but I know a story about a tafl board, which I will tell.’
Men blinked and rubbed their beards. This was new – a boy of nine was going to tell all of us full-grown a story; Kvasir laughed out loud at the delight of it.
The boy cleared his throat and began, in a strong, clear, piping little voice. And all those hard axe men leaned forward to listen.
‘Once a man in a steading in Vestfold carved a beautiful tafl board for his son,’ the boy began. ‘He made it from oak, which is Thor wood. When he was finished he showed his son how to play games upon it. The boy was very glad to have such a beautiful thing and in the morning, when he went out with the sheep up to the tree-bare hills where they grazed, he took his tafl board along, for he could always get stones as counters for it.’
The boy paused and the men leaned forward further. He had them now, better than any skop. I marvelled at the seidr spell he wove round the fire, even as I was wary of it. How did he know this story? It was certain Klerkon never tucked him in at night with such tales and his foster-father had died when he was young. Maybe his mother had, before she turned her head to the wall.
‘Everywhere he went he carried his board under his arm,’ the boy went on. ‘Then, one day, he met some men from the next village up, making charcoal around a small fire. “Where in this country of yours can a man get wood?” the charcoal burners asked. “Why, here is wood,” the boy said. And he gave them the fine tafl board, which they put into the fire. As it went up in flames, the boy began to cry. “Do not make such fash,” the charcoal burners said, and they gave him a fine new seax in place of the game board.’
‘That was a good trade,’ growled Red Njal from out of the shadows. ‘A boy will get more use from a good seax than a tafl board. That and the forest is the best teacher for a boy, as my granny used to say.’
They shushed him and Olaf shifted to be more comfortable.
‘The boy took the knife and went away with his sheep,’ he went on. ‘As he wandered he came to a place where a man was digging a big stone out of his field, so that he could plough it. “The ground is hard,” the man said. “Lend me your seax to dig with.” The boy gave the man the seax, but the man dug so vigorously with it that it broke. “Ah, what has become of my knife?” the boy wailed. “Quiet yourself,” the man said. “Take this spear in its place.” And he gave the boy a beautiful spear, trimmed with silver and copper.’
A few chuckled, seeing where the story was going and others asked where a farmer who could not afford a decent shovel got a silver-trimmed spear – but they were quickly silenced by the others.
‘The boy went away with his sheep and his spear,’ little Olaf continued. ‘He met a party of hunters. When they saw him one of them said: “Lend me your spear, so that we may kill the deer we are trailing.” So the boy did.’
‘Piss poor hunters,’ muttered Kvasir, ‘without a spear between them.’
Thorgunna glared her worst glare at him.
‘Oho,’ chuckled Finn. ‘There’s a look to sink ships. This is why you should not take a wife out on the vik.’
Kvasir scowled. Olaf waited patiently, until they subsided, then cleared his throat again. In the dark, his one pale eye caught the fire and flashed like pearl.
‘The boy gave them the spear and the hunters went out and killed the deer. But in the hunt the shaft of the spear was splintered. “See what you’ve done with my spear!” the boy cried. “Don’t fuss about it,” the hunter said. “Here is a horse for you in place of your spear.”
‘The hunter gave him a horse with fine leather trappings and he started back toward the village. On the way he came to where some farmers were keeping crows off their rye, running at them and waving sheets. This made the horse frightened and it ran away.’
‘This sounds like the story of my life,’ growled Thorkel from across the fire and everyone laughed, for they had heard of his lack of luck.
Finn bellowed at them to shut up and listen. ‘For I want to hear this. This sheep-herding boy seems much like a trader I know.’
There were some chuckles at my expense, then the story went on.
‘The horse had gone for good,’ Olaf said. ‘But the farmers told the boy not to worry. They gave the boy an old wood axe and he took it and went on towards his home. He came to a woodcutter who said: “Lend me your large axe for this tree. Mine is too small.” So the boy did and the woodcutter chopped with it and broke it.’
‘He should have quit and gone home when he had the horse,’ shouted someone.
Olaf smiled. ‘Perhaps so, for the woodcutter gave him the limb of a tree, which he then had to load on his back and carry. When he came near the village a woman said: “Where did you find the wood? I need it for my fire.”
‘The boy gave it to her, and she put it in the fire. As it went up in flames he said: “Now where is my wood?” The woman looked around, then gave him a fine tafl board, which he took home with the sheep.
‘As he entered his house his mother smiled with satisfaction and said: “What is better than a tafl board to keep a small boy out of trouble?”’
The roars and leg-slapping went on a long time, especially when Olaf, with a courtly little bow, handed the tafl board and bag of counters back to Thorgunna, who took it, beaming with as much delight as if she was mother to this princeling.
Into the middle of this, his breath smoking with cold and reeking of porridge and fish as he leaned closer to my ear, Kvasir hissed: ‘That boy is not nine years old.’
I stepped off a strug, one of those blocky riverboats the Slavs love so much, on to the wooden wharf of Novgorod, which we call Holmgard. I had been here before, so it felt almost like a home.
We had taken the strug from Aldeigjuborg, since it had been a hard enough task to work the Elk along the river to that place, never mind to Novgorod. My lungs had burned in the cold with the effort and, for days afterwards, my shoulders felt as if someone had shoved a red-hot bar from one side to the other. I was, I admitted ruefully to myself, no longer used to pulling on an oar.
The weather did not help. Gizur, when the Elk had edged painfully into the mouth of the river on which Aldeigjuborg stood, heaved the slop bucket over the side and hauled it in. He looked briefly, then shoved it at me. Ice rolled.
‘I did not need that to tell me how cold it is,’ I said, blowing on my hands. He nodded and emptied the water, then set the bucket in its place with red-blue hands, already studded with sores. Everyone had them, split from the cold and the rowing. Noses were scarlet; breath smoked and the air was sharp enough to sting your throat.
‘Too early for such ice,’ Gizur growled. ‘By a month at least. The river is freezing and this close to the sea, too. The sea will freeze for a good way out this winter, mark me.’
That thought had floated with us all the way to the berth, bringing little cheer. No sooner had we lashed ourselves to the land than Finn and Kvasir, swathed in cloaks and wrapped to the ears in wadmal and hats, came up and nodded in the direction of another drakkar, snugged up to the bank and with it’s mast off, the sail tented up across the deck, which spoke of an over-wintering. Klerkon’s ship, Dragon Wings. Two men all wild hair and silver arm rings watchfully tended a box-brazier of charcoals on the mid-ballast stones.
‘Small crew only,’ Kvasir reported after a brief open-handed saunter in their direction. They had seen us and were guarded after events in Gunnarsgard, though it was not a sensible thing to start swinging swords in someone else’s realm. What would happen when they learned what we had done on Svartey was another matter entirely.
‘Klerkon has gone south to Konugard,’ he added, cocking his head in that bird way he had these days.
‘He will have taken his captives,’ Finn said, almost cheerfully. ‘They will sell better in that place.’
I scowled at him, while Kvasir said nothing. I knew why Finn was so joyous – he was out on the raid and expected to winter in Novgorod and then head off in the spring to find the mountain of silver he thought we had left
alone too long.
I was hoping that it would be a long winter and that, at the end of it, Sviatoslav, Prince of the Rus, would renew his mad fight against the Great City and make it too dangerous to travel south of Konugard, which the locals called Kiev. I was hoping those events had trapped Lambisson with Short Eldgrim and Cod-Biter.
I also knew I was Odin-cursed with this mountain of silver. It was like being in a thorn patch – the harder you struggled, the worse you were caught. Sooner or later, I was thinking day after day, I would have to go back to Atil’s howe and every time the thought came to me it was like swallowing a stone.
But first there was Thordis to get back and Eldgrim and Cod-Biter to rescue.
We stayed long enough in Aldeigjuborg to find that Lambisson, if he had been there at all, was long gone. We stayed a little longer, to stand by the Oathsworn Stone which Einar had raised to those we had lost getting this far on the original journey down to seek Atil’s treasure.
Six years since and now the survivors of that time stood round it, a mere handful and a half – Hauk, Gizur, Finn, Kvasir, Hlenni Brimill, Runolf Harelip, Red Njal and me. Thorkel stood with us, for he had known Pinleg and Skapti Halftroll and the others the stone remembered but he had not been with us at the time. Crippled Cod-Biter and the addled Short Eldgrim were two more and we remembered on their behalf.
‘Someone has been,’ Kvasir noted, nodding at the garland of withered oak leaves fluttering on the stone’s crown.
Not for a long time. Yet the names were there and, though the paint had faded, the grooves were etched deep on the stone and the story was there still. We made our prayers and small offerings and left.
Finn thought the garland might have been left by Pinleg’s woman, who had stayed in the town with her son and daughter. When we went to where they had been, those who had known them told us they had left for the south long since. I remembered, then, that Pinleg’s wife had been a Slav, his children half-Norse Rus.