Crowbone o-5

by Robert Low

  ‘When the banquet was over, the foxes said to their friend: “How great your skill and wisdom. You are truly a prince of cunning.” Which was only the truth, after all.’

  A few laughed, others frowned, for they knew there was a meaning in the tale but did not want to admit they had not understood it. Except Kaup, of course, who always wanted explained what he did not understand about men of the north.

  ‘Does this tale reveal that all crabs are stupid, or all foxes clever?’ he asked, smiling.

  Crowbone, his head on one side like a quizzical bird, did not smile.

  ‘Perhaps it reveals that there is more than one way to catch crabs,’ he answered.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Berto offered, looking at Crowbone, ‘it is more a tale about how a fox can succeed by seeming to be a friendly prince.’

  Crowbone smiled, but others frowned and one or two snorted, saying there had been hardly a mention of a prince in it at all and what did a Wend know of Norse tales anyway?

  ‘Now that you have warmed the pot of your skills,’ Gjallandi declared to Crowbone, before Berto boiled over into fighting, ‘perhaps you would favour us with another. Such as what they are saying.’

  He uncoupled one hand from his cloak and waved it at a distant wheel of wind-ragged birds. Crowbone did not reply for a moment and let folk think he was considering matters, though the truth was that he was wondering whether the skald was worth the effort of keeping. He was more jealous than a woman when it came to his skills, seeing Crowbone as a rival and, though it was always good for a prince to have someone spreading your fame, Crowbone thought, Gjallandi was more irritating than grit in bread.

  For a moment, he savoured the sight of the man’s big head, the fleshy lips opening in an O of surprise as he was pitched into the sea — but the thought brought back the memory of his foster-father, Lousebeard, and he shivered.

  ‘I can tell you what lies ahead,’ Crowbone announced and stared pointedly at Gjallandi. ‘Provided you have the stomach for the knowing.’

  ‘You can tell me what lies ahead,’ Stick-Starer declared, bustling down one side, following another wood chip’s bobbing dance, ‘provided it has nothing to do with crabs, for I have eaten too many.’

  So Crowbone told them how the birds were struggling back to land, as fast as they were able, because a storm was coming. Men looked at the sky and squinted, but it was grey-blue, scudding with clouds and gave nothing away.

  Stick-Starer stroked the grizzle of his face, then the yellow bitch barked once or twice and Berto declared that there was a storm coming, for sure. Men laughed and Stick-Starer shrugged.

  ‘I do not know the workings of birds,’ he said slowly, ‘but a man with his head up his arse could tell you it is late in the year for heading up to Mann. Storms are more than likely. If you want to follow the barking of an ugly bitch and the wheeling of birds, you must tell me and I will fold my arms and sit.’

  Crowbone nodded and men groaned, for the wind was mostly from the shore and now they had to climb on to sea-chest benches and pull hard for land.

  Later, when the drakkar was keel-snugged in the shelter of a natural scoop of shingled harbour, men huddled round a flattening fire on shore under a wool sail that flapped like a bird wing in the rising wind. They did not mind the wind or the ticking of rain on the canopy and joked about whether to thank Crowbone’s birds or Berto’s yellow bitch for getting them clear of bad weather.

  Crowbone sat and stared into the darkness, wondering where Hoskuld’s knarr had gone.

  The mica panels in the unlit lantern were loose and their trembling woke Thorgeir Raudi.

  ‘Awake are we?’ growled Bergfinn, appearing from behind him. ‘An eyeblink before I kicked you, so that was rib-luck for you.’

  The darkness puzzled Thorgeir for a moment, for he could not have slept, he thought, all through the day and into night. Besides, he said to himself, Bergfinn would never have let him.

  Then he realised that the light puling on the horizon still marked the day, but clouds had smothered it like smoke. The wind whipped the raggles of his hair and the lantern swung above him, hung from a hook at the stern; Thorgeir knew that tremble well enough, felt the heavy slap of wave that caused it.

  Bergfinn met his gaze.

  ‘Aye — a blow is coming and we are making for land.’

  ‘Where is the Shadow?’ demanded Thorgeir and Bergfinn shrugged.

  ‘They could row straight for the shore. I last saw them some time back.’

  Thorgeir had been pride-swelled since Prince Olaf chose him, after their trading call on the Franks, to replace Kaetilmund on the knarr and he had picked Bergfinn to stand for Rovald, both of them to keep an eye on Hoskuld. Thorgeir didn’t feel so pleased suddenly.

  ‘We have been tacking since the wind rose,’ said a new voice and Gorm came forward, the wind flattening his tunic against him. ‘Hoskuld asks a favour of you.’

  Above them men were fighting the sail down another knot and when they came up to the cliff-faced captain he was bellowing aloft like a bull seal. Thorgeir could see that only the least patch of sail was out, but still the ship leaped like a goosed maiden.

  ‘Yonder,’ said Hoskuld, pointing, and they all three peered out, the wind whipping their hair and beards back from their faces, at the dark bulk of land, the white cream of waves on the shore.

  ‘If we want to reach it,’ Hoskuld yelled at them as the wind roared and whined, ‘I will have to take the sail down entire and then we will wallow like a sick whale. If I leave it up even a notch we may never reach land at all. We cannot row but I can get it close — then I need two good men to rope us to shore and we can then haul it in.’

  Bergfinn turned to Thorgeir, the hair flying over one ear and whipping his face. He knew the knarr was not for rowing, knew what was needed and did not like it. He said as much.

  ‘My men know how to handle this ship,’ Hoskuld yelled. ‘I need them aboard. You are strong and I can get you within a few strokes of the shore.’

  As if to seal matters, Gorm came up with two lengths of bast rope and the Orkney steersman cursed and bellowed for help; men sprang to lend their strength to his, keeping the knarr wallowing slowly towards land.

  Thorgeir hesitated. He did not like what Hoskuld wanted, but he took the rope and looked at Bergfinn, who looked at the shore, which was even closer now, but at the end of a tack. From now, Hoskuld would have to turn back out to sea, or try and hold where he was and wish for land to come and meet him at some point — hopefully without hidden rocks heralding it.

  ‘Fuck,’ Bergfinn said and took his shoes off, stuffing them down the front of his tunic. Then he wrapped the rope around his waist as Thorgeir had done and, with a brief glance, one to the other, they went over the side, whooping and roaring defiance.

  The shock of it almost sucked the breath out of Thorgeir and the water smacked him like a hand, great swelling breakers that whipped the feet out from under him and sucked him this way and that.

  He half-swam, half-fought, struggling and breathless, his throat burning with swallowed salt water that racked him with spewing coughs. Something banged his feet, then hit them again until he realised it was shore. The next surge took him to his knees in shingle and he struggled up out of the white water, dropping, panting to the stones. His chest burned but elation drove him to his feet — he had made it. Still alive, praise Aegir and his queen, Ran.

  He took two or three breaths, red-raw ones that coughed more bad wet air from him, then took his hands off his knees and straightened. To his relief, he saw Bergfinn staggering up the shingle, the rope in one hand and his mouth working like a landed fish.

  It was only when he got closer that he heard the words.

  ‘… cut the rope. Fuckers. They have cut the rope.’

  Thorgeir jerked his own line, felt nothing and hauled it in until he brought up the dripping, fresh-cut end.

  Out on the bow of the knarr, Gorm peered into the mirk, raised one hand, then the other, ar
ms aloft; Hoskuld heaved a sigh of relief that both men were alive, for he had not wanted deaths over this, only escape from that odd-eyed boy. He offered a pungent curse to Orm who had talked him into this and wished a rotting disease on the monk who had begun it all — though the three gold coins the priest had paid glowed warmly in his mind and he touched the hem where he had sewn them for safekeeping.

  He shouted for the sail to be racked up, the wind catching the wet weight of it almost at once; the Swift-Gliding reared up and sped away from the land, where Thorgeir howled unheard and whipped the wet stones in a fury with the treacherously cut rope’s end.

  Hoskuld had gone.

  FIVE

  The Manx Sea, days later …

  Crowbone’s Crew

  Shadows shifted as men gathered gear and moved softly under the creak and flap of the old-blood sail; even before Crowbone reached the prow he saw Onund waiting, watching, with the tools in his hand that would unfasten the snarling dragon-prow, keeping it from challenging the fetch of this land. More importantly, it would announce that the folk following it came in peace.

  Crowbone, Kaetilmund and Onund stood with Stick-Starer, all of them staring out beyond the prow at the distant, silvered horizon and the smear on it.

  ‘Smoke, I am thinking,’ Stick-Starer declared and Kaetilmund, his hair whipping ahead of him with the strong wind, gave a grunt that might have been agreement and squinted a little, so that he was looking more sideways at the stained horizon.

  ‘Could be a place with a borg on a hill,’ he admitted finally and Stick-Starer looked relieved.

  ‘Of course it is a place with a borg on a hill,’ he answered scornfully. ‘Holmtun on Mann, as I said.’

  ‘You have not been in these waters for some time,’ Crowbone pointed out mildly, ‘and we have seen no land on our steerboard side, which should be expected if we have sailed up the west coast of Mann.’

  ‘Where are we then?’ Kaetilmund demanded challengingly, curling his lip at Stick-Starer. ‘Is this not Holmtun?’

  Stick-Starer stroked his chin and looked at the milk-sodden sky. Truth was, he did not exactly know and the prince who was now their leader had the right of it — he had been long out of these waters, so that the warp and weft of old wisdom was being dragged from him with some trouble. He muttered, pored over the tally-marks and the wooden wheels for some time. Then he threw a wood chip in the water, watching it bounce away behind them in the curling wake.

  Crowbone leaned, one foot up on the thwart, brooding from under his eyelids. The Great City shipmasters had matters marked on scrolls and drawn on vellum, so that all they had to do was haul them out and look them over to find the description of how to get to a place, whether they were far south in the Middle Sea, or north into the Dark Sea. Yet northmen were considered much better seamen than the sailors of Constantinople and Crowbone wondered why that was.

  He looked at Stick-Starer mumbling over his wooden instruments like some Pecheneg shaman casting bones and with about as much chance of solving the problem; he wished he had some of the Great City scrolls. Not that they would be of any help to Stick-Starer since he could not read — but that was unfair, Crowbone thought, for neither can I, not Latin nor Greek. I cannot even decently read runes, he added to himself and made a promise to at least learn that.

  When, though, was the problem — there was enough for a prince-who-would-be-king to learn, not least of it using either hand in a fight and getting out of ringmail underwater while still swimming like a fish. All that and how to lead men and read the ways of power — a prince was never done working.

  ‘I believe,’ admitted Stick-Starer, breaking into Crowbone’s brooding, ‘that we may be a little bit off. I need a landmark before I can be sure.’

  Onund gave his familiar grunt.

  ‘Engi er allheimskr ef?egja ma,’ he said, his thick Iceland accent enough to make decent Norse speakers frown over it. Crowbone smiled as Stick-Starer worked it out and glared — no-one can be really stupid who stays silent.

  Not much later, the truth of it was unveiled and Stick-Starer had a single eyebrow from scowling, while the beaten walrus-skin of his seamed face was red as a skelpt arse.

  ‘A place with an island fort,’ Kaetilmund jeered. ‘You had that right, for sure — but you have managed to miss Mann island entire.’

  Stick-Starer hunched into it and stared at the water running in a V from the prow, while Onund and others fought the dragon-beast down from the prow before the Shadow got too close. In the end, most folk were agreed on where they were — Hvitrann, which was stuck on the end of a tongue of land which Murrough knew as Galgeddil. It was, he said, part of the kingdom of Cwymbria, which ran all the way up to the river fort at Alt Clut and was run by a skilled and hard man called Mael Coluim, though the kings of Alba said they owned him.

  The locals called it Hwiterne, Murrough went on, which means White House and comes from the white stone church the Christians built, which in Latin is called candida casa. It was a good Norse place once, though none of them around here were welcoming to men on the vik.

  All of which was interesting, Crowbone said, but of no real aid to men looking for Holmtun on Mann and one or two, hoping to be helpful, said that if they were to sail south and a little west for a day they could not miss the island. Crowbone looked at Stick-Starer, who licked his lips nervously and said nothing at all, for he thought the odd-eyed youth had a hard look on him, like a man about to throw his shipmaster over the side.

  Crowbone knew what Stick-Starer thought and let him sweat a little; the truth of it was clear to him now — the Norns wove this and Stick-Starer’s poor way-finding was another thread that had led Crowbone to this place. The storm had lashed them hard and Hoskuld was gone in it; Crowbone did not think he had sunk, but he had poor hopes for Bergfinn and Thorgeir, who would not have allowed Hoskuld and his men to sail off without arguing out the folly of it.

  He knew, all the same, that the great, mysterious tapestry of the world was woven of men’s lives and his own thread was bright in it, shining with the men and ships and silver and kings the Norns wove it with. Even the threads of gods, he thought to himself grimly, are braided with my wyrd, for the Norns weave even Asgard’s lives.

  ‘Well,’ growled Mar as the clang of alarms began to sound, ‘do we sail off or try to show these folk how friendly we are?’

  ‘Do not land on the east side,’ Stick-Starer added, attempting to redeem himself and remembering something about the place they were sailing to. ‘There is a bay there which looks inviting, but it is all stinking marsh.’

  There was, thought Crowbone with a frown, no reason at all for stopping here, other than the fact that heading south for Mann would put the wind in their teeth and mean a hard row of it. It was not as if they needed food, though the bread was mushy and more than a little green, nor water, which was still drinkable if you strained it through your linen kirtle first. Yet the Norns were in this, he was sure of it, ever since he had seen the three terns screaming sunwise round the mast that morning.

  Then the yellow bitch barked and Berto shaded his eyes with one hand and pointed with the other.

  ‘Looking yonder,’ he said in his crippled attempt at West Norse. ‘Is that not the ship of that Hoskuld, harboured there?’

  There was a flurry of peering and pointing, then Kaetilmund gave a nod and a grunt, smacking the little Wend on the shoulder hard enough to rattle the leather helmet over his brow.

  ‘Good eyes, No-Toes,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It is that lost ship, for sure.’

  Crowbone felt the hairs on his arms raise, tasted the tingle of the Norn-weave moment on his tongue. The sail came flaking down, the prow beast was lifted off and the oars clattered out. On the way to his sea-chest oar bench, Mar offered Crowbone a hopeful grin.

  ‘All we need are some quiet words,’ he said and Crowbone looked sourly back at him, then at Kaup, the dark shadow following him. Quiet words. From a black ship with a blood-red sail whose crew cont
ained at least one walking dead man. In every saga told, the villain was always a powerful magic-worker with a pack of trolls, rabid wolves, alfar — and black men.

  ‘Aye,’ he declared as the men picked up the oar rhythm. ‘There is no bother in this at all.’

  An hour later, of course, matters had turned out as sour as Crowbone had thought and he stood in the prow, shaking his head at the wyrd of it.

  It was, he brooded, ridiculous. Between us all we have command of a fair wheen of tongues, yet I am standing in the prow of a boat trying to find one gods-cursed person we can talk to.

  Crowbone, fretting and churning deep in himself, wondered if it was worth pitching Stick-Starer over the side and ignoring the sunwise terns and his own surety of Norn-weaving. All unknown to him, Mar watched the hood-eyed prince and marvelled at his stillness and seeming unconcern as the youth stood, hipshot and silvered by the dawn, as if waiting patiently for his rising-meal.

  The Shadow rose and fell in slow, rolling swells, the snarling prow of it removed and safely covered, the strakes grating on the harsh sand and shingle but not driven hard enough up on the beach so that it could not be rowed swiftly out again. To the left, jostling with fishing craft, Hoskuld’s knarr nudged the stone quay, fastened snugly to an iron ring. Beyond the curve of shingle, sand and stiff grass was a sea wall, behind which huts and houses huddled. To the right was a great rock, hunched as Onund’s shoulder and with a stone-walled borg barnacled tight on it; somewhere there a bell clanged.

  ‘Call them again — surely they know even your bad Frankish? The land is only across the water from them.’

  Onund glanced briefly at Crowbone, then called out that they came in peace, but held his own council as to how close this place was to the land of the Franks.

  Crowbone watched and waited, but no-one came, not even from the borg and he studied the round gate-towers, saw the strength of it — but saw no spear points or helmets. There were folk around, all the same, for a handcart and people hurried across the raising-bridge into the maw of the borg; two of them were girls, their skirts flying. The bridge came up not long after, with a rending screech of cogs and wheels needing greased.