by Robert Low
The worst of the real storm was gone, Crowbone realised when he surfaced from all this, and he said as much as he eased the stiff wet of himself. Nearby, Berto sat and stared at the deck with unseeing eyes, while the yellow bitch lay, head on paws and eyes pools of wet misery as deep as the ones that sluiced the length of her and down the rest of the boat. Stick-Starer glanced at the sky while the wind tried to tear his beard out by the roots, then shook his head.
‘We are in the mouth of it,’ he said. ‘We are running hard with the wind and it will get much worse than this before we see the last of this weather.’
‘There is cheer for you,’ grunted Murrough and Onund, coming from checking the mast and steerboard and how much water was shipped, looked at Gjallandi and said: ‘A tale would be good while we throw water out of the ship.’
‘Not one about the sea, all the same,’ added Murrough, scooping water over the side with his eating bowl. He nudged Berto, who seemed to wake from a dream and took another bowl up listlessly.
‘Or dogs,’ added Vandrad Sygni, as the yellow bitch, staggering in the swells, shook water out of itself all over him.
‘You can stop a dog from barking and howling by turning one of your shoes upside down,’ declared Murrough and then stared, a crab claw almost at his mouth, when he felt eyes on him.
‘What?’ he said.
‘When did you know so much about dogs?’ demanded Kaetilmund, shaking a cask to see how much drinking water was left in it.
‘We of the Ui Neill know everything about good hounds,’ the big Irishman boasted. ‘The health of childer will always be better if you allow them to play with dogs. If you see a dog rolling in the grass, you should expect good luck or news.’
‘Or expect it to be covered in its own shit,’ Kaetilmund countered.
‘Good news?’ demanded Vigfuss Drosbo, looking at the yellow bitch. ‘Does it work if the beast rolls on ship planking?’
‘No,’ answered Murrough with a grin, ‘but it is good luck to allow strange dogs to follow you home. And wherever else we are going, we are going to my home.’
‘Never give a pig away,’ Gorm offered, huddled with the others of Hoskuld’s men, who were doing nothing much at all. ‘I had that from my old da, before I took to the sea. He said it was a curse from the old time, but most who heard it thought it only sensible trading.’
‘No help, even if we had a pig,’ Gjallandi noted pompously. ‘Maybe, though, it would take your place at the bailing. Time you sleekit seals did something for your bread and water.’
Since he was wrapped imperiously in his wet cloak and doing nothing much himself at the time, this brought laughter — but the idea was sound and Hoskuld’s crew were handed buckets and bowls. Crowbone saw that Halk had moved to help Rovald at the steering oar.
‘Since you do not bail,’ Crowbone declared bitterly to Gjallandi, ‘it would be good to have those tales now.’ And he threw more water over the side, with a flourish to show that he was also working, prince or no.
‘As you command, my prince,’ Gjallandi answered wryly, though it was clear he had no stomach for the thought. Crowbone narrowed his eyes a little and stopped throwing water.
‘I am bound by the Odin oath, same as you,’ he said pointedly, ‘but do not press too hard on me keeping to it and not harming you at all.’
Gjallandi felt his mouth dry up, which made it the only dry place on that ship. He began to gather his thoughts, but Crowbone’s odd eyes had turned to soapstone.
‘A great bear, who was the king of a great forest, once announced to his subjects that he wanted someone to tell stories one after another without ceasing,’ he said and Gjallandi closed his mouth on his own tale.
‘If they failed to find somebody who could so amuse him, he promised, he would put them all to death.’
The men had all stopped and Onund kicked first one, then another, into starting bailing again.
‘Well,’ Crowbone said, settling back on his haunches, ‘everyone knew the old saying “The king kills when he wills”, so the animals were in great alarm.
‘The Fox said, “Fear not; I shall save you all. Tell the king the storyteller is ready to come to court when ordered.” So the animals did so and the Fox bowed respectfully, and stood before the Bear King, who ordered him to begin. “Before I do so,” said the Fox, “I would like to know what your majesty means by a story.”’
‘Something Gjallandi does not tell,’ bawled a man from down the deck; Bodvar, Crowbone remembered, by-named Svarti — Black — because of his nature rather than his looks. Gjallandi’s scowl was soot after that.
‘The Bear King was puzzled by this,’ Crowbone went on, ignoring the pair of them. ‘“Why,” he said, “a narrative containing some interesting event or fact.” The Fox grinned. “Just so,” he said and began: “There was a fisherman who went to sea with a huge net, and spread it far and wide. A great many fish got into it. Just as the fisherman was about to draw the net the coils snapped. A great opening was made. First one fish escaped.” Here the Fox stopped.’
‘Just as well,’ muttered Onund, ‘since a tale about the sea is not so welcome.’
Crowbone ignored him, too. ‘“What then?” demanded the Bear King. “Then two escaped,” answered the Fox.
‘“What then?” demanded the impatient Bear. “Then three escaped,” said the Fox. Thus, as often as the Bear asked, the Fox increased the number by one, and said as many escaped. The Bear grew annoyed and growled loudly. “Why, you are telling me nothing new!” he bellowed.
‘“I wish your majesty will not forget your royal word,” said the Fox. “Each event occurred by itself, and each lot that escaped was different from the rest.”
‘The Bear King showed his fangs. “Where is the wonder in all this?” he demanded.
‘“Why, your majesty, what can be more wonderful than for fish to escape in lots, each exceeding the other by one?” said the Fox. “I am bound by my word,” said the Bear King, gnashing his fangs and flexing his great claws, “or else I would see your carcass stretched on the ground.”
‘The Fox, in a whisper to the rest of the animals, said: “If rulers are not bound by their own word, few or no matters can bind them. Even oaths to Odin.”’
The wind was loudest on the ship for a long moment, then Gjallandi cleared his throat.
‘The Lay of Baldur,’ he began and Onund whacked him on the shoulder.
‘Shut up and bail,’ he growled. ‘There are too many fish in the boat and not all of them are escaped from that story.’
South of Hy (Iona), some days later …
The Witch-Queen’s Crew
The sea creamed and smoked where it was not black as a slice of night and the spray smoked in Erling’s face, so that he turned away and let the raggles of his hair flail one cheek for a moment.
Od, unmoved by anything other than keeping his blade dry, grinned back at him from a pearled face; he sat alone, for Gudrod’s crew would not go near him if he could be avoided. They did not do this with any sneering, for the last thing they wanted was to annoy the beautiful boy, so they busied themselves with little tasks that kept them from sitting near him.
There were enough tasks to go round, Erling decided moodily, since the wind was thrawn in the rigging lines, singing like a harp while the waves hit the unmoved dragon-beast with a shuddering power that broke them into shards and smoke.
Standing up in this, watching the horizon, was Gudrod, one hand on a rigging line, one just touching the sealskin pouch where the letter they had taken from Holmtun was snugged up, warm and dry with his other precious treasure, the cloth nine-squares and bone counters of ’tafl.
One is as unreadable to me as the other, Erling thought bitterly, remembering the sighs and sneers of Gudrod over his playing. That left his mood as black as the sky behind them, where clouds, massive as bulls, were silvered by flickers of light.
‘We have to make for land,’ Hadd screamed out. Gudrod did not need his shipmaster to tell him, though he suspect
ed they had skipped under the worst of the storm, which was roaring and stamping closer to Mann. Still, they had a wind coming out of the east which wanted to push them west and contrary currents slamming waves into them from the north. The thought of running with the wind turned his bowels to water, for he had heard of others who had done this and missed Ireland entirely, never to be heard from again.
‘Hy,’ he roared back and Hadd left the mastfish and stumbled to his side, where he did not have to bellow his fears for the others to hear. Hy was not far off but a small island, hard to approach at the best of times, never mind at night in a storm. Difficult landing on an open beach where a mistake would rip the bottom off.
‘The wind is wrong and the wave with it,’ he said, his mouth fish-breath close to Gudrod’s ear. ‘It will be a hard row.’
Gudrod looked at his men and knew they needed something to shove fire into them, something more than muscle. He was the Witch-Queen’s son and he had been around his ma long enough to have learned a few things. He nodded to Erling, then to the miserable, bound figure of Hoskuld.
It was a right shame, he thought to himself, stepping up to the prow, an iron-headed axe in each out-thrust hand, bellowing out old chants to Aegir and Ran and Thor, for he had hoped to bring Hoskuld all the way back to his mother, who would know if the old trader had anything left worth telling.
Still, there was the writing in Latin-runes, which probably told all there was to know and he planned to sail into Hy and get the monks there to read it. He threw the axes over the side for Thor’s consideration, then drew his seax and turned to Hoskuld, whose face was stiff with fear, for there was too much sailing-salt in his blood for him not to know what would happen.
He wanted to tell Gudrod of the three gold coins sewn in the hem of his tunic but stitched his lips thin on that, for he knew Gudrod would then get the coins and would still use the knife.
The spray pearled on the silver of the blade and Hoskuld looked at it, then at Gudrod’s set face. Then he spat, though the gesture was lost a little when the wind sprayed it back in his own beard. Gudrod laid one hand gently on the old man’s wind-whipped hair, feeling the flinch in the man then.
Hoskuld’s eyes grew wide and panicked as a hare; Gudrod felt him shake then, heard him squeal, but the words were whipped away by the wind — something about his tunic. He gripped, pulled the throat up and sliced. The men howled as the blood flashed, whipping away in red ropes by the wind. Hoskuld, like an old anchor stone, toppled over the side and was gone; the crew scrambled to their rowing places.
An hour later, the wind died and the sea settled to a long, slow, black heave, like a sated wolf breathing in its sleep.
The Manx Sea, at the same moment …
Crowbone’s Crew
‘We are turning,’ Stick-Starer screamed and it was not a request. Onund, his hair and beard all to one side and stiff as a hackle, bellowed something back at him, but the wind ripped it away. They traded mouthings while the rain and wind tore and spat; Crowbone saw, in the blue-sparked dark, the tight, grim faces of men, wet with the sweat of fear as much as spray and rain.
‘We have lost the shore,’ Onund bellowed, forcing himself close to Crowbone’s ear. ‘He is guessing where it is.’
Now Crowbone was afraid. They had seen the land in the last of what passed for day, a silver sliver of light below a great black glower of thunderclouds, and started to row for it. Then the grey mirk had sheeted down on them, the wind drove it sideways like a sleeting of arrows and they had lost sight of that thin, dark lifeline. Stick-Starer had raised the sail a notch and they ran on with the wind, hoping it did not plough them into unseen rocks as they slanted towards where the land had been.
They needed ship-luck and wave-luck. The deck felt pulpy to Crowbone and he fancied he could feel the Shadow wallow, fat with shipped water; he felt sick at the thought of being plunged into that madly shifting black maw and, at the same time, almost welcomed it, for he had dived in it daily in his ringmail, threshing and choking, training himself to slither out of the stuff underwater. That had been in quiet shallows, all the same, where he could recover the byrnie.
Then the yellow bitch barked. The roar and hiss of the wind chopped the sound off with a vicious abruptness, but the dog stood on splayed, staggering legs, stiff-ruffed and shaking with every bark, as if its whole body was forcing them out.
Berto went to it, turned and pointed out into the dark. In the next flare of blue-white, the curve of shingle between thick forests etched itself on the back of all eyes and a delighted Onund thumped Stick-Starer on the shoulder, hard enough to spurt water.
He sprang to the steersman, already helped by Halk and two others, while men fought the sail back on to the spar, gripped the oars and started to pull; laboriously, the Shadow turned, wallowingly and rocking like a sick cow, the rowers hauling and grunting. One fell sideways and men hauled him away; Rovald slid to the bench and began to pull, while others hunkered, waiting to relieve those who collapsed.
There was a long time of wind and rain and cursing. The Shadow plunged and bucked, tried to spin, was flung forward, then sucked back.
Finally it staggered to a sudden stop, throwing everyone flat. The sea grabbed it and sucked it out again, then flung it back to the shore, this time hard enough that everyone heard the harsh grating and the sudden crack. Onund howled into the wind and rain, wolfing out his pain and outrage at what was happening to the ship, as if it was his own bones breaking and not planks, but the sudden tilt of the deck flung everyone sideways, some of them completely out of the ship.
Then there was a longer time of struggling in knee-deep water that slapped and sucked folk off their feet as they staggered to the shingle, hefting precious sea-chests. Kaetilmund and Stick-Starer fought through the surf and heaved lines ashore, looking for good fastenings.
Finally, safe ashore and looking back, Crowbone saw that the storm was growing and spat salt water as the crew gathered slowly beside him, slipping their sea-chests down and rubbing the rain and spray off their faces.
‘Cracked like an egg,’ roared Onund against the whine and howl of the wind and did not need to say more; the Shadow lay canted on the shingle and sand, the white of splintered wood bright on her.
‘As well we made it to the shore,’ Stick-Starer yelled back. ‘Now we need shelter.’
‘At least someone has found a mate,’ Murrough bawled and stabbed his axe towards the yellow bitch, then stumped off up the rain-hissed beach, laughing.
Everyone turned; a brindle hound circled the yellow bitch, the pair of them sniffing each other’s arse while men chuckled.
‘Well,’ said Kaetilmund to Berto, ‘there was me thinking your yellow bitch was as magic as Finn’s Weatherhat, or Crowbone himself — yet it was all because she is as prick-struck as a weasel in heat.’
‘Different magic, same effect,’ muttered Rovald. ‘What I want to know is — who owns the other dog?’
‘I fancy the light will tell us,’ Gorm growled and pointed to where the faint yellow glow of the lantern bobbed and swayed.
The owner was a cloak-wrapped figure looking for his dog and cursing it for having run off on such a foul night. Instead of his dog he came on a pack of wolves and, screaming, dropped the lantern and fled into the dark.
‘Fuck,’ said Vigfuss Drosbo with some disgust. ‘All we want is a bit of shelter.’
‘And some food,’ added a voice.
‘Ale would be good,’ said Vandrad Sygni. ‘And a woman or two.’
‘And all the gold and silver they have,’ Murrough finished, making everyone laugh as the rain dripped down their necks.
It was not hard to find where the man had come from — a huddle of buildings shut tight save for one back door of the main steading, left banging in the wind; the owners had fled into the storm night. Murrough stepped inside and found the fire in the hearth and a cauldron bubbling; a little salty, but that could as well be kale as the owners having gobbed in it before they left. As
good a stew as you could hope to find in Ireland, he announced after tasting it.
‘If we are in Ireland,’ Crowbone growled back, with a pointed look at Stick-Starer, who shrugged.
‘Storms run us where the gods wish,’ he answered, ducking under Crowbone’s black look and into the warmth and shelter. One by one, men crowded in, grateful to be out of the wind and rain, dumping sea-chests and shaking themselves like dogs.
Crowbone sent Kaetilmund off to explore the other outbuildings; when he came back, he announced that the place had storerooms, a brewhouse, a decent cookhouse with a bread oven, a byre with plough oxen contentedly chewing — and the building Crowbone had been most concerned about, a stable.
‘Four wee ponies, five stalls,’ Kaetilmund said and Murrough spat into the hearthfire.
‘So they have sent word somewhere,’ he growled, then helped himself to the stew.
Crowbone went to the door and looked out; the wind was rising and the rain pelting. Blue-white light rippled, the sky cracked and he could not see the sea from here, though he knew it would be lashing itself. He did not think a messenger would make good time to any warriors, nor they back to this place — and no man would want to drape himself with metal when Thor hurled his Hammer. He turned back to the fire and said so and Gjallandi shrugged.
‘Unless there is a borg close by,’ he pointed out. ‘Where would the folk from this place be running to, after all?’
Murrough snorted.
‘Anywhere. Too many women and weans to risk putting up a fight. They will find what shelter they can and spread the word of us for miles … gods curse it, boy, get your wet serk and breeks off or you will die.’
This last was directed at Berto, who was shivering near the fire in his wet clothes while men stripped and tried to find space to dry their clothes. The Wend eyed the big Irishman with a jaundiced look.
‘When the same sort of men as we found in Galgeddil arrive here,’ he piped back, ‘I would rather be dressed and wet than have to face them bare-arsed.’
Which made a few laugh — and even more decide to get dressed again.