Crowbone o-5

by Robert Low

  ‘Ach,’ Murrough yelled out, hearing them mumble and fret, ‘I had a good pair of naal-bind socks in my chest, only darned twice and hardly a hole in them. Now I will have to go and buy for new.’

  Men left off their grumbles and a few laughed, shamed and sheepish, hardened raiding men who knew that you should be able to leave anything behind in an eyeblink, for it was sometimes the way of the wave and war that a good sea-chest vanished. Yet there was a mutter, about how all the plunder from one place was gone and now it looked as if the rest was lost, too. Poor raiding luck from this new jarl.

  Crowbone heard it. Fridrek, he thought, still breathing through his mouth since his nose was broken. He felt the rage surge in him then, and wanted to stop Fridrek breathing entirely — but he knew what to do instead.

  ‘We have not even thrown a few sparks off an enemy blade,’ he bellowed out. ‘We are not turned and burned yet.’

  So they laughed and formed up, shields casual and ready by their sides. But when the men came up, they made everyone blink; Crowbone felt his face go stiff with the sight of them.

  They were not horsemen, just men on horses and they had wisely climbed off them and sorted themselves out into a long thick thread of shields and helmets and spears. Their leader rode a little fyrd pony, was slathered in ringmail cut for riding and coming down over his thighs; off the horse it would drag at his ankles.

  He had a decorated helmet with a brass boar crest and mail all round the front so that only his eyes showed, like a dog peering from a kennel. He rode forward a little and peeled off the helmet, revealing a flushed face, black hair bound back and ragging in the wind and a chin shaved save for a long moustache. Slightly behind him, a boy looked on from the back of his own horse, curious and unafraid.

  ‘More driftwood washed up?’ the man said in heavily accented Norse, fighting the mouth of the pony so that slaver flew. Eighty men, Crowbone counted and felt his own men shift slightly, for even if they could not tally beyond fingers, they knew when they were outnumbered.

  His tongue felt like old wood, but Crowbone forced himself to be light and easy, as relaxed as if he sat at his own hearthfire with a horn in one hand and a woman in the other.

  ‘You have found some driftwood already?’ he asked and the horseman frowned a little at that, cursing as the pony tried to dance him round in a circle.

  ‘Aye,’ he answered and waved a hand. Men came forward carrying a limp form and laid it down alongside the pony, which snorted and stamped at the smell of death.

  ‘One less Dyfflin raider,’ the horseman snarled and Crowbone stepped forward. It was Kari, puffed with water, his shattered hand still stuck in his tunic belt. Men groaned when they saw it, for the fate of the knarr was now confirmed.

  ‘By all the gods of Ireland,’ bellowed a voice which snapped heads round. Murrough stepped forward, his big hooked axe held in front of him. ‘You dare call me a Dyfflin raider? Who are you to insult a son of the Ui Neill then?’

  Crowbone flared with anger that someone should have crashed into his speaking without a by-your-leave — yet he also saw the horseman’s head snap up and his eyebrows go even further than that. Then Murrough went off into Irish, a great scathing, snarling dragon-spit of words which left the horseman lashed and even more flushed, his lips thin as wires.

  ‘Your Chosen Man reminds me of my manners,’ he said eventually, stiff and painful. ‘Congalach macFlann, macCongalaig, macDuin macCernaig. I serve Gilla Mo Chonna macFogartach macCiarmac, ri Deiscert Breg.’

  He broke off and indicated the boy behind him, who kicked his horse forward and rose up a little in the stirrups to announce, in a shrill voice, that he was Maelan macCongalach, macFlann and so on.

  None of which made the least sense to Crowbone, but he knew the Irishers were reciting their lineage and that they were father and son. Not that it meant much, since every ragged Irisher was as proud as a king, even if he had no arse in his breeks, and every one was rich with names if nothing else. Still, he had no idea who Gilla Mo was but did not show it, for he knew how to behave like a prince. Vladimir had taught him that.

  ‘Olaf Trygvasson, of the Yngling line of Harald Fairhair, king of Norway and a prince in my own right,’ he declared. ‘And no friend to the Norse of Dyfflin.’

  ‘So this Murrough macMael fellow says,’ Congalach replied. ‘You are part of the Oathsworn of Jarl Orm, the White Bear Slayer.’

  Crowbone glanced at Murrough with narrowed eyes, wondering what else the Irisher had said, but only had a broad grin in reply. Behind him, Kaetilmund grunted as if kicked.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ he muttered. ‘Now we have trouble — they know us.’

  Crowbone merely inclined his head and the horseman cuffed the head-tossing pony on one ear.

  ‘I have heard of those men,’ Congalach declared, frowning. ‘I am told they are not Christians.’

  ‘The Oathsworn have been prime-signed,’ Crowbone replied, which was no lie for they had all been once; Crowbone had the tales of it from Finn. ‘I myself have just come from the chapel of St Ninian at Hvitrann.’

  Leaving a deal of dead and a Galgeddil lord’s family weeping — but there was still no lie in it, thought Crowbone, though he felt the heat of black stares on his back from the likes of Onund and Kaetilmund and all the other firm pagans. He willed their teeth together.

  Congalach smiled.

  ‘Then you are welcome,’ he said, ‘in the lands of the Ui Neill.’

  ‘God bless the Ui Neill,’ Murrough added cheerfully and made the sign of the cross on his breast, over the Thor Hammer neatly hidden beneath his tunic.

  ‘Amen,’ Crowbone lied smartly.

  The island of Hy (Iona), around the same time …

  The Witch-Queen’s Crew

  ‘I believed you to be Christians,’ said the abbot and Gudrod acknowledged him with a slight ironic bow, which flitted up the stone walls and flickered, wavering, as the wind threatened the fish-oil lamps.

  ‘As Christian as you are,’ he replied and the lash of it was not lost on the abbot, who had barred the door of the monastery when the ship had first appeared, afraid of the sleek of it and not consoled enough by the friendly removal of the dragon-prow to offer Christian charity. The door, which had been briefly opened, was shut and barred once more for the abbot was Frankish and from the eastern borders of that place, where no-one was to be trusted.

  It had taken Od’s toying with some of the monks who had stayed outside the monastery, cowering or praying in their beehive huts, to get the door opened again, by which time Gudrod was rain-soaked and bad-tempered as a wet cat. He waved the written parchment under the abbot’s nose and demanded he read it in a decent tongue but all he got was a babble of Frankish prayers. It came as no surprise to Erling that the abbot soon found himself strung by the ankles above his own altar, but what amazed him was the passive courage of the other monks, who simply knelt and started to pray. One or two rose up, shouting, ‘Saint Blaithmac’, then subsided to prayer again.

  ‘Who is this Blaithmac?’ Od demanded.

  Erling did not know, so he asked and, eventually, a whey-faced priest told him in stumblingly poor Norse — a monk, martyred by raiders for refusing to give up the shrine of Columba on the island of Hy a hundred years ago at least.

  ‘So he is dead?’ asked Od and Erling nodded, which made the youth shrug; a god who would not protect his own from death was not much of a god — though the house these folk had built for him was interesting. Stone and solid as a fortress.

  Erling pointed out that the priests seemed to be made of the same stuff as the saint, for Od had killed three already and the abbot was still refusing to read anything to help pagans and murderers. He continued babbling prayers in his own tongue.

  ‘Remember also the signs of old burnings on the way up here,’ Erling pointed out as they stood in the flickering half-dark, waiting for Gudrod’s next move. ‘This Hy place has been scorched before. My da’s da probably did it.’

  Laughter
flitted round the stone columns, so that the monks shut their eyes and prayed harder, trying not to notice the skull-grins from the shadowed men lurking beyond the light and angry at having been left so long out in the wind and rain.

  ‘Fater unser, thu thar bist in himile, si geheilagot thin namo …’ the abbot panted, the drool running up his own nose. Erling sighed; it did not appear to him that this one was about to do as was demanded of him and he said as much. Gudrod’s eyebrows braided and he backhanded the abbot twice, then glared at him, sucking his knuckles as the Christmann swung like a bad bell.

  ‘Do you play hnefatafl?’ he asked suddenly and the abbot, swaying and bleeding, only moaned. Gudrod sighed.

  ‘I thought not. If you did, you would have known that the king is surrounded in this game and it would be as well to give in.’

  The abbot started a gasping call for God to visit plagues on the pagan and died so suddenly, when Gudrod’s temper snapped, that even the monks were surprised. The abbot’s throat was opened by a seax in mid-rant, the priest’s last curse a hiss of blood-mist that Gudrod had to wipe off the writing.

  ‘Well,’ muttered Erling with pointed sarcasm, ‘do I pick another and find out if he can read?’

  Gudrod, well aware that he had acted hastily, bent and wiped the seax clean on the abbot’s robes while the blood pooled out under the man’s head like a black, spreading shadow in the lamp light.

  ‘No need,’ said a voice and a figure stepped into the light and stood to let Gudrod and Erling look him up and down.

  Indistinguishable in his dress from any of the other priests, he was as different from them in bearing as donkey from stallion; tall, hair neatly cropped and tonsured, eyes clear and unafraid. Lips, Gudrod thought to himself, thin and bloodless as wires and an arrogant tilt to the chin.

  ‘Who?’ he demanded.

  ‘Mugron,’ the man declared.

  Proud, Gudrod thought. Knows his worth. Here is a man who wants to be the next abbot of Hy. Better still, here was a priest who spoke decent Norse and could read the Latin.

  He thrust the parchment at him.

  ‘In return for this, a peaceful departure in the morning — you will have shelter and food for the night,’ Mugron said. ‘No-one else killed, nothing burned, nothing taken.’

  Gudrod’s smile was twisted.

  ‘Do you play hnefatafl?’ he asked and the priest frowned.

  ‘Possibly. I play skaktafl which I learned in Rome.’

  Gudrod had heard of skaktafl, the Shah’s Table, an invention of Musselmen and a game with more pieces and lined up like opposing armies — but Shah was just the Serklander’s name for a king, and any game of kings was one Gudrod wanted to play. So he smiled.

  ‘You have the word of a Christian on matters,’ he answered, while the blood of the abbot patted in large, wet drops to the stones. There was the briefest of hesitations, then the priest started to read.

  Cnobha (Knowth), Kingdom of Brega in Ireland, days later …

  Crowbone’s Crew

  They skliffed over worn stone slabs, clack-clacking in salt-stained boots, skidding in the scowl-dark of the place, which was all tall shadows broken by the dazzle of torchlight so that Crowbone could not get a true impression of it.

  They walked through skeins of men in the long hundreds, sorting themselves out so that the whole of that fortress writhed like a cut snake. Then, suddenly, they were at a door and the men in the lead, swathed in shoulder-fastened cloaks of muted check, stood to one side to let their king go through.

  The king half turned then, to where Crowbone and Gjallandi and Murrough followed, rearing to a stop with the surprise of facing him. His eyebrows, like snow on lintels, had closed to make one iced line and his long moustaches, the colour of old walrus teeth, trembled almost as much as his belly when he spoke.

  ‘Watch your words,’ he growled. ‘This is Mael Sechnaill himself in here and he is judge. I have offered my hand to you on the strength of this Ui Neill man here and would not like to find I had misplaced it.’

  He paused, then hitched up the great gold pin that fastened his cloak to the bulk of him.

  ‘Prince,’ he added, in such a scathing way that Crowbone took a step forward until Gjallandi’s hand gripped his forearm and stopped him. The anger in him burned his belly, all the same, as he stepped after the king of Brega, Gilla Mo Chonna. Gjallandi caught Murrough’s eye as the Irisher stepped up and was not made easier by the wild grin he got back.

  They moved into the bright of the place, blazed with torches. Crowbone was surprised to see a floor of stone slabs that bounced the light back, so that the place seemed like the inside of a great bowl of red gold; he became aware of the salt streaks on his clothes, the tarnish on his pin and neckring.

  He half-turned once to the other two, convinced the three of them were griming a trail on the floor, like slugs on a gold plate — then his laugh, half-shamed, died on his lips at the sight of the guards he had forgotten were behind them like pillars, long ring-coats jingling and dragging round their calves, faces blanked by helmet metal. It reminded him that his men were snugged up in the warm, but not part of the feast and kept away from the High King’s army until matters were resolved.

  The dark gable of the place soared above Crowbone and the noise and smell of food was a blow to the senses. Ahead on the High Seat sat a figure, his dark hair bound back by a braided thong of gold threads, his face wreathed in smoky torchlight as he spoke from one side of him to the other with all the lesser kings — Mael Sechnaill, High King of the Irishers.

  He turned as Gilla Mo stepped up and, smiling, waved the king of Brega to the seat beside him. This was Gilla Mo’s hall and that was his High Seat, but he acknowledged Mael Sechnaill as his better and bowed, then sat — on his left, Crowbone noted, not at his right hand, which was reserved for what seemed to be a blind man.

  In a moment, though, Gilla Mo had his white hair close to the High King’s ear, while Crowbone stood, aware of the looks and the muttered questions, the faces turning like hog snouts to see who was coming to share the trough.

  Crowbone could guess some of what the fat king of Brega told — how a band of Norse claiming to be part of the famed Oathsworn and led by a self-styled Prince of Norway had wrecked themselves on the shore near Ath Na Gassan, the Ford of Paths. On how they claimed to be Christians and one of them had announced himself as an Ui Neill called Murrough macMael, so Brega had offered them hospitality and brought them to the High King.

  A fair walk it had been, too, Crowbone thought bitterly — they rode and we tramped. After a few hours of forested hills, humping their own sea-chests on their backs, Crowbone had refused to go further until this was resolved. In the end, reluctantly, Congalach had relented and the sea-chests had been taken on the front of the ponies; it had gone some way to quelling the black scowls directed at Crowbone from his own men, who thought his luck was poor.

  On the way, Murrough had tried to find out more about these men of Brega and what they did, but beyond the mention of Mael Sechnaill’s army being at Cnobha, Murrough found out nothing much.

  ‘He is mannered enough,’ he whispered to Crowbone one rest-halt, ‘but this Congalach speaks a lot and tells nothing. I only know that the army goes to Tara and his men took seven years to train for war.’

  ‘I know that we are prisoners, for all we have our weapons,’ muttered Kaetilmund and grim faces growled agreement to that. Crowbone laughed as easily as he could make it.

  ‘As long as we have edge and hand, we are not prisoners,’ he told them. ‘We are war, waiting to be woven.’

  Standing in front of the High King, all the same, Crowbone did not doubt that he had his feet firmly planted in a kennel of dogs who eyed him like a strayed wolf, so he pretended to ignore the stares and squints, looking instead at the richness of the hall.

  There were wall hangings — a winged youth or a woman, in blue and green; a bearded man who seemed to be dead or sleeping and others, their colour faded by dark an
d smoke but some with the gold head-circles that Christ figures had. Real gold wire, too, Crowbone noted.

  ‘Murrough macMael.’

  The voice cut through the noise and stilled it at once. The High King raised a hand and flapped it at them to come forward and Murrough, grinning, swaggered out. Gjallandi and Crowbone hesitated a moment and felt the body heat of the guards closing in behind them, forcing them forward. Congalach strode out in front and to one side.

  ‘Kneel!’ he ordered and both Murrough and Gjallandi went down on one knee.

  ‘Kneel before the Ard Ri,’ Congalach bellowed. ‘And the king of Brega. And all the kings of Ireland.’

  Crowbone saw the cat’s arse purse to the Brega king’s mouth then and thought — aha, here is a man who does not like being an afterthought on the left hand of a High King. Then he felt the hard wolf eyes of all that other nobility raking him, so that he clenched hard on the bowels that threatened to turn to water and tilted his chin.

  ‘Never bow the knee, me,’ he declared and Congalach moved, two clacking steps, with one hand poised to grip Crowbone’s shoulder and force him down; then the odd eyes turned on him and he felt himself stop in mid-stride.

  ‘Lay that on me, Irisher, and suffer for it,’ Crowbone declared, then raked the assembly with a single sweeping glance. ‘Know this — you think we are prisoned here with you, but it is you who are trapped with us.’

  ‘In the name of Christ’s heaven,’ cracked out a voice and you could taste the dark scowl in it. ‘What does it matter? The man is a prince of Norway, after all, who does not need to bow even to the High King of Ireland. If we find that to be less than true, all the same, we will take his measure anew. If only to allow for the length of his burial hole.’

  Congalach swallowed and the muscles in his jaw worked before he drew back. Mael Sechnaill rose, moved to the edge of the High Seat dais and stepped confidently off it. Suddenly, there was a stir at the back of him as men parted to let a figure through; it was the blind man from Mael Sechnaill’s right-hand seat and Crowbone stared at him.