Crowbone o-5

by Robert Low

  He stopped and scrubbed his beard, thinking.

  ‘Erling said Gunnhild and Gudrod had claimed the axe,’ he mused and Finn growled at Crowbone.

  ‘He might have said a little more on the subject,’ he said, barbed as a hunting arrow, ‘but finds it difficult to speak with an axe above his eyebrows.’

  Crowbone admitted the fault with a brief flap of both hands, then squinted at the looming, smoking mountain.

  ‘Well,’ he growled, ‘he may have gone off with it, or Erling might have thought so, or been told to say as much. We will only learn the truth by going to this mountain.’

  He broke off as Bergliot came up, curious to see this legend that was Orm and trying to look at least a little alluring, while swaddled in as many clothes as she could put on.

  ‘You Norse call this Morsugur,’ she said to Orm. ‘I am told this means “the time that sucks the fat”. It is a good name.’

  Crowbone felt her hand on his arm and shook it off, irritated, feeling her stiffen.

  ‘Together,’ he agreed looking at Orm, though both of them knew that was only until matters declared themselves.

  ‘I have lost interest in the working of birds,’ he added. ‘I do not fear the Mother of Kings as much as I did.’

  ‘Dimidium facti, qui coepit, habet,’ said Adalbert from nearby. Orm turned, saw the raw-boned priest, hands shoved deep in his sleeves, cowl up and the beginnings of a good beard. Adalbert smiled.

  ‘He has done …’ he began.

  ‘He has done half, who has begun,’ Orm interrupted. ‘I know that one, priest.

  ‘You keep strange company these days,’ he added softly to Crowbone, who frowned back at him, sullen as slush.

  ‘Adalbert,’ he declared. ‘He came with me from Hy. To save my soul — “probae etsi in segetem sunt deteriorem datae fruges, tamen ipsae suaptae eniten”. Was that not what you said, priest?’

  ‘Very good, young prince,’ Adalbert murmured. Orm grinned.

  ‘At least you will learn the Latin,’ he declared, then looked at Bergliot.

  There was a pause, long and awkward.

  ‘Bergliot,’ she said stiffly, when it became apparent that Crowbone would not introduce her. ‘I am from Wendland.’

  ‘A thrall,’ added Crowbone, then looked pointedly at her. ‘To a princess.’

  Orm did not say anything, though he was sure this Bergliot thought herself more than that and certainly much more than that to Crowbone. He merely nodded and turned away, his heart leaden; he was grown, was Crowbone, but still had much to learn, about love as much as friendships and the power of an oath.

  They went on, shedding men like slug slime. The Oathsworn were fittest, almost untouched by the fighting — because, Crowbone thought bitterly, it has all been done for them.

  Yet the cold and the bad food did for them all and men were staggering with the shite freezing down their legs, some falling down and begging to be carried even as others begged for death rather than be left to the Sami. Yet others simply vanished, dropped out unseen and unheard.

  The ties that bound them all now were a snake-knot tangle of oaths and fear and hope. It kept men from each other’s throats, but did not dispel unease or mistrust — the snow-buried dead braided the tension on them and the last, panting climb to the smoking gash in the mountain twisted fear out of them like water from a tight rope.

  It was grim and grey as a hag’s head, with the almost sheer wall of a cliff where they wanted to go and a tumbled ruin of snow behind where rocks breached like the backs of whales, all the way to the faint line of dripping, mist-shrouded pines where the beast-men skulked. No birds sang here and only the dark gash with its pall of rotten-egg stink offered a way ahead. Finn alone took delight in it because it was warm.

  ‘Warm enough to have vanished away all that fallen snow,’ he pointed out, almost cheerfully, as if that was somehow a good matter. Everyone had noted the warmth that blew fetid from the mouth of the gash in the mountain; it did nothing to make them easier in their minds about entering the place, as Svenke Klak declared.

  ‘I mean,’ he argued, ‘if the creature laired in it breathes warm enough to turn snow to water for yards, chances are it is not a hare hole we are looking at.’

  ‘Melts my bowels to water, for sure,’ growled Kaetilmund, then glared at Crowbone. ‘Those oath-breakers without the protection of Odin should be trembling.’

  Crowbone soured him with a withering stare. His shoulder throbbed and burned and his head felt light as a ball of air.

  ‘I did not come here to tremble on the edge,’ he growled. ‘I will go — but if it will make folk easier, then I will go alone and take a first look ahead.’

  He had courage, Orm saw — but he had always known that about the boy. It was the rest Orm did not like, all he had learned from Onund and Kaetilmund and the others. He had hoped Crowbone would understand about the Oath, keep to it, use the strength of it, but it was clear that he was too much of an Yngling prince for that. He was not Oathsworn, that was sure — but what he is becoming, Orm thought, is less clear.

  ‘Best not, prince,’ he advised. ‘That dog can talk and we will need you here, I am thinking. Send someone else.’

  The yellow hound was ruffed and stiffly pointing off into the snow haze; men shifted uneasily and started thinking about shields and weapons.

  Crowbone moved to the entrance, where the walls rose up on either side and no more than three men could stand abreast — the yellow bitch whined and moaned as loudly as the wind, so that Bergliot reached down and patted her.

  ‘By the Hammer,’ Finn growled, looking round him at the smoking ground. ‘I hope this is no goddess fud I have crawled into, though it reminds me of a woman I knew.’

  ‘I was married to such a one once,’ muttered Murrough, which brought crow-laughter from throats dry from fear and twisted with attempts to breathe. Even Bergliot managed a smile, bright-eyed with fear.

  Crowbone turned his odd eyes on Klaenger, who groaned a little. Freyja’s tits, he thought to himself, is mine the only face he sees? Yet he had seen the fight with Od and had more respect than ever for this young prince, was sure he was braided for greatness; it only remained to hope that his greatness was not threaded round Klaenger’s doom. Then he put his head down, as if walking into a downpour and plunged into the reeking smoke ahead.

  The tension seemed to hiss away then and the men left outside turned away from the cleft, putting backs to the shroud of white and the sick heat of dragon breath, to face the sort of enemy who was almost a comfort now — the dark little Sami with their reindeer skins and beast masks and the desperation of those who have already lost.

  They all knew the men were coming now, for even the blind could have seen them flit between the misted trees lower down, had caught clear sight of knots of them skulking cautiously towards them over the open white slide of new snow, so that they did not need the yellow bitch’s fresh warning growls.

  There were not as many as before and a lot of them had no masks now, but they still had their little bows and vicious black-shafted, owl-feathered arrows.

  ‘They will have to come at us here,’ Orm shouted out to the backs of the men forming up, battered, scarred shields ready. ‘Up Finn’s woman’s fud, which he has clearly not ploughed enough, for it is very narrow.’

  They snarled out laughter and their backs straightened. The ones in front, The Lost, hunkered their ring-mailed bodies behind shields and the spearmen closed up a little to force their hedge of points through to the front.

  Finn folded up the brim of his hat and clapped his helmet over it, then stuck his iron nail between his teeth. Folk chuckled at the sight and Murrough shook his head.

  ‘I do not see why you bother with that hat, Finn Horsehead,’ he declared, ‘for it has never once nailed the weather the way we want it, so it has not.’

  Finn frowned. The battered, rag-brimmed hat was spoil from the rann-sack of Ivar’s steading, him who had been by-named Weatherhat, for
his headgear was reputed to ease storms. It was this that Finn had taken and, in all the years he had worn it, he had never, as he confessed, mastered the way of working it. Yet he would not part with it and said so.

  ‘You should at least tie that helmet under your chin,’ Murrough noted, for Finn simply clapped the dented effort on his head.

  Finn snorted. ‘I have broken the neck of many a man using his own helmet,’ he pointed out, ‘and throttled a few more besides.’

  Men tying their own helmet-thongs nearby looked stricken and paused. Crowbone almost smiled, but could not bring himself over the edge of it, for he wished his own men were as snarling grim and sure of themselves, of each other, as the Oathsworn.

  He looked at his men, cat-nervous and still strangers, yet he took comfort from the fact that they stood, looking to him, oathed to him. He swelled himself up a notch; he was Prince Olaf, son of Tryggve, an Yngling and a chooser of the slain.

  ‘Do not listen to Finn,’ he bellowed. ‘To break a neck as Finn describes has to be done from behind and so it is rare, for all his boasts. Finn kills from the front and it is that iron nail you want to watch at work.’

  Finn gave a huge burst of laughter and acknowledged Crowbone with a wave. Men yelled out and smacked weapons on their shields, taunting the creeping Sami. There was a shout from the front and men hunkered down, shields up, almost without thinking; the air flickered and arrows shunked into scarred wood, or skittered off the rocks. Knots of Sami ran to within range and hurled little throwing spears which clattered and bounced; folk jeered and yelled, while Crowbone pounced on the shafts and, one in either hand, hurled them both at once back over the heads of his men, shouting: ‘Idu na vy!’

  The Slavs knew that one — the great Prince Sviatoslav’s war-yell to his enemies. I am coming against you. Orm raised his sword in salute hoping, even as the ranks roared at the expertise of the young Crowbone, that few remembered how Sviatoslav was now part of a Pecheneg war chief’s drinking cup.

  ‘That’s a fine skill,’ Svenke Klak said to Crowbone. ‘Is it as hard to learn as that snatching in mid-air trick?’

  Crowbone grinned and shook his head.

  ‘You cannot learn it,’ he announced loudly. ‘It is a gift of the gods.’

  Men who knew him, though, shook their heads, half-admiring, half-amazed at the truth of it. They had seen him practise such throwing daily, while his sea-rotten ringmail showed where he swam in it; they knew he had his face set on being a saga-hero.

  Crowbone was about to tell Svenke more about how only some men had his hand luck, but the next flurry of missiles came, a mix of short spears and arrows, zipping and clattering dangerously. Svenke had half-turned to listen, his mouth open and a grin lopsided on it when the spear spanged off the black rock wall, splintered and broke, the point spinning harmless away and the broken shaft hitting him in the throat, just above the leather-thonged rim of his beloved ringmail, with the sound of a spade striking wet dung.

  He staggered back, looked amazed at the lump of wood which had somehow just sprouted from him and turned his bewildered face to Crowbone, who half reached out as if to pluck the words Svenke’s mouth worked to form — but all that came out was a gout of black-scarlet and he fell backwards with a clatter.

  He was dead by the time Crowbone reached him, which was a mercy, for he could never have lived long with such a wound. Murrough cursed and saw Crowbone’s face take on a pinched look — Halfdan moved steadily down the thick-ranked Oathsworn, telling those who craned to see who had been hit to watch their front and keep their shields up.

  The stink of the place, the swirling misted smoke, the rattling rain of missiles and a thin, high shrieking wind ate at courage like worm on a keel, so that Finn and Orm had to move into the ranks, slapping shoulders and telling folk to stand, for they were starting to shuffle backwards. After a pause, Crowbone straightened from Svenke Klak’s body and did the same. He shoved the man’s death in the black sea-chest deep inside him and clashed the lid shut on it. Just another lost counter in the game of kings …

  The actual charge came almost as a relief, but folk had been watching it curl on them like a falling wave and had braced for it. This time, Crowbone did not see any of the enemy, for the Oathsworn of Orm were the ones with numbers here and formed the front two ranks. He heard the furred Sami crash on the shields, saw wood splinter up, heard the Oathsworn howl like wolves and their enemy scream and die.

  It was an eyeblink, no more, but enough for the Sami to leave a heap of reindeer-clad bodies almost three deep in front of the locked shields; spearmen killed the moaners close enough to reach and those who were too far away were left to groan and cry for help, for no-one wanted to leave the shieldwall to finish them until such cries started to itch their teeth.

  The moments crawled away and the thin wind’s shrieking bounced like thrown spears down the rocks of the cleft. Men passed leather water flasks back and forth; Svenke was carried off and other men bound up welts and scratches. Styr and Atli banged helmets together, panting and howling at each other — still here, they roared. Still here.

  Then Klaenger appeared, panting slightly, face streaming and his eyes red from the acrid white smoke.

  ‘You have to see this,’ he said to Crowbone. ‘Better to bring a few men, I am thinking. Bring Boomer and the priest, too, for we may need what lore they both know.’

  The curiosity burned everyone when Crowbone called the pair of them over, ignoring Orm and Finn, who scowled and questioned Klaenger themselves.

  ‘I found a way through the mountain.’

  He paused, looked from Orm to Crowbone and back, licking dry lips.

  ‘There is no snow beyond it. No snow at all.’

  Orm took Finn and Murrough, left Kaetilmund in charge, with Halfdan to take over if he was killed. Crowbone, with a look at Orm’s two grim warriors and his own men, the tremble-lipped skald, the determined priest and the grimly fearful Klaenger, slid across black stones, slush and puddles, into a wind that seemed to bounce and scream down the rocks, streaming all the stink and smoke round and behind them.

  The cleft kinked to the right and Klaenger held up one hand, which froze them in mid-step — Crowbone realised the yellow bitch had come with him and crouched, trembling, by his side. He did not want to turn and see Bergliot, for he would have to order her back and knew she would defy him.

  ‘This is where I saw the light,’ Klaenger said. ‘I thought it might be a way out.’

  ‘Did you get to the part where such a thought found your feet?’ Murrough demanded.

  ‘Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur,’ Adalbert declared, then looked at Crowbone.

  ‘Not the time for lessons,’ he snarled back and the bland face inclined itself in a gentle nod.

  ‘Nobody should be punished for his thoughts,’ Orm translated, then looked mildly at Crowbone, who was sure he was being mocked and whose glare said he did not like it.

  ‘I say that for Finn,’ Orm added blandly. ‘He does not like not knowing what is being said.’

  Finn, grinning, confirmed it with a nod.

  ‘Well?’ Crowbone demanded into the silence that followed. ‘Do you all stay here, go back or go on with me?’

  Klaenger, hackled up like an annoyed dog at Murrough’s implication, growled, ‘My feet found the thought you mentioned. Follow me.’

  Then he paused and twisted a grin at the big Irisher.

  ‘Do not believe what you hear or see.’

  That curdled the flesh on all of them and Finn cursed his back for the mystery he was leaving, but he was already gone, threading into the skeined smoke, before anyone could get him to speak plain.

  The wind moaned and screamed like gulls, it seemed to Crowbone, mournful shrieks, hot and fetid. Murrough gripped his axe more tightly and glanced sideways at Orm, who glared back at him, raising an eyebrow as if daring him to start in about the very breath of a sleeping dragon.

  Then they stepped beyond the smoke, to where ranks of head
s screamed on their poles, sightless eyes staring, snaggle-toothed mouths open, the last of their hair wisping round the ruin of their faces. The heads shrieked at them so that everyone froze and crouched — save for the yellow bitch, who bounded forward and growled and barked. Up ahead, Klaenger stood, unconcerned and enjoying a measure of revenge for what he had been asked to do. Then he laughed and smacked one of the heads, so that it spilled from its stake and rolled towards them. The dog chased it, barking.

  ‘First time I saw them I shat myself,’ he pointed out. ‘But I threw a stone at one and nothing happened, so I had a closer look.’

  He indicated that others should and Finn stirred the grinning horror with the point of his nail, so that the flesh still hanging like black strips waved in the wind. There were three holes punched in the back of the skull and Klaenger nodded when he saw folk understood.

  ‘They are all like this,’ he said and then laughed at the scowls.

  ‘A rare joke,’ Finn said bitterly to him. Three holes fluted the hot wind through each head, so that it appeared that they shrieked, as clever an idea as pretending to bark from secret like a guard dog and for the same reason.

  ‘These are northmen,’ Crowbone said, calling the yellow bitch by the name he had given it — Vigi. In the end, he had to catch it by the ruff and drag it away, for it was no good thing to maul the recently dead.

  ‘The folk who know them will not share the joke in it,’ he added.

  ‘Well spoken,’ said Orm and, for a moment, there was a warmth between them, an echo of what had once been. Finn and Murrough knelt and inspected the grisly skulls, as if examining lathe-made bowls. Bergliot moved up, one hand to her mouth and Finn glanced up at her.

  ‘You should go home, woman,’ he growled. ‘This is no place for you.’

  ‘The Norns wove her into this,’ Crowbone answered harshly. ‘Let them unpick her.’

  ‘Move,’ Orm told them, to bring them back to watchfulness. Cautious as sheep round wolf scent, they moved down past the shrieking skulls, through the last veils of smoke and steaming pools — then, like balm to the eyes, the shrouded white was swept away and, lolling beneath them like a naked blonde maiden with two bags of gold, was a little bowl-shaped scoop of valley, with grass cleared of snow and the huge mass of the mountain looming above and all around.