Crowbone (7 page)

‘We have your heathen dog,’ Gurdrod said and then unlooped a small bag from his belt and grinned. Erling sighed.

‘Lord,’ he said, ‘we should be moving on. There is no time for
hnefatafl
.’

‘There is always time for ’tafl,’ Gudrod replied, unfolding the cloth and placing the counters. ‘Anyway, it should not take long – you are a poor player.’

Erling sighed, then turned to look at Od.

‘Do not do that,’ he said. ‘You will be sick.’

Od smiled like a summer’s day, his lips bright with blood.

‘I am never sick,’ he answered.

The Frisian coast, a little later …

CROWBONE’S CREW

CROWBONE lay on the lip of the seawall, peering through the grass and meadow flowers. Bees hummed and, next to him, Kaetilmund lay, chewing a stem and squinting across the neat fields to the raised mound and the houses on it.

A
terp
it was called, a mound heaped up above the floodplain in case the earth dyke that Crowbone lay on was not enough to keep out the sea. The fields might be awash, but the Frisian folk of this place would keep their homes dry on an island of their own making.

‘What is that one doing?’ Kaetilmund demanded and Crowbone had to admit, for once, that he did not have any idea. The thrall had an axe and looked to be trying to cut a section from a branch that had a slight curve at one end to use on the pole lathe next to him. An old man was watching him, unconcerned, perhaps to make sure he did not use the axe for anything but woodcutting, though the thrall was not having a deal of success with that.

He cut once, twice – then the head flew off the axe and he went and fetched it, stuck it back on the haft and bent over the thick branch again. One, two, three – and the head flew off the axe. He went to fetch it. The old man shook his head in sorrow and spat.

The idiot thrall, small and dark and ragged, was not what occupied Crowbone. He and Kaetilmund had come to see if this was the place the snake-boat raiders had launched from and, if so, how many men they had left.

By the time the Swift-Gliding had been worked to shore with a makeshift steerboard fastening of poor bast rope there was the raid-thrill on all of Hoskuld’s crew, which made the Oathsworn laugh. Thick as linen on those who had never had much chance for raiding, it set them to staring at the land with their hands flexing, as if grasping hilt and shaft. They no longer saw wave or water, only riches and fame and Gjallandi, as grinning and glaured with it as any of them, clapped their shoulders and spoke of gold, boasting of old exploits and new ones to come.

Crowbone and Kaetilmund had gone ahead and now it was clear there were few, if any, fighting men left in the Frisian place. There was the idiot thrall who made Kaetilmund chuckle and that was interesting enough. There was the white-haired Frisian who watched him and the man in the cage nearby.

There was the strangeness that Crowbone studied, his head cocked to one side. The man had been imprisoned for a time, it seemed, and was hard to see into the shadows of the cage. Yet he was a man in a cage and, every now and then, the idiot thrall would stop and peer in, as if anxious, then go back to doing what clearly was fretting to Kaetilmund.

‘Odin’s arse, man – fix the fucking axehead,’ he muttered, as if the thrall could hear him. The thrall thought up a new way and tried many little, fast strokes, since large ones simply loosened the axehead faster. That caused the branch to shift sideways and, after chasing it for a few steps, the thrall put a foot on it and kept cutting, so that Kaetilmund sucked in his breath and at once by-named the idiot No-Toes, since he predicted that as the most likely outcome.

Then the thrall changed the branch round and this time, when he put his foot on it, he did it on the curved end, so that it flew up and smacked his shin. The old man shouted something; Kaetilmund stuffed his knuckles in his mouth to keep from laughing aloud and the effort squeezed a fart from him.

Crowbone did not laugh. Memory washed through him of another time he had lain hidden in the grass, a memory dark as Munin’s wings. Lying in the grass above Klerkon’s summer settlement on Svartey, the Black Island, having run away yet again. Of course, being an island, there was no escape from Klerkon, the raider who had taken Crowbone and his mother and killed his foster-father. For all that, escape was what Crowbone had done more than once and, each time, hunger had driven him back to see what he could steal – and each time he had been captured he had been punished more harshly than before.

They had seen him this time, too, so that he had crouched down and pretended to be dead, not moving, not breathing, hidden in the long grass and so small at eight that he could easily be missed as they swished a way towards him.

Then a fart hissed out of him. He thought that was good, for he knew that the dead farted, sheep and men both and so would add to his subterfuge. Then the hand had gripped him like a vice and one of Klerkon’s men, Amundi Brawl, hauled him up, laughing about how the smell had given him away.

Klerkon, his goat-face twisted with anger, had thrown Crowbone back to Inga, Randr Sterki’s wife, snarling at her to make sure the boy knew he was a thrall and not to let him loose again. Inga, furious at having been so embarrassed, fetched sheep-shears and a seax, then cropped Crowbone’s head to the bone and beyond, flicking off old scabs and scraping new wounds until the blood got in the way and she gave up.

‘There,’ she said, wiping her hands clean on dry grass brought by her own son, the grinning Eyvind, full of his ten years and malice at his ma’s tormentor.

‘Now,’ Inga said, ‘you will be fixed to the privy by a chain and stay there until you learn that you are a nithing thrall.’

‘I am a prince,’ he had spat back and she had smashed his mouth with a scream of rage. He had wanted his mother, then, but she was already dead, kicked to death by the man who had put his bairn in her. It was him, Kveldulf, who fastened Crowbone to the privy and left him there.

Revenge. The day Orm and the Oathsworn had come to raid Klerkon and freed him, the day Klerkon’s own precious bairn went against the side of a wall and had the life broken from it with a snap and a last wail, that day he got his revenge.

Inga, begging and pleading, snarling and fighting, as the Oathsworn held her down and someone – who had it been? Crowbone squeezed his head, but could not remember clearly. Red Njal, maybe? Finn? No matter – the man who had broken his way into Inga had stabbed her first and a frantic Eyvind had died trying to save her. Orm had taken off the back of his head with a sword-stroke.

Crowbone had bent to Inga as the men had left her, choking in her own blood on the flank of a dying ox.

‘I am a prince,’ he had said, his breath wafting the dying flutter of her eyelashes. ‘You should have listened.’

Princely revenge. He shook the memories from him and shoved them back in the black sea-chest he kept in his head. Stuffed full, it was, of all those matters a prince finds expedient and necessary. Lesser men are allowed to brood on them, Crowbone thought, but princes who would be kings cannot afford them. Vladimir had taught him that, having learnt it from his own father, the harsh Sviatoslav.

‘Thor’s hairy balls,’ Kaetilmund hissed with delight. ‘We have to have this thrall, Crowbone, just for the joy of watching him.’

Crowbone stirred out of the past and peered down. The thrall had cut his length of wood and fixed it to the lathe, wrapping the rope round it once, then twice. It was clear the lathe-grip was faulty, for when he pumped the footboard, the lump of wood spun obligingly – then flew off like an arrow from a bow, straight into the open doorway of a house. There was a shriek and a clatter, followed by a scream of woman who lunged out and proceeded to shriek at the old man, who in turn took to battering the thrall round the head and shoulders, grunting and red-faced with the effort.

The thrall took it all, half-curled, like a rock in a storm. When it had washed over him and the woman went off, panting, he got wearily to his feet, fetched the lump of wood, wrapped it in the rope and fastened it on the lathe.

‘No, no,’ Kaetilmund declared with glee. ‘Surely not …’

But he did. He pumped the footboard, the lump of wood flew off and smacked the side of the house, then bounced, scattering chickens in an irate din.

Crowbone turned and grabbed Kaetilmund’s shoulder, signalling that they should slither away, as the woman burst from the house with fresh howls.

There were more shrieks when men from the sea came down on them not long after, grey and snarling as wolves. Shrieking and running, dragging stumbling bairns by the wrist, what was left of the little
terp
went out across their mean fields like scattering sheep.

The Oathsworn did not bother with them much – there was no room in Hoskuld’s boat for slaves and enough of the better-looking ones had stayed, cowering, for men to look over and decide what to do with.

Hoskuld’s crew did the fighting and chasing, yelling and waving weapons, slick with the raid-lust that comes on men who never usually get a lick of the
rann-sack –
even Hoskuld himself puffed along with a long, single-edged old seax in one fist and kicked a door, beaming from the great headland of his face. His snarling joy was spoiled a little when the door did not give way and the force of his kick landed him on his arse. He got up, looking right and left, while folk pretended not to notice.

There were only two fighters. One was the white-hair, who came storming round the side of the main steading of the place, an axe in either hand and both wrists with enough old memories in them to show that, in his youth, he would have been feared.

Gorm aimed a wild swing at him, which the man easily dodged and, if he had not been slowed by age and stiffness, the return would have spilled a deal of Gorm’s belly into the kale patch. It did enough to make Gorm back off and call for help, so that Halk rushed in from one side and the old man, snarling with the desperation of the doomed, hurled himself on the Orkneyman with a shrill cry, like an owl threading the night with screech.

Crowbone watched Gorm and Halk cut the old man down, flurrying blows long after the blood-speckled grey hair was the only thing that moved on the man, wisping stickily in the wind.

‘Bravely done,’ Murrough growled and spat. Crowbone said nothing; brave or not, it was done and that was what mattered.

The other fighter was the idiot thrall, who took up the wood axe and moved to the caged man, turning this way and that, standing guard. Hoskuld scrambled up from his episode with the door and launched himself at the thrall, thinking the stub of a nithing would turn and run.

Instead, the axe whirled up and cut. It would have been a death-blow, for sure, save that the loose axehead flew off, back over the thrall’s shoulder and made Vandrad Sygni hunch his neck into his shoulders as it whizzed past him. But the thrall’s blow was with the haft only, which was battleluck for Hoskuld, since it took him in the left ribs and drove the air out of him as if he was a dead cow. Then the thrall followed it up with a head smack that laid Hoskuld flat with a groan.

‘Do not kill him!’ Kaetilmund yelled, as Vandrad, scowling, nocked an arrow to his bow. ‘That thrall is too valuable to waste.’

The Oathsworn agreed with some chuckles – all save Vandrad, who still had the memory of the axe-bit bird-whirring too close to his head – and closed in on the thrall, who
half-crouched with his stick. Inside the cage, the shadowed figure stirred and Crowbone saw the gleam of white hair or beard.

‘Hold there,’ Vigfuss said. ‘Drop that little stick and no harm will come to you.’

A choking laugh came from the shadowed figure in the cage. ‘Too late for that,’ he wheezed.

The thrall did not move at all, but a young dog the colour of yellow corn suddenly bounded out from behind some huts and skidded up to stand before him, legs splayed and growling.

The Oathsworn tensed a little, for no-one liked dogs, which were just fur bundles with a mouthful of filthy blades.

‘Call that hound off, thrall,’ Vandrad rumbled. ‘Or I will kill it and whack your bottom with your little stick.’

‘It is a bitch,’ the caged man growled. ‘A guard for the village.’

‘Not such a good one,’ Crowbone pointed out and felt the caged man’s eyes appraising him. He did not like to be watched where he could not see and so moved a little way round, to try and see more than just the gleam of white hair or beard; the thrall watched him, flexing his hand on the axe-shaft. The yellow dog wagged her tail and licked the back of the thrall’s hand.

‘It liked everyone too much,’ the caged man observed.

‘Now you have your reward,’ Crowbone said, ‘for if it had been on guard, perhaps your village would not be leaking blood down the street.’

‘Not my village,’ said the caged man and now Crowbone saw him clearly – a thin face, like a ravaged hawk, with a shock of white hair and a tangle of grey-white beard. He had a tunic and breeks, which had once been fine but were now smeared and stained with blood and the leakings from filthy wrappings round both of his hands. The eyes that met Crowbone’s own were fox-sharp, all the same.

Murrough, hearing women shriek and wanting to be off in that direction, finally had had enough. ‘Throw down that stick,’ he growled jutting his jaw, but the look he got back caught Crowbone’s attention and made him study the thrall intently.

There was no wolf at bay in those eyes, nor was there the wild flare of darting looks that sought an escape. Most revealing of all, there was the stare itself. A thrall who knew that his place was no more than that of a sheep would have stared at the ground. Instead, the thrall’s eyes, slightly narrowing, were a blue appraisal of Murrough, as if marking where he would strike for best effect. It was then, too, that Crowbone saw the thrall was fastened by a length of chain to the cage and, for a moment, felt the sharp bite of his own thrall’s chain on his neck, tasted the acrid stink of the privy.

Murrough saw the thrall’s look, too, and was made wary by it – which showed sense, Crowbone thought, but still he snapped a command for Murrough to be still just in case the Irishman launched an attack certain to include pain for one or the other and possibly a deal of blood. The others watched, wary as hounds round a stag.