Crowbone

by Robert Low

  ‘On their first voyage, with Grima as shipmaster of them,’ Mar said, ‘they had the Shadow, then a new ship and a fine new sail, dyed with reád-stán. When it was rinsed, it came in stripes – dark red and yellow-gold – and Grima was pleased.’

  Onund nodded. A sail coloured with reád-stán – ochre – was a fine sight, though he preferred, he said, to weave the colours in strips and sew them. Mar smiled again.

  ‘Aye, that’s an expense, but worth it, as we found,’ he went on. ‘When such a dyed sail as we had is sea-washed, the colours are fastened in the cloth – except that when it dries in the wind for the first time afterwards, it gives off a dust and that blew all over Grima and all of us. Everything. Then the damp soaked in and everything was dyed. When the ship came to berth next, it was completely red and everything in it – clothes, faces, hands, sea-chests, everything. We had to pitch-paint the hull to change the colour of it, but the sail had turned mostly as you see it – the colour of blood. It has faded a little, but not by much – it took longer to lose the skelpt-arse look of our faces. That was us. The Red Brothers.’

  Murrough chuckled and Mar saw that even the prince they called Crowbone managed a smile. This prince, Mar was sure, knew the power in names, no matter how you came by them – none better, since the name of Crowbone was one any sensible man walked carefully around.

  ‘You were with Grima a long time, then?’ Crowbone asked and Mar nodded.

  ‘All my far-travelling life,’ he said. ‘It is strange that he is missing now. It feels as though I have left something valuable and cannot remember where.’

  Crowbone knew that feeling well enough and had the fading memories to prove it – Lousebeard, his foster-father, vanishing over the side of Klerkon’s ship, pitched out because he was too old; nowadays, Crowbone could only remember him as a face made up mostly of the black O of his open, surprised mouth as he went backwards into the grey water.

  Then there was his mother. Sometimes Crowbone had to squeeze his eyes tight to summon up the face of his mother and, once to his horror, had forgotten her name for a moment. Astrid. He said it to himself, as if to nail it to the inside of his head.

  They sat, each man wrapped in his own thoughts, watching the little peeping birds that run at the tideline. As each wave hushed in, the birds would all wheel about and bundle busily away across the gold-gleaming shore, piping anxiously to one another. As each wave slid out, they would advance again, all together as a patter of tiny feet. When the silly yellow bitch ran at them, they rose together, and swirled overhead in a wild whirring of sound.

  ‘Like Pechenegs,’ Crowbone said and both Onund and Murrough laughed, for they had seen these steppe gallopers, climbing over and under their little ponies, wheeling and darting as one and with no-one seemingly ordering it. Then Crowbone saw Kaup and Mar nodding and smiling and it came to him that they had seen a lot, too.

  Onund sighed a little at the sight of Crowbone and Mar together, for Mar had the same way about him as Crowbone did – as if some old man had settled in a much younger body.

  They traded tales for a while and Mar discovered that Crowbone, stripling or not, had been up and down Gardariki, even in the worst of winters, had fought the Pechenegs and worse, it seemed, for Mar had heard of the Oathsworn legend of how they came by all the silver of the world in Atil’s hidden tomb. Why they still raided, then, seemed a mystery to Kaup, but he kept his fine white teeth clicked shut on that and most other matters.

  Mar told of the Red Brothers faring beyond the Khazar Sea, which the Rus call Khvalyn, and how they had joined in battles there, first with one people, then another. Not that it mattered who they battled as long as they won, for plunder and death was the same and the chance for both equal in any red war.

  Then Crowbone told him of the Great City – which neither Mar nor Kaup had seen, for all their Gardariki travel – and some of the marvels in it, such as the clever constructs that throw water in the air, for amusement. And Kaup managed to astound Crowbone when he spoke of meeting a strange people out along the Silk Road. They called themselves the Soong, were yellow as old walrus ivory and had flatter faces than even the Sami and eyes which were not only slitted as if they were always trying for a hard shit, but set slantwise in their heads.

  Crowbone and the others looked at him closely once or twice to see if he was just clever-boasting, but in the end had to believe him, even when he told how these folk had made toys out of a fire which roared like Thor with his arse ablaze and then bokked coloured stars up in the air. He had, Kaup confessed, shat himself and then run away when he had first witnessed this.

  There was laughter – a good sound, Crowbone thought. Then the Burned Man sucked back to the marrow of the meeting.

  ‘I have taken this Oath,’ he declared, frowning, ‘but it does not bind me. I am not afraid of it.’

  Mar shifted uncomfortably, but Kaup’s eyes were like lamps on Crowbone’s face.

  ‘I am Christian,’ he said, then dazzled out a smile and spread his hands. ‘Well,’ he added, ‘I am, but not a Christian the others like. For all that, they have asked me to speak.’

  This was new and Crowbone shifted.

  ‘They?’

  Kaup put his fingers to his mouth and let out as good an imitation of a hunting owl as any Crowbone had heard; a few moments later, men slid out of the dark, silent and heavy with unease. They looked at Kaup, who grinned back, not realising the truth was not so much that they had asked him to speak on their behalf, but that they had picked him as the most expendable if Crowbone took offence.

  A dozen, Crowbone reckoned – and Berto one of them, the yellow dog at his heels. Crowbone laid a stilling hand on the forearm of Onund, who had started to rise, grunting like a threatened bull walrus.

  ‘I am Thorgeir Raudi,’ said one man peering out from under a great tangle of curls, made even more red-gold by the firelight. ‘All of us here are Christmenn.’

  ‘I am Bergfinn,’ said the one next to him, a man with hair like padding from a burst saddle and a face beaten by wind and weather into soft, brown leather. ‘I took your Oath, like all the rest of us here – but it does not sit well with us.’

  ‘You had the choice,’ Onund growled and men shifted, digging the sand with their toes like lectured boys.

  ‘We have been raiding men for so long,’ Kaup declared and men nodded agreement. ‘What else is there for us? We want to stay as brothers – but your Odin oath is not binding to us.’

  ‘So?’ demanded Crowbone, curious rather than angry, since it was clear they had thought this through and found a path they all could follow. Now they are trying to put my feet on it, he thought to himself.

  Kaup took a breath, but it was Berto who spoke, his voice lilting and clear as birdsong.

  ‘We will swear to you, prince. Swear on God and Jesus to be your men. As binding as any Odin oath.’

  Onund blew down his nose like a startled horse and waved one hand with dismissive disgust – then he saw Crowbone’s face and stopped, his eyes narrowing.

  Crowbone, smiling at the possibilities, nodded. Onund felt the air shift, as if knotting itself with anger, and listened, silent and stricken, as Berto took one knee and put his hands on Crowbone’s hands and swore to be his man. One by one, the others followed.

  Later, they went back to the fires and he listened to them boast and insult one another. Two fell into a quarrel about who had the stronger blow and decided on a fight to prove it, which was good entertainment until one, seeing he was losing, hauled out a seax and the event turned nasty.

  Crowbone was pleased, though, when Murrough felled one with the haft of his axe and Kaup hammered the other to the ground.

  ‘Once,’ Crowbone said as the men grunted shakily to their feet and wiped away blood, ‘a frog lived in a pond and made friends with two geese who used to come and visit him there. They were happy for many years, but then there was a freeze that lasted for months. The ponds and rivers started to ice over. People and animals we
re starving.’

  There was silence, profound as snow; the bleeding men dripped quietly.

  ‘The two geese decided to save themselves and fly to somewhere warmer,’ Crowbone went on. ‘They also worked out how to save their friend too, even though a frog cannot fly. The geese would hold a stick in their beaks and then the frog could hold the stick in its jaws. In this way the geese could fly him south while holding the two ends of the stick.

  ‘The geese flew off with the frog between them. They flew over hills, valleys, fields and fjords, and a city. The people of the city saw them and clapped in wonderment, shouting for others to come and see two geese carrying a toad that way. But this irritated the frog, so he opened his mouth to tell them that he was not a toad, but a frog. He was still telling them when he hit the ground and burst.’

  There was silence, save for a few grunts.

  ‘Do not get too annoyed by what others are saying,’ Crowbone finished, looking at the two men, who were grinning wryly at him through the blood on their faces. ‘It could burst you.’

  ‘Besides,’ he added pointedly, ‘the jarl always has the strongest blow.’

  There were grunts and a few cheers. Folk helped the two men up, so that they staggered back to seats side by side and set to swearing to each other how they had never meant any harm.

  It would take time to unravel the old rules, Crowbone thought, so best to start at once. He looked for Onund, for he had seen the hunchback’s cold face when the Christmenn had sworn to him and wanted to see if a little time had tempered the look – but the shipwright was nowhere to be seen.

  Gjallandi fell to telling tales, having made one up about the death of Balle at the hands of Prince Olaf. It was a good tale, ending with a feather of black smoke coming out of the dead man’s mouth, taking the shape of a raven and flying away.

  ‘That did not happen,’ said a man.

  ‘Did the story of it make you shiver?’ demanded Gjallandi haughtily, pouting his beautiful lips and throwing his considerable chin at the man, who admitted it did. Gjallandi smacked one hand on another, as if he had made a good law-point at a Thing.

  ‘What was the raven, then?’ demanded Kaup, fascinated and Gjallandi did not miss a beat.

  ‘Odin, it was, shapechanged and possessing the body of Balle. A test, it was, to see if our Prince Olaf was ready.’

  ‘Ready for what?’ demanded Stick-Starer and Halfdan snorted derisively.

  ‘To be king in Norway,’ he answered, then turned to Gjallandi. ‘Is that not the right of it?’

  Gjallandi nodded portentously and men looked at Crowbone, sitting among them and yet apart, his face bloody with flame.

  ‘Now you come to mention it,’ said Stick-Starer, ‘I think there was some smoke.’

  ‘I saw a raven,’ another man offered. ‘For sure.’

  Gjallandi grinned.

  Northeast of Holmtun, Isle of Mann, at the same time …

  THE WITCH-QUEEN’S CREW

  Gudrod sat with Erling Flatnef on the night-stippled beach, apart from the rest of their men as was fitting. He was playing ’tafl with Erling, for the game was his obsession and a good contest pleased him because he invariably won. Erling, with his boneless nose wobbling, was no contest as usual and Gudrod was bored, glancing across to where Od sat alone, for the men did not like him and he did not care for fire, or company or even, it seemed to Gudrod, for food, since Erling had to tell him to eat.

  ‘My sister’s boy,’ Erling declared moodily, following Gudrod’s eyes. ‘A strange one, from a birth that killed his mother. His father died in a bad winter four years later, so I got him.’

  ‘Who taught him to fight?’ Gudrod demanded and Erling, frowning over moving, took some time to reply.

  ‘I showed him the strokes,’ he answered, ‘but no-one taught him the things he does, or the way he moves.’

  He leaned forward a little.

  ‘You should know this,’ he said, low and slow as if the words had to be forced out. ‘The boy kills. That is what the gods made him for. Chickens, dogs, deer, men, women, children – he has killed them all in his short life and not one of those deaths meant anything more than another or anything at all to him. I am sure Loki made him, but I have leashed him with Tyr, telling him that the death of people is a god-sacrifice and the best sacrifice is a warrior, dedicated to Tyr. I tried God and Jesus, but could not persuade him of the fighting worth of those two.’

  Gudrod felt the skin along his arms creep and he glanced at Od, sitting still and quiet and staring up at the grey-black sky.

  ‘Perhaps Tyr has taken him, after all. Best avoid him,’ Erling said and so Gudrod, with a sharp sneering glance at the man, got up and deliberately went to the side of Od. For a time it seemed Od had not even noticed him and Gudrod was not used to that, did not like it.

  ‘Are they eyes?’ Od asked suddenly and, for a moment, Gudrod was lost. Then he realised the boy was looking at those stars the clouds unveiled.

  ‘Embers,’ Gudrod corrected. ‘Flung there by Odin and his brothers, to help guide folk on the whale road. Folk like us.’

  He paused as Od’s head dropped and turned to look at him.

  ‘Do you play hnefatafl?’ Gudrod asked and had back a blank stare.

  ‘The game of kings?’ he prompted and had back a beautiful, slow smile.

  ‘The game of kings,’ the boy replied slowly, ‘is to ask me to kill their enemies.’

  Gudrod was too stunned to speak for a moment, for it was clear the boy had never played the game in his life. What lad did not learn hnefatafl? Or even halatafl – the fox game?

  ‘You did well with that upstart warrior Ulf Bjornsson,’ Gudrod said finally, to break the oppressive silence. ‘One stroke.’

  Od said nothing, his face like a fresh-scraped sheepskin. Gudrod, trying to smile, told him of the first time he had killed a man, when he was fifteen. On a russet hillside slick with rain and entrails, he had shoved his sword into the man’s face, leaving him lying there with the wet and blood pooling under him. Later, someone had told him that it was the Rig-Jarl Tryggve, so the first man he had killed had been a king.

  He looked at Od, expecting something and nothing came for so long that Gudrod began to get angry, sensing he was being insulted. Then at last Od spoke and Gudrod’s mouth was filled with ash, choking his angry words.

  ‘I killed a boy who annoyed me when I was five,’ Od said, as if he spoke of cutting down a tree, ‘but Erling gave me my first man-kill for my name-day. A thrall we had captured. He was a Jutlander, I think.’

  ‘Gave you?’

  Od looked at Gudrod, that bland sea-gaze, as if this was something that happened every name-day, that every uncle gave a nephew such a present. Gudrod felt the back of his neck prickle with a sudden rush of sweat.

  ‘Aye. I was learning how to properly cut throats,’ he explained and smiled, warmed with the old memory of his fine day. ‘There were ten thralls in all, but I was a fast learner and needed only six.’

  Gudrod’s armhairs were bristled now and the back of his neck prickled with a sudden rush of sweat. He managed to point out that he was sure the remaining four were grateful and Od turned that bland sea-gaze on him.

  ‘I used those ones to learn how to hamstring,’ he said, then stretched and rose up, yawning.

  ‘Best name-day I ever had,’ Od said. ‘I was seven.’

  He went off to find his cloak, leaving Gudrod in the darkness, feeling older than stones and colder than the hissing wind, which had long since upset the abandoned game of kings.

  Valland to the Manx Sea, two weeks later …

  CROWBONE’S CREW

  ‘Each one of these should be coated with gold,’ Crowbone growled moodily, waving a crab claw. Kaup, cooking them on a coal-grill by the mastfish, grinned back at him.

  ‘We should not have traded, then, but raided these Franks,’ said Berto and one or two nearest him chuckled at his Wend fierceness towards northmen. When they said it was a foolish risk for
crabs, he only scowled more deeply and spat back that these Franks were too far removed from northmen nowadays. Then he swaggered off, chewing and spitting out shell, so clearly a boy trying to be a man that men laughed, remembering what that had felt like.

  ‘They no longer speak decent Norse in Valland,’ Onund admitted. ‘Not for years. They are still northmen, though they have forgotten a lot of that and now call this coast Normandie. Now they cannot sail worth a fuck and have taken to fighting on horseback.’

  He spat out shell, so that the wind whipped it away over the side, then worried more meat out of the claw.

  ‘They are Norse enough that it would be foolish to annoy them,’ he added and glanced sideways at Crowbone. ‘They are ruffled by us. It is this ship. You may as well shake a sword and scream at them. We should paint it an easier colour.’

  Crowbone scowled, for he liked the black ship and bloody sail.

  ‘Once there was a fox,’ he said and, because the sail was up and rowing men were lounging in sheltered spots out of the wind, he was the centre of all their attention at once; already the crew knew that Crowbone’s tales were even better than those of Gjallandi.

  ‘This fox seated himself on a stone by a stream and wept aloud,’ Crowbone went on. ‘The crabs in the holes around came up to him and asked: “Friend, why are you wailing so loud?” The fox told them: “My kindred have turned me out of the wood and I do not know what to do.”

  ‘Of course, the crabs asked him why he had been turned out. “Because,” said the fox, sobbing, “they let it be known they would go out tonight hunting crabs by the stream and I said it would be a pity to kill such pretty little creatures.”

  ‘Then the crabs held a Thing on it and came to the conclusion that, as the fox had been thrown out by his kindred on their account, they could do nothing better than engage his services to defend them. So they told the fox and he readily consented, then spent the whole day in amusing the crabs with all kinds of tricks.’

  ‘Sounds like Gjallandi,’ said Halfdan, sucking his fingers where he had burned them on the grill; the cloak-swathed skald acknowledged him with a good-natured wave.