Crowbone

by Robert Low

  ‘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.

  He was old, with a face seamed and soft-skinned as an old purse, his eyes blind-white as boiled eggs. He was wearing a long kirtle of check and Irisher-laced shoes, with a blue cloak fastened round his waist and thrown over one shoulder, fastened with a pin which winked silver.

  ‘This is Meartach, my Ollumh,’ the High King said with a smile. ‘He has no eyes but he sees a great deal.’

  Crowbone heard Gjallandi move slightly at the announcement and remembered that an Ollumh was some sort of superior skald for the Irish; small wonder our own skald is concerned, Crowbone thought, since he might have to prove his worth in front of an expert.

  Meartach came shuffling up, close enough for Crowbone to see the napped white hair, fine as a dusting of snow on his pink scalp, the lines and grooves of the man’s face. The Ollumh reached out both hands and Crowbone drew back from him, which made the old man laugh like the rattle of old bones.

  ‘Have no fear, Prince of Norway. What can an old man do?’

  ‘Odin seems an old man,’ Crowbone answered uneasily, letting fingers trace his face; they were warm and dry as lizard skin, smelled of meat and old dust. ‘One-Eye, however, is dangerous to let close to you, even as a friend. And a king may do what he pleases in his own hall.’

  This brought a chuckle.

  ‘Is he your god, this Odin?’ Meartach asked, moving on to pass his fingers over the grim smile that was Murrough, trembling like a horse at the start of a fight.

  ‘Not in this place,’ Crowbone answered and the High King laughed.

  ‘I thought Christ had reached the ears of the Oathsworn,’ he said.

  ‘The White Christ is everywhere,’ Crowbone admitted and had back a nod and wry twist of grin, while Meartach hovered around Gjallandi, making noises in the back of his throat, something between a cat purr and an expression of surprise.

  Then he shuffled back to the platform and sat on the right of the High Seat, which Crowbone saw made the Brega king scowl.

  ‘A prince he is, for sure,’ Meartach announced, which brought a brief murmur, a moth-wing of sound racing round the smoky hall. ‘There is more there, but it is shrouded and I cannot tell of it.’

  Mael Sechnaill seemed surprised and impressed, stroked his chin and then went back to sit down.

  ‘The others?’

  ‘A warrior, the big man,’ Meartach declared. ‘The other has song in him, but not as much as he would like.’

  There were laughs at this and the scowl of pride it brought to the bristling Gjallandi. Crowbone was impressed, but it was tempered with the thought that the Ollumh had not said anything that could not have been gleaned from matters already known.

  It was, all the same, enough. The High King waved one generous hand at the benches opposite him.

  ‘In which case, Prince Olaf – welcome to this hall. You also, skald – and you, Murrough macMael.’

  They climbed onto benches and food arrived – salmon and other fish, coal-roasted pork and fine venison in great slabs on a platter of flatbread. Women brought ale and Crowbone felt the heat of their bodies as they poured for him; it had been a time since he had taken a woman.

  ‘I was hoping you would not claim kinship, Murrough macMael,’ the High King said with a smile, ‘since I am over young to have sired something the size of you and not known it.’

  Folk laughed and Murrough grinned, meat juice running down his beard.

  ‘The Mael I am sired from is as far from your High Seat as the worm from the moon – a simple farming man from down Inis Sibhtonn way.’

  This brought mutterings, for that was in the lands of the Dal Cais and, though they were also Ui Neill, Crowbone knew the rivalry between south and north was considerable.

  ‘I should have known from that axe,’ Gilla Mo chimed and then had to explain it all to the High King. Crowbone chewed meat and bread and watched the level of his ale cup closely.

  ‘Do you not bless your meat?’

  The speaker was small-mouthed, long-fingered and had hair the colour of faded red gold, rippled the way sand does when the tide goes out. He looked truculent as a rooting pig as he stared at Crowbone, who matched it as cool as he could manage.

  ‘Do you?’ he countered, feigning astonishment.

  ‘Of course,’ the man snapped back, though bewilderment made his voice tremble.

  ‘Why?’ Crowbone asked. ‘Are you afraid of being poisoned by it?’

  The man opened and closed his mouth, for any answer to this mired him in a swamp he did not want to put a foot in; Crowbone saw Meartach’s tooth-free mouth gaping in a silent laugh.

  ‘Seems to me you are no Christian at all,’ the man persisted. ‘It appears to me that you are as pagan as the amulet you wear under your shirt.’

  ‘This?’ Crowbone replied and pulled out his Thor Hammer. ‘Neck money, no more. There is at least four ounces in it of good burned silver – enough to buy you some better taunts than you are trying here. Perhaps I should lend it to you?’

  Neighbours laughed and one of them was the High King. The red-haired man scowled and glanced sideways, to where the king of Brega sat, bland and unsmiling. Aha, thought Crowbone, so that is the way of it – you are looking to impress your fat old lord.

  ‘I have taunt enough for you, heathen,’ the man eventually sneered, which was so poor that Crowbone almost sighed.

  ‘I doubt it,’ he declared mildly, ‘considering that I frightened off a great troll with taunts once.’

  The man opened and closed his mouth; Murrough, grinning, picked up the head of his salmon and mimicked the look with his fingers on the fish’s mouth; folk roared and some beat the table.

  ‘I had heard of the Oathsworn wonders,’ the High King declared, loud enough for his voice to carry over the burr and buzz of the hall and bring it to silence. ‘Did this troll-scaring take place on the hunt for that fabled hoard of silver?’

  ‘There or thereabouts,’ Crowbone declared, off-hand. ‘There was a range of hills, but the name of the place escapes me entire. A troll called Glyrnna – Cat’s Eye – lived there and I happened upon it by chance.’

  ‘The luck that wrecked you here holds true, then,’ snarled the red-haired man, seeing his chance at a sally. Crowbone almost pitied him.

  ‘Perhaps so – it was worse even than I knew, since Glyrnna was a troll-woman and they are worse than the men of their kind, for sure. Yet that same luck brings me here to the High King’s table, same as you.’

  That brought more laughter and then Mael Sechnaill signalled for Crowbone to go on; somewhere, a woman shrieked and then giggled, only to be shushed – the story was more interesting than any fumbling in dark corners.

  ‘Mark you,’ Crowbone continued and Gjallandi saw his eyes, flat and glassed as a summer sea, with almost no colour in either of them save what the torchlight threw, ‘I do not deny that my breeks were not entirely clean after hearing her bellow. “Who comes there?” demanded the troll, stood standing there with a large flint stone in one fist and the same look on her face as Murrough here is giving that slice of fish.’

  Murrough paused, a portion of the same fish bulging out his cheeks.

  ‘So I told this Glyrnna who I was,’ added Crowbone while the laughs burred round the benches, ‘but it did not seem to impress her much. “If you come up here I will squeeze you into fragments,” she
yells at me and crushed the stone between her fingers into fine sand as she did so. “Then I will squeeze water out of you as I do out of this stone,” I answered, taking a new-made cheese from my bag and squeezing it so that the whey ran between my fingers to the ground.’

  There were cheers at this and groans, too, for it was an old story-telling device. Crowbone grinned and flapped one hand.

  ‘Aye, aye,’ he went on, ‘you may scoff, but that old trick still works, as you can see. However, it did not make this troll any colder. “Are you not afraid?” she asked and I told her plain enough. “Not of you,” I said and there was more lie in that than truth. “Then let us fight,” says this Glyrnna, which was not what I wanted to be hearing, so I rattled around in my thought-cage and came up with – a taunting, I told her. A good taunt, as you all know, will get anger and anger always gives cause to fight.’

  ‘Well, this troll racked her head so hard over it I could hear the thoughts grinding round the inside of her skull. “Very well,” she says and thinking herself cunning, declares that she will go first. “Speak on,” says I and she takes a deep breath.’

  The silence was as thick as smoke in the pause Crowbone gave, screwing up his face like a desperately-thinking troll. Then he roared out.

  ‘“Your ma was a crooked nose hobgoblin,”’ he bellowed and then shrugged apologetically. ‘That was her best. I was as sorry as you for having to hear it.’

  ‘What was your reply?’ demanded a voice and Crowbone spread his hands.

  ‘I strung my bow and nocked an arrow,’ he said. ‘Did I mention I had such? No matter – I have it now. Once the arrow was drawn, I yelled to her: “You are uglier than a bucket of sheep grease and armpits,” then shot her just under the ribs, so that she squealed. A man would have been dead from it, but the troll-woman just tried to pull it out and demanded to know what had hit her.

  ‘I told her plain enough – a taunt, though there was more lie than truth in that. “Why does it stick so fast?” the troll demanded of me and pulled the arrow out with as big a slab of meat on the hook of it than sits on the king of Brega’s plate.’

  There was a deal of laughing at this and the expression on Gilla Mo’s face, eating knife half-way to his mouth.

  ‘I told her why it stuck,’ Crowbone went on into the hush that followed. ‘Because a good taunt takes root. “Have you more of such?” inquires she. “Here,” says I, “have another. Your old ma was so stupid she tried killing a bird by throwing it from the top of a cliff.” I shot another arrow, this one into her eye. I did not mean it, I confess freely, for I am not good with a bow and was aiming at her foot at the time.

  ‘She shrieked a deal and then asked if I was angry enough to fight, so I told her I had a few more taunts yet, at which she shrieked even more loudly and told me to walk where I will, though it would be an obligation on her if I would do it somewhere other than this hill.

  ‘And so she ran off.’

  The laughter and table thumping lasted a long time and even the High King had to stand up and raise his hands in the end, for the sound of his voice alone was not working.

  ‘A good tale,’ he declared, beaming greasily. ‘Enough to earn the Hero’s Portion at this feast, for I doubt any will better the beating of a troll with a taunt.’

  The roars confirmed it and a brace of women brought the meat, the musk-sweat smell and bobblings under their kirtles tightening Crowbone’s groin as they looked slyly at him; one winked.

  ‘Now I am convinced of the tale of how the Oathsworn gained all the silver of the world,’ added Mael Sechnaill, resuming his seat.

  ‘With such riches,’ Gilla Mo retorted savagely, ‘why would such a man set forth with only a small company so far from home?’

  ‘Odin promised us all the silver of the world,’ Crowbone answered. ‘He did not promise we could keep it.’

  The chuckle was from Meartach, like a wind through red leaves.

  ‘So it is with pagan gods,’ he declared piously. ‘No doubt that is one reason you found the way to Christ’s path.’

  ‘No doubt of it at all,’ Murrough broke in, grinning.

  ‘Now one of you three has earned his meat in my hall this night,’ Gilla Mo declared and Crowbone heard the slight stress on the ‘my hall’ of what he said. ‘There are kings from all over Ireland looking you over – what can you bring to this feasting fit for a High King, skald?’

  Gjallandi cleared his throat and stood, one hand clenched in a fist over his heart. Then he gave them the tale of Brisingamen, which was clever.

  Brisingamen was the true name of it, though Tears Of The Sun was another and both were equally shunned by the mouths of men. It was a necklace, crafted by the four duergar Brising brothers in their dark hall and so desired by the goddess Freyja that she was prepared to play the slut with them all to possess it. Or perhaps it possessed her.

  A good scop could earn the best place by a fire, choice meats and a good circle of armring for telling the tale of it – but it was not often trotted out, for it was dangerous and depended on the audience.

  For a Christian household, with women and bairns listening, it was a hint, a shadow of the lusts in it, enough to leave the weans round-eyed and the women stuffing their head-squares in their mouths to quell squeals of delighted horror.

  In a hall still true to the old gods, it was a brave scop who told it and, if he did, he transformed Freyja’s lust into a pious sacrifice, like Odin hanging on the World Tree, or giving his eye to Mimir for a drink from the Well of Wisdom – the glittering-eyed women lurking in the dark of the hall would not hear otherwise of the Sorceress Queen, mistress of the magic and mystery of seidr. If he was brave and clever enough not to offend, a scop would leave that place wealthy and arrive at the next without becoming grey-faced and coughing, or vomiting blood, or drooling mad.

  For a hall of feasting men with women spilling in their laps, however, it was perfect, with the meat of it provided by what the four black dwarves, stunted in every way but one, did with the luscious goddess in the sweaty dark. At the close, the approving roars brought a beam to the red-flushed face of Gjallandi and he bowed.

  ‘Well told,’ the High King declared, then looked at Murrough, who blinked a bit. ‘What of you, Irisher – what do you bring to a High King’s feast?’

  Crowbone knew it even before Murrough opened his mouth, had felt the wyrd of it in every whirring wing he had seen all the way from the shore to this place. The words, of course, condemned them all to the same enterprise.

  ‘Why sure,’ said Murrough, his face bright with grease and grin, ‘my axe and the arm that wields it, against your honour’s enemies.’

  EIGHT

  Ireland, some time later …

  CROWBONE’S CREW

  THERE was a little wind that fretted this way and that, a hound fresh released from the lead. It slithered and snaked through trees and grass like the invisible water which found its way between neck and tunic and, if he could have seen any wet at all, Crowbone would have cursed it.

  There was no rain, only a white, thick, soaking milk-mirr that even the little wind could not do more than shift a little, like a spurtle in a pot of porridge. It reduced the world to the length of a poor spear-throw and made tracking almost impossible; if it had not been for Kaup and the yellow bitch, Crowbone thought, we would not be on any heading that made sense.

  That fuelled the slow-stoked anger in him, flared to life the moment he had been told that Gorm and the three others of Hoskuld’s crew had fled. That Halk was with them did not help, while the news that Fridrek and four others of the Oathsworn crew had also gone with them was a breath of forge bellows to his rage.

  ‘Well,’ Gilla Mo said when he heard of it, ‘it is bad enough that your thralls are running round loose in my land without half your own warriors gone with them, waving their blades and frightening folk.’

  He perched on his High Seat in the brindle morning of his hall, where the smoke swirled greasily grey and people still f
arted and snored. He drew his cloak more snugly round him against the damp, kicked his own thralls into blowing life into the pitfire embers and so clearly enjoyed seeing Crowbone smoulder in front of him that he prolonged the whole business of giving his permission to pursue them.

  ‘Take what men you think you need,’ he went on, peering under the bar of his scowl, ‘but make one of them that blue man you have. My folk are no strangers to blue men, since they are common enough on the Dyfflin slave blocks, but the sight of one as dark as he and treated like a true man and a warrior is unnerving to them. I do not want trouble over it.’

  He eased his buttocks on the seat and savoured the last few moments of Crowbone squirming.

  ‘Congalach will go with you,’ he added. ‘There is no need to thank me for the help. You have two days only – have this resolved and be back with the army to march to Tara.’

  Crowbone could only offer a curt bow and clack his way over the flagged stones out into the rainwashed day, where the clouds scudded as fast as his beating heart. Old arse, he thought viciously, who only sits in his own High Seat because Mael Sechnaill is sleeping in his bedspace.

  Tracking after Fridrek and Gorm had not improved his mood, for it had been a long, slow stumble through the tired yellow light of a dying day, questing here and there after the trail like a bat among moths.

  They came on a line of slow cattle, the drovers wisely hiding until they knew who came up on them, stepping out suddenly from behind trees to stand, packbags on their backs, while Congalach shot Irish at them and had it fired back in measure. Eventually, he turned to Crowbone.

  ‘Two handfuls of men passed them a quarter-day ago,’ he said. ‘They tried driving off a beast or two, but were bad at it and gave up. They have one of their number with a bow and the shafts for it.’

  ‘That will be Lief Svarti,’ Mar said. ‘He is as good with that weapon as he is with his little-headed axe, so we should be wary.’