Crowbone

by Robert Low

  Martin grew impatient, wanting to move on, but no-one shifted and the reek swirled round them. Nothing changed.

  Except …

  ‘Someone is coming,’ Eindride said and they all turned to where the faint iced light from the entrance had been a comfort, a thread leading back to the world of men.

  Now, they saw the red-gold of a bobbing torch and Eindride nocked an arrow, growling. Martin crouched, wary as a rat and looking over his shoulder; there was screaming down there, a moaning shriek that shaved the skin from the back of his neck.

  Then a voice from behind the red-gold torch whispered out like the wings of bats. A woman’s voice, old and soft as sealskin.

  ‘My son bids me tell you that it would be better if you turned over your King piece. You have lost this game.’

  TWELVE

  Finnmark, the mountain of Surman Suuhun …

  THE WITCH-QUEEN’S CREW

  WHEN she thought of ravens at all, which was not often or with any regard, she thought always of the white one. They said the worst winters were when AllFather let loose the third of his ravens, the white one. While his black brothers, Thought and Memory, stuck their heads under one hunched wing, the white raven trailed frosted pinfeathers over the world, teased clouds with talons, drawing out the long, slow tumble of soft white, silent as sleep that fell on high peaks, was razored by thin crags, sifted softly into the deep soul of the world.

  Once, long ago, beyond this place, she had been a girl in a fire-warmed home who looked out to a world softening to curves of drifting landscape, looked out in wonder at how the world could come to such a whispering end. She was young and hugged herself then, wishing for warmer winds and the kiss of sun on her skin.

  It was not to be. She had been brought here not much later and ever since the only world that existed was the one of short, blazing-passionate summers and long winters full of dancing night fires that skeined the dark with green and red.

  There had been travellers, the curious and brave who tried to seek her out. The ones who came for riches seldom arrived, but those who sought wisdom were allowed and sometimes stayed long enough to tell her their own secrets and some of the workings of the world beyond the fire mountain. There had even been two Greeks and a Serkland Arab who all professed to know the secrets of snow and other matters, speaking loftily of winds and tides and clouds.

  Once, she had travelled out of the mountain, out of the Finnmark, hoping to learn more of this strange new god, the Christ. In the cut of cold, folk struggled to badly-heated eggshells of stone where Christ prayers smoked; some who shivered there secretly went home to bind their hearth with an older invoking. Those she smiled at, for there was hope for them – then she came home to the smouldering mountain and left them to their world.

  Yet she envied all of them, for they all crouched by fires, succoured by the light as much as the heat, sharing a hope as old as dark that the flames would not fail. It was no longer a part of her life, to be with them, to have ones she loved and who loved her.

  So here she was at the end of days, pushed by obligation and if any saw her they fastened their lips on it. Ajatar’s handmaiden, they called her, which made her smile. It had pained her, that name from her own Sami folk, but she knew what made them liken her to the favourite of a goddess of pestilence and disease, who could strike you with a look and who suckled serpents. They reflected their own twists of ugly suspicion on her, making her monstrous.

  Yet even some of them came to her, struggling up the fire mountain for the power they believed she had. Wise woman some called her and she liked that name, though it was plain and there was pride enough left in her to resent it; all women were wise, long before her age and certainly by it, for they had learned the feel of the world. Younger folk were not for listening and so missed a deal of life, for you fished more meat out of that cauldron by just looking and remembering.

  It was all about Hugin and Munin, the black brothers of the white raven, all about Thinking and Remembering and there was enough of the norther in her to appreciate that. The north god, AllFather, knew this, had learned this through hanging pain and spear-thrust, nine nights on the World Tree for the whisper of runes, the mystery she knew well as a result.

  Those northers who feared her called her a silly auld wummin, only half believing it was true, hoping that she was diminished by them making her seem small. Some, who knew a little better, called her ‘cunning’ and that never bothered her, although she doubted it meant what they thought. She did not mind the scathing wyrd-rider either and was as likely to tell folk that she had wyrd needed riding as ‘farewell’ when she had decided to close the door on herself.

  Only a few called her by her true name, a name older even than the dancing lights that split the long north dark. Spaekona. Witch-Queen. It was the name they used when they came with heads lowered and eyes resting everywhere but on her own, twisting their hands in their lap and looking for daftness they should not be seeking.

  She did not hear it from those who wanted a leech wort release from pain, or root potion to help with a sad loss, or relief from the sickness of the long dark. She only heard it from those wanting to snare an unwilling man, or curse a rival, or lose a bairn. When she refused them, that was when they hissed ‘spaekona’ under their breath and for those whose hate made them bold, she had her hunters, with their skin cloaks and spears. Those hunters knew her true worth, knew she belonged to the north mountains and them and understood the wordless bargain that went back before the first handsealed contract, beyond even the blood oath.

  Now they watched her closely, hunkered round fires that were near yet far enough away and wearing the full masks of the beasts they killed, though she only half understood why. She did not mind being worshipped for it was the least due to her, latest in a long line who were chosen for this. Last in a long line, she thought suddenly, unless a new goddess is found to learn from me.

  The one who had gone before her – she could not remember her name now – had sent men to her village and stolen her, such was her desperation. There had been a long time of fear and hate, then a moment when she saw what was being taught to her and, finally, a too-brief time when the pair of them worked in tandem. Then, suddenly, she was alone with the burden of waiting, for the axe and her own successor, the first to be returned to the stone kist until someone brave came to claim it, the second to sit at her fire and begin the task of shouldering the burden of all the long years of old knowing. So it had always been, so it would always be.

  Well, the first had come, passed hand to hand through blood and danger, for the axe had claimed its cursed victims – she remembered being told that the axe had failed to return only once, when a true spaekona, a full-cunning woman of the north had tricked the Sami carrying it into revealing their powers and those of the Bloodaxe. That spaekona had given it to her husband, for the power in it and hoped to pass it to all of her sons in turn – but the curse of the axe tainted all her sons, according to the man who had last brought it back to the fire mountain.

  Svein he had called himself, a man bitter with defeat and death, she had seen, twisted from his faith by the betrayal of that axe. His king and master had commanded him to take it here, he said. He did not want his sons to get it, she learned, even the worst of them, for none were worthy and all would be betrayed, like him. She had watched this Svein stumble off and thought it likely he would die in the Finnmark cold, for he was so uncaring of life.

  The second had not come and she was beginning to wonder if it would ever happen. There was always the raid on a village – but she remembered the fear and the hate of it and balked at doing it.

  Now, she thought, it might be too late. There were many folk plootering over her fire mountain to claim the Bloodaxe and her hunters had suffered for it. It had come to her, just recently, that perhaps she was the last of her kind and the thought troubled her.

  She found a nice spot by the clawed hand of tree, while the wind hissed down the bowl of the valley a
nd drew the reeking white smoke out of the entrance to it. She knew the swirl of it sucked the smoke from the strange hot, bubbling pits in the Cleft, then roared it out through the mountain beyond, as if the place breathed.

  She had made fires here before and liked the place, for it reminded the air about true cold. It took a hard winter to make this sheltered, eldritch-heated valley clog with snow and she was used to the warmth, so that stepping out beyond it ached her bones these days; she preferred to wait until folk came to her.

  She found her ring of old stones, coned a few sticks together and sparked up a fire. Her hunting men settled down to watch. They were hurting and sick and too many of them had died and she was sorry she had asked them to. They thought they had been fighting to keep the northers away from this place, the home of their wise-woman goddess and that they were failing; they did not know that they were meant to fail if one wyrd was to prove a success.

  The soft flames spilled red-gold into another long night of white and bruise-blue. A good fat moon, crisp air and a warm hue dancing in a hearth. Grandma was another name she didn’t mind, though only children, the ache of her lost heart, called her that. She had not seen one for some time, but remembered how they had liked her stories, in the days when she had gone abroad more.

  She liked to tell stories to herself – at least, that is what she said when she caught herself mumbling into the straggles of her hair. Sometimes she let the fur-masks listen, but even those hunters preferred to creep away, ducking away from an old-young, shapeless, mumbling woman hung about with odd weavings and difference.

  She knew one or two stopped to listen and would have been surprised at the few, the very few, who wondered if what she muttered needed some other name than ‘story’ – but they only wondered that sort of thing when they could not hear it being told.

  While they were listening they felt lifted up into a cloud of dusted age, where there was nevertheless something firm and strong, like finding a good pass through the mountains. There were some who said she spoke of their own home, but long ago, where their people must have lived forever. No-one who listened went away unmoved and some were woken to wondering who the stories were for.

  Now, though, the Sami beast-warriors saw that she just seemed to be humming to herself, and kicking snow off the old hearth, talking life back into it, like a bitch mouths and licks the litter’s failing runt. The hunters sat silent and waiting.

  The man came quiet out of the cleft, but the hunters knew and their beast-masked heads came up; others followed the man. The hunters glanced at their goddess, but she showed no alarm and they took the hint, lowered their weapons and waited.

  She watched the group coming towards her – a litter on poles, with a man at each corner, another man hirpling painfully, and one with a bow, some more behind. The hirpling man had a robe which might have been any colour but now was mainly stain, dagged and torn round the hem where it straggled in strips. He carried a staff in one hand, had a face like a long stretch of bad road and one foot was bare. Twisted and crippled, that foot, but not so dead that it never felt the bite of stone or cold, but the eyes in him were even more dead than that and the dangling cross made her catch her breath.

  A Christ priest. Here. Did he come to claim the axe? The thought stunned her, almost crushed her with the wyrd of it – then the litter was set down and she sensed the seidr from it, even before the figure was helped out, moved slowly towards her.

  Old, she thought. An old power, this, and one to be feared. Still, she did as she was supposed to do. She nodded at the curved roots opposite and watched as her visitor sat down. The wind sighed and the fire hissed and the Old Power looked at the hunters and they looked back at her, hackles ruffed as dogs, for they sensed what she was. She looked round at the place, at the lack of snow, and the warmth compared with what was on the other side of the rock walls and nodded.

  Then, finally, she turned and looked into the sere, ageless face of the woman opposite.

  ‘Goddess, is it?’ she said, in a voice made harsh by design. The woman nodded briefly, trying to look through the spiderweb-silk veil and seeing only the glitter of old ice eyes.

  ‘Aye, so they call you now. They have power, the Sami, but no common sense.’

  She stopped, sucked in breath and muttered.

  ‘Still, no reason to be discourteous,’ Gunnhild added. ‘I have come for the Bloodaxe,’ Gunnhild said. ‘I had it before, when your … predecessor … was here, though I did not ask politely then. I had it then for my husband. Now I take it for my son.’

  All her trepidation about old power vanished and the Sami goddess laughed with the sheer delight of this funny little veiled woman who thought the Sami had no common sense, yet came for the axe that had killed her husband and all her sons but one.

  Finnmark …

  CROWBONE’S CREW

  The masked Sami would not stop. They were harried from rock to treeline, into clumped stands of pine and out on to the bare tumble of snow-draped rocks and still they would not go away. Crowbone wondered what hand guided them, for he knew there was a leader driving them. There seemed, to most, to be no sense in the losses they took, but Crowbone knew the game of kings well and the King Player’s best defence was to hurl his warriors at the enemy. The Orkneymen had died in winnowed droves and now Crowbone’s men did, too.

  They found Mar spreadeagled on a rock, his insides laid out in some ritual. Gjallandi thought that a Sami wizard had done it, but the why remained a mystery. Crowbone sat back on his heels and looked at the iron-tangle of the man’s beard, the frosted eyes. Because he had broken that Oath he had taken so lightly? He looked to where Onund and Kaetilmund stood, accusing-grim, but they said nothing and, eventually, he broke their gaze.

  ‘We should give this axe foolishness up,’ growled Klaenger, a tall, rangy man with a nose red-raw with cold. ‘It is clear the folk here do not want us to have Odin’s Daughter.’

  Crowbone knew that the man and Mar had been friends and saw a few agreeing nods from others. He looked up, to where the grey-green rocks piled ever higher, right up to the mountain fang where the white smoke plumed.

  ‘Look behind you,’ he said to Klaenger, who jumped and did so. When he saw nothing threatening, he turned back, scowling and wary.

  ‘Do you see the sea?’ Crowbone demanded. ‘Our ships?’

  Klaenger’s lip drooped sullenly.

  ‘Look ahead,’ Crowbone offered and it was no longer for Klaenger, but for all the men. ‘There is the mountain where our quest ends. Which is easier to get to now?’

  Men scuffed the ground with what was left of their boots and said nothing – the mountain was easy enough to navigate to, but no-one knew what terrors lay in it. But they went on. When the dog found Vandrad Sygni not long after, no-one even grunted.

  It was clear that he was dead from the way his head lolled brokenly to one side. His eyes had been dug out with his own horn spoon, which had been left beside him. The strange, loose, sideways turn of his feet showed where he had been hamstrung; as a message it was as subtle as a slap on the forehead – your best tracker cannot see us, cannot move quietly enough, is no match for us.

  They were attacked again not far ahead, a sudden rush as short and vicious as the day itself – a shower of black-shafted arrows and a howling of beast-masked men. Almost in a heartbeat it was over and, again, they left more dead than they caused.

  Yet one of those they killed was Vigfuss Drosbo and another Thorgils, who had taken an arrow in the armpit, straight up the short sleeve of his ringmail. They are whittling us away, Crowbone thought, desperate and weary, like flakes from a lathed bowl.

  It was then that Murrough, cleaning his axe beside a body, announced that he was sure he had killed this one the day before.

  ‘They all look the same,’ Kaetilmund growled in savage answer, trying to warn the Irisher off such a topic with his eyes. ‘Slit-eyed, flat-faced fucks with stolen weapons.’

  No-one laughed, all the same and the id
ea persisted that they were killing the same men over and over again.

  The next short day saw no sign of live men at all, but the yellow dog spoored out more dead, some from under fresh snow. One was a Sami and he had been burned with crosses and shot with a black-fletched arrow, then hung from a tree like a gralloched deer. That was clearly the work of Martin and Crowbone scowled and squinted at the snow glare, as if he could hook the monk to him with his odd eyes.

  ‘Perhaps not exactly in that order,’ Kaetilmund argued, frowning, ‘but all of those matters took place here.’

  The other was a snow-buried norther and Gjallandi was sure this one was a Norwegian, though he could not be certain. He could be certain the man had died because an arrow had gone into his kidneys. Most of the rest did not care, one way or the other, for they had found the remains of a deer hanging in a nearby tree and there was a lot left on it, even if it was hard as stone.

  Crowbone looked at the growing dark and felt the cold stone slide into his bowels; the days were so short, the nights long and fired by red and green lights, so that the mountain never seemed to get closer. They were danger-close to failing – yet he could feel the nearness of that axe, like heat.

  Men started fires with old twigs and branches dug from under the snow, lichen plucked from rocks at the start of the day and dried out down boots or inside tunics. Stacked into small cones, sparked into life by flint, steel and gentling breath, fire budded, then blossomed.

  The men thawed out the meat enough to cut, stuck it on strong twigs or even their knives, careless of the soot blacking the metal. Men on watch stamped and looked at the fires enviously, licked their lips as the white fat slowly began to broil and sputter; meat and smoke smells eddied up and away into the maw of the night.

  Crowbone closed his eyes, swathed in the too-small white cloak, but those nearest him were never sure if he slept or not.

  ‘What are you after thinking?’ asked a voice and Bergliot swam into his waking vision, holding out a sharpened branch which speared meat. A rush of saliva drowned his reply and he held the stick with one hand, biting into the meat, then sliding his eating knife along to slice the mouthful free with a casual pass.