by Robert Low
Crowbone never answered and she, thinking her attempt to mend fences had been spurned, did not ask again, merely huddled nearby and ached for the lee of his body. Crowbone never noticed; he was thinking that the dead Sami, whoever he had been, had been handled badly and that the Christ priest had done it. It was Martin, for sure – once before Crowbone had seen this cross-burning work of his, done on the back of the addled Short Eldgrim to try and get him to tell what he knew. That was when Crowbone had made a mistake and quit Orm in favour of Prince Vladimir.
He remembered it well enough, for Vladimir had been too young, not yet enough of a prince and matters got out of hand – Thorgunna’s first husband died and Thorgunna herself had been kicked in the belly, hard enough to ruin a child out of her. The same man who had done it to his mother, Crowbone remembered – Kveldulf, who had paid for it later.
For a moment Crowbone remembered the utter hopelessness, recalled his tears and snot as he huddled beside Thorgunna, stacked like a log in the boat Vladimir planned to use to sail down to the Black Sea and away from Orm and the Oathsworn.
He had wept like a cracked heart, for his mother, whose face he could not remember, for Thorgunna who had been like one to him and for himself, alone and abandoned and afraid. Poor Thorgunna, Crowbone thought, to have lost two men and two bairns.
Orm had stolen the boat and Thorgunna, dragged him out into the light and, Crowbone remembered, could have killed him but did not. He had taken him almost as a son. And married Thorgunna, too, later.
Yet Orm had been treacherous now, Crowbone was sure of it. The Oathsworn he had taken – Onund and Kaetilmund and the others – had not been been chosen by him, he remembered, but by Orm, sent to make sure Crowbone tripped all the traps Martin had made. Orm wants the prize, he thought bitterly, using me like some stupid young hunting dog.
Yet Orm does not know me, Crowbone thought. I will not be surrounded in this game; I am no fawning hound, to be sent out to spring snares.
As if it had heard, the yellow bitch nosed hopefully and he flung it the gristle of his meal, which it snapped up. Bergliot, smiling, tossed it some better chunks and men laughed. There was a murmur of soft talk.
As if they were not freezing on a bare mountain with all oaths in tatters, chasing a madness and fighting beast-men to do it, Kaetilmund thought. He murmured as much, quietly, to Onund, adding: ‘Perhaps Orm has not judged this well.’
Onund grunted his bear grunt, which could mean anything.
When the light struggled reluctantly back, they moved on, with mountains in every direction save the way they had come, which was a long, winding trail back down through the scree and pine and rocks. A river ran through it, frozen to milk-white, iced rills curling round and over the rocks and narrowing until it ended at the foot of a cliff.
Halfdan looked up, squinting at the white glare of it.
‘In summer,’ he said wistfully, ‘this would be a pleasant place of sounding water and wildflowers, birds and good air. A man could take some refuge from the heat of the sun in the pool here.’
It was a good vision, yet as forlorn as a flower in that place and he had back harshness for fetching it up.
‘Even in summer the water would be freezing,’ Onund pointed out, ‘while the insects would drive you out of your thought-cage entire. I have seen elk running off the top of cliffs because the insects plagued them to blind madness.’
‘You would not want to bathe in it now,’ Tuke added, lumbering past and cackling. Halfdan looked up and could only agree; the river was frozen like an immense hall hanging, stopped still in the middle of falling down the rocks and layered in folds like white stone. He turned as something black flitted and stared at a raven, the first bird he had seen for some time.
Crowbone stopped, too, the hackles on him stiff as hog bristle. It had gobbets of meat hanging red in its beak and shouldered into the depths of a dead, stunted pine at the foot of the falls, a tree now a splintered and frost-sparkled larder for the bird.
‘Steady,’ he said, low and soft. ‘That bird’s beak tells a whole saga.’
Kaetilmund saw it at once – fresh meat, unfrozen. A recent kill. He nodded and sent men on ahead; they began to climb the treacherously rimed trail alongside the waterfall, Crowbone, last to start up it, watching the raven as it watched him with its cold unwinking black eye. Only when it took its full beak into the depths of the tree did Crowbone blink back to the now of matters and start to climb; he was surprised to see the yellow dog at his heels.
At the top was a flat area through which the little stream flowed when it was not a ribbon of ice. There were hardly any rocks for a long way round, making it a good place to camp – which is why the men who had got there first had done so.
Crowbone arrived to find men panting hard, shoulder to shoulder and the breath rising from them like spray from a blowhole. Kaetilmund looked round, saw him and simply jerked his chin out in front. There were dead beast-men dotted here and there, stiff but not yet frozen; the raven’s feast. Beyond the scattered dead stood men, shields up and weapons ready.
They are iron-grim, these men, Crowbone thought. Faces like bruises, eyes red-rimmed and not looking at you so much as through you to somewhere distant, while the meltwater from their smoking breath ran off their helmets and refroze on their beards. They were stained and bloodied and coldly desperate, their hands on hilt and shaft flexing and clenching. Crowbone half turned, realising they were no different at all from the men at his own back.
‘How many of them, are you thinking?’ Onund asked, craning to see. A stone’s worth, said Gjallandi, though he was prepared to revise that upwards a few times, aiming it at men who tallied laboriously from one to twenty – ein, tveir, þrír – then took a stone from a pile and started again.
Crowbone heard a voice claim three stones’ worth, but that was from Tuke, who came from somewhere north of Jorvik and counted in some eldritch way – yan, tan, tethera – and did not do it well, even with his boots off.
‘There are enough,’ Kaetilmund claimed and the air grew thick and heavy with frosted fear. Crowbone pushed his way to the front and spread his empty hands wide. There was a pause, a stir as if a bird fluttered in the bush of them, then a man stepped from safety and stood looking at Crowbone.
He was middling old, though the cold had crippled his face to that of an old man, a rough, greying beard frozen to it like lichen to a rock and a nose that seemed to spread across what remained of his face. Crowbone knew him as if he had been a brother, had followed the name from Hy to Orkney to here – Erling Flatnose; he felt the ice-spear in his head stab viciously, so that one eye shut and he winced with the pain of it.
Erling watched the boy curiously, saw the sudden twist, the flicker of pain and wondered at it – or if he had seen it at all, for it was gone in an eyeblink. It left a sharp face, coin-weighted yellow braids dangling on either side and the dusting of a good beard rising to meet them. Average height, not any sign of special on him at all and wearing ringmail that a dead man would scorn from the grave.
Yet the eyes Gudrod had warned him about gripped him, one blue, one brown; he felt them on his face like the trail of cold fingers and it made him shiver.
‘Here we are, then, son of Tryggve,’ he declared, attempting to get matters walking on the trail he wanted. ‘Seeking the same, fighting the same. It seems to me that the Sami are watching us and will laugh to see us carve each other up.’
‘No need for it,’ agreed Crowbone, so amiable and quick that Erling was confused. ‘There are other ways to settle matters. Where is Gudrod and that mother of his?’
‘Gone, with the axe you seek, of course. I will be following them once matters are done with here.’
Crowbone laughed and stood, hip-shot, though he trembled and hoped it did not show.
‘So,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘Gudrod has left you here to … what? Kill me? Die for him? For a man with the Bloodaxe of victory, he seems strangely reluctant to face me in person. Perhaps
he fears the curse of it.’
Erling shifted slightly, for the thought had entered him also.
‘He plays the game of kings,’ he answered, shrugging. ‘To win it, you get your king to safety.’
Crowbone flung back his head and laughed with what he hoped sounded like genuine delight.
‘Only if you play it on a cloth of nine squares,’ he answered. ‘There are other ways to win – but if that is what you intend, then matters are simple here and only one needs to die.’
Erling nodded, for he had been told to expect this.
‘Were you thinking only two need risk themselves? Yourself being one of them? What does the winner gain?’
‘Everything,’ Crowbone said, wondering at the ease with which Erling had helped steer this course. ‘The winner agrees that his oath-men go their own way unharmed. Those that wish and are acceptable may even join with the winner.’
Onund gave a barking growl at that and Erling heard it, flicked his eyes briefly to the hunchback, then back to Crowbone’s face.
‘It seems not all your oath-men agree,’ he answered.
A prince should always strive to be good, Crowbone thought, but if necessary he should be capable of evil.
‘Some are oathed to me, others have taken an Odin Oath to each other. Those whom we do not trust, we can kill,’ he harshed out, loud enough for all those behind to hear it. ‘For we are choosers of the slain, you and me. I am thinking it will not matter to you which ones I take a mistrust to, since you will be dead.’
Erling laughed.
‘Agreed,’ he said and it came to Crowbone, too late, that Erling would not be the one he would fight, as he had thought. Even as the spit dried in his mouth, he saw the man turn and raise a hand. Everyone watched the youth step out, gliding as if on bone skates, the sword in a ring at his belt.
‘This is Od,’ Erling said. ‘Od, this is Olaf Tryggvasson, called Crowbone. Kill him.’
The youth flicked the sword out of his belt-ring with one hand as Crowbone drew his own blade; men made yells of encouragement as he fell into a fighting crouch, watching the youth called Od, who made no movement at all save for the tilt of his head as he studied Crowbone.
Crowbone saw the face in the slow heartbeats that ticked away. Beautiful as a girl, it was, untouched by the weather or the world and, for a moment, Crowbone felt a sharp pang deep in him and wanted the boy to go away, to keep his face untroubled and unblemished.
Od saw the eyes of the man he would kill, blue and brown, and thought they were pretty, like agate stones he had found once on a beach. He smiled; they would be good on a sacrifice to Tyr and the god would be pleased. Above them was a domed helmet with a plume of white horsehair braiding its way out of the top and he thought he might like that – then he frowned.
‘It has a dent in it,’ he said and Crowbone, puzzled, did not understand him at first, thought it some ploy and watched him warily.
‘Your war hat,’ the boy said, waving the sword in the general direction of Crowbone’s head. ‘It has a dent in it.’
‘So will your head,’ Crowbone croaked out, ‘since you do not wear one at all.’
Od smiled brightly at that and shook his head.
‘I never get hurt,’ he declared proudly. ‘Tyr protects me.’
The boy moved then and Crowbone almost squealed with the terrible speed of him – but he got his sword in the way and Od’s blade skittered off it with a high, thin tang. Then the boy was whirling, sure-footed, across the frozen stream, skipping like a flung stone.
He did it again and Crowbone fended it off again, though he felt the sick certainty that he could not hit this youth, who seemed like smoke. Onund thought so, too, and looked at Kaetilmund and they nodded – whatever happened, the Oathsworn would not become Gudrod’s men.
The third whirl of the sword was another high slash and Crowbone turned it yet again and this time managed a half-hearted slash of his own, but Od was already turning, almost strolling, back into striking range.
Then Crowbone saw it, saw that the fourth would come in like the others, but it would be feint, for he would whip it low and up, hoping to get under Crowbone’s defence and cut up into the armpit.
It came, the high cut, a whirr like a bird wing and Crowbone held back – when the feint slice came in, his sword met it with a resounding ring of steel and, when Crowbone had shaken the sting of sweat from his eyes, he saw that Od was frowning.
Men were yelling on both sides, screaming at their men to finish it. Erling was only aware of them as a noise, like insect whine, for he was watching Od. He had seen the move, seen the strange-eyed boy counter it and the frown on Od’s face; for the first time he felt a worm of unease creep into his belly, for Od had never taken so long to finish a man.
It was the game of kings, thought Crowbone, only faster and using steel. He felt better for knowing it, for the game of kings was his game; he smiled.
When Od skipped in again, Crowbone sucked the breath from those watching – he flipped his sword from right to left hand and Od, just as he started to cut, found himself open all along one side and desperately changed his mind. His feet skidded a little and Crowbone, exultant, slashed at him.
There was another clash of iron and the boy reeled away, his beautiful face twisted, pale and ugly with fear and hate now. This had never happened before. He had never been made to do this before, to feel this way.
Crowbone heard the rasp of his own breath in his ears, felt the sick hopelessness. He should have had him, there and then – by all the gods, this Od was fast. Perhaps he really was beloved of Tyr One-Hand. Perhaps Gunnhild’s seidr magic was still strong and, somewhere far away, she worked it in the muttering dark.
Od came in, all anger and blinding speed, so that Crowbone backed away, a foot skidded on the ice and he went down on one knee and the helmet, badly fastened, slid off and clattered away; men howled and roared as Od closed in and started to hack, madly, blind with fury.
Erling shoved to the front, roaring with anger. ‘No, no – kill him, Od. Kill him now.’
But the boy was using brute strength and no finesse. A sliver to the right or left and Crowbone, sword held up and across him, would have been cut to the bloody core – but Od slammed his sword against Crowbone’s blade again and again, as if trying to drive it down into Crowbone’s own pale, upturned face.
There was a sudden sharp bell of sound and everything stopped. No-one spoke, or even seemed to breathe; Od stared at the shattered nub of his sword blade while the main length of it spun lazily through the air. When it landed, with a soft tinkle that skidded it along the frozen stream, time and noise began all over again.
Crowbone hurled himself upright. He had this chance, this one chance and Od, stunned and squealing, backed away. Crowbone tried once, twice, three times to carve his blade into the body of the boy, but, even with the broken remnants of his sword, Od’s hand-speed glissaded the danger away from him.
Panting, sobbing for breath, Crowbone paused briefly and launched a new attack. Od half-turned, dropped to one heel and flung the broken blade at Crowbone’s face, making him shy sideways and lose his concentration. Something whacked his sword hand and he felt the fingers go numb and uncurl, heard the blade ringing on the ice. Erling’s men bellowed out hoarse cheers.
Crowbone closed with the boy, before he could get away and find a new weapon; he was stronger and taller, yet the fight had sucked at him and they both locked together, straining for advantage, feet skidding on the ice and snow. There was an axe snugged in the belt at the small of Crowbone’s back but there was no way he could get to it quickly, even when he freed one hand.
It had irritated Crowbone since he had started to wear it, but he had had the idea from Finn and the nail in his boot. Crowbone, since he had strapped the dagger sheath to the outside of his left ankle, wondered how Finn stood the rubbing and annoyance – and he did not even have a sheath to ease matters. More than a few times, Crowbone had thought of taking the contra
ption off; now he prayed to Odin for the wisdom the god had clearly provided.
His hand drew it out, a long, thin, sliver of steel only slightly shorter than the length of his forearm. He got it up and round, saw Od’s eyes widen with shock when he saw it and felt the great surge of triumph that comes with the certainty of victory – then the world exploded in red mist and pain.
He stumbled back, blinded by tears, desperately dashed them and the blood from his nose, cracked by Od’s forehead. He saw the boy, smiling, standing hip-shot and easy and with the dagger dangling loosely in one hand; he had not even felt the boy pluck it from his hand.
Here it comes then, he thought numbly. Somewhere, the Norns’ weave had gone awry, for this was clearly not what Olaf Tryggvasson had seen of his own future – but it was happening. The snips were closing on his thread.
He lunged, the boy skipped away, smiling, while people jeered.
‘Freyja’s tits, boy – fucking kill him!’ screamed Erling and Od, frowning, struck like a snake. Crowbone saw the wink of it, the cold, shining stab of it and then the length was in his shoulder, right in, driving the rot-brown metal rings into his flesh, spearing through them and the sweating skin and the raw meat until it grated on the bone; he screamed – though there was no pain yet – at the violation of the iron in his flesh.
Od slid, skate smooth, behind him, keeping one hand on the dagger, putting the other round Crowbone’s pale, sweating forehead; Erling tensed and dared not speak, for the pair were close to the edge of the waterfall now, not on the frozen spill, but to the right of it, where the rocks were just as slick with ice spray.
Crowbone felt the wash of pain, then, the hot, sick surge of it and his legs almost buckled. Behind him, Od crooned and stroked his hair, sweat-plastered to his forehead. At the same time, he worked the dagger into the wound a little more, a slow circle, so that Crowbone could feel it in great red billows of pain.
