Crowbone

by Robert Low

  ‘You should go home, woman,’ he growled. ‘This is no place for you.’

  ‘The Norns wove her into this,’ Crowbone answered harshly. ‘Let them unpick her.’

  ‘Move,’ Orm told them, to bring them back to watchfulness. Cautious as sheep round wolf scent, they moved down past the shrieking skulls, through the last veils of smoke and steaming pools – then, like balm to the eyes, the shrouded white was swept away and, lolling beneath them like a naked blonde maiden with two bags of gold, was a little bowl-shaped scoop of valley, with grass cleared of snow and the huge mass of the mountain looming above and all around.

  It was warm in that place, so that the grass of it, though winter sere, seemed like the rippling autumn pelt of a fox and the copses had bare trees that were tall, and those that were evergreen had branches that trembled like a rich man’s belly in the ever-present swirl of warm wind.

  Under one of them was a whipping vein of smoke; furred men stood up, spears ready and for a moment matters winked at the brim of blood. Then a woman’s voice said something and the beast-men sank down like dogs.

  Crowbone was hammered into the ground, as if a fist had struck him in the belly, driving air and sense out of him. Hate and fear welled in him and he almost went on one knee, then recovered himself, though he had to push to do it, lifting his head to see the puzzled worry in Orm’s face.

  ‘Gunnhild,’ he said and Orm’s eyes widened. He peered, then shook his head.

  ‘Not Gunnhild, lad,’ he declared. ‘This is another witch.’

  Unconvinced, Crowbone was barely aware that he moved at all; the last few steps towards her seemed like a walk through sucking bog wearing iron shoes.

  FOURTEEN

  Finnmark, the mountain of Surman Suuhun …

  CROWBONE’S CREW

  THÓRGERTH Hölgabrúth she said her name was and Gjallandi went pale at the sound of it, for he knew that name well. Orm only knew that the name somehow meant a bride and had the taint of seidr on it – but Thor was in it and that bluff, red-haired god was not noted for spawning women of magic.

  Crowbone did not care what her name was, for up close she was not Gunnhild and that was all that mattered to him. Oh, she had the cat’s arse mouth and a skin soft as chewed reindeer hide, but she was taller, thinner, both old and young at the same time, with eyes that were curious, resting on his own with the blue intensity of old ice.

  ‘You have an axe in your care, mistress,’ Crowbone managed to growl, keeping polite in his voice for he was aware that Klaenger had gone down on his knees, while Adalbert had done the opposite and drawn himself up as tall as he could, sticking his chin defiantly at her and making the sign of the cross back and forth on his chest.

  She ignored all of this, while her Sami guard dogs fanned out warily.

  ‘I had,’ she answered, her voice cracked as a bad pot, the Norse in it blurred with neglect. ‘A wise woman came for it. Though I am not so sure she was all that wise, for she had fetched it once before and it had killed her man and all her other sons but one. Now she wants it for this last.’

  ‘Ave María, gratia plena,’ Adalbert intoned, his face raised and eyes closed. ‘Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in muliéribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui Iesus.’

  ‘So Erling had the truth of it,’ Crowbone spat bitterly. ‘Gunnhild and her son have the Bloodaxe.’

  ‘Was there a Christ priest here?’ Orm demanded. ‘With a bad leg and looking like something freshly dug up?’

  ‘There was – gently, gently,’ she said, the last spoken to the Sami, grown restive with the priest’s chanting, for they clearly thought he was casting some spell. She held her hands straight down by her sides, palms level with the earth and the furred warriors sank down on one knee, gathered protectively round her.

  ‘That axe is mine,’ Crowbone declared, his eyes narrowing. The woman nodded, as if she had known that.

  ‘Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae …’

  ‘In the name of Thor’s hairy arse, priest, shut up,’ Finn roared.

  ‘Amén,’ said Adalbert. Finn looked askance at the woman.

  ‘I meant no disrespect to the Thunderer,’ Finn added hastily and she smiled.

  ‘It is cold,’ the woman said. ‘I am going to the fire. When you are ready to talk, come and join me.’

  She turned and walked off, confident and sure-footed, trailing her hands through the pack of Sami, who rose up and trotted after her.

  ‘You know this Thórgerth, Boomer,’ Orm said and Gjallandi jerked his eyes away from the woman’s retreating back and nodded, licking his big, firm lips.

  ‘She was the bride of King Helgi of Halagoland,’ he said, then shook his head. ‘That cannot be, for it was long ago, before the time of our grandfathers’ grandfathers.’

  ‘Perhaps she is that old,’ Finn muttered and made a warding sign. ‘She has the look, like the last leaf before winter.’

  ‘More than likely there is a sisterhood,’ Adalbert offered, ‘of which she is the latest. They all call themselves the same name.’

  ‘Like Christ nuns, you mean?’

  Adalbert glared and denied it, but Crowbone shrugged.

  ‘I have seen such nuns, in the Great City and elsewhere. A sisterhood, who all seem to be called Maria.’

  ‘These heathens are not the same,’ Adalbert insisted.

  ‘A sisterhood? So you do not think anyone can be so old, Christ priest?’ Orm asked. ‘What of the one in your holy book – Methus … something?’

  ‘Metushelach,’ Adalbert answered levelly, ‘son of Enoch, father of Lamech. He died old – but he was one of God’s chosen.’

  ‘Which this witch clearly is not,’ interrupted a harsh voice and all heads turned to where Finn stood, glaring after the goddess of the Sami. He turned to Adalbert and astounded everyone.

  ‘Nine hundred, sixty and nine years when he died,’ he growled, then turned from astonished face to astonished face.

  ‘What? You cannot spend time in the Great City and not pick up a few things,’ he spat. ‘I had the saga of that old Christmann from an Armenian whore. Which is not the point. The sharp end of this affair is what we do now – that little fuck Martin had a plan, but I cannot fathom it. Unless it was to mire us in this place, surrounded by Sami and with no way out, in which case it is a very good plan.’

  ‘He laid a full-cunning plan,’ Orm admitted, his face quern grim. ‘I am thinking it was a Norn-weave of plot, but Martin does not have the skill of those blind sisters. I am thinking it unravelled a little in his hand.’

  He stared, blindly thoughtful and spoke almost to himself.

  ‘Gudrod was meant to be here, not away with the axe – Haakon’s men were meant to secure that. All of us were meant to be killing each other and Martin, like a raven, would pick from the dead what he wants most in life. Not good enough, little priest – but many good northmen were wyrded to die in this affair and that must be answered.’

  ‘Where is the axe?’ demanded Crowbone and Orm blinked, then shrugged.

  ‘Orkney, if it is anywhere. The priest, too.’

  ‘Beyond us all if it is there,’ Finn agreed. ‘Even if we get out of this place.’

  ‘Aye,’ Orm agreed, which made men shift nervously and look about. The whole place, the situation, had them walking on dewclaws, looking to where the woman they had heard was a goddess sat beside the fire, to the Sami around her, to the woman again, who had stood up for some reason.

  ‘Do you want this axe for yourself?’ Crowbone demanded flatly and Orm fixed him with a silent, cold stare.

  ‘That is the second time you have asked me that,’ he answered coldly. ‘Do not ask it again.’

  ‘Will you help me against Gunnhild if I get us out of this place?’

  Orm nodded with narrowed, questioning eyes and Finn snorted.

  ‘I will help you against Loki himself if you get us out of this place,’ he answered, with a lash in his voice that
suggested it was beyond even Crowbone’s strange seidr.

  Crowbone looked along the line of men and grinned; they grinned back, wolf snarls with no laughing in it at all and that only increased Crowbone’s delight, for he knew now how matters stood, knew it with the certainty of the next move in a game of kings, for he had seen the Sami goddess rise up from the fire and clap her hands, had seen what had delighted her.

  He went to the fire and looked at the woman, who did not look much like a goddess now, with her mouth drooping a little and her eyes full of what she had seen.

  ‘What can we trade to leave here with no fight from these hounds of yours?’ he rasped, knowing the answer already and Thórgerth blinked her eyes up into his – then slid them back to Bergliot. Crowbone smiled, a long, slow triumphant smile and nodded.

  For a moment, Bergliot stared at him bewildered, disbelieving, then her eyes widened, Finally, she screamed.

  Sand Vik, Orkney, three weeks later …

  THE KING PIECE

  Gudrod sat at the far end of a long table, drinking from a green-glass cup. His gilded helmet was perched on the end, the nasal of it scoring a new mark in the scarred wood, the ringmail puddling round it. A board of nine squares sat in front of him, glowing soft as red-gold in the sconces, the pieces winking back fire.

  In front of that, stretching the width of the table, lolling like the whore of fortune that she was, lay Odin’s Daughter, the long handle of the Bloodaxe dark with age and sweat and old wickedness, the head gleaming, worked with the inlaid silver mystery of endless snake-knots and strange gripping beasts.

  In front of the axe lay another long batten of wood, also dark with age, slightly swollen in the middle and with a nub-end of dark metal licking from the tapered wooden point. It had been taken, swaddled in cloth, from Orm’s shoulder when their weapons had all been removed. It was an Old Roman spear, Crowbone knew, which the priest Martin coveted as a seidr of his own.

  Crowbone had not known what to expect from this last son of the Mother of Kings, but what he saw was a big man whose neck was thick and roped with great veins down either side, a fleshy face with a neat-trimmed beard more iron than black and eyes a little too bright with drink. Gudrod gestured, the cup in that meaty hand seeming as dainty as an eggshell.

  ‘Olaf, son of Tryggve,’ he said. Crowbone nodded curtly and walked forward a little, to where the swirling blue dim of the hall broke against the torchlight. Here he was, the killer of his father, the son of Gunnhild who had scattered the lives of him and his mother like chaff to the wind. And there, behind him …

  She shifted from the dark like a detaching shadow and the light fell on the stiffened planes of her face, so that he caught his breath. Gunnhild, the hand who wielded the sword, the power which had conspired. He tried to see the eyes, but saw only the knobbed fingers of a hand. He tried to find the hate, but discovered that, strangely now that he was so close after the years running from her, he had no fear, only curiosity.

  ‘Orm,’ said Gudrod. ‘Finn.’

  Each name was a flat slap and, at each one, the owner stepped into the light. Out of the side of an eye, Crowbone saw the iron pillars which followed them, one for each, like watching hounds.

  ‘Who was it who told you I play ’tafl?’ Gudrod asked Crowbone suddenly.

  ‘The abbot on Hy,’ Crowbone replied. ‘Or perhaps Erling, before I killed him. I forget which.’

  ‘Just after he killed that strange lad,’ Orm added. ‘Od.’

  The sibilant hiss came from the dark, a herald of the dust and rheum voice to follow.

  ‘You have them in your power here,’ she said warningly and Gudrod stiffened a little, then hunched his shoulders, as if against a chill breeze on his neck.

  ‘You are resourceful,’ he said, ignoring her. ‘Survived the Sami and the cold, Erling and that boy. Especially that boy. He was strange and gifted, that one. I respect that – admire it even – but I am not witless. Do you really think to beat me at the game of kings? And that I will hand over the axe if you do?’

  That had been the plan when Orm and Finn, Crowbone and the others had reached the Finnmark shore, using axes to break up the forming ice and having to leave two ships behind because they did not have men enough to sail them. Even those who climbed on to their rimed sea-chest oar benches were burst-lipped growlers, trembling with cold.

  Crowbone had stood with Orm and Finn on the snow-clotted shingle amid the frozen puddles of the beach arguing this plan; he knew they thought it madness, yet Orm went with it because he saw the hand of Odin in it and Finn went with it because it was mad and bold. Crowbone had known that, too, for they were all pieces in the game of kings.

  Orm, watching the boy now, felt the grey slide into his heart, for he knew that whatever happened here, Crowbone was gone from him. He wondered what would become of the boy he had loosed from Klerkon’s privy all those years ago.

  Not yet into the full of his life, he had said for as long as he could recall, fooling himself with it. Crowbone was into the full of his life now and, just as Orm had predicted long since, was not a man you wanted to be around; the Wend woman had shown that, if nothing else. Orm hoped that Odin had not abandoned them completely – and that Crowbone could play ’tafl.

  ‘I had heard you could play a bit,’ Crowbone said to Gudrod, with an off-hand shrug, then nodded towards the black-handled axe. ‘Now that you have that blade of victory, I thought to come and lay matters to rest between us. If I win, you and your mother stop working against me.’

  Gunnhild’s hiss was enough to bend Gudrod’s backbone and he half turned as if irritated by something between his shoulderblades. Then he drank from the blue-glass cup and set it down gently.

  ‘You seem to believe you can trade,’ he said. ‘You have nothing to trade. Two words from me and you are a corpse.’

  Finn growled and Gudrod glanced up and twisted his fleshy face into a grimace of smiles.

  ‘I hear you, Finn-who-fears-nothing,’ he sneered. ‘And I feel your stare, slayer of bears. You were foolish to entangle yourselves in this.’

  Orm spread his hands and smiled, easy and loose.

  ‘I am a trader, if you have heard anything of me at all,’ he answered. ‘I thought to help a prince I know. I thought I would be dealing with a Christ priest, mark you.’

  ‘Ah,’ Gudrod said knowingly and raised one hand above his head. There was a stirring in the shadows and then another iron pillar came forward, thrusting a figure by one shoulder. So, Crowbone thought, three guards …

  ‘Martin,’ said Orm and the figure raised its slumped head. He was blackened with ice rot and lurched, hip-shot to take the weight off his crippled foot. One hand was held awkwardly, the fingers of it clearly broken and sticking out at odd angles and his mouth was a fester of brown and black that showed when he breathed, for his nose was smashed and he sucked air in over raw gums.

  Yet the eyes were a glittering grue at the sight of the Roman lance and he stretched out his good hand towards it.

  ‘Mine,’ he said and Gudrod backhanded him, so that the priest’s head flew sideways. Finn and Orm both half started to their feet and Crowbone stared at them, astonished. Here was their arch-enemy – why did they care how badly he was handled?

  Orm laid a hand on Finn’s arm and they both sank back to their benches, so that the ring-mailed hounds behind them eased a little and let their swords slide back into sheaths.

  ‘Mine,’ Gudrod replied mockingly as Martin struggled to his feet.

  ‘Tscha,’ spat Gunnhild, forcing herself forward into the light. ‘Kill them now and be done with this. It is bad enough you let Haakon’s people go free and kept this festered monk …’

  ‘Thank you,’ Martin lisped, puffing blood on to the wild matting of his beard. ‘That tooth pained me more than the others.’

  Then he smiled, showing the bloody ruin of his swelling tongue and the blood in his mouth.

  ‘I have had the winter eat my foot to endless pain,’ he puffed at
Gudrod. ‘Brondolf Lambisson, whom you never knew and should thank God for it, broke my mouth long since. I have suffered the wrath of my God, little man, and there is no pain the equal of that. Think you are a king in making, a hard man from the vik? My first baby shite was harder than you can hit.’

  Crowbone heard the delighted ‘heya’ from behind him. He turned to where Finn grinned, shaking his head with admiration.

  ‘You have to say it,’ he declared, beaming into Gudrod’s thunder, ‘our Martin speaks true enough. He is the hardest man I know, for sure.’

  Our Martin. Crowbone could hardly believe he heard it – there was even affection there. Martin wobbled his head round and fixed it on them.

  ‘Is that yourself, Finn? Ja, I think so. Orm also must be there. For certain you have sold yourselves to the Devil, to have come this far. You should both be dead.’

  ‘I know you planned matters differently,’ Orm answered coldly. ‘Good men died for that and there is not much left of you. I have decided that this foolishness between us ends here.’

  ‘You have decided?’

  It was Gudrod’s cracking bone of a voice and his eyes blazed behind it. ‘You? In my own hall, you say this. To me?’

  ‘Arnfinn’s hall,’ Finn answered with a scowl. ‘You have no hall of your own.’

  ‘Nor will have if you do not behave like a king …’ Gunnhild interrupted, her voice cracking like the paint on her twisting face.

  ‘Quiet!’

  The thunder of it rang them all to silence and Gudrod stood, his face dark and his whole body heaving with the effort of controlling his anger. His eyes raged at them all and, momentarily, he put a hand to one temple, then let it drop.

  ‘I should kill you now,’ he declared and sat down, suddenly, like a dumped bag of winter oats.

  ‘That you can is undeniable,’ Crowbone answered. ‘You will not, of course. Because your mother wishes it and you wish to defy her. Because you wonder if you have the beating of me in the game of kings.’