by Robert Low
‘Take care,’ Thorgunna said to Kvasir, tugging his cloak tighter round his neck. ‘There are bannocks and cheese and the last of our meat in a bag on the saddle horn. Oh, and a skin of ale is hooked there. I don’t expect you home before dark, so wrap warm this night.’
‘Don’t fuss, woman,’ he said, though it was lightly done. Finn heaved himself up into the saddle, black-browed at all this. He aimed a storm-scowl at Crowbone and rumbled: ‘We are not having that silly dog.’
Crowbone agreed with a nod, for I had already made it plain that the elkhound was staying behind. He was tied up and yowling as we left through the main gate, circling round to the opaque ribbon of the river, watched by cold-pinched, anxious faces and one of the village curs, who had routed out a bird frozen in the eaves of a house and fallen to the rutted path.
The river was iced and drifted with powdered snow, so we crossed it where there would have been a shallow ford and never as much as cracked it. In a moment we were into the tussocked, snow-scoured marsh and the palisade of the village shrank to a line behind us as we moved away from it, towards the faint scar at the edge of the sky.
The marsh glistened and, when it was full thawed, would be a formidable place of bog and sink holes – impassable, as Crowbone pointed out, if you did not know the secret way of it, as these creatures surely did.
‘Outlaws,’ Kvasir corrected, rubbing his weeping eye and we hugged that hope to us with our cloaks as we slithered through the stiff-spiked sedges, towards the scab of rock that grew even darker as we came up on it.
The sun hovered like a blood-drop on the edge of the world and our shadows grew eldritch, thin and long in front of us, while that black rock seemed more ominous with every mile. There was something about it that lined the heart with chill.
Trees sprouted, grew stark claws and thickened in clumps as we came up on the dark-cragged gall on the steppe, which was choked with them. In summer, it would be a mass of green and the rock would be softer and more rounded – but now it looked as if Jormundgand, the world dragon, had brushed a coil through the crust of the earth and left a single scale behind.
‘A real outlaw lair,’ Kvasir remarked, chewing on some thick bran bread and spitting out little pieces of grit.
Closer still, we heard strange sounds, like bells would make if they were made of water. The hairs on my neck were up and we all put hands on weapons and went slower, peering this way and that through the scatter of bare, twisted trees; Finn climbed off the horse, for he would not fight on it and had been complaining about his sore buttocks for so long now that I knew more about his arse than his own breeks.
Morut found the source of the sounds soon after; in one taloned tree hung the whitened skull of a cow, with other bones dangled from it, fastened by tail hair. In the wind, they turned and chimed against each other and the big, bold, bearded men of the druzhina shifted uneasily and made warding signs until Sigurd snarled at them to stop being women.
‘Outlaw signs,’ Finn growled sarcastically. Kvasir said nothing, but glanced back to where the sun trembled on the edge of the world. His look was enough; the idea of being in this place when it got dark was turning my bowels to gruel.
There was no choice, all the same and at least we had wood for a fire – though it was not only the chill that made us bank it high. We perched round it warily, under a millstone moon and a blaze of stars, so many, when the clouds flitted clear of them, that they made a man hunch his neck into his shoulders, as if ducking under a low arch.
‘There was once a band of men,’ Crowbone said, staring into the fire, ‘up in the Finnmark, who thought they would hunt out troll treasure.’
I wished he would not tell one of his tales; they had a nasty way of stinging you. I said as much and he merely blinked his two-coloured eyes and hunched himself under his now dirty white cloak.
‘Let the boy speak,’ growled one of the Slavs, a big slab-faced scowl of a man called Gesilo. His comrades in the druzhina nicknamed him Bezdrug, which meant ‘friendless’ and you could see why.
‘You will not like it,’ Avraham growled back, but Gesilo only grunted. Crowbone cleared his throat.
‘There were three of them and they knew the rock trolls in that part of the world were always gathering gold and silver to them and they thought it would be a fine thing to get some of it. One – we shall call him Gesilo – said that it would be easy, for rock trolls became boulders in daylight and only came alive at night. It would be a little matter only to rob them when they were stone and be gone by nightfall.’
‘A smart plan,’ agreed Gesilo. ‘This man has a good name, for it is a plan I would have come up with myself.’
He nudged his neighbours, who did not laugh.
‘The three friends travelled high up into the Dovrefell,’ Crowbone went on. ‘They saw many a boulder like a stone-fixed troll, but none with any sign of treasure and it was growing harder and harder to find a night-camp where there were no such stones at all.
‘The other two were wanting to go home after a few nights of this, but Gesilo pointed to a great hill, a lump of rock that stood high above the Fell and was shrouded with trees like the claws of birds. He was sure there would be troll treasure there.’
The listeners shifted and it was not hard to see why, since Crowbone had just described the very place we sat under. I wanted to tell the little cow’s hole to clip his teeth to his lips, but I could not do it. Like a man in a longship heading off the edge of the world, I could not turn the steerboard one way or the other for wanting to see what lay through the mirr of falling water.
‘The three friends took all day to travel to the place,’ Crowbone went on in his bone-chiming little voice. ‘It was growing dark when they came up on it, a great hump of black rock thick with bare-branched trees and surrounded by crops of rocks and boulders, many of which could easily be sunfastened trolls. The other two said that there would be trouble, for there was no shelter and as soon as it grew dark the trolls would come out, stamping and angry.
‘But Gesilo started up the steep sides of the rock, shouting out that there was a cave halfway up and it was too small for any of these boulder-sized perhaps-trolls to get in if they did come alive.
‘That settled it; the other two followed on and soon reached the cave, which was as Gesilo described. It was too dark to see how far back it went, though it narrowed considerably, so could not be a bear den. It was just tall enough for them to sit in and light a fire, which they did. Darkness fell, but everyone was cheerful, because they seemed safe and had a big roaring fire going.’
Kvasir threw a stick on our own, which caused the sparks and flames to flare up and some of the listeners to shift. Grinning, rueful and half-ashamed, they sank down as Crowbone tugged his dirty-white cloak round him and went on.
‘Eventually, they ran out of wood and drew lots to see who would brave the dark and fetch some time. One – we shall call him Orm – drew the shortest twig and reluctantly left the safety and fireglow for the dark of the hill.’
‘Now there’s the lie of it, right there,’ grunted Kvasir. ‘For I cannot remember Orm ever having fetched wood. Or water. Or …’
‘I am the jarl, you dog turd,’ I gave back, looking for a bit of flyting to put an end to this Olaf-saga – but Crowbone’s tales were like the magic salt-mill that tainted the seas; once started, there was no stopping.
‘Orm went out,’ Crowbone continued. ‘The trees seemed to reach for him like claws, so he resolved to gather what fallen wood he could, as swiftly as he could and return to the cave, which was now a welcome glow above and behind him.
‘Then he heard a noise. A grinding-grim sort of a noise. When he turned, there was a rock troll, tall as a house, made up of stones in the shape of a man, like a well-made dyke. When it spoke, it had a voice like a turning quern and demanded to know what Orm was doing in this place and why he had annoyed his old grandfather.
‘Orm, puzzled, decided it would be a bad idea to speak of treasure, so h
e answered that he was collecting sticks for a fire and surely there was no harm in that and how could gathering a few sticks annoy this large troll’s grandfather?
‘The large stone troll raised his large stone fists and it was clear he was going to smash Orm into the ground. Orm, unable to get away and facing his doom, demanded again to know how gathering sticks for a fire should have annoyed the troll’s old grandfather.
‘There was screaming and the light of the fire went out above Orm’s head, then the screaming of his friends was cut off. The big stone fists were raised to smash Orm to pulp and the big stone head smiled like a cleft in a cliff.
‘“You should not have lit your fire in his mouth,” answered the troll.’
There was silence and those with the great dark rock behind them hunched down a little, as if feeling breath on the back of their necks. Everyone was now remembering how much like the top of a head it had looked, sticking up through the glistening marsh, thin-furred with trees like the nap on a thrall’s skull.
Avraham chuckled at Gesilo’s stricken face. ‘I said you would not like it.’
Gesilo – and the rest of them – liked it even less the next morning, when the light crept up and turned the trees into shadowed hands. It slid, honey slow, like the milk mist that tendriled the scarred slopes of that dark place, looping in chilled coils round our knees. No-one was happy.
The rock was no higher than a few hundred paces, but in that flat, white nothing, seemed big as a mountain, cut and slashed as if one of Crowbone’s trolls had taken a frenzied flint axe to it. It made us all move quiet and speak soft.
Crowbone stood, wrapped in his white cloak as usual, head cocked to one side as if listening, while men moved around like wraiths, upset if a horse stamped too loudly or snorted. Naturally, someone had to ask him.
‘What do you hear?’
Crowbone turned his coloured eyes on the speaker, a vast-bearded giant called Rulav, who was standing at the head of his big horse.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Not a sound.’
Which was only the truth, but the way he said it made us all suddenly discover the utter silence of the place. No wind sighed, no bird fluttered or sang. Men made warding signs and muttered.
‘White-livered bunch,’ growled Sigurd blackly, though he saved some dark looks to shoot at his nephew. Morut laughed and slithered on to his shaggy steppe pony. He moved out into the mists, faded, then vanished and the shaggy-bearded giants in their long, leather-backed ring-coats watched him go and wished for his courage.
I laid a hand on Crowbone’s shoulder as we sorted ourselves out.
‘Time you learned the value of such a silence as you have found here,’ I said to him and he nodded, now as pale and afraid as any nine-year-old.
The druzhina were more unhappy than ever, once they discovered that they had to leave their horses behind and go on foot towards this dark rock. Finn and I and Kvasir, on the other hand, were pleased and, when we shrugged into our light ringmail coats, caught the envious stare of the big Slavs, encumbered with their own weighty garments, split to the crotch for riding and dangling heavily down to their ankles.
We waited; Morut ghosted back to us, wiping the pearls of mirr from his dripping face where the freezing mist had melted.
‘There is a pool, the ice fresh cracked, not far ahead and just where the steep slopes begin,’ he said. ‘It is where they get water, for sure – recently, too. A trail leads up into the rocks.’
‘Any green-haired beauties there?’ demanded Finn scornfully. ‘Combing their tresses, perhaps?’
Morut chuckled while the big Slavs sucked in the reference to slope and rocks. Not the words the great, trudging, drip-bearded warriors wanted to hear, but Sigurd adjusted his silver nose and whistled scorn down it at them. They shipped shields on their backs, took the peace-strings off their swords and stumbled on, those mailed coats flapping at their feet. Those left to guard the horses were no happier, a few men on their own and looking right and left.
The pool was just as Morut had described – opaque, stippled ice with black in the middle where it had been chopped to the water. If there was a trail away from it, all the same, I could not see it – but it was hardly necessary. A boy raced away from it, bounding like a hare, leather bucket flapping in one hand, pointing the way up the slope as clearly as a blazed sign.
With a whoop and a roar the druzhina lumbered after him, despite Sigurd’s furious bellows and Finn stopped, blew drops off the straggle of his moustache and shook his head.
‘Can bulls catch a hare like that? My bet is on the boy.’
He won, but only just. The boy half-turned on the run to look at the roarers who waddled after him – and went straight into a tree, flying backwards on to his arse, the bucket bouncing back down the slope. One of the Slavs gave it a kick in passing and a triumphant bellow.
The boy was caught, for sure – he was up and reeling, but the breath had been driven out of him and you could see his little chest heave. Dark, wild hair, I saw and skins over ragged wool and scraps of fur. Barefoot. Doomed.
The first one to him was Gesilo, reaching out one hand to grab him, the other heavy with a big, straight blade.
‘Take him alive,’ roared Sigurd, but who knows what Gesilo might have done. Not that he had a chance; his horny, broken fingernails barely brushed the boy’s skin-covered shoulders and something broke from the snow-splattered rocks nearby with a throaty roar and a spear that drove straight into the Slav’s face.
He howled and went over backwards with his jaw flapping loose and blood flying. A hand grabbed the boy and shoved him further up the slope. I say a hand, but it was more of a claw. What stood in front of the boy, spread-legged and speararmed and snarling protectively, brought all the roaring Slavs to a skittering stop. Everybody gawped.
It was the shape of a man, but the face was warped, as if the bones had been squeezed and the skin tightened, so that it looked like a wide-mouthed frog. The eyes bulged, hair patched in a parody of a beard and straggled in wisps across the skull and it was naked, save for a skin wrapped round the loins.
And scaled. Every visible inch of it. Scaled as a chicken leg, just as we had been told, from thick-nailed feet to that wisp-haired skull. The hands that gripped the spear – a well-made weapon, I saw – were yellow-horned with nails long as talons.
There was silence, save for the scrabble of the boy vanishing up the trail into the rocks of the slope and the harsh panting of the Scaled Troll standing guard as he did so. Then Finn gave a rheum-thick growl, hefted The Godi and charged, howling out Odin’s name and elbowing aside the startled, rooted Slavs.
Cursing that valknut-sign he wore, I went after him and, a step behind me on my shieldless side, was Kvasir.
As Finn came up, the Scaled Troll braced, stepped back, reversed the spear and dropped low, scything it in a tripping arc. A lesser man would have been ankle-felled, but Finn leaped up and over it and the Scaled Troll was open for a downward cut – except that Finn’s foot slipped on the iced rocks and he fell flat on his face.
With a howl, the Scaled Troll stepped back, spun the spear back to the point and stabbed. I got my shield there a second before; the spear thunked into it, wrenched it out of my grip and spun it down the slope like a wheel.
Kvasir, an eyeblink later, brought his wave-sword glittering down on the Troll’s neck where it joined his left shoulder, carving deep so that blood and collarbone flew up. He – it – died with a howl and a series of skin-crawling mews, slushing blood in streams down the rocks while Finn and I hauled each other up, wrist to wrist.
‘Good stroke,’ Finn grunted, blowing blood from where his nose had battered the stones. Then half his face twisted in a grin at Kvasir. ‘Outlaws,’ he added. ‘My arse.’
Kvasir did not grin. He stood and stared at what he had killed, while the scaled heels drummed and an arm twitched once or twice. The druzhina Slavs came up, cautious as cats and touching amulets and little magic bags.
Later, when we had recovered our courage, we examined the Scaled Troll more closely and discovered that it was a man after all, though barely old enough to be called one. The scales were like callouses all over the creature, flowed together, thick as fingernails, though here and there, the creases seemed cracked and red-raw.
‘A disease, perhaps,’ Sigurd said, using his sword to unravel the skin loincloth. ‘Look – he has a prick like a man and that isn’t scaled.’
‘Yet,’ growled Finn, unimpressed. ‘It is a youngling.’
Sigurd, whistling through his silver nose, plunged his sword into the snow to wipe it clean and even then stared at it as if wondering whether to keep it or not.
There were other parts of the dead boy that were free of scale – a hip, a patch behind one knee, most of a buttock – and the skin here was as normal as any slain man’s, turning blue-white with death and cold.
‘The other boy was not like this one,’ Morut pointed out, looking up the slope to where the wild-haired little boy had run.
‘That you could see,’ Kvasir pointed out.
‘This one protected him, died for him,’ Avraham pointed out. ‘Hardly the act of a monster.’
Finn spat. ‘Wolves will fight for the pack,’ he answered. ‘Does that make them men?’
It made these creatures monsters to the Slavs, were-wyrms, or scaled trolls or worse. That and the threat of some strange disease made them grumble and mutter among themselves and, in the end, Sigurd came across to me and admitted, furious with the shame of it, that they believed these scaled creatures to be offspring of Chernobog, black god of death. It would be difficult, he thought, to get his men to go on.
‘How difficult?’ I demanded, angry myself and not anxious to unhook him from his shame easily. He glared back at me, the skin white round his silver nose, which was answer enough.
‘Then we will go on without you,’ I said, hoping it sounded bold enough for a Norseman and wishing I was Slav right then. Finn added a ‘heya’ of approval; his bad foot-luck had annoyed him and he was anxious to prove, to himself and Odin, that these scaled Grendels were no match for him and The Godi.
