The White Raven

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 sun-fastened 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 half-way 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. Tor 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 he 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 ring-mail 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