‘Moonlit-buried silver, blood-price enough to end this feud.’
That brought heads up; everyone there knew the Oathsworn tales, particularly the one about finding all the silver of the world. Even allowing for the lies of skalds, that left silver enough for any man’s dreams.
‘There is not enough silver to end this,’ Randr bellowed back, then heard the mutterings that ran through the wolf pack behind him and whirled to face it. In an eyeblink, he saw them fracture, into those who thought there was enough silver and those who wanted blood only.
‘Stenvast is dead,’ growled the same bearcoat who had spoken before. ‘There is little left for us here and some of the Oathsworn’s famed silver seems a fair price.’
‘I will tell you where you can find it,’ I offered, driving the wedges deeper. ‘If you agree that it is finished and we each go our ways.’
‘You bitch-licking turd!’
The shriek came from Tov and he launched himself at me, all screaming and clawed fingers, seeing his revenge tremble on the brink of failure.
It was reflex from Randr, no more than that, the savage, sudden burst of anger from a jarl with too many problems all at once and disobeyed once too often; my sword whicked past my own ear and cut Tov’s throat out of him in a vomit of blood that splashed me as he thumped on the road.
There was a frozen moment of stillness, broken only by the sound of Tov’s blood trickling to a whisper and sliding in tendrils through the rain-water.
Then uproar and yells and argument. Fights started and Randr bellowed and laid about him with the sword. I saw Abjorn and the others look at each other, sizing up the chance of taking the fight to the enemy while they were so fractured and, for a moment, was frantic they would do it.
In the end, the bearcoats, bristling and growling in a group tight as a fist, brought order where Randr failed — and faster than the Oathsworn could make their minds up; I heaved a sigh of relief.
There was a brief, muttered argument, then Randr stalked angrily at me, badger-beard trembling. Two men were with him, one of them a wild-bearded giant of a bearcoat who announced himself as Skeggi Ogmundsson.
‘Tell where the hoard is,’ Randr said, jerking his head at the men. ‘They will go to it. If it is not there, you will die when the news is brought back.’
‘If it is?’ I countered, my voice thick with blood and pain, sounding strange and faraway in my ears.
He looked into my tear- and blood-streaked face and sneered.
‘We will take it and sail away. You and your whelps may have your lives for now.’
The ‘for now’ did not escape me. I knew he would not agree to forever, so I nodded and told what I knew.
Standing there for the time it took the men to go all the way to it and back was a long, long day. No-one spoke much, nor gave up their positions, nor rested their arms save in shifts. Randr’s men lit a couple of fires, but they had precious little fuel and they soon went out while, from the direction of the carts, I smelled smoke and soup, heard the grumbles from Randr’s hungry men and would have smiled, save that the muscles would not work for the trembling in them.
Then it rained again and the shadows slid and darkened. Men broke out what cloaks they had, or pulled their clothing tighter round them as the cold gnawed them. My nose throbbed and I had to stand open-mouthed as a coal-eater, because I could not breathe through it.
Then, suddenly, one of the men was back, lurching up the trail. Men stood; excitement drove out hunger and cold and they waited.
‘Well, Hallgeir?’ demanded a cold-eyed Randr.
‘Silver,’ said the man, scarcely able to speak. ‘Great piles of it — look.’
He thrust out a hand and men crowded to it; in the charcoal dim, the soft glow of coin and silver torc sucked the breath from them with a hiss. They looked at the handful, seeing it in dragon heaps.
‘Well,’ said Randr, straightening. ‘Now we have the silver.’
‘Untie me,’ I said and he laughed, a crow-snarl laugh that let me know it was not about to happen.
‘There is another matter…’ Hallgeir said, trying to thrust himself through the crowd that wanted to see, to touch, part of the fabled hoard of the Oathsworn.
Scowling, Randr turned, impatient at being thwarted from killing me, which was his next act, I knew. Odin was about to get his sacrifice. Make it quick, AllFather, I was thinking, while part of me was gibbering and wanting to flee rather than stand there like an ox at a
‘Where is Skeggi Ogmundsson?’ demanded a voice.
Before anyone could speak, something flew out of the shadows, whirling like a stone. It smacked wetly on the ground and rolled towards Randr, who stepped back from it; all hackles were up when they saw it was the bloody ruin of a wild-bearded head.
‘There was a grey gull.’
The voice came out of the darkness, down the trail from where the head of Skeggi the bearcoat had come. A piping voice, not yet broken.
A boy’s voice.
Heads turned and voices stilled; I saw Randr Sterki’s face just then and it was white round eyes which flicked briefly with fear, like Hati the moon goddess hearing the howl of the devouring wolf which pursued her.
‘That is the other matter,’ Hallgeir sighed, wearied with resignation. His hand fell to his side and the silver in it dropped, unregarded by anyone, to the rain and the mud.
Crowbone stepped to where men could see him. He wore a ringmail coat made for his size and carried a spear in either hand, was bareheaded so that his coin-weighted braids swung, and he did not look like a mere boy. Alyosha, as ever, was at his shoulder and, behind, the creak and shink and breathing of ringmailed men, gleaming faint and grey in the twilight, was a cliff at Crowbone’s back.
My legs sagged; now I knew why Ljot had been rowing so hard for the open water — to avoid Crowbone coming up. That Ljot had not informed Randr Sterki of it told a great deal.
‘There was a grey gull,’ Crowbone said, stepping closer and shouting less. ‘A raiding gull, who lived high on a cliff, on the flight’s edge. A king of gulls, whom men called Sterki — Strong — and who laughed at those same men and stole their fish and shat on them for fun.’
There were nervous sniggers, for they had all suffered that. Meaningful looks were shot at Randr Sterki, who shared the same name as this gull and at whom the tale was clearly aimed. I saw men sidle sideways, away from the rest; the last of the bearcoats, I was thinking.
‘I need no talk of gulls,’ Randr began, but Alyosha, only eyes showing in the helmet of his face, made a little gesture with a big axe that spoke loudly. The bearcoats stopped moving.
‘Better listen,’ I offered. ‘Better one of little Prince Crowbone’s sharp stories than the sharper alternative.’
Randr licked his lips; the alternative stared back at him from all the faint faces behind Crowbone’s back. Yet here was the boy who had turned his hate on all Randr had held dear. Here were all his enemies, all those he wanted revenge on and he hovered on the sheer cliff of wanting to hurl himself at them. He also knew, in the little part of him not blinded with red mist, that he would fail and that leash held him a little yet.
‘This king of gulls had an egg, a fine egg,’ Crowbone said, after a pause during which the silence became painful as my nose. ‘He knew it would hatch to be a fine son to replace him in his time and he left his fine gull-wife to sit on it while he flew away in search of food.
‘When he returned, he found his gull-wife with her neck broken and the fine egg gone and he knew, at once, that it was the blacksmith who had done it. He had shat on the smith many a time, stolen the fish right from the fingers of his children — and he knew the smith could climb any cliff.’
‘Speak up,’ yelled Ref from where the fire burned. ‘I think I know this man.’
There were soft laughs, but they had no mirth in them and Crowbone went on, level and firm and slow, in his rill-clear voice.
‘The gull-king knew at once that the blacksmith must have taken it. So he went to the man and demanded that he give the egg back. But the smith pretended it was just a shrieking bird flying round his head and waved the gull-king away.
‘The gull-king was heartbroken and flew about looking for help. On the way he met a pig, and asked him to
