‘On the fourth day, they were careless with the bindings and I worked one hand free, so that when they came to prodding and pushing, I tore the cloth from my eyes. There were eight of them, who all saw I had one hand free and so they came at me with spears.’
He paused, a long time this time, until Styrbjorn — that child would never learn when to put his tongue between his teeth — demanded to know what happened next.
‘I went over the edge,’ said Finn. All breathing stopped at the dizzying vision of that, of what it had taken to do it.
‘And died, of course,’ sneered Styrbjorn. ‘I heard this tale when I was toddling.’
‘I did not die. I went over the edge and, when I hit the end of that bast rope it snapped clean through. I should have had my neck cracked, but had my free hand taking a deal of the strain, so I was spared that. I hit the sea and got through that, too.’
Men were silent, for such a matter was a clear intervention of the hand of some god. Frey, suggested one. Odin himself, another thought and those who favoured Slav gods offered their own thoughts on the matter.
‘I have had no fear since,’ Finn said. ‘It was snapped from me by that bast rope. Nothing and no-one since has made me drip shite down my leg through terror.’
‘That is why you did not want that Vislan hanged,’ I said, suddenly seeing it and Finn admitted it.
‘And why you follow the prow beast,’ Kaelbjorn Rog added. ‘Since you cannot return to Skane while Halfidi and his sons are waiting.’
Finn said nothing.
‘They are not,’ I said softly, staring at him, rich with sudden knowing. ‘But you can still never go back, can you, Finn Horsehead?’
Finn stared back at me, black eyes dead as old coals. ‘I went to their hall in the night. That same night. I barred all the doors and fired it. No-one got out.’
It might have been the wind, or the trailing finger of that horror, but men shivered. The burning of a hall full of his own kind was the worst act a Northman could do and he was never forgiven for it.
It was cold, that burning revenge, for there were women and weans in it. It came to me then that humping a dead woman on the body of a dying ox was neither here nor there for a man such as Finn. I had been wrong, telling Brother John bitterly that I was leading the charge into his Abyss, for no matter how hard I ran down that dark, steep way, Finn would always be ahead of me.
‘Heya,’ growled Rovald. ‘That was a harsh tale — what did you do that so annoyed this Halfidi?’
We expected robbery, dire murder or killing his ma — or all of them, after what we had just learned. Finn stared at the fire, leaned forward and stirred the cauldron.
‘I fished his river,’ he answered. ‘Fished it once by moonlight for the salmon in it. He was not even sure it was me that one of his men saw.’
No-one spoke for a long time after that — then Onund suddenly leaped sideways with a curse and lashed out. Folk sprang up, hands on weapons and Onund looked at them back and forth for a moment, then grunted sheepishly.
‘Rat,’ he said. ‘Ran over my hand. I hate rats. They come out for the raven’s leavings.’
Crowbone’s new voice was still more of a clear bell than others and heads lifted when it spoke.
‘Pity the rat,’ he said. ‘It was not always as you see it now.’
He shifted his face forwards, to have it dyed by embers. His odd eyes were glinting glass chips.
‘In the beginning of the world,’ he said. ‘When Odin was young and still had both eyes and so was more foolish than now, he was more kind-hearted. So much so that he did not like to see folk die. So one day he sent for Hugin, Thought, who was his favourite messenger from Asgard to men. He told that raven to go out into the world and tell all people that, whenever anyone died, the body was to be placed on a bier, surrounded by all the things precious to it in life and then freshly-burned oak wood ashes were to be thrown over it. Left like that on the ground, in half a day, it would be brought back to life.’
‘A useful thing to know,’ Styrbjorn announced. ‘Find some oak ash and we will have our own army round these parts by tomorrow’s rising meal.’
‘Not now,’ Crowbone announced sorrowfully. ‘When Hugin had flown for half a day he began to get tired and hungry, so when he spotted a dead sheep he was on it like a black arrow. He sucked out the eyes and shredded the tongue and made a meal of it. Then went to sleep, entirely forgetting the message which had been given him to deliver.
‘After a time,’ Crowbone went on, looking round the rapt, droop-lipped faces, ‘when the raven did not return, Odin called for the smallest of his creatures — the rat. It was not a skulker in sewage and darkness then, but a fine-furred beast, even if he had no discernible use other than sleeping. Odin, in his foolishness, sought to raise the rat in life and sent him out with the same message.’
‘Odin sounds very much like every king I have ever heard of,’ Onund Hnufa rumbled, ‘while his rat reminds me of every royal messenger I have ever seen.’
The laughter was dutiful, but so weak it dribbled out like drool from a sleeping mouth and scarcely made Crowbone pause.
‘The rat was, as you say, a poor messenger,’ he went on. ‘He fell asleep, went here, went there — and, though he eventually remembered the message, forgot what it was exactly; so as he went about among the people he told them that Odin had said that, whenever anyone died, they should be set on an oak bier, surrounded by all their prize possessions and burned to ash. In half-a-day, they would be brought back to life.’
Crowbone stopped and spread his hands wide.
‘Well — by the time Hugin woke up and remembered he had a message, it was too late. He flew around furiously yelling at people to stop setting fire to their dead and telling them of the message Odin had given him — but folk said they already had a message and it was all too late.’
‘And so,’ Crowbone said, ‘the Odin dead are always burned to this day; the god in a fury rescinded the secret of resurrection and went off to find the sort of wisdom that would stop him making any more mistakes like that.
‘Now no-one trusts a raven when it speaks — and the rat is hated for the false message he brought.’
Folk shifted slightly as the tale came to an end; Rovald shook a mournful head.
‘Think of that,’ he said, nudging his neighbour, who happened to be Styrbjorn. ‘If the raven had not stopped to eat — folk would all still be alive.’
‘Blame the dead sheep for dying, then,’ snarled Styrbjorn.
‘Or having tasty eyes,’ added Ospak moodily.
Koll stirred and moaned, came awake into his nightmare.
‘Moonlight,’ he said and a few folk looked up; like a pale silver coin, it seemed to drift across the sky between clouds.
‘Rain on the wind,’ muttered Thorbrand.
‘This place is famous for it,’ Ospak growled and that raised a weak chuckle or two.
‘The same moon,’ Koll whispered, ‘shines on my home.’
It was a link, right enough and the tug of it brought every head up briefly. Styrbjorn wiped his mouth, gone dry with the thoughts that flitted nakedly over his face — home was there, under that silver coin in the sky and just as unreachable. He would die here. We would all die here.
‘Tell me of your home,’ the monk asked gently and Koll tried, in his shadow of a whisper, a thread of sound that stitched all our hearts. Of running barefoot on the strand’s edge. Hunting gull eggs. Playing with his dog. Fishing. A bairn’s things that, to these hard raiding men, were as far removed as that same moon — yet close enough to be remembered, to make them blink with the sudden rush of it. A man grunted almost in pain as Koll lisped about sliding on the frozen river on goat-bone skates. Then the boy’s voice faded — mercifully — to sleep.
‘What of your own home, monk?’ I harshed out, eager to be rid of the pangs of Koll’s memories, sure that tales of Miklagard would be more diverting, since most of the men here had never been to it more than once and that only briefly.
‘The city walls rise like cliffs,’ Leo said obligingly, ‘and the towers and domes blaze with gold. In the morning, a mist hangs over the roofs, there is smoke and ships…’
He stopped and I was surprised to see his eyes bright. Murrough shifted his big frame and coughed, almost
