Ulf howled then and Ogmund heard the snake-hiss rasp as he dragged his blade out.
‘Stay!’ he roared out, but Ulf had blood in his eye and was kicking the horse, which had started to doze and was now sprung awake. Shocked, it leaped forward and, without stirrups, Ulf swayed off-balance, so that his sword waved wildly.
‘Od,’ said the flat-nosed man. ‘Kill him.’
The beautiful boy-man moved like silk through a finger-ring. Ogmund had never seen anything move so fast — yet he saw it clearly enough, like a form in a storm-night, etched for an eyeblink against the dark by a flash of lightning. The figure flicked the sword up and out of the belt-ring with the fingers of his left hand, swept it from the air with his right, took one, two, three steps and leaped, turning in the air as he did so, bringing weight to the stroke.
There was a dull clunk and a wet hiss, then the man called Od landed lightly on his feet and turned to stride, unconcerned, back to where he had started. Something round and black bounced once or twice and rolled almost to Ogmund’s feet.
The horse cantered on, then tasted the iron stink of blood, squealed and tried to run from it, so that the body on its back, blood pluming from the raggled neck, tipped, slumped and finally fell off into the broom.
There was silence. Ogmund looked at the thing at his feet and met Ulf’s astounded left eye; the right had shattered in the fall and watery blood crept sluggishly from the severed neck.
‘This is Od,’ Gudrod said in his inhuman voice, waving one hand at the angel. ‘He is by-named Hrafndans.’
Ravendance. It was such a good by-name that men sucked in their breath at it, as if they could see those black birds on branches, joyously bobbing from foot to foot as they waited for the kills this youth would leave them. They looked at this Od, then, as he took to one knee, sword grasped by the hilt and held like a cross, praying. It was when he licked Ulf’s blood from his blade that they all realised that it was Tyr Of Battles, the Wolf’s Leavings, he was praying to, dedicating Ulf’s life to the god. There was a flurry of hands as they crossed themselves.
‘You should know that Od is only one of my crew. Nor did I come from Orkney on a little faering,’ Gudrod said. ‘I am the son of Queen Gunnhild and King Eirik Bloodaxe, after all.’
Ogmund licked his lips. Once he had had to beat a horse until it bled before it would cross a tiny rivulet to the green sward on the other side, and when it did so, the leap took it into the sucking bog that had only looked like a firm bank. Ogmund had spent a long, sweating time hanging on while the horse plunged and struggled itself back to trembling safety, knowing that if he fell in his ringmail he was doomed.
He felt that same fear now, glancing round at the trees where men were hidden, he was sure. How many ships would Bloodaxe’s son bring from Orkney? His sister was married on to the jarl, in the name of God — how many ships would he not bring? The trees hid long hundreds of men in Ogmund’s mind.
‘So we will leave,’ Gudrod ended, his voice cold as the metal rings which hid his face. ‘You will not stop us.’
Which is what happened. Ogmund considered the sight of them vanishing from him, then stirred Ulf’s head with one foot.
‘Gather this up,’ he said. ‘We will take him back and tell everyone that he died for pride and stupidity and that the three miserable bandits who raided were actually a prince of Orkney and many ships of men. Though they outnumbered us, our fierceness chased them off.’
The others agreed, because they had been too feared to fight and knew it, a secret shame they did not want out in the world. It began to rain a little, a cooling mist that refreshed Ogmund as he watched Ulf loaded like a sack on to his uneasy horse. Ogmund smiled to himself, careful not to let it show on his face; it had not been such a bad day.
Two miles away, the three miserable bandits rested on a knee and Gudrod took off the helmet, so that he could raise his face, like a bairn’s fresh-skelped arse, to the cool mirr of rain. His short, curled beard pearled with moisture.
‘No Drostan,’ Gudrod declared. ‘But at least we learned something from those monks — old Irish-Shoes is here on Mann, in Holmtun.’
‘Aye, well — the church in Holmtun was where Hoskuld said the priest lived. Olaf Cuarans will have him,’ Erling said with a certainty he did not entirely feel. ‘His hand is closer, after all — he rules here as well as Dyfflin, no matter what Hardmouth Godred MacHarald thinks.’
‘You would think that the priests of this place would know this Drostan,’ Gudrod said, baffled. ‘What news he brought — of a dead companion — is worthy of being written down by them who scratch down everything that goes on. If they did, they kept that writing hidden well — there is no mention of a monk called Drostan coming to them with news of two dead in the hills. You would also think that Godred Hardmouth would know that and tell his Chosen Men.’
Erling shrugged, having no explanation for any of it. Truth was, he had never thought to find any monk or priest and that tales of Eirik’s famous axe were just that — tales. As for searching out writings — well, none of them here could read and if the monks had admitted to it, the document they scribbled on would have to have been taken to someone who could unravel the Latin of it. He kept his lip stitched on all this, all the same, for Gudrod was Eirik’s son and the Witch-Queen his mother.
‘Olaf Cuarans is where we go next,’ Gudrod said, settling the helmet in the crook of his arm. ‘Old Irish-Shoes wants my da’s axe, that is certain and he is sleekit as a wet seal — it would not surprise me if he told no-one his plans, not even his hard-mouthed jarl here.’
Erling swallowed thickly at the idea of sailing into Holmtun proper and facing the might of the Dyfflin Norse.
‘Is that wise, lord? Orkney and Ireland have never been friends.’
‘My mother wishes it,’ Gudrod said and his tolling bell voice was as hard metal as if he still wore the helmet, ‘so we must find a way.’
‘She will have me be a king yet,’ he added bitterly and ran one hand through the iron raggles of his thinning hair. ‘Since I am the youngest.’
Erling got stiffly to his feet, saying nothing, though he knew that Gunnhild’s youngest had in fact been called Sigurd, by-named the Slaver. Klypp the Herse had killed him some time ago, after Sigurd forced himself on his wife while a guest in his hall. Gudrod was not so much Gunnhild’s youngest as the only one of her sons left alive.
This did not, he thought to himself sullenly, give him the right to put them all in danger.
‘Next time,’ he said bitterly, ‘we will take all the crew with us, I am sure.’
Gudrod only grunted, something between laughter and scorn, then jerked his fleshy chin towards Od, who was picking the congealed blood from the blade as he cleaned it, sucking his fingers now and then. He looked up and smiled blandly at Gudrod and Erling from under the dagged black curtain of his hair.
‘We have your heathen dog,’ Gurdrod said and then unlooped a small bag from his belt and grinned. Erling sighed.
‘Lord,’ he said, ‘we should be moving on. There is no time for
‘There is always time for ’tafl,’ Gudrod replied, unfolding the cloth and placing the counters. ‘Anyway, it should not take long — you are a poor player.’
Erling sighed, then turned to look at Od.
‘Do not do that,’ he said. ‘You will be sick.’
Od smiled like a summer’s day, his lips bright with blood.
‘I am never sick,’ he answered.
THREE
Crowbone’s Crew
Crowbone lay on the lip of the seawall, peering through the grass and meadow flowers. Bees hummed and, next to him, Kaetilmund lay, chewing a stem and squinting across the neat fields to the raised mound and the houses on it.
