Crowbone

stiffness, the return would have spilled a deal of Gorm’s belly into the kale patch. It did enough to make Gorm back off and call for help, so that Halk rushed in from one side and the old man, snarling with the desperation of the doomed, hurled himself on the Orkneyman with a shrill cry, like an owl threading the night with screech.

Crowbone watched Gorm and Halk cut the old man down, flurrying blows long after the blood-speckled grey hair was the only thing that moved on the man, wisping stickily in the wind.

‘Bravely done,’ Murrough growled and spat. Crowbone said nothing; brave or not, it was done and that was what mattered.

The other fighter was the idiot thrall, who took up the wood axe and moved to the caged man, turning this way and that, standing guard. Hoskuld scrambled up from his episode with the door and launched himself at the thrall, thinking the stub of a nithing would turn and run.

Instead, the axe whirled up and cut. It would have been a death-blow, for sure, save that the loose axehead flew off, back over the thrall’s shoulder and made Vandrad Sygni hunch his neck into his shoulders as it whizzed past him. But the thrall’s blow was with the haft only, which was battleluck for Hoskuld, since it took him in the left ribs and drove the air out of him as if he was a dead cow. Then the thrall followed it up with a head smack that laid Hoskuld flat with a groan.

‘Do not kill him!’ Kaetilmund yelled, as Vandrad, scowling, nocked an arrow to his bow. ‘That thrall is too valuable to waste.’

The Oathsworn agreed with some chuckles — all save Vandrad, who still had the memory of the axe-bit bird-whirring too close to his head — and closed in on the thrall, who half-crouched with his stick. Inside the cage, the shadowed figure stirred and Crowbone saw the gleam of white hair or beard.

‘Hold there,’ Vigfuss said. ‘Drop that little stick and no harm will come to you.’

A choking laugh came from the shadowed figure in the cage. ‘Too late for that,’ he wheezed.

The thrall did not move at all, but a young dog the colour of yellow corn suddenly bounded out from behind some huts and skidded up to stand before him, legs splayed and growling.

The Oathsworn tensed a little, for no-one liked dogs, which were just fur bundles with a mouthful of filthy blades.

‘Call that hound off, thrall,’ Vandrad rumbled. ‘Or I will kill it and whack your bottom with your little stick.’

‘It is a bitch,’ the caged man growled. ‘A guard for the village.’

‘Not such a good one,’ Crowbone pointed out and felt the caged man’s eyes appraising him. He did not like to be watched where he could not see and so moved a little way round, to try and see more than just the gleam of white hair or beard; the thrall watched him, flexing his hand on the axe-shaft. The yellow dog wagged her tail and licked the back of the thrall’s hand.

‘It liked everyone too much,’ the caged man observed.

‘Now you have your reward,’ Crowbone said, ‘for if it had been on guard, perhaps your village would not be leaking blood down the street.’

‘Not my village,’ said the caged man and now Crowbone saw him clearly — a thin face, like a ravaged hawk, with a shock of white hair and a tangle of grey-white beard. He had a tunic and breeks, which had once been fine but were now smeared and stained with blood and the leakings from filthy wrappings round both of his hands. The eyes that met Crowbone’s own were fox-sharp, all the same.

Murrough, hearing women shriek and wanting to be off in that direction, finally had had enough. ‘Throw down that stick,’ he growled jutting his jaw, but the look he got back caught Crowbone’s attention and made him study the thrall intently.

There was no wolf at bay in those eyes, nor was there the wild flare of darting looks that sought an escape. Most revealing of all, there was the stare itself. A thrall who knew that his place was no more than that of a sheep would have stared at the ground. Instead, the thrall’s eyes, slightly narrowing, were a blue appraisal of Murrough, as if marking where he would strike for best effect. It was then, too, that Crowbone saw the thrall was fastened by a length of chain to the cage and, for a moment, felt the sharp bite of his own thrall’s chain on his neck, tasted the acrid stink of the privy.

Murrough saw the thrall’s look, too, and was made wary by it — which showed sense, Crowbone thought, but still he snapped a command for Murrough to be still just in case the Irishman launched an attack certain to include pain for one or the other and possibly a deal of blood. The others watched, wary as hounds round a stag.

‘Berto,’ said the grey-head, almost wearily, ‘I am done. Let their leader come up.’

The youth called Berto let the stick drop a notch and half-turned to the man in the cage, his bland, beardless face furrowed with concern. The tension leached away and, lumbering up like a great bear, Onund Hnufa clapped Murrough on one shoulder and glanced at the thrall.

‘Not bad, fetar-garmr,’ he said and folk laughed at the term, which meant ‘chain- dog’ and could be directed at both the thrall and the yellow bitch equally. Then Onund turned to Murrough and the others.

‘Leather,’ he said and they remembered why they had come and went off to hunt some out. Kaetilmund stayed and went slowly up to the cage and cracked it open with a sharp blow that made the dog squeeze out a bark. Murrough hauled out the man, gently enough, and the thrall knelt by his head. When Crowbone moved up, the thrall fixed him with summer-sky eyes dulled with misery.

‘My thanks,’ the grey-hair said to Crowbone. ‘This is Berto. He is from the Wend lands. I am called Grima, from Bjarmaland.’

‘A long way from home,’ Crowbone noted and Grima chuckled, a moth-wing of sound. His wrapped hands soaked some fresh blood on to the old stains of his tunic. There was gold thread in that tunic, Crowbone noted.

‘Need help with those fingers, old yin?’ Kaetilmund asked. ‘We have a skald who knows some healing runes.’

Grima smiled and raised both blood-swaddled hands.

‘Hrodfolc’s joke,’ he said. ‘He fed me bowls of good stew with meat in, but cut a finger off and never let me know which stew it was in. Where is he, by the way?’

Crowbone told him and Grima’s grin was sharp and yellow.

‘Good. Nithing Frisian fud — he thought I would not eat for fear of swallowing my own flesh,’ Grima said and then laughed. ‘He knew better when I asked him to cook it longer — my own meat is a little too aged to be tender.’

Crowbone and Kaetilmund smiled at this, a defiance they appreciated.

‘Balle did this to me, the whore’s by-blow,’ Grima wheezed.

His eyes closed while pain washed through him, keen enough for Crowbone to feel it as well.

‘This flatness is no place for a man from the north mountains to die,’ he added. ‘Who are you, then, who is here to witness it?’

Crowbone told him, adding that the death was still a way off — then Kaetilmund finished unwrapping the first of the hands and Crowbone saw the ugly black and red and pus yellow of it. He realised the bright glitter of Grima’s eyes was fever.

‘Good,’ said Grima. ‘Now all truths are almost unveiled. The gods are kind, for I know your fame. With your help I will leave this cursed place and die where I belong. But I have little time, so listen, Olaf, son of Tryggve, now of the Oathsworn. I am Grima. Once I was known as you are known, for I led the Raudanbrodrum — do you know of them?’

The Red Brothers. Crowbone had heard of this varjazi band and their leader’s name, which meant ‘a full helm’ in the honest tongue of the north and was usually given to a man whose face was hard and set as iron, so that only his eyes gave anything away. He had not heard these names for some years and said so; Grima nodded weakly.

‘This is the last you see here. We are rule-bound — though not as fiercely oathed as you — and most of us did not do well faring out in the east, along the Silk Road, so we came down on to the decent waters of the Baltic and raided the Wend lands, where I thought they would be fat and lazy, since it had not seen rann-sack for some years. Well, here I am, dying for lack of luck — the raiding was poor and all we had was Berto here, which a certain Balle did not think enough. He is wrong — Berto is worth a deal as you may discover when the matter is ripe. I hear you were luckier — all the silver of the world, eh?’