Crowbone

was hard to tell. Two monks, all the same. This Drostan is dead.’

‘Then who was with Hoskuld the Trader?’ demanded Olaf, leaning back on the High Seat and spreading his feet to the fire — sensibly shod feet, Ogmund noted with surprise but then, the name ‘cuarans’, Irish Shoes, was only given by Norwegians and Danes as a sneer against the Dyfflin Norse, who were all thought to be half-Irish of lesser worth because they had forgotten how to be true people and taken to wearing Irisher sandals.

‘Hoskuld came to Dyfflin with a monk, but I never saw him,’ Olaf went on, fiddling with his beard rings. ‘Hoskuld came with a preposterous tale of how this monk knew where Eirik’s old axe was and that this monk he had was prepared to reveal the where of it for money. The monk, Hoskuld said, would only come to me in person once assurances had been given — which was not a little insulting, I was thinking.’

‘I thought it the worst attempt to gull you out of silver I had heard in many a long day,’ Sitric rumbled and his father nodded and grinned ruefully.

‘Aye — but Hoskuld is a good trader and valued, so I let him have his night’s hospitality, as if I considered the matter. Truth was I had already decided to send him packing back to his shy monk, or else bring the charlatan before me — but before I could do anything, Hoskuld left my hall. In haste. In the night. That was even more insulting, as if he thought I would do him harm.’

‘Not so stupid, though,’ Sitric growled, ‘since that is what he deserved for such a tale.’

His father looked sharply at him.

‘Yet here is Gunnhild’s last son, come from Orkney looking for a monk,’ he said. ‘A man with the sense of a stone can see that this tale of Hoskuld’s now has legs on it.’

‘Find Hoskuld,’ answered Godred and Olaf soured the jarl with a hard look.

‘Good idea,’ he snarled. ‘I had not thought of it at all now that it is clear Gunnhild seeks him hard enough to send her last son.’

Godred’s cheeks grew pale, then red, but he said nothing, merely picked moodily at a loose thread on the hem of his own tunic and perched on a bench in his own hall while Olaf lolled in his High Seat and his son grinned.

‘I want this Hoskuld,’ Olaf declared suddenly, ‘but unlike Gunnhild I do not have the ships to spare — I need them and you, Godred, for the war that is coming.’

Godred merely nodded and said nothing. Olaf Irish-Shoes had been thrashing around in a fight with Domnall and the southern Ui Neill for years and, only this year, Domnall had finally decided to throw it all away and enter the monastery at Armagh. Good news all round, Godred thought bitterly — but now the old man had decided to wave his sword at the new leader of the Ui Neill in the north, Mael Sechnaill.

‘In five days,’ Olaf declared, levering himself stiffly out of the chair, ‘I want you and your men in Dyfflin. Then we are off to teach this Ui Neill puppy a lesson. Send your best man after this Hoskuld — but no more than a snake-ship’s crew.’

Godred nodded and watched the old man stump off, calling for Sitric and complaining of the damp as he hauled his fur tighter round him. Battles, he thought bitterly. The old fool lives only for battle and will risk everything on the outcome of a stupid fight; he has lost as many thrones as he has gained. The thought of losing everything here on Mann if the old war-dog failed made Godred waspish.

‘Find Hoskuld,’ he snarled at Ogmund. ‘Take the Swan Breath and same arses you got to lie for you over the Gudrod business and see you make more of a fist of matters when next you meet that Orkney bitch-tick. Get this Hoskuld and the secret he holds. I was going to send Ulf, but you have contrived to get him killed. Now you will have to do.’

Ogmund watched Hardmouth leave the hall, the anger burning in his chest so hard that he found himself rubbing his knuckles on his breastbone. He would not have taken that when he had been young, he thought, then swallowed the sick despair at that truth.

He was no longer young when the likes of Godred could lash him and walk away.

The Frisian coast, a little later …

Crowbone’s Crew

He had many names. The Arabs gave him Abou Saal. The Church called him Biktor the Nubian and the True People, the Ga-Adagbes, knew him as Nunu-Tettey — Nunu, because all the Nubii males were called after the Divine Celestial Waters and Tettey because he was first-born.

Here, they called him Kaup. Sometimes they called him Kaup Svarti. Kaup came from their mistake when he tried to tell them that he was a Christian, but not one they knew. Copt, he had told them, but they were stinking, ignorant northmen and thought he was saying kaup, which meant ‘bargain’ in their tongue and they thought that thigh-slapping funny, since they had hauled him from the ruin of an Arab slaver and so had got him for free.

Svarti, of course, because it meant black. Black was a poor word to describe Kaup, all the same; Mar Skidasson, closest thing to a friend Kaup had among the Red Brothers, had likened Kaup’s colour to the wing of a crow in sunlight, that glossy blue-black colour. He knew a good name when he heard one did Mar — his own by- name was Jarnskeggi, Iron Beard, and Kaup had to admit that Mar’s hair was exactly that colour.

Kaup grew no hair on his face and the stuff on his head was a tight nap that never got longer, only a little greyer at the temples, for it had been a long time since the slave ship in the Dark Sea. With little hope of returning home, Kaup had been with the Red Brothers of Grima for years and, after they had crept round the unnerving fact that he looked like a man two weeks dead, most of the northmen found Kaup good company. He laughed a lot and they envied the white of his teeth and the way his black skin always shone, as if buttered.

Still, in all the years with Grima, Kaup had never been sure whether he was a slave or a warrior. He knew slaves of the northmen were treated no better than livestock and not allowed to carry weapons, but Kaup had a spear and a shield and one of their long knives, called a seax. He had killed for them and had his share of loot — yet when something had to be fetched or carried, it was always ‘the Burned Man’ who was sent to do it and expected to carry it out with no mutter.

Standing watch was another of the matters he was expected to do. Wrapped in a wool blanket he had made into a cloak, standing on one leg like a stork and leaning on his spear, Kaup was less happy than he had ever been, for Grima — whom he had liked — was gone and Balle was now in charge. Kaup did not like Balle and neither did Mar, who had had to twist his face into many agreeable positions to avoid the fate of others who had been good friends with the old jarl.

Not long after Balle had thrown Grima and the Wend into the sea they had come down to this old berth, which they had not visited in many years. At this time of year, no-one expected to see another ship, yet before Kaup’s eyes a fat trader muscled in to the shingle and men spilled to the shore.

There was a tingle on him when he ran to report this strangeness and the skin of his forearms was stippled and grew tighter when he and Mar and Balle went to look at the newcomers.

‘A fat knarr,’ Balle said, a shine in his eyes, relief showing in his broad, deep- marked face the colour of old wood. It would be relief for Balle, thought Mar, for he would be eager to show he had better luck than Grima, luck that brought a great plump duck right into the teeth of all these foxes.

‘Teeth,’ said Kaup and Mar jerked at this echo of his thoughts, then looked at the knarr, seeing the helmets and the dull gleam — like still, dark water — of ringmail. His own eyes narrowed at that, for there were more than a few of them and the one who was clearly the leader had a helmet in the Gardariki style, with a white horsehair plume braiding out of it, like smoke from a roofhole. All of his men had similar helms, but his was worked with brass and silver. Truly, this knarr had teeth.

‘A hard fistful,’ growled Balle, studying the men, tallying the possibilities. ‘Yet their leader is only a stripling and there’s no more than a handful of nithing sailors.’

The Red Brothers numbered fifty-eight and, after all their bad raid-luck, even the ones who did not like Balle much and thought he still had matters to prove would follow him: it would be an easy prize with the numbers on their side. Even if it was empty, the knarr alone was worth it.

Mar felt Kaup shift beside him, tasted the big dark man’s unease along with the salt from the sighing sea. It smelled of blood and his hackles stirred a little.

Balle watched and waited, feeling his men filter up in knots and pairs to look, not wanting to turn round to