Crowbone

‘Awake are we?’ growled Bergfinn, appearing from behind him. ‘An eyeblink before I kicked you, so that was rib-luck for you.’

The darkness puzzled Thorgeir for a moment, for he could not have slept, he thought, all through the day and into night. Besides, he said to himself, Bergfinn would never have let him.

Then he realised that the light puling on the horizon still marked the day, but clouds had smothered it like smoke. The wind whipped the raggles of his hair and the lantern swung above him, hung from a hook at the stern; Thorgeir knew that tremble well enough, felt the heavy slap of wave that caused it.

Bergfinn met his gaze.

‘Aye — a blow is coming and we are making for land.’

‘Where is the Shadow?’ demanded Thorgeir and Bergfinn shrugged.

‘They could row straight for the shore. I last saw them some time back.’

Thorgeir had been pride-swelled since Prince Olaf chose him, after their trading call on the Franks, to replace Kaetilmund on the knarr and he had picked Bergfinn to stand for Rovald, both of them to keep an eye on Hoskuld. Thorgeir didn’t feel so pleased suddenly.

‘We have been tacking since the wind rose,’ said a new voice and Gorm came forward, the wind flattening his tunic against him. ‘Hoskuld asks a favour of you.’

Above them men were fighting the sail down another knot and when they came up to the cliff-faced captain he was bellowing aloft like a bull seal. Thorgeir could see that only the least patch of sail was out, but still the ship leaped like a goosed maiden.

‘Yonder,’ said Hoskuld, pointing, and they all three peered out, the wind whipping their hair and beards back from their faces, at the dark bulk of land, the white cream of waves on the shore.

‘If we want to reach it,’ Hoskuld yelled at them as the wind roared and whined, ‘I will have to take the sail down entire and then we will wallow like a sick whale. If I leave it up even a notch we may never reach land at all. We cannot row but I can get it close — then I need two good men to rope us to shore and we can then haul it in.’

Bergfinn turned to Thorgeir, the hair flying over one ear and whipping his face. He knew the knarr was not for rowing, knew what was needed and did not like it. He said as much.

‘My men know how to handle this ship,’ Hoskuld yelled. ‘I need them aboard. You are strong and I can get you within a few strokes of the shore.’

As if to seal matters, Gorm came up with two lengths of bast rope and the Orkney steersman cursed and bellowed for help; men sprang to lend their strength to his, keeping the knarr wallowing slowly towards land.

Thorgeir hesitated. He did not like what Hoskuld wanted, but he took the rope and looked at Bergfinn, who looked at the shore, which was even closer now, but at the end of a tack. From now, Hoskuld would have to turn back out to sea, or try and hold where he was and wish for land to come and meet him at some point — hopefully without hidden rocks heralding it.

‘Fuck,’ Bergfinn said and took his shoes off, stuffing them down the front of his tunic. Then he wrapped the rope around his waist as Thorgeir had done and, with a brief glance, one to the other, they went over the side, whooping and roaring defiance.

The shock of it almost sucked the breath out of Thorgeir and the water smacked him like a hand, great swelling breakers that whipped the feet out from under him and sucked him this way and that.

He half-swam, half-fought, struggling and breathless, his throat burning with swallowed salt water that racked him with spewing coughs. Something banged his feet, then hit them again until he realised it was shore. The next surge took him to his knees in shingle and he struggled up out of the white water, dropping, panting to the stones. His chest burned but elation drove him to his feet — he had made it. Still alive, praise Aegir and his queen, Ran.

He took two or three breaths, red-raw ones that coughed more bad wet air from him, then took his hands off his knees and straightened. To his relief, he saw Bergfinn staggering up the shingle, the rope in one hand and his mouth working like a landed fish.

It was only when he got closer that he heard the words.

‘… cut the rope. Fuckers. They have cut the rope.’

Thorgeir jerked his own line, felt nothing and hauled it in until he brought up the dripping, fresh-cut end.

Out on the bow of the knarr, Gorm peered into the mirk, raised one hand, then the other, arms aloft; Hoskuld heaved a sigh of relief that both men were alive, for he had not wanted deaths over this, only escape from that odd-eyed boy. He offered a pungent curse to Orm who had talked him into this and wished a rotting disease on the monk who had begun it all — though the three gold coins the priest had paid glowed warmly in his mind and he touched the hem where he had sewn them for safekeeping.

He shouted for the sail to be racked up, the wind catching the wet weight of it almost at once; the Swift- Gliding reared up and sped away from the land, where Thorgeir howled unheard and whipped the wet stones in a fury with the treacherously cut rope’s end.

Hoskuld had gone.

FIVE

The Manx Sea, days later …

Crowbone’s Crew

Shadows shifted as men gathered gear and moved softly under the creak and flap of the old-blood sail; even before Crowbone reached the prow he saw Onund waiting, watching, with the tools in his hand that would unfasten the snarling dragon-prow, keeping it from challenging the fetch of this land. More importantly, it would announce that the folk following it came in peace.

Crowbone, Kaetilmund and Onund stood with Stick-Starer, all of them staring out beyond the prow at the distant, silvered horizon and the smear on it.

‘Smoke, I am thinking,’ Stick-Starer declared and Kaetilmund, his hair whipping ahead of him with the strong wind, gave a grunt that might have been agreement and squinted a little, so that he was looking more sideways at the stained horizon.

‘Could be a place with a borg on a hill,’ he admitted finally and Stick-Starer looked relieved.

‘Of course it is a place with a borg on a hill,’ he answered scornfully. ‘Holmtun on Mann, as I said.’

‘You have not been in these waters for some time,’ Crowbone pointed out mildly, ‘and we have seen no land on our steerboard side, which should be expected if we have sailed up the west coast of Mann.’

‘Where are we then?’ Kaetilmund demanded challengingly, curling his lip at Stick-Starer. ‘Is this not Holmtun?’

Stick-Starer stroked his chin and looked at the milk-sodden sky. Truth was, he did not exactly know and the prince who was now their leader had the right of it — he had been long out of these waters, so that the warp and weft of old wisdom was being dragged from him with some trouble. He muttered, pored over the tally-marks and the wooden wheels for some time. Then he threw a wood chip in the water, watching it bounce away behind them in the curling wake.

Crowbone leaned, one foot up on the thwart, brooding from under his eyelids. The Great City shipmasters had matters marked on scrolls and drawn on vellum, so that all they had to do was haul them out and look them over to find the description of how to get to a place, whether they were far south in the Middle Sea, or north into the Dark Sea. Yet northmen were considered much better seamen than the sailors of Constantinople and Crowbone wondered why that was.

He looked at Stick-Starer mumbling over his wooden instruments like some Pecheneg shaman casting bones and with about as much chance of solving the problem; he wished he had some of the Great City scrolls. Not that they would be of any help to Stick-Starer since he could not read — but that was unfair, Crowbone thought, for neither can I, not Latin nor Greek. I cannot even decently read runes, he added to himself and made a promise to at least learn that.