Crowbone

When, though, was the problem — there was enough for a prince-who-would-be-king to learn, not least of it using either hand in a fight and getting out of ringmail underwater while still swimming like a fish. All that and how to lead men and read the ways of power — a prince was never done working.

‘I believe,’ admitted Stick-Starer, breaking into Crowbone’s brooding, ‘that we may be a little bit off. I need a landmark before I can be sure.’

Onund gave his familiar grunt.

‘Engi er allheimskr ef?egja ma,’ he said, his thick Iceland accent enough to make decent Norse speakers frown over it. Crowbone smiled as Stick-Starer worked it out and glared — no-one can be really stupid who stays silent.

Not much later, the truth of it was unveiled and Stick-Starer had a single eyebrow from scowling, while the beaten walrus-skin of his seamed face was red as a skelpt arse.

‘A place with an island fort,’ Kaetilmund jeered. ‘You had that right, for sure — but you have managed to miss Mann island entire.’

Stick-Starer hunched into it and stared at the water running in a V from the prow, while Onund and others fought the dragon-beast down from the prow before the Shadow got too close. In the end, most folk were agreed on where they were — Hvitrann, which was stuck on the end of a tongue of land which Murrough knew as Galgeddil. It was, he said, part of the kingdom of Cwymbria, which ran all the way up to the river fort at Alt Clut and was run by a skilled and hard man called Mael Coluim, though the kings of Alba said they owned him.

The locals called it Hwiterne, Murrough went on, which means White House and comes from the white stone church the Christians built, which in Latin is called candida casa. It was a good Norse place once, though none of them around here were welcoming to men on the vik.

All of which was interesting, Crowbone said, but of no real aid to men looking for Holmtun on Mann and one or two, hoping to be helpful, said that if they were to sail south and a little west for a day they could not miss the island. Crowbone looked at Stick-Starer, who licked his lips nervously and said nothing at all, for he thought the odd-eyed youth had a hard look on him, like a man about to throw his shipmaster over the side.

Crowbone knew what Stick-Starer thought and let him sweat a little; the truth of it was clear to him now — the Norns wove this and Stick-Starer’s poor way-finding was another thread that had led Crowbone to this place. The storm had lashed them hard and Hoskuld was gone in it; Crowbone did not think he had sunk, but he had poor hopes for Bergfinn and Thorgeir, who would not have allowed Hoskuld and his men to sail off without arguing out the folly of it.

He knew, all the same, that the great, mysterious tapestry of the world was woven of men’s lives and his own thread was bright in it, shining with the men and ships and silver and kings the Norns wove it with. Even the threads of gods, he thought to himself grimly, are braided with my wyrd, for the Norns weave even Asgard’s lives.

‘Well,’ growled Mar as the clang of alarms began to sound, ‘do we sail off or try to show these folk how friendly we are?’

‘Do not land on the east side,’ Stick-Starer added, attempting to redeem himself and remembering something about the place they were sailing to. ‘There is a bay there which looks inviting, but it is all stinking marsh.’

There was, thought Crowbone with a frown, no reason at all for stopping here, other than the fact that heading south for Mann would put the wind in their teeth and mean a hard row of it. It was not as if they needed food, though the bread was mushy and more than a little green, nor water, which was still drinkable if you strained it through your linen kirtle first. Yet the Norns were in this, he was sure of it, ever since he had seen the three terns screaming sunwise round the mast that morning.

Then the yellow bitch barked and Berto shaded his eyes with one hand and pointed with the other.

‘Looking yonder,’ he said in his crippled attempt at West Norse. ‘Is that not the ship of that Hoskuld, harboured there?’

There was a flurry of peering and pointing, then Kaetilmund gave a nod and a grunt, smacking the little Wend on the shoulder hard enough to rattle the leather helmet over his brow.

‘Good eyes, No-Toes,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It is that lost ship, for sure.’

Crowbone felt the hairs on his arms raise, tasted the tingle of the Norn-weave moment on his tongue. The sail came flaking down, the prow beast was lifted off and the oars clattered out. On the way to his sea-chest oar bench, Mar offered Crowbone a hopeful grin.

‘All we need are some quiet words,’ he said and Crowbone looked sourly back at him, then at Kaup, the dark shadow following him. Quiet words. From a black ship with a blood-red sail whose crew contained at least one walking dead man. In every saga told, the villain was always a powerful magic-worker with a pack of trolls, rabid wolves, alfar — and black men.

‘Aye,’ he declared as the men picked up the oar rhythm. ‘There is no bother in this at all.’

An hour later, of course, matters had turned out as sour as Crowbone had thought and he stood in the prow, shaking his head at the wyrd of it.

It was, he brooded, ridiculous. Between us all we have command of a fair wheen of tongues, yet I am standing in the prow of a boat trying to find one gods-cursed person we can talk to.

Crowbone, fretting and churning deep in himself, wondered if it was worth pitching Stick-Starer over the side and ignoring the sunwise terns and his own surety of Norn-weaving. All unknown to him, Mar watched the hood- eyed prince and marvelled at his stillness and seeming unconcern as the youth stood, hipshot and silvered by the dawn, as if waiting patiently for his rising-meal.

The Shadow rose and fell in slow, rolling swells, the snarling prow of it removed and safely covered, the strakes grating on the harsh sand and shingle but not driven hard enough up on the beach so that it could not be rowed swiftly out again. To the left, jostling with fishing craft, Hoskuld’s knarr nudged the stone quay, fastened snugly to an iron ring. Beyond the curve of shingle, sand and stiff grass was a sea wall, behind which huts and houses huddled. To the right was a great rock, hunched as Onund’s shoulder and with a stone- walled borg barnacled tight on it; somewhere there a bell clanged.

‘Call them again — surely they know even your bad Frankish? The land is only across the water from them.’

Onund glanced briefly at Crowbone, then called out that they came in peace, but held his own council as to how close this place was to the land of the Franks.

Crowbone watched and waited, but no-one came, not even from the borg and he studied the round gate- towers, saw the strength of it — but saw no spear points or helmets. There were folk around, all the same, for a handcart and people hurried across the raising-bridge into the maw of the borg; two of them were girls, their skirts flying. The bridge came up not long after, with a rending screech of cogs and wheels needing greased.

‘Well,’ growled Kaetilmund, ‘we have tried Frank and Norse and Slav and a bit of Wend and some Greek — even Murrough’s Irish, which you would think they would know, being even closer to them than the Franks, but unless you know Englisc or the Christ-tongue, then we are done with talking here.’

Mar shrugged as Crowbone looked at him.

‘I know the prayers in Latin,’ he said. ‘Well, a bit, here and there.’

‘Well, we did not sail in here to stand and stare at Hoskuld’s ship,’ Crowbone said and jerked his chin at Kaetilmund. ‘Take two men and get aboard her. Murrough, you and Rovald come with me — there may yet be someone who speaks the Irisher tongue. Gjallandi, you speak well and know the Latin a bit. Berto, you can come as well, since it is the only way to get the dog — it is an ugly animal, but a wagging tail is a soothing sight.’

Then he leaped over the prow into the shallows and sloshed his way to the shore, the others following him. Half-way up the shingle, he turned and called out to Onund.

‘If you see us coming back at a fair speed, it would be nice to think that folk were bending the oars for the open sea even as we leap aboard.’

‘Not too fast, all the same,’ Murrough added with a scowl. ‘For it would be nicer if we were actually aboard when you bend them.’

The laughter was nervous and those left behind soon fell silent and watched Crowbone and his four men and a dog trudge up the shingle into the grass-stabbed dunes and over the sea wall. The gulls wheeled and screamed at the yellow dog as it ran back and forth, tail beating furiously.

They came into the fringes of the place, cautious as old cats, past the drunken fences and the plots they bounded, up through the houses with the doormouths of them stoppered and the shutters closed. For all their