the name and all these men were Baltic raiders until recently.
‘Well, that is that, then,’ Mar declared moodily. ‘We should leave when the sea comes back, hoping it does before this lord and his men arrive from this Surrby.’
‘I have heard of that place,’ Stick-Starer answered, aware that he was also being blamed for not knowing about the tide. ‘It is a Norse borg, surrounded on three sides by marshes, which accounts for its name.’
‘Interesting,’ Crowbone snarled at him, ‘but of less use than gull shit on a rope end.’
‘What of the prisoners in the borg?’ demanded Berto, feeding fish scraps to the yellow dog.
‘What of them?’ Kaup asked, astonished that anyone would care; they were nothing to do with the Shadow’s crew and had been treacherous besides. Folk argued it back and forth while the wind hissed out of the dark land and flattened the flames of the fire.
In the end, Onund silenced them with a smack of one hand on his thigh.
‘Bergfinn and Thorgeir are there,’ he pointed out and Crowbone saw the puzzled looks on more than a few faces, particularly those of the Christians. He sighed, for he knew it would come to this.
‘They are Oathsworn,’ he reminded them and saw the cat and dog chase of that across faces until they worked out the power of the oath they had sworn. Crowbone saw Mar and Kaup look at each other and knew what they were thinking — we have sworn only to the prince, so what is this oath to decent Christians? He saw that Onund had spotted this too, and decided it was a princely matter to speak up quickly.
‘We cannot leave them,’ he said. ‘Besides — they may know exactly where this Ogmund has taken Hoskuld.’
‘Which is what to us?’ demanded a tall man, a Saxlander called Fridrek. Good with a bow, Crowbone recalled.
‘I mean no disrespect,’ the man lied, his bold stare into Crowbone’s blank face a clear challenge. ‘I just wonder why we are pursuing this trader. I wonder why we are in this part of the world at all, trying to get to Mann. For some axe?’
There was silence enough for the wind to seem to roar, then a stillness came down until it seemed even the world held its breath.
‘It seems to me,’ Fridrek went on, seemingly oblivious to any silence, ‘that we are following a youth of little fighting experience for no gain I can see in it.’
Crowbone shifted a little and spread his arms. He was trying to be liked, though the matter of the tides and this Fridrek’s tone was a powering sea to the crumbling cliff of it.
‘We seek my destiny,’ he said finally, ‘which is to be king of Norway …’
‘Norway has a king,’ Fridrek interrupted. ‘You seem short on men and war skill to be claiming a throne. Now we are stuck in the mud and at the mercy of some Galgeddil men.’
‘It is true that I am a little light in the ways of battle,’ Crowbone said, smiling — then he lashed out with one foot and it was only then that folk realised he had shifted to balance himself on the other. The nail-studded sole of his boot took Fridrek in the sneer of his face; his nose burst with a great gout of blood and teeth flew when he went over backwards with a muffled shriek.
‘I have some skill in surprise, all the same,’ Crowbone added, fierce with the release of the moment. ‘Nor do I like folk yapping when I am speaking.’
‘You are a little mean-spirited tonight,’ Onund growled as men helped Fridrek up and began to look to his nose and mouth.
‘I am not,’ Crowbone countered. ‘I am the happiest of men, for I know how to take that borg away from Fergus and release both the men in it, Hoskuld’s cargo and all the other cargoes no doubt stored there.’
Men leaned forward, glaured with the vision of all the plunder that might be to hand. Even those tending Fridrek let him bleed a little as they turned to listen.
‘Otherwise,’ Crowbone added, looking sourly at the Saxlander, ‘I would just have killed him.’
Somewhere, a bleared sun smeared through the mist, making silhouettes on the road up to the borg. It was a cold sun, a dirty grey light that fell on the handcart being pushed by four weary peasants and preceded by two girls in decent overcloaks and white headsquares, carrying covered jugs.
Maccus, who only liked this gate guard duty because of the morning girls with their milk, nudged Cuimer and nodded in their direction, licking his lips ostentatiously. Cuimer grinned, set his spear to one side and pulled off his helmet, the better to free his hair, which made Maccus frown. Cuimer had thick, wavy hair only slightly infested with nits, while Maccus dared not do the same, since the helmet, he swore, had worn all the hair from the front half of his head.
Still, the girls looked winsome enough, and he thought they had probably come from Hvitrann proper, since he had not seen them before. New girls; the prospects made him lick his lips. One was short and plump — that one is Cuimer’s, Maccus promised himself, tonguing his loose teeth — but the other was tall and had started to sway lasciviously as she came up and across the raising-bridge.
Not far away, Murrough and Mar turned their heads at the sweet sound wafting from the chapel, where most of the people had sensibly gone including two girls shamed and clutching themselves in their underclothes and four peasants worried about their handcart. Two hard men with spears made sure they stayed there, grinning at the girls and the discomfited monks.
‘Like honey to the ears,’ Murrough said softly.
‘The sound of swan-maidens,’ agreed Mar.
Inside the chapel, Domnall led his charges in loud Latin, chanting sonorously that the borg was in danger until Gjallandi stormed in with the great scowl that was Kaup alongside him and gave the priest a look that let him understand the Norse skald knew Latin well enough, even when sung. Domnall shrugged — he had done his best and it had been a forlorn hope, since he knew no-one in the borg, especially keg-head Fergus, understood more Latin than the proper responses.
Yet he had done his duty so that he could face his God and Lord Duegald both with the knowledge that he had tried to thwart these raiders, while also keeping the raiders — who were now certainly in charge of matters — from burning God’s house or harming the innocents. Warriors would die, of course, but that was the nature of fighting men, Domnall thought to himself.
The mist and the water blended with vague strokes of rushes, grass and trees. The guards were grey on grey stone as the peasants laboured the handcart of bread and the girls hefted the heavy jugs of milk, a rising-meal for the garrison.
Cuimer, plump and pink, his helmet held in the crook of his arm and his hair flowing over his ears, stepped forward, grinning a yellow smile at the tall, slender girl. He said something the tall girl obviously did not understand, but his wink was lewd and he laughed, even though she had odd eyes, neither one colour nor another.
Then, sudden as a flaring spark, he wasn’t laughing at all and the tall, slender girl had whipped a seax out from the jug she carried, slammed the earthware into the man’s face and followed it up with an expert slash across his throat.
Maccus, who had been scowling at Cuimer as he stepped forward to talk to the winsomely tall maiden, gawped as the blade flashed, bright as kingfisher wings in the mirk and Cuimer fell backwards, the blood slushing from his throat and his face full of pottery shards. Maccus opened his mouth to shout and something darted at him from one side like the tongue of a snake, so that he reared back with a little scream, half-turning to see the round face of the plump girl, her eyes wide and bright. He thought he saw reluctant sadness there, but there was nothing reluctant about the fistful of steel she had. The strength went from his legs and then the plump girl stabbed him in the liver and lights and he fell, scrabbling away from this horror, pleading in a voice that wheezed because his lung was burst.
‘Leave him — get to the draw-weights!’
Crowbone tore the headsquare off and flung it away, while the peasants grabbed the hidden axes from the handcart and turned, in that instant, into four
They wedged the cogwheels, cut the ropes and pulleys and, even as the garrison started beating metal alarms, the rest of the Shadow’s crew spilled out from where they were hidden and ran screaming at the wide-open
