Crowbone

Those nearest laughed and Berto’s eyes grew even larger and rounder, so it was clear to all of them there that the Wend youth had never humped in his life.

‘I was eleven,’ Crowbone went on, ‘which folk tell me was late in starting.’

‘You made up for it,’ Kaetilmund growled morosely. ‘There was the Dane girl we took in a raid and you would not share.’

‘Sigrid,’ Crowbone said slowly, remembering. ‘She died of the flux not long after, so no-one had much joy of her.’

‘Then there was the famous twenty,’ Kaetilmund declared. ‘Last year, when we went to Polotsk to get Vladimir the bride who spurned him.’

Crowbone stayed silent, for the memories of that brief and bloody little campaign were locked in the black sea-chest inside his head and he did not want to drag them out.

‘The Prince of Polotsk,’ Kaetilmund explained to a droop-mouthed Berto, ‘objected to his daughter marrying Prince Vladimir — so we all went to his fortress, killed him and took her. We took twenty Polotsk girls, too and little Olaf here had them all before we sold them. It is a wonder he could stand up, never mind find the strength to whack Vladimir’s brother between the eyes with an axe.’

Men roared with laughter and Crowbone shifted, feeling Berto’s eyes on him and not liking to look, for he felt hot and uncomfortable under the gaze and did not know why. So he grew serious as a reef, talked about shieldwalls and large battles.

‘You have never been in any battles,’ he said to Berto, ‘nor have we had much chance to show how we form Burh and shieldwalls for practice, then we fend off Murrough’s pretend berserk lunges and Kaetilmund’s shield kicks.’

‘Have you been in battles, then?’ asked Berto and Crowbone wondered if the boy was as innocent as his eyes said he was, for the question had only made Crowbone aware of what he did not know.

‘One or two,’ he said, then rubbed his beard ruefully. ‘Not big ones,’ he admitted.

‘I have,’ growled Murrough, passing by and hearing this. He squatted without asking, which made Crowbone scowl, but Murrough only grinned at him, then turned to Berto.

‘You have a bow, I see. Learn to use it, for it is easier to kill a man at distance than when you are looking into his eyes,’ he said. ‘If you have ringmail you will stand in the front line — The Lost. That’s the place of honour, where the best warriors belong. Others, usually the called-out men, the fyrd, fall in behind them with their spears and leather jerkins and old war hats.’

Lifting a piece of horse on a stick and blowing on it he went on, ‘You saw us do that against that Galgeddil horse lord.’ He tested the horse for heat, then tasted it, smacking his lips. ‘Oh, for some of that limon Finn got out of Serkland,’ he said, dreamy with remembering. Then he became aware of Berto, patiently waiting. He sighed.

‘Well, here there is no fyrd, for we are all Chosen Men — the Oathsworn,’ he went on, beaming. ‘Our fame is great and jarls want us on their side when they fear even their own house warriors will flee. The fyrd, of course, are men who take up arms when their families or land is threatened. They are farmers first and fighting men second, unlike us.’

He sucked the meat while the fire swirled a little in a draught, the reek catching his eyes and making him curse. Crowbone still scowling at this intrusion said nothing, was acutely conscious of Berto’s hand still on his wrist. Berto was patient and still as old stone, though there was a tremble in the underneath of him that Crowbone could feel, like a fly-twitched horse.

‘For all that, it is necessary to have second and even third ranks, spear-armed,’ Murrough went on. ‘In the front rank all you have to do is stand and not get killed — harder than it sounds. You cannot do much fighting, for there is hardly room to lift an elbow and all you are there to do is protect the men behind you, whose spears will be stabbing past your ears and doing the real work.’

‘No fighting?’ Rovald said, leaning forward to get meat and then having to slap the ends of his burning hair. ‘It is The Lost who win such battles.’

‘In the end, of course,’ admitted Murrough and took up his axe, which was rarely far from a hand, ‘for there is only one way to find room to fight — you push into them, step by step until they break apart. Then you fight them to ruin. In pairs, which is why we practise that, too.’

Mar, who had been paired with Murrough, nodded and grinned across at his partner, who raised his beard- bladed axe to him. Berto already knew that Murrough used it to hook shields to one side, while Mar did the killing of the exposed man.

‘This axe trick is used by the Irishers,’ Murrough went, grinning and looking the hook-bitted weapon over like a man does a willing girl. ‘The Dal Cais of this Brian Boru fellow perfected it, and much as it pains me to admit it, folk call these axes after them.’

‘Mark you, that trick is fine when you are moving forward,’ added Halfdan. ‘The hardest matter is to step back a pace or two and still keep the line.’

‘Aye,’ admitted Murrough. ‘It is bad enough being in The Lost with no-one else in front of you and the enemy howling down — the second and third ranks seem pleasant places then. But stepping back is hard.’

‘Why would you?’ Berto demanded and those who knew chuckled. Because war is hard work, he learned from a dozen throats. An hour of struggling and sliding and yelling and stabbing seems like a whole day and actual edge-swinging leaves you on your knees and gasping in half of that.

Murrough’s understanding was that men whose world is war will last the pace — farmers with spears and axes will not, but even fame-laden warriors such as the Oathsworn would need to step back and take a breath or two eventually. It was possible to feed fresh men into the fight, exchanging one rank for another, but few had the Roman skill of this and did not use it much for fear of the chaos it caused.

All this talk did nothing to send men to sleep and Berto eventually got up and went into the dark looking for the yellow bitch, leaving Crowbone feeling the heat of his touch on his wrist and confused by the loss of it. Halfdan joked that the Wend was jealous of the brindle hound, now vanished.

‘I wonder how the knarr is faring,’ Onund muttered and Crowbone saw Gorm’s head come up at that.

‘Sunk entire,’ Stick-Starer declared moodily. ‘We will find them strewn all over the shingle come morning.’

‘You are a hard man, Stick-Starer,’ Kaetilmund answered, shaking his head. ‘That is no wish to put on sailors.’

‘Go down to the shore and hail them if you are so concerned,’ Crowbone told him and Kaetilmund waggled his head from side to side in a non-commital way. Vigfuss Drosbo stuck his bluff, square face into the conversation and announced he would go if Stick-Starer would, since he had left his own porridge pot on board the knarr and was missing it now. They talked round it until they wore the subject to a nub, but did not go all the same.

‘Aye, it is hard life at sea,’ Murrough declared, stretching languidly in the fire heat. He farted and took the rough edge of tongues from those nearest him as his due for it.

‘What would you know of it?’ scoffed Stick-Starer. ‘You Irishers plooter in the shallows in a skin bowl, so you do.’

‘I have sailed,’ Murrough spat back indignantly. ‘I have seen the smoke-spray where the sea pours off the edge of the world.’

‘The world is round, you oaf,’ Onund rumbled. ‘As any sailing man will tell you.’

‘And how do you know this?’ demanded Halfdan — and a few others, Crowbone noted, stirring interestedly from half-sleep. ‘Are there not duergar at the four corners of the world, holding up the sky? Four corners, note. Of a square. Even I know this of our gods and I am not a learned man.’

‘It is a disc,’ said Stick-Starer. ‘Surrounding the World Tree. That ocean you see is the one that separates us from Utgard, the void of all matters.’

‘The world is curved like a round ball — how else do you account for the masts of ships showing over the horizon before the hull?’ answered Onund, sitting like a lopsided hill by the fire.

‘Sailing uphill now are we?’ jeered Halfdan and Onund, who could not quite find an answer to that, hunched and said nothing. Stick-Starer simply spat a hiss into the fire.

‘The world is round,’ Gjallandi told them sonorously, ‘for Odin and the gods of Asgard decreed it so to spoil