Crowbone

pony, which snorted and stamped at the smell of death.

‘One less Dyfflin raider,’ the horseman snarled and Crowbone stepped forward. It was Kari, puffed with water, his shattered hand still stuck in his tunic belt. Men groaned when they saw it, for the fate of the knarr was now confirmed.

‘By all the gods of Ireland,’ bellowed a voice which snapped heads round. Murrough stepped forward, his big hooked axe held in front of him. ‘You dare call me a Dyfflin raider? Who are you to insult a son of the Ui Neill then?’

Crowbone flared with anger that someone should have crashed into his speaking without a by-your-leave — yet he also saw the horseman’s head snap up and his eyebrows go even further than that. Then Murrough went off into Irish, a great scathing, snarling dragon-spit of words which left the horseman lashed and even more flushed, his lips thin as wires.

‘Your Chosen Man reminds me of my manners,’ he said eventually, stiff and painful. ‘Congalach macFlann, macCongalaig, macDuin macCernaig. I serve Gilla Mo Chonna macFogartach macCiarmac, ri Deiscert Breg.’

He broke off and indicated the boy behind him, who kicked his horse forward and rose up a little in the stirrups to announce, in a shrill voice, that he was Maelan macCongalach, macFlann and so on.

None of which made the least sense to Crowbone, but he knew the Irishers were reciting their lineage and that they were father and son. Not that it meant much, since every ragged Irisher was as proud as a king, even if he had no arse in his breeks, and every one was rich with names if nothing else. Still, he had no idea who Gilla Mo was but did not show it, for he knew how to behave like a prince. Vladimir had taught him that.

‘Olaf Trygvasson, of the Yngling line of Harald Fairhair, king of Norway and a prince in my own right,’ he declared. ‘And no friend to the Norse of Dyfflin.’

‘So this Murrough macMael fellow says,’ Congalach replied. ‘You are part of the Oathsworn of Jarl Orm, the White Bear Slayer.’

Crowbone glanced at Murrough with narrowed eyes, wondering what else the Irisher had said, but only had a broad grin in reply. Behind him, Kaetilmund grunted as if kicked.

‘Oh fuck,’ he muttered. ‘Now we have trouble — they know us.’

Crowbone merely inclined his head and the horseman cuffed the head-tossing pony on one ear.

‘I have heard of those men,’ Congalach declared, frowning. ‘I am told they are not Christians.’

‘The Oathsworn have been prime-signed,’ Crowbone replied, which was no lie for they had all been once; Crowbone had the tales of it from Finn. ‘I myself have just come from the chapel of St Ninian at Hvitrann.’

Leaving a deal of dead and a Galgeddil lord’s family weeping — but there was still no lie in it, thought Crowbone, though he felt the heat of black stares on his back from the likes of Onund and Kaetilmund and all the other firm pagans. He willed their teeth together.

Congalach smiled.

‘Then you are welcome,’ he said, ‘in the lands of the Ui Neill.’

‘God bless the Ui Neill,’ Murrough added cheerfully and made the sign of the cross on his breast, over the Thor Hammer neatly hidden beneath his tunic.

‘Amen,’ Crowbone lied smartly.

The island of Hy (Iona), around the same time …

The Witch-Queen’s Crew

‘I believed you to be Christians,’ said the abbot and Gudrod acknowledged him with a slight ironic bow, which flitted up the stone walls and flickered, wavering, as the wind threatened the fish-oil lamps.

‘As Christian as you are,’ he replied and the lash of it was not lost on the abbot, who had barred the door of the monastery when the ship had first appeared, afraid of the sleek of it and not consoled enough by the friendly removal of the dragon-prow to offer Christian charity. The door, which had been briefly opened, was shut and barred once more for the abbot was Frankish and from the eastern borders of that place, where no-one was to be trusted.

It had taken Od’s toying with some of the monks who had stayed outside the monastery, cowering or praying in their beehive huts, to get the door opened again, by which time Gudrod was rain-soaked and bad-tempered as a wet cat. He waved the written parchment under the abbot’s nose and demanded he read it in a decent tongue but all he got was a babble of Frankish prayers. It came as no surprise to Erling that the abbot soon found himself strung by the ankles above his own altar, but what amazed him was the passive courage of the other monks, who simply knelt and started to pray. One or two rose up, shouting, ‘Saint Blaithmac’, then subsided to prayer again.

‘Who is this Blaithmac?’ Od demanded.

Erling did not know, so he asked and, eventually, a whey-faced priest told him in stumblingly poor Norse — a monk, martyred by raiders for refusing to give up the shrine of Columba on the island of Hy a hundred years ago at least.

‘So he is dead?’ asked Od and Erling nodded, which made the youth shrug; a god who would not protect his own from death was not much of a god — though the house these folk had built for him was interesting. Stone and solid as a fortress.

Erling pointed out that the priests seemed to be made of the same stuff as the saint, for Od had killed three already and the abbot was still refusing to read anything to help pagans and murderers. He continued babbling prayers in his own tongue.

‘Remember also the signs of old burnings on the way up here,’ Erling pointed out as they stood in the flickering half-dark, waiting for Gudrod’s next move. ‘This Hy place has been scorched before. My da’s da probably did it.’

Laughter flitted round the stone columns, so that the monks shut their eyes and prayed harder, trying not to notice the skull-grins from the shadowed men lurking beyond the light and angry at having been left so long out in the wind and rain.

‘Fater unser, thu thar bist in himile, si geheilagot thin namo …’ the abbot panted, the drool running up his own nose. Erling sighed; it did not appear to him that this one was about to do as was demanded of him and he said as much. Gudrod’s eyebrows braided and he backhanded the abbot twice, then glared at him, sucking his knuckles as the Christmann swung like a bad bell.

‘Do you play hnefatafl?’ he asked suddenly and the abbot, swaying and bleeding, only moaned. Gudrod sighed.

‘I thought not. If you did, you would have known that the king is surrounded in this game and it would be as well to give in.’

The abbot started a gasping call for God to visit plagues on the pagan and died so suddenly, when Gudrod’s temper snapped, that even the monks were surprised. The abbot’s throat was opened by a seax in mid-rant, the priest’s last curse a hiss of blood-mist that Gudrod had to wipe off the writing.

‘Well,’ muttered Erling with pointed sarcasm, ‘do I pick another and find out if he can read?’

Gudrod, well aware that he had acted hastily, bent and wiped the seax clean on the abbot’s robes while the blood pooled out under the man’s head like a black, spreading shadow in the lamp light.

‘No need,’ said a voice and a figure stepped into the light and stood to let Gudrod and Erling look him up and down.

Indistinguishable in his dress from any of the other priests, he was as different from them in bearing as donkey from stallion; tall, hair neatly cropped and tonsured, eyes clear and unafraid. Lips, Gudrod thought to himself, thin and bloodless as wires and an arrogant tilt to the chin.

‘Who?’ he demanded.

‘Mugron,’ the man declared.

Proud, Gudrod thought. Knows his worth. Here is a man who wants to be the next abbot of Hy. Better still, here was a priest who spoke decent Norse and could read the Latin.

He thrust the parchment at him.

‘In return for this, a peaceful departure in the morning — you will have shelter and food for the night,’ Mugron said. ‘No-one else killed, nothing burned, nothing taken.’

Gudrod’s smile was twisted.

‘Do you play hnefatafl?’ he asked and the priest frowned.