Crowbone

‘I strung my bow and nocked an arrow,’ he said. ‘Did I mention I had such? No matter — I have it now. Once the arrow was drawn, I yelled to her: “You are uglier than a bucket of sheep grease and armpits,” then shot her just under the ribs, so that she squealed. A man would have been dead from it, but the troll-woman just tried to pull it out and demanded to know what had hit her.

‘I told her plain enough — a taunt, though there was more lie than truth in that. “Why does it stick so fast?” the troll demanded of me and pulled the arrow out with as big a slab of meat on the hook of it than sits on the king of Brega’s plate.’

There was a deal of laughing at this and the expression on Gilla Mo’s face, eating knife half-way to his mouth.

‘I told her why it stuck,’ Crowbone went on into the hush that followed. ‘Because a good taunt takes root. “Have you more of such?” inquires she. “Here,” says I, “have another. Your old ma was so stupid she tried killing a bird by throwing it from the top of a cliff.” I shot another arrow, this one into her eye. I did not mean it, I confess freely, for I am not good with a bow and was aiming at her foot at the time.

‘She shrieked a deal and then asked if I was angry enough to fight, so I told her I had a few more taunts yet, at which she shrieked even more loudly and told me to walk where I will, though it would be an obligation on her if I would do it somewhere other than this hill.

‘And so she ran off.’

The laughter and table thumping lasted a long time and even the High King had to stand up and raise his hands in the end, for the sound of his voice alone was not working.

‘A good tale,’ he declared, beaming greasily. ‘Enough to earn the Hero’s Portion at this feast, for I doubt any will better the beating of a troll with a taunt.’

The roars confirmed it and a brace of women brought the meat, the musk-sweat smell and bobblings under their kirtles tightening Crowbone’s groin as they looked slyly at him; one winked.

‘Now I am convinced of the tale of how the Oathsworn gained all the silver of the world,’ added Mael Sechnaill, resuming his seat.

‘With such riches,’ Gilla Mo retorted savagely, ‘why would such a man set forth with only a small company so far from home?’

‘Odin promised us all the silver of the world,’ Crowbone answered. ‘He did not promise we could keep it.’

The chuckle was from Meartach, like a wind through red leaves.

‘So it is with pagan gods,’ he declared piously. ‘No doubt that is one reason you found the way to Christ’s path.’

‘No doubt of it at all,’ Murrough broke in, grinning.

‘Now one of you three has earned his meat in my hall this night,’ Gilla Mo declared and Crowbone heard the slight stress on the ‘my hall’ of what he said. ‘There are kings from all over Ireland looking you over — what can you bring to this feasting fit for a High King, skald?’

Gjallandi cleared his throat and stood, one hand clenched in a fist over his heart. Then he gave them the tale of Brisingamen, which was clever.

Brisingamen was the true name of it, though Tears Of The Sun was another and both were equally shunned by the mouths of men. It was a necklace, crafted by the four duergar Brising brothers in their dark hall and so desired by the goddess Freyja that she was prepared to play the slut with them all to possess it. Or perhaps it possessed her.

A good scop could earn the best place by a fire, choice meats and a good circle of armring for telling the tale of it — but it was not often trotted out, for it was dangerous and depended on the audience.

For a Christian household, with women and bairns listening, it was a hint, a shadow of the lusts in it, enough to leave the weans round-eyed and the women stuffing their head-squares in their mouths to quell squeals of delighted horror.

In a hall still true to the old gods, it was a brave scop who told it and, if he did, he transformed Freyja’s lust into a pious sacrifice, like Odin hanging on the World Tree, or giving his eye to Mimir for a drink from the Well of Wisdom — the glittering-eyed women lurking in the dark of the hall would not hear otherwise of the Sorceress Queen, mistress of the magic and mystery of seidr. If he was brave and clever enough not to offend, a scop would leave that place wealthy and arrive at the next without becoming grey-faced and coughing, or vomiting blood, or drooling mad.

For a hall of feasting men with women spilling in their laps, however, it was perfect, with the meat of it provided by what the four black dwarves, stunted in every way but one, did with the luscious goddess in the sweaty dark. At the close, the approving roars brought a beam to the red-flushed face of Gjallandi and he bowed.

‘Well told,’ the High King declared, then looked at Murrough, who blinked a bit. ‘What of you, Irisher — what do you bring to a High King’s feast?’

Crowbone knew it even before Murrough opened his mouth, had felt the wyrd of it in every whirring wing he had seen all the way from the shore to this place. The words, of course, condemned them all to the same enterprise.

‘Why sure,’ said Murrough, his face bright with grease and grin, ‘my axe and the arm that wields it, against your honour’s enemies.’

EIGHT

Ireland, some time later …

Crowbone’s Crew

There was a little wind that fretted this way and that, a hound fresh released from the lead. It slithered and snaked through trees and grass like the invisible water which found its way between neck and tunic and, if he could have seen any wet at all, Crowbone would have cursed it.

There was no rain, only a white, thick, soaking milk-mirr that even the little wind could not do more than shift a little, like a spurtle in a pot of porridge. It reduced the world to the length of a poor spear-throw and made tracking almost impossible; if it had not been for Kaup and the yellow bitch, Crowbone thought, we would not be on any heading that made sense.

That fuelled the slow-stoked anger in him, flared to life the moment he had been told that Gorm and the three others of Hoskuld’s crew had fled. That Halk was with them did not help, while the news that Fridrek and four others of the Oathsworn crew had also gone with them was a breath of forge bellows to his rage.

‘Well,’ Gilla Mo said when he heard of it, ‘it is bad enough that your thralls are running round loose in my land without half your own warriors gone with them, waving their blades and frightening folk.’

He perched on his High Seat in the brindle morning of his hall, where the smoke swirled greasily grey and people still farted and snored. He drew his cloak more snugly round him against the damp, kicked his own thralls into blowing life into the pitfire embers and so clearly enjoyed seeing Crowbone smoulder in front of him that he prolonged the whole business of giving his permission to pursue them.

‘Take what men you think you need,’ he went on, peering under the bar of his scowl, ‘but make one of them that blue man you have. My folk are no strangers to blue men, since they are common enough on the Dyfflin slave blocks, but the sight of one as dark as he and treated like a true man and a warrior is unnerving to them. I do not want trouble over it.’

He eased his buttocks on the seat and savoured the last few moments of Crowbone squirming.

‘Congalach will go with you,’ he added. ‘There is no need to thank me for the help. You have two days only — have this resolved and be back with the army to march to Tara.’

Crowbone could only offer a curt bow and clack his way over the flagged stones out into the rainwashed day, where the clouds scudded as fast as his beating heart. Old arse, he thought viciously, who only sits in his own High Seat because Mael Sechnaill is sleeping in his bedspace.

Tracking after Fridrek and Gorm had not improved his mood, for it had been a long, slow stumble through the