‘Bowman …’ Berto panted and, at that moment, a second figure pounded like a shadow from the mist. Lief, Crowbone thought wildly and half-crouched, sword up.
Lief was half-stumbling and screaming, which was a surprise to everyone, for it was clear he had been chasing Berto and now seemed to be running away from something else. Then the yellow bitch hurled itself into the huddle at the foot of the stone cross, a brass dagger of snarls and teeth. Lief went down, the jaws ripping and shaking the forearm he put up to keep them from his neck; he was flung this way and that like a rat.
‘Call him off,’ Crowbone ordered hoarsely and Berto struggled up and started making kissing sounds. The yellow bitch, jaws locked, merely hauled the screaming Lief towards the little Wend.
‘Odin’s hairy arse!’ Crowbone exploded and whacked the snarling curl of yellow with the flat of the sword, hard enough to knock the animal sideways — but it held grimly on. The Irish boy moved swiftly then, past Berto with his pathetically flapping hands and kisses, to the rear of the fight. He paused, grabbed the bitch’s tail and shoved two fingers hard into the softness under it.
The bitch, outraged, opened its jaws and howled, allowing Lief to scrabble away. The boy let go and leaped away as the bitch whirled to snap at him, but Crowbone kicked it hard, so that it tumbled over and over and got up shakily, the fight knocked from it. Berto moved to it while Crowbone grabbed Lief and hauled him up to his knees. Blood sprayed from him.
‘You shot at me, you hole,’ he spat, but Lief’s eyes were rolling and one look at the stripped red-meat remains of his right forearm told Crowbone that Lief would not be shooting any more bows, even if he survived. Crowbone let him flop, an empty sack, back to the ground.
‘Are you hurt?’ he demanded of Berto, who shook his head, eyes wide with shock and his face as white as the mist. The yellow bitch looked back at Crowbone with reproachful eyes.
‘He tried to shoot you and we fought,’ Berto managed to explain. ‘He was stronger and I had to run for it. Then Yellow here chased him as he chased me.’
The Irish boy cleaned his fingers on the wet grass and Crowbone nodded to him.
‘Good trick, that.’
‘Sure, we have hounds ourselves and they are always quarrelling,’ he answered levelly. ‘Can we go and help my da now?’
‘Lead on,’ Crowbone ordered and the boy looked at the moaning Lief pointedly. Crowbone sighed; it made sense not to leave anyone in their rear, even one as hurt as Lief. He crossed to the man, remembering the tall, rangy figure laughing round a fire somewhere, hauling on a line during the storm. He was a handsome man with a neat, grey beard and the giggle of a girl when he was drunk.
Lief had lost his helmet but still wore the padded linen arming cap, as like the headsquare of a woman as to be funny on a bearded man. He was not laughing now, all the same, though he stopped moaning as Crowbone knelt and his black eyes, pools of misery already, grew bright with the fear of what was to come.
‘You are a prince,’ he gasped, the slaver wild on his lips. ‘It is princely to grant mercy.’
‘Once,’ Crowbone said dreamily, ‘in place far from here, do not ask me where, a woodsman entered a wood with his axe on his shoulder. The trees were alarmed, and addressed him thus: “Ah, lord, will you not let us live happily some little time longer?” It was the time in the world when trees had voices, you understand.’
‘The concern of these trees I can understand,’ Lief panted, hoping to prolong the tale. The blood was seeping from the forearm and the pain almost blinding; he could see the white of bone in it and did not want to look more closely. Crowbone ignored him.
‘The woodsman,’ he went on, ‘said he was willing to do so. “However,” he added, “as often as I see this axe, I am tempted to come to the wood, and do my work in it. So I am not so much to blame as this axe blade.” “Don’t blame the axe bit,” answered the trees. “We know that the handle of the axe, which is a piece of the branch of a tree in this very wood, is more to blame than the iron; for it is that which helps you to destroy its kindred.”
‘The woodsman spat on his hands and hefted the trees’ worst fear. “You are quite right,” he said. “There is no foe so bitter as a renegade.” And he set to chopping.’
Lief tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry.
‘Have you another?’ he started to say, but the bright flash of the blade made his eyes squint and the tug at his throat seemed to steal the words from his mouth. He saw Crowbone’s hand come down to cover his eyes and heard his voice.
‘Tell Hel — not yet, but soon.’
Crowbone climbed to his feet and saw the Irish boy looking at him, wary as the yellow bitch. Berto knelt beside Lief and covered his face with the arming cap; he seemed to be praying, Christ-fashion.
‘Do you tell stories to all you kill?’ the Irish boy asked and Crowbone merely smiled and settled his helmet snugly on his head.
‘Remind me never to ask you for one,’ the boy muttered.
‘What is your name again?’ Crowbone demanded and the boy scowled.
‘Echthigern mac Oengusso,’ the boy answered sullenly.
‘Eck,’ Crowbone declared firmly. ‘Lead on.’
A wind got up and shredded the mist to witch hair, so that the body they would have stumbled over was easily seen, right at the door of the dark gable end that was the church. Crowbone was distracted, concentrating so hard on the church, marvelling at the tall building of wood and half-stone and why folk would go to all the trouble of it when they did not live in it most of the time. It was as useless as the tower, a tall, slender stone prick rearing up not far off — the height of a couple of ship masts and all it did was hold a bell.
‘Christ and all his saints preserve us!’ the Irish boy burst out, crossing himself at the sight of the rag-doll shape at the door.
‘For ever and ever,’ Berto repeated without thinking and Crowbone shot him a glance; he had not known the Wend was so hot for the Christ that he knew the responses — but the body shoved that from his mind.
It was Gorm, his head lopsided and smashed in like an egg, the blood spreading in a dark lake underneath him, right down to his knees.
‘One less,’ he grunted and looked at the door, which lay slightly open. A postern, the boy called it, used for daily coming and going while the big main door was used only for letting in folk to glory in their god.
He started forward, but Berto, as if released from a bow, suddenly darted in front of him and in through the door. There was a high-pitched squeal, a scuffling and, with a curse, Crowbone ducked inside, blinking in the dark. He heard a rustle, felt the breath of movement and half-turned, just as someone yelled.
The blow crashed on him, rattling his whole head almost off his neck and the world exploded in bright light and then a great well of darkness, which he fell into.
Martin
He knew they were watching him, so he minded his manners and, when he smiled at the little girl whose doll he was repairing, he did it with his lips stitched so his ruined mouth would not frighten her to screams. It felt strange to his cheeks, all the same and he did not do it again.
The hall of Haakon Jarl, King of Norway, was bright and bustling, though folk avoided where the priest sat, both for the look of him and for what he was. Martin knew that Haakon Jarl had broken with his supposed overlord, Harald Bluetooth of the Danes, and it was said he did it because Bluetooth had forced Christ priests on him while he was visiting Denmark. The tales had it that Haakon had pitched them into the sea and forced them to swim home, so there was danger in coming so openly to his hall wearing a cross.
The truth, of course, was a matter of princes, Martin mused to himself, while he fiddled out the broken straws that fastened the doll’s leg to the body. Haakon now ruled Norway in his own right and dared Bluetooth to do something about it. Bluetooth looked to be daring just that and so there would be red war between them — Eirik’s axe would be a powerful attraction for fighting men and was not a prize Haakon could overlook.
The thought made Martin smile, just as a thrall woman brought meat and bread and ale for him; she shoved it across and left, hurriedly.
He gave the doll to the girl and she looked solemnly at him for a moment or two and clutched it tightly to her.
‘You are very ugly,’ she said and a man laughed close by, making Martin twist to see, a movement that
