Crowbone

spasmed pain through his foot.

‘Such reward for your labours,’ said the man, shifting into a bench opposite. Martin saw his russet and green tunic, his friendly, open smile and shock of dark hair. He envied the man his neatly trimmed — and curled, he saw — beard and, most of all, his teeth. Almost to spite himself, he took a large portion of meat which he knew he could only suck, a noisy and messy business.

‘I trust kings are kinder,’ he growled. He knew this man and, for all he had his hair and beard still, he was a thrall. He was also Haakon’s friend and what he said might just as well come from the jarl’s mouth, while what he heard went straight in the jarl’s ear.

‘You have news for me, Tormod Kark?’ he asked, mushing his gums round the meat in a deliberately repellent fashion. The thrall did not flinch at all.

‘The king finds it strange that a Christ priest should come all the way from Hammaburg to tell him he knows the way to Eirik’s Bloodaxe, a rich prize for what you folk call heathens.’

That was straight out, a flat blade of a statement banged on a wooden bench. Martin spat out the sucked gobbet and wiped his fingers down his front; his smile was greasy and blackened.

‘I am a long time gone from Hammaburg,’ he said, ‘but Haakon Sigurdsson knows this, for I came in a trading ship from Torridun in the north of Alba and, before that, from Orkney.’

He leaned forward a little and now Tormod Kark did flinch, drawing back a little and touching the silver amulet band round his left wrist as a protection against spells. Martin saw that but kept the sneer to himself. He had stirred up all the hornets who sought the Bloodaxe and now needed the one with the biggest sting, to make sure he and God received the reward for such cunning.

‘The Witch-Queen and her last son,’ he said, ‘plus Olaf, Tryggve’s son, and Orm Bear-Slayer of the Oathsworn. All Haakon’s enemies, lured by me out into the wilds of the Finnmark after this axe, to be slain by him and the prize taken. All you need do is provide the ships and the men to take me there and guard me while the axe is recovered from where I know it lies. Then you kill them all and we come home.’

Tormod Kark blinked a little. This limp-footed little ruin of a man did not look like any of the shaved, tonsured Christ priests the jarl had pitched into the sea, but he claimed the role and wore a battered cross. There was also something about him — Haakon had already agreed to provide ships and men, but he would not speak directly to the little priest because he worried what magic the man had and whether even his breath was a curse. It could be, Tormod thought bitterly, if the smell is anything to go by.

Tormod, of course, had pointed out to Haakon that, if this ragged-arse priest really knew the way to Eirik’s famed axe, he had already promised all the others the same. Haakon merely smiled; this was the game of kings, as well constructed as a spiderweb and with much the same purpose — all you had to do was pick your way safely to the prize at the centre of it.

He said as much and Tormod bowed, thinking to himself that the real trick was to pick your way out again with the riches. He said nothing all the same, just smiled, the same way he now smiled at the priest.

‘Your reward for this gift?’ Tormod asked, with the air of one who has already sold himself and thinks all the world is the same. Martin looked sourly at him.

‘A stick,’ he answered, which made Tormod blink.

‘A stick?’

‘An old spear. Orm will have it, or know where it is. Do not kill him until I have my stick.’

Tormod swallowed, for he wondered if the priest was working some subtle magic, as Haakon had feared. He wondered if this spear-stick was part of it.

‘We will consider it,’ Tormod said and rose, easy and white-toothed. He spread his hands. ‘Meanwhile, I offer you the hospitality of the hall of Norway’s king.’

‘No gift from a thrall, who owns nothing, not even his own name,’ Martin said viciously, which brought the blood surging to Tormod’s face. ‘Thank the king for it from me, all the same. Tell him not to take too long in the considering, for the year turns.’

Tormod swept off, trailing a chill cloak of indignity; Martin went back to sucking noisily on his meat, mainly because it kept folk from sitting near him and that suited him well enough.

It would be endless day in the north now, but they were shortening fast and soon Bjarmaland and the Finnmark would be cloaked in long night and ice.

Dark and cold, Martin thought. Like revenge.

Mainistir Buite (Monasterboice), Ireland, around the same time …

Crowbone’s Crew

‘You were lucky,’ said the voice and Crowbone tried to see the face that belonged to it, but his eyes would not open entirely and the little they did would not permit focus; the light was blinding. A woman, he noted, with the part of his thought-cage that was not thundered with pain.

‘You were,’ echoed another voice, deeper and stronger. A man, then.

‘It was as well the girl squealed when she did,’ the woman went on, ‘for it made you more wary and Oengusso’s blow was badly struck.’

‘It was, so it was,’ echoed the man and the woman sighed.

‘Oengusso, go away. You are not helping here — drink this, young Olaf.’

‘I just wished to make sure the wee prince was not too dunted,’ the man answered, while Crowbone felt the bowl click against his teeth and a slightly bitter liquid filled his mouth. He swallowed and then felt warm breath, smelling of rosemary, close to his mouth, then his ear. The woman sang, whisper-soft and seeming nonsense, but Crowbone knew seidr when he heard it and the hairs on his arms rose. He felt her draw away from him and the voice of her was so familiar that her name was on the end of his tongue.

‘He will be finer than new linen,’ the woman replied firmly. ‘I have sung the charms of mugwyrt, plantain, lamb’s cress, cock’s-spur grass, camomile, nettle, crab-apple, chervil and fennel into his mouth and ears.’

‘In the name of God, I hope,’ the man said and Crowbone knew him for a monk by the tone. Suddenly, with a rush as warm as strong wine, he knew the woman, too, had heard that voice a hundred times when he could not see the face, as she sat behind him and combed his hair. Before that she had salved his scabbed, badly shaved head the day Orm had rescued him from his tether by the privy on Svartey.

‘Thorgunna,’ he said and opened his eyes into the great smiling sun of her face. Then the other face swam into view and ruined the moment.

Oengusso had eyes like a pig, tiny and blue, fringed with straw lashes. He was big and fat-bellied, too, yet there was muscle under the monk’s garb and quiver of him, which Crowbone had to acknowledge when he saw his helmet, held out to him by apologetic hands.

‘Sure, I am sorry for it,’ Oengusso said, watching Crowbone slowly sit up and swing his legs over the side of the pallet bed. He sat for a moment until the world settled, then took the helmet from the Irish monk; the left side of it was dented, the little plume-holder battered.

‘We could not get it more straighter, sure,’ Oengusso offered, seeing Crowbone’s silence as accusing. In fact, Crowbone was wondering what the side of his head was like if the helmet had been this bad; if the throb and ache of it was anything to go by, it was crushed and his left ear was almost certainly missing.

‘No, no,’ Oengusso said when Crowbone said as much. ‘Hardly a dunt on you. A good helmet that.’

Crowbone said nothing else, for he was trying to stand up and the floor would not help him. It swayed like a ship side on to a swell and, eventually, Oengusso thrust out an arm for Crowbone to grip. It felt, he thought, like a bar of iron and he knew now where the strength that all but flattened his head had come from.

He held it for a long moment, staring at the hanging on the wall until the bird on it stopped flying round in circles and stayed fixed on the blue square.

‘The dove of peace,’ Oengusso explained, seeing him look and thinking he was puzzling on it, ‘returning to Noah’s marvellous boat with a twig to prove that the Flood was ended and God had spared Mankind.’

‘We do the same,’ Crowbone managed to say, ‘though we use ravens to find land.’

‘I thank you for my son,’ Oengusso said and Crowbone looked at him. This would be the lector.

‘You are a singular Christ-follower,’ he managed, trying to keep the sickness from bokking up in him. ‘Not many of your kind hit so hard.’

Except here, he discovered a day later, when he had recovered somewhat. There were many hard-hitting