them like stink and, behind that, he saw Congalach, bound hand cradled in the crook of the other and his eyes wet with pain and misery.
Eight of them, Crowbone saw — Halk was there, sorrowed as a whipped dog, pleading with every look, though he knew there was no hope. And Fridrek, all sullen and twisted mouth.
He looked them over for as long as it took for Oengusso to come up, his arm across his son’s shoulder, then he turned to the lector.
‘What would you do with them?’ he asked. ‘Since it was you they offended last.’
‘Sure I would hang them,’ Oengusso said and there was a stir among the men.
‘No Christ mercy, then?’ Crowbone demanded harshly. ‘Some of them are Christ baptised.’
Oengusso laced his hands together, while his snub-nosed piglet of a son gazed adoringly up at him.
‘A mind prepared for red martyrdom, a mind prepared for white martyrdom,’ he said sonorously. ‘Rules Eight and Nine. Fervour in singing the office for the dead, as if every faithful dead was a particular friend of thine — Rule Twelve.’
‘That is not what the blessed Columba had in mind when he made the Rules,’ Mar declared bitterly. ‘I am sure of that.’
‘They broke the oath,’ Crowbone pointed out and Kaetilmund studied him for a moment, trying to work out if the odd-eyed boy spoke of the Oathsworn’s oath or the oath he knew others had sworn personally to the prince. He was still no wiser when Kaup started dragging the men away.
Halk babbled and pleaded, but Fridrek, half-stumbling, flung curses back at them over his shoulder and men who had known him a long time shifted and shuffled.
‘If you have a mind to allow it,’ Crowbone said, ‘I would like that dove flag you have.’
Oengusso blinked, then smiled and nodded, sending his son scampering to get it, then went off on his own; not long after they heard his great bell of a voice and the singing chants of the monks. They waited in the dripping day, while the bast ropes creaked and scoured the tree branches, hauling their kicking burdens high into the air.
When the dead had stopped swaying, Crowbone said his farewells to Thorgunna, who stood like a cloaked shadow in the shelter of the church, the great tower hunching itself into the sky over her shoulder.
‘What would you have me tell Orm if I meet him?’ Crowbone asked and she flicked a little smile on her cheeks, made old and withered in the harsh daylight, he saw suddenly, like the last winter apple in the barrel.
‘That you are sorry you did not hold to the Oath,’ she answered and the slap of that made him take a step back.
‘I meant about yourself,’ he answered, which was as good as admitting the truth of what she said, though he only realised this much later. ‘Shall I tell him where you are?’
‘You will or you won’t,’ she answered sadly, which left him no wiser. Then she dragged her woollens tighter round her and looked up at the sky.
‘I am leaving,’ she said, shivering a little, as if a wind had kissed her neck. Crowbone did not know whether she meant now, or this place entirely.
‘I am gone,’ she whispered, her eyes black as an iced sea and turned away; the bleakness she left was more of a desert than before.
As he marched out of the place, conscious of the men filtering along behind him, sullen as rainclouds, Crowbone turned to the woman he had known as Berto and held out the blue flag.
‘Here,’ he said, vicious as a slap. ‘You are a woman now. Sew this in the way I tell you.’
Crowbone’s Crew
There were horns blaring and the great reek of warriors, giving off so much heat that the air above the armies wavered like water. Irishers trotted past near Crowbone, one of them fumbling to try and fasten his rolled cloak over his right shoulder to leave his arms free; he had a leather helmet half-tilted over one eye and a long spear that smacked the shoulder of the man behind, who cursed him in a long spit of Irish.
‘Here — I have sewn it.’
She held out the tall spear, the furled cloth held tight to it with her fist, then let it go and flutter free; someone made a noise between jeer and cheer and Crowbone glanced up at it. A cloud-blue square with a white eagle on it, though there were those who thought the wings were strange. Not surprising, since it started life as a dove.
‘You have sewn it well,’ he said, which was the truth — the silly twig was unpicked and the thread saved had been used to curve the beak and add some talons. It was not, as Onund said pointedly, the Oathsworn banner, which was Odin’s
‘Can I carry it?’ Bergliot asked, her face tilted and defiant.
She had done it well, as he had to admit. Now she stood there, in the middle of a stinking, bustling, roaring army about to dive headfirst into blood and slaughter, holding it on a long spear and asking her question. Men paused in what they were doing to hear the answer.
‘No,’ Crowbone said, though he could not help the leap in him at her courage. ‘You cannot carry the banner. That is work for a man, which you are not. Now take off those breeks and pull your dress down — we are at war here.’
Kaetilmund laughed at the scowl on her face, then plucked the banner from her hand and raised it high; the shouts were half-hearted at best and Crowbone saw Congalach striding up, his Irishmen at his back and Maelan trotting at his side in his own little fitted suit of ringmail.
‘I hope they fight better than they cheer, Norseman,’ he growled at Crowbone, then went off laughing to the side of Gilla Mo, raising his sword high so that his own men burst their throats with his name — Congalach, son of Flann, lord of Gaileanga.
‘Thinks well of himself, that one,’ said someone close — Bryti his name was and Crowbone was pleased to have remembered it.
‘So he should,’ Murrough said, slapping Bryti hard on the back, so that the rain spurted out of the wool cloak, ‘for he is a prince of the Ui Neill and so worth ten of you.’
‘Princes,’ snapped Onund and then spat pointedly, so that Kaetilmund chuckled. Crowbone said nothing, pretending that this was just the way of all Icelanders, but he burned inside, so that his belly hurt and the battered side of his head felt like ice.
‘Well,’ Halfdan declared, rolling his own cloak round his shoulders like a ruff, giving him better protection there and freeing up both arms, ‘he is a dead prince of the Ui Neill. He should have listened to his da — everyone else did.’
Folk laughed. The argument between Congalach and his old father Flann had been loud; the old man had wanted Congalach to stay out of things because the arrow wound meant he had no proper grip in his sword hand. He did not want his grandson in it, either, claiming the boy was too young at twelve.
Congalach had all but whined that neither would be left out of this, a great battle and the only one they might ever be involved in. Now he was striding off with his sword lashed tight in his fist and his son dogging his heels like a small shadow.
‘Things are moving,’ Murrough said and looked inquiringly at Crowbone, who took a breath and then ordered everyone to form up, sliding the wet helmet on as he did so. It felt strange, with the old fitted comfort of it battered out and where it now touched, the new bruising seemed colder than before, as if there was ice there.
They went into a two-rank line in the rear of Gilla Mo’s Chosen — at least it was that, Crowbone thought sourly, and not in the back of a bunch of horny-handed Irish farmers. The Irishers turned half round and muttered about having northmen at their back; one looked up at the flag and squinted a bit, then laughed and said something to his neighbour.
Murrough growled and spat Irish back at them, then turned to Crowbone, beaming.
‘That dung-smeared cow’s hole there said our flag looked more like a shot pigeon than an eagle, so I told him it was no eagle at all, but a stooping hawk.’
A Stooping Hawk. Crowbone liked the idea and resolved to tell Gjallandi of it when this stushie was done with — there was no point in looking for the skald in this, for he took care to keep away from such events, being no
