fighter of any note or inclination.
Horns made farting sounds close by. The men nearest to Crowbone rolled their neck muscles, fitted helmets more snugly, touched amulets, crossed themselves; a few glanced at him, their faces pebbled with rain and one even smiled. Crowbone wondered if they would fight for him.
‘Rain is an amusement when it is hissing from the gutters and you are in the dry and warm looking out,’ Halfdan said moodily and folk laughed, saying he was going soft. Kaetilmund called out that Halfdan was thinking he wanted to be back in the warm with Bergliot. The name and the memory of her — of him, who was now her — brought a silence that the rain lisped through while they moved, half-stumbling over tussocks and ruts. Crowbone did not know where they were when they eventually stopped, panting like blown bulls. Horns blared again.
Apart from Murrough, not even the grimmest of them could smile into a rain that came down like stones, stung the face, sluiced down ringmail and seeped through to wool and neck. Crowbone’s boots were sodden with it, his braids dripping and he wondered blackly if Ireland had any other weather.
‘Call this rain?’ Murrough demanded, grinning and happy as a hog in a wallow.
‘Only you and him do not seem to care,’ Halfdan answered and jerked water off his beard indicating the stone figure nearby. ‘Who are you thinking it is, eh, Crowbone?’
Crowbone did not know. It was weathered and bird-splashed stone, half the height of a true man, a youth with a scabbed dog caught by the ruff in one hand and the other arm raised, holding a dripping slather of slimed weed from the stump of a wrist. The face, worn and speckled, had an expression of bewilderment, not helped by the lack of nose.
‘Ask Murrough,’ he grunted, but the big man only grinned and shrugged, blowing rain off his nose.
‘Who knows? Cuchulain maybe. This is Teamhair — the place is thick with this sort of stuff.’
Teamhair, Hill of Tara, High Seat of Kings. The place where Ireland’s overlord was hailed by all the lesser kings, Crowbone had been told. A place of pillars and monuments, of course — and known to both sides. An easy place to arrange to meet in battle without all the tedious business of marching about seeking one another out.
A good place to play the game of kings, the true choosers of the slain.
‘Archers!’
The warning came from the front and shields went up as shoulders went down. There was a pattering, as if the rain had hardened. Something whumped into the chewed grass near Crowbone’s foot, but it was no arrow — a stone, Crowbone thought. No, a smooth lump of lead.
‘Slings,’ Murrough spat. ‘By The Dagda, but I hate them folk worse than I hate archers.’
There was a loud whanging sound and everyone jerked their necks in, then peered round. Bryti, his hand shaking, pulled off his helmet and looked at the dent in it.
‘By the gods of all Ireland,’ Murrough said into the man’s dazed look of wonder. ‘You have enough luck there to be Ui Neill.’
Bryti fingered the place where the lead shot had struck and looked up, grinning. The next stone took him in the jaw with a wet smack that tumbled him backwards, spewing blood and teeth. Murrough frowned, watching him choke and die, quivering like a terrified rabbit.
‘Well — perhaps not Ui Neill after all,’ he said, glancing at the straw-doll tangle of limbs. ‘Keep your shields up lads.’
‘Remind me again,’ Mar said grimly and he did so to be heard by Crowbone above all, ‘why we are here, good men of the north fighting Norsemen for the Irish?’
‘Something concerning an axe,’ roared a voice Crowbone did not know and the rage bokked up in him, so that the struck side of his head throbbed and he bellowed the cords of his throat raw.
‘Because it is my wyrd. I am Olaf, Prince of Norway who will one day be king and if you are wise you will all remember that.’
Then he slung his shield on his back and took a spear in either hand as they moved forward. Kaetilmund fell in on his right, the banner in one hand and a sword in the other, while Rovald fell in on the left, the only one with a shield up and charged with, somehow, protecting them both.
It had stopped raining, but the ground was churning under so many feet and the sharp smell of turned earth and torn wet grass was enough to make the heart leap, for it was the smell of life and death.
Horns bayed like staghounds and men stumbled over the rough ground, up to where the Chosen of Gilla Mo swarmed into a copse of trees and stood beneath the branches; Crowbone and his men joined them, feeling the drips spatter.
Crowbone looked at Kaetilmund, saw the drawn-back snarl of his lips and knew, if he looked to the other side, he would see Rovald the same. His own skin felt tight and the corners of his mouth gummy; his head ached and where the helmet touched still felt as if an icicle had been slid into his skull.
A brown bird whirred in to land on a branch above his head. It was exhausted from having been beaten from cover to bush by thousands of tramping feet, the swish of long grass on calves, the leather creaks and frantic shouts. Crowbone watched it closely as it perched on a branch and looked back at him with a bright black eye; he shivered at the wyrd of it.
Somewhere ahead there was a huge shout and a great thundering crack, as if a giant door had been slammed shut — the shieldwalls coming together. Now there was a stirring and the faint shrieks and bellows where the lines struggled in a ruck, but Crowbone could see nothing at all.
There was a deep roaring from the left, where the Leinster men forged forward, roaring out that they had come to free their king, held hostage by Olaf Cuarans in Dyfflin: they were determined to let him hear them from his prison.
Suddenly, Crowbone saw Gilla Mo’s banner raise up and go down — once, twice, three times.
‘Move — fight in pairs. Keep together …’
If the Chosen Men were going in forward it either meant the battle was already won, or in the balance. Crowbone loped along, peering ahead as the solid ranks melted apart in front of him — a chase then, the battle won on this part of the field at least.
Others sensed it, heads went back and the great wolf howl of the Oathsworn rolled out, followed by the shouting of their name. The blue banner cracked in the wind and men started to tumble over bodies, seeing the backs of fleeing men and fevered by the sight, as cats are with running mice.
Crowbone stumbled to his knees over a body and started to lever himself up using one of his spears; then he paused at the sight of the little shape, unnaturally still and face down.
‘Are you hurt?’ panted Kaetilmund coming up to him, Rovald pounding desperately along behind him. Crowbone did not answer, merely stuck the butt of his spear under the small frame and rolled it over.
Maelan, his youthful face a fretwork of blood and bone where a blade had punched him. Even his own da would not recognise him.
Not that it mattered much — two steps further on was his da, who was past recognising anyone. Congalach lay on his back, staring at the sky, his sword still lashed to one hand, the other clutching the burst rings of the mail on his belly and the tarn of his own lost blood thick and dark around him.
‘Ah, shite,’ Murrough said as he came up and saw them. ‘A bad day for the Ui Neill and Gaileanga — are them the ones that did this?’
Crowbone looked to where Murrough pointed his hooked axe and saw the tight group of men moving backwards steadily, shields up and protecting a man in their midst. Beside him, like a great tree in a field of long grass, was a bareheaded giant with a mass of tow-coloured hair.
‘Christ’s bones,’ muttered Mar, ‘he is even bigger than yourself, Murrough macMael.’
‘So he has further to fall,’ Murrough answered, though he butted the axe and leaned on it thoughtfully — but Crowbone was already waving them forward, for he knew the sight of a lord and his picked guards when he saw it and wanted them at his feet, for his glory as a prince.
Kaup set out to unnerve them, capering in front like some great dancing
So Crowbone sent them, surprised that his men went, howling and roaring. The lines smacked; men hacked and slashed at each other, bellowing curses and screaming. A gap opened and Kaup fell back out of it, blood pouring from a wound on his thigh and his mouth large and wide with the shock. The tow-haired giant burst out of it like a boar from a thicket, clattering his way through the hole.
