Crowbone

take what food we have left, we will die of starvation.’

‘We want nothing that you possess,’ Crowbone replied, more patient now. ‘Only a word with your head monk and some few more with Olaf.’

There was a pause, then the slat shut. A moment later came the sound of a heavy beam being lifted off and the door opened to reveal a tall figure, neatly dressed in robes, shaved and with the tonsure of his head bouncing back the lantern-light held in the swaying hand of a small hunched man with the eyes and face of a rat.

‘I am Abbot Mugron,’ the tall man said and smiled, though the effect was spoiled when his nervous top lip, thin as a wire, stuck to his dry teeth.

‘Olaf, Prince of Norway,’ Crowbone declared, then introduced the others.

‘Est autem fides credere quod nondum vides; cuius fidei merces est videre quod credis,’ Mugron declared with forced beaming. ‘As the blessed Augustine said.’

Then he added, because he knew this prince would not have understood: ‘Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.’

‘I want to see the king of Dyfflin,’ Crowbone declared shoving past the priest. ‘I have faith in that, for sure.’

Gjallandi, who thought that rudeness was not princely or helpful, sighed and followed, with the others piling through. Atli gave the rat-faced brother his blackest scowl on the way past.

They clacked across the worn slabs to the rear of the shadowed place, into a forest of shadows where monks shifted, their voices humming in prayer. Crowbone wondered how they could live like this, huddling in the half-dark like fearful sheep each time a ship was sighted off their shores. A cowled figure scuttled away as they approached and Mugron, hands folded inside his sleeves, frowned and paused at a door.

‘I understand Brother Olaf has given up the world,’ he said and, for a moment, Murrough thought the monk spoke of this prince, then realised his mistake and laughed. Mugron, misunderstanding, raised his eyebrows, but Crowbone merely shrugged.

‘Brother Amlaibh,’ Mugron corrected. ‘The men who brought him said he had renounced throne and world in favour of God. Two of his men have stayed on, though they have not yet embraced God in total.’

‘Do they still embrace weapons in total?’ demanded Crowbone and Mugron inclined his head politely, frowning.

‘They yet retain the marks of their status as guardians of the king of Dyfflin,’ Mugron said, his voice stiff with disapproval, ‘even though such a personage does not exist here, only an old and sick man who has come, at last, to the fold of Christ.’

Crowbone looked back at Murrough and the others; then, hard as whetstones, they went through the door.

The room was bright enough for them to see that it was furnished well; Olaf Irish-Shoes had clearly not come to his White Christ empty-handed. The man himself sat in a good chair, as like a High Seat as next of kin, wrapped in a fur-collared blue cloak and with his feet stuffed, not in Irish sandals, but in sealskin slippers. His hair was trimmed to the ears and the ring-hung braids of his beard had been shorn, but the face that scowled at them was red as a wean’s fresh-skelpt backside, the eyes in it boarlike and annoyed.

There were others — two monks, one tall and blond, the other small and dark, fussing with a basin and cloths round the outstretched arm of the slumped Olaf. Two others, in coloured tunics and silver, bearded and long-haired, stood on either side of his seat and stepped forward, swords out.

‘Lord Olaf,’ Mugron began and Crowbone whirled on him.

‘Prince,’ he spat back and Mugron recoiled a little, then smiled.

‘I was talking to our brother in Christ, lord of Dyfflin,’ he explained greasily and Crowbone blinked, annoyed at his mistake. Anger made him rash.

‘No longer,’ he snarled. ‘Another has that High Seat and name now. Tell those dogs to lose the steel.’

‘I know who claims the seat,’ Olaf Irish-Shoes spat back, his face turning blue-purple and his breath wheezing. ‘My treacherous son, not fit to lick the arse of his brother, who died …’

He broke off then and slumped back, his face deep blue. The Chosen Man nearest to him looked anxiously at him, then flicked his eyes back to Crowbone and the others, his hand clenching and unclenching on the sword hilt.

‘Are you well, lord?’ he asked Olaf Irish-Shoes over his shoulder, at which Murrough laughed.

‘Of course he is not well, you arse,’ he bellowed. ‘He has a face like a bag of blood and two monks sticking his arms with blades — are you blind?’

‘We were in the process of bleeding him,’ said the yellow-haired monk and Mugron frowned.

‘Again? Is that wise?’

‘He is choleric, lord abbot,’ the monk replied, but Crowbone interrupted him, harsh as thrown gravel.

‘You and you,’ he said to the armed men, ‘throw those blades down. I will not say this again.’

‘Dum inter homines sumus, colamus humanitatem,’ Mugron said nervously and Atli turned to Gjallandi.

‘I hope that he is telling them to be sensible,’ he growled and the skald, nervously backing away from the glinting steel, shook his head, then nodded, confused.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ he began. ‘Something like being among humans and so being humane.’

‘Speak Norse,’ Crowbone declared to Mugron, then nodded to the two men. ‘Kill them.’

Mugron started to protest; the dark monk shrieked and the yellow-haired one sprang back. Olaf himself struggled weakly, his blue cloak falling open to show his white underserk — the basin of his own blood flew up and crashed on him.

It took moments — for all that the men were fine fighters, they were outnumbered and taken by surprise a little. Even Murrough was, for he had not expected the prince to be so bloody, so the fight was a mad flail of blades and ugly blood trails.

Mugron knelt and babbled, the dark monk with him; the abbot was clearly shocked by this and Crowbone was pleased. Now he knows what he has let in his door, he thought and he turned to Gjallandi.

‘Oderint, dum metuant,’ he said, saying it carefully so as to get it right; it was the only Latin he knew, gleaned from an inscription on some weathered monument in the Great City. Let them hate as long as they fear. Gjallandi knew it at once — an Old Roman emperor had said it first and the skald licked dry lips at the drawn-back snarl of lip that came with it. That Old Roman ruler had been a madman, but Gjallandi said nothing on that.

Olaf struggled upright, his belly plastered to the blood-drenched serk, but his eyes wild and angry.

‘Hoskuld,’ Crowbone said. ‘Where is he? And the monk that was with him. I know you know.’

Olaf stared at the bodies, the blood pooling, gleaming viscous in the flickering torchlight.

‘Magnus,’ he said and looked at Crowbone. ‘I have known Magnus from when he was a bairn. My Magnus …’

‘Not yours now,’ Crowbone said. ‘Hel has him and will have you if I am not happy with your answers — shut that priest’s fucking babble!’

The last was bellowed as he spun to where Mugron chanted; there was a meaty smack and Atli sucked the knuckles of one hand, grinning, while Mugron climbed unsteadily on to one elbow and wiped his mouth, then gazed, incredulous, at the blood on his fingers. Murrough leaned thoughtfully on his axe; he did not like what he was seeing here at all.

‘Hoskuld,’ Crowbone repeated and Olaf blinked once, then twice and seemed to see the odd-eyed youth for the first time. ‘Eirik’s axe.’

‘Hoskuld?’ he repeated. ‘How would I know? Ogmund had him and lost him to Gunnhild’s son and some Grendel of a boy he has in train. Eirik’s axe is a story for bairns,’ said Olaf scornfully. ‘Such as yourself.’

It took an effort not to cut the old man down, especially when four or five questions later Crowbone realised, with a sinking stone in his belly, that Olaf Irish-Shoes knew nothing at all and Hoskuld was either gone to Gunnhild or dead. He looked at the proud old man and wondered; he had to be sure.

‘Fetch those hangings,’ he said and men leaped to obey; not Murrough, he saw from the corner of one eye and ignored it. When they started to string Olaf up by his bound ankles, using the stripped hangings as rope over a beam, the Irisher cleared his throat.

‘I’m thinking this is not right or clever,’ he said and Crowbone turned, his odd eyes seeming to bounce the