Crowbone

light, so that those who saw it drew back a little. Murrough was suddenly aware of the iron stink of blood, smothering air from the room.

‘Orm has done it,’ Crowbone replied, which was true and Murrough had to admit it. All the same, Orm had strung folk up with some sense to it — but Murrough did not say this, though he managed to meet the odd-eyed stare until Crowbone grew tired of the game and looked at the slowly swinging Olaf. His blood-soaked serk had drooped over his face, revealing spindle shanks, stained underclothes and thin, veined legs; when Murrough lifted the serk to look, he saw the old man’s face was turning bluish red.

‘You are certain there is nothing more to tell me?’ Crowbone demanded and Olaf, swinging and wheezing, merely glowered at him. Then he shook a little and foamed at the mouth — the yellow-haired monk moved swiftly towards him, but not as fast as Crowbone’s voice.

‘Stay,’ he snapped and the monk stopped, stared with cool grey-blue eyes and went on to the side of the dangling man, ignoring Crowbone completely. Finally, he looked up into Crowbone’s blazing face.

‘Cut him down,’ he said. ‘Or else he will die.’

‘Let him speak the truth.’

‘He cannot speak at all. Cut him down.’

Murrough decided it, the axe scything briefly through the air and so close to Crowbone that, for the flicker of an eyelid, he thought he was the target — but the blade sheared through the cloth strips and Olaf Cuarans collapsed in a soggy heap, his heels drumming. Crowbone glared at Murrough, but decided to let the moment pass. He would remember it all the same.

The dark-haired monk started to babble in Latin and Gjallandi, gnawing his knuckles at all he had seen, blinked out of the horror that was no part of the hero-sagas he told and into the moment, into what the monk was wailing.

‘A letter,’ he said and Crowbone turned.

‘A letter,’ Gjallandi repeated, pointing to the dark-haired monk. ‘That one wants the abbot to tell what was in it, before everyone dies.’

‘What is a letter?’ Atli demanded and Gjallandi started to tell him, but Crowbone snarled him to silence and rounded on Mugron. Behind him, the yellow-haired monk knelt by Olaf and muttered prayers.

‘What letter?’ he demanded and Mugron stirred from his prayers and unfolded his hands. He laid his hand gently on the shoulder of the dark-haired monk kneeling beside him and wearily climbed to his feet.

‘There was such a message,’ he said, ‘which dealt with the matters you seek. It was brought by Gudrod, who claimed to be the son of Gunnhild, the Witch-Queen. It was written by a monk in Latin and I translated it for this Gudrod, who went his way.’

He paused and blinked a little, as if to get the horror out of his eyes.

‘We played a game,’ he said. ‘On a cloth with little counters. The game of kings. Do you play?’

Crowbone wondered if the blow had addled the abbot and leaned his face forward a little.

‘I play,’ he growled, ‘but not on cloth with counters — you remember that writing-message. Tell it to me.’

‘So you can then kill me? All of us?’

Crowbone shook his head impatiently.

‘No, no — only those two sword-dogs had to die. Have I harmed a monk yet? Well — apart from a wee dunt to your teeth, that is. I will hear what you have to say and go, taking nothing and doing no harm.’

‘Dum excusare credis, accusas,’ Mugron declared bitterly and Crowbone whirled to Gjallandi, who had been whispering about the nature of letters to Atli and had missed it. For a moment, the skald felt the world tilt and disappear beneath his feet at the sight of Crowbone’s fist of a face, waiting furiously to be informed.

‘When you believe you are excusing yourself, you are accusing yourself.’

The yellow-haired monk rose slowly, as if his knees pained him.

‘St Jerome,’ he added, then made the sign of the cross over the rasp-breathing Olaf.

‘He will die, this night or the next,’ he said accusingly to Crowbone. ‘For no reason at all.’

For four ships and crews, Crowbone thought and felt the wyrd of the moment — he had killed Olaf Cuarans, as he had agreed and had not as much as nicked him with a blade, so could be accused of nothing. Not that it would bother him, he persuaded himself.

‘He was Olaf Irish-Shoes,’ Crowbone replied harshly. ‘For some that is reason enough. He is even an affront to your god, for he was a pagan all his life and now seeks to crawl into your Christ valholl through a hole in the wall.’

‘God will not be mocked,’ Mugron answered stiffly and Crowbone laughed, a sound with no mirth in it at all, it seemed to Gjallandi.

‘Your god opens himself to mockery,’ he answered, then pointed to the dark-haired monk, whose eyes went big and round.

‘You — your name?’

It took him three attempts, but he managed to tell the terrible youth that his name was Notker.

‘He is from Ringelheim in the Empire,’ said the yellow-haired monk. ‘As am I. My name is Adalbert.’

Crowbone looked from one to the other, then at Mugron.

‘Here is what I propose,’ he said, seeing the weave of it unfold gloriously as he spoke. ‘You, Notker, and you, Adalbert, will argue why your god cannot exist. Mugron, your abbot — being holier than you and so worth the pair of you — will argue why he does. If Mugron loses he tells me the content of the letter — and you pair die. If the two of you win, I leave in peace, with nothing.’

‘The Lord is not a wager,’ Mugron spluttered, then sighed. ‘I will tell you what is in the letter.’

Gjallandi saw Crowbone’s face and knew the truth.

‘Post festum,’ he said sadly. ‘Periculum in mora.’

‘What?’ demanded a man behind Atli, but Gjallandi just shook his head; there was no point in telling everyone that Mugron had come too late for this feast, that Crowbone had turned on to a new tack and was driven by some Loki wind along it.

Murrough cleared his throat and this time he spat a gob on the bloody floor, as pointed a gesture of disgust as he dared make. He knew Crowbone had marked it, but the youth did not comment. Instead, he nodded to the man behind Atli, the one who had spoken up against Christ priests on the way in.

‘What are you called?’ he asked and the man, pleased to be singled out, heaved out his chest and told everyone that he was Styr Thorgeistsson from Paviken in Gotland. Crowbone nodded, picked up the bloody sword that had belonged to Magnus and handed it to the delighted man.

‘Make that pair begin,’ he ordered.

Grinning, Styr poked Notker in the ribs with his new weapon and the monk whimpered, then began praying frantically in Latin, his voice rising until Adalbert, still calm, laid a hand on the man’s arm. Notker subsided, panting; the front of his robe darkened and his shoes got wet.

Atli and the others chuckled, for it was reasonable entertainment when there was little drink and no women, but Murrough stared at the floor. Orm had strung folk up when he needed them to talk, dragging out his little ‘truth knife’ to whittle pieces off them until they told all they knew. That was for good reasons of gain. This was a sick thing, which you could see in Crowbone’s too-bright eyes.

Notker started and everyone knew he was doomed right from the start if left to himself. He was devout enough — he had come to this place all the way from Saxland and you had to be mad for your god to do that — but his Norse was stuttering and he was too afraid, Murrough thought. Adalbert silenced him gently with a hand on his shoulder.

Mugron was no better, Crowbone marked, disappointed suddenly. He had hoped for some moment, a flash of insight or understanding, a sign from some god somewhere. But Mugron was not it — there must be a God, he babbled, for if there was no God, there was no Judgement and that was surely unfair. And if there was no God, how could he, Mugron, be a priest and abbot?

Atli and the others beat their thighs at that, trading comments on how the abbot would look with a second smile. Murrough looked at the two dead men and the dying Olaf Irish-Shoes, whose great belly no longer trembled with his breathing; the stink of blood was choking.

Notker fell to his knees, all tears and snot and prayer, but Adalbert turned to Crowbone, calm as the mirror-