were told of their young prince’s hand skill while they poked among the dead. Crowbone spoke soft to Murrough, not wanting to ruin what he had made, but pointing out their own dead and silently sending him to find out the tally for this day.
He was back soon enough — Hrolfr was dead, as well as a Jutlander called Lief and a Saxlander called Taks. Mar and Vandrad Sygni were missing. Crowbone did not know much about Lief save that he played ’tafl well but Taks did good leatherwork and everyone would miss his shoe repairs. Hrolfr, though, was a loss that brought something sharp into Crowbone’s throat, remembering the skill of the man’s playing. Vandrad and Mar were more of a worry, all the same — they were two of the three best trackers and the third had four legs.
‘Aye, well,’ said Kaetilmund moodily, scrubbing the rain off his face. ‘They ran — I think Mar went off and Vandrad went after him in anger. Odin’s bones, though, matters could have been worse.’
‘Just so,’ agreed Murrough, lumbering past. ‘It might have been snowing as well — for the love of all the gods, man, will you just die and give us all peace.’
This last was spat to the choker still struggling to breathe and Murrough’s big Dal Cais axe rose and fell, cutting the last breath out of the man.
‘What now?’ demanded Kaetilmund.
Crowbone told him — hunt for Gudrod and Gunnhild. Search the bodies for a big man with the look of a fancy jarl about him and an old woman, he told them and they pawed their way through the corpses while Bergliot, her dress looped up through her belt and breeks on for the warmth, helped others prepare a fire from the little that was available to burn, grinning at Crowbone until he answered it.
Later, the men sat with bellies full trying to ignore the stiffening dead nearby, nudging each other when they saw Bergliot clump up on her too-big turnshoes and throw herself next to Crowbone, forcing him to offer her the shelter of his cloak. Crowbone, aware of the scowls and nudges, tried to ignore them; the dog came up, muzzle bloody, tongue lolling and permitted itself to be patted warily.
‘I cannot keep calling this animal Yellow,’ he said to Bergliot. ‘I will call her Vigi — Stronghold — instead.’
‘No matter what you call her,’ she replied sternly, ‘she will answer only to me.’
It was the truth, but Crowbone did not like to hear it and decided, as the cold dark drifted down on them, to put matters on the straight between them. He took a deep breath.
‘Listen,’ he began. ‘I have no home to give you, nor time to find you safety. I am awaited beyond the mountains and the truth is that I don’t know but that it is my death waiting. The best I can do for you is ask Murrough, or Kaetilmund or the priest to make sure you get to safety — though there is no surety of anyone living through this. Is there anywhere you could go before the winter sets in hard?’
He felt her stiffen beside him, turn from warmth and limpid length to a log.
‘There is nowhere I can go, not before, not after winter. What would you have me do, prince? Would you have me a bed slave and no more?’
Crowbone looked at the fire until his eyeballs seared. She was, he realised, the first woman to come to him willingly and that was what was colouring matters here, so that he could not simply up and walk away. That and the fact that there was nowhere for her to go that did not mean her death.
‘There is nowhere I can go. I shall be here, or dead,’ she said, as if reading his mind, which snapped his head up to look at her.
‘Woman, listen to me,’ he said. ‘I am a prince who intends to be king in Norway. I do not need a wife and if I did …’
He stopped, seeing the mire he was plootering into the middle of, but it was too late. She pushed herself away from him.
‘If you did,’ she said slowly, ‘it would not be the likes of me. The princess, not her friend, is that the fact of it?’
It was so completely the fact of it that Crowbone could not answer and, eventually, she stood up and looked down at him.
‘Prince,’ she said, soft and gentle and all the more scathing because of it. ‘King who would be — yet not kingly enough to be kind and even offer to take me home.’
She turned and started to walk away, paused and looked back.
‘A boy,’ she said. ‘I see only a boy, who cannot even find it in him to thank me for saving his life.’
It was the truth, but he did not like to hear it from her and watched as she went to the other side of the fire and sat, so that her image wavered through the flames. He was aware of men silently watching this and his anger seemed to flare with the sputtering fire.
‘Once,’ he said suddenly, ‘Thor had two sons on a mortal woman. Two young thunder-gods who grew to red-headed manhood in the way boys do, then fell violently in love with the same woman, as boys do. Said one of them to the other, in a joking way: “I will become a flea, so as to be able to hop into her bosom.” Said the other: “I will become a louse, so as to be able to stay always in her fud.”’
‘It is only your lice that let you know you still live,’ Adalbert interrupted, seeing the glares between Crowbone and Bergliot. Crowbone ignored the priest.
‘Thor heard this and fumed,’ he went on. ‘And he roared: “Are those your wishes? You shall be taken at your word. Be slaves to a woman all your lives, then.” He turned them into flea and louse, which is why we have them today and why, whenever there is a thunderstorm, fleas jump out of all sorts of places where there were none to be seen before and your crotch lice itch more than they usually do.’
Men chuckled but most realised why the story had been told in the first place and stitched their lips shut until the silence was broken only by the whine of wind and the stutter of flame. Then Kaetilmund reported that they had searched all the dead, but there was no man or woman like the ones they sought.
‘Now,’ Crowbone told him, ‘we go on.’
When the dawn came up, whey-faced and chill, they sorted themselves out, bound up cuts and ground on into a long, cold climb, carrying their dead and leaving the Sami and the old Orkney dead, though Adalbert grimmed about that.
No-one else did, for they did not want to each be burdened with a cold-stiffed stranger, though there were no mutters about stumbling along weighed with their own comrades; no-one wanted to be left as one of those blue- white corpses when their turn came and everyone agreed they would burn their own men when they had got far enough away from that killing ground and into some decent trees.
They did, though it took most of the long night, thawing out enough stunted, twisted pine, which popped and spat out ice in three great dead-fires. Even they could not keep the dour away from the dark beyond the flames, shrouded by trees that seemed to close on them. Crowbone sat by himself now, for the yellow dog lay with Bergliot and though both were only across the width of a mean fire, it might have been the other side of the world itself.
Adalbert muttered prayers, which brought one or two glances from the good Odin and Thor men, so Gjallandi intoned prayers to Odin in his sonorous voice, so that all heads turned. At the end, knowing he had done well, he smiled a triumphant, knowing smile with his great lips and inclined his head in a gracious bow.
‘One of my many accomplishments,’ he declared. ‘Together with reading and writing runes, at which I am a master as much as I am at the
‘I have heard weeping when you speak, for sure,’ Halfdan interrupted savagely, ‘but the only time I heard people listen intently was when you gave us a
That raised a weak chuckle despite the mood, for Gjallandi’s boasts about courtly verse in its various forms and his ability to make decent
Crowbone turned to Adalbert then and said suddenly: ‘
Those who remembered the priest saying this on the beach at Torfness ages since nudged each other at this feat of memory and the priest himself acknowledged it with a murmur of praise and no corrections. Crowbone beamed.
‘Now,’ said a man unseen in the shadows. ‘If you could pluck this axe up as easily as you learn the Christ
