Crowbone

tongue, we would all be thankful — do we know where it lies?’

‘As to that,’ Gjallandi declared, before Crowbone could snap back, ‘you should have paid more attention to those Sami at Kol’s steading. They speak of this axe and say it might be the Sampo, hidden in a mountain.’

‘Now I know this,’ Onund declared, ‘I know even less than before — what is a Sampo, then? You are rich in seidr, Crowbone — I have seen and felt it — do you know?’

Crowbone was pleased at the reference to his powers, but he had never heard of a Sampo and admitted it, then looked expectantly at Gjallandi. The skald sat and composed himself neatly by the ice-grumbling fire; folk sighed, seeing the preliminaries of a performance.

It was long and involved, as good sagas are, but the gist of it seemed to be that some Sami smith of note was forced to make a Sampo, a great work of magic, in return for a bride. Then a sorceress stole it and, in the struggle to get it back, this Sampo was lost.

‘But what is it?’ Halfdan demanded and he was only the first of a clamour. Gjallandi shrugged.

‘No-one knows,’ he answered. ‘Some say it was the World Tree itself, which is obvious nonsense. Others say it was the ever-grinding quernstone that made flour, salt or gold from thin air. Others have it that it was a strange device that the Greeks call horoscopium for reading what the Norns will weave in the actions of stars. I have heard also that it is a Bloodaxe — Odin’s Daughter — from the time when the young AllFather still had both his eyes.’

There was silence for a time, while eyes glittered in the half-dark bright with new interest.

‘I like the gold-milling one best,’ said Tuke, who was small and round, with a beard as bristled as a badger’s arse, so that folk called him Duergar, meaning Black Dwarf.

‘I am standing beside you there,’ agreed Murrough.

‘I favour the axe,’ Halfdan added, ‘for I am hoping it is the one which makes our Crowbone into a king and lets us all become rich.’

Folk laughed. Adalbert cleared his throat.

‘Cornucopia,’ he said and eyes turned to him until he felt the scorn in them and raised his head into the heat of it.

‘A Greek horn from the Godless times,’ he said, ‘which poured out whatever your heart desired and never grew less for it. Seems to me this Sampo is whatever folk wish it to be — and that is the work of the Devil, who tried to persuade Christ himself to all the world’s power.’

‘And was refused,’ declared one of the Christmenn passionately, then crossed himself; Crowbone was surprised to see that it was Wermund, one of the Kiev Slavs. There was a pause, split by the crackle and roar of the fire; somewhere, snow loosened by the heat slithered from the trees and men glanced round, to make sure the sentries were alert.

‘He turned down all the power of the world?’ Crowbone demanded and then shrugged into Adalbert’s stern nod.

‘He had a lot to learn about the game of kings, then.’

‘There is no game,’ Adalbert answered flatly, ‘for God spake that the world should be governed by kings and princes.’

‘Did he now?’ Crowbone said, staring levelly at the priest with his odd eyes. ‘So was it your God that appointed who rules the Northlands? To stand against Haakon is to stand against the White Christ?’

Adalbert frowned a little and folded his hands in his sleeves.

‘Just so — and not so. Haakon is a heathen. Those unanointed who stand against an anointed king are not on the side of good Christians, only of the Aesir,’ he decreed. ‘All the baptised kings and princes will shun such a man — will join in war against him.’

Crowbone’s eyes narrowed, but Adalbert did not flinch.

‘You are brave, priest,’ he answered slowly, ‘but not invulnerable.’

Adalbert waved a dismissive hand. ‘We can sit here calling each other names until Heimdall blows his horn, as you people say, but it will not change matters.You want to be king in Norway, but that will never be until you embrace Christ. Look at Haakon — he is a heathen and the world lines up to topple him.’

‘Haakon is still king in Norway,’ Crowbone responded. ‘He threw your kind into the sea.’

‘Is he the true king, then?’ answered Adalbert. ‘Or are you, as you claim? Christ will decide, not the gods of the Aesir. Nor any cursed axe.’

Finnmark, the mountain of Surman Suuhun …

Martin

No-one wanted to go in that smoking cleft in the dripping grey stones. There was a hot wind from it that seemed to pause every now and then before whining out of the cleft in a gout of white smoke and the stink of rotten eggs.

‘Surtr,’ muttered one of the men and Hromund glanced uneasily round, then up, blinking in the snow which had been falling steadily all night and into the short, leaden day. The rest of the peak hunched over them, capped with snow, misted in a sinister shroud. He did not like to admit it, but the man had the right of it here — this was a place of Surtr, the fire jotunn, and all his kin spawned from Ymir’s armpit. No place for men; he shivered.

Martin saw it, knew it was not the cold and curled his lip back on his black stumps; this was where the axe was and he had expected no help. This was where Sueno had known it would be, hissing it out as he clutched Drostan’s rough wool sleeve, demanding promises that the astonished and frightened monk agreed to.

Afterwards, Martin had sternly told the trembling, bewildered Drostan that he had placed his soul in peril by listening to such heathen blasphemy at all, never mind making promises. And, when the monk knelt, eyes squeezed shut to receive absolution from Martin, the clerk regular, Martin had given him it, with a stone. He had absolved Drostan so fiercely that he had crushed one of his own fingers, but he scarcely felt that among so many of the pains he bore.

The reek swirled round him, stinging his eyes and he saw the faces of the Norway men waver and blur, as if under water, then looked at the cleft in the rock, so like the unclean part of a woman’s body. Such a pagan, blasphemous item — what else would it be but in one of the entrances to Hell itself, reeking with the stink of the Pit?

‘Who will come?’ he demanded, knowing none of them would, for they were followers of false gods and their hearts knew it even if their heads did not. They did not have the power of God to keep Satan’s imps away — Martin did not doubt for a moment that he would meet the denizens of hell and slaves of the Fallen Angel inside that hole in the mountain.

The wind sighed out of the gash and men backed away from it, crouching down. Hromund looked round and saw that none of them would go; he wanted to say that he would, but had persuasive arguments with himself that his place was outside, with his men.

Eindride saw the scornful look on the priest’s face and felt anger surge in him, stoked it with more indignation that this twisted, hirpling follower of a coward’s godlet would dare the place while good northers squatted and looked at the ice and rocks rather than each other.

As good as courage, it welled up and burned the words out of him.

‘I will go.’

Men offered up ‘heya’ to the courage of the archer — then blinked in astonishment as Tormod shouldered through them.

‘You have a wee son at home — I will go instead.’

He and Eindride looked at each other and the archer smiled at what had not been said — a thrall would not be much missed, even a king’s favourite. He turned to Hromund.

‘If things go badly,’ he said, ‘you will see that my wife and son are safe?’

Hromund nodded and Eindride split his ice-clotted beard with a grin that burst blood on to his cold-chapped lips, then clapped Tormod on the back.

‘Together, then,’ he said.

Two men, not about to be outdone by a thrall, king’s favourite or not, sprang up and announced their names — Kjartan and Arnkel — and their intention not to be shamed. The rest, too afraid even to worry about the shame, offered up no sound at all.