Crowbone

Martin, staff in his cold gnarled hands, shuffled towards the dark opening; the more practical Tormod organised torches, food and water.

‘Gloria Patri, et Fili, et Spiritui Sancto,’ Martin intoned at the entrance, raising the staff up as if to strike down an enemy. ‘Sicut erat in principio, et nunc et semper, et in saeccula saeculorum, Amen.’

Eindride gave a sound, half way between cough and grunt, then pushed the priest scornfully to one side and strode into the maw of the place, one hand clutching the Thor amulet at his throat. Martin hirpled after him. Kjartan licked spit on to his lips, Arnkel took a deep breath and they both ducked after Martin, as if plunging under freezing water. At the entrance, Tormod turned once and met Hromund’s eyes, smiled wryly and then was gone.

Hromund and the men sat for a moment, as if waiting for something cataclysmic, but nothing happened at all. The smoke stopped pouring from the hole, the wind in it moaned a little, there was a pause, then it began again. From somewhere came a distant rumble, as if a storm brewed and Hromund shifted.

‘Make fires and a camp,’ he ordered, cramped and stiff with cold. ‘We will wait here.’

He did not say how long they would wait and the scores of rimed men did not want to ask. They did not have long, as it turned out, for the short day was sliding to death when Gudrod’s men wolfed out of the shadows, led by a Tyr-howling boy.

Not far inside, pausing to tie cloths round their mouths to help them breathe in the foul reek of the place, Martin and the others heard the shrieks and crouched. Kjartan whimpered, sure that the Sami animal-men were coming; Tormod snarled him to silence and they waited, blinking in the guttering light of the torch, the sweat stinging their eyes. Nothing changed.

Martin grew impatient, wanting to move on, but no-one shifted and the reek swirled round them. Nothing changed.

Except …

‘Someone is coming,’ Eindride said and they all turned to where the faint iced light from the entrance had been a comfort, a thread leading back to the world of men.

Now, they saw the red-gold of a bobbing torch and Eindride nocked an arrow, growling. Martin crouched, wary as a rat and looking over his shoulder; there was screaming down there, a moaning shriek that shaved the skin from the back of his neck.

Then a voice from behind the red-gold torch whispered out like the wings of bats. A woman’s voice, old and soft as sealskin.

‘My son bids me tell you that it would be better if you turned over your King piece. You have lost this game.’

TWELVE

Finnmark, the mountain of Surman Suuhun …

The Witch-Queen’s Crew

WHEN she thought of ravens at all, which was not often or with any regard, she thought always of the white one. They said the worst winters were when AllFather let loose the third of his ravens, the white one. While his black brothers, Thought and Memory, stuck their heads under one hunched wing, the white raven trailed frosted pinfeathers over the world, teased clouds with talons, drawing out the long, slow tumble of soft white, silent as sleep that fell on high peaks, was razored by thin crags, sifted softly into the deep soul of the world.

Once, long ago, beyond this place, she had been a girl in a fire-warmed home who looked out to a world softening to curves of drifting landscape, looked out in wonder at how the world could come to such a whispering end. She was young and hugged herself then, wishing for warmer winds and the kiss of sun on her skin.

It was not to be. She had been brought here not much later and ever since the only world that existed was the one of short, blazing-passionate summers and long winters full of dancing night fires that skeined the dark with green and red.

There had been travellers, the curious and brave who tried to seek her out. The ones who came for riches seldom arrived, but those who sought wisdom were allowed and sometimes stayed long enough to tell her their own secrets and some of the workings of the world beyond the fire mountain. There had even been two Greeks and a Serkland Arab who all professed to know the secrets of snow and other matters, speaking loftily of winds and tides and clouds.

Once, she had travelled out of the mountain, out of the Finnmark, hoping to learn more of this strange new god, the Christ. In the cut of cold, folk struggled to badly-heated eggshells of stone where Christ prayers smoked; some who shivered there secretly went home to bind their hearth with an older invoking. Those she smiled at, for there was hope for them — then she came home to the smouldering mountain and left them to their world.

Yet she envied all of them, for they all crouched by fires, succoured by the light as much as the heat, sharing a hope as old as dark that the flames would not fail. It was no longer a part of her life, to be with them, to have ones she loved and who loved her.

So here she was at the end of days, pushed by obligation and if any saw her they fastened their lips on it. Ajatar’s handmaiden, they called her, which made her smile. It had pained her, that name from her own Sami folk, but she knew what made them liken her to the favourite of a goddess of pestilence and disease, who could strike you with a look and who suckled serpents. They reflected their own twists of ugly suspicion on her, making her monstrous.

Yet even some of them came to her, struggling up the fire mountain for the power they believed she had. Wise woman some called her and she liked that name, though it was plain and there was pride enough left in her to resent it; all women were wise, long before her age and certainly by it, for they had learned the feel of the world. Younger folk were not for listening and so missed a deal of life, for you fished more meat out of that cauldron by just looking and remembering.

It was all about Hugin and Munin, the black brothers of the white raven, all about Thinking and Remembering and there was enough of the norther in her to appreciate that. The north god, AllFather, knew this, had learned this through hanging pain and spear-thrust, nine nights on the World Tree for the whisper of runes, the mystery she knew well as a result.

Those northers who feared her called her a silly auld wummin, only half believing it was true, hoping that she was diminished by them making her seem small. Some, who knew a little better, called her ‘cunning’ and that never bothered her, although she doubted it meant what they thought. She did not mind the scathing wyrd- rider either and was as likely to tell folk that she had wyrd needed riding as ‘farewell’ when she had decided to close the door on herself.

Only a few called her by her true name, a name older even than the dancing lights that split the long north dark. Spaekona. Witch-Queen. It was the name they used when they came with heads lowered and eyes resting everywhere but on her own, twisting their hands in their lap and looking for daftness they should not be seeking.

She did not hear it from those who wanted a leech wort release from pain, or root potion to help with a sad loss, or relief from the sickness of the long dark. She only heard it from those wanting to snare an unwilling man, or curse a rival, or lose a bairn. When she refused them, that was when they hissed ‘spaekona’ under their breath and for those whose hate made them bold, she had her hunters, with their skin cloaks and spears. Those hunters knew her true worth, knew she belonged to the north mountains and them and understood the wordless bargain that went back before the first handsealed contract, beyond even the blood oath.

Now they watched her closely, hunkered round fires that were near yet far enough away and wearing the full masks of the beasts they killed, though she only half understood why. She did not mind being worshipped for it was the least due to her, latest in a long line who were chosen for this. Last in a long line, she thought suddenly, unless a new goddess is found to learn from me.

The one who had gone before her — she could not remember her name now — had sent men to her village and stolen her, such was her desperation. There had been a long time of fear and hate, then a moment when she