hardly any rocks for a long way round, making it a good place to camp — which is why the men who had got there first had done so.
Crowbone arrived to find men panting hard, shoulder to shoulder and the breath rising from them like spray from a blowhole. Kaetilmund looked round, saw him and simply jerked his chin out in front. There were dead beast-men dotted here and there, stiff but not yet frozen; the raven’s feast. Beyond the scattered dead stood men, shields up and weapons ready.
They are iron-grim, these men, Crowbone thought. Faces like bruises, eyes red-rimmed and not looking at you so much as through you to somewhere distant, while the meltwater from their smoking breath ran off their helmets and refroze on their beards. They were stained and bloodied and coldly desperate, their hands on hilt and shaft flexing and clenching. Crowbone half turned, realising they were no different at all from the men at his own back.
‘How many of them, are you thinking?’ Onund asked, craning to see. A stone’s worth, said Gjallandi, though he was prepared to revise that upwards a few times, aiming it at men who tallied laboriously from one to twenty —
Crowbone heard a voice claim three stones’ worth, but that was from Tuke, who came from somewhere north of Jorvik and counted in some eldritch way —
‘There are enough,’ Kaetilmund claimed and the air grew thick and heavy with frosted fear. Crowbone pushed his way to the front and spread his empty hands wide. There was a pause, a stir as if a bird fluttered in the bush of them, then a man stepped from safety and stood looking at Crowbone.
He was middling old, though the cold had crippled his face to that of an old man, a rough, greying beard frozen to it like lichen to a rock and a nose that seemed to spread across what remained of his face. Crowbone knew him as if he had been a brother, had followed the name from Hy to Orkney to here — Erling Flatnose; he felt the ice-spear in his head stab viciously, so that one eye shut and he winced with the pain of it.
Erling watched the boy curiously, saw the sudden twist, the flicker of pain and wondered at it — or if he had seen it at all, for it was gone in an eyeblink. It left a sharp face, coin-weighted yellow braids dangling on either side and the dusting of a good beard rising to meet them. Average height, not any sign of special on him at all and wearing ringmail that a dead man would scorn from the grave.
Yet the eyes Gudrod had warned him about gripped him, one blue, one brown; he felt them on his face like the trail of cold fingers and it made him shiver.
‘Here we are, then, son of Tryggve,’ he declared, attempting to get matters walking on the trail he wanted. ‘Seeking the same, fighting the same. It seems to me that the Sami are watching us and will laugh to see us carve each other up.’
‘No need for it,’ agreed Crowbone, so amiable and quick that Erling was confused. ‘There are other ways to settle matters. Where is Gudrod and that mother of his?’
‘Gone, with the axe you seek, of course. I will be following them once matters are done with here.’
Crowbone laughed and stood, hip-shot, though he trembled and hoped it did not show.
‘So,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘Gudrod has left you here to … what? Kill me? Die for him? For a man with the Bloodaxe of victory, he seems strangely reluctant to face me in person. Perhaps he fears the curse of it.’
Erling shifted slightly, for the thought had entered him also.
‘He plays the game of kings,’ he answered, shrugging. ‘To win it, you get your king to safety.’
Crowbone flung back his head and laughed with what he hoped sounded like genuine delight.
‘Only if you play it on a cloth of nine squares,’ he answered. ‘There are other ways to win — but if that is what you intend, then matters are simple here and only one needs to die.’
Erling nodded, for he had been told to expect this.
‘Were you thinking only two need risk themselves? Yourself being one of them? What does the winner gain?’
‘Everything,’ Crowbone said, wondering at the ease with which Erling had helped steer this course. ‘The winner agrees that his oath-men go their own way unharmed. Those that wish and are acceptable may even join with the winner.’
Onund gave a barking growl at that and Erling heard it, flicked his eyes briefly to the hunchback, then back to Crowbone’s face.
‘It seems not all your oath-men agree,’ he answered.
A prince should always strive to be good, Crowbone thought, but if necessary he should be capable of evil.
‘Some are oathed to me, others have taken an Odin Oath to each other. Those whom we do not trust, we can kill,’ he harshed out, loud enough for all those behind to hear it. ‘For we are choosers of the slain, you and me. I am thinking it will not matter to you which ones I take a mistrust to, since you will be dead.’
Erling laughed.
‘Agreed,’ he said and it came to Crowbone, too late, that Erling would not be the one he would fight, as he had thought. Even as the spit dried in his mouth, he saw the man turn and raise a hand. Everyone watched the youth step out, gliding as if on bone skates, the sword in a ring at his belt.
‘This is Od,’ Erling said. ‘Od, this is Olaf Tryggvasson, called Crowbone. Kill him.’
The youth flicked the sword out of his belt-ring with one hand as Crowbone drew his own blade; men made yells of encouragement as he fell into a fighting crouch, watching the youth called Od, who made no movement at all save for the tilt of his head as he studied Crowbone.
Crowbone saw the face in the slow heartbeats that ticked away. Beautiful as a girl, it was, untouched by the weather or the world and, for a moment, Crowbone felt a sharp pang deep in him and wanted the boy to go away, to keep his face untroubled and unblemished.
Od saw the eyes of the man he would kill, blue and brown, and thought they were pretty, like agate stones he had found once on a beach. He smiled; they would be good on a sacrifice to Tyr and the god would be pleased. Above them was a domed helmet with a plume of white horsehair braiding its way out of the top and he thought he might like that — then he frowned.
‘It has a dent in it,’ he said and Crowbone, puzzled, did not understand him at first, thought it some ploy and watched him warily.
‘Your war hat,’ the boy said, waving the sword in the general direction of Crowbone’s head. ‘It has a dent in it.’
‘So will your head,’ Crowbone croaked out, ‘since you do not wear one at all.’
Od smiled brightly at that and shook his head.
‘I never get hurt,’ he declared proudly. ‘Tyr protects me.’
The boy moved then and Crowbone almost squealed with the terrible speed of him — but he got his sword in the way and Od’s blade skittered off it with a high, thin tang. Then the boy was whirling, sure-footed, across the frozen stream, skipping like a flung stone.
He did it again and Crowbone fended it off again, though he felt the sick certainty that he could not hit this youth, who seemed like smoke. Onund thought so, too, and looked at Kaetilmund and they nodded — whatever happened, the Oathsworn would not become Gudrod’s men.
The third whirl of the sword was another high slash and Crowbone turned it yet again and this time managed a half-hearted slash of his own, but Od was already turning, almost strolling, back into striking range.
Then Crowbone saw it, saw that the fourth would come in like the others, but it would be feint, for he would whip it low and up, hoping to get under Crowbone’s defence and cut up into the armpit.
It came, the high cut, a whirr like a bird wing and Crowbone held back — when the feint slice came in, his sword met it with a resounding ring of steel and, when Crowbone had shaken the sting of sweat from his eyes, he saw that Od was frowning.
Men were yelling on both sides, screaming at their men to finish it. Erling was only aware of them as a noise, like insect whine, for he was watching Od. He had seen the move, seen the strange-eyed boy counter it and the frown on Od’s face; for the first time he felt a worm of unease creep into his belly, for Od had never taken so long to finish a man.
It was the game of kings, thought Crowbone, only faster and using steel. He felt better for knowing it, for the game of kings was his game; he smiled.
