When Od skipped in again, Crowbone sucked the breath from those watching — he flipped his sword from right to left hand and Od, just as he started to cut, found himself open all along one side and desperately changed his mind. His feet skidded a little and Crowbone, exultant, slashed at him.
There was another clash of iron and the boy reeled away, his beautiful face twisted, pale and ugly with fear and hate now. This had never happened before. He had never been made to do this before, to feel this way.
Crowbone heard the rasp of his own breath in his ears, felt the sick hopelessness. He should have had him, there and then — by all the gods, this Od was fast. Perhaps he really was beloved of Tyr One-Hand. Perhaps Gunnhild’s
Od came in, all anger and blinding speed, so that Crowbone backed away, a foot skidded on the ice and he went down on one knee and the helmet, badly fastened, slid off and clattered away; men howled and roared as Od closed in and started to hack, madly, blind with fury.
Erling shoved to the front, roaring with anger. ‘No, no — kill him, Od. Kill him now.’
But the boy was using brute strength and no finesse. A sliver to the right or left and Crowbone, sword held up and across him, would have been cut to the bloody core — but Od slammed his sword against Crowbone’s blade again and again, as if trying to drive it down into Crowbone’s own pale, upturned face.
There was a sudden sharp bell of sound and everything stopped. No-one spoke, or even seemed to breathe; Od stared at the shattered nub of his sword blade while the main length of it spun lazily through the air. When it landed, with a soft tinkle that skidded it along the frozen stream, time and noise began all over again.
Crowbone hurled himself upright. He had this chance, this one chance and Od, stunned and squealing, backed away. Crowbone tried once, twice, three times to carve his blade into the body of the boy, but, even with the broken remnants of his sword, Od’s hand-speed glissaded the danger away from him.
Panting, sobbing for breath, Crowbone paused briefly and launched a new attack. Od half-turned, dropped to one heel and flung the broken blade at Crowbone’s face, making him shy sideways and lose his concentration. Something whacked his sword hand and he felt the fingers go numb and uncurl, heard the blade ringing on the ice. Erling’s men bellowed out hoarse cheers.
Crowbone closed with the boy, before he could get away and find a new weapon; he was stronger and taller, yet the fight had sucked at him and they both locked together, straining for advantage, feet skidding on the ice and snow. There was an axe snugged in the belt at the small of Crowbone’s back but there was no way he could get to it quickly, even when he freed one hand.
It had irritated Crowbone since he had started to wear it, but he had had the idea from Finn and the nail in his boot. Crowbone, since he had strapped the dagger sheath to the outside of his left ankle, wondered how Finn stood the rubbing and annoyance — and he did not even have a sheath to ease matters. More than a few times, Crowbone had thought of taking the contraption off; now he prayed to Odin for the wisdom the god had clearly provided.
His hand drew it out, a long, thin, sliver of steel only slightly shorter than the length of his forearm. He got it up and round, saw Od’s eyes widen with shock when he saw it and felt the great surge of triumph that comes with the certainty of victory — then the world exploded in red mist and pain.
He stumbled back, blinded by tears, desperately dashed them and the blood from his nose, cracked by Od’s forehead. He saw the boy, smiling, standing hip-shot and easy and with the dagger dangling loosely in one hand; he had not even felt the boy pluck it from his hand.
Here it comes then, he thought numbly. Somewhere, the Norns’ weave had gone awry, for this was clearly not what Olaf Tryggvasson had seen of his own future — but it was happening. The snips were closing on his thread.
He lunged, the boy skipped away, smiling, while people jeered.
‘Freyja’s tits, boy — fucking kill him!’ screamed Erling and Od, frowning, struck like a snake. Crowbone saw the wink of it, the cold, shining stab of it and then the length was in his shoulder, right in, driving the rot-brown metal rings into his flesh, spearing through them and the sweating skin and the raw meat until it grated on the bone; he screamed — though there was no pain yet — at the violation of the iron in his flesh.
Od slid, skate smooth, behind him, keeping one hand on the dagger, putting the other round Crowbone’s pale, sweating forehead; Erling tensed and dared not speak, for the pair were close to the edge of the waterfall now, not on the frozen spill, but to the right of it, where the rocks were just as slick with ice spray.
Crowbone felt the wash of pain, then, the hot, sick surge of it and his legs almost buckled. Behind him, Od crooned and stroked his hair, sweat-plastered to his forehead. At the same time, he worked the dagger into the wound a little more, a slow circle, so that Crowbone could feel it in great red billows of pain.
He heard Od chuckle, a wet, sick sound. He felt the heat of the boy behind him, the groin heat and the hardness and the revulsion blasted the pain away in a white light. Od’s chin was down on his shoulder, his breath hot under Crowbone’s ear and Crowbone took one hand and placed it over Od’s, the one holding the knife, just as the boy began to intone his dedication to Tyr.
Od stopped and frowned, for he had been about to cut Crowbone’s throat, but he laughed instead, for now Crowbone seemed to be trying to prevent him moving the dagger out of the wound. It would keep it from his throat, but Od did not mind a little more play; when Crowbone’s second hand came up and covered the first, he grew even more eager for the idea. He did not understand it, but the pleasure of it seemed to suck the breath from him and he wanted desperately to press himself tight against Crowbone.
Three hands clasped on the hilt, they stood for a moment, their mingled breath smoking, cooling and pearling. Men fell silent, not understanding what was happening, why one did not kill the other and there was unease at it.
Then Crowbone roared and thrust with all his strength. The dagger went through, right to the grind of the hilt on the ringmail of his shoulder under the bone and out the other side, into Od’s neck. The pain tore the feet out from under Crowbone, sent him blind and retching to his knees — but Od staggered and clutched himself.
Erling saw it then, the dagger through from one side of Crowbone to the other, saw Od grab his neck and scream. No great jet of blood, Erling saw with a leap of relief. Not a dangerous cut then — but he saw the boy take his hand away and look at it, then search for Erling across the distance between them, his fine, girl’s face twisted with shock and fear, the blood clear on his fingertips.
He has never been injured, Erling realised. Tyr has failed him …
He was about to call out for him to stay, to wait. Od reeled, panicking and Erling saw the boy’s eyes roll up into his head, one foot slither out from under him and he yelled, seeing the inevitable. With a sharp cry and a slither like the rushing of wind, Od vanished over the edge; there was a crash and a shrill screaming that ripped through everyone, so that some crouched and put their hands over their ears. Then silence.
Surfacing, with a whoop as if he had plunged into cold water. Breaching like a whale from an ocean of dark into blinding agony that made him roar.
‘Easy, easy,’ Bergliot soothed, while she seared lances into him and men held him down. He saw her, fingers and bone needle bloody, hooking another rusted iron ring out of the wound and flicking it away like a tick from a dog. The cold chewed on the stripped bare shoulder, the rest of him swaddled in a cloak, his hauberk and tunic both removed.
There was a flurry of movement behind Crowbone that drew all their heads round; men milled, uncertain and uneasy about what to do next as Erling came up, with Onund and Kaetilmund, the three of them carrying the body of Od. They had scambled down scree and snow to the foot of the frozen falls, Crowbone realised, while Gjallandi and Bergliot had been busy with his shoulder, howling more agony into him with their attempts at healing. Who did they now stand with, he wondered?
Kaetilmund saw Crowbone’s stare and ignored it, for his mind and eyes were still full of Od in the raven tree. When he and Onund and the tallow-faced Erling had skidded and slithered to the foot of the waterfall, they saw Od spreadeagled across the splintered remains of the dead, stunted pine, skewered through arms and legs and body.
The worst was the branch which had gone up under his chin, needled through his tongue and come out of his mouth. The force of him landing had snapped it, so that his ruined face lolled sideways, staring at them with eyes like a fresh-kicked dog. On a rock nearby, the disapproving raven glared at them, black and unwinking.
Getting him off had been a hard, panting struggle of cracking ice-hard branches, but they managed it and lugged him back up the side of the falls again. Onund, sucking air into his searing lungs, lowered the feet of the boy
