and straightened into the eyes of Crowbone.
‘Is he dead?’
Erling, his face twisted still with the shock of it, heard Crowbone’s question and the truth of it crashed like a wave, so that he grunted and almost buckled to his knees. The boy was dead. Od was gone.
When no-one answered, Crowbone shoved folk away from him and struggled up, weaving, hoping his knees would not buckle. The earth heaved like a ship in a swell.
‘As well,’ Crowbone said to Erling. ‘That boy was wrong in his head.’
Erling gave a hoarse, high shrill of sound and Crowbone, gasping with the pain it caused him, hauled out the axe stuck down his belt in the small of his back. Onund and Kaetilmund had grabbed the struggling Erling, were forcing him to his knees, the great hunchback cooing at him as if he was soothing a restive horse.
‘You need to guard your mouth, Crowbone,’ Kaetilmund said bitterly.
‘You mistake me for someone who cares about a man trying to kill me,’ Crowbone spat back. He stepped forward to where Erling, his eyes raving and wild, struggled and kicked, held tight by the two men.
For a moment he stood, while Erling, his mouth covered by Onund’s massive hand, hoarsed out screams between the fingers and lurched, fighting to get to Crowbone now that his target was close.
‘In the name of the gods,’ Kaetilmund panted, ‘move away at least.’
Crowbone looked at them each in turn and shook his head. He could not believe that Erling was still alive and wondered why these, his men, had allowed it. His shoulder burned and the side of his head had that cold icicle driven in it. In a movement, quick as a snake strike, he brought up the butt of the hand-axe and slapped Erling in the forehead, then grunted and cursed with the pain it seared through his shoulder and into his whole body.
Erling slumped like a sack, then stirred and blinked.
‘Let him go,’ Crowbone ordered and Kaetilmund and Onund did so; Erling fell to his knees and started to retch.
‘Behave yourself,’ Crowbone said to him, ‘or I will use the blade.’
Then he looked at Onund and Kaetilmund.
‘This one should be dead. He wanted to attack the jarl you are oathed to protect — yet all you did was struggle with him.’
‘Which oath?’ asked Onund savagely. ‘The one all Oathsworn give to Odin? Or the one you had others swear to you alone?’
Crowbone ignored him, looked round at Erling’s tight-faced men while their leader wiped his mouth and climbed to his feet.
‘Who among you is a shipmaster?’ Crowbone demanded and, after a series of shuffles and looking from one to the other, a man stepped forward, small and ice-grimmed, his eyes like wary beasts in the thicket of his face.
‘I am Ulfar Arnkelsson,’ he declared. ‘I know the stars and the waves, rarely make a mistake in runes and am a shipmaster of note. I can ski a little …’
‘I am not looking to hire you,’ Crowbone snarled and the man’s teeth clicked together.
‘You should be wondering why you are all alive,’ Crowbone told him and the men at his back, ‘so I shall tell you. You will take the body of Od back to Gudrod in Orkney. You will take those men stupid enough to pass up the chance of riches with me and had better hope there are enough of them to crew a ship, for you will get no more.’
Ulfar glanced over Crowbone’s shoulder, to where Erling stood like a weary ox.
‘No,’ said Crowbone softly, shrugging the cloak free and leaving himself naked to the waist, though he felt no cold. ‘Do not look to Flatnose, for his day is done.’
He turned then and struck, knowing the distance between them to the last finger-width. The axe split Erling’s head sideways under the hairline so hard that the man’s feet shot out from under him. He hit the ice of the frozen riverbank with a crash, blood and yellow gleet spilling from his head, cracked like an eggshell. If he made a sound, or knew what had hit him, he gave no last sign of it.
There was a howl of outrage and the Orkneymen stirred like a broken byke; weapons came up, shields clattered.
‘Mother of God,’ whispered Adalbert, but Onund roared him down.
‘Odin’s holy arse, boy — what are you?’
Crowbone fixed him with his odd-eyed stare as his own men fell into fighting crouches, weapons ready.
‘A prince,’ he rasped back, ‘who knows the game of kings enough not to leave a threat at his back.’
There was sense in it, enough so that Kaetilmund, sick at the ease with which Crowbone had killed Erling, flicked a worried gaze at Onund. The Icelander’s face was thunderous, his neck drawn in and his hump towering up like the mountain itself.
‘The gods have given up on you, boy prince,’ he snarled. ‘And so have I.’
Crowbone tensed. He had half-expected it, but the actual moment of it was crushing. Behind, he heard confusion and angry voices, knew that men were drawing apart, the Oathsworn sliding towards Onund and Kaetilmund. Across the way, the Orkneymen were looking at one another and spotting a chance, while Erling and Od bled sluggish tarns on to the scuffed ice.
The cold air grew thick with fear and tension, the shouting rose up like the smoke of their panting breath. Kaetilmund blinked once or twice, looked at the furled Stooping Hawk banner he carried, then flung it at Crowbone’s feet and stepped back; Crowbone’s men growled and the yellow bitch, picking up on the thick angry air, whined uneasily, not knowing who was the enemy.
Then a voice cut through it like the whirl of Crowbone’s hand-axe.
‘I have come just in time, it seems.’
There was silence. Orm Bear-Slayer stepped up over the edge of the falls trail and men spilled up after him, springing eager and weapons ready. One was Finn.
‘By the Hammer,’ he said, with a look towards Crowbone that mingled disgust and admiration, ‘you have not learned the lesson of axe and head, have you, boy?’
THIRTEEN
Crowbone’s Crew
There was not one among them who liked the place, though only one admitted it openly, scowling up at the slick, grey-green rocks and the dark cleft spilling out white smoke which stank.
‘It has always been my belief,’ Murrough grunted, glancing uneasily at the dark split and the white vapour, ‘that such a place is the home of a dragon.’
It raised hackles on everyone at once, for the suck and roar of it, with the hot, smoking breath that went with it, certainly looked as much like the breathing of a great, scaled wyrm as any had imagined. Finn, of course, merely grinned, heady with delight at having found warmth and only slightly annoyed by the smell.
‘What do you know of dragons?’ he countered, while the Irisher glowered back at him. ‘You come from a country where there are not even snakes, let alone a decent-sized wyrm.’
‘Regardless,’ Murrough muttered. ‘A hole in a wall of rock with stinking hot smoke coming from it is not a welcoming place.’
‘Dwarves,’ agreed Tuke. ‘If not wyrm, then a
Then he grinned.
‘Or a
Since he looked so much like one, folk made warding signs, not entirely certain he was not planning to introduce them to his kin.
‘Cursed, so it is,’ Murrough added with relish and everyone nodded and agreed that this was almost certainly the case. Finn, festooned with bundles, stopped adjusting himself and stared at the Irisher, clearly impressed.
