‘A wyrm,’ declared one of the Orkneymen who had come with them, ‘for that stink is its fire-breath, waiting to happen.’
Onund Hnufa gave his usual preliminary grunt and heads turned as he forced his huge, deformed shoulder — as big, it seemed, as the cliff towering over them — into the pack.
‘By the Hammer,’ he growled, then spat derisively. ‘Gather up your skirts and listen to me, you fuds. I am from Mork in Iceland. I have lived a deal of my life with Hekla on one side and Katla on the other, two great mountains only reached across a field of black rock where nothing grows at all. There is this same stink and same white smoke almost all the while from those places — at night I have seen the red glow off them. Folk who live there assure me this is because the World Wyrm itself has his slumbering head right beneath our feet. Yet I have never, ever, in all my life, seen anything that resembled a single scale.’
No-one spoke, for Onund was fearsome when he scathed. In the end, only Murrough dared.
‘Well then. Not Jormungandr’s head, as Onund tells us that is in Iceland. His arse, probably, judging by the smell.’
‘Ha,’ scoffed Halfdan, ‘that is Finn, suffering from his own cooking.’
Finn, who was reeking most of the time, beamed and that brought some chuckles. They were forced, all the same; no-one cared for this place and they had struggled up to it over fresh snow, studded with bits and pieces of men’s life — and the men themselves.
They had found helmets, a scrag-end of fur, a broken spear — a hand. They dug out the bodies at first, saw them frozen as wooden dolls and soon realised there were so many it would take them forever.
‘Haakon’s men,’ Orm declared. ‘Gudrod’s Orkeneyers also. They fought and here is where Gudrod won his victory.’
Crowbone knew he was wondering if the priest, Martin, was among them, for he was not with anyone else. Unless he was alone, of course. It would not surprise Crowbone to find that Martin had come to this place alone, where scores of men had clearly failed.
‘So Erling spoke true,’ he answered, bitter with thought that Gudrod had won.
‘The curse of the axe,’ growled Klaenger and men looked from one to the other, unsure of matters and bitter that they had come all this way after having been told the truth by Erling after all. Orm saw it; he knew the Oathsworn could be relied on, but only those who had clearly walked to his side as they sorted out who was who at the top of the waterfall.
When it became clear that Onund, Murrough and Kaetilmund and the other survivors of the original eight he had taken were back at Orm’s side, together with a good number of the old Red Brothers who considered the Oath binding, Crowbone felt the bitter gall of it in his mouth.
He had the Christmenn and some of those who still thought their prince was gods-blessed and would bring them to riches. Most of the Orkneymen, having gathered up the dead Od and Erling, let themselves be led by Ulfar the shipmaster, who gave no more than a grim nod to Orm, and filtered out, heading back to the coast and their ships.
‘That may have been a mis-move,’ Crowbone frowned to Orm, watching them leave. ‘They may put a torch to our ships and try and strand us here.’
‘Why would they?’ Orm declared. ‘They gave their word.’
Crowbone said nothing for a moment, though it was clear he thought Orm wrong-headed. Then he glanced at the sky, where a distant honking revealed the last skeins of geese, fleeing the land northmen knew as Cold Shores for the south.
‘I have tripped every trap you put me at,’ he said bitterly. ‘Though there may be one or two ahead left for you. We had better hurry, all the same, for the winter is closing in and if we time this badly, we will be iced here for months.’
Orm nodded and forced a smile, trying to mend some bridges.
‘I did not set you at traps,’ he answered. ‘I had work of my own and thought you would want this axe for your greatness. I thought to bring you the key to the King’s Key — the stick Martin wants in return for the Bloodaxe.’
‘You do not want it, then?’ Crowbone snapped back.
Orm did not answer, for the fact that the boy — he must stop thinking of him as the nine year old he had rescued from Klerkon’s privy chains, he snarled to himself — had asked that at all was a crushing stone to all his hopes. In the end, all he could do was shake his head.
‘I thought to make sure your sky did not fall,’ he said, but the words felt as if he was dragging them from some endlessly-deep sea-chest. ‘I handed you some good men and gave you to the care of Hoskuld. All you had to do was go with him to find out where the axe lay.’
‘You knew Martin was at the bottom of it,’ Crowbone countered sullenly. ‘You knew he was pretending to be this Drostan, yet you did not tell me of that.’
‘I was not sure,’ Orm answered. ‘This Drostan may have been a part of it, though Martin was the cunning in it. I am thinking Martin killed Drostan — it would not be beyond him. Once you got to Mann I thought matters would become clear to you.’
‘Clear long before then,’ Crowbone spat back. ‘Hoskuld had carted Martin everywhere laying a trail of enemies to this prize. Hoskuld did not think fit to tell me of it — did he tell you?’
‘No,’ Orm admitted, ‘though I was after thinking something of the same. You should have had patience, Olaf, for Hoskuld would have told you in the end. He did not trust you altogether. Thought you had much to learn.’
‘I taught him a lesson or two,’ Crowbone growled and Orm’s sad eyes rested on him — worse, thought Crowbone, than if he had struck me.
‘You hanged his crew, I hear,’ he said and shook his head sorrowfully. ‘They were good men; I knew them for a long time. What of Hoskuld?’
Crowbone pushed against the sudden shame he felt at the hangings and harshed out a grunt, waving one hand dismissively.
‘Ask Gudrod. He lifted Hoskuld from Mann, but the trader was never heard from again.’
Orm sighed and scrubbed his beard. ‘That was ill done.’
‘It was all ill done,’ Crowbone said, rasped with misery. ‘You should not have used me like some thrall, to run ahead and take the blows.’
Orm’s eyes narrowed and he straightened a little.
‘I did not use you at all. I turned you loose and gave you what I could, so that you might make your own wyrd. I hoped you would stay true to the Oath you swore, hoped you were more of a man and less of a prince. I was wrong everywhere, it seems.’
Crowbone felt the spinning whirl of that, as if the earth had dropped away underneath him. There was a moment when he panicked from the fear of it, of being alone, like a boat cut away from the shore. Then it passed and the world settled.
‘Here we are, then,’ he said, staring Orm in the face. ‘Do we go on together in this?’
The loss was sharp, as if someone had actually died. Orm met the odd-eyed, half defiant stare of him and nodded.
‘Aye,’ he declared, ‘for you found Thorgunna for me, you tell me, and Odin’s hand was in that, for sure. The least I can do now is hold up your sky, which I have done before. But quickly, as your birds in it tell us.’
He stopped and scrubbed his beard, thinking.
‘Erling said Gunnhild and Gudrod had claimed the axe,’ he mused and Finn growled at Crowbone.
‘He might have said a little more on the subject,’ he said, barbed as a hunting arrow, ‘but finds it difficult to speak with an axe above his eyebrows.’
Crowbone admitted the fault with a brief flap of both hands, then squinted at the looming, smoking mountain.
‘Well,’ he growled, ‘he may have gone off with it, or Erling might have thought so, or been told to say as much. We will only learn the truth by going to this mountain.’
He broke off as Bergliot came up, curious to see this legend that was Orm and trying to look at least a little alluring, while swaddled in as many clothes as she could put on.
‘You Norse call this
