is rare, for all his boasts. Finn kills from the front and it is that iron nail you want to watch at work.’
Finn gave a huge burst of laughter and acknowledged Crowbone with a wave. Men yelled out and smacked weapons on their shields, taunting the creeping Sami. There was a shout from the front and men hunkered down, shields up, almost without thinking; the air flickered and arrows shunked into scarred wood, or skittered off the rocks. Knots of Sami ran to within range and hurled little throwing spears which clattered and bounced; folk jeered and yelled, while Crowbone pounced on the shafts and, one in either hand, hurled them both at once back over the heads of his men, shouting: ‘Idu na vy!’
The Slavs knew that one — the great Prince Sviatoslav’s war-yell to his enemies. I am coming against you. Orm raised his sword in salute hoping, even as the ranks roared at the expertise of the young Crowbone, that few remembered how Sviatoslav was now part of a Pecheneg war chief’s drinking cup.
‘That’s a fine skill,’ Svenke Klak said to Crowbone. ‘Is it as hard to learn as that snatching in mid-air trick?’
Crowbone grinned and shook his head.
‘You cannot learn it,’ he announced loudly. ‘It is a gift of the gods.’
Men who knew him, though, shook their heads, half-admiring, half-amazed at the truth of it. They had seen him practise such throwing daily, while his sea-rotten ringmail showed where he swam in it; they knew he had his face set on being a saga-hero.
Crowbone was about to tell Svenke more about how only some men had his hand luck, but the next flurry of missiles came, a mix of short spears and arrows, zipping and clattering dangerously. Svenke had half-turned to listen, his mouth open and a grin lopsided on it when the spear spanged off the black rock wall, splintered and broke, the point spinning harmless away and the broken shaft hitting him in the throat, just above the leather- thonged rim of his beloved ringmail, with the sound of a spade striking wet dung.
He staggered back, looked amazed at the lump of wood which had somehow just sprouted from him and turned his bewildered face to Crowbone, who half reached out as if to pluck the words Svenke’s mouth worked to form — but all that came out was a gout of black-scarlet and he fell backwards with a clatter.
He was dead by the time Crowbone reached him, which was a mercy, for he could never have lived long with such a wound. Murrough cursed and saw Crowbone’s face take on a pinched look — Halfdan moved steadily down the thick-ranked Oathsworn, telling those who craned to see who had been hit to watch their front and keep their shields up.
The stink of the place, the swirling misted smoke, the rattling rain of missiles and a thin, high shrieking wind ate at courage like worm on a keel, so that Finn and Orm had to move into the ranks, slapping shoulders and telling folk to stand, for they were starting to shuffle backwards. After a pause, Crowbone straightened from Svenke Klak’s body and did the same. He shoved the man’s death in the black sea-chest deep inside him and clashed the lid shut on it. Just another lost counter in the game of kings …
The actual charge came almost as a relief, but folk had been watching it curl on them like a falling wave and had braced for it. This time, Crowbone did not see any of the enemy, for the Oathsworn of Orm were the ones with numbers here and formed the front two ranks. He heard the furred Sami crash on the shields, saw wood splinter up, heard the Oathsworn howl like wolves and their enemy scream and die.
It was an eyeblink, no more, but enough for the Sami to leave a heap of reindeer-clad bodies almost three deep in front of the locked shields; spearmen killed the moaners close enough to reach and those who were too far away were left to groan and cry for help, for no-one wanted to leave the shieldwall to finish them until such cries started to itch their teeth.
The moments crawled away and the thin wind’s shrieking bounced like thrown spears down the rocks of the cleft. Men passed leather water flasks back and forth; Svenke was carried off and other men bound up welts and scratches. Styr and Atli banged helmets together, panting and howling at each other — still here, they roared. Still here.
Then Klaenger appeared, panting slightly, face streaming and his eyes red from the acrid white smoke.
‘You have to see this,’ he said to Crowbone. ‘Better to bring a few men, I am thinking. Bring Boomer and the priest, too, for we may need what lore they both know.’
The curiosity burned everyone when Crowbone called the pair of them over, ignoring Orm and Finn, who scowled and questioned Klaenger themselves.
‘I found a way through the mountain.’
He paused, looked from Orm to Crowbone and back, licking dry lips.
‘There is no snow beyond it. No snow at all.’
Orm took Finn and Murrough, left Kaetilmund in charge, with Halfdan to take over if he was killed. Crowbone, with a look at Orm’s two grim warriors and his own men, the tremble-lipped skald, the determined priest and the grimly fearful Klaenger, slid across black stones, slush and puddles, into a wind that seemed to bounce and scream down the rocks, streaming all the stink and smoke round and behind them.
The cleft kinked to the right and Klaenger held up one hand, which froze them in mid-step — Crowbone realised the yellow bitch had come with him and crouched, trembling, by his side. He did not want to turn and see Bergliot, for he would have to order her back and knew she would defy him.
‘This is where I saw the light,’ Klaenger said. ‘I thought it might be a way out.’
‘Did you get to the part where such a thought found your feet?’ Murrough demanded.
‘
‘Not the time for lessons,’ he snarled back and the bland face inclined itself in a gentle nod.
‘Nobody should be punished for his thoughts,’ Orm translated, then looked mildly at Crowbone, who was sure he was being mocked and whose glare said he did not like it.
‘I say that for Finn,’ Orm added blandly. ‘He does not like not knowing what is being said.’
Finn, grinning, confirmed it with a nod.
‘Well?’ Crowbone demanded into the silence that followed. ‘Do you all stay here, go back or go on with me?’
Klaenger, hackled up like an annoyed dog at Murrough’s implication, growled, ‘My feet found the thought you mentioned. Follow me.’
Then he paused and twisted a grin at the big Irisher.
‘Do not believe what you hear or see.’
That curdled the flesh on all of them and Finn cursed his back for the mystery he was leaving, but he was already gone, threading into the skeined smoke, before anyone could get him to speak plain.
The wind moaned and screamed like gulls, it seemed to Crowbone, mournful shrieks, hot and fetid. Murrough gripped his axe more tightly and glanced sideways at Orm, who glared back at him, raising an eyebrow as if daring him to start in about the very breath of a sleeping dragon.
Then they stepped beyond the smoke, to where ranks of heads screamed on their poles, sightless eyes staring, snaggle-toothed mouths open, the last of their hair wisping round the ruin of their faces. The heads shrieked at them so that everyone froze and crouched — save for the yellow bitch, who bounded forward and growled and barked. Up ahead, Klaenger stood, unconcerned and enjoying a measure of revenge for what he had been asked to do. Then he laughed and smacked one of the heads, so that it spilled from its stake and rolled towards them. The dog chased it, barking.
‘First time I saw them I shat myself,’ he pointed out. ‘But I threw a stone at one and nothing happened, so I had a closer look.’
He indicated that others should and Finn stirred the grinning horror with the point of his nail, so that the flesh still hanging like black strips waved in the wind. There were three holes punched in the back of the skull and Klaenger nodded when he saw folk understood.
‘They are all like this,’ he said and then laughed at the scowls.
‘A rare joke,’ Finn said bitterly to him. Three holes fluted the hot wind through each head, so that it appeared that they shrieked, as clever an idea as pretending to bark from secret like a guard dog and for the same reason.
‘These are northmen,’ Crowbone said, calling the yellow bitch by the name he had given it — Vigi. In the end, he had to catch it by the ruff and drag it away, for it was no good thing to maul the recently dead.
‘The folk who know them will not share the joke in it,’ he added.
