Crowbone

around her, to the woman again, who had stood up for some reason.

‘Do you want this axe for yourself?’ Crowbone demanded flatly and Orm fixed him with a silent, cold stare.

‘That is the second time you have asked me that,’ he answered coldly. ‘Do not ask it again.’

‘Will you help me against Gunnhild if I get us out of this place?’

Orm nodded with narrowed, questioning eyes and Finn snorted.

‘I will help you against Loki himself if you get us out of this place,’ he answered, with a lash in his voice that suggested it was beyond even Crowbone’s strange seidr.

Crowbone looked along the line of men and grinned; they grinned back, wolf snarls with no laughing in it at all and that only increased Crowbone’s delight, for he knew now how matters stood, knew it with the certainty of the next move in a game of kings, for he had seen the Sami goddess rise up from the fire and clap her hands, had seen what had delighted her.

He went to the fire and looked at the woman, who did not look much like a goddess now, with her mouth drooping a little and her eyes full of what she had seen.

‘What can we trade to leave here with no fight from these hounds of yours?’ he rasped, knowing the answer already and Thorgerth blinked her eyes up into his — then slid them back to Bergliot. Crowbone smiled, a long, slow triumphant smile and nodded.

For a moment, Bergliot stared at him bewildered, disbelieving, then her eyes widened, Finally, she screamed.

Sand Vik, Orkney, three weeks later …

The King Piece

Gudrod sat at the far end of a long table, drinking from a green-glass cup. His gilded helmet was perched on the end, the nasal of it scoring a new mark in the scarred wood, the ringmail puddling round it. A board of nine squares sat in front of him, glowing soft as red-gold in the sconces, the pieces winking back fire.

In front of that, stretching the width of the table, lolling like the whore of fortune that she was, lay Odin’s Daughter, the long handle of the Bloodaxe dark with age and sweat and old wickedness, the head gleaming, worked with the inlaid silver mystery of endless snake-knots and strange gripping beasts.

In front of the axe lay another long batten of wood, also dark with age, slightly swollen in the middle and with a nub-end of dark metal licking from the tapered wooden point. It had been taken, swaddled in cloth, from Orm’s shoulder when their weapons had all been removed. It was an Old Roman spear, Crowbone knew, which the priest Martin coveted as a seidr of his own.

Crowbone had not known what to expect from this last son of the Mother of Kings, but what he saw was a big man whose neck was thick and roped with great veins down either side, a fleshy face with a neat-trimmed beard more iron than black and eyes a little too bright with drink. Gudrod gestured, the cup in that meaty hand seeming as dainty as an eggshell.

‘Olaf, son of Tryggve,’ he said. Crowbone nodded curtly and walked forward a little, to where the swirling blue dim of the hall broke against the torchlight. Here he was, the killer of his father, the son of Gunnhild who had scattered the lives of him and his mother like chaff to the wind. And there, behind him …

She shifted from the dark like a detaching shadow and the light fell on the stiffened planes of her face, so that he caught his breath. Gunnhild, the hand who wielded the sword, the power which had conspired. He tried to see the eyes, but saw only the knobbed fingers of a hand. He tried to find the hate, but discovered that, strangely now that he was so close after the years running from her, he had no fear, only curiosity.

‘Orm,’ said Gudrod. ‘Finn.’

Each name was a flat slap and, at each one, the owner stepped into the light. Out of the side of an eye, Crowbone saw the iron pillars which followed them, one for each, like watching hounds.

‘Who was it who told you I play ’tafl?’ Gudrod asked Crowbone suddenly.

‘The abbot on Hy,’ Crowbone replied. ‘Or perhaps Erling, before I killed him. I forget which.’

‘Just after he killed that strange lad,’ Orm added. ‘Od.’

The sibilant hiss came from the dark, a herald of the dust and rheum voice to follow.

‘You have them in your power here,’ she said warningly and Gudrod stiffened a little, then hunched his shoulders, as if against a chill breeze on his neck.

‘You are resourceful,’ he said, ignoring her. ‘Survived the Sami and the cold, Erling and that boy. Especially that boy. He was strange and gifted, that one. I respect that — admire it even — but I am not witless. Do you really think to beat me at the game of kings? And that I will hand over the axe if you do?’

That had been the plan when Orm and Finn, Crowbone and the others had reached the Finnmark shore, using axes to break up the forming ice and having to leave two ships behind because they did not have men enough to sail them. Even those who climbed on to their rimed sea-chest oar benches were burst-lipped growlers, trembling with cold.

Crowbone had stood with Orm and Finn on the snow-clotted shingle amid the frozen puddles of the beach arguing this plan; he knew they thought it madness, yet Orm went with it because he saw the hand of Odin in it and Finn went with it because it was mad and bold. Crowbone had known that, too, for they were all pieces in the game of kings.

Orm, watching the boy now, felt the grey slide into his heart, for he knew that whatever happened here, Crowbone was gone from him. He wondered what would become of the boy he had loosed from Klerkon’s privy all those years ago.

Not yet into the full of his life, he had said for as long as he could recall, fooling himself with it. Crowbone was into the full of his life now and, just as Orm had predicted long since, was not a man you wanted to be around; the Wend woman had shown that, if nothing else. Orm hoped that Odin had not abandoned them completely — and that Crowbone could play ’tafl.

‘I had heard you could play a bit,’ Crowbone said to Gudrod, with an off-hand shrug, then nodded towards the black-handled axe. ‘Now that you have that blade of victory, I thought to come and lay matters to rest between us. If I win, you and your mother stop working against me.’

Gunnhild’s hiss was enough to bend Gudrod’s backbone and he half turned as if irritated by something between his shoulderblades. Then he drank from the blue-glass cup and set it down gently.

‘You seem to believe you can trade,’ he said. ‘You have nothing to trade. Two words from me and you are a corpse.’

Finn growled and Gudrod glanced up and twisted his fleshy face into a grimace of smiles.

‘I hear you, Finn-who-fears-nothing,’ he sneered. ‘And I feel your stare, slayer of bears. You were foolish to entangle yourselves in this.’

Orm spread his hands and smiled, easy and loose.

‘I am a trader, if you have heard anything of me at all,’ he answered. ‘I thought to help a prince I know. I thought I would be dealing with a Christ priest, mark you.’

‘Ah,’ Gudrod said knowingly and raised one hand above his head. There was a stirring in the shadows and then another iron pillar came forward, thrusting a figure by one shoulder. So, Crowbone thought, three guards …

‘Martin,’ said Orm and the figure raised its slumped head. He was blackened with ice rot and lurched, hip- shot to take the weight off his crippled foot. One hand was held awkwardly, the fingers of it clearly broken and sticking out at odd angles and his mouth was a fester of brown and black that showed when he breathed, for his nose was smashed and he sucked air in over raw gums.

Yet the eyes were a glittering grue at the sight of the Roman lance and he stretched out his good hand towards it.

‘Mine,’ he said and Gudrod backhanded him, so that the priest’s head flew sideways. Finn and Orm both half started to their feet and Crowbone stared at them, astonished. Here was their arch-enemy — why did they care how badly he was handled?

Orm laid a hand on Finn’s arm and they both sank back to their benches, so that the ring-mailed hounds behind them eased a little and let their swords slide back into sheaths.

‘Mine,’ Gudrod replied mockingly as Martin struggled to his feet.

‘Tscha,’ spat Gunnhild, forcing herself forward into the light. ‘Kill them now and be done with this. It is bad