Crowbone

The Red Brothers numbered fifty-eight and, after all their bad raid-luck, even the ones who did not like Balle much and thought he still had matters to prove would follow him: it would be an easy prize with the numbers on their side. Even if it was empty, the knarr alone was worth it.

Mar felt Kaup shift beside him, tasted the big dark man’s unease along with the salt from the sighing sea. It smelled of blood and his hackles stirred a little.

Balle watched and waited, feeling his men filter up in knots and pairs to look, not wanting to turn round to see how many, which would have made him look as if he was anxious. He was pleased, all the same, when he caught sight of some, out of the corner of one eye; they were armed and ready.

He would wait until the crew of this fat trader had finished unloading whatever it was in the bundle they thought to appease him with. The stripling who led them would come, arms out and easy to show he meant no harm but wanted only to share warmth and food and maybe trade whatever was in the bundle. He does not realise, Balle thought, with a lurch of blood-savage, that all he has is already mine.

The stripling came and with him was a worryingly big man with a hook-bitted axe leading the helmeted ones carrying the burden. The stripling came with a spear in each fist and the walk of a man who did not want to appease anyone, which Mar and Kaup noticed and frowned at, glancing sideways at Balle. They all noticed the youth’s coin-weighted braids, the neat crop of new beard and the strange, odd-coloured eyes.

Balle had seen it, too, and pushed the worry of it from him as if it was a bothersome dog. The shine of that rich knarr was on him and the stripling was still a stripling, who had done as Balle had seen in his head, even if he had a giant at his back, spears in his fists, eyes of different colours and a measure of arrogance which had taken in the Burned Man and showed no shock. Balle had been disappointed at that; the sight of Kaup always made northmen lick uneasy lips and should have made this boy at least blink a little.

Then he saw the truth of what he had thought was a trade bundle and everything in him melted away, running like water out of his bowels and belly, so that he could not move and almost fell where he stood.

It was no wrap of trade goods. It was Grima.

Mar and Kaup grunted, the shock of it stirred through the rest of the Red Brothers like ripples from a stone in a quiet pool. Grima, who was thought drowned and dead, was back, sitting in a throne carried by great mailed warriors, guarded by a giant, preceded by …

‘Prince Olaf, son of Tryggve,’ announced the stripling loudly. ‘Come to hold up the falling roofbeams of Grima’s sky. Come to bring him back to those who tried to foist red murder on him.’

Now this was real luck to men who knew the shape and taste of it, for Grima had gone into the sea with nothing but the cloth on his back and yet, here he was, sprung out of it, with warriors and a prince at his command.

This was god-favour if ever it was seen and if Grima was so smiled on, then the man who had tried to kill him clearly was not – both those who were Christmenn and those who followed Asgard stepped away from Balle. He felt men draw away from him and anger surged in, which was as good as courage.

Then Grima stirred in his chair and Balle felt the better for seeing how weak and near death the old man was, saw the dark stains on the wrappings round his hands. He saw, also, the little figure appear suddenly from behind the mailed throne-carriers, a yellow dog prowling at his heels.

‘Berto,’ Kaup called out without thinking how much delight was in his voice, for he had liked the little man.

Berto raised one hand to Kaup in salute, then curled his lip at Balle, who almost went for the man then and there. Arrogant little fuck! A nithing thrall, with a look like that on him …

‘I speak for Grima,’ Berto said, his chin in his chest as he made himself gruff. The fact that he spoke at all in such a way so astounded Balle that he opened and closed his mouth once or twice.

‘He challenges Balle for the leadership of the Red Brothers,’ Berto went on. ‘He declares Balle a white-livered son of a sheep, who lets himself be used as a woman every ninth night by those who supported him in throwing Grima into the sea.’

There was muttering at that and a hissing sound of sucked in air, for there was no stepping back from that insult. The stillness that followed made the sea-breathing seem to roar and a gull cried out like a lost bairn; the stripling leader raised his head and searched for it.

‘I take the challenge,’ Balle said, ‘and after I have won I will not deal kindly with you, Wend.’

Then he twisted his mouth in a nasty smile at Grima.

‘Will you stand up long enough for me to kill you?’ he asked, knowing Grima was not the one he would have to fight.

The bundle on the throne shifted a little.

‘No,’ said the husked whisper, which a trick of wind carried down the beach to a lot more ears than should have heard it. ‘Yet you cannot kill me, Balle. I will live longer than you.’

Folk made signs on themselves and Balle had to resist the temptation to cross himself, or touch his Thor Hammer, which would have been as sure a sign of weakness as dropping to your knees and babbling for mercy.

‘I stand in his place,’ said the stripling with two spears.

Mar, looking at Balle as the youth spoke, saw the sudden flood of relief wash the man.

He thought it would be the giant, Mar realised, but thinks he can beat the stripling. That is wrong; if the stripling fights a big man like Balle, whose name is a warning since it means ‘dangerously bold’, it means he is their best. Better than a giant with a hooked axe. Mar studied the youth more closely now, but saw nothing in him that spoke of greatness, or even of prince. He was a tall youth with tow hair and a spear in either hand, nothing more. It was clear Balle thought this, too.

‘If you have a god,’ he growled, low and hackle-raising, ‘you had better ask him for help now.’

‘I have a god,’ the stripling declared, ‘and I dedicate you to him. I claim the Red Brothers for Grima and you are the price of it. Will you stand aside or fight?’

Kaup caught the unease that flickered on Balle’s face, a moment only, like a flare from a firestarter’s spark. Enough, all the same. Balle will lose this and the youth already knows it. Yet the little prince’s face was as innocent as a Christ-nun’s headsquare.

Balle spat on his hands, hefted the long axe and rolled his shoulders, which was answer enough. The youth smiled and the delight in his voice was a rill of pleasure.

‘Odin, hear me – take this Balle, as blot for this victory. I, Prince Olaf of the Oathsworn of Orm Bear-Slayer, by-named Crowbone, say this.’

There was a rustle, as if a wind had come up and rushed through unseen trees, as men stirred and sighed. Suddenly, the famed Oathsworn were here, launched out of a clear day and a calm sea like Thor’s own Hammer; Mar looked at Kaup and licked dry lips, for the grim mailed men with horsehair smoking from their helmets were now even more fearsome than before.

Balle, too, felt the chill lick of it, but was instantly ashamed and the anger that brought to him was a forge-fire. He hefted the long axe and calculated the distance between him and the stripling – then signalled for Mar to pass over his shield.

Mar paused, then handed it over with a look that flared Balle’s rage into his face. He would remember that scorn when this was done and then Mar had better look to himself. Overdue for having his head parted from him, Balle thought.

Kaup watched carefully, for he tucked all such matters of these northmen away in the sea-chest of his head and knew that this was no holmgang, with ritual and measured fighting area, but an einvigi, unregulated and unsanctified, which most vicious combats were. It did not rely on any god – though Ullr was claimed to be the deity who watched over it – but on skill and battle luck only. Once, when his people were young, Kaup knew that they had worshipped false gods, such as Bes and Apedemak, the god of war, who would have presided over such matters as this.

No matter which of the Asgard gods watched here, Kaup had to admit Balle looked the better man with his long axe on one shoulder, and shield held to cover most of himself against the stripling with two short throwing spears. They faced each other on the sand of a nowhere beach, where the tide-birds scurried, beaking up black mud from a strand silvered by the fading light of an old day.

‘You are a big man,’ Kaup heard Prince Olaf say said softly to Balle, ‘and no doubt of some value to Grima, once, before Loki visited treachery on you. At half your size, I will still be twice as useful to him and three times the fighter you are.’

Balle blinked a bit, worked the insult out and came up spitting and dragging the axe off his shoulder with one hand, though it was unwieldy like that. Yet everyone saw the battle-clever in Balle, for he was about to rush the stripling who had two throwing spears and a seax snugged across his lap.

The youth would get one spear off, which the shield would take – then Balle would throw the shield to one side and close in with the two-handed axe, before the youth transferred his second spear to a throwing hand. Everyone saw it. Everyone knew what would happen – except the youth, it seemed.

Balle lumbered forward; the spear arced and smacked the shield hard – harder than Balle had imagined, so that he reeled a little sideways with it and saw the point splinter through on his side. A powerful throw, but harmless, ruining only the shield.

With a great roar of triumph, he hurled the speared shield to one side and threw himself forward. He had him; he had the youth, for sure.

Something whirred like a bird wing and there was a sharp tearing feeling in Balle’s belly, then he tripped and fell, rolled, cursing, scrambling upright and appalled at his bad foot luck. Ready with the axe, he spun in a half circle and almost fell again, looked down and saw a blue, shining rope tangled round his ankles. At the same time as he followed it back to the bloody rip in his shirt and into the very belly of him, a shadow fell and he looked up.

It was the stripling, a thoughtful look on his face and Balle snarled and went to strike, but the axe seemed stuck to the ground. Then something flashed and there was a burning sensation in Balle’s throat, harsh and fierce enough for him to drop the axe and spin away. He did not want to touch his throat, was afraid to touch it, but thought to get away from the stripling for a moment, get his breath and then work out how to get back in the fight, for it had clearly gone awry.

He could not hear properly and could not catch his breath and there was a terrible gargling, roaring sound; he found himself on the ground, felt a draining from him, like slow water falling, looked down at the huge bib of red that soaked his tunic.

Never get the stains out of that, he thought. My mother will be furious …

Crowbone stuck his seax in a patch of coarse sand once or twice, then wiped the rest of the throat-clot off it on Balle’s tunic sleeve, the only bit that was not already covered in the big man’s blood. He felt his left thigh start to twitch and hoped no-one had noticed either that or the fear-sweat that soaked him, stinging his eyes to blinking.

No-one spoke, then the Burned Man walked up with Crowbone’s second spear, the one that he had thrown with his left hand, the one that had sliced open Balle’s belly so deftly that the axeman had scarcely even noticed it until he fell over his own insides. He handed it politely to Crowbone and smiled, unnervingly white, out of the great dead-black of his Hel face.

‘Am I leader here?’ asked Grima in his hoarse whisper. Men nodded and shuffled.

‘Am I leader?’ Grima roared and then they bellowed back that he was. Grima, the roar almost the last breath left in him, slumped back in the makeshift throne and whispered to Berto, who nodded and straightened.

‘I told Balle I would see his death before mine and so it is and I can let Asgard take me,’ Berto said and, for all his piping and thick accent, no-one doubted it was Grima’s voice. ‘Prince Olaf will be jarl. My silver is his. My ship is his. If you have any clever in you, you will follow him – but mark this. The Red Brothers die with me. You swear to him and the Oathsworn now.’

Men looked at the so-called prince, a stripling digging his spear point into the sand to clean it. The giant with the hook-bitted axe, grinning, worked the other spear point from the shield, then handed the shield back to Mar.

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘there is a fair wee peephole in it now. A good thick leather patch is needed – ask Onund if he has some left from fixing our steer oar. He is the man with the mountain on one shoulder. My name is Murrough macMael.’

Mar looked thoughtfully at the finger-length gash and then nodded to Murrough.

‘I will leave it as it is,’ he answered blankly. ‘The breeze through it will be cooling in the next fight.’

The tension hissed away from the beach. The ring-mailed throne-carriers picked up the chair with Grima in it and started back to the knarr; the Red Brothers began to go back in little knots to their fires, but the stripling cleared his throat and they stopped.

He did not say anything, merely pointed – once, twice, picking two men. The third time was at the bloody remains of Balle. The men he pointed out hesitated for an eyeblink; Mar stepped in to that, scowling.

‘Pick him up,’ he said to the men. ‘He was a Christmann so we will bury him.’

He looked at Crowbone. ‘Do you have a priest in your crew?’

Crowbone eyed the man up and down, taking in the neat-chopped hair that came down round his ears only, the close-trimmed beard, the cool eyes the colour of a north sea on a raining day. The one, he noted, who had handed his shield to Balle with a look as good as a spit in the eye. A good friend to the Burned Man and the pair of them better on your side than against it. He smiled, for he felt good and the thigh-twitching had ended; he was alive, his enemy was dead and the triumph of it coursed through him like the fire of wine.

‘I am a priest,’ he said, ‘though a good Christ-follower would not think so. Better you say words over him, I am thinking. Better still, of course, if you kept him, for Grima will die tonight and he was no Christmann, I am sure. It would be good to lay this dog at his feet as he burns.’

Mar blinked.

‘Is that your command?’ he asked and Olaf spread his empty hands in a light, easy gesture and said nothing at all.

Mar nodded, satisfied; here was a follower of the old gods, but not one with his face set against the Christ as hard as he had heard the Oathsworn were. They lifted Balle and carried him away to be buried and Kaup stumbled out some Christ words, as many as he could remember.

Afterwards, they dug him up again and brought him back to the driftwood pyre being prepared for Grima; Mar nodded to Olaf, who smiled at this cunning.

Men came to the pyre, no matter which gods they followed, out of respect for Grima, and Crowbone watched them as Hoskuld, scowling at the cost, spilled expensive aromatic oil on to the driftwood. Crowbone saw which of them mourned, stricken, for Grima and which of them did him honour for what he had once been. There were others and he watched them closer still, the ones who hung at the back and shifted from one foot to the other, trying not to look at each other and make it obvious they were plotting.

Grima burned, hissing and crackling, throwing shadows and lurid lights over the strand. Crowbone stepped into the blooded ring it made and held up his hands.

‘You are the Red Brothers of Grima,’ he said loudly. ‘You have travelled as one, fought as one. You have rules for this and I want to know them.’

Men looked one to the other and Crowbone waited.

‘None may steal from another,’ said a voice and Crowbone knew who it would be, had already marked it and turned to where Mar was.

‘Or?’

‘Death,’ answered Mar. ‘Unless mercy is shown, but Grima was not a merciful man.’

There were grunts and a few harsh laughs at the memory of what Grima had been. Mar folded his fingers, rule by rule, to mark them.

‘Equal shares for all. If a man loses a finger in battle, he gets an extra share, but if he loses two he gets no more shares, for one is a sad loss, but two is careless.’

Orm would not have grown rich here, Crowbone thought, thinking of the three lost fingers on the Oathsworn jarl’s left hand.

‘If a man loses a hand, all the same, he gets a share for every finger and thumb on it, provided it was taken off with a single blow, for a hand removed by more than one blow shows the owner of it was not fighting well or hard enough.’

Crowbone nodded, but said nothing. These were good rules and he would remember all of them, though they consisted mainly of what a man got for losing pieces of himself. Death gained him nothing, though it was expected that the jarl would pay weregild to any family, if they were ever found, out of his own wealth.

‘If one man kills another,’ Mar went on, ‘there is no crime, provided it puts no-one else in danger, or sends the ship off course. Another may claim the right to settle blood-feud on such killing, but if there is none to right such a wrong, then no wrong has been done. If a Brother insults, offends or otherwise does you injustice, you may kill him for it, unless he kills you first.’

There were more, which were all the same matters, Crowbone noted – those with sharp edges and skill were in the right. Those with dull blades and fumbling were in the wrong.

Mar stepped back respectfully, leaving the flame-dyed space to Crowbone and the lifting sparks that whirled Grima to Odin’s hall.

‘The Red Brothers die here. We are the Oathsworn,’ Crowbone said and it was clear he meant all of them assembled, not just the ones who had come with him on the knarr. ‘We have no such rules and need none, for we have an Oath. We will all take this Oath while Odin is close, watching Grima come to him as a hall-guest. Those who do not take it will leave at once, for if they are nearby and in sight come dawn, anyone may kill them.’

He stopped and the fire hissed and the sea breathed.

‘Be sure of your mouth and your heart, where these words come from,’ he said and suddenly did not seem a stripling any longer, seemed to have swelled so that his shadow was long and eldritch. There was flickering at the edges of vision and those who believed in such things tried not to look, for it was clear that the alfar were close and those creatures made a man uneasy.

‘Once taken, this Oath cannot be broken without bringing down the wrath of Odin,’ Crowbone went on. ‘You can take it as a Christmann and stay one if you can – but be aware that the Christ god will not save you from the anger of breaking this Oath. This has been tried before and those who did so found all the pain of their suffering a great regret.’

‘God will not be mocked,’ said a voice and Mar turned to see it was Ozur, one of Balle’s men. Langbrok – Long-Legs – they called him and Crowbone listened to all of what he had to say, patient as the man’s bile flew like froth. At the end of it, Ozur spat into the funeral fire. Men stirred and growled at this insult, even some Christ worshippers who were friends of Grima; if they did not agree with a pagan burning, they at least wanted to do him honour.

Mar sighed. It would be Ozur, of course, who was hotter for the Christ than this funeral fire and now those who had followed Balle were at his back, uneasy that they were now in the few and not the many.

‘I will not foul my mouth with such a heathen thing as your oath,’ declared Ozur finally, then stared round the rest of the faces. ‘Neither should you all. It is a bad thing, even for you idol-worshipping scum.’

Eyes narrowed, for few men had liked Ozur anyway and none of the Thor and Odinsmen here cared for his tone. Yet there was a shifting, from one foot to the other, like a nervous flock on the point of bolting and Mar heaved another sigh; there had been enough blood and upset. The Red Brothers were gone for sure and nothing was left but for each to go his own way – or become Oathsworn. It wasn’t as if men like them had much of a choice, after all.

He said as much, marvelling at the faces turning to listen to him. Ozur scowled. Crowbone cocked his head like a curious bird and marked Mar with a smile; he liked the man, saw the pure gold of him and how he could be worn like an adornment for a prince.

‘You also are a pagan,’ Ozur spat back at Mar. ‘God alone knows what you and that burned devil you keep so close to you get up to, but it does not surprise me that you will take something as foul as this oath into your mouth.’

Rage sluiced over Mar and he was already curling his fingers into fists and looking for a hilt when there was a wet chopping sound and men were spilling away from where Ozur had stood. Now there were two figures, one on the ground and, as Crowbone and the others watched in amazement, Kaup – stripped naked and no more than a shadow in the shadows so that his eyes were the palest thing to be seen of him – heaved up the body of Ozur after plucking his knife from the man’s throat. He took three steps and threw it on to the pyre. Sparks flew.

‘This Ozur child should have paid more heed to the fact that I was not so close to Mar tonight,’ said Kaup in his thick, low, smile of a voice. Then he jerked his head at the pyre and Crowbone.

‘Now he goes to the feet of Grima. Say your oath, for I have a mind to take it.’

Crowbone recovered himself, blinked away the shock and surprise of what had happened and looked at Kaup.

‘That was the last such killing you will do among oathed crewmates,’ he said, ‘once you have spoken the Oath from your heart.’

He and Kaup stared at one another for a long moment and, in the end, the Nubian nodded. Crowbone said the words of the Oath and Kaup repeated them, then crossed himself, as if to clean off a stain and went to find his clothes. Slowly, in ones and twos, men stepped forward into the pyre light and intoned the Oath.

We swear to be brothers to each other, bone, blood and steel, on Gungnir, Odin’s spear we swear, may he curse us to the Nine Realms and beyond if we break this faith, one to another.

Crowbone stood and listened to them, the stink of oil and burning flesh circling him like a lover’s arms. There was a sudden sharp moment of heimthra, of longing for that which was gone; Orm’s Hestreng, where the jarl had tried so hard to bring the Oathsworn to rest, and failed, for they were raiding men, not farmers. There would be new grass in the valley there, unfolding leaves making tender shadows. There would be a sheen on the fjord and the screams of terns, swooping on everyone who came too close to their carelessly-laid eggs. It was a good jarl’s hall and Crowbone had envied Orm for it.

Crowbone wanted that. He wanted that and more of the same, with the great naust, the boatsheds, that went with it, huge lattice-works of wood as elegant as any Christ cathedral and, in them, the great ships and all around them the iron men to go in them. Ships and men enough to make a kingdom.

Why have the Norns brought me here, to this beach, Crowbone wondered, binding the thread of my life into the frayed remains of Grima? My greatness is lifted up by the last act of the jarl of the Red Brothers, as sure a sign of Odin watching over me as a one-eyed face appearing in the blue sky.

He brooded on that the rest of that long night and into the dawn, while men moved to fires and left the pyre to collapse into ash and sparks, hushed and reverent and awed by everything that had happened, swift as a stooping hawk, on this dark and lonely beach.

In the morning, they howed Grima’s ashes up in a decent little mound, marked out with light-coloured stones plundered from the shingle and circled in the shape of a boat to show a man from the vik lay here. Then they packed up their sea-chests and started to board the two ships.