Finnmark, near Surman Suuhun, the Jul feast …
MARTIN
THE scouts came in as the snow thickened and started to swirl, cutting the iron-grey tumble of mountains to dim shadows. They had seen nothing, they said to Hromund, but had shot a reindeer. They pointedly tried not to speak directly to Tormod at all, for he was a thrall and Tormod, used to it, merely listened and spoke quietly to Hromund when they were standing apart from others.
‘Nothing?’ Tormod said in a voice that dripped bile. Hromund scrubbed his nit-cropped hair, which gave him his by-name, Bursta-Kollr – Bristle Scalp.
‘Eindride is a good man,’ he said stubbornly, while the good man himself laboured with others to string the buck up by the heel tendons. ‘A master bowman, too.’
‘I see he shoots well,’ Tormod answered patiently, ‘which must mean he has good eyes. Yet he has seen no sign of the enemy?’
‘Other than the one I shot earlier,’ growled a voice, so close to Tormod’s ear that he smelled the rank breath and saw the smoke of it, which made him spring back, startled. Eindride grinned out of the ice-spattered matting of his beard.
‘I meant no disrespect,’ Tormod declared and Eindride looked at him, as if seeing him for the first time.
‘If I thought that,’ he answered, ‘I would beat you, thrallborn.’
Tormod’s face flamed; he knew Eindride was a rich bondi in Óðinssalr in the Trondelag, probably the oldest farm in the world, yet the thrall did not like to be reminded of his true status for he was Haakon’s wisest advisor and opened his mouth to say so.
‘Has he spoken yet?’ Hromund demanded, before matters welled up. Eindride shrugged and looked over to where the Sami hung, like the buck from a frozen tree branch, by his heel tendons. Eindride had brought him into the shivering camp like a hunting prize from the last scout he had done.
‘Ask the Christ priest,’ he answered bitterly, then spat and swaggered away to oversee the butchering of the buck. Tormod watched them tie off the bowels, draw out the guts, belly, liver, spleen, gall, lungs and heart. Rumps and hams, ribs and loin were all neatly cut out and wrapped, yet there was still much left on the carcass. Men ate the cooling liver, chewing with relish and grinning with blood on their teeth. It was the Jul feast and they had been drinking minni toasts with the last of their strong ale.
The king’s thrall swallowed his anger. Nearby hung the Sami, swinging like the buck and yet able to see what was being done to it – which was, no doubt, part of the Christ priest’s plan.
Hromund, frowning, went over to where Martin hovered, hunched and hirpling back and forth from his crude sail shelter to a fire. A dark dwarf, the Chosen Man thought miserably. This was the place for such matters, for sure, a place of the jötnar, those blood-thirsting giants who were enemies of Asgard’s gods and kept at bay only by the threat of Thor’s own Hammer.
Not for the first time, he wondered at the sense of this untimely journey through the high mountains in search of … what? A legend? Yet, he thought to himself, if it were true, if the Bloodaxe of Eirik was somewhere in these mountains, then the one who possessed it had power. You take Odin’s Daughter to wife and you got One-Eye as your in-law – Hromund shivered at that thought. He would make you king, as the saga told it, then one day turn the axe on you, laughing.
The Sami groaned and swung. There were raw festering marks on him, blackened at the edges – crosses, Hromund saw and he felt his mouth fill with saliva and spat it out.
Martin saw it as he returned the iron cross to the flames and curled his lip. Hromund, of course, was a heathen, like all of them in Norway, so he did not see the benefit of God. The Sami did and Martin smiled at what the man had already babbled – in Norse as Martin had surmised would be so when the man was brought in, shot through the thigh by Eindride. He had never seen the guide he had refused from old Jarl Kol, but he had known at once that this Sami was the one.
A hunter and trader, for sure, this Sami who wore good north wool and knew Norse well enough, even if he knew nothing about axes, which Martin had suspected when he had the man strung up. He had learned since that the man’s name was Olet and that he had been sent, as Martin had thought, by Jarl Kol with the men from Orkney – with the Witch-Queen Gunnhild, he said. She has power, he said, enough to face the goddess of the mountain. He also knew the place Martin sought and, in the end, confirmed it, whimpering.
Surman Suuhun. Their heathen way of saying ‘the mouth of death’. Each time a holy cross was placed on his flesh, red-heated from the fire, fierce with the power of God, the man gasped out, screaming, ‘Surman Suuhun.’
‘And the enemy?’ Hromund asked after Martin had explained all this, wiping his hands on the uneven, ragged dags of his robe.
‘What enemy?’ Martin retorted scathingly. ‘There are so many Norway men here that these mountain hunters are no threat. Gudrod and the Witch have got ahead of us, all the same – though all that means is that they do all the fighting.’
Hromund scowled at the implied slur on his leadership and was about to bark back when the Sami grunted. They both turned, astonished to see that he grinned bloodily, a horror made worse by his face being upside down.
‘She will take you all,’ he slurred through the blood of his own bitten lip. ‘Ajatar’s handmaiden.’
‘Who is Ajatar?’ Martin demanded at once, for he had never heard Gunnhild called that before. An arrow struck the Sami as he swung, took him in the back and came out through his front in a gout of blood, with heart meat snagged on it. He arched for the last time and screamed.
Hromund and Martin pitched to the snow-covered ground, yelling; men scattered like chickens and there was shouting; someone screamed. Then silence.
By the time men had gone out of the camp to look, Hromund knew it was pointless; no-one would be found, a fact which Tormod stated, his voice a sneer at Eindride, who flushed. The bowman knew he and his men had missed the hidden Sami and marvelled at that – even on this almost bare landscape of tumbled rock and lichen and gnarled, twisted trees, he had not seen them.
Yet he cut the arrow from the dead Olet and studied it, as if it would provide some clue, while the snow whirled in and around them like white bees. A slender shaft, blackened with pitch, fletched with owl feathers. A short arrow, so the bows were wood and sinew, not powerful, but enough, all the same, to kill a man with no protection – or even with if they were shot true.
Eindride had no doubt these bowmen could shoot true. He picked up the bow the dead Sami hunter had been using and saw that it could easily have shot this arrow, noted the soft fur puffs round the string below the bow tips to muffle the sound of the release. Pitch-blackened arrows used on a bow that shot them silently – night hunters, too, then.
‘They do not want us to get to where we want to go,’ Hromund said, as men went back to cooking and making what shelters they could against the snow. Martin, blinking flakes from his eyelashes, grinned his black grin.
‘Up is where we go,’ he said and pointed to the tallest of the mountains, now no more than a shade in the white whirl. ‘Up and fast, to get there just as the Witch finds out that God will not let her have the prize.’
Hromund knew where he pointed, for they had been seeing it for days, the great grim fang of it. He shivered and not just with the cold; the smell of cooking deer mingled with the charred stink of the cross-burned Sami and, suddenly, Haakon’s Chosen Man had no appetite. Worse than that, the mountain they were heading for smoked, a plume curling from the side of it like the tail of a snow wolf.
The drum started to sound like a distant woodpecker, insistent as a racing heartbeat. When the juoiggus chanting came with it, he felt sick and more afraid than he had ever been in his life.
Finnmark, the same day …
CROWBONE’S CREW
The snow eased, started to fall in smaller and smaller flakes, until it was fine as emperor salt, sifting through the short day into long cold nights dark as raven wings save for the faint flickers of green moving like skeins of yarn far to the north.
Fox fires, Svenke Klak declared and those who had been in the high north before agreed. They heralded plague and pest some said, though Onund grunted like a rutting deer at that.
‘All it means,’ he said, ‘is that a cold is coming that will freeze fire. I had that from Finn Horsehead, who fears nothing.’
Kaetilmund had heard Finn say that once, but it was no comfort, as he whispered to Murrough when they were close together, drip-nosed by fires that never seemed to get them warm.
‘We have little provision for this,’ he muttered, which was only the truth and men knew it, giving the prince harsh glances when they thought he could not see – yet marvelling at how he sat, seemingly unaware of the cold, wrapped in a dirty-white cloak that was too small for him, with a furred collar patched and mangy.
Those who knew told them the cloak had been his first present from Vladimir of Kiev and he had been nine, so it was old, yet precious. He had had it when he, Vladimir, Orm and all the rest of the Oathsworn went into the Great White, the winter steppe, to hunt out Atil’s treasure. Small wonder the youth did not feel the cold, after that.
Crowbone was freezing, but would not show it, not even to Bergliot. He had not wanted to bring her further than Gjesvaer, but she would not be left and Crowbone did not trust Kol Hallson. The old jarl had had more than enough of visitors and Crowbone had come late to the feast, it seemed, for Haakon Jarl’s men, followed by Gunnhild and Gudrod, had all chewed their way through his winter stores.
‘Now there is you,’ he declared and was surly because, though he had heard of Crowbone and the Oathsworn even this far north, he thought the youth arrogant and with no claim to the title of prince at all. Worse than all that was the thought of what was happening in the Sami lands to have brought all these folk and whether there was profit in it that he was missing out on.
‘I have nothing left to give you,’ he said and Crowbone, who had been polite in the hope that Bergliot could be left, lost his temper with the old man, sitting on his High Seat with his great moustaches and his belly and his bowl-cut hair. He looked like a walrus with a bird’s nest upturned on its head, Crowbone thought and made the mistake of saying so.
It had not been entirely wise, as Stick-Starer and Onund and Kaetilmund and all the others had pointed out when they were forced back to their ships empty-handed – Mar simply scowled – until Crowbone bellowed at them to leave him be.
So they did, in a sullen, cold silence, all the way here – which was not even the best harbour for ships. That was taken by many longships belonging to Haakon Jarl and they had scudded past them like a rat looking for a drain, then approached the next seeming safe berth with caution, half-expecting to find the Witch-Queen’s crew. Crowbone did not know whether to be happy that they were nowhere to be seen, or unhappy to think of them lurking a short sail down the coast.
Stick-Starer and a handful were left with the ships and the rest went on towards the mountains; the only one who kept close to Crowbone now was Bergliot, which did not help for it was clear what was going on between him and the woman and men denied the same sweetness and warmth drew their brows down and muttered together with Mar.
‘Not, mind you,’ Mar was forced to admit, bringing bitter laughs from the growlers, ‘that I think I could water my colt there, for I remember her too much as Berto and that has a diminishing effect.’
They struggled into the mountains and came upon spoor almost at once – a snapped boot toggle, a broken horn spoon – that told them they were on the right trail, following northmen, though they did not know who. Others had questions on the subject.
‘Following them to where?’ Mar demanded as they huddled into the long night. ‘For what? For an axe? There is no plunder in this for us – only for this prince we have tied ourselves to.’
He said this to the men from Ireland, all the same, not to his former Red Brothers, or to the old Oathsworn, for he could not be sure that they would listen kindly to him.
Then Vandrad Sygni loped in through the snow with an arrow in one hand and a tunic in the other, neither of them his. The tunic was old and patched and had been blue once, but it was clotted with frozen blood now. The arrow was strange, black and fletched with owl feathers. Crowbone, sitting with the yellow dog and grateful as much for the friendship as the heat, looked at the archer’s face and silently followed him back to where he had found these treasures.
He led them to a small clearing in the tumble of rocks, patched with snow and lichen. Men gathered round, looking nervously right and left when they could tear their eyes from what had been done.
‘Killed by arrows,’ Kaetilmund said. ‘Howed up in rocks, as was proper – then some whoresons dug them up.’
‘For the weapons,’ said a man called Thorgils, one of the old Red Brothers. ‘They did that out in the Khazar lands, too, so that we had to break spears and swords and burn the bodies.’
There were twenty bodies and all of them blue-white and bloodless, gashes like lipless mouths, frozen with hands on their breasts, though the fingers had been broken to prise good blades from them.
‘Who are they?’ Crowbone asked and a voice answered, thick and savagely bitter: ‘Norsemen. Like us.’
Crowbone knew it was Mar and ignored it; soon enough, he would have to deal with Iron Beard, but this was not the place.
Onund straightened stiffly from one body and held out his hand; folk craned to see. It was a little ship with a dragon-prow, a neck ornament moulded from pewter and torn from its leather thong. Those who knew the style nodded.
‘Orkney made,’ Onund confirmed and Crowbone stroked his hoar-frosted beard. So Gunnhild and her last son had run into trouble – the thought was warming, though he kept the smile to himself.
It grew colder when they came on more of the same. By the time they had tallied past a hundred, men were working saliva into dry mouths and wondering why they were ploughing on along the same bloody furrow.
The last in this rimed knot of tragedy consisted of thirty-two dead and none of them had been howed up, just left to lie along either bank of a frozen stream, fringed with dwarven, snow-laden pines. Men hauled out weapons and crouched a little, like dogs expecting a kick – unburied bodies meant the survivors, if any, had fled and left them, which meant the attackers were still about.
Then, sudden as a hand-clap, the demons of the mountains came howling out at them in a shower of arrows and throwing spears and a mad, leaping charge. One minute men were turning this way and that, looking at the snow-shrouded tree line, the next, the world was full of shrieking horror.
‘Form! Form!’ bawled Kaetilmund, but some men broke and ran, yelling, sliding, tumbling over and over and cracking themselves on the iced rocks. Those left turned to fight, hard-eyed and snarling, grim as cliffs, sliding towards Crowbone and Kaetilmund like filings to a lodestone.
They took the first rush of spears and arrows clattering on their shields, then lifted their hoared eyebrows and saw the furred faces, ears and whiskers and fanged muzzles. Lesser men would have had trouble – the ones who ran, or wallowed in confusion, died for it – but even the ones who kept facing to the front felt their bowels opening. Dry-mouthed, they had to force themselves to stay rooted at the sight of animals risen on their hindlegs and snarling.
It was Bergliot who ended it. She nocked and shot as the howlers started moving down on the huddled band. The arrow took one of the beasts in the face and there was a yelp of pain; the beast muzzle seemed to come apart and the body fell the other way, a tangle of limbs with a flat face, bloodied and unbearded and undeniably Sami.
‘They are men!’ roared Murrough and, even those whose minds were numbed by the surprise and shock of it were so honed with war that their limbs knew what to do. Arms brought shields and edges up; legs moved and men slid so swiftly together that shoulders were bruised in the clash. Others, too slow to reach the shieldwall, stumbled into fighting pairs.
They are men. The roar went up, a fire that leaped from head to head. They are men and so could die.
There was a skidding moment or two, then, as the enemy felt the new resistance. They were not beasts, as Bergliot had revealed, but men in furs and masks made from the heads and muzzles of animals – wolf and fox and bear, the snarling jowled heads fitted over their own, the little ears sticking up, the withered muzzles bared with loosened fangs; from inside, he saw white eyes gleam.
A few black arrows flew, shot by unseen archers from behind the others; one shaft whirred over the front rank and hit the helmet of a man next to Onund with a clang that rattled him sideways, then it spun off, skittering dangerously over the iced rocks. The beast-men roared up enough courage to hurl themselves on the shieldwall.
Crowbone had his shield on his back, which he realised was foolish, but it was too late to swing it free. He dragged out his sword as the Sami crashed like a wave on the wall of linden shields, then washed round the flanks, shrieking and screaming; a northman spun backwards and landed on his arse, most of his face punched in with a spear – Hrolfr, the gusli player, Crowbone saw dully.
The one who did it gave a fighting roar out of the depths of his bobbing bear mask, a great black and brown affair with puckered eye pits. He hefted the bloody spear – then hurled it through the gap at Crowbone.
No shield – I look like an easy mark, Crowbone thought with snow-crisp clarity as the spear came at him, flexing and spinning, the gore spuming off the iron tip, which grew larger and larger. He saw the pitted head of it, the notched edge as he twisted sideways to let it half pass him. He watched his hand come up, though it looked like it belonged to someone else – then he snatched the spear in a fist, reversed it and hurled it back, all in an eyeblink.
A bad throw, he thought as the spear spun from his hand; I must work on that left, it is weaker than the right. It carved to the right of the bear mask and the man howled with surprise and fear, his eyes following the spear as it clattered to the ground, as if it was a snake about to coil and spring at him.
The real danger stepped in close to him, close enough to see the weathered yellow fangs and old leather lips of the bear jaw, to see the Sami’s sweat and charcoal streaked face deep in the maw of it, the eyes wide and white. Then Crowbone stuck him under the right ribs with the sword, once, twice, three times, hard enough for the round, blunt point to rip him off his feet, on the last blow the beast-man falling away, groaning.
Another turned this way and that, wild and uncertain, so Crowbone closed with him quickly, before he could gather courage and sense round him like a cloak on a cold day. He was larger than the rest of them, Crowbone noted, though still a half-head shorter than any of us. He had the mask of a fox, with the russet ears perked up on his head – more immediately, Crowbone saw that the man carried a good Norse sword and an axe, but by the time Foxmask had worked out what was happening and which one to use, Crowbone had slashed a second mouth for him.
The man fell backwards on his arse, making guh-guh sounds and the blood slicked the haft of the sword, so that it slithered out of Crowbone’s hand as he spun, looking for another to fight.
Weaponless, he crouched and looked wildly around – the yellow dog sped past him, boring in hard and snarling on another of the masked Sami, barging him off his feet and scrabbling to get at the man’s throat. Eventually, Svenke killed the man and stopped him screaming, which was a relief for everyone; by then the Sami’s forearms were shredded by the yellow bitch’s fangs.
They had no belly for it, these little mountain men. A shower of spears and arrows and the sight of them in their beast masks and furs had always worked before, sending Gunnhild’s Orkneymen running and shrieking to be easily cut down.
We are different, Crowbone exulted and howled it out until the cords of his neck hurt, as different from what the Sami had faced before as lambs to wolves.
‘You are Olaf’s men,’ he screamed and the warriors bellowed agreement, slashed and carved their beast-masked enemy until they fled, yelping, back up into the misted treeline. Those chasing them stopped, panting and retching, hands on knees and sweating in the iced air; breath and steam smoked as if the place burned.
Crowbone stumbled over to collect his sword, half-dazedly wiping it clean with snow, while the man whose throat he had slit choked on his own blood, his hands empty of Norse-forged weapons now, grasping like claws as if trying to swim to the surface of water.
‘You have blood on you,’ Murrough noted.
‘His,’ Crowbone answered, jerking his chin at the gargler.
‘That was a wee dunt,’ Murrough said cheerfully, looking round. ‘Now these creatures know who they fight – that was a fine trick with the spear, all the same. Is it hard to learn?’
This was said loud enough for others to hear and they growled out agreements; those who had not seen it were told of their young prince’s hand skill while they poked among the dead. Crowbone spoke soft to Murrough, not wanting to ruin what he had made, but pointing out their own dead and silently sending him to find out the tally for this day.
He was back soon enough – Hrolfr was dead, as well as a Jutlander called Lief and a Saxlander called Taks. Mar and Vandrad Sygni were missing. Crowbone did not know much about Lief save that he played ’tafl well but Taks did good leatherwork and everyone would miss his shoe repairs. Hrolfr, though, was a loss that brought something sharp into Crowbone’s throat, remembering the skill of the man’s playing. Vandrad and Mar were more of a worry, all the same – they were two of the three best trackers and the third had four legs.
‘Aye, well,’ said Kaetilmund moodily, scrubbing the rain off his face. ‘They ran – I think Mar went off and Vandrad went after him in anger. Odin’s bones, though, matters could have been worse.’
‘Just so,’ agreed Murrough, lumbering past. ‘It might have been snowing as well – for the love of all the gods, man, will you just die and give us all peace.’
This last was spat to the choker still struggling to breathe and Murrough’s big Dal Cais axe rose and fell, cutting the last breath out of the man.
‘What now?’ demanded Kaetilmund.
Crowbone told him – hunt for Gudrod and Gunnhild. Search the bodies for a big man with the look of a fancy jarl about him and an old woman, he told them and they pawed their way through the corpses while Bergliot, her dress looped up through her belt and breeks on for the warmth, helped others prepare a fire from the little that was available to burn, grinning at Crowbone until he answered it.
Later, the men sat with bellies full trying to ignore the stiffening dead nearby, nudging each other when they saw Bergliot clump up on her too-big turnshoes and throw herself next to Crowbone, forcing him to offer her the shelter of his cloak. Crowbone, aware of the scowls and nudges, tried to ignore them; the dog came up, muzzle bloody, tongue lolling and permitted itself to be patted warily.
‘I cannot keep calling this animal Yellow,’ he said to Bergliot. ‘I will call her Vigi – Stronghold – instead.’
‘No matter what you call her,’ she replied sternly, ‘she will answer only to me.’
It was the truth, but Crowbone did not like to hear it and decided, as the cold dark drifted down on them, to put matters on the straight between them. He took a deep breath.
‘Listen,’ he began. ‘I have no home to give you, nor time to find you safety. I am awaited beyond the mountains and the truth is that I don’t know but that it is my death waiting. The best I can do for you is ask Murrough, or Kaetilmund or the priest to make sure you get to safety – though there is no surety of anyone living through this. Is there anywhere you could go before the winter sets in hard?’
He felt her stiffen beside him, turn from warmth and limpid length to a log.
‘There is nowhere I can go, not before, not after winter. What would you have me do, prince? Would you have me a bed slave and no more?’
Crowbone looked at the fire until his eyeballs seared. She was, he realised, the first woman to come to him willingly and that was what was colouring matters here, so that he could not simply up and walk away. That and the fact that there was nowhere for her to go that did not mean her death.
‘There is nowhere I can go. I shall be here, or dead,’ she said, as if reading his mind, which snapped his head up to look at her.
‘Woman, listen to me,’ he said. ‘I am a prince who intends to be king in Norway. I do not need a wife and if I did …’
He stopped, seeing the mire he was plootering into the middle of, but it was too late. She pushed herself away from him.
‘If you did,’ she said slowly, ‘it would not be the likes of me. The princess, not her friend, is that the fact of it?’
It was so completely the fact of it that Crowbone could not answer and, eventually, she stood up and looked down at him.
‘Prince,’ she said, soft and gentle and all the more scathing because of it. ‘King who would be – yet not kingly enough to be kind and even offer to take me home.’
She turned and started to walk away, paused and looked back.
‘A boy,’ she said. ‘I see only a boy, who cannot even find it in him to thank me for saving his life.’
It was the truth, but he did not like to hear it from her and watched as she went to the other side of the fire and sat, so that her image wavered through the flames. He was aware of men silently watching this and his anger seemed to flare with the sputtering fire.
‘Once,’ he said suddenly, ‘Thor had two sons on a mortal woman. Two young thunder-gods who grew to red-headed manhood in the way boys do, then fell violently in love with the same woman, as boys do. Said one of them to the other, in a joking way: “I will become a flea, so as to be able to hop into her bosom.” Said the other: “I will become a louse, so as to be able to stay always in her fud.”’
‘It is only your lice that let you know you still live,’ Adalbert interrupted, seeing the glares between Crowbone and Bergliot. Crowbone ignored the priest.
‘Thor heard this and fumed,’ he went on. ‘And he roared: “Are those your wishes? You shall be taken at your word. Be slaves to a woman all your lives, then.” He turned them into flea and louse, which is why we have them today and why, whenever there is a thunderstorm, fleas jump out of all sorts of places where there were none to be seen before and your crotch lice itch more than they usually do.’
Men chuckled but most realised why the story had been told in the first place and stitched their lips shut until the silence was broken only by the whine of wind and the stutter of flame. Then Kaetilmund reported that they had searched all the dead, but there was no man or woman like the ones they sought.
‘Now,’ Crowbone told him, ‘we go on.’
When the dawn came up, whey-faced and chill, they sorted themselves out, bound up cuts and ground on into a long, cold climb, carrying their dead and leaving the Sami and the old Orkney dead, though Adalbert grimmed about that.
No-one else did, for they did not want to each be burdened with a cold-stiffed stranger, though there were no mutters about stumbling along weighed with their own comrades; no-one wanted to be left as one of those blue-white corpses when their turn came and everyone agreed they would burn their own men when they had got far enough away from that killing ground and into some decent trees.
They did, though it took most of the long night, thawing out enough stunted, twisted pine, which popped and spat out ice in three great dead-fires. Even they could not keep the dour away from the dark beyond the flames, shrouded by trees that seemed to close on them. Crowbone sat by himself now, for the yellow dog lay with Bergliot and though both were only across the width of a mean fire, it might have been the other side of the world itself.
Adalbert muttered prayers, which brought one or two glances from the good Odin and Thor men, so Gjallandi intoned prayers to Odin in his sonorous voice, so that all heads turned. At the end, knowing he had done well, he smiled a triumphant, knowing smile with his great lips and inclined his head in a gracious bow.
‘One of my many accomplishments,’ he declared. ‘Together with reading and writing runes, at which I am a master as much as I am at the drápa and flokkr. At the first, I can delight with the dróttkvæði and the Lausavísur. With the second, I am able to make tears with my nidvisur.’
‘I have heard weeping when you speak, for sure,’ Halfdan interrupted savagely, ‘but the only time I heard people listen intently was when you gave us a mansongr.’
That raised a weak chuckle despite the mood, for Gjallandi’s boasts about courtly verse in its various forms and his ability to make decent nidvisur – flytings of scorn – were all true enough, but his mansongr, the filthy verses he made for the delight of hard men, were best of all.
Crowbone turned to Adalbert then and said suddenly: ‘Illi robur et aes triplex circa pectus erat, qui fragilem truci commisit pelago ratem primus.’
Those who remembered the priest saying this on the beach at Torfness ages since nudged each other at this feat of memory and the priest himself acknowledged it with a murmur of praise and no corrections. Crowbone beamed.
‘Now,’ said a man unseen in the shadows. ‘If you could pluck this axe up as easily as you learn the Christ tongue, we would all be thankful – do we know where it lies?’
‘As to that,’ Gjallandi declared, before Crowbone could snap back, ‘you should have paid more attention to those Sami at Kol’s steading. They speak of this axe and say it might be the Sampo, hidden in a mountain.’
‘Now I know this,’ Onund declared, ‘I know even less than before – what is a Sampo, then? You are rich in seidr, Crowbone – I have seen and felt it – do you know?’
Crowbone was pleased at the reference to his powers, but he had never heard of a Sampo and admitted it, then looked expectantly at Gjallandi. The skald sat and composed himself neatly by the ice-grumbling fire; folk sighed, seeing the preliminaries of a performance.
It was long and involved, as good sagas are, but the gist of it seemed to be that some Sami smith of note was forced to make a Sampo, a great work of magic, in return for a bride. Then a sorceress stole it and, in the struggle to get it back, this Sampo was lost.
‘But what is it?’ Halfdan demanded and he was only the first of a clamour. Gjallandi shrugged.
‘No-one knows,’ he answered. ‘Some say it was the World Tree itself, which is obvious nonsense. Others say it was the ever-grinding quernstone that made flour, salt or gold from thin air. Others have it that it was a strange device that the Greeks call horoscopium for reading what the Norns will weave in the actions of stars. I have heard also that it is a Bloodaxe – Odin’s Daughter – from the time when the young AllFather still had both his eyes.’
There was silence for a time, while eyes glittered in the half-dark bright with new interest.
‘I like the gold-milling one best,’ said Tuke, who was small and round, with a beard as bristled as a badger’s arse, so that folk called him Duergar, meaning Black Dwarf.
‘I am standing beside you there,’ agreed Murrough.
‘I favour the axe,’ Halfdan added, ‘for I am hoping it is the one which makes our Crowbone into a king and lets us all become rich.’
Folk laughed. Adalbert cleared his throat.
‘Cornucopia,’ he said and eyes turned to him until he felt the scorn in them and raised his head into the heat of it.
‘A Greek horn from the Godless times,’ he said, ‘which poured out whatever your heart desired and never grew less for it. Seems to me this Sampo is whatever folk wish it to be – and that is the work of the Devil, who tried to persuade Christ himself to all the world’s power.’
‘And was refused,’ declared one of the Christmenn passionately, then crossed himself; Crowbone was surprised to see that it was Wermund, one of the Kiev Slavs. There was a pause, split by the crackle and roar of the fire; somewhere, snow loosened by the heat slithered from the trees and men glanced round, to make sure the sentries were alert.
‘He turned down all the power of the world?’ Crowbone demanded and then shrugged into Adalbert’s stern nod.
‘He had a lot to learn about the game of kings, then.’
‘There is no game,’ Adalbert answered flatly, ‘for God spake that the world should be governed by kings and princes.’
‘Did he now?’ Crowbone said, staring levelly at the priest with his odd eyes. ‘So was it your God that appointed who rules the Northlands? To stand against Haakon is to stand against the White Christ?’
Adalbert frowned a little and folded his hands in his sleeves.
‘Just so – and not so. Haakon is a heathen. Those unanointed who stand against an anointed king are not on the side of good Christians, only of the Aesir,’ he decreed. ‘All the baptised kings and princes will shun such a man – will join in war against him.’
Crowbone’s eyes narrowed, but Adalbert did not flinch.
‘You are brave, priest,’ he answered slowly, ‘but not invulnerable.’
Adalbert waved a dismissive hand. ‘We can sit here calling each other names until Heimdall blows his horn, as you people say, but it will not change matters.You want to be king in Norway, but that will never be until you embrace Christ. Look at Haakon – he is a heathen and the world lines up to topple him.’
‘Haakon is still king in Norway,’ Crowbone responded. ‘He threw your kind into the sea.’
‘Is he the true king, then?’ answered Adalbert. ‘Or are you, as you claim? Christ will decide, not the gods of the Aesir. Nor any cursed axe.’
Finnmark, the mountain of Surman Suuhun …
MARTIN
No-one wanted to go in that smoking cleft in the dripping grey stones. There was a hot wind from it that seemed to pause every now and then before whining out of the cleft in a gout of white smoke and the stink of rotten eggs.
‘Surtr,’ muttered one of the men and Hromund glanced uneasily round, then up, blinking in the snow which had been falling steadily all night and into the short, leaden day. The rest of the peak hunched over them, capped with snow, misted in a sinister shroud. He did not like to admit it, but the man had the right of it here – this was a place of Surtr, the fire jötunn, and all his kin spawned from Ymir’s armpit. No place for men; he shivered.
Martin saw it, knew it was not the cold and curled his lip back on his black stumps; this was where the axe was and he had expected no help. This was where Sueno had known it would be, hissing it out as he clutched Drostan’s rough wool sleeve, demanding promises that the astonished and frightened monk agreed to.
Afterwards, Martin had sternly told the trembling, bewildered Drostan that he had placed his soul in peril by listening to such heathen blasphemy at all, never mind making promises. And, when the monk knelt, eyes squeezed shut to receive absolution from Martin, the clerk regular, Martin had given him it, with a stone. He had absolved Drostan so fiercely that he had crushed one of his own fingers, but he scarcely felt that among so many of the pains he bore.
The reek swirled round him, stinging his eyes and he saw the faces of the Norway men waver and blur, as if under water, then looked at the cleft in the rock, so like the unclean part of a woman’s body. Such a pagan, blasphemous item – what else would it be but in one of the entrances to Hell itself, reeking with the stink of the Pit?
‘Who will come?’ he demanded, knowing none of them would, for they were followers of false gods and their hearts knew it even if their heads did not. They did not have the power of God to keep Satan’s imps away – Martin did not doubt for a moment that he would meet the denizens of hell and slaves of the Fallen Angel inside that hole in the mountain.
The wind sighed out of the gash and men backed away from it, crouching down. Hromund looked round and saw that none of them would go; he wanted to say that he would, but had persuasive arguments with himself that his place was outside, with his men.
Eindride saw the scornful look on the priest’s face and felt anger surge in him, stoked it with more indignation that this twisted, hirpling follower of a coward’s godlet would dare the place while good northers squatted and looked at the ice and rocks rather than each other.
As good as courage, it welled up and burned the words out of him.
‘I will go.’
Men offered up ‘heya’ to the courage of the archer – then blinked in astonishment as Tormod shouldered through them.
‘You have a wee son at home – I will go instead.’
He and Eindride looked at each other and the archer smiled at what had not been said – a thrall would not be much missed, even a king’s favourite. He turned to Hromund.
‘If things go badly,’ he said, ‘you will see that my wife and son are safe?’
Hromund nodded and Eindride split his ice-clotted beard with a grin that burst blood on to his cold-chapped lips, then clapped Tormod on the back.
‘Together, then,’ he said.
Two men, not about to be outdone by a thrall, king’s favourite or not, sprang up and announced their names – Kjartan and Arnkel – and their intention not to be shamed. The rest, too afraid even to worry about the shame, offered up no sound at all.
Martin, staff in his cold gnarled hands, shuffled towards the dark opening; the more practical Tormod organised torches, food and water.
‘Gloria Patri, et Fili, et Spiritui Sancto,’ Martin intoned at the entrance, raising the staff up as if to strike down an enemy. ‘Sicut erat in principio, et nunc et semper, et in saeccula saeculorum, Amén.’
Eindride gave a sound, half way between cough and grunt, then pushed the priest scornfully to one side and strode into the maw of the place, one hand clutching the Thor amulet at his throat. Martin hirpled after him. Kjartan licked spit on to his lips, Arnkel took a deep breath and they both ducked after Martin, as if plunging under freezing water. At the entrance, Tormod turned once and met Hromund’s eyes, smiled wryly and then was gone.
Hromund and the men sat for a moment, as if waiting for something cataclysmic, but nothing happened at all. The smoke stopped pouring from the hole, the wind in it moaned a little, there was a pause, then it began again. From somewhere came a distant rumble, as if a storm brewed and Hromund shifted.
‘Make fires and a camp,’ he ordered, cramped and stiff with cold. ‘We will wait here.’
He did not say how long they would wait and the scores of rimed men did not want to ask. They did not have long, as it turned out, for the short day was sliding to death when Gudrod’s men wolfed out of the shadows, led by a Tyr-howling boy.
Not far inside, pausing to tie cloths round their mouths to help them breathe in the foul reek of the place, Martin and the others heard the shrieks and crouched. Kjartan whimpered, sure that the Sami animal-men were coming; Tormod snarled him to silence and they waited, blinking in the guttering light of the torch, the sweat stinging their eyes. Nothing changed.
Martin grew impatient, wanting to move on, but no-one shifted and the reek swirled round them. Nothing changed.
Except …
‘Someone is coming,’ Eindride said and they all turned to where the faint iced light from the entrance had been a comfort, a thread leading back to the world of men.
Now, they saw the red-gold of a bobbing torch and Eindride nocked an arrow, growling. Martin crouched, wary as a rat and looking over his shoulder; there was screaming down there, a moaning shriek that shaved the skin from the back of his neck.
Then a voice from behind the red-gold torch whispered out like the wings of bats. A woman’s voice, old and soft as sealskin.
‘My son bids me tell you that it would be better if you turned over your King piece. You have lost this game.’