Читать книгу The White Raven - Robert Low - Страница 9

FOUR

The sea was the colour of wet slate, the spray coming off the tops of the chop like the manes of white horses. Somewhere, at that almost invisible point where the grey-black of sky and sea smeared, lay the land of the Vods and Ests.

Two days. Three days. Who knows? A day’s sail from a shipmaster is how far a good ship takes to travel some thirty ship-miles – but it could take you two sunrises to do it. Gizur kept saying we were three days from the Vod coast, looking for a range of mountain peaks like the teeth of a dog, but we never seemed to get closer.

Everyone was boat-clenched, which is what happens when the weather closes in. You sink deeper inside, like a bear in winter, sucking into the cave of yourself where you hunch up and endure.

The sail was racked midway down on the mast, we were driving east and a little south with a good wind and the oars were stowed inboard, so most of us had nothing to do but huddle in our sealskin sleeping bags. Everyone was busy, in silence, trying to keep dry and warm, while the lines hummed and the rain slashed in.

Thorgunna and the thrall women and the deerhounds huddled beside me under the little awning which was my right as jarl. Not that it gave much more than the illusion of shelter, but there was the warmth of shared bodies and the added, strange enjoyment of them being women.

I had done Botolf little favour appointing him steward in my absence – though Ingrid took the store keys from Thorgunna with a triumphant smile, which made Kvasir’s wife scowl. It was bad enough what Thorgunna was leaving behind – her chest of heavy oak with its massive iron lock, filled with fine-wrought wool and bedlinen stitched by her grandmother’s hands – without handing over her status in my hall to another woman who was not my first-wife. Not even my wife.

I then had to promise to get those keys back for her when we returned.

‘Stay quiet, do nothing,’ I advised Botolf, who was unhappy at being left behind and thought it more to do with his missing leg than anything else. I needed a level head and a brave heart, for Tor had friends in the region and there was no telling who they would blame or what they might do. Ingrid would supply the first and Botolf the second.

‘I plan to deal with Klerkon, get Thorgunna’s sister back, then go to Gardariki lands and find Short Eldgrim and Cod- Biter,’ I explained. He nodded as if he understood, but the truth was there was as much clever in Botolf as in a bull’s behind. Now and then, though, he surprised me.

‘Jarl Brand will have much to say on this and none of it good,’ he declared. ‘You should find a way of telling him how matters stand, before he takes it into his head to make you outlaw.’

Then he grinned at my astonishment.

‘You should sell Hestreng to me for an acorn, or a chicken,’ he added. ‘Then I can sell it back when you return. That way…’

‘That way,’ I finished for him, ‘Jarl Brand would spit blood at me selling that which I only hold from his hand.’

He stared for a moment, then astonished me further.

‘If you want Hestreng and the love of Jarl Brand,’ he grunted, ‘then you will have to put a rare weight in the pan to counter what he is thinking – that you lied to him about Atil’s treasure and are running about frightening decent farming folk with your sea-raider ways.’

His eyes went flat, like a sea where the wind has died to nothing.

‘It comes to me that you will need to travel all the way to Atil’s tomb and take all the silver you can,’ he added, his voice bitter-bleak because he knew he would not be part of that. Then he forced a smile and stuck out his hand.

‘I expect my share, all the same,’ he ended and, mazed at all this, I clasped him, wrist to wrist, more sure now that I had left matters in Hestreng in good hands. Then I stole the smile from him.

I told him we would be taking Drumba and Heg and three thrall women as well, because we had Thorgunna with us. This was a hard dunt for Botolf; two thralls had died in the winter before and losing five more was bad enough without also waving goodbye to Thorgunna, who was a pillar of Hestreng. I did not want her with us, but Kvasir did and Thorgunna was determined to chase after her sister, so there it was. I pointed this out patiently to a scowling Botolf.

‘We are oar-short on the Elk,’ I added, ‘but at least all those hard men with big bellies will be going with me, so you won’t have the expense of feeding them.’

There were twenty fighting men, bench-light for a drakkar like the Fjord Elk, which properly needed two watches of thirty oarsmen apiece – we barely had enough to sail her, as Gizur pointed out at the oath-swearing.

Hrafn provided the blood for it, as expensive and sad a blot offering as Odin would ever have. We found him, flanks heaving for breath, streaming blood and sweat, lying in the meadow shot full of arrows, as Botolf had said. Now his head reared accusingly on a shame-pole of carved runes, streaming out bad cess at Klerkon’s steading on Svartey, the Black Island, hidden miles beyond the grey mist and sea. Unlike us, Klerkon had no hall, but this was a winter-place he used and it was likely he was heading there.

‘We will pick up more men,’ I told Gizur and the new Oathsworn, more firmly than I believed. It was more than likely we would – but not from the land of the Livs and Vods and Ests. We would get no decent ship men until we reached Aldeigjuburg, which the Slavs call Staraja Ladoga and so would be raiding the steading of Klerkon with about half the men he had.

Finn pointed this out, too, when everyone was huddled in the hall out of the sleet, fishing chunks of Hrafn out of the pot, blowing on their fingers and trying to forget the hard oath they had just sworn.

‘Well,’ I said to him, uneasy and angry because he was right, ‘you were the one who wanted to go raiding. You were the one never still-tongued about Atil’s silver hoard, so that men would come to Hestreng and force me back to the tomb. Pity you did not think that the likes of Klerkon would hear you, too.’

Which was unfair, for he had saved my life in Tor’s hov, but all of this had smashed whatever shackles bound me to the land and the thought that Finn had had a hand in it nagged me. There was more cunning in it than he had ever shown before, so I could not be sure – but I was watching men eat my prize stallion and so was in no mood for him at that moment. He saw it and had the sense to go away.

Kvasir came to me while men shouted and fought good-naturedly in the ale-feast that followed the oath-swearing. He hunkered down at my knee as I sat, glowering and spider- black over the fun raging up and down the hall, and took his time about speaking, as if he had to pay for the words in hacksilver and was thin in the purse.

‘You were hard with Finn, I hear,’ he said eventually, not looking at me.

‘Is he aggrieved of it?’ I asked moodily.

‘No,’ answered Kvasir cheerfully, ‘for he knows you have other things to think on. Like me, he believes the sea air will clear your head.’

Well, Finn had the right of that, at least, though I did not know it myself at the time – or even when I was in the joy of it.

But when it happened, Finn came and stood with me in the prow, while the wind lashed our cheeks with our own braids and sluiced us with manes of foam.

The spray fanned up as the Elk planed and sliced down the great heave of wave, moving and groaning beneath us like the great beast of the forest itself. Those waves we swept over would not be stopped save by the skerries and the cliffs we had left behind. Only the whales and us dared to match skill and strength with those waves – but only the whales had no fear.

I was filled with the cold and storm, threw back my head, face pebbled with the salt dash of the waves and roared out the sheer delight of being in that moment. When I turned, Finn was roaring and grinning with me, while Thorgunna and the thralls watched us, sour and disapproving, hunched with misery and the deerhounds under a dripping awning that flapped like a mad bird’s wing.

‘You look a sight,’ Finn said, blowing rain off his nose. Which was hard to take from a man wearing a hat whose broad brim had melted down his head in the rain and was kept on his head by a length of tablet-woven braid fastened under his chin.

I said so and he peeled the sodden thing off looking at the ruin of it.

‘Ivar’s weather hat,’ he declared, ruefully. ‘There must be a cunning trick to it, for I cannot get it to work.’

‘Keep trying,’ urged Klepp Spaki, peering miserably out from under his cloak, ‘for if you can get the sea to stop heaving my innards up and down, I would be grateful.’

Others nearby chuckled and I wondered, once again, about the wisdom of bringing Klepp along at all. He had turned up at the hall with the rest of some hopefuls and I had taken him for just another looking for an oar on the Elk, though he did not look like the usual cut of hard men. When he had announced he was Klepp Spaki, I groaned, for I had forgotten I had put the word out for a rune-carver and now I had no time – nor silver – for his service.

However, he had looked delighted at the news we were off on a raid and said he would do the stone for free if he could take the oath and come with us, for he had never done such a thing and did not feel himself a true man of the vik.

Now he sat under his drenched cloak, hoiking up his guts into the bilges, feeling exactly like a true man of the vik and no doubt wishing he was back in the best place by the fire, which was his due as a runemaster of note. It was a joke on his name, this journey – Spaki meant Wise.

Later, I woke suddenly, jerking out of some dream that spumed away from me as my eyes opened. The deck was wet, but no water washed over the planks and the air was thick with chill, grey and misted with haar that jewelled everyone’s beards and hair. Breath smoked.

Thorgunna squatted on the bucket, only her hem-sodden skirts providing some privacy and I saw the thrall women passing out dried fish and wet bread to those on the oars, who were steaming as they pulled, eyes fixed to the lead oar for the timing. No thumping drums here, like they did on Roman ships; we were raiders and never wanted to let folk know we were coming up on them.

Gizur rolled up, blinking pearls from his eyelashes and grinning, the squat mis-shape of Onund hunched in behind him like some tame dancing bear.

‘Rain, wind, sleet, haar, flat calm – we have had every season in a few hours,’ he said. ‘But the Elk is sound. No more than cupful has shipped through the planks.’

‘More than can be said for my breeks,’ grumbled Hauk, picking his way down the deck. Gizur laughed, clapping Onund on his good shoulder so that the water spurted up from the wool. Onund grunted and lumbered, swaying alarmingly, to examine the bilges and ballast stones.

Gizur glanced over at the water. He could read it like a good hunter does a trail and I watched him pitch a wood chip over the side and study it, judging speed as it slid away down the side of the boat. Two hours later, the haar-mist smoked off the black water and Lambi Ketilsson, whom we called Pai for his peacock ways, stood up in the prow, yelling and pointing.

Black peaks like dog’s teeth. Gizur beamed; everyone cheered.

‘Now comes the hard part,’ Finn reminded everyone loudly and that stuck a sharp blade in the laughter.

Not long after, it started to snow.

The dawn was silver milk over Svartey, the Black Island. We were huddled in a stand of wet-claw trees above Klerkon’s camp, where the smoke wisped freshly and figures moved, sluggish as grazing sheep and just woken.

I watched two thralls stumble to the fringe of trees and squat; another fetched wood. The camp stretched and farted itself into a new day and we had been there an hour at least and had seen no-one who could fairly be called a man, only women and thralls. I had seen that Klerkon had built himself a wattle hall, while other ramshackle buildings clustered round it, all easily abandoned come Spring.

I looked across at Finn, who grinned over the great Roman nail he had clenched sideways in his teeth to stop himself howling out like a wolf, which is what he did when he was going to fight. Slaver dripped and his eyes were wild.

We had talked this through while the Fjord Elk slid through grey, snow-drifting mist on black water slick and sluggish as gruel.

‘It wants to be ice, that water,’ grunted Onund and Gizur shushed him, for he was leaning out, head cocked and listening for the sound of shoals, of water breaking on skerries. Now and then he would screech out a short, shrill whistle and listen for it echoing back off stone cliffs. The oars dipped, slow and wary.

‘We should talk to Klerkon,’ I argued with Finn. ‘If we can get Thordis back with no blood shed, all the better.’

Finn grunted. ‘We should hit them hard and fast, for he will have more men than us and we must come on them like Mjollnir. If we talk, we give up that and they will laugh in our faces and carve us up.’

‘Klerkon may just kill Thordis even if we do strike like Thor’s Hammer,’ Kvasir pointed out and I waved a hand to quiet his voice for, though we sat with our heads touching, it was not a large boat and Thorgunna was not far away.

‘No,’ said Finn. ‘I am thinking he will keep her to bargain with if it goes badly for him. He wants the secret of Atil’s treasure, so she is worth more to him alive.’

It was more likely to go badly with us, for if we could have taken Klerkon surely, I would have done it at Gunnarsgard. Neither of us had had enough men for certain victory then – but, in his own place, Klerkon probably had more. I did not say this, for it was no help; we had not sailed all this way to gather shells on Klerkon’s beach.

There was a flurry of movement, some hissed commands and then, with a crunch and a lurch, the Elk slid an oak keel scar up the shingle beach of Svartey, the Black Island of Klerkon.

The thralls and women stayed behind, for they were useless in a fight. Gizur and Onund stayed, too, for they were too valuable to the ship to be risked. The rest of us hauled out weapons, checked shield straps, slithered into mail if it was there to be worn.

In the dim before dawn they were grim and glittering with hoar, bearded, tangle-haired under their helmets and grinning the savage grin of wolves on a kill. Hauk Fast Sailor had a bow, which he preferred. So did Finnlaith, who was a hunter of skill and I had marked that. The rest had good blades, axe or spear. Few swords. All the blades were dull with sheep grease against the sea-rot.

They were hard men, wild men, rough-dressed and tattered, but their battle gear and blades were cared for as women care for bairns and no matter what they had done before, they had put the words in their own mouths and were bound to each other now, blade-brothers of the Oathsworn.

I reminded them of this at the same time as telling them to leave off the loot and women until we were sure all the fighters were dead. They growled and grunted in the dark, teeth and eyes gleaming.

Then Finn stepped up, a battle leader as was Kvasir. But Kvasir said little at these moments and had seemed even more preoccupied than usual. I took it to be because he had Thorgunna with him; a woman is always a worry.

‘It is as Jarl Orm says,’ Finn growled. ‘Obey him. Obey me and Kvasir Spittle here, too, for we are his right and left hands. You are no strangers to red war, so I will not give you the usual talk, of Hewers of Men and Feeders of Eagles.’

He paused, hauled out his long Roman nail and grinned.

‘Just remember – this is Jarl Orm, who slew the White Bear. Jarl Orm, who has stood in the tomb of Atil, Lord of the Huns and has seen more silver in a glance than any of you will see in a thousand lifetimes. Jarl Orm, who has fought with the Romans against the Serklanders. Jarl Orm, who is called friend by the Emperor of the Great City.’

I winced at all this, only some of which was true – but Finn’s audience would have howled and set up a din of shield- clanging if we had not been looking for stealth.

As we moved off, I saw Thorkel grin at me and raise his axe in salute and I realized that a lot of those things had been done by me right enough. I was now in my twenty-first year in the world, no longer the boy Thorkel had let into the Oathsworn on a shingle beach like this one, on a night much like this one, six years ago. I touched the dragon-ended silver torc round my neck, that great curve that snarled at itself and marked me as a man men followed.

No-one challenged us as we watched and waited above Klerkon’s holding, looking to count hard men and seeing none. The trees dripped. A bird fluttered in, was shocked and whirred out again, cackling. I did not like this and said so.

‘We had better move fast,’ said Kvasir, his mouth fish-breath close to my face. ‘Sooner or later we will give ourselves away and the lighter it gets…’

The sky was all silver, dulling to lead beyond the huddle of wattle huts. I half-rose and hauled out my sword – not the sabre this time, but a good, solid weapon given to me by King Eirik himself, with little silver inserts hammered into the cross- guard and a fat silver oathing ring in the pommel. I had a shield, but it was mostly for show, since I only had two fingers and a thumb on that hand to grip it with and any sound blow would wrench it away.

Grunting, red-faced, teeth grinding on his nail, Finn slid down through the trees, letting the rest of us follow. He had The Godi, his big sword, in one hand and carried no shield. The free hand was for that nail.

Then, just as he was seen by the two thralls squatting to shit, he ripped the nail from his mouth, threw back his head and let out a howl that raised the hairs on my arms.

The Oathsworn wolfed down on the camp, skilled and savage and sliding together like ship planks. The first thralls, gawping in terror and surprise with their kjafal flapping round their knees, vanished in a red flurry of blows and it was clear, from the start, that there were no warriors here.

Well, there was, but not much of one. He barrelled out of a doorway with only his breeks on, mouth red and wet and screaming in his mad-bearded face and a great shieldbreaker sword swinging.

Finn and Kvasir, like two wolves on a kill, swung right and left and, while Mad Beard was turning his shaggy head, deciding which one to go for first, Finn darted in with his Roman nail and Kvasir snarled from the other side with his axe, though he missed by a foot with his first swing. It did not matter much, though, for there were two of them and only one defender.

When they broke apart, panting, tongues lolling like dogs, I saw that the man they had been hacking to bloody pats of flesh was Amundi, who was called Brawl. We had all shared ale and laughed round the same fire three summers before.

‘So much for him, then,’ growled Finn, giving the ruined thing a kick. He shot Kvasir a hard look and added accusingly, ‘You need more practice with that axe.’

I had done nothing much in the fight save snarl and wave a menacing blade at a couple of thralls armed with snatched- up wood axes, who thought better of it and dropped them, whimpering. Now I watched these hard men, the new Oathsworn, do what they did best, standing back and weighing them up, for this was a new crew to me for the most part. It was also an old crew, let loose like a pack of hunting dogs too-long kennelled.

Hlenni Brimill and Red Njal and Hauk Fast-Sailor were old Oathsworn, yet they raved through that place, mad with the lust of it, so that the terror in faces only made them worse. Others, too, showed that they were no strangers to raiding and, for all that I had done this before, this time seemed too bloody and harsh, full of screaming women, dying bairns and revenge.

I saw Klepp Spaki, bent over with hands on his thighs, retching up at the sight of Brawl’s bloody mess. Now he knew the truth of the bold runes he carved for brave raiders who would never come home.

I saw Thorkel and Finnlaith laughing and slithering in the mud trying to round up a couple of pigs, which was foolish. We wanted no livestock on this raid – we had provision enough for where we were going.

It was the others who brought red war and ruin to that place. Women and thralls died there, right away or later, after they had been used. Weans died, too.

In the dim, blue-smoked hall, men overturned benches, flung aside hangings, cursed and slapped thralls, looking for loot. When they saw me, they fell silent and went still. Ospak, Tjorvir and Throst Silfra, like three bairns caught in the larder with stolen apples, dropped their thieving when they saw me. It was a half-naked, weeping thrall woman they had stripped between them – but they only dropped her because I had told them to leave the women until we were sure all the fighting men were dead.

Finn lost himself in it – him most of all. Like a drunk kept from ale, he dived headfirst into the barrel and tried to drown himself, losing his sense so much that I had to save him from the boy who was trying to avenge his mother. Since Finn had killed her before he flung her down on a dead ox in the yard and started humping her, it was futile, but I had to kill the boy anyway, for he had a seax at Finn’s exposed back.

A few kept their heads. Runolf Harelip spilled into the red light of the rann-sack in the hall, dragging a struggling thrall- boy with him, cuffing the child round the head, hard enough to throw him at my feet and almost into the hearthfire. I looked down as the boy looked up and a jolt went through me, as if I had been slapped.

A sensible man crops the hair of a thrall – it keeps the nits down and reminds them of their place – but this boy had been shaved and badly, so that hair stuck in odd dirty-straw tufts between scabs. He wore an iron collar with a ring on it and I knew there would be runes that told how he was the property of Klerkon.

None of the other thralls, I noted, had as much as a thong and bone slice, for Klerkon’s steading was an island with no place for a thrall to run – but this one had tried. More than once, I suspected, for Klerkon to collar him; Harelip had noted that, too, and thought it strange enough to bring him to me rather than kill him.

‘Chained up outside the privy,’ Harelip grunted, confirming my thoughts. Fastened like a mad dog, dumped near filth for more punishment.

The boy continued to stare at me. Like a cat, that stare, out of the muck and bruises of his face. Unwavering and strange – then I saw, with a shock, that he had one eye blue- green and one yellow-brown and that was what was strangest in that gaze.

‘Klerkon is not here,’ offered Ospak, stepping away from the weeping woman, though not without a brief look of regret. Light speared through the badly-daubed walls of the rough hall, dappling the stamped-earth of the floor.

‘That much I had worked out,’ I answered, glad of the excuse to break away from the boy’s eyes and angry at being made so twitched by him. I stepped towards what was Klerkon’s private space in the hall, throwing back the curtain of it.

Furs, purest white fox. A cloak with bright-green trim. The frame of a proper box-bed, planked over and thick with good pelts. No chest. No money. No Thordis.

‘I am a Northman,’ the boy said. A West Norse tongue, stumbling through the Slav he had been forced to speak, stiff with the old misuse of defiant silences.

I turned back into those eyes. He stood, chin up and challenging and, for a moment, reminded me of the Goat Boy as he had been when we found him on Cyprus. About the same age as the Goat Boy was then, I noted. Of course, we had stopped calling him the Goat Boy when he had grown into resenting it – Jon Asanes he was now, being schooled by a trader I knew in Holmgard, which the Slavs call Novgorod.

‘I am from Norway and a prince,’ the boy added. Throst Silfra gave a loud laugh and those strange eyes swung on him, eagle fierce. I saw Throst quail in an eyeblink, then recover as quickly, also angered at having been so disconcerted by a thrall boy. He moved, lip curled.

‘Stay,’ I warned and, for a moment, he glowered at me, then lowered his hand and stepped back.

‘I AM a prince,’ the boy insisted.

‘Aye, just so,’ thundered Finn, ducking into the middle of all this. ‘Wipe the muck off every thrall and they will swear they were pure gold in their own country.’

‘A prince of where?’ I asked.

The boy stirred uncomfortably. ‘Somewhere,’ he said, hesitantly. Then, more firmly: ‘But my mother was a Princess. She died. So did my fostri. Klerkon killed them both.’

‘There isn’t so much as a bead in this place,’ Finn growled, ignoring the boy. ‘Klerkon did not return here with his loot, so he must have sailed straight to Aldeigjuborg.’

‘The storerooms are full,’ Kvasir added, coming in to the hall. ‘Winter feed. Honey in pots, seal and deer hides, fox pelts, feathers for pillows, sacks of acorns…’

‘Feathers,’ sneered Finn. ‘Fucking acorns…’

‘Take it, load it,’ I said and Kvasir nodded. ‘When you have everything, burn this place to the ground. Leave the thralls – they take up too much room and they are not what we came for.’

Kvasir ducked out of the hall, bawling for people to help him; Red Njal came in and glanced at me, then looked away. His knees and hands were clotted with gore where he had knelt to plunder a woman and the bairns he had killed; I had stepped in on him and being watched had shamed him away from the small bodies.

‘Is it wise to burn it?’ Finn asked.

‘Wise?’

‘You know Klerkon,’ Finn offered. ‘Unless we finish him, he will have his revenge. He has already torched Gunnarsgard and half of it was mine – he may decide to kill all the thralls and Thordis with them, out of fury.’

He was right and this was reason enough, as Finn often pointed out, for not owning anything you could not stuff into a sea chest. Yet, outside, I could hear what we had brought to this place, in the screams and the harsh laughter. Humping a dead woman on the flank of a dead ox in the yard was the least of it. I said that, too and we glared at each other.

‘Fear the reckoning of those you have wronged,’ Red Njal said mournfully and I shot him a savage glance; he, above all, had much to fear, for I suspected the bairns whose blood he had been paddling about in were Klerkon’s own.

He saw my look and stiffened, then shrugged.

‘The shame you cannot lift you had better let lie, as my granny used to say,’ he muttered darkly.

‘Happy woman who never saw you guddling in the blood of bairns for what you could steal,’ I spat at him and he winced away from it. It was unfair, for others had done worse and none of us were snow-pure.

‘I know where Klerkon’s gold is,’ the boy said. ‘I will tell you if you do not fire the steading.’

‘If I tickle you with a hot blade you will tell us anyway,’ Throst Silfra growled, but the boy’s double-coloured eyes never left mine.

‘I would have thought you would warm yourself at such a fire,’ I said, flicking the iron collar. He flinched.

‘The thralls you leave will die without shelter,’ he replied. ‘It is enough that you take their food. They are not able to run, are not to blame and some are my friends here.’

‘Other princes?’ chuckled Finn scornfully.

The boy grinned. ‘No. But some have been kinder than kings. The free folk here are another matter and I have my own thoughts on that.’

Was he the age he looked? Nine, I had reckoned – but he spoke like someone ten times as old.

‘So it is agreed,’ I said. ‘Show us Klerkon’s secret.’

‘Lend me your axe,’ demanded the boy and Kvasir, after a moment’s narrow-eyed pause, handed it over. The boy weighed it with little bounces of his thin arm, then stepped to the boxbed and swung it, hard. Chips flew.

He swung it again and part of the frame cracked. A coin flew out and smacked on the beaten earth of the floor. Kvasir picked it up, turned it over, bit it. ‘Gold, by Odin’s arse,’ he said. ‘A Serkland dinar in gold, no less.’

The boy swung again and more chips flew.

‘Here, give me that – you need more muscle,’ said Runolf Harelip with a grin. The boy handed him the axe and stepped back. Harelip split the bed in two blows and Kvasir, Tjorvir, Throst and the others scrambled to gather the coins that spilled from the hollow frame.

In the end, they filled a sack the size of a the thrall boy’s head, all gold coins, most of them Serkland dinar with their squiggly markings, each worth, I reckoned it up in my head, about twenty silver dirham each. It was as great a loss for Klerkon as it was a gain for us.

The boy stood, unsmiling and straight. I saw that the iron collar was rubbing his skin raw and looked at Kvasir, who had also seen it.

‘Ref Steinsson has tools,’ he said, ‘that can strike that off.’

‘Just so,’ I said, then turned to the boy, feeling that heart- leap as our eyes met. ‘Do you have a name, then, or will we simply call you Prince?’

‘Olaf,’ said the boy with a frown. ‘But Klerkon called me Craccoben.’

There was silence. The name squatted in the hall like a raven in a tree. It was a name you gave to a full-cunning man, rich in Odin’s rune magic and one who, like him, could sit at the feet of hanged men to hear the whispered secrets of the dead.

Not a name you took or gave lightly and I wondered what had made Klerkon hand it out to this thrall boy.

Crowbone.