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.
Crowbone, last to leave, turned to look at