Free Crowbone by Robert Low Page A

me to shore. The gods clearly turned their back on me all the same – for this Hrodfolc took us both.’
    Kaetilmund gave Berto an admiring grin.
    ‘Well, No-Toes,’ he declared. ‘You may have no skill with an axe or a lathe, but it seems you are more fish than chain-dog.’
    Crowbone simply wondered why the thrall had done it, for there seemed little reason for it. Grima saw the look and knew it for what it was. When he spoke Crowbone jerked, as he always did when he suspected folk were reading the whirl of his thought-cage.
    ‘Perhaps because I did not kill him and he was no better than a thrall when I took him anyway,’ Grima said. ‘Nothing much changed for him except he breathed sea air. I am in his debt. I have nothing to give to him but what I can make happen in the short time left me, with my last breaths. He has eighteen summers on him and will prove valuable to you. Trust me in this and free him, in return for what I can give.’
    Crowbone smiled.
    ‘What makes you think you have anything I need?’ he pointed out and Grima grinned; sweat rolled off him. Gjallandi had come up in time to see and make tutting sounds as he inspected the ruin of the old warrior’s hands.
    ‘You are a prince with no princely ship crew I can see,’ Grima grunted. ‘Unless you have more hidden away. Which means you have no princely ship, either. I am jarl of the Red Brothers, who are a crew with a ship and in need of a prince. Free Berto and I will lead you to them. Kill this Balle and those who follow him and make me jarl again – then I will hand crew and ship to you, for I have no use for them where I am going.’
    Crowbone considered it and was thinking the old man might not last long enough for all this. He was set to scowling when Grima chuckled.
    ‘I will live long enough to watch Balle’s face when I arrive full in it with a prince and a fistful of the famed Oathsworn,’ he growled and Crowbone sat still for a time, put out at the idea of the old man reading his thoughts – or, worse, his own face being so blatant that anyone could see what went on inside his head.
    Then he nodded and spoke the words aloud, so there would be no going back. The thrall blinked a little from the bland round of his face and Kaetilmund, grinning, cracked the links of the chain, so that the freed thrall could unravel himself.
    ‘There you have it, No-Toes,’ he said. ‘Fetch that axehead back and fix it on properly, for you can carry it like a man now. You had better thank Prince Olaf here, for now you are a warrior.’
    ‘I am Berto. I am thanking.’
    The voice was high and thick with accent, for the Wend knew Norse only as spoken by Frisians and his own sort, which was as like the true sounds of men as dogs barking. Crowbone held the flat gaze of the Wend with his own odd eyes, seeing the deep blue eyes and round olive face of a youth not yet even into beard. He had seen Wends before, travelling up the Odra River with Orm. He had not thought much of them, so he was surprised to find himself being studied carefully and there was something both attractive and disturbing about that; not much of a thrall in his own lands, this one, he thought, that he can keep his head up and his eyes bold. He found he had muttered as much aloud.
    ‘No doubt a prince at home,’ Onund grunted, hearing it as he passed. ‘As all thralls are who are raided from others.’
    He went away laughing, with others who knew how Crowbone had been rescued by Orm – and claimed his princely rank with his first words – joining in. Crowbone, remembering the slaughter that had come after, could not find a smile and turned to the old man instead, cocking his head in a question.
    ‘We have a
stöðvar
,’ Grima said. ‘An old seasonal place where we lie up. The crew will be there, for Balle has all the clever of a rock and thinks me dead and gone.’
    Berto the Wend bent his head over the old man while the yellow dog whined and tried to shove its scarred ears