"Thank the White Christ, you have come back," the old man said. "I was near death here. Now give me my cross."
'Instead, the cat picked up the Christ amulet in her mouth and ran off with it, leaving the old man cursing. He never saw Martin the cat ever again. Months later, as he lay dying, he heard barking at his door and, suddenly, a handful of mangy, limping hounds burst in, tired, and dusty, all torn ears and scratches.
"Too late," the old man said. "The cat's run off and hidden the amulet." Then he turned his face to the wall and died.
'The dogs slunk away, howling and arguing with each other and began to look for the cat, but Martin was long gone. So from that day to this, dogs have fought each other and only stop to chase every cat they see, hoping it is Martin with the amulet. They have distrusted all cats ever since — and men, if they are wise, should do the same, for not all those who carry the cross are good Christ-believers.'
In the silence that followed, the hissing wind was loud and mine was the only chuckle. Then men started half-up, afraid, as something flitted silently overhead.
'Only a hunting owl,' Martin snapped, then rounded on Thorkel, Tyrfing and the others and savaged them for their twitchiness.
'This is what comes from listening to that damned boy,' he thundered and they hunched their heads deeper into their shoulders, as much to endure him as the cold and the long night. Then he looked sideways at Olaf and made the sign of the cross.
'If you have such a Christ amulet,' growled Tyrfing, trembling with cold, 'now would be a good time to use it, priest.'
Martin only shook his head at such foolishness. The silence was brooding.
'A good tale,' I whispered to Crowbone when I could. 'It did not miss the mark, I am thinking.'
He turned to me, eyes round and serious. 'The owl tells me to watch out tomorrow,' he said. 'Things will happen and we must be ready for them.'
He turned back to stare at the flames and I felt the racing creep of my flesh that always told me when the Other was close, when the membrane between the worlds was thinnest.
He may have been earlier in the day, but he was not nine now, that little Crowbone.
Tyrfing was dead next morning, sitting by the black scar of the iced-over fire, wrapped in his cloak and ghost-white with rime. His face was a faded blue, his eyes fastened shut with lashes fine as silver wires.
'He will be the lucky one,' Olaf piped up and the remaining men scowled; Heg even reached out as if to cuff the boy, but freedom sat too new on him to behave like that.
Martin, a dark scar himself in that place of frosted ground and frozen white birch trees, slapped men to get them to move and they did, slowly, as if underwater. Thorkel, too, added his curses and cuffs and they staggered into a world like the inside of the frost-giant Ymir's skull, a huge curve of iced sky and snow plain that seemed to have no beginning and no end and was turning pewter-dark by the minute.
The last pony, trembling and head-bowed with misery, was fetched from where it had been tethered and Martin told us to get back in the cart.
'They should be made to work,' Drumba argued, scowling. 'That one pony will scarce pull the load. Get them out and pushing.'
Martin gave in and we climbed Out, stiff with cold and me with my head aching still, each step a stab of pain in it. The wind hissed snow in my face and the pearl sky slid towards darkness.
'Whatever happens,' Olaf said, looking up into my face, 'do not worry. Yesterday, I saw a magpie in a tree over there and a raven joined it and they sat together for a while, watching us. Then the raven chased the magpie off.'
Raven — magpie? I heard it, as if from a long way off. The boy was mad for birds. Or just mad.
He saw my look and smiled, his lips blush-red against the pallor of his pinched face. 'The magpie is Hel's bird, made like her face — half ruin, half beauty. The raven belongs to Odin and the message is clear. . Odin will prevent Hel from claiming us this day.'
Not a straw death, at least,' I managed through my clattering teeth.
'If the Norns weave it,' Olaf answered, 'no death at all.'
Thorkel was trying to back the pony into the traces, had it halfway hooked up when someone yelled, shrill and high as a woman.
Drumba half-turned and the arrow took him high on the shoulder when it should have pinned him between the shoulderblades. Thorkel, fighting to hold the pony, took one there, a deep shunk of sound that staggered him — but he stayed upright and only seemed angrier.
The horsemen spilled around us like ghosts, the white cloths that had draped them and their horses flailing like winding sheets. Those cloths had hidden them from sight, the snow had hidden them from sound and now, breaking right and left round the little copse' of trees, they galloped in a spray of white flakes and arrows.
Heg fled, screaming, vanishing into flurries of snow. Another arrow thudded into Thorkel, in his chest this time and he staggered back with the force of it and lost his grip on the pony, which reared and fought in terror.
They were silent, these horsemen. Silent and agile as cats, climbing up and ducking under, whirling almost completely round to keep the arrows coming while they rode round and round, flailing their horses into stumbling runs, the snow like gruel under their ponies' hooves.
Thorkel, snarling now, dragged out a sword — the frozen-stiff fur he wore was as good as armour against the arrows and he whirled one way, then another, spiked with them, like a mad hedgepig. Drumba choked off his last yelping cry when another arrow skewered his chest and punched a little way out of his back in a flick of time. He went down in a swirl of moans and red-dyed snow.
The wind was howling, I realized. Crowbone tugged my cloak and I saw him hunkered at my feet, but the pony and the wind and the screams of men turned him into a gawping fish, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly to me.
A figure lurched into me, bounced off and started to move away, half-turning to fling me away with a curse from a black-toothed, ruined mouth.
I grabbed out, caught something and heard him yell. Pain slammed into my shins and made me howl and something arced up and sideways into the snow — a great, hard-ridged leather shoe. Then something snapped and I fell backwards, clutching what I had grabbed, knowing Martin had just escaped.
The pony was mad with fear now, plunging and bucking. The cart tilted, went on one side, then over again, the sledge-runners in the air. The traces snapped and the pony staggered off.
Crowbone, on his knees, started to dig, while I lay there, head muzzed and pounding, waves of sick pain flowing up my leg from the kick on the shin.
Now I saw how dark it had become, how most of the shrieking was the Wind and that the horse warriors were vague shapes in the seething snow and barely moving. I managed to get to my knees just as one of the horse-warriors lumbered out of the swirl, bow cased and a curved sword in one hand. I heard a series of shrill screams as the sword went up and came down, threw up the bundle I had and heard the edge whack on it, the blow almost jerking it from my hand and flinging me flat again. The rider gave a howl of triumph, fought the horse round, leaning out to be able to hit me.
Then Thorkel snarled out of the white mist of snow, the sword swinging, smacking the rider out of the saddle. Roaring and hacking, Thorkel flurried more blows on the fallen shape, half of them bouncing off because he was wild with fear and anger and using the flat as much as the edge.
'In here, Jarl Orm,' shouted Crowbone, tugging my leg. 'In here.'
He had dug out the snow at the edge of the cart, like the sunken door to an Iceland toft and, even as I moved, Thorkel spotted it and lumbered towards me, a hedgepig bristled with arrows that seemed to have done him no harm at all.