God of Vengeance Read online

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Norway AD785. It began with the betrayal of a lord by a king . . .

  But when King Gorm puts Jarl Harald’s family to the sword, he makes one terrible mistake – he fails to kill Harald’s youngest son, Sigurd.

  On the run, unsure who to trust and hunted by powerful men, Sigurd wonders if the gods have forsaken him: his kin are slain or prisoners, his village attacked, its people taken as slaves. Honour is lost.

  But he has a small band of loyal men at his side and with them he plans his revenge. All know that Óðin – whose name means frenzy – is drawn to chaos and bloodshed, just as a raven is to slaughter. In the hope of catching the All-Father’s eye, the young Viking endures a ritual ordeal and is shown a vision. Wolf, bear, serpent and eagle come to him. Sigurd will need their help if he is to make a king pay in blood for his treachery.

  Using cunning and war-craft, he gathers together a band of warriors – including Olaf, his father’s right-hand man, Bram who men call Bear, Black Floki who wields death with a blade, and the shield maiden Valgerd, who fears no man – and convinces them to follow him.

  For, whether Óðin is with him or not, Sigurd will have his vengeance. And neither men nor gods had better stand in his way . . .

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Giles Kristian

  Copyright

  God of Vengeance is for Phil, Pietro and Drew, with whom I rowed the Dragon Harald Fairhair.

  I know that I hung

  On a wind-rocked tree

  Nine whole nights,

  With a spear wounded,

  And to Óðin offered

  Myself to myself;

  On that tree

  Of which no one knows

  From what root it springs.

  Óðin’s Rune-Song

  PROLOGUE

  AD775, Avaldsnes, Norway

  THE WOODS WERE silent but the men were not. They progressed slowly and with care. No sudden movements. Round-shouldered like wolves, heads pulled in, eyes half closed so that their whites would not betray them. And yet every other footfall snapped a twig or disturbed the pine litter, making the guilty one curse inwardly and hold still as a rock to see if the bull elk would bolt.

  For now at least the creature stood upwind and unaware, its hide dappled pale gold in the late morning sunlight threading through the trees.

  Three hunters had broken off from the group. Two men and a boy, and all of them carrying spears, the boy’s one and a half times his own height, its haft almost too thick for his hand to grasp, though he had not dropped it all day. If he had learnt anything in his seven years it was that you did not drop your spear in woods where boar might be foraging. Or where an injured wolf might linger. You especially did not drop it in front of your father or the king, no matter how white your knuckles or how much your fingers ached.

  They should have waited for the men with bows perhaps. The dogs too. But kings and jarls were not good at waiting and now the king turned around and grinned at the boy, putting a thick finger to his lips, his copper beard bristling in the breeze. Then he gestured to the boy’s father to skirt round to the right of the glade and the boy knew this was doing his father a great honour and pride bloomed hot in his chest. For once the king made to cast his spear the elk would sense it and take off eastward, and Jarl Harald would hurl his own spear and bring the creature down.

  So the boy held still now, his heart beating in his ears, his stomach knotted with the thrill of it all. He would sooner die than be the one to scare the beast off now and ruin their casts.

  The bull is magnificent, he thought, trying to be as still as his brothers had taught him, each measured breath rich with the sweet, pungent scent of tree bark and pine resin and the moss that crept up the lower trunks. All around him bracken quivered in the shadows. Something scuttled across an ancient animal track near by, and far behind them a dog’s bark echoed off the trees, but the boy kept his eyes on the elk, hoping his gaze could somehow hold it there, as though his eyes could bind the beast to the spot as Gleipnir, the dwarf-forged chain, had held the mighty wolf.

  Then, shielding the gesture with his own body, the king waved a hand at the boy behind him, inviting him to be the one to throw the first spear. The boy blinked. Swallowed. They had been out since before dawn and this was the first worthy prey they had found and now he would have the honour of casting first. And if there was another thing he had learnt in his seven years it was that you did not miss when a man with a torc at his neck the thickness of your wrist invited you to launch your spear. Every day the boy practised with sword and shield but never with a spear so thick he could barely grip it.

  He nodded to the king and the king nodded back. He would have acknowledged his father too and made sure of where he was, but he would not allow himself to tear his thoughts from the elk.

  ‘Even before you throw, see the spear in your mind, flying straight and true,’ his brother Sorli had told him, and no doubt Sorli had been told it by Sigmund, who had heard it from Thorvard, which was the way of it with brothers. ‘See the spear pass through the elk’s flesh and drive into its heart. Only when you have spun this picture in the eye of your mind should you make the throw.’

  And so the boy spun the picture of it now as he eased his leading foot forward, making up ground and preparing to put all of his seven years behind the throw.

  But the bull had many more years in him than the boy and suddenly he hauled up his great head and sniffed the air. He was a giant. Over seven feet tall at the shoulder and then there was his great head and the antlers which themselves spanned a distance much greater than the boy’s height. The beast’s hackles rose as he lowered that great head and flattened his ears, and the boy was close enough now to see the flies buzzing near his muzzle and hear the crunch of his teeth working through the tough plants he had rooted up.

  Now!

  The boy made three quick strides and on the fourth step hurled the spear and it flew, arcing slightly before striking the bull in its right hind quarters but not hard enough to stay in the flesh, as the bull roared and turned and galloped off through the trees.

  Towards the boy’s father.

  Harald gave a roar to rival the bull’s as he cast his own spear, the iron blade streaking like lightning, but somehow the beast swerved, too limber for its great size, and the jarl’s spear gouged a red streak along its neck but flew on into the trees.

  ‘Thór’s arse!’ Harald yelled, as the bull plunged off, snapping branches and twigs and vanishing deep into the pine wood.

  But the king was laughing, great booming peals that echoed off the trunks and bent him double, hands on his knees, his spear stuck in the earth beside him.

  ‘What is so funny?’ the boy’s father called, an angry flush beneath his golden beard, for he had missed and that was bad enough without his host laughing about it.

  Still laughing, th
e king straightened and came over to the boy, putting an arm around his shoulders, at which the boy straightened and puffed up his chest and tried to grow a year’s worth in a heartbeat.

  ‘It’s your boy, Harald!’ the king said. ‘By the gods he’s got a throw on him! I swear that proud bull shit himself when he saw young Sigurd’s face.’

  The boy did not know if he was being complimented or if the king was making fun of him. He tried to smile but could feel that it was all teeth and nothing else, and then his father burst into laughter too and between the two men the sound was like the roar of the sea.

  ‘I would not like to get on your bad side, boy!’ the king said, giving his shoulder a shake that made his brain rattle in its skull.

  But the boy was still thinking about the bull elk. About how he had failed to bring it down. Next time the spear would pierce the flesh, he told himself. Next time he would be stronger.

  ‘I don’t know about you, Harald, but I am thirsty,’ the king said, pulling his spear from the earth.

  ‘I am always thirsty,’ Harald said, as the rest of the hunting party drew nearer, the men eager to catch up with their lords and the dogs barking with the bull elk’s scent in their noses.

  Sigurd gathered up his own spear and his father pointed at the blade.

  ‘See the blood there, boy?’ Harald said. ‘That was a good throw. Better than mine.’

  And with that they turned north to make their way back to King Gorm’s hall and the mead that awaited them there.

  And somehow the spear in the boy’s hand no longer felt too big.

  CHAPTER ONE

  AD785, Skudeneshavn, Norway

  THE JARL RAN his fingers through the scraps of gristle and white knuckles of bone on the platter before him. Then, his hand gleaming, he raised it to the rings of twisted silver which sat below the muscle of his left arm and rubbed the grease between metal and skin. A grin spread within his beard, growing broader still when one of the rings began to shift enough for him to wedge a thick thumb between the snarling beast heads that had for a year or more closed the circle.

  ‘This for the man who puts Olaf on his arse!’ he roared and was answered by the pounding of hands on the pine planks of the mead table as he pulled the ring from his own flesh and held it aloft, its greasy lustre catching the flicker of oil lamps before he slammed it down beside his trencher. ‘We need to give Hagal some new stories, eh! He has been giving us the same tales for years and thinks that simply changing the names is enough to fool us!’

  Everyone laughed at that apart from Hagal ‘Crow-Song’ who flushed crimson beneath his neat fair beard and muttered some half-hearted defence.

  ‘He thinks we don’t know he is serving the same scraps over and over,’ Harald roared, the huge silver brooch that pinned the cloak on his right shoulder glinting in the flamelight, ‘but what he doesn’t know is that while he is farting out of his mouth, we are sleeping.’ Folk crowed and hammered palms against the mead bench and the poor skald batted the air with a hand and put his horn to his mouth.

  ‘Don’t break any necks, Olaf!’ Harald warned with a glistening finger and woven brows.

  Without turning to see if there were any challengers – for there always were – Olaf shrugged his broad shoulders and clambered out from the mead bench, brushing crumbs from the tunic stretched over the barrel of his chest. He put his drinking horn to his full lips and downed its contents to a din of cheers and table-thumping that all but shook the timbers of Eik-hjálmr, the jarl’s hall.

  ‘Take your time, Olaf! You will live many years with the humiliation of what is about to happen,’ Sorli said, grinning at his friends who hoisted their mead horns in appreciation of Sorli’s boasting. Men and women fumbled in the darker corners and dogs growled over scraps.

  ‘Ha!’ Olaf exclaimed, upending the mead horn on his head to show that it was empty, then flinging it at a dark-haired thrall who caught it with practised ease.

  ‘You’ll be making friends with the mice and the dogs soon enough, old man,’ Sorli said, stirring the new floor reeds with a foot and almost unbalancing with the doing of it. ‘Remember that one, Crow-Song!’ he called over to the skald, who curled his lip, beyond caring now.

  Sigurd raised his own drinking horn to his lips and mumbled a curse into it. Beside him his friend Svein shook his head, the thick braids of red hair swishing like reefing ropes on a sail. ‘Your brother has pissed away his senses,’ he said, then grinned. ‘But we will get a laugh out of it, hey!’

  Sigurd nodded half-heartedly. He was in no mood for laughter, as anyone around him would have known. And yet he would stay to watch his elder brother attempt to make good boasts that had often filled Eik-hjálmr the way breath fills the sky.

  ‘You should look away now, boy,’ Sorli barked at Harek who was conspicuous amongst all those grizzled growling men for his beardless face but more so for his hair which was white as ale froth and smooth as a girl’s. ‘I don’t want you seeing your old father dropped on his arse in front of his friends.’ Sorli frowned, scratching amongst his thick, golden hair which, when hanging loose as it was now, had earned him the byname Baldr because men and women both thought that Sorli resembled that most fair-faced god. But Baldr son of Óðin was also said to be the wisest of the gods and that, Sigurd thought, was where the similarity ended.

  Harek did not look away, instead humouring Sorli with a gentle smile and nod. Then he looked at his mother who sat cradling Harek’s infant brother, though all you could see of the bairn was a shock of hair as white as Harek’s sticking from the blanket like cotton grass. His mother rolled her eyes, shook her head and went back to cooing in little Eric’s ear.

  ‘I’m ready, boy,’ Olaf said, shoving men aside who were gathering in the middle of the hall to watch the match. ‘No tears now. Your father and brothers are watching.’ Olaf winked at Sigurd and Sigurd could not help but grin at the man who was his father’s closest friend and sword-brother. It was strange, Sigurd thought as he climbed up to stand on the mead bench for a better view, how he wanted Olaf to answer Sorli’s crowing with a serving of floor rushes, and yet also wanted his brother to give a good account of himself, perhaps even surprise them all by dumping Olaf on his rear.

  ‘Don’t embarrass us, brother,’ Thorvard called out, raising his mead horn, his wolf’s grin doing nothing to disguise the sincerity of the command.

  As the eldest of the brothers Thorvard took family honour more seriously than any of them but for their father perhaps, and Sigurd suspected that if Sorli were beaten too easily then Thorvard would feel duty-bound to challenge Olaf himself and salvage what he could of the family pride.

  ‘Hey, Asgot!’ Slagfid bellowed, his voice rolling through the hall like thunder above the din. ‘Who is going to win? What do your runes say?’ But the godi ignored Jarl Harald’s champion, perhaps the only man but for Harald himself in that hall who would dare address him thus, and sat like a cloud threatening rain to the right of the jarl’s high seat.

  ‘You and Asgot make for shit company tonight,’ Svein told Sigurd, taking the deer-antler comb on its thong around his neck and pulling its teeth through the beginnings of the red beard of which he was so proud. How many times in Sigurd’s seventeen years had he heard his friend claim to be descended from the thunder god Thór himself? ‘Is it the godi’s bag of bones that has you as sour as a woman sailing the red river?’

  A great cheer went up as Olaf and Sorli slammed into one another like bull deer during the rut and grappled.

  ‘You know that isn’t it,’ Sigurd said.

  Sorli slipped Olaf’s grasp and swung a fist but missed and the men cheered as Olaf glanced round the hall and asked if anyone had seen where that punch landed.

  ‘We’ll get our chance,’ Svein said. ‘If there’s one thing you can count on it’s that with old Biflindi as king there will be more fights than there are bristles on Thór’s ball sack.’

  Olaf cracked a fist into Sorli’s temple and the younger man staggere
d backwards but kept his feet.

  ‘You and I will have years to make our fame,’ Svein went on, gesturing to a thrall to refill his drinking horn. ‘We’ll wear our swords down to stubs,’ he added, then gave a mischievous grin that suggested he had also meant the swords in their breeks.

  ‘But not tomorrow,’ Sigurd said, the bitterness of it working into him like iron rot into a helmet. He had trained with sword, axe and shield since he had been strong enough to hold them, and yet still he must stay behind while his three brothers and their father went into the steel-storm.

  ‘Ah, drink up!’ Svein said, thumping his mead horn against Sigurd’s so that liquid spilled over the lip and splashed onto the shoulder of a man who was enjoying the fight too much to notice. Not that he would have picked a quarrel with Svein, Sigurd supposed, for Svein was already built like a troll. Given a handful more years he would be a red-haired, red-bearded giant, perhaps even bigger than his father, Styrbiorn, who sat with a beard full of mead and a lap full of wench across the hall, paying no interest to the fight whatever.

  Sigurd drank.

  ‘That’s better,’ Svein said, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth and giving a great belch that all but brought tears to Sigurd’s eyes. And just then Olaf ducked underneath Sorli’s leading arm, throwing his left shoulder into the younger man’s chest and rolling across him so that he took Sorli’s arm between both of his own and bent the hand back on itself, forcing Sorli to his knees lest his wrist be snapped.

  Helpless, Sorli barked a curse and Olaf had the better of him enough to stretch out one arm and give a gaping yawn.

  ‘Fuck!’ a man named Aud exclaimed in the open doorway, still tightening his belt over his huge belly after a trip to the cesspit. ‘I missed it.’

  ‘Not much to miss,’ another replied.

  ‘Anyone else?’ Olaf asked, his gaze raking over the gathering like a smith’s tongs through hot coals. Several men called out or stepped forward but when they saw Thorvard press through the throng they stopped out of respect for him, and not just because he was the jarl’s son, either.