Wings of the Storm: (The Rise of Sigurd 3) Read online

  ‘Runa,’ Skuld said. Just that. Nothing more. Runa looked down and saw Varin lying there, face down, Skuld’s scramasax buried up to the hilt between his shoulders.

  The other men lay where they had fallen. Blood offerings for the Goddess, Runa thought to herself. She bent and pulled Skuld’s knife from its flesh sheath and gave it back to Skuld, who looked at it vaguely and so Runa slid it into the scabbard at the High Mother’s waist. Then Runa saw something else and knew that they would not need a flame to guide them home. Through the trees and rising above them into the black sky was a molten iron glow.

  ‘They are burning it,’ she said, a new horror flooding through her. Pain was seeping in now too. From the cut in her head and the gash in her side which she pressed a hand against, trying to stem the blood. Her neck felt as if it were on fire and other injuries were beginning to announce themselves, but they would have to wait.

  She went over to the dead and pulled Iarl’s axe from Gevar’s head and robbed Gevar of his long knife. She also took up the big man’s spear because the one she had put through him would take too much getting out. Then, threading the sheathed knife on to her own belt, she turned back to Skuld, who was watching her every move.

  ‘We must get back, High Mother,’ Runa said, pointing the hand axe in the direction of the fire glow in the sky.

  Skuld blinked slowly. Then a shiver seemed to go through her from her feet to her scalp, and Runa wondered if that was the High Mother shrugging off the veil of it all. She had been alone up here for days and Runa wondered if she had eaten in that time or whether some seiðr had sustained her.

  ‘Are you still with them? The gods?’ Runa asked.

  Skuld seemed to consider the question. ‘No,’ she said.

  Runa nodded. ‘We must go.’

  Skuld’s hand dropped down to the hilt of her scramasax and there was a flash of something in her eyes.

  ‘Can you run?’ she asked Runa.

  Runa touched the gash in her head. The bleeding seemed to have slowed, the oils in her hair helping it to clot. But the wound in her side needed stitching and she knew that blood would spill from it all the way back. Perhaps too much blood.

  ‘I can run,’ she said.

  Then, leaving the Freyja tree to watch over their corpse-gifts, they loped off into the pine wood. Towards the fire.

  Two of the three longhouses were ablaze. Great flapping flames stretched up into the black, roaring their anger at the night sky and spitting torrents of swirling copper sparks. The third longhouse was beginning to burn too, crackling now as hungry young flames worked into the staves and the knots in the pine logs and set the thatch smoking like a beast belching foul yellow breath at the gods. And the Frejya Maidens of Fugløy could not get out of that doomed place because Varin’s men had nailed planks across the door. But those men had their own lives to think of now because Ingel and Ibor faced them and the blacksmiths were dressed for war with helmets and brynjur, shields and swords. One of Varin’s men already lay dead and by the light of the burning buildings Runa saw that Ingel’s sword was bloody.

  ‘Give me your spear, Runa,’ Skuld said, so Runa did, relieved to see that the High Mother seemed to have shed the seiðr which had clung to her like a sea fog and her eyes were clear and bright.

  ‘We’re with you, Ingel!’ Runa called as she and Skuld ran to stand with the blacksmiths against the three men who faced them. Gudny cowered in the shadows nearby, her arms wrapped protectively across her belly.

  ‘They must have killed Varin and the others,’ the one called Asvald said, lifting his shield as the three of them drew together.

  Ingel glanced at Runa and in that heartbeat his face betrayed his horror at the sight of her.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, knowing that she must look far from fine, her face sheeted in blood and her kyrtill more red than blue now. ‘Ibor, get them out,’ she told the older smith, gesturing at the longhouse inside which the Freyja Maidens were trapped. Above the roar of flame she could hear the cracking and splintering of wood and knew that the women were trying to break out.

  ‘We kill these whoresons first,’ Ibor said. But the longhouse was burning well now and those inside must be choking on the smoke.

  ‘Do as Runa says, Father,’ Ingel said. ‘We can deal with these cowards.’

  Ibor nodded and ran off towards the fires.

  ‘Ready?’ Skuld said.

  ‘Kill them,’ Runa said, striding forward, the axe in her right hand, Gevar’s long knife in her left.

  Asvald came to meet her, thrusting his shield at her, but Runa had known he would do this and she jumped back and swept the axe down on to the top rim of that shield and pulled, tilting it towards her so that Asvald’s face was exposed. In the same movement she punched the knife into his eye which was wide with the shock of how easily he had been killed.

  Runa looked over to see Ingel slam his shield into his enemy’s, the man yelling at the impact though he managed to lift his shield again. So Ingel rammed him again, his smith’s strength behind that well-made, iron-reinforced shield and iron boss, and this time the brigand staggered backwards and tripped over his own feet to fall on his backside.

  Ingel’s sword slashed down and finished him.

  ‘Don’t kill me!’ the last of Varin’s men said, but even as he pleaded for his life he must have known that it was wasted breath and so he turned and ran and Skuld’s thrown spear missed him but the arrow did not. It took him in the neck, spitting him, and yet he ran a good four or five spear-lengths even so, before the bones in his legs turned to water and he dropped into the mud by the pig pen.

  Runa turned to see Drífa, her face cast in shadow by the burning longhouse behind her, the bow still raised in the wake of that arrow. The other women were spilling out through the splintered planks of the threshold beside which Ibor stood doubled over, gasping from the effort of having hacked a hole big enough for them to escape through. They came coughing into the firelit night, heads turning this way and that as they gathered up their swords and spears and took in the terrible extent of the brigands’ handiwork.

  ‘What happened up there?’ Ingel asked Runa, his gaze swinging between her and Skuld, who was herself watching the buildings being eaten by flame, knowing it was far too late to try to save them.

  Runa’s sight was failing her. She saw Sibbe strike down Gudny and spit on her, while another Freyja Maiden was yelling at Sibbe for killing a woman so swollen with child. But a rising tide of sickness eddied inside Runa now and she thought she would vomit. She was cold and her legs had no strength in them and she dared not look down at the cut in her side which felt as full of fire as the night.

  ‘What happened, Runa?’ Vebiorg now. Or was it Drífa? The darkness was seeping in like seawater between the strakes.

  ‘Runa killed them,’ Skuld said in a voice loud enough to challenge the roar of the flames and the crack and spit of the burning timbers. ‘Our sister slaughtered them and left their corpses for the Goddess.’ This stirred up a murmuring amongst the smoke-choked, eye-stung Freyja Maidens.

  Runa could no longer make out the faces around her, but she could feel all their eyes on her and the weight of that was terrible, yet she bore it, keeping her knees locked as the seasickness swirled and eddied in her belly and in her skull.

  I must look like the walking dead, she thought, slathered in blood and cut like meat for the wolves. Yet I am alive.

  ‘I’ve got you,’ a man said, and for a cold heartbeat she fought against the arms that held her, fearing it was Gevar and that she had only imagined killing him. ‘It’s me, Runa. Ingel,’ he said. And she let herself slacken against him.

  ‘Bring her into the light. Quickly! We need to stitch her,’ someone said.

  ‘I’ll fetch water,’ another said.

  ‘High Mother, what did the gods say?’ a woman asked.

  ‘Yes, what did Freyja tell you?’ That was Drífa, Runa was sure of it. ‘Are we to leave Fugløy? Or must we stay?’
/>   ‘Come, Runa,’ Ingel said, leading her away.

  Runa braced against him. ‘Wait,’ she said, for she was no less eager than the others to hear what Skuld Snorradóttir had learnt under the cloak.

  ‘Tell us, Skuld,’ a Freyja Maiden demanded. ‘What did the gods say?’

  The flames from the burning buildings stretched into the darkness, thrashing like the sail from a god’s ship ripped in a storm. Like tongues they flapped wildly, telling of the end which was surely coming, just as the old prophetess had warned. They spat tiny embers of flame, those tongues, sparks and cinders beyond counting which swirled and soared and were carried off on the fire’s breath, and Runa imagined each one took with it word of what had happened here on this island.

  ‘What does it matter?’ Skuld said.

  The flames whipped and the sparks soared.

  And Runa let Ingel take her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  TWO DAYS AFTER the battle, after Guthrum had dealt with his dead and his army were still licking their wounds, Olaf himself came out of the borg to meet with the jarl. Guthrum’s men had begun to disassemble their camp within the shadow of the borg’s palisade, but if Alrik thought that meant Guthrum had given up, he was mistaken. Guthrum simply moved his camp back down the slope to flatter ground and there set up as before, with smaller bands of warriors stationed at various places along the perimeter to ensure that none of Alrik’s men, or Alrik himself, could drop over the wall and make a run for the woods.

  It was Beigarth who brought news to Guthrum that one of Alrik’s warriors was asking to speak with the jarl, though Guthrum, still wearing his dark mood like a cloak, was in no mind to speak with anyone. That was to say not until Beigarth explained that the man was one of the brynja-clad, helmeted Norsemen who had thwarted his attack on the gate with their unbreakable skjaldborg. One of those who had thinned Guthrum’s war host with their spear-craft and sword-work.

  ‘He’s part of the same lot as them,’ Beigarth had explained, nodding towards Sigurd, Valgerd and Floki, who were tied to stakes on the edge of the camp within sight of those on the borg’s ramparts. ‘Those boasting bollocks with all the shiny war gear,’ Beigarth said.

  This was enough to catch Guthrum’s attention and he turned to look at his prisoners. ‘I will hear what the man has to say,’ the jarl told his champion, ‘but he must come alone. And he will bring me a gift in return for hearing him out.’

  ‘Something in particular?’ Beigarth said.

  ‘Silver. Iron.’ Guthrum rolled his left shoulder, a grimace flashing in his big fair beard. Some or other ache, probably from swinging his axe at Alrik’s gate like a mad man. ‘I will have it all back anyway, but if this man wants to speak to me now he will pay for the privilege.’

  Sigurd watched Olaf come down the slope. When he was halfway between the borg and the outer edge of Guthrum’s camp Olaf stopped and carefully laid his shield, spear and sword on the ground beside him. He even pulled off his four silver arm rings and placed them on his shield. This was his way of showing that he came under an oath of peace, sworn upon his own weapons and warrior rings, and that were he to break that oath those same weapons would turn against him. This wordless declaration made, he walked no further. Guthrum would have to come to him now. The jarl would have to meet him halfway.

  Sigurd could not help but smile to see that.

  ‘Who does this man think he is?’ Guthrum asked the knot of warriors standing with him.

  ‘Some strutting Norse fuck,’ said one.

  ‘Goat-swiving fjord-spawn,’ another rumbled into his beard.

  ‘Still, he has bigger balls than Alrik, for at least he dares set foot outside that wall,’ a big warrior pointed out, which got some reluctant ayes from Guthrum’s men.

  ‘Maybe he has come to pledge his sword to you instead of Alrik,’ the first man suggested, thinking he had hit the rivet true with that. ‘Maybe he will open the gates for us one night. That would be helpful given how things have gone so far.’

  And perhaps Guthrum had the same thought in his head, which was why he, a Svearman with a torc of twisted silver at his neck and an army at his command, set off up the hill towards some waiting Norseman who was too stubborn to walk all the way down the hill.

  ‘Beigarth, bring young Byrnjolf,’ Guthrum called over his shoulder. ‘It will not hurt to let the man see that I do not mutilate my prisoners.’

  And so Beigarth untied Sigurd and hauled him after his jarl, whose ill mood, it turned out, was not helped by the fact that Olaf had not brought him a gift.

  ‘You will get nothing from me, Jarl Guthrum, while you keep my friends tied to posts like dogs,’ Olaf said when Beigarth asked him why he had come empty-handed.

  ‘Your friends came to murder me in my sleep. If I treat them like dogs it is better than they deserve, Norseman,’ Guthrum replied, gesturing at Sigurd. Olaf gave a nod as though ceding this point. He was careful not to look at Sigurd and for his part Sigurd avoided his friend’s eye too. If Guthrum knew they were as close as the rings of a brynja he would only exploit it to his advantage.

  ‘So who are you?’ Guthrum asked.

  ‘Olaf Ollersson.’

  ‘And you are oath-sworn to Alrik?’

  Olaf shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘And yet you fight for him. Who leads your crew?’

  Olaf shrugged. ‘We are a fellowship. We all play our part. Oars, tiller, mast and sail, a ship needs all of these else it is dead in the water. It is the same with us.’

  Guthrum frowned at that. Perhaps he wondered why Olaf and his Norsemen were still holed up in that hill fort fighting for their lives if they were not even sworn to Alrik. But it made sense of why Alrik had let Olaf come out of the borg under truce to speak with his enemy. The warlord had no choice in the matter, this Norseman being his own man.

  ‘But you fight for Alrik’s silver.’ The jarl flashed his teeth then. ‘Most of which is mine anyway, as it happens.’

  ‘Who it once belonged to is no concern of ours,’ Olaf said.

  ‘I know you have not come to offer me silver for my prisoners, for you already know I will not sell them,’ Guthrum said.

  ‘That was before you sent your men to a mauling that will feed the crows until they are too fat to fly,’ Olaf said. ‘Could be you have changed your mind.’

  Guthrum did not like that. ‘The answer is the same,’ he said.

  ‘So be it,’ Olaf said.

  ‘Either you have come to offer me your swords, or else you hope to negotiate safe passage away from here. For you and your Norsemen know that I will have this borg and kill every man within. Alrik has brought this end upon himself and all that are fool enough to follow him.’

  Olaf shook his head. ‘By the time you take this place, if you ever do, I will be a toothless old man and more than ready to drink with my brothers in Óðin’s hall,’ he said.

  ‘You can drink the Allfather’s mead this very night if you want, Norseman,’ Beigarth said, not needing to touch his sword’s hilt to edge that threat.

  Olaf looked at the jarl’s champion, taking stock of him from his boots to his black beard and his black hair which hung loose but for two braids which would keep most of it out of his eyes in a fight. ‘You’re a brave man and a good fighter, lad,’ Olaf told him. ‘I’ve seen you in the blood-fray, watched you shield your jarl in the hail of arrows when shafts were striking you. What is your name?’

  The man lifted his chin and that massive beard with it. ‘Beigarth,’ he said, as if Olaf should have heard of him. ‘I am the man who killed Jarl Esbern at Baldr’s rock. And Fridlef Ox-Neck at the ship fight off Björkö. And Thuning Thuningsson who men called Snake Arm because he was so fast with a sword. That was before I cut off his sword arm and his head too.’

  Olaf shook his head. ‘I have never heard of any of them,’ he said, ‘but I am not from these parts, and if you say they had reputations, who am I to argue?’ He raised an eyebrow at the man. ‘Well then, Beigarth, you might
make a name for yourself one day. But not if you throw threats around the place like a man scattering hen feed.’ That said, he looked back to the man’s jarl, ignoring the scowl on Beigarth’s face which would have made an onion cry.

  ‘Look, Jarl Guthrum, we’ll not slope off and leave Alrik now, much as you’d like us to.’ Olaf thumbed back up the hill to the borg. ‘We are comfortable in there with our hearth and our beds. More comfortable than you sleeping out here night after night.’

  There were faces up there above the gates, looking out of the fort, and one of them was Alrik’s.

  ‘So you did come thinking you would buy my prisoners.’ Guthrum turned to Sigurd. ‘It seems your friends are keen that you should all die together when I take this fort,’ he said.

  ‘It could be that,’ Sigurd admitted. ‘Or it could be that they want us to feast and drink with them when one of them takes your head from your shoulders.’

  Beigarth yanked Sigurd towards him and backhanded him across the face so that when Sigurd smiled again he tasted the blood on his teeth.

  ‘Again, I say my prisoners are not for sale, Olaf Ollersson,’ Guthrum said.

  Olaf shrugged at Sigurd as if to say no one could claim he hadn’t tried. ‘What will you do with them?’ he asked Guthrum.

  ‘Do not waste a moment thinking about it, Norseman,’ Guthrum said. ‘All I will tell you is that Frey, the best of the gods, has spoken and I have heard him. Now go back to Alrik. He is lucky to have a man of your honour fighting for him.’ He raised a hand. ‘Know this, though, Olaf. If I find your corpse at the end of all this, I will make sure it is treated with respect. You can tell Alrik that I will not afford his corpse the same. I will geld him. I will stuff his cock and balls in his mouth and I will put out his eyes. He will wander the afterlife blind and prickless.’