Winter's Fire: (The Rise of Sigurd 2) Read online

  Valgerd said nothing to that and he looked at her. Gods she was beautiful: golden and strong like Runa, but different in every other way. Whereas Runa still had a girl’s features, the rounded, slightly upturned nose, the full cheeks and the smooth high forehead, Valgerd’s beauty had a fierceness about it. Her cheekbones were high and sharp as scramasax blades. Her nose was straight and strong and her eyes were like those of the big cats which dwelt in the forests and were beloved of the goddess Freyja.

  ‘Did you come down here alone to talk to the gods?’ she asked. ‘Because you are more likely to get answers from the fish.’

  ‘You are brave to mock the gods,’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘They mock us.’

  He said nothing to that.

  ‘So, Sigurd Heppinn, where will we go?’ she asked. ‘Where will the threads of your wyrd lead us?’

  ‘Sigurd the Lucky?’

  ‘That is what they are calling you now,’ she said. ‘Since we wriggled through Hrani Randversson’s net.’

  He thought about his family and all the blood through which he had waded since King Gorm had betrayed his father.

  ‘If I am lucky it does not say much for those who are unlucky,’ he said.

  ‘You are free and you have a fine ship,’ she said and chose not to argue the difference between being free and being a hunted outlaw.

  ‘We’ll go south,’ he said, returning to her earlier question. ‘We’ll follow the coast and try not to get killed by some Svear king. Perhaps we’ll cross the sea to raid the Danes like my father used to. We need silver.’ And they did, for with silver Sigurd could buy spears, warriors who were not already oath-tied to some other lord. Without silver, or at least the promise of it, he would be lucky to hold on to the half crew he had. ‘So long as we are out of the oath-breaker’s reach. Hrani Randversson’s too.’

  Valgerd nodded. A movement on the stones caught Sigurd’s eye and he watched a brown crab edging along the tideline. At the onset of winter most of the crabs retreated to warmer, deeper waters. Not this one apparently, and it was large enough to make good eating.

  ‘Why did you leave the fire?’ he asked Valgerd.

  By way of answer she stepped down on to the shingle, dropped her breeks and squatted to piss on to the smooth stones. ‘It was not so that I could talk to the gods,’ she said. And Sigurd kept his gaze on the sea, smiling to himself. Thinking himself a fool.

  When she had finished she walked to the sea’s edge where the stones glistened.

  ‘So we are going raiding,’ she said, picking up the crab by its back legs. The creature had survived the winter but it would not survive the cook pot.

  Sigurd shrugged. ‘No one will expect it at this time of year,’ he said.

  And he hoped that was true.

  Hrani Randversson stood on the hill at Avaldsnes overlooking the channel of dark water and mumbled the foulest of curses. It was clear to everyone gathered there in the snow below King Gorm’s hall that Estrith Left-Handed was as dead as a man could be. Worse, he was naked and blue as the veins in a woman’s wrists as he lay there on that rock, pathetic and shamed, given up as the tide retreated. As if not even Rán, Mother of the Waves, who takes the drowned into her cold embrace, had wanted him.

  ‘Try not to look so sour about it, husband,’ Herkja said. ‘What’s done is done.’

  ‘It should not have been done at all,’ Hrani growled. ‘Not like this. Not by him.’

  Herkja gave him a disapproving look and clapped her mittened hands together for warmth before rejoining the conversation she had been having with Queen Kadlin and a gaggle of Avaldsnes women, all of them far more interested in the talk of spring weddings than in the fate of some skipper from Hinderå.

  Hrani looked back at the flat rock and the body on it, thinking that at least Estrith was not being picked at by crabs as he would be were it summer.

  ‘Oh don’t mind him,’ Herkja told the queen, dismissing Hrani with a flutter of her ringed fingers. ‘Some old wound. He is too proud to admit that it still pains him and so we must all suffer for it.’ She shook her head. ‘But you know what men are like.’

  ‘They are all the same in that regard,’ Queen Kadlin said, ‘but at least your husband is still a young man, my dear.’ She leant in close to Herkja, though did not lower her voice. ‘Imagine how many wounds my husband doesn’t complain about,’ she said and Herkja laughed.

  Hrani shook his head and cursed again. They had married at the Jól feast because Hrani had been keen to play the part of a jarl after his father’s death, which meant having a good wife to run his hall and bear his cup. And whilst Herkja was a beauty, the daughter of a wealthy karl from Sandnessjøen on the island of Alsten south of Hinderå, her tongue was a little too free with her advice given how her neck could hardly have warmed the silver he had put around it. Furthermore, it was unseemly that she should be laughing now, while Estrith Left-Handed lay drowned on that flat rock for all to see.

  If it had been down to Hrani, which it should have been, Golden-Fire’s skipper would have been punished. Certainly outlawed. Perhaps even killed, though not in such a foul way as this. For he had let Sigurd Haraldarson slip through the net. He had been close enough to that hag-ridden, murdering, hall-less fiend to put a spear in him and yet he had fallen for Sigurd’s trick, believing him dead. Now who knew where Sigurd and the dregs of his crew might be, or where they were headed? Yes, Estrith had failed him and by doing so had brought this poor end upon himself. But it was down to Hrani as the man’s jarl to punish him. King Gorm had had no business sending his men to Örn-garð to pull Estrith from his jarl’s hall like a mussel from a shell.

  ‘He is doing it to make a point,’ Hrani’s brother Amleth had said as they feasted the king’s hirðmen with meat and mead and Hrani had sat in the jarl’s seat with Herkja on his left hissing at him to paint more smile and less grimace on his face.

  ‘I know why he is doing it, little brother,’ Hrani had said. ‘Our king wants to remind me who holds the power. Who has the longest claws. And he is using my hall as his scratching post to do it.’

  And now Hrani was supposed to stand there on that hill freezing his balls off and be reminded what happens to those who fail in their duty.

  ‘Well, Hrani, I hope the next skipper of Golden-Fire is not a man so easily fooled, hey!’ King Gorm said, trudging across the slope and striking Hrani’s fur-clad back with a big hand.

  ‘Your man Moldof must possess more Loki-cunning than anyone gave him credit for, lord,’ Hrani said, unable to resist, ‘for from what my men tell me it was he that spun the trick of it all, claiming that he had killed Sigurd himself.’ The king’s face darkened but Hrani pushed on. ‘What punishment have you in mind for him, should you ever lay your hands on him?’

  The king removed his arm from Hrani’s shoulder and Hrani knew that his mention of Moldof was like a flea in Gorm’s ear. ‘I am thinking that Moldof must be biding his time,’ the king said, irritated. ‘Like a smith who must judge the right time to strike the glowing iron.’

  ‘And yet when the opportunity came along to be rid of Sigurd and his half crew, your prow man turned his back on it. Strange,’ Hrani said, shaking his head as though he could not fathom it. ‘At Moldof’s word Estrith and my men would have boarded Haraldarson’s ship and cut the dogs down beside their own sea chests.’

  His eyes still on the drowned corpse out in the channel, the king shrugged broad shoulders, scratching his beard which was greyer than it had been the last time Hrani had seen him. ‘Moldof was my prow man and champion for many years. He lost all that and an arm when he fought Jarl Harald in those woods,’ he gestured to the south, ‘but the man still has his pride. He left my hall to bring me Sigurd Haraldarson’s head. He will do that or die trying. Moldof would not betray me. He is made like an ox but he has more wits in him than that.’

  This last was aimed like a spear at Hrani, who nodded, knowing he had nettled the king enough, though the sight of Estrith out t
here on that flat rock goaded him on. A big herring gull had swept down to the skerry and now stood perched on Estrith’s blueish chest, its yellow bill wide open as it gave its loud laughing call.

  ‘A warrior can expect to be pecked by crows and ravens. But gulls?’ Hrani shook his head.

  ‘A warrior would have killed Sigurd Haraldarson when he had the chance,’ King Gorm said. ‘Come, Jarl Hrani,’ he said, turning away from the sea and walking back up the snow-covered slope towards his hall, at which point his attending warriors and the women gathered there did the same. ‘Let us get by the fire and rinse our insides with some warm mead. Forget about your man. I never understood how he worked a tiller with his left hand anyway.’

  For a little while Hrani stood waiting to see if that gull would start picking at Estrith, or whether it was simply using him as a bench while it considered its coming meal of small fish or slick weed yielded up by the retreating tide. Then he turned and trudged up the hill after his king.

  The farmstead was a modest affair comprising a longhouse, grain store, byre, animal pens and several other small outbuildings, the whole lot enclosed by a decent enough fence that would keep out wolves till Ragnarök and a man with an axe till noon. Beyond that was grazing land cut by a stream, the line of it showing like a black vein across the mantle of brittle snow. But it was the byre which interested Sigurd and the five others who had followed him along the track leading from the shore up through the trees to the arable land beyond. They were hungry and it was the kind of hunger that fish can never truly satisfy.

  ‘If there’s fresh meat for the taking we’d be fools to deny ourselves,’ Svein had said when Bjorn and Bjarni had returned to the ship with news of what lay up on the high ground beyond sight of the sea. They had all seen the tarnish of smoke against the sky but Bjorn and Bjarni had been the first to volunteer to go ashore and investigate, their faces lit with the predatory lust which all raiding men recognize and all those who have been raided learn to fear.

  It was a cold but clear and dry day, a rare enough thing itself for that time of the year, and the sky was the brilliant, flawless blue of Freyja’s eyes, which meant that any smoke against it was visible for as far as the eye could see.

  ‘See what’s there and come straight back,’ Sigurd had told the brothers.

  ‘That means you don’t so much as drink a drop or sniff a skirt before getting your arses back here, understand?’ Olaf had warned them, and to give them their due the pair did as they were told, though they had all but licked their lips at the telling of the byre within which the cattle lowed as if pleading to be eaten, as Bjorn had put it.

  ‘We could just buy a cow from this farmer,’ Runa suggested now as they stood on the south side of the steading, looking across the hilly, snow-covered land and wondering how they could get what they wanted with the least amount of effort.

  ‘What is the point in having swords and axes if you still have to pay for everything?’ Bjorn asked, which few of the others could argue with.

  ‘But why kill the man?’ Runa asked, at which Bjorn looked at Sigurd with raised brows as if to say this is what you get when you bring your sister along.

  She had pleaded with Sigurd that she be allowed to come, saying that if she did not remind her legs what it felt like to stand on solid rock again she feared she would spend the rest of her life walking like Crow-Song after two horns of mead.

  ‘I may not have an endless capacity for mead, young Runa,’ Hagal had put in, unable to let that slur slide by unanswered, ‘but I do know when to stop and that is to my advantage. A man can neither observe the conspiracies of the mead hall clearly nor weave a fine tale if he is face down in his pottage.’

  ‘I am just teasing, Hagal,’ Runa said, giving one of Hagal’s braids a gentle tug which was all it took to wipe the frown off the skald’s face.

  ‘You can come,’ Sigurd had said, smiling to see his sister’s eyes light up at something so simple as the prospect of going ashore for a short while. From the report of what awaited them Sigurd did not expect danger – though he insisted she wore brynja and helmet and carried a shield and spear.

  Runa had suffered as much as he and yet the world was not blighted for her. Her spirit was a flame which Sigurd had promised himself he would fan whenever he could. ‘It will do us all good to stretch our legs,’ he’d said in a low voice so as not to incite the jealousy of those who would remain with Reinen.

  ‘If they give us no trouble we won’t hurt them,’ Sigurd said now for the benefit of Bjorn, Svein, Floki and Aslak.

  ‘No point in taking the edge off a blade if it can be avoided easily enough,’ Svein agreed, for he had always had a soft spot for Runa, which was the only possible explanation for him advocating peaceableness that Sigurd could see.

  ‘So what is the plan?’ Aslak asked, huffing breath into his hands. ‘It looks as if they are all snugged up by their hearth. No one is coming to invite us inside.’ It was that kind of cold where if you were to leave an axe carelessly on the ground, it would freeze to it so completely that the haft would snap off at the head if you tried to lever it free. Anything left in mud, like a shoe or a loom weight, became a part of it until the thaw.

  Somewhere within the steading a dog was barking, which may or may not have been because it sensed strangers nearby. Some hooded crows were pecking amongst the snow at the stream’s edge. Beyond the farmstead to the north and east, stands of birch and pine, looking troubled by their white burden, played host to a clamour of rooks whose raucous cawing rose into the sky.

  ‘Floki will go over the wall and open the gate,’ Sigurd said. ‘Then we will tell whoever lives here that we are taking a cow or maybe a bull and whatever else we like the look of.’ He shrugged. ‘We’ll butcher the meat here, making sure no one runs off to their jarl, but we’ll cook it on the shore in case we have to move on.’

  ‘Who is the jarl round here?’ Aslak asked, but no one knew. Not that it mattered, for jarls did not stray far from their hearths in the winter and were more likely to stay wrapped in furs and bed slaves than come trudging out because of the theft of one cow and a cheese or two.

  Everyone nodded, happy with that plan, then they set off across the rolling snow-covered hills and toiled up the slope towards the farm, their war gear jangling and clumping and their breath clouding ghost-like. Theirs were the only tracks through the snow. Not that they could blame these folk for staying indoors if they had the supplies to see them through. If anything the clear sky had turned it even colder. The faraway white sun had all the heat of week-old hearth ash, so that ear rims tingled and burnt, noses glowed red and, inside his boots, Sigurd’s toes would have curled right under his feet if they could.

  ‘Looks like we’re not the only ones wanting inside this place,’ Bjorn said, pointing his spear to the oval spoor of a big dog fox, the animal’s single-file prints stitching the snow along the white-topped perimeter fence. Sigurd thought he caught the scent of the fox’s urine on the morning air but he doubted the creature had found a way in to the hen coop.

  His shield slung over his back, Floki kicked his boots against the timbers to get the worst of the snow off them, then stepped into the stirrup of Svein’s hands. Svein straightened and up Floki went, grabbing hold of the top of the fence so that he could haul himself over, which he did as nimbly as a squirrel before disappearing from view. They heard the crump of him landing in the drifts on the other side and Sigurd asked if there was any sign of the folk who lived there.

  ‘All quiet,’ came the reply, though Floki was not referring to the dog which was barking continuously now – the poor creature having been left outside to stand guard – or to the cattle in the byre which were lowing.

  Floki opened the gate and the others passed through into the farmstead, standing a moment to familiarize themselves with the layout. Then, hefting spears and raising their shields, they tramped towards the longhouse from whose thatch smoke poured up in stark contrast to the clean sky. But no arrows streaked
from between the outbuildings and neither did any blade-wielding men step out into the day to defend their home, and it was left to Sigurd to thump the butt of his spear against the longhouse door as though he were a cousin come to share a cup of ale and some news of the world beyond the wooden wall.

  They waited, stamping their feet and getting cold. Svein looked at Sigurd with watery eyes and a heavy frown. ‘This is not how a raid is supposed to be,’ he said.

  Before Sigurd could ask his friend what usually happened, seeing as Svein was such an old hand at this raiding life, they heard a muffled voice from within.

  ‘Who is it? We are not expecting guests.’

  ‘Open this door,’ Sigurd said.

  ‘No,’ came the reply.

  Bjorn mumbled a curse. Runa laughed.

  ‘I can’t decide whether to burn this house and kill all of your cattle,’ Sigurd said, ‘or take just one animal and leave you to your hearth and furs. It is strange but I find I make better decisions when my feet are not freezing.’

  There was more muffled conversation on the other side of the door but then they heard the clump of the locking bar being removed and it swung ajar.

  A man’s face appeared in the crack.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said.

  Svein kicked the door open, sending the man flying on to the hay-strewn floor. They walked into the flame-lit house, coughing on the smoke which the open door drew, their eyes adjusting to the dark.

  ‘Who are you?’ the man asked again, gathering up the hand axe he had dropped and climbing to his feet.

  ‘What does it matter?’ Sigurd asked him, looking around the room. The people living there had pulled their beds up to surround the hearth. Three of those six beds had people in them, old folk, their terror-stricken faces the only parts of them showing beyond the piles of pelts beneath which they cowered from winter.

  ‘You’ve come to raid us?’ a woman asked. She stood behind a roof post, but had it been three times as thick it would not have come close to hiding her. Sigurd looked beyond the hearth flames and saw the pale face of a boy up in the loft, peering down with round eyes.