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

  ‘Gungnir,’ Asgrim rumbled in Sigurd’s ear. ‘The Swaying One. Óðin’s own spear. A gift from the dwarfs whom men call the sons of Ívaldi.’ Sigurd nodded, all but open-mouthed, for such a thing could not belong to anyone else but the Allfather whom men called the Spear-God.

  ‘You have come to make an offering, Jarl Guthrum,’ the priest said. A statement rather than a question.

  The jarl nodded. ‘Two offerings.’

  This confused the old man but he nodded. ‘Not thralls though,’ he said.

  ‘Enemies,’ Guthrum said without looking at his prisoners. ‘Worthy of the god.’

  ‘And yet this is not the time for a blót,’ the priest rasped, throwing an arm wide. ‘You would need King Eysteinn’s blessing and he is not here.’

  Guthrum said nothing to that and so the old man took it up again. ‘Assuming they have not offered themselves to Frey’s knife,’ he said, not looking at Sigurd and Floki, ‘we would need to know who they are and the nature of their offence or crime.’

  ‘They are Norse,’ Guthrum said, and the old man’s face twitched. ‘They have wet their spears in Svear blood. They have made many widows. They tried to kill me in my sleep,’ he added, making them sound like nithing would-be thieves and murderers. ‘But it is not my wyrd to die in my bed.’ The jarl glanced at the three gods sitting there, as if hoping they might give a sign to confirm his own prophecy.

  ‘Will you allow me to honour the god and this temple?’ he asked, turning back to the priest.

  The priest looked at Valgerd and it was hard to tell if he was relieved or disappointed that she was not one of those on Jarl Guthrum’s platter to be served up to the god. But the shieldmaiden was looking at Sigurd, her eyes cold and flint-sharp with this confirmation that Guthrum had come to Ubsola to make sacrifice. Not that any of it came as a surprise now.

  ‘Young blood for the god. Hmm …’ The Freysgodi pushed back his cowl in a cloud of dry skin which showed in the dusk light arrowing through the door. Like flour blown off a quern-stone. His white hair was cropped short and there was not much of it, so that the runes and whorls etched into his scalp and filled with greenish blue pigment were clearly visible, though their meaning was to Sigurd as unfathomable as the voices of the fish in the sea. ‘I will ask the god if he is willing to accept your offering, Jarl Guthrum,’ the old man said at last. Then he frowned. ‘You have silver for the temple?’

  ‘Of course,’ Guthrum said. There was plenty of silver just in that torc round his neck.

  ‘And for King Eysteinn?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then we will see,’ the old man said with a nod.

  ‘I left a fight to come here, priest,’ Guthrum said, ‘and I have not brought the god a bull or a ram, but men who are in the prime strength of their lives. I hope Frey will allow me to make the offering.’

  The old man did not like that. It was not a threat but it uncloaked the issue about how decisions might be made in this temple, and as if to push the point Guthrum took a thick silver ring off his arm and handed it to the priest.

  ‘For the mead,’ the jarl said, and the old man kept his face straight as a spear but nodded again, accepting the payment. He had been a Freysgodi long enough to act as if that beautiful twisted silver ring was fair payment for fourteen cups of mead.

  And neither was that mead anything special when it at last arrived, though that did not stop any of them from drinking it as if it had come from the Allfather’s own barrel. Asgrim held a cup to Sigurd’s lips and then did the same for Valgerd and Floki because of their hands being tied.

  ‘Take Jarl Guthrum to the grove,’ the priest told a boy whose hairless head was adorned with symbols and raised scars similar to the old man’s. ‘He can wait there until I have the god’s answer.’

  Guthrum seemed happy enough with this and they were being led to the place when Halvdan pushed his way through the other men to get close to Sigurd.

  ‘Not the death you foresaw, hey?’ he gnarred into Sigurd’s ear with a grin that screamed to be knocked through the back of his skull. ‘Thought you were special, didn’t you? Strutting around up on that hill, safe behind a wall.’ His breath smelt like rancid meat. ‘Now look at you.’

  ‘I’m not dead yet, Halvdan,’ Sigurd said. ‘It might be that the god does not want anything from your lord. Frey knows that Jarl Guthrum is too deep in the mire of his own fetid curse now and any favour will be as a drop of clean water in a lake of piss.’

  Halvdan grinned. ‘You saw what the jarl just paid for that ball-sweat mead,’ he said. ‘So we both know the old man will give Guthrum the right answer.’

  A warrior called Hrok jutted his chin at Sigurd. ‘At least he will find himself in Asgard with the Æsir,’ he said, ‘for that is where priest-killed men end up. Which of us can be sure of the same?’

  ‘Hrok is right,’ Asgrim said. ‘Whereas I am certain to carve a reputation killing Jarl Guthrum’s enemies, it would not surprise me if you fell off a cliff or shat yourself to death, Halvdan.’ His warped mouth twisted into what was as close to a smile as he could manage. ‘Ha! It would not even surprise me if you fell off your mead bench and cracked your skull open so that your brains leaked out in the floor rushes.’

  ‘Well, I’d make sure they soaked your shoes, you ugly arse,’ Halvdan said.

  ‘And what about her?’ another man put in, gesturing at Valgerd.

  ‘Seems our jarl is keeping her for himself, which is a shame if you ask me,’ Hrok answered as they came round the far side of the ting mound where meetings were held. ‘I am thinking we should have earned more than piss-tasting ale fighting Alrik.’

  ‘Tell Jarl Guthrum that,’ Asgrim said, but of course Hrok was not going to do that and so that was the end of it as they followed a track down towards an enormous and ancient yew tree which filled their eyes. Its girth was more than fifty feet and its gnarled and twisted branches writhed off from the great contorted trunk in all directions, so that no one said another word as that yew tree, this place’s very own Yggdrasil, filled the world and the sky before them.

  ‘This is the sacred tree of Ubsola,’ the boy said when they came under its reaching boughs and all of them turned their faces up to the dark green canopy. Even the boy seemed to be looking at the tree as if for the first time, and his pride and awe reminded Sigurd of himself one day many years ago, when his father had taken the great silver jarl torc from his own neck and put it around Sigurd’s to let him feel its weight.

  ‘It is not so heavy, Father,’ Sigurd had said with all the swagger he had learnt from his father’s warriors in the seven summers he had been alive.

  ‘Then you will be a better jarl than I, for I find it heavier than a mountain,’ his father had said, and Sigurd had not understood that then. He understood it now. Or at least he was closer to understanding, because warriors had sworn themselves to him and what had he given them in return? And now it seemed he would never wear the torc as his father had done.

  ‘Have you ever seen a tree like it, Jarl Guthrum?’ the boy asked, and Guthrum said he had not. ‘If you had been here for the last blót you would have been greeted with a sight you would never forget,’ the boy went on. ‘All the jarls and chiefs of the Svear were here for the great Dísating, the Assembly of the Goddesses, and for nine days we celebrated with feasts and much drinking.’

  ‘Ha!’ one of Guthrum’s men blurted, ‘you must have been drinking your mother’s milk the last time the Dísablót was held, lad!’ But the boy took no notice for he was in spate now, gushing with it all.

  ‘Each of the nine days a man was sacrificed, his blood given to the gods, along with many other male animals, until by the end of it seventy-two offerings were made.’ He pointed a stick-like arm at the sprawling yew, some of whose boughs were still ringed with old frayed rope. ‘In these branches and in the grove yonder were hung men, horses, dogs, rams and even a bull.’

  By the mutterings they made it seemed some of Guthrum’s men did not b
elieve that about the bull, but the boy pushed on.

  ‘This old tree creaked with her cargo while songs were sung and skalds told stories of the old times and men said they could hear the gods breathing because those lords of Asgard were here among us.’

  ‘I have already hung in a tree for the gods and will not do it again,’ Sigurd growled to Valgerd beside him, as the boy led them off towards the sacred grove. Once amongst those trees Jarl Guthrum fell to his knees, along with some of his hirðmen. Seven or eight other men could not stay there more than a few heartbeats and retreated in a way that would have been shameful had it been in the face of an enemy.

  Sigurd might have left too if he could, for the grove was like no other place he had ever been. If a place could feel heavy, that grove did. It was silent and strange, the air still as clotted blood, and the trees, spruce and birch mostly, were undoubtedly imbued with the spirits of those beings which had been left hanging from their branches. Rotting a little more day by day.

  For who could say how many years those trees’ roots had fed on soil rich in human flesh, had drunk the rancid fluids of the dead? And they owned some power because of it.

  Bones lay everywhere, too. They carpeted the ground, fragments of human skulls mixed with those of horses and a dozen other types of creature, and now the boy said nothing at all because there was no need.

  Asgrim lifted his chin to Sigurd. ‘If I ever see your friend again, the one who killed Beigarth, I will tell him where your bones lie,’ he said in a voice that was a low rumble. ‘So that he can come here to honour you and your young friend.’

  Sigurd did not want to speak in that sacred place but words came to his lips anyway. ‘I cannot say what the Norns have spun with the threads of Jarl Guthrum’s wyrd, or even yours, Asgrim,’ he said, ‘but this I know, that if you meet Olaf again he will kill you. Guthrum too. So if I were you I would not waste my time telling him about bones or Ubsola or anything else.’

  Guthrum hissed over his shoulder at them to be quiet and then they stood – or knelt – amongst the strangely divine trees and shades of the men who had hung in that darkening grove. And eventually the old Freysgodi himself came to deliver the god’s verdict to Jarl Guthrum.

  They slept in tents or under furs beneath the stars by the ting mound east of the kings’ mounds. Not that Sigurd slept much. Nor did Valgerd or Floki, who watched Guthrum’s men like a hawk, waiting for one of them to stray from his spear or axe. But there were always two men watching the prisoners and Sigurd began to think it would take the intervention of the gods themselves to stop their deaths come the next full moon. For that was when they would be sacrificed and their blood given to appease the gods and turn Guthrum’s luck from sour to sweet.

  ‘Frey will grant you his favour in return for the blood of these young warriors,’ the Freysgodi had said, his old wet eyes slipping from the jarl to Sigurd and Floki, and Guthrum had let out a sigh of relief, his shoulders softening as though he had shrugged off a great burden.

  There had been tears in the jarl’s eyes when he arranged to deliver his gifts of silver to the temple and to King Eysteinn, and for his part the priest sent more skins bulging with mead to Guthrum’s men who took their ease, sensing their lord’s lightened mood and happy at the prospect of a few days lying around in the summer sun not having to fight anyone.

  That day, traders from the village beyond the ridge to the south of the mounds arrived in dribs and drabs to hawk their wares to the strangers camped by the ting mound. They brought amber and leather, bone, cloth, glassware, sacks of wool and a hundred other types of thing which were of no use to a war band who were mostly travelling on foot and would have to carry whatever they bought. But they also brought food: cheeses and meats and fresh fish and strong-flavoured spices, and in this produce they did a brisk trade, Guthrum’s men gorging themselves and making the most of their jarl’s generosity.

  Two days later another new face appeared in Guthrum’s camp. Sigurd might not have noticed the young man had his ears not pricked up when the man introduced himself to Jarl Guthrum, saying he was a horse trader come to Ubsola to do business with King Eysteinn. It was not the man’s trade which caught Sigurd’s attention but that he was clearly Norse, though he said he had been in Svealand now four summers. The man’s thrall waited nearby, struggling to hold the reins of eight sturdy-looking ponies, and Jarl Guthrum told the Norseman that whilst the beasts did him credit he would be better off waiting for the king to return because Guthrum would not pay him what the ponies were surely worth.

  ‘Besides, you do not have enough animals for all my men,’ the jarl said. ‘Even if I bought all eight from you, I would have to put up with plenty of moaning from those who still had to walk.’

  The Norseman, whose name was Storvek, accepted this graciously but admitted that there was another reason why he had sought Jarl Guthrum out. ‘I heard that you have some prisoners with you,’ he said, fighting the urge to glance over to where Sigurd, Floki and Valgerd sat in the grass.

  ‘Here we go,’ Sigurd said under his breath.

  ‘What of it?’ Guthrum asked, his suspicions aroused now.

  This young Storvek seemed embarrassed, scratching his thin beard as if having second thoughts about having brought the thing up at all.

  ‘The truth is they are not my ponies but my father’s,’ he said. ‘He is up in Vaksala, no doubt selling more than me, which he will be sure to crow about when we next meet.’

  ‘Ah, so you’re off proving yourself,’ Guthrum said with a smile. He was already a different man since the news that he would be allowed to make his offerings to Frey.

  Storvek nodded. ‘I had two thralls until recently,’ he said, thumbing over his shoulder. That would make more sense, Sigurd thought, glancing at the thrall who was being all but pulled off his feet by all those ponies. ‘Well, they also belong to my father,’ the young man admitted. ‘And that is the problem.’

  With a look Asgrim asked his jarl if he should throw this Storvek out of their camp but Guthrum shook his head at the champion and gestured for the Norseman to continue with his little saga.

  ‘The thrall that you do not see was a wretched creature,’ Storvek said, ‘and one night I woke to find him having his pleasure with one of the mares.’ He nodded towards the ponies. ‘That chestnut one at the end.’

  ‘Well who can blame him, for she is prettier than some women I have known,’ Hrok said, grinning at Asgrim and Halvdan and some of the others who had one ear turned towards the conversation between their jarl and this Norseman.

  ‘I was angry of course, as any man would be,’ Storvek told Guthrum. ‘I hit the thrall. I hit him hard.’ He glanced at the others, bringing them in to his tale, and some of them nodded, agreeing that hitting the man was the right thing to do. Storvek shrugged. ‘Next morning he was gone.’

  ‘It sounds like you are better off without this horse-swiving thrall,’ Jarl Guthrum said, which got some ayes.

  ‘Else one day you might wake up to find he is riding you,’ Asgrim put in, raising a laugh or two, though Storvek did not find it funny.

  ‘My father will not be happy to be a thrall short. He will blame me,’ he said, ‘which is why I was hoping to come to some arrangement with the king. But he is not here and nor is there to be a slave market hereabouts for some weeks yet.’ Now the young man’s eyes flicked across to where Sigurd, Valgerd and Floki sat in the long grass. ‘When I heard that you were travelling with prisoners I thought you might be willing to spare one of them, for a fair price.’

  ‘That pretty chestnut mare perhaps,’ Halvdan called, bringing upon himself a flurry of good-natured insults.

  Storvek pointed at Sigurd. ‘The one with the fair hair looks strong and capable,’ he ventured. ‘I am certain that my father would approve of him as a replacement for the thrall I lost. I dare say he would be an improvement, so long as he kept his snake in his breeks and not in our stock.’

  Jarl Guthrum shook his head. ‘They are dangerous
, Storvek,’ he said, ‘even the woman. That fair-haired one would cut your throat while you slept. Don’t ask me how I know this.’

  ‘But—’

  Guthrum had raised a hand to stop the man. ‘I will not sell him to you,’ he said. ‘He and the black-haired one will be swinging from the branches of that tree soon enough. So you see I cannot help you.’

  Storvek accepted this and thanked the jarl for hearing what he had to say, then turned and walked back to his ponies and his one thrall and that was that.

  ‘Just think, you could have been a horse trader like him,’ Black Floki said to Sigurd.

  ‘And you could have been a king,’ Sigurd replied. They both grinned then despite the ropes binding their hands, and the threads of their wyrds which led towards that great ancient yew tree whose evergreen branches had borne so much corpse-fruit since before the time of the first Svear kings.

  And four days later Guthrum himself came to his prisoners with bread and cheese and a sense of the occasion which fitted him like that long brynja of his. Asgrim came too and crouched by the crackling fire, leering from that ugly face of his though there was no malice there. Not even Halvdan had any insults or blows for them this morning and it seemed all of Jarl Guthrum’s warriors respected Sigurd and Floki for what they would soon endure. Even men such as they, who would put a spear in Sigurd’s belly without a thought in a fight or just because their jarl ordered them to, saw it altogether differently if a man was to be lashed to a bench and slaughtered like a beast. And if furthermore all that was to be done in the sight of the gods and with ceremony and in cold blood.

  ‘Will you face it like men?’ Guthrum asked, warming his hands above the flames for the sun had yet to rise above the rim of the world in the east. Perhaps he was worried that they would ruffle the waters and embarrass him in front of the old priest and Thór, Óðin and Frey. In front of his own men too, who were bound to have their doubts about following Guthrum these days, after how things were going at the borg against Alrik.