Wings of the Storm: (The Rise of Sigurd 3) Page 17

  ‘I always knew we would come face to face again,’ Hrani said. He was a big man, solid as an oak and every inch a warrior. But men said of Hrani that he had a cruel streak as wide as a fjord is deep, which was something they never said of his father Jarl Randver.

  ‘So you are jarl now,’ Sigurd said. Hrani nodded. ‘Then you should thank me for cutting your father’s throat. The crabs in your fjord should thank me too for giving them a feast.’

  Hrani’s teeth flashed in his beard but he kept a hold of his temper. ‘When we heard that you were to be slaughtered like a goat at the Svear temple I was disappointed.’

  Sigurd’s eyes flicked to the man standing at Hrani’s left shoulder and recognized Kjartan Auðunarson, who had flown from the borg to take news of Sigurd’s whereabouts to Hrani. He had done well by it too, judging from the two silver rings glinting at the ends of his moustache ropes.

  ‘I was disappointed and I was angry because I had always thought I would have my revenge,’ Hrani said. ‘I drank to it and dreamt of it many times, but the way things turned out I did not think it would be wise to start a war with this King Eysteinn over it. Let the Svear priests butcher you then, I thought. Let them hang your corpse in their tree for the crows.’ He lifted his big sword, pointing it at Sigurd. ‘So as you can imagine, I am surprised to see you.’ With that he pulled a twisted silver band from his wrist and tossed it to Storvek who caught it and flashed a smile. Since he had failed in persuading Jarl Guthrum to sell Sigurd to him, Storvek must have hung around like a fly around blood, waiting for the priests to do their work so that he could at least take news of Sigurd’s death back to his lord. And yet he had been wise enough to keep his horses nearby just in case.

  ‘Well here I am, Hrani,’ Sigurd said. ‘Let us fight here and now. And when I have killed you as I killed your father, your men will let us go.’ It was worth throwing that challenge at the man’s feet for it would be hard for a jarl not to pick it up with his men watching, and to Sigurd a fighting chance was better than what he expected from Randver’s son.

  ‘Kill him, Father!’ the boy said, pointing his own short sword at Sigurd. ‘Spill his guts and put out his eyes for what he did to grandfather.’

  And if words could drip hatred …

  ‘As much as I am stiff between the legs at the thought of gutting you,’ Hrani told Sigurd, ‘I am not the kind of man who wolfs down a meal without tasting it. No, Haraldarson, I will take you back to Hinderå so that my people can watch you die.’ He grimaced. His son spat a curse. ‘Your reputation has grown. I do not mind that,’ the jarl said, ‘because by killing you my own fame will swell too.’

  ‘Frey, who is the god most of these Svearmen seem to love even above the Allfather himself, could not kill Sigurd this very night,’ Floki told Hrani. ‘But you think you can?’

  Hrani considered this. Then he walked up to Floki and swung his sword, hacking into Floki’s pony’s neck. The animal screeched and toppled and Floki fell with it, then scrambled clear of the thrashing beast whose blood pumped on to the ground in great hot gouts.

  ‘Tie him,’ Hrani said, pointing his gore-stained sword at Floki. ‘The shieldmaiden too.’

  Some of his men pulled Valgerd from her mount while others took hold of Floki and another warrior ran off to the byre where he said he’d seen some rope. Then Hrani walked back to where Sigurd still sat on his pony, the enormous spear across him.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ the jarl asked.

  ‘He came from the temple with it,’ Storvek said, filling the silence which Sigurd left. ‘The Svear folk say it once belonged to Óðin.’

  Hrani’s eyes grew wide at that. Of course they would, for there was not a jarl alive who would not want to own a spear which men believed was in some distant time wielded by a god.

  ‘Give it to me,’ Hrani said.

  Sigurd threw a leg over the pony’s back and slid down, and Hrani’s men bristled, bringing their own weapons up in readiness for some madness. Sigurd lifted the spear to his shoulder and felt the muscles in his arm bunch and swell in readiness to launch that great weapon. If Hrani wanted it then he would give it to him. He would plant it in the jarl’s chest and that would be the end of Hrani Randversson.

  ‘No, Sigurd,’ Valgerd said.

  His heart was thumping and the sound in his ears was like the roar of the surf against a craggy headland. He turned and hurled the spear with all his strength and it flew as if from the hand of a god and even if Kjartan Auðunarson saw it coming he could do nothing about it. The long blade cut straight through Kjartan’s chest, taking the man backwards with its flight so that he fell but did not hit the ground. Instead he hung there with a foot of shaft in him, pinned by the spear, his back a hand-span from the dry earth and his arms flopping uselessly either side.

  If Hrani was impressed by the throw he did not show it as he walked over to the pinned man, crouched and sawed the ends of Kjartan’s moustache ropes off because he would have those silver rings back. He took back the newly given arm ring too. Then he stood and showed them to Sigurd. ‘I never liked that man,’ he said. ‘He left my hall for Svealand because he did not think I should wear the jarl torc. Whoreson soon came running back when he saw a chance to get rich.’ He nodded. ‘You have saved me some silver there, Haraldarson.’ He kept the arm ring but handed the hair and smaller rings to another man, telling him to work the silver from the braid, then ordered his men to bind Sigurd’s hands nice and tight, which they did. Then Hrani sheathed his sword, went back to his pinned hearthman and, taking hold of the spear’s shaft, put his foot on Kjartan’s chest and shoved the body down to the ground before pulling the blade from earth and flesh.

  ‘I have never seen such a spear as this,’ he said, ‘not even in my grandfather’s day when men liked their spears longer. Thank you for bringing it to me, Haraldarson.’

  ‘I hope you can run with it,’ Sigurd said, ‘for when this Svear king, Eysteinn, learns that a Norse war band has the thing, you will be haring back to your hall if not lying in a worm-ridden grave pit with your hirðmen.’

  ‘The Ubsola folk will have sent word to their king that the spear is stolen,’ Storvek told Hrani. He nodded at the three prisoners. ‘And Jarl Guthrum will be looking for them, if he is not burnt to death,’ he added, glancing at Valgerd. ‘Once the Svearmen see that we have them, they will surely know that we have their spear too.’

  A man with a huge belly and a long-hafted axe shook his head at his jarl. ‘It would be a bloody thing to fight our way back to the sea, Hrani,’ he said. He was old enough to see little glory in being savaged all the way back to the coast and was not afraid to speak his mind. He tilted the axe head towards Sigurd. ‘I will do it gladly for the sake of taking that troll’s turd back to Örn-garð, for I as much as any man want to see your father avenged. But what need have we for that spear?’ No doubt he had been Jarl Randver’s man before Hrani’s, and it surely chafed the new jarl that these voices from the past still lingered.

  ‘You have grown soft, Bjorgolf,’ Hrani said, ‘which we can all see for ourselves.’ The warrior glowered at that but held his tongue. He knew that Hrani, who was a warrior in his prime as well as his jarl, would have the better of him in a fight. ‘But I am not a fool, Bjorgolf, and do not intend to start a blood feud with this Svear king. Nor would it be clever to risk the Allfather’s anger, for if this spear belonged to Óðin he is likely to make sure no good comes to the man who steals it from the Svearmen.’ He lifted Gungnir high so that all of his warriors could see it well, its blade catching the moon glow. ‘I will sell this spear back to them. To King Eysteinn or the temple priests or even to Sigurd’s friend Jarl Guthrum. Any man with a brain in his skull will choose to trade rather than fight us for it.’

  And that was true, Sigurd thought, because now it seemed all of Hrani’s men had gathered in the clearing and there must have been fifty of them. And they were not farmers either but hardened Sword-Norse, men who had stood in the shieldwall and soaked
the earth with the slaughter’s dew. Such a war band was not to be taken lightly, even by a king.

  Hrani’s boy grinned. Clearly he was proud of his father’s great wisdom.

  ‘Come, Randver, let us drink some ale to celebrate,’ Hrani said to the lad. Named in honour of the crab-feast jarl then, Sigurd thought, knowing he had yet another enemy in that boy, albeit one not yet old enough to sprout down upon his cheeks. ‘I want a proper watch set until daybreak,’ Jarl Hrani announced, then turned and walked back towards the longhouse, the Óðin spear resting on his shoulder and his boy walking behind.

  ‘I am beginning to think Asgot was right when he said that Loki the mischief-monger has joined this game,’ Floki said, watching Hrani walk away.

  Sigurd tested the rope which bound his wrists. There was no give in it and the knot would have kept a longboat at its mooring in a storm. He cursed the Æsir under his breath, not caring if Thór hurled a spear of lightning down to pierce him as he himself had skewered Kjartan.

  Because the gods were playing games and he was a prisoner again.

  They stayed at the farmstead another four days and in that time Sigurd never caught sight of the karl who owned it nor his family nor even the dogs you would expect to see around the place, sleeping in the shade or sniffing for deer and boar.

  ‘I’d wager they are all buried together in a hole in the woods,’ Valgerd said when Sigurd brought it up, which seemed a reasonable assumption given who was sleeping in the farmer’s bed, eating his smoked meats and drinking his ale.

  But it was not for these home comforts that Jarl Hrani had decided to stay there a few days more. Rather it was because he wanted to let the Svear folk miss their sacred spear awhile before he gave them the chance to see its return, and it was Storvek whom he tasked with going back to the temple ahead of them. The young man would tread gently to discover who out of some godi or king’s man, or even King Eysteinn himself if he were thereabout, would pay the most to get the spear back.

  Then at dawn on the fifth day Jarl Hrani’s patience snapped like a hemp line and hook snagged on the sea bed. ‘Storvek has had enough time to find a buyer,’ he announced to anyone in earshot.

  They emptied the smokehouse of the last of its tasty treasure and put it into sacks along with the salted meat from the animals they had slaughtered themselves. The ale was long gone and so was the cheese and skyr, but they went about milking the cows, goats and sheep until bucket after bucket was filled before being emptied into the ale skins which bulged by the end of it. All of this was loaded on to the ponies and they set off southward through the forest to Ubsola.

  They were fifty men in all their war-gear glory. Twelve owned brynjur and more wore steel helmets than hardened leather skull caps and all carried painted shields or had them slung across their backs. They walked through that Svealand forest with the assured swagger of men who have little to fear. Even little Randver Hranisson carried himself like a champion-killer, so that Sigurd wondered what kind of man he would grow to be, if he survived into manhood. And yet, confident as Hrani was in his hirð’s ability to deal with any threat that they might encounter, he was not so arrogant that he neglected to send two men ahead on ponies to make sure he did not walk into some other war band, either Jarl Guthrum’s or the king’s or that of some hersir with a thirst for plunder and fame. So when those riders came trotting back through the pines with faces as white as marsh-grass flowers and Thór’s hammer amulets warm from the clutching of them, Hrani put his beautiful silver helmet on and waited for the bad news.

  ‘Jarl Hrani, there is something on the track less than one rôst from here,’ one of them said, glancing over his shoulder like a man who fears his own shadow.

  ‘A trap?’ Hrani asked.

  The other rider shook his blond braided head. ‘I don’t know, lord. I saw no one.’ He glanced at his companion. ‘No one alive, anyway.’

  ‘But someone knows we are coming,’ the first man said. ‘And knows the course we are taking through this forest.’ He was breathing hard, too hard for that little trot, and the hand which was not on the reins was on the little silver Mjöllnir hanging upon his chest.

  ‘So what is it?’ the jarl asked, nodding into the forest beyond the mounted men.

  ‘It is better if you see for yourself, Hrani,’ the man said, ‘but if you ask me there is some seiðr at work. Perhaps we have angered the Allfather,’ he dared, though he did not mention the spear in his jarl’s hand. He did not have to.

  ‘You two have forgotten your fathers’ faces,’ Hrani said, ‘to be shaking like old hounds about something you do not even have the balls to talk about. I should have sent my son ahead, for he would not be pissing in his breeks like you.’

  Some of his men laughed at this but the two riders did not, as Hrani ordered his men to form into a column two abreast and with shields up and spears ready. ‘If it is a trap whoever set it will know we have seen it and must surely expect us to take another path through the trees,’ Hrani said. ‘So it is on that other path that they will be waiting.’ He shook his head. ‘But I do not think it is a trap. We will keep going this way and we will see what has got Bild and Erlingnar’s arses singing like a pair of bukkehorns.’ He pointed at Sigurd, Floki and Valgerd, who were near the front of the column. ‘Whatever happens keep your eyes on them. Haraldarson will not wriggle off my hook as he did Jarl Guthrum’s.’

  There was no talking as they moved along the track, their eyes searching the forest and their guts looser than they had been before, as is the way of it when men half expect a fight.

  ‘Guthrum?’ Valgerd said under her breath.

  ‘Doubt it,’ Sigurd said. ‘Not without help anyway. He doesn’t have enough spears.’

  ‘Thirty can beat fifty if the fifty are not expecting it,’ Floki said, ‘but this lot are ready for Ragnarök.’

  They knew they had reached the place when they heard a clamour of kowws and a murder of crows clattered off through the trees. It was a sound to chill a man’s blood, the song of the slaughter field after a battle.

  Jarl Hrani raised the Óðin spear to halt the column, his neck twisting and that beautiful helmet glinting in the shafts of sunlight filtering through the trees as he turned this way and that, looking for the ambush that wasn’t there. His men were mumbling curses and invoking the gods’ protection. Some were spitting in disgust or shaking their heads and all gripped spear shafts and axe hafts with white hands. Twenty feet away a stake had been stuck in the ground and on it was rammed a man’s head, the mouth and eyes open as if in shock. The crows had not yet ruined the eyes but the flies were feasting. They swarmed thickly around the severed neck and fed on the congealing dribbles that had cascaded down the length of the stake. It was Storvek’s thrall, or at least it had been. Sigurd had not learnt the man’s name, not that it mattered now.

  The rest of the thrall was scattered amongst the pines: an arm hanging here, a leg there, and all of that flesh buzzing with flies so that you only had to let your ears follow the hum to find another bit strung up amongst the sweeping green boughs or the brittle brown lower branches.

  ‘Show yourself!’ Hrani roared into the forest. ‘Where are you, coward?’ His voice was swallowed in the shady gloom and the only reply he got was more crowing from the unseen birds who were waiting to resume their meal. The fact that there was no answer from a human mouth did nothing to dispel the men’s fears that some god had had a hand in this scene of slaughter.

  ‘We keep moving,’ Hrani said, hoisting Gungnir, and with that they set off, giving the thrall’s head a wide berth because no one wanted those staring eyes to fix on their own. They walked on, all but peering over the rims of their shields as if they expected a hail of arrows from the forest at any moment, and soon Hrani raised his spear again and the column stopped.

  This time it was Storvek himself, though unlike the thrall he was alive. Naked as a newborn bairn he was tied to the base of a tree, ropes round his legs, waist and chest with another round hi
s face and in his mouth to keep him quiet. There was a strip of cloth blinding him, but he could hear all right, for his stomach was pumping like forge bellows because he knew his jarl had come.

  ‘Let me cut him free, Father,’ young Randver said, moving forward until his father, who was growling foul things under his breath, grabbed a handful of the sword belt across the boy’s shoulder.

  ‘Stay here,’ he told the boy, then turned to the two men at his back. ‘You two, with me. You see anything move, you so much as smell a fart on the breeze, you shout.’ Both warriors nodded grimly as the three of them went forward to help Storvek.

  ‘Cut him loose,’ Hrani said, and one of the men thrust his spear into the earth and drew his scramasax and had no sooner bent and put the blade to the rope around Storvek’s legs when a man dropped through the lush boughs and put an axe in his back. There was a scream and in the same heartbeat another man fell from the pine and threw an arm round Jarl Hrani’s neck while bringing a blade up to his throat.

  ‘Move and I’ll bleed you like a pig,’ Bjarni told the jarl, who still gripped the massive spear. Bjarni’s brother Bjorn stepped in front of him, his axe threatening the third man, who stood there not knowing what to do.

  Hrani’s champion, a man named Hadd whom men called Hog-Head, though he was only half as ugly as Jarl Guthrum’s champion Asgrim, growled and moved forward, spear levelled.

  ‘Not another step!’ Bjarni yelled at him and Hog-Head stopped, but little Randver didn’t, which meant he was either stupidly brave, just stupid, or Týr, Lord of Battle in disguise.

  ‘No, Randver!’ Hrani managed even with Bjarni’s arm crushing his windpipe.

  ‘Get back here, lad!’ one of Hrani’s men growled, but young Randver had a legend to make. He pulled his arm back as if to hurl his spear at Bjorn, then he yelled ‘Óðin!’ in a screechy voice, but before he could launch the spear a man burst from a tangle of thorns nearby and ran across the path, grabbing the boy the way a sea eagle scoops up a fish. It was Thorbiorn Thorirsson and Sigurd realized that what Thorbiorn lacked in war-craft and experience he made up for in speed, and now he stood off to the side amongst the trees, holding the son the same way Bjarni held the father.