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

  If Hrani Randversson had not looked afraid before, he looked very afraid now with some stranger’s knife at his boy’s throat. Though he tried to put some steel in his eyes when he saw the big man walking towards him from the forest, because he knew now who he was dealing with.

  ‘Olaf Ollersson,’ Hrani spat.

  Olaf strode forward looking like a war god in his brynja and helmet, his bright-painted shield and gripping his big boar spear. The others came from the trees too and Sigurd whispered his thanks to the Allfather at the sight of them. Svein, Bram, Aslak, old Solmund, Asgot and Hagal Crow-Song and even Moldof Wolf-Joint. They were all there, had somehow dug their way out of that mess at the hill fort and come north to Ubsola to find him.

  ‘Hrani Randversson,’ Olaf said, greeting the jarl with a nod. Hrani’s men were silent and watchful, their expressions alone betraying what they thought about having been lured into this trap by their enemy and a Norseman at that. ‘You all right then, Sigurd?’ Olaf asked. ‘I heard a rumour that the Svearmen tried to cut your throat and give you to the gods but the gods didn’t want you.’ He was grinning, as were Svein and Aslak and the others.

  Sigurd grinned back. ‘No thanks to you, Uncle. While you have been sitting around scratching your arses we have been dragged from here to there like dogs on the leash.’

  ‘Untie them,’ Olaf demanded of Hadd Hog-Head, but the man did not move. He was waiting for Hrani to tell him what to do. Hrani, though, was like a man with one foot on the boat and one on the jetty and he did not know which way to jump, so Thorbiorn Thorirsson made it easier for him.

  ‘I will prise out your boy’s eye like a clam from its shell,’ he told the jarl, putting the point of his knife to the skin just below Randver’s left eye. For his part young Randver did not beg nor say a word, so that Sigurd found he was starting to like the boy, but Jarl Hrani was not about to watch his son earn himself the byname One-Eye.

  ‘Do as he says,’ Hrani told Hog-Head, who thrust his spear into the ground, drew his scramasax and cut the rope binding Sigurd’s wrists.

  ‘Lucky shit,’ the champion muttered, then freed Floki and Valgerd. They went to join Aslak and Hagal who gave them each a spear and scramasax so that they were at least armed. Sigurd walked over to Thorbiorn and the king’s son nodded at him, pushing young Randver towards him because he knew what was coming.

  ‘Now then, Hrani,’ Sigurd said, taking the scramasax which Thorbiorn offered him. ‘It seems I am going to earn myself quite a reputation with your kin, being the man who killed your father and your son.’ He wrapped the boy’s hair round his fist and pulled his head back to reveal the delicate white throat which did not yet boast a man’s throat stone. ‘My brothers will pour you a man’s measure of mead when you get to Óðin’s hall, Randver,’ he said, locking eyes with the boy’s, which were wet now though still he did not beg for his life.

  ‘No, Sigurd!’ Hrani said.

  ‘Shut your mouth before I cut your tongue out,’ Bjarni growled at the jarl, tightening the grip round his neck.

  ‘You know I have to do this, Hrani,’ Sigurd said, ‘but I will make it clean and quick because none of this is the boy’s fault. He did not ask for an overreaching snake as a grandfather or a woman-killing nithing for a father.’

  ‘I did not kill your mother,’ Hrani managed, choking now thanks to Bjarni.

  ‘You did not stop it,’ Sigurd said, then bent to Randver’s ear. ‘Are you ready, boy?’

  ‘Please!’ Hrani gasped. ‘Let the boy live.’

  ‘And have him stick a blade between my ribs one day when he is full grown and I am old and slow?’ Sigurd shook his head. ‘That would not be very clever of me, Jarl Hrani.’

  But Sigurd knew that he and his own men were the ones walking a knife’s edge there and then in that Svealand forest. If he killed the son and Bjarni killed the father, Hrani’s men would go berserk and Sigurd and his crew would be cut down in a frenzy of blood. So he would dangle the hook a little deeper in the hope that Hrani would catch the glint of it. Before the pines around them drank the slaughter’s dew.

  ‘What would you do in my position?’ he asked the jarl. Hrani’s eyes were bulging now, his face pale, so Sigurd gestured at Bjarni to loosen that iron grip of his to let the jarl speak.

  The first thing Hrani did then was plunder a lungful of air, the gasp of it loud in those quiet woods. ‘We could make an agreement,’ he said. ‘Your lives in exchange for my boy and me.’

  ‘Try again, Hrani,’ Olaf put in and Hrani curled a lip at him.

  ‘You know my men will kill you all if I tell them to. Even if I am dead, they will avenge me,’ Hrani said.

  Sigurd shrugged. ‘You still get to watch your boy die before you do,’ he told him. ‘Besides which, you must know I cannot let you live after everything that has happened.’ He looked at young Randver, then brought the knife’s point away from the boy’s face and used it to scratch his own neck. ‘Unless,’ he said, letting that word hang there like hope for Jarl Hrani, ‘unless you join me.’

  Hrani Randversson was not as handsome as his father had been, yet he still boasted looks that gave a skald something to work with, and his grin then was one which must have had girls wet between the legs when he flashed it back home in his hall. ‘You are mad, Haraldarson,’ he said. ‘We are sworn enemies and everybody knows it.’

  ‘Everybody?’ Sigurd said. ‘You think we are more important than we are, Hrani, if you believe everyone is talking about us and our feud. These Svear warlords have their own feuds. I know this because I have been tangled in one myself.’

  ‘I’d sooner die than join you,’ Hrani said.

  ‘I would hope that is true,’ Sigurd said with a nod, ‘but would you sooner watch your boy die at the hands of the same man that killed your father? Would you watch that rather than join me, Hrani Randversson?’

  Hrani wrestled with that question, though everyone in that forest knew what the answer was going to be even if he did not. It was in his eyes, clear as runes carved in a rock.

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ he asked Sigurd.

  ‘Join me,’ Sigurd said. ‘Swear an oath to fight at my side.’ It seemed to Sigurd that someone else was speaking, for how could his own mouth craft the words that would see him become allies with Hrani Randversson? The muttering from some of his own men, including Svein, did not help him to believe he was doing the right thing, but making war against jarls and kings was more like playing a game of tafl than wrestling. Besides which, there was only so much war he could make with just his half crew around him.

  ‘I am a jarl,’ Hrani said. ‘Why would I swear to be your man? What are you but a wolf on the loose? An outlaw with a handful of followers, fighting for some Svear warlord in return for the food in your bellies and the ale in your cups. You have no hall.’ He had to say all that, what with his men’s eyes on the whole thing like sailors watching the waves and the ship’s vane to know where the wind was blowing. ‘You have nothing.’

  Sigurd grinned. ‘I have your son,’ he corrected Hrani, and he could not help but nod at Olaf in thanks for that. ‘And while it is true that you have picked up the jarl torc which your father dropped, that is not the same thing as earning it.’ Hrani could have been the greatest warrior standing in that forest that day but it would not have made Sigurd’s words any less true. And they all knew it. ‘Fight with me, Jarl Hrani, and swear an oath, and in return I will help you become much more than you are now.’

  Clearly Hrani was confused by this, as were other men judging by the frowns amongst the trees. Some were murmuring amongst themselves. Others loosened shoulders and necks as if readying to fight Sigurd’s hirðmen who had planted themselves across the track before them looking magnificent in their war gear.

  ‘How would you like to be King Hrani Randversson?’ Sigurd asked. ‘You know I am going to kill Gorm oath-breaker and so you already know you cannot both swear to me and remain loyal to him. But when we have killed that goat-swiving whores
on you will be the one to take his high seat and sit there on the hill at Avaldsnes squeezing silver from every ship which sails past.’

  Hrani’s eyes became slits. ‘You don’t want to be king?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t want to be king,’ Sigurd said and it was the truth; he did not want to be king, though he was not sure why not. ‘Your son lives, you live, your men live and you become King Hrani. You will live in the oath-breaker’s hall and with all that silver sailing into your hands you pay half a dozen skalds to sing about what a great man your father was but how you are even greater.’

  ‘You’ll want them to be better skalds than Crow-Song here,’ Olaf said, nodding at Hagal, ‘which shouldn’t be a problem seeing as how you’ll be richer than Fafnir.’

  For a while then Hrani stood there thinking about it all, as though he had a choice. Then he nodded, at which Sigurd told Bjarni to let go of him, which must have pleased Hrani for he could at last straighten his spine and stand like a man.

  ‘If you swear to help me be king, I will swear to fight with you, though I will not let you throw away my men’s lives.’

  Now it was Sigurd’s turn to consider what he had heard and he made a show of scratching his beard as he weighed it up in his mind.

  ‘Agreed,’ he said at last and there was a low hum from Hrani’s men because they were relieved that their jarl was going to live, and the only person who looked unhappy with the way it had turned out was Floki, who spat a curse in Hrani’s direction and glowered like a boy who is made to go to sleep when he would rather be playing.

  ‘No sword then?’ Olaf said to Sigurd, for if Hrani was to swear an oath properly the words should be spoken over Sigurd’s sword. But Troll-Tickler was amongst Jarl Guthrum’s loot now.

  ‘The spear,’ Sigurd said, pointing at the Óðin spear which was still in Jarl Hrani’s hand.

  ‘That’s what it is!’ Olaf lifted his bushy beard. ‘I thought it was one of those posts from the side of that track near Ubsola.’

  ‘It’s from the Svear temple,’ Sigurd said.

  Olaf frowned. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I just hope you know what you are doing by stealing it. Not from the Svearmen, I couldn’t give a shit about that, but from the Allfather. If it really was his favourite boar-sticker.’

  Bjarni held his blade close to Hrani while his brother Bjorn took the spear from the jarl and carried it to Sigurd, appreciating the weight of the thing in his hands.

  ‘Tell them about this spear, Asgot,’ Sigurd said, turning to the godi, who had tied some new bones into his hair and beard since Sigurd had last seen him.

  ‘Gungnir, the Swaying One,’ Asgot said. ‘Fashioned by dwarfs from Yggdrasil’s sacred ash, it never misses its mark.’ The godi talked about how the Allfather had pierced his own flesh with Gungnir as he hung on the ash, sacrificed to himself, and of how he would use the spear to fight Fenrir Wolf at the twilight of the gods. And while he talked, men listened and Sigurd ran his fingers over the runes carved into the spear’s shaft, and on to the strange shapes etched in the massive blade itself, wondering what they meant. ‘Óðin himself carved the runes on it,’ Asgot explained, ‘just as he carved them into the teeth of his horse Sleipnir.’

  ‘We all like a good story,’ Hrani interrupted, ‘but if we are going to make some agreement here instead of making a slaughter then let us get on with it.’ This earned him a hiss from Asgot, not that he noticed. Even with his life and his son’s life in his enemy’s hands Hrani was still a jarl and could not help speaking like one.

  He had a point too, Sigurd thought, because Asgot had not got to the part Sigurd had been waiting for. ‘Hagal, tell Jarl Hrani why the spear has a part to play now,’ he said, and Crow-Song smiled because he knew the old stories inside out, upside down and back to front. And as a skald he had spent enough time around jarls and kings to know which bit of the Gungnir story Sigurd wanted, just as a shipwright knows which tool to use for each part of a boat build.

  ‘An oath made on the Allfather’s spear can never be broken,’ Crow-Song said, simple as that, and that was all he needed to say.

  ‘I don’t see how it can be Óðin’s spear,’ Svein mumbled. ‘For a start, even though it is the biggest spear I have seen, I would expect Óðin’s to be bigger still. And if this really is Gungnir then what spear is leaning against the Allfather’s high seat in Valhöll at this very moment, while we stand around making friends with men who we ought to be killing?’

  ‘Shut your mead hole, Red,’ Bram growled, ‘you’ll ruin the moment.’

  Svein shrugged, pushing such questions to the back of his thought chest because he knew they were about to watch a powerful jarl swear an oath of loyalty to Sigurd.

  It did not take long, because Sigurd did not make each of Hrani’s fifty men swear on the great spear. Every man amongst those pines knew that as the jarl himself was saying the words, and thus binding himself to Sigurd, then so they were bound also for they were already oath-tied to Hrani.

  The jarl spat the words more than said them, but that was only to be expected, him hating Sigurd as much as he did, but once it was said it could not be unsaid and from that moment every fighting man there loosened like the weave of a sail after a blustery crossing. Swords were sheathed and shields were slung on backs. Hadd Hog-Head introduced himself to Moldof because being a prow man, but the younger of the two, Hrani’s champion had heard stories of Moldof’s fights. He had envied and respected the king’s champion in equal measure and now took the opportunity to meet him properly and as equals – if not in some ways as Moldof’s better, Moldof being nowadays an ex-champion and wolf-jointed.

  ‘This I never thought I’d live to see,’ Solmund told Sigurd as they watched the two hirðs come together like the confluence of two streams, admiring each other’s war gear, comparing swords and boasting of the craftsmanship that went into pommels and lobes, hilts and the patterns in the iron which men talk of as the breath in the blade. As if a sword is a living thing.

  ‘It is not an easy thing to swallow, my friend,’ Sigurd said, knowing how the old helmsman must feel what with him having fought Hrani’s men, been half killed by one of them too, when they had attacked Sigurd’s village. ‘But what we have done here is navigate through the skerries and arrive at the Jól feast.’

  Solmund was too old to pretend that he would not rather have seen that Óðin spear in Jarl Hrani’s belly than in his hands as he spun the oath to Sigurd, but he nodded anyway. ‘You are learning the game of jarls and kings, Sigurd,’ he said, ‘and I knew your father well enough to be certain that he would be proud.’

  The weight of that made itself known on Sigurd and he held the old man’s eyes a moment, remembering how he had sewn the wound in Solmund’s chest himself when he had found him pale as a corpse amongst the dead of Skudeneshavn.

  Then a peal of laughter turned their heads towards a group of Hrani’s men gathered in front of Storvek, who was still tied to the tree, even after the whole oath-swearing thing.

  ‘You’ve had your fun, you rancid shits!’ Storvek said. ‘Bild! Erlingnar! Untie me, you grinning arses.’

  ‘Looks like we’ve got ourselves a proper war band,’ Olaf said, slapping Sigurd’s back as they watched Hrani’s men cut Storvek loose while the jarl himself spoke with his most important hirðmen, no doubt dealing with their concerns about being enemies now of King Gorm. For by swearing an oath to Sigurd, Hrani had just pissed on the oath he had sworn to Gorm. But then the oath to the king had not been made on Gungnir.

  ‘It is a start,’ Sigurd said. ‘But we will need more than this.’

  ‘Aye, I expect we will,’ Olaf said.

  ‘And I want my sword back. My brynja too.’

  ‘Guthrum’s got them?’

  Sigurd nodded. Olaf grinned. Because they were now more than sixty warriors: Sword-Norse who fed the wolf and the raven and whose ears had so often rung with the din of the sword-song.

  And they were going to find the Svear jarl who had thought h
e could buy the gods’ favour with men’s blood. Because Sigurd wanted his sword back.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THEY FOUND JARL Guthrum and his men still camped at the foot of the hill to the east of the kings’ mounds, his axe banner fluttering in the warm breeze. Storvek had assured Sigurd and Hrani both that King Eysteinn was still nowhere to be seen, having yet to return from whatever fighting he was up to his neck in, which was good news as it meant there would be no other war band getting mixed up in things.

  It turned out that having arrived at Ubsola Olaf and the others had recognized Guthrum’s banner and kept watch from a safe distance while Asgot had gone to the temple to speak with its priests. Two of them being dead, it had been the boy-godi who explained what had happened and how the two would-be sacrificial offerings and a fierce woman warrior had escaped, stealing the sacred spear as they went.

  ‘When Storvek rode into the place telling anyone who would listen that they could see the spear returned for the right price, we knew all we had to do was put a blade to the lad’s throat to find out what he knew, then use him as the bait on the hook,’ Olaf explained.

  Now Jarl Hrani’s boar head banner was revelling in the wind as his Norsemen climbed the ting mound and formed a great shieldwall upon it to deny Guthrum the high ground. They had come round from the north of Ubsola and come at speed too so that Jarl Guthrum was caught completely by surprise, his own men not expecting to be faced with a fight of any kind, much less with a force outnumbering them two to one.

  ‘I can see you’ve made yourself known around here, lad,’ Bram said to Sigurd, grinning at the sight of the temple, or King Eysteinn’s hall if that was what the Svearmen called it, for it was still standing but half of it was black and charred and you could smell the burnt timbers on the same breeze that made Guthrum’s and Hrani’s banners dance.