God of Vengeance Read online

  ‘I will fight you, Uncle!’ Sigurd heard himself call and this raised some laughter but not much. ‘And if I beat you then I will earn my place aboard Reinen tomorrow.’

  This threw Olaf off balance more than any man had ever done in Eik-hjálmr and he looked over at his jarl, but Harald was too busy frowning at Sigurd. Hagal the skald wasn’t frowning though. The challenge had hooked him from his gloom like a fish from the dark and he clambered up onto the bench to get a clear view, spilling mead with the flurry of it.

  ‘Sit down, boy!’ Harald called to Sigurd, wafting fingers that gleamed with silver rings. ‘I have seen one son made a fool of, for all that that is like wetting water. I will not have you on your knees too.’

  ‘Let him fight!’ a man yelled.

  ‘Aye, he’s got the makings of a good fighter, I’ve seen him and Svein working with spears. Let him have a swing at it!’ someone else shouted.

  Olaf scratched his bird’s-nest beard and looked at Jarl Harald. ‘I won’t hurt him,’ he said. ‘So long as he doesn’t tickle me.’ He turned his broad smile on Sigurd. ‘I can’t abide tickling,’ he said.

  ‘Let him try, Father,’ Sigurd’s other brother Sigmund put in, standing on a mead bench beside the hearth, a pretty thrall under each arm. White teeth flashed in his golden beard. ‘If he can beat Olaf then he’ll be a useful man in the steel-storm tomorrow.’ Sigurd nodded to him in thanks and Sigmund nodded back.

  ‘No, Sigurd,’ Thorvard said. Their brother’s handsome face was carved in granite now. ‘Go back to your sulking. This is my fight.’ Do not embarrass us all is what Sigurd heard.

  Sigurd burnt inside. All eyes were on him. Even Var and Vogg his father’s two house hounds had called a truce over a fleshy bone and were looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes. This was not the first time Sigurd had asked his father to allow him to stand in the shieldwall but it was the first time he had asked in front of his friends and every sword- or spear-bearing man in the village. With a feeling like a ship’s anchor plunging to the sea bed he knew his humiliation would be complete were his father to deny him now. Perhaps Harald knew this too, or else perhaps he decided that his youngest son needed to learn a valuable lesson about growing into a man. Whatever it was, Harald nodded then, and to Sigurd that simple gesture was sweeter than any mead he had tasted.

  Thorvard swore, shrugged his huge shoulders and shook his head, stepping back to show that he withdrew his challenge.

  Svein tapped a finger against his own head. ‘You are mad, Sigurd,’ he said. ‘The only time Olaf’s been beaten was after too much mead when he fell asleep standing up before the fight even started.’

  ‘That might happen again,’ Sigurd suggested.

  ‘And Asgot might pull some good portents out of a bull’s arse,’ his friend countered.

  Sigurd curled his lip as an admission that neither was likely.

  ‘All right then, you run along and have fun,’ Svein said, batting the air with a big hand. ‘I’ll be over to scrape you off the floor when it’s done.’

  Sigurd drained his mead horn and gave it to his friend who was muttering something under his breath, then he turned and walked into the same space in which his older, stronger, more experienced brother had failed only moments before.

  ‘Be gentle with Olaf, Sigurd!’ Sigmund called above the clamour. ‘When you’re that old it takes time getting up off the floor and we have a fight tomorrow.’

  This got a table-hammering and laughter like the rolling surf upon the shore, though all of them knew Olaf was as strong as an ox and a fighter in his prime. Olaf himself did not dignify it with a response, instead leaning in to Sigurd close enough that Sigurd could smell the mead on his breath and the pork grease in his beard. ‘You sure about this, lad?’ he asked in a low voice through lips still spread wide for the crowd.

  Sigurd hoisted one eyebrow. ‘I told her I would make you yowl like a kicked dog,’ he said.

  Olaf’s eyes widened. ‘Told who?’ His smile contracted into a cat’s arse in the bush of his beard.

  ‘Her,’ Sigurd replied, nodding towards Eik-hjálmr’s door, and when Olaf looked round Sigurd kicked him in the bollocks. Olaf’s eyes bulged like a fish’s hauled from the depths and down he went, first onto his knees then falling over onto his side, hands thrust between his legs. For a moment Sigurd stood above the man, staring down at him as the men around them railed in outrage or laughed or acclaimed Sigurd as the new champion of Eik-hjálmr, the thunder of it so loud in that hall that Sigurd could not hear Olaf yowling though he could see the shape of it on his mouth.

  And in the midst of this tumult Sigurd recalled the story of the hero Beowulf, so often breathed and bellowed by skalds beside Eik-hjálmr’s hearth. For just as the monster Grendel was drawn by the din of men carousing in King Hrothgar’s hall, so a shadow was coming to Skudeneshavn with the next day’s dawn, for all that those around Sigurd this night drank and feasted and fought as though they would live for ever.

  He looked through the throng and caught Thorvard’s eye and his brother gave him an almost imperceptible nod that was the highest praise Sigurd could hope for or expect.

  ‘Father, the ring?’ Sigmund bellowed through the din. ‘My little brother deserves his spoils.’

  ‘Aye, give the lad his prize!’ Orn Beak-Nose called. ‘Seeing Uncle on his arse is worth that ring and more.’

  Harald shook his head and slammed a big hand onto the arm ring before him. ‘Not for that. The boy needs to learn respect.’

  Others agreed with this and Sigmund bawled at them, sweeping his mead horn through the fug. Sigurd ignored them all, offering his hand to help Olaf to his feet. But Olaf growled an obscenity and so Sigurd shrugged and turned to walk back to his bench where Svein was waiting with two brimming horns and a grin as wide as a mead-hall door.

  ‘You’ve ruined his night then,’ Svein said. ‘No notch for old Olaf.’

  ‘But his wife will thank you for a good sound sleep,’ a lad named Aslak said through a mouthful of bread. ‘If Olaf doesn’t spend all night scratching in the reeds looking for his balls.’

  ‘There was no honour in that, Sigurd,’ a man named Vigdis said, his greying brows knitted above disapproving eyes. ‘You striplings mock the gods with your disrespect.’ He shook his head at Sigurd. ‘As the jarl’s son you should know better.’

  Svein and Aslak knew better than to nettle the older man further and so held their tongues, but Sigurd held Vigdis’s eye.

  ‘I know how to win,’ he said, ‘and that is enough for Óðin.’ The man shook his head again and went back to his food, and Svein, Aslak and Sigurd shared the sort of look that comes so easily to young men who hear what their elders say as rocks hear the river gushing over them.

  The clamour rolled on as a stout man named Alfdis helped Olaf up and Jarl Harald’s champion Slagfid swaggered into the circle, rumbling a challenge to anyone drunk enough to take him on. And beyond that smoke-seasoned haven of pine and oak the Valkyries were riding the night, their presence felt by all those grizzled, drunken boasters though mentioned by none. Tomorrow, then, the storm of swords. Dragon against dragon out in the Karmsund Strait.

  The red war.

  Sigurd felt the fury knotting in his gut like a spitting serpent but he fought to subdue it lest he draw every eye to the quarrel. He had come down to the harbour – the allotted gathering place – dressed for war in his thick woollen coat which reached to mid-thigh and was belted at the waist, woollen breeks and his greaves made from iron strips fastened to leather straps; a gift from the man he had kicked in the bollocks the night before. He did not own a sword, for his father said he must earn such a weapon, but he had brought his spear which was a better thing for a ship fight anyhow.

  Not that he would get the chance to use it now.

  ‘I made the challenge and everyone under that roof heard the terms, Father,’ he said, his rage threatening to consume him. ‘Did I not win?’

  The jarl raised an eyebrow. ‘What
a noble victory that was.’ He made a deep umm in his throat. ‘You are lucky Olaf did not flay you alive and beat you with your own thigh bones,’ he said, glancing at Olaf who nevertheless shot Sigurd a sympathetic look as he tied the helmet thongs in the snarl of his beard.

  ‘So you will go back on it? Like a fox skulking back to his hole?’ Sigurd dared.

  ‘Careful, boy,’ Harald growled.

  Leading his pony by the bridle as he made to leave Skudeneshavn, Hagal Crow-Song stopped to take in the scene.

  The jarl looked like a god of war on that jetty, the red dawn light across the black water like a bloodstain and glinting on the iron rings of his brynja. ‘Besides, what would your mother say?’ He nodded and Sigurd turned to look at Grimhild who stood on the grass-tufted rocks with Sigurd’s younger sister Runa and all the other women, their faces harder set than their menfolk’s as they watched them prepare themselves for battle.

  Even war gods fear their wives, then, Sigurd reflected sourly.

  ‘She is already warping my ear for taking three sons into the same fight,’ Harald went on. ‘If I took you too she would make what you did to Olaf look like a kiss on the cheek.’ He frowned. ‘Look now! Her eyes are into us like cat’s claws.’

  ‘The wind is good, Harald, and the men are ready,’ Olaf called from where he stood on the jetty by Reinen’s prow.

  Harald raised a hand and nodded, then barked at his thralls to hurry up with bringing all the spears they could carry down from Eik-hjálmr to load onto his ships: two longships of seventy-five feet, and a shorter karvi with thirteen pairs of oars. Reinen, the Reindeer, was Harald’s best ship and well named, men thought, for she was broad and yet fast, as worthy to ride the sea road as a proud bull reindeer was to strut across the uplands east of Karmøy. Sigurd had often imagined the day he would stand aboard Reinen armed for battle amongst a fellowship of warriors.

  ‘I will be careful, Father,’ he said, knowing it was the same as spitting into driving rain.

  ‘Ha!’ Harald almost smiled at that. ‘None of my sons knows the meaning of that.’ Then, loud enough for Grimhild to hear: ‘As your jarl I forbid it. As your father I forbid it. There is no more to say.’

  ‘Don’t worry, little brother,’ Sigmund said, coming up and slapping Sigurd on the shoulder. His hair was braided for battle, his helmet was under one arm and he was one of the few men wearing mail. ‘I’ll try to spare some of the whoresons so that you will have someone to kill when Mother finally lets you fly the nest,’ he said, smiling and waving at Grimhild and Runa. ‘Tonight we get drunk, hey?’

  But Sigurd was watching Harald’s champion, Slagfid, carry the great set of reindeer antlers to Reinen’s bow. When the ship cast off, slipping into the fjord far enough away from Skudeneshavn not to upset the land spirits, they would mount the snarling beast head at the prow and Slagfid would set those antlers either side of the creature’s eyes. As the man who would fight at the prow that day it was Slagfid’s honour to mount those antlers in their iron sockets and, thus prepared for battle, Reinen and Slagfid both would strike fear into the enemy.

  Sigurd felt a strong hand grip his shoulder and turned to look into his father’s eyes. ‘Your time will come, Sigurd,’ Harald said. ‘A warrior must master patience just as he masters the sword and shield.’

  ‘I may be of use to you, Father, if things go against us,’ Sigurd said, gripping his spear as tightly as he yet gripped the hope of changing the jarl’s mind. ‘Asgot said that you should not fight today, that the omens are bad. Another spear can only help.’

  ‘That old crow’s omens are always bad,’ Harald said. ‘If I listened to every cast of his runes I would never leave my hall.’ The jarl turned to his men now, spread as they were across the jetty, the surrounding rocks and some already at their places aboard Reinen, Harald’s second ship Sea-Eagle, and the short karvi which was named Little-Elk. All of them hefted shields, spears and axes, some wore iron helmets but most had leather skull caps or even fur hats for the protection they provided, though these men would be sweating soon enough.

  ‘Men of Skudeneshavn!’ Men could no more ignore Harald’s voice than they could ignore a long-axe in a killer’s hands, and it boomed out across the still water of the harbour and surged across the rocks like surf. ‘We have been called out to fight for King Gorm, to whom we have pledged fealty and whose high seat we are oath-sworn to protect. Biflindi’s lands to the east have been threatened by Jarl Randver. And our king is not happy about it.’ There was a flash of teeth then in Harald’s fair beard. ‘That dog Randver has slipped his leash and his appetite has outgrown him. Today we whip the hound!’

  The men cheered at that and those who carried spears banged the shafts against their shields and it was like an echo of King Gorm’s byname Biflindi, meaning ‘shield-shaker’. Even Hagal the skald seemed to be lifted like an eagle on a warm wind, despite how the jarl had teased him the night before.

  ‘With the king’s own men and those bondsmen he will have rounded up we will have the advantage of numbers.’ Harald hawked and spat a wad of phlegm onto the slick decking of the jetty. ‘But do not underestimate Jarl Randver for he is the kind that will wait until you are looking the other way and then bite your arse. Besides which, you know as well as I that bóndi more often than not run off back to their farms as soon as the first spears are thrown.’

  ‘That’s why Biflindi is fighting Randver at sea!’ Slagfid roared from Reinen’s prow, ‘because the goat-fucking bóndi can’t run away if they’re on a ship.’

  Men cheered that rare wit from Harald’s chosen prow man and more than ever Sigurd burnt to be one of them, a sword-brother going into a fight, instead of the jarl’s youngest son who must stay behind with the women and the boys and the old men.

  ‘See my son Sigurd here!’ Harald exclaimed. ‘Brave Týr himself could not be more eager to fight with us today!’ Harald threw a brawny arm around Sigurd and pulled him into his chest, against the brynja’s polished iron rings. ‘I am lucky that all my sons are wolves. They thirst for the blood of our enemies!’ Sigurd could smell the mead on his father’s breath. A man needed mead or ale in his belly before he gave himself to the steel-storm, or else, Olaf had told him once, thoughts of blades slicing into flesh will send a man mad. ‘The lad will fight amongst us soon enough.’

  Then the jarl released Sigurd and turned his gaze on Asgot who was snarling at six thralls as they hauled on the halter of an ox, trying to bring it down to the water. The godi was dressed in animal skins and had bones plaited in his long, wolf-grey hair, and some of the women near by clutched their broods a little closer as if they feared Asgot might steal the children for some dark purpose.

  ‘The Allfather craves blood, too!’ Harald called, ‘and we shall let him drink.’ All eyes were turned to the godi and the ox, which was bellowing pitifully, either because it could smell the sea and feared it, or more likely because it had seen the wicked-sharp knife in Asgot’s hand and had enough clever in it to know what was coming.

  Asgot raised the knife in one claw-like hand, pointing the blade to the sky. ‘Óðin, accept this offering. Show us your favour and together we will turn the sea red with the traitor’s blood.’ With that he stepped behind one of the thralls holding the ox’s halter, threw an arm around the young man’s face, hauled his head back and sliced open his throat in a crimson spray.

  The women gasped as the thrall fell to his knees clutching the savage, blood-spitting wound and Harald’s warriors beat their shields with spears and swords and the ox roared as the stink of blood filled its flaring nostrils.

  ‘He was a good thrall,’ Sigmund said above the clamour. Men were chanting ‘Óðin’ and the young thrall lay on the rocks, gore-drenched, wide-eyed and spluttering.

  ‘He was,’ Jarl Harald agreed, ‘but the omens were bad. Today I would rather have the Allfather’s favour and one less slave. Leave the beast, Asgot,’ he called, then turned to Sigurd. ‘Have them slaughter it properly, Sigurd. We will eat it
at our victory feast.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ Sigurd said, watching the godi drag the dead thrall towards the sea, his blood smearing the rocks. Then Asgot dropped the body into the plunging surf where it floated, limbs buffeted this way and that, its bloodless face turned up to the sky, the eyes bulged with the surprise of being dead.

  Asgot looked at Harald and Sigurd, pulling the braids of his beard through his gore-slick hands so that those hair ropes wicked the blood and made him look even more feral. ‘It is no bad thing to remember Njörd, too, before a sea fight,’ he said and Harald nodded in agreement and put on his helmet which was a thing that would make even a king envious. Forged of the finest steel, it boasted many decorated panels of polished silver plate, and a high crest of bronze that came down to a raven’s face, the creature’s beak dividing two thick eyebrows of brass. Below these were eye guards and a nasal that made the wearer look like one of the Æsir come down from Asgard, and Sigurd had never seen anything more beautiful.

  ‘He who stands with me this day to feed the wolf and the raven is my brother!’ the jarl bellowed.

  Olaf raised his spear. ‘Harald!’ he roared. ‘Harald!’ Then more than one hundred warriors took up the chant, ‘Harald! Harald!’, the din of it filling the new day, carrying to the gods like the call of the Gjallarhorn announcing the beginning of Ragnarök, the final battle, and Sigurd felt the thrill of it thrum in his blood like wind through a ship’s rigging.

  ‘Good luck, brother,’ Sigurd said to Sigmund who was tying the thong of his own helmet beneath his golden-bearded chin.

  ‘I will tell you all about it tonight, little brother,’ he said with a grin, then turned to join the others boarding Reinen, Sea-Eagle and Little-Elk. Harald and five of his best warriors took up positions at Reinen’s bow and the rest seated themselves on their sea chests which served as row benches, as the spruce oars were taken from their trees and handed out. Mooring ropes were untied and at the command of Reinen’s helmsman, Thorald, those on the port side used their oars to push the ship out from the berth.