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

  When Sigurd had told the others he was off to fetch more ale he had glanced at Valgerd in the hope that she might offer to go with him. It was childish really, he thought, and the rest of them, those still halfway sober, had probably seen clean through it. And yet he did not care because before Svein had slurred three words Valgerd had stood, pushed her wet hair off her forehead and said she could do with walking a cramp out of her legs. And now they were alone, which meant that Sigurd’s less than cunning plan had somehow worked.

  It was dark inside Trygir’s tent, the only light coming from two lamps which burnt foul-smelling fish oil, and the rain was pelting against the sailcloth which had been slathered in pine tar to keep Trygir and his barrels dry. In a corner of the tent a boy sat on a pile of furs carving a wooden sword. Trygir’s son by the look of his reddish hair and upturned nose.

  ‘Reinen’s crew, yes?’ Trygir greeted them as they wiped the rain from their faces and shook water off their hands. A man like Trygir must come to know every new face in that camp, Sigurd thought. Sees them come, sees them go. ‘Where’s the big man with the red beard and his mouthy friend?’ Trygir said. He was a big man himself, though a full head shorter than Svein.

  ‘We drew the short straw tonight,’ Sigurd said. Even his beard rope was dripping.

  ‘Did you now?’ Trygir asked, lifting his chin a little. He glanced at Valgerd and smiled. Unlike the man who had called to Sigurd outside, Trygir knew full well who led Reinen’s crew, brynja or no brynja. He knew that Sigurd was standing in his tent now because he wanted to be standing there.

  ‘So what can I get you this fine night?’ Trygir asked, putting both hands on the table before him and leaning towards his customers, ignoring the mud and water which they had traipsed across his reed- and grass-strewn floor. ‘I’m hoping it’s ale or else you’ve come to the wrong place.’ Behind him were stacked two dozen barrels, with more partly visible beyond a hanging partition at the rear of the tent. Skin bags and wooden gourds hung from the central tent pole and a set of bronze scales hung over the table, suspended from the roof pole on thin chains. A collection of lead weights sat on the table along with Trygir’s own cup and drinking horn, a cudgel to deter difficult customers, and a sharp-looking axe for those who needed a little more persuasion.

  ‘Mead?’ Sigurd asked with a grin.

  ‘Ha! I wish,’ Trygir said, rubbing his hands together for warmth. Readying himself to do business. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said, his eyes smiling in the lamp glow, ‘I’ll do you a very good deal seeing as it’s your first time in here.’ He looked at Valgerd then. ‘And because I don’t often get beauties like you in here,’ he added in a low voice, as if his wife might be behind that partition at the back of the tent.

  They bought four skins from Trygir, who warned them that he would have to sell them less from now on because at this rate he would run dry and men would start killing each other for the stuff and Alrik would return to find half his army dead and the other half drunk. ‘And don’t tell anyone what a good deal I gave you or they’ll be in here demanding the same,’ he warned them.

  Sigurd tied his two skins together and slung them over his shoulder. Valgerd did the same. ‘We’re off to find Alrik tomorrow anyway,’ he said, at which Trygir nodded, understanding why the late-night visit, and wished them well. His merchant’s mask almost hiding his disappointment to be losing his best customers, he then tried to sell Sigurd two more skins from what he alleged was Alrik’s own stash.

  ‘Four is enough,’ Sigurd said, ‘given the walk we’ve got ahead of us tomorrow.’

  ‘We could try a little of Alrik’s brew,’ Valgerd suggested, moving further inside Trygir’s big tent to avoid a stream of water which was pouring through a hole in the red cloth. She looked at Sigurd. ‘Before we head back.’

  Sigurd’s stomach rolled over itself. He nodded. ‘We could,’ he said, rummaging in the scrip on his belt for a thumb-sized piece of silver. He did not owe Trygir anything like that much but it was his guarantee that he would be back in the morning, hopefully when it was dry, with the pelts he owed the man.

  ‘You two looking for somewhere quiet?’ Trygir asked. He looked from Sigurd to Valgerd and back to Sigurd. ‘Some place to enjoy a drop of my best without your friends sticking their beaks in?’

  Sigurd felt the heat in his face. ‘We should get back—’

  ‘Where do you suggest?’ Valgerd asked Trygir. He had sent his boy into the back to fetch the good ale and now the lad handed Valgerd a leather flask and Sigurd two cups. Even the boy seemed taken with Valgerd, who pointed at the nearly finished sword tucked in his belt and said it was some of the finest work she had seen. The boy’s teeth flashed in the gloom and he looked at his father with unbridled pride.

  ‘You’ll give the lad ideas and I’ll lose him to some blade smith,’ Trygir said, shaking his head, though his eyes were smiling because the boy looked so proud. He looked back to Sigurd. ‘So, you go next door, to the back entrance, and you ask for a man named Brodd-Helgi. Can’t miss him, face like a goat and broken teeth,’ he said, putting fingers to his own mouth, ‘like he’s been eating rocks. Say Trygir sent you, that I said to give you the loft.’ He nodded at the small ale skin which Valgerd held by the neck. ‘You’ll be able to enjoy that all to yourselves up there.’

  ‘And what will that cost me?’ Sigurd asked, thinking it would be worth any price to be alone with Valgerd. Just the two of them for once, without the rest of the crew around.

  Trygir did his best to look offended. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘You’ve been a good customer, Byrnjolf Hálfdanarson. And I wish you and your crew well.’

  Sigurd nodded and shook the man’s hand, then he and Valgerd turned and pulled their cloaks tight around their necks against the freezing rain which still hissed in the gloomy world beyond Trygir’s tent.

  ‘You make a good-looking pair,’ Trygir said as Sigurd lifted the flap and they stepped outside, and Sigurd hoped Valgerd had not heard the man, though the curl of her lips told him that she had.

  ‘There isn’t enough of that good stuff to go round anyway,’ Sigurd said quickly so that they would not have to deal with Trygir’s parting words. The sly shit. ‘So we might as well make the most of a dry spot while we drink it.’ They stood there looking at the longhouse, whose thatch was shrouded in a thick haze, as if the whole place was steaming. The main door clunked open and two men stumbled out, one of them puking into the mud before he had made four paces. His companion fumbled at his breeks and began pissing on to the log pile under the eaves. Men’s voices and a woman’s shrill laughter leaked from the place before the door clumped shut again.

  Valgerd lifted the flask and studied it. ‘I for one would like to know how Alrik’s ale compares with what we mortals have been drinking,’ she said, and with that she trudged off down the side of the longhouse looking for the other door. And Sigurd followed, thinking that Tygir was a sly, scheming son of a she-troll. He was also thinking that in the morning, when he brought the man the pelts he owed him, he would tell Trygir to keep the hacksilver.

  They waited beneath the dripping thatch, enjoying the last lungfuls of sweet, rain-cleansed air while the big-bellied man who had opened the door went off to find Brodd-Helgi, leaving another man blocking the threshold, swaying on a sea of ale.

  Eventually, Brodd-Helgi came and he did not look happy about being dragged away from his women and his cup to deal with two strangers standing at his door.

  He glared at Sigurd. ‘Don’t know your face,’ he said, then lifted his chin. ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Trygir sent us,’ Sigurd said. ‘He told me to tell you to give us the loft.’ Sigurd grinned and patted one of the plump ale skins slung over his shoulder. ‘We need to try a little of this before sharing it with our crew.’

  Brodd-Helgi fixed his eyes on Valgerd. ‘Wouldn’t mind a taste of that myself,’ he said, his stare lingering on the shieldmaiden. ‘You friends of his, then?’

  Sigurd shrugged. ‘We
are good customers.’

  Brodd-Helgi’s tongue poked out between the ragged remains of his teeth. ‘I’ve seen you,’ he said to Valgerd. ‘You’re the new crew that came in with Knut. Handsome ship you’ve got there. Too much ship for the crew as I recall.’ He was not a big man but he was confident, which probably meant whoever had broken his teeth was most likely dead now. ‘Shouldn’t be here though,’ he said, then threw an arm back towards the interior. ‘Only men allowed in here are those who’ve been fighting for Alrik a season or more.’

  Behind Brodd-Helgi, partly cast in the glow of the hearth, mostly shrouded in shadow, but fogged by smoke, Sigurd could make out men and women drinking and rutting on beds and on the fur-strewn floor. They fumbled and groped in the fire-played shadow, knots of limbs and bare flesh, writhing beasts made of tits and arse, beards and balls.

  ‘Aye, I should be telling you to piss off and come back when you’ve broken a few skulls for Alrik.’ Brodd-Helgi sniffed, leaning out of the door and peering up at the rain-filled gloom. Then he straightened and licked a drop of rain off his lip. ‘But if Trygir vouches for you . . .’

  Sigurd’s stomach rolled over and he made to remove his sword belt but Brodd-Helgi flashed a palm.

  ‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘No one starts trouble in here.’ Then he turned to the man who had been guarding the door before. ‘Kick that arse-leaf Stækar out of the loft. If he wants to swive that pretty thing of his without his wife knowing, he needs to pay for the privilege.’

  The man nodded and went off and Brodd-Helgi shut the door behind Sigurd and Valgerd and led them through the musky fug, picking a well-practised path through the gloom-shrouded drinking and rutting and sleeping folk. Along the sides of the room, stretching from roof post to roof post, hung screens of canvas or wool, creating separate cells and privacy for those who wanted it. Some of these hangings were plain, but for the smoke and drink stains, whilst others were embroidered with birds, falcons whose feathers Freyja goddess of lovers wore as a cloak.

  ‘It’s just as well the others don’t know about this place,’ Valgerd said, stepping over the outstretched arm of a woman who held on to her ale cup despite being ridden like a fjord horse to a feast.

  Sigurd’s heart was hammering in his chest and his palms were slick with sweat, and he felt as if he were walking into an ambush as they waited for an angry-looking Stækar to descend the ladder followed by a blushing beauty who somehow managed to avoid everyone’s eye before slipping off into the crowd.

  ‘You miserable shit, Brodd-Helgi,’ Stækar growled, raking his long fair hair back off his face. ‘I was a cock’s length from tupping her.’

  Brodd-Helgi grimaced. ‘Take her back to your tent and tup her there,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Hildigunn won’t mind. If you’re quiet she may not even wake up.’ He turned a palm over. ‘Or pay me to use the loft.’

  ‘Prick,’ Stækar growled, then shot Sigurd a filthy look and stormed off, calling to a friend to get him a drink.

  ‘Enjoy the ale,’ Brodd-Helgi said to Valgerd. ‘I’ll want you out long before dawn. If someone pays me for the bed you’ll be gone before that.’

  Sigurd wanted to tell the man they were only looking for somewhere to talk and drink, but Brodd-Helgi would not believe him and what did it matter anyway? Then he was following Valgerd up the ladder and into the dark where the smoke had gathered, though someone had gouged a hole between two of the logs in the wall to let at least some fresh air in. As it happened there was no bed up there, just a thick pile of furs, two chests for leaning against, someone’s rolled-up cloak – Stækar’s perhaps – and a heavy dished stone lamp whose flame was sputtering on its cotton-grass wick.

  ‘They’ll worry about us,’ Sigurd said, watching Valgerd bending over to shrug off her brynja. There was not enough room to stand and so Sigurd had crawled from the ladder on hands and knees towards the lamp glow.

  ‘Olaf will come looking for you,’ she said, picking up the discarded cloak and using it to dry her brynja to keep the iron rot out of it.

  ‘Bram will come looking for the ale,’ Sigurd said, removing his own sopping wet cloak and his sword belt. He held out the cups and watched Valgerd as she unstoppered the flask and poured the ale. The lamp only just caught her in its flickering bloom so that one side of her face was burnished gold and the other was cast in shadow. And Sigurd realized that this was Valgerd, half in the world and half . . . somewhere else. Lost. In the past perhaps.

  ‘You think of her often?’ he asked, dropping that into the silence between them. Not even knowing why he had done it, especially now of all times when they were alone with a flask of strong ale and a pile of soft furs.

  She sipped from her cup and looked away, towards the glow and the clamour rising from the room below. ‘Less than I did,’ she said, seeming annoyed with him too for bringing it up. Then she turned her eyes on him, glacial blue even in this dim light, and a shiver ran down through Sigurd from head to arse.

  Sygrutha, the spae-wife whom Valgerd had been sworn to protect, had been dead a day or two when Sigurd found Valgerd living apart from other folk by the sacred spring in the Lysefjord. The völva had been nothing but skin and bone, a wisp of a corpse lying in a bed, but that bed was the only one in the cabin and Sigurd had known that Valgerd and Sygrutha had been lovers. And since the day she had joined his crew, Valgerd had mourned the völva and hated the gods.

  Valgerd shrugged and picked up the loose thread of it. ‘Sygrutha knew she was dying. How could she not?’ she said.

  ‘Because she had the gift?’ Sigurd asked.

  ‘Because death stalked her,’ Valgerd said. ‘Because it worked on her like rot in the blade. And there was nothing we could do to fight it.’ She drank again. Sigurd had not yet touched a drop. ‘In the end she faded away. Like a dream.’

  ‘Was there pain?’ Sigurd asked.

  ‘She tried to hide it from me. But yes. Eyes cannot lie about pain. Have you noticed that?’

  He nodded. ‘And you cannot forgive the gods?’

  Valgerd shook her head. ‘Nor Sygrutha,’ she said. ‘When she knew death was close, she told me she would come to me. After. She promised to come. She knew the ways, she said, to reach me through the birds or the wind. Or the waterfall.’ For a moment Sigurd thought she would shed tears, but then those blue eyes sharpened. Valgerd had done all her crying unseen. ‘She lied.’

  ‘Maybe not. Maybe she tried,’ he suggested.

  ‘She lied,’ Valgerd said. She drank again and this time Sigurd did too. ‘Have your brothers come to you?’ she asked him. ‘Your mother? Your father?’

  Sigurd frowned at the question because he did not know how to answer it. There had been times. A whisper amidst the sword-song. A feeling in the shield din. All in his own head perhaps.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last.

  Valgerd shrugged. ‘I don’t think of her when I am fighting.’

  Sigurd forced a smile. ‘Then you have joined the right crew,’ he said and with that lifted his cup and she did the same. ‘Skál.’

  Valgerd lifted her own cup. ‘This is better than that,’ she said, nodding at the four ale skins which they had put to one side.

  Sigurd drank, then swept the back of his hand over his lips. ‘Another reason it’s a good thing we’re leaving tomorrow,’ he said, ‘or else we’d be spending what little silver we have buying more of it.’ The ale was rich and bitter, the flavours of the hops, juniper and bog myrtle combined in a fresh-tasting brew which hit Sigurd’s stomach with a feeling not unlike the first thrill before a fight. Or maybe that was not the ale at all.

  ‘So now we will fight another man’s battles for him?’ she said. ‘Instead of our own.’

  ‘You know we are not strong enough to face the oath-breaker,’ Sigurd said, drinking again. ‘By killing his messenger—’ He frowned, searching for the man’s name. Freystein. ‘Freystein Quick-Sword.’ Not quick enough, he thought. Gods but this ale was strong. ‘Sending my father’s jarl to
rc back to the oath-breaker around Freystein Quick-Sword’s neck was all I could do to hurt Gorm. But we could not have stayed.’

  Valgerd lifted one eyebrow, her hawk’s eyes fastened on his.

  ‘You think I should have accepted the oath-breaker’s offer of land? I should have taken my father’s torc as though it were the king’s to give?’

  ‘No,’ Valgerd said. She shrugged. ‘But perhaps there was another way. Perhaps we could have gained his trust and bided our time. Then, two, three summers from now, we put a blade in him when he least expects it.’

  ‘Too late for that now,’ Sigurd said, not even wanting to think that there might have been a cleverer way of doing things.

  ‘Yes, too late now,’ Valgerd agreed, picking up the flask and refilling their cups.

  Neither said anything for a little while then. They sat in the near darkness, drinking and thinking, the sounds of men and women rutting louder now and then than the usual hum of the place.

  Valgerd closed her eyes and sank down against the side of one of the sea chests and Sigurd took the opportunity to look at her without her knowing it. Her tunic was damp and without her mail on he could clearly see the swell of her breasts and the shape of her thighs and he could imagine what lay between them. She was not a fierce shieldmaiden now. She was just a woman. A beautiful, proud woman who had the courage to hate the gods and yet lacked the courage to ignore them.

  He looked at her and wanted her. It really was like the battle thrill. There was a tremble in his legs and a fluttering in his chest like a bird up amongst the roof beams. His saliva was thick with ale and need, but it was need of her, not the wild joy of killing. He needed her and here she was. And would she have climbed up here with him if she had not known what was in his mind? No, she had led him up here. And what had he done? Talked! Because talking was like bailing, and if he stopped . . .

  ‘Do you think I am a fool,’ he asked, ‘to believe I can avenge my father and balance the scales with the oath-breaker?’