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

  ‘Whoreson knows,’ Olaf said.

  ‘He does,’ Sigurd agreed. ‘But look how he controls his temper.’

  Olaf nodded. ‘Ice in his veins this one,’ he said. ‘He knows that if Alrik is cosy up in his borg it means the rest of his men are most likely dead. Also knows he’ll lose more men trying to kick us out.’ Olaf pulled at his beard. ‘That’s a hard thing to swallow.’

  It was, and yet Jarl Guthrum simply stood staring up at the borg. No cursing. No red-hot fury. No threats.

  ‘Here we go,’ Svein said as Guthrum took a spear from the man beside him who was even bigger than he was, and strode up the hill towards the gates.

  ‘Guthrum is coming,’ Sigurd called down to Alrik.

  ‘I see him,’ Alrik replied. He was standing on a barrel peering through a crack between the gate timbers.

  ‘He’s close enough,’ Valgerd said, an arrow nocked on her bow string, the stave bent and straining. The shieldmaiden was the only woman in that borg, but there was no one in Alrik’s war band or in Sigurd’s crew who was better with a bow. Few better with a blade either. ‘Want me to put this between his teeth?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Sigurd said. ‘If Alrik wanted to he could take three or four men out and pull Guthrum in here before the rest of his men got halfway up the hill. Let us hear what this jarl has to say.’

  But Jarl Guthrum did not say anything. He ran a few steps and hurled the spear high and it soared over the palisade and Sigurd looked up at it before it plunged into the borg behind Alrik. It was the kind of throw that skalds sing about. More importantly, it meant that Guthrum was claiming the borg and every man in it.

  ‘It’ll be war then,’ Olaf said.

  ‘Did you think he would offer Alrik a horn of good mead and discuss a truce?’ Solmund asked.

  ‘I would have been disappointed in the man if he had,’ Olaf said.

  Jarl Guthrum turned his back on his enemies and walked back down the hill to rejoin his men. Then, protected by a shieldwall of fifty warriors, the remainder of his army made camp on the ground where Alrik’s men had camped previously.

  It was a grey, rain-filled day the first time Jarl Guthrum sent his warriors against the borg. Fifty attacked the eastern section of the palisade, fifty the west, and one hundred came at the southern perimeter, the bulk of them massing before the gate. Only, it wasn’t really an attack. They brought ladders and ropes but never intended to climb. Instead they came close enough that Alrik’s men had no choice but to throw spears and drop rocks, most of which did little more than split a few shields or send Guthrum’s men away with cuts and bruises.

  ‘Don’t waste your spears,’ Olaf said to those on the rampart above the gate, he being the first man in the fort to guess what Guthrum was up to. ‘He’s testing us, that’s all,’ he told Sigurd, ‘and will be pleased with himself when we end up with nothing left to throw but clever insults and buckets of piss.’

  The second time Guthrum attacked, his men did the same thing, and again the borg men tried to kill some of them, though they did not try as hard as before and did not throw many spears or shoot many arrows. The third time was different because this time some of Guthrum’s men threw their ladders against the palisade and began to climb, their shields held over their heads, while archers on the ground loosed shafts at those on the ramparts. All the while Guthrum kept an impressive-looking skjaldborg facing the gate as a deterrent to Alrik leading a sortie out of the place. Some of the climbers made it over the top and on to the ramparts and fought ferociously too, but these brave men were soon sent on their way to Valhöll.

  The fourth time the jarl attacked, the defenders did not know what he intended. They hurled their spears and dropped their rocks, killing seven of Guthrum’s warriors and wounding a dozen more, which had Alrik’s men cheering as though they expected Guthrum to turn round and lead his beaten army back into the forest.

  ‘Why doesn’t he come for the gate?’ Thorbiorn asked, seeming disappointed. A prince amongst the Danes, Thorbiorn was more used to bed slaves and mead-soaked nights in his father’s hall than days manning ramparts and dropping rocks on other men’s heads, but King Thorir hoped his son would learn sword-craft and the warrior’s way as part of Sigurd’s crew, and in truth Thorbiorn seemed to be enjoying this new life. ‘Why doesn’t he just come?’ he asked again.

  ‘Because he’s not a fool like you, that’s why, boy,’ Olaf gnarred.

  ‘He knows we’re here,’ Sigurd explained to Thorbiorn, watching the fighting at the other walls. ‘And he knows we are killers.’

  ‘Well it’s not right,’ Svein said, gripping his big axe but having nothing to hit with it. ‘It’s like watching other men eating and drinking when you are hungry yourself.’

  ‘He’ll attack the gate tomorrow, Red,’ Bram said, hopefully. ‘Aye, he’ll come at us tomorrow, if the gods want to watch the blood flying.’

  What no one expected was another attack that very night when Guthrum should have been dealing with his own dead and, as Olaf put it, scheming about his next move. They came just before the dawn, men with ropes and grappling hooks, and they came from the north.

  The first Sigurd and his crew knew about it was the shouting, followed by a moaning of horns from those sentries manning the northern ramparts.

  ‘That Guthrum is a cunning shit,’ Olaf grumbled, sitting up in his nest of furs and scrubbing the sleep from his face while the others groaned and cursed around him.

  ‘I was beginning to like the man but he’s ruined it now,’ Bram said, downing a cupful of ale which someone had left on a stool by the hearth. ‘Waking me up when I am dreaming about a beautiful woman is not the way to get on my good side.’

  ‘Whoever the woman was, she owes Guthrum for sparing her your stinking clutches, Bear,’ Valgerd told him, shrugging into her brynja and sweeping her golden hair back to tie it. A simple enough thing for a woman to do, and yet the watching of it hurt Sigurd like a blade in his flesh. In some ways … in one way … Valgerd was closer to him than any of them. They had been lovers, if only for a night. But he had less command over her than any in his crew. Valgerd was no more his than had the cascading water of the falls where he had found the shieldmaiden living been hers. She and the völva of the sacred spring had shared a life and perhaps Valgerd had belonged to the völva, but the seeress had withered and died, for which Valgerd blamed the gods. No, Sigurd thought now, watching Valgerd prepare for battle. He could no more claim that she was his than he could claim ownership of the hearth smoke which rose to leak out through the thatch above them.

  ‘Ready?’ Olaf said, giving Sigurd a newly sharpened spear and a look which was sharper still. Sigurd nodded.

  They did not rush, as the other men sharing the longhouse did, tumbling out of the place half asleep, their bladders still full of ale and their blades as much a danger to themselves as the enemy. But when Sigurd’s crew were fully into their war gear, some of them having relieved themselves in the ditch outside, Sigurd led them through the borg towards the fighting.

  Guthrum’s men had not got far into the borg, but there must have been thirty still alive out of those who had made it over the palisade and more were still clambering over, spilling into the place while their companions fought Alrik’s men, half in the moonlight, half in the shadow of the north wall. They had won a good part of the ramparts in that spot, allowing the next in line to get over the wall with relative ease. The borg men manning the rest of the perimeter could do nothing to prevent it, since to leave their own stations would invite the enemy to flood over the wall from all sides.

  ‘Wait!’ Sigurd said, stopping Black Floki and Bram who would have walked right into the fight without breaking stride. The rest halted at Sigurd’s shoulder while he stood there, eyes sifting the chaos ahead.

  Alrik himself was in the thick of it, bellowing encouragement to his men and hammering shields with his sword. There were no shieldwalls as such, just two opposing tides which mingled here and there. Small knot
s of warriors making their own steel-storms.

  ‘We take back the wall and let Alrik deal with these,’ Sigurd said, gesturing with his spear at those enemy fighters already inside the place, and Olaf nodded because it was what he would have done. They split into two groups, six going with Sigurd, six with Olaf, and skirted round the mass of fighting men, resisting the urge to join the slaughter. Then they clambered up the bank either side of the point where most of Guthrum’s men were coming over the wall, Valgerd stopping halfway up to draw her bow and put an arrow into the thigh of a warrior straddling the stakes. Pinned to the wall, the man screeched like a vixen and Sigurd knew that Valgerd had meant the shot, knowing the man’s plight would put fear in the bellies of those on the other side who had yet to climb.

  ‘Shieldwall!’ Sigurd yelled, and those with him moved with the fluid ease of long practice, drawing level and overlapping their shields to form a rampart to which each of them entrusted their lives.

  ‘Now kill the goat turds!’ Svein roared as a spear clattered off his shield and Floki bent to put his axe into the skull of a man who sat with his back against the palisade having somehow snapped his leg coming over it.

  They drove into Guthrum’s men, hacking and stabbing, as Olaf’s skjaldborg swept towards them along the rampart, two killing waves swamping all before them, trampling the dead, while Valgerd loosed arrow after arrow, the dull thud of shaft striking flesh announcing men’s doom.

  Sigurd speared a warrior in the shoulder then slammed his shield boss into the man’s face, dropping him. Hagal cleaved a head in two and Bram spilled a man’s guts. Holding his long axe halfway along the haft, Svein hooked the crescent head round his opponent’s neck and hauled him on to Asgot’s sword, which was quite a thing to see. And then there were no more living men between Sigurd’s skjaldborg and Olaf’s.

  ‘Come then!’ Bram yelled up at two of Guthrum’s men who were half over the wall, but when they saw what was waiting for them they scrambled back down and were gone.

  ‘You wait here in case any of those turds change their minds and want to die,’ Olaf told Sigurd, pointing his gore-slick spear at the palisade. ‘We’ll help Alrik with this lot.’

  Sigurd nodded and Olaf took Moldof, Bjarni, Bjorn, Floki and Svein back down the mound to hit Guthrum’s men in their rear. But those men, knowing that they could expect no more reinforcements to come over the wall, did not fight on for long. One by one they threw down their swords and axes, clamouring to be spared, and some of them died on their knees, hacked to death before Alrik threw the leash over his own men and put an end to the butchery.

  Men stood panting for breath, spitting, coughing, grimacing with pain or grinning at friends who had also survived. Some were already looting the dead, while others growled insults at Guthrum’s men, the dead and the living. A handful of survivors stood around boasting that they had known their wyrds would not be severed that day, which Solmund muttered was a bold thing to claim.

  The wounded were helped back to the dwellings where those most skilled in treating injuries waited with bone needles and horsehair thread, strong ale and herbs to numb the pain, and red-hot irons to seal cut flesh.

  Sigurd looked out into the night and saw the backs of Guthrum’s men as they retreated across the moon-silvered meadow and melted into the forest. Then he ordered some of Alrik’s men to resume a watch from that place so that he and his crew would not have to, and no one questioned the order or refused it, even as weary as they were.

  ‘Guthrum would be a fool to try that again,’ Alrik told Sigurd, which was as much acknowledgement of Sigurd’s part in that fight as he would give. The warlord was blood-spattered. There were beads of it on his long moustaches, glistening by flame and moonlight or dark against the pale skin of his neck where his Thór’s hammer sat. His hair was cropped to the scalp at the sides but long enough on top to be braided into a rope which was pulled back over his head and tied between his shoulder blades.

  ‘I would not put anything past Guthrum,’ Sigurd said, and Alrik answered that by striking a kneeling prisoner across the temple with his sword hilt, dropping him. Then he turned and barked at his men to get on with the binding of the fourteen prisoners who, unlike the earlier boasters, must have sensed that they had come to the end of their wyrds now. The Norns, those spinners of men’s futures, were poised with their shears.

  ‘This feud you two have between you is a thirsty bitch, Alrik,’ Olaf told him, looking at the carnage around them. ‘She drinks blood like we drink ale.’

  Alrik could not argue with that, though he did not like hearing it as he crouched to pull the silver rings from a dead man’s fingers.

  ‘It is a shame Guthrum did not have the courage to lead his men over the wall,’ he said, running his sword through a scrap of wool torn from a tunic. ‘He would be a corpse now and a good number of his men would pledge themselves to me.’ With that he called to one of his men who looked up just in time to catch the two silver rings which Alrik threw. ‘They would join my army because I am a more generous lord than Guthrum,’ Alrik said, locking eyes with Sigurd. ‘As you have seen for yourself, Byrnjolf,’ he added, using the name by which Sigurd went amongst these Svearmen.

  ‘Silver is of little use to dead men,’ Sigurd said, which was not quite insulting Alrik’s leadership but not far off. It was not that Sigurd disliked the man particularly, just that Alrik did not seem gods-favoured in any way, and that was disconcerting. Besides which, the strain of this feud was carved in Alrik’s face like runes on a standing stone, which did not fill anyone with confidence.

  ‘Byrnjolf has the right of that,’ Olaf said. ‘More nights like this and you won’t have a war host to speak of,’ he said, which was true. Sixteen of Alrik’s men would never fight for him again, because they were dead or halfway dead: which was slightly better than Guthrum’s losses, but still. Guthrum could afford to lose more men because he had more to begin with.

  ‘Earn your keep, Norsemen, and we shall all come out of this silver-rich,’ Alrik said, turning his back on them to greet Knut, his second in command, who had come to report how things stood across the other side of the borg. It seemed this at the north wall had been the only real assault, though Guthrum had made another feint at the gates to lure some of Alrik’s men away from the proper fight.

  ‘Earn our keep? Is that what he said?’ Svein growled, clutching a fistful of arrows which he had gathered and now gave to Valgerd like a bunch of spring flowers. The shieldmaiden smiled and thanked him and Svein spat on his axe head and rubbed it with a handful of hay to get the blood off. ‘If not for us Guthrum would be drinking mead from Alrik’s skull by now.’

  ‘At least he’s a fighter, unlike my last lord,’ Bram said with a shrug, which got some nods from the others who were milling around wondering what to do now. They had heard the story from Bram’s own mouth, of how he had insulted his lord, a jarl named Otrygg, in his own hall because Otrygg had become a soft-bellied, hearth-loving jarl who had forgotten how to raid and live like a man should. And how Brak, Jarl Otrygg’s champion, had had no choice but to defend his lord’s honour and die for it too. Because Bram, whom men called Bear, was as skilled as he was strong and would fight Thór himself for the fame of it.

  ‘Even so, this is not fighting,’ Bram added, curling a lip at the sight of the prisoners who were being herded together by Alrik’s men. ‘You can all stay and watch this, but I am going back to sleep to see if that beauty in my dream is waiting for me.’ He walked off, his shield slung across his back and his helmet under his arm.

  ‘Wait for me,’ Hagal called after. ‘I do not want to watch these men get their throats cut.’ Neither did any of the others, it seemed, and so they made their way back to the longhouse, leaving Alrik to do what he would with the prisoners. Not that anyone expected him to spare a single one.

  The truth was that this attack had nearly succeeded, and almost certainly would have, had Sigurd’s crew not retaken the rampart and turned the tide against Gu
thrum.

  ‘Not that Alrik will admit it,’ Olaf said as he and Sigurd wriggled out of their brynjur and laid them over a sea chest by their beds.

  ‘Wager he expects this to buy him more dead enemies yet,’ Sigurd said, touching the chest, which was carved with ravens and eagles, and leaning his shield against it. He drew his scramasax to check the blade. Wouldn’t hurt to take a whetstone to it. His blood still thrummed with the battle thrill so it wasn’t as if sleep would come to him any time soon.

  ‘Aye, I think you’re right with that,’ Olaf admitted, yawning and taking the ale mug which Svein passed him. Nearby, Bram was already snoring, the sound of it like a rockfall.

  Right he might be, but Sigurd suspected there was another reason for Alrik’s having bitten his tongue rather than admit that Sigurd and his half crew of Norse had stopped Jarl Guthrum becoming king of that hill in Fornsigtuna. Alrik was beginning to feel the worm of jealousy squirming in his gut. As much as the warlord needed Sigurd’s crew, he was a proud man, and whilst his own men were dying, it must have been a hard thing to recognize that here was a young warrior whose reputation was beginning to shine like a moon-washed blade.

  Or a flame-licked blade, Sigurd thought, as by the flickering light of the hearth he ran the whetstone along the knife’s edge.

  Still, Alrik had more important things to worry about than reputation, either his own or Sigurd’s. With Guthrum for an enemy they all did.

  It was a golden day on Fugløy. A breeze rattled the birch leaves so that the rocks and long grass were dappled with dancing light. Bees threaded the air, going from flower to flower, the hum of them almost drowning out the distant clack of wooden swords as a group of Freyja Maidens practised in the clearing. The sky was endless and blue but for a few wisps of white, like a god’s waking breath still lingering on the cool dawn air. The gulls soared and floated high above the island, at the edge of sight, seeming more inclined to revel in the day than dive for fish or scavenge snails and worms or leftovers from the midden.