Wings of the Storm: (The Rise of Sigurd 3) Page 5

  Men were coughing now, choking on the smoke which billowed over the palisade into the borg, enveloping the huge mass of Moldof who scowled at it as if that would turn it back. And it might, given how ugly Moldof was.

  Flame-glow showed like copper against the night sky.

  ‘Now would be a good time to take your snake out of your breeks, hang it over the side and piss out that fire,’ Svein told Bjarni, who was not above boasting about the size of the thing given any opportunity.

  ‘I won’t risk burning it. Not for the sake of this lot,’ Bjarni said, gesturing at thirty of Alrik’s men who stood with them on the ramparts, peering round their shields at Guthrum’s war host massing on the slope.

  It was one thing to make light of it all, Hagal said, but no one would be laughing when those burning stakes gave way and Guthrum’s men poured into the place.

  Alrik’s men were bringing pails of water from all across the borg and tipping them over the wall, while their comrades shielded them from arrows and spears, and when a cheer went up fifty paces further along the rampart, Sigurd knew that the fire there had been put out. But the one eating the palisade where he stood was growing, tongues of flames now and then stretching above the pointed stakes to singe men’s beards.

  ‘Well, Byrnjolf?’ Alrik said. ‘What do we do?’ The warlord was looking at the enemy rather than at Sigurd, and the question had leaked from the corner of his mouth like pus from a wound.

  Sigurd had been asking himself the same question and had not liked the answer. But he shared it with Alrik anyway. ‘A few of us slip over the wall and loot Guthrum’s camp,’ he said. Arrows streaked over their heads and thudded into men’s shields around them. ‘We burn his tents if we get the chance and we make a lot of noise about it.’ He nodded towards the horde on the hillside, fully revealed in its war-glory now by the glow of the fire. He fancied he could make out Guthrum himself standing in the heart of that body of warriors, taller than those around him. ‘If they think we are into their sea chests and slashing their ale skins they will hare back to the camp.’ He shrugged. ‘It may give your men a chance to deal with this fire at least.’

  Alrik scowled, considering the idea. ‘Anyone who makes it as far as those trees without being carved up will be tempted to keep going and not look back.’

  ‘You think I would run?’ Sigurd asked.

  ‘You have sworn no oath to me,’ Alrik said.

  Here it was again. ‘And neither will I,’ Sigurd said. ‘But tell me, Alrik, is my oath worth more to you than this borg?’

  To his right Olaf cursed as an arrow tonked off his shield boss. He picked out the archer who had just tried to kill him and bellowed at him, calling the man a nithing son of a flea-ridden bitch. Then he turned back to Alrik.

  ‘You won’t have to worry about anyone leaving you here in the shit, Alrik,’ he said. ‘No one is going out there. Not us, not your oath-sworn.’

  ‘What do you have in mind, Uncle?’ Sigurd asked.

  ‘We’ll let the arse-leaves come to us instead. Only thing is, we need to lose this part of the wall to save the rest of it. If the fire spreads we’re dead men.’

  Sigurd knew what Olaf was thinking then.

  Alrik knew too. ‘But if there is just a small hole we will be able to plug it,’ he said.

  Olaf nodded, then called to Svein and Bram to bring their axes. Alrik ordered some others to help and they set to work, going at those flaming stakes like woodsmen while others went off into the borg to find the timbers they would need as replacements.

  The first of the stakes fell with a shower of embers and the rest soon followed, and were kicked away down the slope from the palisade by Alrik’s men, their shields raised against the heat as much as the arrows. Then Alrik himself stepped into the breach and his skjaldborg built itself around him. He was lucky in one way because the burning timbers lying on the bank checked Guthrum’s advance. Yet he was unlucky in that those burning fence posts lit up his shieldwall so that Guthrum’s archers could hardly miss.

  ‘He can smell blood now,’ Bram said. He meant Guthrum, who was pacing up and down in front of his men, yelling at them, inciting them to the coming slaughter, rousing them with promises of plunder and arm rings and fame. Men were flooding in from the surrounding darkness, swelling his numbers because they knew that this breach was their best chance of retaking the borg.

  ‘All we have to do is hold!’ Alrik called. ‘We will kill them. We will bleed them and they will lose heart. Jarl Guthrum will show himself for the pale-livered, pus-filled prick he is.’ His men cheered this, thumping swords and axes against their shields, showing their defiance. One of them loosed an arrow at Guthrum which hit him square on the helmet between the eye guards. But Guthrum did not flinch. He pointed his sword at Alrik, roared something to Óðin Hrafnaguð, Ravengod, then led his army forward. They came up the slope as though they never doubted that they would win, as though they would punch through that gap in the fort’s palisade like a rivet through a ship’s strake.

  But Alrik had not become a warlord by being an easy man to kill. Nor was he afraid to lead from the sharp end, and he held like a rock, striking men down, hammering them with his sword, splitting skulls and lopping limbs. Knut was there too and he was a deadly fighter, cunning and quick, his spear striking like a snake and laying men low.

  ‘They’re doing well,’ Svein admitted grudgingly.

  ‘Aye, they need to,’ Solmund said. For now they stood back from the fighting because Alrik already had two lines of men filling the breach and there was no room for more.

  ‘Hold your crew in reserve,’ Alrik had told Sigurd. ‘My men will fight harder knowing that you are at our backs. But if we break, you must hold the breach.’

  ‘You won’t break,’ Sigurd had said, and so far he was right. And now those men they had sent off to find timbers were returning with their heavy loads, so that whilst Alrik and Guthrum’s skjaldborgar clashed, their blades biting, Olaf took charge of the new defences. He had Sigurd’s crew digging holes and setting the new posts in them, but not so that they made a new palisade, for being rushed it would be weak. Instead they set the timbers at a slant and supported them so that they pointed towards the breach. Old roof timbers, posts from the animal pens, even split planks from long tables were set in place, clustered thick as sea urchin spines, and then Olaf had them take axes and sharpen the ends of the timbers. And as they dug and hacked and sweated, they kept one eye on the battle in the breach, hoping that Alrik’s shieldwall stood firm. Because if not, his men would be driven back on to those spikes and the enemy would surge in.

  The sword-song rang out into the night, accompanied by the shrieks of the wounded and the gruff shouts of encouragement from men who knew only too well that they each depended on the other, that the shieldwall was only as strong as its weakest man. And it was a hard fight between those two warlords that night, with men falling on both sides, their bodies hauled back so that others could step up and take their place.

  Still, try as he might, Guthrum could not break Alrik’s shieldwall and force his way into the borg. And in the end, exhausted and bone-weary, Guthrum’s men pulled back from the carnage in the breach, and Alrik’s men up on the ramparts could not even sting them with arrows as they retreated down the hill, for they had long run out of shafts.

  The mangled and the dismembered lay there like a grim burial mound, a testament to the savagery of that fight and to the stubbornness of both sides. But Alrik still held the hill, for all that he had paid a heavy price for it.

  ‘I don’t think we can take another night like that,’ Svein said to Sigurd. Dawn was breaking and he had come with Sigurd to look at the hole in the palisade and see what Alrik was doing about it. ‘I am thinking we should take our silver and iron and leave while we still can.’ Svein had braided his thick red beard into one rope, which he pulled now as they watched three dogs licking the blood-smeared grass of the slope where the corpses had lain. Now Sigurd realized why Svein ha
d got out of his bed to come with him while the rest were still half asleep in the longhouse. This was not the sort of thing his friend would say in front of anyone else. ‘You know I would stay here and fight beside you until Ragnarök, Sigurd,’ he said, tugging at that red rope, ‘but how will that help us avenge our kin? This is a good fight but it is not our fight.’

  They stood beside the sharp teeth of the makeshift defence, looking out across the rock-strewn meadow which was thick now with yellow flowers that showed even in the weak light, reminding Sigurd of home and Runa.

  Now and then the breeze brought the low hum of men’s voices from Guthrum’s camp, but there was no sign that the jarl was going to attack the breach again. Which was why Knut was making the best of it and had his men digging out the last stumps of the ruined timbers, like rotting teeth from raw gums, so that they could be replaced properly.

  ‘You think Guthrum would let us walk out of here and back to Reinen?’ Sigurd asked.

  ‘I think he would be glad to see us go,’ Svein said, then held his tongue while two of Knut’s men walked past hefting a long timber between them. ‘Guthrum has lost too many warriors already,’ Svein went on when the men were out of earshot. ‘He wants this borg and the iron in it. He won’t sacrifice more of his men fighting us if he doesn’t have to. Not if we show him our backs.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be much of a fight. Not out there in the open,’ Sigurd said, which was true enough. Even armed like Týr, Lord of Battle, they were just fourteen, whilst Guthrum still commanded as many as one hundred and fifty warriors. Even so, he suspected Svein was right and that Guthrum would just be glad to see Sigurd’s crew fly the coop, leaving Alrik in the mire of it.

  ‘We will never kill the oath-breaker if we die here,’ Svein said, his mention of King Gorm like the stab of a cold blade in Sigurd’s guts. There was no argument Sigurd could make against that and so he said nothing, which allowed a silence to spread between them like a bloodstain.

  It had taken a lot for Svein to suggest that they turn their backs on Alrik and leave his men to Guthrum’s army. And yet Svein was right, this was not their fight.

  ‘Alrik will think we are cowards,’ Sigurd said after a while.

  ‘Alrik will not be alive for long after we leave so what does it matter what he thinks?’

  But Óðin will know, Sigurd thought, and I have not come this far, having got old One-Eye’s attention, just to prove unworthy of it now.

  Sigurd looked along the rampart and saw Alrik doing his rounds, walking the perimeter and talking to the clusters of men manning the palisade. Down in the borg his other warriors were spilling out of their dwellings now, stretching aching muscles and preparing for whatever the day might bring. They were good men. Loyal men.

  ‘We just have to beat Guthrum,’ Sigurd said. Svein raised one thick red eyebrow but Sigurd pressed on. ‘We beat Guthrum and we leave here as rich men.’

  Svein nodded, which was his way of saying that whatever Sigurd decided, that was fine by him.

  Sigurd nodded too. All he had to do was come up with a way of killing Jarl Guthrum and he would earn silver, fame and the Spear-God’s respect. He was still wondering how this might be done when Svein tramped back down the bank into the borg to find something to eat.

  It was not until four days later that the answer came to him. And it was Guthrum himself who came up with it, laying it before Sigurd like a gift.

  ‘The horse prick is trying to put the worm of fear in our bellies, breathing down our necks like this,’ Knut said. After three days of rain it had dawned bright and golden. The breeze itself was warm and what little cloud there was drifted through the blue sky like unspun wool.

  Alrik, Knut, Sigurd and Olaf had gathered on the ramparts above the gates because the sentries there had called down into the borg that Guthrum was coming.

  But the jarl was not attacking. Rather he was moving his whole camp up the hill towards the borg so that it was more than a spear-throw but less than an arrow-shot from the walls. Not that he need fear Alrik’s archers taking long-range shots, because they were saving what few arrows they had scavenged or made for Guthrum’s next attack.

  ‘He thinks that if he puts his war host in full view, my men will lose heart at the sight,’ Alrik said.

  Olaf nodded in agreement. ‘He wants this thing over with,’ he said, ‘and is coming at us like a hand round a throat. And his own men are going to want to finish it sooner rather than later for they will be fed up with living on a hillside and rolling out of their beds.’

  It took most of the day, but by the time the sun fell behind the mountains in the west the enemy had set up their tents again and were sitting round fires, or rather lying because of the slope, drinking and talking, laughing and singing, and all of them ready in their war gear, shields and spears within reach. It was a sight which had Alrik’s one hundred and ten fit men gripping sword pommels, spear shafts, axe hafts and Thór’s hammer amulets with sweaty palms. But of all of it, one thing had Alrik spitting curses and telling anyone who would listen that he was going to pull Guthrum’s head out of his arse, stick it on a pole and leave it for the birds. That was the sight of the jarl’s own tent sitting nearer the borg than any of the others, as if Guthrum were announcing to gods and men that he was a man without fear of death. That he could snore the night away almost within spitting distance of his enemies and have no concern that he might wake with a blade in his belly.

  Guthrum’s tent was of red sail cloth and the upper ends of its cross-timber supports were carved to resemble snarling wolves; the whole thing now being where it was made for a decent insult. It was Jarl Guthrum saying that Alrik was too afraid to come out and fight him amongst the spring flowers, man against man, skjaldborg against skjaldborg.

  And it was a sight which had Sigurd’s heart pounding against the anvil of his breastbone. When he looked at Guthrum’s red tent he saw opportunity, a chance to win this fight for Alrik and cut out the despair which was spreading through the borg like rot in damp wood.

  ‘What is on your mind then?’ Olaf asked him. They were sharing bread and some cheese and a skin of ale that was only a little sour. ‘When you are quiet like this it usually means you are waist-deep in some scheming.’

  ‘Not this time, Uncle,’ Sigurd said.

  But that was a lie.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THEY CALLED HER wise mother – though Runa had never heard of her having children of her own and so she supposed the Freyja Maidens of Fugløy, most of whom would never bear fruit themselves, were the old woman’s family. She was a seiðr-kona too. A prophetess. A witch whom Runa had met in the depths of winter up in Jarl Burner’s old hall in Osøyro, which in itself had enough of the strange about it to stand her neck hairs up when she thought of it. Knee-deep in snow out hunting a wolfpack, Sigurd, Olaf and Svein had found the witch – or perhaps she had found them – her galdr song holding the wolves at bay, stopping them from ripping out her throat until Sigurd and the others could put their spears to use.

  The witch had come to warn Sigurd that there were men hunting him, warriors on their way to kill him and so end Jarl Harald’s line. She had lived with them in that hall, her presence sensed more than felt, like a dark shadow in the corner, and she had told Sigurd other things which he had kept to himself. Meeting the old woman again, here on this island, and learning that the Freyja Maidens sought her wisdom and prophecy had stunned Runa like a blow from Drífa’s leather-bound spear. So had the witch’s words about Runa herself.

  ‘The time of kings and jarls is ending,’ the old woman had said. ‘There will come a day when one king will rule everything beneath the sky as far in every direction as a raven can fly. And he will not support the Freyja Maidens. He will bend his knee to the White God. All across the north, few kings and one god. That is what I have seen.’ But then she had gone on to say that in spite of this changing tide, there were still those in whose lives Óðin, Thór, Loki and Freyja liked to meddle. ‘One such woman is
amongst us here this night,’ she had announced, the Freyja Maidens spellbound by her every word. ‘Runa Haraldsdóttir and her brother are threads in the hem of the kyrtill of all this which I have spoken of.’

  Runa had not known what to make of that, but the women of Fugløy had looked at her differently since that night. Not that the Wise Mother had done much far-seeing since then, she thought now, coming through the trees into the clearing, the man and his waddling wife on her heels. She had known where to find the witch, for the old woman did not range far these days. Not on her own two legs, anyway. In her mind, though, who could say?

  ‘I’d better get back to work,’ Ingel said, letting go of the woman and leaving her in her husband’s care.

  ‘Aye, run back to your hammer and your fire, my brave Völund,’ Runa told him, half grinning as the smith frowned and made his escape, for she knew he was afraid of the seiðr-kona, as were most men, and would do whatever he could to avoid her.

  There she was, just where Runa knew she would be, outside the longhouse in the shade of the eaves. It was where the old woman spent the long days, sitting on a stool, bent as a bow, hunched over, her grey hair itself like a tapestry hiding her face as she pushed the bone needle through the cloth over and over again, times beyond counting. Runa had yet to get a proper look at her work. Truth be told, her own dislike of being in the prophetess’s presence was stronger than her curiosity where the old woman’s needlework was concerned, though she had caught a glimpse of a horse’s head, the brown threads of its mane flying. A hunting scene perhaps. Mounted warriors chasing a deer or a boar?

  ‘What have we here?’ the old woman said without looking up, head tilted, her face all pucker and frown, so that she could easily have been talking about the needlework on her lap.