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

  ‘I am no longer the king’s prow man,’ Moldof said.

  ‘That is hardly surprising, you fucking lump,’ Bram said, eyeballing Moldof, wanting nothing more than to fight him there and then. ‘You are not useful enough now to empty his piss bucket.’

  Moldof regarded Bram and there was no fear in his eyes for all his missing arm. Sigurd noted this well. He had seen this man pierce his father’s shield with a one-handed spear thrust. He had seen him throw his own shield and knock Finn Yngvarsson to the ground who was standing twenty feet away.

  ‘Hagal Crow-Song tells me that skalds have saga tales about you, Moldof,’ Sigurd said and the big man’s eyes glinted at that. The hook is in then, Sigurd thought. ‘I think now that I recall hearing one of them when I was a boy. Some story about you taking your axe to the mast of some karl’s ship and felling it like an oak, dropping the sail on to your enemies so that all Gorm’s hirðmen had to do was club them through the wool.’

  Moldof almost smiled at the memory. ‘I fought at the king’s prow more times than you have years in you, Haraldarson,’ he said.

  ‘Then it is a shame that you will be remembered not as a champion and prow man but as a nithing who came to me to be slaughtered because you could not live with the shame of it.’

  ‘He did not like that,’ Olaf murmured in Sigurd’s ear.

  ‘The skalds will forget your name, Moldof,’ Sigurd said, ‘and into those tales that were once about you they will stick some other warrior’s name. Perhaps in years to come it will be King Gorm’s new champion who cut down that mast.’

  Moldof shrugged. ‘That is the way of it with skalds,’ he said as though he cared nothing about it, though the eyes below that shaggy hat told Sigurd a different tale.

  ‘You want me to melt the snow with his guts?’ Black Floki asked Sigurd, gesturing at Moldof with his hand axe.

  ‘Not yet, Floki,’ Sigurd said and now Moldof laughed, his breath pluming in the still, frigid air, the sound deadened by the snow all around yet also carrying across the sleeping sea.

  ‘You?’ Moldof asked, pointing his spear at Floki. ‘The turd I laid this morning was bigger than you.’ Then his eyes were back on Sigurd. ‘You have gathered a strange crew, Haraldarson. Boys, old men and even a woman, I see. They talk about her.’ He looked at Valgerd. ‘But I did not believe it. And yet here you are.’ He hawked and spat a gobbet into the snow, his eyes on Valgerd. ‘They say you are a valkyrie.’

  ‘That is the way of it with skalds,’ Valgerd said, smiling.

  ‘I have an offer for you, Moldof,’ Sigurd said.

  ‘It is not for you to offer me anything, boy,’ Moldof said. ‘I am here to kill you, but find that you are trying to talk me to death. I have a wife for that.’

  This got a grin from Olaf.

  ‘I will not raise my sword to you, Moldof,’ Sigurd said, ‘but will keep it snugged in its scabbard and so you will not have the honour . . . the pleasure of fighting me.’ He gestured at the warriors behind him. ‘Instead, my friends here will make a spear ring around you where you stand and they will each take a bit of your flesh but none will give you a death wound. When the snow is red with your blood and you can no longer stand I will piss on you, then have my sister Runa roll you off the jetty.’ He turned to Runa then so that she would become the subject of Moldof’s gaze and he would see her fresh young face and know how few years she had on her back. ‘You will have a drowning death, given to you by a girl, and instead of drinking mead with those of your line in the Allfather’s hall you will linger in Rán’s cold embrace.’ He cocked his head but spoke then to Hagal at his left shoulder. ‘Do you think you can work that into my saga tale, Crow-Song?’

  ‘I am weaving it as I stand here, Sigurd,’ Hagal replied.

  ‘All good stories must have those bits which set folk laughing,’ Svein said.

  Sigurd let the blade of his words sink into Moldof then, almost pitying King Gorm’s former champion. The man had come alone up to Osøyro to kill the king’s enemy and prove himself a great warrior still, or perhaps more likely to earn a good death that would gain him a bench in Valhöll. Instead, and before he had even cast his spear, Moldof’s ambition – likely the last thing he clung to in this life – had been pissed on with just a few words from Sigurd. A warrior like Moldof knew all too well that a man’s reputation is the most valuable thing he leaves behind him in death. Now, after all his brave deeds in the sword-song, he would leave nothing of worth behind. Nothing but a sorry tale, the ring of it in his ears as he sank to the slime and weed of the fjord bed, dragged down by his brynja and silver arm rings and staining the sea with his blood.

  ‘Now will you hear my offer?’ Sigurd asked him. Moldof did not say yes, but he did not say no, either. ‘Join me. Fight with me against the oath-breaker. Earn more fame and silver and die a warrior’s death instead of being pecked at by the fish in a sea grave.’ Sigurd smiled at the man then, which was not easy when that man was Moldof and, as such, a living memory of that day in the pine woods near Avaldsnes when Sigurd’s life had been savagely overturned like a boat in a storm. ‘I am Óðin-favoured. You have heard men say it. Perhaps you have even heard the oath-breaker say it?’

  ‘You have been lucky,’ Moldof said. ‘But trying to hold on to luck is like trying to keep water in your fist.’

  ‘And yet my luck has rubbed off on to you, Moldof,’ Sigurd said, ‘for you are alive and have received a generous offer from me when you could otherwise have been busy tripping over your own gut rope.’

  ‘We don’t want him, Sigurd,’ Svein said.

  ‘That ugly swine was killing men before you were born, lad,’ Olaf growled at Svein.

  ‘I will not make you swear an oath to me yet,’ Sigurd said, ‘for I will wait to see if you are still of any use without your sword arm. I have seen your rowing and am not so sure.’

  Moldof put the butt of his spear into the snow on the jetty.

  ‘I’ve seen it all now,’ old Solmund said.

  ‘Others will come for you, Haraldarson,’ Moldof said.

  Sigurd nodded. ‘But not today. So let us go up to my hall and get some warmth into our bones.’ He turned his back on the huge warrior and tramped towards the path which led up to shelter, a hearth and the iron pot of horse broth that hung above the flames. There was ale too, bought from the nearest village with some of the silver that Sigurd had dug up from its safe place amongst the pines on the island south of Røtinga.

  ‘He’s not coming, Sigurd,’ Aslak hissed, having looked over his shoulder. Sigurd kept walking, his back to Reinen and the warrior beside her.

  ‘He’ll come, lad,’ Olaf answered for him.

  And Moldof did.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE DAYS PASSED but the winter held on and the sun, when it could be seen, never rose properly into the sky but hung low, pallid and cold. Shadows lay long across the snow and the air bit still, eking in through the unseen cracks high up in the old hall’s timbers to ruffle the hangings lining the staves behind the benches. It had lamp flames dancing, throwing their shadow monsters across the walls of dead oak and working their shape-shifting seiðr on the faces of the living.

  The two hearths burnt day and night and Sigurd’s crew were either huddled around them or else out hunting deer and squirrel or buying provisions from the folk who lived beyond the woods west of Hakon’s hall. On the hillside overlooking the sea they had cut a swathe through the trees – which had been allowed to grow tall in Thengil Hakonarson’s time – so that they would see ships when they came. They watched the land too where they could, in case their enemies tried to come unannounced, and the hall was so huge that they trained with sword, shield and spear beneath its ancient beams. Olaf reminded them that only a fool, and a soon-to-be-dead fool at that, thinks that he will still be fast and strong even though he has long sat on his arse by the fire.

  Olaf himself trained with Moldof often, the giant working with his one arm until the sweat poured off him and he could
hardly lift his spear. Sigurd sparred mostly with Floki, who was Týr-blessed with weapons, and those two seemed like reflections of each other, their wool-wrapped blades a blur in the flame-licked gloom.

  The winter endured and they waited. And then one morning Runa threw open the great flame-singed door and ran up the hall’s central aisle to where Sigurd and Olaf sat talking.

  ‘They are here!’ she said, bent double, drawing smoky air into her lungs.

  ‘Who is here, sister?’ Sigurd asked, though he had no need.

  ‘The king,’ Runa said. ‘Or his men anyway.’

  ‘How do you know it’s Biflindi?’ Olaf asked.

  She scowled at him. ‘I know the ship, Uncle,’ she said and Olaf nodded, for Runa had stood with Sigurd on the cliffs that day of the ship fight in the Karmsund Strait, when King Gorm had revealed his treachery by not coming to their father’s aid against Jarl Randver.

  ‘How many ships?’ Moldof asked before Sigurd could.

  ‘Just one,’ Runa said.

  ‘Then he has not come to fight you, Haraldarson,’ Moldof said, ‘or he would have brought three crews at least.’ A grin spread in that huge, unkempt beard of his. ‘You are Óðin-touched, Sigurd. And the king loses sleep over it.’

  The rest had gathered up the thread of it and were arming themselves, shrugging into brynjur, tightening belts, huffing on to helmets and scrubbing them to a shine with their tunic sleeves or the legs of their breeks.

  ‘Hey, Sigurd, maybe King Gorm wants to join your crew too,’ Bram called, tying a leather thong around a long braid of hair.

  ‘I would not have him in the bilge with a bailing bucket,’ Sigurd said, making sure that he looked like a war god in his own gear. Over his brynja and helmet he wore the great wolf’s pelt, the beast’s lower jaw fixed on the helmet’s spike, its teeth promising death to his enemies. He strapped the greaves on to his shins over the fur-lined boots and hitched his cloak over the pommel of the sword at his left hip. There was a scramasax sheathed above his groin and a hand axe tucked into his belt. Then he took up his spear and strode from the great hall and his hirðmen went with him.

  ‘Sigurd, wait a moment.’ The voice was dry and old and he turned back to look at the witch who was in her dark corner of the hall where she could spend days unnoticed by anyone.

  ‘What do you have to say to me, seiðr-wife?’ Sigurd asked, gesturing at the others to go on ahead. ‘Be quick about it.’

  ‘I have a riddle for you.’

  ‘Now is not the time for riddles, old woman,’ Sigurd said, yet he did not walk away.

  ‘Who are the two who ride to the ting?’ she asked him anyway. ‘Three eyes have they together, ten feet, and one tail: and thus they travel through the lands.’

  Sigurd could not help but smile. ‘Óðin and Sleipnir his eight-legged steed, of course,’ he said, because that was one of the first riddles every child learnt from their elders. ‘You will have to do better than that,’ he dared.

  ‘Óðin is the Wild Huntsman,’ the witch said with a smile, a hand raised as if pointing at the god’s flying, fleeting charge through the sky upon the snorting beast’s back, ‘and his passing raises such a rush and roar of the wind as will waft away the souls of the dead. And with it Haraldarson too,’ she said, now pointing a finger at Sigurd.

  He blamed the shiver which ran up his spine on the cold air that was a shock to his body standing there half in the hall and half out of it.

  ‘Back to your sleep, witch, and next time set a riddle that I have not heard a hundred times before,’ he said, ignoring the rest of what she had said, and with that he turned his back on her and walked out into the day.

  ‘The wild hunt! The raging host!’ the witch called after him. ‘You cannot escape it, Haraldarson. You cannot escape the wings of the storm!’ She laughed then and the sound of it was like claws in Sigurd’s back as he tramped through the snow, walking in the prints which the others had made.

  The king’s ship did not come up to the jetty. Instead she lowered her sail and her crew took up the oars, rowing her to within a good arrow-shot from the shore. Her skipper dropped the anchor stone and two men climbed into a tender tethered off the stern.

  ‘It seems they do not trust us with their ship,’ Bjarni said.

  ‘Be fools if they did,’ Solmund said.

  Sigurd waited on the snow-covered jetty where they had met Moldof those weeks before. One man was rowing the tender while the other sat stiff-backed and proud, though even at a distance Sigurd could tell that it was not King Gorm. This was a much younger man, whose loose golden hair was probably getting caught in the rings of his brynja, though he looked vain enough not to care.

  ‘You were right, Moldof, the oath-breaker has a message for me,’ Sigurd said.

  ‘The pretty one is called Freystein,’ Moldof said, jutting his chin towards the man sitting facing the shore while the other rowed. ‘Thinks he’s good with a sword.’

  ‘Is he?’ Sigurd asked, but the curl of Moldof’s lip was answer enough.

  They watched the men climb up on to the planks and Sigurd left them standing there huffing into cold hands and striking their upper arms for warmth. The one who had rowed had a nestbaggin slung over his shoulder and eyes that jumped around like fleas on a fur.

  ‘Who are you?’ Sigurd asked eventually. He aimed the question at the young warrior with hair as golden as his own, wanting to hear this Freystein introduce himself. The man nodded respectfully and came forward, until Olaf growled at him that if he took another step he would be dead.

  The man stopped.

  ‘I am Freystein who men call Quick-Sword,’ he said, as though it was a name which ought to impress.

  ‘Did your woman give you that name?’ Olaf asked and the others chuckled at that.

  ‘Why don’t you find out?’ Freystein said to Olaf, which showed just how vain he was, for he could have had the quickest sword in the world but he would still be a dead man if Sigurd gave the word.

  ‘Let us first hear what the oath-breaker has sent his dog to bark at us,’ Olaf replied, a smile bending his lips.

  Freystein nodded and looked at Sigurd. ‘Sigurd Haraldarson?’ he said, wanting it confirmed. Sigurd dipped his head and with it the wolf’s head impaled on his helmet.

  Freystein regarded him for a long moment. ‘My lord is willing to bury the issue of your attacking Jarl Randver and killing him. Even though you surely knew that by making war on the jarl you were making war on the king.’ He looked beyond Sigurd and must have seen Moldof then for his brows arched and there was a glint of teeth in his fair beard, though he said nothing about it.

  ‘The oath-breaker betrayed my father,’ Sigurd said. ‘King Gorm and the worm Randver between them killed my brothers and my mother and many of our kinsfolk. They plotted their treachery well, buying off jarls far and wide to ensure there would be nothing to take the shine off their new alliance.’ He threw both arms out as if to accept a great silver hoard which he had been offered. ‘But now he is willing to overlook my killing of the worm?’ He smiled. ‘How generous of him.’

  Freystein nodded, running a hand through his long golden hair. ‘As I said, he’ll bury it.’

  ‘But I don’t want the thing buried for I have not finished with it yet,’ Sigurd said. ‘Your king and Jarl Randver wove their own wyrds.’ Freystein frowned, not liking what he was hearing. ‘Randver has paid the price,’ Sigurd said. ‘The sheep’s dropping who sits on the high seat at Avaldsnes who you call king will pay next.’

  Freystein held up a finger. ‘You have not heard the rest of it, Haraldarson,’ he said. ‘King Gorm is not only willing to be merciful. He would be generous too, even to you. He strives to build peace these days, at least with those within five days’ sailing of Avaldsnes, and he would have peace between you and him.’

  ‘Because he knows I am Óðin-favoured,’ Sigurd said.

  ‘Because war is expensive,’ Freystein countered, as though he were giving away information he s
hould not be, though Sigurd knew he was merely changing tack to steer off the whole god-favoured business. ‘If you will swear an oath to my king he will give you lands and silver. He will even give you another ship so that you can go raiding properly in the spring.’

  ‘Do I look like I have the crew for two ships, Freystein?’ Sigurd asked.

  ‘The king will lend you men and arms. The ship will be yours to keep. You will raid the Danes and keep two thirds of the plunder. The rest you will give to Biflindi.’

  ‘Would he make me jarl in Hinderå and give me Randver’s high seat?’ Sigurd asked him.

  ‘Aye, it’s not as if the worm has any use for it now,’ Olaf rumbled.

  Freystein shook his head. ‘King Gorm cannot give you what is not his to give. Randver’s son Hrani sits in his father’s seat now. He has already sent silver to the king and the king will support his claim.’ Sigurd was about to speak but Freystein raised a hand. ‘You will keep this hall if you want it,’ he said, looking up the hillside to the tree line which hid Jarl Hakon’s hall. ‘I have heard it is twice the size of the king’s.’ He shrugged. ‘Or perhaps you may build another where your father’s was at Skudeneshavn. A hall even greater than Eik-hjálmr was.’

  ‘I could,’ Sigurd agreed. ‘But I would rather kill your king.’

  Freystein took that in good part, smiling broadly though his companion did not seem so comfortable. There was a man who looked as if he would rather jump into the tender and row back to his ship faster than a mackerel could swim it.

  ‘Come now, Sigurd,’ Freystein said, ‘this is not an opportunity to turn your back on. Not if you want to live as long as your father did.’ He reached an arm out to his companion who nodded and took the nestbaggin from his shoulder. He gave it to Freystein who loosened the draw string and plunged a hand inside. When he pulled it out again there was a murmur from those around Sigurd.

  Sigurd himself felt as if Thór had swung the hammer Mjöllnir into his chest.

  ‘Óðin’s arse,’ Olaf growled.

  ‘That is a sight to rouse the blood,’ Svein said.