God of Vengeance Page 6

  ‘If old One-Eye wanted me to play this game he should have left me with more men,’ Harald snarled and Asgot raised an eyebrow at that as he gathered up the rune stones to cast them again.

  The sun was in the west and cloud-sheathed by the time they had rowed the protected waters east of Karmøy south and round the peninsula back to Skudeneshavn’s safe harbour. The quayside bustled with folk come to see if their men were living or lost and Sigurd called to a friend of his mother to ask if Runa had beaten Little-Elk home. She had, at which news he sighed with relief and muttered thanks to the goddess Freyja.

  As they moored up, Sigurd saw relief flood his mother’s eyes when she caught sight of Harald, though she tempered that joy in respect for those women who could not see their husbands and lovers in Little-Elk’s thwarts. Neither did the jarl seem in the least happy to be alive. He was a brooding, sour presence amongst his milling people and they kept out of his way. But what Sigurd saw on his father, heavier than his fine brynja and his blood-slick helmet, was shame. It clung to the jarl, rounding his square shoulders and hooding eyes that would not fix on Grimhild’s. Then she hammered her fists into his mail-clad chest, tears springing from her eyes now, and Sigurd knew his father must have whispered to her of their loss, given hard words to what her eyes had already told her. Harald stood there like a rock as Grimhild beat his chest and tore her nails on the bloodied rings of his brynja and moaned with such sorrow that others looked away. Then Harald pulled her against him, so that her iron-muffled cries were all but lost amongst the dark tide of woe rolling across the folk of Skudeneshavn.

  Sigurd took Runa in his own arms and Sorli was left like a standing stone looking out to sea and a thousand gulls could not have made such a pity of shrieking as that which filled the still dusk as Little-Elk rocked gently against the jetty.

  Sigurd felt Runa’s body trembling in his arms, thrumming like a ship’s rigging in strong wind, and he did not have the words to soothe her but then Olaf came up to them and laid a firm hand on Sigurd’s shoulder.

  ‘We must prepare, Sigurd. Get eyes on the strait. Bury our silver.’ His eyes were rivet-sharp and his lip was hitched back from his teeth. ‘There is every chance Jarl Randver will come here to finish the job. That is what I would do.’

  Sigurd nodded, keen to do anything that would take him away from that place.

  ‘Maybe the king will come himself,’ Svein suggested, blinking at the water in his eyes, the big jaw bones beneath his beard clenching like a hand in the cold.

  Olaf shook his head. ‘Whatever Biflindi’s part in this ill thing he will not want to be seen attacking his own oath-sworn men. Not unless he wants every jarl with spears and ships to doubt his word from now till Ragnarök.’ He spat into the tufted grass. ‘But that shit Randver will come and kill us with a smile on his face so we need to be ready.’

  ‘I’ll set watches,’ Sigurd said. ‘If Jarl Randver comes we’ll gut him in front of his men.’

  Olaf nodded but it lacked conviction. ‘Make sure there’s dry wood in the beacon and take the loudest horns you can find. If Randver comes I want you to wake the gods, lad.’ He grimaced. ‘With all this wailing a hundred men could land in the bay and we wouldn’t hear them.’

  Sigurd turned but Olaf gripped his arm to stop him. ‘Give them spears. Even the youngens. If the whoreson comes he’ll come to end it. There’ll be no mercy. No terms.’

  Sigurd glanced at his mother still wrapped in Jarl Harald’s arms, and at the other wet knots of wailing women. Let Randver come, he thought, gathering that possibility around himself like a cloak. He has killed Sigmund and Thorvard, so let him come and we will soak this night with blood.

  Then he turned his back on them all and went to tell the young men of Skudeneshavn that only blood, not tears, would avenge their fathers. And Svein and Aslak went with him.

  He set them in twos and threes on the high ground overlooking the strait and the Skudeneshavn fjord, then he, Svein and Aslak spent the night on a ridge looking north across the pastures of Hillesland whose blanket of buttercups glowed brightly in twilight. Full dark would not come again for two months, which meant that if a war band came it would not come unseen. But Jarl Randver and his men did not come that night and in the morning Sigurd returned to his father’s hall and Olaf sent other men to the lookout posts.

  ‘I should have come with you. Anything would have been better than spending the night here,’ Sorli murmured into his mead horn, staring into the glowing embers of the hearthfire. Sigurd glanced around the hall at the women wreathed in smoke and misery and those of Harald’s men who had survived but had lost friends and oarmates and pride.

  Sigurd blinked the sting out of tired eyes, glad to have spent the night out on the hill rather than in that dark, bitter place. ‘Where is Father?’

  Sorli’s gaze did not leave the last flame-licked sticks that resembled serpents now, their scaled hides pulsing with heat, grey to red to grey. ‘With Asgot somewhere. And the gods,’ he said. ‘Trying to unpick the knot of this bad thing.’ Sorli was still in his gore-spattered brynja, their enemies’ blood clotted black in the rings, the spear shaft behind him stained with it.

  Sigurd’s own spear lay amongst the rushes beside him, its blade clean, the rune-etched shaft mocking him for he had not stood beside his brothers nor laid a single man low with it.

  ‘Fucking Thorvard.’ The words escaped Sorli’s mouth like a dog’s growl, the handsomeness of his face ruined by it.

  ‘Do not speak ill of your brother, boy,’ Olaf said, chewing a hunk of bread and looking into the same dying fire whose flames whispered a different saga to every eye.

  ‘Do not tell me what to do, Uncle,’ Sorli said, glaring at Olaf. ‘He pushed me over the side. He took my honour from me and now here I sit with boys and old men and those who fled the fight.’

  There were some murmurs and growls from the men of Little-Elk at that, though none was prepared to make any more out of it.

  Olaf cocked an eyebrow, a deep hum stirring in his throat. ‘You’re a fool, Sorli,’ he said, gesturing to a thrall to fill his cup. ‘You think Thorvard was trying to shame you?’

  Sorli was working a thumb into the palm of his right hand to loosen tendons that were tight from gripping his sword. ‘No. He was trying to save me but it was not his right. It was not for him to deny me my place in that fight. I was shoulder to shoulder with him and Sigmund. I was killing men beside Slagfid and would have shared his saga.’

  Sigurd looked round at the bench to the left of Harald’s seat, beneath the yellowing bear’s skull nailed to the wall which had been Slagfid’s place but never would be again. Slagfid’s father had killed that bear with nothing but an eating knife, men said, though there were one or two greybeards who chuckled when they heard the boys telling this tale.

  ‘Any of Randver’s men who saw me in the water being pulled into Sigurd’s boat like a fucking fish will think that I jumped. Even now they are probably calling me a coward.’

  ‘Ha!’ Olaf exclaimed. ‘You are arrogant enough to believe they discuss you at all! Or that they know your name? They will be far too busy counting Slagfid’s arm rings and each of the swines claiming to be the one who gave him his death wound. As for men thinking you are a fish, you are the first one I have seen that breathes so well out of the water. You should be thanking your little brother for hooking you,’ he said, nodding towards Sigurd. ‘Between Sigurd and Thorvard they have given you something you could never buy.’

  Sorli was drunk and tired and he dragged a hand across his mouth leaving a snarl of teeth in its wake. ‘What are you talking about? Do not give me riddles, Uncle.’

  ‘Thór’s bollocks, boy, you got two portions of prettiness but they left plenty of room in your skull.’ Sorli batted the insult away and mumbled some curse into his golden beard but Olaf waded on. ‘You would have died in that red slaughter, as would I and Jarl Harald. We would have been hacked to bloody pieces and that maggot Randver would have pissed on ou
r corpses and had his godi work some foul spells to keep us from ever seeing the Allfather’s hall. At best you would have been given half a line in Slagfid’s saga tale. Maybe a whole line in your father’s if the skald was thirsty and your kin was within earshot.’ Sorli did not like this but neither did he deny it, instead turning his gaze back to the dying fire and the secrets within it. ‘This golden thing your brothers gave you is revenge, Sorli. Or the chance at it.’ Olaf said this loud enough for other ears in the hall to hear and Sigurd sensed folk look up, never so wrecked by grief that they could not see the warming flicker of vengeance somewhere up ahead. Svein sat a little way off smouldering like a pyre. Beside him was one of his father’s old shields, Styrbiorn’s first helmet and a long-axe and no one thought it strange to see the young giant with his father’s war gear.

  ‘Who would get the blood price from Randver for all our dead brothers if not us? Even Harald knows this is the clot of honey in the sour drink of this thing, though he’s still too pride-stung to admit it and give Sigurd here the arm ring he deserves.’

  ‘Thorvard and Sigmund would want us to spill Randver’s guts, brother,’ Sigurd said. ‘King Gorm’s too for his treachery.’

  Sorli looked up, his blue eyes boring into Sigurd’s. ‘Then there will be no more watching from the shore for you, brother. You will stand in the wall of shields and together we will feed the ravens.’

  Sigurd nodded, feeling the weight of eyes on him and not just eyes but expectations too, for he had seen two of his brothers killed the day before and they demanded retribution.

  ‘Good,’ Olaf said, chewing his bread and nodding to himself. ‘The fucking mist clears.’

  But before any of them could say more a figure appeared at the hall’s threshold, the light behind him painting his features black though Sigurd knew it was Solveig by his bronze cloak brooch, the ends of the broken ring representing a ship’s prow and stern.

  ‘Olaf! You in here, Olaf?’ There was an edge to Little-Elk’s skipper’s voice that had Sigurd’s hand on his spear.

  ‘I’m here, man. What is it?’ Olaf growled, then put the mug to his mouth and emptied it.

  ‘You had better come and see for yourself,’ Solveig replied and with that turned and disappeared back the way he had come.

  Sigurd and the others followed Olaf out into the day and stood blinking in the golden morning light that flooded across the hill and the dwellings around it and made a glittering hoard of the sea to the south and east.

  ‘Biflindi’s men,’ Svein spat and Sigurd felt his own hackles rise with the thought of violence.

  ‘Come to calm the waters, I’d wager,’ Olaf said as they walked towards the strangers who were already in conversation with Jarl Harald and Asgot. It was telling that Harald had not invited the men into his hall and this would have been taken as an insult to King Gorm. Though they were past such insults now.

  ‘These men come with word from Avaldsnes, Olaf,’ Jarl Harald said without turning to those approaching. ‘They say our king is appalled by all that befell us in the strait yesterday.’

  Olaf muttered something and one of Gorm’s men turned and nodded respectfully to Olaf, for all men knew him. ‘The king’s heart is broken for the loss of his people in Skudeneshavn and for the deaths of Jarl Harald’s sons Thorvard and Sigmund, though he was consoled to hear that their brother Sorli was able to save himself by jumping overboard.’

  ‘Frigg’s arse!’ Sorli exclaimed, glancing at Olaf, but Harald cut off any further opinion with a raised hand. The jarl showed no signs of the wounds he had taken and neither would he reveal any weakness in front of Biflindi’s men.

  King Gorm’s man might have come with words but he was dressed for battle in brynja and helmet, for all that the face beneath his fair beard was flushing red as the men and women and even the children of Skudeneshavn gathered around him and his uneasy-looking companion.

  ‘The king was as surprised by events as you were, Jarl Harald,’ the messenger reassured the jarl, turning from him to Olaf and back to Harald. ‘Two of his captains had been bought by the rebel Randver and we did not know that they were attacking your ships until it was too late.’

  ‘Too late?’ Olaf blurted. ‘We fought the dogs until our blades dulled and still the king did not send help!’

  ‘We were trading arrows with Jarl Randver’s other ships,’ the man said, ignoring the insults that the spectators were flinging his way now like pebbles into the mire. Clearly his companion had no words to deliver, served no purpose other than to soak up some of the ill-will aimed their way lest the messenger swallow his own tongue through fear.

  ‘The king thought it wise to deal with the threat to himself first for he would be no use to you if he were sprouting arrows,’ this man managed. ‘Indeed we were surprised when we saw you had been overrun. We thought you would hold them off longer. To give us a chance to send ships across.’ The man was on thin ice now and must have known it, which meant he had a backbone beneath that mail and it likely saved his life.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Olaf said.

  ‘My warriors sit in Óðin’s hall while traitors live and breathe,’ Harald said and Biflindi’s man did not know whether the jarl was talking about the king or Jarl Randver, or the two captains who Biflindi claimed had sold their loyalty to Randver, and that was just as Harald intended. ‘You say the king has not pissed on our oath of allegiance. And yet somehow that oath has lost me many men and two ships.’

  Despite no doubt wondering if he would walk out of Skudeneshavn alive, Biflindi’s man was sharp enough to pierce the skin of that for he nodded sombrely. ‘The king would pay you for your loyalty . . . your steadfastness out there,’ he said, nodding towards the sea. ‘You will receive a horn’s worth of silver for each man lost and your ships will be replaced with two of the king’s own.’

  Harald pulled his beard between finger and thumb and eyed the man like a hawk appraising a mouse.

  ‘Furthermore,’ the man went on, ‘he has sent silver to the traitor Jarl Randver to buy back the bodies of your men. The king invites you to Avaldsnes to receive your weregeld, to hear the pledge that you shall have the ships and to collect your dead so that you might bring them back to their kinfolk and pay them the respect they deserve.’

  This was balm to many of the widows gathered, so that their tongues ceased their lashing and the messenger forged on. ‘You will also renew your oaths each to the other so that the waters may be clear between you again,’ he said. ‘When this is done you will lay plans for Jarl Randver’s defeat. The traitor must be killed before he can build on his success.’

  ‘This has a stink to it,’ a man named Asbjorn said. Asbjorn had not been in the fight the day before because he had some disease that had turned his right hand into a claw, and though he could fight well enough using his left he could not grip a shield, which made him no good for the shieldwall. ‘I say we slit their throats and throw them into the sea.’

  King Gorm’s two men glanced at each other, their hands falling to their sword hilts, for though they were armed there were still men enough in Skudeneshavn to see the thing done without any trouble at all. And yet gone were the best men, those who had earned their jarl’s silver with their death-work. Men such as Slagfid and Styrbiorn, Thorald and Haki were corpses now and the weight of this hung round Harald’s neck like a quern stone.

  ‘Kill them, Harald,’ Asbjorn said.

  ‘Hold your tongue, Asbjorn,’ Jarl Harald barked, also shooting Sorli a look that warned him to behave himself. For what choice did the jarl have but to accept the king’s summons, for that was what it truly was.

  ‘We will come for our dead,’ Harald said. ‘Tomorrow so that we might get them in the ground or the flame before they begin to stink. As for the horn used to measure each man’s weregeld, I will bring my own drinking horn so your king had better have enough silver.’ The man did not mention the your king in that and was wise not to. Instead he paid his respects again, turned and walked off, his sile
nt companion wafting alongside like a bad smell.

  When the men had mounted their ponies and were making their way through the gates in the low palisade Olaf looked at Harald and the jarl raised one brow.

  ‘So we’re going to walk up into Avaldsnes and jump into whatever pot of piss Randver has bubbling over his hearth?’ Olaf said.

  ‘What choice do we have?’ Harald asked him. ‘Come, Uncle, I am all ears if you can see another way out of this.’

  Beneath the bush of his beard Olaf’s face had the look of a skipper who sees grey rocks, a slack tide and a green crew. ‘The dog’s bollock was happy to watch us slaughtered while he sat on his arse out of harm’s way. Likely as not he sent those two ships to help finish us off. And now we’re to pull down our breeks and bend over for him?’

  ‘Better to go there armed and half expecting a fight than to sleep with one eye open for the next five years half expecting to be burnt alive with Eik-hjálmr’s beams crushing our wives and daughters. King Gorm or Randver, or both together, could bring their ships and enough spears to make short work of it even if we knew they were coming.’ This got some ayes, for no man wants a bad death, the one that sneaks up from behind.

  ‘I’ll not get my throat cut in my own bed,’ Asbjorn said.

  ‘And no man is going to murder my wife and children and swive my bed slaves while I draw breath,’ a man named Frothi said, his hand going to the Thór’s hammer at his neck.

  ‘Let us walk up to the king and look in his eyes, our backs straight and our sword arms ready,’ Jarl Harald said. ‘And we’ll soon enough know where the thread of this thing ends.’

  ‘In a pool of blood is where it ends, lord,’ Asgot sneered from where he sat atop a nearby mound pawing through the innards of a cat. He was completely naked, his knotty body a mass of scars and strange shapes that were stained into his skin, and his hands were bright with the creature’s blood.