Winter's Fire: (The Rise of Sigurd 2) Page 6

  Freystein held up a great neck ring of twisted silver thicker than a man’s thumb and glinting like a fish’s scales. The last time its lustre had winked in Sigurd’s eyes had been in the wet woods near Avaldsnes when it had been round his father’s neck. Harald had fought like a champion from some saga tale that day, but in the end he had been cut down and someone, perhaps King Gorm himself, must have pulled that silver torc from the jarl’s corpse. And now here it was again, within Sigurd’s reach, whispering to him to take it back for the sake of his father and his brothers, for his mother and even for Runa who stood wrapped in furs on the rocks nearby.

  ‘My king sends this, your father’s torc, as a gift and a sign of his respect.’

  ‘I would like to see that round your neck, Sigurd,’ Svein said.

  ‘Aye, it’s a foul thing to see it in this nithing’s hand,’ Olaf said, and far from seeming offended by this Freystein held the torc out, though it was clear that if Sigurd wanted it he would have to go and get it.

  ‘Do you think I should take it, Uncle?’ Sigurd asked.

  ‘I think it’s yours, Sigurd,’ he said. Then he edged closer, leaning in to Sigurd’s right ear. ‘I think men like to see silver at the neck of the man they’ve sworn oaths to.’ Sigurd recognized the truth in this. Such a torc around a man’s neck could draw new men too, like cold hands to the hearth, because a man who owns silver is one who can also give it.

  ‘What do the gods tell you?’ Sigurd called to Asgot.

  His stick-thin body wrapped tightly in skins and grey furs, the godi looked like one of the silver birch trees amongst which he stood. ‘They watch,’ Asgot said, giving no more answer than that.

  Sigurd nodded. He considered asking the seiðr-witch if she had foreseen this meeting with King Gorm’s man. Did she already know what the outcome would be? Would he lay his hands on his father’s neck ring and shine its lustre upon his own reputation?

  He looked over his shoulder at the witch and she grinned inside her catskin hood.

  ‘Are you a fighting man, Freystein?’ he asked. ‘Or just the king’s tongue thrall, earning your meat and mead with words while other men pay in sweat and blood?’

  This ruffled the preening cock’s feathers and his hand fell to his sword’s hilt. ‘I am a hirðman,’ he said, clearly thinking this was answer enough. And it was too. For all that King Gorm made his silver from taxes these days more than from raiding, this Freystein would not have got the two silver rings on his arms without at least once or twice staining his shoes with the slaughter’s dew.

  ‘Good.’ Sigurd nodded. ‘Then you will know that now is the time to pull your sword from its scabbard.’

  Freystein flicked his loose golden hair back over his shoulders. ‘I am my king’s hearthman,’ he said, ‘but today I am here to talk, Haraldarson, not fight.’ He looked suddenly nervous and well he might.

  ‘Unless your words can deflect steel and iron, unless your tongue can slice flesh and bone, you would be better off drawing your sword, Freystein,’ Sigurd said.

  ‘Sigurd?’ Olaf said, but Sigurd was already walking towards Freystein and pulling his own sword, Troll-Tickler, from its scabbard as he went.

  ‘Hold, man!’ Freystein blurted, even as his sword hissed into the bleak, grey day.

  ‘No more talking, kingsman,’ Sigurd said and his first swing would have cleaved Freystein’s head in half had the man not got his own blade in the way. Yet he staggered back under the blow, his feet slipping on the brittle snow and ice sheathing the jetty’s planks. He glanced back to his ship anchored out there in the bay, but those aboard her could not help him now. His companion stepped back, shaking his head and throwing up his arms to show that he wanted no part of it. Another step would put him in the sea.

  Freystein parried again and this time swung his sword, but there was not enough muscle behind it and Troll-Tickler turned it aside easily.

  ‘This is dishonourable, Sigurd! The king will spit fury if you kill me!’ Freystein managed, eyes bulging. His face, which had no doubt brought women to his bed, was fear-warped and ugly now.

  ‘The king can spit lightning and fart thunder for all I care,’ Sigurd said. ‘That slithering prick has no right to offer me what is already mine. I will take these things back when I choose.’ With that he strode forward again and swung Troll-Tickler high, but as Freystein brought his own sword up to block, Sigurd twisted, stepping back on to his left foot, and brought Troll-Tickler down across his own body before scything it up into Freystein’s belly above his right hip. The blade tore up through the rings of the man’s brynja and he screeched with the shock of it as a dozen broken rings fell on to the jetty.

  Sigurd hauled the blade free and took a step back. Freystein stood there still as a rock, as though waiting to see if he had been dealt a death wound, for there was not yet blood in the torn flesh.

  ‘Sometimes happens like that on a cold day,’ Bram rumbled from somewhere behind as Sigurd walked up to Freystein and took hold of his shoulder, turning the stunned man around so that he faced out to sea. So that the men in King Gorm’s ship had eyes full of it. Then, gripping Freystein’s left shoulder he put Troll-Tickler’s point against the small of the man’s back and forced the blade in, grimacing as it broke through mail and wool, leather, linen, skin and flesh. The steel scraped off bone, held for a heartbeat, then broke through the last resistance and erupted from Freystein’s belly, and Sigurd held him close, his mouth against the man’s ear so that to those on Biflindi’s ship it must look as if Freystein was being savaged by a wolf. The king’s man was mewing.

  ‘This is the answer I give to your king,’ Sigurd roared across the water, as Freystein’s high-pitched cry ended in a soft sigh and his legs gave way so that he fell to his knees. Sigurd hauled his blade free and stood looking at the ship in the bay, ignoring Gorm’s other man who was pissing down his own leg, the liquid steaming in the cold air.

  To his credit Freystein still gripped his sword. He had dropped the jarl torc, though, and Sigurd bent to pick it out of the snow. He opened the ring wider and put it around Freystein’s neck as the man knelt, coming to terms with his own death. But before Sigurd had finished squeezing the two bulging ends together, Freystein pitched forward into the snow, his golden hair splayed across the icy crust.

  ‘That is that then,’ Olaf said.

  They stood there for a moment. Just looking. ‘Svein, help this piss-soaked huglausi get Freystein into the boat,’ Olaf said, glaring at Freystein’s companion, who was corpse-pale himself and trembling like an old dog.

  ‘Take this worthless pile of pig shit back to your king,’ Sigurd said. ‘Tell the oath-breaker that Sigurd Haraldarson says there will be no peace between us. Tell the maggot-arsed nithing to start digging his own burial mound for he will need it soon enough.’ The man nodded, as Svein and Bram took hold of Freystein and lifted him, and still there was no blood to be seen, not a drop staining the snow. ‘And leave the torc where it is,’ Sigurd warned the Avaldsnes man. ‘Tell your king that he may keep my father’s torc a little longer yet. Until such time as I decide to take it back.’ He bored his eyes into the man. ‘But I will have it back.’

  ‘I will tell him . . . lord,’ the man said, hoping his flattery would be well received.

  Sigurd looked over at Runa. Her eyes betrayed no fear or horror at what they had just seen. But her jaw was tight and her cold-reddened hands were knots at her sides and Sigurd knew that his killing of Freystein must have shocked her. He wanted to tell her that all would be well, that he knew what he was doing. But just as no blood had come to Freystein’s torn flesh, so no reassuring words would come to Sigurd’s lips. In truth he did not know what he was doing, only that he had followed where instinct led. That would do for now.

  Of the others on that shoreline watching Gorm’s man clamber into his boat beside the bloodless corpse, most had granite-hard faces and cold eyes. They knew now, if they had not already known, that there could be no peace, and that they were u
p to their knees in this blood feud until the end. Valgerd and Aslak, Crow-Song and old Solmund and the others. They would sail into this storm together.

  Asgot caught Sigurd’s eye and gave a slight nod. Sigurd had once again proved himself worthy of the Allfather’s one-eyed gaze. Black Floki was grinning like a wolf. Olaf was frowning, though even he would not say that Sigurd had been wrong to decline the king’s offer, so Sigurd bent and picked up a handful of snow, running it along his blade to remove any bit of Freystein that might be caught on it, and watching the king’s men out there in the bay who were yelling curses, threats and insults at him. Bjarni and Bram hurled their own insults back, calling the Avaldsnes men cowards and inviting them to come ashore and fight. But the yard was already being hauled up the mast and the oars were clunking into their ports and there would be no more fighting today. Freystein’s piss-wet friend rowed the little boat back to his ship and Sigurd watched him go.

  And in Valhöll the roof beams shook with the gods’ laughter.

  ‘He said what?’ Gorm knew he was yelling. He knew his thralls were scuttling away like crabs off a rock, suddenly seeking outside jobs because freezing was preferable to being near his blazing rage. ‘The insolent, swaggering shit! The strutting, cocksure, lording puddle of rancid pus!’

  Groa flinched as a gobbet of Gorm’s spittle struck his lip.

  ‘I’ll rip his throat out!’ No. A better idea. ‘I’ll cut the runt. I’ll open him up and pull out his gut rope. Feed it to my pigs and make him watch as they gobble it up.’ Gorm backhanded a cup off the table and it bounced in the rushes by the hearth. His hound was whining, sad to see its master agitated. Gorm closed his eyes and took a breath. ‘Who does that haughty son of a nobody jarl think he is?’

  ‘He’s an animal, lord,’ Groa said, putting a hand to his lip. ‘They all are.’

  In that deep, slow breath Gorm caught the tang of stale piss. It was coming from Groa. He felt his lip curl at the thought that the man might have pissed himself with fear in front of Haraldarson and his crew. Mouse piss in the floor rushes, he told himself, preferring that explanation.

  ‘I should have cut him down there and then, lord,’ Groa said. ‘I nearly did.’ He put a hand to the hilt of the sword at his left hip. ‘But then we would never have brought Freystein’s body home.’ Groa looked around, peering through the smoke, relieved that no one who had been on the ship watching Freystein die was in the hall to hear the lies spilling like goat turds from his mouth.

  Gorm looked down at Freystein’s body. At Jarl Harald’s torc which was still round his blue-white neck. Even that was a big thing. All that silver. Harald had been too self-important. Doubtless that’s where his runt got it from.

  ‘He didn’t bleed?’ the king asked. You could not miss Freystein’s death wound, but his breeks, tunic and mail were clean.

  ‘It was cold,’ Groa said with a shrug.

  ‘Arse,’ Gorm muttered, wishing Freystein were alive to know how disappointed his king was with him. He looked back to Groa. What did you do then, he thought, glaring at Groa, disgusted by the sight of him. What did you do when Haraldarson was opening Freystein up from hip to chest? When he was putting that rope of twisted silver round Freystein’s neck? Other than piss yourself.

  ‘He said there will be no peace between you, lord. That you should dig your burial mound,’ Groa said, filling the silence, using words like a shield to deflect the king’s obvious revulsion.

  ‘My burial mound?’ The rage came again and Gorm turned to look at the hearth flames, drawing the sweet birch smoke deep into his lungs. ‘Hmm . . .’ He swallowed another clutch of curses and listened to the fuel cracking and popping. Outside, Kadlin was yelling at a thrall. As if getting the stain out of a kyrtill hem was important.

  ‘And Moldof?’ Gorm said. He watched the flames still. He did not want to see Groa’s annoying face. He could almost hear the man squirming.

  ‘He was there, lord,’ Groa said.

  ‘I know he was there,’ Gorm said. ‘He didn’t give you a sign of any sort?’

  ‘A sign, lord?’

  Gorm turned round and fixed the man with his eyes. This spineless toad sits at my table, he thought. ‘Moldof went up to Osøyro to put a sword in Haraldarson. Yet there he was on that jetty, standing with those treacherous dogs watching Haraldarson kill my hearthman. Listening to Haraldarson pile insults upon me.’ This was perhaps the worst part of all. Worse than Freystein being split open anyway. Quick-Sword. Ha! Not quick enough. ‘Perhaps Moldof gave you some secret sign that he still intends to do what he promised.’

  ‘I saw no sign, lord,’ Groa said. ‘He watched Freystein die and did nothing. Together we might have killed a handful of them.’ His hand went towards his sword grip again then he thought better of it and scratched his side instead. ‘Maybe Moldof has joined them because he cannot face the shame of what he is nowadays.’

  The smell of piss was stronger now. The heat from the hearth getting into the weave of Groa’s breeks.

  ‘Get this out of my sight,’ Gorm said, waving a hand at the bloodless corpse in the rushes. ‘But give me that first.’ By ‘that’ he meant the torc, which Groa bent and prised off Freystein’s neck, no doubt relieved that Quick-Sword’s eyes were closed, and gave to his king.

  I offer this to the man and he turns it down? Well, he will regret that.

  ‘Fetch Fionn,’ he told Groa.

  ‘Fionn? That little pale man who looks like a stoat?’

  ‘Bring him to me.’

  ‘Is he still here? If so I don’t know where,’ Groa said. ‘But I’ll find him,’ he added with a curt nod, having seen the rage flare in Gorm’s eyes again.

  ‘You will,’ Gorm said. Then he turned back to the hearth to watch the flames dance.

  ‘So you’ve changed your mind, lord,’ the man said.

  Gorm grunted. He had not changed his mind. He had not made up his mind where this outlander was concerned. He had just sent for the man and there was nothing more to it than that. Yet.

  ‘I knew you would. Just a matter of waiting.’ The man wasn’t smug about it, simply matter of fact.

  Gorm winced as his stomach griped. He had woken that morning just in time to get to the latrine pit but his bowels were full of dark, stinking water again. He could feel it churning. ‘Spiced ale?’ he said.

  ‘Keeps the cold out,’ the man said in his strange accent.

  Gorm gestured to a thrall who was stirring the pot hanging over the hearth. The thrall took two cups and dipped them into the steaming juniper ale.

  Groa was right, Fionn did look like a stoat. Or a pine marten perhaps. And he was as pale as poor Freystein too, ill-looking really, all sinew and vein and sunken eyes like piss holes in snow. To look at him Gorm did not know why he had sent for the man. Certainly Fionn did not look much of a warrior, even less so in the company of Hreidar and Alfgeir and his other hirðmen. Third or fourth rank in the shieldwall perhaps.

  But then again . . .

  There was something about him. Something in those dark eyes: to look at them was like peering into the fjord on a dark winter’s day and hoping to see the fish on the bottom taking your hook. They showed nothing of what lay beneath, those eyes, and maybe that was a common trait in men from Alba in the west. Who could say?

  ‘What makes you think you can do it?’ Gorm asked. ‘He has friends. Not many of course. But good fighters.’

  ‘You want them all dead? Or just this Sigurd Haraldarson?’

  ‘Just him. For now.’

  Fionn nodded. ‘Then I can do it.’

  ‘Others have tried. Others have failed. Most are dead,’ Gorm said as the thrall gave them their cups and slipped away like a wraith.

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ Fionn said.

  Gorm lifted the cup to his nose and breathed in the fragrant brew. Fionn was confident. He’d give him that. But maybe he was deluded. Maybe he was mad without seeming it.

  Fionn’s brow lifted a touch. ‘If you have a rotten to
oth that is hurting, you do not ask the smith to knock it out with his hammer. You use—’ he mimed the action in the absence of the Norse word.

  ‘Pliers,’ Gorm said, annoyed with himself for playing the game.

  Fionn nodded. ‘You pull it out like a bent nail.’

  Gorm knew full well what the man meant by this but gave him more frown anyway.

  ‘Sigurd Haraldarson will be expecting the hammer. Not the pliers,’ Fionn said, blowing into the steaming cup before slurping at the ale.

  ‘Still, you must reckon yourself a great fighter, Fionn of Alba,’ Gorm said, trying to draw the man into a boast or two. Anything to suggest he was a warrior after all.

  Fionn shrugged. ‘I fight when I need to. But you don’t need to fight to kill.’

  Was the man talking about poison? Hemlock in Haraldarson’s ale? Gorm didn’t think so. He loves his blades, this little man. A good-looking sword at his hip. Not a big cleaver – he didn’t have the muscle for it – but a well-made weapon if the hilt was anything to go by with its lobed pommel and grip inlaid with fine silver wire. A bone-handled scramasax hanging above his groin and another long knife scabbarded at his right hip. No brynja that Gorm had seen. Nor a helmet. Blades in the dark then. Or in the back, rather than a toe-to-toe fight. No honour in that. Not that Gorm cared where Harald’s son was concerned. That golden puffed-up boy did not deserve a good death.

  ‘They say you are from Alba in the west,’ Gorm said. Fionn nodded. ‘Why are you not in Alba now?’

  ‘A man paid me to kill his king,’ Fionn said.

  This was a brave thing to admit, Gorm thought.

  ‘And his king’s wife too,’ Fionn went on. ‘She being with child.’ His lip curled. ‘Then the man decided he wanted his silver back and tried to have me killed.’ He held the king’s eye. ‘That did not go well for him.’

  ‘And yet you had to flee the land of your birth? You wash up here on my shore,’ Gorm said.

  ‘It became complicated,’ Fionn said with a shrug.

  Gorm did not doubt it. ‘If you do it—’ he began.