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

  ‘It might,’ Guthrum said. Then he turned to his men, who were still waiting to see if there was killing to be done. ‘Bind them,’ he said, and one of them went to find rope.

  ‘What will you do with them?’ the huge warrior with the pitch-black beard asked his lord. He was the one who had complained about having to wait all night in that stinking tent in case Alrik attacked.

  ‘I don’t know yet.’ Guthrum frowned. ‘The gods will tell me in their own time.’

  ‘And if they don’t, I’ll cut their throats,’ the huge warrior said. His nose was flat, spread across his cheeks, and his black hair was tied back but left unbraided like a horse’s tail. ‘Well maybe not hers,’ he said, grinning at Valgerd. Like Floki she was being held by two men, only these two were all over their prisoner like dogs on a bone. Having pulled off her helmet they were sniffing her neck and hair, growling filth in her ear, telling her what they would like to do with her. One of them was licking his lips, a silver thread of spittle lacing his beard. That’s how much he wanted her. And it made Sigurd burn.

  ‘There is not enough cunny round here to go wasting it when it comes along,’ Guthrum’s champion said, going over to Valgerd, and with that he thrust his hand under the brynja’s hem and grabbed her between her legs. The swords came up at Sigurd because the fury had struck him like a lightning bolt and he had almost broken the choke hold, but then he was held fast again by brawn and blade and could do nothing but watch as the woman he loved was violated.

  Valgerd, though, had no intention of yielding to Guthrum’s champion and his lust. She jerked like a fish on a hook and slammed her forehead into the warrior’s chin and he staggered, clutching his face. He very nearly fell, which would have been good to see, but then he straightened, spat a wad of blood on to the ground and surged forward, grabbing Valgerd round the throat as the other two men let go of her and stepped back.

  ‘Bitch!’ the big man bellowed into her face. The arm round Sigurd’s throat tightened even more, his head filling with heat. Floki was straining against the men holding him, teeth bared like a wolf, but he could do nothing either.

  Valgerd’s face was purpling by the flickering lamplight, her bulging eyes full of hate as she thrashed her legs and fought to break the big man’s grip, trying in vain to pull his hands from round her neck. The man had lifted her off the ground, even in her mail.

  ‘Put her down, Beigarth,’ Guthrum said. ‘Before she pisses herself in my tent.’ But Beigarth was enjoying himself, his head on one side as he watched Valgerd suffer, the steel gone from her eyes now, replaced by the panic of a body which knows it is dying.

  ‘You’re a dead man, Beigarth,’ Sigurd snarled. ‘I swear it by the Allfather.’

  ‘Beigarth! Put her down!’ Guthrum said, and this time the man obeyed him, throwing Valgerd down into the dark corner of the tent. She lay there gasping for breath, rasping like a whetstone on a sword. Sucking life back into her body.

  The man who had gone for rope stepped back into the tent and looked down at her, his teeth glinting in the firelight.

  ‘Tie her,’ the jarl said, then he turned back to Sigurd. ‘What makes you think the Allfather cares for you and your oaths?’ He gestured to the tent’s entrance and the night beyond. To the hill and the fort sitting upon it. ‘Perhaps you thought the gods would favour this bold plan of yours? Even that Óðin would conceal you from my men until your blade was sheathed in my heart? And yet look at you now. If the gods favoured you once, they do so no longer. Your wyrd is mine to cut.’

  He gestured to one of his men to tie Sigurd and they wrenched his arms behind his back and bound them. Other men were doing the same to Floki and Valgerd, and as the knots were tied, Beigarth muttered something foul and strode from the tent like a bear from its cave. The jarl followed, leaving four men to guard his prisoners, and Sigurd thought about what Guthrum had said. He thought too about what Asgot had said the day after they had captured the borg through Sigurd’s cunning trick with the jarl’s war banner. ‘You drew Loki’s eye, too, with that trick of yours,’ the godi had warned him. Asgot was a man who caught the gods’ whispers on the breeze. Read their thoughts in the runes. He had advised Sigurd’s father where the gods and their capriciousness was concerned, and now he shared his knowledge with Sigurd. The trickster god was part of this whole thing now, Asgot had warned, ‘like a man who sits down at the tafl board rubbing his hands at the prospect of the game’. And perhaps the godi was right.

  Sigurd thought of Moldof standing there in the borg with his rope, looking out into the night, waiting for them. By now he would be starting to think something had gone wrong. It was possible he had even seen the commotion and the warriors crowding round Jarl Guthrum’s tent and he would have no choice but to tell Olaf about Sigurd’s plan. If the gods were laughing at Sigurd now, the sound of it would soon be drowned out by the sound of Olaf cursing.

  ‘Stay where you are, Uncle,’ Sigurd whispered. He doubted Alrik would venture out of the borg, but Olaf? Thinking that Sigurd might be alive and Guthrum’s prisoner, Olaf might lead his crew out in some desperate sortie which would have no chance of success.

  ‘When I took this borg, Alrik gave me a silver hoard,’ Sigurd called out, knowing that Guthrum, who was talking with his men outside, would hear him. The voices fell silent and Guthrum appeared at the threshold. ‘Let us go, Jarl Guthrum, and the silver is yours.’

  Guthrum considered this for a moment. ‘The man who took my borg is now my prisoner,’ he said. ‘It seems to me that the luck which has abandoned you, Byrnjolf, is now mine. It has passed from you to me, like a flea hopping from a dog to a wolf.’ He pulled his beard through his fist. ‘No. I would not give you back to Alrik for a knörr full of silver. With the Allfather at my back, I will attack the borg tomorrow and take back what is mine. When it is done, and if Alrik is still alive, I will carve the blood eagle on his back and give him to Óðin as a token of thanks. I may carve the eagle on your back too, Byrnjolf.’

  The threat of the blood eagle was not a thing which a man made lightly, and Sigurd’s blood ran cold in his veins at the mention of it. Guthrum looked at Valgerd, who stood tall and defiant again. There was a cut on her forehead which showed how hard she had hit Beigarth with it, and her throat was red against the pale skin around it, from where Guthrum’s champion had half strangled her. ‘Are you his woman?’ Guthrum asked her, nodding at Sigurd.

  ‘I am no man’s woman,’ Valgerd said. And that was true albeit hearing her say it was an invisible blade in Sigurd’s guts.

  The jarl’s brows lifted and he almost smiled. ‘Wrong, shieldmaiden. You are my woman now.’

  The look in Valgerd’s eyes said what she thought about that much better than words ever could. Then Guthrum turned his back on them and left to make his plans for the next day’s assault.

  ‘I would enjoy watching him die,’ Black Floki said, spitting after him.

  ‘Then we had better make sure we are alive to see it,’ Sigurd said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE NEXT DAY, Jarl Guthrum attacked the borg with his whole army at his back. They fell upon the east wall in one great mass, taking ladders, hooks and ropes, and even riding their horses up to the palisade and standing on the animals’ backs to reach high enough to pull themselves up. Again, Guthrum himself was in the heart of the blood-fray, his best warriors gathered round him as they attacked the gates with axes, hacking at the timbers while others held shields over them.

  But before the first insults were hurled, before the war cries and the first blood was spilled, Guthrum had taken Sigurd, Valgerd and Floki up the slope to within a spear-throw of the borg so that the defenders could see that they had failed in their attempt to kill the jarl. To his credit, and to Sigurd’s surprise, Alrik offered Guthrum five of his iron bars for Sigurd’s freedom. But Guthrum sent his reply in the form of another spear over the palisade, in this way claiming every man in the borg for Óðin.

  ‘Should have told me!’ Olaf called
to Sigurd, his face hard as a cliff face. The others did not look any happier. Svein would not even look at Sigurd, which said how he felt about being left behind.

  ‘You would have stopped us,’ Valgerd called back.

  ‘Aye, and you’d be on this side of the wall instead of that side,’ Olaf said.

  And that was the end of the talking because it was time for the killing to begin.

  Sigurd did not hear what Jarl Guthrum had said to his men that morning but they fought as though they felt the gods at their shoulders, Óðin and Thór, Týr and Vidar, mail-clad and eyes blazing. They threw themselves at the borg as though the scent of the winners’ feast was in their noses and the silver lustre of plunder lit the day. Up the ladders and ropes they went, yelling their throats out and thrusting their spears up at the borg men.

  Yet, that gods-fevered army broke on Alrik’s walls like a wave smashing against a rock. Sigurd saw it all, how Alrik’s men speared those coming up the ladders, then used their spears to lever those ladders off the palisade and throw them back. Saw how they let the grappling hooks bite then waited for men to climb before cutting the ropes so that Guthrum’s men fell, tumbling back down the bank.

  He watched Olaf and Bram, Svein and Moldof slaughtering anyone foolish enough to climb the gates, and he saw Alrik and Knut rallying their men in a desperate and stubborn defence, splitting skulls, staving faces and knocking the attackers off the walls like mussels knocked off a jetty pile.

  ‘This will be a feast for the crows,’ Floki said, looking like a crow himself with that black hair, and he was right. The whole thing did not take long. After the time needed to put a keen edge on a blade which is not blunt to begin with, it was over.

  They watched as Beigarth had to haul his jarl away from the splintered hole they had managed to make in the gates with their axes. That hole was Guthrum’s own work as much as anyone’s and by the time his axe had broken through he was beyond all reason, his usual composure replaced with a mad rage. Sigurd saw him drag one of Alrik’s men out through that breach and turn him to pulp with the butt of his axe’s haft. But even as he was pummelling that man, his own warriors were dying all around him, falling to the spears, rocks and arrows raining down from the ramparts, and had Beigarth not dragged him off, his shield raised over the jarl, Guthrum would have died by that hole he’d made.

  The cheer that rose from the borg as Guthrum’s men fell back knowing they were beaten must have been a hard thing for the jarl to hear. He did not seem to care that the six shafts sprouting from Beigarth’s shield meant there was a good chance he would have been dead if not for his champion.

  ‘He will come over here and cut our throats just because he can,’ Valgerd said. But Sigurd did not think Guthrum would do that. It seemed to Sigurd that the jarl was already getting a grip on his rage. He had shrugged Beigarth off and was standing tall again, taking long, deep breaths as he watched his men help their wounded companions down the hill away from the borg; from those walls which had once protected them but against which they had now thrown all their weight and failed.

  And yet Alrik had lost his share of men too, warriors he could ill afford to be without, and that night their pyres sent a thick black plume into the wan sky, tainting the air with the smell of burnt flesh. From what Sigurd could see before Guthrum’s men led them away, it seemed that his own little crew had survived. He knew that Olaf would have steered them through that fight, not letting them risk themselves unnecessarily, but that did not take the edge off the guilt Sigurd felt for having not been there fighting beside them. In his arrogance he had thought he could do what Alrik had so far failed to do: kill Jarl Guthrum and put an end to this war between them. He had thought that one thrust of his scramasax in the night would make him rich and prove that he was still Óðin-favoured. Instead he had walked into Guthrum’s trap like a bear shambling into a pit of sharpened stakes. As if he did not have enough enemies in the world, he was now at the mercy of a new one, a man who owed him a bad death at the very least.

  Perhaps the gods were playing with him. Perhaps, as Asgot believed, he had drawn Loki’s gaze now as well as the Allfather’s, meaning nothing was certain from here on – not that it ever had been.

  He cursed as Guthrum’s men tied him and Floki and Valgerd to stakes in the ground and left them there as night fell.

  Because he had failed.

  Through the open door Runa could see that the light was fading. It was not high summer yet and dusk was laying its shroud over Fugløy as the day retreated into the west. And still the woman’s child was not born, much to the disappointment of those who had gathered round, drawn to the magic of birthing the way men are drawn to a fight.

  ‘She’s never going to spit this bairn out,’ Sibbe said with a curl of her lip. If Runa had an enemy on Fugløy, Sibbe was it, though they had not fought with anything other than wooden practice swords since the night the Wise Mother had returned and Runa had knocked Sibbe unconscious. After that they had avoided each other as far as was possible on a spit of an island like Fugløy.

  ‘Why don’t we push on her belly?’ Drífa suggested, her hands wrapped round the cup of ale which the Wise Mother had told her to fetch. Runa still gripped the tongs she had borrowed from Ingel, though neither she nor the prophetess had put them to use yet because the woman did not seem to want their help after all. ‘If we push in the right place it should pop out from between her legs like a ripe pea from the pod,’ Drífa went on, which had some of the others shaking their heads and telling Drífa she would be better off saying nothing than talking such nonsense. What did Drífa know of childbirth, having lived her whole life on an island of women who had no men? What did any of them know, Runa thought. Then again, she supposed many of them must have seen new lives being brought into the world, or at least been around labouring women when they were younger, before they had come to this life of sword-craft and solitude.

  ‘Bring it here, girl,’ the old prophetess snapped at Drífa.

  She had told Drífa to bring ale, the strongest she could find, because she was getting angry with Gudny now. Had been angry for a good while, truth be told, though she had kept the fire of it behind a cold face, perhaps for fear of making things worse. For ever since they had got Gudny comfortably into a nest of fleeces, which had been no easy undertaking, she had refused to spread her legs properly and let the Wise Mother peer inside her or bring the lamplight close enough for a good look. Now and then those bent legs would drift apart, slowly, and it seemed Gudny would let them help her. But then they would snap together again and with the force of a dog’s jaws too, so that the Wise Mother had nearly lost a hand on more than one occasion. Certainly the stubborn woman’s knees would be bruised like the apples at the bottom of the barrel, as one of the Maidens had pointed out.

  ‘If she does not want our help she should go back to wherever she came from,’ Sibbe said.

  ‘Our help?’ the Wise Mother said, snatching the cup from Drífa, who shrank back as from a flame. ‘And tell us, young Sibbe, just how are you helping, hey?’ Sibbe had no answer to that and the old witch took a mouthful of ale herself before dragging a claw across her puckered mouth. ‘Drink, girl,’ she rasped, ‘drink it all, you fool. I’d wager you spread your legs easily enough for that man outside.’ Gudny’s doe eyes gazed at the faces around her as she curled her fingers round the cup which the Wise Mother thrust at her.

  ‘Ale will surely get her legs open,’ Signy said, leaning against a roof post, her arms crossed over her chest. ‘Two cups and they’ll fly apart so fast there’ll be a breeze in here.’

  ‘Aye, get it down you, girl,’ an older Maiden told Gudny, ‘for if you do not want it, I will drink it for you.’

  ‘What is she waiting for?’ a woman named Svanloga said. ‘I’d wager she must have been up to her tits in ale to let that man out there ride her in the first place.’ She nodded towards the door and got a rasped rebuke from Vebiorg who told her that was no way to talk to guests. For seeing as t
hey had not cast the couple and their stuck bairn back into the sea, then surely it meant they were guests on the island and must be treated accordingly.

  ‘Tsk! He cannot hear me,’ Svanloga said, waving a hand which made a nearby lamp flame gutter.

  ‘But she can,’ Vebiorg said, jutting her chin towards Gudny, who if she was offended showed no sign of it as she sipped at the ale. Vebiorg had been replaced on the bluff by Rinda, who had gone off sulking because she had wanted to see the baby being born. Not that she was missing anything yet.

  ‘I’ll not fetter my words for some man,’ Svanloga said, loud enough that Varin, who was outside in the dusk, could surely not help but hear. He had been told that a house with a birthing woman in it was no place for a man and that he would only make things worse by standing there all useless, talking of things about which he knew nothing. The man had not needed telling twice and had not shown his face since, though Runa imagined he must have been sweating himself into a lather out there on his own.

  ‘Drink it, girl!’ the Wise Mother snapped. ‘Don’t just wet your lips with the stuff. Drink!’

  Gudny drank. And after two more cups her resolve drowned in ale like a cat tied in a sack and thrown into the fjord. Those milk-white legs of hers all but fell open and Gudny let out a thin snickering laugh which had the women glancing at each other, eyebrows arched.

  ‘That ale is not so strong, or is there another stash which I do not know about?’ Sibbe said, looking at Drífa, who shook her head.

  But the Wise Mother did not wait for further invitation. She had smeared butter on her hand and was up to the wrist in Gudny, whose eyes were round like her mouth. ‘So you bled, hey?’ the Wise Mother said, her eyes closed as she felt around inside the woman.

  ‘I … thought …’ Gudny winced and drank more ale. ‘I thought I was dying.’

  By the flickering light of the lamp flames Runa noticed the prophetess’s face clench at the same time that her arm went still. She withdrew her hand from Gudny’s sheath and wiped it on the fleece beneath her. She stood up on creaking legs, stared at Gudny lying there and then walked towards the hearth, the women parting to let her through the press of them.