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

  ‘Runa Haraldsdóttir, come here,’ she said, and Runa, still holding Ingel’s iron tongs, did as she was told, passing through the throng of murmuring Maidens until she stood at the old witch’s shoulder.

  ‘What is it, Wise Mother?’ Runa asked. She felt a sudden weight in her stomach. Something cold running up the skin of her arms. She looked round to see that the others were watching them, though none had come any closer.

  ‘That woman will squeeze the bairn out soon enough,’ the old witch said, turning her gaze from the small hearth flames on to Runa. ‘But not tonight. Not by my reckoning.’ She chewed on her thin lips. ‘The child is there and alive as far as I can tell. Its heart flutters like a little sparrow. See my hand, girl,’ she said, holding it in the fire glow. ‘Notice anything?’

  Runa did. ‘There’s no blood.’

  The witch nodded. ‘So what is that on her clothes, eh? Something about these two does not smell right,’ she said. ‘Her man is still outside?’

  ‘Where else would he be?’ Runa said.

  ‘Come with me, Runa Haraldsdóttir,’ the old woman said, taking her catskin hat off the nail in the roof post where it hung, ‘and we will see where this smell leads.’

  They stepped outside into the dusk and saw men. They were armed with shields and blades and by the faint last light of the day Runa saw their teeth and the whites of their eyes.

  She pushed in front of the Wise Mother, pulling her scramasax from its scabbard.

  ‘Drop it, girl, or I’ll cut the old hag’s throat.’

  Runa turned to see two more men looming in the near-dark either side of the longhouse door. One had a fist full of the Wise Mother’s hair and a knife against her pale neck.

  ‘It would take just a stroke,’ the man warned, pushing the flat of his blade against the witch’s flesh, ‘and a little tug. Easy as picking a sloe from the bush.’

  ‘Do as we say, Runa Haraldsdóttir,’ Varin said, stepping forward to reveal himself to Runa, who hissed a curse at him but threw the scramasax on to the ground beside her. Then Varin nodded at another man who came forward and grabbed Runa round the neck, pulling her against him so that his stink flooded her and she felt the cold kiss of his knife beneath her chin.

  ‘Nice and still now, girl,’ this one growled, his foul beard and breath assaulting her. ‘I don’t want to have to cut a pretty thing like you.’

  The others came together, spears and shields raised, some of them facing out into the night while the rest faced the longhouse door through which Varin walked, followed by Runa who went where she was shoved.

  ‘Who are you, then?’ Vebiorg asked, she being the foremost of those who stood facing the threshold. Alerted to the danger, the women had grabbed whatever weapons they had to hand, but now they might as well have been rooted in the earth for they stood still as the posts which held up the longhouse roof.

  ‘Careful now,’ Varin warned them. ‘We don’t want any accidents.’

  Drífa had her bow raised, its string pulled back to her chin, the arrow aimed at Varin, and Runa knew that she was good enough to put that shaft in any of the pitted scars on Varin’s face that she chose.

  Yet Varin was confident and well he might be, for whatever his intentions he could not have hoped for it all to be this easy.

  ‘I want a pile of blades there,’ he said, pointing his own spear at the long table. ‘Every knife, every shield, any silver or iron you have. I want it all on there. Do what I ask and all will be well.’ He pointed his spear at Drífa then swung it towards the Wise Mother and Runa. ‘Disobey me and we will kill the witch and the girl.’

  Runa tried to meet the Wise Mother’s eyes but all she saw were the whites as those eyes rolled up into the old woman’s head before the lids came down. She was trying to see the future. Or communing with the gods perhaps. Either way she was no longer fully in that room with the rest of them, and Runa was filled with a dread fear that this night was the end which the prophetess had foretold.

  Surely Freyja would not have her Maidens’ wyrds lead them to this. But what if this were the twilight of the world and Freyja needed her warriors to join her in the last battle between the gods and their enemies? Was Ragnarök upon them all? Runa’s mind was knotted with these thoughts and perhaps the other women were thinking such things too. They looked to each other, not knowing what to do.

  ‘If we give up our blades, who is to say they will not slaughter us all anyway?’ a fierce-looking, spear-armed woman named Harthegrepa asked the others.

  ‘They’re men,’ another woman spat. ‘If they have come all this way it is not to kill us. Least not until they’ve had their pleasure.’

  Nevertheless, Vebiorg shook her head at Drífa, who eased the tension off the bow and lowered it, though she kept the arrow nocked.

  Just then one of Varin’s companions appeared in the doorway. ‘We’ve got the others. Gave us no trouble once we made things clear,’ he said. ‘But the blacksmiths are gone. Hiding in the woods, I would say.’

  Varin cursed. ‘Keep your eyes open. If they show up meaning to make a fight of it, tell them we’ll kill the girl. Her name’s Runa. That should keep them out of it.’ The other man grinned, nodded, then vanished again. ‘Well?’ Varin said, pointing his spear at the thirty or so women gathered in the hall. ‘Do I have to bleed Runa here to show you that I mean what I say?’

  Vebiorg’s eyes promised Varin a death she could not give him as she muttered some oath to Freyja and went over to the long table, putting her knife on it. ‘Do what he says,’ she told the others, who muttered their own dark threats at Varin but followed Vebiorg’s lead until the table was covered with weapons whose iron and steel blades and creamy bone and antler hilts gleamed by flickering flamelight. Drífa had been one of the last, but her bow lay amongst the rest of it and now her glare was aimed at Varin, her eyes themselves gleaming like arrow heads.

  ‘Let her through,’ Varin said, pointing his spear towards Gudny, who was standing now behind a knot of women who were not ready to let her rejoin her husband, if Varin was her husband.

  ‘What is to stop me putting my knife in her belly and skewering the child too unless you let them go?’ Svanloga asked, placing the point of her scramasax, which she had kept hold of, against the great swell of Gudny. As for the swollen young woman, she was trembling with fear now that her and Varin’s deceit was uncovered and the promise of death hung in the air.

  Varin shrugged. ‘If it is in you to murder her and the life inside her, do it. I will put my seed in another woman. But I will not give up what we came for. Not for her.’

  Runa pitied Gudny then, for all her trickery and the part she had played in Varin’s scheme to throw the Freyja Maidens off guard so that his friends could come ashore unnoticed. For there was no doubt in Runa’s mind that Varin would stand there and watch Svanloga sheathe her blade in the woman’s unborn bairn rather than see the stitching of his plan come undone. Svanloga saw this too, and with a hiss like that of the swan after which she was named she stepped aside and told Gudny to go. ‘I hope that bairn splits you like a mallet and wedge,’ she spat, going over to lay her scramasax on the table with the other war gear, and the brooches, silver rings, iron keys and amulets spread upon it.

  ‘Wait outside,’ Varin told Gudny, who nodded, swiping away her tears as she waddled past Varin out into the night. ‘Asvald, Iarl, get in here!’ Varin called, and when those two came into the house Varin had them gather up what was on the table and carry it all outside, which took them three trips each, and all the while Runa seethed inside, hateful of these men and angry at herself for being fooled by this Varin and his whale of a woman. The weapon hoard on its own was plunder men such as these could only dream of.

  ‘On your knees, all of you,’ Varin ordered them. ‘You!’ he barked at four women who stood at the far edges of the room where tapestries hung by the beds. ‘Here with the rest. All of you, down.’ He walked over to the Wise Mother and added his spear point to the long blade at he
r throat. ‘Now!’ he said, and the Freyja Maidens went down on their knees in the rushes and straw. ‘Good,’ Varin said, then he called to his companions outside to bring in the women they had rounded up, who were made to kneel with the rest, so that the only three missing were Gæierlaug and Ingibjorg, and Skuld Snorradóttir. Rinda had taken over Vebiorg’s watch up on the bluff overlooking the bay, and Runa feared for her now, for surely she would have warned them about Varin’s crew if she had been able to. And where was she now? Ingibjorg was over on the west side of the island at the beacon overlooking Flea Rock, because there was another sandy beach there which was kind to ships’ hulls and so had to be watched.

  As for Skuld, she was under the cloak and so with the gods.

  ‘Are you enjoying this cuddle as much as I am?’ the man gnarred in Runa’s ear. She could smell pig grease on his beard and something rotten in his mouth.

  ‘I’ll enjoy killing you,’ she said, at which he pressed his groin against her and she flinched at the hardness in his breeks, and was suddenly even more afraid than she had been at the touch of his steel against her throat.

  ‘Ever had a man inside you, girl?’ he rasped.

  ‘Have you?’ Runa dared, and the man did not like that and so he squeezed Runa’s neck in the crook of his arm and suddenly Runa could not breathe. Heat bloomed in her face and head and she struggled against the man’s bulk but he was immovable, a great reeking mound of muscle and flesh, and so she went still instead, hoping that his grip would slacken if she gave him no trouble. It did. She gasped for breath.

  ‘We have come to Kuntøy for the silver which King Thorir sent here,’ Varin said, pointing his spear at the Wise Mother, whom Varin’s man had brought forward so that the women could see with their own eyes how helpless the witch was against the threat of the blade at her scrawny old neck. ‘Do not bother telling me that you know nothing of it. I know the skipper of King Thorir’s knörr Storm-Elk. I know that the day Storm-Elk brought young Runa Haraldsdóttir here from Skíringssalr there was an even prettier cargo aboard. A sea chest brimming with hacksilver. With full arm rings and ingots and all of it heavy enough that it took four men to offload it.’ He planted the spear’s butt on the floor and pointed at Vebiorg with his right hand. ‘I know all this, so do not try to spin me your lies.’

  ‘That silver was King Thorir’s gift to the Goddess,’ Vebiorg said.

  ‘Ah,’ Varin said, lifting his chin. ‘I had wondered what use you would have for such a hoard. Living here stuck to this island like mussels to a rock.’

  ‘They say Thorir means to buy his way into Freyja’s hall,’ the man holding Runa growled.

  ‘He would rather spend the afterlife there than in Valhöll?’ the one called Asvald asked from the doorway behind Runa.

  Varin shrugged. ‘I know nothing about any of that,’ he said, ‘and care nothing about it either. What I know is that there is a silver hoard on this island and I will be leaving with it.’

  ‘You take that silver and you’ll be stealing from the king himself,’ Vebiorg said.

  Varin shrugged. ‘There are other kings,’ he said. ‘With a hoard like that we can go anywhere. Pledge ourselves to another lord.’ He grinned and it was the first smile Runa had seen on his face since she had met him on the shore. ‘I could become lord of my own hall. Somewhere far from here.’

  ‘If we kill them, King Thorir will never know what happened here,’ the reeking man holding Runa said, pressing his cold blade against her neck. Pressing his other weapon into her hip.

  ‘That is true, Gevar,’ Varin acknowledged with a nod, ‘but they are making this easy for us and I am grateful for it. I will be more grateful still when one of them tells me where I can find that chest that came ashore with young Runa scar-face there.’ He was one to talk about scars, Runa thought as he swept the spear from Runa towards the women who knelt on the floor, the blade slicing through the smoke which hung above their heads. ‘Which of you will tell me?’ he asked.

  ‘Were it our silver to give, we would say take it and leave,’ the Wise Mother said, her eyes still closed. They were the first words she had spoken since this thing had begun and as Varin turned to her she suddenly opened those eyes on him, making him start a little. Everyone in that room saw it, and Runa knew that for all his swagger the man still feared that the witch might put some curse on him. ‘It does not even belong to King Thorir, that silver,’ the prophetess said. ‘Not any more. Vebiorg was wrong about that.’ Those old eyes were in Varin’s flesh like fish hooks. ‘It belongs to Freyja now.’ She grinned and it was as cold and desolate as Helheim. ‘I know you are a man, Varin, but even so. Surely you cannot be so stupid as to steal from a goddess?’

  ‘Still your old tongue, crone,’ Varin told her, turning back to the kneeling women. ‘Where is the silver? Tell me now or I’ll cut her throat.’

  They glared at him, their eyes full of defiance, none of them wanting to be the one to give the shit what he wanted.

  He sighed, then walked back to the Wise Mother and gestured at the man holding her to take his knife from her throat, which the man did. Then Varin brought his spear up and slashed open the witch’s throat with the point, tearing apart her skin and flesh as easily as if it had been old sail cloth. Blood welled and spilled as the prophetess’s eyes widened then rolled up into her skull again. The Freyja Maidens screeched and clamoured but the men threatened them with their spears and the women knew that to move against them was to die.

  Runa strained and fought against the arms holding her but the more she struggled the tighter Gevar bound her.

  ‘You next if you keep this up, girl,’ he growled into her hair, his breath hot on her scalp. ‘That what you want, eh? Hold still, bitch, or I’ll cut you myself!’

  ‘Some seeress, hey,’ Iarl said, jutting his chin at the old woman on the floor by Varin’s feet. In her catskins she looked more animal than human, but for her grey hair which had spilled from her hat and now covered her face, wicking blood from the pool which was spreading amongst the straw. ‘She did not see that coming, Varin.’

  But Varin ignored him as he bent to pick up a handful of straw and used it to wipe the old woman’s blood off his spear blade. Then he walked over to Runa, who was still staring at the Wise Mother, who was no more. Just like that.

  ‘Did I not tell you all what would happen if you did not share the whereabouts of that silver?’ Varin asked. He was looking at Runa. Her eyes slid from the dead witch on to his and she wanted to tell him he was a fool to kill a seiðr-wife, for who could say what curse she had laid upon him as she died? But she did not dare, because if Varin’s silver-lust was strong enough that he would cut out the Wise Mother’s throat like that, then he would surely do the same to her if she gave him reason.

  ‘Now I will ask again,’ Varin said, lifting the newly cleaned spear tip to Runa’s face. She wondered what he was doing then realized that the blade was tracing the scar which an arrow had carved from just below her left eye to her ear. ‘Where … is … the … silver?’

  ‘Tell us, girl, and be done with it,’ Gevar mumbled into Runa’s hair. The man was all over her, his face and nose pressed amongst her braids. He was breathing her in, sniffing her like an animal.

  Runa clamped her teeth together to stop herself telling these men what they wanted to know. Let them kill me then, a voice said in her head, for she would not break now. Her father had been Jarl Harald of Skudeneshavn and her mother had fought until her last breath. Her brothers had been great warriors and the last of them yet living was Óðin-favoured. Of all the women in this hall, she would not be the one to break.

  ‘Well, Runa?’ Varin said.

  She gave a slight shake of her head, then braced herself for whatever was coming. Varin’s own jaw was clenched tight, the muscle bouncing beneath the pitted cheeks upon which no beard would grow. Suddenly he turned and strode over to the kneeling women and put the spear blade to Vebiorg’s throat and Vebiorg lifted her chin so that it would at least be
done cleanly.

  ‘It’s buried!’ Runa said. ‘The silver. It’s buried.’

  Varin held the spear still, a layer of wool grease and a piece or two of straw all that was between the blade and the Freyja Maiden’s white flesh. ‘Where?’ he asked.

  Vebiorg’s eyes told Runa to say nothing, but Runa knew that Varin would let that spear blade drink again unless she spoke up.

  ‘I’ll take you there,’ Runa said. ‘I’ll show you where it is buried.’

  Some of the kneeling women hissed or murmured their disapproval, but others nodded at Runa as if to tell her that she was doing the right thing given how the night was going so far.

  ‘Good,’ Varin said with a nod, lowering the spear and walking to the door. ‘Bring her,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘The rest of you, out.’

  ‘Looks like we’re off for a walk, girl,’ Gevar gnarred at Runa, shoving her after Varin.

  As she went, Runa shrugged at Vebiorg. What choice was there? she asked with a look.

  ‘The Goddess go with you, Runa,’ Vebiorg said.

  And then Runa was amongst seven grizzled, predatory-looking men in the gathering dark. She looked at the Freyja Maidens’ weapons piled on a fur on the ground but knew she would be cut down before she could make use of any of them.

  Those men must have already known what would happen next, for two of them retrieved several planks of wood along with a hammer and nails which they had piled against the longhouse wall while Runa was inside. They held the planks across the threshold and hammered the nails in while two others defied the night with firebrands, having lit them at the forge.

  Where were Ingel and Ibor? Runa did not know whether to be glad they were not here, for what could they do against seven armed men? Or angry because they had not at least tried to fight.