Suddenly Beri, one of the white-haired aeldrener, was standing over the pair writhing in the mud. The old warrior lifted his sword and then plunged it into the Norskman’s back.
He reared up, bellowing like a bull, mouth stained red. Beri twisted the hilt, and Gunnar squirmed free, face oozing blood. The axe-man screamed, then flopped flat on his face. Gunnar spat, stooped over him, and with one quick motion of his knife, the screaming stopped.
Hakan scrambled to his feet. The last beleaguered Norskmen stood nearby. Some of them bare-bodied berserkers smeared red with the blood of his kinsmen, others hard-looking killers in mail and leather. Many lay around them. Magni the Ox, a spear through his neck, dead. Ran, his cousin, chest splayed – dead. Aevar the White, sword shattered – dead.
A fine day’s reaping for Odin’s hall, he thought bitterly.
The Norskmen formed shields and the Jutes went for them again, relentless, wanting the dying to be done.
Gunnar took a hard cut to his arm and fell back. Hakan took up a spear, lunging with the last of his strength, glimpsed an axe, lurched backwards, and felt his helm ring and the kiss of steel. A heartbeat slower, his head would have been split.
‘Stand back!’
The Jutes looked round. Haldan was with them, the bronze mask of his helm menacing and cold.
‘We lose no more. Do you wish for quarter?’ he shouted at the huddle of Norskmen. Only four were left, eyes yellow as wolves, full of hate.
‘Walk the Hel road, Jute,’ one of them spat. ‘We die with our kin.’
Haldan gave a grim nod. ‘So be it. Stone them.’ His men hesitated, uncertain.
‘You heard me – stone them!’
They looked at each other, and then at the ground. The fell was strewn with rocks. The northerners snarled curses, seeing what was coming.
The rocks found their mark, and in a few moments the last of them crumpled. The Jutes swarmed in, stabbing out any last signs of life.
At last the fell was still, the only sounds the gasps of the living and the groans of the dying.
Hakan sank down, bone weary.
‘Victory!’
He looked up at his father, standing with his sword pointing at the sky.
A weary cheer went up. Gunnar slumped to the ground, face pale under smears of blood. His arm hung limp, his side a slick of blood. Garik was no better. His breeches glistened darkly where his hand pressed down on his thigh.
Hakan’s ankle throbbed. He was a killer now. A proven man. As he sat on the grass, gasping for breath, out of nowhere his mother’s words came to him. You’re to be a man, not a monster. He remembered the piss-yellow terror in that lad’s eyes, the whistling sound when he pulled the axe free.
A monster. Aye – what was that?
His father stood looking up at the clouds still aglow with the rising sun. ‘A red sky for a red day.’ Sheathing his sword, he looked around him at the remnants of his shieldband.
‘You – Dag.’ The shadow-faced killer stepped forward. ‘Take Hakan and check on their ship. And the women.’ He gave Dag a hard look. ‘If they’re still alive.’ Dag licked his lips, nodding.
‘We need an archer. Where’s Eskel?’ The helmsman pushed his way through.
‘You go too.’ Haldan pointed west where the land dropped to the sea. ‘Be careful. I want the women alive, but if there’s more than one guard, come back here. I want no more men killed.’
The three moved off wordlessly across the fell. Above them crows and gulls were gathering for their feast. At the crest of the slope, Hakan spied the Norskmen’s ship far below, beached, its hull half-rolled and black as tar.
Everything was quiet.
‘Come on,’ he said, striding on, ‘there’s no one there.’ But he hadn’t gone two steps when fingers, hard as iron, bit his shoulder.
‘Slowly, lad, slowly.’ Dag grinned yellow teeth. ‘No need to be too hasty, eh? Let’s sit here a while. Have a watch.’
He shoved Hakan down into a hollow, out of sight from the beach. He and Eskel dropped down next to him.
They watched in silence. They didn’t have long to wait. A lick of wind ruffled the sail and a rusty head appeared under it. A Norskman came hopping from bench to bench to the bows.
‘Is he all there is?’ scowled Dag, unimpressed. ‘Reckon you can take him from here?’
‘Tha’s a pig of a shot,’ grimaced Eskel, already nocking an arrow. ‘Still, might be you won’t forget this in a hurry.’
‘Just don’t fucking miss,’ hissed Dag.
The guard was hanging off the prow, shading his eyes to the hill.
‘He can’t see us,’ whispered Hakan.
‘’Course he can’t fucking see us.’ Dag spat into the mud. ‘He might feel us soon enough though, eh?’ A chuckle rattled in his throat and he patted the haft of his knife.
Eskel drew back his bow, the string creaking in protest, then – thrum – the arrow shot into the sky. It arced high. For a second, Hakan lost it, hoping it would reappear in the Norskman’s chest.
Instead there was a thud, and the arrow was quivering two feet wide of the mark.
‘You dozy bastard.’ Dag was already climbing to his feet. ‘So much for the easy life. Right, here we go.’
The guard didn’t wait for a second shot. He was over the benches and under the sail before they were even out of the hollow.
‘He’s gonna kill ’em,’ yelled Eskel.
‘Best fucking run then, ain’t we?’ Dag tore off down the slope and Eskel after him. Hakan lurched on behind, best as his ankle would allow.
They were still a way off, running hard, when the first scream shattered the quiet.
A woman’s scream.
Then another. Wails that were like to make the sky weep. Almost as quickly, they grew less and less. Until, abruptly, they ceased.
‘Shit on it!’ cried Eskel. ‘Move!’
They reached the beach, the soft sand slowing their pace.
‘Easy now, fellas,’ called Dag, slowing to a menacing stalk.
The sail billowed. What it revealed hit Hakan like a stone wall.
There was the redhead Norskman, and behind him, a miserable sight.
Lashed tight around the mast were the women from Vindhaven. Most were still; for some the spasms of death weren’t yet done. Some were naked, others in rags, their bodies slumped forward, filthy hair hanging down. And daubed down the front of each of them, an ugly scarlet smear: blood, still welling in lazy pulses, their throats cut to the bone.
‘Bastard!’ shouted Hakan. But it was too late. The guard leaped languidly over the gunwale. He was clad in dirty breeches and a loose mailshirt, and underneath nothing but bones. He couldn’t have been many winters older than Hakan, with a few dirty wisps of stubble around a crooked mouth.
‘What you been up to, fella?’ Dag’s eyes glinted cruel in their hollow sockets.
The guard only laughed. ‘Long way to come for nothing, pig-fuckers.’
‘Pig-fuckers, is it?’ chuckled Eskel. ‘And there was I thinking that was your mother.’
‘They’re all of them dead,’ the guard sneered.
‘You think we care a soft turd about them,’ said Dag, nodding his head at the dead women. The scars on his face twisted into a dark smile. ‘No – it’s you we came to hear scream, boy.’
The guard’s grin faltered. ‘I’m ready to die.’ He shifted the weight of a short sword in one hand, and rolled an axe round his wrist in the other.
‘Oh, you’ll be begging for death by the time I’m done with you.’ Dag licked his lips.
Without warning, the redhead thrust at Dag, who knocked it aside casually with his shield.
‘You’ll have to do better than that.’
The Norskman fell back on his guard, but Hakan had seen his eyes were on the others. He lurched in and struck right. The guard saw it late, parrying with his axe. He tried to retire, but couldn’t: the axe-heads were locked tight. Hakan yanked hard, pulling his arm out straight. Ste
el streaked down, and the Norskman’s axe flew loose.
With it, his hand.
‘Gaaaaaaaaah!’ he screamed, falling to his knees, blood leaking all over the sand. Dag smashed away his sword, Eskel put a boot in his chest. The guard went sprawling, clutching for the hand that wasn’t there.
Dag was astride him in a heartbeat, punching him with the pommel of his sword – once, twice. The redhead slumped back, unconscious.
‘There you are,’ said Dag, grinning up at them, dried blood flaking off the twisted scars on his face. The guard’s wrist was squirting blood. Dag undid the man’s belt and wound it tight around his arm.
‘What are you going to do to him?’ asked Hakan.
‘Hang about, lad, and you’ll see. Might learn something.’
Hakan didn’t reply. Hadn’t he seen enough for one day?
‘Come on, lad,’ said Eskel. ‘He works best without an audience.’
‘Suit yourselves.’ Dag shook the redhead’s chops. The man started to come round, all groggy. ‘You leave him with me. I’ll soon make him real comfortable.’ There was a raking sound as Dag drew out his long-knife. ‘Won’t I, boy?’ The lad only whimpered, eyes wide with fear. The wind caught the sour smell of urine.
Hakan turned away. Eskel was already striding up the beach towards the fell. The first scream sounded when Hakan caught him up.
‘Scream once, and they never stop.’ Eskel quickened his pace.
‘Doesn’t everyone scream?’
‘Some never utter a sound. Others squeal like hogs. You can’t tell which a man’ll be just from the look of him.’
‘This one’s a screamer anyhow,’ Hakan murmured. He thought of the women. The blood in their hair would be clotting, their bodies stiffening with the chill of death. ‘I guess he deserved it.’
Eskel gave him a slantwise look. ‘Guess he did. Might be we all do one way or another.’
The guard screamed again, a sound so savage Hakan had to look back. He saw Dag sit up and fling something small and red over his shoulder.
‘Seems a waste now.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The women. That’s why we came here, isn’t it?’
‘So it is,’ Eskel nodded grimly. ‘Hel’s got ’em now, I guess. Still – you can’t change what the Norns have woven.’
Can you not?
He’d often pictured those three ancient sisters in their gloomy dwelling, far below the woods and fields of his homeland, sat at the foot of the World Tree, spinning their thread, weaving the fates of men. Each sister had a name: What Was, What Is and What Will Be. They would sit till the Ragnarok, working their loom of destiny in the shadowy depths.
‘We did what we could,’ sniffed Eskel. ‘That’s it.’
Hakan nodded. Aye, they had done what they could. And now they could go home.
To Inga.
High on the wind, the gulls swooped, each shriek shrill and taunting.
They’re laughing at us, he thought, looking up. They must be. Laughing at the bloody strife of men.
His face twisted into a grimace. Let them laugh. Or scream in rage at the ceaseless wind. The dead were riding for the Hall of the Slain now.
But he was still alive.
He pushed on up the hill, pain twinging each step. Behind him, the screams grew fainter.
CHAPTER SIX
Konur was into his third helping of venison stew. He sat hunched over, scraping at the bottom of the bowl. Tolla and the girls sat round him, their appetites long sated.
Inga had told the thralls they could go to bed. Old Rapp was doing his best to snore a hole right through the roof at the end of the hall. Flames rippled in the firepit, smoke curling up into the summer sky. On the wall, torches burned, sending shadows dancing over the tapestries hanging there.
Einna giggled. Inga shot her a reproachful look.
‘What?’ Einna frowned. ‘He’s a good strong eater, tha’s all.’
‘You have to be under my father’s roof.’ Konur shoved away the bowl, satisfied at last. ‘With four brothers, it’s bed with an empty belly if you can’t eat fast as a hungry pig.’
‘You’ve certainly took that lesson to heart,’ said Tolla.
‘Four more.’ Einna’s eyes widened. ‘And all of ’em pretty as you?’
‘Stop bothering him,’ said Inga.
‘No bother.’ He flashed Einna a smile.
They fell silent a while.
‘You like the food then?’ asked Einna, eventually.
‘Very fine.’
She squealed, and clapped her hands. ‘I knew you’d like it. I told Inga so. Even though it was her taught me, and Tolla taught her. Isn’t that right, Tolla?’
‘Do you have to make such a fool of yourself, girl?’ said Tolla.
‘It’s grand hospitality. Worthy of Thor himself.’ Konur stretched and gave his belly a pat. ‘Not much talk though. . . Except from you.’
Einna giggled. ‘Oh, I prattle away all the livelong day!’ She wasn’t wrong there, thought Inga.
Tolla rolled her eyes. ‘Just stop talking, you little halfwit.’
‘Oh, leave her,’ said Inga, putting a protective arm round Einna. ‘She can’t help it. Can you, silly goose? Besides, he’s used to women turning gooey on him. Isn’t that right?’
Konur cocked an eyebrow.
‘Don’t be bashful.’ Inga decided she liked teasing him. ‘You know, Nussa told me he’s kissed every thrall-girl within five leagues of Karlsted.’
‘And more ’n kissed besides,’ sniggered Einna.
‘I didn’t know you took such an interest in my kisses.’
‘Me? You flatter yourself. I don’t care. I guess when folks haven’t got enough to say, they talk any old nonsense.’
‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear over an ale-cup.’ He took a long, steady swallow, never taking his gaze from hers. Inga shifted. He sure loves staring with those big grey eyes of his. ‘Still,’ he conceded. ‘They’re right about one thing. I do like women.’
Tolla’s scoff into her cup could have been heard at the other end of the hall.
Konur laughed. ‘Well – what man doesn’t?’
Tolla thumped down her cup. ‘Plenty! Wanting to bed a thrall-girl or three, and liking women isn’t the same thing. A man can hate a woman and fondle her teats just the same.’
‘Tolla!’ cried Inga. Einna was a fountain of giggles, evidently enjoying herself.
‘Can’t a man like a woman both ways? To me, you’re all fascinating.’
‘Sure, sure,’ said Inga. ‘Maybe you’ve forgotten what you said to me at the feast. You seemed a lot more fascinated by teats then than anything else.’ She knew she should still be angry about what happened. But just then, it all seemed faintly ridiculous.
He looked suddenly abashed. ‘Well – perhaps I didn’t know what I was saying.’
‘I don’t make you ache for me, then?’ She feigned a grimace, enjoying his discomfort.
‘No – I. . .’ He snorted. ‘You’re laughing at me.’
‘No one ever done that before?’
‘Not so much.’
‘Well then – welcome to the lesson. All part of our hospitality here at Vendlagard.’
‘I’m glad for it,’ he smiled. ‘If you’re the teacher. Still, will you accept an apology?’
‘Hah!’ scoffed Tolla. ‘You think it’s all dealt with that easy?’
Inga bristled. She didn’t like Tolla telling her what to do. Konur hadn’t asked Tolla, after all. ‘I suppose I will.’
Tolla gave her a sharp look, but she didn’t mind. It was all best forgotten anyway. Hakan would have to bear the grudge for both of them.
‘Excellent!’ he cried. ‘Will you drink to it?’
‘Why not?’ she shrugged. Then, clapping her hands, ‘Come on, we all will!’
They pushed in their cups. Konur poured the amber liquid. The cups clattered in a toast and they all drained them. Konur snatched the pitcher again.
>
‘Another.’
Tolla shook her head. ‘Not for the girls. It’s not for womenfolk—’
‘—to make ale-soaked sluts of themselves,’ chanted the two girls together, bursting into laughter.
‘Darling Tolla, we know!’ Inga planted a kiss on Tolla’s cheek. ‘Come – it’s not too strong. We’ll only sip it.’
‘Your uncle wouldn’t let you.’
‘If he’s so worried about a second cup of ale, he can come back and stop me!’
The girls took another sip. Einna spilled hers, setting off more giggles.
Inga wiped her mouth. ‘So, Konur, son of Karsten, heir to the Karlung lands – tell us. We’re all ears. What is so fascinating about us then?’
He leaned closer. ‘You’re all a mystery.’
‘A mystery, eh? Hear that, Einna?’
‘So you are. You’re a comfort and a terror. Unfathomable as the ocean, wild as the north winds, beautiful as the autumn sun. Bitterness and sweetness in one bite.’ He snapped his teeth shut.
Inga glanced at Einna. The silly thing’s eyes are big as platters. ‘My – don’t you sound like a skald-singer, just? I suppose you scatter a few pretty words like that and a girl is ready to lift her skirts for you, is that it?’
‘I’ll not deny it,’ he smiled. ‘Doesn’t mean I don’t believe them.’
‘And that makes it so much better, I suppose! Well, we’re not all so beautiful as you say. I’ve seen swine licking shit off a stick prettier than my aunts.’
‘Inga!’ scolded Tolla.
‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ she laughed.
‘They ha’n’t been kissed by Freya, and that’s the truth.’ Einna nodded earnestly, as though that were a point worth considering.
‘Not like you.’ Konur was trying to hold Inga’s gaze, but she wouldn’t let him. It was very flattering and all, but she wasn’t going to play this game with him. Meanwhile, Tolla’s scowl was growing ever deeper.
‘Do your brothers’ lips drip as much honey, I wonder?’
‘Hardly. Karni’s too busy thinking up his next wisecrack, and Kufri singing songs with his mother.’
‘And the others?’
‘The littl’uns? They’ve barely stopped pissing their breeches.’
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