God of Vengeance

by Giles Kristian

  Sigurd nodded and turned to Svein and Aslak. ‘Are you coming?’ he asked. They looked at each other and nodded, and before the old man had even climbed back to his feet the three of them were tearing across the bluff, then scrambling down the worn narrow track towards the sea.

  When they reached the shore the four fishermen turned and stood, two of them pulling knives from their belts, their nerves honed to an edge by what they had seen in the strait.

  ‘Give me your boat,’ Sigurd said, striding up to them, Svein at his right shoulder, Aslak at his left.

  One of the men laughed though there was no mirth in it.

  ‘Fuck off, boy,’ another growled, waving his knife through the air.

  Sigurd spun the spear in his hands and thrust, striking the man square on his forehead with the butt end and dropping him. The other three stepped backwards leaving their senseless companion lying on the wet shingle.

  ‘That’s Jarl Harald’s son,’ a man said and brows arched above round eyes.

  ‘Take it,’ a leathery-skinned fisherman said, nodding towards their small boat.

  Sigurd nodded and turned his back on them, going over to the boat from which seagulls took off screeching, their feast of fish guts disturbed. They pulled it down into the still water of the sheltered cove and when the boat was in two feet of sea they climbed in, Aslak giving it a shove for good measure before he sprang aboard.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Svein said, placing himself in the middle, taking up both oars and setting them in their locks, his back to the open fjord. Sigurd looked up at the bluff and saw Runa, her hair bright as gold in the afternoon sun, and he waved at her but she kept both fists and the silver Freyja pendant against her breast. Then Sigurd turned and knelt at the bow, watching the battle rage beyond the skerry-guarded cove as Svein hauled back on the oars, his great strength pulling the boat away from the shore.

  ‘What are you scheming, Sigurd?’ Aslak asked as Svein’s long strokes took them past the rocks out into the strait. ‘We cannot do much with one spear.’

  ‘Just be ready,’ Sigurd said, standing up on the step, using his spear to balance as the battle din grew louder. Somewhere amongst the chaos a man screamed. Yngvar was still blowing his horn now and then, when he wasn’t fighting for his life. Sigurd heard splashes as warriors fell into the sea, their ringed brynjas taking them down to the sea bed before they realized they were dead. Sea-Eagle was lost, its thwarts full of Jarl Randver’s men, some of whom Sigurd could see stooped, stripping Harald’s dead perhaps whilst others joined those who were now clearing Reinen’s deck. But even standing, Sigurd struggled to see over the ships’ sides and it was only when he caught sight of his father’s helmet, its panels of polished silver plate glinting in the sun, that he knew Reinen was lost too. For Harald had been driven back to the raised platform at Reinen’s stern and now stood a little forward of the tiller, his sons Sorli and Sigmund beside him, shields raised. Slagfid was there too, the champion’s shoulders sagging with exhaustion now, though his shield was high and his great, worm-looped blade yet promised death to all who faced him.

  ‘Faster, Svein,’ Sigurd growled and Svein obeyed, shoulder muscles billowing with each stroke, the veins in his neck corded like walrus-skin ropes as he took them ever closer to Reinen’s stern, making sure to keep a good distance from the two ships attacking her and also from Sea-Eagle, which now thronged with Jarl Randver’s warriors.

  Then Sigurd saw a small shieldwall stepping backwards along the port side and caught sight of Olaf barking commands at this last knot of Harald’s household warriors. Thorvard was amongst them too, blood-spattered and grimacing as he defended their meagre shield rampart against the weight of the attack bearing down on them.

  ‘Little-Elk has broken off!’ Aslak called, which was something at least, and Sigurd saw the frenzied panic in that ship, heard the clump of oars as men took them up from the deck and pushed the staves out through the ports and began to row her away from the slaughter whilst Randver’s men showered her with arrows. Sigurd could almost hear Asgot spitting curses and invoking the gods to come down from Valhöll and piss on the worm Jarl Randver.

  Yngvar lay dead over Reinen’s sheer strake, still clutching the horn as though even now they hoped King Gorm would come to fight at their shoulder, but there was no sign of Biflindi and it was too late now anyway.

  ‘Father! Sorli!’ Sigurd called but the battle din was so loud that they could not hear him, or if they could they were too embroiled in the fray to take notice. With Little-Elk pulling away from the slaughter and Sea-Eagle already taken, Jarl Randver was able to set all of his warriors against those few of Jarl Harald’s hearthmen still holding their ground at Reinen’s stern. More hooks thunked against ships’ ribs and thwarts, more ropes were passed to Randver’s men already brimming Harald’s deck so that this floating platform now belonged to the rebel . . . but for some two spear-lengths of oak deck upon which the great warrior in the glittering, raven-beaked helmet held dominion with his best warriors and those of his own blood. Sigmund, who was a great fighter, ran two steps and jumped, thrusting his sword down behind an enemy’s shield and into his neck, then he slammed his shield into the dying man’s own and leapt back into his own shieldwall, a wolf’s grin on his face. Sigurd’s chest filled with pride at his brother’s skill and daring even as he knew all hope was lost.

  Now another horn blew, this one Jarl Randver’s, and Sigurd saw that the rebel meant to offer terms to his defeated enemy. But Harald roared that Randver was a rancid goat’s turd and the treacherous cunny snot of a slobbering whore and his men thumped their swords and spears against their shields to echo the insult and acclaim their defiance.

  For a moment Randver’s men seemed unsure what their jarl wanted of them but Harald made their minds up for them by taking a spear from Sorli and hurling it with such strength that it pierced a warrior’s shield and pinned his arm to his chest, raising a cheer from those aboard Reinen who knew they would soon sit with their ancestors in Óðin’s hall and drink to this moment.

  The rebels’ shieldwall stretched right across Reinen’s deck and must have been five men deep, a tide of steel and flesh that would drive Sigurd’s father and his brave men into the sea or see them butchered in a sea of their own blood on the oak boards. Both sides roared as the skjaldborgs struck and the sword song played for the amusement of the Æsir. But Jarl Harald’s men were pushed back foot by foot until they were level with the tiller and crammed beneath the great sternpost where the resin-sheened sheer strakes were carved with runes and gripping beasts.

  Slagfid beat a man’s shield down and Thorvard plunged his sword into the man’s face, the blade erupting from the skull in a gleam of bone shards and blood. The man fell and Sorli burst forward into the gap, hacking his hand axe into a warrior’s face and cleaving off his jaw before jumping back into his own shieldwall as quick as a lightning strike. But now some of Randver’s men aboard the ship lashed to Reinen’s port side were loosing arrows and these shafts streaked into Harald’s men who could not have their shields in two places at once, though three or four turned and tried to raise a rampart against this new threat. Reinen’s helmsman Thorald took an arrow in his neck and clutching at the thing dropped over the side and vanished. Then Harald staggered forward and Sigurd saw a feathered shaft jutting from his shoulder, though the rings of his brynja had taken the force and he made a show of standing tall again and rolling his shoulders.

  ‘What do we do?’ Aslak called, his face ashen, wide eyes appalled by what they were witnessing. ‘They’ll come for us soon enough.’

  Sigurd did not answer. He stood swaying with the fishing boat, watching his father’s and his brothers’ last moments, and he could not tear his eyes away. A spear blade plunged into Aud’s eye and he screamed, his shield arm falling so that the same spear struck again, opening his great belly, and Sigurd saw the glistening rope of his guts spring loose to thump on the deck. Olaf was barking commands, encouraging men to keep their shi
elds overlapping and their heads down. Slagfid was growling at the enemy to come and die on his sword and Sigurd’s brothers were shoulder to shoulder now, defiance coming off them like the stink of blood. But they were trapped and had barely the room to use their swords and it seemed that they would be tipped into the sea like discarded fish guts and would all get drowning deaths, which was something a man feared more than almost anything.

  Perhaps that thought was too sour for Sorli, who surged forward, slamming his shield into the enemy rampart and throwing up his arm, reversing the blade to hack into the back of a man who was too tightly pressed to do anything about it. And with this the rest of Harald’s men came spitting fury and contempt, throwing themselves at the enemy with their last strength. They were cut down, savaged by sword, spear and axe, and Sigurd yelled at Svein to row them even closer to Reinen’s stern. Svein said nothing but the oars plunged and the boat moved and Aslak sat in the stern keeping his protests behind a barricade of gritted teeth.

  ‘The jarl! Protect the jarl!’ someone yelled and Sigurd knew his father had been cut down though he had not seen the act.

  ‘Vigdis!’ Sigurd called, recognizing the warrior for the bear skin he wore, and Vigdis turned to look over the side, the eyes beneath his helmet’s rim bulging when they saw Sigurd and his friends.

  ‘Fuck off, boy!’ Vigdis shouted. ‘Get back to the village!’ Vigdis, who had told Sigurd there was no honour in how he had beaten Olaf the night before, possessed enough honour now to hurl himself at the enemy lest they notice Sigurd, and Sigurd cursed as the man disappeared from sight.

  Then Sigurd saw Alfdis where Vigdis had been and he called to him and Alfdis was similarly shocked to see him but Sigurd gave the man no time to speak.

  ‘The jarl!’ Sigurd yelled, pointing back into the fishing boat, and Alfdis understood without a moment’s hesitation and nodded. Sigurd’s heart hammered against his chest and he feared he was too late but then Alfdis and a man named Jorund came to the side and slung in between them was the jarl, wounded but alive. But then Alfdis was cut down and a big man raised his axe to finish the jarl, when Olaf appeared, thrusting his sword into the man’s armpit to cleave his heart. He hauled the sword free in a gout of bright blood and turned his own gore-stained face to Sigurd, teeth white against the mess.

  ‘No!’ Harald yelled, his wits returning as Olaf took a hold of his other arm and pushed him to the side. Even wounded, his own blood slathered across his brynja, the jarl was strong enough to fight Olaf and Jorund while the rest of his men hacked and slashed and were being slaughtered behind him. Then Sigurd heard a splash and looked over to see Sorli in the water, flailing in his mail, and up on Reinen Thorvard looking down long enough to see that Sigurd had sight of their brother whom he had knocked into the water. Then Thorvard turned and stormed into the blood-fray and Sigurd saw a spear take him in the side as another man hacked into his neck with a hand axe. Two arrows took Jorund, one in the neck, the other in his thigh, and he fell over the side to sink in the dark sea. Aslak took a rope from the bilge and cast one end out to Sorli who grabbed it and pulled himself towards the boat.

  ‘Olaf!’ Sigurd yelled, but Olaf was doing what he could and somehow he managed to muscle his jarl to the side and with a great effort lifted him over, the jarl fighting in vain, and now with Svein’s help Sigurd reached up and took hold of his father and the three of them fell back into the thwarts in a tangle of limbs. Olaf turned back to the fight, snatching up his sword, resolved to die with the others, when a spear struck his shoulder and he staggered backwards, his legs hitting Reinen’s side so that he toppled over the sheer strake and hit with a great splash.

  Sigurd scrambled back to the bow and held out his spear and Olaf had enough sense left in him to take hold of it so that Sigurd could pull him in.

  ‘Row!’ Sigurd screamed and Svein was up and had the oars in the water, his broad shoulders and thickly muscled arms pulling the boat away from the slaughter even as Olaf clung on to the side and Sigurd clung on to Olaf and Aslak did what he could to keep Harald down lest the jarl try to jump back aboard Reinen to be cut down with his hearthmen.

  ‘Hold on, Olaf,’ Sigurd said, as he saw Slagfid still hewing men down and two or three other men fighting to the last.

  One of whom was Sigmund his brother.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SVEIN ROWED, THE oars all but snapping with the force of it as their blades pulled against the sea. Sigurd and Aslak managed to pull Olaf into the boat and he lay half drowned in the bilge, beard and brynja glistening with brine, his chest puffing like bellows. Similarly waterlogged but standing up in the boat, Sorli was spitting fury, his beard flecked with curses hurled back at Thorvard whose last act had been to throw his brother overboard. His eyes full of tears or salt water, Sorli railed at his brother for denying him his place in that last stand. He kicked the boat’s strakes and yanked his blond braids and screamed at Thorvard who was past hearing now, and Sigurd did not try to calm him for Sorli was lost to the here and now and the best thing was to leave him alone.

  Jarl Harald looked like a man dragged from his burial mound with the smell of Sæhrímnir the best of meats in his nose and the voices of his ancestors in his ears. His eyes were rivets fixed on the murder which was now two good spear-throws off their stern. His hands gripped the side of the boat like white claws. He had not laid eyes on Sigurd yet and Sigurd was glad for it, though he knew the moment must come.

  A cheer went up from Jarl Randver’s men, which could only mean that the last of Harald’s warriors was dead, cut down on his lord’s ship, his blood running across the oak planks with that of his sword-brothers, and Sigurd felt as though he was at sea in a storm, his head spinning and his thoughts in the whirlpool of it.

  ‘My sons,’ Harald muttered, the words barely strong enough to ruffle his blood-specked golden beard. ‘My sons.’

  ‘The king betrayed us,’ Olaf growled. There was blood in his hair and in the rings of his brynja but he paid it no heed. ‘That putrid swine’s bladder left us to be mauled.’

  Sigurd realized he was still clutching the spear, knuckles white against the rune-carved ash. His guts felt as heavy as a quern stone and yet his heart was thumping like the hare that has seen the hawk. His brothers Sigmund and Thorvard were dead. Slagfid who was unbeatable, a warrior who had put fear in his enemy’s bellies and whose boasts had seeped into Eik-hjálmr’s beams like hearth smoke, was slaughtered. Svein’s father Styrbiorn was gone, and Haki and Gudrod and so many more. Harald’s finest warriors and retainers were corpses now, their weapons and warrior rings, their brynjur and helmets being pulled from their ripped bodies, while the ragged survivors drifted off like feathers from a fox-killed bird.

  ‘Little-Elk!’ Aslak called and Sigurd followed the line of his outstretched arm and saw the karvi off their bow. She was being rowed southwards, Solveig her helmsman and skipper wisely hugging the coast where Jarl Randver’s ships might not dare to follow for fear of their plunder-heavy hulls striking the rocks now that the tide was slackening.

  Olaf bellowed over to the karvi and Solveig had his oarsmen hold water until Svein could row them up to the ship and the men could climb aboard. Sigurd saw the relief in the men of Little-Elk’s faces when they saw their jarl alive, and Asgot the godi, his beard braids sticky with blood, gnarred his thanks to the Allfather for giving them this one floating timber in the wreck of that day.

  They left the fishing boat to drift where it would and the survivors, some twenty-nine men all told, rowed or watched the ships out in the Karmsund Strait or kept a lookout for rocks and skerries just below the surface as old Solveig carried his beaten jarl south, bound for Skudeneshavn. Sigurd remembered Runa but when he looked up he saw no sign of her amongst the few folk still gathered on the bluff and Aslak suggested that she was already riding home to bring news of the events to the village.

  ‘We should not have left her,’ Sigurd said.

  ‘What choice did we have?’ Aslak said, which was
true enough. Still, Sigurd hoped that Runa knew that their father and Sorli were alive and that at least some of Skudeneshavn’s menfolk had survived Jarl Randver and King Gorm’s treachery and were even now coming home.

  ‘They are not interested in us,’ Olaf announced when he was certain that their enemies were not coming after them. He was looking back out into the strait the way a man looks at his family on the rocks when he is going off raiding, as though he wanted to go back as much as go on.

  ‘Why would they be?’ Jarl Harald said. ‘They have my ships. They have killed my sons and my champion.’ There was an arrow wound in his shoulder but he seemed unaware of it. ‘They have broken me,’ he murmured.

  ‘Biflindi will pay in blood for this,’ Sorli said, pushing his tunic sleeve up to examine the vicious-looking purple stain spreading on his left forearm. ‘We will flay the skin from his back and cut off his balls.’

  ‘And how will we do that, boy?’ Harald asked, the words seeping from the twist of his lips. ‘My sword-brothers are corpses. I am left with dregs, old men and boys.’ Sigurd felt the sting of this, knew the barb of it bit into the pride of those at the oars now who kept their eyes down rather than meet their jarl’s and see the anguish there. Harald stood on the steerboard side looking out at the ships he no longer owned. Farther off, King Gorm’s longships were heading north again back to his base at Avaldsnes, his part in the thing over, the king content it seemed to let Randver keep the spoils. ‘Óðin has washed his hands of me,’ Harald said. He looked at Asgot who was on his knees scattering runes across the deck. ‘You told me not to fight today. I should have listened.’

  Asgot studied the stones before him and pursed his lips, then looked up at his jarl, his eyes as sharp and black as flint. ‘One-Eye’s hand is still in this, Harald. You would not be standing here otherwise. This blood is as the first drop in a pail before a storm. Óðin has set up the pieces on the tafl board and now rubs his hands at the thought of the game.’