Harald turned and looked up at the man, shielding his eyes against the sun’s glare. ‘Is this pool of blood in Avaldsnes?’ he asked. Sigurd knew his father did not always like what his godi had to say but he always listened. Everyone else listened too, faces turned up to the small hill, the women’s swollen, anguished eyes slitted now against a dawn that saw them widows.
Asgot held something purple and glistening between finger and thumb and put it to his lips then glared down at his jarl.
‘No, lord. I see fire at Avaldsnes but no blood.’
‘Funeral pyres for the dead perhaps,’ Sorli suggested. ‘We killed many of Jarl Randver’s men but some of the king’s too.’
Harald scratched his bearded chin, his brow furrowed like Skudeneshavn’s bay with the first northerly beginning to blow across it. ‘So you think we should go and hear what Biflindi has to say? Listen to him try to wriggle out of the carcass of this thing?’
‘It is wiser to stand up to a bear than to turn your back on it,’ Asgot said and even Olaf seemed to agree with this for he gave a curt nod.
‘Then we need to prepare,’ Olaf said. ‘Who stays, who goes. The last thing we want is to come back and find the thralls gone and our silver with them.’
‘Or Randver knocking on the gate,’ Frothi said.
Olaf looked to his jarl but Harald was looking out across the harbour, his thoughts spear-flung somewhere far off. Perhaps he was hoping to see Reinen and Sea-Eagle coming in, oars beating like wings, Slagfid, Thorvard and Sigmund at Reinen’s prow, shouting the tale of their miraculous victory across the water to those on the shore. Sigurd had never seen his father look like that before and he did not like it.
‘Come to the hall tonight,’ Olaf announced. ‘Jarl Harald will choose his war band.’
‘What shall we do now?’ Aud’s widow Geirhild asked, grim-faced, all her crying done beneath her own roof.
‘Fetch stones,’ Harald said, still looking across the bay. ‘And wood. My men will be buried in a stone ship. Together as they fell, so that they might enter the Allfather’s hall as one fellowship.’
‘And the wood?’ Asbjorn asked, pulling a louse from his beard and crushing it between finger and thumbnail.
There was a silence as all looked to their jarl whose face had all the expression of a granite cliff.
‘I will burn my sons,’ he said, looking for ships that were never coming.
There was no singing in Eik-hjálmr, no fighting or boasting or fumbling in dark corners. There was drinking though. The mead flowed and horns and cups ran over but there was no joy and Sigurd was reminded of Hrothgar’s hall Heorot burdened by grief from the havoc the monster Grendel had wrought.
But for those few men and boys at the beacon on the hill to the east and those at other lookout posts, it seemed that everyone in Skudeneshavn had crammed into Jarl Harald’s hall. There was barely a nostril of clean air to be had and the benches along the walls creaked under the strain of so many folk standing on them to get a better view. Sigurd had managed to shoulder his way through the throng until he was standing before his father and Olaf, both of them standing on their benches adorned with warrior rings and wearing their finest tunics, cloaks and brooches. Harald even wore his jarl torc round his neck, the twisted rope of silver the final part of the display meant to put confidence in his people’s bellies and remind them that they still had a great warrior watching over them.
And yet it was not lost on anyone that there were so many faces missing from Eik-hjálmr, so many great warriors whose bluster would never again carry up to the smoke-blackened beams. In one day Skudeneshavn had been stripped of fifty-two of its men and now their womenfolk and sons filled their places in Harald’s hall, looking to their jarl to salvage something from the wreck of it, to convince them that they would be kept safe.
And yet no matter how great a warrior Jarl Harald was he was now a wolf without a pack. He still had spears to call on, and good men too, but without his champion and his two eldest sons, his best warriors and his ships, his power was broken in Haugaland. No amount of silver lustre in that dark hall could paint its shine on that.
‘How many is that?’ Svein asked, all bristles and mead breath in Sigurd’s ear.
‘Fifteen,’ Sigurd said, having gathered up every name that his father had so far announced and stored them in his mind like hacksilver in a chest. He could have repeated the muster perfectly, though it was as yet imperfect for the lack of his own name in it.
‘Frothi. Agnar.’ Harald went on above the hum of voices. Each man chosen raised his hand in the air so that his jarl could look him in the eye, and this was enough to let each know what was expected of him and also what an honour it was to be chosen, for all that Sorli had muttered that owning a spear and shield was enough to see you picked.
‘Asbjorn. Where are you?’ Harald nodded when he caught sight of the man in the thick of the gathering. ‘You will also come.’
Sigurd saw the grin spread in Asbjorn’s beard as the man ruffled his boy’s hair. Saw the pride in the boy’s eyes, too, and the fear in the boy’s mother’s.
‘You would take a man with one good hand rather than me?’ Sigurd said, hearing his own voice cut through the place like a keel through the dark water.
There was an intake of breath and some rumbles at this, for no one had yet interrupted the jarl. Besides which it was no small insult to Asbjorn. Harald’s face, already dark as the mixing of two sea currents, now threatened a squall.
‘Asbjorn stood in the shieldwall with me when you were nothing but an itch in my crotch, boy,’ Harald said. Some chuckled at this but not many.
‘And yet it was I who saved your life in the fight with Jarl Randver,’ Sigurd announced. ‘All of your other men were too busy being killed.’
‘Hold your tongue, Sigurd,’ Svein beside him growled as Eik-hjálmr thrummed with the ill-breeze of that shameful strike.
Harald’s eyes were arrow points and Olaf beside him was shaking his head but Sigurd held his father’s stare and braced himself.
‘Leave, Sigurd, before you say something that cannot be unsaid,’ Olaf rumbled, nodding towards Eik-hjálmr’s door. ‘This is not the time.’
Then Sorli turned to his father and Olaf. ‘If now is not the time then tell me when is?’ he said, and Harald’s eyes bulged with the audacity of this two-pronged attack in his own hall in front of his own people. ‘Look around you, Father. What do you see? I see sheep waiting for the wolf. I see old men and boys where Sword-Norse stood but two days ago. The steel-storm thinned us and we would have joined our brothers in death if not for Sigurd.’ He could not help but acknowledge Olaf with a nod then. ‘Sigurd has given us the chance to see blood given for blood. But first we must show the king that we still have teeth. Let him see that you still have two strong sons at your back. We will walk into Avaldsnes like war gods and Biflindi will have no choice but to pay the weregeld he owes us or else face a hard fight of it.’
‘Sigurd is only just a man,’ Harald said.
‘True. But he is a warrior,’ Sorli said, holding Sigurd’s eye then. ‘It is all over him like a burnished brynja. If ever there was a man whose wyrd would make the gods sit up and take notice it is my brother. Even the birds speak to him.’
Sigurd glanced at Runa then and knew she had told Sorli about the raven whose warning Sigurd had heard as they watched the ship battle from the shore. Runa flushed and looked back to their father.
‘He did put me on my arse,’ Olaf admitted, a brow hitched and the twitch of a smile appearing in the bush of his beard. ‘And only a man favoured by the gods would manage that.’
Harald glanced over at Grimhild and Sigurd saw his mother give an almost imperceptible shake of her head, then Harald turned to his godi who had up until now held his tongue. ‘What do you say, Asgot?’
‘Sorli is not famous for his wisdom but he has it right where Sigurd is concerned.’ Asgot had some new bones tied in his hair, from the cat he had been up to the wr
ists in that morning perhaps. ‘The lad is Óðin-favoured. It was the Allfather who sent that raven to warn Sigurd that you were doomed out there in the strait. And Sigurd has enough of the Æsir in him to have untangled the bird’s voice and got sense out of it. I am not jarl and it is not my decision, but I would take him to Avaldsnes.’
The jarl grimaced but nodded and there was a murmur in Eik-hjálmr like that of the sea as folk discussed the rights and wrongs of it.
Eventually after much beard-scratching and lip-chewing Jarl Harald raised a hand to hush the gathering. ‘Sigurd will go,’ he said. ‘And so will Finn Yngvarsson and Orn Beak-Nose.’
Svein slapped Sigurd’s shoulder and Sigurd nodded to Sorli who shrugged as if to say it had only been sense that he’d been talking, for all that Sorli rarely talked sense.
Harald raised a hand to silence the hall again. ‘Olaf will not come for he will go to the outlying farms to muster spears and spread word amongst the bóndi and lendermen of what has happened. He will see how things lie with Jarl Leiknir at Tysvær and Jarl Arnstein Twigbelly at Bokn. He has already chosen the men for that trip and they will know who they are soon enough.’ Svein would be amongst those men though he did not know it yet.
‘Those who stay here will have no lesser task,’ Olaf said, ‘for while these men are off puffing up their feathers for King Gorm you will keep your spears pointed east in case Jarl Randver should grow the balls to attack us here. Keep your eyes peeled and the timbers damp,’ he added, slapping one of the thick oak posts which supported the hall’s roof. ‘And you youngens put the work in with spear and shield for we’re raising a new war band and there will be a place for any man who can prove he’s more useful in the shieldwall than he is in the pig pen.’
There was a buzz at this as young men, even those recently made fatherless, saw greased and golden their chance to grow to manhood and become one of Jarl Harald’s húskarlar, his household warriors. Sigurd’s own life blood was pulsing in his veins at how things had turned out, though he tasted the sour in it, for his own elevation all but stood on his brothers’ burial mound, not that they had one.
Even so, he would prove worthy of it. He would stand with Sorli and their father and show King Gorm that the men of Skudeneshavn were not beaten yet. They would avenge their dead and skalds such as Hagal Crow-Song would weave their tale for the ears of those yet in their cribs.
‘If the lad’s going with you he ought to look the part, Harald,’ Olaf said, scratching his cheek, lips pursed.
Harald almost smiled then. ‘The boy did put you on your arse, Uncle,’ he said, thick fingers prising open the silver ring on his arm which he had offered as a prize the night before the ship battle. ‘If you kick King Gorm in the bollocks too you can have another one,’ he said, pulling the ring off and flinging it at his youngest son. Sigurd caught it, appraising its weight in his hand for a moment before putting it on his own left arm.
And he was going to Avaldsnes.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE DAY BEGAN cloudy and as grey as the sleeping sea around Karmøy. A thin rain that could barely be felt against the skin had nevertheless soaked cloaks and breeks and greased spear shafts by the time they had walked the seven rôsts to Snørteland. Another four rôsts would take them to the village of Kopervik and from there it was just five rôsts to King Gorm’s stronghold at Avaldsnes, from whose vantage point on the hill kings had always sought to control trade and ships going north up the Karmsund Strait.
Sigurd was aware of a gentle trembling in his blood, like water passing the overlapping strakes on a ship’s hull when the sail is up and the wind is good, yet the trembling was not from fear. It was because despite King Gorm’s insistence that he was a loyal king and his promise to Jarl Harald of silver to pay for each of the jarl’s warriors killed, the twenty men from Skudeneshavn had come dressed for war. Each had spear and shield and whatever head protection he could find, be it a leather skull cap or, in the case of a few, a steel helmet. Each wore his thickest woollen coat, normally only worn in winter, so that they were rain-soaked outside and sweat-soaked inside, but content that these would provide some protection against the blade’s bite.
Some carried bows and quivers of wicked-bladed arrows. Some had hand axes tucked in their belts, these weapons as useful for cleaving logs or breaking down a man’s door as they were in the tight press of the shieldwall where they were often more effective than swords. A few carried the long-hafted, two-handed battle axes that could split shield, helm, limb or torso. It was with such axes that Harald’s champion Slagfid and Svein’s father Styrbiorn had woven their fame, killing men outright with a single blow and giving other men to foul themselves through fear. But there was no Slagfid or Styrbiorn amongst them today. Sigurd wished Svein was there too, but his friend had gone with Olaf and three others, taken the boat across to Tysvær.
Only two men had brynjur, their countless woven iron rings glistening with rain which was as much their enemy as the arrow, for the first would rot it and the second could pierce it. And yet to own a brynja was every warrior’s ambition for it meant you were rich and powerful or that you had killed a rich and powerful man and taken his mail. It also meant you were a hard man to kill, for a good brynja will turn aside a sword or a hand axe, and Jarl Harald and Sorli looked like gods of war now with their iron coats and their polished helmets, the gold and silver metalwork on their sword pommels, belt buckles and brooches, and their arm rings of twisted silver.
They walked in single file so that to the Æsir in Asgard they must have looked like a vicious little serpent slithering north across Karmøy, Jarl Harald, Sorli and Sigurd at the head.
Sigurd felt like Týr, Lord of Battle, which was fitting, he thought, because Týr had placed his right hand in the jaws of the wolf Fenrir, just as they would now put themselves between the teeth of a king they no longer trusted. Týr had been tricked and earned himself a wolf-joint for his bravery, for ever after one-handed yet still associated with victory. What would they earn from King Gorm, Sigurd wondered.
Over his woollen tunic he had a leather coat which had belonged to Sigmund, his brother having worn it before earning his own brynja, and on his shins were his own greaves, the iron strips polished to a lustre against the dark leather onto which they were fixed. Like most of them he bore a scramasax, the single-edged knife that was so useful for finishing a felled opponent, but unlike most of them he wore a sword at his left hip. It was not an ornate weapon. It had no silver wire wound round the grip, no decoration in the pommel or cross guard, but it was straight, double-edged and had taken a moon’s cycle to make. And though it was not a thing to turn heads it was certainly capable of taking them. The smith who had forged it had incised the name Troll-Tickler in runes on the blade where it met the guard, and Sigurd thought that such a name was worth more than gilt and silver wire.
The scabbard was a good wooden one covered with leather and with the mouth and tip protected by iron, and the inside was lined with sheep’s wool whose lay was upwards to enable an easy draw. The grease in the wool prevented the blade from rusting and the curl in it held the sword firm in the scabbard, and the weight of it all at Sigurd’s hip made him feel a foot taller.
‘You are my second son now and must appear like a warrior who has done his share of killing for me,’ his father had said that morning when he had given Sigurd the sword from his own great chest of war gear. ‘But do not forget that you will be amongst better men today. Men who have stood their ground in the skjaldborg and traded blow for blow with our enemies. Many of them do not own such a sword even as this one and may begrudge you having something you have not earned.’
‘Let anyone who does say it to my face,’ Sigurd had replied, expecting his father’s wrath at that. But Harald had half smiled and Sigurd had seen his eldest brother Thorvard in that smile.
‘Let us show Biflindi that we still have teeth,’ the jarl said, gripping Sigurd’s shoulder as Sigurd drew the blade to fill his eyes with the strange patte
rn that swirled up its length like dragon’s breath, markings as unique to that blade as Sigurd’s dreams were to him.
‘If the king betrays you, Father, I will kill him,’ Sigurd said, thrusting the sword back into its scabbard.
Now it was a wolf’s grin that broke the jarl’s golden beard. ‘If he betrays me he will already be dead,’ Harald said.
‘Ah, so there is a sun up there,’ Orn Beak-Nose said now, looking up at the pale yolk of light that was trying to spill through the grey.
‘It is warm enough already,’ Frothi said, puffing out his cheeks and perhaps wishing he had brought only a spear instead of his long-axe with its huge crescent-shaped smiting blade and steel edge.
‘At the least we are owed mead and women,’ Finn Yngvarsson said, limping from an old wound. They were tramping up Sålefjell, the highest point on the island of Karmøy, which no one enjoyed doing in full war gear. But Harald would not risk the easier option of hugging the coast in Little-Elk and letting the wind do the work, for if Jarl Randver’s ships caught them out in the strait they would be dead men in the time it takes to curse the Norns and the bad wyrd they had woven.
‘After how he served us in the fight I would be afraid that any woman the king gave us was really a troll in disguise, her eating knife aimed at our bollocks,’ Asbjorn said, which got some chuckles.
‘I should think you’d be happy with a troll, Asbjorn, compared with what waits for you back home,’ Orn Beak-Nose dared, which had the men laughing as Asbjorn thumped the butt of his spear against the shield slung on Orn’s back.
‘Mead will do for me,’ Agnar said, getting some ayes all round, ‘and the silver he owes us for our sword-brothers,’ he added, which silenced them then as each man’s mind filled with memories of friends they would never see alive again, like brackish water flooding a bilge.
Gulls shrieked overhead and the sun threatened to break through the cloud and Sigurd’s hand kept falling to the hilt at his hip because after the years of training with the tools of death he was now one of a band of Sword-Norse. He had at last been given the chance to prove himself, to show his father and brother that he was worthy of the blood in his veins.
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