‘I feel like some troll peeled off the top of my skull and did a shit inside it,’ Loker said, wiping grease from his forehead. They carried spears and wore all their war gear except for their shields which they had left at Guthorm’s hall.
‘That is nothing, Loker,’ Aslak said. ‘I am seeing two of you.’
‘A curse if ever there was,’ Hendil said.
‘Pah! You bairns cannot hold your ale!’ Olaf said, though in truth he did not look any less miserable than the others. ‘When I was your age the Boknafjord was not salty water, but sweet golden mead. I used to swim from Skudeneshavn to Kvitsøy every morning with my mouth open all the way.’
This got a laugh despite the sore heads. Asgot wafted Olaf’s boast away with his long fingers. ‘I remember you spewing your guts over Slagfid’s shoes the day Harald took the jarl torc from Ansgar Iron Beard,’ he said.
‘I was there,’ Solveig said. ‘Slagfid threw those shoes in the pit for he said he would rather go barefoot than live with the stink.’
‘Aye, well the fish we had was rotten! That was the cause of it,’ Olaf said, which got some crowing before they fell silent again, perhaps retreating back inside their ale-soaked misery. But more likely, Sigurd thought, because each of them was remembering old times, when friends and kin were full of life and Harald’s hall shook with feasting and drinking and boasting. All that was gone now.
‘Look, there’s Guthorm and his hound,’ Svein said, pointing further up the path.
‘Thrall or no, it’s a poor thing to see a man kept on a chain like that,’ Olaf said.
Guthorm and his friends were trudging up the hill, the karl leading the young dark-haired man on the end of his iron leash which attached to a neck ring. Eid was cradling an assortment of axes and swords and Alver behind him carried a stack of spears across his shoulders. Fastvi was there too, walking amongst a knot of women who were all laughs and smiles as though they were on the way to the market.
‘I am put in mind of Fenrir Wolf,’ Sigurd said, watching Guthorm’s thrall and noting how the other villagers were pointing at him and chattering like finches though keeping their distance by the looks.
‘Better to slit a troublesome thrall’s throat and offer him to Loki Mischief-Maker than have to sleep with one eye open,’ Asgot said. No one could disagree with that.
‘Maybe that’s what Guthorm is doing,’ Aslak suggested. ‘Why bring a thrall out here on the end of a chain otherwise?’
‘Maybe Guthorm likes the black-haired whoreson enough to give him a good walk on a fresh morning,’ Olaf said, filling his nose with a breeze that carried the scent of moss and dew-laced grass off the hills.
But Sigurd doubted that was it at all. Guthorm’s people were afraid of that young man with the crow-black hair and wolf eyes. The karl had said there was going to be killing done today and Sigurd would wager every last piece of silver in his purse that Guthorm’s thrall was going to play his part in it one way or another.
‘There it is then,’ Svein said as they came over a rocky brow to the Weeping Stone and the crowd that was already gathered around it. Standing as tall as Svein the stone was carved with Jörmungand the Midgard Serpent, its rune-filled body snaking over the rock’s surface in burnt ochre red, yellow from orpiment or saffron, green from copper salts and black from charcoal.
‘Hey, boy! Come here!’ Olaf called to an urchin racing up the hill with his friends and a barking mutt. The boy ran over to them, his eyes wide and ready to glut themselves on whatever lay in store up there on the crown. Olaf pointed his spear up to the standing stone. ‘Why is it called the Weeping Stone?’ he asked.
The boy had a wooden sword tucked into his belt and a comb hanging round his neck that he had forgotten was there by the looks of his straw-tufted head. ‘Some woman called Aesa put it up,’ he piped. ‘Her husband and their son went raiding to the west and never came back. The runes speak of it.’ He wrinkled his stubby nose. ‘To those who can read them,’ he said.
‘Well there is Lame-Leg,’ Loker said, pointing at Guthorm’s friend who was limping up to the gathering with an expression that could have been a smile or a grimace.
‘Aren’t you a clever one, hey?’ Solveig said, earning himself a growled insult from Loker.
In-Halti was richly dressed in a fine blue kyrtill, the hem of it lifted and tucked into his belt, as many of the other folk had done too because the day was getting warmer. There were others with him including two bristling warriors, one a bear of a man who lumbered under the weight of an enormous brynja and a long-axe over each shoulder, and the other a smaller man in leather armour hefting a shield and spear and with a sword scabbarded at his hip.
They came up to the stone and Sigurd watched Guthorm greeting the visitors in turn, some with smiles, others with a clasp of wrists and still others with little more than a nod. Ofeig, bynamed Scowler, was likewise easy enough to pick out of the throng for he had a face like a pail of thunder, though it said nothing of his mood. The expression was the result of a thick and gnarly scar that ran across his forehead and down through his right brow to below the eye, though the eye itself looked usable still. The flesh knitting together had twisted the skin giving the man the look of someone who had just found some young swaggerer in the hay with his daughter. And he had brought fighters too, four of them and all armed to the teeth and mean-looking. Three wore mail, short-sleeved brynjur that left their arms bare but for the patterns carved in them. The fourth man wore leather armour and carried a boar spear whose haft was as thick as his arm, but he had brawn enough to handle it, and Solveig observed that this one had the look of a farm thrall about him.
These were not the only fighters there. There were perhaps a dozen more, all come to this deserted place to stand amongst the wind-rippled grass to win silver.
‘I am looking forward to this but I wish I had brought some ale,’ Svein said, apparently ready to begin drinking again though that idea turned even Sigurd’s stomach.
‘We won’t know who to put our silver on,’ Hendil said, eyeing the fighting men among the gathering.
‘Our silver?’ Olaf said, cocking an eyebrow at Hendil who scratched his beard and looked at the floor. ‘You can get the feel of it just by looking at them,’ Olaf said. ‘I wouldn’t wager much against that lump of meat,’ he said with a nod towards the giant with the two great axes. ‘That’s a fine brynja from the looks and with those arms and a long-axe he’ll knock men into the next life before they’re even close enough to smell him.’
Silver was already changing hands and it was Guthorm’s wife Fastvi, a spear-armed bóndi at each shoulder, who was dealing with all that. Her land, her scales, Guthorm’s rules. Which as it turned out were not exactly unfathomable.
The men would fight until they were either killed or too injured to continue. Or until their masters – or lords in some cases by the looks, for not all were thralls – cast a spear into the ground to say that their man yielded, which was the same as being killed so far as the silver was concerned.
Olaf and Solveig and the others were just arguing about who they thought would or should be matched against who in the first bout, when Guthorm led his young thrall to the Weeping Stone and began to fasten the end of the chain to a ring that had been put into the rock where the serpent’s open mouth was. The black-haired young man went along with it and simply stood there eyeballing the crowd while tying his hair in two braids either side of his wolf’s face. Guthorm raised a hand to silence the assembly and as a hush fell across the place the thrall and Sigurd locked eyes for a long moment until Svein tugged on Sigurd’s sleeve, drawing his attention to the axe-wielding giant who was coming grinning into the circle of men, women, children and dogs.
‘I see that after what happened here last time you have returned with worthier opponents,’ Guthorm told the gathering, as Sigurd watched Aslak wander off. ‘Well, they look worthier at least. We shall soon see the truth of it.’ Some among the assembly hurled insults at one another or barked
curses in Guthorm’s direction, but the karl could barely keep the smile off his face. ‘May bravery be rewarded and slowness punished. Make sure you have placed your wagers with my wife. The first fight will begin soon.’
And that was all the talking there was, for it seemed they had all done this before and there was no mystery in any of it.
The chained man walked to the extremity of his little world which was roughly seven paces in a crescent around the Weeping Stone’s face, then with his foot scored lines in the earth. He did the same thing halfway between those marks and the stone, which spoke of experience, for you would not want to outrun the length of a chain when it is fastened to your neck. In some places you could see old marks but he gouged fresh scars here and seemed unconcerned whilst doing it.
‘Frigg knows what sort of useless sods this lot brought to the last fight,’ Olaf said, noting how calm the chained man was, ‘but this lad will be dead in a sparrow’s fart. Not that he seems to have the wits to know it, which is probably just as well for him.’
‘Put some silver on the giant,’ Svein said, leaning on his own hafted axe, his great arms folded upon the iron head.
‘Aye, but we won’t win much for everyone is doing that,’ Solveig observed.
‘Have you placed your wager, Harek?’ Guthorm called across, to their relief using the name Sigurd had arrived at his farm with.
Sigurd nodded, giving Guthorm a half smile.
‘When did you do that?’ Olaf asked, then saw Aslak emerge from the knot of folk around Fastvi and her scales. ‘You fox,’ he muttered. ‘You put it on the lad, didn’t you?’
All eyes were on Sigurd. Solveig was muttering that he might as well have tossed the silver into the sea for at least that way you might get Njörd’s favour.
‘Sigurd put the silver on the big man,’ Svein said, ‘for anyone can see that he is a warrior and will cut the thrall in half.’ Sigurd looked at the giant with the long-axes and his guts knotted because Svein was right, the man looked like a champion, his hair braided for battle, his arms criss-crossed with scars and adorned with silver rings. He was a man to put at your prow and turn your enemy’s bowels to sour water and Sigurd suddenly thought he should have used that silver – enough to buy a good sword – to buy the giant’s loyalty.
Instead of putting it on Guthorm’s thrall, who had yet to grow a man’s beard.
‘Wait,’ Olaf said, ‘what is that I see in Sigurd’s face?’ He frowned and turned to Aslak. ‘Have we put our silver on the boy?’
‘Our silver?’ Hendil said with raised brows, and got a cold look for it from Olaf.
Aslak glanced at Sigurd, who nodded. ‘And we were not the only ones,’ Aslak said, ‘though most went for the giant.’
‘You are very quiet about all of this, godi,’ Olaf said. ‘What do you have to say of it?’
Asgot tilted his head to one side as he studied the young man with the crow-black hair. ‘There is a reason he is kept on a chain,’ he said.
‘It is because otherwise he would run east as fast as those young legs could carry him,’ Solveig said, ‘for who would want to be lashed to a stone and made to fight a troll like that?’
‘Bad enough that he has no mail or helmet, but they are not even giving him a shield,’ Loker said. Eid handed the thrall a hand axe and he seemed happy enough with it, testing its weight and balance as he strode back to the Weeping Stone.
‘Well what good would a shield be against him?’ Hendil said, nodding towards Lame-Leg’s man who was grinning at his opponent now, and Hendil’s point was not one you could argue with. That much muscle behind a long-axe could see the blade slice straight through a shield and the arm holding it.
‘Well I am looking forward to this,’ Svein said. He was not the only one. Those who had come up to the Weeping Stone had made a half circle around it, the hum of their excitement like that of bees near a hive.
Sigurd saw Guthorm nod at Lame-Leg who stood shoulders back, chest out, chin high like a man who knows he is about to be proved right. He swept a hand out before him in a gesture that told Guthorm to begin the fight and this gave rise to shouts of encouragement from the crowd, most for Lame-Leg’s man but some for the black-haired youth.
Who spun the axe butt over blade, the haft slapping into his palm.
The giant hawked and spat a gobbet of something nasty into the tall grass. ‘Tell your nithing ancestors you are coming,’ he said, ‘that you will join them in Niflheim soon.’ This put shivers into some because Niflheim was the dark world, a place of freezing mists and rivers of ice where those who died a poor death were bound. ‘I am Waltheof, son of Asgaut. I would boast of deeds and of the men I have killed, but there does not seem much point.’ With that he held the long-axes out wide, twirled them once in great cart-wheel circles, and strode forward.
And the chained man threw his axe.
It spun end over end twice and embedded itself in the giant’s forehead with a crack that echoed off the Weeping Stone. There was a collective gasp from the crowd as the big man stood for a long moment, the axe sticking from his head the way you might leave it in a block after chopping wood, blood leaking from his skull to drip from his nose. Then, still gripping the long-axes by their hafts, the giant pitched forward and slammed onto the earth as dead as any standing stone put up in memory of a lost husband and son.
‘Óðin’s arse,’ Olaf rumbled. ‘That hardly seems fair.’ He looked at Sigurd. ‘That’s the sort of thing you’d do,’ he rumbled, perhaps recalling the fight in Eik-hjálmr when Sigurd had laid him low with a well-placed foot.
‘Still it was a brave thing, throwing the axe,’ Aslak said. ‘What if he had missed?’
Sigurd shrugged. ‘He didn’t miss,’ he said.
‘Well I for one am happy about it,’ Loker said, ‘for the silver will come in useful.’
But most of those gathered around the Weeping Stone were not happy and they were letting Guthorm know about it to the extent that Guthorm’s spearmen guarding Fastvi and the silver were beginning to sweat. Neither was Guthorm happy about it by the thunderous look of him. He snarled something foul at his thrall and hid it with a smile.
‘Seems our host did not want it over so fast,’ Hagal said, which was true, for such a thing was not good for business.
Lame-Leg was so furious that he had yet to summon the words, as two of his friends took hold of his dead champion, one foot each, and dragged him away, the axe’s haft scoring the earth as he went.
‘That thing will take some getting out,’ Solveig observed.
The chained man went back to the rune stone and sat down against it, digging dirt from his fingernails and waiting for the storm to pass through the gathering.
‘You cannot call that a fight, Guthorm!’ Lame-Leg managed, spraying his own beard with white flecks.
Guthorm held his arms out wide. ‘Maybe you will have better luck next time, In-Halti.’ Lame-Leg looked around for support but the others were over the thing now, many of them off crowding round Fastvi to be the first to make their wagers on the next contest. Sigurd gave Aslak some more silver and his friend nodded and ran to join the throng.
‘The lad again?’ Olaf asked.
‘Would you bet against him?’ Sigurd asked, which had Olaf scratching his bush of a beard.
‘Just because the boy can throw an axe straight doesn’t make him a fighter,’ Loker said, ‘and whoever fights him next will be ready for that trick.’
This was true enough, Sigurd admitted.
‘You have missed your chance, In-Halti,’ Ofeig Grettir said, wafting ringed fingers in Lame-Leg’s direction. ‘Now it is my turn to feed the worms with this troll shit of a thrall.’ He gestured at one of his four men to step forward and so the warrior did, though he did not look quite as cocky as the giant had, and who could blame him after what he had just seen?
But then Fastvi sent a boy running over to her husband and after listening to what he had to say Guthorm raised a hand for silence. ‘This will not
do.’ He shook his head. ‘No one is putting their silver on Ofeig Grettir’s man.’
‘Grettir is,’ Solveig murmured, ‘and he’ll be jarl-rich if his man wins.’
But Guthorm would not let it continue this way. ‘In order to balance the scales I will allow all four of Grettir’s men to fight him,’ he said, pointing at his thrall who still sat at the base of the Weeping Stone, his back to the carved rune serpent. This got the crowd humming and Fastvi’s weights clanking in the scales as folk parted with their ingots, bars and ring silver.
‘Guthorm is a greedy fool,’ Olaf said, thinking the farmer had gone too far now just to make sure enough people bet against his man. ‘One man can’t fight four. Not when he is chained to a damn rock and without mail or helmet or even a bloody beard on his chin.’
Sigurd cursed under his breath because he agreed with that, but it was too late to fetch Aslak back now without losing face and so he touched the iron pommel of the sword at his hip and invoked Óðin Hrafnáss, the raven god, because only his intervention now could save the young thrall from an end soaked in slaughter’s dew, and save Sigurd from being silver-light.
The young man with the crow-black hair was interested now. He had climbed to his feet and stood studying the four men arrayed before him, three in mail, one in tough leather armour, all with spears.
‘This could be one for your tales, skald,’ Solveig said to Hagal.
‘It’ll be too short for one of Crow-Song’s tales,’ Olaf said, to which Hagal replied that folk did not mind short tales as long as they were even more bloody than the long ones. This was well said and no one disagreed with him.
‘I’ll wager he won’t throw the axe this time,’ Svein said.
But Eid did not give the thrall an axe. This time he would fight with a spear, though Sigurd did not see how it could be much of a fight against four, whatever weapon they gave him. To sink his spear point into one of them would be to invite three more blades to gore him. And yet clearly some people had wagered their silver on the strange young man, which suggested they had seen more in him than the skill of throwing an axe well enough to sink it in another’s head.
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