In-Halti’s man needed no invitation. He strode forward and the steel-song of their swords rang out, echoing off the Weeping Stone. It was what these folk had come to this place for and they lapped it up like cats at the cream, shrieking and squawking at every blow. Blades thundered against limewood and clunked off shield bosses and then Sigurd leapt, thrusting his sword into Hagberth’s right shoulder, but the man’s leather armour stopped the blade and he roared in pain, slamming his shield into Sigurd’s and forcing him back.
‘You are a dead man, Hagberth,’ Sigurd said, then nodded at the Weeping Stone beneath which the black-haired thrall sat watching him, his face still spattered with dead men’s blood. ‘Do you think your wife will raise a stone in your honour?’ Sigurd grinned at him. ‘I do not think so, Hagberth. I think she will get over your death by getting under the first man she sees.’
‘Hold your tongue, whelp!’ Hagberth snarled but Sigurd laughed. He had practised with sword, shield and spear since the first day he had been strong enough to lift them, but he also knew that words could be weapons too. They could rob a man of his self-possession. A well-placed insult could pierce an enemy’s battle-craft like a spear through a shield. It could make a warrior do something reckless.
But not Hagberth. With a man like that it did the opposite, because he had fought too many battles to fall for such tricks. If anything such a tongue-lashing only made a man like Hagberth more careful.
Which was precisely what Sigurd was counting on. No thundering charge from Hagberth now. In-Halti’s man would not fall for this pup’s wiles. He came slow. His shield across his body, eyes sharp as rivets, sword arm not too far from his body and the shield before it as if to offer it as a target.
And Sigurd let him come.
He waited, his heart pummelling his breastbone, the muscles in his arms and legs bunched tight as ships’ knots. He would get one chance. No more than that. The crowd and his own friends were shouting but to Sigurd it was the sound of waves hurling themselves against rocks, or the murmur of blood pulsing in his ears.
Come on then. Let us end this.
There was little more than a stride’s worth of ground between them now. Suddenly Sigurd swung his left leg, smashing his greave-guarded shin into the lower rim of Hagberth’s shield and driving the shield up into the man’s jaw and throwing his head back with a loud crack of bone.
Hagberth stumbled back, desperate to put distance between them, his mouth welling with blood that spilled into his beard and poured down the hard leather sheathing his chest.
‘Do you yield, Hagberth?’ Sigurd asked, not that he expected to hear an answer for Hagberth’s jaw had shattered like an ill-forged blade and he would never speak again. And yet his answer could not be mistaken by anyone there as he shook his head, slopping blood left and right, then struck his sword’s hilt against his shield, and Sigurd admired him for it. ‘I told you you were a dead man,’ he said, striding forward, then he swung Troll-Tickler with all the strength he could muster and it chopped Hagberth’s shield in half, taking off his arm. Gasps and groans rose on the breeze as Lame-Leg’s man dropped his sword and fell to his knees, clutching the gory stump, his eyes impossibly wide, his beard frothed with blood.
Sigurd bent and picked up the man’s sword, then yanked Hagberth’s right hand from the messy stump where the left had been, wrapping the blood-slick hand around the weapon’s grip, keeping his own hand tight on Hagberth’s so that the man could not let go.
‘When you see my father Jarl Harald sitting with the Æsir in Óðin’s hall, tell him I will not join him and my brothers until my sister is safe and I have avenged him.’ Hagberth was dying now. Sigurd could see the light fading in his eyes like a guttering lamp flame. ‘Did you hear me, Hagberth?’ he yelled. ‘Tell my father I will avenge him.’
Hagberth managed to nod, the gesture loud in the silence which now reigned at the Weeping Stone. Still gripping the man’s hand around his sword, Sigurd placed the point of Troll-Tickler against the inside of Hagberth’s collar bone and brought his weight down, driving the blade deep into the man’s body to rip open his heart. Hagberth gasped and shuddered and died, and Sigurd stood, hauling his sword out and noting the dark gobbets hooked on the blade’s notches. Then he turned to Guthorm and those gathered around the rune stone.
‘Does anyone else want to fight me?’ he roared, struggling to see their faces for the black spots marring his vision. But no one did, which was just as well for he thought he might fall flat on his face. Then he felt an arm round his shoulder and Olaf was there, the bulk of him like a tree for Sigurd to lean against and together they walked away from the Weeping Stone. And the wolf-eyed young man who watched them go.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘WELL I DON’T think we have made many friends here,’ Solveig said, looking around Guthorm’s dark, smoke-filled longhouse. Æskil Lame-Leg and Ofeig Scowler were there salving their wounded pride with Guthorm’s ale and so were many others who had brought silver to the Weeping Stone – and lost it in most cases – who had accepted the karl’s invitation to spend the night in his hall before setting off for their homes in the morning.
‘If anything I’d say you’ve got another enemy in Lame-Leg,’ Solveig went on, turning Sigurd’s eye towards Æskil who had his beard half stuffed in Guthorm’s ear and a scowl on his face worse than Ofeig Grettir’s.
‘That may be so, Solveig, but they know Sigurd now,’ Olaf said, ‘and that is worth something.’ He downed a great wash of the bad ale and dragged a hand across his mouth, frowning. ‘Still, I don’t think we will find many arms for our oars here as it turns out.’
‘Arms for our oars?’ Solveig’s grin was sour as the ale. ‘We don’t even have a ship.’
‘Yes, well that is another thing,’ Olaf said, drowning the words in his cup. ‘But these are not real fighting men anyway. They like their quiet lives and now and then watching the blood fly up at Guthorm’s rune stone, but they are no good to us.’ The mood in the hall was sombre. Men and women talked in low voices and drank steadily, and by the hearth, where Hagal said he had told many a saga over the years, an old man sat on a stool playing a bone whistle while his ancient friend sang in a voice as worn as an old shoe. The song was the one about a fisherman who swam down to Rán’s kingdom under the sea to steal an arm ring for his wife. But the man fell in love with the Mother of the Waves and drowned in her embrace, which, according to Olaf, was his own fault. And neither was this sort of song likely to lift the mood, he told the old man, who showed what he cared by launching into a song about a boy whose bad luck brought him to outlawry and a bad death.
‘A reputation is like a good sword,’ Hagal said, ‘or a good saga tale come to that. You cannot make it overnight. It takes time. Word of Sigurd’s time on the ash tree—’
‘Ash tree? It was an alder,’ Loker said.
Hagal shook his head. ‘Now it is a great ash, Loker, like the one from which Óðin One-Eye hung for nine days in his search for wisdom. That is the way of it in my stories and word of it, and of Sigurd’s fight against the giant at the Weeping Stone—’
‘Giant?’ Olaf said.
Hagal raised a hand to still any objections before they could come. ‘I think it sounds better that Sigurd beat the giant than that other little man,’ he said, which the others conceded with grunts and nods. ‘These tales will hop from ear to ear like fleas across a bed fur and like the roots of Yggdrasil itself Sigurd’s reputation will spread.’ A broad smile filled his beard then. ‘It has already begun.’
Sigurd did not doubt it, for he had watched the skald wreathe amongst Guthorm’s guests like smoke from the hearth, sharing their ale and pouring the spiced mead of Sigurd’s tale in their ears.
‘We have made no friends here but we have made plenty of silver,’ Svein said, not seeing, or perhaps not caring, that those two things were linked as surely as the chain at the neck of the young killer who was back in the corner of Guthorm’s hall.
‘Aye, and you e
arned that silver, lad,’ Olaf said, raising his cup to Sigurd who nodded and raised his own, glad for the rough-hewn bench beneath his arse and the pea and goat-meat broth that was putting strength back in his bones. ‘But next time kick the shield into the whoreson’s face at the beginning rather than waiting till you look like you’re about to drown in your own sweat.’
‘It was all part of my scheme, Uncle,’ Sigurd said.
‘I’m sure it was,’ Olaf said, one eyebrow hoisted.
‘Sigurd was drawing it out to give all those folk a reason not to string Guthorm up by the bollocks,’ Hendil said, banging his cup against Sigurd’s.
‘And while Guthorm must be grateful for it, for he is sharing his food and ale with us, all the same I do not trust him,’ Aslak said. ‘What is to say he has not sent a man off to Hinderå to tell Jarl Randver that we are here? Or even sent to the king at Avaldsnes?’ He gestured at the steaming bowls and hunks of bread on the table before them. ‘Perhaps he has put this on just to keep us here until our enemies arrive.’
‘We could be the flies in the web,’ Loker conceded. ‘There is no doubt Guthorm has a nose for easy silver and he would make himself jarl-rich by giving us up to either Randver or King Gorm.’
‘Perhaps that is what they are talking about,’ Asgot said, nodding towards Guthorm and Lame-Leg and slurping broth from his spoon, ‘for they seem to be friends again now.’
‘We will leave in the morning,’ Sigurd said.
Olaf nodded, saying that skulking off now would not look very good, besides which you didn’t throw a man’s hospitality back in his face even if you did not entirely trust him and the only ale he had left tasted like horse piss. ‘I would speak to Guthorm to see if he knows of any other karls in Rogaland or Ryfylke, or even east in Nedenes Amt, who might have a reason to prefer a dead Jarl Randver to a living, breathing one.’ He looked at his friends, trying not to wince at the taste of Guthorm’s ale and wishing they had saved some of the better stuff the night before. ‘It would be good if you all did the same instead of huddling together like women around the loom.’ There were some murmurs at that but they could not disagree that their time would be better spent finding out what they could than sitting there like boys too shy or too arrogant to join in with the rest.
‘There is a girl over there who looks the kind to know all the important things,’ Hendil said, smiling at a pretty girl with long wavy uncovered hair. To the others’ surprise she smiled back.
‘And if she doesn’t then perhaps her friend does,’ Loker added, slapping his friend on the back as they emptied their cups and got up from the bench.
And in a few moments Sigurd and Asgot were alone but for Solveig who had fallen asleep, his head against the old tapestry behind them, his mouth catching smoke and flies.
‘What do you think, Asgot?’ Sigurd asked.
The godi lifted his bowl, eyeing the room over the rim as he drained the last of the broth. ‘I think if I were to sit down next to any of these sheep they would piss themselves.’ It was true, for since they had learnt that Asgot was the priest who had shape-shifted to escape a drowning death at Avaldsnes they had looked at him the way livestock will look at a prowling wolf, wide eyes fixed on him but greasing off the moment he looked their way.
But that had not been what Sigurd meant and the godi knew it. Still, Asgot held his tongue until the sharpness of Sigurd’s glare hooked the words out of him.
‘I think it is not about Guthorm at all. Or Lame-Leg or his handsome friend,’ he said, nodding towards Ofeig Scowler, ‘but then you know that better than I.’ He turned and looked into Sigurd’s eyes, their glares squared up like opponents at the Weeping Stone. ‘Or do I have to mix up one of my draughts again and pour it down your throat?’
‘Can’t be worse than this,’ Sigurd said, lifting the cup to his lips though their eyes were still locked. ‘I remember,’ he said.
‘I know you do,’ Asgot said, turning his gaze towards Guthorm who had his mouth against his wife’s ear now that Lame-Leg was limping off through the throng to empty his bladder.
‘But I don’t know what it means,’ Sigurd said. Fastvi looked up at Sigurd then and gave him a smile that did not venture north of her lips. Sigurd smiled and nodded at her then turned back to Asgot. ‘It is like trying to make sense of one of Hagal’s stories after too much mead.’ Sigurd’s body ached and he was so exhausted that his very blood seemed to want to stop flowing and rest. His skull hurt so much that he wondered if Hagberth had cracked it with that blow from his sword’s pommel, and the last thing he wanted to do was to try to untangle the knot of the visions that still stalked his mind to the shadow beat of Asgot’s spirit drum.
‘You are tired, Sigurd,’ Asgot said half smiling, fingering a silver ring he had knotted into his beard. Sigurd could not say where he had got it. ‘Perhaps this will all be clearer in the morning.’
Sigurd closed his eyes and for a moment he was back in Eik-hjálmr his father’s hall, the hum of his people in his ears like the sea breaking on the rocks down in the bay, the sweet smoke of the hearth in his nose, his eyelids burnished by the golden flicker of lamp flames. But all that was gone now and only existed in the thought chest of his mind where he would keep it for as long as he could. He opened his eyes and the truth hit him like a pail of cold water. This was no jarl’s mead hall but the low-roofed, ill-made longhouse of a karl who thought more of himself than he had the right to. A farmer who grew fat on the scraps but lacked the courage to run the boar through himself.
I do not need such men as these, Sigurd thought, shaking his head. Not men but sheep, and sheep are no good to me.
The ale was beginning to dull the edge of his thoughts and he welcomed it because it also numbed the aches and pains in his muscles and bones.
‘It tastes better the more you drink,’ he said to Asgot. ‘That is something at least.’
‘It tastes less the more you drink,’ Solveig beside them said, his eyes still closed, head still back against the planks. ‘There’s a difference.’
‘Bollocks,’ someone growled and Sigurd turned round to see Ofeig Grettir standing behind him, a lump of cheese in one hand, his ale cup in the other. He gestured with the cheese towards Solveig. ‘I had put a wager on the old man being dead,’ he said and Sigurd waited for Solveig to bite but it seemed he had fallen asleep again. ‘Mind if I sit?’ Scowler asked.
Sigurd gestured to the empty bench across from him and Ofeig Scowler nodded and went to take his seat, slamming the cup down on Guthorm’s rough-hewn table.
‘What do you want, Ofeig Grettir?’ Sigurd said.
‘I wanted to thank you for winning today,’ Scowler said. ‘I had already lost four men to that Hel-spawn boy,’ he said, nodding to the thrall chained in the dark corner, ‘and things were as bad as they could be. But at least I won some silver on you.’ The scar that gouged across his forehead and down over his right eye was even more terrible close up but the man seemed quite used to it. ‘Though if I am to tell the truth, for a moment out there I thought Lame-Leg’s man had the better of you.’ He grinned. Or at least it was what passed for a grin on that face. ‘That was a Loki trick with the shield, hey. I must get myself some greaves like yours. You’d have cracked a shin otherwise.’
‘Do you find yourself in many fights then?’ Sigurd asked.
‘Look at me,’ Scowler said.
Sigurd nodded and could not help but smile.
‘But I choose my fights carefully,’ Ofeig went on. There was a glint in his right eye then, telling Sigurd that he still saw out of it despite the gash. ‘Unlike you, Sigurd Haraldarson. And I’m not talking about your little brawl up at the Weeping Stone today. Kings and jarls is a different thing. A heavy thing, lad.’
‘I did not choose this fight,’ Sigurd said. ‘It lies before me like the sea before a ship’s bow. Those who betrayed my father and slaughtered my mother, my brothers and my friends, they wove their own deaths when they did not kill me.’
‘T
hat’s as may be,’ Scowler said, ‘but you might as well fight a troll with a toothpick. Still, I can see you are a young man of purpose, Sigurd, and from the looks of it you have some good spear arms to call on, friends who will follow where you lead, and that’s to your credit. Though you will need many more than this,’ he said, gesturing towards Olaf and Svein where they sat talking to a knot of local folk.
‘Will you join me then, Ofeig Grettir?’ Sigurd asked.
‘Me? Ha! No,’ he said, biting off a hunk of cheese. ‘The only decent fighters I could bring to a disagreement lie dead in Guthorm’s barn. As for me, I have little affection for Jarl Randver or King Gorm, but neither do I have any great desire to get a spear in my belly for helping you.’
‘There will be plunder in it,’ Sigurd said. ‘Even Jarl Randver is as rich as Fáfnir these days.’
‘Silver is little good to a dead man,’ Scowler pointed out. ‘But I do know of two men who would walk through dragon’s fire to join a crew that had the balls to take on Jarl Randver of Hinderå. And not for the silver either but just for the blood of it.’ He washed the cheese down with ale and wiped his mouth with his hand. ‘These two are brothers who were stupid enough to get themselves outlawed for killing a man and refusing to pay the weregeld to the dead man’s kin.’ He wafted a hand through the smoke. ‘Some fight over a woman, I heard, and what with brothers being brothers once one was in the mire the other soon followed. Jarl Randver had their father thrown from a cliff.’
‘Why did Randver care so much about it?’ Sigurd asked.
Scowler pursed his lips, scratching the thick bristles of his beard. ‘Something to do with the man whom the brothers skewered being married to Randver’s sister. These boys did not concern themselves with the details of the thing,’ he said, sharing a look with Asgot that said You know what young men are like these days. Then he shrugged. ‘But they were very fond of their father from what I could see.’
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