‘Yield! I yield!’ he screamed, as the crowd hurled insults at him and waved their arms in disgust and disappointment. And Bjarni stepped up, lashing him across the temple with what was left of his stick. He sprawled onto the ground and lay still as a corpse.
The crowd roared even louder now, their fury carving a smile on Bjarni’s face, like a moulding iron cutting a handsome groove on a ship’s prow.
‘He had yielded,’ Bjorn snarled, hoisting a hand to placate the crowd. ‘He was screeching it like a fucking cat.’
Bjarni looked down at the man whose head was leaking blood onto the flattened grass, and shrugged. ‘I did not hear him,’ he said, all beard and teeth.
His brother shook his head, bewildered. ‘If we kill them we cannot beat them again next time, you half-wit,’ he said, then cursed under his breath and went to collect their winnings.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE KNÖRR WAS a good vessel, forty-five feet long, eleven feet wide and with a draught of a little under three feet. She had half decks both fore and aft, each with a few oar-holes for manoeuvring in harbour, and between these decks an open cargo hold lined with brushwood mats to protect the hull strakes. She could easily be run right up onto a beach for unloading and when she was in the sea she was as watertight as you could hope for, though still needed one man bailing on and off in a rough sea.
‘Ofeig Scowler was a lucky man to own such a vessel,’ Solveig said a little after dawn when they had the sail up to catch a fresh wind that blew them south along the pine-bristled coast.
‘He was not so lucky to get himself killed by being friends with that worm Guthorm,’ Sigurd said, and this got some ayes. For they were sure now that Guthorm and Æskil In-Halti had intended to murder them in their sleep for their silver and perhaps for whatever reward they would get from the oath-breaker King Gorm or Jarl Randver. For why else had Guthorm’s other guests had their weapons to hand in the dead of the night when the previous evening they had left them in the racks outside with those of the Skudeneshavn men?
In all likelihood Scowler had woken when the killing began, saw his host being attacked by the thrall and drew his own knife as any man would do, for all the good it did him.
‘I would sooner believe he was in on it too,’ Hagal said, ‘seeing as we have robbed him and made off with his ship, when he likely has kin somewhere looking out to sea for his return.’
‘You can believe whatever you like, for all the difference it makes now, Crow-Song,’ Olaf said, standing at the bow, eyes closed, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his left cheek.
And now and again Sigurd saw one or other of them staring at their new crew member as though there was some seiðr about him as dark as his long crow-black braids, or as if they were waiting for him to talk about that slaughter-filled night. Not that Black Floki had much to say about it, or about anything come to that. Solveig observed that clearly the lad did his talking with sharp edges, which was fine by him seeing as with Loker and Hendil aboard there was already too much talking for his ears.
‘What shall we call her then?’ Olaf asked, glancing from Sigurd to Solveig who stood at the stern like a king because he had a tiller in his hand again and that was all Solveig wanted from his life.
‘She’s wide, Olaf, so how about Ragnhild?’ Solveig said.
Olaf grinned at that, stroking his hand along the knörr’s sheer strake. ‘She’s too easy to handle to be named after my wife,’ he said, which got some laughter. A good sound on an unfamiliar ship.
‘How about Sea-Sow?’ Aslak suggested.
‘Frigg’s white arse, Aslak,’ Hagal blurted, ‘that is not a name that fits well in any saga tale I can think of. Can you imagine Jarl Randver trembling with fear at mention of the Sea-Sow?’
‘Well I like it,’ Sigurd said, for the knörr’s hull was round and deep like a sow’s belly, and so unlike his father’s dragon ships Reinen and Sea-Eagle that to give her a saga-worthy name might cause her offence. At least Sea-Sow was an honest name, as Olaf observed, and as soon as Solveig nodded his assent it was done.
‘We will name her properly when we find some good mead to throw across her bow,’ Sigurd said.
She was no fighting ship, and if a crew of raiding men, or even worse one of Jarl Randver’s crews, saw the knörr as prey and came after her, Sea-Sow would have no chance of outrunning them. So Solveig would keep them snugged up to the coast, giving them the option to make landfall rather than being caught at sea. But with her high sides she was as seaworthy as you could want and certainly more comfortable for living on than Otter, which they had left up on the beach below Guthorm’s longhouse and which was likely being rowed off somewhere even now as the wind played across Sea-Sow’s woollen sail. For there had been folk around Sea-Sow – or whatever she had been called while she had belonged to Ofeig Grettir – readying to push her back into the sea, when Aslak, Solveig, Loker and Hendil had come onto the shingle, swords and spear blades glinting in the moonlight. But at the sight of them those wide-eyed folk had scarpered like mice before an owl.
‘Did you see the lads who were looking after her?’ Olaf had asked Loker, nodding towards Otter as they put their shoulders into the knörr, shoving her back into the surf.
‘Not a hair of them,’ Loker had said, which was hardly surprising given that it was the third day now since the Skudeneshavn men had arrived at that place. Still, Olaf seemed disappointed about it for as far as he was concerned an agreement was an agreement.
‘Lads today have no honour,’ he grumbled into his beard, but was soon cheered when he and Sigurd had raised Sea-Sow’s sail and the day broke into that golden sort of morning on which you feel as though you could happily sail off the edge of the world and never look back.
‘Just think how much booty we could pile in there,’ Svein said now, looking down into the great hold which was empty but for the ballast, for Ofeig Scowler had not gone to Guthorm’s farm to trade. ‘Silver and bronze, furs, ivory and good drinking horns. And women.’ Teeth flashed in his red bristles.
‘Aye, we could carry a king’s hoard, lad, and wallow about out here until someone comes along to relieve us of it,’ Olaf replied, ‘which they likely wouldn’t break out in a sweat doing, seeing as we are only ten. And that’s including old Solveig whose best fighting days are behind him.’
‘Tell that to the seven-fingered goat-fucker who cut me!’ Solveig called from the stern, proving that for all his years his ears yet worked.
Olaf batted his objection away with a big hand, looking back to Svein. ‘Then of course there’s the how of us getting our hands on so much plunder in the first place.’
‘Well I am a big man and so have big thoughts,’ Svein said, tapping two thick fingers against his temple. ‘I cannot help it if you do not have the space in your thought box for such ambitions.’
And though the mood aboard Sea-Sow was as light as the white spume which the wind whipped off the choppy water, Olaf’s words sat in Sigurd’s skull like stone net sinkers. For ten men in a broad-beamed knörr was not something to trouble a man like Jarl Randver who could put nine ships into the fjord and at least six of them bristling with Spear-Norse. It seemed to Sigurd that his revenge sat far ahead of him, beyond his reach. A thing as unclenchable as Bifröst, the shimmering path connecting the worlds of gods and men. And even if he had got the Allfather’s attention on the hanging tree or up at the Weeping Stone, it would not last if he did not continue to earn it.
He put this to Asgot who unlike Sigurd seemed untroubled as the wind flicked his bone-tied braids around his face and Sea-Sow followed the jagged coastline east between Jørpeland and the hammer-shaped island a Thór’s throw from the shore.
‘The gods are capricious, Sigurd, as your father would attest if he could,’ the godi said. ‘But now that they have taken an interest in you, which I am certain they have for we have called them as though with the Gjallarhorn itself, they will not turn their backs again in a matter of days. For them the lag between two ful
l moons is like the time it takes for a sparrow to fly into a longhouse and out through the smoke hole.’ His mouth warped like a bad oar. ‘It is more likely they will treat our ambitious undertaking as they would a game of tafl.’ He moved an imaginary gaming piece through the air. ‘Placing obstacles in our way to see how we measure against them.’
A cheer went up from the bow where Aslak was pointing at a shoal of flying fish that splashed into the waves like a handful of thrown pebbles. The men were happy to be at sea again and in a proper boat. And not rowing.
‘Gather your strength, Sigurd.’ Asgot pressed a gnarly finger against his own temple beside a greying braid. ‘And hone your purpose to a keen edge. Every step you take, every wave against the bow brings you closer to the spoils.’
But not the spoils of a raiding man, Sigurd thought. Not silver and slaves and weapons, though those things might be his too. But rather the blood plunder he would take with the blade, from those who had earned his hate. Those who had killed his parents and his brothers and taken Runa.
These thoughts raised the hairs on Sigurd’s neck. They fanned the glowing coals in his gut, making them red hot.
The godi saw it and nodded. ‘Feed the fire of it, Haraldarson,’ he said. ‘Keep that fire burning and the gods will stay close.’ He grinned. ‘Even the Æsir love a good fire. More now than ever with Fimbulvetr approaching. For that bone-cracking winter marks the beginning of their doom. They search the world for the worthiest of men to stand beside them at Ragnarök.’
‘I need men too,’ Sigurd said, watching a gull dive to snatch something up from the waves.
Asgot nodded towards Black Floki who stood amidships on the port side with his face to the sea spray that was soaking his crow-black hair. ‘We have found our wolf, yes?’
Sigurd looked at the strange young man who was death with a blade, a warrior who might even have made his father’s great champion Slagfid bleed if the two had ever faced each other in a fight. Perhaps Asgot was right and Floki was the spirit wolf of Sigurd’s hanging vision. And perhaps they were playing some sort of game in which the gods had a hand. And so Sigurd would take Sea-Sow up the Lysefjord to search for the brothers Bjarni and Bjorn, for men foolish enough to murder a man who was Jarl Randver’s kin by marriage were just the sort of men he needed. If he found them he would persuade them to oath-tie themselves to him and then there would be two more swords aimed at Randver’s throat.
But in Valhöll the gods were moving their pieces across the board and their laughter must have been shaking the great roof beams and spilling the mead from their horns.
‘I feel like I’m sailing up Frigg’s cunny and might never get out again,’ Olaf said, mouth open, head tipped so far back that from behind you could not see his neck at all.
‘Then Gungnir should be the least famous of Óðin’s two spears,’ Hagal said, also looking up at the towering rock around them, ‘if he has to fill this.’
It was Sigurd’s second time down the Lysefjord but he had been an infant the first time and now he was as awe-brimmed as the others, for the place stole a man’s breath from his lungs. Green water against brutal, majestic mountain walls which rose some three thousand feet up into the cloud fog to give a man neck ache.
‘You are right, Olaf,’ Solveig said, filling his lungs, ‘you can almost smell the gods. There is as much magic here as there was in that fen.’
No one disagreed with that, their eyes round and glutted yet still unable to drink it all in. Protected from the day’s northerly breeze the water was calm enough that ducks bobbed in lines in the shadows of the cliffs and every jumping fish made great moving rings that your eyes could follow for fifty feet or more. Hendil observed that you didn’t need to crane your neck if you were clever about it, for rock and sky were reflected upon the still water in such perfection that a drunken man might think he could step over the knörr’s side and not get his shoes wet.
And though there was only a breath of wind, barely enough to push them along at more than a walking pace, no one complained. For that breath was like a god’s whisper and every man felt it on the back of his neck.
‘It is the kind of fjord you think of when men tell their stories of the old times,’ Svein said, ‘when heroes fought trolls and Thór came down from Valhöll to brain great serpents with his hammer.’
‘Ah,’ Hendil said, grinning, ‘I am sure Solveig remembers it well.’
‘Watch your tongue, youngen!’ Solveig barked. ‘I may be old, but my belt still knows its way around an arse.’
They lined Sea-Sow’s sides, staring up at the great jagged walls and mist-wreathed heights, some of them touching iron amulets or knife blades for luck, or muttering invocations under their breath. They were deep into the fjord now and if Sea-Sow sprang a leak, or if a storm whipped up from somewhere, they would die. There was nowhere along those steep cliffs to make landfall, no beach or cove, no man-made wharves or jetties. There was just rock and water as deep, Solveig said, as the distance between Yggdrasil’s leafy canopy and its Nídhögg-gnawed roots.
‘Well it is easy to see why the brothers came up here,’ Loker said, which was true enough, Sigurd thought. For if the water was calm and you did take your boat up against the rock wall, and if you could find a suitable place to put your feet and hands, you could scramble up like a goat and vanish into the trees and who would ever find you? The ancient rocks cried fresh water into the sea and there must be more fish in those dark depths than stars in the night sky, which made the Lysefjord a good place to hide from a jarl who had dragon ships and spear-warriors and a thirst for your death.
‘Which makes me wonder how we will ever find them,’ Sigurd said.
Much of the towering granite either side that was not obscured by dark green pine and scrub was bone-white, which was how the place had got the name Light Fjord. At least that was what Crow-Song told them, though with a skald you could never be sure. Still, it was as good an explanation as anyone could think of.
‘This Bjarni and Bjorn,’ Solveig said, ‘either they were carried here by a bloody great sea-eagle, or else they came by boat. Let’s assume they would want to keep hold of that boat but would not want anyone coming up the fjord to see it.’
‘So they’ve pulled it up somewhere and hidden it,’ Olaf said.
Solveig nodded. ‘We keep our eyes skinned and we think like them. Maybe we see smoke. Maybe we hear something.’ He shrugged. ‘If they were brought by a sea-eagle I do not know what to say.’
‘Well I am busy, as you can see, so do not ask me to find these brothers you are after,’ Svein said, standing at the port-side stern with a weighted line and hook in the water. They had found four such nettle-hemp lines wound round blocks of pine and stowed in a chest by the tiller, along with two good whetstones, an old set of scales, a fur hat, an iron cauldron and Ofeig Grettir’s drinking horn.
‘You cannot be so busy seeing as you haven’t caught anything yet but for a tangle of slime,’ Aslak said.
‘That is because you all talk so much and the fish can hear you,’ Svein grumbled.
Hendil glanced at Loker, a smile in his beard. ‘I have never seen a fish with ears,’ he said, then let out a long rumbling fart. ‘I wonder if they are afraid of thunder.’
‘I am afraid of thunder when it comes out of your arse, Hendil,’ Olaf growled.
‘See there,’ Asgot said, pointing to a stand of flickering birch set back from the shore across the other side of the fjord.
At first Sigurd saw nothing but then he made out a thin curl of smoke rising from amongst the trees. ‘It is a landing place at least,’ he said.
‘And it took Asgot’s old eyes to see it,’ Olaf said. ‘It would be on the other damned side though. Chances are they’ll see us coming and have plenty of time to disappear into some troll hole.’
‘Still, it was not so difficult after all,’ Hendil said, which was the way with Hendil, he always saw the sun through the clouds and thought things would turn out well.
/> But when they had moored Sea-Sow and found the log house among the trees it turned out not to be the two renegade brothers but an old man and his wife. They had seen the knörr coming across the fjord, yet rather than hide they had stood waiting patiently on the shore and even when Sigurd and the others had jumped onto the rocks with spears in their hands the old couple had seemed unworried.
‘We don’t get many visitors,’ the old man said, ‘much less raiders.’ He turned his gummy smile on each of them in turn. ‘But then we’ve got nothing worth stealing. Well, there’s Vebiorg here,’ he said, waving at his wife. ‘You can take her. But I warn you she can’t cook like she used to.’
‘You are a braver man than I,’ Olaf said.
The old man shook his head. ‘She’s deaf as a rock,’ he said, ‘and if you take her away you’ll be wishing you were too before long.’
Vebiorg narrowed her eyes at her husband, telling Sigurd that she might be old and deaf but she was no fool.
‘So why do you live out here with only fish and goats for company, old man?’ Sigurd asked. For a moment the old man seemed to be considering whether or not to answer this, but then he pointed west back towards the fjord’s mouth. ‘I upset a powerful man,’ he said, then shrugged his narrow shoulders as though to say it was a thing easily done.
‘Not Jarl Randver of Hinderå?’ Olaf said.
The old man frowned. ‘Randver? Don’t know him. This was a long time ago.’ He glanced back to Sigurd. ‘Before you were born, youngen.’ He clawed his wispy beard. ‘Gunnlæif, who men call Grunter, was jarl at Hinderå when I was last there.’
‘Then you have been hiding a long time,’ Olaf said, ‘for they burnt Grunter in a handsome karvi some twenty summers ago or more.’
‘Ah, I would like to have seen that, for you do not get so many proper send-offs like that any more.’ His white brows arched above his rheumy eyes then. ‘Or maybe you do, but what would we know of it?’
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