God of Vengeance

by Giles Kristian

  ‘As you can see, Hagal, my son will have to take his draw-knife and smooth the edges of this one,’ the jarl said. ‘I had to do the same with his mother,’ he added, his sharp eyes softening for a heartbeat. Runa recalled hearing some years ago that Thorgrima, Randver’s wife, had died after some drawn-out illness, and yet clearly she was even now never far from his thoughts.

  ‘If you think she is spirited you should see her brother, my lord,’ Hagal said. ‘Sigurd is strutting around the place crowing like a cock on a dungheap. He thinks he is a jarl already. But jarl of who or what I could not say.’

  It was clear they had already talked about this, that Hagal was saying it again for Amleth and Runa’s benefit.

  ‘He should count himself lucky that he is alive,’ Amleth said, scratching his neatly combed beard.

  Jarl Randver leant back as a thrall put a plate of glistening meat before him. He inhaled the steam coming from it then held a piece between finger and thumb as he cut it with his fine bone-handled eating knife. The delicious smell greased Runa’s mouth.

  ‘Crow-Song has been telling me that he believes young Sigurd will never accept peace between us,’ Randver told his son. ‘I told Hagal that I am willing to pay the young man the bride price that would have lined Jarl Harald’s chest had he still been alive.’ He grimaced. ‘But the skald has convinced me that Sigurd hungers only for revenge. The fool is drowning in his own blood-lust and there is nothing to be done about it.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Amleth asked.

  ‘Nothing that will help her brother’s future,’ he said, glancing at Runa. ‘It is a shame though, for having young Sigurd’s blessing on this marriage would have been . . . useful.’

  ‘Why doesn’t Hagal just tell us where we can find him?’ Amleth said. ‘Better still take us there. Face to face you could convince him that this is the only way. If he still refuses . . .’ he shrugged, ‘then we can kill him.’ He turned to Hagal. ‘How many men does he have?’

  Hagal grimaced. ‘Not nearly enough to crew a dragon,’ he said. ‘Some of them are good fighters though and Olaf, his father’s sword-brother, is no fool when it comes to war. There is even a woman. A shieldmaiden.’

  Randver’s brows arched and Amleth grinned. ‘If this is one of your stories, Crow-Song, save it for my wedding night,’ he said, but Hagal raised a hand.

  ‘It is true,’ he said. ‘And she is a fierce fighter from what I have heard. Cut off a man called Loker’s hand.’

  ‘And this Loker is one of Sigurd’s men?’ the jarl asked.

  Hagal nodded, a handsome smile in his fair beard.

  Randver laughed. ‘Then perhaps there will be no fight between us after all,’ he said. ‘If we leave them alone they will kill each other.’

  Now Crow-Song shook his head. ‘As I have told you, Jarl Randver, Sigurd is coming. As surely as night.’

  ‘He’s coming here?’ Amleth said incredulously. ‘Is he mad?’

  Hagal’s lip twitched as if to say it was possible. ‘He believes he is Óðin-favoured,’ he said.

  ‘Did you know he hung in a tree for nine days to get the Allfather’s attention?’ Randver asked Amleth, stabbing a piece of meat with his knife. ‘Knowing Crow-Song it was likely four days. Maybe five. But still. What kind of a man does such a thing?’ He popped the meat into his mouth and began to chew, considering the question himself.

  Runa’s thoughts twisted in her head like snakes in a pit. Perhaps Sigurd had lost his mind. It would not be hard to believe after all that had happened to him. Or perhaps Óðin Draugadróttin, Lord of the Dead, really was guiding him, steering him towards some reckoning because he was a god who loved chaos.

  ‘When is he coming then?’ Amleth asked Hagal directly, his eyes still round with the shock of learning that Sigurd and his rag-tag crew had the balls to come to his father’s land, where they would face a war band second in strength only to the king’s. It would be a slaughter.

  Hagal looked at Jarl Randver as though seeking permission to tell them.

  ‘When is my brother coming, Hagal?’ Runa said, drilling the skald with her own glare. It was to be another betrayal then, this time by a story-teller. An ambush and red murder to finish it once and for all.

  Randver nodded and Hagal grinned at her, raising one fair brow. ‘Why, on your wedding day, of course. When else?’

  Runa thought she might be sick all over Jarl Randver’s plate. Her legs threatened to buckle and she put a hand out and gripped the jarl’s table, steadying herself.

  ‘I can see why you have been given the high seat, Hagal Worm-Tongue,’ she managed, and he seemed to cringe at that, as the jarl fluttered a hand at his son telling him to take the girl back to their seats across the way before she upset their guest further.

  Amleth grabbed her hand and hauled her back through the smoke and fug, past the tables and benches thronged with drinkers, and when they got back to their own board there were plates of succulent-looking meat waiting for them.

  ‘Well, brother?’ Hrani said. ‘Did he tell you?’

  So Hrani knew, then. Amleth nodded, heavy-browed, clearly annoyed that their father had told Hrani before him.

  ‘Good!’ his brother said. ‘It will make it much more fun if you know.’ Bloody grease was dripping from the meat skewered on the end of his knife and he waved it in Hagal’s direction. ‘Hey then, little brother, it seems there will be one good performance on your wedding night after all, for Crow-Song will have a great story to tell.’

  A story of treachery and blood, Runa thought, pushing the plate away from her.

  Like they always were.

  They came to Osøyro on a sleeping sea, the knörr barely disturbing the dark water as she slid up to a wharf whose ancient piles were encrusted with barnacles and glossy black mussels, and whose planks were slick with moss, and rotting. There was an old karvi tied up against it, but as Olaf murmured when they got a better look at it, any man stepping aboard her would likely put his foot through the hull and find himself wearing a fish for a shoe.

  ‘She was a fine ship once,’ Sigurd said, wondering why anyone would leave such a vessel unloved and sitting there to be devoured by wind and rain and time. The yard was stored on the oar trees fore and aft, and the sail furled on it was in a poor state by the looks. She had been painted long ago, lines of red and ochre above the water-stroke, but this adornment was a faded stain hinting at a better time. Now, much of the dark, waterlogged oak had been painted white by the gulls, some of which took off shrieking from their roosts upon the beam as Sea-Sow drew up.

  Olaf and Svein made her fast with ropes and Olaf nodded to Sigurd who nodded back, both of them relieved not to have made a pig’s ear of the landing even in that flat sea and with less than a fart’s worth of wind to worry them. For five was too small a crew for a ship like Sea-Sow, yet Sigurd had insisted that he would arrive at the place with no more. Not that there was anyone down on the jetty to meet them.

  ‘And this jarl lives here?’ Svein called, looking around the wide bay across which his voice carried like thunder across a cloud-laden sky.

  ‘Keep it down, big mouth,’ Olaf said, but Svein had only said what Sigurd himself had been thinking. As well as the karvi there were three small fishing boats roped to the jetty, but even one of these was full of rainwater, and Sigurd could not get the scene to balance in the scales of his mind with what he had heard about Jarl Hakon Brandingi, this hall-burning warrior who had given children nightmares and grown rich on plunder.

  There had been houses south of here, unseen behind rocks and trees but given away by spear-straight plumes of hearth smoke rising into the still, grey sky. And it was onto a gently sloping beach near these dwellings that they had driven Sea-Sow that morning so that all the others could disembark leaving only Sigurd, Olaf, Asgot, Svein and Valgerd aboard.

  Now, these five clambered up onto the jetty, which was no easy thing at low tide, and stood there waiting for Sigurd to decide what they would do next.

&nbs
p; ‘So who is going to stay with the ship then?’ Olaf asked. Sigurd swore under his breath, annoyed with himself for not bringing another two, the brothers perhaps. But he had expected Jarl Hakon’s people to appear at the sight of a trader like Sea-Sow and they would have looked after the ship as tradition required. Not that there was anything on the ship worth stealing, seeing as the crew all had their weapons with them and Sigurd had decided to take no chances where his silver was concerned, burying all of it in a pine wood on an uninhabited island south of a place which Solveig had guessed was Røtinga.

  But Sigurd had nevertheless wanted to make a certain kind of impression on this old jarl, which was why he had brought those standing with him now and them alone. For apart from himself and Asgot they each wore brynjur of polished rings that were by themselves worth small hoards. They wore belts of the best leather, gleaming buckles, shining pin brooches in their cloaks and carried impressive war gear: swords, spears, shields and, in Svein’s case, a long-hafted axe. And Sigurd thought they looked like war gods.

  Even Valgerd, for all her hawk-faced, golden-braided beauty, was made savage by the blade-skill they knew she possessed. Hagal Crow-Song had said that when he looked at Valgerd he saw the goddess Freyja, whose darker side is witnessed now and then in tales of her riding into battle on the bristled back of the boar Hildisvíni.

  Valgerd and Olaf had their fine helmets but Svein had nothing but his mass of flaming red hair and it did not take a skald like Crow-Song to put folk in mind of the thunder god Thór when they laid eyes on Svein.

  So Sigurd had come with war gods and Jarl Hakon would see it.

  ‘You will have to stay with the ship, Asgot,’ Sigurd said now, knowing full well what the godi would think of that idea. ‘It is important to fill this jarl’s eyes with gleaming rings and war gear,’ he said before Asgot could unleash his defiance.

  ‘I am no guard dog!’ Asgot snarled.

  ‘That is strange for you seem to have a hound’s love of bones,’ Olaf dared, drawing their eyes to the animal bones plaited in the godi’s silver braids.

  Asgot glared at Olaf, who was putting on his helmet and trying not to smirk.

  ‘Why don’t we leave the bird to look after the ship,’ Svein suggested, ‘for I am sure Sigurd has taught it how to sail over these last days and if there is trouble it can simply raise the yard and slip away.’

  ‘I’d wager the creature has more wits in its skull than you have in yours, boy,’ Asgot said, resigned, it seemed, to staying.

  Fjölnir had been spitting mad when Sigurd had taken her out of the bucket, but now she was calming down as he let her settle on his arm, soothing her with compliments about her night-glossed feathers and deep-mindedness.

  ‘From the looks of it we will not find what we have come here for anyway,’ Sigurd said. ‘This does not look like the kind of place where we will find Sword-Norse for our fight against Randver.’

  ‘Aye, that’s true enough,’ Olaf said.

  ‘Doesn’t even look like the kind of place where we might find ale,’ Svein put in, scratching his flaming-red beard. ‘Or women come to that.’ He turned to Valgerd. ‘Which is a shame for you, hey!’ he said through a grin.

  ‘Did your friend say something?’ the shieldmaiden said to Sigurd, nodding in Svein’s direction. ‘You will have to explain to him that I do not speak the language of trolls.’ And with that, a blow to Svein sharper than any sword because he thought he was very handsome indeed, they set off clomping along the old jetty towards the worn track that would, if Olaf’s memory served him well, lead them to Jarl Hakon’s hall.

  The track wound up between birch woods still dripping from earlier rain and then levelled off by rocks upon which an iron brazier sat rusting. Sigurd turned around and noted that even if the beacon were flaming like a god’s pyre, no one at sea would see it for the birch trees which had been allowed to grow tall.

  Two hooded crows sat kraa-ing near the top of an old beech tree and they started Fjölnir croaking but she did not try to fly, because she knew her foot was tied to the string wound round Sigurd’s arm.

  ‘Are you sure this is the place?’ Sigurd asked Olaf.

  Olaf nodded, pointing his spear at the beech whose leaves were still mostly green although Sigurd could smell the turn of the seasons on the air.

  ‘When I came here as a boy there was a man strung up by the neck from that branch there,’ he said. ‘A murderer perhaps. Or a sacrifice.’

  ‘It’s a shame Asgot isn’t here then,’ Svein said, ‘for that is just the sort of story he likes.’

  ‘There is smoke there,’ Valgerd said, pointing into the sky beyond another stand of trees. And so there was, a spreading stain of it like iron rot against the grey windless sky. Before them was a meadow of long grass, which was in itself unusual for they would have expected to see sheep on ground like that and the grass cropped short.

  ‘Maybe this Jarl Burner died years ago,’ Valgerd suggested, ‘which would explain why no one hears anything about him any more.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Sigurd said, wondering if this was another wasted journey. It was not long now until the Haust Blót feast and Runa’s wedding to that whoreson Jarl Randver’s son. But Sigurd was not ready to take on his enemy yet.

  And this thought was weighing on him when they came out on the other side of the trees and saw it standing there, filling their eyes, as hard to ignore as a slap in the face with an oar blade.

  ‘You never said we were coming to Bilskírnir, Uncle,’ Svein said. They had all stopped to take in the fullness of it.

  ‘Everything seems big when you are but knee-height,’ Olaf said, as awed as the others. ‘I did not think much about it then.’

  For there it was, dark and poorly thatched and huge. Not Bilskírnir, Thór’s own dwelling place, but a place that a god might be proud of none the less.

  Jarl Hakon Brandingi’s hall.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A THRALL CARRYING a pail in each hand saw them and ran to the hall, sloshing milk over the pails’ sides in his haste.

  ‘Let us go and introduce ourselves then,’ Sigurd said. Fjölnir croaked, one steel-grey eye boring into Sigurd’s own. ‘But remember, even if the jarl offers us soft furs and his best mead we will not spend the night here.’

  Svein looked disappointed, then turned to Valgerd. ‘We slept in a karl’s hall near a place called Moldfall and this fat karl and his piss-drinking friends tried to murder us while we slept, which anyone will tell you is not good manners.’

  Valgerd nodded, the whisper of a grin on her lips. ‘Yes, he should have waited until you were awake and then done it,’ she said.

  Svein frowned at this, wondering what she meant by it, then he shrugged and told her that Floki had killed them all. ‘Before I had rubbed the sleep from my eyes,’ he added.

  ‘Aye, it turned out well for us in the end,’ Olaf admitted, thinking of Sea-Sow and the weapons and silver, and the young man who could kill without breaking a sweat, which they had got out of it. ‘But I agree with Sigurd that it is better if we do not sleep here tonight.’ He shook his head. ‘It seems to me that you cannot trust anyone these days.’

  Which was another reason why the rest of the crew were somewhere beyond the pine-crested hill west of Jarl Hakon’s hall. Arriving at the place with such a small but richly armed retinue would show this hall-burning jarl that Sigurd did not fear him, and that he was a man who was either generous with spoils so that his warriors boasted war gear to make any man envious, or else the kind of man to whom great warriors flocked, much as Jarl Hakon had been in his day.

  ‘Won’t he think it is strange that you do not have your own brynja when we do?’ Svein had asked earlier.

  Sigurd had smiled at his friend, who was proud of the huge brynja he had got from Æskil In-Halti’s dead champion at Guthorm’s farm. ‘He will think I am such a good fighter that I do not need one,’ he said.

  ‘Or else that your friends are such good fighters that you do not need o
ne,’ Svein had suggested, which Sigurd thought sounded just as good.

  And yet it would not hurt to have more friends where Jarl Hakon could not see them. Let your enemy see the sword in your hand but not the sax behind your back, he thought now as he waited with the others a good spear-throw from the jarl’s hall. As armed outlanders they did not want to go any nearer without being invited, but now that they had been seen they would not have to wait long.

  ‘Why do I get the feeling we’re walking into the wolf’s lair?’ Olaf said, scratching his bird’s nest beard.

  ‘It seems it is a dangerous thing being in your crew,’ Valgerd said, which put a bad taste in Sigurd’s mouth because it made him think of Loker whom he had killed and dumped in the sea.

  ‘If this old jarl does not want any part in this thing we will leave him to his straw death and turn our backs on this strange place,’ Sigurd said. He was watching the western woods above which two crows were attacking an eagle, taking turns to drive it off, its screech carrying across the cloud-skeined sky.

  And he hoped Black Floki and Solveig, Bjarni and Bjorn and the rest of them were not too far away.

  ‘Here we go,’ Olaf muttered after what seemed like an age standing there before that looming hall like dead warriors waiting to see if there was a bench for them in Valhöll.

  The longhall’s great door opened and out came a knot of warriors, blinking in the day, grey as it was, and puffing themselves up like cocks as warriors will.

  ‘Thór’s arse! That one at the front looks older than Solveig,’ Svein said under his breath.

  ‘Which means he’s likely seen lads like you come and go, and likely made some of them go, too,’ Olaf growled into his beard.

  ‘They’re all old men,’ Valgerd said, and she was right for many of them had white braids hanging either side of their faces and snowy beards, some plaited and tied with silver rings, others splayed from their chins like breakers smashing against rocks.