There were eleven of them and they might have been old men, two of them bent with the burden of years, but they were armed like Týr himself and proud of it. Each was wearing a brynja, most of them polished until the rings gleamed, and Olaf remarked that he had never seen so many brynjur assembled in one place before. All had spears and swords and now, as they drew close, the knot broke apart and they strode on in line, their faded, painted shields presenting a wall.
Sigurd kept his hand off his sword’s grip and hoped the others did too, for all that Troll-Tickler sang to be released in the face of so many spear-armed strangers. On Sigurd’s left arm Fjölnir flapped her huge wings and gave three loud tocks.
‘Who are you?’ the leader of this retinue asked. He had rings on his arms, scars too, carved into the skin like white runes.
‘I am Sigurd Haraldarson. My father was the jarl at Skudeneshavn before he was murdered by the oath-breaker King Gorm.’ It did no harm bringing Gorm into this from the beginning, Sigurd thought to himself, seeing as Jarl Hakon had been the fire in these parts until Gorm pissed on him.
‘You are outlawed,’ White-Beard said, ‘for all that Jarl Randver of Hinderå is trying to build a bridge between you by marrying his son to your sister.’
‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ Sigurd said, ‘which surprises me.’
‘Why does it surprise you, Sigurd Haraldarson?’ the old warrior asked, running his eyes up and down Valgerd which showed there was still a man under the iron rings, leather, scars and years.
‘Because this feels like a place of ghosts,’ Sigurd said.
The old warrior’s lip curled in his white beard at that, though it was impossible to say whether he was amused or offended.
‘Aye, well we are ghosts here,’ he said. ‘Only we’ve forgotten to do the dying part of it.’ Some of the men at his shoulders grinned or chuckled though they did not drop their shields any lower or hold their spears any looser.
‘Are you Jarl Hakon, whom men call Burner?’ Sigurd asked him.
The old warrior’s hoary brows arched at that.
‘I have not heard that name in a while,’ he said. ‘For all that it was well given. And well earned.’ Sigurd recognized the look in his eyes then. Here was a man remembering better times. Still, when you are as old as that any memories of being a younger man must shine like silver, he thought. ‘But no,’ White-Beard said, ‘I am not Brandingi.’ He looked at Olaf and almost nodded, the way one warrior will to another to show that he sees him and sees him well.
‘I have come to speak with your jarl,’ Sigurd said.
‘And the bird?’ White-Beard asked. ‘He comes to speak to my jarl too?’
‘It’s a she,’ Olaf put in, nodding at the raven, ‘and she gets upset if you get that wrong, as any woman would.’
A few eyes flicked to Valgerd then but no one said anything, which was just as well, Sigurd thought.
‘I speak for Jarl Hakon,’ White-Beard said, ‘and if you have come here seeking his help avenging your kin then I can tell you you have made a worthless journey.’
‘Perhaps. Yet I would hear that from Jarl Hakon himself,’ Sigurd said.
The man shook his head. ‘I am telling you, Sigurd Haraldarson, there is more chance of my hair turning red again—’ he glanced at Svein ‘—oh aye, youngen, it used to flame like your own.’ He turned back to Sigurd. ‘More chance of pretty wenches hanging off me like silver off a king, like they did when I was your age, than there is of my jarl wading into this blood feud you have with Jarl Randver and King Gorm.’
‘You speak for him as you say. Do you think for him too?’ Sigurd asked. ‘For he does not even know I am here.’ Sigurd was beginning to wonder how this man had survived to such an old age if he had riled others as he was beginning to rile him. ‘Fetch him, White-Beard. Or take me to him.’
The other old retainers raised brows and shared smirks and one of them murmured something about thinking that a man with a raven on his arm would be better informed about things.
‘Your hearing seems poor for a young man,’ White-Beard said. His patience was wearing thin now, fraying like the hem of the tunic hanging below his brynja. ‘Jarl Hakon will not come aboard this feud of yours.’ He hefted his shield and tilted his spear towards the sea, which was his way of telling Sigurd to leave without saying it.
‘Still,’ said Sigurd, sharpening his eyes on the man, ‘I have come all this way and will hear it from the jarl, I think.’
This got these men’s hackles up. Their shields too, which was not lost on those at Sigurd’s shoulder. Svein raised his great axe and Valgerd and Olaf tensed.
White-Beard rolled his old shoulders then and for a moment Sigurd was sure the man was going to lead his companions into the slaughter and end their lives properly. But then he gestured at his men to take up positions either side of the visitors and seemed to breathe the day’s air deep into his old lungs.
‘You had better come and meet him then,’ he said, turning back towards Hakon’s hall. And together they walked up to that looming place until they came to the door which was wide enough for three men with shoulders as broad as Svein’s to walk through side by side. Not that you were likely to find three such men in a place at any one time.
Sigurd saw his red-haired friend staring at the great door and knew he was wondering if that was the door from Olaf’s story, which Jarl Brandingi had taken across two fjords to Kvinnherad and nailed across his enemy’s threshold to prove a point.
‘Leave your weapons out here,’ White-Beard said, pointing his spear at a rack under the eaves, though Sigurd doubted that rotten old thatch would keep the rain off a man’s sword.
‘I will go in alone,’ Sigurd said.
‘Aye, we’ll keep hold of our blades if it’s all the same to you. Or even if it isn’t,’ Olaf said, as Sigurd took off his own sword and handed it to him.
‘The last time we gave up our weapons our host tried to kill us,’ Sigurd said by way of explaining why he was leaving his retinue outside and armed.
‘And he had already tried to kill us with ale that tasted like horse piss,’ Svein added, though he might as well have smacked his lips together and held out a horn for the filling.
White-Beard nodded. ‘I can see why you might be a man light in trust,’ he said to Sigurd, then looked at Svein and Olaf. ‘I’ll have something brought out to wash the salt spray down.’
Olaf nodded his thanks as White-Beard told three men to come with him and the other seven to remain outside with their guests.
Svein jerked his chin towards the hall’s door. ‘See there, Sigurd. They must have pulled it off before it was too late. And brought it all the way back.’
Hearing him White-Beard glanced at the door, brows knitted. Then he nodded as though having hauled an old memory up from the depths, and pushed the great door open. Before he walked through, Sigurd looked at the scorch marks at its edges, black tongues of blistered wood that had licked out of some doomed jarl’s burning hall. He imagined the screams of those who had burnt alive; warriors certainly, but women and probably children too. A hall burning like that was as dark a thing as a man could do. This Jarl Hakon had been a killer down to the ice in his bones where the marrow should have been.
Sigurd hoped he could be such a man again.
Fjölnir’s eyes changed from steel grey to black as Sigurd walked inside the hall, his own vision swamped with darkness, his nose filling with the smells of wet wool and wet dog, the tang of hearth smoke, sweat and piss; men’s and mice’s. There was wood rot in the fug too and the musty smell of thatch that should have been replaced years ago. Sigurd had heard once that a rat had fallen out of Eik-hjálmr’s thatch and landed on his father’s plate. He looked up now, high up, his eyes fashioning the different shades of black into thick beams and ancient roof planks, and he imagined this place could rain with rats and mice and dead birds too. There were trestles and tables up there on the beams, stored for feasts and celebrations, though they look
ed to have become part of the roof’s structure now and Sigurd guessed they had not been brought down in years.
‘You should have seen it once,’ White-Beard murmured, letting Sigurd fill his eyes with the place. Two rows of roof posts, too many to count now, stretched off into the gloom and along either side raised wooden benches topped with planks and sheep skins ran the length of the hall. There were two fire pits in the central corridor, though only one of them, at the far end, roared with flame and it was near this one that the benches were occupied. As Sigurd followed the old warrior, his eyes adjusted now to the place, he saw some women sitting on those benches, busy with needles and thread, or beads, or preparing food by the flamelight and that grey light filtering through the haze of the smoke hole above. These women carried on with their work, though their eyes were on Sigurd and his bird.
One, who was sitting on a stool by a loom, looked up and raised an inquisitive eyebrow at White-Beard, but her fingers kept up their rhythm amongst the warp and weft and Sigurd wondered if she was the old warrior’s wife. Across from her was a low table that was cluttered with cups and plates. Sea chests were set around it and clearly White-Beard and his men had been seated upon them before they were disturbed by the milk-spilling thrall who was now lighting more of the lamps which stood about the place or hung on chains from the beams.
Then through the flames and smoke of the fire pit Sigurd saw that one of the big trestles and boards had been brought down from the beams, only it was now piled with skins and furs and being used as a bed. He followed White-Beard around the hearth, the three other brynja-clad, spear-gripping warriors at his back, and up to the bed. Upon which a dead man lay.
Then White-Beard’s next words told him that Jarl Hakon, whom men called Brandingi, was not a corpse yet for all that he looked like one.
‘My lord, this is Sigurd Haraldarson, the last living son of Jarl Harald of Skudeneshavn on the island of Karmøy to the south.’
Sigurd looked at the bone-sharp face, which was all that was showing above the old bear fur and sheep skins covering the rest of him, and he saw the fierceness in it. Even now.
‘What are you doing, Hauk, you old fool? You know he cannot hear you any more than a turd can hear the flies buzzing around it.’
Sigurd turned and saw another man getting up from one of the benches against the far wall, leaving two bed slaves in the furs behind him. There were three more warriors standing there in the shadows though not as straight as the spears in their hands, and they moved forward with the man who now addressed White-Beard.
‘Nevertheless, my lord,’ Hauk replied, watching the man spill his mead as he clambered off the edge of his bench and came into the hearth’s copper glow, ‘Sigurd insisted on being introduced to your father and I thought to give him the honour, him being the son of Harald who all men said was a great warrior and a good jarl.’
‘And yet my father even now is more alive than Jarl Harald,’ the man said. ‘But you forget yourself, old man,’ he sneered at Hauk. ‘I am your jarl and you bring guests to me, not him.’
Hauk nodded and planted his spear’s butt on the packed dirt floor which had been strewn with ashes from the fire to absorb the damp which came in on shoes and clothes or found its way through the old roof and the smoke holes in it.
The man turned his half-hooded eyes from the near-corpse by the fire to Sigurd. ‘I am Thengil Hakonarson and this is my hall.’ He waved the mead horn towards the shield-bearing warriors behind Sigurd. ‘These bags of old bones are my hearthmen, though you would not know it sometimes. I like to think that in their winter years they simply forget from time to time, their heads full of memories. The way an old dog’s legs will twitch in its sleep, as if it is dreaming of running across the meadows like it used to do.’
Sigurd glanced at Hauk but the old warrior’s face was a sleeping sea and Sigurd guessed he was not even listening.
‘But the truth is,’ Thengil Hakonarson went on, ‘they were my father’s men and near enough the last thing that came out of his mouth was an order that they must swear an oath to me.’ He shrugged. ‘They did not like it of course, but the old fools did it and now they are mine.’ The fat lips curled in the soft bed of their beard, a beard that had seen no salt spray by Sigurd’s reckoning. Thengil touched the silver-inlaid hilt of the sword at his hip. ‘For some men an oath sworn on a sword still means something. It binds them as surely as Gleipnir round the wolf’s neck.’ He drank from his horn and swiped a fat hand across his mouth. ‘Other men . . . well, I don’t have to tell you, hey, Sigurd.’
This was as good as bringing up King Gorm’s betrayal of Sigurd’s father without actually doing it. To the heart of it then.
‘I will kill the traitor king,’ Sigurd said, smooth as a whetstone run along a sword’s edge. ‘But first I will deal with Jarl Randver of Hinderå.’
‘And you came here thinking to persuade the fearsome Jarl Brandingi to join you in this undertaking.’ It was a statement rather than a question. Then he laughed and Sigurd noted the tremble of the man’s soft belly and of his fleshy throat. Fjölnir croaked at the sound.
You would like to feed on that fleshy corpse wouldn’t you, bird, Sigurd thought. It was hard to believe this was the son of the man in the bed beside them whose yellowing skin was so tight over his skull that the mouth was held open and what teeth were left were fixed in a permanent snarl.
‘I had heard that your father was no friend of the king’s,’ Sigurd said.
Thengil’s fleshy lips pulled back from his teeth and in that moment and that moment alone you could tell from whose loins he had sprung.
‘My father was a friend to no man,’ he said. ‘Though he was generous to his hirðmen. They fought like wolves for him and never found themselves silver-light in return.’ He swept an arm across the vast flame-dotted space. A mouse skittered past Sigurd’s foot and disappeared under a bench. ‘Look around you, Sigurd Haraldarson. You will see there are no young men here now. They have all gone.’ He flickered his fat fingers up into the air. ‘They flew away seeking fighting jarls and plunder. For I had to stay here and tend to my father and could promise them no plunder, only a wealth of quiet years and a straw death at the end of them.’ He glared at Hauk as though the man was something foul brought in on the bottom of his shoe. ‘They are my war band. They stayed for my father and now it hangs over them like a curse, as you can no doubt see with your young eyes. Are you not disgusted by them?’
‘I would not want to fight them,’ Sigurd said, which he knew was generous of him, but which was also true. For men who kept their brynjur and war gear as well as these men did were proud men. And pride makes men strong regardless of the years on their backs.
‘They are sour as old beer, Sigurd.’ He waved his horn towards the low table and the sea chests. Land chests these days, Sigurd thought. ‘I hear them,’ Hakon’s son went on, ‘sitting there talking about their friends who sit in the Spear-God’s hall. Going over old battles again and again, like sheep ambling along the same path day after day. I think that sometimes they do it to get at me.’ Another mouse ran across the floor and Thengil cursed and hurled his mead horn at it but the creature was long gone. The women at their work did not even look up. ‘They gnaw away at me, Sigurd. They think I am a weak man who has not lived even half the life that they have lived.’ He looked at Hauk and at the men at Sigurd’s shoulder but none of them bit at this hook. ‘But their talk is so much bleating in my ears. I have this hall and all they have is a bench and an oath forced on them by a living corpse.’
‘Join me, Thengil Hakonarson,’ Sigurd said. ‘Bring some silver-lustre to this dark old place. Weave your own saga tale so folk will not always look for you in your father’s shadow.’
Thengil scratched his soft beard then and stared at Fjölnir perched on Sigurd’s arm. ‘Are you mad, Sigurd?’ he asked, his eyes sliding back to Sigurd’s. ‘Is that why you have a raven on your arm?’ He squeezed his finger and thumb together. ‘Jarl Randver will squa
sh you like a louse. As for King Gorm, I’d wager he does not even know you are alive, much less care.’
‘He knows,’ Sigurd said.
‘Aah, I see it now,’ Thengil said. ‘You hunger for a warrior’s death because you miss your brothers and your father. You want to sit and drink with them in the Hanged God’s hall.’
How had Jarl Hakon had a son like this, Sigurd wondered, then supposed that it was perhaps the jarl’s disappointment in Thengil that had reduced him to that withered skull-grinning stick by the fire.
Thengil clapped his hands and the milk-spilling thrall brought him another full horn. He had yet to offer Sigurd any, which was insult enough in itself but also just another reason why Sigurd felt tempted to put the man’s teeth through the back of his soft head.
‘My lord,’ Hauk interrupted, ‘I said I would send some drink out to Sigurd’s men.’ He frowned. ‘And the woman.’
The heavy lids of Thengil’s eyes hauled themselves up at that. ‘You leave your woman standing outside my hall?’
‘She is not my woman,’ Sigurd replied. ‘She is a warrior. And a ferocious one.’
Thengil half turned his face away as if expecting Sigurd to admit the jest, but Sigurd’s eyes were chips of ice and the fat man gave a great belch which rolled into a laugh as thin as piss. ‘So you have roped in some women to fight for you then? And we mustn’t forget that fierce bird you’ve got there. Such a beast will have your enemies trembling.’ He fluttered a hand at Hauk to get some mead sent outside. ‘A war band to weave a saga tale about, hey!’
‘A hirð of white-beards and crooked-backs will hardly get you in a skald’s tale,’ Sigurd said, unable to stop himself biting back. ‘Nor will sitting in the dark on your arse when other men are out there weaving their fame.’
Thengil winced at this and Sigurd knew his words had stung the man. They really were loyal thegns then, these ancient retainers of Hakon’s, that none of them said such things to Thengil’s face much less put a spear in his belly. For men such as Hauk knew only too well that their reputations, or what was left of them, were now eroded by their binding to this pale-livered, soft-living lord, like a trusted sword that is left in the rain to be eaten by the iron rot.
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