God of Vengeance

by Giles Kristian

  ‘Hold here!’ someone in Randver’s skjaldborg bellowed, and the weight against Sigurd’s shield was suddenly gone and there was ground between the two shieldwalls again. Men were hauling damp air into their lungs and spitting thick saliva. They armed sweat from their eyes, checked their shields for damage and invoked their gods.

  ‘We’re doing well,’ Olaf said, rolling his shoulders and working a crick out of his neck. ‘But we can’t stay.’

  Sigurd knew his friend was right. They had killed many of Randver’s men and had even come close to killing the jarl himself, but they had failed and now the tide of this fight had turned. Even with the advantage of their brynjur and their blade-craft, they could not now hope to turn it back, and Sigurd knew he owed his newly forged Fellowship a chance to live beyond that bloody day.

  ‘Whoresons know their business,’ Hauk said, his beard rope dripping blood now, for Jarl Randver was using this respite to rebuild his shieldwall, putting the best-armoured men, those with brynjur or helmets or good leather armour, in the front line and those without behind them. He had more than forty men there now and he was also ordering some of them into another skjaldborg, an eight-man wall of shields and spears which Sigurd guessed he would send round the next clash to come at his seventeen from behind.

  Then Runa was back at his shoulder and he thanked the gods for that as she caught her breath and fixed him with her blue eyes which looked like their mother’s more than ever in that moment.

  ‘There is no one between us and the jetty, brother,’ she said, which was to Sigurd’s ears like ale to a parched throat.

  He nodded, the plan weaving in his mind even as he spoke his next words.

  ‘Uncle, can you give these Hinderå men a good reason to piss in their breeks?’ he asked.

  Olaf frowned but soon enough caught the thread of what Sigurd had in mind. He nodded. ‘I can keep the sons of swines thinking of other things, Sigurd,’ he said, ‘but it’ll unravel soon enough and then it’ll be every man for himself. Bloody chaos.’

  Sigurd grinned. ‘The gods love chaos, Uncle,’ he said, then called for Valgerd and Karsten Ríkr who slipped from the shieldwall and came over, blinking sweat from his eyes. When Sigurd told these two and Runa what he wanted from them they nodded and shared a determined look amongst themselves.

  ‘Ready, Uncle,’ Sigurd said and Olaf nodded again, spat on the ground and thumped his sword against his shield.

  ‘Svinfylkja!’ Olaf yelled in a voice that the freezing dead themselves must have heard down there in Niflheim. Olaf did not move but everyone else did, the shieldwall breaking up, war gear jangling as they arrayed themselves behind Olaf in the wedge-shaped formation that resembled a swine’s head. And while they did this, Randver roared at his men to brace themselves for what was coming, and those men beat spears and swords against their own shields for courage and to rouse themselves to the imminent clash.

  And they were too concerned with the bristling, ringmailed swine-wedge facing them to care about the three who had made a run for it towards the sea.

  ‘Move, Uncle,’ Sigurd said.

  ‘Not a chance, lad,’ Olaf said over his shoulder.

  ‘Step aside, Olaf,’ Sigurd said. ‘They have held good to their oath and I will hold good to mine.’ Olaf glowered and shook his head. But then he growled a curse into his bird’s nest beard and moved aside, letting Sigurd take his place at the point of the wedge, for Sigurd had sworn to fight before his men and he would have them see him do so now.

  Olaf was off his left shoulder and Svein muscled Bjorn out of the way to stand off his right, his crescent-shaped axe blade slick with gore and his red beard split with a grimace. Behind stood Floki, Bram and Bjorn and behind them the rest made up the formation, and knowing the men that stood with him then, Sigurd almost pitied those in the shieldwall before them.

  He wished his father and brothers could see him now, that they would know how he faced their enemy with courage and in the sight of Óðin One-Eye and Vidar God of Vengeance. Not that Sigurd did not feel the worm of fear gnawing at his guts. It was not a fear of pain or even death, for in death he would surely drink mead in the Æsir’s hall with his brothers, though he did not wish to leave Runa alone in the world. But rather that writhing worm was the fear of failing to quench the fire inside him in the blood of this reckoning. He had done everything he could to get the Allfather’s attention. Now he would honour the Spear-God by living up to Óðin’s name, which means frenzy.

  ‘Now,’ he said, lifting his battle-scarred shield and dipping his head just in time, as an arrow glanced off his helmet and flew wide. They strode with him, staying close to one another, keeping the wedge tight and strong, and they roared as they covered the ground. And on Sigurd’s first swing Troll-Tickler bit deep into a man’s shield and Sigurd forced the shield down so that Bram could bury his sword’s tip into the man’s eye and pull it free, spattering Sigurd’s face with hot blood. Sigurd hauled his blade free of the splintered wood and drove on. Svein rammed the head of his long-axe into a bearded face, staving in the skull, then turned and hooked the crescent blade behind another warrior’s neck and pulled the man towards him and Floki knocked his shield aside and sheathed his hand axe in the man’s forehead.

  On they drove, right through Randver’s skjaldborg like a rivet driven through green spruce, and men died beneath their blades. But the Svinfylkja formation could not hold with the enemy all around them now and spears coming from every side, and in ten thumping heartbeats there was no more wedge, only a knot of men fighting for their lives against more than twice their number.

  Sigurd found himself at the heart of the knot then, as though his hirðmen had gathered around him, putting their own bloodied, battered bodies between him and their enemies, and for a moment he stood there as the deafening chaos whirled all about.

  He saw Ubba smash a face with his shield boss then hack the dazed man down. He watched Bjarni duck a scything sword and thrust his own blade up into a man’s inner thigh and he heard that man’s scream above the battle din. Sigurd spun and saw Agnar Hunter and Kætil Kartr fighting back to back, Agnar catching a sword swing in the cross of his two long knives and turning the blade aside then slashing a knife across a face. Kætil was bleeding from three wounds, the worst a deep bloody cleft in his shoulder that looked like the work of an axe, yet he fought like a hero from some old tale, roaring challenges at his enemies.

  Those old warriors who had once fought for Jarl Hakon Burner fought side by side once more and it was only their long experience of doing so that was keeping them alive, Hauk standing there grim-faced between Bodvar and Grundar, the last of their old hirð, men from a bygone age.

  ‘We must fly, Sigurd!’ Olaf said and Sigurd turned, instinctively looking for Randver, trying to lay his eyes on the jarl amidst that maelstrom. ‘He’s safely out of it,’ Olaf said, knowing what was on Sigurd’s mind. ‘His boy took a wound and Randver hauled him off. We can’t get to him now, Sigurd, and we’ll never get to that whoreson king if we die here.’

  ‘To the sea!’ Sigurd roared, and his Wolves replied with a last great effort, trying to put their opponents down to give themselves a chance. With Randver out of the snarl of it the rest did not know what to do and Sigurd’s hirðmen were able to draw together again, presenting a loose wall of shields to a badly mauled enemy that seemed relieved to catch their breath.

  Their eyes on the jarl’s men, Sigurd’s crew shuffled backwards towards the ground they had previously occupied near the edge of the bluff, but for Hauk and his two companions who stopped and planted their feet, their blood-spattered, ragged shields overlapped. They looked exhausted, yet held their heads high and tried to straighten their backs.

  ‘Here, Hauk!’ Sigurd barked.

  ‘No, lad!’ Hauk called over his shoulder. ‘We’ve never run. Not from any fight. And we will not run today.’

  ‘We can make it, Hauk!’ Sigurd said.

  ‘You had better, lad,’ the old man said. ‘
I expect you to come back here and finish what we started.’ He hammered his sword hilt against what was left of his shield. ‘Osøyro men!’ he bellowed, his voice dry and cracked as old leather. ‘Tonight we drink with our sword-brothers in Valhöll.’ Grundar and Bodvar thumped their own shields and spat challenges at those coming to kill them. One last proud show of defiance in the face of death that had Sigurd’s crew thumping their own shields, more than a few of them looking like they would rather stay to finish it one way or another. ‘Now go!’ Hauk yelled over his shoulder. ‘We will wait for you in the shining hall, Sigurd Haraldarson!’

  Sigurd shook his head but a big hand gripped his shoulder. ‘Better they end it like this than with spears in their backs,’ Olaf said, nodding towards the pitiful shieldwall. Sigurd knew this was true enough, for Hauk and the others would not have the legs to run. Yet the thought of leaving them there to be slaughtered was like a blade in Sigurd’s chest, as Skarth began bellowing at the jarl’s warriors now, rousing them to one final effort as he strode towards the Osøyro men.

  Sigurd took one last look at those brave three, their old legs rooted to the ground so that only death would move them.

  And then he turned and ran to the sea.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THEY RAN DOWN the slippery path which led to the shore, the Osøyro men’s last sword song lingering in Sigurd’s ears like smoke in woollen clothes. And when they clattered down to the wharf his heart leapt like a salmon in his chest, for Runa, Valgerd and Karsten were aboard Reinen, his father’s old ship, and the dragon had slipped her moorings.

  ‘Are we leaving then?’ Karsten called from the mast step, a grin in his beard. Men were clambering aboard, some going to help with the sheets while others brought the oars down from their trees and threaded them through the ports. They would need wind and muscle to put as much water between them and Jarl Randver as they could.

  ‘Does me good to see her,’ Olaf said, taking hold of the oar Bram gave him, the two of them getting ready to push Reinen away from the wharf.

  Breathing hard still, Sigurd found his nose filled with Reinen’s scent: the pine resin and the tar-coated ropes, the wet woollen sail and the brackish seep water in the bilge around the ballast stones.

  ‘We would have set fires in them but it was too wet and there was no time,’ Valgerd said, nodding at Jarl Harald’s other ship, Sea-Eagle, and Randver’s favourite ship, Fjord-Wolf, which were crewless and drifting off from their berths, their mooring ropes cut.

  ‘You have given us a chance,’ Sigurd said, nodding to Valgerd in thanks then looking up to where Jarl Randver’s men were spilling over the hill and cursing at what they saw – two ships adrift and Reinen slowly easing away from the wharf.

  ‘Well no one can say we have not ruined their feast at least,’ Olaf shouted and this got some belly laughter even from men sheeted in blood and still thrumming from the fight, as they pulled their oars through the slate-grey, wind-stirred sea, most of them standing and bending deep because there were no sea chests aboard.

  ‘There were sea chests on Fjord-Wolf,’ Runa said, coming to stand with Sigurd, ‘and that man said we should take her.’ She nodded towards Karsten behind them at the tiller. ‘But I told him you would rather take Reinen.’

  Sigurd saw that her whole body was trembling and he put his arm around her, wincing at the many pains in his own body, though he did not think he was cut deeply anywhere. ‘Do you think Father would have left her to that pile of goat turds?’ he asked, watching Randver who was on the jetty now, roaring commands at his men who were milling on the boards, unsure what to do next, though a knot of them had found a small boat and were already rowing towards Fjord-Wolf.

  With a shaking hand Runa pushed her still damp hair over her ear and asked if she should row, too. Sigurd shook his head. ‘We will catch the wind in a moment and Karsten is a good helmsman.’ He took off his cloak, relieved to see that there was not much blood on it, and put it around his sister’s shoulders on top of the one she already wore in case she was cold. ‘Rest while you can,’ he said, pointing to a place in the thwarts on the port stern. Then he turned to look at his ragged, grim-faced crew.

  Kætil Kartr was not rowing for he was white as bone from leaking so much blood, though he stood even so, watching the shore rather than sitting in the thwarts and saving what strength he yet owned. Bjorn was grimacing from a cut in his side where his brynja was torn and bloody, and if Agnar Hunter’s head were a hull, its crew would have been busy bailing for it had an ugly gash in it.

  Still, they had left five of their sword-brothers up there on the hill and Sigurd knew that was the deepest wound of all.

  ‘Have their bollocks shrivel up and drop off, Asgot!’ Ubba called to the godi, who stood up at the stern, his arms raised to the sky as he crowed a galdr at their enemies on the shore. His keening voice was enough to chill the blood even if you did not know the spell he was weaving with that ancient seiðr. But Sigurd’s ears could unravel enough of it to know that Asgot was singing Jarl Randver’s doom. No hero’s pyre for Randver, just a cold blade and a colder grave, and every man or woman aboard Reinen, no matter their wounds, was glad that that dark, baneful curse was not being sung at them.

  ‘That will do. Bring them in, lads!’ Olaf called, pushing his own oar all the way out through the port and bringing it back over the sheer strake. There was wind in the sail and with so few men rowing would gain them nothing now. He came over to stand with Sigurd who was still at the sternpost watching Randver’s men bring Fjord-Wolf back to the jetty where the rest waited, their spears pointing to the low heavy clouds rolling in from the east. Gulls keened wildly overhead, perhaps in answer to Asgot’s old spell, and Rán’s white-haired daughters were appearing here and there, racing across the sound as though they too fled from the jarl’s wrath.

  ‘I wonder what happened to old Solveig and Hagal,’ Olaf said. Sigurd knew his old friend was trying to take his mind off what might have been. There was no sign of Sea-Sow or those of Randver’s ships that had chased her west. The crews that had come and saved the jarl’s skin must have been lying in wait behind another island in the sound and Sigurd smiled grimly at the lengths his enemy had gone to in trying to catch him.

  ‘Listen,’ Svein said, cupping a hand to his ear. ‘I think I can hear Crow-Song’s arse squeaking.’

  Olaf grinned. ‘And I wouldn’t blame him, what with four crews snapping at their heels. But if you really listen hard you can hear old Solveig laughing. Those whoresons will starve to death before they catch up with that old goat.’

  ‘Then let us hope we do not run into them when they give up and turn for home,’ Karsten called from the tiller.

  ‘If we do we will see what kind of a helmsman you really are, hey!’ Olaf said, which did not seem to worry the Dane.

  Sigurd stood there with Olaf beside him, the wind ruffling their beards and drying the gore that crusted on skin and in the iron rings of their brynjur. And yet an ominous silence spread between them like a bloodstain as, far behind them now, their enemy’s ship harnessed the easterly gusts and ploughed a spumy furrow through the sound. Randver, it seemed, was as eager to kill Sigurd as Sigurd had been to kill him.

  Eventually it was Olaf who hauled the thing to the surface. ‘We had no choice, Sigurd,’ he said, scratching his beard.

  ‘There is always a choice, Uncle,’ Sigurd said.

  Olaf pursed his full lips. ‘Even a wolf will slink off when the farmer brings all his hounds out.’

  Sigurd turned to him now. ‘But we are more than one wolf,’ he said, sweeping an arm across the deck and those catching their breath at last and seeing to their wounds or else working on the sail to keep it catching the wind. ‘Did I make myself known to old Blaze-Eye just so that he could watch me fly from the man I have sworn to kill?’

  ‘Well he is not the only one that needs killing,’ Olaf said, meaning that they still had to deal with King Gorm which seemed beyond impossible now.

 
‘And you think I will have Óðin’s favour after this?’ Sigurd asked.

  More beard-scratching now as Olaf chewed on that.

  ‘You want to finish it?’ he asked, though it was not a question. Not really.

  Sigurd held his eye, in that one fjord-deep look saying more than words ever could.

  ‘Frigg’s arse,’ Olaf growled, then turned to Karsten. ‘Bring her around!’ he called. ‘You see that piece of dog shit ship back there full of men who want us dead? Aim for that.’ Karsten’s mouth unhinged but Olaf had already turned to the crew, to Svein and Floki, Bram, Bjarni, Bjorn and the rest, who were gingerly getting to their feet. ‘Did you really think you could sit on your arses for the rest of the day?’ he bellowed. ‘Did you think that little scuffle back there proves you’re good men in a fight? That you’re worthy to share the same saga tale as Olaf Smiter and Sigurd Óðin-Favoured?’ Most of them were wide-eyed and taken aback, but Svein and Bram shared a predator’s grin. Floki was looking at Sigurd and nodding slowly as though he had been waiting for this moment all his life. ‘Your ring-giver has something to say.’ This was clever on Olaf’s part for it reminded them of their oath without calling Sigurd a jarl, which was a thing he could not claim yet.

  Sigurd stepped up onto the raised platform and stood beside Karsten who was already getting his mind around turning Reinen into the wind.

  ‘Look!’ he said, pointing off the bow towards Fjord-Wolf. ‘This jarl wants to fight us.’ He caught Runa’s eye and that was a thorn in him but there was nothing he could do about that now. ‘Svein, your father Styrbiorn was a fearsome prow man. I have no doubt he would be proud of you today for you will stand at Reinen’s prow.’ The red-haired giant grinned like a man with two mead horns.

  Sigurd knew Olaf would have expected to be the prow man, but Sigurd needed his battle-craft and could not risk a wound putting him out of the fight early on.