Winter's Fire: (The Rise of Sigurd 2)

by Giles Kristian

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Norway, AD 785 – a vow of vengeance must be kept . . .

  Sigurd Haraldarson has proved himself a great warrior . . . and a dangerous enemy.

  He has gone a long way towards avenging the murder of his family. And yet the oath-breaker King Gorm, who betrayed Sigurd’s father, still lives. And so long as he draws breath, the scales remain unbalanced.

  The sacred vow to avenge his family burns in Sigurd’s veins, but he must be patient and bide his time. He knows that he and his band of warriors are not yet strong enough to confront the treacherous king. They need silver, they need more spear-brothers to rally to the young Viking’s banner – but more than these, they need to win fame upon the battlefield.

  And so the fellowship venture west, to Sweden, to fight as mercenaries. And it is there – in the face of betrayal and bloodshed, on a journey that will take him all too close to the halls of Valhalla – that Sigurd’s destiny will be forged. There, in the inferno of winter’s fire . . .

  The Vikings return in this thrilling, thunderous sequel to Giles Kristian’s God of Vengeance – a novel Conn Iggulden hailed ‘a masterwork’ and which Wilbur Smith declared ‘stirs the blood and thrills the soul’.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Glossary of Norse Terms

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Giles Kristian

  Copyright

  Winter’s Fire is for Chris Cornell, whose voice and music has seeped into this saga like mead into the feasting table.

  The maidens of death came riding

  To claim his battle-slain kin

  But Sigurd was Óðin-kissed, men said,

  And the fire burnt within.

  A boy no more, he killed a jarl

  And fled with half a crew.

  So swore his vengeance on the king

  As young men often do.

  Sigurd Haraldarson’s Saga

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE TRACKS WERE fresh but the snow was old. Deep too, so that it was impossible to know how many animals there were, for each was using the same tracks as the one in front. The trail they made through the pines was narrow and straight. Or as straight as it could be in a forest.

  ‘Wolves waste no energy when they’re on the move. Not like dogs,’ Olaf had explained when they set out into the night with spears and bellies full of ale.

  ‘Aye, but a dog wouldn’t waste a nice warm fire,’ Svein had said, shuddering at the sudden cold and pressing a thick finger against one nostril to expel a wad of smoke-blackened snot on to the snow. ‘So I am thinking that maybe dogs have more clever in them than wolves.’ He glanced back towards the hall as though already regretting his decision to go with Olaf and Sigurd. ‘More clever than us too,’ he added, clearing his other nostril and pulling the wool back over his face, blinking smoke-stung eyes in the frigid air.

  They had wrapped their legs and hands with wool too and wore the same sheepskin or fur and leather hats that they had pulled on to their heads when the snows had come, and which they had rarely taken off since, even inside Jarl Hakon Burner’s old hall. For that place was huge and there were never enough bodies inside to warm its edges, even with both hearths burning day and night.

  ‘Compared to wolves dogs walk as if they are drunk,’ Olaf had gone on, cinching his cloak tight at his neck. ‘Tend to drag their toes as well, whereas wolves have a cleaner stride. Leave neater tracks, see.’

  He had been right about that, Sigurd thought now as a shaft of moonglow arrowed through the trees, lighting the trail before them and threading the brittle mantle with silver, like wire inlay on a blade. The left and right paw prints were only slightly offset and it was clear that the wolves were making much lighter work of it than Sigurd and his friends. Sigurd could see where the lead wolf’s body had carved a track through the snow like a karvi’s sleek bow through a heavy sea. By contrast he and his companions laboured and puffed and sweated now despite the chill. For the pine canopy above had not prevented the snow settling deep in places, nor stopped the prevailing south-westerly wind piling it up in drifts against trunks, making it hard going.

  ‘Bollocks, but the lad’s blowing like Völund’s own bellows!’ Olaf said a while later, pulling the woollen wrap below his chin and planting his spear butt in the snow as he and Sigurd turned to look at Svein who had fallen behind. ‘The beasts’ll smell his mead-breath five rôsts off and we’ll never catch a glimpse of them.’

  Olaf had been Sigurd’s father’s closest friend and now he treated them all as a man will who thinks his having a few more years on his back is the same as having twice as much sense. Perhaps it was, too. And yet Sigurd knew that Olaf would take a spear in the gut or an arrow in the throat for him, and where was the sense in that? Olaf would say he owed it to Sigurd’s father Harald – hard to gainsay, for you could count the dead jarl’s still breathing hearthmen on one hand these days. On three fingers actually.

  Now, though, Olaf’s own mead-breath was clouding around his face as though his beard were on fire and Sigurd suspected his stopping to moan about Svein had more to do with Olaf catching his own wind than it had to do with their big friend. Sigurd found himself smiling. He was a long way off Olaf’s age and whilst he might have been clumsy compared to their prey he nevertheless felt a wolf’s stamina thrum in his blood, felt the beast’s vigour in his flesh, and believed he could keep this pace up all night if need be.

  ‘Better being out here with the silence in our ears than back there with them full of Crow-Song,’ Sigurd said.

  ‘True enough,’ Olaf agreed. ‘By the time he has spun your killing of that treacherous, over-reaching crab bait Jarl Randver into your saga tale he will have you sharing kinship with the Allfather himself and I will be some troll-slayer with a dwarf-forged sword.’ One of his eyebrows curved like Bifröst the rainbow-bridge. ‘Fucking skalds, eh?’

  Sigurd felt the cold air on his teeth. ‘He says the truth is as welcome in a good story as a fart under the furs.’

  They could have waited until morning before setting out, but Asgot had smelt new snow in the air, or seen it in his runes perhaps, and Sigurd would not risk another fall covering the tracks. Besides which he welcomed any excuse to get out of Hakon Burner’s hall.

  They had gone up to Osøyro the first time harbouring the hope that Jarl Hakon Brandingi, who had earned his reputation as a hall-burner many times over, might help them fight the oath-breaker King Gorm. But arriving at Brandingi’s hall they had found the jarl himself a living corpse and his son, Thengil, lording it around the place instead. Thengil had been a soft, slimy nithing, and perhaps that had been all to the good because he had died piss-soaked and strung up from the rafters, and the corpse jarl’s last hearthmen, proper warriors to a man, had seen in Sigurd one last chance to live and die as men should. They had sworn loyalty to him, which was a heavy thing, they being warriors of so many fights and Sigurd being grass-green by comparison.

  He could still see those greybeards in the eye of his mind, standing there in their last shieldwall
by Jarl Randver’s hall in Hinderå, facing the jarl’s warriors who, though younger and undoubtedly stronger, must have learnt a thing or two that day. For those old Sword-Norse had stood their ground so that Sigurd and the others could get to the sea and take ship away. Not that the greybeards’ legs could have carried them fast enough even if they had wanted to live.

  After that steel-storm by the Nilsavika headland in which Sigurd killed Jarl Randver, whose bones now sat in the cold dark at the bottom of the fjord, they had sailed back up to Osøyro, to Jarl Hakon Brandingi’s old hall. There, their ears had been full of the curses of those old women who blamed Sigurd that their men were now in the afterlife without them; and all Sigurd could do was give each a handful of silver, which the women took off to live out the rest of their lives in some village elsewhere, not wanting to dwell with their menfolk’s ghosts nor with Sigurd’s crew.

  But dead as Randver was, he yet had living sons and the eldest of them, Hrani, now had ships and men and a thirst for revenge. And then there was King Gorm and all the Sword-Norse he could call upon, and the oath-breaker would never have a better chance to rid himself of Sigurd. So like a hunted wolf, Sigurd had taken to his den to wait out the winter. But that huge hall, bigger than any Sigurd had ever seen or heard of, was a forsaken place. Its ancient soot-blackened timbers were corpse-cold. Its corners, in which men and women once fumbled, now writhed with rats. Its mead-stained benches lay up in the roof beams swathed in spiders’ web thick as wool, and of the hangings on the walls keeping out the draughts, a few had been spun in recent years but most were old, faded and threadbare. It was a hall of ghosts and no amount of lamp or hearth flame could breathe life into it.

  Which was why Sigurd would rather be knee-deep in snow hunting wolves. For if they could find the creatures’ den they could come back with more spears and dogs and traps.

  The beasts had dug their way into the sheep pen and killed two ewes; but there would have been little point trying to follow them had there not been snow on the ground and had the wolves not dragged one of the ewes off, which meant they were not moving as fast as they could have been. It also meant there was a chance that their den was nearby, and as Olaf had said, best to deal with them now – or else pay dearly for it in the summer when there would be no tracks to follow.

  ‘There,’ Sigurd said, pointing to a patch of disturbed snow up ahead from which tracks radiated like spokes on a cart wheel. In the middle was the ewe, or rather what was left of it, and as they drew closer the little moonlight permeating the forest canopy turned the gore-smeared snow darker still.

  ‘Eyes sharp then,’ Olaf murmured, lifting his spear a little higher, his own eyes scouring the trees around them. Knowing that spear-armed men followed them, the wolves had eaten what they could before vanishing like sea mist. ‘I’d wager they’re three rôsts away by now,’ Olaf said, then nodded at the deeper forest which was gloomy as Hel’s own hall, the pines like pillars beyond counting. ‘But there’s always a chance they’re out there watching us and will risk a spear in the ribs to protect this kill.’

  ‘Well, that is it then. We turn back,’ Svein said, ‘get back to a fire.’ He stamped his fur-lined boots in the snow, trying to put some warmth back in his feet.

  ‘May as well,’ Olaf agreed. ‘No point in freezing our balls off for we will not find the den now.’

  Sigurd did not want to go back yet, not while his blood was still thrumming with the thrill of having found the ewe. Not while the wolves might yet be close, for their kill was steaming where it lay in the bloody snow, the hot contents of its stomach meeting the night air, meaning that part of it was only recently ripped open. He was about to say as much when a wolf’s howl cut through the night like a blade through flesh. Immediately other beasts joined the chorus and for a cold heartbeat the sound reminded Sigurd of the many war horns whose thin notes – all different in pitch – had pierced the day in the Karmsund Strait when his father had been betrayed by King Gorm and the fjord had turned red.

  ‘We didn’t bring enough spears,’ Svein said, peering north and rolling his great shoulders, for the howling filled the forest around them so that it seemed there must be a score or more animals.

  ‘That’s the trick of it,’ Olaf said, ‘to make other packs think there are more of them than there are.’

  ‘It is a good trick,’ Sigurd said, eyeing the tracks leading away from the kill.

  ‘Aye, low cunning,’ Olaf agreed, ‘but Svein is right that there are still more than we had bargained for.’ He sniffed and hawked phlegm into the snow. ‘Might be as well for us to leave them to it and set our traps near the pens rather than trudging all the way out here into their territory. Like fools pissing up against a neighbouring jarl’s hall.’

  The howling was cut with yip yipping now as though the wolves were summoning their own bloodlust and encouraging each other to bold and reckless acts the way young warriors do in the shieldwall before a fight. It was a sound to turn your bone marrow to ice and none of the men needed to say as much to know that each thought it.

  ‘Could be those that took our ewe are back with the pack, meaning their den is close,’ Sigurd suggested, still eager to do what they had come out there to do. ‘We find their den and mark it. Come back in daylight. Or they attack us and we kill a few of them and the rest leave this place. Leaving our animals in peace.’

  Olaf and Svein looked at each other, their breath clouding before their faces. ‘I suppose if they go for us and get their teeth into Svein they will be eating him for a week, giving us plenty of time to get away,’ Olaf suggested, earning himself a growled insult from the red-haired giant. ‘So, we ignore the beasts’ warning and walk right up to their den, of which they are bound to be as protective as you would be of Reinen or your own hall.’ He flapped a big hand. ‘I don’t include Burner’s hall in that for I know you don’t much care for the place, which is the real reason we’re out here pissing icicles.’

  Sigurd had not known his dislike of Jarl Hakon’s old place was so obvious.

  He pointed his spear into the forest. ‘Does that not sound like a challenge to you, Uncle?’

  ‘Aye,’ Olaf admitted, ‘and you are your father’s son.’

  Turning their backs on the slaughtered ewe they set off along the new trail, eyes sharp as rivet points, hearts hammering against their breastbones because it was no easy thing to walk towards that bowel-loosening clamour.

  ‘Remind me to tell you the saga of the ram which men called the Terror,’ Olaf said, then glanced at Svein. ‘Your father and Slagfid were both up to their necks in that mischief and all because we were young and stupid and could not turn away from a challenge.’ With that he stopped and gestured with his spear, inviting Sigurd to lead the way. ‘After you, Haraldarson.’

  Sigurd trudged ahead, putting his feet in the wolves’ tracks, a wolf’s grin on his own face. ‘I am happy to lead the way, Uncle,’ he said, ‘for it is well known that wolves will go for the one lagging behind. They can easily tell which of their prey is old and will be less trouble to bring down.’

  ‘Ha! It is not difficult to see why you have so many enemies and so few friends,’ Olaf said, nevertheless glancing behind him as they walked.

  But as they progressed along the track into a part of the forest where the trees were closer together and the snow was more shallow because of it, it was Svein who realized that although the howling might be the beasts issuing a challenge, the way one war band will hurl a spear over the heads of another, that challenge was not aimed at the three men lumbering through the snow after them.

  ‘Down!’ he hissed, pulling Sigurd’s cloak. The three of them crouched, which felt to Sigurd like a foolish thing to do, giving away their advantage of height to put their faces level with a wolf’s jaws. But his eyes picked out the shapes in the gloom, told him that the wolves were not facing in their direction. Since they had turned off the original path where they had found the dead ewe, what little breeze there was carried their own sce
nt eastward away from the wolves, so that there was a chance, albeit a slim one, that the creatures did not even know they were so close, particularly given all the noise they were themselves making.

  ‘They have some animal cornered,’ Svein whispered.

  Above them a bird flapped in the snow-laden canopy: a raven perhaps, following the pack, waiting for it to kill again, and Sigurd saw Olaf touch the Thór’s hammer amulet at his neck because where there was blood and death there were always ravens.

  ‘An elk. Or a bear,’ Olaf suggested. The pack had surrounded its prey and Sigurd looked from one beast to another, trying to get a grip on their number in the half-light. Ten? Maybe more. He could not say, other than there were enough to bring down a bear, if Olaf was right and that was what had got the wolves baying for blood. But all Sigurd could see was the pack, the crouching beasts all snarl and noise and bristle.

  ‘Are you sure we should get involved in this fight?’ Svein asked Sigurd, for if the wolves had cornered a bear the three men might be better off away from the tooth and claw of it all.

  ‘Unless you can tell me that you have heard a bear singing the galdr before, then I think we have walked into something else here,’ Sigurd murmured, tapping his ear which was turned towards the howling chaos among the trees a spear’s throw away.

  ‘Óðin’s arse!’ Olaf hissed.

  It was no easy thing to pick the human voice out of all that wolf singing, but once Sigurd had found the thread of it there was no doubt. And it was a woman too, though what a woman was doing alone out in the woods at night was itself a question to make a man’s neck hairs stand up like a wolf’s hackles.

  ‘I didn’t come out here to tangle with a seiðr-witch,’ Olaf said, flexing his hand around his spear’s shaft to get some warmth into his fingers. The wolves were snarling more than howling now and it was a sound that Sigurd felt in his very guts like a rockfall in a cave.

  ‘She cannot be much of a witch or else she would have concealed herself from them,’ Svein said, which was more sense than they were used to hearing from him.