‘No,’ she said again. ‘I am not worried about it,’ but Skuld stopped and turned to her. The woman was no fool.
‘You must not be ashamed of this,’ she said, gesturing at the wound which for all the neatness of the stitching was still new and angry-looking. ‘And neither are you less beautiful for it.’ Her eyes blazed in the gathering gloom. Night was upon them now. ‘If I were you I would be proud. Such battle runes speak for us, Runa. They tell our tales as well as any skald. This rune of yours tells me that you are a survivor. A formidable young woman who possesses the strength for which you are named.’
Runa had not thought about it like that, and yet it was just the sort of thing that Valgerd might have said and she liked the sound of it. A battle rune, she thought, gently touching the puckered skin. Yes, she liked the sound of that.
‘I will try not to hide it then, my lady,’ Runa said, and Skuld nodded as they walked across the clearing amongst which several more oil lamps hung from the trees, their small flames hissing and spitting in the rain which was a little heavier now.
They passed the forge in which Ibor and Ingel were setting up so that they would be ready to begin work first thing in the morning. The two men were unwrapping tools from oiled leather sheets, piling up sacks of charcoal which they had brought from dry storage in the nearest longhouse, and tipping buckets of water which they filled from the nearby rocks into the plunge bath. And as Runa and Skuld walked on, Runa felt the weight of the younger man’s eyes on her, heavy as a ringmail tunic.
By the third day on the island Runa knew very well why the father and son blacksmiths Ibor and Ingel had been grinning like mead-drunk fools while the other men aboard King Thorir’s ship had looked so gloomy. It seemed the two men were useful for more than repairing weapons, making nails, riveting brynjur rings and all the other tasks which required more skill than simple iron-working. Runa had lost count of the times she had seen either Ibor or his son all but pulled into a Freyja Maiden’s bed, or led up the ladder into one of the lofts by those women who preferred not to do their swiving in view of everyone else.
Freyja the battle maiden. Freyja the lover.
‘The Goddess herself has such appetites, girl, and we are no different,’ a tall, dark-haired woman with close-set eyes called Signy told Runa, who was watching Ingel being hauled out of his forge, his father laughing and waving that he should go and do what he must and that the bent sword he was working on would still be there when he returned.
Runa and another Maiden called Vebiorg had been fighting each other with wooden swords, going through the basic cuts and parries, when Runa’s attention had been caught by the commotion across the clearing.
‘Guthrun prefers the young bull to the old,’ Vebiorg said now, slashing her practice sword through the air. ‘Myself, I prefer Ibor. He makes the ride last longer and he knows what he is doing.’
‘Yes but Ingel is getting better at it,’ Signy said. ‘The last time they were here he rode me like a man who has just heard that his jarl is putting on a feast and is serving his best mead.’ Her lips curled into a smile. ‘When he was done, I gave him a little while to catch his breath but told him I would cut off his snake if he didn’t do it again.’
‘Yes, you have told us this before, Signy,’ Vebiorg said, waving a dismissive hand. ‘The second time, you rode him and he lasted until the sun came up.’
‘Well, it’s true,’ Signy said, ‘and by the time we finished he was red raw but proud as a young stallion.’
Signy looked at Runa, who felt the colour in her face as a bloom of heat. She had never lain with a man and was not used to talking about such things, not that she was talking about it now. Perhaps if she’d had sisters instead of brothers.
‘We are making our young guest uncomfortable,’ Vebiorg said. ‘Look,’ she nodded at Runa, ‘you could warm your hands on that face. All this talk has the girl as dewy as a spring morning. We’d best get back to sword and spear work before she wets her skirts.’
Runa could find no words to answer that and so she did the only thing she could. She raised her practice sword, tilting its point towards Vebiorg, and attacked.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT HAD COST Fionn more than half the silver which King Gorm had given him to get to Birka. He had bought passage on three different boats before going aboard a trading knörr whose skipper was as eager to reach Birka as Fionn was himself. The man had a hold full of bear, wolf, marten and squirrel pelts and feared the weather turning warmer before he got the chance to sell them at twice their worth. His name was Alver and he said he had seen too much meltwater pouring into the fjord for it not to mean that summer was around the corner. And so he sailed that broad-bellied ship with an impatience bordering on recklessness, or that was how it seemed to Fionn who did not know that coast and saw the rocks which broke the surface at low tide like seals’ backs and which threatened to rip out Wave-Rider’s belly, spilling men and furs into the sea. But Fionn stood at the side and revelled in the song of the wind through the lines because he was on the hunt. Did a stooping hawk, its talons extended, suddenly open its wings to slow its flight when it could almost taste the prey? No, it did not. Besides which, he could swim like an otter if needs be. Let them all drown, including his horses. Let it all sink to the fjord’s bed and so long as he had his scían in his hand when he clambered up the rocks Sigurd Haraldarson would die.
And yet when Wave-Rider clumped up to her mooring and he had bid his farewells to Alver and gone off to get an eyeful of all the bays and berths which Birka had to offer, Fionn began to think that he had made a mistake. That he had been too hasty in killing the farmer and his family before he had taken ship into the Jutland Sea. He should have asked them more questions, made it even more clear what they stood to lose by lying to him, for as it was it seemed they had done just that. That fat sow. Because Sigurd Haraldarson and his crew-light ship were not in Birka.
No. They will come. Haraldarson will come. In my haste I am here before him, that is all. Patience is the hunter’s weapon, he reminded himself.
And so he would wait.
‘Well, I cannot even tell I have been drinking at all,’ Bjarni said. He was standing on the table, an ale horn in each hand and a woman on his shoulders, just sitting there, her skirts up round her hips so that Bjarni’s beard bristles must have tickled her inner thighs. Though she looked happy enough with the arrangement. And Bjarni was naked.
‘We started drinking properly at midday,’ Svein said, a puzzled expression on his face, ‘so I would wager we must have had one or two by now.’ He grinned. ‘But it would be a shame if we did not carry on a little while longer. It is not every day a man is drinking ale in such a place as this—’ He frowned, trying to remember the name of the settlement.
‘It is called Birka, you brainless ox,’ Bjarni slurred.
‘Ha! You had never heard of the place before we tied up to the wharf the other morning,’ Olaf told him, downing the ale in his cup and dragging a hand across his beard and lips.
‘This is true, Uncle,’ Svein said, ‘but now that we do know of Birka, I am thinking Birka should learn a little about us.’ He grinned up at the woman on Bjarni’s shoulders who was moving her arms up and down in undulating, languid strokes, as though she believed she was a bird flying through the sky. A bird that was falling asleep, Sigurd thought, looking at her eyes which were beginning to grow heavy. She had done her best to keep up with Bjarni and the others on the drinking and it had been a worthy effort, but there was more chance of those flapping arms lifting her up and out into the night.
‘Tell your friend to get down,’ the owner of the drinking house called across to Olaf, who waved a hand at the man as if to say he would get round to it in a moment.
‘I am glad we are here,’ Bjorn said. Along with Sigurd and Moldof and most of the others crammed into the benches of that fug-filled, reeking, flame-lit tavern, Bjorn, Hagal and Solmund were sitting on stools, leaning against the wall. Solmund had been asl
eep and snoring for a good while now, which at least got him out of the drinking. The only two missing were Aslak and Asgot who were down at the wharf with Reinen. There were harbour guards down there whose job it was to see that men did not steal from other men’s ships, but Sigurd would not trust that job to Svearmen he did not know.
‘This is what men like us should be doing when there is no one around who we ought to be killing,’ Bjorn went on.
‘You are lucky that Sigurd is so generous with his silver,’ Olaf said, at which Bjorn and his brother both raised their ale horns to Sigurd by way of thanks for keeping the stuff flowing like a river in spate.
‘When you want someone dead, we are your men,’ Bjorn said, grinning. ‘You just have to give us the word, Sigurd.’
At that moment the woman up on Bjarni’s shoulders opened her mouth and spewed a hot, stinking gush on to the table, which had men jumping from the benches and cursing her to Hel’s cold kingdom and beyond.
‘At last we have found someone who holds their ale as well as Thorbiorn here,’ Svein said, smacking King Thorir’s son on the back as a foul-mouthed Bjarni deposited his burden. The woman cursed, spat and tried to grab Bjorn’s ale horn but he held it beyond her reach and told her to fuck off, at which she cursed again and staggered away into the crowd.
Bram leant over to a stranger sitting on the bench behind and swiped the man’s fur hat off his head, tossing it to Bjarni who was still standing on the table, though now he was wearing something at least, even if it was wet and foul and had recently been inside the girl.
‘Where’s my fucking h—’ the stranger began, stopping when he looked up to see the well-muscled, well-scarred man wiping himself down with it.
‘I would forget about the hat if I were you, friend,’ Valgerd advised the stranger, who looked at her, then at Bram and Olaf and Sigurd, and promptly turned back round to his cup.
‘I say we find somewhere else to drink,’ Thorbiorn suggested, grimacing at the smell, though there were two thralls with water at the table now, trying to sluice the mess away without soaking anyone.
‘Then it is too bad that no one gives a bag of bollocks about what you say, whelp,’ Olaf told him.
‘Get him off that table!’ the drinking house’s owner bawled again from beyond a press of men who were even more drunk than Sigurd’s crew. If that were possible.
‘Brave when he’s all the way over there, isn’t he?’ Black Floki muttered.
Again Olaf raised a hand in the man’s direction, then turned back to Bjarni. ‘Down you get, lad,’ he said. ‘If you don’t hide that worm of yours soon some bird is going to swoop in here and peck it off.’
‘Just as soon as I have seen the girl I am looking for, Uncle,’ Bjarni slurred, sweeping his ale cup across the crowded place, ‘for up here you get the best view.’
‘And which one are you looking for, Bjarni?’ Sigurd asked him.
‘The prettiest one of course,’ Bjarni said, drinking.
‘And by pretty he means blind,’ Valgerd put in, which had them all laughing.
They had been in Birka, on the island of Björko, three days now and were still full of it, none of them having ever seen a place like it. Unlike the kaupang at Skíringssalr, Birka was a year-round trading settlement, home to metal workers, bronze casters, wood carvers, bone carvers and leather workers. It buzzed with activity, with merchants and fur, hide and ivory hunters, who had brought their goods in readiness for the coming season and the arrival of the trade knörrs which would mark the beginning of summer. Iron mined all over Svealand was traded at Birka, as were slaves, their captors bringing them across the Baltic to the island where they exchanged them for silver, glassware, cloth, jewellery, weapons, wine or any number of other goods. It was enough to make the palms itch for the feel of silver, as Sigurd’s father might have said. But easier to get hold of that silver as a trading man than a raiding one, Sigurd had said.
Olaf had agreed. ‘She’s a sweet nut but she’d take some cracking,’ he said as they took in the fortress surrounded by its earth and stone ramparts, which stood upon the great lump of bare rock due north of the settlement itself.
‘Still, makes the mouth water just to think of it,’ Moldof had put in. ‘All the treasures in a place like that. The riches which make men build such walls to keep other men out.’
Birka’s location was its greatest advantage, Sigurd knew, for it was protected from casual attack by a network of rivers, lakes and inlets, which would be guarded by ships full of Svear warriors. As it was they had been challenged by one such crew, whose skipper had wanted to see evidence of Sigurd’s trade goods before granting him permission to enter the large harbour of Kugghamn at Björko’s northern end. That itself had been no easy thing, requiring Solmund’s experience at the tiller and Sigurd’s own good eyesight, for the approach through the Skärgård and Løgrinn, the great bay of the Baltic Sea, had been strewn with rocks deliberately placed to make the way more difficult, hazardous even, for those new to Birka.
A commotion turned Sigurd’s head now and he saw the main throng of drinking men part to allow the owner of the place and five big, ugly, broken-nosed men to come through, each of them brandishing a club of some sort. There were no blades, other than eating knives, allowed in the place, all swords and scramasaxes being left in the care of thralls outside.
‘Only five?’ Svein said. ‘Now this whoreson is really nettling me. Five? What an insult.’
‘I’ve told you enough times to get your friend down off my table,’ the owner said, pointing a finger at Olaf, which was not, Sigurd thought, the best idea the man had ever had. ‘And he can put some clothes on while he’s at it. Gods but nobody in here wants to see all that flapping about like a fish in the bilge.’
That was when Olaf took hold of the man’s finger and snapped it, and the man screamed and the fighting began. Olaf’s fist in the man’s mouth stopped him shrieking at least. ‘It is hard to make so much noise when you are chewing on broken teeth and blood,’ Svein said afterwards. But it took a purposeful blow to his jaw to shut the drinking house owner up completely.
It did not last long. Bram, Svein, Olaf and Bjorn were in the thick of it, breaking noses, hammering fists into jaws and eyes, kicking men in the balls and generally making a mess of the place while Sigurd and the others looked on, trying to avoid the flailing limbs and flying ale. He would not have admitted it but Sigurd’s bones still ached from his fight with King Thorir all those weeks ago. Besides which, this fight was not of his making and he was content to keep out of the way and let the others have their fun.
Even Bjarni had jumped still naked into that seething cauldron, an unsettling sight as he grappled a man who was a head taller than he, until at Sigurd’s word Olaf hauled him off, telling him to get his clothes back on before he earned Sigurd’s crew the kind of reputation they did not want.
And yet no one seemed to be enjoying the fight more than Thorbiorn. He leant against the wall, grinning like a dead hare.
Solmund nodded in his direction. ‘Maybe we should have left when the lad suggested it,’ he said to Hagal, who for his part clearly did not think the fight worthy of one of his tales, for he seemed more concerned with emptying his ale cup down his throat while he still could.
Everyone in the place, all the other crews, the traders, the hunters and the craftsmen, were all watching, and many of them did not look happy about what was being done to the ale house owner and his companions by this crew whom many of them had never seen before. One of these spectators, a lean, dark-haired man with only a nub of skin where one of his ears used to be, caught Sigurd’s eye. It wasn’t just the missing ear that drew his attention. It was the tilt of his head and the way he held himself. He was no silversmith or wood turner this one. He was a warrior and it did not take any cleverness to see it.
Solmund noticed the man too. ‘We are not going to make friends like this, Sigurd,’ he said, turning back to see Svein pick up a discarded cudgel and walk over to a ma
n who was on all fours, bloody spittle hanging from his beard as he tried to rise. Svein lashed the cudgel across the man’s face and he dropped to the ale- and mud-slick floor.
No one was doing any killing, that they knew of anyway, but Solmund was right. It was not as though they needed any more enemies.
‘Besides which, I doubt we will be served any more ale here,’ Hagal said.
Bjarni nodded at the ale house owner who was a moaning heap of misery. ‘Not unless that turd has pissed in it,’ he said, stumbling into his breeks and trying, not altogether successfully, to pull them up.
‘We’re leaving,’ Sigurd announced. ‘Now.’
‘S’pose we might as well,’ Bram said, looking at the wreckage of dazed, crumpled men around them. He seemed disappointed that there was no one left to fight.
They downed the last of their ale and made for the door, other drinkers parting to let them leave, then poured out of the longhouse into the spring night, making their way past a line of warehouses, workshops and the jetties which provided access to them from the lake on the north-east of Birka. Dogs barked, horses in a nearby stable nickered and somewhere a baby screamed.
‘Well, the owner of that place will never chew a good mutton stew again,’ Svein said, looking up at the night sky and retying one of his braids which had come loose long before the fighting began. Grey cloud was scudding westward, breaking up here and there to reveal swathes of black in which stars beyond counting blinked like the sparks from some god’s fire in Asgard. It was a good night to be alive, Sigurd thought.
‘That is his own fault,’ Olaf said. ‘He was near enough picking my nose with that finger of his. A man should not shove his finger in another man’s face unless he is certain he can put him on his arse.’
‘Maybe he thought he could put you on your arse, Olaf,’ Moldof said.
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