Sigurd looked at Olaf and could tell that he thought it was a proposition worth considering.
‘It’s not as though we have a great deal of choice,’ Olaf said. This was true as far as Sigurd could see. ‘And we are going to need more silver before this thing with the oath-breaker is done.’ He gestured for Sigurd to follow him over to the mast step where they could talk without being overheard. ‘We go with this Knut and we fight for his lord but we keep our heads down and maybe we make an alliance or two that might come in useful.’ The rest of the crew were still poised for a fight, their shields forming a rampart along Reinen’s side. Sigurd knew they would fight if he gave the word and he was proud of them for it.
‘What do you say?’ Olaf asked him. ‘If we meet this Alrik and he turns out to be a toad’s arsehole who is not worth our sweat, we’ll be on our way. If he tries to stop us . . .’ Olaf shrugged. ‘We kill him, then go on our way.’
Sigurd nodded and turned back to Knut. ‘I will fight for your lord but I will not swear to him. Neither will my crew for they are already sworn to me.’
‘Are you a jarl then?’ Knut asked.
‘Not yet,’ Sigurd said. ‘But they are sworn to me. We will fight and you will see our worth, but I will not let your lord waste their lives.’
‘So we are agreed? You will come with us? I have your word?’
Sigurd jumped on to the sheer strake and stepped across on to the wharf, gripping Knut’s forearm as the one-eared warrior gripped his.
‘You have my word, Knut,’ Sigurd said.
‘I am glad you have found some new meat for Alrik’s shieldwall, Knut,’ Horsefly said. ‘I will be still more glad when I have my four cups of silver.’
‘You know I’m good for it, Asvith,’ Knut said.
‘I do,’ Asvith said. ‘When will you sail?’
‘Tomorrow? The day after? When we have the wind.’
Asvith nodded. ‘Tell Alrik that King Erik wants that troll-swiving Jarl Guthrum dead before the Jól feast.’
Knut gave the man a warning look. ‘You know as well as I do that my lord Alrik is not sworn to King Erik, nor any other king.’
‘I like the sound of this Alrik,’ Olaf muttered to Sigurd.
Asvith gave Knut a smile that was as greasy as swine fat. ‘Not yet, perhaps,’ he said. ‘But once King Erik has got oaths from all of the western jarls, he will come east to mop up the last dregs from here south as far as Götaland. Your lord Alrik is no fool. He knows that resisting King Erik would be like trying to turn back the tide.’
‘We will see what happens when that day comes,’ Knut said. ‘In the meantime we have our own fight.’
‘You do,’ Asvith said. ‘We hear that it is not going well for you.’ He turned back to Sigurd. ‘Your crew is the caulking to stop Alrik’s boat shipping water,’ he said. Knut did not deny it.
‘Then Alrik is a lucky man, for with caulking such as this, he could sail to the edge of the world,’ Sigurd said, grinning.
‘Let us hope there is more to you than a good boast, Byrnjolf, because you have already cost me enough silver,’ Knut said, though there was a smile on his lips which looked at odds with his hard, battle-scarred face.
‘Back to the borg then!’ Asvith called, turning to his warriors, who if truth be told looked just as happy that they would not have to fight anyone that morning after all. They slung their shields across their backs, tucked hand axes back into their belts and began to head back to the town in loose order, their chatter a low hum in the dawn.
‘So that’s it for Birka then,’ Svein said as they laid their own weapons down in the thwarts and removed their helmets. ‘It was good while it lasted.’
‘The wound-sea calls us,’ Hagal said, meaning that they would be sailing a sea of blood before long, which was a dark way of looking at how the morning had turned out.
‘I prefer to think that we are heading into an ice-sea,’ Olaf said, which was not the best kenning for silver that anyone had ever heard, but they knew what Olaf meant and anyway they preferred it to Crow-Song’s foretelling. For Knut had promised them fighting. And where there was fighting there was plunder.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AS IT HAPPENED, they had spent another three days in Birka, waiting for a good wind and keeping out of trouble while Knut rounded up the last of those other men whom he had convinced to sell their swords to his lord Alrik and sail north with him. Some of these were men from outlying farms who had endured a hard winter and would need to earn enough silver to get their families through the next one. Most were Svearmen but some were Geats who had come north to Birka to make a name for themselves in trade or war. Rumour was that one man was from far-off Alba across the whale’s road, which had men intrigued, at least until they laid eyes on him, for word had it the man was not much to look at. But wherever they were from Knut promised them fame as men of Alrik’s war band, his fellowship, and they had swallowed the hook whole, and perhaps they would earn fame in the sword-song. Still others were young men who would rather do anything than work the land like their fathers, or spend their days fishing, or turning wood, cutting peat to harvest bog iron, or felling trees in the forests. Few owned brynjur, helmets or swords, but most came with spears, short axes and heads full of fireside tales, and when they saw Sigurd and his crew they were round-eyed and as full of awe as men who have caught a glimpse of the world of the gods at the far end of Bifröst the shimmering bridge.
‘Either you served a generous king or else you killed a rich one,’ Knut had said to Sigurd, for even he had been impressed by the sight of them in all their war glory the day they had set off from Birka. It was not that Sigurd expected trouble, but he wanted Knut to see them in their mail and helmets, their spear blades gleaming, sword scabbards and belts oiled and lustrous, axe heads polished, and each of them looking as rich as a jarl and dangerous as death.
‘No king gave us this war gear,’ Sigurd had said, which was answer enough. Knut would know that he had brought battle-tested warriors to his lord’s banner. He would also know better than to cheat them or waste them in some hopeless fight.
So they had sailed north across Løgrinn in the wake of Knut’s ship, a sleek karvi named Kráka, which had Solmund muttering that Crow was a strange name for a ship, but then these men were Svear, he said, which he supposed explained it. The crossing was easy enough, even when on the second day the wind died and they had to row, because although Løgrinn was not strictly a lake, for it drained into the Baltic Sea, it was as flat as a mead board. Terns, herring gulls, ducks and sandpipers thronged on the skerries. Now and then cormorants flew low over the water across Reinen’s path, having returned to the north now that winter was over, which was a good thing to see, though young Thorbiorn was not so sure and would touch the Freyja pendant at his neck whenever he saw one. He believed that the birds were men who had been lost at sea, which had even Asgot muttering to himself. ‘Those who drown but escape Rán’s cold embrace end up on the island of Utrøst,’ King Thorir’s son told them. ‘But the only way they can return to their homes to see their loved ones again is if they take the shape of cormorants.’
‘And where is this Utrøst?’ Solmund asked him. ‘For I have never heard of it.’
Thorbiorn had shrugged and shot the helmsman a petulant look. ‘You tell me, seeing as you are the one with salt water for blood and a beating sail for a heart,’ he said. ‘Besides, my mother told me the story when I was a boy and I cannot remember it all.’
‘You must have a bad memory then, lad,’ Solmund gnarred, which was well said because Thorbiorn was still a boy in many ways.
And when they came to the northern edge of Løgrinn, they followed Kráka east along the thickly forested shore until they arrived at the bay in which Alrik’s other ships were moored. There were five of them in all: three knörrs, a big snekke as good for war as for riding the whale road, and another karvi similar to Crow, though to Sigurd’s eyes none of them was as handsome as Reinen. The forest around the
bay had been cleared, the timber having gone into several small buildings and the palisade of sharpened stakes which surrounded the settlement, enclosing it almost to the shore so that the ships at their moorings were protected. The rest of the place was a clutter of tents and animal pens, workshops and stores, and all of it roofed by a pall of smoke from the many fires around which men and women gathered. Though many of the men and women, at least fifty or sixty, came to the muddy shore to see Kráka and Reinen slide up to their moorings. They greeted Knut and those men they knew, exchanging news and hurling insults at one another the way men will when they are pleased to see that their friends are still in one piece.
Some of the camp men asked Knut how he had managed to get so many young men drunk enough to join him. Others told those wide-eyed strangers that they should have stayed in Birka where there were plenty of women and less chance of being gutted by a spear or bitten to death by the midges which swarmed round Løgrinn’s shore in the summer. Most, though, eyed the poorly armed new men the way a gull watches a ship which it knows has its prow turned towards a storm.
‘They’ve seen fighting, that lot,’ Bram told Olaf, nodding towards a knot of men who, instead of clucking over the newcomers, were standing round a rack on which a wolf skin was stretched for scraping.
His arms full of his sea chest, Olaf glanced over at the men and nodded. They wore their experience of the spear-song like the cloaks on their backs. It was pride but weariness. It was callous cruelty but the indifference of a dull blade. It was fellowship.
‘Take me to Alrik,’ Sigurd told Knut when they had all disembarked and Knut had shown Reinen’s crew to their sailcloth shelter near the shore’s edge.
‘He is not here,’ Knut said. ‘But in a few days we will march north to Fornsigtuna. You will meet him then.’
There was no room in any of the log houses for now, but that could change at any time, Knut assured them. Not that Sigurd minded sleeping under sailcloth, for he did not want to be far from Reinen until he had got a better idea about this war-leader Alrik and his people.
‘I don’t think they have seen many shieldmaidens before,’ Knut said to Valgerd, who must have felt the weight of men’s eyes more than any of them. ‘In truth I would have filled two of Asvith’s cups just for you.’ Even a grizzled, one-eared, finger-light warrior like Knut was not invulnerable to Valgerd’s fierce beauty, though unlike Bjarni – or Sigurd himself, truth be told – he was not vain enough to believe that she might be attracted to him. ‘Alrik will see it as a good omen that I’ve brought him you.’
‘His enemies will see it differently the first time they face her,’ Sigurd said.
Knut nodded, tearing his eyes from Valgerd back to Sigurd. ‘I will make sure I am nearby to see it,’ he said. ‘So . . . which of you will help me train these wet-behind-the-ears lads so that they don’t turn and run off the first time they hear a shield din?’
‘I’ll help you,’ Olaf said, coming back out of the tent. ‘If one of them ends up beside me in the shieldwall I want to know he’s not going to piss on my shoes.’
‘Aye, I’ll come,’ Bram said.
‘Me too,’ Bjorn said, picking up his spear and shield.
‘Good,’ Knut said, turning towards the others. ‘The rest of you make yourselves comfortable and try not to start any fights. You’ll be earning the silver I paid for you soon enough.’
‘Where will we find the ale?’ Svein asked, throwing an arm over Bjarni’s shoulder. ‘If we are busy drinking then we are not busy fighting.’
For a moment Knut looked dubious, then he pointed to a tent of red cloth across the far side of the camp beside a modest log-built longhouse whose thatch leaked so much smoke that presumably it let in the rain too. ‘You need to speak to a man called Trygir. He will give you the two skins which is your crew’s daily measure. You want more, you pay for it.’
Svein and Bjarni seemed happy enough with that and off they went. The others continued lugging sea chests and war gear into the tent and making their nests with furs and fleeces, and Sigurd looked up to see a white-tailed eagle soaring high above the forest beyond the palisade.
We will sharpen our own talons for this Alrik, he thought, and see where it leads us. There would be fighting and the gods would be watching. And Sigurd would fill his sea chest with silver because silver would buy him a war host.
Fionn had begun to think he had lost the scent and yet he had never taken his eyes off the jetties and wharves, as though by imagining Haraldarson he could conjure the reality. Then one blustery day Reinen had slid up to her mooring and Fionn’s quarry had been all but served up to him on a trencher. The farmer’s wife had been telling the truth after all, which was worth knowing. Good to know his methods were effective, not that he’d ever really doubted them.
Ever since that day, Fionn had watched Sigurd the way a hunter stalks a bull elk, looking for the perfect opportunity to strike. Waiting for his prey to make some mistake, to reveal his weakness. Just one vulnerable moment would be enough, was all the hunter needed. But Fionn had stalked enough men in his time to know that patience itself is to a killer as important as a well-honed blade. Four winters past he had shared hearth, hall and three full moons with a man he was being paid to kill. They had even become friends so that his quarry was as shocked as any victim could be when Fionn had put a knife in him while the man squatted behind the reed screen with his breeks round his ankles. Perhaps Fionn could have taken him before that, but there was something about the waiting which excited Fionn, which put a bone in his own breeks truth be told.
And yet he did not have the luxury of time now. Having pledged himself to fight for Alrik the last thing he intended was actually doing so. Not for him the shieldwall and the chaos of battle. Nor death by some unseen arrow falling from the sky, or facing some thick-skulled giant waving a long axe around thinking he was the Thunder God. Not that anyone could call Fionn a coward, for it took balls to look into the eyes of a man you had shared a mead horn with and put your knife into his heart. A man needed iron in his spine to hunt and kill a man who was said to be god-kissed, favoured by Óðin whom these men around him now called Allfather, Spear-God, Battle-Wolf. But Fionn did not fear these northern gods. It was not that he doubted their existence, just that he did not think they cared one way or the other about mortals and their struggles. When Fionn’s knife drank, men died. He had crossed the whale’s road some five years ago now and no shining, spear-wielding god, no red-bearded or blaze-eyed Lord of Asgard had ever come down from the clouds to stop him cutting a throat.
But people? People sometimes got in the way. The big growler who watched Sigurd like a proud father was one to start with. Olaf his name was, and Fionn might not have revelled in the spear din like some men but he knew a formidable warrior when he saw one. This Olaf had the war gear and the bearing of a champion, a man who fears no other, but more than this, he was older than most of Haraldarson’s crew and wiser too.
Yet, Olaf was not the only warrior between Fionn and Sigurd. There was a wolf-lean, black-haired young man who might as well have had ‘raven-feeder’ carved in runes on his head, for he was a killer and no mistake. Fionn had not caught this man’s name but he and his hand axes were rarely far from Fionn’s prey. And there was Moldof the one-armed, who used to be King Gorm’s prow man and who might well recognize Fionn from his time at Avaldsnes.
And so Fionn, hunter of men, killer of men’s enemies, had watched and waited and now, on the third night since they had come ashore to Alrik’s camp, he was beginning to smell an opportunity like the iron scent of blood in the air.
Perhaps two skins of ale per day should have been enough for a half crew like them. But it was not. Svein, Moldof, Bjorn, Bjarni and Thorbiorn each drank two men’s share. Bram drank three. And so long as they were not fighting or causing too much trouble Sigurd did not see the harm in keeping them well sluiced in the stuff. He was their leader, and whilst he could not be much of a ring giver yet, he could reward their
loyalty with ale, which was just as good as far as most of them were concerned. Sigurd had done what he could to keep Alrik’s ale flowing into their cups like meltwater off a cliff face, but they had run out again now, which was why he was walking through the camp in the pouring, freezing rain towards Trygir’s red sailcloth tent. Men sat huddled in skins under what meagre shelter they could find, murmuring round hissing fires and looking miserable with it. Sigurd imagined that more than a few of the younger lads, who had followed Knut singing their own legends under their breath, were beginning to think they should have stayed in Birka where there was plenty of dry floor space and better ale than Trygir’s to be had.
‘I could see the fear in their faces,’ Valgerd said through a grin as they walked together. ‘They were terrified that I would not be able to carry as much.’
Sigurd laughed, slipping and sliding in the mud, his arms outstretched for balance. ‘And yet not one of them was so terrified that he volunteered to go in your place,’ he said, walking through a thick haze of smoke which leaked from a nearby shelter made of spears stuck in the mud with oiled skins for its roof.
‘Fetch a drop for us, won’t you, lad?’ a voice from the smoke said, though Sigurd could not see the body to whom it belonged amongst those who huddled steaming and stinking in that shelter.
‘You do look younger without your brynja and helmet and with your beard braided like that,’ Valgerd said, amused by the man having addressed Sigurd as though he were some stripling running errands.
‘And yet no less handsome, hey?’ Sigurd replied, made bold by the ale already inside him warming his blood.
‘Or vain,’ Valgerd said, lifting an eyebrow then nodding through a gap between two tents because she had seen Trygir’s place through the rain and the gloom.
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