Knut had explained how Alrik had a long-running feud with a jarl called Guthrum. It had started with the theft of a few sheep – Knut had not said who stole from whom – and grew from there, the way a snowball grows when you roll it in snow. Blood for blood. Murder for murder, as is the way with these things. Jarl Guthrum had risen high and fast, some saying he meant to raise enough spears to challenge King Erik Refilsson. He had taken this fort from another warlord and stuffed it with silver. ‘He is raising an army,’ Knut had said, ‘but we mean to scupper his ambition and get back what he has taken from us over the years.’
Still, it did not look like it was going well for Alrik so far.
‘You can see what has become of the men who have been knocking on that gate,’ Asgot said, pointing his staff towards three mounds of newly turned earth over by the trees on the east side of the borg. Sigurd wondered how many men already lay in the ground for Alrik’s ambition to take this place.
‘If it was me I’d burn it,’ Sigurd said. ‘I would pile a great heap of dry wood against that gate and set fire to it at night. Then, while Jarl Guthrum’s people were busy throwing pails of water and pissing out the flames, I’d get most of my men arrayed in a skjaldborg facing the gate, lit up by the fire for all to see.’ He shrugged. ‘While all this was happening, some of us would hop over the wall on the other side and start killing.’
‘Good enough,’ Olaf said with a nod.
‘We cannot burn it,’ Knut said, coming over to where Sigurd and the others stood. He nodded towards the borg. ‘Alrik has forbidden it.’
‘He might be one ear short of a pair but there’s nothing wrong with the man’s hearing,’ Bram muttered to Svein.
‘Why can’t we burn it?’ Sigurd asked.
‘Because we might need that palisade,’ Knut said. ‘Only half of Guthrum’s force is in there. The rest are with the jarl somewhere to the west, shaking taxes out of rich karls and raising spears.’ He hawked and spat a wad of phlegm which was whipped away by the gathering breeze. ‘The whoreson has promised his own arse King Erik’s high seat.’
That made sense of why, back in Birka, Asvith had told Knut that King Erik wanted Jarl Guthrum dead by the Jól feast, Sigurd thought. This feud between Guthrum and Alrik was being fuelled by the king’s silver, then.
‘Gods but these things become tangled like yarn in a bairn’s hands,’ Olaf said.
‘If the fire catches and too much of the palisade burns, we might not have the time to rebuild the defences before Guthrum himself shows up,’ Knut said. ‘Even if we cut the timber and fashioned the stakes to have them ready, they would not be properly bedded into the earth.’
‘So we just sit here and wait for Guthrum’s people to starve?’ Olaf asked.
‘That will be the easiest silver I have ever made,’ Bjarni put in, grinning at his brother Bjorn.
‘Is that Alrik’s plan?’ Sigurd asked. ‘Because if Jarl Guthrum returns while we are sitting out here we will be caught between him and the borg, which does not strike me as a good thing.’
Olaf agreed with that. ‘A shieldwall with enemies in front and behind does not tend to last very long,’ he said.
‘There is not much of Loki in this plan of Alrik’s,’ Sigurd said, turning back to Knut, ‘and yet from the looks of those graves over there, perhaps starving them out will work better than whatever you have tried so far.’
Knut’s lip curled and he seemed about to answer that accusation when his attention was drawn to a group of four warriors who were walking towards them, wet cloaks hitched over fine-looking swords, mail gleaming dully and sopping hair pulled back from weather-worn, battle-scarred faces. ‘Here is your chance to come up with a better scheme, Byrnjolf,’ he said, raising a hand in greeting to the newcomers. ‘My lord Alrik, this is Byrnjolf Hálfdanarson and his crew, who have come to win this battle for us.’ There was more than a touch of mockery in that, but only Bram bothered rising to the bait and growling something unpleasant in Knut’s direction.
There was no contempt in Alrik’s eyes though and neither would Sigurd expect there to be, what with them standing there in that camp looking like lords of war, albeit wet ones, in mail and helmets and the sort of gear you only normally saw on kings and the richest and highest of their hirðmen. Few of Alrik’s warriors were even half as well equipped by the looks.
‘Welcome, Byrnjolf,’ the warlord said, holding out his arm which Sigurd gripped, taking in the man before him. Alrik was a little shorter than himself but powerfully built. His hair was cropped close against his scalp on the sides but long enough on the top to be pulled back over his head and twisted into a rope, which hung down between his shoulder blades and was bound in leather thongs. ‘I see Knut has brought me a crew who are no strangers to the blood-fray.’ He glanced at Knut and nodded in appreciation. ‘You’ve done well, Knut.’
‘They can fight,’ the one-eared warrior said. ‘Even after drinking ale from sunrise to sunset they can fight. I’ll vouch for that.’
‘I do not doubt it,’ Alrik said, looking from Sigurd to Olaf, his eyes widening as they moved on to Svein. It was not unusual for men, even battle-hardened warriors, to be impressed by Svein’s size.
‘Knut offered us silver to fight and so here we are,’ Sigurd said, ‘and just as well for that Asvith Horsefly and his men too,’ he added, ‘for I had just been thinking that Asvith’s brynja would suit me well.’
‘It’s wasted on him, the soft sodding prick,’ Alrik said. Clearly he was no friend of Asvith.
‘I’ll admit it was a fine brynja,’ Olaf said. ‘No matter. Knut assures us there is plenty of plunder to be had here fighting for you.’
‘And he is right,’ Alrik said. ‘You and your men . . . and your woman will earn your fair share of the spoils.’ He glanced at Valgerd who was sitting on a tree stump, her brynja laid across her knees as she polished the rings with a greasy cloth. ‘Enough to make yourselves rich,’ he said with a smile. ‘Perhaps you will swear to me once we have killed Jarl Guthrum.’
‘Perhaps,’ Sigurd said. There was no harm in letting Alrik think Sigurd and his crew were there to be bought with the spoils of war.
Alrik held Sigurd’s eyes, twisting one side of his moustaches, which were so long that they drooped past his chin. He seemed possessed of a war-leader’s self-assurance, but Sigurd was the son of a jarl and he knew when a man’s nerve was being tested, when his resolve had been damaged like a brynja which has shed rings. It was in the man’s eyes, the strain of this long-running, root-deep feud of his with Jarl Guthrum.
‘Why would anyone build a borg so far from the sea?’ Sigurd asked. He had grown up with the scent of the sea and of his father’s ships in his nose, the smell of pine resin and tarred ropes and damp sailcloth. He had lived with the sound of gulls and the suck and plunge of the clear water against the rocks and he could not imagine why men would choose to live far from all this. It was bad enough that they had come so far from Reinen.
‘This borg is where Jarl Guthrum trains his warriors,’ Alrik said. ‘He has been building an army where he thinks no one can see him. He gathers spears from all over Svealand, demanding men’s oaths and promising them silver and fame. The treacherous dog thinks he should be a king and have men from here to Uppland kiss his sword’s hilt.’
‘That may be so, but I like the sound of this silver of his,’ Olaf said.
Alrik nodded at him. ‘He has something else which is of great value to me. Something I crave even more than silver. And it’s all in there,’ he said, pointing at the borg.
‘Gold?’ Sigurd asked.
‘Iron,’ Olaf said.
Alrik’s teeth flashed beneath those moustaches. ‘There’s enough iron behind those walls to make the rings for a Jötunheim-dweller’s brynja. Or rivets for twenty ships. From good rauði too. Red earth which Guthrum’s smiths have smelted and beaten into bars. Those bars sit in there waiting for me.’ He grinned. ‘At night they whisper to me, Byrnjolf. They beg me to have them
forged into blades and helmets. Into swords that will cut down my enemies and write my reputation in their blood.’ He threw out his arms to encompass his camp with its warriors and tents. ‘That is why we are here. I will have Guthrum’s iron.’
‘First we have to get into the place,’ Olaf said, ‘and our beards will be white before that happens if you will not burn it. Or else we will be caught between the borg and Guthrum like the iron between the hammer and the anvil.’
‘The man who commands in Guthrum’s absence is called Findar,’ Alrik said. ‘He does not seem particularly clever, but I do not think he is a fool either.’
‘He’s still in there and you’re still out here,’ Olaf pointed out. It was not the most tactful thing he could have said and it got a frown out of Alrik.
‘You will always find him in the heart of the fray,’ Knut put in. ‘No one can say the man lacks courage, though if you ask me, Findar will get himself killed sooner or later because he does not know when to pull his head in. Stands there to make a show of it as our arrows slice the air by his head.’
‘So this Findar thinks he is something special,’ Olaf said. ‘That is good to know.’
‘In the last attack on the wall I lost sixteen men,’ Alrik said, as if pointing out to Olaf that he need not think it would be an easy thing to take the place, just because he and his friends had arrived in all their war glory. ‘Twelve dead and the rest wounded,’ the warlord went on. ‘We used hooks and ropes at night. We got right into the ditch without any of them seeing us.’ Alrik touched the Thór’s hammer at his neck as if to ward off ill luck. ‘But their dogs heard us. Or smelt us. Damned barking alerted the sentries and we threw the hooks and climbed and some made it over, but not enough. Those brave men were cut down. Corpses hurled back over the wall.’ It was a sore memory by the looks and Alrik shook his head to rid himself of it. ‘Anyway, you have come a long way and will be ready for something decent to eat and drink.’
‘You are right about that,’ Svein said, and so Knut led them off to find their patch of ground and some food to fill their bellies.
Sigurd had not expected the attack that night and neither had Alrik. Afterwards, Olaf would say to Sigurd that it was good war craft by Findar, who led the borg men himself, to sally from the fort. Before Alrik’s new men had properly flattened the grass out there beyond the walls. While they were still tired after the trek from the lake camp and likely to be sleeping like the dead that first night in the new place. And they nearly were dead that night, no thanks to Alrik’s sentries who gave no warning and two of whom had their throats cut and died without knowing it. A third had yelped before the blade had finished killing him, but afterwards two men would tell Alrik they had thought it the squeal of a fox, a vixen luring a male to mate with. Those two men were digging a new latrine trench for days after.
They came before the dawn, a raiding party of wraiths with spears. The night was not pitch black, winter showing its back now, but it did not need to be full dark, for once they had killed the two sentries nearest the borg, they were faced, if you can call it that, by men sleeping in their tents. It was an old warrior called Høther who raised the alarm eventually and it was his old bladder and his need to piss five times a night which saved a good number of lives.
‘Shields!’ old Høther yelled, admitting after that he had pissed down his own leg to see the borg men not in the borg. ‘Shields, Alrik’s men! We are attacked!’
Floki’s hand gripping his shoulder roused Sigurd from a deep sleep and he got to his feet still foggy, watching through blurred eyes Floki trying to wake Olaf, which took him three or four good shakes, Olaf not being such a young man any more.
‘The borg has come to us,’ Bram said, poking his head into their tent and grinning even though he must have been half asleep himself.
Men were fighting now, dying too. The clamour of it had all of a sudden poured into the pre-dawn stillness, and Sigurd’s first thought was of Valgerd. His second was that he would feel such a fool if they were killed now before ever throwing a spear or loosing an arrow at Guthrum’s hill fort.
Still, they took the extra time to throw on their brynjur and tie their helmet straps and arm properly.
‘No point rushing out there bare-arsed and still snoring,’ Olaf said, making sure his helmet was a snug fit. ‘Looking the part is half of it.’ Then an arrow tore through the sailcloth and got fouled in the opposite wall, where it hung like an unanswered insult.
‘Now I’m ready to kill the buggers,’ Olaf said, hefting his shield, and with that they went out to face whatever had come.
Sigurd had barely drawn his first breath of night air when a throwing axe struck his shield like Thór’s fist. It split the wood against the grain and jarred his arm in his shoulder joint, but from that moment he was wide awake.
‘There,’ Valgerd said, pointing her spear at the man who had thrown the axe, little more than a shape in the dim light. An arrow thumped into Olaf’s shield and another glanced off the cheek of Svein’s long-hafted axe, which he did not like much.
‘On me,’ Sigurd called, as the others closed round him. It was no shieldwall fight, this, with men fighting in loose order all around, but he did not want his crew off chasing kills in the dark. Besides which, it was no bad thing to show Alrik that they not only looked the part, but knew their business too. ‘Forward,’ Sigurd said, catching another arrow on his shield. ‘Thorbiorn, you stay in the pack,’ he growled. No one wanted King Thorir’s boy getting sliced and tripping over his own guts in the dark. ‘Move!’ Sigurd shouted.
‘You heard him,’ Olaf bellowed, ‘let’s put these bold buggers back in their box.’
‘Better still, kill them now and it’ll save us a job later,’ Bram said, which was true enough and with their shields up they strode into the fray, getting amongst the snarl of it all now that Alrik’s men were fighting back. Those who were not dead in their tents, that was.
Svein ran ahead and started swinging that long axe, roaring his challenge in the night, not that anyone seemed interested in fighting him.
‘Hard to know who’s who,’ Solmund said, his old eyes little more than slits as he peered at those fighting around them.
‘If they’re facing downhill, stick them. If they’re facing uphill, don’t,’ was Moldof’s answer, which was not altogether stupid, and as if to make his point he buried his spear blade, one-handed, in the belly of a man who had just thrown his own spear and was pulling the axe from his belt.
Bjarni and Bjorn speared a big warrior who died foaming at the mouth like a mad dog, and Valgerd stepped out of the loose formation to go up behind a man whom Knut was fighting and cut his hamstrings with her scramasax. The man fell in a heap and Knut hacked him to death, then glared at Valgerd before turning to find another enemy.
‘Larboard, Sigurd,’ Olaf said, and Sigurd looked to his left to see a wild-looking man coming for him, drawn by his war gear no doubt and leading a knot of borg men.
‘Mine,’ Bram said, discarding his shield and stepping in front of Sigurd to meet the attack. Coming fast, the borg man thrust his spear at Bram, who knocked it aside with his own spear and in the same movement drove it on into the man’s belly, using the man’s own momentum to lift him into the air. This got some roars of approval, for the strength it took as much as the spectacle of it, as Bram smashed the impaled man down into the ground so that bones must have broken in him like seashells under foot.
Sigurd stepped up and smashed his shield against another man’s, stopping him in his tracks. The borg man growled and swung an axe over his shield and the blade struck Sigurd’s shoulder, scattering brynja rings, but at the same time Sigurd thrust his spear down into his enemy’s foot, pinning him to the spot. Olaf took off his head mid-scream.
‘Alrik! Lord Alrik!’ someone was yelling. But it was dark and men were still fighting all around them and it was hard putting voices to bodies.
‘Where is Alrik?’ Sigurd called back to Knut, who was leaning over a
wounded man to cut his throat. The dead man flopped forward and Knut stood up, sword in hand, and shook his head as if to say he did not know.
‘There!’ another of Alrik’s men yelled, pointing up the hill.
‘Aye, it’s him,’ Crow-Song said.
A knot of five borg men had hold of Alrik and were dragging him up the hill towards the fort, though the warlord was not making it easy for them, kicking and flailing, frenzying against his captors.
‘Whoresons want him alive,’ Olaf said. ‘They’ll trade him to get us to piss off.’
‘Or kill him on the wall for his men to see,’ Sigurd said, for that was a more certain way of ending the siege, as without Alrik his army would disintegrate and scatter like chaff on the wind.
‘Knut’s got a fight on,’ Solmund said, for though the sally had faltered, the borg men had regrouped and overlapped their shields in order to retreat back up the slope to safety. They had built a skjaldborg on the edge of the camp and Knut was trying to rein in his men to fight them, but many were busy looting the dead.
‘Arse wipes would rather pick corpses for silver than fight,’ Moldof said.
‘Who wouldn’t?’ Thorbiorn asked and didn’t get an answer.
Bram pointed up at Alrik, who’d had the fight knocked out of him now by the looks. ‘Well, we need to get him back if we want paying,’ he said, which was the truth of it.
‘Floki, Bram, Svein, with me. Rest of you help Knut,’ Sigurd said, and before Olaf could argue with that he was running up the hill. They loped like wolves, passing one of the sentries who had failed to warn the camp and now lay pale and bloodless in the grass.
‘Findar!’ Sigurd called, and hurled his spear as the borg man straightened at the challenge. Findar got his shield up in time but the spear’s point punched through the limewood.
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