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

by Giles Kristian

  ‘Get him inside now!’ Findar roared at his men, hurling his useless, spear-burdened shield aside and turning to face Sigurd who drew Troll-Tickler without missing a step. There was a blur in the darkness and Sigurd saw one of the men dragging Alrik fall to his knees with Floki’s axe between his shoulder blades. Then, when he was ten feet from Findar, Sigurd stopped on his leading foot and hurled his shield. It flew hard and fast and struck Findar edge on in his left upper arm as he tried to haul his sword from its scabbard. The blow turned him but he got his sword up in time to block Sigurd’s first cut, then attempted to throw a punch but perhaps his arm was broken because it flailed uselessly and Sigurd drove forward and butted his helmet into Findar’s face. He staggered back but kept his feet, raising his sword as blood flooded from his nose into his beard.

  ‘It took courage to leave the borg, Findar,’ Sigurd said, ‘but it was a mistake.’ He pointed his sword up the hill to where Floki, Svein and Bram were slaughtering Findar’s men, and when Findar had seen it he turned back to Sigurd and shrugged.

  ‘A man gets bored hiding behind walls,’ he said, then spat a wad of blood and phlegm into the grass.

  Sigurd nodded. ‘If you see my brother Sigmund Haraldarson in the Allfather’s hall, tell him the shield throw worked. He laughed when I tried it on him once.’

  ‘Tell him yourself,’ Findar said. He came at Sigurd and his first cut took a bite out of Troll-Tickler and his second ripped Sigurd’s brynja as he twisted aside, but his third was too wild and he put himself off balance. Troll-Tickler wanted its own revenge then and the blade snaked out, its point opening Findar’s cheek before Sigurd pulled it back out of the way of the borg man’s scything sword. Then Sigurd sank Troll-Tickler deep in the flesh of Findar’s leg between the thigh and the knee joint. Findar went down and Sigurd considered sparing his life for three marks of silver.

  ‘Finish it then,’ Findar said, bleeding in the dark. Bleeding enough to know that he was a dead man one way or another.

  Sigurd nodded. ‘Sigmund Haraldarson, remember,’ he said, then stepped up and hacked into Findar’s neck.

  ‘Gods you like to make a fight last, Sigurd!’ Svein said, coming back down towards him. Floki and Bram were supporting Alrik between them, the warlord bleeding but shaking them off because he was too proud to be carried. Arrows were hissing down from the fort’s ramparts now, thudding into the ground around them, so they moved back down the hill to avoid being killed by some lucky borg man.

  ‘Protect Alrik,’ Sigurd said, because the last of the borg men who had attacked the camp were now fleeing from Knut, who had put together his own skjaldborg and was marching up the hill.

  Sigurd, Bram, Svein and Floki closed in around Alrik, nice and tight, blades raised just in case, but the borg men were no longer interested in them or Alrik. They ran past in the dark, yelling at their companions to let them back into the borg. And Sigurd let them go.

  Life on Fugløy had settled into a pattern as predictable as the yellow and black of a plaid sailcloth or the squares of a tafl board. Runa woke each morning before dawn and took two pails to the byre and did not come out again until they were full to the brim with warm milk. Then she went to the ewes which foraged freely and took a pail of their milk too and all of this she brought to the hall to help Signy and Vebiorg make cheese, butter and skyr. There was still hay to be harvested and so she scythed it and raked it and stacked it against the byre wall for drying so that it would feed the animals come next winter. She teased wool which had been shorn or plucked the previous spring, and combed it diligently as she had learnt to under her mother’s watchful eye, so that the tog fibres lay parallel to each other, crucial if you were to spin a strong warp thread. She worked the spindle and the distaff, she gathered fuel for the fires and she carried slops to the pigs. She practised with the bow, for the Freyja Maidens prided themselves on their skill with that weapon and could put an arrow through an arm ring at thirty paces seven times out of ten. Runa could not even do it one time out of ten in those first weeks, and yet she drew and loosed, drew and loosed, until her arms trembled and her fingers bled.

  But mostly she fought. Sword, spear and shield work consumed her and all the other tasks were dreary by comparison, a means to an end which she rushed where she could in order to hold the shaft and the hilt again.

  She was good, too. She knew it. Not as good as the others, but then most of them had practised the art of war for years. And yet what she lacked in experience she almost made up for with talent. Whenever she struck Signy’s shoulder or snuck a blunted spear past Skuld’s shield, neither of which happened often, she imagined that her father and brothers had seen it and were cheering for her. She imagined her mother looking on with disapproving eyes but being secretly proud.

  ‘You are gifted, Runa,’ Skuld had said one day, a compliment which Runa did not take very graciously because she was on her backside in the dirt trying to catch the blood which was pouring from her nose. She had been too slow in getting her shield in the way of Vebiorg’s and had wrongly thought Skuld was mocking her.

  My family were warriors, she thought afterwards, when she had done well enough to claw back a little pride at least. My father was jarl. My brother is Óðin-kissed. Why shouldn’t I be able to fight? Do we not share the same blood? The same will?

  It was a simple life stripped of the clutter of her past existence. Not on Fugløy the ale-fuelled fights of drunken men, the strutting and boasting of warriors chafing for a fight to prove themselves. Not on the island of the Freyja Maidens the poison that spreads when a woman swives another woman’s man, or the serpent-toothed gossip or the bitter jealousy. Nor even the ever-present possibility of being raided, which hangs above most villages like a cloud which remains even if the sun is shining.

  Though for all that it was not a life without pain. The practice swords were wooden or blunted so that they would not cut the flesh, but they left bruises which bloomed green, yellow and black, and now and then one of the warrior women would break a finger or an arm, or chip off a piece of bone which could be felt floating under the skin. Many of them had had their noses broken by their opponent’s shield. Two had lost eyes, perhaps from spear work. All of them were hardened and honed, seasoned and sinewy and skilled, though still Runa could not help but wonder how they would fare at the Twilight of the Gods, for they were masters in practice but had never killed big, fierce, battle-tested men who were trying to kill them.

  It was a half life in a way, spent in preparation for death, when each Maiden would be carried to Sessrymnir to fight for the Goddess. And yet Runa was almost happy. It was hard to think about your murdered mother and your slain father and brothers when you were taking hammer blows on your shield or trying to avoid some screeching woman’s sword. It was hard to think of Sigurd and fret for him when you were slowing your heartbeat and drawing the bow, whispering to the arrow to fly true. When those fears came they came at night. Not every night. Sometimes she was too tired for them and would be asleep before they got their claws into her. Another reason to fight until she could hardly lift the shield to meet a high spear thrust. To shoot until she could no longer draw the bow string to her cheek.

  Yes, a half life, hidden from the world and from its men. Though not all of its men. And therein lay the violent meeting of currents in an otherwise sleeping sea. She had noticed Ingel looking at her from his forge when she was practising with sword or spear. At first she had thought it was perhaps mere curiosity because she was a new face on Fugløy. That was what Runa told herself, even though she knew the truth of it really. A woman knows when a man wants her. It is all over him and it is in his eyes and it is not as if men even know how to hide it or even want to try.

  It might not have been a problem had a woman called Sibbe not decided to be jealous about it. The first time Runa noticed this was when Sibbe, the cock-hunger upon her, had gone to the forge to pull the young blacksmith out of it and Ingel had abandoned his work and gone with her willingly enough, a
lbeit his eyes had been on Runa from the moment he laid down his hammer to the moment he disappeared into the hall. And just as a woman knows when a man wants her, so she also knows when the man she is with wants someone else.

  Sibbe had hated Runa from that day on. When she was not scowling at her across the hearthfire with eyes like knives, she was trying to fix it so that she was Runa’s opponent in the practice bouts. During those fights she would come at Runa like a berserker so that it was all Runa could do to escape with cuts and bruises and nothing worse.

  ‘You think because your father was a jarl you are better than the rest of us,’ Sibbe growled at her during their first bout after Sibbe’s roll in the hay with Ingel. ‘But you are weak. A little girl sent away because your brother did not want the trouble of looking after you.’ Perhaps she had heard this from the blacksmiths, for Runa had revealed almost nothing about her reasons for being there.

  Sibbe’s first attack had comprised a hail of sword blows which had deadened Runa’s arm behind the limewood planks of her shield. The second attack put Runa on the ground, a cut in her temple spilling crimson into her blonde braid.

  ‘A little girl who would not know what to do with a man,’ Sibbe sneered down at her, stepping back to allow Runa to rise just so that she could knock her down again.

  Runa did not take the bait. She did nothing to let the bout spill over into a proper fight because she knew she would lose. But neither would she stay down amongst the twigs and the pine needles while she had the strength to rise, and this only infuriated the Freyja Maiden the more.

  ‘Do not let her get to you,’ Vebiorg had said. ‘She grows more bitter with each new crease in her face.’ She had smiled at Runa then. ‘You are young and golden and beautiful, Runa, and there is nothing like that to remind us that we are getting old.’

  ‘You are not old, Vebiorg!’ Runa said, and neither was she. But then none of them was as young as Runa.

  As for Ingel, all muscle and soot that he was, he looked, he stared, but actually speaking to Runa seemed beyond him. Eventually Runa grew tired of his games and did something which made him flush red as the metal he worked, and made Sibbe hate her with the fierce heat of the forge.

  She stared back at him.

  Alrik would have a new scar on his temple and another on his arm from where the poll of a hand axe had torn the skin, but other than that he was none the worse for having been all but carried off like a sheep in a spring raid. Yet he was furious and wanted everyone to know it.

  He did not kill the sentries who had allowed Findar to come into his camp in the night and steal him from his tent, for he needed every man if he was going to beat Guthrum, but he raged and stormed about the camp, letting all know that if anyone should fall asleep on their watch again he would skin them and rub them with salt.

  ‘You would think he’d be more grateful to us,’ Thorbiorn said, jutting his chin towards Alrik who was amongst some other crew’s tents wanting to know which of them had been looting the dead when they should have been the meat in Knut’s shieldwall.

  ‘What, for all the killing you did that night?’ Solmund said to Thorbiorn, winking at Olaf, who tried not to grin.

  Thorbiorn glowered. ‘I would have done my share had I not been corralled like a prize bloody bull.’

  ‘Bull, you say?’ Svein’s brow lifted.

  ‘Goat, more like,’ Bjarni suggested with a wicked smile.

  ‘Still, the lad’s on to something there,’ Bjorn put in. ‘We saved Alrik’s arse and should see something for it.’

  ‘Something that shines in the night like Fáfnir’s eye,’ Crow-Song said.

  ‘Something drinkable at least,’ Bram said, which had some murmurs of agreement.

  ‘He knows what happened that night,’ Sigurd said, ‘and he knows what would have happened had we not fetched him back.’

  ‘Within pissing distance of the gate, too,’ Floki said.

  ‘He’d be hanging from that wall by his neck,’ Moldof rumbled, nodding at the borg from whose ramparts Guthrum’s men stared out. Those men must know how close Findar had come to delivering them, to scattering Alrik’s host like gulls before the plough. No doubt they felt Findar’s absence now. Missed him the way Moldof missed his right arm.

  ‘And the rest of us would be on our way back to our boats or else fighting each other for whatever silver Alrik keeps in his tent,’ Solmund said, hands clasped, kneading the swollen flesh around his knuckles.

  ‘Or . . .’ Olaf said, ‘we’d still be here scratching our beards trying to come up with a way of taking the place, for we still need silver if we are going to raise our own war host.’

  ‘You don’t have to remind me of that, Uncle,’ Sigurd said and Olaf raised a hand to acknowledge it.

  ‘Well, we didn’t walk all this way to sit around scratching our backsides waiting for the end of days,’ Svein moaned.

  Olaf swept his arms wide. ‘I’m all ears, Red,’ he said. ‘What is this Loki-worthy plan of yours to turf those shits out of their cosy borg? Don’t be shy, lad, let’s hear it.’

  But Svein had nothing more to say on the matter and neither did any of them, and so they would just have to wait until someone did.

  The next morning a gust of wind came out of the west. It was a wet wind laden with drizzle and it lifted the damp red cloth of one of Alrik’s war banners which hung on a shaft stuck in the earth. It showed glimpses of some beast, that banner, a bear from what Sigurd had seen of it, standing tall on its hind legs, its forelegs stretched out. Reaching for something, Sigurd liked to think. Guthrum’s silver probably.

  ‘Here he comes again,’ Valgerd said, nodding towards Alrik who had stopped to talk to some men by a fire but was clearly heading their way. The warlord had been hanging round their tents, comparing war gear, admiring the craftsmanship that had gone into Sigurd’s helmet and Valgerd’s brynja, and showing off his own gear, particularly his sword Sváva, of which he was very proud. It was a fine blade, the ghost in it like a swirl of Týr’s breath on a cold day. Sleep-Maker was a good name for a sword, too, good enough to get a smile out of most men, though Bjarni asked Alrik if he had hit himself with his own blade, not to have woken when Findar came into his tent.

  Alrik had told Bjarni to fuck himself. ‘Leading a war host is tiring work,’ he said. And it was, too, Sigurd thought, having watched Alrik striding around the camp checking supplies, sending men off to buy bread, ale and cheese from any farmsteads within ten rôsts. Sending others foraging for meat: deer, boar and fowl if they could get it, squirrel, hare, nettles and leafy docks if they could not. All the while he was busy, listening to complaints from men who wanted what they believed Alrik owed them for sitting outside that borg, be it plunder or decent ale. Settling disputes. Rewarding men for their bravery. Whetting their silver-lust and reminding them of all the fights he had won in the past so that they might believe he would win this one too. All these jobs fell to Alrik, and none could deny that he was good at it.

  ‘You could learn something from him,’ Olaf had told Sigurd, who had dismissed that with a young man’s arrogance, yet he had known Olaf was right. Which of them commanded a war host, after all? Being a dróttin, a warlord, was the same as being a jarl in some ways. Men wanted silver and loot in return for fighting. But it was different in that not all these men were oathsworn to Alrik, meaning they would pick up their nestbaggins and walk off if they thought they could do better fighting for someone else. And Alrik knew it, which was why he did his best to keep them fed and watered and was keen to remind them how much silver and iron was in Guthrum’s borg if only they could get their hands on it.

  And here he was again, coming like a weaver to the loom, to draw the threads of his army even tighter together.

  ‘So you’ve finally come to reward us for saving your neck, Alrik,’ Thorbiorn said. Being the son of a king, he thought he could speak to the man like that.

  ‘You’ll get your silver when you earn it, lad,’ Alrik said, which got some da
rk looks from those who remembered all too well how close he had been to being dragged inside the borg and some unpleasant end. Alrik knew men and knew when he risked offending, and so he raised a hand at Sigurd and Olaf and Bram. ‘You know your business. That’s clear to everyone. Win me that borg and you will find me generous.’ He glanced round to make sure he would not be overheard by his other men, then he came closer to the fire around which Sigurd’s crew were scattered on the long flattened grass. ‘Look, some of these men are happy enough taking my meat and ale and doing not much else,’ he said. ‘Gods, they’d be happy waiting all summer.’ He looked at Sigurd now. One warrior to another. No. One leader to another. ‘But you get me in there,’ he said, thumbing at the fort up on the hill, ‘and I’ll make you rich.’ He turned to Crow-Song, having got his measure for all that Hagal was not much of a skald these days. ‘I mean rich enough to be worth a song or two,’ he said.

  Crow-Song nodded, happy to be noticed amongst men who were better with a blade than he.

  ‘Does Jarl Guthrum have a banner?’ Sigurd asked Alrik, pulling Troll-Tickler through a greasy cloth to stop the rust getting into the blade.

  Alrik nodded. ‘A white axe on a black cloth,’ he said.

  ‘Everybody seems to want a banner these days,’ Solmund said.

  ‘A banner can be a rag at the top of a stick,’ Asgot said, retying a bone into his beard. ‘Or it can be a powerful weapon.’

  ‘Aye, well, I’ve yet to see a banner break down a gate,’ Olaf said.

  ‘Wiped my arse with a banner once,’ Moldof said. ‘I was not a proper warrior then. Don’t think I’d even tupped a girl.’ He grinned at the memory. ‘Some jarl who refused to pay King Gorm what he owed came waving the thing about like he was somebody. We fed the crows that day and, after, my arse was squirting. Wiped it on that prick of a jarl’s banner.’ He looked at Hagal. ‘That’s in a song, now I think about it.’

  Hagal grimaced. ‘I’m sure the skald was a gifted man,’ he said.