‘The Allfather’s favour shines in him brighter than the lustre of this helmet of his,’ Asgrim said, gesturing at Sigurd in all his war glory, his mail and helmet, the Óðin spear in his left hand. ‘And that spear he is holding is Gungnir, which once belonged to the Allfather whom we call Spear-God. Here is a lord of war favoured by the god of war. Do not tell me you cannot see it.’
And they could see it, too.
‘When we have gone to Valhöll what will we leave behind for our children and their children if not a shining reputation?’ Asgrim asked them. And now they were murmuring again but this time it was because they were agreeing with their champion and so Sigurd dropped Guthrum’s rotting head because it had served its purpose.
And Sigurd thought that maybe Asgrim was a half-decent skald after all.
CHAPTER NINE
THAT WAS NOT the end for Jarl Guthrum’s head as it turned out. Of the remaining one hundred and fifteen warriors of the jarl’s host, only twelve did not swear the oath to Sigurd. Six were in ill health and said they did not have it in them to follow Sigurd back to Norway. Four were so disgusted by Asgrim’s murder of the jarl that they wanted nothing to do with him and said they would rather fight for any king, even a king of a cave, than for a treacherous prow man and a Norseman they had never heard of. Asgrim wanted to kill these rather than let them go out into the world pouring scorn on his name, but Sigurd overruled him, saying their honesty had taken courage. ‘Besides, Asgrim, they will spread our names, which can only be a good thing for there are always fighters looking for men to fight for.’ Asgrim still did not like it but was clear-thinking enough to see that killing men he had campaigned beside would not go down well with the others.
As for the last two who refused to take the oath, they were grey-bearded, life-weary warriors for whom thoughts of dying with the spear din ringing in their ears were no longer as warming as thoughts of a hearth and hounds and a comfortable bed, and no one begrudged them gathering their things and tramping off east.
But when the rest had spoken the words over Sigurd’s sword Troll-Tickler, and had then broken camp and made ready to turn their backs on the hill fort, Sigurd took up Guthrum’s head once more and carried it up the slope in full view of Alrik and all his men, who were wide-eyed at this turn of events.
‘Jarl Guthrum has given up his claim to this borg,’ Sigurd called up to Alrik, lifting the rotting, half-burnt, honey-slathered head. ‘His men are now my men, and I have no quarrel with you, Lord Alrik.’ He gestured back to his war band of one hundred and ninety-three warriors, an army now by even a king’s reckoning. ‘As you can see, I have fulfilled my side of our bargain.’ Three of Guthrum’s former warriors were driving six pigs up the hill and at Sigurd’s words the suspicions filling the heads of those warriors on the ramparts flew off like starlings from a thatch fire and cheering rose from the borg.
‘You have done all that you said you would, Sigurd Haraldarson,’ Alrik said, unable to keep a grin off his face at the sight of his enemy’s severed head. Guthrum’s face had haunted Alrik’s dreams long enough that the warlord knew it even with the scorched skin and the green pallor. ‘I will have half my silver and iron brought out to you. And no one can say you have not earned it.’
Jarl Hrani had suggested that they try to persuade Alrik to join them and swear to Sigurd. ‘Better men than he have done,’ Hrani pointed out, but Olaf said Alrik would never do it, and Sigurd knew that was true. At last the borg was truly Alrik’s. He and his men had suffered for it and now there was no way he would abandon it to go off fighting somewhere else. Thór’s balls but he would not even come out of that gate – for all that he must have wanted to spit on Guthrum’s rotting head – just in case this was some scheme of Sigurd’s to take the borg and the whole of its silver and iron hoard for himself.
‘I will want carts and the horses to pull them,’ Sigurd said.
‘We’ve eaten the horses,’ Alrik said, ‘but you can have the carts.’
That would have to do. He had enough men to take turns pulling the carts. It was not all fame, silver and skald-song this being a warrior.
‘We’re going to need a bigger boat,’ Solmund grumbled, looking at the mass of them all as they got the measure of each other, these Norsemen and Svearmen, and Guthrum’s men who had been left behind asking the others what had befallen their jarl at Ubsola. ‘Even with Jarl Hrani’s War-Rider, which is a good spear-length longer than Reinen.’
‘Probably,’ Sigurd said, ‘but there are good problems to have and there are bad problems. Even you must agree this is one of the good ones.’
Solmund muttered an aye and Sigurd turned to Asgrim who had come up to him, his face, which would surely frighten his own mother, clenched like a fist.
‘I will have Jarl Guthrum’s head now, lord,’ he said and there was not much of a request about the way he said it.
‘You know that if you put his head back together with the rest of him there is a chance he will make it to Valhöll, so my godi tells me,’ Sigurd said, tossing him the head which he caught without so much as a grimace that wasn’t already there. ‘Like a man coming to the feast through the back door, but even so. I think he was a good and brave enough warrior in former times to be useful to Óðin come Ragnarök.’
‘If we meet again in the hereafter we will be friends as we once were,’ Asgrim said, though he did not look convinced. ‘If not,’ he went on, looking into those dead, shrivelled eyes, ‘then so be it.’ With that he turned and that was the last time Sigurd saw or smelt that stinking head, other than when the smoke of the jarl’s pyre reached his nose that dusk when the rooks and crows clamoured off to their roosts.
‘If you ever burn me, do it when I’m still warm, not reeking like a rancid turd,’ Olaf told Sigurd as they set off at the head of the war host.
‘A hero’s pyre? For you, Uncle?’ Sigurd said, an eyebrow arched like Bifröst. ‘I think we will save the wood for our meal fire, hey, Svein!’
The red-bearded giant grinned. ‘Aye, or even for a new ship,’ he said, lifting his chin to Solmund. ‘What do you think, old man?’
The old helmsman smiled. ‘At last some sense from the bairns,’ he said, and the rooks’ craawing was drowned by a war host’s laughter.
They knew they had come to Alrik’s camp on the shore of Løgrinn before they could see it, because of the woodsmoke in the air and the constant rhythmic thwock of axes cutting trees as the timber men encroached ever deeper into the forest. But even without these signs, the midges dancing in brown swarms amongst the trees, making men slap exposed skin, scratch heads and beards and curse, told them they had come to the lake. Not that it was really a lake, of course, seeing as men said there was a channel in the east which led out into the Baltic Sea. But Birka sat on an island in Løgrinn and it was that famous trading centre which drew ships and crews into the great bay like crows to a newly sown field. It was from Birka that Alrik recruited most of his warriors, enticing young men and old growlers with promises of riches in exchange for their spear and sword arms. That was where Alrik’s man Knut had recruited Sigurd and his crew, and now they were returning to the camp at which they had stayed before marching to the borg. The camp where, one rain-flayed night, Sigurd and Valgerd had given themselves each to the other, so that he felt the weight of that on him now and wondered if she did too.
They came up to the palisade with their shields above their heads to show that they came in peace, for the men of the camp would be more than wary of such a large sword-host, more so if they recognized any of Jarl Guthrum’s men. Bram had thrown Guthrum’s axe banner into a fire, which was less subtle than quietly burying it as Olaf had suggested, and those who had served the jarl watched it blacken and burn, their faces grim and betraying what a heavy thing it was to see that. Not that Bram cared.
‘What?’ he said, answering glares with a shrug. ‘You watched your jarl’s luck go up in smoke. Now you can watch his banner do the same.’
But some of Gut
hrum’s men still had the axe painted on their shields and there was a good chance someone in the settlement would spy them and raise the alarm, believing that Alrik was beaten and Guthrum had come to finish them or hurl them back to the sea.
‘That head would have come in useful again now, even stinking as it did,’ Olaf said, but as it turned out the men watching from behind those sharp stakes recognized Sigurd and his crew, not least Valgerd who Sigurd made sure was standing with him, with her golden braids lying over the swell of her mail-clad chest. They recognized Jarl Hrani too and his boar’s head banner, for the jarl had paid a man acting as harbour master to moor War-Rider there and keep her safe while he tramped inland on Sigurd’s trail.
Sigurd had allowed Hrani to keep that banner not out of respect for the jarl or as a first act of generosity to a man who was now oath-tied to him, but because it would not hurt for other jarls and lords back in Norway to hear that Hrani Randversson was now allied with Sigurd Haraldarson. Let the oath-breaker hear it too, Sigurd thought, so that he might feel the icy worm of betrayal looping over itself in his guts.
If they had turned heads the first time they had walked through that camp on the shore, it was nothing compared with this time. It seemed that the whole place went still. Women came out of the houses and stood planted there, hands on hips as they eyed the war host in all its grim glory. Men could not help but put their hands on spears and sword grips; much good it would do them if Sigurd meant the place harm. Only the hens and the beasts in the byres and the pigs in the pens seemed unimpressed, clucking and snorting as normal, and of the craftsmen who had been about their daily tasks only the blacksmith did not stop, his hammer ringing like a bell because he was in the middle of a forging and to stop now was to ruin the blade.
Neither did the folk there need to see beneath the skins covering the carts which the sweating men were pulling to know what lay beneath, and they must have wondered how Sigurd had got his hands on the hoard which their own lord had set out to pillage from Jarl Guthrum – though none had the balls to come up and ask him, and the only man who saw opportunity rather than danger was Trygir, who had given Sigurd’s crew their allotted two skins of ale each day when they had stayed there before.
Sigurd was drinking in the sight of Reinen when Trygir came up to him, getting his attention by hawking and spitting a gobbet into the mud. He nodded at Reinen sitting still and graceful and full of quiet promise on the water, which was as flat as the whalebone plaques which women used with smoothers to get the creases out of linen.
‘You’ll be wanting supplies if you’re off,’ he said. ‘I can get you plenty of ale, some mead too. Meat, bread, cheese. Fish of course. Got some eggs and plenty of bilberries. Crowberries too if you want them.’
Sigurd nodded. One hundred and ninety-three warriors needed a lot of food. That was one thing to consider now that he was responsible for them all. You could not expect them to row, fight, or fuck for that matter, with empty bellies, and he would have to be careful – even as rich as he now was – not to see that pile of silver and iron shrink. Which was why he decided he would not pay for the supplies which Trygir had gone off grinning to find. No point telling Trygir that though. Neither would he hand over any silver for Kráka, Alrik’s ship, which he was going to fill with those men who could not fit aboard Reinen or War-Rider.
‘She’s a pretty thing,’ Olaf said, looking at the sleek karvi and knowing exactly what Sigurd was thinking. ‘It’s not as if Alrik will miss her either, what with him clinging to that borg like a shipwrecked man to a rock.’
‘We’ll make an enemy of him,’ Sigurd said.
Olaf said nothing. Later, when the checks to the ships were done, the provisions stowed and the crews were climbing aboard to take their places, the men of the settlement gathered together. They had come in small groups, twos and threes, spear and axe-armed, and now there were some sixty men arranged in a half-decent skjaldborg though they kept a safe distance from the wharf.
‘You think they’ve got it in them?’ one of the men asked Asgrim who with thirty bristling Svearmen had made a defensive line with their backs to the ships, their blades threatening death to the settlement men. Asgrim muttered something into his beard but Jarl Hrani, who had come to get the measure of Alrik’s men, said he did not think they would be wetting their blades that day, even though Trygir was hurling insults at them, yelling at Sigurd and Olaf that they were men without honour, for all their shining war gear, nothing more than whore-born thieves and pale-livered, dog-tupping Norse scum.
‘They are not going to die for the sake of one karvi and the food we’ve stowed,’ Jarl Hrani said and that was Sigurd’s take on it too, for they were leaving Alrik with his other boats: three broad-beamed knörrs, that other karvi and, most importantly, his big snekke, a warlord’s ship with high curving prow and stern, a sturdy but shallow keel and room for twenty-two oarsmen on each side. Solmund had wanted them to take that ship instead of the karvi. The old sea-wolf could not help himself. He was weak at the knees for a beautiful ship the way even warriors of reputation weaken in the presence of a pretty girl.
‘She will sit well ploughing a furrow beside Reinen and War-Rider,’ he had said, his mouth close to Sigurd’s ear, trying to convince him. But Sigurd shook his head.
‘We’ll take Crow,’ he said, ‘for she will serve us well enough and it is a theft which Alrik can choose to ignore if he wants to. We take his best ship and his honour will leave him no choice but to bring his little fleet west to repay us in blood.’
‘Burn his little fleet then,’ Solmund suggested, ‘apart from her of course,’ nodding at the snekke.
‘We take Crow,’ Sigurd said, ending the discussion before his mind was changed, and Solmund had accepted that and gone aboard the karvi to make sure she was still as seaworthy as she had looked when they had followed in her wake from Birka into this bay.
‘We are ready,’ Sigurd called to Asgrim now and the big man nodded and growled at the warriors in his shieldwall to walk slowly backwards, keeping their shields up in case one of the settlement men chose to make a point by lobbing a spear or loosing an arrow. As it was, those men came forward bit by bit, the way nervous dogs will edge closer to the boar they have trapped, but it was little more than a gesture because they knew that if they attacked they would die and Alrik would lose much more than some supplies and a pretty boat with room for sixteen pairs of oars.
Sigurd went aboard Reinen, and his crew, which now included twenty-five Svearmen, pushed off with their oars to turn her bows into the west and the other crews did the same so that all three ships glided out into the bay. And being on the water again, albeit more a glorified lake than a real sea, was a joy which had men singing bawdy songs as the oars bit and pulled, bit and pulled, and the three ships slid across the flat water like a small skein of geese crossing the sky.
‘Ah but this feels good,’ Olaf announced, standing at the prow upon which Svein had mounted the great reindeer antlers. ‘How do you like this life, lad?’ he asked Thorbiorn Thorirsson who was grinning as he pulled his oar. ‘Better than wasting your days in your father’s hall, rutting the hours away with the women’s burbling in your ears all the while.’
‘I miss the rutting part,’ the young man said, ‘but I will get even more of that done when I return a hero.’
‘Is that so?’ Olaf said, winking at Sigurd.
‘Well we will find out soon enough,’ Sigurd said, for after Birka they would go back to Skíringssalr in Viksfjord, because Sigurd was a warlord now and a rich one too. And he had a proposition for King Thorir and his Spear-Danes.
The sun hung in the west in a purple sky and their prows followed it, the oarbanks beating steadily like eagles’ wings. Then, as though the Æsir themselves thirsted for the blood and the crop of warriors that this feud was bound to reap, a gust gathered from the east to agitate the water. At first it ruffled the lake but soon it furrowed it, even whipping spray from the small waves and giving the crews enoug
h reason to stow the oars and haul the sails up.
‘This will do us,’ Solmund said, standing at the tiller and keeping their course as straight as an arrow’s flight. ‘Aye, this will do us just fine.’
And Sigurd felt as light as a leaf dancing in the wind. He wanted to shout with joy, to call out the names of his brothers who awaited him in Valhöll. He was out for vengeance and there was nothing in this world that could stop him.
He was going to war.
They did not stay long in Birka. Nevertheless, two days was enough time to pick up a handful of landless, lordless men who might have ended up serving Alrik or some other Svear warlord had they not been drawn to the harbour like dogs to meat as word of the three new ships spread through the town. Three were grizzled, growling, big-bearded men who, to look at them at least, any jarl or king would be pleased to have in their skjaldborg. They had assumed Olaf or Jarl Hrani would be the man receiving their oath but to their credit they made no fuss when Asgrim pointed out that it was Sigurd to whom they would bind themselves.
‘He’s young, I’ll grant you,’ one of them, an Irishman named Niall, said in a fair mix of Norse and Svear, ‘but if he already has the oath of all these then who are we to question it?’ He nodded at Asgrim. ‘I would rather fight for a young man on the rise than an old man on the fall.’ He did not have any disagreement from Asgrim about that.
The other five were young men out for adventure as much as silver, and they spoke the words with trembling voices and such grave solemnity that it was obvious this was their first oath-taking. Still, all the rest had long enough memories of their own beginnings along the warrior’s road and did not tease these nervous new beards too sorely about it.
‘You know that we are off to fight a king?’ Sigurd asked them as the first young man put his lips to Troll-Tickler’s pommel. ‘And not just some little king of some unknown valley but a powerful king, the lord of Avaldsnes and master of the North Way.’
Wings of the Storm: (The Rise of Sigurd 3) Page 21