Wings of the Storm: (The Rise of Sigurd 3)

by Giles Kristian

  ‘Some of the men in this hall, some of you standing before me now, came to my village with fire and the sword,’ he said. A fact rather than an accusation. ‘Some of you killed my friends. My kin. One of you, a man named Andvett, tried to dishonour my mother, though he is dead now because Grimhild had no patience for a drawn-out feud and gave Andvett his death wound there and then, before she herself was slain by another Hinderå man.’

  ‘You were our enemy!’ someone shouted from the throng.

  Ayes at this, but Sigurd continued. ‘Even now some of you wear my father’s knives, or his arm rings, or the silver hammers which Jarl Harald had pulled from the necks of men he had slain in battle. You have the balls to stand here in front of me owning things which were taken from my father’s sea chests and from the corpses of his people. I am sure the women here are wearing brooches your husbands pulled from the Skudeneshavn women after they forced themselves upon them like beasts, spilling their seed in anything that moved.’

  ‘Who does he think he is?’ a man gnarred.

  ‘Aye, enough of his talk,’ Athulf put in, for no men liked hearing this sort of dark thing by the light of the hearth, even if they had been up to their balls in it on some or other raid.

  ‘But I answered these offences,’ Sigurd said. ‘I came to Hinderå and I fed the raven. I killed Jarl Randver and many of your best men lay dead at the end, even your champion Skarth, who was no match for Olaf here.’

  They looked at Olaf then but with respect not hatred in their eyes, for no one could argue with the way Olaf had taken Skarth down, like an experienced man felling timber.

  ‘Our blood-worms drank deeply,’ Sigurd said, touching the hilt of Troll-Tickler, which Hrani had allowed him to wear even under Örn-garð’s soot-stained roof, a sign of the new trust between them, ‘and the scales between us were balanced.’ He took a step forward and lifted the great spear high. ‘Now that we are friends, your people and mine, you have the chance to make Hrani Randversson king. And with Gorm’s power broken and no other jarl strong enough to challenge the new king at Avaldsnes, you will have years of peace if you want it. You can sit on your arses getting rich off the taxes from those crews passing through the North Way. You will sell those same crews your crops and your meat, for they are always in need of supplies. Pick and choose a raid or two each summer if you wish, for new slaves and the adventure of it.’

  ‘And what’ll you get out of it, Haraldarson?’ the knörr-breasted woman asked, those silver brooches gleaming fierce as dragon’s eyes.

  Sigurd felt the grimace come to his face before he had the time to put it there himself. ‘I will have my revenge on the oath-breaker,’ he said, the words themselves sweet as mead in his mouth. ‘Seeing that goat-shit Gorm’s bloodless corpse lying at my feet is enough for me.’ He would have Sea-Eagle back too, his father’s second-best ship, which King Gorm had stolen after his men had cleared Jarl Harald’s warriors from its blood-soaked deck in the Karmsund Strait. But no point in bringing that up now. ‘I swear I shall see him dead.’

  Some of them nodded. A few touched the Thór’s hammers at their necks because they knew a solemn and self-binding oath when they heard it.

  That would have been a good end to it all, and only a skald would put a better shine on it by having Hrani’s people cheering and clamouring for the fight. As it was, there was no cheering but they seemed content. Perhaps in their minds some of them were already spending the silver paid by skippers who as yet had not even provisioned their ships for a sail up the Karmsund Strait. Others were no doubt imagining how else their lives might be improved by their being the king’s own people.

  But this was real, not some skald’s tale. And that big-mouthed, big-breasted karl’s wife had no flair for the poetic. They were not done yet.

  ‘So what has he to do with any of it?’ she asked, pointing at King Thorir, which was not really the thing to do even though the man was a Dane in a Norseman’s hall. ‘This is not his fight. Who is to say he will not want Gorm’s high seat for himself when Sigurd Haraldarson stands crowing on Gorm’s corpse?’

  For a heartbeat or two King Thorir looked as if he might challenge the woman to a wrestle, and that might have been something to see, but then he lifted his chin with its long silver beard rope and threw back those massive shoulders of his. ‘I have come to my own arrangement with Sigurd,’ he said, ‘and am in this up to the hilt.’ He grinned at his sons, who were all there with him, and they all grinned back. ‘My Spear-Danes will win this little fight for you and then we will be gone before the crows have had their fill. No offence meant, Jarl Hrani,’ he said, glancing at his host, ‘but as you well know, my own hall makes this place look like a dung heap.’ Hrani did not like this, but he wasn’t about to make a thing of it. ‘So you can all be sure that we will not be staying around here, or in this Avaldsnes place, any longer than need be.’

  ‘Still,’ Sigurd said, picking up the thread from where he had left off, ‘it will not be a little skirmish.’ He let his eyes roam across the faces of those gathered in the acrid flame-chased dark. ‘As you all know, King Gorm has many warriors. He knows we are coming and even now will be calling in the levies and bringing other jarls to his banner. But as word spreads, more fighters will flock to my own banner too. To this spear,’ he said, lifting the thing again. ‘For this will be a fight to tell your grandchildren about. A fight for warriors and skalds.’ He grinned and Svein beside him grinned too. ‘The gods are watching,’ he said, ‘so let us make sure we are worthy of it.’

  ‘Óðin!’ Olaf roared.

  ‘Óðin!’ Svein echoed. And then the other warriors in that hall, Sigurd’s crew, Hinderå men and Danes alike, took up the chant, their blood coming to the boil with the thought of war and booty, the sword-song and fame.

  ‘Óðin! Óðin! Óðin!’ they called, hammering the boards, caught up in the moment.

  ‘This is how you will tell it, skald,’ Sigurd said to Hagal Crow-Song, who was grinning like a fiend.

  ‘Óðin! Óðin! Óðin!’ Like the beat of oars. Like swords on shields.

  ‘This is how I will tell it,’ Crow-Song agreed. ‘But I think I will add some thunder and lightning.’

  They came to Rennisøy on a sleeping sea, sails furled on the yards and oars chopping the still water as neatly as a jackdaw’s wings in flight. Reinen, Crow, War-Rider, Sea-Eagle and King Thorir’s two most impressive ships, Sea-Shaker and War-Pig, which was a strange name for a boat in anyone’s ears but they were both named after Freyja and her battle swine Hildsvini. And by a Dane, as Solmund had said, as if that explained it all. They came more or less together, crews bantering at each other across the smooth water, insulting each other for their ships, their rowing, their beards and anything else they could come up with, such as how busy the men in other boats were in the bilge with the bailing buckets. Always a well-spring for taunts, that.

  ‘Ha! She leaks like a cracked egg!’ one of the Svearmen in Crow called over to Sea-Shaker which was being skippered by King Thorir’s son Thidrek. Brine was being flung over Sea-Shaker’s side so often that Moldof muttered he would be surprised if the sea level did not rise around Rennisøy with water from the Svealand coast.

  ‘At least she is a real ship and not a fishing boat,’ one of the Danes yelled back, as another man, who was not needed at the oars, jumped nimbly on to the sheer strake, pulled his breeks down and showed the Svearmen his arse. Lucky he didn’t get it slapped by an oar, with how close they were, like a skein of geese across the sky.

  And all of this was good to see because insults were better than silence. ‘A bit of banter does no harm. Can be the glue that binds men before the slaughter,’ Olaf said as Reinen slid up to her mooring and men jumped off with ropes while the others shipped oars, the staves clumping as they stowed them across the oar trees.

  ‘So long as we save some good ’uns for that goat’s turd king and his haughty buggers,’ Solmund said, and in his life he must have heard every insult a man could wea
ve, though he’d likely forgotten plenty of them.

  Rennisøy had been Jarl Hrani’s idea. ‘Neutral ground,’ he had said simply, looking from Sigurd to Olaf. Olaf and Hagal nodded, seeing the sense in choosing the island, which lay due east as the crow flies from the southern tip of Skudeneshavn. Long ago the strongest jarls of Haugalandet, Rogaland and Ryfylke had agreed that Rennisøy would belong to no man and that pact stood to this day.

  ‘If we go to Avaldsnes, we’ll be fighting on the king’s ground,’ Olaf said. ‘To other men we’ll look like dogs turning on our master.’

  ‘And it will seem that Sigurd is only after the king’s high seat on that hill overlooking the Strait,’ Crow-Song added.

  ‘We could fight him at home,’ Svein had suggested, meaning Skudeneshavn. Not many left who would call it home any more, Olaf’s eyes said to Sigurd. ‘Why go to an effort?’ Svein went on. ‘Let the mighty king march his arse down to us and die tired.’

  Sigurd shook his head and not just because he did not like the idea of fighting in the ashes of his childhood home, with all those ghosts watching. With those memories of defeat hanging there like heavy black clouds. Like swarms of midges, biting him every which way he turned. ‘Let the king come to us at Skudeneshavn and he’ll trap us,’ he said. ‘His shieldwalls in front of us, his ships at our backs. No, Svein.’ He looked at Hrani. ‘Jarl Hrani’s idea is a good one.’

  This being most of the Svearmen and the Danes’ first time this far into the north-west, they had no opinions one way or the other and were content to let the others decide how they would play this game.

  ‘We go to Rennisøy,’ Sigurd confirmed for them all. ‘We find a good place to raise our banners and we let him come to us there, but in the meantime we spread the word so that others may join us if they too want to see the oath-breaker laid low.’

  ‘Aye, there must be others who would feed that rancid piece of gristle to the wolves and the ravens if they could,’ Solmund said.

  And so here they were, unloading spears and shields, tents and food, barrels of ale and sheaves of arrows, and all of them thrumming with the thrill of being part of something. For this was an army now, a great rebellious horde. Certainly a big enough affair, this thing, to draw skalds like crows to carrion.

  ‘You see this, Sigurd?’ Asgot asked him now, his head on one side as he watched him, making Sigurd uncomfortable with the weight of it. ‘Do you see what you have done?’

  ‘I have done what I must if we are to pay the oath-breaker back for his treachery,’ Sigurd snapped. He felt judged. Felt the burden of so many men’s lives about to be weighed in the scales of his ambition.

  ‘You have called the storm down from the skies,’ Asgot said. He lifted his staff as if half expecting Thór to strike it with a bolt of lightning. ‘I hope you are ready.’

  Sigurd did not answer this. He turned his back on the godi and watched the men coming ashore, spilling over the rocks in a tide of leather and iron. Sword-Norse, Svearmen and Spear-Danes. It was, he thought, like forging a sword. Like taking iron bars and twisting them together, making them into a single blade which he would wield against the hated enemy. All those he had lost, his kin – they were the pattern in the iron, the ghost in the blade. And they would drink of Gorm’s blood too.

  ‘So this is a sight, hey!’ Svein said, stopping beside Sigurd and Asgot and resting a brawny arm on the head of his long smiting axe.

  ‘Our fathers would have liked to be a part of this, Svein,’ Sigurd said. They had climbed up to the higher ground from where they could look out across the Boknafjord for King Gorm’s ships, though they knew it would be some days yet before he was ready to set sail. Below, Jarl Hrani was bellowing at two of his men who had dropped a barrel which they had been unloading from Sea-Eagle. It had sprung a stave so that ale was spraying out across the rocks. The jarl was furious.

  ‘If my father were here now he would take their heads off for wasting good ale,’ Svein said with a smile. ‘And then he’d be on his knees lapping it up.’

  That was a little too close to the truth to be funny, but Sigurd smiled anyway, wondering where he would be without Svein at his side. Without Solmund and Olaf and the others too. Perhaps Harald had felt the same way about Svein’s father Styrbiorn, until the drinking ruined him.

  A loud croak had them turning to see a raven, all black gloss and bill, on the rock behind them.

  ‘So the Allfather is here, anyway,’ Svein said. Which was just what Sigurd himself was thinking. Svein knew him well enough to know it too, which was probably why he’d said it. Doesn’t make it any less true, Sigurd thought, watching the bird pick up a mussel in that heavy beak and smash it against the rock to get to the meat.

  Hugin or Munin? Sigurd wondered which of his ravens Óðin had sent to keep an eye on him. Thought or Memory? For himself memories lay heavy on him now. Weighty as his brynja. Memories of his brothers and of a simpler life in Skudeneshavn.

  Simpler? Back then? Hah! What could be simpler than now, living only to wreak vengeance against your enemies?

  He was struck then with another memory. It came unbidden to his mind, bursting through his thoughts like a drowned corpse rising to break the surface, all bloated and refusing to be ignored. It was a memory from his boyhood, of the elk hunt he had gone on with his father and King Gorm in the woods near Avaldsnes. They had tracked the magnificent beast for days, a lifetime for a boy gripping his first man-sized spear. But in the end, when they had caught up with their prey there had been no glory in the killing. The once noble beast had been rotting alive, writhing with maggots, and the sight had sickened Sigurd and tainted the summer. And now he wondered at this blood feud and his hunger for it. Gorm the oath-breaker needed killing. Nothing could change that. But then what? The whole thing was already tainted, as the boy’s summer had been, by the faces of those he had lost. The friends and sword-brothers and the kinsmen who were no more. What awaited him now at the end of this hunt? Despair? Maggots squirming in his flesh? Death?

  ‘Not before the debt is settled,’ he muttered, remembering how, at the feast after the hunt, the king had praised him for his patience. In front of his father and all the honoured guests in his hall. If only the oath-breaker had known then that of all his enemies, even those who were not enemies yet, the seven-year-old boy at his feast table would be the one he should have made sure to kill.

  Well it would be over soon. One way or another. If all went to plan, King Gorm would come to meet Sigurd’s challenge. He would have no choice. Pride would force his hand and oars would drive his ships towards Rennisøy and there would be such a fight as the islands had not seen for a generation.

  ‘Shame it won’t be today,’ Svein said, intruding into the spell which the bird had woven around Sigurd.

  Sigurd looked up. Blue sky. Not many clouds and those that there were drifted lazily, no rain in them, like hulls out for a raid, their holds empty.

  Thought or Memory?

  Thought would be more useful now, for King Gorm would come at him with every spear he could muster. Every jarl, hersir and powerful karl who owed him fealty would be sharpening their swords and rounding up their own young men. But it would not be about the numbers alone. The oath-breaker had fought wars before and knew the art of it. The craft. And in the thick of the fight there would be decisions to be made. Sigurd would need to think hard and think well, because the lives of these men spilling ashore would depend on it.

  ‘Ah, there is his mate,’ Svein said as another raven landed beside the first with an agility that belied its size. It began a loud rhythmic call, a toc-toc-toc which had Svein touching the silver hammer that he wore on the chest of his brynja.

  Thought and Memory both, then.

  For years beyond counting, men had come to Rennisøy for the first three days after each full moon to buy and sell slaves. Now they would come for the sword-song. For the spear din.

  ‘Come then, oath-breaker,’ Sigurd said, looking out to the north-west towards Bo
kn and beyond, where the king’s estate at Avaldsnes sat above the Karmsund Strait which carried ships north the way a big vein carried blood to the heart.

  Let us finish this.

  Sigurd looked up to the top of the hill as he had done a dozen times since the dawn had begun to rise in the east like a tideline, wicking into night’s hem inch by inch. The man up there was moving and for a moment Sigurd’s stomach rolled over itself and his breath caught in his throat and he watched to see if the sentry would light the beacon fire. But the man got halfway to the pile of wood, stopped and went still.

  ‘Just pissing,’ Olaf said in a low voice because most of the men were still asleep.

  Let them rest. This may be their last sleep. Or wake them because this might be their last sunrise?

  ‘He’ll come when he comes,’ Olaf said, spitting on his helmet and rubbing it. Not that his war gear could shine any more than it did already.

  ‘What about them?’ Bram said, nodding over at a group of newcomers as he poured himself a cup of ale. ‘Think they’re any good?’

  They looked across at the thirty men who had come from Mekjarvik, some of whom were sitting round a fire as their companions snored and farted in their nests of fleeces and skins.

  Olaf shrugged. ‘I think they all have spears and axes,’ he said, ‘which makes them welcome here if you ask me.’

  Their leader was a one-eyed, bushy-browed hersir called Erp who had sailed for Rennisøy the day after hearing from a fisherman that there was going to be a fight. Some years ago King Gorm had killed Erp’s brother over a disagreement about taxes.

  ‘The sheep-swiving fuck invited my brother up to Avaldsnes to air his grievance,’ Erp had told Sigurd as his men disembarked from a flotilla of færings and row boats, as excited as women going to a wedding. ‘We never saw Enar again. Mother dreamt that Enar had a drowning death.’ Erp’s big brows had knitted together with those terrible words. ‘Perhaps he did. Perhaps he didn’t. But she has a way with dreams,’ he said.